Not a mote of light or a suggestion of power leapt forward to entomb Discord's spirit inside his body. Not a sound escaped his lips as he waited, his unwitnessed expression frozen in a moment of undistilled fear. Certain that he had lost at last, he had no ultimate wisecrack to mark his demise.

The coils of his broken body slackened and flopped to the ground, the magic powering them momentarily lost in the clutch of terror, and then he brought them back to carefully assemble under his detached head, watching all the while. The Elements stood in a semicircle, eyes closed, faces calm, stances secure, but their gems were unresponsive.

When he had brought himself up to his full height, the ponies were again backing away. In their eyes, he could see the fear he had felt not seconds before.

He gathered energy in his palm, scattering them, and threw, enough magic to shred a city block.

The ponies vanished.

In the silence that followed, gravel and dust settling in the wake of his blast, Discord looked around. No trace of his foes remained, save the magical residue of their battle, and of the teleportation spell one of them—Twilight, he assumed—had cast just in time.

For a moment, he stood still, taking in the resounding quiet, trying to make his breathing even once more.

Discord walked across his land and through his walls, not bothering to realign the doorways that he had spun away in his exchange with the Elements. Exhausted, his stooped form had to rest against a wall to regain the energy required to move through the next. His shapeshifting trick had been a long shot, a sudden idea to scare and unbalance them, a decision made in haste and with too little thought, for it left him with precious little mental energy. If they chose to double back, he knew he would likely have to retreat.

His footsteps were heavy on the grass, whose cool touch he could never feel. His head was sluggish, his mood soured, his focus dulled. All the triumph he had felt upon capturing and imprisoning Celestia was receding, leaving him only fatigue and cold loathing. Victory was in his grasp, but felt farther away than ever; one problem had been replaced with another, a known factor replaced with an unpredictable one.

By the time he had phased through his final wall, the airship was speeding away from his castle, its only visible sign the torch occasionally spurting in the far, far distance. He felt their magic at the launch site as well, and sat down. When had they gained such power? "Or," he thought, "when did I lose mine?"

Only when they were a sufficient couple miles away from the castle and it was clear they would not be chased or hit with another mysterious parting shot did the crew assemble and the voices begin to rise.

Applejack watched from the wheel as Rainbow landed, fluffed her wings, and looked at Twilight, hurt and confused. "What the heck happened?"

"We had him!" Pinkie said. "At least, I thought we did."

"I don't know," Twilight said.

Rainbow looked at her for a moment, outwardly inscrutable, but seething inside in the face of ignorance. "But you're the magic expert."

Twilight just shook her head.

"Well, what? Was someone not in harmony? Did Discord mess us up somehow? Maybe we didn't stand close enough or, or maybe there were too many others around, or—"

"I said I don't know."

"At least everypony's okay," Big Mac said.

"Everything was as it should have been," Twilight continued slowly, trying to frame her frantic thoughts in a calm reply. "We did everything right."

"Clearly not," Pinkie said.

"I don't know!” she cried. "If I did, I'd be doing something about it—that is, I probably would have done something about it already."

"So someone messed up," Rainbow said. "If we did everything else right, then it's one of us." She looked at Twilight first, then threw her gaze around the rest of the deck. "I know I was feeling pretty loyal out there, I don't know about everypony else."

"You were feeling loyal?"

"Yeah, what?"

Twilight stood up to pace along the gunwale. "Meaning you're not right now."

"Celestia, Twilight, that's not what I meant," Rainbow said, rolling her eyes. "You know what I meant!"

"I was just about as laughter-y as I could've been," Pinkie said. She looked at Rarity, who simply gazed on, eyes unmoving.

"Great, now we've lost Rarity," Rainbow said.

"It wasn't Rarity," Twilight said. She bit her tongue, immediately wishing she hadn't spoken.

"How do you know?" Pinkie asked.

"I mean… it probably wasn't any of us, is what I meant to say."

"Oh, like it just happened accidentally? Like how you said the Elements are specifically designed to never do?" Rainbow shouted.

"Well, what do you think happened, then?"

"I'm not the magic expert, Twilight."

"I don't know how these things work!"

"Liar!" Pinkie shouted.

Twilight lowered her volume, her expression darkening. "Not specifically, I mean."

"Twi, maybe you should back it up a touch," Applejack said. "Cool off a little."

"It was me," Rarity mumbled.

"Great, here come the waterworks," Rainbow said, taking an exaggerated step away from Rarity.

"RD, come on," Applejack said.

"What makes you say that?" Pinkie asked.

"Could Discord have put a spell on us to make the Elements not work?" Octavia asked.

For a second, the argument stopped as Rarity lowered first her head, and then her body to the deck, her face wrinkled in a grimace, lips pulled back and eyes narrowed to crinkled slits as tears squeezed out. A high whistle escaped her mouth, then a pause, and then the sobs. Her whole body shook as she lost even the strength to crouch, and she lay flat against the wooden floor.

"What happened out there?" Pinkie asked. Fluttershy was eyeing her closely.

"It was me," Rarity repeated, her voice, like her cries, thin and tight. "I'm so, so, so sorry." She shook her head, rubbing her wet muzzle on the deck.

"I don't think this was anyone’s fault," Twilight said cautiously.

"You can stop saying that now," Rainbow said. "We get it, Twilight, you don't know what went wrong. For some reason."

"Hey, I did my best."

"It wasn't good enough," Pinkie said.

"You're one to talk," Fluttershy blurted out.

"Huh?"

"Just what are you saying, Rainbow Dash?" Twilight asked, taking a long, deep breath. "For once in your life, can you try to articulate your thoughts?"

"I think they're pretty clear," Rainbow said.

"Fluttershy, what's wrong?" Pinkie asked.

"Stop it, Pinkie," Fluttershy said.

"I want to know."

"Girls," Applejack said, her voice edged.

"I think you know already."

"Go ahead, Dash," Twilight said while Rainbow glared into her eyes. Rarity was still crying, occasionally repeating her apology. Vinyl, creeping at the edge of the slowly closing circle, was searching for a way to reach her.

"I really don't," Pinkie said.

"Of all the ponies in this group, and you are the one to tell someone their best isn't good enough!" Fluttershy shouted. She flinched as Big Mac put a hoof on her wing, but didn't back away.

"Twilight, I don't know what you’re getting at," Rainbow said.

"Just say it!" Twilight yelled, stomping her hoof. Under her, Rarity sobbed. "Say it! You think I'm screwing things up!"

"Twilight, it's not about you!" Pinkie said. Throwing a caustic look at Fluttershy, she added, "But something's clearly about me."

"Well, Twilight, I wasn't gonna say anything, but maybe you are screwing up," Rainbow said. "And while we're at it, I also think you're projecting your insecurities onto us, and me especially. Whoa, insecurities, what's that? A big word coming out of me?"

"Rainbow, shut up," Twilight said, shaking her head.

"You shut up!" Pinkie cried. "You're not the only one here who feels bad, you know!"

"I tried, dammit!"

"You shut yourself in your room the whole way over," Rainbow said. "I bet that's what did it. You got all bitter, alone with your research, and now we can’t go home."

"Where even are we going?" Big Mac asked. Fluttershy shot a glare at him before fixing her eyes back on Pinkie.

"What, are you gonna use The Stare on me?" Pinkie asked, stepping up to face Fluttershy. "Out with it, sister! What’s the deal?"

"You can't have it both ways, Dash. Either I do my research, or I spend time with you," Twilight said.

"That is so beside the point, and you know it!" She flapped her wings, bringing herself half off the deck for a second. "And, and, you didn't even get it right! All that crap about the Elements, and all that talking back at Furnace whatever-it's-called, what did it get us?"

"I'll admit I may have overlooked something, but—"

"Yeah, uh, no duh, Twilight. You've been doing that a lot lately."

"Since when?"

"Since like forever ago." She turned and stepped over Rarity, who had gone quiet, her breathing still ragged.

"Again, I'd like to ask that you do your absolute best to speak in precise terms."

Applejack looked at Octavia pleadingly. Octavia sat on the other end of the argument, Colgate beside her, watching raptly.

"If it was anypony's fault, it was yours," Pinkie said to Fluttershy, who had backed away to look at her askance. The accusation of using The Stare had cowed her somewhat. "Little miss callous over here, learning to be assertive and stuff. You're probably the one who pitched her Element."

"Twilight sure seems to think so," Rainbow said.

Twilight raised her voice. "Again—"

"You can't even… you can't…" Fluttershy spun about with her wings and mane flying, for an instant looking ready to attack something. "I'm going." And so stomping across the deck, she made her exit below to a momentary bout of stunned silence.

"I’m sorry!" Rarity cried out. She flopped onto her back and bared her soaked face to the cool air, breathing in short bursts as her chest rose and fell rapidly. "I promise, I didn't mean anything."

"Rarity, you didn't do anything," Rainbow said, suddenly kind.

"It was me. I've… Celestia, you're right, all of you." She turned and hid her face in another round of sobbing, and Vinyl found her opening to enter and rub Rarity's back. She glared at Twilight, who glared right back.

"Maybe we should stop the fighting for a minute," Vinyl said.

"She'll be fine," Twilight said.

"Twilight, if you're not gonna help, then get off the deck," Rainbow said.

Twilight blinked, her hot retort momentarily cooled. She looked at Rainbow, standing between her and Rarity, knees bent slightly as if to crouch to comfort her friend, but eyes on Twilight. Vinyl was saying something in Rarity's ear, and just beside both of them, Pinkie, shocked at Fluttershy's exit. Big Mac looked on worriedly, and Octavia and Colgate stayed to the back, neither with anything to contribute.

