She was covered in blood, dirt, and sweat, walking in a daze through a field of poppies. Smoke weighed down the sky in a deep, hazy umbrella over her head, rising from flames as black as tar, guttering low in the wreckage. In her ears, she still heard the whistle of far-off magic and the insistent screams of wounded, and her mind was still crowded with questions. Her nurses had seemed to surround her at the end, and Chilly’s too, asking her question after question. No patient was ordinary, no situation standard, and her mind and memory, drawn past what she was sure was her limit, still ran on, reviewing her answers and questioning her decisions.

Mentally exhausted and emotionally drained, she got close enough to the airship crash to see that it was actually a confluence of five ships, all brought down and reduced mostly to cinders in a single, smoldering pile. The paint had long since fizzled away, leaving only glowing spears of charcoal to protrude over a great, ashen circle that buried the grass and flowers. She stepped over a corpse to get a better look, pushing its golden helmet away without thought.

She saw the metal husks of engines, the fan blades, an occasional gear or spring poking out of the ash. Snake tongues of flame still coursed over the soot, and her chest was warm where she stood over an outreaching delta of gray dust. On a closer look, she saw the nails and screws that held each board together, all reduced to black points in a smoking miasma.

Her magic drained, she could not move anything to help her observe, and so began a slow circle around the crash site. As she walked, one thing stood out to her: there was only one direction that all the wreckage faced. The ships had been traveling together, and they had fallen together. Together, the ruin formed a single stroke across Canterlot’s plains. What intrigued her more than that, though, was the lack of static in the air.

Unicorns, and occasional sensitive earth ponies or pegasi, could feel ambient magic in the air, even after it had been cast. The battlefield had only gone quiet an hour ago, and the air still thrummed with the remaining Datura airships; magic strong enough to bring down all five airships at once would not have faded so soon. She didn’t know what it meant, but it piqued a part of her mind, the same part that had saved her from a painful end at the watchpoint outside Grass Graves.

She was not surprised when she spotted a skull partially submerged in the ash, not then. It merely confirmed for her that she had seen all she needed to see, and she began the slow walk back to watchpoint thirty-six. The patients had all been teleported to hospitals in the city, but she still needed to help clean up.

The nurses and a few random volunteers, one of them a shell-shocked young mare who refused to remove her armor, were taking down the first of the tents when Colgate returned to camp. Chilly Clouds was inside the windmill, stacking body bags; she, too, was covered in blood. She had been amputating all day.

“Where are we putting the medical waste?” Colgate asked.

“We’re just putting it aside for now. Someone’s gonna bring a couple trucks from the city.”

Colgate nodded and went out into the sunset, ignoring the reverent looks she received from the ponies she passed. In her mind, the looks were unearned; she had not done anything special. She had simply provided answers that the nurses should have known already.

“Wait, Colgate,” Chilly said. “A moment, please.”

Colgate went back, staying at the back door. She still felt claustrophobic inside the windmill.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll need to find your own way back home. We can’t be seen with each other in the city.”

“Okay.” She had expected it, after Fleur’s warning in the parking lot.

“Remember what she told us. Just… stay out of trouble. Don’t do anything uncautious.”

“I’m aware of what I need to do.” She looked down at herself. Her hooves and legs were stained red, and some of the ash from the crash had gotten into her fur, carried by an astringent breeze. Over the windmill’s roof, the smoke still billowed, but lessening.

“All right. Hey, good job today. They told me you took over while I was busy.”

“It felt natural.” A lie; Colgate still felt strange, stiffly apart from herself, as if she had suddenly intruded into someone else’s life, and no one cared to notice.

“We look for those qualities.” Chilly hefted another body bag onto a stack, not using her magic, and Colgate went into the field, where she helped tear down tents until night fell and Celestia’s shield finally burnt out, putting the countryside into true darkness. From the watchpoint, the only sounds to be heard were the crickets, the ruffling of fabric, and the routine exchanges of directions and answers. When the trucks rumbled out of the city to pick up the medical waste, Colgate was right there, watching with her keen eyes that they should not miss a single syringe, a single flap of gauze—or a single limb.

Flitter wrote a single sentence on a piece of parchment, “I’m fine, will write tomorrow,” gave it to a sour-faced pegasus whose job it was to fly all the mail, and news of the battle, to Ponyville, and walked with her teammates to the nearest hotel. There was no question of payment; Windy Weathervane told the clerk that they were in the battle, and they were given a pair of rooms with neither complaint nor commendation. To Flitter, it meant little. She was happy to fall into a bed.

Her head pounded, her wings and back were sore from sitting and being jerked around all day, and her eyes felt like she had rubbed sand in them, but she lay down with a smile. She knew, guiltily, that she had had it easy in the battle. She and her companions had stayed in the air the whole time, had the majority of their jobs done for them before they even arrived, and had only to contend with a single sequence of true fear and uncertainty. She fell asleep next to one of the spotters, reliving her moment of courage and brilliance over and over.

The following morning, Windy treated them to an upscale breakfast on the edge of the mountain forest. From where they sat, they could see a deep scar in the rocks, from where a thin, but strong waterfall had once emptied from a stream above. Young trees were growing along its edges, and, as they sat and simply enjoyed their food and peace of mind, a falcon perched on a sharp stone. Flitter watched it as it preened for a moment.

“So where’s everyone going after this?” Windy Weathervane asked. “Any plans?”

“I’m supposed to meet with a contact in Hoofington,” one spotter said. Her name was Citrus Dawn, and she had barely touched her food. Her eyes were wide and expressive, but Flitter had never heard her say very much.

“Is that for the coal deposit thing?” Windy asked.

“Yeah. This pony says he knows where they’re coming from.”

“Good luck. I’m heading back to Snowdrift, myself, after I wrap up a couple things here.” He grinned and sipped his mimosa. “I’ve got a vacation saved up that I’m going to use. Well deserved, in my humble opinion.”

“Good for you,” the other spotter, Sand Star, said. She was the spotter with whom Flitter had shared the bed the night before, a heavier unicorn with a soft, blonde coat and a long, pumpkin-colored mane. It was obvious to Flitter that Windy thought her beautiful, and she didn’t blame him.

“Where are you off to, then?” Citrus Dawn asked.

“Applewood. Flood relief.”

They all nodded knowingly. “Flood relief” was the code phrase for “classified.”

“I’m staying here,” Flitter said. “Right? That’s still happening?”

“I need to get you set up still,” Windy Weathervane said. “I think I know who you’ll be working for, but nothing else.”

“So…”

“Hm?”

“So what’s gonna happen until I get settled? Where do I stay?”

“That’s what I’m working on, honey.” He accepted another mimosa and smiled again. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you high and dry, Flitter. One good turn deserves another, after all.”

Flitter blushed. She knew it was coming, the conversation about her performance in the lotus, but she felt embarrassed all the same. She wasn’t used to adulation.

“You’ll be in high demand in these next few weeks, I guarantee that. I’ve already got your letter of recommendation in my head; I just need to write it.”

“This is your first experience outside of Ponyville, isn’t it?” Sand Star asked.

“I guess so, yeah,” Flitter said.

“Congrats,” Citrus Dawn said. “You couldn’t ask to start off better. With Windy vouching for you, you really will have some good options coming down the pike.”

“Don’t let it get to your head, that’s all I ask,” Windy said. “Don’t lose perspective.”

“I won’t,” Flitter said. “To be honest, I think I’m too scared to let anything blind me like that.”

“There’s no need for fear,” Sand Star said, “just caution. You did a good job yesterday; keep doing a good job, and you’ll be golden.”

Flitter nodded, no less uncomfortable than when they had been about to praise her. “How do I know which assignment to take, when I’m given a choice?”

“Same way you’d choose anything else,” Citrus Dawn said.

“Though one thing I’d advise,” Windy said, “figure out what you want out of this as quick as you can. I didn’t, and I spent a lot of time running around, doing stuff I hated as a result.”

“Yes, absolutely. Are you the type of pony who wants a steady job, something she knows she can do well, and nothing else? Or are you looking for advancement? That’s the first thing I’d ask.”

“Well…” Flitter thought, realizing she had never once considered the idea of advancement with any seriousness. In her mind, she was still a nervous spa worker, and she wasn’t sure when that had changed. “I guess advancement?”

“Know for sure,” Windy said. “Some ponies can fast-track you to the most dizzying highs of the business, if you can take it. Some’ll let you travel the world. Others can set you up with a cozy job somewhere with minimal stress.”

