Twilit Blood Pact

Chapters

Goodbyes
Awakening
Prey
Family
Dawn
The End

Goodbyes

Chapter 2

Goodbyes

"Sister, please speak with us." Luna had spent most of her day trying to get her solar sister to utter at least a single word, but no matter how hard she tried, Celestia remained still with a forlorn look on her tear soaked face. The meeting with the Griffon Nation bore no fruits, they still refused to allow Equestria to travel through its land to reach the continent of Zebrica, so the sisters made an early arrival at the Canterlot Castle. Their dull moods soon turned into ones of shock and dread after the sobbing Elements Of Harmony informed them on why there were only five of their group present. Celestia herself tore through the heavens in flight towards the cave mountain that had been described by those who could choke back their cries enough to utter out the location.

The gruesome sight within the partially collapsed cave broke the sun god's heart and caused her eyes to unleash a torrent of tears; she could see the lethargically growing pool of scarlet blood that streamed out from under a pile of rubble. She tore her heavenly gaze away from the cavern's scene, unleashed her sorrowful dread by using her magic as an outlet, blasting solar rays that lit up the night sky all the way to the capitol she had just flown from. After she calmed her fury at the universe's cruel hand, she walked back inside the cave and, with extreme amounts of reluctance, lifted the stones that had crushed her beloved faithful student, breaking down again once she saw what she had been reduced to.

Luna had never seen her sister act the way she had. She marveled at the incredible connection she and Twilight must have had since Celestia wasn't exactly easy to break out of the mask of composure she wore around her subjects. Said mask was now being worn again, albeit poorly considering that her eyes gave away all of her secluded emotions, as if her face being matted in tears wasn't enough of a dead giveaway.

Dead, that word could carry so many different kind of weights.

Celestia had seen many of her subjects fade away with the sands of time, many friends that were lost to the ages, but never had Luna seen the reaction from her sister that she had seen a few days ago. It wasn't of a teacher losing her student, or a friend losing another friend, it was the absolute misery of a mother being torn away from her foal, and it was put on display on the sun goddess' features and the way that her mood was affecting the quality of the day.

A chilling wind descended from the grey, overcast skies overhead, slithering its way through the benches and ponies clad in black. The Element Bearers sat together at the head of the lined up benches, no laughter being shared between them, no good memories being made, no battle with a god threatening Equestria. The spark was gone, dead.

The only soul out of those who attended the grim ceremony who could match the grief that the solar princess was going through would be the one belonging to Twilight's closest companion. Spike choked out sobs as he rested in Rarity's forelegs with a flat-maned Pinkie attempting to comfort him to no avail, his throat worn raw from his shouts of denial, and his vision blurred with the warm tears that refused to stop their salty cascade.

A casket lay ahead of all of those gathered, the sight reminding the half of Ponyville that attended the ceremony why they were there. A couple, a pink alicorn and a white unicorn with a blue mane, walked up to the open casket, peering in to find the mare that had played a great role in both of their lives, the savior of their marriage, and the filly that they had grown up alongside with.

Celestia had outright refused cremating the remains of her beloved student. For days on end she concentrated almost obsessively on bending the rules of magic itself to allow her to revive the cells in Twilight's skin for short bursts, piecing her back together until she looked as if nothing had ever happened to her, as if she were only slumbering and would awaken to bring happiness back into their lives. None of that happened.

Shining Armor and Cadance walked away from the casket reluctantly after praying for their lost sister, hoping that she would find her way to the heavens and join her late parents.

"We...we can speak later, Luna, right now we have to do this, for Twilight." Celestia finally spoke to her patiently awaiting sister, her voice lacking any of the warm tone it usually held as she dropped her mask for the moment, attaching it again quickly as she stood from her seat and began to trot towards the small podium behind the casket. Luna had much to praise her late friend for, but felt that Celestia would need the speech to reach her closure.

'But, there is also the alternative we can use, this doesn't have to be the end...no, we'd have to ask Tia before even thinking about using that.'

Luna shook her head turned her attention towards the wooden podium which her sister was currently at, lighting her horn slightly, beckoning all those present to direct their attention towards her. No script was needed for what she was about to say, for her words weren't thought out, they weren't planned out meticulously, they were the voice of her heart.

So, through the silent tears that wouldn't be stopped by her composed facade, she retold the story of her faithful student, cherishing the memories she had built together with her, praising her acts as a savior to Equestria not as assignments, but as shows of character. Although she spoke of times that would never come again, a sense of finality began to settle in to those attending the scene. The sheer sorrow wasn't driven away, but they now had hope that their beloved friend would be able to gain the peaceful rest she deserved.

"...and so, today we pray that her soul will find eternal happiness with the astral herd in her afterlife. Let us have a moment of silence." No one moved a muscle after Celestia spoke, not a sound was heard in the clearing they were in as they all bowed their heads to commence the ceremony's end.

The sun goddess moved the podium out of its place, its job already finished, and Luna arose from her seat, trotting through the deafening silence to stand next to her sister. The celestial sisters shared a quick conversation through their eye contact, agreeing on taking the casket away. Twilight's resting spot was levitated by its edges by the princesses' magical auroras, being floated away from the crowd's eyes and into the crypt that would house it for the rest of its existence.

The godly sisters put down the open casket on its designated spot within the concrete building, both of them staying inside just looking at their lost friend, one of them running through her memories while the other devised a way to explain her newest plan.

"Tia, may we speak with you now?" Luna kept her voice low, a sign of respect to the lifeless mare in the room.

"Yes Lulu, what is it?" Celestia kept her eyes on her student, afraid that if she turned around she would lose her from her sight forever.

"What is it that you feel about all of this?" the lunar princess thought it would be best to ease her true question in after conversing with her sister for a while, and she honestly wanted to know the extent of her sister's thoughts, though she already had an idea.

"It's my fault, everything...I sent her there without thinking of the consequences." Celestia's puffy eyes began to blur again as guilt mixed in with the sorrow she tried to tame.

"Don't say that, Tia." Luna wrapped a wing around her sister as she tried to quell her negative thoughts, "how were you supposed to know that he would be there?"

"I couldn't have, Luna, but I still sent her without so much as a clue as to what I could be getting her into." the sun goddess sighed out a stuttering breath before she spoke again, "I should have been more careful, I should have seen the signs he could've given off. I just wish I could go back and talk to her one final time so I could tell her how much I despise myself for what I did to her."

"Celly, she wouldn't want you to blame yourself over this, she wouldn't want her beloved mentor to tear herself to pieces over an accident."

"You're probably right Lulu, but...I'll miss her. I'd give anything to have her back." Luna spotted her chance in her sister's words, but it was still an idea that even she was a bit skeptical about.

"What if she could come back?"

"What do you mean, Luna?" Celestia raised a confused eyebrow at her sister, not exactly following what she meant.

The lunar goddess replied to her sister's question by lighting up her horn as she summoned her innate alicorn magic, weaving together a spell that she had long since used. The aurora on her horn began to dribble down in a silvery cascade, forming a cloud of the magical substance. Luna continued the spell by crafting the material into a small flower, whose petals were a velvety midnight-blue until they reached the tips, where the color transitioned into a soft lavender color. Celestia's eyes widened slightly after the flower was completed, a small frown on her face as she remembered what exactly it meant.

"Luna, I don't think that would be a good idea. As much as I want her back, I don't think I would want to use a Nightingale Lily on her. Besides, the probability of it working is close to none, and you know how spontaneous the side effects can be."

"But isn't it worth a shot, sister, don't you agree with us when we say that it is?"

"She fully deserves another chance, but I don't think I want to risk desecrating her sanctity by using that. If there was any other way I would take it, but no...not like this."

"Celestia, we know full well that you long to be reunited with her again, we know that you understand the new threat that has arisen in Equestria, and we know that you understand the weakness our nation now finds itself in due to the Elements Of Harmony missing one of their own. We won't activate the Nightingale Lily's effects in a power burst like we have done in the past, instead we will leave it with her to bring her back within a year."

"I...I don't know what to say, Luna. You're right about the way we can stretch out the application, but would she want to come back to the problems of everyday life?" Celestia knew that she was just trying to stop herself at that point, her arguments becoming weak and transparent.

"Let us answer your question with a question. Were you to somehow have perished, would you want to return to the eternal suffering of agelessness just to be able to live alongside her for as long as you could?"

"Yes Luna, I would." the solar goddess didn't doubt her answer in the slightest, she would never regret any action she took to be able to be at her faithful student's side, to watch over her as the mother she could be to no one else, even if that meant that she would have to pass up the only offer Death would ever give her.

"Then let's give her that chance, even if it is small, let's give her the hope for a new day." Luna levitated the flower between herself and her sister in preparation for what would come next. Celestia was stopped by a rebellious bit of reluctant hesitation, but she snapped herself out of it long enough to be able to watch her sister begin the ritual.

Luna lifted her right fore hoof in front of herself, materializing a small dagger a moment later. The night alicorn floated the dagger to her outstretched leg, dragging it across her flesh to leave a small cut from which blood began to dribble from. She then let the dagger fade out of existence as she began to levitate a little bit of the blood from her wound, forming a small sphere of it in front of herself, and she nodded towards her sister to signal her to begin. Celestia mimicked her younger sibling after staring at the dagger she had created for a while, looking at herself in its reflection before turning towards the open casket again, the sight giving her the final "Okay" to do what she planned. The sisters closed their wounds with some of their magic, leaving no trace behind, and they joined their blood spheres together shortly afterward. The alicorn blood was then deposited on the flower's blooming center, causing the lavender tips to shine as they wrapped themselves back up into a bud.

With the Nightingale Lily's power restored, Celestia and Luna trotted closer to where their late unicorn friend lay silently, depositing their divine creation into the hooves of the resting mare.

"The deed is done, dear sister, now we must allow her to rest, and the lily to put its ability to use." Luna spoke calmer now that her mind wasn't debating on the best way to convince her sister to help her complete the ritual that they had just finished.

"That it is Lulu, that it is." Celestia moved even closer to the casket, leaning her head down and pecking a motherly kiss on Twilight's forehead. "Goodbye, Twilight, but don't worry, I'll be back soon."

"Now, Tia, we believe it is time for us to return to the reception, ponies will start to wonder what it is we are doing in here."

With a silent nod, the solar goddess left the casket's side, closing it behind her as she began to walk out of the building and back out into the eyes of those present at the funeral. Nopony asked them about what happened inside, they simply conversed quietly among each other, trading condolences until the sun began to set beyond the darkened horizon. None of Twilight's closer friends wanted to leave yet, so they stuck together in the nighttime's soft glow, but, like all things in life including life itself, the funeral came to an end. Cadance and Shining Armor got into a royal carriage that would take them back to their home in Canterlot, and the remaining Element Bearers soon returned to their respective houses in Ponyville after having agreed that Spike would be able to live with Fluttershy.

And so, the building in which Twilight was to sleep in eternally was left in solitude. Nopony dared to so much as touch the monument since they all knew who it was dedicated to. It was left unfazed throughout the day, and that day turned into weeks, and those weeks in turn morphed into months that finally stacked up to the number twelve.

It was time for a visit.
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Celestia was bawling her eyes out again. She thought that her emotions had cooled down over the past year, yet she couldn't have been farther from the truth. In fact, it would seem as if all the time she put on her act of serene composure had allowed the sorrow inside of her to fester, to build up in size and agonizing pressure. Her state was only worsened when her visit to the burial crypt bore no fruit, there wasn't a lavender mare awaiting her return, not alive at least. No, Twilight remained in her neverending rest, the beautiful flower still placed in her hooves. Her body hadn't changed at all since the last time they saw her, the same soft smile still adorned her intimate features, most likely due to the preservation spells that were placed on her by the alicorns.

"We're sorry Celly, it just didn't work like we planned, you were right." Luna lowered her head a little, feeling guilty at bringing her sister back to visit the place that brought so many horrible memories back to her, but she felt even worse for having given hope to her beloved sister, only so that it could be crushed again.

"N-no, it's okay, Lulu. You tried your best with the lily, but I guess Twilight's body just didn't accept it."

"It is not okay, sister, we've just put a lot of more stress on you than we should have. You've got enough to fill your plate with the arising conflict in the northern border."

"Luna, please, you just bash yourself too hardly. You gave me hope, and I thank you for it even if that hope didn't succeed in the end. Maybe it really is time to let her go, as much as I wish it wasn't." Celestia looked back to the year-old coffin, shuddering as her emotions threatened to get the better of her again. She could stop all of them but one, the one ponies were supposed to be most careful with during their lifetime. "Now it's time for me to hunt him down for good this time, he will pay for what he has done to Equestria, to my only daughter!"

"Calm yourself Celestia, we do not wish for you to succumb to your own rage lest you fall victim to recklessness like we have in the past." the sun alicorn closed her eyes and snorted a few times, slowly clearing her mind from the blinding haze that had begun to form as she spoke.

"Thank you, Luna, it's just that I can't control how I feel about him at times. He deserves every furious fantasy I can design to be enacted upon him."

"Yes, but not today. For now we must say our final goodbyes to our friend."

Luna and Celestia walked over to the open casket, each giving off their versions of the ultimate farewell, although the day alicorn's was very similar to the last one she gave since her feelings hadn't changed. Luna on the other hoof sat on her haunches and began to babble on to the deceased about all the adventures they had together, most of them involving the night goddess trying to fit into society more normally. But, much like the event that had been conducted a year ago,their time with Lady Sparkle expired, and the duties of royalty beckoned them to return to the castle. The goddesses left behind the Nightingale Lily as a parting gift before they closed the casket and exited the silent building. Nopony came close to that place ever again, except Celestia on her yearly visits, but she never actually entered the crypt again.

As time passed, ponies began to accept the loss of their favorite egghead, and the sorrow began to die down for most of them. Still, it was a touchy subject that no one ever really seemed to want to talk about. Many risings of the sun passed by, equally matched by the moon's, and the ponies of Equestria who only knew Twilight as a mare who served her country forgot about her, name and all.

Nopony recognized the building that held the fallen Element of Magic, nopony recognized the building that held the one sight that could break one of their princess' mask of composure, nopony recognized the building from which a blinding light begun to emanate from.
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"Wake up, Twilight Sparkle."

"Wha? Who are you? Where am I?! All I remember was a cave and then...oh no, oh no!"

"Calm down Twilight, you're not dead. You've simply been...sleeping for quite some time."

"Uhm...alright. I-I'll take your word on this, but who are you?"

"Someone you're going to have to collaborate with if you want to get us both home."

"Okay, point noted, but I was kinda referring to your name. You obviously know mine, so may I ask what yours is?"

"You, Twilight, can call me Potential. We'll be spending quite a bit of time together from this point on so you might want to memorize that."

"Potential? What an odd name, but it's nice. Why are you named like that?"

"That's a really good question that I'll love to discuss later, Twilight. Now...WAKE UP!
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A set of amethyst eyes snapped open to find darkness all around the unicorn mare they belonged to as she gasped in the first breath of her life.

Awakening

---Chapter currently under revision---

Chapter 3

Awakening

"Princess Luna, are you okay?" one of the various night guards patrolling the halls of the Canterlot Castle knocked on the dark alicorn's bedroom doors as he asked his refined question. Muffled screams that had echoed all the way to his post had alerted him of a possible hostile situation amiss. He began to count to ten with the precision of a metronome, his dark grey lips silently counting down the seconds before he would burst into the room.

"We are fine, Sergeant Nightlock, please return to your post." the reply came from within the room lazily, but the guard could tell that she wasn't being forced to give the okay.

Nightlock reluctantly left the princess' doors, some would call him overprotective at times, but he knew that if he wasn't the one to put in the extra effort nopony else would.

Luna wiped a foreleg across her tear riddled face, just like she had been doing a lot lately. She looked around her royal bedchamber, taking in the deep hues that she personally selected to be used for the walls and flooring. Sighing, the night alicorn looked up at her ceiling, a perfect replica of the night sky, taking in her creations and the moon's waxing crescent phase.

"What irony fate has put upon us, we command the realm of dreams, yet we can't rid our self of the nightmares that plague our sleep." Luna shivered at the word that she once used as a part of her name, and the cold sweat coating her horned forehead wasn't exactly helping.

It almost seemed like a cycle to her, wake up, eat breakfast, attend royal court, and finally return to sleep that she could never enjoy. But, something was different that night, something she couldn't quite understand. She felt a wave of magic so subtle that only a creature with her amount of magical prowess would hope to detect wash over the face of Equestria, and with the way things had been going recently, she wasn't sure where it could have originated from.

"Perhaps it is just our imagination getting the better of us. Still, we'll have to look into this matter later on during the day." with a shrug and a yawn, the lunar goddess lay her head back against her damp pillow, hoping that she could get some rest before she was forced to return to her daily cycle. She would get none.
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"Hmm..." A lone figure stood atop a weathered boulder amidst a forest clearing that matched his stonefaced expression, various guards who were assigned to scout the borderlands laying unconscious at his hooves. The unmoving stallion stared at the pale moon in all of it's crescent glory, and a toothy grin spread his muzzle as his mind began to register what could have been responsible for the magical fluctuation that had just pulsed over the land.

"Perfect, the time of action is nearing its beginning, and there's nothing you can do to delay me any further, Lulu." He spoke to the lunar object hovering in the ebony night's sky as if he would actually receive a response from its mistress, delighting himself with the plans running through his secluded mind.

"Why the buck do you keep talking to yourself like this, it's really creepy you know?" The pensive stallion snapped his attention away from his stream of thoughts to focus on the newcomer that had joined him, a hot-pink mare with a curled, light purple mane that cascaded down the back of her neck. She pierced the disturbed silence with an appraising whistle before speaking, "Damn, another patrol squad this near to the mountain border?"

"Mimy, it would serve you well to watch your language when speaking to me. I know you're a mare of talents, but it gives you no right to speak that way to your superior." Mimy simply shrugged her shoulders in response to the stallion's scolding remark, showing him that she hadn't cared in the slightest about what he had just said, "And yes, I believe Princess Luna is beginning to realize that we prefer to operate near the Griffon Nation's border."

"I don't get why you don't just kill these bastards instead of just leaving them on the ground knocked out, that might get them to stop sending so many of them to look for us up here." Mimy trotted over to one of the guards she was talking about, lifting his chin up of the ground as she tightened her grip around his neck, preparing herself to snap it, "Just like th- OW!"

She dropped the guard's head so that she could rub the scorch mark on her flank that a minuscel lightning bolt spell had left behind. Mimy turned around to look at the stallion's unamused, celestially blue eyes, glaring at him with all her strength, "What the heck was that for!?"

"I've warned you about murdering the patrol guards already. I know Luna, she won't just stop sending her guards to look for us if you kill them, she'll join them and make our operations much more difficult to accomplish. Do not question my methods, Mimy, much less talk back to me."

Another undersized lightning bolt descended from one of the few clouds in the sky, striking the exact same spot on the mare's flank that the last one had, causing her to yelp in pain again. Her cry of aching annoyance contrasted heavily with a childish giggle that faded into the clearing housing the arguing ponies, one that caused Mimy's scowl to harden and the stallion's eyes to light up in the pale moonlight.

Some of the trees' various swaying shadows slithered across the ground, coalescing at a single point next to the stallion lecturing the hot-pink mare. The splotches of oozing darkness began to extend out of the ground, the youthful giggles getting louder in time with the form's growth, reaching their apex once the figure of a small colt was prevalent.

"Hehehe, see Mimy? That's why you have to be a good girl and listen to grandpa when he tells you to not do something he doesn't like. Oh, and hi to you too grandpa!" the ebony colt threw himself at the large stallion, wrapping his tiny hooves around his neck and hugging him as best as he could.

"Hello child, how have you been?" the stallion's soft voice was very much unlike the scolding tone he had used on the rebellious mare nearby just moments ago as he spoke to the magical projection of the small colt, happy to see someone who could give him an enjoyable conversation. Mimy simply gave an annoyed huff and retreated into the forest's depths, not wanting to be around the little colt any longer than she had to.

"I've been doing okay, the ponies are really nice where I live and they've been helping me fit in. I miss being here with you and Mimy though, its just so different over here. Why did you send me over here anyway, grandpa?" The colt's magical projection began to pout it lower lip, trying to coax an answer out of the stallion.

"It's because I have been planning a special mission, just for you." The smaller figure's face lit up at the prospect of a new assignment, always eager to assist his elder with any task at hoof.

"Really!? What is it, huh!?"

"You see, a very special unicorn has been asleep for some time now, and this unicorn has the power to hurt little old me, so I need you to stand keep your vigil over Ponyville and wait for her there."

"How will I know who she is?"

"Don't worry about that, you'll know when you see her."

"Okay grandpa, if you're sure about this, than I'll wait for her there, but I have one more teensy question."

"Yes?"

"What do I do when I see her?" the stallion rewarded the little black colt projection with a warm smile, one that it craved to get as much as it could from him.

"Put her back to sleep...forever."
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The blinding abyss left by the absence of light greeted Twilight as she awoke from her slumber, a slumber that nopony was ever supposed to awaken from. Her frantic breathing slowly chilled a burning sensation she felt within her pleading lungs. She couldn't explain why, but since the moment she opened her eyes it felt as if her internal system was devoid of any of the oxygen it needed to maintain itself.

Now that she wasn't vacuuming in all of the air inside the confines of her...well, she didn't exactly know what she was in, but she did know one thing, and it was odd. She felt comfortable. Very comfortable, in fact, which was really weird considering that she was prone to minor claustrophobia.

Twilight's pair of amethyst eyes began to adjust to the shrouding darkness of her little napping spot in no more than a minute, not really helping her out as much as they could since she could only see a wooden surface directly in front of her and surrounding her on all sides.

"Hmm...where am I?" the newly awakened mare's body began to respond to her commands as the oxygen began to spread throughout her circulatory system, washing away the numb sensation her limbs felt. The first thing she noticed with her regained sense of touch was that she was currently resting on something soft underneath her. Then, she became aware of the fact that she was holding something in her hooves, but her current situation didn't let her bend up to see what it was.

Twilight raised her left hoof, holding the unknown object in the her right one, and pressed it against the wood in front of her face. With a creak, the panel opened up and fell off of the hinges that held it together, clattering noisily on the ground. The mare could now see that she was inside some kind of building, most likely spacious if the echo given off from the wood was any indication. Twilight lifted her stiff body up to a sitting position, resting on her haunches as she lifted up her right hoof to curiously inspect whatever it was she was holding. She found herself enraptured by the beautiful blooming flower she held in her grasp, the elegant dark-blue colors being accented by the lavender tips of the petals, and it had a strange feeling to it, as if it were beckoning her attention towards it.

The unicorn's stomach gave of a loud rumble, apparently it didn't like getting teased with such a scrumptious delicacy as she inspected it thoroughly. Twilight giggled at her body's demands, more than happy to oblige them. Even though she did really like the flower, it just looked too good a meal to pass up, and a scent was coming off of it that made her mouth water the moment it entered her nostrils. The hungry mare moved the treat up towards her muzzle, eyeing it one last time before popping it into her mouth. The looks were truly misleading, it didn't taste great, it was the best thing she had ever eaten! The petals were smooth and felt heavenly against her tongue, the stem was so fresh that it seemed to have just been picked, and her personally favorite thing about the flower was that it gushed with some kind of delightful juice. The sweet red filling from the treat traveled down Twilight's throat, washing away a dryness she didn't know it held, and giving her a feeling of fullness for some reason. A weird anomaly considering that it was only one flower that had managed to sate her starvation-like hunger.

"Mmmm..." Twilight's tongue lolled out a little as she began to moan slightly, much to her embarrassment even though nopony was around to hear her, as a tingling sensation jolted throughout her body, concentrating on her overly tense muscles and the idle horn adorning her forehead. The stiffness she felt was eradicated after the feeling of euphoria finished its job on her body, leaving her feeling refreshed and ready to begin the day. However, she seemed to have forgotten the fact that she had no idea where she was due to being so concentrated on the morsel she had just finished eating, but when the bliss began to leave her body her mind caught up with her current affairs.