"Get," Rainbow said. "Get your bruised feelings out of here."

Twilight looked back at her. Part of her wanted to leave, to honor the request with as much grace as she might salvage, but her inflamed emotions overshadowed the thought. She narrowed her eyes, searching for an even more hurtful response.

"I'm serious." She looked down at Rarity, still mumbling apologies. "I don't want to look at you right now."

"Please stop apologizing," Vinyl murmured.

Twilight backed away, eyes locked with Rainbow's. She could feel disorderly anger stirring her thoughts, and could see something much cooler behind Rainbow's expression. She walked to the hatch, parted Octavia and Colgate with a gesture of her hoof, and, descending, thought of her parting comment. "You're all nothing without me."

"Go mope, Twilight," Pinkie said to Twilight's back.

When she was gone, the deck was quiet again, and Rarity repeated her apology.

"Why do you think you're responsible?" Vinyl asked.

"I've… I'm so sorry."

"Rarity."

"I've been a bad pony." The confession came out as a whisper, strangled by the strain of another ill-contained sob. "This proves it. I'm bad, or I'm going bad. Celestia, I've thought it for so long now." She sniffled. "I feel like I'm turning to stone from the inside out, like every day I just get worse and worse and worse."

"Rarity, where is this coming from?” Rainbow asked. "You're none of that."

"I feel it, Dash. Back at Moondrop, I… on the way, I didn't help with anything, I didn't do anything. I just sat back and let you all do all the work."

"I mean,"

"And what do I do to repay you all? I just fail." She sobbed once more.

"I don't think it was you," Pinkie said.

"I can't even keep a damn shield up for more than five seconds! We were useless, even with our Elements."

"Rare, Ah gotta agree with Pinkie, Ah don't think you were the problem back there," Applejack said.

"I'm sorry."

"Come on, let's get off the deck," Vinyl said, pulling at her. "C'mon. Breathe, Rarity. You're okay."

"At least nopony got hurt," Rainbow said.

"This time," Pinkie said, glancing at Octavia.

"Dumb luck," Rarity said.

"Better that than intelligent failure," Applejack said. "Even if that ain't what this was."

"What makes you think you've been so horrible?" Rainbow asked.

"Rainbow," Rarity said.

"I'm really asking, I don't see it. You've been totally cool."

"I'm useless."

"Don't say that."

"It's true!"

"Is not! You're not thinking straight."

"Deep breaths," Vinyl said again, and Rarity took one unsteadily.

"I'm the Element of Generosity, but I've hardly given anything."

"Uh, let's see," Rainbow said, "time, energy, encouragement, magic, money, personal safety… Yeah, totally generous. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Ever since… I'm not sure, a long time now.” She sighed, and a couple more sobs escaped. "I hate being like this right now."

"You're fine."

Rarity stayed still for a minute, taking in the reassurance. "Okay, for a long time, I'm not sure just how long, I've been just filled with such awful thoughts. I know they don't show—at least, not often—but they're there all the same. 'Why don't we just do it this way?' 'Why don't we just do this, hurt this pony so they can't get us back?' That kind of stuff."

"Everyone thinks those types of thoughts," Vinyl said. "Sometimes."

"I think more than that," Rarity said. "I felt, you know, I felt perfectly fine, and sometimes even happy to be traveling with you, but those dark ideas were always there in the back of my mind. Some generosity, I know."

"I mean, that's more the opposite of Fluttershy's thing," Rainbow said quietly, looking back to the hatch. Many of the others had vanished below as well.

"But I let them get to me. Do you know, I spent the night before the battle wishing that…" Here, she broke into a fresh wave of crying, and it took Vinyl and Rainbow several minutes to calm her down. All the while, Applejack piloted them stoically, pushing them through a soft cloud and out over a downward sloping plain, its face lined with exposed ridges, tall and dark like furrows created by a divine claw across the ground. Ponds and streams winked up at them like broken glass.

"Anyone else's eyes really hurt?" Applejack asked.

"Mine are fine," Vinyl said. "Ironically."

"Can I try?" Rainbow asked, putting out a hoof.

Vinyl turned her head away from the torch and lifted her goggles onto Rainbow's face.

"Wow, these are wild. I thought they were just weird colored."

"Prescription lenses, too."

"And you need these, like, all the time?"

"Anything brighter than a dim evening."

"I spent that morning secretly wishing that something would happen, and we would be forced to continue," Rarity said. "I was so scared of facing him, I wished we wouldn't, that something would get in the way."

"Geez, Rare," Rainbow said.

"I didn't mean it, obviously, but I guess that doesn't matter."

"What were you afraid of?" Vinyl asked.

"The fight, duh," Rainbow said.

"Not necessarily. Could be more there than the battle."

"I don't know," Rarity said. "I think I'm afraid of everything ending. I think I'm afraid that we'll finish this one day, and then that'll be it. Nothing else to do."

"Then we'll go home," Rainbow said.

Rarity shook her head.

"No?"

"I don't know."

"Whenever I went on tour, I would get kind of nervous for my last show," Vinyl said. "There's something weird about knowing you're almost done with something. Like, you can't wait for it to end, but you're also so used to it that it feels wrong to be done. There's this moment when you're up there, doing whatever you're doing, and it occurs to you, 'wait, I've only been here how long?'"

"We've been at this for seven months," Rainbow said. "Something like that." She counted for a second. "Eight. We started in March."

"But it feels like we've been out here for years," Rarity said. "Just tonight feels endless." She draped a hoof over her eyes. "It's like a bad dream that I can't wake up from."

"I hear that." Vinyl looked at the two of them and sat down.

"For what it's worth, even though I don't think you caused it, you're forgiven, Rarity." She patted Rarity's leg.

"What happens next?" Vinyl asked.

"Don't know."

Octavia found Fluttershy alone in one cabin, staring angrily into one of Twilight's books. She shut the door.

"Twilight was in here, but she left when I came in," Fluttershy said, not looking up. "She's sulking after her fight."

Octavia got on the bed and lay down on top of the sheets, chin sunken into them and mane dangling down like a frazzled, dirty shadow. Her eyes were, as usual, bloodshot.

"Not sleeping?"

"I sleep."

Fluttershy looked back at the book, open to a chapter concerning memory wipe spells, and then closed it. With her levitation, she tossed it into the pile of others near Twilight's dismantled divination setup.

"How do you manage to keep going in your state?" Fluttershy asked.

"I do not know what you mean."

Fluttershy frowned. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound offensive. I'm…" She took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm upset right now, but it has nothing to do with you."

Octavia nodded at her. She understood who had angered Fluttershy.

"How do you motivate yourself to keep doing this, when time after time we fail? These last several months have been one step forward, two steps back for us." She paused, but continued. "Frankly, sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't just cut our losses."

Octavia closed her eyes. "Is not your station as Element of Harmony enough motivation to keep going?"

"I know it should be."

Octavia nodded, then paused. She snored for a second before jerking back awake. "I apologize."

"Don't. You…"

"I know."

"Yeah." Fluttershy levitated the book back to her. "I'm tired, is all. I'm tired of everything, of feeling like everything depends on us. Rather, I'm tired of knowing everything depends on us."

"In one small respect, we are fortunate," Octavia said. "We have no access to newspapers up here."

"I don't even look at them when I do see them. I can't bring myself to." She frowned. "But you didn't answer my question. How do you keep going in times like this?"

"How do you know that I am going to keep going?"

"Because I know this isn't the first time everything's seemed hopeless for you."

Octavia's eyes fluttered as her lips curled downwards.

"I'm sorry, but I know it's true. You've known despair before, yet here you are."

Octavia sighed through her nose and turned over. She adjusted her mane to let it fall down the bedside, almost to brush the floor. All of their manes had grown longer, something Fluttershy had not thought of in the beginning, minor as it was. She had no reason to expect they would be gone so long, she supposed.

"I want to know so that I can try it too. If you must know."

"I am simply trying to think of how to begin," Octavia said. "Some of it, perhaps much of it, I learned from a young age. Work, in my family, was the best use of one's time. Allowing yourself to indulge in undue sadness and discouragement is a more selfish form of laziness. I avoid it."

"So you just put everything out of your mind and try to focus on the task at hoof."

"Yes."

Fluttershy thought. She had known Rarity to do the same at times, back when she had her fashion business to occupy her. Familial drama or small tragedies always resulted in extra long nights for the dressmaker, and usually an unexpected gift or two to the friends who stuck with her through it.

"This is not to say that I do not still sometimes feel these things," Octavia continued.

"I think we've all noticed something's bothering you."

"More than usual, you mean?" she asked with a wry smile.

"I… yes, that is what I meant."

Octavia looked to the side at the sound of passing steps outside.

"Something happened during the battle, right? I'm sorry, you can stop me any time. We weren't supposed to be talking about you anyway. Er, not to sound insensitive."

"I know what you mean, and I do not mind. I have been feeling not myself lately." She paused. "That is not true. I have not felt myself since… college, probably. There were a few times in those days when I felt complete."

"Octavia…"

"I took life in the battle, Fluttershy. More than one. I did not count them."

"Of course," Fluttershy thought, hating her cynical reaction even as the weight of the statement made her heart skip a beat. Of course she had; battles ended countless lives. It seemed so obvious, but Fluttershy had not considered it.