“Logistics is a good branch for that,” Sand Star said.

“But not everyone’s cut out for that,” Windy said. “Or, who knows? There’s lots to choose from out there.”

“Plenty more than what we’ve said.”

“And who are you thinking of putting me with first?” Flitter asked.

“An old partner of mine. She’s tough, but she’ll take you places, if you want to follow. She’s a good pony,” Windy Weathervane said. He tapped his glass. “C’mon, ladies, eat up. This is a glorious day, let’s savor it.” He sighed. “Who’s for dessert after this?”

By sundown, Flitter had waved goodbye to both Sand Star and Citrus Dawn, leaving on different trains. She and Windy walked back to his carriage in the beginnings of a rain storm. Celestia had ordered it specially to cover the entire city, both to start washing away the trappings of war and to remind her ponies that there was still beauty in the world.

“Where are they going? The trains don’t go all the way to Hoofington and… wherever, do they?” Flitter asked.

“Back to Ponyville for now. There’s some cleanup to do there too. I don’t know if they’re helping, but they’ll at least catch a pair of airships there.”

“Cleanup. Right.”

“Your sister’s going to have her hooves full.” He smiled at her, but, seeing her expression, looked away. “Sorry. She’s doing well, I know. I… well, I like to keep my ponies informed as much as I can, as to family. Cloudchaser is doing just fine.”

“What about Limestone?”

“I’m sorry?”

“A friend of ours. She came from some farm out in the wilderness.” They got into the carriage, and Windy raised the divider after giving the pullers his directions. “She was sad to see me go, almost sadder than Cloud.”

“I’ll ask about her before I go. Flitter, speaking of family, I’ve found a place for you to stay until things can start up again.”

Flitter frowned. “Have things stopped?”

“So… here’s the deal. We weren’t the only team at work yesterday, which I’m sure is no surprise. We had support from below, and from the sidelines too. Medics and so on. They all had to go to ground after the battle, though, and some of them were pretty important ponies.”

“Is it bad?”

“No, no. Well, hopefully not. It’s quite routine, disbanding like this and having everyone disappear. Actually, it’s one of these invisible ponies I’m setting you up with. She… well, anyway, one of the things is that they’ve ordered total silence from the watchpoints until one of these ponies can do her job. It’s complicated, Flitter.”

“But I assume I’m going to be learning more soon, since—”

“In the next few days, I expect. But back to family. You have a cousin?”

“One, in Manehattan, yeah.”

He smiled, and they pulled onto a crowded street, where they waited for a knot of traffic to loosen. “What if I told you she’s moved out here?”

Flitter thought about it. Last she had heard, her cousin Wings was in Manehattan, making a living and getting along, keeping her head down and staying out of trouble. She wasn’t entirely surprised to hear that she had moved, but she hadn’t thought about her in a long time. They were never especially close.

“I guess it’ll be good to see her again,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve actually seen each other in… shoot, years. She’s not affiliated with us, right?”

“That’s right. She’s in the dark, and so she shall remain.”

“I can handle that,” Flitter said. “When did she move out here?”

Windy looked at her.

“I guess I should ask her.” She chuckled. “Sorry. It’ll be nice to get back in touch.”

They returned to the hotel, and Windy left a number for Flitter to call while he repaired to his room. Her cousin, Wings, did not answer the phone, and, for a second, Flitter didn’t recognize the other voice. It was Wings’ good friend, and, Flitter suspected, closeted marefriend, Jet. Flitter had met her once, but forgotten just how much Jet enjoyed talking. It was fifteen minutes before she could get a word in without sounding rude.

An hour later, they were driving again, heading out into the suburbs in a swaying carriage with a fabric roof that drummed with rainfall. Inside, Windy gave Flitter a sheaf of paper with a complicated, circular design.

“This is a communication sigil,” he said. “A design for one, anyway. Have you drawn one before?”

Flitter shook her head.

“Ink works best, but any sort of material will do, as long as it can hold an unbroken line. This is already designed to connect with my sigil. Just find a flat surface away from prying eyes, draw it, and wait a moment. If I’m there, I’ll complete the connection.”

“A magical telephone,” Flitter said.

“Sure, if you want to call it that. Contact me late tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have something for you.”

“About this mare I’m supposed to work with.”

“Yes, her. I need to try to find her first, though.” He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t think I thanked you for helping us yesterday.”

“You have.”

“Well, thank you again. I see my trust in you was not misplaced.”

Flitter only smiled as he shook her hoof. He didn’t need to know how little trust she had placed in herself. Then again, she thought, he had been around Daturas long enough; perhaps he would understand.

Life in Manehattan, Wings and Jet were eager to explain, had become so complicated and dangerous that most ponies who could move out were doing so. For them specifically, the impetus was when Lacey left. They hadn’t known it at the time, but, for all the ill she had brought them, she was the sole obstacle between their business and a heap of legal and extralegal trouble. Most of it, they figured, was from Strawberry, the scheming pegasus who had finally ousted Lacey from the big city.

“No one just gets to the level he’s at, in my mind,” Jet said. She and Wings sat on the couch, tails entwined, and Flitter sat to the side of their crackling hearth. Each pegasus had a warm glass of apple cider, generously spiked with a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey. “Canterlot’s finest,” Wings called it.

None of them were much for elaborate introductions. Flitter had simply knocked on the door, gotten a suspiciously close and lengthy hug from Jet, set down her one saddlebag, and that was it. Wings got the drinks, Jet set up the fire, and Flitter just watched, amazed that she had found a familiar face after so much Datura madness.

“We’ve thought it over,” Wings said. “Seems to me—”

“Us, rather.”

“Yeah, seems to us that he had a lot of friends in low places well before he got the power to match.”

“Why haven’t the princesses done anything?” Flitter asked, though she well knew why. They had bigger problems than a businesspony with a dirty record.

“Who can say?” Jet asked.

“Last I heard, he’s gone full mob-boss status,” Wings said.

“Not a don, or anything, mind.”

“Yeah, nothing like that, just a pony with deep pockets and a lot of criminal buddies.”
“I doubt he does anything himself.”

“Just gets his goombahs to do the dirty.”

“And plenty of deeds, Flitter, have been done.”

“Folks go real quiet when they start sniffing around in his business, if you catch me.”

“That’s why we high-tailed it.” Jet spoke with her wings flared out, and her coat was almost black; in the dark from outside, she seemed more shadow than pony. Next to Wings, a weak cream color, Flitter couldn’t help but think of Jet as some manner of beast the Datura might encounter, spreading itself over a civilian.

“See, we know a thing or two, and we sure didn’t want him to remember that fact,” Wings said.

“We’re like the only ponies left who know he’s at the bottom of this trash pile. Or would that be the top?”

“Either way, it’s a no-no.”

“As far as loose ends go, we’re about the loosest left.”

“Two laces that need to be tied up.”

“Unlike Lacey, who seems to have been tied quite nicely.”

“An irony we really should not lose in these trying times.”

“Agreed,” Jet said, nodding solemnly. “That nag got gotten good, if you ask me.”

“We’ve had a lot of time to consider it, in our journey from the big city to the other big city.”

“But what about you?” They both paused, and Flitter looked at Wings instinctively, expecting the conversation to keep volleying.

“Me?” Flitter asked.

“What brings you to C-lot?” Wings asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see you again, but… it’s a shock, cuz.”

“You can stay here as long as you need, by the way,” Jet said.

“Yes, absolutely. We have the room and all that.”

“But how’d you come here? Don’t you have a sister, too?”

“Cloudchaser,” Wings said. “How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Flitter said after a second, making sure they were going to let her answer. “She’s back in Ponyville still, running the spa.”

“Holy crap, little Cloudchaser, a business owner? Who’d’a thunk?”

“I ran it with her for a little, but I decided to move here.” Flitter took a long sip of her cider. She had rehearsed her reasons for leaving everything and showing up in Canterlot, but, with the good cider and good company, those reasons were dissolving. She coughed, accidentally drinking too much.

“Easy, ace,” Wings said. “Hey, is anyone hungry? I’m starving.”

“I could do a little food, I guess,” Jet said. “I think we’ve got a thing of instant tapioca powder in the fridge.”

“The fridge?”

“What?”

“You don’t keep dried goods in the fridge, Jet.” Wings frowned and sat up straight, adopting a tone of mock-severity. “They go in the cupboard, with all the other non-perishables.”

