Had it not been for the wind, Twilight complained to herself. Had it not been for the wind, they might have landed neatly on the fields outside Draught Castle, sauntered in, put an end to the nightmare, and been in the air in time for dinner. She was sure her coordinates were correct and Applejack’s aim was true, but that damned Snowdrift wind had messed their course—and her own haste, she admitted to herself at the end of her internal tirade.

They had landed on top of a peaceful streambed somewhere between the castle and Furnace Creek. Twilight and Applejack frowned over a map and compass to figure out where they had to fly while the others took advantage of the moment, their excitement burgeoning out in a frolicsome display of laughter and splashing in the cool, rolling waters. Coats and jackets were doffed, shoes were kicked into a pile, and scarves were left to flutter on the deck. Octavia stayed in the shallowest part, wearing a hint of a smile as Colgate sought the muddy banks and rolled around, soaking herself. Rainbow, Pinkie, and Fluttershy joked and laughed under a hissing white sheet of water coming off the flat of a small stone rise. Twilight let them enjoy themselves for a minute before calling everyone back aboard.

“This is going to be a blessing in disguise, actually,” she said after everyone had dried off and quieted down. “We’ve got about twenty hours from here to the castle, that’s with Rainbow at the back. Not yet, Dash.” Rainbow halted and turned back to her. “I don’t know about you all, but I’m going to need that time to recharge. I used all my magic in Snowdrift.”

“You’re going to tell us what happened, right?” Fluttershy asked.

“How you somehow traded those scary crystals for a book page?” Pinkie offered.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Twilight continued. “For now, we need to head southeast. East by southeast, actually.”

“What are we going to do about Vanilla Cream?” Octavia asked.

“You said you could silence Discord,” Vinyl said. “You had a spell for that.”

“I do.” Twilight walked to the back of the ship to look out toward the Everfree Forest, which they could barely see as a black fringe on the horizon; several wide splits stood at its foot, beautiful from afar. “That’s the next spell I’m going to use after I dispel whatever sort of shield he has.”

“Won’t Vanilla be released once Discord’s entombed?” Fluttershy asked.

“He’ll go back home then,” Vinyl said. “I’m sure of it. He’s suffering here.”

“I think Vinyl’s right,” Rarity said.

“I feel sorry for him.”

“I would feel sorry for him,” Twilight said. “But, you know. All right, Rainbow, let’s get you set up, and then we’ll go.”

“We should all get some sleep if we can,” Big Mac said. He turned his head to the sky, where the sun was hitting noon for the fifth time in twenty-four hours.

“I’m going to sleep as soon as we’re all set here.” Twilight helped Rainbow install herself behind the ship in her cradle of magic and wind, and they were soon speeding along at twice what their engines allowed on their own, racing the sun over the grasses and plains, the speckles of forest and veins of creeks running through them, the patches of isolated farm land. Fields of wheat and barley yellowed in sunset, and the air turned cool once more. At eleven o’ clock, they crossed paths with a confused flock of geese, and Fluttershy, resting against the rail, reached a hoof out to them.

When Twilight woke, no one else was tired, and around midnight, with the image of dawn again whitening the pastoral wilderness, she knew there was no point in encouraging them to go to bed. Restless minds refused to settle.

Vinyl brought out her board game, and she, Twilight, Big Mac, and Rarity played in the middle of the deck while Twilight described what had happened in Snowdrift. Applejack kept her place at the front, Colgate with her, chatting and frequently laughing, while Octavia kept Rainbow company in the back. Pinkie joined Fluttershy at the gunwale, where she had watched the world speed by all day.

“Are you still mad at me?” Pinkie asked.

Fluttershy blinked back tears. Nothing specific had brought them on, only the world’s enormity and the bittersweet knowledge that her journey was almost over. She faced Pinkie with a guileless grin, slightly embarrassed at being caught in the middle of an emotional moment. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“Oh! No reason!” Pinkie laughed, but quieted when Fluttershy did not join her. “I thought you were. You’ve been, I don’t know, distant.”

“We’ve all been having a hard time,” Fluttershy said.

“That’s oblique.”

“It’s nothing, really. You’re a bit, um, much, sometimes. That’s all.”

Pinkie giggled. “It’s not like I’m the Element of Laughter or anything!”

She serviced another smile. “I know, and no, I’m not mad. I’m sorry if I was ever rude to you, Pinkie.”

“All’s forgiven!” She wrapped a foreleg around Fluttershy and leaned on the rail with her. “You prefer the quiet, I get that. Hoo, I’m just glad it wasn’t something serious!”

“Were you worried about that?”

“Maybe a little.” Pinkie disconnected and raced over to the board game, where Twilight and Vinyl were laughing together, and added her voice to theirs. She came back to Fluttershy a minute later. “Maybe a lot, actually. My magic. I worry I haven’t used it as much as I should.”

Fluttershy thought about it. True, she had not seen Pinkie employ her magic outside of the occasional, conveniently summoned money, but it did not seem to her that Pinkie was under any greater obligation. They did not need it, for they had Twilight and Rarity for most of the strenuous tasks, Octavia for brutish demolition, Applejack for airship management, Rainbow for speed, and herself for healing. “I guess it depends on who you ask,” she settled on replying.

“It’s just scary.”

“Your magic?”

“The responsibility. I don’t want to be seen as a powerful pony.”

“I know what you mean.”

Pinkie looked at her. She didn’t need to explain, for Fluttershy saw it in her expression. She knew she had the greatest power of their group, and that she used hers the least; Fluttershy’s claiming to empathize appeared an empty gesture.

“I think it was on our way to Trottingham, or maybe we were leaving, Twilight explained my magic to me. My magic isn’t insignificant either,” Fluttershy said.

“I know. I remember Celestia saying that. But you just heal, so what’s the problem?”

“That’s what I asked Twilight. I thought my power was just outright good, but it’s actually really dangerous. What I didn’t realize, what she explained to me, was that no one has healing magic, per se. They have…” She shivered. The term bothered her. “Flesh magic. Healing magic doesn’t exist like how we think of it, because the magic doesn’t know the difference between healing someone or hurting them. Magic like mine can control, um, flesh, or influence it anyway, but it’s up to me how it gets applied.”

“Healing’s easier for you, though.”

“It’s easier for everyone, that’s because a body tends to heal itself naturally, so the magic is really just accelerating the process. But with enough power—and Twilight wasn’t sure if I had enough—you can overcome that tendency and start doing other things.”

“Nasty things,” Pinkie completed.

“She didn’t go into detail, and I wasn’t about to ask.”

“I get it now.” Pinkie nodded and put a hoof to her chin. “That’s why you don’t have to know how the body works to be a healer, ‘cause you’re just speeding up something the body would do anyway. That makes sense.”

“I told myself I wouldn’t ever try to use my magic for bad, and I haven’t.”

“But you know you could.”

“I could try. Maybe I’m lucky, maybe I don’t have the power for it. I’d rather never find out.”

“Responsibility,” Pinkie repeated, gently pulling one of Fluttershy’s wings. “It sure is a bugbear, huh?”

“If everyone keeps thinking that healing is all I can do, I’ll be happy. Is that sort of how you feel about yourself?”

“Except everyone already knows I have big power, so I can’t hide from it like you.”

Resenting her use of the word “hide,” Fluttershy gave Pinkie a tired smile. The two stood in silence as a dry forest came into view underneath a mantle of clouds. Lightning flickered inside, and Pinkie drew closer to Fluttershy. “I’m glad we’re friends, Fluttershy.”

