With Princess Luna’s dark blotch of magic flaring and swooping inside the gaping crater, and heat as though from a second sun rising from the same, the Elements of Harmony, complete at last, walked with the guards and their quiet charge into town. Ponies watched them openly, some with unconcealed curiosity, others with what almost seemed fear, or concern. One guard had divested himself of his armor, his underclothes soaked with sweat, and the other only had his helmet off. He had removed a hair tie to let voluminous, tangerine locks spill across his back and flutter in the erratic wind.

They agreed to stay behind and do what they could to assist the remaining princess, and the Elements agreed to take Colgate and drop her off back home, or the next town, whichever came first. In the discussion, the unicorn in question made not a sound, watching the interlocutors impartially, only acknowledging that she had paid attention by following Twilight and the others back to the airship, where she went to the back and watched. Pinkie sat beside her, but quietly.

Before taking off, Applejack insisted on inspecting the ship for damage, incurred either by the teleportation or the ungraceful landing on the desert floor. While she dissociated into the ship, the others half-heartedly went about searching for obvious problems, but no one’s mind was on the task. They could tell Applejack’s wasn’t either when she raised them up into the sky without preamble. Once aloft, they took off at an odd angle, which Applejack explained was due to a pair of tilted propellers; nothing serious, at least for the time.

The black crater poured forth hot air as they approached, and they had to curve widely around it. They could see the imprisoning obelisk obscured by heat waves like a mirage, and Luna occasionally floating into view above the gateway like a darkling will o’ the wisp.

“How much hotter’s it gonna get?” Rainbow asked to no answer.

As the crater again melded with the landscape behind them, though, routines were able to return to normal. Rainbow flew alongside the ship, Pinkie tried to talk with Colgate, Applejack steered, and Rarity and Octavia found places to sulk while Twilight went below to occupy the room across the way from Vinyl and Big Mac’s, the two of them having a hushed conversation, the topic of which Twilight felt no need to guess.

She locked the door and opened a collection of books on the bed, wreathing them in the various implements she had purchased in Canterlot.

When she had all of her tools spread before her, she stopped to listen to the engine. They had put the crater behind them as easily as any other city, any other problem. She doffed her Element and held it out, studying her stretched reflection in the jewel and the golden headband. Her mane was longer, her coat unkempt and fluffy, her expression duller. Replacing it, she thought of their next task, their final movement: banging on Discord’s door and showing him that he could not undo them, for all his magic and clever ideas. Princess Celestia, without the aid of Discord’s magic, would be free of her prison, and would return to her throne before anyone could be the wiser. Everyone would simply think she was away on another diplomatic mission.

Twilight wondered whether Princess Luna would tell them that, if she could not free her sister.

“None of that matters right now, Twilight,” she thought to herself, refocusing on the task before her. Approaching Discord where he lived seemed the correct choice, of course, and the most heroic, the most fitting. It was for those reasons that Twilight imagined that he might not be there when they did arrive.

At seven o’ clock that night, Pinkie rattled Twilight’s door almost off its hinges with a buffet of energetic knocks, and Twilight snapped at her that she would be right out. Balanced on a narrow stand on the gently rocking floor, there smoked a bowl of water, and Twilight covered it with a long cloche that she had had to purchase at a kitchen supply store.

“Yes?” she asked, cracking the door.

“Dinner!” Pinkie said, bolting up the stairs and out of sight.

Twilight sighed and had a last look at her incomplete experiment before joining her crew mates on the deck, sitting in a rough circle beside the torch as she had every night before. This time, the circle had expanded to include one more. She shook hooves and introduced herself, and Colgate nodded politely.

“We’ve still got plenty in the way of food,” Applejack said, unpacking one of their bags for the flatware. “Hope you like dehydrated greens, Colgate.”

“It’s fine,” Colgate said. Her voice was guarded, but no one looked at her as they began eating.

“So how’d you get roped in with us, doc?” Rainbow asked.

“She was in the throne room with us, I remember,” Rarity said.

“Coincidence,” Applejack said, glancing at Big Mac, who gave no acknowledgement.

“I have no explanation,” Colgate said.

“She lives in Ponyville too,” Pinkie said to Octavia. “We were all friends back then. You know, back then.”

“It is good to meet you,” Octavia said.

Colgate nodded at her. “You’re going after Discord. I believe I heard that.”

“You won’t have to leave the ship when we do it,” Twilight said, looking also at Vinyl. “We wouldn’t ask that of you.”

“It bein’ so dangerous an’ all,” Applejack said.

Colgate nibbled on a withered spinach leaf.

“How is Ponyville, anyway?”

Colgate looked at her. “Not sure. Haven’t been.”

“Haven’t been? Why? Did you move?” Pinkie asked.

“Canterlot now.”

“I thought you had a nice little niche for yourself in Ponyville,” Twilight said.

Colgate thought for a moment. “I did, but they replaced me. Some new doctor showed up and started taking all my patients.”

“Ponies can just do that?” Pinkie asked.

“Nothing stopping him,” Colgate said. “He did a better job, they liked him better, so he stayed. The hospital only had the facilities and staff for one at the time, so I had to move. Either that or take a nursing job.”

“What a jerk,” Rainbow said.

“I bet you were able to find something good in Canterlot, though,” Fluttershy said. “Until… well…”

“That actually brings me to this point,” Twilight said. “I’ve been thinking, and I’d like us to get this done with.”

“Here here,” Rainbow said.

“How much distance do we have to cover?” Octavia asked.

“A lot,” Twilight said. “But I think I have a way we can get there faster. I haven’t tested it yet, but my figuring seems sound so far.”

“Yer not gonna teleport us, are ya?” Applejack asked.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to have to be something a little more roundabout.” She looked at Rainbow, who shrugged. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to need to do some work with you tonight.”

“Why me?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight eyed Colgate, still waiting at the circle’s edge, offering nothing. “I’ll explain later.”

“What about her?” Rarity asked.

“You said somethin’ earlier,” Big Mac said to Colgate. “Ah didn’t make much of it at the time, somethin’ like ‘Ah think Ah know what he was talkin’ ‘bout’.”

“Is it important?” Colgate asked.

“We have found, in our work, it’s best not to let strange things go unexplored,” Twilight said. “No matter how minor.”

“And you gotta admit, you are pretty strange,” Pinkie said.

“Pinkie,” Applejack said.

“For being here, I mean!”

“How’d you come to be in the palace at the same exact time as us?” Twilight asked. “Princess Celestia,” she glanced back toward Moondrop, just a smear of torch light behind them, “said she wasn’t expecting any other visitors.”

Colgate stared past her into the darkening sky, as if she might find an answer amid the scattered, waking stars. It was eight o’ clock; in her efforts to help her sister, Princess Luna had not started the night on time.

“We should have talked to the guards,” Octavia said. “They would have known.”

“They didn’t know anything,” Colgate said. “They just let me in.”

Twilight shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Guards don’t just let unscheduled ponies in.”

“Except us,” Applejack said.

“We’re special!” Pinkie said.

“I was scheduled, though,” Colgate said. “My driver told them to let me in, and they did.”

“Your driver?” Rainbow asked.

