Under the prosperous, ancient city of Roan, in their well-ventilated home atop the petrified remnants of a much older city, the CEO and CFO, husband and wife, of Mansel and Company prepared for bed.

Mrs. Mansel, in her pale green nightgown and striped socks, playfully pressed on her husband’s midsection. “I had an interesting conversation today.”

“Mm?” He rolled over and let his eyes slowly trace her silhouette.

She kissed him, her blood rising; she could feel his as well. “Someone called on the Trottingham sigil, but it was not Gold Ribbon. It was his attack dog, Whippoorwill, I believe the name was.”

Mr. Mansel kicked at the sheets, trying to get into a more comfortable position, and his wife lay back.

“He was distressed.”

“What’s going on? Must be serious, for him to go to you directly.”

“He had quite the story to tell; I was talking to him for close to twenty minutes.” She breathed out as her husband lowered himself over her, his eyes closed—a quirk that still annoyed her, after years of marriage. “It seems Gold Ribbon has it in his head to cut ties with us.”

His thrust faltered, but she moved with it as best she could, wishing to spare him the embarrassment.

“Instead of getting the Elements of Harmony’s information, he got their money, enough to secure a loan from a third party.” She gasped as he finally found his rhythm, and, for a time, neither said much.

Afterwards, they both lay back with the sheets off, enjoying the cool night air. “What did he want? Whippoorwill?” Mr. Mansel asked. He was out of breath.

“Safe transportation elsewhere. He mentioned something about the Elements knowing about him, and what Gold Ribbon is up to, and some sort of retaliation. I could tell he was scared.”

“Rightly so, if the Elements and Gold Ribbon are against him.”

“Only maybe,” she said. “He knows nothing.”

Mr. Mansel frowned. “So what did you decide? Or are you still thinking?”

“I’d like to send him to Canterlot. I think he can be useful there.”

“What about Gold Ribbon?”

Mrs. Mansel huffed and grabbed a pillow off the ground. “I’ve already spoken to the contractors I sent up to him. They’ll take care of him for us.”

“A nasty surprise, for sure,” Mr. Mansel said. “And the dog? What’s in Canterlot for him?”

“Nothing at first glance, but I pulled his file, and he has a connection to a local gang leader there. Friends back in school, I think.” She stretched, and Mr. Mansel planted a kiss on her ribs. “Tell me what you think of this plan. I want to send Whippoorwill to Canterlot and have him reestablish ties with this gang leader of his. I’d like him to be our liaison, of sorts. A go-between. Do you know how many magical trinkets we have that we can’t sell?”

Since the disaster in Applewood, the Mansels had found themselves suddenly in possession of a large quantity of illegally enchanted objects, things they were going to ship to the big city. The product was no small cause of distress among the company owners, who were, at the same time, coping with a sudden audit from the royal treasury. Keeping a step ahead of the royal accountant was a daily task, and one they both knew they could not keep up indefinitely.

“Something in the thousands, isn’t it?” Mr. Mansel asked. “I haven’t looked at our most recent numbers in that regard.” He sighed. “I’m still working on hiding our involvement with Heavy Sleeper.” Their former Applewood drug lord.

“Two thousand-something,” Mrs. Mansel said. “If we can dump them into Canterlot, that’ll be a couple problems solved as one.”

“I see the first. What are the others?”

Though it was dark, he could hear her lips part in a toothy smile. “The Astras are there too, you know. They’re working on a new crow.”

“Another one?”

“The way I see it, we fill Lower Canterlot with some magic toys and have the dog drop a hint or two, implicating the Astras. They are known for enchanted objects, after all. We can put the pressure on them when they’re far from home, and potentially set up a business in Canterlot.”

Mr. Mansel propped himself up on his pillow, not completely shocked by what he heard, but unsettled. “What would make you think we can set up in Canterlot now, of all times?” He lowered his voice. “We’ve never been weaker.”

“Weak or no, this is a golden opportunity, and it won’t come again.”

“The best we can hope for is to distract the Astras, unless we find some way to plant evidence. Were you thinking of using the dog for that too? How can we trust him?”

Mrs. Mansel was silent.

“He betrayed Gold Ribbon; how long until he betrays us too? Suppose he goes native there? Suppose he gets it in his head to take over for his gang friend and split, just like Gold Ribbon?”

“I hear a lot of negativity,” Mrs. Mansel said in a near growl. “Any positive suggestions?”

“Yes. Don’t do it. Let’s dump our magic in a landfill out in the desert, or incinerate it. Something. Let’s weather this audit before striking out on new business ventures.”

She turned over and frowned at the wall. “I want Canterlot.”

“We all do, which is the exact reason why now is the wrong time to make a move. If the Astras get wind of us there, they’ll have room to maneuver, time to plan, and money and resources to execute that plan. Basically, everything we don’t have.”

“But at least all we’ll lose is a ton of product we need to dump anyway, and a traitor.”

Mr. Mansel paused, one hoof on her side. “Is the plan to fail?”

“The plan is the plan. If it works, then we’ll have a piece of Canterlot. If not, we’ll get rid of some liabilities, at the cost of a little dignity.”

“You’re talking like you’ve already set this all up.”

“No, no, of course not.” She turned back over, tenderness returning to her voice. “I’m going to speak to Whippoorwill again tomorrow and give him my answer.”

Mr. Mansel nodded, thinking her plan over. He didn’t like it, but couldn’t deny a certain allure it aroused in him. Another, larger part of his mind was still thinking about Heavy Sleeper. They had been business partners for years; severing ties suddenly was not easy on anyone. “At least,” he thought, “all the drugs are up there.” He would rather deal with a warehouse full of illegal magic than vats of illegal chemicals.

The Elements’ last hours in The Mountain Zone, formerly Trottingham, were short ones. By one, they were within view of the dam, but still a long way away, and Twilight paced the deck nervously. Her plan, to cast a beacon above the dam and its artificial lake, had been met in town with fear and mild excitement, not the emotions she had expected. Rarity had had to convince her that there was only so much that could be done, and, ultimately, the ponies would need to help themselves.

“How much water do we have?” Fluttershy asked.

“Enough fer one or two showers, Ah expect,” Applejack said. “Don’t worry, we’re refillin’ at the dam.”

“I can’t believe, after everything in Applewood, something good came out of it,” Twilight said. “Maybe.”

“They’ll be fine,” Rarity said from her position on the opposite side. “I just hope those Mansel ponies don’t do anything.”

“What can they do?” Applejack asked. “By my reckonin’, there’s only two of ‘em.”

“Still.”

“Us farmers are a tough lot, Rare. Ah think they can handle themselves if we just give ‘em a little hope.”

“What about Snowdrift?” Rainbow asked. “First of all, how far is it?”

“We’ll be in the air for quite a while, I’m afraid,” Twilight said. “And we’re going to want to stop at the first settlement we find. Our rations are running low.”

“How low?”

“Pretty low. By my calculations, we have enough for three or four days, if we eat light.”

“Seriously?” She flapped her wings angrily. “No one picked up anything in Trottingham?”

“What’s to pick up?” Applejack asked. “They’re just as poor as us.”

“Oh, but whatever teeny-weeny village we find won’t be?”

“They won’t be crushed under one of the Mansels’ tentacles, at least,” Twilight said. “I’m sure we can find some farm land. Besides, we have money.”

“No, we have a treasury slip,” Rarity said. “They won’t want that in the wilderness. The nearest bank will be thousands of miles away.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to bring that up,” Rainbow said. “How long are we gonna go on without any, you know, physical bits? For that matter, how long until… well…”

“One of us loses the slip?” Big Mac completed.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Fluttershy offered.

“Maybe we should’ve made a withdrawal in Roan,” Rarity said. “Those Mansels are bankers, after all. We could have put them to use.”

“How far from Snowdrift to Roan?” Rainbow asked, concern entering her voice.

“They’re not going to get us in Snowdrift,” Twilight said.

“You don’t know that. They almost got us in Trottingham.”

“That wasn’t them, though,” Fluttershy said. “That was just some… I don’t know.”

“Third party,” Vinyl said.

Twilight looked at her for a second before going on. “Yeah, he was different. He was just a trumped-up attack dog.” She thought for a second.