"I expected it, in a sense. I told myself that I most likely would, either in self-defense or to stop something awful from happening to another. I knew that from the minute I volunteered to take the angel up to Canterlot." Her voice was as even as if she were speaking about music theory, and Fluttershy tried to listen without tearing up herself. The pristine monotone of Octavia's voice, the conversational speed and cadence, was at once alarming and disheartening. Alarming because she thought perhaps Octavia felt no shame for what she had done; disheartening because, much more likely, she thought Octavia was beyond showing it in any way except speech.

"It was that idea that I was accepting when I took that task, not the danger to myself. That is a risk I have always felt more comfortable taking, I do not know why. But when that moment actually came, and I had done it, I was not prepared. I had no time to reflect or to apologize, because there were more right there. I had to find a spot for myself to hide behind the ship." She glanced back at Fluttershy. "We crashed after maybe ten minutes of flight."

"Ah."

"I turned to my next task, and I saw it through, and when the battle was over, my friends and I were alive. In that regard, and for that reason, I do not regret what I did. This, too, I knew."

"What do you mean?" Fluttershy asked softly.

Octavia cocked her good ear and tilted it toward Fluttershy.

“What do you mean?"

"I knew that if I had to do it, I would do it, and if we survived, then I would consider it the correct decision."

"Mm-hm." She didn't want to speak, to break Octavia's monologue, but the earth pony had a habit of pausing, and Fluttershy felt compelled to fill those spaces, to acknowledge that she was listening. She really had nothing to say.

"As the battle got closer, I lost sight of that knowledge, and when I used my magic to blow someone apart, the surprise was as fresh as if I had done it on any other day. I was not prepared to see the crater where my enemy had stood, not prepared to know, absolutely, that she would not be coming back to hurt me. There is something frightening in that knowledge."

"Yeah."

"Ponies speak of power all the time. I was not ready to face the reality of my own. That I could change something so completely, it was sickening. I remember all my thoughts, for an instant, stopping."

"I think I might get it."

"You probably do. I think you all do to some extent. This solidarity, too, does not help."

"I'm sorry."

Octavia shook her head. "It is no one's fault but my own. I feel filthy, like I have no right to exist after what I did, despite how justified I believe it to be. I simply cannot accept that I did it."

Fluttershy nodded, and Octavia turned back over to look her in the eyes.

"That is what has been bothering me lately."

"You should really talk to Twilight," Fluttershy said, and looked away. She wanted to take it back; it was not the time to suggest advice, it was the time to listen and accept.

"In my time, I may."

"Do you at least feel a little better now? I… um, I imagine you haven't told anyone else."

"I have told my sister."

"What did she say?"

"Essentially, she told me to stop feeling sorry for myself."

"Oh."

"She was correct to say it. I wish that I could obey her, but such is my weakness." She turned over again and hid her eyes. "Not a minute passes when I do not hate myself for what I have done. Then I will ask myself, would I take it back? And I think 'no, never.' For it was right in the end, I must believe that."

"So…"

"Fluttershy?" Finally, her voice had changed; she sounded uncertain.

"I'm right here."

"Please forgive the selfishness of this question. Do you think that I am fated to suffer?"

Fluttershy could not answer at once. She had expected a simpler question: "what do you think?" or "would you have done it, if you were in my position?" For those, she knew her answers, though she prayed she would never have to demonstrate them.

"I don't believe in fate," Fluttershy said at last. "But I do believe we shape our own destinies."

"Where are we?" Colgate asked.

"Celestia knows," Vinyl said. "Sorry. That was kind of tasteless."

"We're far from him, that's all that matters right now," Big Mac said.

"Why?"

"I just want to know," Colgate said.

Vinyl and Big Mac looked at each other. "So you’re a doctor?" she asked. "Noticed Dash kept calling you 'doc'."

"I was a surgeon for the Ponyville hospital. I operated on Rainbow's wings a few times, set bones and stuff."

"Stunt flyer," Big Mac explained. "She was always crashin' into this or that."

"Ahhh, that makes sense," Vinyl said.

"Why am I important to you?" Colgate asked.

"Huh?" She looked at Colgate, whose expressionless face offered no explanation. Eventually, she realized what was being asked. "It's complicated."

"I want to know."

"Yeah, an' Ah reckon you have a right to," Big Mac said. "You know 'bout the glamour?"

"They told me about you, the glamour, Vanilla Cream, and a little about the magic you all have. Fluttershy healing and stuff."

"Wonderful.” He thought. "The way Ah see it, you showed up in the exact place where you'd be stuck with us, an' my glamour told me that we had to go to Canterlot."

"Vanilla controls the glamour, though, right?"

"I don’t think so," Vinyl said.

"Indirectly," Big Mac said.

"What's that mean?"

"Meanin' he had to know that Colgate here would be useful to us before he moved her into position. Ah think."

"How could he know that?” Colgate asked. She stared straight through Big Mac, her blue eyes flat in the dim cabin light. After the fighting above, her unseemly gaze was a relief.

"No idea."

"She was with Celestia too," Vinyl said.

"He put me there because it was the only thing to get you to return to Celestia, sounds like," Colgate said.

"Fucking hell," Vinyl whispered.

Big Mac just looked at her.

Vinyl dragged a hoof down her face, and though her goggles covered her eyes, her displeasure was clear as day. "Twilight warned us about this exact thing. Blindly following the glamour. It doesn't take collateral damage into account, she said, so we'd end up in situations where we sacrifice a lot to gain a little." She gestured loosely at Colgate. "Sorry, shouldn't be talking about you like you're not here."

"Regardless, yer here now," Big Mac said. “Let's make the best of it."

"Am I staying with you?" Colgate asked.

"That's for you to decide," Vinyl said.

"Sounds like it isn't." She looked at a pile of books in the corner, Twilight's; she had books in both cabins. "What's that?"

"Light reading."

"On top."

Vinyl floated The History of the Elements of Harmony to Colgate, who paged through. "Why would Twilight be reading about this after you got the sixth Element?"

"How d'ya know it's her?" Big Mac asked.

"She's the strongest mage here, and this book has a strong magical residue. She didn't read with much finesse."

"That's a good question," Vinyl said. "Why would she be reading that?"

"A justified lack of confidence," Big Mac said.

"Geez."

"Just callin' a spade a spade, Vinyl."

"Why would she not be confident?" Colgate asked. "She had all the tools to succeed."

"Any number of reasons, I'd imagine," Vinyl said, frowning. "She was under tremendous pressure. That can scare a pony. Know it scares me."

Colgate looked at her blankly.

"Come on, you know what that's like, doctor."

"I know my abilities," Colgate said.

"Okay, sorry."

"This is gonna sound ridiculous, but maybe you should've been with us fer that battle," Big Mac said.

"Did your glamour—" Vinyl looked at him. "Sorry. Never mind."

"It didn’t say anythin', an' if it did, Ah wouldn't withhold. Ah don't do that."

"I said I'm sorry."

He rolled his eyes. "Let's talk 'bout somethin' else. We're 'bout to have a nice, long airship ride to go over this an' over this. Colgate, how'd you get to be in yer position?"

"My position?" Colgate asked.

"There's gotta be somethin' special goin' on with you fer you to appear on Vanilla's map like that."

Colgate shrugged. "I'm smart, I work well under pressure. Givens, considering my profession."

"You said you were a surgeon," Vinyl said. "You don't consider yourself one now?"

"I didn't say that."

"So are you one still?"

Colgate blinked. "Yes. I'm not practicing, but I am one. I could still operate if I needed to." She narrowed her eyes. "Does someone need medical attention? Or will someone? If this Vanilla guy can predict the future, I might be here to save your lives."

"We've got Fluttershy for healing, though," Vinyl said.

"Magical healing is rarely as precise as medical healing." She paused. "Your gray friend, for instance. Something's wrong with her head or her ear, and I'm guessing Fluttershy already did some magic to it. But it's clearly not healed properly."

"Point taken," Big Mac said. "Ah'm not sure Ah buy that explanation, though. If we're somewhere where our only option fer surgery is you, an' not a hospital or somethin', then we're probably lost already."

"We'd be out in the wilderness, you mean," Vinyl said. "Hadn't thought about that."

"So what happened in Canterlot?"

Colgate stared at him for a time, apparently deep in thought. "I spent a lot of time helping out around shelters and things. Basic medical care, advice on taking care of yourself, sometimes I counseled victims. Me and this other unicorn named Fleur dis Lee."

“You knew Fleur?" Vinyl asked.

Colgate's eyes widened.

"What am Ah missin'?" Big Mac asked.

"She and I were close," Colgate said after a moment.

"Fleur dis Lee’s a famous supermodel," Vinyl said. "Half the country has a crush on her, seems. How'd you get to know her, Colgate?"

"I ran into her at a convention, and we hit it off."

"D'ya suppose that has anythin' to do with it?" Big Mac asked.

"She doesn't," Colgate said.

"She might," Vinyl said slowly. "I don't see how, though."

"She doesn't, I know that," Colgate said. "She died."

The three of them were silent. "I'm sorry, Colgate," Vinyl said.

"She went down in the battle."

"Wait, she was in the battle?"

"During the battle, I should have said." She turned away, and for a second, a look of pained frustration crossed her face.

"Were you there?" Big Mac asked. He expected her to affirm, and wasn't disappointed.

"I operated on the wounded in an outpost near the city limits, and I only found out…" She paused, thinking again, and appeared to master herself. "It was an accident. She fell down at home, I think. That's what the news said." As she spoke, she lowered her head a fraction and pierced Big Mac with her eyes again, as if willing him to reply. He looked back, undaunted, and for a minute, they simply looked into each other's eyes. She broke the connection.