“We keep flour in the fridge.”

“Yeah, after it’s been opened, so it doesn’t get millipedes.”

“You like tapioca, Flitter?”

“Tapioca is a poor pony’s rice pudding, anyway.”

“You are so full of garbage, do you know that?”

“You can at least put some golden raisins in it.”

“Wings, there’s a damn good reason why I never use those golden raisins.” She held up her hooves. “See these? You think I’m gonna go to all that work to dig those teeny-weeny little things out of their box just for a snack?”

“They make boxes for the non-magical, you know.”

Jet laughed. “Yeah, well, tell that to past me.”

Wings smiled at Flitter. “Sorry, cuz. C’mon, Jet, we shouldn’t bicker in front of our guest.”

“I don’t mind,” Flitter said. “It’s good to hear regular conversation again.” She snapped her jaw shut, but neither pegasus appeared to read into her slip.

“Do you think they’re delivering pizza again?” Jet asked.

“I’d hold off a day or two,” Wings said.

“We can nip down to the grocery, I guess.”

“Too cold out.”

Flitter chuckled, and Wings blew her a raspberry.

“Manehattan gets cold too, you flake,” Jet said.

“That’s different. This is, like, a dry kind of cold. It sucks all the moisture out of my coat.”

“Aw, you’ll be fine.”

“Wait, who said I’m going?”

Jet laughed, and Wings bopped her on the head.

“We can go out,” Flitter said. “I saw a couple places open on my way over, and it’ll be warm inside. Oh. But, um, I don’t have any money.”

“We can spot you, cuz,” Jet said.

“She’s not your cousin,” Wings said.

“She’s close enough.” She eased off the couch, pushing her mug away from the table’s edge. “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”

“Lemme get a scarf at least,” Wings groused, going to the hallway closet. “Say, so, Flitter, how did you wind up here, anyway? I don’t think I got your story.”

Of the angel, there was no trace, save a crash site that was indistinguishable from all the others. Of Octavia, Pinkie, and Whooves, there was less. They had vanished into the city, Pinkie and Octavia into the midnight streets of Lower Canterlot, Whooves to parts unknown. He was absent when the battle was won.

On that night, with smoke blighting the sky behind and the Datura scrambling, unseen, to clean up the traces of its involvement all across town, the two sisters walked with heads reeling into a quiet pub and sat at the bar, not a bit between them. The bartender, a weathered mare with yellow eyes and too much makeup, looked Pinkie up and down first, then Octavia, then shrugged to herself and got two glasses. She poured their drinks, and, seeing Octavia look around for saddle bags that weren’t there—a habit, nothing more—said not to worry about it.

Octavia savored the drink. On the angel, they had had to ration water and food both, and, since dinner in the palace, they had had little of either. Their stores had been tossed into oblivion in the crash, along with her cello. Having something to wet her throat almost brought tears to her eyes, and she could see that it had a similar effect on Pinkie.

“We made it,” Pinkie said, prodding her glass with an unsteady hoof.

Octavia nodded. For the first time in weeks, she wanted to talk, to describe her feelings to someone, but she couldn’t. Elation moved through her, making her feel like she might float to the ceiling, but she could not put it into words she felt would do the feeling justice. They had left Roan close to a month ago, what felt more like two months, and had nothing but one another for company since. The Elements had forged ahead, the world had kept running, the battle had been fought. So certain had she been that she was to reach an end of some sort, Octavia had accepted it long before. That she could still sit in a bar with her sister, enjoying a draft, unscathed from Discord’s attack was simply too much. She was safe.

Octavia finished her glass and ordered another. Though her head felt empty, partially with relief and partially with the usual cocktail of insomnia and anxiety, she wanted to keep drinking. She wanted to celebrate.

She had not seen the battle’s end. Under the angel’s shadow, she had held off the approaching ponies for as long as she could, which was not long, before wavering in her spot and fainting where she stood. Pinkie had sprinted out of her cover by the river to drag Octavia back, where the two of them hid under a rise in the bank, freezing but safe. The angel fought on, obeying its master’s last order, even after its wings had all been rent away. Wingless, it rolled and flashed its spotlight eyes. Eyeless, it rolled. Dented and scarred, it juddered in the notch it had eroded for itself. Eventually, the army had left it alone, and it rested. It was at some point in the proceedings that Whooves left them, Pinkie suspected by creeping upriver. She figured he was in town somewhere, but had no particular interest in finding him. He had made his choice.

At dusk, Octavia awoke, her first impulse to hop up and guard against the enemies she thought still approached. Pinkie kept her distance for a minute, then told her that it was over, and the two of them had then simply sat on the river banks until sundown, silent, watching the smoke and the last of the airships vanish. Far away, they could see the mute fires of a work camp, but could make nothing of the details.

When Octavia had cleared her head, and had dried from her immersion in the static river, her suggestion had been to celebrate, the shocking and galvanizing opposite of what Pinkie had expected. She had anticipated tears, or rage, or some other extreme emotion; she had expected a release of whatever her stoic sister had kept bottled up in the interminable flight from Roan to Canterlot.

“We’ll get you a new cello once all this is done,” Pinkie said. “Don’t you worry about it, sis.”

“I hate to admit it, but I have not worried about it in a long time,” Octavia said.

“No?”

“No.”

Pinkie smiled, then giggled, and finished her beer. “Custom made, shiny finish, whatever wood you want, stained a nice dark red—what’s the color again?”

“You are thinking of port,” Octavia said. Her favorite color.

“Port, yeah! A little short, so you don’t have to reach as much to play. Then you’ll be ship-shape again, that’s what I say.”

Octavia thought of it for a moment, but did not smile. In her heart, she did not feel it was an idea worth entertaining.

Still, she lived.

“I am glad that you were with me,” she said at last. “I had my doubts.”

“I know, and I forgive you,” Pinkie said, patting her sister on the back. “You did a good job. As doc might say, you really thumped ‘em.”

At this, Octavia did smile. “I thought it impossible. I still do, in a way; it does not seem like something that actually happened.”

“I know what you mean. That’s how I felt when I found out I was an Element. Heck, sometimes I still feel weird about it. That’s life!”

“Life is strange sometimes.”

“But it goes on, with or without us.”

Octavia poked her glass, and Pinkie followed suit. “To life, then.”

“To life!”

By the time the Elements reached the battlefield, waiting until nightfall and watching to make sure they would not float into an ambush, there was plenty to see, but nothing that they were looking for. The ground was scarred from the edge of the suburbs to the beginnings of the river valley that marked their way to town, shot with debris and bodies. Pieces of armor added their hard shapes to the pocked relief, sometimes askew and empty on the ground, sometimes attached to their battered bearers. Spears stuck out of the ground in places, some draped with banners, some bare.

In places, the grass and scrub had been burned away. Some trees by the stream had been charred, or mostly charred, and the stream itself was redundantly dammed with a crude, leaking levee of packed dirt and what looked like an amalgam of airship parts. An engine lay in a teardrop divot by a pile of stones, not far from a pile of destroyed ships. They could see a sweltering red glow in its heart still, and the air smelled of smoke.

Amongst the wreckage and the ruin, they saw no sign of the angel. They had not expected to find it, but they had also not expected to be so without recourse upon inspecting the battlefield. They landed for want of anything else to do, and conferred in the moonlight.

“Ah say we get a hotel fer the night an’ strike up a search tomorrow,” Applejack said. “Ah’m bushed, an’ Ah know they will be too. Even if we did find ‘em tonight, we wouldn’t wanna head out right now.”

“They probably have business with the princesses anyway,” Rainbow added.

“That’s true,” Twilight said. “But we can’t let ourselves lose focus. We don’t know how close this was, after all; Discord might not need a full army again to push the city over. We need to turn around as soon as possible.”

“Where to, though?” Fluttershy asked. “Vanilla said that the Element wasn’t in Snowdrift.”

“Do we believe him?” Rarity asked.

“Not fer a second,” Applejack said.

“Ah say we should,” Big Mac said.

“Is that you talking, or the glamour?” Twilight asked.

“Me.” He rolled his eyes. “Ah think.”

“He’s treacherous,” Applejack said.

“Why would he steer us wrong?” Fluttershy asked. “He… well, he still wants what he wants. He said he can’t tell us where it is, but he can probably tell us where it isn’t.”

“That’s a habit he’s startin’ nice an’ late.”