She wrapped a wing around Pinkie. “Me too.”

The night came and went, the storm passed, the fields rolled ever onward. When they were four hours from the castle, they could see a diffuse smear of smoke in the far, far southeast: Moondrop, the site of Celestia’s imprisonment.

At the first wall, they landed in a smooth depression of dust and dry grass, tied the airship down, and assembled in its shadow. The sun and moon had sped up: the world was bathed in the eerie, silent pulse of day and night, fifty seconds each, both bodies’ movement visible to the eye. As it had been each other time they visited, the countryside was utterly still, the castle deathly quiet. Whether by design or coincidence, the immense and unbroken silence touched them all.

No surprises caught them at any of the three walls, nor any strange darkening, nor gloating letters or whispering voices of magic on the dry breeze. Twilight led the way to the throne room’s marble doors, her Element gleaming on her head, her friends’ on their chests, each an emblem of its bearer, to each a talisman of strength. Colgate scuttled in the back, her haversack tightly strung across her chest, her own Element loose inside.

“Last call,” Twilight said, stopping at the doors. “We won’t have time to talk inside, most likely. If you’ve got something to say…”

“Ah’m hungry,” Applejack said, and Pinkie laughed nervously. Twilight pushed open the doors and waited, but nothing met them. Just the cool, dry air; the quiet, pulsing sky; and ten sets of hooves on stone floor.

A grand oval, Draught Castle’s center was devoted to the royal courtyard, a massive window to which stood at the throne room’s back, situated between the armory and guard house, with a small vestibule occupying a nook where the armory tapered. Towers to the north and south rose proudly over all, serving as storage, as music halls, theaters, and sanctuaries for the princesses; these they could see through the window, their silent shapes in the flashing day, presiding over a threadlike bridge between and suspended four stories off the ground. There were no flags or crests visible on the walls, no tapestries.

Twilight’s horn was ready before Discord danced into sight, bells tinkling on an oversized jester’s hat and a wide cape of brocaded polka dots swishing at his back. He twirled into range at the end of the throne room, bowed, took a seat, and spread his paw and talon in benediction. “Welcome to Chaos Court,” he said. “What seems to be troubling you today, my citizens?”

No one broke stride to rush to him, and Twilight’s approach was measured up to the first pillar, where she stopped and cycled through her first spell, dissolving his shield.

“I didn’t want that anyway,” Discord said, standing and stretching. “Ready?”

“Are you?” Rarity asked.

“Then catch!” In a motion, he loped over the step to the throne while the heavy chair hurtled to bounce off Rarity’s shield. The carpet rose in a wave and the pillars cracked at their bases, the windows shattered, and the air was filled with a horrid skirl as he disappeared through the wall and into the royal vestibule, coming suddenly alive with the scrape and scrabble of thrown furniture. The Elements dashed apart, ears down, eyes rolling, and only regrouped when Twilight had extinguished the sound. The royal carpet sat in a ball at the entryway, motionless, and they could hear Discord’s feet pattering in the vestibule.

“What’s the move, Twilight?” Rainbow asked, catching her breath.

Twilight looked at her and trotted to the arched doorway, ajar to give them a look at the cracked marble floor and its master playing at balancing on one of the benches against the wall. In one swift move, Twilight barged through and splattered Discord’s face with a spell to silence him, so he could not call Vanilla Cream to his aid. Shaking his head, Discord gave them a wink and a grin before his feet went up under him with the bench, suddenly rising and upending him with a crack, chin to floor. Fluttershy brought the bench in a short arc to slam it into the back of his head, where it stayed, impaled on his horns, and burst into flames a second later with another spell from Twilight.

His body shook with laughter, and they had time enough to scatter again as he lunged across at them, the bench a fireball dragging a trail of soot across the sapphire-studded ceiling. Flames whirled and spat in a great, circular swing where they had stood not a second ago, his head wheeling around until the bench flew off to hit the wall and explode in sparks and black smoke, falling as a bed of cinders that popped and skipped on the reflective floor. Colorful plumes of magic flew and missed as Discord cartwheeled into their midst, mismatched limbs flopping on dislocated joints, teeth snapping and tongue lolling, eyes spinning, laughter seeming to boom out of his chest with the audible beating of his heart. For a few seconds, he and Rarity danced alone, she dodging out from under his stamping feet and he throwing his extremities at her, claws elongated like bola cords, hissing on the floor. A spell clanged off her shield as she bashed into Pinkie and Colgate, the three of them falling as the coals flew back at Discord’s face, mistimed and breaking on a pilaster instead.

He gave a second of peace when Twilight shoved him from Rarity, along with half the room behind him; and then he was dancing again, wiggling and sashaying in the dusty rubble until Octavia’s explosion tossed him like a doll, his wings fanning out as he was flipped out of sight. They followed, Vinyl’s horn alive with white light that she beamed into his face as soon as she spotted him, wagging his paw at a suit of armor. In the wild western sun flickering in from the room’s short, even windows, the armor rent asunder by his suddenly slamming paw was as a set of amber pieces, shattering on the floor, gaining wicked white teeth in the reflection of Vinyl’s spotlight. He was unbalanced for a moment, but then turned, clapped, sparked his heels, and spread his limbs wide as if to embrace the engulfing light that bloomed in answer.

Someone yelled a stream of curses, and Octavia threw a panicked explosion into the corner: a momentary blush of yellow coupled with the sound of falling rock and more magic, and Discord’s heart hammering overhead as he escaped into the second-floor crawl space. Fluttershy was bawling for everyone to settle, and some of them did. She ministered to Twilight’s eyes and then Pinkie’s, by which time the others were recovering on their own, enough to see that Discord was gone, slithered up through the pipes and out of sight.

Catching their breath, Rainbow set with back hunched to dragging armaments across the floor to lay them at Twilight’s hooves. Colgate stared through the hole at the bench’s glowing remnants, and Big Mac stumbled into her.

“You’re fine,” she said quickly, before he had completed his apology.

“Let’s get out of here,” Twilight said, waving a hoof at Rainbow to stop bringing her weaponry. She folded most of it into her magical space, leaving only a tower shield with a flaming, red horseshoe emblazoned on its face, pristine like all the rest of it.

“Above!” Rarity yelped, dashing back into the vestibule as the beating heart drew down. They followed her just as Discord crashed through the ceiling, dust and water spraying at their backs, and he was with them a second later, wriggling across the chipped marble floor, his ill-fitting Equestrian armor gouging a trail of dirty sulci. Twilight hurled a spear, which turned away from his chest on a diverting point of magic, and then tried to grab him. His heartbeat quickened, but he still just smiled, writhing on the floor, the sky and the sound of scraping armor a clash of sensations, the embers at the wall cooled to a dull red and casting all in a fevered light.

When Twilight tried to encase his armor in a coat of heating magic, and Fluttershy tried to shove him against the ground, and Octavia tried to blow him up through the ceiling, Discord wiggled and smiled still; and when one of their spells finally connected and sent him sprawling in the corner, his fur smoking under the scalding armor, he simply shrugged, threw his arms in the air dramatically, and doffed his pyramidal helmet. Pausing, he was thrown once more by an explosion and let himself roll off the shock wave to lie, toying still with the helmet. His eyes were bright as he flicked away another thrown spear.