“And who’s to say there won’t be someone just like him in Snowdrift?” Rainbow asked.

“If there is, we can deal with them like we did Whippoorwill.”

“Can we?”

“I can.”

“Has anyone here been to Snowdrift before?” Vinyl asked.

“None of us,” Rarity said. “And none of the others either, I think. Whooves hasn’t, right?”

“Does it matter?” Rainbow asked.

Rarity shrugged.

“I spent a lot of time there, when I was younger,” Vinyl said. “I can tell you about it.”

“There’s an entryway to Tartarus there, that much I know,” Twilight said.

“It’s a mile outside. Not as bad as ponies think.”

“How can that not be bad?” Fluttershy asked, coming closer.

“Never had any trouble with it when I was there. There are ponies in charge of watching it.”

“Secret agents,” Rainbow said.

“Could be,” Vinyl said. “I saw it once.”

“What’s that like?” Rarity asked.

“It was a long time ago. The most striking memory, I think, was the warmth. Snowdrift is really really cold, but the doorstep is actually comfortable. Feels kinda like Canterlot weather.”

“The doorstep?” Applejack asked.

“What we call the Tartarus gateway.”

“What does it look like?” Big Mac asked.

“Not much, honestly.”

“They’re just dark holes in the ground,” Twilight said. “Kind of dimensionless.”

“You’ve seen one?”

“A while ago. I’ve mostly read about them.”

“Ah, should’ve guessed.” Vinyl smiled. “It’s kinda like a big shadow over the ground.”

“Does it emit heat?” Rainbow asked.

“Think so. It’s probably warmer on the other side.”

“Well, that makes sense,” Applejack said. “Hell is hot.”

“Hopefully we won’t have to go near it,” Rarity said. “But…”

“It’s too perfect a hiding place for the last Element,” Twilight said. “It’ll be there, or at least nearby.”

“Which one are we missing?” Vinyl asked.

Twilight paused for a second; her use of the word “we” annoyed her. “Pinkie’s. The Element of Laughter.”

“I propose we glide over, locate it, and stop for just long enough to grab it,” Rarity said. “Then it’s off to the castle.”

“Wasn’t that the plan for this one too?” Vinyl asked.

“That’s always been the plan,” Rainbow said. “We still haven’t been able to do it right.”

“This one was better, at least,” Twilight said.

“How was this better?” Fluttershy asked.

“Shorter, then.”

“How much of it do you suppose is coincidence, and how much Discord?” Vinyl asked.

“Maybe fifty-fifty,” Rainbow said. “Some of it’s been monsters and stuff, and we know those don’t just show up. Right? Discord summons them.”

“They do just show up in Snowdrift, though,” Big Mac said. “That’s what Ah heard, that they come out of the gateway.”

“Again, never saw anything myself,” Vinyl said.

“What about the rest of the town?” Fluttershy asked.

“Mm, I like it well enough. Kinda like Ponyville, with its shops and stalls and things. Lots of small business there, lots of magic.”

“There are griffons there, right?” Twilight asked.

“Some.”

“Ah seem to recall hearin’ somethin’ ‘bout illegal magic there,” Applejack said. “Is that right?”

“‘Experimental,’ we call it.”

“Heh, maybe we should’ve taken you there to get you resurrected, AJ,” Rainbow said.

“Takin’ my first breaths in a freezing city right next-door to hell, yeah,” Applejack said. “What could be better?”

According to a team of Datura precogs, the battle with Discord was to be in four days’ time. The Ponyville caravan was making final adjustments, and another of Fleur’s teams was working inside the palace to get its bevy of magical defenses back up to standard. The angel from Roan was just crossing the northern edge of the Everfree forest, and would be arriving maybe a day early.

Meanwhile, Fleur and Colgate walked side-by-side through the opulence of Greater Canterlot. Once a ruin just the same as everywhere else, it had received the first of the princesses’ ministrations, and returned to former, expensive glory in a matter of months. Young ponies, mostly unicorns, filled the sidewalks in trendy clothes, many with bags swinging in clouds of magic, while many more filled the streets in noisy, shining cars. Colgate had never seen so many cars in one place, even in Manehattan.

Fleur wore a long, ragged-edged dress with silver trim and silver spirals decorating its deep blue fabric, which turned nearly transparent if the sun hit it right, giving her the effect of one encased in stained glass, and more resembled a chandelier twisted around her body when the sun didn’t. A necklace of pale red pearls clasped around her throat, a pastel underscore to the darker red eye shadow she wore, which gave her eyes a haunted, sleepless look that Colgate thought ridiculous, but Fleur insisted was in style. Her mane had been transformed into a single, braided whip of white and pink, tied at the very end with a black bow, a tiny, jeweled ladybug on one corner.

They had only to walk for ten minutes before stopping at a three-story, cathedrallike wood and glass building, its arched entrance engraved with the bold capitals and long, precise lowercases of Canterlot Public Library. Through wide windows, light poured in to turn the wood flooring into a slick, copper shellac, on which reflected the barest suggestions of the hundreds of arched sub-corridors, each stocked ceiling to floor with books. The smell of paper filled Colgate’s nose, and she was reminded of Twilight’s library in Ponyville. It seemed part of another life.

Their hoofsteps echoed faintly as they walked past tables mounded with tomes and encyclopedias, engraved pillars, and stout platforms on which stood marble and granite busts. Twilight’s own likeness stared seriously back as a dead-eyed statuette, around which was arranged a round table of reference materials. A lone unicorn frowned into a thick, burgundy book, occasionally pausing to scribble on a leaf of scrap paper.

Through the library’s heart, past a large bust of Princess Celestia, its horn tipped with gold to emulate the effect of magic being cast, Fleur took her to a nearby help desk, where sat an elderly, blue stallion in a rumpled polo shirt. He smiled warmly at Fleur’s approach.

“Well, there’s a face I wasn’t expecting to see today.” He laughed genially, his rickety voice putting Colgate on edge. “You’re looking as beautiful as ever, my lady.”

“Thank you, Peel.” She smiled and leaned on the counter. “I was hoping to show my new friend here some of your rarer research materials. Can you tell me what you have in right now?”

“Well, let me check,” he said, leaning under the counter for a second. “I have a couple old things on the origins of Equestria, if you’d like.”

“What is this?” Colgate asked.

“Those would be lovely,” Fleur said, telling Colgate with a single look to be quiet.

“This way, please,” the old pony said, hobbling out from his spot. He walked them to a corner off the main hallway, near the bathrooms. He gestured to a spot on the bookshelf opposite. “Enjoy, please. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Fleur waited for him to turn the corner before pulling out a book, seemingly at random, and paging through it.

“What in the world is going on?” Colgate asked again.

“Just wait,” Fleur said.

Colgate selected a book for herself and looked through it without interest. Fleur was confident that she would notice that the books did not match what the information pony had said they would find.

When the light changed, Fleur put her book away, and Colgate did the same.

“So?” Colgate asked.

Fleur walked silently back to the main corridor, which had been replaced with a long, stone alley, still lined with bookshelves, but cooler and lit with torches, not windows.

“I knew it.”

“You did, did you?”

“That this was some kinda Datura area, yeah. You know, you act kind of cagey when you’re about to introduce me to something new.”

Fleur smiled, but, inside, was not happy that she was so transparent. Who else might notice such a change in her? She resolved to try harder to act naturally with Colgate.

“Was all that some kind of code with him?”

“Yes, code phrases. There are a few others, for emergencies and things.” Fleur paused by a decorative suit of armor in a glass case. “This is one of the main Datura headquarters. We’re underground.”

“Any reason you wanted to bring me through the bullshit entrance?”

“I’m sorry?” Silently, she was again amazed at the unicorn’s incisive mind when she wasn’t ruining herself with pills.

“You’re not gonna hide a ‘main Datura headquarters’ under a library like this and have the only entrance go through the ponies working the help desk. Other ponies would notice, when large groups came in, vanished, and later came out.” Colgate tapped her head with a hoof. “I pay attention, you know.”

“Most important Daturas have access to teleportation sigils, it’s true,” Fleur said. “I wanted you to see the surface entrance, though.”

“Yes, why?”

“It’s interesting. Wouldn’t you agree? If we only teleported, you wouldn’t grasp the scope of our operation here. Plus, it’s good for you to know where it is, in case you need to come here someday on your own.”