The lavender unicorn looked down, her blood freezing the instant she recognized what she had been sleeping inside, and promptly jumping out and away from it as soon as her brain registered that she had, in fact, been inside a coffin.

"Why in the name of Tartarus was I in a coffin!?" Twilight's mind began to dig up the hazy memory from the "Dream" she had experienced before she woke up inside the wooden burial cover. She remembered that she had spoken with someone, or something, and that it had told her its name.

Something that scared her greatly was that she didn't remember much more than the vision she had, the only other memories available to her being that she was a gifted lavender unicorn by the name of Twilight Sparkle, and that she had thrown herself in harm's way to push some...farm mare out of Death's way.

The mystery figure from her vision was the only other being she could recall by name, so she began to search the gray circular room in order to find the one who knew what was going on. The mare knew that the odds of her dream actually helping her out in the real world were slim to none, but she really didn't have any other leads to rely on.

"Potential, are you in here?" Twilight's search bore no fruit, the only things she found were some dried up flowers that didn't look anywhere near as enticing as the one she had eaten earlier, a dusty portrait of herself sitting next to some used up candles, and various dust bunny kingdoms scattered everywhere. However, a minute into her search, when her frustration began to slowly ascend to its apex, she heard it.

'But of course, you didn't think I'd leave you all alone in here did you?' the voice startled the unicorn mare, causing her eyes to frantically scan the dimly lit room in an attempt to locate the speaker amidst the shadows.

"Where are you?" Twilight's ears perked up intensely as they listened for any sound other than their owner's quickened breaths.

'I'm right here Twilight, where I've been for quite some time. Look not at the room in which you are in, instead look into yourself.' Potential's voice was, to say as clearly as possible, unidentifiable. Whenever Twilight thought she had the pitch for the voice figured out, it would change itself to be either an octave higher or lower, messing up her mental categorization and making it impossible to figure out the gender of its owner.

"Wait, not in this room, been with me for a long time, look into myself...you're inside my head!" the lavender mare's fore hooves flew to her head's sides, gripping it for no apparent reason, and the unicorn honestly didn't know how to feel. She was glad that she had figured out where the voice was coming from, and that in a way she wasn't truly alone, but she was more than a little freaked out that the voice was originating from within her own mind, not to mention that she was already pretty frazzled up from waking up in a casket.

'Aha! Correct, Twilight, I knew it wouldn't take you long to figure that out.' it may have just been Twilight's imagination, but she thought that the voice had grown slightly more feminine and stayed that way, finally giving her the closure she needed on figuring out whether Potential was a mare or a stallion...well those two didn't exactly apply either, after all, it was just in her head.

"Uhm, don't take this the wrong way, but, why are you inside my mind? Are you a figment of my imagination, or are you sentient on your own?" questions were the only things filling Twilight's head, aside from Potential of course, and she dearly hoped that she would get some straight answers.

'I'd love to explain it to you sometime, Twilight, but it would seem that we have other matters to attend to. One of which would be to get out of this place.' the newly awakened mare sighed and shook her head as she bore with the fact that she would have to wait to get her answers.

"Okay, I agree, but can you at least tell me why I'm here, or better yet, who I am."

'I don't know why we were in a coffin, but you already know who you are, don't you?'

"No, I don't. I know that my name is Twilight Sparkle, I am a lavender unicorn mare that is gifted in the magical arts, but that's all I know other than you and some other hazy memory of a cave collapsing." confusion and frustration were evident in the unicorn's voice, she was almost pleading for some understanding on her current situation.

'Well, I should have known that the memory loss would be more extensive than I previously thought it would be. Unfortunately, I don't know much about your personal life, I only know of what has happened after my placement within your subconscious mind.'

"Placed? By who?"

'I don't know, Twilight. All of my memories consist of the time you and I spent together in our slumber. The only other thing I know is my prime directive towards you.'

"Prime directive? So, are you some kind of neurological attachment, and if so, what do you do?"

'For the time being, I serve as your mental partner, I will offer my advice if it is needed, and I will be here if you ever need somepony to talk to. I can also carry out a more complex function, this being my principle objective, but that is one we will have to explore later on.'

"Okay Potential, just be careful with my head, now let's get out of here and look for anypony else who can tell us where we are."

Twilight made her way towards the pair of granite double-doors that marked the exit of the cold building she was in. Without stopping here trot, the mare lit up her horn and tried to push the doors open, promptly smacking her face against the cool stone once a padlock on the other side stopped her from opening the exit. Twilight sat down on her haunches and groaned as she rubbed a hoof against a sore spot on her nose, glaring daggers at the inanimate doorway.

"Great, just great, now I get to bear with a sore nose for the rest of the day." sarcasm dripped from the unicorn's remark, along with annoyance.

'You should have been more careful, sorry for being so blunt but it's true, now get back up and try to break the lock by pushing the doors with enough force.'

With a nod that nopony else saw, Twilight concentrated her magic on the heavy doors as she enveloped them in a red glow. She was a little surprised that she hadn't noticed the shift in her magic's aurora before, but distracted herself by snapping the lock on the other side of the doors as she pushed them apart, an action that seemed far too easy now, even with all her magical prowess, it should have been more difficult to do so.

Sunlight flooded in through the opening in the building, splashing against the unicorn and draining away the chill that the enclosed building had set upon her. Even though the celestial orb filled her with a warmth she craved, it also caused her to shy away from it, as if by instinct, jumping back into the shadows of the crypt. She could almost swear she heard herself hiss angrily a little once the sunbeams touched her. She began to worry even more about herself, from what she knew up to the moment, she had lost massive portions of her memory, her magical aurora had changed, and she kept acting strangely.

'What? It's just a little sunlight, go ahead.'

"I know, I know, but it's just so bright." Twilight slowly made her way into the sunlight with squinted eyes, letting them adjust to the absence of darkness. With clear vision once again, the unicorn could tell that she was in the middle of a grassland, and that the building she just just came out from had several cracks forming on the exterior, nothing major, but they didn't exactly make it look any better. She also noticed that the sun was much dimmer than she last saw it, but she blamed that one on her over-active mind.

Her head turned towards the north side of the field, spotting a huge oak tree that had grass growing near it that shorter than the one in the area around it. The sight brought jumbled images and blurs to Twilight's head, short visions of five other mares huddled around a picnic table conceiving conversations filled with laughter. Who the mystery mares where completely slipped away from her mind's grasp, frustrating her to the point in which she had to use her breathing techniques to calm herself down, but her controlled breathing wasn't the only thing helping her lose her irritation. A small gust blew through the grassland, through some fine grass, causing a sweet chime to ring out into the air and cooling the mare greatly.

"The Melodic Prairies."

'What?'

"I remember this place from some time in my past."

'Ah, it's good to see that your memories can return easily. If this is a place you already know, then there are probably more familiar areas around here.'

"Yeah, but I've got a hunch that we're going to have to traverse the forest surrounding this field."

'Then it would be best if we begin now, don't you think?'

The lavender mare and the neurological being began to move away from the building that had sheltered them during their slumber, making their way towards the thick woods surrounding the clearing. Oaks of all shapes and sizes greeted the unicorn as she entered the canopy's shadow, many of which held various scratches or markings. Twilight continued her trek even after the sun set beyond the horizon and made way for its sister orb, and she was a little more than surprised that she could see perfectly even though there was no light available. The mare walked into a small clearing in the dark forest, one that held a small fresh water pond, along with various herbs growing on the floor.

"How about we rest for a while, Potential?" Twilight wasn't actually tired, but it was exactly that that worried her, she had been walking the entire afternoon with nothing but a single flower in her stomach.

'That would be best, no need to trot on tired hooves.'

Twilight walked closer to the water's edge, and she found herself staring at her reflection, taking in the fact that she hadn't changed much. The only two things that were actually different about her were that her coat had grown slightly darker, and that her horn had grown about an inch and a half in length. The latter caused the unicorn to run a hoof along its spiraling length, admiring her improved magical tool, but she reserved all of her questions for later since she knew that she wouldn't be able to get any answers at the moment.

'Be wary of what is moving in the plants, Twilight.' Potential spoke in a highly warning tone, as if she already knew what was behind there.

The lavender unicorn turned towards the shaking plant, spotting a pair of yellow eyes staring at her from within. She shifted her stance to a defensive position, pointing her horn towards the creature in the topiary, a shield spell she had learned from her brother already prepared to be used. Just as she was going to push the creature out of its hiding spot, another bush behind her rustled, causing her to jump backwards. With her back to the pond, she stared at the trees and plants in front of her, spotting four pairs of yellow eyes looking at her. Four became five when yet another creature joined the onlookers, this one had the same golden eyes, but Twilight could tell that it was significantly bigger by the increased amount of noise and rustling it caused.

"Oh buck, Potential, I think I know what these things are." Twilight whispered to her companion, fearing that anything louder than that would cause the threatening creatures to attack.

'Velociprey, I know. You better run. Now.'

Twilight turned tail, teleported across the pond, and sprinted away as quickly as possible, desperate to put as much room between herself and the reptiles that were stalking her. The four velociprey left their hiding spots in the brush, jumping across the water's surface and giving chase to the lavender mare, leaving behind the biggest one of the pack. The larger creature simply stared at his hunting partners chase behind the mare blindly, shaking his head a little before jumping deeper into the topiary and taking a hunting route it always used.

Trees blurred in Twilight's vision as she ran with a speed she didn't know she had, incredibly staying ahead of the velociprey pack. Said pack was slobbering over the thought of sinking their teeth into their prey's warm flesh, and they were driven by pure eagerness to catch the unicorn in front of them.

"Velociprey, carnivorous lizard-like creatures that hunt in packs of four to five. Each pack is lead by a larger specimen of velociprey, named a velocidrome, who grows a red crest over its head as a sign of its dominance. They inhabit random tropical jungles and areas deep within the Everfree Forest, do not engage if escape is an option." Twilight recited the short summary on the creatures chasing her, finding that it calmed her slightly by making her feel like she knew exactly what they could do. In all honesty, nopony could actually research the velociprey species longer than a day or two before they were promptly devoured by the very pack they were observing. Twilight had read more about the velocidrome since it didn't exactly kill all of its victims, but in her eyes what it did do to most of them was much, much worse.

'Stall them, Twilight, use your magic to block off their path.' Potential's ideas were more than welcome at the moment in Twilight's 'What to do when being chased by carnivorous monsters' list.

The unicorn lit up her horn in its red aurora, concentrating on the vines cascading down from the grim trees, and willing them to serve as tendrils for her. Twilight used the vines to ensnare the velociprey at the head of the pack, causing it to give off a surprised yelp as it was lifted off of the ground and into the canopy made up by the thick treetops. The remaining three creatures dodged the vines that were sent after them, knowing their prey's fighting capabilities from what she did to their partner.

Much to her sheer terror, a tree root caught one of Twilight's hooves, causing her to fall face-first into the muddy ground, pain spreading through her muzzle quicker than the mud itself. The velociprey pack gave off their 'Barks' of joy at how their catch was facilitated, closing the distance between themselves and the mare. Twilight on the other hoof jumped back to a standing position and continued her frantic sprint, mentally berating herself for not being as careful as she should be. She felt a stinging sensation in her back, causing her to turn her head to look at what had caused it.

One of the velociprey had caught a few strands of her purple tail in his mouth, having gotten dangerously close to her. Twilight instinctively bucked her hind legs due to the pain and fear, kicking the lizard on the head and leaving it unconscious on the cold ground. The other two reptiles didn't even glance at their fallen comrade as they continued chasing the unicorn.

'Good kick by the way, now use a short-range teleportation spell to put some space between the velociprey and yourself.'

Doing as she was advised to do, the unicorn disappeared in a red burst, appearing a couple of feet further away from her would-be predators. The trees rushing by in Twilight's vision began to slow down substantially, a couple of drops of sweat began to form on her brow, and her breathing began to turn more labored. She was in deep trouble.

"Potential, I can't keep running forever! I'm going to have to find a way to lose them!" she had a plan, and she prayed to whatever was listening that it would work.

The velociprey began to tackle each other slightly, trying to get ahead of the other to get the first bite out of the unicorn, unaware of what their meal was planning. Twilight's horn lit up again and she blinked herself out of existence, causing the predators to frantically search the area ahead of them, overlooking the red aurora overtaking the ground. They were startled when all the stones on the floor lifted into the air and began to press against each other tightly, forming a solid cobblestone wall that blocked of the velociprey's forward path for a couple of seconds before they gained their senses again and ran around it, continuing down the path that led deeper into the forest.

"Haha, yes, I can't believe they fell for it." Twilight chuckled happily to herself as she climbed down from the tree she had teleported herself into.

'I have to say, that was incredibly crafty for a spot-on idea, even by your standards.'

"That's nice of you to say, but I'm just grateful I could get away from those things. There aren't many carnivores in Equestria, but velociprey are one of the worst." the unicorn trotted away from the path the predators took, looking for a safe place to rest until the sun would come up.

'True, but why did you study so much about them?'

"When I was little, I would usually attach myself to a specific genre of books for a couple of months before switching to another on. I studied about the carnivorous species of Equestria since I wanted to learn about monsters without heading into the fictional areas." Twilight set her sight on a steep cliff side a couple of yards ahead of her, spotting a cave low enough for her to be able to enter.

'It's a good thing you did, we would have probably been shredded to pieces if you hadn't.'

"Yeah, don't remind me about it. But there's still something bothering me." Twilight shuddered as she thought of what would be left of her if the velociprey had actually caught up to her.

'What, are you scared of them possibly coming back here?'

"Well, yes and no. When the pack found as at the pond clearing there were five sets of eyes watching us, but we only saw four chasing us." the unicorn began to climb up towards the cave mouth. She didn't know why, but he felt like she should be avoiding caves for some reason.

'It must have just stayed behind, probably too lazy to even try and chase its prey'

"No, I don't think it's that simple. That fifth one was much bigger than the rest, roughly a head taller than I am, and I think he might have actually been the pack leader." once she was inside the cave, Twilight cast a magelight spell that summoned a orb of white light that banished the darkness inside the domed chamber.

'Perhaps he knew somewhere else where food was easier to catch, who knows? Let's just seal this place up for the night and get some shut-eye, it's important.'

"What do you mean when you say it's important?" Twilight levitated various rocks in the cave, compacting them into a sturdy wall just like she had done when she tricked the velociprey to get away from her. She placed the cobblestone barrier at the cave's entrance, closing it off from the outside world so that she would be able to rest with a mildly peaceful state of mind.

'You'll see.'

"Okay, whatever that means."

Twilight gathered up a pile of fallen leaves that had been blown into her temporary residence before she sealed it off, spreading them out evenly as she fashioned a makeshift sleeping pad. Laying down on the itchy, cold, and lightly rotting leaves, Twilight closed her eyes and began to let her grip on the waking world slip away. Potential said something that the unicorn's drowsy mind didn't register as she slipped into sleep's silent embrace..

'It's about time we got to meet, face-to-face.'
______________________________________________________________________

Luna tossed and turned in her restless sleep, whimpering slightly from the reoccurring nightmares she suffered through her nights. Her quick breathing began to slow down, her hooves stopped thrashing, and her head stopped shaking, all in perfect synchronization. Something was wrong.

The moon goddess' mind was still fully in her command, even as she slumbered, so she could tell that her hellish nightmare had been replaced with confusion, confusion that was directed at her dream magic. As the mistress of dreams, she could tell what everypony saw in their dreams simply by following a trail towards them through her subconscious mind and peeking into their fantasy. Nopony was ever excluded from her monitoring magic, she was always granted access if she some much as asked for it, so it really baffled her on how there was a dream going on that she couldn't get a hold onto.

She attempted to latch her magic onto it, only to have it repelled by dream itself, as if it knew what she was trying to do. No matter how much she focused on it, she couldn't enter the dreamer's creation, she couldn't even trace where, or who, the dreamer was.

Her nightmares long forgotten, Luna spent the rest of the night trying to break through whatever was shielding the dream from her magic, driven by curiosity, fear, and her pride.

'We will break thee, even if it is the last thing we do!'
______________________________________________________________________

Twilight's eyes drifted open as one of her hooves wiped away a little of the drool that had trickled down her mouth as she slept, With a lazy yawn, the lavender unicorn got up from the reading couch she had fallen asleep on, a copy of 'Carnivores Of The Everfree' falling off of her chest and onto the floor with a dull thud. She slapped a hoof on her forehead as punishment for her ineptitude, hating herself for bringing harm to a defenseless book.

"Darn it, you've got to be more careful Twilight, a librarian does not simply drop a book on the floor." Twilight levitated the fallen book and put it on the coffee table nearby, a smile on her face as she noticed that no permanent damage was done to her book. She turned her head towards the stairway leading into her bedroom before calling out, "Spike! Let's make some breakfast!" She began to walk towards the kitchen she and her little dragon always ate in, getting halfway through the archway before she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at a spot on the wall with a confused frown on her face.

"Who's Spike? And since when am I a librarian?" the mare shook her head and walked towards the icebox in the kitchen, hoping that a nice glass of milk would be able to calm down her unstable thoughts. She very nearly dropped the bottle of milk when a voice sounded out from somewhere within the library.

"Good question."

Twilight wheeled around and stared at the archway leading back into the living room, her horn alight with her charged magical spells. She took a couple of tentative steps until she reached the entrance to the tree house's main room, still not seeing whoever it was that had spoken.

"Who's there!? Show yourself!"

"Why don't you come and find out."

The voice rang out again, but this time Twilight could tell that it originated from her upstairs bedroom. With an extremely deadly milk bottle in her magical grip, the mare ran up the oak wood stairway and burst through the door that led into her bedroom. Her amethyst eyes scrutinized every single inch visible to her, not finding the smallest of clues as to who had beckoned her up there.

Wanting to see her new appearance better, Twilight moved towards her large vanity mirror. She wasn't one to take too much time to judge the way she looked, simply combing her mane and checking for any filth on her coat, but the changes her body had undergone were more than enough to prompt a check-up from her. With the pristine mirror's surface, she could see her darkened coat shining against the moonlight that filtered in through the glass doors leading out into her balcony, she could also tell that her polished horn had not only grown in length, but it had also gained a sharpened tip, one that would make the results from the most expensive of horn makeovers look like dirt when compared to it. What really caught her attention though was her overall form. She wouldn't say that she was fat before, but she certainly wasn't the lightest of mares either, but what she saw in the mirror was anything but chubby. Her shimmering skin bulged slightly with refined muscles, how she gained them was another thing to add to her list on un-explainable occurrences. She didn't look skinny, like many mares thought looked the best, no, her body was sleek, from the tip of her horn to the end of her flanks, it was light enough to give her agility without sacrificing her muscle strength to scrawniness.

"Woah, I'm...I'm.." Twilight liked her new body, but she couldn't call herself what she wanted to.

"Hot?"

"AHHHH!" Twilight jumped away from the mirror she was using to look herself over after it finished her sentence on its own accord, making her fall to the floor, and nearly giving her a heart attack from the shock.

"Hehe, calm down, silly little mare, it's just me, Potential." the reflection walked through the vanity mirror to stand right in front of a panicking Twilight, offering her a lavender hoof to help her get up. Accepting the help, Twilight grabbed onto her partner's hoof as she stood back up, all the while her jaw was stuck in a slack position, well, until she spoke again.

"Why do you look like me!?" Twilight began to search Potential's body for anything that didn't match with her own.

"Because this is the way I am, Twilight, we are inside your subconscious mind at the moment, so you can see me for what I truly am." Potential's words put an end to Twilight's search. and reigniting the storm of questions.

"So this is where you are talking to me through? You're attached to my mind, but why, and what do you do other than offer me advice?" the barrage of questions was silenced when Potential raised her hoof and spoke in a exact copy of Twilight's voice, just like she had been doing since Twilight first heard her from the downstairs kitchen.

"One question at a time, okay?" Twilight nodded at Potential's question, prompting her to continue speaking, "Yes, I am attached to your subconscious mind. As I have told you before, I was introduced here by an external source, I have no idea who it was, but they left me in here to help keep you preserved."

"Preserved?"

"Yes, I acted as a anchor that kept your memories, personality, and innate magical abilities from permanently fading away through the time of our slumber."

"Wait, why do you keep mentioning a slumber."

"It was the period of time between my introduction into your being, and the moment you awoke inside of the coffin. The memory loss hadn't kicked in during the time of our sleep since we could only spend it inside your subconscious mind, so I helped you train your spellcasting and tactical abilities since those two only need your mind to be refined. I trust that the skills you gained during our training will come to you naturally as time passes by."

"Okay, and how come I'm a different shade of purple, have a longer horn, and a better body? Are some of these attributes even real?"

"I don't know how your body changed, Twilight, but I can assure you that what you saw in that mirror was very much what you look in the real world. I bet you're happy about that, aren't you, hot stuff?"

"Potential!" Twilight's blush threatened to burn her cheeks off, much to the amusement of the neurological counterpart.

"Hahaha, I'm just kidding, Twilight."

"I swear that sometimes you remind me a lot about Rainbow Das-" Twilight's statement was cut-off by herself as her eyes lost their focus on Potential, distracted by images of a cyan pegasus mare with a chromatic mane running through her thought processor.

"Hey, snap out of it." Potential clopped her hooves together in front of Twilight's face, releasing her from the grip her memories had put her into, "What happened to you?"

"Rainbow Dash...I know her from somewhere, but from where?" after Twilight finished her monologue, an explosion rang outside of the library, and the sky filled with every color of the light spectrum. The commotion drew the two identical mares outside onto the balcony, and they stared at the brilliant display for a while before it faded away. The buildings around the library, which were all just blobs of color, began to mold themselves into more detailed versions of what they were supposed to be, forming a small town.

"Ponyville, my home." Twilight cast her gaze over the town she once inhabited, each small sight bringing forth small snippets of larger memories.

"So you've managed to remember?" Potential was giving her host a praising smile, she didn't think that Twilight's mind would be able to revert itself so quickly, but it was anything but bad news to her.

"Yes, only a couple of things though, but from what I've seen in these little memory flashes, we are inside the Everfree Forest, directly south of Ponyville."

"Great, now we have a sense of direction for the trip tomorrow. If we pace ourselves right, we can reach the end of the forest within a couple of hours, at most. Now all we have to do is wait for this dream to expel us fro-"

The dreamscape that Potential and Twilight were in began to shake violently, causing both mares to fall to the floor, and toppling over some of the smaller buildings within the replica of Ponyville. A roar rang out in the sky, but its source was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh buck, Twilight, you have to wake up!" Potential had to scream over the thundering noise raining down from the night sky over the small town.

"What!?"

"Wake up! Wake up right now or we're both in a deep sack of horseapples!" Potential gripped Twilight's shoulders in her hooves and began to shake her wildly as she screamed in her face.

The ground under the library cracked apart and split open into a giant trench, swallowing the tree, floor, and the mares in its blinding darkness.
______________________________________________________________________

Twilight scrambled away from the pile of leaves she was sleeping on as something banged against the stone wall she had set up, adrenaline that was summoned in her sleep coursing throughout her veins. Just as she was about to relax her fighting stance slightly, the cobblestone wall shook again, cracks starting to appear on its surface. A muffled roar was heard on the other side before the offender tackled straight through the barrier, spewing forth a cloud of dust. After the obstructing cloud dissipated its large yellow eyes focused on the lavender mare in front of it.

The lavender unicorn stared at the large velocidrome in front of her, the same one that had peeled away from the pack, and the only one that actually stalked her through her journey in the forest. Through all the fear and the instinct to escape from the hostile situation, Twilight uttered one phrase, before getting swatted with a whip-like tail for trying to escape past the carnivorous lizard.

"Clever boy."

Prey

Chapter 4

Prey

A pair of midnight-blue eyes snapped open in frustration, their winged mistress sitting up as she rubbed a hood against her forehead. Luna had pushed her mind to its limits as she tried to 'Hack' her way into the slippery dreamscape she had discovered, ultimately failing in the end.