“Someone from the castle sent to pick her up?” Vinyl offered.

“Palace,” Twilight mumbled. “Colgate, why did you need to go to the palace so bad?”

“I didn’t,” Colgate said.

“This isn’t adding up,” Fluttershy said softly to Rarity, who studied Colgate intently.

“Can you explain a little more?” Twilight asked. “I’m sorry, I just feel like we’re hardly getting anything from you, and this might be important.”

“Who drove you?” Applejack asked. “This gal have a name?”

“Vanilla Cream,” Colgate said.

There was an intake of breath, and Rainbow uttered a muted curse.

“You’re sure you heard that name right?” Rarity asked.

“Reasonably.” She looked first at Rarity, then Applejack. “He just came out of nowhere.”

“Yes, he likes to do that.”

“Darlin’,” Applejack said, sighing, “this is gonna take a while to explain. Twi, you wanna get down there an’ do yer magic experiments while we hash this out?”

“How much are we going to tell her?” Rarity asked.

“Just who Vanilla is, fer now.”

“That leads to so much else, though,” Twilight said, running a hoof through her mane. “Answer any questions she has, but don’t volunteer what you don’t have to, I say.” She tapped Rainbow on the wing joint. “Come on, let’s get to it.”

“How much do you know about what’s going on between Discord and the Elements?” Vinyl asked Colgate.

Twilight and Rainbow went below to Twilight’s cabin, where she lifted the glass off her smoking water.

“Stinks, Twilight,” Rainbow said, flapping a wing once to clear the smoke that wafted over to her.

“I know. I should have bought some air fresheners earlier, but I didn’t think of it,” Twilight said. “Sorry, I was working on something else when Pinkie told me to come up.”

“What is it?”

“Come look, maybe I can show you.”

Rainbow joined her to look into the water, which had taken on an aubergine tinge, liquid amethyst cupped in its stone mortar. Twilight tapped the bowl’s lip twice and lit her horn gently, rimming the water with a halo of magic, lightening it. She tapped it once more, hard enough to send a ripple moving across its surface. In its wake, darkness spread, and small, tinny voices emanated into the room.

“What the heck is it?” Rainbow asked.

“It’s not supposed to look like that,” Twilight said, turning to consult one of her books. “This is supposed to be the deck, but I’ve got it… hold on.” She read for a minute, and Rainbow kept looking into the water, not wanting to just watch Twilight studying. “All right, I see what I did wrong. Anyway, that’s the sky above the deck. I wanted us to look down on the others, but at least we can hear them.”

“Awesome.” Rainbow lowered her face over the water until her muzzle was almost touching it. “We gonna use this to spy on Discord?”

“That’s the idea,” Twilight said. “That’ll be a lot harder than this. This,” she shook the water, erasing the magical image it showed, “was practice. Much needed practice, and not what I want you for right now.”

“All right, lay it on me. What’s the plan?”

“You have that weather magic Vanilla gave you some time ago. Are you any good with it?”

“Uhhh, define ‘good’.”

“Functional. I think I’ve found a use for it.”

Rainbow scoffed.

“Can you summon wind?”

Rainbow flapped her wings in Twilight’s direction.

“Magical wind, Dash. It needs to be magic.”

Above, Pinkie was cheering about something; they could hear her hooves stomping about the deck, and Applejack’s laughter.

“I can’t believe how lightly they’re taking this.”

“We’re gonna go blow up Discord in, like, a week,” Rainbow said. “Less, if whatever you have in mind works.”

“I hope it does.”

“Yeah. Hey Twilight? Seriously, what the heck was that, earlier?”

Twilight levitated a book to herself and began to page through it. “My little display?”

“More like you totally unloading on Vinyl like that.”

“You were on my side, I recall.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Twilight thought. “I’d rather continue not talking about it, actually.”

“No, nuh-uh, not with us using these things so soon,” she said, tapping her own Element. “What’s the deal?”

“Rainbow, this is gonna take a while to explain,”

“That’s fine. They’ll be a while, we’ll be a while, everypony’ll be up for quite a while yet. I’m not tired.”

“Hm.”

“I get that you were mad,” she started.

“I thought it was a bad idea as soon as we left Furnace Creek,” Twilight said. “I didn’t say anything because we were already committed, I figured I was just getting cold hooves, but once I figured it out, it got even worse.”

“No arguments there, but why the explosion?”

Twilight scowled and again looked to her book.

“Is it Vinyl?”

Twilight chewed her lip, a deep frown pressed onto her face. “I don’t like her. I don’t like her attitude, I don’t like how she’s always sucking up to Big Mac and having all these private conversations with him. She’s so sanctimonious and so… I don’t know how to put it.”

“She just wants to fit in,” Rainbow said.

“By activating the curse before we had a chance to figure out what to do? Great job of fitting in.”

“Okay, I can’t speak for that, but I know one thing. She looks up to you, Twilight.”

“Sure.”

“Do I gotta say it?”

Twilight smiled, masking true pleasure with lines of bitterness. She knew what was coming.

“We all look up to you, ‘cause you’re the leader. C’mon, you know you are.”

“You look up to Octavia.”

“Yeah, back when she was kinda nice, and not all weird.”

“She’s always been weird.”

Rainbow breathed out through her nose and regarded Twilight impatiently.

“Fine, I know,” Twilight said. “I’ve known all that for a while. Since Roan, I suppose.”

“Is it ‘cause Vinyl doesn’t recognize your leadership?”

“That would be petty of me.” So spoken, she glanced back at her book, no longer holding in mind what she actually needed from its pages. “And maybe it is,” she added softly.

Her thoughts were so crowded with worries that she did not register the strange surprise she otherwise would have when Rainbow sat on the bed beside her. “Okay, well, what are we gonna do about it?”

“I don’t think we can get rid of her.”

“And I don’t think we should. Other than you, she’s taken with us all pretty good.”

“Then I’ll just deal with it.”

“That’s not gonna be good, you know.”

“Of course I know that. Of course I know.” She closed her book and floated it to the pile of others. “I was so mad because I explained why going here was a bad idea, but then I turned around with everyone else and marched up to the palace all the same. Then we went in and Vinyl did what she did, and the rest… it was so preventable, that’s what really gets me. All I had to do was put my hoof down and say ‘No, I’m not going up there,’ and our timer would have run out, and then that would be that. I would have looked like a jerk, but at least Princess Celestia would be safe.”

“Maybe,” Rainbow said slowly. “We also wouldn’t have the new girl.”

“So?”

“Seriously? You don’t see it?” She chuckled. “Twi, she was there ‘cause that Vanilla brought her there, the same pony-thing who engineered Big Mac’s glamour. Isn’t it obvious? That Colgate is the one we were doing this for. Vanilla was influencing us from both sides of the glamour.”

Twilight thought, and she had to concede. Vanilla would not have brought her there for no purpose.

“I mean… for all we know, maybe Celestia being imprisoned is gonna be good in the end too. We don’t know, you know? Lots can happen between now and then. I hope it doesn’t, but, you know.”

“I do know.”

“If it makes you feel better, I do still think Vinyl crossed the line. It wasn’t her choice to make.”

