Typhoon’s half-lidded eyes stared up at the ceiling, still, unseeing. Her body was locked stiff, rigid, unable to move, and her jaw hung open where it had stopped mid-sentence. Glistening scarlet blood still stained her chin and her nose, and a few floating drops were frozen in midair an inch away from the mare’s lips. Her crumpled wings were bunched under her back, trapped between her coat and the straw-filled mattress.

Hurricane sat on a stool by her side, his head in his hooves. Wet, matted hair covered his cheeks, and his swollen eyelids held pink sclera within their sockets. His eyes were continually drawn to Typhoon’s face, even though it only opened a pit in his stomach and threatened to tear his heart to shreds. Sometimes, the shimmering air or thin wisps of energy surrounding her body would catch his attention, and when they did, he turned to the mares at his sides.

Aurora sat by his side on a similar stool, her slitted, golden eyes narrowed with worry. The thestral chewed on her lip, and her fangs were starting to do some damage to the cold flesh. If she noticed, or even cared, she showed no sign of it. Instead, her concerns seemed to be focused on the stallion to her right, and she fidgeted as she tried to decide whether or not it was okay to hug the normally stoic and distant commander.

Opposite her stood Celestia. The white alicorn’s brow furrowed as wave after wave of sparkling Arcana streamed from her horn to join the aura surrounding Typhoon’s body. Celestia’s nostrils flared with each punctuated breath, and she worked the tension out of her jaw. Occasionally, she would wince, and her shut eyelids would squeeze tight for a moment of exertion before they returned to their relaxed albeit concentrated expression.

Hoofsteps echoing in the hallway preceded the opening of the infirmary door. Aurora jumped, ready to fight, but her bristling mane relaxed when she recognized the tall form of Luna and the off-white coat of Second Sister. The thestral immediately hurried to Typhoon’s side, and her slitted, crimson eyes flitted back and forth over the mare’s body.

Hurricane’s gaze, however, didn’t waver. The thestral might as well have been invisible to him.

Celestia cracked open one of her eyes at the noise and quickly sighted Luna. “Good, you’re here,” she forced between gritted teeth.

Luna nodded. “My Night Guard are clearing the castle presently. I also dispatched two patrolling pegasi to gather some of your officers,” she added, gesturing towards Hurricane with a wing. Again, Hurricane remained oblivious to the events transpiring around him.

Then the dark alicorn narrowed her eyes at Typhoon’s body, frozen in time by Celestia’s spell. “What do you need me for?”

“She’s…” Celestia winced, and her horn pulsed with energy. One of her eyes caught Aurora’s, and the alicorn forcefully nodded at the thestral.

Aurora cleared her throat. “Hurricane ran into Typhoon just below the archmage’s tower. I tried to help him subdue her, but she sealed the passage off with a wall of ice. I backtracked to go find Celestia and get through one of the other entrances into the room. When we got there, some spell was killing her in Hurricane’s forelegs.” She cast a sidelong glance at the frozen mare on the bed. “Celestia cast a stasis spell to keep her alive, but we need to remove what’s afflicting her before she stops maintaining it. Otherwise, Typhoon will die.”

Luna nodded. “I see why you had Second find me.”

Hurricane tore his eyes away from Typhoon to notice Luna for the first time. Somewhere beneath the anguish and pain, a tiny glimmer of hope shone. “You’ll save her, right?” he murmured. “You’re practically a goddess. You… you can do anything. You’ll save her.”

The alicorn shuffled her dark wings and averted her gaze, instead choosing to focus on Typhoon. “Typhoon… you said that she was under the influence of some spell?”

“Yes,” Hurricane said. “Legate Rain reported as much to me when she first ran into her. Then I saw it for myself. They…” He took a shuddering breath and rested his forehooves on the edge of the bed. “They did something to my daughter. Something horrible. I just… just want her to be free of this nightmare.”

For several seconds, silence reigned. Luna frowned and tapped a hoof to her chin, deep in thought. Celestia, however, wasn’t patient.

“I can only keep the stasis up for a few more hours at the most,” the mare said. “Even I get exhausted after so much exertion.”

Luna nodded. “Right. We don’t have time to work up a counterspell, and Star Swirl is trying to find Queen Jade anyways. There was an attack on her quarters. If she’s hurt…” She let the thought hang in the air before she shook her head. “I’ll need to delve into her mind and see if I can extract the curse myself.”

“How... It’s in her mind?” Hurricane looked over his daughter with renewed worry. Living foes he could cut apart with magic and steel, but unicorn magic was far beyond him. “How?”

“Curses like these are usually tied to a pony’s thoughts and emotions,” Luna said. Her horn began to glow with brilliant teal energy, burning brighter with each passing moment. “I can enter her mind and disassemble it with all possible care. I have ample experience in wandering the minds of my ponies.”

She turned to Celestia and touched her older sister to catch her attention. “When I enter, I need you to slow the stasis. Otherwise my mind will be frozen in time like hers. I don’t wish to be stuck in eternity trying to save her.”

“What happens if she dies while you’re in there, Mistress?” Aurora asked.

“I perish with her,” Luna said matter-of-factly, although her voice carried a small amount of worry. “I’ll have to be quick.”

Celestia nodded slowly. “I can lessen the stasis a bit so that it only seemingly slows down time for her. That should give you enough to work with.”

The dark alicorn stood a little straighter. “I can only hope.”

She advanced towards Typhoon, and soon wispy tendrils of light began to unravel from the spiral of her horn. They reached for Typhoon’s brow, seemingly surveying the best angle of attack.

“Luna, wait.”

The tendrils withdrew, and Luna cocked her head towards Celestia. “Sister?”