"We may have had a chance if they hadn't woken up so soon."

Nopony was there to listen, and they wouldn't even understand what the heck she was talking about, but she felt that she could save a bit of her pride by reassuring herself with that one statement. In all reality, she highly doubted she would have been able to break into that specific dream realm, even if she were to have put all night into trying.

"Bah! Tis a problem we will face another day."

After slapping herself for slipping back into her old speaking dialect again, she thoroughly hated how weird it made her sound compared with the new way of speaking, Luna stood from her velvety mahogany bed, stretching in a cat-like fashion as she tried to pop the few kinks in her back. With various satisfying crunches, the night alicorn's body lost its tenseness, making her feel perfectly comfortable as she hopped out of bed.

The goddess of the night trotted over to her spacious closet, ignoring the overwhelming choices of dresses that a certain designer in Ponyville had made for her to use at special occasions, and instead picked out her royal regalia. The metal necklace felt cool against her skin, similar to the glass slippers she had on, whose clink was muffled by the carpet coating the room's floor as Luna made for her bedroom's door.

The hall in which Luna's room was situated was empty at the moment, aside from the lunar goddess herself, the decorative statues, and the waxing moon right outside the windows. Luna sighed, at times she wished that the night were a time in which more ponies would go about their jobs, but she understood that sleep was a necessity. Besides, she was content with knowing that various ponies now partook in activities that were more celebrated during the night, like clubbing for example.

The thought of clubbing made Luna's thoughts wander over to the 'Party' category, and she suddenly remembered what was going on in most places across Equestria on that night.

"Nightmare Night, yes, just what I need to get some of this horrible work stress off of my system." the dark alicorn hopped onto one of the broad windowsills, flapping her wings a little to prepare for flight, "Perhaps I'll visit my subjects at Ponyville, like good old times."

Just as she was about to blast off into the night, the grey mare that took the role of her accountant called out to her from down the hallway.

"Princess Luna, please wait!"

The lunar goddess folded her wings back at her sides, jumped down from the window she had perched herself upon, and turned to face the employee. She spoke with a voice that seemed as cool as the night's breeze, and as smooth as the slate the stars were painted upon, hiding the annoyance she had at the interruption.

"What is it that you require from us, Miss Quill?" Luna disliked the bow that was given to her as she mentioned the mares name, it reminded her that she would never get the chance to walk among the ponies of Equestria as a everyday individual, instead of being cursed to live a life full of useless formalities.

"Sergeant Nightlock has sent for your appearance at the Northern Tower, he has news about the latest scout patrol sent to the northern border." the night god lit up slightly at the newest bit of information that had become available for her, she had been waiting for the report of her northern patrols for the past month, and she was eager to put a close to that part of her personal investigation.

"Thank you for informing us of this, Miss Quill, you may report back to your usual post." with a small, unwanted bow, the accountant left the princess' presence.

'It seems like the ponies of Ponyville will have to spend this year without our appearance at the festivities.'

Luna would have chosen to celebrate the special night with her friends, the only ones who could make her feel 'Normal', even if only for a couple of hours, but the news that awaited her was of the highest priorities to her. The dark alicorn spoke to herself as she briskly trotted towards the northern sector of the castle.

"Perhaps they've finally found her."
______________________________________________________________________

Twilight's body shook as she attempted to stand on her shaky legs, straining at what little wind was left within her lungs. The beast she was pitted against had just lashed at her with its tail again a few moments prior, adding to the collection of bruises forming on her body. Her injuries were barely visible behind her dark lavender coat, but that didn't mean that they hurt any less.

With a deafening roar that reverberated off of the cave's walls, the velocidrome that had stalked her to the chamber she was in put its long legs to work and charged at the unicorn it was facing. Adrenaline flooded through Twilight's veins as she jumped out of the collision course the lizard-like beast had set, barely managing to roll away from her offender. The unicorn mare found herself hiding behind a partially large boulder as she tried to salvage any of the mangled thoughts running wildly through her head.

'You're not going to be able to outrun this one, Twilight.' Potential's voice finally made an appearance since the attack began, but she was saying the last thing Twilight wanted to admit to herself.

"I know, I know! I'm running out of options!" the carnivorous lizard finished the failed charge, and turned towards the source of the commotion that his highly developed ears could pick up.

'Fight it off, just hurt it enough for it to run away.' after Potential stated the obvious final resort, Twilight looked down to her hooves and found that various stones had managed to chip off from the boulder she was hiding against. Just as she levitated up the solid rocks, the velocidrome jumped over the boulder being used as her cover, turning its head to glare at the lavender mare.

Twilight found herself locking eyes with the predator standing a few feet away from her, amethyst clashing with gold in a battle of intimidation that was being dominated by the larger creature. The velocidrome let lose another one of its trademarked screeches, but this one only went on for about two seconds before a cold stone was shoved into his mouth by a purple aurora, effectively silencing him. Another rock was fired at his face, smashing against the red crest that adorned him as the leader of the velociprey pack, followed shortly after by many more. When Twilight's barrage of stones ran out, the top predator crushed the rock in its mouth with its jaw, spitting out the pebbles that had formed within his orifice.

The unicorn mare began to back away, not liking the sinister grin that grew on the predator's face. She was running out of both options and ideas. Without materials to work with, defensive or offensive spells to cast, or a way out, Twilight was useless in a physical battle against the natural born killer. She had only enough time to realize that the velocidrome was crouching down before it lunged into the air, reaching a height only achievable with legs that had undergone evolution over millions of years to perfect their structure. She had even less time to realize the trajectory of his jump path, learning only after the full weight of the predator came crashing down upon her.

No wind found itself in Twilight's lungs as she writhed in pain under the velocidrome's claw, which was pressed against her chest, keeping her pinned to the ground under the giant carnivorous leader. Her heart stopped as his crested head craned down and gave her an experimental lick on the face, giving her the feeling that this wasn't exactly one of the hunters in the group.

No females in the velociprey species meant that they had very limited numbers, barely surviving on the meat they could gather from their ecosystem. But, out of every five or so velocidromes, one of them was born different than the rest. This special velocidrome is born with the uncanny ability to reproduce with anything of the female gender as long as it can hold the egg within its body, and he had such a candidate writhing under his claw.

Twilight felt a alien warmth on her belly, her heart catching in her throat as she got an idea in her head,but saw only the malicious grin of the velocidrome as she attempted to look down. Her right eye twitched as the foreign heat pushed against her stomach, pulled back afterwards, and repeated the cycle.

'Twilight, what are you doing!? Fight back! Struggle!'

The unicorn simply stared blankly as the carnivore on top of her began to move its body back, while still keeping her pinned to the floor with its claw, positioning itself better for its job. There was a break in Twilight's mask of blankness as the horrifying heat brushed past its target, missing by no more than a couple of inches.

'Twilight! Run! Listen to me you have to get out from there and run aw..'

Make it pay. Make it cry out in pain. Make it beg for mercy.

The velocidrome almost burst his vocal chords as the mare under him released a buck that would have made Applejack's jaw hit the ground, hitting him right between his legs. The alpha backed away a couple of steps, releasing the unicorn from his grip.

Twilight was gone, there was nothing left in the unicorn's mind at the moment that even resembled the friendship-loving mare that the world believed to be dead. No, this was a horned, lavender creature that had a static expression on its face, yet managed to exude anger, hate, and a fair share of malevolent intent into the environment surrounding it.

First, we take his sense of dominance

The pony lowered her head mechanically towards the recovering velocidrome, planning out her move before charging horn-first at her opponent. The predator had only just recovered from the mare's attack before he received a horn-assisted tackle straight to the chest, hearing a couple of ribs crack as the momentum the unicorn had carried with her transferred onto him.

A brilliant red flash enveloped the vicinity of the cave, blinding the velocidrome for a couple of seconds before he opened his eyes to find that he was alone in the chamber. He wasn't sure whether he should have felt relieved that the mare was gone, or annoyed that a perfectly capable mate escaped. It didn't matter though, because an intense pain in the back of his skull told him that he wasn't alone in the cave yet.

No, he wasn't lucky enough to save himself from the recently teleported mare, not lucky enough to avoid the flying buck she had swiftly delivered to the back of his head. The beast fell face-first into the ground, smashing has head against the cold stone floor. He wished he could just wallow there on the ground for the rest of the night, it was a wish that wouldn't come true.

Twilight, still falling from her teleport-aided assault, aimed her legs at the velocidrome's skull again as she fell towards him. She heard the, strangely satisfying, crunch of the bone, along with a couple of teeth, smashing from the blunt force inflicted. The mare walked off of the huddled heap of carnivore that once had her on her back, opting to stand a couple of feet in front of it as it stood to its great size. With a battered head, the velocidrome let loose a faltering bark at the mare. He scraped one of his legs against the ground, signaling that he was about to charge again. He didn't like the idea of being beaten by a simple pony, and it was that very stubbornness that caused him to use the battle tactic that had failed him so many times in the past.

Next, we take his pride

Twilight turned tail and ran in time with the velocidrome's charge, heading towards one of the cave's walls. The carnivorous creature screeched to a halt as he came within no more than a couple of feet from the wall, not wanting to bash his head any further than it already was. The lavender mare, however, continued to run towards the wall at full speed, not stopping for anything.

The velocidrome's jaw gaped as he watched the unicorn run up the wall with nothing but her bare hooves. He craned his neck backwards as she propelled herself from the stone wall, through the air, and onto his back, catching him by completely by surprise.

Twilight endured the wild thrashes that the velocidrome began to give off as soon as she jumped onto his back, he clearly didn't want her anywhere near his precious skull anytime soon. His cold blood froze completely as he felt a pair of diabolical hooves grip his precious crest, the one thing that made him special, other than the freakish size, and begin to pull.

The violent movements increased tenfold as Twilight began to tug on the scarlet crescent between her hooves. The mare could feel the smooth object between her hooves begin to give way, small cracks appearing between the beast's head and the red ornament.

With a sickening snap, the precious red crest snapped off of the predator's head. The very sound of that happening made his eyes shrink to pinpricks, and his breath to catch in his throat. Twilight felt the velocidrome under her seize up entirely for a couple of seconds before she jumped off, still holding the valued red crest in her hooves.

The predator fell onto his side, staring at nothing in particular as he thought of what he had just lost. Without his crescent edge, he looked like nothing more than a over-sized velociprey, and he would be treated as such if he were ever to return to his pack. The red crescent that once adorned his head was his key to being the leader of his kind, and now he was nothing without it...nothing.

Now, we take his blood

Twilight didn't know what she was listening to. She wasn't sure if they were her own thoughts, Potential's advice, or if she had finally gone insane under the pressure she was subjected to whilst being beaten by the creature that now lay at her hooves. All she knew was that she had a path to follow, and she was going to follow it.

A stab of pain formed in Twilight's mouth, causing her to flinch her head back from the sudden sensation. It was a feeling that lasted no more than three seconds before it was washed away by the mare's subdued mind, and the adrenaline still lingering in her system. She somehow ended up in another stare-off with the fallen velocidrome, glaring at him as he lay on the floor. But something was off, she felt her orifice begin to tingle, and her throat went dry.

Thirsty...that was what she felt as she looked at the beast under before her.

The velocidrome stared into the eyes of the unicorn that had bested him, finding himself unable to look away from the red orbs that stared back at him. His cold blood nearly turned to ice as the slowly narrowing eyes moved their slitted pupils away from the intense gaze-lock they had shared, and settled onto his neck.

Thump-thump...thump-thump...thump-tump

Twilight could hear it all, the shallow breathing the creature gave off, her own hearty breaths, but, most importantly, the steady heartbeat of the predator near her. She unconsciously licked her lips as she began to trot closer to the fallen beast, never letting her vision stray away from the exposed neck before her.

The lavender unicorn felt her mouth open slightly, unsure what it was that was happening, and began lean towards the velocidrome's body. Her heart fluttered with excitement for some reason as her soft lips pressed against the exposed neck of the hunter, said excitement increasing as her teeth began to lightly prod at the flesh between them.

To say that Twilight was confused would be a major understatement, but she couldn't do anything as she was stuck in her trance-like state, only feeling whatever her body did. She felt the skin break against some of her teeth, allowing some of the cool blood to trickle out of the predator's body and into her mouth. Her eyes drifted closed as she suckled on the cut skin, licking at it to let more of the succulent fluid into her awaiting throat

If Twilight was confused at the moment, then the velocidrome's mind was screwed up in every way possible. One, he was just beaten to a pulp by some random purple pony he found in the forest. Two, said pony didn't run off after beating him into the ground. Three, the creepiest fact of all, that she was drinking from his neck as if he were some sort of twisted water fountain. He wanted to run, he wanted to go home to his nest and cry from the mental trauma he was enduring, but he couldn't move. He literally couldn't move ever since he stared into his 'Prey's' red eyes, as if he was paralyzed on the floor and was nothing more than a blood bag for the unicorn.

Twilight pulled away after about five minutes, gasping at the realization of what exactly she had just done. As much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she had just drained the velocidrome of its blood, and she had enjoyed every second of it. Even if she had wanted to stop herself, Twilight couldn't have. Her motor controls were all lost to her for the duration of the battle, only returning to her once she had robbed the lizard-like predator of his blood supply to feed herself.

Her eyes, which had reverted to their vibrant amethyst color, scanned the creature before her, and she let loose a content sigh as she saw that he still maintained a steady breathing pattern. The physical abuse, mental warfare, and the lack of blood all caused the velocidrome to slip into unconsciousness, where his dreams were plagued by a lavender monster that would stalk him through the forest.

One detail that intrigued Twilight was that the blue creature had two little holes in his neck, but they disappeared shortly after they had been discovered by the mare. The unicorn got an idea in her head on what could have left the incisions there, but it was a ridiculous one that she highly doubted.

Twilight pushed her tongue past her lips, moving it to the left until it reached the corner of her mouth. Well, it would have reached the corner of her mouth if it hadn't been obstructed by something smooth blocking its way. The mare's heartbeat sped up as she tried the opposite side of her mouth, meeting similar results as the left side.

With a start, Twilight ran to a small puddle of water that had seeped in through the cavern's walls, and what she saw inside was yet another change to her physical form, albeit a lot more noticeable. There, just poking out of her mouth and sitting against her lips, were two gleaming fangs that glimmered in the artificial light that Twilight had set up. Her bruises were nowhere to be seen, only the unharmed tissue that she usually had.

'Wow! When did you get those!?' Potential's voice startled the jumpy unicorn with its sudden appearance, barely having been heard since Twilight had woken up from her memory-inducing dream.

"Where have you been!? Did you know that I was nearly raped!?" Twilight blinked after she spoke, the teeth weren't obstructing her speech at all, but her voice sounded...huskier. It was a change so subtle that she doubted anyone else would realize it, but it was there, and it made so many more questions pop up.

'Hey, don't blame me! I don't know what happened, all I remember was trying to get you to run away from under the velocidrome before I 'Blacked out', so to speak. What in Equestria happened to you?'

"I...I hurt him, very badly." Twilight turned towards the huddling mass of carnivore that once intimidated her, finally giving Potential a good idea on what exactly went down in her absence, but she wanted details.

'My god! How the hell did you pull that off!?'

"I don't know, Potential, I just did. I just followed my instincts on what to do, and I ended up beating it until it fell unconscious."

'Damn...that's so freakin' awesome. But what's with the fangs, they make you look like some kind of wolf.'

"I have no idea regarding how I got these, perhaps I already had them and I hadn't noticed before. Wolf teeth are actually a common dental problem among equines, in fact." Twilight desperately wanted her fangs to be nothing more than a dental condition, just a mistake that she could clean up, but that still didn't explain her final act towards the sleeping velocidrome, or why she liked it so much.

'Well you could ask Colgate to give them a check-up when we get back home. How about we start moving before meat-breath over there wakes up?'

"That'd be best, the sooner we reach civilization, the better." Twilight didn't inform her mental companion on the fact that she had drained the velocidrome of its blood out of fear that Potential would think less of her for it. She planned on telling her, but decided that it would be best to gather further information on the subject before actually approaching it.

Before stepping out into the young night's light, Twilight trotted over to the slumbering velocidrome, the red crest she had cracked off levitating at her side. The unicorn levitated the crescent to the top of creature's head, pasting it back on with a simple melding spell. It was the least she could do to make herself feel better after beating the living crud out of the poor creature, and she unknowingly saved him from a lifetime of humiliation and depression.

'Ready Twilight?'

"Ready."
______________________________________________________________________

Luna smashed her hoof against the table that housed the latest report from her sergeant, nearly splitting it in half from the sheer force of the contact. Her scouts had not only not found the pony she was looking for, but had also been assaulted in a ambush, leaving them out of commission for a couple of months.

"I'm sorry that the search parties returned fruitless, your majesty." Nightlock spoke from across the conference table that had just been punched by a frustrated princess, sympathy deep in his voice as he tried to calm his ruler.

"Tis not you at fault, Sargent Nightlock, we should have foreseen that the search would prove to be useless at this stage." Luna simply sighed as she noticed that she had slipped in her speaking pattern again, clearly in no mood to do much to correct herself.

"Why don't you try to attend the festivities of your night, my princess, it could help you keep your mind away from this for a while?" Nightlock was the only guard that could say that he interacted with the night princess when the job didn't force him to.

"No, we doubt that we would be able to enjoy ourselves at the Nightmare Night celebrations being hosted with our current state of mind, and we wouldn't want to ruin the setting everypony else has set up. We will simply return to our chambers for the remainder of our free time, have a good Nightmare Night, Sargent Nightlock."

"You too princess, you too."

Luna flew out through a open window in the hallway, choosing to use her wings to reach her room. The cool wind blew past her as she dashed through the night sky, soothing away some of the tension of the day with the gentle breeze. After much delay, the night goddess landed on the balcony that lead into her bedroom chamber, not even locking the door as she ran inside and jumped onto her bed. A sad frown grew on her face, but determination was clear in her celestially blue eyes.

"Just because we didn't find you today doesn't mean that our search has ended, we will find you, no matter the cost."
______________________________________________________________________

'Would it kill anypony to carve a path through the Everfree one of these days.'

"Most likely, you know how dangerous it is around here."

Twilight's horn lit up the area around her as it pushed aside the foliage blocking her path home. Using the location of the celestial orb in the sky, Twilight was able to find a relative location to Ponyville, and she had been walking nonstop ever since. Her thoughts lingered on her battle with the velocidrome, on the way she had used it as a food source, the way she had become the predator for once. It sickened her to the core that a grin grew on her face as she thought about herself as the dominant creature in physical power, but it just wouldn't leave her face.

'What's with the smile, huh?' Potential and her ever nosy nature had picked up on Twilight's facial features somehow, but her comment (thankfully) made it disappear from existence.

"I'm just glad we finally get to go home, and hopefully we can get some answers as to why I was inside a coffin." It wasn't a lie, it simply wasn't the full truth.

The journey through the forest lasted a couple of hours, if the moon was any indication, but the night was still early by the time the duo spotted lights in the distance. The forest around Twilight began to thin away the closer that she got to the lights until it was nothing more than a grassy plain. The lavender mare finally saw her home, and it was a sight that brought a tear of happiness to her eye.

The small town had grown from what Twilight could tell, many residential buildings having been constructed in the outskirts of town, and the amount of light emanating from the not-so-small town lit up the night sky. What really caught her attention though was that the buildings were decorated with novelty bats, spiders, and snakes that made the atmosphere creepy. Ponies of all shapes and sizes walked around in costumes of great variety, none of them noticing the mare that was slowly approaching town.

'Nightmare Night, look at our luck, something good for once.'

"How is this good, aside from the fact that its a party."

'Now we can blend in with the crowd by using your creepy new fangs, it'll be as if we were just any other pony.'

"Well, that could work, but it's a bit risky. What if they recognize me, I don't want all of the attention right now."

'You've dealt with much tougher things today, just go through with it. You'll be fine, I promise.'

With a silent nod, Twilight continued to move ever closer to the town. Just as she was going to enter the field of vision of a group of ponies, her entire body stopped all of its movement.

'Twilight? Why did you stop come on we have to keep mov...'

We must not be seen, move silently atop the roofs

Twilight sprung to action, ducking into a dark alleyway as a group of foals passed by were she originally stood. Next, the mare jumped onto one of the walls, and then used that wall as a launching pad to launch herself to the opposite side, repeating the cycle to effectively 'Wall jump' her way to the top of the buildings.

The silent mare looked out over the town, watching each and every individual move through the decorated streets in search of candy, and in a test of bravery. Her directive was still clear, so her slitted scarlet eyes focused on a building near the town's center.

With a path planned out Twilight jumped down from the rooftop she was on, landing on a different building, and repeated this for various times. Her billowing mane came to a stop as her body did the same, her sprint across the rooftops had gone uninterrupted until she came across a peculiar group of ponies. She watched from the shadows as a female zebra told stories to the young foals of the town, whose attention was focused solely on every word that left her lips.

Twilight shook her head before she got too interested in the zebra's tales of monsters and ghosts, instead opting to continue her prowl through the village's rooftops. The wind whistled as she made her way through the buildings of Ponyville, never stopping her movements towards the town's center, which was oddly devoid of anypony trotting around in a silly costume.

A cloud of dust rose into the air as Twilight jumped off of a three story building, landing without so much as a scratch on her body, defying the very rules of nature that a pony was supposed to abide by. She didn't care that she was doing the un-explainable at the moment, she only cared about completing her objective, and she was very close.

Twilight found herself in front of a heavy oak door, one that she had longed to see ever since she remembered about it. Her hoof rose on its own accord and knocked against the wooden entrance three times. She heard multiple objects hit the floor, followed by a loud groan of annoyance. After a few seconds, the only resident of the building began to walk towards the door, rubbing a sore spot on his head as he opened the door.

The resident's greeting died in his throat as he took into account who the pony knocking at his door was. His mouth hung open as the lavender mare gave a smile that fully displayed her new fangs, and he nearly fainted as she spoke to him in a voice that he believed he would never hear again.

"Hi Spike."

Family

Chapter 5

Family

An obscure shadow oozed its way through the streets of Ponyville, completely avoiding everypony else's attention as it passed a group of dressed up foals. The anomaly had been patrolling the streets of Ponyville for the entirety of the day, and one of nature's needs had finally caught up to it, signaling its presence through a loud rumbling noise.

'I'm starving~.' its hungry whine was put to a end once it noticed a light in the distance, or, more specifically, the buckets scattered around it, 'I guess grandpa wouldn't mind if I took a teeny little break.'

The shade moved silently towards the fireplace the small group of ponies were sitting at, completely ignoring the magnificent stories being told by a female zebra as it closed in on its target. In the blink of an eye, a small bucket filled with confections sunk into the black spot taking up the ground, which proceeded to slither away before anyone noticed that their candy had just been swiped.

The thieving shadow crept into a small alleyway, dropping the spell it was using once it was out of sight. As the magic faded away from the entity, the black smudge on the floor began to rise up, taking on a more physical pony form. With a mouth that could now be used, the shade devoured the sweet candy with enthusiasm that only the young of age could summon, humming contently as it stuck its face deeper into the pail..

"Child? What are you doing with your head stuffed in a bucket?"

The shadow equine was startled by the sudden voice in the alleyway, jumping away a little, but relaxed slightly as it discovered the source. A small puddle of water nearby shone with the light of a scrying spell in effect, beckoning it to get closer . Peeking into the liquid, the shade could see the familiar face that had assigned it the mission it was supposed to be working on.

"Uh...I got hungry, so I went to look for a little bit of candy to eat." the little shadow pony tried to hide the bucket that once held candy behind its back, but it was no use trying to evade the stallion's excellent eyesight.

"Now now, what have I told you about eating too many sweets? You wouldn't want all of your teeth falling out, would you?" a faux tone of disappointment laced his question as a equally fake look of disappointment grew on his face.