“That’s a reach,” Vinyl said. “Personally, I trust him. Not a lot, but I trust him. He seems competent.”

“Suppose he is telling the truth,” Twilight said. “Where do we go, then? Where haven’t we gone?”

“Not to sound pessimistic, but there’s thousands of miles of unexplored wilderness out there. Seems like a good hiding place to me.”

“I’ve thought the same,” Fluttershy said. “But he hasn’t done that yet. It’s always towns or landmarks.”

“There was that one in the middle of the swamps,” Big Mac said.

“An’ that one at the bottom of the ocean,” Applejack added.

Vinyl’s horn lit up. “Bottom of the ocean?”

“Well, okay,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe not all towns, then. But he prefers them.”

“What towns haven’t you been to, besides Snowdrift?” Vinyl asked.

“As far as large towns go, none,” Twilight said. “Small towns, there’s hundreds.”

“Like Passage Town, outside Manehattan,” Rarity said.

“Exactly.” She watched an airship lift off from the mountaintop. “Let’s think. Have there been any commonalities between where he’s hidden the Elements?”

“There’s always some kind of trap waiting for us,” Rainbow said. “But I guess that doesn’t count, since we only discover it afterwards.”

“If it weren’t fer the swamp, Ah’d say it’s ponies needin’ our help,” Applejack said.

“But they’re everywhere,” Rarity said. Seeing a look from Vinyl, she blushed. “It’s true, dear. I’m not saying I don’t care.”

“Wait, maybe this isn’t as hard as we think it is,” Rainbow said. “Luna said she has ponies out there searching for these things, right? And we haven’t heard anything, which means they haven’t found it yet. So we need to go where they haven’t searched. That’s probably a smaller area.”

“Ah, good point,” Vinyl said. “Can you write a letter, asking her?”

“I can,” Twilight said. “To be honest, I’d rather talk to her about it. That and some other things.”

“Ah doubt she’ll be available to talk to us right after this battle,” Applejack said.

“She’ll make time for us,” Rainbow said.

“Will she?” Vinyl asked.

“If she can,” Twilight said.

“She usually does,” Fluttershy said. “Not to sound arrogant, of course.”

“I just had another thought,” Rarity said. “Um… well, it’s not exactly kind of me. It involves you, Big Mac.”

“Go ahead,” Big Mac said. “Ah can take it.”

“Do you think there’s a way we could, er, manipulate this glamour of yours? You know, to make you intuit where the last Element is?”

He sighed. “Mm.”

“I don’t think they work that way,” Twilight said. “And especially with him knowing about it, it’ll be hard.”

“They’re not things you can force, from what Ah’ve read,” Applejack said.

Twilight glanced at her. “Exactly. If we tried to force his magic into doing something it isn’t meant to do, it might not work, or it might backfire. We might just accidentally break it.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Big Mac said.

Vinyl looked at him and scooted a little closer.

“No, I think asking Princess Luna is the thing to do,” Twilight said. “But tomorrow. I’ll send a letter tonight, asking for some of her time, but let’s call it there. Applejack, do you want to get us into town?”

“If we stay in town, we’re gonna get mobbed,” Vinyl said. “Even though we had nothing to do with the battle, ponies will assume we did.”

“She’s right,” Rainbow said. “Probably.”

“Well, where do you propose we stay?” Twilight asked.

“There’s a tiny town just outside Canterlot,” Vinyl said. “Can’t see it from here. It’s called Grass Graves.”

“Oh, I know Grass Graves. My parents took me there for a weekend once, when I was young. We had a picnic on the hillside.”

“That sounds lovely,” Fluttershy said.

“It was. I didn’t know it was still around, to be honest.” She slapped Applejack on the back. “Let’s go.”

When they found Grass Graves, they had to land on a flat plain beside a lonesome train station and walk down to the tiny settlement. They crossed through most of the ghost town before finding a miniature hotel, in view of the cheerfully glowing city. From even their scant distance, there was no evidence that a fierce battle had taken place.

Twilight woke, with the sun, to a letter shooting out of her horn: Luna confirming an appointment time. They checked out, Vinyl bought a souvenir, and they got back to their ship. They had skipped the meager breakfast that their hotel offered, and were all irritable with hunger when they got into town. Finding a place to land their ship was difficult. The airship lots near the palace were full, most of them holding uniform rows of Canterlot army ships, and many more filled with large, colorful, personal airships for the wealthy. In the vast distance, they could see occasional specks of returning ships, ponies coming back from their vacations to miss the battle.

As Vinyl had predicted, they were mobbed when they appeared in public, and lunch was a rushed, uncomfortable ordeal, with amazed civilians gawking at them, asking questions, and requesting autographs. For once, Vinyl was the least important pony in the group she traveled with, and she ate her pasta salad with a wry sense of irony, happy that she was being left alone, but also a little jealous.

When it came time to meet the princess, they walked to the palace, across the massive drawbridge, and into the throne room, where a guard led them deeper into the building, up several flights of stairs, and into a soft, blue office. Princess Luna sat behind a desk, pouring over a map, with a cobweb of interconnected sigils glowing dimly in the room behind. She closed that door with a soft snap as she greeted them.

“I am not surprised that you’re here,” she said, “just that you’re here so soon.” She inclined her head a fraction of an inch. “Miss Scratch.”

Vinyl simply bowed, cheeks aflame and horn tipped with ivory light.

“How are you, Applejack?”

“A little world weary, yer highness, but good,” Applejack said. “Ready to see this thing through.”

“We have five of the Elements,” Twilight said, “so we’re not far from that goal. We were hoping to leave today, actually.”

“That is my intent for you as well,” Luna said. “It’s dangerous to have you all here. Discord has been repelled, and soundly; I expect he will be looking to take his revenge, and, to be blunt, I’d rather that not happen in my city.”

“We understand perfectly,” Rarity said. “We simply need to find our friends, and we’ll be off.”

“Octavia and Pinkie are in Lower Canterlot, at the Heraldic Harp Inn, on Third Street and Compassion.”

“That’s right at the edge,” Twilight said.

“Are they okay?” Fluttershy asked. “And what about Whooves?”

“They are both fine,” Luna said, folding a corner of her map back, trying to get it to lie down. “The doctor is not with them.”

Applejack gasped. “Is he—”

“Unharmed, just not with them. He slept in an empty canal off Fifteenth Street and Lullaby.”

“Guess we’ll pick him up too,” Rarity said.

“Your highness, we were hoping you could help us with the last Element,” Rainbow said.

Luna looked at her.

“We were going to go to Snowdrift,” Twilight said. “From Trottingham, but Vanilla Cream moved us. That’s how we ended up here instead.”

“He said it wasn’t in Snowdrift, though,” Fluttershy said.

“I do not know,” Luna said. “I have not heard anything concerning its whereabouts. If I had, you would know.”

“That’s what we figured,” Twilight said. “So we were hoping you could tell us where you have searched, so we could know to go somewhere else.”

“You’ve got ponies in every city, right?” Rainbow asked. “Secret agents? We’ve met a few here and there.”

“Rainbow, tact,” Rarity said, frowning at her.

“It’s fine,” Luna said. “I make no secret of it. Not to you, anyway.” She eyed Vinyl. “I can’t tell you every location I have them posted, but I can tell you where they’ve searched and come up empty.”

“That would be useful,” Twilight said.

Luna beckoned them come around to her desk, where she had the map flattened, the offending corner underneath an empty coffee mug. It was a large, detailed map of the entire Equestrian continent, every city and small village marked with a dot. “Give me one moment, please,” she said, going into the sigil room. “I’m going to contact someone who will be able to answer your questions better than I. One minute.” She closed the door behind her.

“I’m feeling confident,” Vinyl said. “Don’t know about y’all.”

“I’m not going to feel good about this until Discord is encased in stone,” Twilight said. “Close isn’t good enough.”

“I agree,” Rarity said. “There it is.” She pointed to the tiny dot next to Manehattan. “Passage Town, that’s where Fluttershy and I stayed. I wonder how they’re doing.”

“We haven’t spent much time in the corners,” Rainbow said. “Maybe it’s in one of those.”

“Not a bad idea,” Twilight said. “I doubt he’d put it in the northeast, that would be too close to where we got the Element of Honesty. The northwest is just mountains and valleys.” She scrutinized the map. “Oh, wow, they do have a couple towns up there. Look, Point Hope and Rolling Rocks. Can you imagine living there?”