Celestia clenched and unclenched her jaw, and her pink eyes locked with Luna’s. “If things are falling apart… if you’re in danger…”

Luna didn’t need to hear the rest to understand the fear in her sister’s voice. “You won’t lose me, Tia.” Again she reached for Typhoon, but the sight of Hurricane sitting forlornly at the bed with his wings twisted at awkward angles stopped her. Her teal eyes slid towards Second Sister and she angled her head. “Take care of the Commander. He needs his wings set or they’ll wither. I’m surprised he hasn’t been complaining about the pain.”

“There are more pressing matters,” Hurricane muttered, his eyes never leaving Typhoon’s face.

Second Sister slithered to the opposite side of the bed with unnatural speed and grace. “The Mistress has it under control,” she said, gently wrapping a cold foreleg around one of Hurricane’s. When the stallion tried to tug it away, she adamantly refused to let go. “Due to the time dilation, this could take a while. The best thing for you is to relax and get your wings reset before you lose them.”

A few more gentle tugs finally got Hurricane to relent, and he reluctantly forfeited his seat by Typhoon’s side and followed the thestral to another corner of the infirmary. Still, he didn’t dare take his eyes off of his daughter, until an intervening cloth divider forced him to do so.

With the anxious father escorted away, Luna closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and fused her conscious thoughts with Typhoon’s mind.

Chaos had consumed the interior of Everfree Castle. Legionaries ran and flew to and fro, swords gripped in their teeth and armor rattling with every frenzied step. Shouting filled the castle as milites relayed the orders of their centurions several halls, sometimes even floors, away. Floor by floor, room by room, the legionaries of the Equestrian 5th secured the castle… and carried their numerous fallen brothers and sisters out on bloodied stretchers.

Pathfinder’s skin crawled as armor-clad ponies rushed past him from all directions. The confusion, and the underlying paradoxical sensation of order beneath it, reminded him too much of a battlefield. The olive stallion hated battlefields, and even though he’d been in many as a soldier of the Legion, he preferred scouting the terrain before the battle instead of fighting in it.

On the opposite hoof, Iron Rain seemed to revel in the energy electrifying the air. It filled the castle so thickly that it made the mare’s mane stand on end, like static, and empowered her limbs with exactly the sort of raw grace that she lived for. As a legate, she thrived on the battlefield, something that hadn’t changed since she was sixteen. She’d turned down three separate promotions that would have landed her in the elite ranks of the Praetorian Guard in the past six years alone, solely because it would have removed her from direct command over a legion. That was too much of a price to pay to advance her career.

The two ponies skirted around the chaos and confusion on their way to the infirmary, where they were told they could find Commander Hurricane. The south wing of the castle had already been secured, and so the pair of legionaries were able to make headway without too much trouble. Rain only had to dig out her papers once, and she made sure to smack the milite who dared stop her on the head after she passed.

When they approached the infirmary doors, however, it wasn’t a legionary that greeted them, but one of the strange thestral ponies that Lūn seemed to keep with her wherever she went.

“What’s your business?” the thestral mare asked. Pathfinder recognized her as Third Sister, one of the thestrals that seemed friendlier with Hurricane than most.

“We’re here to see Commander Hurricane,” Rain said. “Tell him Legate Rain needs to speak to him.” She touched one of her shoulder pieces and the twisted feathers emblazoned on it that denoted her rank.

Aurora nodded and ducked inside the infirmary door. The two pegasi patiently waited outside for several seconds before the thestral returned and nodded her head. “He’ll see you. He’s just getting his wings relocated.”

Pathfinder raised his eyebrow. “Relocated?”

“Yeah. Typhoon nearly tore them from their sockets. Thankfully she didn’t—or at least, not completely.”

“Typhoon?” Iron Rain sputtered. “She’s here?”

“Yeah. It’s… a lot happened tonight.”

“That much is obvious,” Pathfinder said, looking around the halls for emphasis. “All we’ve heard is that the castle was attacked by the rebels.”

Aurora pushed the door open a little wider. “Hurricane will explain everything. I wish you guys could’ve gotten a little more sleep before you were summoned, because you’re not likely to get much for the next week.”

“We’ll be fine; we work well without a lot of sleep.,” Rain remarked. She glanced in Finder’s direction for a brief moment and winked. “Lead on.”

“Neither Mistress, nor your commander will appreciate that sort of comment,” Aurora cautioned, though she still opened the door, beckoning the two living ponies in with a flick of her tail. When they entered, she pointed them towards the left side of a cloth partition. On the right, all Pathfinder could see was the two goddesses gathered around a cot, deep in meditation. As to what they were doing, or why they were here in the first place instead of somewhere more secure, was beyond him.

He turned his head to the left, and his breath caught in his throat.

Commander Hurricane lay prone on a cot, forehead drenched in sweat. The dark stallion’s forelimbs were wrapped around the iron bar at the head of the bed, and his teeth clenched a rag tied to that same bar at its midsection. But it wasn’t the commander who caught Pathfinder’s attention. Behind Hurricane, a thestral worked on the stallion’s right wing, which like its companion, was twisted at an awkward angle and bulged at the joint it should have been neatly connected to. Her eyes briefly turned towards the newcomers, and that simple motion froze Pathfinder in place. The corner of her lip drew back in a barely repressed sneer, and she pointedly turned her attention back to Hurricane’s wings.

Seeing the two ponies enter, Hurricane lifted his head and took his teeth off of the bar. “Rain, Pathfinder. I was wondering when you two were going to —gah!”