"I know, grandpa, but I got really hungry while I waited for that mare you told me to look out for. I'm sorry." the shadow equine pouted its lower lip as shame coursed through his body, prompting remorse from the figure in the puddle.

"Do not fret, little one, everyone succumbs to the desires of youth Still, I must ask if you have made any visual contact with the mare I asked you to search for?" the young pony snapped out of his sad stupor quickly in order to respond to his grandfather's question.

"Not a single peep, or at least I think so. It would really help if you would just tell me who she was."

"Ah, but that would be much too easy for you, child, I expect you to challenge yourself to be the best you can be. Beside's, the reputation this mare carries will probably lead her to find you before you even figure out who she is."

"Fine then, I'll keep looking for her, but are you sure you want me to 'Get rid' of her?"

"As I've said before, I want you to give it your best shot. The only thing I don't want is to hear that you held back any punches."

"Okay grandpa, I won't let you down, bye!" just as the small equine was going to shrink back into the ground, the voice in the puddle called out to him again.

"Forget it for now, child, enjoy Nightmare Night with the rest of the children."

"Really, you're letting me go to play!?"

"Of course, little fillies and colts should always celebrate the holidays. Just don't think too much about the mare you have to find, and you're bound to bump into her."

"Thanks granddaddy! I'll see you later!"

The shadow equine drained some more of the darkness surrounding it, willing it to aid its magical abilities in creating a disguise. With the scrying puddle disabled and more energy than what could be spent in a single night, the small pony dashed out of the darkened alleyway, into the festivities going on around decorated town. What it didn't know was how close it was to its target, who was holding a personal meeting of her own.
______________________________________________________________________

"Hi Spike."

Two words.

Two words meant nothing to him in his everyday life.

Two words were what one would use to greet, and dismiss.

Two words would bless the day, and wish a good night.

But, these two words weren't a part of everyday life, they weren't useless parts in the universal puzzle.

These weren't coming from a random pony coming to his doorstep to check on how he was doing, they came from her.

Spike stared at the sheepish lavender unicorn at his doorstep with shaky emerald eyes that threatened to unleash the torrent of tears behind them, wondering who in the holy name of Princess Celestia he was looking at could possibly be. He couldn't convince himself to grasp a hope that had died long ago, not again, it was impossible.

Twilight returned the stare, not sure why her assistant was acting so strangely. Everything seemed to be in the norm, as far as she could tell, so she couldn't decipher what could cause her best friend to look at her as if she were some type of ghost. Funny, considering it was Nightmare Night. The unicorn's intellectual brain was so focused on finding a way home that it failed to take into account that the last time she remembered being awake was a time long before the holiday was anywhere near the date it was set to be celebrated on.

"Spike, are you feeling okay? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Her voice, it was something that broke and reassembled the dragon's heart in a paradoxical spike of emotions. She wasn't like all the other Twilights he had seen before, this one wasn't blurry or oddly shaded. The mare it his doorstep was exactly as he remembered her, albeit looking a lot fitter, not to mention the pair of fangs. No words found a way to escape clearly from the prison Spike's throat had become, instead they came out in incomprehensible nonsense.

"I-I...bu-, how di-...who, Twil-?"

Nothing made sense anymore for the purple drake, all because someone who looks like Twilight, talks like Twilight, and acts like Twilight, turned up at his home. So, like any other normal living thing would do, he began to back away from the source of his confusion. The lavender unicorn looked at Spike as he started to walk backwards, and a look of worry crossed her face a split second before he tripped on a pile of books laying on the floor, which would probably explain the noise made before the door was answered. The young dragon looked at the mysterious mare that had appeared at his doorstep, burning her image into his memory just as his head collided against the corner of a nearby coffee table.
______________________________________________________________________

"Agh!" Spike bolted upright on his bed, gripping the night-themed covers in between his claws as he tried to calm his erratic breathing. He was alone again, same as always. The familiar feeling of cold sweat trickled down his pounding forehead, mixing with the salty tears lining his face before he wiped it clean with one of his arms. It took him a couple of minutes to fully recover from the adrenaline coursing through his veins, nightmares always seemed to pump his body full of the stuff, and he never felt up to the task of actually using it.

Spike reached out towards one of the nightstands beside the plush bed, flinching lightly as he switched on the small lamp placed on it. With deep, steady breaths, the dragon looked around his bedroom. Not much had changed about it ever since he decided to take up residence, the walls still had the occasional star chart, and the telescope was still keeping its gaze locked on the night sky.

He didn't want to alter the house too much, it was the only thing he had left as a memento about...her, and he wouldn't dare defile the memories left behind by changing the place. Trying to get his head back on track, Spike walked over to the master bathroom to splash some water on his face in hopes of easing the throbs. The cooled liquid did wonders against the mild pains, and it also served to snap him back to a full-awakened state of being.

Just like every other night in which he suffered nightmares, which had begun to lose their frequency lately, the dragon began to make his way downstairs to serve himself a cup of herbal tea. On his way downstairs, he took out a book from his dresser, cradling its smooth leather in his claws as he journeyed to the kitchen.

He had been taught how to deal with the night terrors through remedial exercises, which meant that he could mostly keep his head away from the depression that accompanied each of the twisted dreams. Spike hated the method itself, but the results it would yield were the only things keeping him from curling up into a heaping mass of tears. Like he had been instructed to do so in the past, he cleared his mind of any obstructions, making space to drill in the words that would reassure reality, even if it was a reality he wished he didn't have to live through.

"Twilight Sparkle, my ex-caretaker, is not alive anymore. She is not capable of walking here to the library. She is currently buried within her crypt in the Melodic Prairie. She won't come back because she can't come back. All of this is true because Twilight..is not...alive..?"

Spike found himself in a double whammy case that consisted of extreme cottonmouth with a side of mental breakdown. He saw the impossible. Emerald eyes stared in shock at the very mare their owner had just told himself was dead, buried alive, and never coming back into his life. Twilight, with a daffodil sandwich and a first-aid manual in her telekinetic grasp, turned to face her lifelong friend after hearing him come down the stairway.

"Spike! You shouldn't be walking around so soon after your head injury, sit." the lavender spellcaster's command was not up for debate, something the dragon was about to learn.

The bemused purple drake had no more than a single second before he was lifted into the air by a powerful red aurora that tried to set him down on one of the soft red couches in the living room. 'Tried' being the keyword of the aforementioned tactic.

Spike thrashed like a lunatic as he hovered in the air, dropping his book in the process, and causing Twilight to think that she was somehow hurting him. So, out of worried fear, the mare set the draconic resident down on the wooden floorboards again. The dragon looked at her with piercing eyes that conveyed how irritated he was on the inside, irritation born from the sheer amount of times that the same nightmare had repeated itself. All of the pent up frustration was released as he dashed furiously towards the unicorn with the ferocity of a manticore, only to grip on to her left foreleg and start bawling his eyes out. The lavender spellcaster's maternal instincts kicked into overdrive at her surrogate son's tantrum, urging her to wrap her free leg around his back to pull him closer.

Spike hated that moment, he had been forced to live through it so many times in the past after all. It was the same thing every time, as soon as he would let himself believe she was still alive, reality would reel him back in and beat him with the stick of truth. Still, as much as he hated the depression that would follow one of his nightmares, he loved the feeling of at least believing that Twilight was still there with him, that the closest thing to a parent he knew hadn't left his life.

But, this time he didn't just wake up shivering in bed.

No, instead of the torturous chill of dejection he always experienced when he snapped back into reality, Spike felt a cheek brush against his own tear soaked one in a tender act of affection he hadn't felt for the longest of times. The purple drake didn't try to figure out why his night terror was lasting longer than usual, he honestly didn't care anymore. He let himself become consumed by the almost alien feelings being introduced to him, ready to take the throes of insanity in stride like he had done once in the past. Spike knew that everypony would look at him with pity, some even with fear, but it didn't stop him. All he wanted was to feel loved, to feel the presence of the being that had brought him into the world, no matter the cost.

His sullen sobs died down as he allowed himself to become fully immersed in the experience of seeing Twilight again, relishing the comforting nuzzle as it washed away his pains and reignited lost hopes and dreams. The mystic voice that had both haunted and blessed his mind wove together a soft, delicate question, as if its lavender owner was afraid she would break the little dragon if she spoke any louder.

"Spike, please tell me what's wrong. I can't stand seeing you like this. Did something happen while I was off on Princess Celestia's assignment?" the purple dragon barely managed to process the words that were spoken to him before Twilight began to pull away a little, trying to get a better view of her assistant's face.

"NO! Don't leave me alone! Not again, PLEASE!" the traumatic dementia that seemed to drip off of Spike's desperate pleas cut deeper into the unicorn's heart than she ever thought would be possible, akin to blade being twisted in her chest. Somepony, or something, was going to pay severely for hurting her little dragon. She genuinely feared for any living thing that could be responsible for the current pain, if she could beat a giant carnivore into the ground with nothing but her hooves and a simple teleportation spell then nothing she could think of stood a chance.

"Shh, don't be afraid Spike, I won't leave you, not now, not ever." Twilight managed to maneuver herself along with the smaller entity so that they could both look at each other face-to-face, "I love you Spike, you're the closest thing...no, you are my son, and not even Death would be able to rip me away from you." That was exactly what the draconic baby wanted to hear, and she didn't even know how fitting the ending to her declaration was.

It was no mystery that the two library-dwelling companions were extremely close, as any fool with eyesight could tell just by looking at them. But many of those who know the duo don't know how overly-complicated their relationship actually was, chalking it up to them just being best friends. No, friends were there to add some fun into the usually boring cycles of the day, and to help you whenever they could spare the time. Family on the other hoof, was a completely different story, and was a word much more fitting for the pair

Family wasn't reserved to bloodlines or the meaningless titles in one's name, but it was a category Twilight and Spike had never put themselves fully under until that moment. Now that she had though, it felt right. It lined up perfectly with the lifestyle the two had lived together, an aspiring mother with a unique child, both equally susceptible to the depression that was bound to be unleashed if either one of them was to leave the other on their own.

Twilight coming out and bluntly declaring that she considered Spike as her son was not only unexpected, it was what made him realize that that was the one thing he always wanted...needed to hear from her. A secret that would never see the light of day was that he often lay awake at night thinking, questioning his place in the world as a dragon among ponies. Now, the shreds of doubt were gone, receding into oblivion much like the traumatic trance he was being snapped out from.

With sanity restored once more, Spike took a single step back, taking in the form of the mare in front of him, but he was still close enough to keep a claw on her hoof.then now it was a done deal. Nothing had changed about the lavender spellcaster, except that she was looking a lot more fit and that a pair of fangs were just barely poking out of her mouth, but the unique cutie mark adorning her flank was what let him know that he was truly looking at Twilight.

"H-how is this possible." the dragon was afraid that his question would cause the mare to disappear again, but it escaped him before cowardice could stop him.

"What do you mean by that? Did someone hurt you while I was gone on my mission? It was probably that stallion from down the street calling you names again, wasn't it?" Twilight shook her free hoof in building fury as her mind began to set itself on the accusing assumption, "Oh when I get my hooves on him I'll-"

"You mean you don't know!?" disbelief was written all over Spike's features as he began to put two and two together. The drake figured that the intellectual mare hadn't the slightest idea of what had happened up to that very day. The horned mare was taken back by her little dragon's outburst, not expecting it at the time.

"I'm sorry Spike, sheesh, it's just that today has been really weird for me. For starters, I woke up in a coffin, heavens know why I was in there." the drake looked as if he were about to speak upon hearing of the burial place they had left her in, but didn't get the chance to before she continued her ramble, "Then, I hiked through the Everfree Forest with a pack of meat-eating lizards on my tail, and I ended up having to fight one before I finally found my way over here."

"You don't know..." Spike's words railed off as he began to formulate a way to simultaneously keep himself from breaking down again and to explain the current affairs to his companion.

"Okay okay, I'm sorry for not leaving you a babysitter while I was gone! But please, just tell me what's wrong already." her response came not from the dragon's mouth, but from the trembling finger he pointed towards a wall on the far side of the room. Twilight stood and walked towards a sheet of paper posted on the wooden surface, which proved to be a little difficult with Spike still grabbing onto her leg. Then again, she didn't have to walk too much, having frozen as still as a statue upon reading the information shown on the piece of paper.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-1013-

October 31

HAPPY NIGHTMARE NIGHT

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Whoa, damn, what the motherbucking hell is going on?' Potential made an unnecessary appearance, and even her rhetorical question fell on deaf ears. Twilight was a little too preoccupied in maintaining as much mental stability as possible, partially failing, for the record.

"Nine years...but that's impossible! I remember being here yesterday, I had made blueberry pancakes before the sky chariot came to pick me up!" the dumbfounded mare sought out what would surely help her, as they always had throughout her life, books! Or more specifically, the way they were organized, "No no no! What is Starswirl's autobiography doing next to the herbal remedy guides, I had just reorganized them before I left!"

"Uhm...Twilight?" Spike was dragged along, still gripping the mare's leg as she began to survey all of the bookshelves, finding nothing where it should be. Instead of simply speaking, the drake accompanied his question with a poke on the pony's side, "Twilight? Are you alright?"

"Alright? Me? Of course I'm alright Spike!" he didn't like the weird look growing on her features, especially not now that her new fangs looked much more intimidating when she was grinding her teeth together, "Wait...Spike, that's it! You can tell me what's going on! Right!?"

Do not let our sanity slip now, we require this conversation to be as efficient as possible

Twilight shook her head, clearing herself both from the foreign voice and the lunatic look on her face, much to the silent joy of the small dragon. The mare looked down at her assistant, still in the search of answers, but feeling more composed than she previously was.

"Sorry about that Spike, but could you please try to explain to me as to why our calender is nine years ahead of date."

"How about we take a seat Twilight? I'm sure that we're both going to need to be relaxed while we tell our sides of the story."

With a nod from the unicorn, both library-dwellers moved to one of the plush couches adorning the living room. Amazingly, Spike still hadn't loosened his grip on the mare's leg, even as they both sat next to each other. He enjoyed how calm it felt at the moment, just like it used to, but he knew that he was in for quite the interesting conversation. Twilight simply processed all the information available to her at the moment, which wasn't very much on its own, but it was enough for her to draw one conclusion. Needless to say, it was the one she feared the most, yet it was the highest in likelihood.

"What's happened Spike?"

"Well, what do you remember?" the smart little dragon found a way to answer her question more accurately while, at the same time, satisfying his own curiosity.

"Everything, except as to how I ended up in a coffin. Yesterday I finished reorganizing the library before the two royal guards assigned to escort the girls and I towards the site we had to explore. The last thing I remembered before waking up in the casket was that I was investigating a rune marking on the cavern's floor, aside from a couple of shouts, but I couldn't make out what they were trying to say." Spike rubbed the back of his neck, not sure how to break the ice in this particular situation. After all, how could anyone prepare to tell their friend that they've been dead for the past nine years.

"Twilight, uhm, how do I put this lightly?"

'We both already know what he's going to say' the unicorn silenced the voice inside her head with a mental 'Shh!', not wanting to misunderstand the explanation to all the nonsense going on.

"You've been...gone, for nine years."

"What do you mean 'Gone'?"

'Will you quite being stubborn and look at the obvious!?' Twilight knew that Potential was right, all the evidence pointed towards the conclusion that she had been declared deceased, but she needed to hear it to believe it.

"From what I was told, the rune that you were documenting activated itself when it sensed magic nearby, releasing a...what did they call it? Oh, right, it released a golem that attacked all of you. Applejack was stuck inside the cave as it began to collapse, and she would have been crushed by a boulder if you hadn't...taken her place." twin shudders were given off by the mare and the dragon, one from realization, while the other was spawned by the memories of the multiple times he had imagined the scenario in his sleep.

'Told you so.' Twilight barely registered her neurological partner's childish statement, too busy locking itself up too keep itself safe from the mental tantrum she would have if it were to be exposed. It was a tactic she had resorted to in the past, but it always failed for the same reason. The problem was on the inside, in the form of memories that began to resurface, many of which included her getting buried by a ton of stone.

Nine years had been stolen from her life, three thousand two hundred eighty seven days that she wouldn't get to spend alongside those she loved. She considered crying, she really did, greatly liking the idea at the moment, but some shifting next to her drew her attention. Her sights fell on her little draconic assistant, and her selflessness overpowered her desire to take the easy way out by falling into a tantrum attack. Spike needed her, she couldn't just sit around and mope like the foal she used to be. Of course, Spike had apparently lived on his own for some time now, but he was still a baby, both in body and mind. He was her baby, and she wouldn't fail him.

"T-Twilight? You still here?" the purple drake had prepared himself for a bout of lunacy from the mare, basically a reflex built over the many years he had lived with her, but his perceptions were put to shame as the lavender mare reeled him in with the hoof he was grabbing onto, wrapping him in another warm hug. He felt a single tear drip onto his back, the only one that managed to escape from Twilight's willpower, and he wasn't sure what to do other than to snuggle up to the steadily beating chest of his mother.

"Yes Spike, I'm home now. How have you been doing?"

"I've had my ups and downs. After your...funeral, Fluttershy took me in. She was really helpful with cheering me up, but it just wasn't the same, it never was after that day."

"I'm sorry for all of this Spike, I should have thought about you before I threw myself in harm's way. It's just...I couldn't let Applejack get killed. As I pushed her out of the way I could only think of her family, her enormous family, and I imagined how much it would hurt them to lose one of their greatest members. Shining and you are the only two actual family members I have left, and I felt like I had to work towards the greater good, no matter how much it hurt me to leave all of you behind." at this, Twilight pulled her son in closer, nuzzling the harmless spines on his head, finding a hard time holding back her tears. She hadn't noticed it before, but the feeling of his smooth scales felt almost alien to her, giving her the idea that although her mind didn't recognize the nine years of absence, her body did. Twilight pulled away from the embrace to speak to her baby dragon, a remorseful frown on her muzzle, "Can you ever forgive me?"

"Just as long as you do me one favor, Twilight."

"Anything you want, Spike."

"Just don't leave me again, okay?" the purple dragon smiled an honest smile, sadly, it was something that he didn't get to do much recently.

"Of course, little Spikey."

Nothing stirred in the library after that, nothing but the steady heartbeats of two beings brought together again, and the quiet whistle of the wind outside. The drake simply reveled in the new addition to his household, not wanting to know how Twilight was back anymore out of fear that she would disappear again, while the mare sorted out how she was going to settle back into her normal life. She was having an increasingly difficult time calling her life normal anymore, considering that she was dead for little under a decade, and now here she was, fixing things as best as she could with her child. The library-dwellers were snapped out of there thoughts by multiple bangs against the door, mocking the very meaning of the work 'knock'. Spike groaned when the sound hit his ears, instantly recognizing those responsible for it, and he wasn't exactly in the mood for their games.

"Darn, give me a sec' Twilight, I'll get it." the drake hopped off the couch he was relaxing on, trudging over to the door with all the haste of a sloth. Twilight felt an itch in her eyes, so faint it could almost be overlooked, but she couldn't ponder it much further than that before a voice rang out in her head again.

Keep our revival undisclosed to the public eye

"Spike, don't let whoever is at the door know that I'm here." before the dragon could ask why she wanted to maintain secrecy, or why her voice sounded so different, Twilight propelled herself off of the couch and towards the ceiling, activating a gravity reversal spell around herself. The draconic baby could hardly see the lavender mare once she moved into the shadows caused by the angles at which the lighting was placed. Returning to his current task, Spike gripped the door's handle in his claw, only to be pushed aside as it burst open on its own accord, allowing four others to tumble in. From her point of view, Twilight spotted a orange pegasus with a purple mane, a yellow earth pony with a red mane, a white unicorn with a double-shaded mane, and a small brown colt with a black mane. Everypony in the group bore a cutie mark, save for the small colt.

"What's up Spike!" as if the ringing from the head injury wasn't bad enough, three young mares from the group shouted their greeting in unison. The recovering drake actually chuckled a little as he took the 'What's up' literally, seeing only the slightest indications of the pony stuck to the ceiling.

"Well I was relaxing before you guys decided to bust down my door. What're you all doing here anyway, aren't you supposed to be celebrating Nightmare Night along with everypony else?"

"We could ask you the same question, but it'd just be the same answer every time, 'No girls, it's okay, I'm really busy running the library and I can't waste time on the celebrations'." the pegasus with unusually small wings spoke up for the group, and her voice was still a few notches too high for Spike's liking. Her comeback earned a jab to the ribs from the yellow earth pony, who fastened her signature bow before speaking in her southern drawl.

"Ah'm sorry 'bout that Spike, you know how Scoots here can get whenever things don't go according to plan."

"Hey!" the winged pony got up in the yellow mare's face, slight anger building inside of her from the teasing apology.

"Break it up you two," the white unicorn lit up her horn in it's blue aurora as she levitated her hot-headed friends apart, "let's not forget why we're here. We were wondering if you had some botany books that we could borrow for a couple of days, preferably one on simple garden plants. We want to try that out to see if it'll get Color Palette his cutie mark, poor thing has been trying for quite a while now." the colt blushed at the sudden attention towards him, scampering away towards the reading area of the library.

The aforementioned child caught Twilight's attention for some reason, and she unconsciously blocked-off the conversation between the young mares and the baby dragon as her slitted scarlet eyes followed the little colt. She didn't know why, but her mind began to register the various subtle details that were exhibited from the particular young one. Stuff like the fact that he wouldn't go near any of the family pictures that lined the wall, he seemed to sway slightly as he trotted, a pair of saddlebags that seemed nearly invisible due to its uncanny resemblance to the coat which it was perched upon, and that he too seemed to be completely ignoring everything else in the world surrounding him.

Just as she was about to turn her attention back to the mares, who had begun an argument on which book was best suited for the job they had in mind, the brown colt pulled out a sheet of paper from one of his bags. He then went on to put it down on a desk by fictional section of the library.

"Thanks Spike, Ah'll be sure to return this here book before the due date." both the mare in the shadows and the lonely colt turned their heads towards the boisterous farm pony, with the latter trotting back to his group's side. The white unicorn noticed that the dragon kept shifting his eyes towards the ceiling and that he kept fumbling with his claws, causing her to speak out of concern.

"Spike, maybe you should come out and enjoy the night. It's been so long since we've actually seen you around your friends, and it worries me."

"I'm okay Sweetie, maybe some time soon, but you don't have to worry about it."

"No, I do have to worry about it. I'm sorry for what happened Spike, we all are, but she wouldn't want you to shut yourself out of the world like this." the high-pitched mare felt a if she had crossed some sort of line with the drake, so she attempted to soften up her lecture, "Just...please think about it, okay?"

"Yeah, you can count on me. I've got a feeling that things around here are about to start to get better, you'll see."

"That's the spirit! Well, I hate to leave you alone, but Color Palette won't have an easy time earning his cutie mark on his own."

"Bye girls! And you too Color!"

"See ya' later Spike!" the farewell shouted out in perfect synchrony by the trio of mares drowned out the colt's own goodbye, and they soon escaped from the dragon's line-of-sight.

As soon as the door shut, a thud sounded out from behind the purple drake, who spun around to find a pair of amethyst eyes looking at him intently

"She's right you know."

"Who? Sweetie Belle?"

"Yes, Sweetie Belle. You shouldn't have locked yourself away from society just because of my supposed death, it's not healthy for you."

"I know, Twilight, I know! I know that doing that isn't good for me, but...it hurts, it really does." Spike walked passed the lavender pony with a forlorn look on his face, going to the kitchen to serve himself a glass of warm milk, "I tried to move on after your accident, to leave it all in the past, but I couldn't do that with everypony around me reminding me about it. And by the time I disconnected myself from the outside world, the wounds were too deep for me to just forget."

"How long have you been locking yourself away?" Twilight understood why her assistant chose to do what he did, even without the explanation he gave her. Besides, she couldn't get mad at him over this, she had done the exact same thing in the past and Spike was there to help her all the way.