The castle’s outer walls were of brick and mortar, tightly joined and twice as thick as those between rooms, and did not yield at once to Octavia’s magic, which she released in a frantic and uncontrolled burst when she saw how innocently Discord blew into the upturned helmet, how brazenly unconcerned was he with their attempts to harm him. Tinged blue, the magical wind of his breath filled its metal cup in overflowing, baroque swirls, which he then poured out with a flourish. Smiling contentedly, he rode the wind up and around from the corner out to the rest of the room, picking up chairs, throwing tables, smashing decorative sets of china in glass cases, tearing paintings off the walls, and rattling chandeliers. He was buoyed up to the broken ceiling and swung himself over to the Elements, bracing themselves at a crouch behind a disc of protective magic. Discord rode the gale in circles, one with the slamming furniture and the swirling embers, a Stetson on his head and a soundless “yee-haw” in his lungs, around and around while Twilight tried to break the spell. Something banged into Rarity’s shield and caromed into the chandelier behind, broken crystals and golden links of chain showering those in the back. Applejack ran for the armory, Vinyl at her heels, just as Discord came around again, his armor red hot and his eyes electric blue. Octavia’s next spell only spun him into the pillow of wind, and he flew forward to rake a fiery claw of magic over their backs.

Colgate yanked Twilight’s tail before taking off, and when Twilight followed, the others took her cue. Fluttershy was the last, her long tail catching as a portrait whirled past her, but they had no time. Discord was already upon them again, his winds unattended in the vestibule, and he advancing, vibrating with magic, the armor glowing white, smoking, sagging off him. Behind them was the wall to the courtyard, to the right the wall to the throne room, and to the left the armory’s other half, where waited a latched and chained door to the south tower.

Both parties jumped apart as a flash of dark magic hit the ceiling, Discord along the room’s curve toward the tower, the Elements stumbling back into the corner. Octavia, however, did not break her spell; she had a hold of something. Grunting and jerking her head back, she released it with a heavy crack of timber deep in the castle’s frame, letting fall a giant, decorated arch, arrises spiny with celestial ornamentation and architrave embossed with the royal sisters bowing to each other. Miniature suns and crescent moons flecked off as it slid through the hole she had created, dancing across the floor and spraying up at Discord’s back with a wave of telekinesis from Fluttershy. The vestibule wind stopped at a snap of his claws, and Discord put an arm up on the leaning arch for a second as if to catch his breath. This time, they were ready for his trick, and Twilight returned his spell with one of equal power, pushing back, splitting the arch in twain when he tried to smack it across the room at them; and the half she still held, she swung like a cudgel, a gilt brown blur that tore at the wall and caught him in the chest, pinning him for as long as it took him to teleport to the floor above. Rainbow, following, was the only one to see him jump out the window and into the central courtyard.

With the way clear, Octavia rent open the tower door, cast aside crates and sacks of goods, and let them into the courtyard, where Rainbow hovered, pointing though Discord made no effort to hide himself. He had coiled into a spring, bouncing gently on the clay tennis court, a racket in his paw and a tennis ball balanced on the crook of one wing. He had even summoned seats and filled them with illusory spectators, all of whom watched the Elements impassively as they trampled through a row of azaleas and up onto a walkway. Discord bobbed up and down patiently as they navigated the curving path, the dry fountains, the stout hedges that snaked all around between flower gardens alive with bees and butterflies; he was the tallest figure in the courtyard by far.

“Fancy a match, ladies?” one of the spectators called. Discord, still silent, leered with eyes half lidded.

“Enough,” Twilight said to herself, not quite angry, but tired, and put a lance of purple magic over a ring of stone benches and through the net into Discord’s nacreous shield.

“Foul!” one of the spectators called. “That’s a point for the champ!”

“You shut up!” she yelled, throwing another beam and scattering the illusion, dapper mares and stallions flying in a huff, spilling cups of tea and dropping spectacles on the flagstones. Discord shook in laughter all the while, his racket wielding a smaller shield to return the spell Octavia threw at him, coming back as winking orbs of energy to detonate over the court and on the bushes against Rarity’s barrier. Smoke rose where it landed, burning their noses as they closed the distance to come abreast of the court. Its clay surface was darkened with scorch marks, its net hung in tatters, the illusions gone but the chairs still scattered on the lawn. In a slow sweep to one side, Fluttershy picked them up and sent them Discord’s way, where they dispersed with a flick of his wrist. On the other side, Twilight forged into the gardens and waited for something to distract him; thinking something had, she grabbed at the back of his neck, only for the tennis ball to jump out of his grasp and shoot straight at her, bouncing off her shield and arresting her attack, popping into a fizzing pile of streamers a moment later.

Rounding on Twilight, Discord did not see what she did, Applejack and Big Mac laboring to push up a slab of clay, risen where a spell had cracked the ground. She locked her attention back on him, and his on her. Through bushes and clouds of insects, she dodged and jumped away from his burning magic while he twisted and turned from hers. He spun around suddenly, bringing up his lion’s paw, and this Twilight yanked back with the shivering sound of flesh turned out of place. His head pivoted, eyes dilated, mouth turned down, as the slab met his back with a righteous slap. For a second, he was planted in the warm earth, and Twilight had shouted the first word to bring her friends in to use the Elements before the slab broke apart on a tail of orange magic. In a motion too rapid for her to follow, he rolled and flew away, borne on the grass-green whorl of more conjured wind. The dust devil only carried him to the courtyard’s far side, where Rainbow was already waiting with a kick that left her stumbling in air and then pirouetting backwards from a taloned backhand. Pushing a statuette over, he shook his head, his eyes spinning comically in their sockets—still playing.

“He’s trying to tire us out,” Twilight said, galloping back to her friends, hastening to regroup, though Discord made no attempt to attack from where he stood. They stared at one another across the ruined tiers of walkway and manicured land, the thrumming sun sharpening shadows and making irresolute the paths. Their first break, allowing nerves at last to calm, breaths to slow, heads to regain composure. Discord wiped sweat off his brow, his tail waving lazily as he posed in front of a rectangular red and green window that marked the castle’s other side. He had crossed to the side that held the guest quarters and game rooms.

“So what do we do?” Vinyl asked. “Can’t we just blast him?”

“He needs to hold still,” Rarity said.

“Trap him under something heavy?” Colgate offered.

“That’s what we were tryin’ to do with that bit of court,” Applejack said, looking appreciatively at Fluttershy, who smiled to herself, dripping sweat with the exertion of throwing their load at him.

Discord summoned a pair of semaphore flags and waved them in great pinwheels, pausing only to blow raspberries.

“Go ahead, try us!” Rainbow barked.

Discord appeared to laugh to himself and banished the flags, smoky blue magic appearing in his lion’s paw and spreading in rapid vines as he pressed it against the wall. No forceful press, his, but a casual resting of paw to ashlar.

No one said anything, but Octavia darted ahead, throwing an explosion his way and briefly revealing his shield and burning off a bush of closed angel’s trumpets.

“Twilight! Shield!” she yelled, and Twilight stepped forward tentatively, mind not fully on her spell. The shape of Discord’s magic was beginning to follow the outline of a room in the castle, and her attention was caught, wondering what he had in store.