“Thanks, Rainbow.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.” She forced a smile, embarrassed at the very real relief inside her that she had not cause any irreparable damage, at least not with one of her friends.

“You feel better?”

“A little.” She paused, considering her words. “I had a bit of a flashback earlier.”

“Yeah, we, uh, could tell.”

“Hm. Figures.”

“It looked better than they used to.”

“Thank goodness,” Twilight said. “Here, let’s get to this. It actually is pretty complicated.”

Rainbow hopped off the bed and looked back into the water, rendered ordinary by Twilight’s touch. “I’m ready. And yeah, I can make magical wind. It’s not great, though.”

“It doesn’t need to be great, it just needs to be consistent.”

By midnight, everyone was still wide awake, despite the length of their day. They were high above a sere plane of variegated grass and dirt, the only signs to mark their movement the veins of open space that marbled the southern countryside. In the cloudless sky, it was cold enough for them to see their breath, and when wind blew, wings contracted and tails curled up against flanks. Colgate seemed to have understood what was told her of Vanilla Cream and his relationship with the Elements and with Discord, but she still held her own counsel, watching from the ship’s back with soft, emotionless eyes.

Twilight’s plan began with a large sigil on the ship’s poop, painstakingly drawn with a lantern held at her side by Fluttershy, who watched each brushstroke with fascination, wanting to ask but not wanting to break her friend’s obvious concentration. The sigil, Twilight explained, grabbing a circular charm she had fashioned from an old life preserver and spare silverware and placing it in the middle, was to establish a neutral pocket of air just off the ship’s back that would travel with them, formless and impervious to wind.

“What possible good is that?” Applejack asked.

“One second,” Twilight said, activating the sigil and stepping back. Its ghostly glow threw their shadows out into the night for an instant as it sizzled and burned with soft magic, until the light had dwindled to remain around Twilght’s strange charm. She grabbed it and placed it on Rainbow’s head, and Pinkie laughed.

“Dashie! No way! That looks awesome!” Pinkie shrieked. “Let me!”

“Don’t touch that,” Twilight said. “That’s for Rainbow only.”

“Care to tell us what it is?” Applejack asked.

“It’s a sigil hat,” Rainbow said, taking to the air.

“It imprints its own design onto the surrounding air,” Twilight said. “Which is why we need to keep the same bubble of air behind us. Otherwise, each iteration of the sigil will just blow away as we float along.”

“Oh, so this way, you’ll have the same air for the imprint the whole time,” Fluttershy said.

“Ah, of course. Nothin’ simpler,” Applejack said.

“And then Dash here summons up that weather that she dislikes so much and gives us a little breeze,” Twilight said. “Go on, Rainbow, try it.”

“Now?” Rainbow asked, poised behind the airship. She had to shout to be heard over the turbines.

Twilight waved a hoof, and Rainbow gave a small shrug before slowing her flight and closing her eyes.

“Come on,” Twilight whispered. “Come on.”

All at once, they jerked forward, the balloon sighing in its cradle as a strong wind ruffled their fur. It lasted but an exhilarating moment, and then they were slowing again.

“Uhhhhh… did it work?” Pinkie asked.

“Rainbow?” Twilight called, trotting to the rail and looking out. For a second, Rainbow was invisible, but she soon appeared against the velvet desert night, flapping indignantly.

“Yeah, great one, Twilight,” she said, landing on the deck and pacing an agitated line. “You didn’t tell me I’d get blown back on the first gust.”

“Are you okay?” Pinkie asked.

“Fine, Pinks.”

“Sorry, Rainbow.” Twilight thought. “I’m pretty sure I know what went wrong.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Well, let’s hear it.”

“But I’m not sure how to fix it.” She sighed. “Crap. I have to think about this.”

“Was she attached to the ship at all?” Fluttershy asked.

“Sure wasn’t,” Rainbow said.

“But there’s no way I can attach her to the ship without ruining the setup,” Twilight said. “The second she’s attached, any force she’ll exert in one direction will just get cancelled out by the force of her pushing herself back.”

“An’ probably break her back in the process,” Applejack said.

“Great, just what I want to hear,” Rainbow said.

“I’ll take that,” Twilight said, grabbing the sigil hat. “At least this seems to work.” She looked down at the sigil, an insignia of ashen lines that seemed branded into the deck. “No one mess with this.”

“Is that it fer the magic display tonight?” Applejack asked.

“Probably.” She looked down at her work for a moment. “I’m going to bed.”

“Try to get some sleep,” Fluttershy said.

The morning saw them crossing a wide swale inside the ragged fang that terminated at a pair of decussate chasms, twin braids of water gleaming from where they ran off an outcropping of stone to pool an unknown distance below. Twilight had been up half the night, pouring over her books and, later, sketching designs on the deck while Octavia, sleepless as usual, watched without comment.

Her efforts were not wasted; Rainbow’s second attempt carried them at more than twice their speed into the golden sunrise. Rainbow was able to coast behind the ship on a cushion of magical wind, duplicated from her own supply and curved back around the neutral air space Twilight had created the night before. Three pieces to the project, but, to the eye, it looked simply as though Rainbow were hastening to keep up with the speeding ship. The sight of the pegasus, wings flapping languidly but body racing behind as if on an invisible cable, was a source of raucous amusement for Pinkie and Vinyl, who stayed at the ship’s back to keep her company as they shot, arrow-like, across the dismantled south toward Draught Castle.

Whooves toasted the ponies he didn’t know with as much jocularity as the crowd that surrounded him, tapping his glass almost hard enough to knock it off its stem and stain the ecru tablecloth dark brown with cynar. Dinner was finished, plates and tureens and swanlike gravy boats swept away by silent butlers and replaced with ashtrays, carafes, and decanters of dark liquid, and more types of glassware than he could name. The long dinner table was host that night to an intimate gathering of friends and coworkers, all come together to celebrate what Whooves could not recall. The pony who brought him along had been vague on the details.

Soft laughter at his side drew his eyes to the pony in question, his new coltfriend, an interior decorator and amateur fashion reporter named Porchlight. He regarded Whooves with almond eyes, magnified slightly behind glasses on almost invisible frames. “Oh, doctor, you slay me. I hadn’t noticed until just now your choice of glass.”

Whooves looked at his drink and laughed as well, pretending to understand. “Yes, well, you know me, a slave to the classics as always, hm?”

“Oh, stop,” Porchlight said, playfully batting his lashes. “A digestif in a grappa glass. Ah, look! I can see you’ve drawn Lady Coil’s eye as well with your little trick.” He winked before turning to accept a light from the other side, his cigar perched at a jaunty slant in his ocher unicorn magic. Whooves was not envious; he hated the smell of cigars, and was able to bow out gracefully from attempting an undignified conversation with just his mouth to hold the object.

The celebration quieted, and, for a moment, all was the sound of matches scraping, cigars puffing, burnt matchsticks ticking against tempered glass. Most ponies, he could see, were nearing the end of their night. The dinner had gone on for three hours, and since first arriving, he had seen hardly more of the house than the dining room and a modest projection into the anteroom from where he sat. He had seen fancier and better-decorated houses both; his current host’s hadn’t even a chandelier above the dining table, exposing a drab ceiling to Whooves’ quiet amusement and pride at having noticed such a detail, for it would surely provide useful conversation at his next party, scheduled for nine o’ clock that same night, not two blocks away.