"About since the time the mayor let me have the library as a condolence gift, so that's like four years ago. Like I said before, the first five years I lived out with Fluttershy." the mentioning of the butter colored pegasus alerted the spellcaster that she hadn't the slightest idea of how her friends were doing. She wanted to ask earlier, but personal affairs come first.

"Speaking of Fluttershy, how are the girls and her? I mean, you have been isolating yourself, but I think you would know about them anyway."

"Oh, right, yeah I know about them. Applejack still lives at Sweet Apple Acres and manages it as the head pony. The deed to the farm fell to her hooves after Granny Smith passed away from natural causes."

"Poor AJ, she loved her grandmother very much."

"She was pretty down in the dumps for a while after her passing, but she let her work flush out her problems, like she usually does." Spike started to gulp down the warm milk he had served himself, enjoying how it calmed him down, "Next there's Fluttershy. She's pretty much the same as before your accident, but she has become more reserved than usual, only rarely coming into town."

"Do you know why?"

"That brings me to my next point. Rarity finally saved up enough bits to open up a shop in Canterlot, the Sparkling Diamond Boutique, and she moved away like three years ago. Without her around, Flutters didn't have somepony to take to the spa with her, and the only other close friend with the time to spare to visit her is Rainbow Dash."

'Interesting, don't you think? Remove one pony from the equation and it results in a chain reaction that affects everyone.'

"I don't have the time to talk with you right now, Potential." Twilight muttered her response under her breath, almost catching Spike's attention, but said dragon simply continued his report on the Bearers of Harmony.

"Rainbow Dash became almost as secluded as Fluttershy after something happened to her. She moved her cloud home closer to the cottage Fluttershy uses, and those two are only seen in town about once a month."

"What do you mean 'Something happened to her'?" the lavender mare couldn't believe that her brash friend had begun to hide herself away near the outskirts of the Everfree, it simply wasn't her style.

"I...I can't tell you Twilight, she asked me to never tell anypony. I'll just say she feels ashamed of it, and if a gossip pony were to catch wind of it, her life would be ruined."

"I understand, but I'll have to see her soon enough. Wait, that leaves Pinkie Pie, what happened to her these past nine years?" Spike shuddered for some reason she couldn't explain, but her observations were cut short as he began to speak again.

"A better question would be what didn't happen to her. I don't know how to explain it to you, Twilight, but you should avoid going anywhere near Sugarcube Corner, it's not what it used to be."

She didn't know why, but the mare could almost taste the dread in the air, as if the very subject of her pink friend dropped a cloud of gloom into the library. Spike decided to slice through the emotional smog with a question of his own.

"What about you Twilight, from what you told me earlier you've had quite the day. Are you hurt?" the little drake started to inspect the mare with his eyes, seeing no visible injuries whatsoever on her body. What he did see was that his caretaker was...buff. Not at all the physic you would expect from a bookworm who spends more time with her nose in a book than her hoof on the ground.

"No, I outran the velociprey before they could do anything to me. Although I did have a little scuffle with a velocidrome, but it seems to me that there's nothing wrong."

'Except for the fact that you drank the blood from a giant carnivore who intended to turn you into a egg hatchery after giving it the beatdown of a lifetime.' Twilight knew her mental partner was right, again, but she couldn't just go out and say that. No, she would have to research the matter further before she could speak of it to anyone.

"A velocidrome! How the hell did you manage to survive that!?"

"Spike! Watch your tongue or I'll clean it with a bar of soap!"

'Where have I seen that before?'

"I'm sorry Twi, but come on! Nopony ever escapes from a fight with a velocidrome."

"Well I did, and it'll think twice before messing with me again." Spike almost laughed at how Twilight thought she could intimidate the top predator in the Everfree Forest, but it died halfway through his throat as soon as he made eye contact with her. They were dead serious, as if she actually would beat the living hell out of anything that intended to do harm.

After a short discussion on how it was possible to escape from a velocidrome, the dragon and the mare regaled each other with tales of the past and the future that the lavender mare had missed out on. Their conversation stretched out through the nightmare-themed night, never stopping until the point in which both of them were on the brink of passing out. And so, with most of the current affairs known, Twilight trotted up the wooden stairway towards the master bedroom with a drowsy drake on her back, only to stop as soon as she reached the doorway.

"Spike?"

"Yeah?"

"There's only one bed here, and I don't see your basket or the guest bed."

"Uhm, I turned the guest room into a study, heh, and my basket is in storage."

"Do you mind if we both just squeeze into this bed? I don't want to sleep on the couch and I know you don't want to either."

A 'Sure' from the dragon was all the prompting Twilight needed before she collapsed onto the sweet plushness she would slumber on. Spike crawled into his caretaker's reach, snuggling up to her just as a foal would do, and the world slowly began to fade from his eyes. The mare, too, began to fall into the joy of sleep, but a soft voice kept her awake for a couple of seconds longer.

"Twi? I want to ask you one more thing."

"Go ahead."

"Will you be here when I wake up?" so may tears had been shed on that day, but his scared question somehow managed to summon more from the mare's eyes.

"Forever, Spike. As long as you want me to be with you, I'll be there."

"Thank you, for everything. You know, even if this is just a dream, it's everything I ever wanted to hear from..you...mom." the little dragon trailed off as he slipped into the dreamscape, leaving Twilight alone with her thoughts, and a smile that refused to leave her face. She felt as if she was forgetting something, but it didn't matter at the moment.

'I think I'll let you dream on your own tonight, co-pilot.' Potential received silent gratitude from the mare, just as she slipped into the throes of the night herself.

All nightmares that so much as attempted to access the dragon's mind were banished by the reassuring forelegs in which he was wrapped in. Some part of Twilight's mind began to formulate a dream of her own, a dream of a peaceful future that she could live out with her child, a dream in which she could see all her friends smiling down at her. It was a dream in which no evil existed, and one where harmony ruled absolutely. But, as a great mastermind once said...

"Dreams are meant to be broken."
______________________________________________________________________

The predator opened her red eyes, inspecting the sleeping chambers it was in with excruciating detail, finding nothing but average furniture and a infantile purple dragon. She could hear his steady heartbeat, feel the precious red liquid it filtered pulsing throughout his small body. It was so tempting, but no. She didn't need to feed at the moment. and it would undoubtedly cause problems in the future.

Without a sound, the lavender creature slipped out of the bed it originally lay on, deftly making her way over to the storage room in the lower levels of the oaken residence. Before it could leave the room, however, a whimper arose from the small figure laying one the plush bedding, causing her to look back at it. Her scarlet eyes flickered with amethyst for a second as she saw that the little dragon had begun to twist and turn in his sleep, disturbed by the nightmares arising due to the absence of his parent.

The lavender being moved closer to the purple drake, hearing more of his distraught whines before she touched her horn against his forehead. Nightmares were a form of dreams, and dreams were a subsection of magic, so a simple draining spell would be enough to liberate him from the curse of unrest. With the terrible dreams banished, the dragon hugged one of the pillows near him as he slipped back into a peaceful sleep.

She didn't know why she did that, but it was done already. Seeing how she got sidetracked, the ingenious predator continued its journey to the storage room. The room itself was composed of a large, square room filled to the brim with cardboard boxes. The silent mare actually had to cast a spell on the room itself that increased the space inside without altering its external appearance. Once inside the aforementioned chamber, she acquired a dusty cloak from a box that contained a horde of clothing that was rarely used. It was a ugly shade of brown, and it seemed to have ripped in some spots somehow, but it managed to conceal her cutie mark along with most of her facial features.

On her way towards a open window, the night mare spotted a couple of forgotten objects from earlier that night. There was a daffodil sandwich that didn't have a single bite in it, and a sheet of paper resting on a table. Deciding that the food shouldn't go to waste, she ate the sandwich in three bites before inspecting the paper closer. Upon flipping it around, she discovered it to be a oil painting of the dragon upstairs, and it wasn't at all bad.

Realizing she was getting sidetracked again, the cloaked pony made her way to the window placed near the ceiling. Without the slightest of noises, she landed on one of the branches outside of the window, getting a good view of Ponyville and the celebration it was hosting. She pondered how badly the events going on would stall her work, but the cloak she picked out would be able to conceal her enough so that she wouldn't attract too much attention.

With yet another mighty leap, the creature of the night landed inside the darkness of an alleyway, completely avoiding being spotted by any of the ponies roaming the street. With a poker face that would rival that of the Royal Sisters, the cloaked lavender pony walked out into the light cast by the street lamps. Nopony heeded her appearance much, simply moving past her in search of confections to fill their buckets with.

The fanged being began to trot through the decorated streets of the city, ignoring every event available to participate in as she strode towards her destination. On her way to the library a few hours prior she had spotted a shop that appealed to the unicorn nature, and she was interested in what she could acquire from such a place.

Her journey was stalled for just a bit longer as she saw a peculiar building come into view, one that was oddly shaped to look like the very things it sold. Sugarcube Corner stood silently in the night, and nopony seemed to even take the road on which it rested. That little fact would help the lavender hunter greatly, but she couldn't hold back the low growl that escaped her throat by instinct. Something was going on in there, and she didn't want to find out what it was anytime soon. As it turned out, the very store she was looking for was situated right next to the pastry shop, but it didn't seem as if there was anypony handling it at the moment.

The 'Closed' sign was useless in its attempt to stop the spellcaster, who simply teleported through the wall after looking through a window. The inside of the shop was simple, just a couple of shelves lined with writing equipment, horn polish, a couple of gems locked away inside a glass display case, and a register.

The cloaked creature browsed the shelves containing the books, finding nothing but cheesy romance novels and a couple of guides for foals on how to control your mana flow better. She shook her head at the poor selection offered and was about to leave when a door in the back of the building caught her attention, mainly because its label said it was restricted and required an employee escort. She attempted to open the door, only to find out that it was locked, as if that would make a difference. She lit up her horn in its red aurora, clicking open the locking mechanism in a matter of seconds. The hinges connected to the door squeaked as it swung open, granting access to the uninvited guest.

A grin that fully exposed her pearly fangs grew on the trespasser's face as she took stock of what was inside the room. She picked up a random spell book from the shelves, skimming through the various battle spells within. They were amateurish compared to her high degree of skill, but they were the only thing she had since she never actually delved into the offensive side of magic. The spellcaster moved back to the main room, where she picked up a blank black book in her telekinetic grasp. Her horn shone even brighter for a couple of seconds as she cast an enchantment of her own design onto the hardcover book, one that would grant it an infinite number of pages on which she could enact the second phase of her plan for that night.

With the enchanted book in tow, she moved back into the restricted area of the shop. The horned creature levitated a variety of combat spell books in her aurora, flipping them all open to the first page. Next, she cast a scanning spell on the pages, one by one, copying their writing onto the blank book she had enchanted. This process continued for about ten minutes before all the books had been copied over onto the master spellbook she was crafting. Covering up her tracks, the lavender intruder put every single book back in its place, making it seem as if a creature of the night hadn't just stolen all of their secrets.

The unicorn grinned a little more at how easily her plan had come together, tempting the universe to try and screw up her day, so it did.

A little bell chimed as the front door to the shop was opened, causing the trespassing mare to shift her efforts on exiting into overdrive. Without the faintest of sounds, she disappeared from the shop with her nifty teleportation spell, leaving no sign of her invasion save for the missing hardcover book she had hidden under her cloak.

With the spells she needed secured, the lavender being allowed herself to relax on the rooftop she was on for a few seconds. After the outstandingly long break of five seconds, the mare began to scan through the book she had inscribed the magical sequences onto, and a frown began to grow on her face as she realized something most of the spells had in common. They gave off quite the commotion, so if she were to practice them at the library they would attract way too much attention, and the little dragon she woke up next to wouldn't be able to cover that up.

She needed to find someplace where she could train without outside interruptions. Someplace where meddling ponies wouldn't stick their noses in. It had to be a spot that could both conceal the results of the spells, and that was far from society's eye. Only one place popped into her mind, and she loved it.

She hopped back down to the street where nopony would see her fall, and she then began to wade through the thinning crowd of ponies out and about. The moon continued its progress through the sky as the night went on, causing a couple of ponies here and there to retreat to their homes to rest, but it did nothing to stall the energetic cloaked mare, already at the outskirts of the town. What did stall her, however, was a flank in her way that she didn't notice due to how lost she was in her own mind. She tried to move along is if nothing had happened, but the second pony had another idea.

"Ah, forgive me for bumping into you, it is a mistake I wish I could undo." the rhyme caught the lavender one's attention due to its familiarity, and her suspicions were proven correct when her sight fell on the striped mare in front of her. But, as always, she reacted quick enough to avoid suspicion.

"No, the fault is mine. I seemed to have drifted off for a minute there."

"You are forgiven for your collision. I go by the name Zecora, and I manage to help those in search of knowledge on flora." the magical being would have preferred to avoid any contact with the other ponies, but she had to play along for now.

"It's a pleasure making your acquaintance Zecora, my name is...", the horned mare looked up at the sky as she formulated a false identity, seeing the onyx of the night sky illuminated by the shining moon, "Midnight Sparkle, and I'm here to explore an ancient structure within the Everfree Forest." the two ponies began to move away from the town again,getting closer to the treeline that marked the dense woods.

"You plan to trek the Everfree at night? Do you not feel fright?"

"I would if I didn't know that fear is the very thing that attracts the predators of the woods. The increased heat signature, noise, and pheromones released into the air make you a easy to find target. Besides, I've done it before, I can do it again."

"I would urge you to wait until daylight, but you seem intent on journeying tonight."

"Thank you for the concern, but I'll be able to manage myself in a fight if it should come to that. From what I know, the castle I'm searching for isn't too deep into the forest."

"I believe I know of the building which was abandoned long ago. I Insist that you follow the path I grant you in my attempt to assist."

"Very well, Zecora, but time is of the essence so we should move quickly."

After receiving a nod of understanding from the striped pony, the two late-night trotters continued down the dirt path leading into the dark recesses of the Everfree Forest. Zecora pointed out various plants that contained interesting properties, and the lavender spellcaster managed to listen carefully while, at the same time, keeping her guard up. It didn't long before they stood in front of the tree that housed the zebra, marking the point in which they parted ways.

"I wish you luck, Midnight Sparkle, and be careful not to get stuck in some muck."

"Will do, Zecora. We will meet again."

The fanged creature watched as the zebra retreated into her hut, wondering if it should continue avoiding society or if it should try to blend in better. She didn't think too much about it, mostly due to the fact that most of her attention was focused on reaching the area she would be using as her training grounds.

On the way to her destination, she came across a still river blocking her path. Of course, she could just teleport across, but she decided to make it a little more interesting. Her horn lit up as she applied a technique she had never had the chance to field test in the past. It involved taking hold of a liquid of any kind and compacting the atoms it was made up of to the point in which it would temporarily become a solid object. A path in the water illuminated as it was compacted, prompting the mare to set her hoof upon it. It was as solid as the grass her three other legs were on.

With a mirthful grin at her success, the night pony walked across the river's surface and continued her stride through the life-threatening forest. Upon reaching a clearing in the woods, she spotted a rouge timberwolf feeding on a rabbit's carcass. The wooden bio-form turned its blood soaked mouth towards the mare intruding on its territory, not at all liking her presence. It began to growl at her, signalling that an attack was imminent, but it died away as it locked eyes with her. Just as the velocidrome had, the wooden wolf couldn't move ever since his golden eyes linked with the scarlet ones of the pony.

The unicorn gave it some thought to destroy the beast, maybe spoil herself a little with a gluttony sip of its plasma, but she decided not to do any of that. Instead, she spoke to it, never letting her eyes trail away from its own.

"Sleep."

With that, the timberwolf collapsed on the ground, snoring loudly as the mare walked past it without as much as a glance back. The forest began to thin away as she approached her target, which was only a rickety rope bridge away. Said bridge seemed to be in the worst possible conditions, so the magic pony simply teleported across, not wanting to die anytime soon. She could see it closely now, the Palace Of The Royal Pony Sisters, in all its antique glory. She galloped towards the entrance with unusual speed, basically bursting the double doors apart as she made her entrance.

The old structure had obviously succumbed to the effects of time, but it still held together for the most part. It was perfect for the experimentation she would be doing, due to how the sturdy walls would be able to resist most of the spells she would be practicing, and its distance from Ponyville would prove to be a helpful detail as well.

Now that she had established a training ground, the stealthy mare decided to take the time out of her empty schedule so that she could explore her new territory. The deeper areas of the castle were completely intact, if not overly dusty, but nothing of importance was found in most of them. The ponies who used to run the place must have taken everything with them when they left. Before the spellcaster could practice her new set of potential abilities, a shining window caught her attention. Said window was near the top of a spiraling tower that protruded from the area near the back of the castle.

Curious as to who could possibly be in the abandoned structure, the lavender mare sped through the empty corridors in search of a way to access the tower. The staircase to the top was completely intact, much to the mare's joy, and she quickly found the door leading into the room from which the light originated from.

The red, mahogany double doors parted with but a small push from the unicorn, granting her entry to the elegantly decorated room within. The chamber itself was a semi-circular shape, with the door resting on the square end of the room. A fireplace crackled directly across the room, lighting up the black-trimmed red couch in front of it along with various bookshelves lining the room's walls. The floor had plush red carpet covering it, silencing the clop that would result whenever the mare's hooves hit the floor.

The fireplace intrigued the horned creature due to the fact that there was nopony around to light it. After deciding to take a closer look, the unicorn stuck her hoof into the flame, pulling it back out without a single burn. She could tell it was a magically fueled flame due to the extremely faint heat signature it gave off, but she couldn't figure out what powered it. Chalking it up to magic just being magic, she moved on to a closet she hadn't noticed upon entering. Her horn tingled as she got closer to it, signalling that there was something powerful behind that door. Sadly, the door was locked, and it wasn't exactly as easy to break as the lock at the shop she robbed earlier.

The lock on the door before her was composed of a series of magical seals, all of which would take time and careful precision in order to break. She vowed to open it eventually, but she had more pressing matters to attend to. The magical mare moved back to the fireplace in order to carve a copy of her cutie mark onto the wooden frame. She then cast a linking spell, binding that spot so that she could teleport to that specific area from anywhere in Equestria with minimum energy consumption.

The creature of the night moved to the window that she had spotted from the ground below, looking out across the old castle and the Everfree Forest. A feral grin grew on her muzzle, the night would hold much work for her, what with all the new magic diagrams she acquired. But, for that one moment, she allowed herself to enjoy what she could easily take.

"This is my castle now, my forest, and my territory, all of it. Now and forever."

Dawn

Chapter 6

Dawn

The darkness from the dreamless sleep began to fade away as Spike roused from his slumber, groaning in satisfaction at the restful sleep he had gotten. His mind was still trying to look past the haze of drowsiness, but it was a slow progress that left the dragon with a couple of minutes to himself before he could summon the will to leave his warm bed. As the fog in his head started to clear away, details from the vivid dream he had began to resurface to the forefront of his thought train, bringing a sad smile to his face. He had loved everything he saw and heard in the dreamscape, everything that he learned about himself, but he knew that it was the same thing as always. It was just a dream, even if the most recent one held extremely high amounts of detail.

"Maybe the girls are right, I should at least try a little harder to leave the accident in the past. Twilight wouldn't want me to spend the rest of my life as a shutin" he wasn't too sure that he would be able to pull through with his new plan of action, but a resolve was slowly starting to build up. Of course, all it would take was a simple mixture of slurred words to destroy all of his thoughts completely, again.

"Huh? Whuzzat Shpike?"

"Holy buck!" Spike tried to jump away in shock from the unexpected mare laying down next to him, failing horribly as his foot got caught on one of the fore hooves hugging onto him, sending him face-first onto the wooden floorboards. Pained groans floated up into the lavender pony's perked ears, her little dragon had scared the living daylight out of her with his loud cursing and she was planning on asking him why he had done that, but instead moved on to a more immediate issue.

"Spike, you okay?" the scaled baby on the floor rolled over onto his back, looking up at the mare that had decided to peek over the edge of the bed to check on her assistant. He didn't care about the stinging sensation on his snout, it would heal soon enough after all. All of his mind was busy processing that he had just woken up next to his mother, swore again in front of his mother, and that he was making a complete idiot out of himself in front of his living mother.

"Uhm, yeah I guess. Just a little bit of pain on my mouth but I'll be fine." satisfied with the response she got, Twilight turned away from her bewildered baby dragon with a lit up horn that tidied up the bed with speed that those without magic would never be able to achieve. The only way Spike was avoiding a breakdown was because he had already had one in his dream, but then he began to rationalize about that subject. How in Faust's holy name did he get up to his bed if his dream hadn't actually happened? So, he concluded that his dream, in fact, wasn't a dream.

Of course, all of these thought processes happened in real time, and by the time that he snapped out of his internal corrections Twilight had organized most of the room. He swore he even saw a couple of sticky notes labeling the contents of his drawers.

"Sheesh, you're almost as messy as I am." Spike was impressed at how easily his newly-returned parental figure was taking the entire situation. She had come back from the dead without a spec of memory as to how she had done so, and she was acting like she normally would any other day. That brought a nostalgic smile to his face.

'Just like old times.'

"How does breakfast sound to you, Spike?"

"Great actually, you want me to cook?" the dragon didn't know why her return had affected his personality around her so drastically, but he felt like he shouldn't take the lavender unicorn for granted any more. Twilight picked up on the little fact that her assistant rarely ever offered to cook, and when he did it was done begrudgingly. But the Spike in front of her had a goofy smile still plastered on his face as he asked, and she decided not to mention it lest she upset him somehow.

"Nah, we can both help each other out. You probably won't believe me, but I've only eaten one flower and small bundle of mint herbs ever since I 'Woke up'."

Twilight's eyes lost their focus a little as her thoughts strayed back to the night she had rushed through the dark forest, to her confrontation against the carnivorous predator of the dangerous wilderness. She couldn't stop the automatic grin that came over her face as she remembered how easily she had destroyed any sense of dominance within him, torturing his very soul by ripping away the one thing that made him who he was. She licked her lips unconsciously as she thought about the precious liquid she had stolen from him, using him as nothing more than a food source.

She hated how much she loved it.

"Twilight?" Spike's confused gaze snapped her out of the uncharacteristic thoughts running freely in her tormented mind, leading her to question if she had actually enjoyed thinking the way she did. No, she told herself that wasn't true, that she would never come to do anything like that and be able to actually like it.

"Sorry about that, Spike. I guess I'm still a little tired from yesterday and I'm starting to doze off." it wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. What would he think of her if she told him that she was busy thinking about beating a giant predator to a pulp so that she could drain his blood? No, she instead spoke of the feeling of slight fatigue cursing her sleek body, not enough to be called a 'Sore' sensation, but it met the requirements perfectly to be called 'Annoying'.

"It's cool Twilight, but your not the only one starving. Lets get this show on the road." Spike walked alongside his caretaker down the oaken stairs towards the kitchen, clutching his growling stomach as he closed any distance between the icebox and himself. The drake took charge of making a fresh batch of pancakes while Twilight took the liberty of scrambling some eggs, and their bounty was completed quickly through their teamwork.

The lavender unicorn smiled down at her child in pride towards his excellent culinary abilities, but couldn't help but feel that something was nagging at her in the back of her head. Well, a better way to put it would be that something was nagging her at the front of her head. Her horn had a tingling sensation coursing through it and it was warm to the touch, bordering on hot. Both of those things were signs that she had been using a lot of magic recently, which utterly baffled her. She considered it being a effect from her run-in with the pack of carnivorous predators in the forest, but even then she hadn't used enough magic to even remotely exhaust herself. She was getting tired of labeling everything that she didn't understand with a question mark, but she had done no research towards her physical and magical alterations yet, leaving her as clueless as a foal being asked how magic theory worked.