"So that was some scene up there," she said.

"I've never seen them fight like that," Vinyl said. "Not that I've been with 'em that long, but… it's not common, right?"

“Not at all," Big Mac said.

"But it's no wonder the Elements didn't activate. All this stuff was just below the surface. I wonder how long it's been building."

"What do you mean?" Colgate asked.

"A fight like that doesn't come out of nowhere. Some of 'em, anyway, they were sitting on some pretty deep feelings."

"Twilight an' Rainbow," Big Mac said.

"Pinkie and Fluttershy."

Again, the three were silent.

"I'm not going back to Canterlot," Colgate said. "Or Ponyville, for that matter."

Big Mac nodded at her.

"If you stick with us long enough, you might change your tune," Vinyl said.

"Not those cities," Colgate said.

"Why?" Big Mac asked.

"I'm done with them." A grimace darkened her face as soon as she said it, and she made to stand up, but stopped that too.

"Y'okay?"

"Fine," Colgate said.

He raised his eyebrow.

She looked from him to Vinyl and then, after another pause, made for the exit. When she was gone, Vinyl nudged Big Mac, who recoiled.

"Another odd duck, huh?"

Big Mac sighed.

They penetrated the outer banks of a rolling rainstorm the following day, a flocculent floor of silver obscuring their view of the countryside below, and a particularly severe mass of splits where the ground was already weak. Above, the sun gleamed as it always did, and it was replaced by the moon with hardly any words among the travelers. Fluttershy stayed in one cabin, pouring over books, and Twilight did the same in the other. She did not share the letter she got from Princess Luna, which explained what she had already figured: that Princess Celestia had been trapped in a magical dream, and it was her own godly magic reflected to maintain the prison. There was no way that Luna could find to release Celestia without endangering her, but she would keep trying.

Only the cycle of day and night had not been put on hold. The rest of the country was free to govern itself for the time, a weakness that Twilight did not know Discord was unable to abuse. He, too, had suffered a blow; his near loss at the castle had taken away his momentum and wounded his ego, and while the Elements sped once more into the unknown, he plotted aimlessly, discarding idea after idea after idea, half enraged and half terrified.

The clouds first broke on the next day, and Applejack used the break to land them on the far edge of a forested valley. It was cleft down the middle by a gap in the earth, and they could see shreds of river clinging to both sides like luminous growths between the trees. To the south, it widened across half the horizon, whether naturally or as an effect of the splitting they couldn't tell. She had to sway the ship back and forth gently to push through the tree branches, but had soon set them down atop a wide hill overlooking one end of a rusted bridge, its supports buried in the forest and its graceful arch yawning down into the chasm. Birds roosted in the girders and atop wide pylons, some scattering as the airship made ground.

Out in the bridge's middle, one could see vague unevenness, a shape that did not fit the rest of the bridge, much more obvious in the supporting superstructure than the flat top. From the mismatched, crowded redundancy of beams below this anomaly, they could see that the bridge had been lengthened in the middle to accommodate the valley's new width. They had been so long abroad that ponies saw fit to weld together a patch for their bridge, rather than wait for the ground to be forced back together.

"Somethin' wrong?" Rainbow asked when they touched down.

"Ah don't like how these turbines are runnin'. Figured we'd better do somethin' 'bout it now, before we don't have the time," Applejack said.

Rainbow grunted understanding and looked into the sky.

"Go ahead an' stretch yer wings, Ah can handle it," Applejack said. She tapped her head. "Ah can make repairs with this, if Ah've got enough time."

"You sure?"

"Very."

Rainbow shrugged and spiraled up into the clouds. Seeking a warm updraft and finding none, she had to flap for a minute to reach the altitude she wanted. From just under the clouds, she could see the bridge's entire span in one unbroken line, could see where it met train tracks on either end of the valley. The forest extended east for ten or so miles more, where it gave way to the grassy plains and plateaus that they had all come to recognize surrounding Discord's castle. The the west, the trees thinned until they were replaced with a light brown smear, the plains that would eventually become sheer desert. They were just outside the flatlands, which would steadily rise as they went farther west. Eventually, they would either level off into a vast plexus of hills and rivers, shrouded in a deep pine forest; or they would rise into the Friesian Mountains, where they had already been. Either would be cold, and Rainbow thought of her weather magic. Weak as it was, it would be winter soon, and thinking they might soon find themselves in the frozen west made Rainbow look on her capabilities with something almost like pride. She knew they hadn't packed enough warm clothing, and her magic might soon be able to make a difference.

She landed on an offshoot of cloud and looked down on the ship, the bridge, the land. Her frustration toward Twilight had waned, but the feeling did not appear to be mutual. Since the fight, Twilight had not emerged from her cabin. Rainbow could smell the semi-familiar odor of her divination smoke. Angry, probably more at herself than the others, Twilight had shut herself away and was trying to bury her feelings under more research. If confronted, she would claim not to, or be shocked at Rainbow's insight. She would never hear of how obvious the pattern was to her friend.

Rainbow slipped off the cloud, frowning at the thought. Applejack saw it: while they were all fighting, they were just giving Discord more time to regain his composure, and the country more time to finish unraveling. At least Applejack had the wherewithal to do something about it. No one else had asked, but Rainbow had late that first night.

"Takin' us to the mines to get more Elements. Ah figure that's what did us in."

"Twilight said—"

"Bugger to that. If Ah'm wrong, it'll give us time to work things out."

She finally found a warm air current and let it carry her out over the bridge, where she eventually landed on the ties, slick with condensation. Rain was near, she could tell, and possibly snow. She hopped off and flew to the underside, lying down on a curving metal beam and staring into the blue abyss. "Is it even worth it to fix all this by now?" she wondered, not for the first time. Also not for the first time, she had no answer for herself, and her mind turned to other things.

She thought of Trixie, and of the moment she realized—accepted—what had taken place, that she would never see her again. She would never receive another letter, at once advising caution and teasing her innocuously; she would never storm off, flustered, but secretly reread the letter and savor the giddy warmth that seemed to fill her, bottom to top, thinking of its author. Worst, she had lost the old ones, for they were on another ship.

Motion caught her keen eyes, and she looked up to see a tiny, blue pony stepping gingerly out onto the bridge. For a second, her heart stopped.

"Tr— oh."

It was just Colgate.

"Stupid Dash."

Rainbow flew over, the cold air helping to compose her thoughts so that when she landed, she was able to fall into an easy walk beside the new pony, who looked down at the ties with an assiduous glare.

"How's it going, doc?"

"Fine."

"You lose something?"

"I'm just looking," Colgate said.

"Not much to see," Rainbow said, kicking at a tie. "This place looks dead. I wonder if any trains come by anymore. Probably not."

"I don’t know."

Rainbow looked at her and tried to conjure a small pocket of warm air for them, a gesture of goodwill. "You're probably ready to get back home, huh?"

Colgate shook her head.

"No?"

"Shhhhhh." Colgate kept her eyes down, but another expression passed over her face briefly, a narrowing of the eyes and a flaring of the nostrils. Deep consideration. Rainbow allowed herself to be led by the unicorn's slow meander up the tracks, farther out over the valley. If she was afraid of the height, she didn't show it.

"I don't want to go back there," Colgate said at last. "Neither Canterlot nor Ponyville."

Rainbow did not try to feign surprise. She had spent enough time in the company of cagey characters that it was no shock to her that their newest, cagiest addition had some reason to avoid her past. Instead, she simply asked "why's that?"

Colgate thought again for a second and paused once, her legs tensed, as if contemplating running. Eventually, she continued moving. "I met some ponies there I didn't get along with."

"Like that doctor who kicked you out in Ponyville?"

"Him and others. It was bad in Ponyville after you left, but Ponyville was nothing like Canterlot. Ponyville was sweetness compared to the big city."

"Uhhhh…" She wanted to ask for more, but hesitated.

"If I go back to either place, I'll be remembered, and that won't be good."

"Are you saying they'd want to hurt you or something?" A quick thought flashed through her mind, and she swatted it away. "Please don’t be on the run."

"If they could, I'm sure they would, and that brings me to this point. I don't know where everyone else is going, but I don't want to ever go back to those two cities. Anywhere else, but not Ponyville, and especially not Canterlot. Do you think you can ask them not to take me there?"

"I mean, I doubt we'd go up there anytime soon anyway."

"I don't want to go back," Colgate snapped, still scowling down on the railroad ties. She kicked a piece of gravel off the edge.

"Okay, chill." Rainbow looked at her, but the anger she had heard was not to be seen on Colgate's face. Rainbow studied her for a second longer, lingering on the visible outline of her ribs. "Did you, uh… you're kinda thin."

Colgate looked back at herself. "I'm not hungry."

"Yeah. Okay." Her warm air had dissipated long ago. "I'll tell Applejack not to take us up to Canterlot for you, though. If you don't want to go back, you don't have to. We can drop you off in… I don't know. Wherever else you want, I guess."

"I don't think you're supposed to drop me off. Big Mac says I'm important." She smiled, but still refused to look up. "I think I'm not, but he might be right."

Rainbow sighed quietly. She knew it too; she'd seen it early. She did not want to explain it to Colgate, and was relieved that she wouldn't have to.

"Even after everything, though, I'm not going back."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know."

"Well, think about it. There's lots of stuff out there, plenty of places where you won't be recognized." "Celestia," she thought. "I could be saying this to a couple of the others too."