“Hm.”

Fleur could tell she wasn’t satisfied, but didn’t care. “Today, you’re meeting one of my teams.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three. I’ve got a team of eliminators, a hazard crew, and a research team. You’re meeting my hazard ponies.”

Colgate said nothing as they entered a small, cozy room of velvet cushions and softly speaking ponies, who all quieted as they appeared. Above a gray brick fireplace were crossed two long pulse crystals, thin and sharp enough to double as swords, if one wanted. The firelight in their glassy bodies made them appear alive.

“Colgate, this is the hazard team.” Fleur indicated a bright purple unicorn with a wide muzzle and a swirled pink and white mane that reminded Colgate of taffy. “Desserts Dust, our toxicologist.”

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Desserts Dust said, jumping up to shake Colgate’s hoof.

“Silveretta,” she pointed to a small, light gray feathered griffon lounging closest to the fire, “is our memetics and cognition expert.”

Colgate’s eyes lingered on the griffon, who waved and smiled, but said nothing.

“Ink Pearl, our defensive mage.” A dark purple unicorn with a disheveled, blue mane nodded somberly.

Fleur lifted a crystal glass and filled it with water from a ewer on the central table. “And Chilly Clouds, our emergency medic.” The last unicorn was sickly pale green, with a wan, pastel blue mane and an unhappy face, frown lines so ingrained that she looked to be almost incapable of smiling. Colgate recognized her; she was the mare who had escorted her out of Ponyville and to Rouge’s house.

“It’s good to finally meet you,” Silveretta said in a voice that, to Colgate, seemed hardly different from a pony’s. “We’ve been told about you.”

“Yeah?” Colgate asked.

“I’m going to let you get acquainted while I speak with someone. I won’t be long,” Fleur said. She smiled and patted Colgate’s shoulder.

Colgate took a seat between Desserts Dust and Chilly Clouds, and they all looked at her. “I remember you,” she said to Chilly Clouds.

“That’s good,” Chilly said.

“Commander Fleur said you used to be with Commander Fancy Pants,” Ink Pearl said. “Why’d you get transferred?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Colgate said, taking an immediate dislike.

“It is strange, considering what we’ve heard about your recent drug problem.”

Colgate blinked, not immediately sure she had heard right.

“Ink, geez,” Desserts Dust said quietly.

“You’re mistaking me for someone else,” Colgate said.

Ink Pearl brushed her mane out of her eyes and looked imperiously back at her. “Minuette Colgate, originally from Manehattan, medic, recently—” She paused at a claw on her shoulder. Silveretta whispered something in her ear, and she relaxed. “We all know who you are,” she finally said.

Colgate frowned and thought back, recalling her brief imprisonment in the rehab center.

“It’s my business to know.”

Colgate stood up, aware of all the eyes on her.

“What I mean,” Ink continued quickly, holding up her hooves, “is that we’re all briefed on new team members, both on the good things and the bad things.”

“Fleur likes us to have a little foreknowledge,” Silveretta said. “Of course, most of us try to be tactful about certain things.”

Colgate glanced at Chilly Clouds, whose bloodless face was drawn. She looked like she might vomit.

“Why does she look like she’s seen a ghost?” Colgate asked, gesturing at Chilly without looking at her. Her eyes were still locked on Ink’s.

“She’s just shy,” Desserts Dust said.

Ink opened her mouth to speak again, but thought better of it, and sat back. “Introductions. Let’s go, we’re already five minutes behind. Desserts Dust, begin.”

“I want Silver to begin,” Desserts Dust said, sharing a grin with Silveretta. “She’s the better speaker.”

Ink rolled her eyes and turned to Silveretta, and Colgate noted that her expression did not change between them.

“Silveretta, or Silver,” the griffon said. “Clever name, huh? I’ve been a Datura for, one, two, six years. No, six and a half. I used to work in Appleloosa.”

“That’s where we met,” Desserts Dust said, lightly punching her shoulder.

“But, then I—wait, what rank are you?”

“She’s a standard,” Ink said.

Colgate glowered at Ink, who felt she could speak for her.

“Okay. Hey, I’m just one above you. I got my first team in Appleloosa, research and reconnaissance, but then they shipped me out to Canterlot a little before the Crumbling. It’s an incredible honor serving under Fleur.”

“It is?” Colgate asked.

“Ordinarily, Daturas like us would get stuck under someone lower-ranking than her,” Desserts Dust said.

“Fleur’s one of the Datura household names,” Silveretta said. “It’s her and five or six others, then a few higher than that, then Princess Luna.”

“Careful,” Ink said.

“Oh, she can know that at least.” Silveretta waved Ink off.

“Is it coincidence that you and Desserts Dust were put back together out here?” Colgate asked.

“Commander said you had a good eye for details,” Ink said.

“Maybe we should talk about what you already know about me.”

Ink just stared at her.

“Friendship is a very important part of teamwork,” Desserts Dust said hastily, staring first at Colgate and then at Ink. “So no, it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Memetics and cognition expert,” Colgate said, rolling the terms around her tongue, trying to keep her mind off the abrasive unicorn across from her. Escalation at the Datura meeting, she knew, would not go over well with Fleur. “I’ve heard of you ponies, but I’ve never worked with one.”

“Think of me as one part magic philosopher, one part counselor,” Silveretta said. “I work with information and how it moves and changes, and how it interacts with the mind. I do a lot of hypnosis, memory alteration, and things like that. I also instruct ponies on the metaphysical properties of magic, and how to use them.”

“On a hazard team? Shouldn’t you be on a cleanup team?”

“Have you heard of a cognitohazard?” Desserts Dust asked.

“There’s lots of bad stuff out there that can alter the way you think,” Silveretta said.

Colgate nodded and looked at Desserts Dust, who beamed and tipped an imaginary hat. “Five years in the Datura, also from Appleloosa, as I said. Silver’s in charge of the intangible poisons, and I’m in charge of the physical ones.”

“The toxicologist, Fleur said,” Colgate said.

“Yes ma’am, poisons, repellents, toxins, venoms, all of it. I worked in pharmacy for about five years before the Datura got to me.” He smiled wistfully. “I love chemistry. My first day in the lab was love at first sight. And it’s really not so hard to transition from that field into the Datura life, not like for some.”

“Don’t take him for an Appleloosa rube,” Silveretta said with a chuckle.

“Heh, well, not entirely,” Desserts Dust said. “You can take me for a rube on plenty of things, I’m sure. Heck, I was just lucky to find my calling early.”

“Do you bake as well?” Colgate asked.

“You mean my name? Changed it when I got my mark, yeah, I thought it’d be better than some chemical nonsense that only a few ponies would understand. I never got seriously into the confectionary arts.”

“Unfortunately,” Chilly Clouds added, earning a glance from Colgate.

Desserts Dust gave her a wink, then looked at Ink Pearl. “Go ahead, Ink. I can see you’re about ready to burst out of your seat.”

Ink straightened herself in her seat and fixed Colgate with a cold, businesslike stare. “My name is Ink Pearl, and I have been a Datura for thirty-four years. I’ve served under many commanders and in many cities, though I spent the majority of my time in Roan as a monitor on known supernatural entities. I am now this team’s defense mage; I keep everyone shielded in compromising situations. If need be, I am proficient with close combat weapons and some ranged weapons, but I do not generally like violence.” She threw a glare to Desserts Dust, who was nodding his head in time with her obviously rehearsed speech. “I am in a committed, heterosexual relationship and do not drink, do drugs, or attend parties. I am mildly racist against minotaurs and have a moderate phobia of heights, open water, and bees. I am allergic to latex and tree nuts, as well as sulfonamides, which are—”

“I know what they are,” Colgate said.

“Ah yes, medical background.” She paused, finding her place in her recital. “Before I was a Datura, I had an associate’s degree in magical engineering. I am much happier serving my country in this way, though.”

“You’re very concise.”

Ink Pearl looked around her at the corridor behind, sparsely populated with more Daturas, all of them, when Colgate looked as well, no different from the ponies she might have seen above ground. The lack of distinction from the ponies on the street still surprised her, sometimes.