Breakfast was pleasant for the most part, if you could look past all the internal questions Twilight was asking herself. The mare had served herself a glass of juice as she spoke to her best friend about easier ways to organize things. After that she refilled her glass as she listened to Spike tell her more about the growing town of Ponyville, which could barely be called a town now due to its size. After finishing another glass of juice over her retelling of her escape from the velociprey, the two co-managers of the library stood from the dining table to wash the pile of dishes they had accumulated.

When Twilight was about to wash her glass she finally noticed another fact that was bound to drive her insane.

'How am I still thirsty after drinking three glasses of apple juice!'

She licked her lips, finding them to be anything but dry, yet her throat still held that annoyance that beckoned her to drink. The juice carton floated over to her in a red glow, being tipped shortly after so the fresh liquid within would fall into her empty glass. The mare gulped down the cool drink quickly, not even savoring the delicious apple essence as she tried to quench her thirst. Nothing changed in how she felt, her dreaded throat continue to call out for satisfaction, but it became obvious to her that apple juice wouldn't do the trick.

"Dang Twilight, I didn't know that you could be so thirsty in the morning. What is that, your fourth glass?" Spike was quick to catch on to the mare's curious symptom, and he chose to use it as a start-up to what he hoped would be another friendly conversation.

"Heh, yeah, I guess I just woke up with a dry throat. I'm sure I'll shrug it off later today. I've got something to ask you by the way." Twilight was quick in shifting the conversation away from her problem. She was letting the paranoia she had naturally developed shine through the cracks of her composure, making her think that if she told Spike anything more that he would somehow miraculously figure out that she had fed on the sanguine fluid of a giant carnivorous lizard.

"Fire away."

"Would you mind tagging along with me for a walk, I think I'm nine years overdue to pay my friends a visit and I wouldn't mind having you there to lend me a hand."

"Of course! Just let me get my jacket and I'll go with you, I'll be right back." Spike nearly tripped as he dashed up the stairs, filled with excitement at the prospect of re-introducing Twilight to her friends. He knew that things wonuldn't be the same as they were before, not right away at least. Rarity was still out of reach due to her residence in Canterlot and was more than likely never coming to Ponyville again, so she was out of the question entirely. And Pinkie Pie...he wasn't sure what to think about her anymore.

Twilight looked at her child run up the stairs, suppressing a giggle as she saw him very barely avoid tripping on the last step. She really did love him, especially his childish nature, which shone brightly even after nine years. In all reality, he was still a baby biologically and in mind, although he would act maturely when the situation called for it. Still, it hurt her a little to know that he would outlive everyone around him, to know that one day he would come to suffer losing her again, that she wouldn't be able to keep her promise of eternity to him.

"I'm ready Twi!" Spike's exclamatory announcement snapped her out of her gloomy misgivings, back into the reality she had to face. He was now suited in a toasty beige coat that had an inside covered with sheep wool, and the sight reminded her of a critical issue she had almost forgotten.

"Oh darn, how am I supposed to make my way through Ponyville without everypony knowing that I'm back. Sure, I'll let them now soon enough, but I don't want to start up a commotion before I get to my friends first."

"I don't know Twilight, you could try searching for something to wear in the storage room, but I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Tell me about it, it'll take hours digging through that junk before I find something suitable to disguise myself in."

The spellweaver tapped her hoof against the floor as she delved into her inner thoughts, searching for anything that might be able to help her out in her new predicament. There was only one thing that she found that could aid her, and it was named Potential.

'Hey, genius, didn't you pay attention to the coat rack near the door when you made your way to the kitchen?'

Twilight's amethyst eyes focused onto the object her neurological counterpart had advised her to look at, and she found yet another mystery waiting for her perched upon it.

"Spike, who's is this?"

The raptured mare walked slowly towards the piece of oaken furniture near the library's main entrance, getting closer to the source of her awe by the second. A cloak of the likes that the she had never seen before rested upon it, the pitch black silk emphasizing the silver strands running in a giant, thin, web-like pattern on its back. The pattern spread up to the neck, where it was cut-off by a even thicker 'Collar' of silver that had circular ruby embedded into its front. From what she could see, Twilight noticed that the inside of the cloak had a starry pattern that seemed to mimic the night sky, much like the way Luna's ethereal mane would. She wasn't much of a fashion-inclined pony, but even the spellcaster was left astonished at the masterpiece of clothing.

"No, and I don't remember seeing that there when I opened the door for the Crusaders."

'Go ahead champ, even I know that you're just drooling at the prospect of wearing that..'

Twilight paid Potential's insistent teasing no heed as she donned the mystifying piece of clothing, enjoying the smooth silk as it slipped onto her with as much friction as water. It had a cool sensation to it, but the mare barely noticed that as her attention turned towards a couple of thumps she heard on the floor near her. Her sight fell on a set of shoes that were obviously meant to go with the cloak itself due to the way they mimicked the spiderweb design on its back. The black shoes had the web pattern on the front rather than the back, and they were almost as comfortable to the mare as the cloak as she slipped into them, completing the outfit.

"Whoa Twi, that thing looks great on you, I bet it'd give Rarity a run for her money if you were to show up at her doorstep wearing that. And look, it completely covers your cutie mark just like the hood covers most of your face."

Just like Spike had explained, the mare's cutie mark was concealed perfectly behind the fine silk, and the specially designed hood shrouded everything on her face save for her muzzle in the shadow it cast. The hood was connected to the 'Collar' effect line that cut-off the spiderweb design, leaving it nothing but pitch black. It was most likely fashioned to conceal the user's face on purpose due to how its front seemed to come down in a sharp tip, heightening the darkness from the shadow it cast while allowing undisturbed vision.

"You're lucky gothic styles are this year's fashion, you'll be able to pass this off as a personal favor from the Sparkling Diamond Boutique if anyone asks."

"Fantastic, this'll make the trot to Sweet Apple Acres that much easier. Still, I can't help but wonder who would leave such an eccentric cloak forgotten on a coat rack ."

"Dunno Twilight, but if that somepony doesn't come to pick it up it's yours."

Twilight liked the idea of keeping the clothing set, seeing how she would need one for a while, and what she had on was bordering on the line that marked perfection. However, she didn't let her mind get distracted by stuff as meaningless as clothing, and instead opened the library's main door. A gust of cool wind greeted the library-dwellers as soon as the door was nudged out of the way, making them silently thank their choice to wear the warming gear. So, with mysteries to solve, and friends to reunite with, Twilight Sparkle and Spike the Dragon left their humble abode to trek through the masses of ponies rushing to their jobs in the morning. One thing was assured in both of their minds, change was coming, and it was coming faster than anyone could have ever anticipated.
_______________________________________________________________________

Nothing had changed, Luna knew that her adviser was still calling for her attention, but she was lost again. From her throne, she stared at her sister's precious creation finish its rise above the horizon, bathing Equestria with the life-giving rays that kept it and its citizens alive. Her navy blue chest expanded as she prepared a sigh that was released shortly after, she wasn't in the mood to listen for one hour as her royal adviser ranted about arising tensions in the northern border. She wrote the damned reports he was reading for crying out loud! The bad news she had received yesterday left her with a negative mindset, so she decided that she would save herself the remaining forty five minutes she had left in one smooth move.

"That is very intriguing, Paper Press, but I'm afraid that I must take my leave due to a meeting a have with Sargeant Nightlock. I'll be sure to revise these reports when the time presents itself, have a good day Mr. Press."

Before he could fully comprehend what was going on, the pudgy brown earth pony found himself alone in the throne room and that all of the scrolls he planned on reading to the princess were gone. He shook his head as he contemplated his job, it seemed like a great idea at the moment when he decided he would rise through the ranks and settle down as an adviser, but he started having his doubts.

"I should have kept my job as the director of The Canterlot Times, at least there ponies listened to what I had to say."

His words were heard by nopony other than himself as he walked away towards his condominium within the palace grounds, going in the direction opposite to that of the alicorn of the night. Luna hastily made her way past the gossiping maids cleaning the deserted halls, in search of anything she could do to get her mind off of all the recent problems. She considered speaking actually speaking to her sargeant since he could be really sympathetic when the moment called for it, but she shot down that idea due to the side-effect of it leaving a regiment of new guards without a instructor. The lunar princess had been so lost in her thoughts that she barely managed to process that she was outside in the Royal Palace Gardens before she walked head-first into a cluster of thorny rose bushes.

With a shake of her troubled head, Luna stopped thinking about all the problems revolving around her life to enjoy the beautiful foliage to the fullest extent. Gladly, the tension that had been winding up inside her mind began to dissipate as the magic of nature took hold of her, offering a temporary haven from all the challenges she was burdened with during the rest of her waking moments.

She lost herself inside the expansive hedges and freshly groomed flora, letting go off everything she had to do to allow herself a moment of selfish indulgence. It was, however, a short-lived event that was put to an end as a shudder rippled its way across the alicorn's back. With perked ears and eyes with precision to rival an eagle's, suppressing a groan of annoyance at the disturbance breaking her out of her paradise environment. Said disturbance only continued to stare at her with its unevenly sized pupils, not moving a single joint as a conversation started up.

"Ah, little woona has decided to pay me a visit, has she. How nice of you to drop by, here to lament over another failed scouting mission I suppose." the statue's jaw stood frozen as the teasing sentences floated into Luna's mind seamlessly, the sound instantly causing more of her earlier stress to return by the second.

"That is none of your concern, Discord, and it would serve you well to not intrude with our life. We get enough enough fatigue to last us an eternity without you and your insistent prodding in the mix, so just spare us the little games you do so enjoy."

"You've still got that royal 'We' thing going on, huh?" the alicorn brought a hoof to her face as the draconequus shrugged off her please as if they had never existed, and it only sparked her annoyance even further when he brought up a seemingly random conversation up.

"Yes, we are, but you fail to listen to me. We are asking you to simply keep your pestering to yourself for now, I have enough things to deal with already, and I surely don't need to have a conversation with the god responsible for what fills most of my days now." Luna's berating had an air of finality to it, emphasized greatly as she stood to leave the vicinity of the chaos statue, but something weird stopped her in her tracks before she could even take sixteen steps

"Lulu, you don't know how very wrong you are when you say that. Now, out of all other times, is when we need to talk the most." Discord's tone of voice was completely different to the cocky prankster she had heard no more than a couple of minutes ago. In fact, his response was said logically and with an undertone pleading her to stay and listen, a polar opposite to his entire personality. She didn't know if it was all of those factors combined, or her curiosity getting the better of her, but the moon goddess turned back to face the immobilized creature.

"May we ask what we can possibly need to speak about with you, the very being who's silver tongue played a part in setting me down the path of darkness that would eventually lead to my millennium spent away from any and all interactions with other living beings." the ire in Luna's words would have brought a shudder to the draconequus had he not been frozen in stone, and he understood that there was a challenge before him if he ever wanted the moon princess to even give him an inkling of trust.

"Luna please, hear me out." please, that word broke through the lunar mare's mask of anger, forcing her to give all her attention to the still creature. In the back of her mind she swore that she had heard a...weak cough from him, but she couldn't think too much about it before he started speaking again, "I don't have much time left, I can feel him getting closer every second."

"How? The guards are stationed at their posts and we can't even feel his unique signature anywhere near here. What trickery do you attempt, Discord?" the mare jumped back into her defensive line of thought as she shot down the possibility of what the mismatched statue was trying to convince her of, only to suffer the full force of a retaliation from him.

"Perhaps you don't, Luna, but I do. You are in Equestria, a land bestowed with thriving magic, but I am somewhere far more open to the magical plane. You see, your little Element Bearers didn't just seal my body in stone as your sister and you had, they transported my very essence into a prison within the very fabric of reality. Here, even though I cannot move from the small area I am confined to, I can sense further out and deeper into Equestria than you will ever be able to, and I feel his spells working to break inside my prison." Luna caught on to something lining the final words leaving his mouth, something a god rarely ever truly experienced. Fear.

"Then why do you tell us this now, why warn us that he is trying to recruit you instead of letting time take its course? We don't see you as the type to have a sudden change of heart for the better."

"Luna, do you really think he intends to recruit me into his little gang of misfits?" he let his rhetorical question hang in the air for a couple of seconds as he let the moon goddess prepare for the true reason he is confessing everything to her, driving her to the point of scraping her hoof against the cement lining the garden pathway in an attempt to quell her overwhelming curiosity. She heard the chaos lord take a deep breath before his dialogue began once again, "Let me tell you something I figured out a few days ago. I had established direct telepathy with what remained of King Sombra after his defeat, helping him find sources of energy so that he could regenerate his body so that he would in turn release me from here. It had been going well until about a week ago, when all of my attempts to communicate with Sombra failed. I searched the magical plane for any trace of him, yet I came up empty handed every time I tried to retrieve his specific aurora from the mana stream, but something else had caught my attention as I searched."

"What was it you found, Discord." Luna's hatred towards her old friend-turned-enemy was gone at the moment, and she found herself enthralled with the tale the draconequus spoke of. All the while the weird creature spoke, he kept a low volume, another thing contradicting his usual demeanor.

"I stumbled upon two similar auroras, both shining brightly in contrast to everyone else's, and I found my attention drawn towards the larger one. After memorizing the smaller auroras position in the stream, I began to scan the stronger one and I found what I had been looking for all along."

"Did the potent aurora sphere belong to Sombra? Has he found a way to increase his strength?"

"No, this was much worse than that could ever be. The sphere itself had a white exterior, one that didn't represent Sombra's at all, but when I cracked it open to see inside I found remnants of his magical signature being absorbed by the white sphere. It didn't just hold Sombra captive, it tore him apart atom by atom as it merged itself with the magic bestowed to him, growing in strength significantly." Luna couldn't believe what she was hearing, it was...

"Impossible...he can't be powerful enough to do that yet. He's only been free for nine years!"

"Wrong, Luna, he is powerful enough to drain the Aspects Of Creation from the world itself, and he already has Corruption under his control. With that kind of power at his disposal, it's only a matter of time before he breaks into my cage and absorbs me along with the Aspect Of Chaos." as if on cue, Discord grunted in fatigue as he struggled to hold back the probes trying to dismantle the thing that both kept him imprisoned and safe. His sounds of exertion went unheard by the lunar alicorn as she processed the newest escalation the threat to Equestria had taken, and she prepared another set of questions that would help her greatly in her quest to save the land.

"Do you have any ideas on how to stop him? We've tried directly challenging him, but he never responds to our battle offers."

"Umf, don't try to...to take him on your own. F-find that other being, the one that I saw could rival him in strength. If one h-has a chance at beating him, it's the one...the one that can match his rare magical signature." the princess caught onto the tired grunts he was giving off in his attempts to buy time, and addressed them directly out of worry for her new ally. Ally, she never got to notice how close she actually was to him if their rivalry wasn't involved.

"Discord, is everything alright? You sound...weird." the tendrils slamming against the harmony barrier sealing away the chaos god began to grow a spiderweb-crack on its surface, and the fracture only grew in size even though he tried in vain to stop their access. With a shattering sound only the mismatched being could hear, the intrusive probes pounced on him, wrapping around his limbs at the same time as one of them reached for his throat.

"Lu...Luna, go. Find the one b-before it's too late," everyone of his syllables was charged with terror now. Gone was the maniac-like prankster that the world knew, leaving behind what once was a normal draconequus leading a normal life, one that didn't involve magic-draining tendrils dragging him across his jail cell's flooring. Before the world became shrouded in darkness for him, he managed to utter out one last sentence, one that would have spared his life if he hadn't been so childish so long ago in the past, "For what-t it's worth...I'm sorry Luna...for everything I've do-"

A strangled scream was the last thing the baffled, and quite terrified, mare heard over the telepathic communication system before it shut down. Horror and confusion made way for panic, shown clearly by the way she jumped forwards towards the statue so that she could place her trembling hoof against it. The statue was laced with chaos energy still seeping out from the god within, or at least it was supposed to be. Her magical scanning spells came back cold, the statue was nothing more than a statue now without its inhabitant, but that didn't make what came next any easier.

Cracks began to spread across the petrified body's limbs, originating from his wrists, ankles, and neck. Luna stared on with a horrific bated breath as the imperfections on the stone began to grow wider and deeper, blinding white light seeping through them from someplace unknown hurting the moon mare's eyes as she refused to look away. With a sickening crunch, the statue exploded in a flash of unrefined mana that sent the princess flying across the clearing with several small pieces of the statue digging into her skin, burning her with the same raw magic that had given the rupture its strength.

With stinging eyes, Luna dragged herself across the floor toward the remains of the draconequus' statue, not caring about the sharp pebbles scratching her on the way there. The thin trail of blood she had left lead to her laying in the rubble, clutching a small pile of the marble in her forelegs as she began to fiercely tighten her grip on it. Her teeth grit together as she let her furious thoughts stir. There were little things that caused her to fully lose her composure, but murder without being needed was the perfect catalyst for her boiling ire. Feeling something rising in her throat, she turned her head towards the celestially blue sky above, releasing the voice she had suppressed for so long since her return.

"WE WILL GET YOU FOR THIS, YOU INCOMPETENT FOAL! DO YOU HEAR US!? WE WILL DESTROY YOU JUST AS WE SHOULD HAVE IN THE PAST! CURSE YOU FAUSTIAN, CURSE YOU!"
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"Hmm, I'm sorry Luna, but I have a standing curse at the moment, so I'm going to have to turn down your generous offer." the source of the night alicorn's rage, who went by the name of Faustian, sat at the summit of Canterlot Mountain. He had been bored of sitting around all day waiting for a reply from his grandchild and decided to check on one of his favorite ponies, and the Royal Canterlot Voice was still fresh in the air as he spoke to nopony in particular.

He loved that particular spot in the world, it was so disconnected from everything else that nothing but the magic-infused shout of a princess would be able to reach the chilled heaven he was resting in. His ears flicked towards a spot to his left and, without turning to see who it was, addressed the new arrival.

"It's about time you decided to show up, Mimy, and just so you know, you'll never be able to sneak up on me. Where have you been since we last met?" the mare moved closer to her superior, swagger evident in her hoofsteps as she neared the pensive stallion.

"I went to go take care of a few lose ends I had left on my last visit to Manehatten, and let's just say that they'll be sleeping with the fishes for quite some time." she snorted and laughed at her malicious deeds, remembering the terrified expressions on their faces as she tied their hooves to a slab of rock, the sounds of their last breaths bubbling up to the surface without their owner following suit. Faustian wasn't as amused at her antics, which was made clear when he pointed one of his fingers towards the mare, summoning a silver lightning bolt that scorched her hoof.

"Ow! Watch the temper, Fausty! First you go and creep me out by changing your fore hooves into those...things, and now your using them to shoot lightning at me!."

"These are called hands, Mimy, and their appearance should be the last thing you should be worrying about since you deserve much more than a simple shock as your punishment. I'll let you slide mostly for today, consider yourself lucky that I'm in such a good mood."

"Yeah, woo-bucking-hoo, old timer. What are you doing up here anyway, it's freezing and you can barely breath." the mare shivered as she sat on the snow covered ground, taking in shallow breaths to conserve the thin oxygen levels around her.

"Perhaps if you would stop spending so much time wandering off to someplace other than the combat training room you'd develop some resistance against such trivial factors."

"Well sorry for having a life! What do you expect me to do, sit around all day in your stuffy hideout instead of going outside to enjoy my free time?"

"I expect you to be at a moments notice instead of hiding yourself among the crowds. Now that you're here, I can assign you the reserve operation here at Canterlot."

"Finally! Okay, who gets to die?" Faustian was intrigued by how bloodthirsty the mare was, but he knew what her roots were, knew exactly where her nature originated from.

"No one dies tonight, Mimy." he ignored the whine that escaped her muzzle as he continued speaking, "I'm sending you inside the castle to keep an eye on things and to have you there if you are needed. You'll have to fill out an application to get accepted into the castle grounds as a worker, allowing you to avoid any and all suspicion towards you."

"Fine, I'll go, but if anything goes sour I'm decimating the entire platoon!"

"You better hope it doesn't go sour, or you can kiss your powers goodbye. Which reminds me..."

"What do you mean 'take my powers'? I don't think you can actually do thaaAAHHHHH! " the mare collapsed on the ground as a sudden stinging pain stabbed every inch of her body, the agonizing sensation only being rivaled by the splitting migraine she had suddenly developed, and tears were fought back as her vision began to fade . As Faustian's black horn powered off, rapidly dispersing the pain from Mimy's twitching body, and he stood next to her on his hind legs with his arms crossed across his white chest.

"Don't underestimate others' abilities, Mimy, or you'll suffer many fates similar to this one. You still have your powers, but I've decided to lessen them to a certain degree that'll assure me you won't ravage the castle in the middle of the night, and as a punishment for your recent insubordination. Now, I want you're report on how you did on your application by tomorrow night, do not fail me."

Before she could properly get on her hooves to give him a taste of her annoyance, the stallion disappeared from the mountain summit, reappearing somewhere not even Mimy herself could hope to find. The mare really hated him at times, but she reminded herself the huge favor he had done for her in the past, and it cooled her down significantly. She would get really confused as to what Faustian wanted in the end, he made it seem as if he wanted to take over the throne, yet he never made an offensive move toward the capitol. He had the power, the advantages, and the tactical insertions in place, but he never put any of them into effect unless they were needed as a last resort. Maybe she'd figure him out some day, maybe she'll never now, only time would tell.

"Pfft, probably just old an old pony being an old pony.." with that said, Mimy hopped off the edge of the cliff and spread her wings as she flew towards the castle gates. Her schedule would be filled for quite some time, but maybe she'd be able to sneak an assassination or two during her indefinite stay at the castle. All in all, maybe her stay wouldn't be so bad after all, so long as she put her creativity to use.
_______________________________________________________________________

"We're almost...there...Twilight." Spike was panting from the long and tedious walk over to Sweet Apple Acres, his only relief being the cool wind running throughout the massive town. The trip had stolen multiple hours from their schedule by that point, leading Twilight to wonder how in the world a change that drastic was possible. Nine years ago the road went directly to the farm, but new buildings and constructions of the like caused the path to twist and turn, adding many extra miles to the total distance they had walked. Not to mention that the dragon hadn't exercised in a long time, he might have looked the same, but he surely didn't have the stamina he used to.

Twilight wasn't faring any better than her assistant since she too had her tongue lolled out as she breathed heavily. She didn't understand how she had outrun a pack of speed-based monsters without a hitch yesterday, yet she couldn't make the trip across town without hyperventilating. Also, that damned thirst was still there, scraping her throat whenever she staggered back a breath. Nopony seemed to pay the two much attention, obvious since they simply passed by the duo as they rested, although every now and then somepony waved at Spike in surprise at seeing him out of his library.

Going against her better judgement, Twilight levitated her tired son off of the ground and onto her back. He had reused to hitch a ride on the unicorn express for some reason back at the library, and even now he showed signs of reluctance at letting her carry him, but he ultimately settled down on the soft cloak.

"Thanks Twilight, but you really don't have to give me a ride there you know. We're just a couple of minutes away." after he failed to get a response from his still caretaker, he patted her back in an attempt to gain her attention, "Twi?"

The cloaked spellcaster wasn't listening to anything, all of her senses had diverted their power to her scarlet eyes, which had caught wind of something that made her lick her lips. Apparently somepony had scraped themselves against a broken piece of metal on the park bench, earning a small gash on their side. The lavender unicorn couldn't care less about the pony being wounded, she only had eyes for the precious fluid leaking out of the warm body. Her instinct to survive almost got the better of her, but she caught herself before she did anything rash.

Not in public, it would attract too much attention towards us

The scarlet fled Twilight's eyes, but she could faintly remember that she had liked the view of the blood seeping from the shallow wound. Her confusing mind finally registered that her assistant had spoken to her, and she quickly sprung into action before the pause got awkward.

"Uhm, it's alright Spike, really. I'd feel bad if I let you keep walking while your exhausted." the mare started her trot

"It's just that I don't want to use you like this, you're tired too. I just want you to feel okay, and having to carry me around is just a burden I don't want you to have." Spike looked down as an embarrassed blush burned his cheeks. He didn't tend to show his emotions very much, but having Twilight there made him confess his deepest sated thoughts and fears, and it felt good.