The stallion’s face contorted in pain and he nearly slammed his jaw against the iron bedframe as Second Sister wrapped her forehooves around Hurricane’s right wing and forcefully yanked it back into place with a wet pop. Sweat beaded on the stallion’s brow, but the thestral didn’t seem to particularly care. The most she gave was a raised eyebrow and a small shake of her head. “I told you to keep your teeth on the rag and bite. Haven’t you ever dislocated a wing before?”

Hurricane panted as the shudders of pain slowly faded away. “When I was seven, but that was a long time ago. I’ve somehow managed to stay mostly intact since joining the Legion.”

“Hmph. For better or for worse,” the thestral mumbled as she moved to the Commander’s opposite side. Her slitted crimson eyes caught Pathfinder’s dumbfounded stare, and she pointedly turned away. “Anything you want to say to these two before I set the other wing?”

“Nngh…” Hurricane slowly rose up to the knees of his forelegs. “Rain, find out what’s happening with Queen Jade. Her safety and security is our number one priority. You know where she was staying?”

Rain slowly drew her eyes away from the back of the thestral’s head. Her wings fidgeted at her side as she resettled them into a comfortable resting position and nodded to Hurricane. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Groaning, Hurricane laid back down on his stomach. “You’re in charge of that operation.”

Rain shuffled off to the side, and when Pathfinder said nothing, she shot the stallion a look. Finder saw it and cleared his throat. “And me, sir?”

Hurricane painfully cracked one eye open. “They’ve disappeared from the castle grounds, but you might be able to track them. If not, I don’t know. Make yourself useful. There’s plenty to do in this castle.”

Pathfinder nodded, but again he felt his eyes drawn to the thestral doing her best to ignore him. “As you command,” he responded without looking at Hurricane. Hurricane nodded once, then carefully bit down on the rag in front of him. It did little to muffle the cry of pain when the thestral popped his wing back into place.

Iron Rain saluted and moved towards the door but stopped when Finder didn’t follow. The old scout’s eyes seemed glued to the thestral, who began massaging the muscles between Hurricane’s wings with her shaggy hooves. Frowning, she leaned against the doorframe. “Are you coming?”

Pathfinder slowly shook his head back and forth. Rain chewed on her lip, and again her eyes flicked towards the thestral. She blew a tense breath out of her flaring nostrils and shoved herself away from the door with a wing. “Don’t do anything you’re going to regret,” she muttered, and with a swish of her tail, she disappeared down the hall.

The thestral finished massaging Hurricane’s back and pulled out some cloth to bind his wings. She gave the stallion a few quick commands and got him to move enough to wrap the cloth around his midsection and tie it together, keeping his wings held firmly against his sides. “Move your wings as little as you can,” she told him. “The tendons holding them to your back need time to heal and repair any damage they’ve suffered. Otherwise they’ll be weak and exhaust easily. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if you tire faster in flight. They’ll never be as strong as they were before you dislocated them. They’ll be strong, but not as strong.”

Hurricane nodded solemnly, and laid his head down on the pillow. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered into the pillow. Pathfinder could still hear the hurt and worry in his voice, though.

The thestral stared at him coldly for a few seconds, and her leathery wings fidgeted at her sides. “You should get some rest,” she said. “The body does its best healing during sleep.”

“But Typhoon…”

“Will be fine,” she firmly insisted. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. But for now, you need rest.”

Hurricane mumbled something Pathfinder couldn’t quite catch. His attention wasn’t focused on his Commander, however; it was fixated entirely on the off-white thestral nearby. As she began to walk back towards Luna, Pathfinder reached out with a hoof and touched her cold, cold, horribly cold shoulder. Pathfinder winced as he felt the dead flesh beneath his hoof, and he fought the urge to shrink back from the thestral’s slitted, crimson stare.

The thestral’s nostrils flared, and wordlessly she shoved Pathfinder back towards the door. He opened his mouth to protest before he realized the thestral kept shoving him back until they were both standing in the hallway. Aurora was there, and she shot her a questioning look. “I’ve got this taken care of,” the white thestral growled towards Aurora, and she nodded back towards the door. “A minute.”

Aurora nodded and disappeared into the infirmary. Only when the door gently thudded shut behind her did the thestral medic turn back towards Pathfinder and give him a rough shove away. “What do you want, Finder?”

Pathfinder recoiled from the shove almost as if he’d been struck. “Is… is it really you?”

The thestral sighed and closed her eyes. “Yes, Finder. It is me.”

“But, you were…” Pathfinder swallowed hard and his shoulders sank, like he was trying to make himself as small as possible. “I k-killed you, Summer.”

“No, Finder, you didn’t,” Summer said. She settled soft, sad eyes on Finder and moved a step closer to the trembling stallion. “I did it. I killed myself. Not you.”

“But why?” Pathfinder whispered. He looked like he was about to turn tail and flee at any given moment. “Why did you do what you did… you jumped on my sword…” He swallowed hard. “Rain could have gotten you pardoned. She could have talked to Hurricane. He spared Cyclone; he could have—”

“Rain couldn’t have done anything, and Hurricane would never have spared me,” Summer interjected, remorse and sorrow filling her voice. “I’m not sure if I would have wanted him to. I hated him so much, but… but I was afraid, Finder. Like I was never afraid before. I was going to be executed for treason. I didn’t just side with Cyclone; Thunder Hawk and I helped him plan it. And when he lost... when we lost, they were cutting his soldiers down by the dozens.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “I didn’t want to take the Long Fall. I’d buried the bodies… I didn’t want to end up like that.” She touched her ribs, and the still heart they sheltered, and shuddered. “Your sword through my heart was the kindest thing you could have done for me. I’m sorry I had to do it myself.”