“I’ve never been,” Vinyl said.

“Neither have I, but I’ve read that it’s not hospitable. They get hurricanes sometimes, free ones from way out in the ocean, and the whole area, like I said, is just mountains and valleys.”

“What do they farm, seaweed?” Rainbow asked.

“Could be.”

Applejack made a disgusted noise, and Big Mac nodded in agreement.

“Snowdrift is down there, north of all these little ones,” Rarity said.

“That’s where I was born,” Vinyl said. “Boom town, gold panning.”

“No kidding,” Applejack said. “Wow, Ah never took you fer a southerner.”

“But you did most of yer growin’ in Snowdrift,” Big Mac said.

“Not most, just a lot,” Vinyl said, horn glowing a soft pink.

“There’s Roan,” Rainbow said. “I’d rather avoid them.”

“I as well,” Rarity said. “And Trottingham too.”

“Look, this map isn’t too recent,” Twilight said. “It still shows Trottingham as a big city. No mention of The Mountain Zone.”

“Optimism in map form,” Applejack said. Rainbow looked at her, but didn’t speak.

The door opened, and Luna came out with a bright yellow sigil, aglow on a plank of wood that she set down on the other side of the desk. “They’re all here, yes, except for Octavia, Pinkie, and Whooves.”

The sigil pulsed softly, and a flat, feminine voice came back at them. “Hello, Elements.”

“This is my information handler,” Luna said. “She’s in charge of records and research for me. She’s the one to ask about where on my map our ponies have been, and where they still need to go. Her recall will be better than mine.”

“Where are you now?” Rainbow asked.

“She can’t tell you that.”

“You said you came from Trottingham,” the voice said. “You were moved?”

“We were moved to Ponyville, actually, and we just dropped by,” Twilight said.

“Okay.”

No one spoke, and Luna fluttered her map. “Well, ask what you want to ask.”

“Uh, so you don’t know where the Element of Laughter is,” Rarity said. “We were hoping you could help us know where it isn’t.”

“Well, you were just in Trottingham, so it’s not there,” the voice said. “Fluttershy, what’s the range of your Element-finding spell?”

“Oh, um…” Fluttershy thought. “I’m not actually sure. It’s big enough to check a town like Trottingham in one spell.”

“We’ll assume fifty square miles. From which direction did you approach Trottingham?”

“We came from Roan, same route as Octavia and Pinkie,” Twilight said. “We passed over Applewood as well, nothing there.”

“And we were told that it wasn’t in Snowdrift,” Rarity said.

“It is not.”

“We’d know if it was,” Luna said.

“It’s not in any major towns,” the voice said. “We have ponies searching out in the smaller towns now, and in the wilderness between towns, but progress is slow. It’s not near the glacier outside Snowdrift, and it’s not in any of the boom towns to the south.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Rarity said.

“We haven’t fully swept the mountains above, yet, but there’s nothing in the mines either. You might check south of those.”

“Called it,” Rainbow said. “It’s probably in one of the corners.”

“What about the southeast?” Fluttershy asked. “There’s hardly anything there.”

“There’s Roan on one side and Draught Castle on the north end,” Twilight said. “I don’t know which is worse.”

“The southeast would be a good hiding place,” the voice said. “We checked Moondrop two months ago, and there was nothing, but, as we all know, Elements sometimes move.”

“Is anyone monitoring the area?” Luna asked.

“Great Hardpan is still in charge there. She hasn’t experienced anything out of the ordinary since Discord came to Draught Castle.”

Luna thought. “Who’s stationed in Roan that we can afford to move? I don’t like the idea of her team being the only ponies out there. Discord might get some funny ideas.”

“Ice Cap is due to finish sweeping for displacements in three days. I can send her team to Moondrop.”

“Are there any precogs on the team?”

“No precogs, but they do have a postcog named Banana Bread.”

“Keep Banana Bread in Roan, and send the rest of the team to Moondrop,” Luna said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to monopolize your time. Go on.”

Twilight cleared her throat. “It’s fine, your highness. What about right near the castle? I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to keep the last Element close to him.”

“Also a possibility,” the voice said.

“If we head south by southeast, we can pass the castle on our way to this Moondrop place,” Applejack said.

“Have you checked the Everfree Forest?” Fluttershy asked.

“Yes. We finished sweeping the western border eight days ago.”

“How far past the border do you go?”

“Twenty miles.”

“That leaves a good little stretch of land between the forest and Manehattan,” Vinyl said.

“We already have ponies searching that area,” the voice said.

“Yes, don’t worry about that,” Luna said. “If we find an Element there, it’ll be quick—before you got there, if you tried.”

“The same goes for the area around Hoofington, probably,” Rarity said. “You are on the coast, too?”

“We don’t have as many ponies on the coast, but there are some, yes,” the voice said. “Right now, they’re sweeping east. They passed the town of Swaying Reeds just yesterday.”
Luna pointed to a dot on the map’s coastline, a town just west of a small chain of hills, not far from Equestria’s eastern border.

“What about everything north of Appleloosa?” Rainbow asked. “There’s nothing up there.”

“We swept the northwest corner three months ago,” the voice said. “There’s work to be done in Manehattan, but once that’s done, we’re going to send a team back to sweep the northwest again.”

“So that may be something,” Luna said.

“I would advise you stick to places where there are larger populations. If there wasn’t an Element three months ago, then it would have to have moved there in the intervening time. Ponies do not do much travel in the northwest section of Equestria.”

“Discord could have moved it himself,” Rarity said.

“He hasn’t been spotted there,” Luna said. “In fact, Canterlot is the farthest north he’s gone.”

“And Vanilla Cream has nothing to do with the Elements’ locations, from what we can tell,” the voice said.

“I think the desert around Moondrop is the most likely location,” Twilight said. “From what I’ve heard, I mean. Do ponies go down there a lot?”

“The ponies in Roan had been talking about building a road into the eastern deserts for a few years, before The Crumbling. Those plans would have been forgotten, but ponies do still go out there from time to time.”

“Discord knows we’re monitoring him,” Luna said, “so he’s not going to go get an Element to move it. If it moves, it’s because someone else found it. Like young Lacey Kisses, with the Element of Loyalty.”

Rarity sighed.

“I say we go south, to the desert,” Fluttershy said. “I think I agree, it sounds like a likely place.”

“I guess we’ll be right next to the castle, if we do find it,” Twilight said. “We can swing back up and knock him out.”

“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Luna said. “Of course, I’ll keep you informed if anything changes.”

“Yeah, who knows?” Rainbow asked. “You might find it tomorrow.”

“Let’s not get stars in our eyes,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Can I get a smaller version of that map?” Twilight asked. “I don’t know if ours has Moondrop on it.”

“Of course. I’ll talk to you later tonight, my friend,” Luna said.

“Yes, your highness,” the sigil said. “It was good to speak to you all.”

“Thanks for your help,” Twilight said. “And good luck, wherever you are.”

The sigil dimmed, and Luna put the board that carried it back. She grabbed a roll of parchment and gave it to Twilight.

“Get your friends and get moving, Twilight. I’ll send someone to restock your rations and fill your water tanks while you do. I don’t want to waste any time in finding this last Element.”

“Do you really think Discord’s gonna do something?” Rainbow asked. “How badly did you defeat him, anyway?”

Luna smirked. “He’ll be upset. Let’s leave it at that.”

The home of prospectors, archaeologists, geologists, and the occasional cartographer or criminal on the run, Moondrop was also overrun with a group of tourists who had been stuck there since The Crumbling, having selected their vacation with disastrous timing. Three families of city ponies had flown out, endured the cataclysm, lost their airships, and had to adapt to life on the frontier. No one in the town, its population ordinarily fluctuating between fifty and seventy ponies, had the resources or inclination to take care of the unfortunate tourists.

Moondrop had been settled on the unforgiving desert plains just southeast of a massive, millennium-old crater, its origins inflated into the myth that it was Nightmare Moon’s work, a parting shot as she was sent to her lunar prison. The story was untrue, but it brought in tourists every year, often in the summer, when the desert temperatures were almost warm. Moondrop was so far south that, in ordinary times, a pony could walk from there into the minotaur lands in the space of a week, if they didn’t freeze to death first.

Around the town, schisms from The Crumbling remained; no one had bothered to travel there and repair the ground. If they had, they would have been rebuffed; the bridges and canals were sturdy, the distances they spanned insignificant. One daring pegasus had strung his laundry line across a gap, he having unfortunately had his house divorced from his front yard in the disaster.