“I hear Jelly Jars is seeing someone new,” an older stallion said, a fat, black cigar clamped in his yellow teeth. “I didn’t catch the full name. Something with an L? Lemon Twist, something along those lines.”

“Lemon Loops?” a stout mare asked. She adjusted her shawl, giving all a glimpse of her naturally gray mane, something which Whooves had on good authority she hated, but could not change, for all styling products had only blended and made the mane all the uglier. Short of shaving it all off, she had no recourse but to keep her head constantly hidden.

“Lemon’s daughter went off to the war,” someone else said, and Whooves sipped his drink, ears suddenly up. Any talk of the battle—“war,” as they called it, as if a single engagement with Discord’s forces was enough to constitute a war for them—had him immediately alert, lest his name come up before he had a chance to utter it himself.

“Came back with a case of the shivers, I heard,” a lanky, rose-colored pony said. “Poor thing.”

“A ghastly business, all would agree,” Porchlight said.

Two pairs of eyes came to rest on Whooves, and he marked them as Porchlight continued. “The good doctor here was involved, you know.”

“The doctor?” the gray-maned mare asked.

“He’s a veteran.”

“Why, yes,” Whooves said with a chuckle. “Ah, but it was such a small thing, I durst not take too much credit for the success of our side.”

“I heard you were taken aboard Discord’s flagship. Is it so?” Lady Coil asked. She was a young mare of amber coloration, her face done up in enough eye shadow that she reminded Whooves of a pair of sunny side up eggs on a plate—another useful piece of gossip for later. She was their host, wealthy beyond her years from an inheritance from her own parents, both deceased, and poised to inherit some four million bits more on top of a flourishing lingerie business, which her uncle’s son had spurned in favor of a life of foolish labor in Appleloosa.

“Not exactly taken aboard, kind lady,” Whooves said. “Picture this: the teeming sky above, the land torn asunder below my sore hooves, and me connected to them, already pushed to my last extremity by the chase so rendered by the fiercest band of spear tossing juggernauts to ever see and then reject the boon of life’s tenderer sensibilities. Brutes, they! Why, but a one of them could wreck this little soiree with armored hooves alone!” He paused for a drink, flicking his eyes guiltily to Lady Coil. His calling the dinner party a “little” soiree would surely go repeated behind his back.

“Over the cinder of a smoking knoll I leapt, darting for the river and the cover she offered, but to no avail! For there, mired in the mud like a waiting predator, sat the ghoulish mound of black metal that will haunt my dreams for all my days to come. And, lo, that serpentine foe did rise up from an unseen nidus and spread wide his mismatched limbs, as if in welcome. ‘Welcome, Doctor,’ he seemed to say in his face. Ah, such a face!” He shuddered and took another sip, looking around and relishing every pair of eyes that was glued to him. “That gruesome, patulous mouth agape to show row after row of razor-sharp teeth, those dead eyes rolling in their sockets like cue balls sent a-scatter across the felt of my psyche!”

“Discord himself?” someone gasped.

“None other, my dear pony. He clasped me to his breast, and for one moment—more than one, even, to be fully honest—I thought my last living sensation would be the alien squirming of his heart inside that long cage of chest, held against my own like separated kin at last reunited, like dual philosophers once divorced from each other and finally meeting in bitter discourse years later.”

“Astonishing,” someone else said, and everyone nodded. Smoke rose in strands to the naked ceiling.

“But what he didn’t count on, that rascal, was good old earth pony strength!” Whooves said. “Make no mistake, his was a grip to shame any metallurgist’s vice, but the life does not quit your humble doctor so easily, no ma’am. I was able to struggle and free my hooves, and strike him, just there.” He tapped his muzzle, which was going tingly from the drink. “As solid a hit as ever there was, and I was thus dropped, free to take my hurried leave. Into the river I soared, over rail and bank both, splashing into that cold cradle of safety.” He shivered for effect, meriting a chuckle from Porchlight.

“I’ve not met someone who has rattled that demon so,” Lady Coil said. “You must be very brave.”

“Bravery, ho ho! ‘Twas a natural impulse, my dear. After all, who among us wouldn’t do everything she could when her life was threatened?”

“Don’t diminish your own courage,” Porchlight said. “You faced down that savage all on your own.”

“No ordinary pony could attest to it,” an elderly stallion said, clasping a short, curved pipe in his teeth.

“My son is a reporter,” Lady Coil said. “I’m sure he would love to bend your ear for a story, doctor.”

“Why, I’d jump at the chance,” Whooves said.

“Lady Coil, is it true that your son is recently engaged?” the elderly pony asked. He blew a dainty smoke ring to punctuate his question.

Lady Coil chuckled politely. “You’ve been listening to Tea Leaves again, I presume?” Her tone turned icy. “There is no engagement.”

“He’s getting rather old to not be finding someone,” Whooves said.

“I hear that Burgundy Briefcase is looking for a suitor,” the gray-maned mare said.

“I heard that she was seen leaving the hospital recently,” Porchlight said. “Losing weight.”

“My sister goes to the same hairdresser as Briefcase,” the rose pony said. “She heard that the poor mare’s been starving herself for the upcoming fashion show.”

“Only just now? The show’s in two weeks,” Lady Coil said.

“She hasn’t looked better, from what I hear,” Porchlight said.

“Once their ribs start showing, that’s where I lose interest,” another mare said. “Were her ribs showing? You know they’re committed if their ribs are showing.”

“Haven’t heard.”

Another interlude of silence, and smoke puffed all around. “Pity,” someone said, shaking his head.

“Have you heard about the recent turmoil in Lower Canterlot?” Whooves asked. “I was there not long ago, visiting a friend.”

“Those Pegasus Advocates are appearing in the news more and more, it seems,” Lady Coil said. “Barbarians.”

“As long as they stay below us, I’m not concerned,” the elderly stallion said.

“Ah, do not speak so soon,” Whooves said, refilling his glass from a tall decanter. “They’ve been spotted here as well.”

“Here?”

“Causing no harm,” Whooves quickly added. “But their presence has been noted.”

“With those ghastly red ribbons they all wear, it’s no surprise,” the rose pony said.

“Dreadful ponies, but I must say, I find them fascinating,” Porchlight said. “Their choice of garb is so… bold. Were it not for the dangerous implications, I would love to experiment with such a style of dress.”

“There is nothing interesting in their fashion,” Lady Coil said. “Clashing colors on top of too much makeup.”

“But is it not through such disharmony that beauty might be found?”

“If you want to find beauty in those louts, I’d ask you to do it off my mountain,” the gray-maned mare said, adjusting her shawl again.

“I for one have an even more interesting piece of news,” Whooves said. “And you’ll hear it nowhere else.” He turned to butler who was moving nearby. “Water, please.”

“What news, good doctor?” Lady Coil asked, giving him a smile that he returned, eyes locked for just a second, hers overlaid with the smoke from her slender cigar, the color and smell of cedar.

“The Astras are in town,” he began. “Old news, yes?”

“It was through them that we met,” Porchlight said, rubbing Whooves’ back affectionately. “Mutual friends.”