Pathfinder stared at his hooves. “Every night for five years, I’ve seen that broken look on your face when we found you in Cloudsdale, Summer. You… you needed somepony to be there for you. And I wasn’t… I was too shocked by what I saw.” He shuddered as the memories came back to him, of a Nimban mare hiding in an alley, terrified, with a bloodied stiletto protruding from her side. If only he could’ve said something…

“I’m sorry,” Summer whispered. Cold, dead tears streamed down her cold, dead face, even though her muzzle was set like a mask, emotionless, like it was carved from stone. “I’m sorry, Pathfinder, I really am. But it’s over now. Please accept it.”

Pathfinder struggled to hold back his own tears. “Accept what? What is there to accept, Summer? The mare I thought was dead and gone is still here, five years later! Explain that to me!”

“I’m here because I sinned, Finder,” Summer retorted. “I murdered prisoners of war in cold blood. I butchered my patients one by one while Nimbus burned around me. I turned against my nation. I’ve done terrible things, Finder, and what I deserve is nothing less than… less than…” Flustered, she flared leathery wings and grabbed one with her hoof. “Nothing less than this!”

“But I don’t understand,” Pathfinder whimpered. The pain in the face of a dead friend he once loved so dearly tore his heart to pieces, and he struggled to stop the trembling in his limbs. “What do you mean by that? Why didn’t you go to the Great Skies?”

“Because I didn’t deserve the Great Skies!”

Pathfinder flinched from the sudden outburst and recoiled. Summer’s slit irises glared at him, and her fangs glistened in the pale torchlight as she panted, panted. With a frustrated growl, she gnashed her dagger-like teeth together and turned away. “The Mistress—Luna—raises ponies she thinks deserve a second chance as her thestrals. I was given a choice: serve Luna for a hundred years, or burn in Hell for the rest of eternity. Do you know what it’s like to be told you were a bad pony? To stand at the edge of the abyss and feel the fire curling your mane because you were going to be damned to burn?!” She flashed her fangs, and after a second’s delay, closed her eyes and withdrew with a whimper. “So here I am, Pathfinder. And here I’m gonna stay for the next century. Not as myself, but as some twisted… disgusting… mockery of what I once was!”

Silence reigned between the two ponies as Summer’s furious shouts echoed down the hall then died out. After a few seconds, Summer took a deep breath and folded her flared wings back at her sides. “I’m sorry, Pathfinder, but Summer is dead. If you want to respect her memory, don’t try to bring her back.”

She didn’t give Pathfinder the opportunity to respond. Instead, she spun about on her hooves and marched straight to the door. It opened and closed with a crashing finality, leaving Pathfinder alone in the hallway.

The stallion’s trembles slowly faded away as he stared at that door, standing before him like a portal to the past that would never open again. Slowly, he dug a hoof into the hidden compartment on his armor and pulled out a flask of whiskey he’d managed to sequester before he’d left the house. His teeth fumbled around the cap, but he managed to get it open and down several sharp gulps of the fiery liquid. It was the only thing that kept the tears down.

Luna opened her eyes.

Around her, the mosaic of memories that comprised Typhoon’s mind exploded out of nothingness. They roared out of the void at the speed of light, only to come to sudden and lifeless stops around her. Slow pulses of light flittered from memory to memory as they hung in the void, slowly drifting past and vanishing once more.

The alicorn of the night frowned and floated forward, scanning memory after memory. They were important; that was why she brought them forward. Curses lived in the mind, and they sustained themselves off poisoned memories like parasites. All Luna had to do was track down the twisted memories and excise the necrotic magic that was slowly killing Typhoon.

Typhoon had been alive for twenty-two years now, which meant millions of memories and moments for Luna to sift through. Despite working under a different flow of time than the curse, Luna knew that the mare would be dead if she decided to look at them all individually. Instead, she narrowed her search down to memories that’d formed within the past month, well before Typhoon’s capture. If the rebels planted a curse, they’d do so in memories easily twisted to suit their goals. Maybe they fabricated some of their own, too. If rebels had enough magical expertise to layer a complicated curse in some mare’s mind, then who knew what they were capable of?

Luna’s eyes flicked back and forth across two columns of memories, quickly scanning and then flinging them aside. They looked like little moving portraits with foggy edges, dancing before her for the briefest of moments before she moved onto the next one. In a few seconds, she’d cast aside dozens of memories, many of them little more than tiny details that a pony would remember only on random occasion. As she got closer and closer to the date of Typhoon’s capture, she slowed down and began to scrutinize the memories closer.

That was when she saw it. One of the memories waiting to be surveyed flickered with electric green energy. Bringing that one forward, Luna studied it closely. Just as she did so, however, the memory crackled and hissed. Her horn flickered green, and she grunted in pain. Her head ached and her mind screamed like somepony had driven an iron stake through her skull. She tried to back away from the memory and destroy it, but she felt it gripping her being and drawing her forward. Midnight wings flared, but they were no use as Luna fell, screaming, into the memory.

“Duty calls,” Star Swirl said, gathering his things and tucking them back into his robes. “Seems that Diadem and Clover are making another breakthrough on void crystal research. I’m needed to verify the results. Here, let me help you.”

Luna groaned and shook her head. “Star Swirl?” she asked. Immediately she went rigid—that voice was not her own. Gasping, she leaned up as far as she could. Instead of blue hair, she saw a blond coat covering a decidedly smaller frame than she was used to. Bangs of an autumnal mane fell from her hornless forehead into the edges of her vision. With a sinking feeling in her gut, Luna realized that the twisted memory had subsumed her and recast her in Typhoon’s body.

The straps holding Luna down to the table tightened with a firm yank from Star Swirl’s magic, making her cough and wheeze. Star Swirl looked down on her, smiling cruelly. “I did not know that Hurricane was gone. This is… interesting indeed.”