A single mountain broke the flat view from town, an unimpressive peak far to the north and about a hundred miles south of Discord’s castle. On clear days, the blue sky covered the windless plains for miles all around, and the town was as an islet adrift in endless emptiness. The cloud convoy had not yet reached their corner of Equestria, but the ponies there no longer needed it. For the first several months, drought had driven many of them into the desert in a desperate journey to Roan—which none completed—but soon, as the weather came unbound, rain naturally found its way back to the southeast. Rain, and a single tornado that menaced but did not touch the town.

Ramshackle, single-story buildings tilted and leaned with the cacti, their roofs broad and gently sloping to keep the rain well away from the outer walls, and instead falling, when it fell at all, into the shallow, adobe-lined gulleys that snaked all around the area, eventually converging at a wide cistern south of town. A black tarp had been strung over the well like a clam shell, to keep the water from evaporating. From a distance, it appeared as if a droplet of shadow had simply appeared beside an otherwise unassuming village, its only other notable feature that it existed at all.

To the north, then, lay the crater, called simply “the old hole.” A few ponies had made quarters for themselves on the crater’s interior edges, but they were not generally regarded as belonging to the same group that lived in Moondrop.

Onto the tiny town did Discord fall, the day after his catastrophic failure on the Canterlot battlefield. His attempts on the city had been, from least to most recent, genuine, a deliberate waste of time, and genuine. Angrily, he kicked up a dust devil and rode it all the way into the crater, sitting atop its funnel like a gloomy king on a throne, glowering at the world.

He hopped off and, making himself light as a feather, allowed the winds to break apart and blow him where they would. He landed in a patch of prickly pears, which he scattered with a snap of his talons and sent bouncing across the hardpan in a group, where they would, days later, fall all the way down to the planet and skim across the shallow ocean that had leaked in from the far north.

He sat down and took a deep breath of the hot, dry air. Failure had its place, just as victory, and he reminded himself that he had lost nothing he was not prepared to lose, save a great deal of dignity. Only fifty percent of his army had been actual, flesh and blood ponies, either glamoured or truly disloyal to their country. The rest had been magical constructs, slightly more powerful than illusions—powerful enough to harm, and not much else. The device he used to create them was safely in his chamber at Draught Castle.

No ground had been lost to the goddesses either. They owned Canterlot already, and had simply repelled him; he still controlled the south. Though watchful, they knew they must stay in their half of the country, or else present too tempting a target of the capital city.

He grinned falsely and laughed bitterly into the open sky. No one was there to see him pondering his position, to see the large demigod sitting on his rock unadorned, naked of enchantment and caution. The truth was, he had little chance of overtaking Canterlot with his current strategy. Three sieges and three failures, and though the Canterlot Guard was whittled ever thinner each time, other forces appeared to take its place. He had thought that he had effectively scattered Luna’s Datura; it never occurred that they might abandon their posts in other cities to amass such a crushing blow to his army. Even worse, he had no way to track them effectively. He could not stay in Canterlot, not within a thousand miles of it, and it was exactly there that so many of the most important Daturas were going to ground. They would slip out of sight, regroup under his radar, and then be prepared for the next thing, whatever it might be.

Then, the angel. He was not shocked to find that the Elements had organized some sort of counter to his attack—he had been more shocked that they had steered entirely clear of his second one, months ago—but doing so on the ancient, flying siege machine had tormented his thoughts since he saw it. It meant that they were resourceful, and that they were willing to get dirty with everyone else. For the last several months, they had trailed behind his plans, cleaning up and controlling his damage, but now they were getting bolder, and though he had seen to the angel’s destruction, he knew they would just find something else. It was a huge world, after all, and full of magic.

“I must face it,” he said, conjuring a duplicate of himself to stand on the other side of the rock. It paced before him, arms crossed impatiently. “I need to remove one of the princesses. Both, if possible.”

The duplicate scoffed.

“Yes, yes, I know, a fool’s errand. But one wouldn’t be so impossible, would it?”

“You tell me.”

He sneered at himself. “You’re no help, are you?” With a wave of his paw, he banished the illusion. Instead, he leaned over and faced the image of his own face, arranged in the dust. Its pebble eye turned over in a wink.

“Let’s explore the idea, though,” he said. “For giggles, if nothing else. Ah, I could use a good laugh. Which princess must it be? Celestia, right?”

“The night goddess cannot be caught,” the dust said. “Except maybe by herself.”

“And Celestia would turn me inside-out. She may say she doesn’t want to, to keep me complacent, but if I pushed her, she’d roast me. It would take forever, but she’d do it in the end.”

“Painful as it is to admit.”

“Destroying either of them is out of the question. They’re indestructible. Imprisonment, then.” He looked out to the horizon, at the crater’s edge, barely visible. “And that is possible.”

“You don’t have Elements of Harmony,” the dust said.

“Ach!” He swiped the design away and stood up, turning a wide circle and sweeping with his tail, as if to dispel the negativity that clouded his thoughts. “It’s too hot for this kind of madness anyway.” He conjured a rickshaw and lounged back in it, then, with a snap of his fingers, produced an imitation Twilight Sparkle. “Take me into the crater, beast.”

Even the illusion gave him a sour look as she plodded forward.

“Even supposing I was able to trap one of them, the other would have her sister free in no time, and then we’d be right back where we started. Worse, actually, because I’d have dropped the gauntlet.” He thought back to what he had said about Princess Luna catching herself. “Only they have the power to contain one another. Is that anything?”

“You could trick them into fighting each other,” the Twilight illusion said. “Leave yourself nothing at all to rule once the war ended.”

“Oh, yes, a truly delectable option,” Discord said, rolling his head back. “Although… who says the war has to be real?”

“I’m not real.”

He sighed. “I hate it when they say that. Breaks the immersion entirely.” With another wave of his talons, he replaced Twilight with Rarity, who moaned as she realized what she was doing.

“I heard what you two were saying. You know, darling, you’re quite good with illusions.” She cast a smile back at him. “Trick Celestia into fighting a war that doesn’t exist. That’ll keep her occupied, and all you have to do then is keep her contained, keep her from actually destroying the world.”

“Against whom?” he asked.

Rarity laughed. “Who do you think?”

He tapped his one protruding tooth with a claw. “Still leaves me Luna to worry about. How do I keep her from freeing her beloved sister? Oh, cur, stop here.” He got up and banished both illusions, pony and rickshaw, as one, and enjoyed a breeze that welled up from the crater. On the very edge, he spread his arms and leaned forward forty-five degrees, bracing himself on a cushion of magic.

“Roger roger,” he said, producing a colorful cannon around his body. “Ready to fire on your mark, captain.”

A second Discord stood behind, green goggles on his lopsided face and a giant, novelty lighter in his talons. It gave the true Discord a thumbs-up. “Adjusting ten degrees down, and… fire torpedo!”

True Discord shot out with a bang and a cloud of smoke, cackling as he sailed over the eroded, rocky slopes and into the wide expanse almost fifty feet off the ground. The sun and the air surrounded his smooth tumble as if the sky itself were celebrating his spectacular entrance. Ground turned over and under blue sky, and he kept his eyes open until the very end, where he skidded across the parched earth in a long, torn line. He rose, unharmed, and noticed a shack not far from where he had landed. A pair of ponies were ushering their young into the house, not once taking their fearful eyes off him.

“Applause! Applause!” he cried, but no clapping swelled around him. “Aw, heck, who needs it?” He kicked the gravel petulantly. “Who’s the one pony more powerful than Luna? Why, Celestia. Maybe,” he said, looking around. He jumped when he saw, not another image of himself, as he had intended, but Vanilla Cream, his eyes even deeper than the sky that had spiraled over Discord’s head moments before.

“I thought you might need me,” Vanilla said.

“To laugh at my failure, you mean?”

Vanilla only looked at him.

“Well, here I am.”

“I’m beyond pretending not to know what you mean.”

Discord crossed his arms.

Vanilla walked past Discord. “I heard your stream of consciousness, and it gave me an idea. You know, I can show you how to imprison Celestia, if you wish, and make her binding unimpeachable by the other one.”

“Can you?” Discord asked drily.

“All you need is a little of my magic.”

“A little?”

“A lot.”

“Uh huh. How do you know you can do it? How can you defeat the princess?”