"Spike, do you want really me to feel as comfortable as I can?" the magically gifted unicorn stopped her brisk walk to turn her neck around, looking at her little purple dragon straight in the eyes. He simply nodded as a response to her question, prompting a smile that could barely be seen due to the cloak's hood.

"Good, then you'll let me carry you around because it's what makes me feel comfy. You'll see one day, Spike, you'll see how your babies will smile back at you when you're the one giving them rides." addressing him as her child once again satisfied both of them, ending the short debate with mutual winnings. Without anything stopping them, the Sparkle household moved ever closer to the vast expanse of Sweet Apple Acres, and the fields themselves could already be seen from their point of view, billowing in the wind as the late afternoon sun cast its light over the orchards.

Before they got any closer, however, a red carriage sped past them with the speed only achievable through a triple horsepower system, nearly running them over as it disappeared into the seclusion the orchards provided. She could tell that it wasn't from around here due to the excessive amounts of useless decorations placed on it, not to mention that the carriage's license plaque had 'Manehatten' printed in bold letters under the identification number. These thoughts managed to distract Twilight enough that she walked past the golden gates to the fields without noticing immediately, and they continued until she stumbled upon a very familiar building.

Nopony was near the Apple's Farmhouse, save for the three stallions that moved the carriage parked nearby, but a distant echo of a buck resounded through the plethora of trees. The sound caught the duo's attention and it began to lure them deeper into the foliage, but it only took a shout heard through the walls of the house to bring their attention back at the old building.

"Aw, what is it now Baron? Can't ya see that I'm trying to work here?!" Twilight and Spike eavesdropped that one sentence before they concluded that it was, in fact, their freckled farm friend. The door to the Apple residence had been left wide open, presumably by the stallion known as Baron when he walked in to speak with the chief farm pony, and the library-dwellers made their way over to a couch in the cozy living room. Muffled shouts could be heard through the door leading into the room the two ponies were meeting in, none of it anywhere near comprehensiveness.

Just as Spike hopped off of Twilight's back and onto the couch, the wooden door to the locked room slammed open as the amber stallion that had been arguing with Applejack stormed through the living room towards his carriage, not letting his angered gaze linger on the two new occupants of the room for more than a single second before he left the house's interior.

'Sheesh, makes you wonder what put a stick so far up his flank.'

'I'm not going to argue with you on that one, he seems to have some serious issues.'

Spike gestured for her to enter the room her orange friend was in. He didn't know how Applejack would react, but he wanted for his caretaker to manage this on her own terms and he didn't want to get in the way. Besides, he could walk in after the initial heat died down. With a deep intake of breath, the concealed lavender mare took the first step to reintegrating herself into her 'Normal' life. The room she entered was fairly small and square-shaped, with two chairs in front of her, a line of bookcases on the far wall, and most importantly, a strong orange mare wearing a black suite with a red tie. As always, her trademark stetson hat rested upon her ponytail-style mane, masking her face almost as much as Twilight's cloak due to how her head was tilted downward as she scribbled away at a sheet of paper.

Applejack felt the presence in her room and grit her teeth in annoyance, thinking that Baron had sent one of his goons to try and intimidate her to sign his contract again. Her green eyes raised from their spot on the paper and she spit out the pencil she had sunken her teeth into, preparing to talk down yet another stubborn idiot that thought that he could to take her on.

"That freakin' Baron never gives up, does he? Listen up here, punk, Ah don't care how fancy and rich you and your brown-nosing employer are, you boys will never lay a hoof on the deed to this farm for as long as Ah live. Ah'm ready to buck a fool in the face, but are you willing to lose all of your teeth, partner?" Twilight was surprised at the hostility that had arisen so easily due to a little misunderstanding, and she set about to correct it as soon as possible. But, seeing that Applejack was in no mood for games, she decided to be just as blunt with her own approach.

"Well, that's a very nice way of saying 'Hello', don't you think?" the mare in the suit didn't believe her perked ears, did she really just hear Twilight's voice come from that pony? No, it was impossible since the unicorn was buried inside her crypt, or at least that's what Applejack's logical thought process was saying. Her emotions, however, were running wild from the effective catalyst-like effect the mare's voice had on her, and she fought to hold back tears that had been long overdue to be shed. Just as she thought she had managed to control herself, the pony that sounded like Twilight pulled her hood back before speaking in her surreal voice again, "Did I miss anything while I was gone?"

Applejack was startled by the mare's appearance, which was exactly the same save for the fangs poking out over her lips. As far as she could tell, this was the late Twilight Sparkle of Equestria in all her lavender glory, a realization so shocking that it caused her too fall back to the ground after she leaned back into her chair too strongly. Before the cloaked unicorn could do anything to help, the nicely crafted timber chair shot into the air as the mare underneath bolted upright in an attempt to get a closer look at the horned pony in her home.

"Twilight...is that really you Sugarcube?" Applejack knew she must have looked like a freak by how she was acting, but this situation called for anything but a freakout. An orange hoof rose to touch the lavender cheek in front of her in a test to see if she wasn't hallucinating, but all it took was a single reply to fuel her belief.

"Of course it's me AJ, just ask Spike." hearing his name, the purple dragon appeared in the room instantly by means even he didn't understand, ready to make this go as smoothly as possible. He knew what Applejack had been hiding from the world would play a major role in this reunion, the very reason she put herself through all the stress she went through with a desk job instead of being outside bucking apples like the generations before her had. Still, all of that could be solved later. Right now he had to help out his caretaker with convincing the orange mare that it wasn't some kind of elaborate prank or nightmare, but neither of them understood that she was basically a living lie detector by now. She had believed every single word that had left the unicorn's mouth as soon as she heard no sign of deception in them, but she let the little drake go on his little rant about how he had come across his mother yesterday, fainted, had a breakdown, fallen out of bed, and the insignificant piece of information on how satisfying his breakfast was.

During the little dragon's monologue, she kept staring at the paradoxical mare in the room, noting the subtle changes on the overall exact representation of her supposedly deceased friend. The little pair of teeth sticking out over her lower lip dragged her attention to them, mostly because Nightmare Night was yesterday, but also because they looked so real. She would have never thought Twilight would invoke something as powerful as intimidation over her, but her new muscular build and sharpened teeth let her know that the lavender spellcaster could have her shaking on the floor if she wanted to.

Slight intimidation aside, her self-control was starting to break away slowly, and the urge to holler out at the unicorn's return was growing in insistence. But among the joy, she felt something else, something hidden deep in the shadows of her ego.

Twilight didn't know when it happened, or how it had happened without her knowing, but she found herself being choked alive in the surprise hug she was receiving. She smiled at the little fact that this revelation had gone smoother than her reunion with Spike, but it dampened slightly when the Apple mare spoke next.

"Ah'm so-o sorry-y...Ah'm the one r-responsible for w-what happened to you." her pleas for forgiveness where stuttered by her crying, but these weren't just tears of sadness or those of joy. These were tears of guilt, fueled by her witnessing everything that came about due to her weakness on the day she was supposed to have died, and harbored for nearly a decade by the only lie she could successfully pull off, a lie to herself. That was why when Twilight tried to calm her down she responded by rejecting it immediately.

"No Applejack, it's not your fault...it never has been."

"Yes it was. If Ah hadn't been so bullheaded as to try and handle that rock thing on my own I wouldn't have gotten you killed."

"AJ, don't be stubborn, please. I was the one that sent you, along with the rest of the girls to fight the golem in the first place. So, if there's to be any fault, it's my own for not making the choice to evacuate the cave instead of taking a gamble at trying to beat that monster."

"But Ah'm th-"

"Applejack, no. I made my choice nine years ago to sacrifice myself so that you could live happily with your family, not so that you could wallow around thinking about how it could have gone differently," seeing how her friend was bound by guilt, Twilight used the force of that very emotion to break past her stubbornness. Many might call that technique cruel, but it was effective against the farm mare, putting an end to her stuttered apologies as they separated from their hug, "Besides, I'm here now for good, and nobody is going to change that."

Spike smiled at the pair, knowing that things would go smoothly from there on out. Of course, he understood it would take time for the farm mare to fully leave behind her guilt conscious, but at least now it would happen. Still, he had that feeling again that he was forgetting something really important involving Twilight, but he couldn't quite put his claw on what it was.

"So...back from the dead, huh?" Applejack's mind now had the clarity to realize what the lavender mare being in front of her meant, and how impossible it was supposed to be.

"Pretty much. There's nothing as confusing as waking up in a coffin with no idea how you got there, fighting your way through the Everfree, and arriving in what used to be a small town only to find that nine years have passed without my knowing."

"Don't you worry Twi, Ah'm sure you'll fit in just as good as you did before. Besides, we don't need to know how you came back, all that matters is that you are." Twilight didn't exactly agree with the part about not having to find out her revival's reason. Reanimation was something she had scarcely heard of, and every time she did it involved a rotting creature of pure evil being introduced into the world. Still, she was glad her orange friend had a positive view for the future.

"Only time will tell, AJ. Anyway, my little mysteries aside, how have you been handling as the head of the farm all these years?"

"It's had it's ups and down, just like you noticed a couple of minutes ago." Twilight now noticed that the suited mare's accent was severely reduced as opposed to the last time she heard her, no doubt a result of having to speak to more 'High class' ponies, "Damn Baron, he's been trying to take over my farm to set up a carriage factory on my land ever since he heard of Granny Smith's passing. He thought Ah would be a fool that would just hand over the deed to the farm if the pouch of bits looked big enough, but Ah wouldn't sell him this land willingly even if he had me at gunpoint." Applejack's ire at the snobbish red stallion was evident in her green eyes. She seriously hated him with all of her honest heart, especially the way he would scam the poorer individuals out of everything they owned, leaving them for dead out in the cold.

"So, he's been trying to swindle you out of your farm for all these years, nonstop?" Twilight was intrigued at how the passing of an elderly mare that was rarely seen in town could possibly attract a 'Big-shot' stallion with an appetite for power. Granny Smith had never mentioned any companies trying to conquer her own, but it was possible she had taken it as a secret to her grave, trusting her granddaughter to make the right choice when the time came.

"He sure has, and he'll probably keep doing it until he finds some other company that catches his eye, and I feel sorry for the fellas that do." Applejack's side of the conversation was interrupted by her stomach growling in protest at her negligence towards her hunger, bringing an embarrassed chuckle into the room, "Heh, Ah guess I forgot about dinner when Baron came in here. Would you two mind joining me? Ah made more than enough and Ah'd sure love to have some good conversation."

"I'm up for it. What about you Twi?" Spike chirped up from the sidelines, finally speaking since the serious atmosphere had dissolved away, not to mention that the trip to the acres had raised his appetite along the way. In all honesty, Twilight couldn't say she was in a much different situation, save for the fact that her hunger wasn't the issue, it was her terrible thirst.

Her thoughts once again wandered into unknown territory, casting a numb effect over her body as her subconscious mind put its instincts into effect. The amethyst eyes on her face trailed down from her friend's face towards her neck, where she could faintly see the little bulge under the skin that marked the artery. Her irises flashed scarlet for a second as she heard the steady, strong beat of the healthy farm mare's heart.

Thump-thump...thump-thump... thump-thump

The beautiful sound was music to her flicking ears, causing her dry tongue to slide over her lips almost imperceptibly as her saliva started to build up. Calculated plans of isolation and predation coursed into her mind without her knowledge, being brought in by a part of her that was desperately trying to win control over her motor skills.

"Equestria to Twi, you awake?" Spike's inquiry was enough to snap the lavender mare out of her trance for the second time that day. She immediately started berating herself out of fear, asking herself why she was having such strange ideas formed inside her head. Her horror wasn't just born from the thoughts themselves, they were born from the way she reacted to them at first, with enjoyment and anticipation. Perhaps some food would help quell her discordant line of thought.

"Oh yeah, sorry about that. I'd love to stay for dinner Applejack." the mare in the suit grinned widely at the interesting company she had, preferring them much more than the loudmouthed bastard that kept pestering her every week.

"Then come along, I hope you two'v still got a taste for apples, because Ah'm serving up some of Granny's famous apple stew."

Leave it to the Apple Clan to come up with every possible use of apples in foods. The obsession-like loyalty to apples that AJ still held strongly in her heart brought a smile to Twilight's face. Maybe, just maybe, she could live a normal life from thereon out. Even if her friends had gone through some changes during her absence, they were still the same mares she had saved the world with in the past at their cores, and all they need is someone there to bring them all together again.
_______________________________________________________________________

Fluttershy stayed true to her name as she fluttered towards the entrance to her house, a basket full of medical herbs she had harvested from the Everfree's edge hanging from her mouth's grip. The sun began to make its slow decent in the sky, meaning that the nocturnal predators of the forest would come out soon, put an end to her scavenging session.

As she put the basket down to open the door, her eyes wandered to a small tombstone in the distance, bringing a tinge of sadness into her heart. She had lost many animals over the years, mostly due to their short lifespans, but none of them had hurt her as much as Angle's passing had. In fact, it was almost as heart wrenching as Twil...

She shook her head slightly before she got too lost in thought like she usually did when she thought about death, not wanting to loose the confidence she had built up for the conversation she had to start soon. Her unlocked door was nosed open easily, granting her access to her cozily small cottage. The butterscotch pegasus trotted towards her coffee table to set down the herbs she had collected, placing them in plain sight so that she wouldn't forget to organize them later on during the night.

With her charge set down, Fluttershy walked back outside into the fresh air, ruffling her wings in the natural excitement all pegasi got right before they set off into the sky at speeds that could only be beat by teleportation. Of course, the animal-loving vet wasn't one of those pegasi, choosing to fly at a calm pace that would allow her to take in the surrounding scenery instead of just blurring it all with speed.

The afternoon's light caused all the clouds she flew past to glow orange, turning them into works of art rather than just parts of a system used to water the planet. One of such clouds refused to phase into a different color like the rest of its brethren, mainly because it was painted using rainbow juice to match the coloration of its owner.

Rainbow Dash's cloud mansion was reached by Fluttershy in a matter of minutes, due to how closely located it was to her cottage. The cloudway leading to the front door displaced slightly as the butterscotch pegasus' hoofprints were left in her path, fluffing back to its normal form after a couple of seconds of not having the weight on top of it. A yellow hoof came down gently on the doorway with a chromatic thunderbolt painted onto its features, urging the mare within to respond with a timely appearance.

The door opened almost immediately after the knocking was finished, swinging open to reveal the cyan pegasus within, who adopted an excited smile on her face when she saw who her visitor was.

"What's up Fluttershy?" the mare being addressed could faintly hear the sound of a running television coming from within the house, explaining why the speedster has answered so quickly.

"Hi Rainbow, I just came to check on you to see if you were prepared for tomorrow." at that, Dash's smile faltered a little. She never liked it when her friend came to ask her about their little treks, but she also knew it was an issue that couldn't be avoided. Her icebox was as barren as her cabinets by this time of the month.

"Oh...it's tomorrow?"

"Yes, you see, I just ran out of oatmeal, cereal, bandages, and most of the things I need every day. I think it'd be best if we go soon, if that's okay with you." Fluttershy was going to go, whether Rainbow went along with her or not, but it had become a habit to ask for permission for things as trivial as grocery shopping. Unbeknownst to her, the cyan mare felt as if she couldn't let her shy friend face the city alone, knowing how much she disliked large crowds. So, bound by loyalty and against her own wishes to stay secluded, she agreed to accompany her.

"Yeah, that's cool Flutters. I'll meet up with you first thing tomorrow morning." the quiet pegasus smiled back at her best friend, noting that the reluctance in her voice was a lot less concentrated than the first years after the accident, "Do you wanna come in, or what?"

"I'm sorry Rainbow Dash, but I need to get back home to organize my medical plants, maybe some other time." the butterscotch mare gave herself a pat on the back in her mind for turning down an invitation without hesitance. All of the extra time the duo of pegasi had spent together had altered their personalities in subtle ways, such as Fluttershy gaining more courage and Rainbow Dash learning to be more humble towards those around her.

"See you then. Good night Fluttershy!" the chromatically maned mare called out as her friend as she started to hover away towards her cottage, and made her way back inside her mansion after she flew out of sight. She didn't know why, but she had a funny feeling regarding the trip tomorrow, as if something was going on that she didn't know about. She chalked up her explainable sensation to just being a case of the jitters before walking back towards her living room to finish watching her movie.

"Nicoltas Cage, you may be good, but you're still no match for the Daring Do franchise."
_______________________________________________________________________

"And that's pretty much everything Ah'v changed sine I took over the farm, and things have been running smoothly ever since. That is, if you can look past Baron and his insistent attempts to convince me to give it all up."

Applejack took a chugged down her glass of her chilled, non-alcoholic cider to cool down her throat from her lengthy explanation. The fascinating details had Twilight extremely interested, almost enough to ignore her own orifice's protests, especially the part where her farm friend told her about how she managed to export all of her produces across Equestria after she entered a partner ship with a transportation enterprise.

Spike was going through his third dish of stew in his attempt to sate his hunger, which was still as big as it was nine years ago, gulping down everything in his bowl before serving himself another. His gluttony had him distracted throughout dinner, so he never actually got the chance to speak or listen to the two chattering mares sitting at the table with him. The only thing other thing his mind was concentrated on that didn't involve eating was that nagging sensation that he was forgetting something really important that would bite him on his rear of he didn't remember soon.

"Things have really gone swell with you then, Applejack. I have to ask though, do you regret having to lead the entire farm? I bet it could be a really stressful job."

"Ah don't exactly regret it, but sometimes Ah do let myself think back to the days when Ah would be applebucking. Ah love my job right now, always will, but Ah'd love it even more if things could just go back to being simple again, where Ah could be helping Big Mac with the orchards instead of being cooped up in here." Applejack reclined in her chair, remembering the days she would go adventuring with all of her friends, the days where every choice she made didn't determine the fate of the farm, letting her lips pull up into a happy grin elicited by her nostalgic memories.

"Why don't you just let somepony else you trust take some of the load of your back, like a co-owner of sorts. They won't have complete control over farm, but they'll be able to help you out with some of the smaller tasks, and to work as an adviser to you when you need to make important decisions." Twilight had learned a lot about business managing during her years at the castle. It was nearly impossible not to, what with being around the sun monarch of Equestria so much. That train of thought drove the lavender mare into a territory her mind hadn't wandered to yet, the one regarding the Royal Sisters. She had yet to send Celestia a letter informing her about her return, but Applejack spoke up before she could.

"Ah hadn't really thought about that. Shoot Twi, you've just arrived here and you're already solving one of my major problems. You haven't changed one bit." the stetson clad mare saw the look on her friend's face, and so did the purple dragon. It spoke of urgency that was about to be addressed, making Spike feel that sensation of impending doom much stronger than he had before.

"Thanks AJ, you just reminded me that I haven't told Princess Celestia about all of this. Maybe she can help me figure out why I'm back in the first place." Twilight noticed the weird looks her friends were exchanging, not liking them at all. Applejack seemed to be giving her assistant a disbelieving look while his eyes widened in recognition, and the both turned to look at her with nervousness plastered onto their faces. The farm mare's honesty was stronger than Spike's loyalty, forcing her to say something she would live to regret.

"Uhm, Twilight?"

"Yes?"

"Can you promise me you won't freak out about what I'm about to tell you?"

"Well I won't know unless you tell me what it is you're going to tell me."

"Just promise me will you."

"Okay okay, I promise. Now what's got your tails in a twist guys?"

"Princess Celestia...Princess Celestia's been missing for six years. Ah'm sorry Twi, but Luna told us tha-..."

The horned mare was gone. Her mind suffered a breakdown of proportions she had never dreamed of before, leaving her nothing more than an empty husk of emotions at the moment. Her pupils dilated as she retreated into the safety of her mind, trying to find comfort in her memories in hopes of making the reality she was faced with to go away. She wanted to weep, she wanted to curl up into a ball instead of going to search for her friends, but most of all, she wanted the world to make sense again. She sought out her perfect reality inside her subconscious, leaving the forefront of her mind perfectly vacant as Applejack tried to calm down the onslaught that was bound to break out due to her honesty-bound revelation.

The unicorn's head fell limply to the table, nearly falling into her bowl as her mind restarted itself. Neither of the other two occupants could see her face since the cowl had fallen into place along with her horned skull, concealing her features. When she lifted her head back up, the shadow cast over her facial features didn't let them see her expression at all, save for the leveled line that marked her mouth.

"Applejack...Spike...I need some time alone right now. Thank you for the dinner, but I think I need to take a walk to clear my head. Don't wait up for me Spike, I'll be home right after I'm done with my stroll."

That voice. That voice was not Twilight's, and the farm mare knew that just as clearly as the dragon's. Twilight would have gone half-insane due to the shock, instead, this mare set it aside as if it were nothing more than a trivial problem to be dealt with later. Before they could object, the unicorn stood from her spot at the dinner table, quickly making her way out through the front door. That little moment left the dragon and the head mare with slightly agape mouths, wondering what it was they had just seen. Perhaps they were wrong, maybe something had changed inside the lavender bookworm they loved, something more life-changing than any quantity of time could ever hope to amount to.

Further out in the field, a red stallion with a blond mane watched with wide eyes as what he believed looked like a mare sped through the trail leading into town, leaving a dust storm in her wake. The strand of hay he was chewing on fell out of his mouth as she blasted into the air, jumping from tree to tree as she made a beeline for the city, quickly disappearing from his line of sight.

'Now, we must drink, but who holds the correct elixir?

In no time at all, the cloaked pony found herself atop a particularly tall building, giving her a good view of the city that housed her. She briefly recognized that the cloak she had found in the castle yesterday was perfect for keeping her warm against the night air, but it was quickly drowned out by her base instincts as she scoured the city with her scarlet eyes.

From the point she was at, she could see the infrared signatures of the ponies walking the streets, sleeping at their homes, and a couple here and there that were lurking in the darkened alleyways of the city. Her eyes locked onto one of those in an alley, but another signature caught her attention before she made her move. It shone brightly even though it came from within a building, signifying that the plasma within that host would be perfect for consumption, and it was much closer than the alternative choice she had. Naturally, her sights set onto the easier target, locking onto her heat signature as she began to make her move.

The fanged huntress made her way across the rooftops, much like the day she had arrived, jumping across the gaps without a single pair of eyes seeing her in action. She made short time of what could have been a trip that could have taken hours, and she now stood atop a building in front of the one she had marked as her target for the night. Strange, she had been near that strange place before, but that didn't influence her choice to teleport inside.

She was greeted by very dim lights, which didn't really affect her due to her nocturnally adapted eyesight. The furnishing was simple, with multiple booths lining the wall leading her to the conclusion that she was inside a store again. Her horn tingled as a form of extrasensory perception kicked into effect, making her ears flick to the left. Her lightly glowing eyes widened as she heard the wind whistle almost imperceptibly, giving her the chance to raise a hoof in time to block a broom handle that would have swatted her on the back of the head.

The nocturnal predator seized the handle in her hooves and pushed it away, staggering the would-be attacker for a couple of seconds. The time granted was enough to let the lavender mare to spin around to see her opponent, who happened to be her target as well.

The mare she had chosen as her perfect source glared at her through a mane so slick it seemed to be sharpened to a point at its tips. Her celestially blue eyes took in her appearance just before the hardened to match steel, unyielding to the intimidation cast by the spellweaver. The three balloons adorning her pink flank shifted as she stood on her hind legs, balancing herself with the broom to shout at the intruder with a voice laced with universal venom before attempting to bash her again.

"Get out of my house!"

The End

Capter 1

The End

The cool air of the Equestrian sky whistled faintly in the afternoon sun's final rays as it was forced aside by a speeding royal carriage slicing through the heavens, its golden features reflecting the celestial body's warming light. The occupants of said carriage had only been within such a vehicle before in order to attend various ceremonies and events hosted in Equestria's capitol, since they lived a good distance from there in a growing town named Ponyville. The five passengers within the royal escort, excluding the rainbow maned one due to her decision to fly alongside the guards pulling the transportation device on her own, shifted nervously at the prospect of their newest assignment.