“My name is Chilly Clouds,” the pale mare said quietly. “Um, I’m a Datura of twenty years, medic. I’ve always been a medic. I used to be a marine botanist.”

“Interesting,” Colgate said, and she meant it.

“I suppose so, yes.”

“You spent a lot of time with the changelings, didn’t you?” Desserts Dust asked.

“My first fifteen years of Datura life was with the changelings,” Chilly Clouds said. “Most of that was on the ocean.”

“Oh yeah,” Colgate said. “I forgot we’re a global organization.” She thought back to her Datura history lessons in Ponyville, and in Manehattan before that. She didn’t remember very much. “I thought pony-changeling relations weren’t very good.”

“They’re frosty,” Silveretta said.

“But there’s respect on each side, and mutual need,” Chilly Clouds said. “We do a lot of trading, mostly of goods.” A smirk crossed her face, and she turned as if embarrassed by her emotion. “Sometimes Daturas. Changelings make invaluable spies here.”

Colgate hid her shock. “Changeling spies in Equestria. It makes sense, I suppose, but I’d never thought about it.”

“We can’t tell you any names,” Ink Pearl said, “before you ask.”

“I wasn’t going to, Ink.”

“What about you, Colgate?” Silveretta asked.

“Me?” The impulse to lie shot to the front of her mind, but she resisted the urge. They already knew some things about her, but she had no way to know what they did and did not. “Well, you already know I’ve had drug problems. Thanks for that, by the way,” she said, glaring at Ink. “Before that, I was an orthopedic surgeon in Ponyville. I don’t really know how I got lumped into all this, but the Datura picked me up down there.”

“…Anything else?” Desserts Dust asked.

Colgate looked at him. “Nothing important.”

Again, all eyes at the table pinned Colgate, and she looked at each one in turn. She was certain that they were probing her for weakness, but couldn’t be sure whether it was on Fleur’s prior orders. She wanted to believe it was not so.

“Commander Fleur knows what she’s doing,” Ink eventually said. “If she says Colgate belongs on this team, then she belongs on this team.”

“Speaking of which,” Silveretta said, relief filling her smile. “Excellent timing, commander. We were just concluding our introductions.”

“I trust everything went well?” Fleur asked.

“Peachy keen,” Desserts Dust said.

“Excellent.” She looked at them all. “I just received confirmation that the area for tomorrow is cleared and ready for us. The mine shaft has a type six warning spell on it, not a type five.”

“Thank Celestia for small favors,” Silveretta said.

Colgate looked at Fleur, but didn’t receive a look back.

“Let’s meet at ten in the morning just outside. No cars except mine. Chilly, pack for blunt trauma and possible rearrangement, and bring the puncher. Ink, rest well, ‘cause we’ll need you on quarantine for most of the day.”

“Yes, commander,” Ink Pearl said, bowing her head.

“Desserts, anything new from reconnaissance?”

“It’s not getting bigger, at least,” Desserts Dust said. “But the area of effect is, due to accelerated erosion, so we know it’s only practical contact that’ll hurt us.”

“Will protective clothing help?”

“If it’s close enough to touch your protection, it’s too close.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. What’s the spill factor?”

“‘Bout an eight.”

“That’s not too bad,” Fleur said.

“We’ll want air tanks, though,” Desserts Dust continued. “It ain’t confirmed, but it might be rearranging the oxygen down there as well.”

“Shit.” She looked at Colgate for a second. “You’re positive it’s not spreading through the air?”

“I’m positive, commander. Practical contact only.”

Colgate simply watched, fascinated. Surrounded by unprofessionalism for so long, she had forgotten what capable Daturas looked like.

“It’s not a cognitohazard, commander,” Silveretta said meekly.

“That’s good,” Fleur said. “But I bet it could rearrange a brain pretty good, if it got the chance, hm?”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Desserts Dust said.

“Right, well, this is what the job’s all about. Oh, and Colgate will be with us tomorrow, shadowing.”

Ink and Chilly visibly soured.

“Don’t forget to bring your lunches. It’ll probably be a long day tomorrow. Questions?”

“Are we going to keep the operation entirely underground?” Ink asked.

“I’d rather we not, but it might come to that. I’ll bring a vacuum glass in case we need to turn this mine into a quarry. We all have our air tanks? And they’re all full?”

A chorus of “yes commander” replied.

“Good.” Fleur appraised her team. “Good. Dismissed.”

“Wait, commander, one more question,” Ink said.

“Yes?”

“Why is this pony shadowing us tomorrow?” She looked directly at Colgate as she asked.

“Because I want her to see professionals in action.”

Ink turned up her nose.

“Is that a problem?”

Ink’s face twisted slightly in the pain of indecision. “I do not think it’s appropriate for someone like her to be seeing this, given her, um, rank.”

“Especially with the puncher,” Chilly said.

“How do you know I’m not ranked higher than you?” Colgate asked. If Fleur were not standing beside her, her very presence a strange, cold calm, she felt she would surely approach the purple mare and escalate.

“Your objections are noted,” Fleur said, nodding politely.

“How do we know she won’t… well, how do we know she can handle this?” Ink asked. “We don’t even know her past. She refused to go into detail, you should know that, during the introductions. Colgate only said where she was from.”

Colgate looked at Fleur, her heart sinking. All the strength from the day before was seeping back out.

“That’s her right,” Fleur said.

“She has no right to withhold vital information from the team.”

“She’s not on the team.” Fleur’s voice was firm, and Ink’s stare immediately lost its edge. “She owes you nothing, Ink Pearl. I brought Colgate as a courtesy, so you would not have to wonder who she was when I brought her tomorrow. If she doesn’t want to go into depth about her past, she doesn’t have to. Is that clear?”

“Yes, commander,” Ink said, quieter.

“Chilly, you look upset.”

Chilly Clouds only bowed her head, blushing.

Fleur looked at Colgate. “I’m going to stay here, but you can get back home. Silveretta, please escort Colgate back to my house.”

When Silveretta said goodbye to Colgate outside Fleur’s house, Colgate went inside and locked the door, then went to the window to watch her leave. The griffon took off at a steep angle that Colgate could not follow from her spot at the bottom of the window, so she waited, crouched, until her legs had fallen asleep. Seeing nothing, she cracked the front door and watched the yard for ten minutes more. Then she went outside.

A quick look around proved that she was alone, something she did not completely believe. Her chest and stomach quivered with black fear, and her mind felt like it had been wrung of all of its memories, to be given room for every word, every expression, every look in the eyes from the conversation she had just had. The displaced memories, meanwhile, she could only wear around herself like a shawl. If any passer-by came along, she felt certain they would turn and jog away from her, disgusted by the life on display.

She couldn’t think coherently. Frustration and paranoia were once again at the forefront of her thoughts, twisting each moment with the other Daturas into a montage of unspoken accusations and insinuations. They were all sharing a laugh about her, she was positive, and probably scheming against her. Was it Ink Pearl’s job, she wondered, to give her a fighting chance, or to demoralize her?

When Silveretta had described her job to Colgate, she had used the word “counselor,” and looked directly at Colgate as she said it. Remembering the detail, Colgate realized with a shot of angry self-pity that she had missed its significance at the time. Not seeing the subtle suggestion that Silveretta believed she needed a counselor, Colgate had allowed herself to play the fool for them all.

Imagining the iceberg of meaning underneath their interactions, and everything that she had missed, was almost overwhelming. She wanted to sit down and stare into the sky until the sun burned her eyes out. She wanted to go for a swim, mixing dessert wine and painkillers as she had one remote afternoon. She wanted to get lost in the TV.

And yet, petrified as much by her own anxiety and indignation as by her reluctance to commit to any one idea, Colgate stood right where she was, outside Fleur’s house, a portrait of confusion on top of the despicable catalogue of choices to that hypothetical passer-by. She looked down the street, expecting to see them trotting over to meet her.

Before her hyperactive mind had fully settled into a well-worn groove of less specific negativity, a simple case of baseless depression, another familiar idea popped up, one to which she had not given serious thought in a few days.

She could find a pharmacy nearby, she was sure, and write herself a prescription. Barring that, she could find someone willing to purchase something for her, or simply get a case of over the counter pills herself and take all of them at once. The prospect of spending the next few hours face down on her bed carried with it a certain appeal; all she would have to worry about afterwards would be how large a glass of water to drink.