His talon came down on the wall with speed and purpose that belied his funny face, his cheeks puffed out and eyes crossed as he faced them still, head turned entirely around. The magic coalesced, and as Twilight broke free of her curiosity and marshaled another shield breaking spell, the walls shuddered in a wide curtain of dust. He stepped back, his shield sizzling away and he not sparing it a thought, the room sliding out slowly with him, cut from the castle. His steps were heavy—for with such a spell, his weight and the room’s were combined—and the pathway cracked under him. Coming out, the room was alive with flickering shadow, darkness touching contours of wall and brickwork, varnished countertop, brass rail, midnight-blue magic smoking evilly where it scarred the masonry, and then snarled pipes below, shattered floor, tilted shelves and cascading bottles of all colors and shapes falling and disgorging themselves at his feet as the room jostled free; everything slowly circling their way until Discord was hidden, an entire saloon gaping between them with the dark smoke rising thicker and thicker, as if the room might take off on a plume of rocket fire any second—which, roaring, it did, sailing like something out of a dream, a preposterous, bulky projectile, spilling itself as it came. They had scattered, seeing what he planned far before he actually did anything, save Octavia, who planted herself on the tennis court with the look of steadfast self-importance they knew so well. Those who saw her there saw too what she was going to do, and ducked in time to avoid being knocked off their hooves, while those who didn’t fell forward with the shock wave and scrambled to get under Rarity’s umbrella as the remnants of Octavia’s display rained back down. She had blown the saloon upwards, not outwards, and for one ringing moment, she could look up to see the mindless confetti of liquor bottles raining down from the strobing sky: sunset reds, forest greens, saffron yellows, rich browns, oily black tinctures and shining silvers discs of salts and garnishes in their cans, along with with paper and splinters, the disembodied husks of seats rocking in Discord’s dust devil where it wove around a square of charred marble floor. The field was strewn below a smoking sky, hers and his mingling in an acidic cloud.

Discord charged, clearing the smoke with a wave of his hands and receiving a bolt of lightning to his unguarded chest for the effort, throwing him back into the hole he had created. He lay for a second before jumping up with an expression of guarded nervousness as Rainbow took off in his direction, cutting her own way through the smoke. When she reached the saloon’s space, she looked around and then returned.

“Out of the open, come on,” Applejack yelled to Rainbow. They retreated to a row of trimmed oleanders behind a fat spiraling walk, leading up to a pair of ornate chairs bolted to the stone. The princesses’ chairs.

“He could be regrouping,” Twilight said. “We should do the same. Everypony okay?”

“Little winded,” Vinyl said. “But good to go.”

“My ears are still ringing from that last explosion,” Rarity shouted.

“It was a good one, though,” Colgate said.

“Yes, yes, but a little notice would have been nice.” She patted Octavia’s shoulder to show there were no hard feelings, and Octavia shied from it.

“Twi? How are you?” Big Mac asked.

Twilight tapped her horn to see whether any pain would travel down to its root. “Okay so far.”

“He doesn’t like us getting close,” Colgate said, hugging her haversack to her chest. “Everything he does, notice, it’s to keep us away.”

“So we’ll rush him next time,” Rainbow said, peeking over an oleander. “Where is he?”

“Twilight?”

“I can’t see him remotely without my sigils, and they’re on the ship,” Twilight said.

“Let’s just chase him, then,” Rainbow said.

Octavia sat and put her head against the cool stone. “Give me a minute.”

“If we can spare it,” Applejack said, closing her eyes. She opened them a minute later. “Lookin’ fer machines to grab. Nothin’ close by.”

“Good idea, though,” Big Mac mumbled, and she gave him a smile.

“He’s gonna have a trap ready for us,” Colgate said.

“I know,” Twilight said. “I’d like to have something too.”

“Something to keep him from using wind might be nice. My mane can’t—” Rarity jumped when glass shattered nearby, and Rainbow looked again.

“Tower,” she said. “Second floor. He’s… Oh, crap, run.” She took off to the sound of crashing water on the court, and a second later, the spray’s edge misted the tops of their heads. They ran after Rainbow, a straight line over scarred grounds and shards of clay, then over the nails and splinters and bottles from the destroyed bar, into the dirty stone hole from where it had been pulled. Water dripped from exposed pipes and ancient staples poked up from dirty baseboards. They crossed to a stairwell, which Vinyl lit for them in place of the extinguished torches on the walls, and they spiraled up to the second floor while more water hit the courtyard.

They slowly filed into a wide corridor, mercifully hidden from the sun’s race, and took a minute to let their eyes adjust while Discord’s noise continued outside. Through the nearest door was the royal library, liberally furnished and fenestrated; the straight lines and hard angles of countless tiers of shelves and ladders, and the perpendicular lines of books piled on tables, in the harsh black-white of a mad sky was a difficult aspect to take in, and several of them turned away in the open door. Twilight, however, made herself look on, her mind suddenly quiet. To her, it was a hallowed space. Never mind that the princesses’ books had been relocated centuries ago and those that she saw were of no value, placed by Discord for his own obscure purpose; and never mind that she had been in the superior library of Canterlot Palace more times than she could count or appreciate. Under the vaults swept with light, between towering shelves and busts of ancient scholars, her confused eyes found a statue of Princess Luna as centerpiece to a ring of reading tables. She was not in the powerful canter or regally overbearing stance in which most statues depicted the royalty, but in repose, curled on a fat stone cushion with a thick tome in the crook of one hoof. Draught Castle had been constructed after Nightmare Moon’s banishment, but built for two princesses anyway, Celestia’s way of showing that she still loved her sister and still wished to rule by her side. Even down to the facilities, the bathrooms and dressing rooms, the closets, the cloak rooms, the wings in the library tailored to each princess’ taste, the instructions in the kitchens for what they liked to eat, all had been made with two in mind, not one; and exactly half of the facilities had gone untouched for the time Celestia occupied the castle.

This Twilight knew, but the statue had caught her off guard. The sculptor had put perfect contentment on Luna’s face, the unamused but unhurried concentration of someone comfortable in her own space, simple and honest. Twilight approached, transfixed, blind to her friends dispersing through the library and deaf to the fact that Discord still had not found them. Her own suffering was nothing, she realized then, compared to her princesses’, but the thought brought her only anger. When she reached the statue, she put a hoof to Luna’s unshorn leg and stood there, looking up; Discord had marked googly eyes and a flopping tongue on the time-worn face.

Before she knew what she was doing, Twilight brought a guillotine of magic down on Luna’s midsection, grabbing the head and withers and averting her head to the spray of dust and stone. She wielded it around and faced her friends, who looked at her from all sides of the library’s main aisle.

“Y’okay?” Applejack asked.

Twilight turned back to the sound of water, still crashing outside. It had been going too long, surely Discord knew they were no longer there, she thought, running to a window and shading her eyes to look down on their former field of battle. A globe of water, summoned from where she knew not, fired down onto a circular garden, flinging a bird bath and destroying the flowers in a geyser of mud. The grass waved lazily, submerged in low places, pieces of the saloon floating on top. Her eyes ran the courtyard’s perimeter, where she saw the wall of golden magic that kept the water from escaping into the castle. She could not see Discord, but another ball of water fired out from not far off; she saw the twinkling pieces of glass under where he had broken the window with his first shot.

“He’s just a room or two away,” Twilight said, rejoining her friends. “He’s got magic around the courtyard and he’s filling it with water.”

“What’s with the head?” Colgate asked.

“Is everyone feeling okay? I want to find the door and rush in, hit him with everything we’ve got.” She indicated the floating statuary. “This is for him.”

“We saw a door over there,” Rarity said, and Rainbow flew to the section she meant. They cautiously crept between the shelves, waiting for a trap: the library to burst into flames, or the books to come alive and bludgeon them, or the shelves to domino down onto them. Nothing happened, and they stood abreast of the door, listening for anything besides thrown water.