Luna gritted her teeth as Star Swirl’s voice changed. It was all she needed to hear to confirm her suspicions. She was trapped in a fabricated memory, something that the rebels had used to try to break Typhoon’s will. Apparently, given the slip in Star Swirl’s voice, whomever had cast the spell had also been using it to extract information.

The alicorn-turned-pegasus blinked and set her eyes on Star Swirl. “Right,” she murmured in Typhoon’s voice. “You’re the parasite.”

The pony wearing Star Swirl’s face sneered at her. That concerned Luna; the spell was self-aware enough to realize that it was under attack. The lighting in the room jittered back and forth, and the manifestation of Star Swirl flickered several times as the curse altered the memory. “That’s none of your concern,” it forced, shuffling through the parts of the memory to deal with the intruder. Looking at the canteen on the desk, the curse picked it up in its magic and pressed it to Luna’s lips. “Please, you still look thirsty. Drink.”

Luna gagged as the water came pouring down her throat. She moved her tongue up to the spout, to try and stop the flow, to try and push the canteen out, but she couldn’t reach it, couldn’t get it to move. Her lips were suddenly frozen around the canteen. In a fit of panic, the immortal thrashed her head back and forth, but bizarrely the canteen stayed in place.

Water continued to pour down her throat, faster than Luna could swallow it.

The pony that wasn’t Star Swirl gave one last evil smile at her and turned away. He began whistling to himself as he walked across the room and out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Luna could hear the clicking of tumblers falling into place through her own panicked and desperate attempts to remove the bottle.

Her stomach hurt. Her lungs burned. She couldn’t swallow all this water so quickly. And it wasn’t stopping, despite it being a small canteen. Instinctively, she tried to tear it away with magic, but she remembered she didn’t have a horn in this form. She was trapped in the memory, and she didn’t want to think about what happened if she died in it too.

But was a memory all that different from a dream…?

Luna’s panic faded away, and she calmly focused on the canteen protruding from her muzzle. Closing her eyes, Luna summoned her willpower, flared her nostrils…

…and opened her mouth.

The canteen clattered to the ground, gushing water into the room. Summoning a burst of ice to the crests of each of Typhoon’s wings, Luna snapped them outwards, severing the straps that held her down to the bed. In one fluid motion, she leapt to blond hooves and propelled herself straight at the door.

It tore apart like paper under the weight of her shoulder, sending her rocketing straight into the back of the curse masquerading as Star Swirl. With a yell, Luna knocked it onto its back and slammed Typhoon’s hoof down into the muzzle of the aberration.

It shattered like glass, and the scream of dying magic tore the memory asunder, sending Luna hurtling towards the heart of the chaos with a scream of equal parts triumph and fear.

“Mommy!”

Luna’s eyes snapped open right as she felt a tiny bundle of energy slam into her exposed gut. She fought down the urge to flail or cry out in pain, instead wincing and hissing through her teeth. When she opened her eyes, she was muzzle to muzzle with a tiny blue colt with a huge smile plastered across his face. “Get up, Mommy! We’re gonna go see the soldiers train today! You promised!”

Luna groaned and rubbed her head. Mommy… what? She hadn’t been a mother in… a long time. She cracked her eyes open and recognized Typhoon’s blond coat. Apparently that hadn’t changed. And if she was still Typhoon, then the little colt must’ve been her son, Tempest.

“Mooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!” Tempest whined, jumping up and down on Luna’s chest. “You promised! You promised you promised you promised! Come on!” And then he was climbing across her chest and trying to pull the sheets back, his tiny wings fluttering the entire time.

Sighing, Luna sat up in bed and looked around. Unlike last time, she couldn’t figure out what the curse was supposed to be. Nothing jumped out at her from within the room. What if this wasn’t a poisoned memory? What if this was one of Typhoon’s actual memories? Then how was she supposed to get out?

Tempest watched Luna slowly rise, then yawned and sat on the bed. “I’m hungry.”

“Alright,” Luna grunted, nudging Tempest along with a sweep of her wing. “I’m sure your mom keeps something around here.”

The little colt scampered across the floor into the kitchen, with Luna following him more wearily. Wings buzzing, Tempest practically leapt into his chair at the table. There he sat, his tail wagging impatiently, while Luna nosed a few cabinets open in the kitchen. “Let’s see…” she muttered, looking for something edible in the pantry. After pulling out two plates, she nabbed a loaf of bread in one wing and some leftover fish from the night before out of the larder. A little olive oil completed the meal, and she set Tempest’s plate down in front of him. The little colt immediately dove into his breakfast, tearing chunks of bread out from between the loaf he held in his hooves like some sort of feral predator.

Luna couldn’t help but smile and sit at her side of the table. Strands of Typhoon’s autumn mane fell in front of her eyes, and she brushed them away with a hoof. It’d been a long time since she’d felt that sort of love from a child in the flesh, or as close to it as she could consider this. She occasionally masqueraded as mothers for foals in dreams, but she hardly felt as grounded in dreams as she did now in Typhoon’s mind. If this wasn’t one of Typhoon’s poisoned memories… well, Luna didn’t think the mare would mind if she relived what it was like to be a mother.

While Tempest thoroughly devoured his breakfast, Luna picked at hers. She’d heard the stories behind the foal’s birth; she knew what happened. She knew who his father was. She’d nearly spurned him to Tartarus for what he did. But the stallion had been desperate and begged and begged not to be damned. Luna had heard the sob story too many times in her long lifespan; she was about to ignore it, but the stallion started talking about what might happen to the mare he’d wronged. Luna had listened, and when she realized that the stallion was deeply concerned about the chances of his possible bastard son being thrown from Cloudsdale the minute he was born by a wrathful mother who never wanted him, Luna had orchestrated a compromise with the unicorn. He would stay as part of her Night Guard, and if the child was unwanted, then he would take care of it. If not, then she’d reevaluate her decision and judge him again.