Thinking such, she stayed rooted to the spot. Her thoughts still refused to be ordered, and she didn’t like the idea of taking off before thinking things through fully, especially living with another Datura. She looked around again, in case someone was watching who wasn’t before.

“I’m a pathetic idiot if I let this stupid meeting get to me so much,” she thought. “It was just a meeting, after all. There’s no need to freak out.” She frowned at her own thoughts. “I don’t know that.”

But Fleur had stuck up for her, she thought. That, too, needed to be factored into the decision.

“I should just get it over with. I know how this ends, with me back in rehab, or worse. Well, not worse, just dead. But I know that’s where I’m going. May as well start now, while I’m unsupervised.”

Trapped again, though. She would be trapped in rehab, just as she was trapped in the Datura, and thinking more seriously about killing herself made her fast realize that she hadn’t the courage to free herself in such a drastic, permanent fashion.

She looked over at Fleur’s cat in the window, licking its paw.

Pills seemed the most likely option. Not ideal, but simply the most likely to happen. She knew she was weak, and she knew it was no better than she deserved, for letting herself be trapped so easily in the first place. Better, she thought, to backslide as much on her own terms as she possibly could.

And still, she didn’t move from where she stood. She was beginning to get hot in the sun, and wiped her brow, realizing then that her heart was hammering. The agony of indecision had largely slipped into her unnoticed.

“I can’t even figure out what I want.” Aware of her inability to decide her own fate, in what seemed such a critical time, enhanced and clarified as it was by the upwelling of emotion Fleur’s team had brought about, was merely another reason to hate herself, which she did all the way back into the house and to the bedroom, where she stared at the ceiling at the foot of her bed until Fleur came home.

She shared none of her thoughts the day before with Fleur, who was preoccupied with much larger concerns anyway. She had, in addition to overseeing the hazard team’s neutralization of the thing Colgate still hadn’t had explained, to coordinate some last-minute preparations for the battle, only three days away. She said she had a job for Colgate, potentially, but refused to go into detail.

In Fleur’s car, magically disguised as a tarnished, blue minivan, they slowly rumbled down into Lower Canterlot, through miles and miles of suburb that Colgate had never visited, and eventually out into the cracked wilderness. Along a fenced-off split, they drove, Fleur with her radio set, as usual, to static. No numbers station intruded.

“So shouldn’t you tell me at least a little about this thing?” Colgate finally asked, afraid to break the silence but more afraid to be unprepared. Her experience with the moon had shown her just how serious Datura work could become.

“Sorry, Colgate. Yes, I should be telling you. I have a lot on my mind right now.”

Colgate allowed her a minute more of quiet. “So…”

“The moon, that spell that chased you around.”

“Another one of those?”

“No, but they’re related. To pare it down to basics, those types of spells only occur naturally if something with a lot of magic gets sent through a teleportation enchantment. It ruptures the magic holding the teleportation spell together, and those moons, as you call them, are by-products. So…” She tapped her hooves on the steering wheel. “What we’re dealing with today is the thing that broke that portal in the first place.”

Colgate looked into the back seat thoughtfully. Suddenly, the air tanks seemed woefully insufficient. “What in Tartarus is it?”

“Exactly.”

“Wait, seriously? It’s from pony hell?"

“Tartarus isn’t pony hell,” Fleur mumbled. “It’s a kind of poison, or pollutant I suppose would be better. It… well, you’ll see it in action when we get there, but it has to do with phases of tangibility. If it touches something tangible, like a rock, or a car, or you or me, the affected area of that thing suddenly becomes less stable. It starts phasing in and out of our perception.”

Colgate thought for a moment. “What did this happen to touch?”

“An underground mineral deposit.” She looked askance at Colgate.

“And things phase in and out continuously, once touched?”

“I mean, they stop eventually, but—”

“So it’s like a localized earthquake out there, somewhere,” Colgate said. “There’s a ton of shifting rock beneath the ground.” She smacked the dashboard in excited understanding. “That’s why Desserts Dust was concerned about erosion. All the unaffected rock and stuff is still getting knocked around at the edge of the earthquake. And you want to do all the work above ground so we can look down on it, not be in with it.”

Fleur smiled. “You have the brains to be a good Datura, do you know that?”

Colgate shrugged and returned to looking out the window.

“I mean it. You’re great with details, and you put things together really well. We just need to clean up a few… quirks, and you’d be fit for most research or reconnaissance teams.”

“Is that why I’m shadowing? Are you vetting me?”

Fleur’s smile widened. “That is exactly what I’m doing.”

“Whether Ink Pearl likes it or not.”

Fleur laughed. “Yes, whether Ink likes it or not.”

Out in a sea of yellowing grass, the three ponies and griffon waited for Fleur’s arrival around a wide hexagon of warning tape. A cool wind furrowed the grass and Colgate’s fur when she stepped out of the car, and she regretted that she hadn’t brought a scarf or a light coat. In the city, it was relatively warm, but in the open fields just outside the suburbs, the temperature dropped. From where they stood, she could see a fat line of clouds marching southwards, due for Cloudsdale and dispersal across the southern half of the country after that.

“Do we have a seismometer already set up?” Fleur asked. Unlike the day before, she was dressed conservatively and without makeup.

“By the rocks,” Desserts Dust said. “Readings are holding steady at around a hundred thirty-five kilojoules.”

“Good. You feel it, Colgate?”

Colgate walked deeper into the field, where she did feel it. The ground trembled and pattered underneath her, sometimes right under her hooves and sometimes from afar. It put her in mind of a large, burrowing monster, restlessly traversing its small den just below.

“The mine shaft is secured, ma’am,” Chilly Clouds said. “They already put an airlock inside, it just needs to be activated.”

“Okay. Ink, come with me and let’s take a look at this. The rest of you, set up the vacuum glass.”

Colgate stayed where she was while Silveretta flew to Fleur’s car and grabbed a bundle of what looked like metal turnips from the back seat. She and Desserts Dust adjusted the dials and cranks on each while Chilly Clouds set to flattening a particularly long patch of grass. Layers of paper-thin wings unfurled from each turnip’s top to catch in the sun like thin crystals.

None of them spared Colgate a look as they set up their operation. She stood, mane flapping in her face, watching silently, wondering what the vacuum glass was and what she would discover below. Her worry and vexation from before returned slowly. That everyone should ignore her, when before they had been so intent, ate at her. They had already known about her drug problem, so they probably knew more than they were telling her. Perhaps, she thought, yesterday had been a test, and she had failed.

“Colgate, you can grab the air tanks out of Fleur’s car,” Desserts Dust said. “You’ll be needing them coming up here.”

Without acknowledgement, Colgate trudged back to the car and lifted the air tanks out, primitive yellow cylinders that looked disconcertingly similar to the kinds used to inflate balloons. Tied with rubber bands around them were plastic bags of tubing and face masks.

Fleur and Ink emerged from a spot in the grass far from the warning tape, the former chatting energetically, the latter only nodding. It sounded like more technical magical jargon to Colgate, who looked back at the air tanks with a sinking feeling. She wasn’t sure why, but she had expected something different.

“Looking good?” Fleur asked the Daturas working at her turnips.

“Almost there,” Silveretta said. “You wanted a total vacuum, you said?”

“That’s right,” Fleur said. “Ink, how are you feeling?”

“I’m ready when you need me,” Ink said.

“All right, good.” She walked back to Colgate, her taller form able to cut through the grass with ease and poise. “You excited? This is gonna be your first serious experience.”

“I thought the moon was my first serious experience.”

“Ehh, well, in a way it was. It was supposed to be more routine, but… you know. This is some properly serious stuff, though.”

“It’s already interesting.”

Fleur took the tubing out of its bag and started putting her tank together. “Do you know anything about vacuum safety?”

“Uhhh… I thought I was just shadowing you.”

“You can still do some digging,” Fleur said. “We’ll be digging for the first half of today, you know.” She looked at the taped field as Desserts Dust and Silveretta placed the turnips all around it, their wings expanding slowly like magical locusts waking up.

“These things are gonna create a vacuum, and we need to dig inside?” Colgate asked.

“That’s right.” She smirked, but quickly wiped it away.