Pinkie thrust open the door, but it only led them to another corridor, which they crossed before lining up against the next door and waiting a second time. This, too, she slammed open, and as soon as she did, Discord’s eyes were on them, shining with the same golden light as his magic, flashing from atop an unlit stage: they had found their way to the castle’s grand theater, the north tower’s second floor.

His paw shot up to catch Rainbow as she flew over the crowded seats, his talon fixed to the broken window as he created another sphere of water, which held for a second before shooting out into the growing lake, not a drop wasted on the wooden stage where he stood.

“Son of a,” Twilight mumbled, shuffling through her magic space and bringing out a full set of armor. It jangled against the stone head she had not bothered to tuck away before flying in a concentrated beam across the theater floor and into Discord’s midsection. He stumbled, looked her way, and batted Rainbow off his shoulder. Fluttershy was running, not flying, down the aisle, calling for Rainbow to be careful and to aim for his face in the same breath, and Pinkie trailed after her. No one stopped them, and when the stage lights switched on of their own accord and swiveled onto Discord, no one wondered whether it was his or Applejack’s doing.

“No explosions up here,” Colgate said to Octavia, who had positioned herself with her forehooves on the back of a seat, her dark mane trailing down to almost brush the floor, her Element dull against her chest.

Discord moved at the last second, just dodging an attack from Fluttershy, her magic flashing past his neck to fling the floorboards into velvet curtains at stage right. Where the curtains billowed, Rainbow darted and grabbed them to pull around Discord’s body, his arms flung out and waving comically as she covered his face; Pinkie dashed behind, grabbing his tail in a seldom-seen ball of magic, and yanked him off his feet. Water exploded behind the curtain, ballooning it out for a moment before soaking them and buying him enough time to rip the cloth from his body, its gantry snapping from the ceiling and taking a floodlight with it, swinging down and sharply banging the stage.

Twilight ran then, heedless down the aisle, hitting chairs and stumbling on steps, horn alight again and eyes on the thrashing tangle of limbs. The pegasi dipped and wove around him as Pinkie danced away from his swinging tail, trying to get in close to his head. Of the three of them, only Fluttershy was using her magic to hit him, but this she did only occasionally and without much effect; a pink barb would zap his chest or shoulder, and he would bring his claws up to it as if slapping at a fly. Unhindered, they distracted him until Twilight clamored onto the stage, then they ran apart just as she sent the statue’s top half tumbling through air right into Discord’s chest, where he caught it with a sickening crack. He struggled for a second as Twilight pushed down, twisting it to grind him into the stage, her magic fueled by the same anger that had possessed her in the library. He was vermin, he was cancer, he deserved to rot for eternity—and she didn’t notice when he teleported out from under her attack.

“He’s gone, Twilight!” Pinkie shrieked, and Twilight jumped, momentarily alarmed, thinking that Discord had adopted her voice before delivering an attack of his own.

“Out the window and across the pool!” Colgate called, racing down the aisle with the rest of them.

Twilight brought the statue’s head back and placed it in her magical space, dropping a few pieces of armor to give herself room.

“Look.” Colgate, still with her haversack clutched tightly, went to the wide theater window and pointed at a cataract of blue-green water. “Big stream now.”

“That lake!” Vinyl said. “He’s emptying it into the courtyard!”

“He’s summoning the water,” Twilight said to herself. “But that has to be draining his magic really fast. Unless he has… Look for a sigil.” She whipped around and ran across the stage, head swinging, eyes not really seeing anything. She was too frazzled, as were they all; the sun was getting to them, the noise, the endless magic, the sawing hum in the air from the same. In all of them, an electric sensation had taken hold and was slowly constricting even as adrenaline receded.

“Applejack, please shine those lights again,” Octavia said.

Applejack closed her eyes and brought the stage lights to life, and Octavia studied them. She saw it at the same time as Colgate, who trotted over and brushed the stage with her tail, the diffuse outline of a design inked onto one of the overhead lights.

“That clever boy,” Pinkie said, looking up, squinting against the light but not angling her head away.

“I’m bringing it down,” Twilight said, twisting the light off its rail with a shower of sparks.

Applejack shook her head violently. “You wanna give me a second to get back into myself before doin’ that, Twilight?”

“Sorry.” She dragged the light over and inspected it, its bulb hot behind the web of a sigil whose design she recognized. “That’s a summoning sigil, all right. He’s got it decked out with chaos magic, but the function is essentially the same. There’ll be another one at the bottom of the lake we passed.”

“You should see this,” Big Mac called from the window. Twilight went to him and followed his hoof where it pointed upwards, to the tops of the towers and beyond, disappearing: the golden shield that kept his water in, and a second one outside the castle walls.

“He’s filling this whole place with water,” Twilight said, thinking of all the books that would be ruined. “First the courtyard, then he’s going to let it flood into the castle itself.”

“Swimmin’,” Colgate said, receiving a stern look from Vinyl. As they collected themselves at the window, a second and third stream joined from higher up, adding hundreds of gallons every second to the drowning courtyard. The saloon was half underwater, its jewel-like bottles bobbing on the surface, scintillating with the flashing sky. The tennis court and lower gardens were placidly lifeless.

“Do be careful,” Rarity moaned as Rainbow flapped out of the window, hanging close to the wall.

“He’s on the ledge over there, but he didn’t see me,” Rainbow said, perching on the iron balconette.

“We need to immobilize him,” Vinyl said.

“Twilight’s got her Luna head for that!” Pinkie cried.

“Can you stop him from teleporting?”

“I can…” Twilight stopped herself, realizing what she had to do. “Don’t hate me for this. I bet I can find something in the library.”

“Research?” Rainbow yelled. “Now?”

Twilight gave her a dirty look.

“We can distract him,” Octavia said. “How long will you be, Twilight?”

“I can move pretty quick. I have a good idea what to do, I just need to figure out a few details. If you girls… I’m sorry about this.”

“We’ll keep him busy for ya, Twi! You got this!” Pinkie jumped up and hugged her, and Twilight hugged her back, unsure, assuming Pinkie was simply resonating with her Element. “Even here, even now,” she thought distantly, seeing herself outside herself.

“I won’t be long,” Twilight said, backing away, disgusted but trying not to show it. “Please be careful.”

Rainbow saluted, and they separated, Pinkie and Colgate at the head of the new group, charging for the corridor at the theater’s back with newfound energy. At last, a plan! The kicking of their back hooves in excited movement and the relieved smiles on some of their faces signed the renewed determination that erased fatigue and made hard points of magic in the minds of those who used it.

They ran through the staff dining room, faintly redolent with the smells of dinner but bearing no other signs that it had been recently inhabited, to the kitchen where Applejack insisted they pause for her to check for traps in the stoves, ovens, and grills around the circular room. It would take just one exploding at the right time to put them out of the fight, and Applejack took the time to inspect each one for irregularities while Colgate and Rainbow fidgeted and grumbled. When she felt they were safe, they followed the sound of water to dinnerware storage, a cramped room off the kitchen’s left side and affording but a tiny view to the courtyard. Day and night shimmied through a thick window over a huge, industrial sink, and falling water shook the room: metal racks held down under the weight of plates, saucers, bowls, ramekins, cocottes, terrines, cake stands, carafes, decanters, glasses, jugs, gravy boats, tea cups, coffee mugs, demitasses, copitas, snifters, chalices, goblets, tumblers, and more, everything rattling inescapably. They ran to the window with ears low, and from there could see Discord on a lounge chair under an umbrella, a coup glass of hot pink liquid resting precariously on the arm while the river poured loudly over his head from a sigil inscribed on the brickwork. The other two, and a fourth that had joined while they were in the kitchen, came from other places on the castle’s inner walls, spouting powerfully and fanning out white and green over the growing lake, no longer tranquil but boiling with rushing water.