Perhaps the fact that he was one of the more competent thestrals she’d raised in a long time, and that she’d caught him several times trying to catch glimpses of his son like any father would, had something to do with him still hanging around five years later.

“Done!” Tempest happily exclaimed, slamming his hooves down on the cleaned wooden plate. Luna smiled at him as he wiggled in his chair, waiting to be dismissed.

“You want any more?” she asked, scooting her chair back in preparations for the colt’s obvious answer.

It came with an enthusiastic nod. Smiling, Luna stood up, took Tempest’s plate, and cantered back over to the larder. She dropped another piece of fish onto it and turned around to head back to the table.

“Typhoon.”

Luna stopped and raised an eyebrow at the familiar voice. Of course they’d used him. The pony who called himself Jewel, who she now called Seventh Brother, sat at the table by Typhoon’s son. He smiled at Luna, flashing a set of teeth that were perhaps too white. His golden eyes seemed relaxed and distant, but Luna could tell his conjurers had worked a little too hard to put that hateful spark in his eyes that would’ve driven Typhoon mad.

“What?” Jewel asked, his eyebrows waggling underneath a scarred horn. “Oh, don’t act so surprised to see me, Ty, darling.” He glanced over her shoulder towards the counter, and he pointed with a hoof. “Could you get me some bread, dear? I’m afraid my horn isn’t what it used to be.”

Luna simply smiled at the aberration. “Of course, dear,” she sung, turning back towards the counter. She quickly snatched a knife between her teeth and stalked back towards the room, eyebrows wiggling. “Heeeeeere comes the sky chariot!”

The aberration opened its mouth to respond, but Luna was faster. She snapped her neck to the side, loosing the knife straight towards Jewel. With a wet snckt, it embedded itself in his forehead, just beneath his scarred horn. The unicorn’s body jerked and fell out of its chair with a sigh.

Luna shook Typhoon’s mane loose and let out a slow hum. “That one was too easy,” she muttered, looking around the room. But when the memory remained in place after several seconds, Luna’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why isn’t it…?”

Her eyes locked on Jewel’s body. He wasn’t the curse. Then what was…?

“Mommy?”

Luna’s breath caught in her throat. She turned towards Tempest, who watched her with fear. Luna felt her wings begin to tremble as she pieced together the evidence.

Jewel haunted Typhoon’s memory like a ghost, a phantom that wouldn’t leave her alone for as long as she lived. But she didn’t remember Jewel simply because she remembered him. Something she saw every single day reminded her of what’d happened to her five years ago. Something she loved dearly, but brought back memories of the stallion who’d put her through the darkest depths of Tartarus she’d ever experienced.

Trembling, Luna bent over and pried the knife from Jewel’s forehead. Even though this was just a twisted memory, the blood smelled horrifyingly real. Slowly, slowly, she wiped the blood off of the knife with her shoulder, and taking a sharp breath, she turned towards Tempest.

The colt’s eyes were wide and he shook with fear. “M-mommy?” he whimpered, folding his forelegs against his chest and wrapping them with stubby wings. “M-mommy, y-you’re scaring me…”

Luna’s breaths were ragged. “No,” she whispered to herself. “It’s not real. It’s just a memory.” She moved closer, her shadow growing over the terrified foal. “It’s not r-real…”

Tempest’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. “M-mom… m-m-mommy?”

Taking a shuddering breath, Luna closed her eyes, and drove the knife downwards until she felt resistance. “It’s not real,” she whispered to herself, a tear leaking from the corner of her eye. “It’s not real.”

It didn’t drown out the screams that echoed in her skull until the memory exploded into shards.

Luna collapsed and slammed her chin into the ground. Tears streamed down her face and she curled into a little ball. She buried her muzzle in feathery wings and sniffled, unable to stop herself from rocking back and forth. “It’s not real,” she whispered to herself over and over again. “It’s not real.”

Even if she knew it was just an aberration, a twisted memory, her heart couldn’t drown out the screams of the foal as she stabbed and cut and slashed it apart. No child should ever scream like that. Nothing like that should ever happen to a child. What sort of a pony is she who murders children?

Luna shuddered and curled tighter into her nest of feathers as realization struck her like a buck to the face. She was supposed to stop these things from happening. How could she have let things like this happen for thousands of years? Hiding away in her hole under the mountain for centuries, millennia… what did she and Celestia hope to accomplish by doing that? They should have been present in the lives of their ponies a long time ago. Brought the pegasi of Cirra back home to where they belonged and unified the four races under peace and harmony. But they didn’t. Instead, they idly watched, convincing themselves that what they were doing was for the best while three of the races nearly tore each other apart and ousted the fourth as outcasts. Even now that Equestria had finally seemed to realize some of those dreams, it was weak and splintering, and a sudden blow could break the thing entirely.

And ponies still murdered little foals.

It took a great deal of effort, but Luna finally relaxed her weary limbs and brushed the tears from her eyes. Her legs wobbled as she tried to stand up, and when she did so, it was with panting breaths. She closed her swollen eyes and slowed her breathing until her teeth stopped chattering and she felt her airways relax. Only then did she look around herself and realize where she was.

The grimy, moldy walls of a dungeon rose from the dirt floor. They met over her head in a flat ceiling that bulged downwards with the weight of an entire castle resting atop it. Lone torches illuminated the hall every hundred feet, leading to one solid steel door at the end of the hall.