“I thought vacuums were fatal.”

“They are, if you’re not protected. That’s why Ink is so important here, ‘cause she’s our shields.”

Colgate looked over at Ink Pearl, watching the vacuum glass set up.

“She’s completely trustworthy,” Fleur said quietly. “She’s had us in and out of vacuums, and worse things, more times than I can count.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.” She looked at Colgate for a second, as if trying to determine how much trust Colgate was willing to put in her judgment, and continued. “With her shields, it’ll be mostly the same as being out here, but there’s some differences. You won’t be able to hear anything, for starters. No sound in a vacuum.”

“So I’ll want to keep my head up, in case someone needs to tell me something.”

“Well, yes, here. In a larger vacuum, we’d use radios and earpieces.”

“What else?” She eyed Ink, then the field, trying to imagine it as a soundless landscape.

“You need to enter and exit the vacuum slowly, so you can decompress and recompress safely. The shield isn’t perfect, no one expects that, so there’ll be a little discomfort there. If you cross steadily, though, you’ll be fine.”

“How steadily?”

“A little slower than an average walking pace,” Fleur said.

“Ready, ma’am!” Silveretta called.

“Awesome! That was quick. Go get your tanks and come back to me.” She turned back to Colgate. “We’re only allowed to stay in for a half hour at a time, so we’ll dig in shifts.”

“Why is this necessary at all?” Colgate asked. Beneath, the ground still shook, but she had forgotten all about it.

“We don’t want whatever’s down there escaping into the air. All that shaking below, imagine that happening in our atmosphere.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Ohhhh yeah. They’re called skyquakes. I have a book on them, if you’d like. Ink, get my shield up.”

“Yes, commander,” Ink said, horn glowing a dark fuchsia and wrapping Fleur in a similarly colored shield. Ink held it for a moment as the shield wimpled and contracted. “Ready, commander.”

Fleur nodded and strolled to the field, her tank secured to her back by a pair of nylon straps. “Get outside the area of effect,” she called. “Vacuum on in three… two… one.”

She strapped the air mask to her face and pressed a button on one of the devices, and, as if choreographed, the wings of all extended even farther, magic crackling across their surfaces. The more they spread, the harder it was to tell the difference between glass and magic, until dozens of wing tips came to rest on a point high above the field to form a translucent dome, like a bead of water. Fleur walked back with a nod of satisfaction, a light breeze tousling her mane.

“Get Colgate set up while I grab some supplies.”

“I don’t want to go in there,” Colgate said, not thinking.

“It’s part of the job,” Fleur said, going through a large satchel of digging tools.

“Here, Colgate,” Silveretta said, unwrapping her tubing for her. “This bit just hooks into here, like this, and then this goes over your face.” Colgate levitated the air mask over her muzzle, reminding herself of all the times she had done the same with a surgeon’s mask. Silveretta helped her strap the tank to her back; it was an uncomfortable fit, and there was no cushioning.

“Now hold still,” Ink said, lighting her horn again as Colgate experimented with the air release valve.

She watched Ink cast her spell, heart sinking once more. She had only been distantly aware of vacuums, and aware that they were dangerous, before joining the Datura, her only exposure being through one or two movies she had seen in college. Having suddenly to venture into one, protected only by a thin skin of magic, and it not even hers, was enough to make the specter of abandonment again appear in her thoughts. Rouge may have been right to leave her to her fate that day, she thought.

“This will protect you from most of the dangers inside,” Ink said, “but you won’t be able to hear, and it’ll be cold. Don’t overexert yourself. If you need something, wave or send up a magical flare. We’ll all be watching from here.”

Colgate looked over at Fleur, walking with a pair of shovels and a twisting, four-pronged claw. “We’re not digging all the way down into that, are we? That’ll take all week.”

“We’re just prepping the site,” Fleur said, walking up.

“Your shield is ready,” Ink said.

Colgate looked back at the vacuum, contained by the thin, magical moth wings and darkened by Ink’s shield over her eyes. Her heart jumped inside, and she almost bolted there. She was able to anchor herself to the ground with the thought of finding a medicine bottle, a greater threat and a greater comfort.

“We’re scoring the ground,” Fleur said, “then Desserts will come in and plant some blasting caps. We want this plate of earth loose enough that I can lift it out in as few pieces as possible, like taking the top off a jack o’ lantern.”

Colgate didn’t say anything, though it was difficult for her to imagine Fleur doing something so impressive with her magic. So far, she had only seen her dispel some simple enchantments.

“Here, take this.” She dropped the claw at Colgate’s hooves. “Go around the rim and loosen the ground. I’ll be behind with the shovel.”

“Just in a big circle?”

“All the way around.”

Colgate fumbled the claw in her magic, its shape awkward and weighted strangely. The metal claw seemed to hold all the thing’s mass, while the short, fiberglass handle stuck out like a vestigial piece that might belong to another tool entirely.

“That’s the unicorn model,” Desserts Dust said. “We have a manual one if you’d like it. It’s longer.”

“I’m fine,” Colgate said, shoving it into the ground and twisting. A small furrow of earth hopped up at her knees.

“You ever do any gardening?” Silveretta asked.

Colgate ignored her, thinking it a taunt.

“Let’s get moving,” Fleur said, stepping back into the vacuum.

Colgate stood at the edge, the warning tape a blurry yellow line just inside the dome. She tried to think, to examine her options, to determine whether she truly had no choice but to entrust herself to the dark, disheveled unicorn behind her. She could just simply refuse, but would forfeit what little respect she had won from Fleur. She wasn’t sure whether that would matter, but supposed it might.

“Go on, it’s not that bad,” Silveretta said.

Colgate put a hoof through first, surprised to find that the vacuum glass was nothing more than a magical shield. Feeling nothing out of the ordinary, she slowly brought her face through the glass as well. For one brief moment, when her eyes were through but her ears were not completely, she could hear the outside world and see the empty, dreamlike expanse. Then, all sound was gone, and she stepped silently under the tape. She spoke, but nothing came out.

Fleur was using her shovel to flatten a small divot in the grass when Colgate moved up to her. She was surprised when she needed to touch Fleur’s back to get her attention, but quickly remembered that Fleur too couldn’t hear her rustle through the grass. She took her claw, pointed to a spot by the rim, and Fleur nodded.

With what felt like the real world just a few inches away, work began, turning up clods of earth and rags of grass in the empty, cold field.

Chilly Clouds and Silveretta had to finish scoring the ground, and, by the time they were done, the day had turned warm. Colgate sat on a folding chair and sipped from a bottle of water, her head cloudy and dazed, and Fleur sat beside her.

Desserts Dust, when it was his turn, entered the vacuum with a bag of small, metal caps that gently clinked against glass when he moved them.

“Explosive potions,” Silveretta said, pulling up a chair beside Colgate. “He’s gonna set them all around the rim, and then direct the charges down, so Fleur can lift the ground up.”

“Then the real work begins,” Chilly Clouds said.

“What are you going to do?” Colgate asked.

Fleur thought for a long time. “I can’t tell you.”

“That dangerous?”

“That dangerous,” Ink said, but looked down at Fleur’s stern glance.

“I’ll actually want you blind and deaf,” Fleur said. “It’s complicated, and you simply don’t have the experience to know about it.”

Colgate snorted.

“I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, if I were to tell you, Luna would have me out of the Datura within the day. Besides, they’d wipe your memory right after.”

“Is not knowing for my own good, or for yours?”

“Both. More yours than mine, I guess.” She held up a hoof. “Don’t worry, you’ll be well away from the vacuum when we do it. There will be no threat whatsoever to you.”

Colgate stared at her. She knew she would have no way to hold Fleur to that promise.

Desserts Dust emerged from the vacuum with a thin, yellow wire clasped in his mouth. He spat it out with a grin and set to inserting it into a plunger he had left for himself. When it was ready, everyone quieted and gathered around him. Colgate noticed that no one lowered their ears in preparation for the blast, as she had.

The charges went off in a ring of silent, loose soil geysers, and the earth rocked gently in a manner different from the continual shifting below. No dust swirled afterwards; all was again still in the space of a second.

“Isn’t it a fire hazard to have all this grass in there, with explosions going off?” Colgate asked.