“And so fortuitous it was,” Whooves said, leaning close to smell Porchlight’s neck before resuming his alert storytelling position, back straight and hoof cocked to gesture as he needed. “The Astras and a certain… rival family, so to speak.”

“The Mansels, yes, I had heard that,” the rose pony said. “Both in town together.”

“Which can mean only one thing,” the elderly stallion said. “Soon enough, the blood will be flowing.”

“I already have one eye on the obituaries.”

“Ah, then you may not be so surprised as I thought,” Whooves said. “For your dearly loved body count has already started to rise, zero to six in the course of a day.”

“Impossible,” Porchlight said.

“Dreadful,” a mare said loudly. Her drink glass was empty, and her eyes were cloudy.

“There’s no mention in the news,” Lady Coil said.

“Ah, but it’s not for the news to know quite yet.” Whooves winked and sipped his water. “Tomorrow’s news, perhaps, but not today’s.”

“This is happening tonight?” the gray-maned mare said.

“Has it already happened?” the rose pony asked.

Whooves smiled slyly. “I cannot say, for I truly do not know. All I know is that the Astras have made their first move. Six Mansels—or friends of the Mansels, some, I believe—now find their peace in the ground, or will be quite shortly.”

“How can that be?” Lady Coil asked. “The Mansels will surely slay them.”

“If what you say is true, it bodes ill for us all,” the rose pony said. “There’s a reason those two have observed an armistice in Canterlot.”

“The advantage was theirs, so they pressed it,” Whooves said with a shrug. “They must have had some inside information.”

“You know something?” the gray-maned mare asked.

Whooves let the silence drag on for a minute. “Only this,” he finally said, leaning forward archly, savoring the eyes once again on him. “The Mansels find themselves in a tight spot, having lost an important player in their game. Retaliation, at this time, is impossible.”

“How can you know something like that?” the elderly stallion asked.

Whooves winked and brushed a mote of dust off his jacket.

“I don’t believe it,” the rose pony said.

“The Astras are not above such a thing,” Lady Coil said. “I do not think the Mansels will be as easily cowed as you say, doctor. They have friends everywhere.”

“More than six,” the elderly pony said.

“But this ultimatum will surely resound throughout the Mansels’ channels,” Whooves said. “A warning to all.”

“A challenge to all,” Lady Coil corrected.

“Could be interesting,” the elderly pony said. “Such an event might flush out friends of both families, show us who’s who. I, for one, would welcome knowing where certain loyalties lay.”

“Suspicious of some friends?” Porchlight asked.

“Aren’t we all?” the rose pony asked.

The warehouse worker, Whippoorwill’s connection for the storage of his Mansel contraband, left after adjusting his black sunglasses and wide hat. The evening was overcast, and a fine, frosty mist hung around Canterlot Mountain, turning the individual lights of the upper city into a sheet of soft starbursts. Whippoorwill closed the door and went to his couch, sitting down with a reeling mind.

The next Mansel shipment was two days late, and he had received no message across his communication sigil. That alone would not have worried him overmuch, and it hadn’t until earlier that afternoon, when someone had knocked on his door. Few ponies knew where he lived.

Six dead, all Mansels or Mansel contacts, in the space of four hours. Two reporters, one police constable, a small business owner, a mechanic, and a nurse: all spaced across Lower Canterlot, all with their own parts to play in the Mansels’ plan for Canterlot, of which Whippoorwill had been told he was to be the final piece. The reporters and mechanic were his ears, his contacts to the locals, and the messengers he had planned to use to veil his involvement with White Wine and her Pegasus Advocates. The nurse and business owner were potential distributors, and the officer protected them. It had originally been a small-time drug operation, a vestigial accessory to the main Mansel income, but he had been told to grow it into something larger.

Instead, they were gone, and he had apparently slept through it all.

The warehouse worker’s words rang in his ears still, advising he find a place to hide. The attackers, they agreed, did not know where he was, else he would have been a seventh name for the papers, nor did they know of White Wine’s involvement; but that was no guarantee of continued safety.

But where to go? He had no more money, for even though White Wine had agreed to give his product a trial run on the streets, no sales had been made, her operation being delayed at his request. Now, with no more product behind him and his contacts gone, he was adrift. He had no one to ask for a place to hide. White Wine would never allow it, he knew, and he didn’t trust the warehouse worker. Strange, it seemed to him, that such a pony had survived the attack on his other contacts, and then been so quick to inform him of their demises.

He tried to think of what the warehouse pony might have to gain by crippling Whippoorwill’s fledgling process. Pride or satisfaction, perhaps, but it seemed unlikely. There was no profit in it that he could see, for no profit had yet been made, no reliable business structure forged.

The warehouse worker had understood Whippoorwill’s suspicions, and had offered no suggestions on the attacker’s identity, not wanting to dwell on the subject and potentially say anything incriminating. A choice made from legitimate fear that Whippoorwill might retaliate wrongly, or an attempt to make himself as forgettable as possible, Whippoorwill wondered. He had no answers.

He went back to the door and checked that he had locked both locks. It was also possible that the worker had been followed. He went to the bedroom and grabbed his favored pulse crystal from a shoe box in the closet, oiled the magical straps that affixed it to his foreleg, and sat on a bean bag chair with his back to the wall, facing the door.

And then, there were the Astras. As he understood it, the Astras and Mansels generally respected one another in Canterlot, a city to which neither family could fully lay claim. Each had their contacts in the great city, each had their share of political influence in the palace, each had their small voice to occasionally reach the princesses’ ears. A war between the two on Canterlot soil would help no one, it had been tacitly agreed.

Knowing that the Astras understood such an armistice had emboldened him in the beginning, his one assurance of relative safety if he could just keep himself hidden from their attention. They had to know that the Mansels were weakened, an assumption he was only vaguely comfortable making himself based on the lack of communication, the lateness of the second shipment. There were only two possible leaks, he thought, ponies who knew him and also knew the Astras. The warehouse worker, again, a pony he more and more rejected as the architect of his misfortune; and White Wine.

At first, he had thought that her Pegasus Advocacy had been an act, a device to frighten him off, but the notion evaporated with a simple background check. One day in the public library, going through old records and newspaper articles, had disavowed him of any lingering ideas of the kindness and warm-heartedness that had drawn him to her in their youth. She owned four clubs in Lower Canterlot, three of which were praised for their trendy food and drinks, and their tasteful entertainment, but one, Velocity, had come to be a haunt for the local Pegasus Advocate chapter. From what the papers said, White Wine had done everything to make them welcome, though no crimes had been tied to her directly—only her clientele.

She would never go to the Astras for anything, he knew. Even if she were to rise above her prejudices, she could never risk being seen associating with them without risking total excommunication from her group, or worse.

It seemed to Whippoorwill that neither of them was the leak. Both stood to gain so little and lose so much, but he could see no third pony.

Still, the fact was that he was untethered, and too soon, for there was no one he could call on to lend him the place to stay and hide, to wait for whatever events had been set in motion to reach their conclusion—if they hadn’t already. There was no knowing.