Luna began to walk towards that door in a body that was swiftly becoming all too familiar to her. She fluttered Typhoon’s wings, feeling the ragged feathers fight with each other over the air. Frowning, Luna wondered why she was given free reign to wander down these dungeon halls. Wouldn’t the curse simply have trapped her to Typhoon’s cell and leave her to the mercy of her imaginary captors?

As she approached the door, Luna’s ears perked. She heard quiet moans and sobs coming from the other side. The mare furrowed her brow and placed her hooves on the solid steel door. Almost immediately, she shrieked and tore her hooves from it, stumbling backwards as she did so. Her eyes watered in pain, and she resisted the urge to cry out again as she angled Typhoon’s hooves towards her face. The flesh underneath was an angry red with ice crystals piercing from the frozen skin. She eyed the door with worry, wondering just how cold it had to be to flash-freeze flesh.

Luna opened her wings and fluttered over to the door to keep her wounded forehooves off of the ground. As she approached it carefully this time, she could actually feel the air growing colder around her. But how was she going to get past the door?

The same way she stopped herself from drowning.

Luna focused her willpower on the door and waved her hoof across it. The door was not cold. It was nothing. It meant nothing too her. Closing her eyes, she fluttered back a few yards to pick up speed then soared straight through the doorframe. A slight tug of resistance met her, and then nothing. When she opened her eyes, she was on the other side.

Darkness permeated the room, which normally wouldn’t be a problem for Luna if she had her own body. Typhoon’s magenta eyes weren’t as well adapted to the dark, and Luna found herself angling her head from side to side to catch a better glimpse of her surroundings using her periphery. Her ears twitched towards the center of the vast room, and Luna found herself navigating better through the noise than anything else.

The air was cold, dead. Shivering, Luna raised a wing and summoned a small tongue of flame to the tip of her blond feathers. The single spark lit up the room and illuminated the figure within. Luna could hardly suppress a gasp as she saw the wailing mare chained to the wall and surrounded by a cage of ice, blond feathers mirroring those of her stolen body.

“Typhoon?” Luna asked in that mare’s voice. It echoed off of the walls of the empty chamber, seemingly only growing louder with each reverberation before turning into garbled noise that slowly bled away. “Is that you?”

Typhoon gritted her teeth and turned her head away. “Go away,” she whimpered, tears running down her matted cheek hair. “I don’t want to hurt anypony anymore. I don’t want to cause so much suffering. Just… j-just leave me.”

“Leave you?” Luna asked. She hobbled closer to the ice cage, wincing with every step on her frostbitten hooves, and keeping the tongue of flame held high for light. “No. I came to get you out.”

“D-don’t,” the mare sobbed. The chains holding her limbs to the wall rattled as she tried to retreat from Luna’s advance. “Do you know what I’ve done? I’ve killed so many of my brothers and sisters in arms. I turned my back on my father. They used me, played me, destroyed my mind! How can anypony forgive me?!” Her sobs turned into shrieking wails that sent vibrations through the cage of ice surrounding her and echoes off the walls of the chamber. When she finished, she once again broke down into tears and moaning.

Luna gnashed her teeth together and huffed. “Easy. They forgive you,” she muttered, her eyes tracing the walls of the room. Strange… where was the curse? The room was empty save for the two mares in identical bodies. “Nopony blames you for what happened. You need to get over it and—!”

“Get over it?” Typhoon hissed. The icy fury in her voice stopped Luna cold. For the first time, Typhoon looked directly at Luna, her face contorted in misery and anger. “How can I forget what happened to me? How can I forget what I’ve done? I’ve killed so many… I nearly killed my father! What if they break me again? Then what?!”

The room shook with a ferocity to match Typhoon’s voice. Luna flinched and instinctively shot her wings out to her sides. “Things happen!” she shouted back. “We all make mistakes! We all have regrets! But we move on with life! Life goes on!”

“No!”

The scream made the very earth tremble, and a volley of icicles accompanied it. Luna cowered behind a wing as they exploded all around her, and then screamed in pain as one impaled the cannon of her front leg and sent her toppling to the ground. Instantly her leg went numb, blissfully stealing away the pain, but leaving her with a hollow coldness in the afflicted limb. Her head swam, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the foot-long shard of ice had frozen its end to the ground beneath her, pinning her in place. Grunting in pain, she tried to jerk her forelimb free, but the ice refused to budge. Not even the tiniest glimmer of a crack marred its glossy sheen.

On the wall, Typhoon raged and struggled against her icy chains. “What do I have to go on for?!” she screamed. “There’s nothing left after this! They’ll execute me for treason, or they’ll banish me to River Rock like they did with my brother! There’s nothing! Nothing!”

“No… no, you’re wrong,” Luna managed to slur around the chilly fogginess that was slowly filling her mind. “You’re young, Typhoon! You still have your whole life ahead of you! You—!”

“My life ended five years ago!” Typhoon spat back. Another burst of icy magic filled the chamber, and Luna gasped as a ring of needle-like icicles exploded from the ground around her. She tried again to break free, but to no avail. As she hammered her free forehoof against the icicle pinning her to the ground she chanced a frightened look at the seething mare on the wall. “I thought the world was fair when I was a stupid teenager! I may have been a Praetorian, but I was still young, so… so fucking young and naïve! My father was Commander Hurricane! My brother was the heir to the throne! I thought I was safe, I thought we were invincible! But you know what?!”

More icicles exploded around Luna, this time a foot closer to her all around. The mare began to look around herself in a panicked frenzy as she saw her time running out. The nearest icicle was almost close enough to touch with a wing. And all the while, Typhoon continued to screech as chilly tears rolled down her face. “We’re not invincible! Nopony is! Everypony is weak, and everypony is cruel! My father never had time for us! Cyclone did a better job being there for me than he ever did! And then he abandoned me to the worst thing a mare could possibly experience!”