“No oxygen to keep a fire going,” Desserts Dust said.

“Hm.” She remembered the next step, for Fleur to magically lift the disc of ground off the enchanted cave, but asked anyway. She wanted to hear Fleur say it again.

“I’m going to just grab the column of ground here and try to pull it off,” Fleur said. “If I can. If it looks like it won’t work, we might have to go in and do some more digging. Chilly, you and Silver will be on digging duty if we need to do more.”

Colgate could hear the disappointment in their voices when they agreed.

“All right, let’s see if we can get this on the first try,” Fleur said, approaching the vacuum and cracking her neck. Igniting her horn, she spaced her legs farther apart and grounded herself, a quirk Colgate had seen in many other unicorns. A more solid stance actually did nothing to help a user’s magic.

The Crumbling had happened half a year ago—a startling thing on its own for Colgate to realize—and she had thought, since then, that she would never again see anything of its like. She had been awoken that night and ran out into the streets in time to see a split form only a back yard away from her house. The image of the earth yawning would sometimes pop up in her mind, unexpected and fascinating, a memory so grotesque and absurd that it was almost a treasure.

She thought that she would witness no repetition, but, with Fleur’s magic circling inside the vacuum, she saw the scale of the undertaking, and realized a smaller repetition may only be minutes away.

At first, Colgate thought that the wind had somehow got through the vacuum’s edge as the grass swayed, but then noticed that it did so all together, and in a consistent direction. First one way, then the other, the dying grass swayed. Fleur, after what had appeared to be simple mental preparation, had bored through the field to a depth only she knew, grasped the entire resultant tower of earth, and twisted it, like coring an apple.

With a light sigh of exertion, Fleur bobbed her head once, and the first edge of topsoil lifted. With it, gradually and steadily, came more layers of ground, a cross-section of the field emerging. Colgate watched, awe contained, as the other end lifted similarly, making for one short moment a great bowl of the grassy meadow. Soon, other ends joined, and the bowl flattened again into a sheet, hovering first a foot, then three, then nearly seven, and still solid underneath. Fleur pulled and the tower of earth gained altitude, its bottom following smoothly with a gentle caress of magic. Its shadow engulfed them all, a giant splinter extracted from the skin of the world.

When at last the column tapered off, rocks and clods of dirt falling silently into the abyss, Fleur slowly rotated herself, dragging the tower with her. Colgate’s jaw hung open as the lone unicorn gracefully swung what amounted to a small hill out of the vacuum, selected a spot by some trees, and let it softly slough out of her magic. It remained mostly whole, but small avalanches appeared to melt off its sides, turning the sharp cylinder into a stick of butter in the sun. The edge of the new hole stared up into its dome with monstrous impossibility, something Colgate would have expected from Celestia or Luna, and no one else.

Fleur, panting and glistening with sweat, trotted to the edge and put her head to the vacuum’s edge. She stayed that way for several minutes, then walked back to the group.

“Looking good so far. Ink, go ahead and take off everyone’s shields for now. How does lunch time sound?”

“Music to my ears,” Desserts Dust said.

Colgate started. She had forgotten to bring something. In her imaginings of the mission, she had kept herself apart from the team, knowing she was just a shadow; the notion, without her notice, had extended to the need for a break and for food.

“What did you bring, Ink?” Chilly asked.

Colgate turned away and, with effort, pulled up some of the brittle grass. She could feel the judging eyes on her back, and flicked her tail petulantly in response.

“Here, have some of mine,” Silveretta said, nudging her with a claw. “Don’t worry, it’s vegetarian.”

Colgate looked at the half sandwich offered to her, and decided, after a moment, it would be wise to take it.

“How’s the battle looking?” Chilly asked.

“As good as it can,” Fleur said. “We’ve got a time and a location, and the Ponyville caravan is right on schedule. So’s the angel.”

“They flew it all the way from Roan,” Ink said. “How do we know it’ll be in working condition when it gets here?”

“They’re not like airships. They were built to last. As long as it’s not missing any crucial pieces, it’ll be just fine.” She smiled. “Discord won’t know what hit him.”

“That’s certain?” Desserts Dust asked.

“Luna told me not to worry about it.”

“What is this angel you keep talking about?” Colgate asked.

“Short version,” Silveretta said, “Is that the Elements of Harmony stumbled upon it somewhere in their travails, and now a splinter group of them is bringing it up to us to help with the fight.”

“Luna visited them personally, in Roan,” Fleur said. “Something important happened down there, but I don’t know the details.”

“Do the princesses visit the Elements often?” Colgate asked.

“Not that often, not that I know of.”

“Well, Princess Celestia is always elsewhere,” Chilly said.

“Yes, diplomacy. It’s on Luna to govern in her absence.”

“What about us?” Colgate asked. “What part do we play in the battle?”

“You, I’m still thinking about.”

Some final preparations made, and the sun creeping toward dusk, Fleur knew it was time to begin the procedure that would remove all the enchanted minerals from below. She talked Colgate into the car, where she tied a blindfold around her, then put on her earmuffs.

“Okay, let’s start,” she said briskly, trotting out to her team with a large flask of neon purple potion. “Chilly, you have the puncher?”

“Right here, ma’am,” Chilly Clouds said, producing a tall, metal crown.

“Good.” She eyed the device nervously, though she had used them before. Punchers, as they were known, were among the most dangerous tools the Datura had at its disposal, and Fleur carried a healthy sense of respect for the chain reaction she would soon unleash.

“You’re lifting everything?”

“That’s right.” She looked back at the car, half expecting Colgate to have released herself, but she sat where Fleur had left her, appearing placid. “How long do you think it’ll take to calibrate it?”

“Ten minutes should be fine,” Chilly said.

“And Ink, how long can you go for both of us without line of sight?”

“I can give you a half hour safely,” Ink said.

“Perfect.” Decades of working in the Datura and years as a model, her cover job, had taught her how to mask her emotions, which she often did for her team. Everything was not perfect; the risks she was taking were great, as they always were when a puncher was involved.

Made specially and specifically, punchers contained the highest density of magical energy of any piece of technology on the Gaia. Inside the pure tungsten casing were set one thousand twenty-four enchanted filaments, the largest measuring only an inch long and weighing two grams. Alone, they were useless, but if calibrated and enchanted correctly, magic would travel from filament to filament on both sides of the circle, propagating exponentially until colliding with itself on the other end. The reaction took a shade less than half a second, and the end result was a concentration of magic so intense that it would temporarily put a hole in the barrier between Gaia and Tartarus—for what reason, Fleur did not understand. Only the princesses had the answer to that particular question.

Ink put shields on Fleur and Chilly Clouds, as well as the puncher, and the two mares descended the mine shaft. It was good not to hear the earth continuously shifting, but disconcerting at the same time, still being able to feel it in the walls and the floor. Fleur knew some ponies who found the silence of vacuums to be relaxing, but she was not one of them.

They had to walk for five minutes before reaching the vestibule the reconnaissance team had dug for them, and there they waited, taking in the scene. Nothing was still in the cave. From above, waning sunlight cast the jagged clench of shifting rock in a soupy, yellow tinge that made the chaotic shadows nearly indistinguishable from the stone. Boulders pushed at one another while fingers of stone got jammed between heaving piles of looser earth, or broke off into splinters that would either settle or wink out of existence before hitting the ground. Occasionally, Fleur could see the liquid sheen on the toxin that had begun the shifting, something out of Tartarus that had been teleported to a spot underground. She wondered, not for the first time, whether the location had been random. It seemed that way.

Chilly poked her and pointed at the puncher, indicating that she was going to begin calibrating, and Fleur nodded in kind. After a few minutes of watching, Fleur set down her potion, ignited her horn, squared her shoulders, and braced herself. Lifting the field’s floor off the cave had been harder than what she was about to do, she knew, but it had tired her out, and she needed to take longer to gain her focus. The fact that everything was moving did not hinder her, it having taken a year of daily practice to master the technique that allowed her that luxury.

When she had properly formed a floor of repellent magic, and gotten all of the affected material on the correct side of it, Chilly poked her again and gestured at the puncher. A tiny, red light glowed on its front, indicating that it was armed. Few Daturas were even qualified to see the light when it was on.