“He’s not doin’ anything,” Applejack said. “Can we wait fer Twilight? Do we have to, uh, engage him?”

“If we can hurt him at all, then we must,” Octavia said, nudging Colgate aside to let her stand at the sink and look out.

“Cole said he doesn’t like to be approached,” Rainbow said. “How about me and Fluttershy go out and distract him again, and Big Mac can run out from the room behind him and give him a good kick?”

“Ah don’t like that plan,” Big Mac said.

“Ah’ll kick him,” Applejack said. “You reckon Ah can reach his crotch?” Though there was nothing between his legs that Applejack had ever seen, she had fantasized for longer than she cared to admit about bucking him there.

“Go for the reptile leg, just below the knee,” Colgate said. “He favors that side. Fluttershy, can you knit bones back together without setting them first?”

“I’m sorry?” Fluttershy asked.

“Ah’m ready,” Applejack said, back at the door. “Just say when.”

“If Applejack snaps his knee, can you heal him back so that his leg is bent wrong?” Colgate asked.

“I’ve… I’ve never tried,” Fluttershy said, hating the thought; even on Discord, she could not imagine inflicting something so ghoulish.

“Try it. Who besides Octy can’t swim?”

“He’s moving!” Rainbow called. “Okay, never mind. Just grabbing his drink.”

“He’s nice and relaxed,” Vinyl said, crowding the window, shoulder to shoulder with Octavia, who was the only one to hear her under the rattling room. “Should we be worried about that?”

“You should be worried already,” Octavia said.

“Who can swim?” Colgate asked again. “Come on, ladies, it ain’t a hard question.”

“I can tread water,” Rarity said.

“Same,” Vinyl said, horn glowing pale blue.

“Big Mac? A big hunk of stallion like you, I bet you sink, huh?” Colgate said.

“Ah can swim a little,” he said shyly.

“Pegasi, out the window and buzz him. Applejack’ll run through and break his leg, Fluttershy heals it out of place, and then if he does anything weird, we’ll have Octy bust the wall so we can follow him into the water if he falls.”

“We’re not jumping out there!” Rarity cried. “It’s way too far!”

“In case we have to, though,” Colgate said, grabbing a fluted schnapps glass off a rack and looking into it. “More likely, he’ll run for the other tower or scrabble up the wall. I saw the rooms on the roof, he might go for one of those. He likes going up, we see that, right?”

“I hear you, Cole,” Rainbow said, putting a hoof to the window. “Fluttershy, you can blow this for us?”

“Ah’m ready when y’all are,” Applejack repeated.

“One second,” Fluttershy said, readying herself. She counted down, and on two, Applejack was out the door, thundering through the kitchen and down the next hallway, her steps disappearing as the glass blasted outwards, too thick to shatter, disappearing as a whole pane into whitewater. Rarity shielded the pegasi as they went into the flashing air, and Discord jumped up at the same time, his umbrella pushed aside, his drink spilled on the balcony floor, his fists up. He was never faster than Rainbow, but after a couple failed swings, he connected with Fluttershy, grabbing one wing and holding her, kicking and twisting, at arm’s length.

“Come on, AJ,” Pinkie breathed, watching at an awkward angle, not able to see what Rainbow was doing, only Fluttershy snarling and trying to break free as Discord ducked and dodged. The pink barbs of magic resumed, and again, Discord slapped at them where they connected, simply not harmed by what Fluttershy chose to throw at him. A second later, his body crumpled and his jaws opened in a silent scream, and Applejack scrambled onto the balcony, kicked the glass into the water, and aimed a second kick for his mouth, which connected with an impact they could almost feel for themselves. The lion’s paw waved in a heavy glove of magic, striking the balcony with an impact that they did feel, knocking dinnerware off the racks and sending Applejack through the banister, the pegasi up over it. Balusters flew and Fluttershy, one wing useless, spiraled into a waterfall and disappeared.

“Wall,” Colgate said, slapping Octavia’s behind. They backed away and the wall burst outwards, the sink with it, the twisted pipes spraying yet more water onto the floor and into the courtyard. They could hear Rainbow yelling for help while Discord swung at her with his umbrella, which he finally just threw before turning and crawling out of sight.

“Up to the next floor, keep on him,” Colgate said, not looking back, running after Pinkie to fall fast and free into freezing, slimy water. Applejack was paddling toward a wall, Fluttershy dipping down helplessly on one wing and a pair of tired hooves, crying out and choking as Pinkie swam to her. Rainbow was down with them a second later, pushing a large piece of the saloon’s counter for Fluttershy to grab.

Above, Rarity took the lead out through the kitchen, down Applejack’s corridor, through the royal dining hall, all the way across the castle’s front rooms until they were above the vestibule where the roof had been caved in. On the other side, they found their staircase, and the four had to move slowly across sagging floor, all of them waiting for the sound of another attack. They had seen Discord’s pain and shock, and the true desire to get away as he scrambled up the walls; there was no taunting anymore, no cheek in his movement or bearing. He knew it was a proper fight at last.

Up the stairs, flinching as a fifth spout of water started up just outside their wall, they ran for the third floor. The castle’s main structure was only two stories tall, with the towers that bookended it rising to five and a few cupolas forming what passed as the third floor: a parlor, a meeting room, a salon, the breakfast room, and the solarium where they found themselves, looking around frantically for Discord and finding him in the sky over the lake, floating on a reflective cloud of magic as he wrapped his leg, frowning down at his work and leaving it when he spotted them.

He spun once, still under Twilight’s silence enchantment, and threw a small spell into the air to trace the words “brace yourselves” in gilt magic that sparked and crackled loudly when he sped toward them. Rarity renewed her shield as a mushroom of magic shot out and disintegrated the glass that formed their room’s walls and ceiling, and Discord landed, his broken leg hanging uselessly to one side and his face puffy where Applejack had kicked him, the one protrudent fang that distinguished his visage knocked askew. He did not hesitate; on the tips of his claws, beads of ball lightning snarled as he swung their way, flashing icy blue, moving as if in a flipbook as the sun and moon flew overhead, faster still, day and night blurring into eye-burning TV snow. Rarity’s shield spat like hot grease as he met her, his talon pressing down on her magic, their faces bitterly mirrored. He did not take notice when Vinyl put a spotlight onto his eyes, nor when Big Mac suddenly jumped from behind and charged his way. Only when those solid red hooves met his other knee did he break from staring at Rarity, and he fell, his tail lashing furiously and another explosion of repellent magic washing over their shield, only knocking Big Mac away, he who had ventured outside its protection to strike.

A potted fern flew to break over his snout, and then Octavia was on him too, hooves to face, battering once before his talons snapped with dancing electricity and thrust upwards to catch her under the flank as she tried to disengage. She seized up and rolled off, the smell of burnt fur filling the room, and before Rarity could grab a potted plant of her own, he was gone again, his teleportation spell leaving a faint outline of a frowning face in the floor.

“Someone get Fluttershy,” Octavia gasped, struggling on her back, leg up, muscle quivering, showing the ragged burn Discord had left. Dark blood oozed from the red flesh where her fur was singed away, a long gash that ran almost the length from her pelvis to her knee. Her chest heaved and she banged the back of her head against the floor, determined not to cry out.