Her magenta eyes reflected another ring of icicles bursting forth around Luna. The trapped mare jumped and curled herself up tighter in the center of the rings, feeling the chilly kiss of death now just inches away. Closing her eyes, Luna tried to make the icicles go away, just like she did with the door, just like she did with the water canteen. But when she tried to move, she still found her limb stuck to the floor. No amount of willpower could break it.

Typhoon trembled, and her eyes fell as the tears dropped from their lashes one by one. “Four days,” she whispered. It took her a great deal of effort to swallow her tears, and when she did, she looked at Luna with a haunted look in her face. “For four days, they’d tear me down from that wall, beat me senseless, then tie me down to the table. Then… t-they took their t-turns…”

Her face contorted in pain and she shuddered, trying to draw her chained limbs closer to herself. “Jewel was always first. Always. He… he d-didn’t let any of the others have their f-fun until he finished.” She gulped, and her chains began to rattle with her shudders. “By the third or the fourth… t-that’s when your body betrays you. T-that’s when you know they’ve broken you in two. There’s the mind… and t-then there’s the meat.”

Luna froze mid-struggle as Typhoon retreated into her shell. She didn’t want to press the mare again—one more outburst and she was likely to be turned into a pincushion. But as she gently tugged on the icicle, she realized why she couldn’t break free from it.

This ‘memory’ wasn’t a manifestation of the curse. The icicle impaling her leg wasn’t because of the curse. This was all Typhoon’s doing. The young mare tormented herself every day with her doubts that she could ever recover from what happened. And suddenly Luna understood how the curse worked.

The curse preyed on Typhoon’s greatest weaknesses. The manifestation masquerading as Star Swirl fed off of her fear. Typhoon had never felt as helpless as she did chained to that wall or tied down to the table five years ago, and it terrified her. She feared being helpless, trapped in somepony else’s cruelty and relying on their mercy to survive. She wanted to prove to herself and prove to others that she wasn’t some helpless filly. That was why she took dangerous missions on herself rather than trusting her subordinates to handle them. That was why she’d ventured into the Choke and gotten caught in the first place.

Luna shuddered as she recalled the memory with Tempest. What did that represent? Her past? No… something more than that. It was Typhoon’s blame. She blamed herself for what happened, regardless of whether or not it was her fault. She saw Tempest as a reminder of her failure every day, even though she did her best to bury it away and show the colt nothing but love. That blame kept her trapped in the past, and until she learned to get rid of it, she’d never be able to move on with her life.

And this…

Luna looked again at the prison surrounding Typhoon. Chains of frosted steel within a cage of ice kept the mare imprisoned with her misery. The door entering this room could freeze flesh with a touch. The air in the room was so cold Luna could see her breath. Again, Luna concluded that this memory wasn’t fabricated by the curse. It had simply found a place to fester and grow in strength by feeding off of the doubts that tormented the mare imprisoned by them.

Gritting her teeth and taking a deep breath, Luna stood as tall as the icicle impaling her leg would let her and fixed Typhoon with a pointed stare. “What about Tempest?”

Typhoon jolted, and her pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she stared at Luna, perhaps truly seeing her for the first time. She hung from her chains, rigid and motionless, and scarcely breathed. Wincing, Luna leaned forward and forced her muzzle between two icy spires so Typhoon could see her face better. “Does this look like the face of a mare with nothing left to care about?” Luna asked. “Look deep into my eyes—your eyes. Are they heartless? Are they soulless?” She shook her head. “No. They’re not. Because there’s still something in you that finds a reason to live day after day.

“I know you’re trapped in the past. I… I think I can understand. But your past is your past!” Swallowing hard, Luna blinked quickly and did everything she could to maintain eye contact. “No mare should ever have to experience what you did! But look what you’ve gained from it! You’ve gained a son that you love, and who means the world to you! Are you going to give that up? If nothing else, are you going to give him up?”

Luna panted, waiting for an answer from the shocked mare. When it didn’t come, she pressed again. “What about your father? Or your aunt Twister? You have so many ponies who still love you and want you to come back!” She maintained eye contact, trying to look calm and reasonable, but inside, her heart was racing. If Typhoon sank back into her misery…

Well, she’d already seen what that looked like once tonight.

Trembling, Typhoon looked at her hooves, as if checking to see that they weren’t covered in blood. “Tempest…” she breathed. “Does he still love me? I… I’ve been gone for so long… I’ve done so… so many h-horrible things…”

“He loves you, Typhoon.” Luna gave another tug on the icicle in her foreleg, and to her surprise, it wobbled slightly. She turned her attention back to Typhoon with newfound confidence. “He loves you so very, very much. And he’s waiting for his mommy to come home.”

“His mommy…” Typhoon whispered. “Tempest… I… M-mommy’s here, my little soldier… Mommy’s here…”

“Let go,” Luna insisted. Her eyes flitted over to the icicles, and she saw the water beginning to run down them. “Your doubts… your fears… your blame…” She shook her head. “The past is in the past. Don’t let it control you. Move on. Let go…”

Typhoon didn’t respond, but Luna could tell that the words had gotten through. With a shuddering, almost nervous tug of her hoof, Typhoon broke the chains holding her to the wall. Link by link they shattered into tiny pieces of ice, until the mare finally dropped to her hooves. She tripped, stumbled, and fell—but got up again. On shaky legs, she wandered over to the ice cage imprisoning her, placed her hooves against the bars, and howled.

The ice exploded into snow, and the entire memory burst into oblivion, sweeping Luna away with the world.