Fleur nodded and pointed into the empty space below the soundless crash of moving stone. Chilly ducked in—she had only a couple feet of space, and not much time before her commander tired—and placed the puncher in a divot in the ground. She didn’t once look up at the magical ceiling, something Fleur noticed and appreciated, but also expected. The trust between the team and leader had to be absolute, and though Fleur wouldn’t have begrudged a glance at the calamity above, she was happier that Chilly had not found it necessary.

Fleur picked up the potion again, branching off a small splinter of magic to bring it up to eye level, and pointed at the mine shaft. Chilly retreated into the ebbing light, and Fleur watched the flicker and fade of solid stone through the purple liquid.

Chilly had calibrated the puncher to only be powerful enough for a five-minute gateway. She could have given Fleur an hour, or even a day, but Fleur wanted only a small window.

It was a semi-rare action for forcing objects back into Tartarus, known as flushing. The purple liquid inside her flask had been brewed in the Everfree Forest, and would burn off any oxygen it contacted. Inside the flask, uncorked, it was a long-lasting lantern, but shattered in the Tartarus air, it would produce a sudden, impermanent vacuum, which Fleur would use to suck the polluted stone out of the Gaia.

The puncher’s second light came on, the one-minute warning, and Fleur quickly threw a forcefield onto the floor where the puncher would summon its gateway. She could not have any matter from Tartarus rushing in as soon as the way was open, one piece of known physics that, as far as anyone could tell, remained the same on both sides of reality.

While Fleur was about to again earn her rank as commander on the fields of Tartarus, Ink Pearl was proving her worth as a defensive mage, keeping Fleur’s shield in place while also placing a slightly larger one over the vacuum dome, to ensure that only what they wanted would be flushed into the other world.

Fleur had seen more Tartarus gateways than she could remember, and had actually traveled through one eleven times in her life—at a certain point in the Datura ranking, one could not ascend without having spent at least a little time in Tartarus. She was no longer unnerved by the seamless band of shadow that encircled the floor; nor by the dimensionless, unreflective face of the doorway to hell. A small seep of water appeared at the portal’s edges. Orientation meant nothing across the membrane that separated Tartarus from the Gaia, but, from the water coming through the floor, she was able to guess that she would pop her head up from the ground on the other side.

She put her head through first and assessed the rain-swept plateau where she would emerge. Dark clouds rolled above, and she jumped when the first peal of thunder hit; she had forgotten that she would be able to hear on the other side. She had to close her eyes to emerge into the other world. Stepping forward and climbing through the gateway, while her head, already through, told her she was going to simply smash her face against the wet grass was not a complication she wanted.

Once through, she looked around again, seeing only the grass and a small pack of wild animals in the distance, apparently paying her no mind. She put her head back through into the Gaia tunnel and threw a shot of yellow light up through the rocks, a signal to her Daturas to take down the vacuum glass. After a few seconds, a similar beam of light danced down to her, the signal that she was clear.

Fleur sidestepped to the gateway’s rim, one eye on the wild animals in the distance, and judged how the stones would come through. On their own, they would simply fall into the gateway when she released the shield that kept them aloft, but the affected air would not; moreover, in the sudden gravity reversal, very little would remain in Tartarus for long. She needed a second vacuum, perfectly timed, to pull everything deeper, and allow herself the time to slip back in and set up yet another shield behind herself, shutting the stone out until the gateway sealed itself naturally—which it would in only a few minutes.

She waited for thirty seconds more to allow air to seep through Ink’s shield and back into the once vacuumed space on the Gaia, and so allow for a greater pressure differential between worlds. “Okay,” she said to herself, judging that she had waited long enough, and not wanting to accidentally stay too long and be trapped in Tartarus. It had not happened to her, but she had known ponies who were not so careful. “Three, two, one.”

She floated the potion to a space above the gateway and magically shattered it, at the same time releasing her hold on her magic across the gateway. Purple fire flashed and clawed in a wide, hot sphere all around her and the gateway, and she was once again at Ink’s mercy. Of all the times for Ink’s shield to fail, Fleur knew, this was the most likely; the sudden introduction of yet another vacuum was not easy to weather for even a skilled magician.

Stone quietly shot through the black hole, with it fine curls of dust and soil, gravel and the occasional glint of the malignant magical pollutant that had called them all out in the first place, golden in the gentle rainfall. The ring of purple fire dimmed as it expanded, its edges reaching out in a perfect sphere as it combusted upon less and less oxygen. Such potions were not made to combust perfectly, else their use could accidentally blow away the entire sky, but sometimes Fleur wished they had wider range.

As the last pieces of stone jumped out of the gateway, Fleur focused all of her magic on another flat shield on her side of the gateway and jumped through before the larger pieces of land could fall back down and block her egress.

She fell for a second one way, then half a second the other, and landed gracelessly on her own shield. She was momentarily balanced atop the umbral gateway, an unnerving image for her, and she wasted no time in getting back on solid ground. She slumped against a slick shelf of rock to catch her breath, her head pounding from all the magic she had used. Still, she could not dawdle, for she knew Ink would be close to her end as well.

She stepped only slightly into the mine shaft and watched the gateway shrink, its edges silently retracting until all that remained was a pebble of shadow, as the hole in the center of a record; and then that, too, was gone. She saw no motion inside the scraped well of stone and dark minerals, no flutter of dust or bounce of gravel on the floor. With a nod and a mental pat on the back for a job well done, Fleur returned to the surface. It was nearly sundown, and Fleur had Desserts Dust turn the vacuum glass back on to allow Ink a rest.

“Now we just have to sweep the area. I want specific attention paid to the air. Ink, how much more do you have in you?”

“I can keep Desserts shielded for another half hour if I have line of sight,” Ink said, sweat glistening on her brow and chest.

“Take five, and then let’s do it. I’d like to get out of here before dark.” She looked over at her car. “How is she?”

“Can’t sit still, but she hasn’t peeked,” Silveretta said. “You should probably—”

“I am, I am.” She went to the car and lifted off Colgate’s blindfold first, gave her a smile, then removed the earmuffs.

Colgate simply watched her.

“The sensitive part’s over now. We just need to clean up, then we’ll go.”

Colgate slowly climbed out of the car, her face not serene, but not angry either. She looked only uncomfortable.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Colgate looked at the other Daturas, then at the vacuum glass. “You and Ink did most of the work, looks like.”

“That’s right,” Ink said, looking at Chilly Clouds and giving her a sympathetic smile. Chilly, beside her, smiled back with a touch of color in her cheeks.

“What in Tartarus did you do?” Her horn lit for a second, then extinguished. She rubbed her head. “I felt it in the car too. There’s a lot of magic in the air right now.” She squinted at Fleur. “And yet only you two look tired.”

“Sorry, Colgate, I really can’t go into it. Maybe in a year or two.” She moved to pat Colgate’s back, but the blue unicorn looked at her with icy disinterest, and Fleur decided not to.

Cleanup took no more than twenty minutes. Desserts Dust, using his own observation and a pair of faintly glowing potions that Silveretta mixed up for them on the spot, went into the mine shaft with a light song on his lips. He reemerged with one fewer potion, and the second one a different color, with what resembled a gobbet of amber in the bottom.

“No residuals on the stone, and I got all the air,” he said, laying it at Fleur’s hooves. “Not too much.”

Fleur examined the potion. “Lock the vacuum glass and flag the area,” she said to Silveretta. “You did good, Desserts, but I think I’d actually like a micro-detail on this place. I’ll talk to Racing Stream as soon as I get home.”

“So are we done?” Desserts Dust asked hopefully.

Fleur sighed contentedly. “We are done, team. Let’s get back.”

Silveretta cheered lightly and hugged Chilly Clouds, still aglow with pride for operating the puncher.

“That’s it?” Colgate asked.

“That’s it. Hop in.”

“Commander, my report? When would you like it?” Ink asked.

“Don’t worry about it this time,” Fleur said.

Ink stiffened. “Yes, ma’am.” At that, she turned and grabbed her bag out of the pile they had left by the car, tossing each member’s out to them.

“Rest up, relax if you can, and I’ll see you Monday. I’ll have Rushing Stream bring back the vacuum glass.” She started the car and turned the radio up, though there was nothing to hear so far outside the city.