“I’m not talking about defeating her, just keeping her trapped for a while.” He let a frown cross his face, the first show of emotion. “You trusted me with the dam, why not this?”

“This is much more complicated than that stupid machine.”

“They are both the implementation of magic that I have mastered.”

Discord snarled, throwing his arms wide and splaying his mismatched wings. “Apples and oranges, and you know it!”

Vanilla sat down. “What’s your idea, then?”

“It’s simple,” Discord said. “We… well, I…”

Vanilla watched.

“Okay, perhaps you’re right,” he said softly. “What’s your idea?”

“So you do want to listen to me.”

“Yes! Fine, yes, speak your piece. My ears,” he conjured a large, red cone and stuck it in one ear, “are wide open.”

“You’ll need to start small.”

“Just me?”

“I’ll show you how to use the magic, but I won’t do it for you, Discord. I fear the princesses just as much as you. Actually, more; I haven’t the claim to immortality that you do.”

“So you’ll keep quiet and let me take all the risk for myself, wonderful.”

“And all the reward. Remember, draconequus, that until you brought me here, I was content to stay in my world.” He tossed his black mane out of his eyes in a gesture that reminded Discord of his illusory Rarity. “I was quite happy to live and let live.”

“Are you still?”

“With your binding on me, of course not.” He gave Discord a flat stare. “Come, trust me. It’s in my best interests to see your task through.”

Discord chuckled. “Suppose I decided to keep you bound after my victory?”

“This inevitable victory of yours.”

He frowned his gloomy frown. “Yes, inevitable.”

“Well, should you choose to keep me bound past my time, there would be trouble. I have friends in Tartarus, Discord. They’d come looking for me sooner or later.”

“I didn’t know the power of friendship extended into the mirror world,” he said sardonically.

“Seems it’s everywhere where you aren’t. Did you have a troubled childhood?”

“Enough. Tell me how to imprison the sun goddess, and begone.”

“The biggest tyrants often have the smallest characters.”

“Vanilla Cream, as the one who summoned you into my service, I command you to tell me what you know of imprisoning the princess.”

Vanilla rolled his eyes. “You don’t need all the pomp, you know that. Any direct command will suffice. And, you didn’t specify when.”

“Do it now, then!”

“Ah, of course.” He bowed. “I should have guessed.”

“Wait. Can you promise me that I’ll be able to grasp the magic you show me? Able to use it, even?”

“If you’re able to bind me, I’m sure you can handle this.” He took a long look around the crater. “You can pick your own spot, of course, but I advise you set this up along the crater’s edge. You’ll have a ring of ponies all around, and if you can get Celestia in the middle, down here, that’ll be perfect. Spacing will be important once she’s added to the mix.”

Discord watched his eyes, trying and failing to imagine what sorcerer’s trick Vanilla Cream intended to teach him, to imprison the goddess.

Fleur’s cat greeted Colgate with an indignant meow when Colgate finally made it back. Having no money for a taxi and no friends to call on to give her a ride, she had ended up pleading her way onto a bus and then walking the last five miles, all the time thirsty, hungry, and still dazed. She had spent the night at the watchpoint, going to sleep on a pile of empty body bags as the dawn was beginning to show itself.

She nudged the cat out of the way and went to the kitchen, where she took a long, awkward drink from the kitchen sink. Her horn was sore still, but she could use it for simple tasks, like refilling the cat’s water and food dishes. Colgate watched it run to the spot under the counter as she set the dish down. If Fleur were to not return, she wondered, would she have to take care of her pet?

She had spoken to no one on her return trip, not even the other nurses, those few who remained into the following day. By that time, the tents had all been taken down, the medical supplies shipped away, the bodies sent elsewhere for a mass grave or a mass cremation.

As it had been in rehab, there was nothing to do. Colgate walked to the living room and turned on the TV. Resting her head on the couch cushion, she closed her eyes and flipped randomly, letting herself be soothed in the noise. She was surprised that no stations were out; then, reflecting, she was surprised that she was surprised. The city itself had, after all, not been touched.

She left it on the news and rose, going to the kitchen to find some food. All Fleur had that Colgate could prepare was some cereal and some bread, but there were no clean bowls. Colgate took the loaf of bread and a glass of tap water to the couch. The news was slow; one reporter sat at the desk and spoke with a pony out in the empty battlefield, but there apparently was no camera crew to show any footage. The reporter had to describe everything, and Colgate switched to a different news channel.

“—are told not to worry. Princess Celestia has assured us that the airships have all been captured and decommissioned, the magic holding them together dispelled.” A picture of one of the Datura airships was up on the screen, and Colgate nodded. She had wondered how the princesses would explain the Ponyville caravan, how they would explain the sudden appearance of an entire convoy of airships to come to the city’s aid, all operated by the organization no one was allowed to know about. It had always seemed a strangely overt gesture on the Datura’s part, Colgate thought.

But it seemed the princesses had found a plan. They had labelled the airships as dissenting units of Discord’s, a move that Colgate admired for its cleverness. At once, the excuse pardoned any suspicious air activity and made their enemy look like he was losing his grip. It also allowed for the Datura to break down the airships right in town without raising any fuss.

The stallion at the news desk spoke to someone out of frame for a second, his professional mien, clearly strained already, breaking into a look of true disappointment. “Closer to home, we have just received unfortunate news.” He was replaced by a scene of Fleur’s house. Police tape was strung across the front yard, a pair of flashing cars on the street. “We’ve just received news that local supermodel, Fleur dis Lee, was found dead in her house this morning. Police say they got a call from a neighbor, who wishes to remain anonymous, at seven-thirty this morning.”

Colgate sat up slowly, ears ringing. The police tape flapped on the screen, and ponies were consulting near one car; Fleur’s cat was even visible in the window. She went to the window herself and looked out as the TV kept speaking. There was nothing to see. All the tape had been taken down, the cars gone; no sign of anything.

She went back to the couch and sat down numbly as a police officer told the interviewer that the cause of death was most likely due to severe malnutrition. They had attempted to resuscitate her, but she was pronounced dead on the scene. They could not disclose the location of her body yet.

The cat jumped up on the couch and nuzzled Colgate.

“Okay,” Colgate said, turning off the TV and standing up, her bread forgotten. Her head was spinning, hot with shock and the first faint traces of anger. She had expected to find that Fleur was dead—had thought of little else on her journey home—but not in such a way. The news story was fake, something to convince those who knew Fleur only as a model, not a Datura, but Colgate knew that Fleur must still be dead, or at least unable to show herself. Otherwise, there would be no point in running the story.

She had assumed she would simply come to the conclusion herself, if three or four days passed and her commander did not appear. She had assumed she would get home, relax, lay low, as ceaselessly instructed, and endure a tightening noose of unknowing until finally giving up hope.

Instead, that hope had been wrested away. The last thing she saw before she had turned off the TV was a glossy picture of Fleur, smiling sensually in a cool gray dress. She walked to the kitchen and stood there.

“It might be another test,” she thought. “Would she go that far? Would she convince the whole city that she’s dead, just to put me through another test? Or am I wrong, and she’ll come back tonight, apologize for scaring me, and get on with life?” To Colgate, neither option seemed likely.

She went outside first and walked the front yard’s perimeter. In the street, she thought she could see tire tracks, but wasn’t sure. She had hoped to find a shred of yellow tape, but there was none.

It meant nothing. If Fleur was dead, she would be dead outside the city, in an anonymous pile of corpses. No evidence would be found at home anyway, but Colgate could not help her interest. Little conscious thought predicated her exploration of the house, her close examination of the floors and carpets for any sign of an expired pony. Any sort of fluid leakage, any dislodged or upset furniture that the supposedly malnourished Fleur might have tried to use to pull herself up after a fall—for even a moderate fall could be a death sentence for someone in such poor health. But there was nothing; the house was exactly as they had left it. Neither bed was made, neither laundry hamper empty, neither bathroom particularly or notably clean.

As Colgate sat down beside Fleur’s bed, she realized that it was the lack of evidence that reinforced what she knew all along. A couple Daturas, or unknowing ponies on the Datura payroll, could have staged the news story, but it would not require any actual investigation of the house. The police would go in for a time, then come out, and that would be it. The house appeared untouched because it was untouched.

She opened a drawer on the nightstand and pulled out a stack of checks and receipts. Still shocked, with the newspony’s voice repeating in her head, she looked through the papers without much thought. It was something to do with her hooves and her horn and her eyes. The cat came in and meowed at her again.