“Do it. We’ll wait here,” Rarity said to Vinyl, who hesitated before taking off downstairs. The greenhouse was in shambles, soil and leaves everywhere with broken glass, the smell of acrid smoke and living plants mixing into a heady aroma which, with the eye-searing sky to which they had no recourse, threatened to push the overwrought ponies over into panic. Rarity’s head was pounding with magic overuse, but she was not about to say so; as in Applewood, as in Fillydelphia, she had told herself already that she was ready to see the end, even if it meant permanently damaging her horn. Big Mac sat still and tried to focus on breathing, heart racing, eyes burning and body aching from being tossed; he had landed back-first against a trellis of flowering peas. Octavia, prone and writhing in pain she refused to voice save for the occasional moan or shudder, had been sure that it was the death she unconsciously sought. Yet live they did, and their friends on floors below, they lived too. A few more minutes, and the fight would be back on, both parties tired and unwilling to stop.

Discord reappeared a floor above, floating on the bridge that connected the towers and watching them, glowering. Rarity brought up a preemptive shield, but he did not throw any magic at them, just turned and began moving across the bridge, his legs tucked up under his tail. Two by two, sigils appeared on the bridge’s sides and released more water into the rising courtyard lake, which had already overtaken the first floor. Octavia, Rarity, and Big Mac waited, their only option watching the water come faster and harder with each new pair of sigils, gradually rising to lap against the broken theater window, the golden shield keeping it from flooding in where Twilight studied and where Fluttershy worked to heal her wing. Discord brushed the bridge’s silver rails, almost affectionately, his head turned resolutely away from them, as if daring them to attack again with their team halved.

When the door opened, they were whole again, Twilight with a book floating by her head and talking breathlessly about the mechanics of her magic while Fluttershy raced to Octavia and began administering what energy she had not spent on herself.

“Everyone okay?” Rainbow asked. “We got back in through the theater window. Thank Celestia it’s so wide.”

“We broke his other leg,” Vinyl said. “Didn’t really stop him.”

“Did you manage to heal it wrong before you fell?” Colgate asked.

“I’m not going to do that, Colgate,” Fluttershy said a minute later, when Octavia’s wound had cicatrized. It was the best she could do without completely depleting herself.

“How’s everyone’s magic?” Twilight asked.

“Exhausted,” Rarity said, “and ready for more.” She seemed to speak for them all, and without a second look, Twilight took them back down to another set of stairs in the tower and up again to the fourth floor.

“This is Princess Luna’s tower,” Twilight said. They had come up through the floor into a room of gears, pipes, lenses, and carefully labeled shelves stacked with jars and weights. “I’ve read about this room. Princess Luna’s bedchamber is above us, the top of the tower, and across this bridge is Princess Celestia’s room. You can see the telescope above it, that’s the observatory.” Her voice quieted. “She looked in on her sister every day from that tower. Every single day.”

“An’ this room?” Applejack asked, looking curiously through a teardrop of glass at the magnified engraving behind it.

“This is the science room. Princess Celestia liked to experiment with machinery back in the day. It was nothing like today’s technology, but…” She went to the bridge’s foot and looked out at Discord, who had turned and was floating back their way. “Get ready.”

“When are we gonna hit him with the Elements?” Pinkie asked.

“When he’s immobile,” Twilight said. “As I have said. Not yet. And I need to take away his ability to teleport too.”

“Anything we can use in here?” Rainbow asked.

“Any resonating crystals would be great, and some magnifying lenses if there’s no crystals. Something to hang them on, too.”

“There’s a whole drawer of crystals over here,” Applejack said. “How do Ah tell if they’re resonatin’?”

“Keep him busy if he comes at us.” Twilight ran to the drawer and dug through it, grabbing up a gear and a bundle of copper wire and floating them over her head with the book.

“These brass shapes,” Colgate said, grabbing a long rib off the floor. “You can put these together in the shape of one of Twilight’s sigils.”

“What?” Octavia asked.

“These and those over there, look.” She went and grabbed another one. “Curvy and branching, see? Sigil.”

“What good is that?” Rainbow asked, eyes on the bridge, on Discord’s leisurely approach.

“Those are copper, not brass,” Twilight said without looking up. “Copper conducts electricity. She was trying to see if electricity can be used in place of magic if you run it through a sigil.”

“Ah take it that it can’t?” Applejack asked.

“It can at like ten percent the output. You’d need—what’s the number? I read it not too long ago.”

“Concentrate on this, darling,” Rarity said. “He’s coming. Not fast, but he’s coming.”

“I can talk and work at the same time.” She paused, wrapping a gear in the wire and coating it with a bright skin of magenta magic. “Anyway, no, you’d need close to two miles of copper wire or something ludicrous like that, packed into a sigil shape, in order to get enough magic power to lift a book. It’s just not efficient, but she didn’t know that at the time, obviously.”

“He’s waving,” Pinkie said. “Can I throw something at him?”

“Do you need to ask?” Rainbow grumbled.

Pinkie hefted an empty urn, the paint on its side faded, and threw it Discord’s way on a small arc of magic. He flicked it off and into the tumbling waters, his advance not hesitating until he was close enough for them to make out the contours of his miserable frown.

“Now would be a good time to use that magic, Twilight,” Rainbow said, looking defiantly at Discord even as she shrunk against Big Mac.

Twilight looked up, and Discord looked back at her. For a second, it appeared he would do nothing, that the fight had gone from him.

He clapped twice, the sound of even that muted from Twilight’s old spell, and the noise outside doubled, deafening, a ceaseless roar of water as the entire courtyard wall opened in a stripe of sigils, letting the lake go in a monstrous torrent. He shrugged, turned, and floated back down the bridge toward the north tower.

“Water’s coming up good!” Colgate shouted. “Five minutes, I’d reckon, ‘til we’re drinking!”

“Okay,” Twilight said, coiling her wire tighter around the gear, a few crystals hooked in and dangling. She caressed it with more magic until every inch of exposed wire glowed perilously, enchanted and hot. When she was done, she sighed and smiled lightly to herself, and nodded to her friends. “This will keep him from running away.” There was no need for her to shout; she could make her voice as loud as she needed with a simple spell that tickled at the base of her throat.

“Then let’s go!” Applejack cried, galloping away from the ormolu scales she had been ogling and taking off across the bridge. Over the castle courtyard, over the wings of falling water and the terrific sound of intussuscepting lake, they ran, Applejack at the head, ten friends tantivy under the sky’s throes. Cool wind touched their fur, and the countryside seemed to sigh with it outside the castle walls. The world beyond had become a gray image.

Through Princess Celestia’s hallowed bedchamber, up the silk-curtained stairs to the top of the north tower, they ran single-file to the observatory, where Discord was already at work making as much wreckage as he could. Star charts were shredded, metal plates depicting star positions were thrown out into the water, looking glasses were smashed, measuring implements bent and snapped into pieces; he stopped and gave the Elements a strained grin.

“Didn’t see why you wanted to silence me for the longest time, Twilight!” he yelled.

“Then be silent again,” she snapped, repeating the same spell and catching him mid-retort. An explosion rocked him on his cushion of magic as Rainbow rushed him again, diving away from a scythe of searing magic and landing awkwardly on the floor under his crossed legs, then rolling and crawling for shelter under the telescope’s platform, a heavy disc suspended from the walls that it may rotate independently.