"Trottingham seems nice," Colgate said. "Somewhere with a lot of open spaces and empty land."

"Wow, so you're hanging up the doctor thing too?"

"What do you mean?"

Rainbow frowned at her. "You don't want to go back to practicing? You don't want to go back to your old life at all?"

"This is my life, Rainbow Dash."

"Uh-huh." They stopped, and Rainbow sat on the tracks' edge. To her surprise, Colgate joined her to look into the torn sky below. She thought of the money Colgate must have made. Even in a small town, a surgeon of even moderate skill stood to earn more bits each year than Rainbow ever would with her job, if she managed to pay off her student loans first. Giving it up in time she could see, but so soon after such an abrupt change in her life, that was strange.

"She's too prepared," Rainbow thought. "That's what it is. Too ready to give her old life up."

"I don't want to pressure you to talk if you're uncomfortable, but what happened back there? Any specifics for me?"

Colgate looked at her.

"How about, any ponies that are after you who might come after us now? That we should know."

"They don't know where I am, unless Vanilla told them. He might have, I suppose."

"What sort of ponies are we talking about? Is it the Mansels?"

"I… it might be. I'm not sure who those are."

"Powerful crime family, Roan, lots of connections, money laundering, yadda yadda yadda."

"No, nothing like that," Colgate said. "It would be more personal than that."

"Oh, great."

"I don't think they'll leave their cities. In all my time in Canterlot, no one from Ponyville came after me."

"Who the heck wants to hurt you in Ponyville? Everyone I knew there was great."

She looked around, as if afraid that the pony in question might spring out at her. Rainbow looked down and saw her legs tensing again, and she tensed her own wings, just in case she would need to dive off and catch Colgate in a fall. The unicorn looked ready to snap.

"Cole?"

At that, Colgate's tension melted away, and she idly tapped a hoof on the rotting wooden tie. Rainbow could smell rain in the air.

"I, uh, don't think anyone else is out here."

"I can say this. I used to have some pretty powerful friends, but they betrayed me, first in Ponyville and then in Canterlot too. I thought I was going to Canterlot for safety, but they set me up and then abandoned me."

Rainbow could feel a chill beginning to constrict on her heart. "Colgate, I feel like I really need to know who you're talking about here. This could be pretty serious."

"I don't think they'll chase me like this."

"But you don't know that for sure. And I don't know you."

Colgate nodded. Her head was turned in Rainbow's general direction, though the eyes were elsewhere, and Rainbow watched her. She appeared placid, her eyes slowly taking the scene in. There was no hint of unrest in her body language, but something still kept Rainbow from being totally at ease. There was a waiting feeling, a suggestion of expectation about her.

"Cole, come on, be straight with me. I know it's scary, but we're pretty scared too."

"You're not scared."

Rainbow coughed. "Uh, yeah, we are."

"You don't act like scared ponies."

"Well… it's different for us, I guess."

"How so?"

"We've been out in the world for a long time now. How do I put it?" She thought of Twilight, shut tight in her room, angry at them all and, Rainbow suspected, herself. "There's not much that's new for us. Like, we've seen a lot already."

"I don't get it."

"Yeah." She lay back on the railroad and stared into the gray sky. "At least for me, it's a kind of quiet fear. I'm scared that that was our last chance to set things right, and we blew it." Her thoughts quieted as Colgate shifted positions next to her, getting more comfortable. If only she had articulated that thought during their fight, she thought. It may have helped get them all on the same page.

"I'm scared that we're gonna go off and do something else now to try to get back to wherever we should be, but it won't be enough, 'cause we tried too early. Next time, he's gonna be ready, if there even is a next time." "Or he might just shoot us out of the sky and dump us down a gap and be done with it." She did not voice the final thought to Colgate; she didn't want to burden her with the idea. "This would be a perfect place for it."

In a fit of fear and anxiety, Colgate smashed a cup against the wall in her cabin until shards of opaque plastic covered the floor. They were about to pass over Applewood, and the mood on the ship was dark. Everyone seemed to be on eggshells, and conversations on the deck were laced with unease.

She had woken that day from a dream of falling from the ship into a pool of clear water, pushed by an unseen pair of hooves. In the dream, she had known they were Rainbow Dash's, and she understood the significance. Jerking off the floor, she had thought she had woken one of the others, a mistake she was certain would cost her her tenuous position. For twenty minutes that night, she had held herself in desperate expectation before falling asleep again.

She had told Rainbow too much on the bridge yesterday. She had revealed her fear of return, her fear of her enemies, an act that had given her a few minutes of relief and then a night of worries. She had spoken to Rainbow because she was a former patient. Colgate knew things about the pegasus that could give her leverage: that Rainbow had seen a counselor on and off through high school, for instance.

Colgate could hold it over her head if she needed, and it had seemed an adequate guard against betrayal at the time.

At the time. All Rainbow had to do was not honor her request, or ask the others specifically to take her back up north, and that would be it. Secrets held against her or no, Rainbow would be the victor. An uncomfortable truth was simply that: uncomfortable. Colgate, meanwhile, would never escape either city again. She had only done it the first time with Vanilla's help, something she knew to not count on.

Even worse, there was no TV on the ship, nothing to drink, no source of distraction, no way to tap into the creative part of her mind that had served so well in her times with Powder Rouge. There were cards, but she didn't know how to play, and could not ask. There was so little she had to her advantage anymore, even revealing that she did not know how to shuffle a deck or play solitaire would be a forfeit she knew she could not endure. "What good are you at all?" they would ask.

She looked down at her broken glass and thought, "There's the only thing on this ship that's weaker than me." She could run, she supposed. Force a landing and then disappear into the countryside, sprinting away to parts unknown. They would have no reason to chase her if she left quietly enough.

She paced to the other side of her bed and sat down. "If Rainbow does what I asked her, what then? I'll be in her debt, and that could be even worse." Scenes of Rainbow extracting a favor from Colgate played through her mind, each one worse than the next. From inopportune to dangerous to plainly vicious, they came one after the other, until her thoughts were, again, flooded.

For a time, she let the thoughts consume her, treading down each bad path for just as long as it took for the next idea to surface.

Someone knocked, and Colgate started. She raced to the broken cup and swept it under the bed before opening the door for Vinyl.

"I think you should see this," Vinyl said.

Colgate hesitated.

"C'mon, it'll be good for you." She cast an unhappy look back down the corridor. "Plus, I think Pinkie wants a turn to spend some alone time."

Colgate stepped out of the door, and for a second, she was stepping out into the cold sun outside the rehab facility. Her stomach rolled over, and she had to stop for a second.

"Okay?"

Colgate couldn't speak, so she nodded her head. She was afraid she would throw up if she opened her mouth.

"C'mon. Fresh air."

Out on the deck, Applejack was at the wheel, Octavia was curled into a tight ball beside the gunwale, Fluttershy opposite her by the torch. Rainbow was behind, wearing her ridiculous sigil hat and speeding them along with a sour expression, and Rarity and Big Mac were speaking in low voices at the back.

"We're just coming out over Applewood," Vinyl said. "You ever been?"

"Briefly, for vacation once," Colgate said. A lie; she had not been farther south than Trottingham.

"It's not quite suited for vacations now. Come over here."

Colgate looked off the edge and into the horizon, still shrouded with clouds. In the middle distance, there was a dark brown patch of city, unremarkable so far away, resembling a lichenous dip in the desert, a nexus point between two halves of immobile river. One end snaked off to their left, narrowing and widening randomly until it disappeared into the frigid desert, and on their right, it stretched straight and true like the railroad tracks on the bridge, shooting north to where she did not know.

"We did that," Vinyl said.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing."

"You will when we get closer. It was an accident, there was a fight, but it was a fight we lost, and the whole city… you'll see."

"Why are you quiet?" Colgate asked.

"Voice disorder."

"Oh." She squinted, but could make out no details about the supposedly destroyed city. It occurred to her that it could be a ruse. "Closer, closer," Vinyl would say, until the push. She backed away from the railing.

The two unicorns waited until Applewood came into better view, and then Colgate saw what Vinyl had meant. At first, everything looked more or less okay, though she noted the lack of movement in the streets, the lack of light despite it being a cloudy day.

"We had to fight a manifestation of Discord's magic," Vinyl said reverently.

Colgate traced her eyes over the hills and valleys, encrusted with tiny houses and latticed with roads, then looked at the ribbon of desolation that she figured Vinyl wanted her to study. All the city's tallest buildings were clustered into one line, dark and dead, some reduced to charred husks and some uprooted to lie broad across the big street, their destroyed bodies wreathing the feet of other buildings, still standing. The filigrees of old neon tubing and boisterous advertisements had faded, palimpsests upon the city's face.

For Colgate, it was like looking down on the field of battle, examining the wounded and assessing what needed to be addressed most immediately. She looked at a hotel that had partially collapsed, dumping the majority of its façade into the surrounding, green-tinged moat, mooring a small paddlewheel boat that appeared to have been overrun by the newly homeless. She noted the exposed hotel rooms in the building's side, the airship lot bereft of crafts and scored with graffiti and other stains.

She saw the broken spine of a roller coaster barring passage across a bridge, the damaged nubs where giant lamps had once stood on its tall guardrails. Not far off, concentrated burn marks tarnished the image of a pink and orange doughnut, held joyously aloft by a pony who very much resembled Pinkie Pie.

"Everyone had to fend for themselves down there," Vinyl said.