Whippoorwill turned off the lights and peeked through the blinds, watching the street for activity. A sole pedestrian walked under a street light near the intersection directly in his line of sight, but too far to afford any detail. Using the open fridge for light, he checked his cupboards and evaluated how much food he had, how long he could stay inside the cramped apartment. If he ate frugally and drank tap water, he reckoned he could last for five days, maybe six, maybe more if he felt he absolutely must.

Back in the bedroom, he went to his full closet and put an ear to the wall to see if he could hear anything from his neighbors. A TV was playing at low volume, but nothing else. Slowly, he returned to his bean bag chair and faced the door again, his pulse crystal in his lap. He dozed, wondering whether it might already be too late, that his betrayer had walked out the door unharmed for the last and most crucial time.

Wings and Jet were out again, it being another Friday night, and Flitter was staying in. She waited twenty minutes after the two pegasi left before dialing Ink Pearl’s number.

It was with visible envy that she watched her roommates leave for the night. Her first week with The Equine Sun, the magazine where she had been set up to intern, had been awkward and uncomfortable, not as bad as she had expected but still not pleasant. The other interns, while much more educated on matters of writing and reporting, had nowhere near the experience Flitter did with being part of team. To them, she appeared as a level-headed student going about her career at a slower pace than most, sacrificing the burn of ambition for the comfort of stability, and though she tried to keep her questions to a minimum, some difficulties were unavoidable. She had had to construct a hasty lie to explain why she didn’t know most of the big names in reporting, and then spent that same night pouring over the final chapter of her textbook, “Reporting Today.” Ink, she found out, had gotten her an outdated copy.

She was, however, the only one to not complain about the menial tasks her supervisor gave her. From signing for packages to opening and sorting mail, cleaning desks to helping carry boxes of replacement typewriters, she did it with a smile. After all, what were a few errands to being chased through the sky in a dizzying, magical whirligig? Her peers just shook their heads, impressed and confused at how unfazed she was at not immediately getting a spot with one of the writers or editors.

But, on a Friday night, eyes sore from reading and head full of facts she had no personal interest in, that sunny attitude was all but extinguished. She had told Wings and Jet she would try to catch up, but she had neglected to ask them where they were going, and they to tell her. They were in a rush to get out the door too.

Ink Pearl’s phone rang four times before she picked up with a curt “yes.”

“It’s me,” Flitter said.

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Flitter.”

“Ah.”

Flitter waited a moment, expecting Ink to say something. She could picture her standing on the other side, looking intently at a wall fixture, patiently awaiting whatever Flitter had to say.

“Okay, well, not a lot to report this week,” Flitter said. “I flagged two names.”

“Ready.” She said it instantly. No rustle of paper on the other end; Ink truly had been waiting, prepared, for the call.

Flitter read off the names and ages of her two suspicious ponies, who she actually believed would not turn out to be worth investigating.

“Anything else?” Ink asked when the scratching of her pen stopped.

“Yeah, one thing,” Flitter said. Ink hadn’t asked how her first week was. “I know it’s not strictly my job, but I found something interesting that you might want to hear about.”

“Mm-hm.”

“So a couple days ago, there was this PA demonstration in Cherry Stream Park, which is right next to Cherry Stem Mall.”

“PA, as in Pegasus Advocate?”

“Yeah, them. It’s kinda weird, this is actually the second time I’ve heard about them recently. Anyway, it was a ‘peaceful’ demonstration.”

“Mm-hm.”

“But it didn’t take long to turn violent—that’s not the weird thing, I know that’s common. Well, not common, but…” She paused, expecting Ink Pearl to fill in a word for her and let the sentence continue. On the other side of the phone, there was only breathing. “Well, anyway, so it turned violent. Here’s the strange thing, though. According to, like, a dozen eye-witnesses, the pegasi at the rally, some of them, they attacked back with magic.”

“Uh-huh,” Ink said, doubt coloring her tone.

“Like I said, a bunch of ponies saw it. There were shields and telekinetic pushes and all that. No one pulled out any pulse crystals, thank Celestia, but I think someone said there was a fire. Or it might have been fireballs, I forgot which.”

“That’s very interesting, Flitter. I’ll make a note of it.”

Flitter waited.

“Anything else?”

“Wha? Uh, so, uh, do you want me to look into it more? It seemed pretty weird to me.”

“…Why are you reading about this at all?”

Flitter’s mouth went dry. “I… thought you wanted me to pay attention to any sort of strange activities.”

“No, I told you to pay attention to any ponies who match up with any of the measures, on that sheet I gave you. I have a copy right here.”

“No, I know that, and I have been, but I just noticed this, and… I don’t know.”

“What’s your job?”

“My job?”

“Yes, what do you do for me? What did I tell you to do at our meeting last week?”

Blushing, Flitter licked her lips. She was glad Ink Pearl couldn’t see her, but it didn’t smooth her surprise at the harsh tone. “You, uh, you told me—that is, I’m to pick out the ponies—”

“You are to read every article you can without compromising your position, and from those, pick out ponies that don’t match up with that sheet of measures I gave you.”

“Yeah, that, and then I’m…” She paused for a second to think. She thought she knew, but Ink’s questioning cast uncertainty on her memories. Maybe she had missed some important, but tiny step. “Then I report their information to you. Every week. Uh, even if there’s nothing to report, I have to call you and tell you that.”

“Okay, so why are you reading about PA rallies in the park? What good is that to your job? You saw that the article didn’t focus on any specific ponies, but you read it anyway.”

“‘Cause it was interesting,” she wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, she hastened to find a different explanation. “I mean, the eyewitnesses, they might have had something.”

“The reporters wouldn’t have asked them any of the questions on my list, though.”

Flitter looked at a spot on the wall. “Yeah, guess not.”

“I need you to not waste time on things like this. There’ll be time to follow-up on magical pegasi later, but we need to secure the city first.”

“How long is that gonna take, anyway?”

“I have no way to know that. Flitter, in the future, I need you to ask questions before you spend time on something like this. I would flag that story, then call me later that night and ask if you should read it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that was it,” Flitter said in a small voice.

“Great. I’ll follow-up on these ponies you told me about tonight. Call me again next week.”

“Sure thing. Have a good night.”

Ink hung up, and Flitter just looked at the inert receiver cradled in the crook of her hoof. She wasn’t aware of it until after she replaced it, but her face was wrinkled in a mixture of insult and incredulity, and questions trickled in with relief to be done with the call. How would she know to flag a story without at least partially reading it first? Why did it matter that she read a single article that happened to not contain the information they wanted? Wouldn’t it be safer to just read them all anyway?

Ink had not sounded angry, Flitter realized, just annoyed, as well as curious. Curious why Flitter had chosen to approach her with something not related to her immediate mission.

She looked at the closed front door and whined, “Take me with you.”

It was six o’ clock that same night, shortly before Flitter’s call, that they came to rest on the flat dust that surrounded the walls of Draught Castle. As always, the countryside was eerily quiet, the distant tides of grassland barely lucent in sunset nearly completed. A triangle of birds flew west, curving around to not go over the walls.

“Where are we?” Colgate asked.

“This is Discord’s castle,” Rarity said. “You can stay on the ship, dear.”

“No, where are we in the country? In relation to the other cities?”