She went to the closet and went through the clothes. She had not seen Fleur’s wardrobe before, but something caught her attention. Between two dresses, there hung an empty hanger of sturdier construction than the others, perhaps to hold a heavy coat or a jacket. She went to the laundry and found the coat, thick sable with a broad lapel and a velvet interior. Her interest was piqued once more; it had not yet been cool enough in the day to wear such a coat. Fleur had been out at night, and recently.

Colgate could think of no reasons why Fleur might need to go out, except that whatever reason would need to be a secret, even from her. Colgate pawed through the laundry more, eventually assessing that it had been only a few days before the battle that Fleur had gone out. The coat was well buried under other things, but not on the bottom.

She thought back to the last few nights. Most likely, Fleur had gone out before they had gone into the countryside and used the vacuum glass. Preparations for the battle, she was sure.

“Wait.” She stopped moving and stared at the wall. The skull in the ashes, out on the battlefield. The day before, at the breakfast table, Fleur had told her about some ships that were to come from the suburbs, decoys, to explode when they hit the ground. Colgate remembered asking about them then, but not thinking much about Fleur’s unspecific answer. “Why would there be a skull in a decoy ship?” She looked at the cat on the bed, and the cat responded by licking its paw.

There were ponies aboard the decoy ships, which had come out of the suburbs, five of them, and her commander had mysteriously left a few nights before the battle. Colgate went back to the kitchen, an idea moving on the edge of her thoughts, but she was not willing to accept it. On an impulse, she pulled open the cupboard where they kept their miscellaneous papers: menus, lists of phone numbers, and maps. The papers were undisturbed. So Fleur had not gone somewhere for which she needed a map, Colgate thought. Not the type of pony, so far as she knew, who took night drives to clear her mind, Fleur had gone out for a secret, late-night meeting in a familiar location.

“But why a coat? If it was just a meeting, she wouldn’t need one. She’d be indoors the whole time.” “Okay, so she was outdoors, then,” she said. The idea was falling into place, and Colgate trotted back to the bedroom. If she was right, the evidence should be in Fleur’s shoes and dresses. A quick search through her clothes revealed the exact evidence that Colgate had wanted: grass and stickers, and a little mud on the bottom of her shoes. Fleur had been to the battlefield. She would have parked her car somewhere safe and walked to the meeting point.

She inspected the shoes a second time. The existence of mud on their bottoms allowed Colgate to dismiss the notion that they were simply from their mission in the field. That had been daytime, and dry; mud would only come from a moist lawn, and the nights were cool enough for dew to form.

Then she realized something else. That Fleur had not needed a map to get to the battlefield suggested that her night trip had not been an isolated incident.

The idea asserted itself with a force that made her sit down on, her horn dimly alight. Energy seemed to collect in her head, and the small vapors of anger that had appeared on the revelation of Fleur’s death grew. Fleur had visited the battlefield multiple times to prepare for something. Colgate knew that she had nothing to do with strategizing or predicting the movement of the armies; those jobs would belong to the Datura logistics department, which was another team entirely. The only thing that needed preparation from Fleur, and only Fleur, was the decoy. She had underlings who had prepared the watchpoints, she had told Colgate as much in the car.

And Fleur was married to Fancy Pants, who had been Colgate’s commander back when she was without potential, back when she was left to consort with the other irresponsible Daturas, Powder Rouge and her friends.

The useless Daturas lived in the suburbs. The decoys had come out of the suburbs, with ponies aboard. Fleur had said she would be working on the battlefield, in the thick of it, and had visited the area multiple times before.

“Hm.” It was all she could say. She nodded, filling up with thoughts and realizations. Were it not for Fleur’s intervention, Colgate would have been aboard one of those ships, perhaps gloating with Rouge about their luck at escaping the embattled city, then shot down and burned. The episode in Grass Graves, where she had spotted the trap at the watchpoint, was suddenly cast into a sharper, more sinister relief: a prelude to an eventuality, rather than an incident of strange, isolated intent. She realized that she had been marked for demise long before, back in Ponyville. Her attempt to sabotage their mission in the forest had decided her fate, and it appeared only luck had saved her. And through it all, she was none the wiser. Even up to the very end, she had thought she knew everything, and she was blinded the whole way. Fleur had known still more, and had chosen so well what she did and did not reveal that Colgate knew, even sitting where she was, overtaken with betrayed fury, that she would never have realized that she had been manipulated and controlled. She had been kept complacent and useful, never with enough insight to deduce the grand design she had somehow sidestepped. Only in Fleur’s death had she been able to piece together the shell of an idea.

It was, of course, almost perfect. The useless Daturas would need to be evacuated, and it would be easy to herd them onto ships; they had already proven their cowardice long before. The plan was brutally efficient, and easy to cover as an unfortunate casualty of the battle. Had they used citizens to inflate the numbers on the decoy ships, or were there enough useless Daturas that it was unnecessary?

“And it was almost me,” she thought, walking back to the kitchen. That was the worst of all. She had no idea what had kept her out of the jaws of fiery destruction, whether it was luck, an oversight, or a singular point of mercy, and she knew she would probably never have the answer. Though dead, Fleur still controlled Colgate; she had taken information with her, information no one but she could access.

At once, seeing the cat peacefully curled in a chair, the anger flowered and then wilted, becoming a block of ice instead. Colgate felt, momentarily, lucid and in control, much as she would in her days of pill taking. She opened the door and shooed the cat out, then went back to the kitchen and dug through the cupboards and drawers, searching for a bottle of cleaning solution and finding only a plunger and a packet of new sponges. She slammed the doors and went to the bathroom, where she pulled out a bottle of mouthwash.

Floating it beside her head while she worked, Colgate unplugged a lamp and took a kitchen knife to the cord, slowly untwining the two copper wires and leaving their ends exposed. A small arc of electricity flashed when she plugged it back in, and she left the broken cord on a hardback book pulled from the nearby shelf. It sparked weakly, and she, still holding the mouthwash, went to the kitchen and turned on the gas stove. The pilot light clicked at her, and she walked out, sure to close the door behind her. The cat was sniffing around in a neighbor’s yard.

“This is for you, Rouge,” Colgate said to no one, taking a short swig of the mouthwash. It burned in her throat and stomach, worse than any alcohol she had had, but she held it down, determined to finish the bottle. Where she was going, she did not know.

Colgate had picked up a pair of bits on the sidewalk, and used them both at a pay phone right before the on ramp of the freeway that would take her, eventually, back down to Lower Canterlot. She dialed the police and asked them to pick her up, saying she had escaped her own house and the abusive marefriend within. She needed somewhere to stay.

Then, after she hung up, she gulped down more mouthwash and threw the bottle over the wall, where it spilled the rest of its contents into a bush. Feeling like her insides were melting and her head had been replaced with an over-inflated balloon, she gave herself a black eye and tore a strip of fur off her side, hardly feeling either injury. She was considering rubbing some pebbles into her exposed skin to simulate scratching when the police car pulled up. She had no difficulty acting devastated and in no mood to talk. After all, she was those things.

They took her to the police station, where she first vomited in the bathroom, then drunkenly filled out a report, giving them the minimum of required information, pretending to be still in love with her abuser. No names, addresses, or phone numbers were provided, and, waiting for her paperwork to be processed, she realized where she wanted to go. She didn’t need to ask for a ride; an officer offered to drive her to a shelter. She said she had a different idea, and it was an idea that the officer was clearly heartened to hear.

It was a long drive, and Colgate just stared out the window, still drunk and still queasy, remembering her times with Fleur in a new light. All the training, the couple missions she had been a part of, even meeting the team, had been a façade made to keep her occupied. Until what, she wondered. Would Fleur have eventually found a way to dispose of her as well, or was the position legitimate? Colgate might, she imagined, have simply gone on and lived out her life, never knowing what had so narrowly passed her by. The thought of it frightened her more than the thought of crashing with the useless Daturas.

She thanked the officer and shook his hoof, and he wished her luck. She walked through the glass and wood doors and saw the same tiny, freckled earth pony who had greeted her last time, the same black slab of wall down which slithered a calming skin of water. She wavered where she stood, unsteady under the effects of the mouthwash, and checked herself in. The Solar Maiden Rehabilitation Facility was bustling with afternoon activities, and, as before, Colgate went straight to her room and turned on the TV.