"I see no one." Only a partial lie. She did see the signs of ponies below: small wisps of smoke from cook fires, makeshift attempts at water channels, the occasional fresh tire track.

"They're there." Her horn glowed soft blue, and Colgate flinched back, fearing the push.

"Sorry," Vinyl said, looking at her with furrowed brows.

With her goggles covering her eyes, Colgate could not discern the expression. She backed away another step.

"I'm not gonna do anything," Vinyl said, turning her magic off. "Sorry, I light it sometimes. Force of habit."

Colgate eyed her.

"I won't around you, though. Deal?"

She was pinned, and not in the way she had expected. Vinyl was no Element of Harmony, she was no known quantity, but Colgate had assumed that she would at least show her intent early, believing she could overwhelm. With a simple light spell, though, all Colgate's expectations were blown away, and she was faced with an agonizing decision. Pretend to feel safe, and risk her life for the artifice of trust; or expose her knowledge of Vinyl's ill intent to secure what could be only temporary safety as Vinyl was forced to reshape her plans.

She slowly walked back to the rail and looked over at the city. "Any second now," she thought. She could feel herself sailing off the edge like a bag of flour, see herself broken open among the gaudy, wounded city.

"I think it's important that everyone sees this," Vinyl continued, keeping a respectful distance. "This is what happens when we mess up. This times a thousand if we let this last battle be the end."

Colgate nodded absently. She tried to keep one eye on Vinyl, but knew she had to look at the city as well.

"Thoughts?"

"Why aren't they trying to rebuild the dam?"

"Who's to say they aren't? I can't tell from here."

"The roads to the dam aren't clear. Where the dam used to be, I should say." She paused. "Why is there no dam?"

"It… walked away."

"Huh." In her head, there appeared the cartoonish image of a dam with legs, promenading on the river banks with a parasol balanced over its top.

"You're not disturbed by that?"

Sensing that it was a trick question, but not knowing the solution, Colgate asked, "Should I be?"

"A dam getting up and walking away—I did say walking—is pretty alarming. I should think."

"Were you able to stop it eventually? I see you didn't here, but did you get to it afterwards?"

"Luna did."

"That's good." Her eyes strayed back to the hotels, and she watched a small pair of ponies walk down the street, stepping up onto the cluttered sidewalk to avoid twinkles of broken glass.

"It didn't have to be this way, though," Vinyl said.

Colgate edged back away. "She wants me distracted. Any second now, she's gonna go for it."

"Nothing had to turn out like this, but it did. I know there's nothing to do about it now, we can't bring those ponies back, but we have to remember them."

"Of course," Colgate said, though she had no idea what Vinyl was talking about. Taking a stab, she said, "I can remember it pretty easily, I think."

"Not a test of your memory." Vinyl thought. "Never mind. Good luck, Colgate."

"Are you leaving us?"

Vinyl froze. When she spoke, her voice was even lower. "Been thinking about it. I'm not sure I'm cut for this." She raised a hoof to touch Colgate, but lowered it when Colgate shrunk away. "Maybe you're my replacement. Makes sense to me that you would be."

Colgate shook her head. "I doubt I'm a good replacement."

"Not your decision."

"Yours neither." She took another half step away, suddenly afraid that her quick refutation would be just the impetus needed to trigger Vinyl’s aggression.

Instead, Vinyl nodded and tapped her horn. "You're right. Sorry again, about this. I didn't mean to scare you."

Colgate gave her a hesitant smile.

On a Tuesday afternoon, there wasn't much business to be done at her other clubs, but Velocity was full of the usual crowd of Pegasus Advocates. White Wine was in her office in the basement, going over next month's budget and wracking her brain for a solution to her newest problem.

The contraband that Whippoorwill had promised her had stopped after his first batch, and then he had gone quiet shortly thereafter. She had considered sending someone to check up on him, to peek through a window and see if he was even at home, but she could think of no one she wanted for the task. There was already enough unrest at the appearance of his magical trinkets, she didn't want to incite any more questions by sending someone to look in on a seemingly unimportant unicorn.

White Wine got up from her uncomfortable chair to stretch. Above, she could hear the heavy sounds of gear being pushed and pulled about, a local band setting up for their gig. Their excited banter brought a smile to her face, and she decided to go up to see the new talent. In her other clubs, she didn’t mind letting mixed races in, as long as she didn’t have to mingle, but in Velocity, all the musicians were pegasi.

She had two hatches on opposite sides of the basement, one to let her out in the lounge area close to the patio exit, and one to let her come up just behind the stage. She took the patio hatch, a trapdoor with no ladder or ramp, and climbed out into the unlit room. Later that night, the room would be alive with color and music and the tantalizing movements of her dancers up on the oval stage, but for the time, all was quiet.

White Wine did not care for the quiet, and did not linger in the empty darkness. Without announcing herself, she joined a small, ratty pegasus who was struggling with a large amp, and the two managed to wrestle it up on stage. She shook hooves, introduced herself, noted with concealed displeasure the shock on his face when he recognized the significance of her garb. She had chosen to wear her hair down that day, the orange and green tiger stripes draping across her back and down her sides like a giant, ridiculous candy wrapper, but tied up in the very front to proudly display the black X she had tattooed into her forehead. Unlike some of her other patrons, she had learned that there was nothing wrong with concealing it in public, but at her home away from home, she had nothing to hide.

"You're, uh… the manager didn't say anything about this being a… this type of bar," the pony said.

"I'm the manager," White Wine said. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Uh, Grubby Greens, ma'am."

"Your band."

"Oh." He gestured loosely at the drum set, where one of them had scrawled the band name on the bass drum. His expression suggested he wanted to be indignant that she hadn't noticed, but was too scared to say anything. "We're The Crossways Fliers. Yeah, hey, we really appreciate this gig, ma'am, even though, uh…"

"I'm sure you'll be fine," she said, pointedly without conviction, as she turned away. It wasn't her problem that they hadn't done their research.

She stepped behind the bar and examined herself in its mirror. Her black lipstick was smeared—she had been chewing her pencil again, going over the budget.

"I left my lipstick down there, can I use yours?" she asked the bartender on duty. Her name was Warm Welcome, an apt name, but not completely truthful, White Wine knew. No one made her fellow Pegasus Advocates feel more comfortable to take a load off at the bar, nor was anyone so adept at making ponies unwelcome when they wandered in by mistake. Warm Welcome's cutie mark was an open door, a symbol that had puzzled White Wine when they first met. Unlike many Pegasus Advocates, Warm Welcome eschewed the elaborate clothing for a simple black studded vest and tattered, checkered cape that she had cut to hang high over her flanks, exposing a pink eraser of a bob-tail in the middle of her shapely backside. On nights where she didn't need to tend bar, she would string her red ribbons between the bun of her mane and her tail, a relaxed bridge over her back.

Through the mirror as she reapplied her lipstick, White Wine watched the band at work, trailing cables through the open door, hefting amps, rolling tables out of the way multiple times. "Just move them out of the room once and be done with it," White Wine thought angrily. She put it out of her mind; it was insignificant.

"Do you think you could get these studs drunk before their set?" White Wine asked.

"Probably," Warm Welcome said.

"Good." She looked at Warm Welcome for a second, straightening her red ribbon. "Nothing dangerous, just enough to make them embarrass themselves."

"Should be no problem. They're all young, hip ponies." She took her lipstick back. "Oh, Wine, a call came for you a little while ago. I wrote down the number."

"Hm?" White Wine accepted the piece of paper. "Name?"

"He just said to call him right back. He sounded nervous."

White Wine rolled her eyes. There was more than one pony in her life who fit that description.

She took the entrance behind the stage back to her office and sat at her desk, cluttered with papers and notes to herself. On the far wall, there hung a myriad of posters, all involving pegasus pride in some iteration or another. One poster, showing the Wonderbolts streaking across an art deco sky, declaimed "Take back your wings" in huge, blocky letters. Another, the same light orange as her coat, showed only the one word, Spirit, surrounded by a stylized pair of wings. She stared at it for a while, reflecting on its message, and picked up the phone, cradling it awkwardly between her head and shoulder. There were mechanisms in place to assist in the holding of phone receivers for the non-magical, but White Wine, like many of her compatriots, took pride in shunning them.

The pony picked up on the first ring. "Wine?"

"Oh. Whippoorwill." Even edging close to panic, his drawl was unmistakeable.

The pony on the other end paused for a long, relieved sigh. "We've got a bit of a situation here. Are you alone?"

"I'm in my office."

"Ah. Alone?"

She looked back at her posters as a bilious response formed in her mind. Former friend or no, she wanted to cut the connection and let him suffer alone. In the first few seconds of their conversation, she could already tell that he wanted something. She just said, "yeah, alone. What's the situation?" Before she could stop herself, she added, "where were you?"

His voice was low and even; he had mastered himself. "Something went wrong with my contacts, Wine. They've all gone dark on me, not a word of warnin' from no one." He waited for her response, and when he didn't get one, continued. "We might not be gettin' another shipment in a bit. Ah'm workin' on securin' alternate resources to bring the operation closer to home, but fer now, we’re gonna need to wait. Ah hope you haven't done anythin' with what Ah gave ya?"

"I'm just sitting on it all, like you said," she said. "Whippoorwill, I'm at work right now. What do you need?"

"Hold on." She could hear him setting down the receiver and pattering around the room for a minute before returning. "Okay, all clear. Look, there ain't a reason to mince words. We need to strike at the Astras, fast and hard."