“Pretty far,” Twilight said. “I don’t know how many miles off the top of my head.”

“Closest city’s probably what’s left of Applewood,” Vinyl said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get ya home in plenty of time, ‘specially with RD behind us now,” Applejack said.

“I just wish you’d thought of it earlier,” Rainbow said.

Twilight looked at her, disdain appearing on her face for a fraction of a second. “Me too.”

“You’ll be fine,” Rarity said to Colgate.

“Can we not?” Colgate asked, following them down the plank and onto the dry fields.

“We have to!” Pinkie said. She puffed out her chest proudly. “Element time!”

“Think she meant something else,” Vinyl said. “Hm?”

“Never mind,” Colgate said, slinking back to the deck.

“Go with her, Vinyl,” Twilight said.

“I can be useful,” Vinyl said.

“I don’t—”

“She’s right, Twi,” Applejack said. “That light of hers is good for disorientin’. If she wants to help, let’s let her.” She glanced at Octavia. “Y’okay, Octavia?”

“Fine,” Octavia said. She had stopped a distance in front of everyone and faced the castle, motionless, her body and its shadow almost indistinguishable from each other where they connected.

“Mac?”

“We have the Elements of Harmony now,” Rarity said. “Does your glamour even work anymore?”

“We can talk about that later,” Twilight said, joining Octavia at the front. “Each second we spend outside this place, each second we’re wasting. Whoever’s coming, come on.”

As one, they walked to the first outer ring of stone, unmarked, almost black in the twilight. Stars were beginning to appear around a waning crescent moon. They heard no sound, but felt the vibration in the ground, and they all stopped as the wall rotated, its entryway coming to rest directly before them.

“Ah fergot they do that,” Applejack whispered.

They walked to the doorway, smoothly cut into the thick stone, wide enough to admit them all at once. The ground bore no sign of damage from the wall’s rotation, an indication of highly advanced magic at play, and all for show. Its implications soured Twilight’s mood even further.

“I’ll keep his shield down, and I want the rest of us to tire him out. If I can pace myself this time, I’ll be a lot more help,” Twilight said.

“Will you need us to get away when you are ready to activate the Elements?” Octavia asked.

They all stopped and stared, some of them worried, others simply dismayed. In stark contrast to the desert outside, they found themselves at the edge of a lush, grassy meadow, precisely manicured save for tall dandelions standing in large clusters. From a small fountain came the lone sound of running water, several yards in front of them and nearly invisible; behind the walls, only weak starlight made it in to light their way. They had agreed to forgo magic light until encountering Discord so as to not give themselves away.

As they passed the fountain, all was well. The second wall was rotating to face them as the first had, the only moving part in the static scene.

“Any second now,” was all Twilight could think. Since landing, she had repeated it so many times that she no longer believed it. In their flight north, she had worked on her divination project in the cabin, leaving to eat and little else. From the three days of attempts and experiments, she had been able to only discern one unsettling fact: there would be no signal or drama to unfold before the fight began, Discord’s love of panache giving way to the plain desire to finish what had been started. Both sides of the protracted battle were weary of each other, of the seemingly endless spiral of feints and near misses. In the silent field, she felt alone and vulnerable. The dandelions leaned toward them on thick stalks, as if listening for hushed conversation.

“Cut it out, Vinyl, that’s creepy,” Rainbow said.

“Not doing anything,” Vinyl murmured.

“Everypony stop,” Fluttershy said. They froze in the first field, nearly to the second doorway, temptingly open to the second space. Everyone looked around, each scared pair of eyes reflecting spangles of starlight with the jewels around their necks. It took a moment, but then Twilight noticed what had stopped them: the night had changed. In the course of their walk, the crisp, clear darkness had taken a rubicund tinge, most evident when they looked to the stars, dimmer than before.

“I’m not doing it,” Vinyl repeated.

“Forward,” Twilight said. “He’s trying to scare us.”

“It’s working,” Fluttershy said.

“Forward.”

Through the second doorway, they were met with more grass and more dandelions. As they moved, the night seemed to lift, but instead of white light, there was only deeper and deeper red, slowly beginning to outline their shapes against the blackened slabs of stone behind like sketches. No sound, no heat, no tingle of ambient magic accompanied the change, and still nothing moved in the shrinking distance.

“Will you need us to back away when you activate the Elements?” Octavia asked again.

“Oh, sorry, Octavia. Yes, that would be smart.”

As they walked, the dandelions thinned and disappeared, and they came to the third and final wall, its door again facing them. In the scarlet night, it appeared as a gaping wound, its dull edges healed over. Looking up, no stars were visible, but the castle was. Thin, black lines had appeared around its edges, as if rendered in ink.

“Any second now,” Twilight whispered to herself as they passed through. She lowered her head without thinking, though the arch was many times taller than she. She recalled Discord’s question from their second fight, only twelve days past: “Is this what you came for?” It did not seem so likely that he would not meet them, as she had thought back in Moondrop.

On the other side, there was no more grass, only bare dirt and scatterings of gravel, shining vaguely like exhumed rubies, the ground bright as if smeared with raspberry jam. Above, the night sky was the dark of ichor, and the edges of cirrus clouds stood out, thin red scratches in the firmament.

“There’s the door,” Rarity said. No one looked at her.

The white door to Draught Castle was closed, its sides decorated with winding etchings of olive branches; in the red light, they looked like arteries entwining the door’s alettes. Above, the castle rose to a modest height, its tallest turret not much higher than the walls that enclosed it, about fifty feet. There were no visible defenses or armaments, no visible occupants.

“Where is he?” Rainbow asked. “Do we go in?”

Twilight hesitated. She had expected Discord to appear on the castle grounds, as he had both times before, not to be invited in and shown the front door.

“Yes, we go in,” Octavia said, not walking. Twilight glanced at her and started the march herself, and they followed.

“Anythin’ from that glamour?” Applejack asked. “Anythin’ along the lines of ‘look out’ or ‘get ready fer a surprise’?”

“It’s quiet,” Big Mac said.

“I’m bringing up the shield,” Rarity said.

At the marble doors, Twilight raised a hoof for the brass knocker, a loop of metal engraved to resemble a unicorn horn, curving impossibly on itself to taper into the thick ring that served as both base and terminus. Then, thinking better of it, she simply pushed the door open with her hooves. It swung back at her first touch, gliding across carpet that, in the oven-like glow, resembled an open vat of blood in both color and smoothness.

“This far, no further,” Discord said from their sides, reaching a long, boneless arm in to grab the door from the other side and close it. No one jumped or panicked, and, for a second, both parties looked at each other. Discord lay back against the door jamb, head and limbs attached to a body so thin as to fit inside the vinelike carvings. He extruded himself as the ponies assembled in a rough cluster just outside the door, Twilight’s horn alight and working the first spell to dispel the thin shield around him.

“Got those Elements, I see,” he said, his head flopping awkwardly on a noodle neck. As his shield ate itself away, Twilight backed up to give herself room for her next attack, but someone else acted first.

Discord’s head jerked suddenly with a screwing, twisting noise as it was wrenched from the wall like a fruit from a branch. Tiny limbs and wings wiggled in protest as Fluttershy gave him another good yank, and Twilight joined in, wrapping a knot of his midsection in her telekinesis, squeezing as well as pulling. From his mouth came a strangled whistle of pain or shock.