"What do you suppose she wants us to do over there Twi?" the orange cowpony by the name of Applejack hadn't managed to fully grasp the message contained within the royal letter sent to them a couple of days ago, not to mention that she had missed out on the meeting the Celestial Sisters had held on the subject due to some family affairs she had to attend to on her own.

"Do tell, dear, the details seem to be slipping my mind." Rarity chipped into the questioning conversation brewing, figuring she might as well double-check that she understood what it was their little excursion was all about.

"Well, Princess Celestia seemed pretty calm about all of this, so it's probably nothing too big for us to handle. The letter and the briefing she gave us explained that there have been multiple odd occurrences along Equestria's northern borders, mostly magical anomalies or the occasional flashes of light. The residents near the surrounding areas seemed to shrug them off after observing them for a couple of weeks, but they still sent a complaint to Canterlot saying that the unicorns there began to feel uneasier everyday that passed by." Twilight's intellectual mind was able to summon forth all of the information she had gathered the past week in a matter of seconds, a natural ability she had only managed to refined with her intense study sessions.

The new assignment hadn't really bothered her peace of mind at all, considering how harmless it seemed. She had begun to deduce possible reasons for the disturbances on her own free time, but she almost always found herself concluding that the culprits were no more than a couple of teenage colts messing around with unstable spells on the mountainside. However, as soon as the prospect of a task from her beloved teacher came up, she pounced on it at a second's notice as if it were a case of national security.

"Huh, well Ah wouldn't know much about your fancy magic and all, but if it's disturbing all of those ponies, Ah'll gladly help them out." the determination Applejack had managed to release into the atmosphere with her righteous declaration was tainted by an outrageous fit of giggles escaping Fluttershy as soon as Pinkie found a ticklish spot on her delicate butterscotch wings.

"Oh my, this might be serious after all, Applejack. We must uncover who and where these felons are before their little games get out of hand and start causing some real damage." Rarity's polished hoof was pressed against her forehead in a display of her usual dramatic nature as she envisioned the chaos that could be unleashed at the hooves of some dastardly deviants.

"Actually, we won't have to look for the perpetrators at all this time, Rarity." Twilight's statement broke the fashionista out of her pose, gaining all of the alabaster unicorn's apt attention.

"Oh, and why would that be?"

"Because the princesses already gave us a location to explore. They were able to track down the origin of the disturbances to an abandoned area in the mountainside, not too far from the civilised areas near the northern border. Princess Celestia figured that we could handle this for her while she and Princess Luna attend a diplomatic meeting at the Griffon Nation's embassy."

"That's great! We can kick flank and get back to Ponyville in no time at all!" Rainbow Dash's tomboyishly loud voice startled everyone save the pink mare in the carriage as she swooped down from the cloud cover to join the conversation through an open window, her large grin only growing wider at the prospect of mixing some heroine action into her usually routine life.

"We don't even know if there'll be any flanks to kick, Dash. For all we know, the ones responsible for these problems could have already stopped playing around with their unstable magic tricks and left." Twilight's tone only accented the fact that she doubted what had just escaped her mouth, but she didn't want to get Rainbow Dash too pumped, for everyone's own good.

"Whatever Twi, but I'm still not letting my guard down when we get to that place, they get you when you do." just as the lavender spellcaster was about to ask who "they" were, Rainbow Dash did a barrel roll and sped ahead of the carriage to get some ample space for her aerobatic practices.

"Ah wouldn't think too much about it, Sugarcube. Look, Ah think we're almost there." Applejack pointed her hoof out through the open window and towards the towering mountains that the carriage was approaching. The guards piloting the escort chose a clearing in the woods surrounding the mountainside as their landing spot and began preparing themselves for the routine process of setting down the airborne vehicle.
________________________________________________________________________

After a fairly rough landing at the passengers' expense, the traveling group found themselves in a grassy plain surrounded by thick woods and the giant rocks that marked the border against the Griffon Nation. A slightly nauseous white unicorn stumbled out of the carriage's doorway, having not enjoyed the bumpy landing in the slightest, followed shortly after by the rest of the mares that had tagged along.

"Okay Twilight, we're here, now which way do we have to go?" Rainbow Dash crashed down spectacularly from the heavens above just a few feet from the unicorn librarian, impatience clear in her voice as she startled the lavender mare out of the internal checklist she was revising in her memory.

"Hmm, give me a second. Pinkie, hand me the map please." Twilight turned to face the cotton-candy colored mare, who in turn hopped closer to her a couple of times before responding in her cheery tone.

"Okie-dokie, here you go." Pinkie pulled out a pristine map from the depths of her mysterious bubbly mane, how she managed to have held it there the entire time nopony would ever come to understand. Twilight unfolded the large map scroll to find topographical markings depicting the surrounding areas, and her attention was drawn to the bold red circle drawn on a specific spot on the borderland mountainside.

"Aha! The best way to reach the site would be to travel through these light woodlands and use the stone paths carved into the cliffside." Twilight used her hooves to gesture towards the natural routes that could be seen in the relative distance as she spoke, barely visible in the sunset's final rays, "If we stick to the trail we should reach our destination in no time at all."

"Well, shall we proceed? I'm quite sure the weather up here isn't exactly as warm as it is down at Ponyville, and we don't want to get caught in the cold." Rarity's luscious coat rippled faintly as a faint shiver creeped down her spine, urging her to reach shelter before Mother Nature decides to pull a dirty trick out of her sleeve.

With their plans laid out, the six Elements Of Harmony and the two Guards Of Canterlot made their way towards the worn paths that would aid them in their ascension of the mountain's steep terrain. As the sun disappeared below the horizon and the moon took its rightful place in the night sky, the party of eight spotted rapidly flashing lights coming from within a cave further up the path. The sudden illumination beckoned their full attention and made them quicken their pace to a quick trot. The guards unsheathed their swords and held them in their jaws as they entered the cave's mouth, their wings slightly flared in preparation for a potential battle.

With no immediate threat in sight, the adventurers advanced deeper into the cavernous chamber, their senses being assaulted immediately by the overwhelmingly humid smell of moss permeating the atmosphere. The sounds given off by their hooves striking the cold stone underneath them were only intensified as they bounced back and forth in a cycle of echoes, a detail that was vaguely noticed by the lavender unicorn of the group as her attention was drawn to the center of the cavern they were within.

"Look! Someone carved symbols on the cave's floor!" Twilight approached the mysteriously enticing symbols with her usual scholarly eagerness, feeling the hunger for knowledge building in the forefront of her vast intellectual mind. She ran her hoof across the lightly glowing carvings in a daring prod for information on their unique characteristics, feeling that the ground the inscriptions were etched onto was significantly more frigid than the rest of the cave, and a nearly imperceptible tingle began to stir in her precious horn.

"What is it Twilight?" Rarity trotted over to her unicorn companion in hopes of getting in on whatever it was that her very much productive mind could have concluded, feeling the very same tingle on her forehead the second she approached the unusual patterns being prodded by the bookworm.

"These are sigil runes, a sort of all-purpose mana conductor used to cast power-consuming spells without running the risk of unintentionally using up all of your energy." Twilight began to walk around the circle's circumference as she switched into her scholarly mode, taking in each and every detail put into the apparently ancient formation, "This is without a doubt the reason behind the disturbances in the surrounding areas, but magic of this variety hasn't been used in ages. It's not only dangerous, and partially illegal, it'd take someone much more adept in this specific field of enchanted-inscription than a couple of teenage unicorns to be able to transmit the spell to the entire borderlands."

"If that's true, dear, then I guess we do have a culprit after all. However, I must ask, why is it that we didn't undergo the same sensations as the rest of the unicorns in the nearby towns on our way up here? We have to be no more than a couple of feet away to even feel its effects."

"To be honest, I'm not fully sure about that myself either. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that whoever constructed these runes has to be here to activate their innate abilities." Twilight raised a hoof to her chin as she scrutinized the minuscule symbols forming the dimly glowing sigil circle, formulating a possible plan of action befitting the situation, "Hmm...I think I can decipher these carvings with some time, but I'll need something to write with to reorganize the arcane matrix without messing the entire thing up. Could you do me the favor of asking one of the royal escorts for some writing utensils, Rarity?"

"Why of course, I'll go get them for right away, dearie." Rarity turned tail and walked over to the idle guards, who were still wearing the stone-cold expressions that had been cemented onto their faces at their training camp. The fashionista had an extremely brief conversation with one of the guards after retrieving a notepad and a pen, one that was entirely unnecessary and proved to be fruitless, but social mingling was basically a second nature to her.

The white unicorn returned with the utensils in her sapphire telekinetic grip, the sound of her dainty hoofsteps drawing Twilight's attention. Of course, her short distraction had been enough for her to miss the pulse of brightness given off by the sigil rune the moment Rarity got within a couple of feet from it.

"Here you go Twilight. By the way, these guards really can't keep up small talk can they?" the fashion-inclined mare let the light objects in her magical grip be whisked away by the much stronger aurora of her studious friend, who immediately began preparing the heading for the barrage of notes she was already itching to take down.

"Nope, that's the way they're trained Rarity. Anyway, thanks for getting these for me."

"Don't mention it de-," Rarity craned her neck a bit, looking over Twilight's shoulder to take in the brewing spectacle behind her, "Uhm, are the runes supposed to be doing that?"

Twilight turned around to discover that the sigil formation had increased the intensity of the light it gave off, many of the unique symbols on the masterfully carved creation twinkling a little brighter before they died down and gave the spotlight to another one near itself. The celestial student gave off a gasp of scholarly excitement as she began to madly scribble away on the notepad she had been provided with, not even looking at the yellow pages as she described the runes' shift in behavior.

"Tw-Twilight." Deeper inside the cavern, Fluttershy found herself regretting having followed a small swarm of bats to the darker regions of the cave as her breath caught in her throat, terror slowly possesing her entire body.

"Twilight." The yellow pegasus couldn't find her voice's full strength as she stared in horror, wishing as hard as she could that what she was seeing was simply a figment of her cowardly mind, but it didn't help ease her growing dread in the slightest. Taking in a deep breath as she forced back the knot in her throat, Fluttershy prepared herself to unleash her warning call.

"TWILIGHT!" with her duty done, the butterscotch pegasus fled from her observational spot to hide behind the security of the royal escorts, shivering as fear poisoned her mind.

"What Fluttershy? What's wrong?" Twilight looked away from the violently flashing sigil runes to look at the cowering mare, who could only use her willpower to point a shaky hoof at one of the cave's dimly lit corners, and the sight awaiting the unicorn there instantly forced a shock of startled panic into her overactive brain.

It was as if the darkness in the room had gained sentient consciousness, slowly slithering across the cave floor and oozing down from the ceiling as they coalesced on a pile of rubble abandoned in the far end of the cold stone chamber. The sludge began attaching itself to the individual stones, pulling them together while serving as a type of organic glue. The mass of oozing shadows stood on a pair of stone pillars it had decided to use as its legs, a massive boulder serving as the central torso to the malicious construct. Tendrils formed by the seemingly organic sludge burst out from the creature's back, wrapping them around several stalactites that it then tore off of the ceiling, jamming them into its back to serve as a set of intimidating spines. Two more tendrils shot out from the torso's sides, which it used to sweep up several smaller boulders that it proceeded to mold into a pair of arms, hands and all. The newly crafted palms picked up what the group had believed to be nothing more than another boulder, only to reveal that the stone had already been crafted to resemble an equine head by someone else, presumably the one responsible for the sigil runes themselves. The enormous construct was at the very least two ponies high, a stature that only grew when a final tendril shot out of it neck, connecting the carved stallion head to the creature's rocky body. The empty eyes of the equine-like stone were set ablaze in a scarlet glow that was as soulless as the absence it served to fill, and it used its new ability of sight to concentrate its hatred-laced attention on its primary targets.

"Celestia have mercy! Everypony back away from that thing!" terror was prominent in the guard's voice as he shouted out his loose command, without a doubt panicking at the very prospect of being pitted against such a beast with nothing more than his sabre.

The towering construct of stone and organic ooze roared at the group of puny ponies, using its uncontrollable desire to destroy anything that dared move to fuel its immense strength as it dug its colossal hands into the ground, tearing out a chunk of bone-crushing stone that it proceeded to throw at the infidelic lifeforms that had awoken it from its slumber. The ponies scattered around the cave to avoid being flattened by the ton of granite hurled at them, leaving them basically powerless against the semi-organic creature.

Of course, who needs to have brute strength when they could just as easily win a battle with a dexterous mind.

Twilight cast a brief scanning spell on the massive living statue, trying her hardest to figure out what the monstrous construct was and what the quickest way to deal with it would be. Her scan revealed the origin of the tendrils granting the construct its movability to be within the chest cavity of the stone body, a key characteristic that finally allowed her mind to bring up a text she had read in the past about the beast she now found herself face-to-face with.

'An Organic Atronach, a beast with the capability to bring nearly anything it chooses to inhabit as its home to life when disturbed by external changes. Although sluggish and not the brightest of creatures, the Organic Atronach makes up for its faults with its extreme durability, strength, and regenerative properties. If one should be pitted against with such a creature, the only way to truly put an end to its nearly-endless lifespan would be to destroy the "heart" of the beast, the root of each and every limb spawned from the mass of organic material.'

Twilight, now fully confident that she understood the physiology of what she was faced with, began to formulate a battle strategy in a matter of seconds. Using both her natural leadership and the plentiful experience she had by hanging around her military brother's training courses, the lavender spellcaster sprung into action before the atronach could strike again.

The Bearer of Magic broke into a gallop towards the towering beast, flushing away her fear with the flash-flood of dedication she had steeled her mind with. Screams of protest rebounded off the walls of the cave as everypony thought that she had gone partially insane again and was just going to get herself killed with her little stunt, but Twilight never ceased her mad sprint. Undignification mixed in with the rage in the atronachs eyes as it was insulted by a pony believing it actually had a chance to take it on, and he rose his massive fist in preparation to crush the lavender unicorn charging at him.

Gasps of terror rang out in shock as the mighty appendage began its path of life-ending destruction, but it never even got the chance to touch so much as a single hair on Twilight's velvety coat. Just as the stone fist was about to crush her, the spellcaster unleashed a kinetic pulse of magic she had prepared during her dash, knocking away the boulder-like hand and staggering the surprised beast long enough for her to enact the second portion of her hasty plan.

Using the remaining energy she had charged in her horn, Twilight summoned a shining violet length of rope that she used to tie the stone being's pillar-legs together while she ran past them. Outraged at being surprised so easily by the puny unicorn, the atronach attempted to swat her with one of its enormous legs, oblivious to the fact that they were now bound together. With his balance lost, the mighty construct collapsed on the cold ground, cracking the floor itself as it sent a tremor throughout the cavern.

"Everypony! Give it everything you've got while it's still down!" Twilight's labored breaths nearly cut into her commanding rally call, but the message was as clear as crystal to everyone in the room. Taking advantage of the temporary disablement of the towering monster, the pony posse pounced on the atronach simultaneously, including a fearfully reluctant Fluttershy.

Each member that had embarked on the expedition improvised with whatever they could get their hooves on, adrenaline coursing throughout their bodies as their minds naturally transitioned back into their most basic of instincts to aid them in the hostile environment. The guards, realizing that their swords wouldn't stand a chance against the sturdy stone body of the atronach, took off into the air to retrieve some small boulders scattered around the cave. Rainbow Dash caught onto what they meant to do and enlisted herself and Fluttershy to give them a couple of helping hooves. With a barrage of heavy stones now positioned over the beast, the pegasi released their charges, letting their improvised weapons crash loudly against the squirming monster.

"Whooo! Yeah, we did it!" the chromatically maned pegasus began her glorious victory dance as she hovered above the now-unmoving pile of rubble she and the other pegasi had rained down on the beast, letting her prideful pegasus personality shine brightly.

Twilight let a wave of relief wash over herself for but a second, amused by the pride being radiated by her enthusiastic athletic friend up until a passage from the Organic Atronach's physiology popped into the forefront of her mind. Her pupils shrunk drastically a split second before a stone palm burst out of the rock pile, gripping Rainbow Dash's right cyan wing before the lavender unicorn could shout out her warning.

The quickster pegasus screamed both out of the horrific shock and the searing pain spreading throughout her sensitive appendage as the stone hand tightened its iron grip, but even that pain seemed dull when compared to what happened next. With a strength nopony in the cave could hope to match, the atronach's limb launched the chromatic mare across the cavernous chamber, smashing her already damaged wing against one of the cave's merciless walls.

"Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy managed to snap herself out of the restraints her fear had tied her down with, maneuvering around the stone arm to aid her unconscious friend. Rarity and Pinkie Pie rushed to join the impromptu rescue squad, helping the butterscotch veterinarian drag the knocked out speedster out of the cave before she could sustain any further damage.

The entire pile of rubble began to shake as the now-free Organic Atronach began to reconstruct itself, sending out its ebony tendrils to reattach each and every limb that had managed to crumble off. A booming chortle escaped its unholy throat as it snapped its head back on with a sickening crunch that only accented the sadistic exuberance it felt at showing the infidelic ponies their place.

The hovering guards charged at the pile of summoned flesh and stone in hopes of catching it off guard just like Twilight had done, but the towering creature foresaw their barbaric tactic long before they even decided to employ it.

He may have been dumb, but that didn't mean he wasn't able to learn from his mistakes.

A cocky grin spread its rocky features as it spun on its heels, giving its back to the royal guards. Before they could get the chance to ponder why it had done that, the Organic Atronach fired off the stalactite spines lining its back at incredible speeds, landing a duo of direct hits on their armored chestplates. Their armor may have kept them alive, but the guards themselves were sent flying out of the cavern and tumbling down the cliffside on a very much painful trip to the mountain's base.

As it prepared to release a roar of triumph, the atronach's sadistic grin was literally torn off of its face as a boulder smashed against its jaw, leaving a gaping hole where its mouth once was. It directed its now rekindled rage at the duo of ponies left inside the cave with it, billowing smog from its nostrils at the sight of its final combatants.

Twilight's horn glew intensely as she lifted another ton's worth of stone from the cave floor, flashing even brighter for just a second as it forced the enormous stone forward with as much strength as she could siphon into her kinetic pulse. The Organic Atronach balled its right hand into a fist before countering the attack, smashing the boulder hurled at it into nothing more than a shower of pebbles that were sent flying around the cold cavern. This hasty tactic, however, cost it the entirety of its right arm, which crumbled to pieces from the backlash given off by the boulder Twilight had fired at it.

A portion of its durable torso was torn off its place alongside the arm, exposing a rhythmically pulsing splotch of red among the organic ooze stored within the chest cavity. Applejack, trusting her instincts telling her that the now-exposed heart needed to be destroyed to takedown the creature, sped forward with the aid of her naturally athletic body in a final charge against the towering atronach.

Twilight, deciding that she couldn't stop Applejack pulling off her risky tactic at that point, decided to at the very least help ease the situation for her. The lavender spellcaster took notice in the Organic Atronach's eyes following the earth pony instead of keeping a guardful watch over her, immediately prepping a smaller boulder to knock out one of the beast's senses. Drawing more power from her quickly-depleting mana reserves, Twilight fired the makeshift projectile at the distracted monstrosity with enough force to knock off Applejack's signature stetson with the air currents following the stone missile.

The Organic Atronach felt that something was about to go wrong for him, but it was a reflex that came far too late to save him from the ton of stone that smashed against his cocky expression, reducing him to a headless monstrosity seething with unholy hatred towards the ponies that had disturbed its slumber.

A croaked roar creeped out of the atronach's throat as he descended into utter madness, giving up any sense of coordination it once had as it began to flail its remaining limbs in a fit of blinded frustration. Cracks began to spread on the floor below its might legs as he stomped the chilled ground recklessly, and the faults only grew larger and larger throughout its rampage.

Applejack's stubbornness drowned out her logical fears of getting anywhere near the decapitated construct, and her fate was sealed once she rushed past the point of no return. Her legs ached with the force with which she launched herself at the terrifying creature, her foreleg ready to crush its rapidly pulsing heart with her innate earth pony strength to finally end the battle, but it was an act of glory she never managed to achieve.

Her pupils dilated a split-second before a blind punch struck her out of the air, smashing her orange form into the uncaring ground. She felt the pure agony radiating from the snapped ribs in her body, yet not a sound could escape her breathless body as she writhed in pain on the ground.

The Organic Atronach continued its fit of rage as it barreled blindly towards one of the caves jagged walls, oblivious to the fact that it had just crushed one of its last opponents as it began to hammer its fist against the stone. Cracks began to spiderweb from the area it was impacting, slowly creeping their way up the wall and onto the ceiling as the cavern began to rumble in response to the damage it had sustained.

"You girls need to get out of there, now!" Pinkie Pie's shouts were nearly drowned out by the cave's booming quakes, yet they were still registered by the ponies they were meant to be heard by, or at least one of them.

"Wait! I need to go back for Applejack!" Twilight didn't wait for a response as she dashed towards the orange earth pony, who was bearing through searing pains to rise to her hooves. Sweat profusely dripped down her horned forehead as she maneuvered past the granite raining down from the collapsing cavern's ceiling, and adrenaline pulsed through her veins as she pushed her body to its limits. She could see Applejack just a short distance deeper into the cave, but a stone fist struck directly in front of her, hindering her rescue mission.

Her trembling amethyst eyes looked followed the limbs length until they were met by two glaring red orbs supported by tendrils springing up from the Organic Atronach's neck that served as a pair of replacement eyes. The creature's clenched fist rose once more to finally put an end to her infidelic life, but she disappeared in a flash of violet light that marked the completion of a successful teleportation spell.

The crumbling atronach heard the sound of hooves clacking against stone behind it, and he spun around just in time to receive the full force of a concentrated mana beam that split it down it's center in a second, disintegrating its heart as the magic burned anything near it out of existence. Its sturdy body collapsed on the ground loudly without the tendrils keeping it together, smoldering lifelessly as Twilight continued her rescue, not casting a single glance back.

Her strength was all but gone; the adrenaline rush was not enough to support her overexerted body, and the magical backlash of releasing all of her remaining mana in such a raw spell was beginning to deteriorate her condition, forcing her breaths to become labored and her vision blurred. However, Twilight bore through the pain, she bore through the fear, she bore through it all for her doomed friend.

She could see Applejack closer than ever now, she had barely managed to rise to her hooves after being smashed against the ground, but the sight of hope turned to one of terror once she realize that pebbles had begun to rain down on the orange mare. The ceiling above Applejack's had began to crack apart, slowly beginning to collapse along with the rest of the cave.

Twilight pushed her burning muscles again, but she had already reached her body's maximum limitation. She attempted to summon her magic, yet her exhausted mana reserves could do nothing to delay the inevitable. The ceiling would collapse, and a pony would die on that night, so were the ways of fate's game, yet Twilight continued her relentless efforts to change the outcome.

'I won't let her die here! I've just gotta run faster FASTER FASTER!'

Time seemed to slow down in Twilight's eyes, the world around her almost frozen in place. She took into account the brightly glowing runes that continued to fill the cavern with a dim pulsing glow, the screams from the onlooking ponies that had already managed to escaped the damned chamber, and she took notice of the chunk of ceiling that began to fall towards Applejack. And then, it all sped back up.

Twilight crashed into Applejack's side, knocking her a good distance away from where she was trying to maintain her balance.

She had done the selfless, she had faced fortune and spat in in its face, she had made the ultimate sacrifice.

The weight of her actions collapsed on her spent body, in the form of multiple tons of granite. She felt every individual bone in her body snap agonizingly, every vital organ pop, just before her trained mind gave off its final thought, its final message to the body that it inhabited, before it too was crushed.

'Goodbye...my friends.'