"Excuse me?"

"They're at the bottom of it, Ah know, an'… Wine, listen, they woulda gotten me too if they knew Ah was here."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just trust me!" he shouted, making her reel her head back. She almost hung up on him right there. "We gotta go at 'em as soon as we can, if not sooner, you an' me." His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "They won't be expectin' the likes of you an' yers."

"Uh-huh." She frowned down at her budget. "I don't know if you've read the papers lately, but the Astra family is the most powerful group of ponies this side of Trottingham, much more powerful than your ponies. At least here, they are."

"But here, they're divided."

"You don't know that." "You've been in hiding for a week," she wanted to add, but didn't, though she was confident that that was what it was.

"They have to be. They wouldn't have the whole family in Canterlot randomly, Wine."

"Perhaps it's not random, Whippoorwill." She smiled wide into the receiver. "Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for, how you say, you an' yers."

"Wine," he sighed. "It will be if I can't count on your help. They're weak, I know it, I just need a couple of your ponies to go after them and run 'em out of town."

"Oh, run them out of town? That's all?"

"In the euphemistic sense."

She snorted derisively. "And what do I stand to gain in return? Don't say the destruction of the Astra family."

"Wine, if we can get 'em out of our way, then you and Ah can return to normal. Ah can reestablish my supply chain, an' then we can get back to business." He paused. "This is a single hiccup in my plan, that's all. Once it's resolved, everythin' will be how we've planned. You can do it easily, an' Ah'll be there to help every step of the way."

Something clattered above her and angry voices broke into argument. Making her voice as flat as she could, she said, "I'll get back to you after work. I have to go now."

"Wine—listen," he said as she hung up.

For a minute, White Wine stared at the orange poster again and ordered her thoughts. She brushed a lock of neon hair out of her face.

Part of her wanted to trust him, to help him. When they were younger, she had trusted him numerous times with the difficulties of growing up, with the family drama and teenage heartbreak that had twisted her to a point she thought unique for its trueness. In turn, he had trusted her with the same, him using her as his council and open ear when relationship after relationship fell apart. All through high school, there had remained at the core of their friendship a grain of optimistic certainty that whatever the future had in store, they would face it together and be the better for it.

Even their parting had been friendly. She had promised to write, he to visit when he could afford the trip up from Trottingham.

Instead, both had gone on to become their worst selves, crafted and mishandled by life and ill fortune until they had nothing more to offer except ugliness. For her, the transformation had taken a year, the longest year of her life, endless rage and self blame as she withdrew further and further into herself while her assailant—a unicorn, naturally—walked free. She had vowed revenge, had practiced every motion and word in her soliloquy before killing him, but had never gotten the chance to put any of it into practice. Until and past the day that pony would leave town and her scope forever, she had been too scared to do more than sit at her window and frown at the world, hating, until her hate had vitrified into a cold, comfortable plate of armor around her heart.

She wondered faintly what had happened to Whippoorwill as she dialed the phone again and waited for a different voice.

"Yes?" the stallion asked.

"Strawberry."

"No one by that name, ma'am. Good day."

"It's White Wine, you flake," she said with a false laugh, enough to put him at ease.

"Ah. Er, yes, what do you need, then?"

"I've got a fly buzzing around our operation that I need chased away."

"Mm. Chased away?"

"Yes, Strawberry, chased, not squished." "Not yet, anyway." "I'm hoping a warning is enough for this one."

"What does he know?"

"He knows who I am and who my ponies are, nothing about you."

"Our partnership?"

"He knows nothing. As far as he's concerned, I'm just a club owner."

"You are just a club owner, White."

"Yes, of course. That's what I meant to say."

"Mm. One minute." When he came back, she recognized the sound of a pencil in his teeth. "Info?"

She gave him Whippoorwill's name and address, reemphasizing that she wanted him scared only.

"But if he decides to try something violent, do what you must."

Strawberry scribbled on a piece of paper, and she thought she heard the pencil scrape in a long line. Underlining her "no violence" stipulation, she thought with a smile.

"When do you want it?" he asked.

"When can you do it?"

"We could do it tonight, if you'd like."

She thought. Whippoorwill had been clearly nervous on the phone, and she was sure he had been in hiding, waiting for the Astras to finish him off as he suspected they had his friends. Someone showing up at his apartment the same night he had peeked out to call White Wine would accomplish nothing. He would just redouble his efforts to convince her to join his foolish cause against the Astras; that, or do something drastic and stupid.

"He's jumpy right now. Let's give it a few days."

"Jumpy in what way?"

"Nothing to do with you," she said again, a hoof to the crease in her brow. "He's trying to get me to help him with something, that's all. Something I don't want to do."

Strawberry was silent.

"He wants us to take on the Astras in town, attract their attention."

Strawberry laughed, and White Wine chuckled as well.

"Now I see why you'd like this guy gone, Wine. Sure, you got it. How about you call me back the day you want it?"

"That's fine. Thank you." She hung up, Strawberry still laughing on the other end, and was just about to get comfortable when another crash shook the ceiling, and she got up. The argument above persisted as she flew up behind the stage, where she could see the arguers gesturing heatedly around a bass guitar on the floor. Warm Welcome looked on with mild amusement, which turned to an outright laugh when one of the usuals decided to start berating the clumsy band members. A burly pegasus with a spiked choker around his neck, White Wine knew he was about as harmless as the PAs in her club came. He wore no red ribbon; he had not earned it yet.

She let them carry on for a minute or two before stepping in with a simple "that's enough," enough reprimand to make the regular slink back to his table. She looked at the hapless pegasus to whom she assumed the bass belonged and shook her head. She remained in the bar for a little while longer, socializing and helping with an early sound check, before resignedly going back below to crunch numbers—all the more complicated now that Whippoorwill had tried to reenter her life.

At The Equine Sun, Flitter had built up a stack of articles on her desk, which she read whenever she had time between taking calls, which was often. Her job that week was to route calls to the appropriate department, operating a complicated and bulky phone mechanism of levers and buttons. She had a whole cubicle to herself, the job's sole advantage, but the work was monotonous and the scenery dreary. She sat in the middle of the crowded second floor, directly underneath an air vent, her only view to the outside world a constricted look at the street outside through the window at the end of the hall.

One of her fellow interns had managed a spot with one of the copy editors while the other had found himself in the mail room, where Flitter was certain he was complaining to anyone who would listen—barring that, himself. She had been momentarily excited when she found that she would not be in the mail room, but her good cheer evaporated when she saw her giant switchboard. "Still better than the lotus," she told herself, but after the fifth caller complaining about a misattribution on one of their photographs, she wasn't so sure.

Ink's reprimand had stayed with her for the weekend and no longer. She read everything she could get her hooves on, regardless of apparent relevancy, and simply resolved to not report anything that did not fall exactly inside her job specifications. The Pegasus Advocates kept appearing in articles, something she was keeping track of on her own, noting dates and article titles in a small notebook she left in her desk at nights.

The article that had caught her attention that afternoon featured the PAs, as well as the Astras, ponies she was familiar with in name only. The headline ran "Astra Family and Pegasus Advocates on Collision Course?" It was an op-ed by Spring Dance, someone whose straightforward reporting style her peers praised and who Flitter thought needed to find a better mane stylist. The first sentence alone had captured her: "The renowned Astra family may soon find itself in the cross hairs of the most powerful Pegasus Advocacy chapter in Equestria, sources say."

The renowned Astra family may soon find itself in the cross hairs of the most powerful Pegasus Advocacy chapter in Equestria, sources say. They may be staying in Canterlot for a little R and R, but that hasn't stopped them from turning heads. Perhaps this time it's the wrong heads.
Known for their staunch criticism of all things non-pegasus, particularly unicorns, the Pegasus Advocates have been poised to enter into a conflict with the wealthy Astras for a long time coming, if not for the factor of geographical distance. Since moving to the outskirts of Hoofington, though, the Astras may have unwittingly presented a more tempting target to PA chapters across the nation.
Poised, indeed, they are. On Saturday, the unsurprising violence came to a head at a "peaceful" PA rally in Lower Canterlot as pegasi in the crowd broke out their own magical artifacts.
Officer Weed Puller of the Canterlot Police Department had this to say: "We always have trouble with them [the PAs], every time, but this is the first time we've seen magic. We can usually get by with bullhorns and riot shields, but this is the first time we've had to call in magic breakers for a demonstration like this."
So far, there have been two instances of magic use at PA rallies, and no one seems to know where the magic is coming from.
These worrisome displays are not relegated simply to Lower Canterlot. The elite citizens are beginning to fear for their safety as well as PA signs have started to appear on sidewalks and walls.
Local store owner Floral Farms said, "We just finished giving our store a new coat of paint, and those damn PAs made it ugly again." She went on to say that she believes that the PAs are not getting magical artifacts on their own, but from outside sources.
With hardly a peep from the advocacy movement these years past, the timing seems a little too perfect that they should suddenly reappear to the arrival of the Astras, and with magic at their behest. Some even speculate that the Astras are supplying these magical artifacts as part of a political ploy, or even a coup.
No Astras were available for comment, but a friend of theirs, Dr. Whooves, Greater Canterlot native, was. "On one side, we've an unstoppable force—that's the Astras—and on the other, an immovable object—the Pegasus Advocates. Why, it's only a matter of time before they meet, and then we'll hear of nothing else."
With a regretful shake of his head, he added, "It's already begun, I think." Unfortunately, he did not elaborate.
In these uncertain times, one thing, at least, seems clear. In the midst of the war between the gods of our world, Greater Canterlot may soon be embroiled in its own race war.