First, his left arm snapped out of the engraving, scaly talons splaying out and catching the stone on needle-thin claws before falling loose and useless to the gravel. The group was backing up as a whole, and Octavia and Vinyl had added their magic to the effort, growing with distance as his limbs stretched and strengthened, roots attaching him to his castle. He laughed as his lion’s paw came unstuck, and his head twisted three hundred-sixty degrees as he lurched forward, papery wings flickering to keep him somewhat upright, like a figurehead come alive. The red light deepened, and his laugh loudened.

With a grunt, Fluttershy threw herself back and tugged harder, and with a gristly pop, the head came off. Fluttershy fell back as the head landed at their hooves, and Rarity shrieked. At once, Discord’s head swiveled and gabbled words at them as his body spilled out. As the magic that had pulled at it slackened, the wires of flesh came unbound from their anchoring wall and looped and loped over one another to coil and slither in a living pool on the ground by the door.

“Now, let’s do it now!” Rainbow shouted, fumbling with her Element.

“Let’s not!” Discord bawled, head bouncing up in place, as if eager but unable to reconnect to the mess of body.

“Twilight!” Pinkie shrieked.

Twilight already saw it, and silently cursed herself for not reacting quicker. The body, reduced to a collection of strands rather than a singular corpus, was not harmless; it had lain inert for just a second before tightening back to the wall, snapping into place with a sequence of twangs, from each meeting point expanding what in the red light resembled a living network of veins, or a possessed extension of the engravings around the door.

Someone kicked Discord’s head aside, where he landed in the gravel with an indignant “no fair!” His voice, however, was submerged under the abrupt sound of spitting electricity.

At first, Twilight thought it was one of her friends’ spells, but all she could see—all she could bring herself to watch—was the march of stringy flesh up the walls, until, finally, against the scarlet dome of night, the first feelers jumped off the highest reaches, cilia for a mere moment before spiraling down as full-length ropes to scatter gravel and whip in a frenzy, pulling their lower parts out of the walls with small pops and tiny clouds of dust.

Voices shouted to back up as the castle appeared to come alive, the spaghettified pieces of its master bounding off its sides and sparking against each other, making their own little, red stars in the moving morass. A headless snake pit all at once enraged and given direction, the mass sloughed in a loose whirlpool before the castle’s ingress, splinters of its whole occasionally climbing back onto the wall to limply fall back, sparks large and small clicking and chopping all the while.

Far off, Discord’s head laughed. “You likey, my little ponies? That’s what’cha get for stealing my noggin!”

“Make it stop!” Pinkie wailed, and he laughed.

Twilight turned to follow Pinkie’s example and collided with Applejack in the retreat—more of a regrouping, to her mind—and Rarity cried out in a familiar tone. Twilight, getting to her hooves, saw their shield flickering. She called out to Rarity, but was not heard.

“Everypony back!” Rainbow shouted.

“No!” Twilight shouted, quickly searching her repertoire for something more powerful than telekinesis. “Vinyl, move!” Without waiting for her, Twilight shoved the white unicorn out of the way with a wall of telekinesis and let loose with a cone of superheated air, the first idea she landed on. She couldn’t see it, but she could see her friends jump back, heads turning wildly as they thought that they had been brushed with something of Discord’s.

“Ooooh, feisty!” Discord called out as the noodles flashed and writhed faster. Sparks glided high and exploded into smaller streams of themselves in the moving mass, which was beginning to lose shape and form to Twilight, who had looked too long. The constant onslaught of bright light inside the red air was making her eyes hurt, and the energy she had poured into the magic—enough to ignite a living tree at fifty paces, but concentrated enough to barely graze her friends—had left her dizzy.

“Great, did it again,” she thought, letting the magic go to catch her breath. She had used too much too early, and still the viper pit of disorderly tissue unbound and bounced across the gravel, spreading from the center but not coming directly toward them. Single loops would occasionally jump high enough to stand alone in the red night, burned arcs on all their eyes, and Twilight could only try to scoot back quicker. She could no longer tell how near they were to the waves of sparks, or how far to the back wall, but Twilight felt confident that Discord had barred their escape, or would when they got close.

Head pounding, eyes burning, and ears ringing with the dizzying sounds of small motion amplified, she didn’t even recognize the ponies that darted around her, which one was whom, which one might plausibly be of some help to turn the battle around.

When Octavia’s explosions finally came—she apparently being as stupefied as Twilight for the first couple minutes—they did little more but stir gravel, each grouping of noodles splashing apart without apparent harm in Octavia’s fiery blasts. In the crimson night, the explosions appeared to take on momentary form, as kernels of popcorn rupturing before being replaced with horse hairs of smoke.

Octavia stopped only a minute later, as Twilight was attempting to master her vertigo and stand up. There was too much going on; she could not even see whether any pieces of Discord’s body had stopped moving. The sparks, the motion, and the sound of swishing stone in the red world were all she had to piece their situation together.

Twilight sat down again, trying to build up the concentration for a different spell while still steadying her breathing, not noticing Pinkie trotting away from the group.

“Hey!” Discord shouted.

“Twilight’s down!” Rarity called out from afar, herself sounding nearly exhausted.

“I’m not down,” Twilight said, but there was no one close enough to hear.

Then, Discord’s head flew over them again to land much closer, rolling until he was propped at a strange angle on his horns, face down and exposed neck to them, the site of its separation flat and featureless like an eraser.

“Pinkie, that’s genius!” Rainbow yelped, racing over. Behind her profile, Twilight saw a tower of sparks grow and blow themselves out ten feet into the air on a twisting limb of vines.

“Here we go,” Pinkie said, skipping between ponies deftly, pausing to give Octavia an affectionate pat on the back. “Twi, you with us? C’mon, girl!”

“Why am I not getting it?” Twilight thought, standing and joining them. It was just his head, trying to turn over, its hurried words muffled with gravel.

“Ready,” Rarity said, panting at Twilight’s side. “You three get back.”

“Ready,” Fluttershy said at Twilight’s other side.

Then it clicked, and Twilight tried to straighten, but succeeded only shifting her weight and nearly falling into Rarity, who caught her. Through it all, the Element of Magic stayed affixed atop her head. In all her time abroad, she could not recall it ever falling off on its own, and resolving to no longer take that for granted, she squared her shoulders as best she could and closed her eyes in preparation for the outpouring of light.

“Yee-haw!” Applejack cried out.

“I’d really rather you not!” Discord shouted, managing to turn himself to the side enough to get words out.

The hooking cords of Discord’s body jostled and jumped close by, tracing their forms against the red walls like long sparks flipped out of a pan of flaming grease, their electric discharges sizzling like the same. Twilight’s chest heaved, her mind was fuzzy, and she thought she could feel herself lifting into the air for a second, then for two. It made her want to throw up.

“Do it!” Octavia said. “You have him.”

Her eyes closed, Twilight clung to the feeling. She tried to think of magic, to recall all her spells and all her knowledge, to remember how she had used magic so often in the past to help her friends and neighbors. The feeling had always felt natural before.