A ball of fire plumed against Rarity’s shield, and they finally heard her cry out, the sound they had heard plenty of times before, of her resolve buckling and her magic going out. Their protection was gone before the fire, and they jumped and skittered back as tongues of flame found the floor and caught. Over one, Twilight jumped, swinging first the statue’s head and then the armory’s contents in a comet tail of metal and sound that overturned Discord off his magic cloud for a moment—a moment too long, for as he struggled, Fluttershy was on him, dragging him with savage force under the telescope’s platform as she squeezed in and Rainbow squeezed out, and as Twilight cast the spell to let her enchanted wires do their job. The room hummed, numbing their ears to the water, and where Discord flashed under the platform, he lay in the remnants of a dissolved teleportation spell.

When Fluttershy was out and Discord could only crawl by his arms, Pinkie cut the web of cables to let the platform fall, pinning him to the floor. The roof creaked and shingles slid outside, and delicate glass broke within the telescope’s white body, and Discord coughed, his voice back again.

“Vanilla!”

The Elements gathered in a line, side by side, jewels aglow and ready for release, and Discord’s eagle claw elongated in a tube of magic, grabbing at them.

“Hey!” Vinyl stumbled back, the claw groping her chest, Discord’s face disfigured and enraged, neck lengthening and vertebrae popping, diminished magic snapping in points off his horns.

“Kill them! Kill them all!”

The Element of Empathy came off, its golden chain flying apart as Vinyl stumbled forward, and in a heart-freezing second, the little black jewel was over the floor and through a window.

Yet the magic remained.

Vinyl backed away, the only one to see what happened next, the only one not caught in the Elements’ tempest. Colgate withdrew her hoof from her bag, slid something around her neck, and took Vinyl’s place between Octavia and Rainbow Dash, and then a light brighter than the insane sky, a sound greater than the hurricane of water threatening to overtake them, a heat like the sun fallen to earth, and a stridor of ambient magic in full cry consumed the observatory. All the colors of the rainbow fired up, around, filled the room, reflected and refracted off glass and metal, burst through the windows, made the top of the tower into a firebrand. She screamed, unheard, and Discord did too.

Everyone was gathered in Umbrella Park, Versus and a few priests standing atop picnic tables, watching the sky flicker through the thick clouds of a Snowdrift blizzard. They were too far away to see anything, but years later, the story would be that Versus descried a pinprick of light in the east, where the Elements ended eight months of strife and put Discord to rest.

On a couch in suburban Canterlot, Wings and Jet held each other and watched the news. Canterlot’s false sky still declaimed late afternoon, but outside, they were getting a half second of day and a half second of night, as though the planet were hurtling through space. They didn’t speak, just watched.

“They’ll be okay,” Granny Smith said. She stood on the orchard’s edge with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and half the farm’s workers, watching, not sure where the Elements were and so defaulting to face Canterlot, the divine seat of the diarchy.

In the dust and heat of Appleloosa, Braeburn did much the same, sitting on the tracks, resting against a motionless train car, fiddling nervously with his hat. He was alone, and he sent up a whispered prayer to Celestia to deliver his cousins to safety.

In the nuclear noise of Moondrop’s crater, working without avail to free her sister, Princess Luna was not aware of the world outside, nor of the Elements’ work, nor of the breathtaking immediacy with which appearances returned to normal. The second Discord was stone, the illusory sky blew away and the true sun emerged, right where it was supposed to be, moving as it ought. Luna’s unseen work in her sister’s stead was at last vindicated, but she would not be there to see it until hours later, when Celestia finally overwhelmed her prison and broke free in a volcanic outpouring of magic, enough to melt a hole clean through the floating continent.

When the Elements had cooled off, and their bearers had regained their senses, they could only look around. The sky was still, the water rushing down and out through the castle in the absence of its containing spell. Discord was a contorted figure of dull granite under the telescope platform, which no one had the strength to push off him. His arm stuck out, frozen where it had grabbed Vinyl’s Element off her chest.

They looked at each other, and Pinkie, naturally, was the first to laugh. It started with a demure giggle before escalating to a scream, and then moved back down to a torrent of guffaws that soon saw everyone else joining in, legs linked in a group hug, nervously triumphant chatter entangled with gales of feckless joy. Colgate kissed Octavia on the lips, Applejack shook her mane back and forth wildly, Rainbow burst into song and flew out the window.

“The water’s flooding through the castle,” she said when she at last flew back to them.

“Let it,” Twilight said, dropping the rest of the materials she had been holding.

“So…” Vinyl began.

“I want to wait here a minute. First, I need to do this.” She put a spell to Discord’s statue and held it for several seconds. “Good. Checking that he’s actually petrified, and it’s not some sort of trick.”

“We know it can’t be, the Elements went off,” Rainbow said.

“It doesn’t hurt to be sure.” She walked around the destroyed telescope, looked through the eyepiece experimentally, stood in the sunlight through the tower window. It was time to go, yet to Twilight it felt wrong to turn and leave so abruptly, and she thought she could see the same feeling in some of the others. Pacing nervously, not sure what to do with themselves, her friends shared the reverent silence which was not silent at all, but felt that way.

It was over. To think it, let alone say it aloud, felt foolish, as if giving the feeling voice would invite another trick. They could only stand around and look at the statue, the bared fangs and wild eyes, the horns whose tips were scarred from his final discharge of magic. He was still alive in there, and they knew it. He could be made to die, but not by them.

The water shut off on its own after close to an hour, his chaotic sigils fading, and only then did the friends go across the bridge. The courtyard was a sea-green marsh, the room he had ripped out of its frame as bedraggled and anonymous as a sunken ship, the tennis court washed away, the flowers limp where they had been scattered and gleaming where they had held to their gardens. Down through the tower they walked, their energy and excitement spent; they had barely slept the night before, a fact which caught up with most of them by the time they had reached the ground floor. They went back around to the armory, where Vinyl held them up, looking through to the courtyard.

“What’s wrong, Vinyl?” Applejack asked.

She patted her chest. “I didn’t—I mean, he yanked it off me at the last second. Threw it out the window I think.”

“Out here,” Fluttershy said, walking to a nude slope and poking through the begonias that had washed down to its base. The Element of Empathy had landed in them, its chain shattered, the black gem shining dully on crimson petals.

“He pulled it off of you?” Octavia asked.

Vinyl shrugged. She didn’t know what to make of it, except that whatever it was, whatever the implications were, it could wait.

They marched through the front doors, many of them turning back to give Draught Castle a final close look, and squished over the grass between the outer walls. On the airship, leaning dangerously in the newly-formed mud plain, they stood under the balloon and at the gunwales, looking at the world, while Applejack got them running and Rarity read the letter waiting for them on the deck.

“It’s Vanilla,” she said. “He’s gone back to Tartarus, and he thanks us for destroying Discord. He says it took us long enough.”

“He’s not wrong,” Rainbow said.

“Discord told him to kill us,” Pinkie chirped, skipping to Rarity’s side. “It say anything about that?”

Rarity turned the page over. “‘In answer to the question Pinkie will ask, Discord never said when to kill you, or for that matter, who. He said to kill them all. Kill whom? He had no time to clarify.’”

“Gotta love technicalities,” Applejack laughed, shaking her head. “Hoo-wee, an’ we’re off. Take one last look, girls.”

The cold breeze of waxing winter, the golden sun secure in the west, the smell of grass, the chug of their engines, their hoofsteps on the deck, the light and unbelieving banter, the birdsong: some of them cried, some just watched the great and ruined castle recede into memory.