The phone rang, and Flitter sighed. She enjoyed customer service—her times at the spa with her sister had been some of the happiest in recent memory—but operating a switchboard was not that. She transferred the caller to the advertising department and stretched.

Wings and Jet were no help. She had told them the truth, to a point, about her finding a job doing grunt-work with a magazine, and they had both offered to put in a good word for her at their job, swiftly detecting her discontentment. Flitter was silently envious. She knew them only as air-headed jokers, but with their experience in Manehattan, they had their pick of employment opportunities in the lighting business, apparently to such an extent that they could turn down offers on the condition that they wouldn't be able to work together.

"Just get married already," she thought bitterly, glaring at her cup of tap water. She blew the bendy straw to the cup's opposite side and grabbed another article, but she had no will to read. The thought of her roommates, happy, in love—in her opinion, though they still claimed it was a platonic friendship—and safe filled her with disgust. How easily she could be in their position, she thought. "Why did I even choose this gig, anyway?"

The answer, she knew, was because it had seemed a good idea at the time. She hadn't realized that the door would slide closed behind her when she joined up with the Ponyville Datura.

She pulled off her next article, "Renovation Project for Canterlot Palace." Apparently, the palace had suffered a leak in the throne room, and ponies were being diverted to one of the two antechambers for Royal Court. One construction worker on the royal payroll assured everyone that the issue was minor, and the good citizens of Canterlot would soon be able to see the palace's face again. Flitter set the article aside for a second read when she noticed that no sources were named.

"What"s wrong with me?" she thought, her disgust turning inward. "They're my friends, they're letting me live with them for free. Why am I so mad at them? No, not mad, just annoyed. Okay, why am I so annoyed with them? Simple envy? Maybe." She thought, rerouted a call, thought some more. From her desk, the new headline declared "Dancing Quarter Prepares for Third Annual Puppy Festival." "That could be fun," she thought idly.

She had never known herself to be a jealous mare, nor had Cloudchaser, nor had she ever been given to particularly deep or lasting displeasure. More one to carry on and find a solution instead of getting stuck behind bad feelings, disgust as she felt in the office was new to her. It seemed utterly without cause; no anger precipitated the bitterness, no feeling that she had been slighted. Slowly, as she thought, Flitter's disgust became puzzlement.

"Where's this coming from?" Ink Pearl's voice popped up in her thoughts, urging her to forget it and get back to work, and she read the first paragraph of the puppy article before giving up and staring into space.

She rerouted another call, someone claiming to have information for a potential article. The reporter they wanted was on lunch, so Flitter sent them to the pony's voicemail. She could at least take messages, she thought, pulling a switch. That would be something to do.

Thinking so, she played out the imaginary conversation in her head, a pleasant, momentary distraction.

"I wonder if I could find a way to get those two to work here. That might liven things up, at least. Do they need light technicians at a magazine? I'm sure they do somewhere. Or maybe they can be photographers. It's probably not that much different. Or maybe it is. How good are Wings and Jet, anyway?" She tried to recall a time when they had spoken about work in front of her, and could not, at least nothing specific. She supposed they must be very good at what they did.

"And here I am, sitting at a dang desk like I just got out of college, like I'm waiting to find my real career." Something clicked, but she had to take another call, and when she could get back to thinking ("This year will be leaner for the festival committee, spokesmare Bright Bounce said"), she had already forgotten the main point that had jumped out at her a minute before. Something about her actual career.

"I'm not doing anything with my life? Is that it? I mean, that's not it, obviously, but that's what it feels like right now. Maybe that's it, maybe I'm just mad because I'm not doing anything exciting and dramatic." She quietly hoped that wasn't it, disliking the image it conjured of a Flitter who allowed herself to be pulled by only the brightest chances at glory, but did not form that hope into a sentence in her mind; she was worried she might, in articulating it to herself, seem to be trying too hard to convince herself otherwise. The thought, however, was also not as easily dismissed as Ink's caustic attitude.

She sipped her stale water. She was told that the tap water was clean, that chemists and technicians had worked overtime in the past months to implement purification stations for static river water, but Flitter still avoided tap water when she could.

"Where are they putting all the impurities?" she briefly wondered. "Is there a landfill full of grit and algae they've skimmed out of our water somewhere?" She shuddered and pushed her water back, her thirst no longer so strong. She took a call, and then a second call right after.

"Slow day," she said quietly to herself, and forced herself through the article, a feel-good piece that did not give her the warm, fuzzy feeling she needed. The idea of snuggling up with all the prize puppies from the festival did put a short smile on her face, though.

Only five more hours until it was time to go home.

Rain turned to sleet as the Friesian Mountains hove into view, and Applejack laid her hat at her hooves. Partially, it was because she didn’t want it to blow away, but more than that, she wanted to feel the weather on her head.

The mood on the deck was thawing, as it was now known that she was taking them to the mines for more Elements, but interactions were still stiff. Twilight still refused to come out of her cabin, even to eat; Pinkie diligently slid plates of food through the space between door and jamb when Twilight allowed it. Rainbow had taken it on herself to speed them along, using Twilight's old magic to let them cover more distance each day than ever before. She, too, did it without being asked. Like Applejack's choice of destination, Rainbow had gone up one day, put on the odd-looking sigil hat, and boosted them through the sky, just like that. No big conversations or indecision, just magic and movement.

For Applejack, it was all so distant drama. Through it all, she was glad for her role as ship's captain, for though she did not strictly need to be by the wheel to steer them, she could choose to remain at the bow whenever she wanted, as impartial an observer as she could manage.

She was sure they had all noticed it to some extent, but Vinyl had been the only one to bring it up in bold terms. "Why are you staying so far from all the conflict?" she had asked one blustery morning just outside of Applewood. "Sure you've got your share of things to say."

Equally frankly, Applejack said, "'Cause after what Ah've been through, dyin' an' comin' back an' all that fun stuff, Ah don't feel Ah have time fer pointless infightin'. Look around, look at everyone. They're sore from the defeat, but they're all still here. Once all the grievances an' petty secrets have been aired out, we'll all come together an' finish this. No one's givin' up, so Ah may as well keep out of it."

"Some are talking about it. Quitting, I mean."

"But they haven't done it."

The freezing ice melted into her fur, and she tried not to shiver. When she was younger, her granny had taught her a trick about the cold. Instead of shivering and tightening up, she said, accept it. Open yourself to that cold, let it fill you up, and you won't be as miserable. Of course, that was in Ponyville, where the only snow they got was from Cloudsdale, and which did not come with wind chill or impenetrable slabs of cloud, or puddles she could lose a leg in.

Applejack did shiver, but still she tried not to. The stinging sleet reminded her where they were, and, more importantly, that she was alive. It seemed too grim a thought to her to voice to the others, but since her momentary departure from the living, she had caught herself unconsciously seeking out sensations to help her remember. Living, breathing, and feeling were important; exchanging hurt words when no one or everyone was at fault was not.

Rarity shambled over and, without asking, threw up a shield in front of Applejack's face.

"'Ppreciate it," Applejack said.

Rarity sighed.

"How ya feelin', sugarcube?"

"Better."

Applejack nodded.

"Not very much better, but better. Yes." She rested her chin on the rail and said something, which was carried away by the wind.

"Yer gonna need to turn towards me."

"Sorry." Rarity sat down and faced Applejack. "These last days, I've been working on seeing things in a more positive light."

"Now's a good time to do it. Only better time's yesterday." She chuckled at Rarity's puzzled expression. "Ah heard the doctor say that once."

"Ah. Him."

"That’s goin' well fer you, then? Changin' yer outlook?"

"It's difficult. I keep finding myself thinking poorly of someone or of something, and I have to stop myself. 'No, Rarity,' I say to myself, 'Positivity, dear.' Sometimes I find my words ring false, but I say them anyway."

"Keep remindin' yerself, you'll get there."

"Indeed." She looked at Applejack, something unspoken plain on her face.

"Go ahead, spit it out." She pointed into the growing chain of mountains. "That's our destination, so, as you can see, we've got time to talk."

"I don't want to bring it up."

"Y'already have." She smiled. "Come on, out with it. If it's about what Ah think it is, Ah can take it."

Rarity hesitated. "When you… left us, did you have any problems with your outlook? I imagine you must have, at least for some time, but you never seemed particularly affected to me. I never noticed any of the things I would expect from someone who'd been through that."

Applejack nodded. "Early mornin's are the worst 'cause Ah don't have anythin' to think 'bout but death. Comin' back is like wakin' up in a lot of ways."

"I hadn't thought about that."

"Ah recall…" She held a hoof to her chin, stalling to say what she wanted. She did not think the timing was right, and said so. "But you asked, so here goes. Ah think 'bout it a lot more'n Ah'd like to. Like you with yer negative thoughts, I try to use it to remind myself of what's still good in the world an' in us—an' there is a lot, Ah firmly believe that."

"We have to believe that," Rarity said.

Applejack looked over Rarity's shoulder at Octavia, huddled in the back. "We don't have to believe that if we don't wanna."

Understanding shone in Rarity's eyes.

"But it still weighs. Useful reminder or no, on the face of it, it's a dark thought attached to a dark memory. Ah s'pose no one could be blamed fer feelin' a little blue every now'n again."

"Certainly not. But you…"

"Like Ah said, only in the early mornin's. Ah'll get up to watch the sunrise sometimes, an' Ah can feel her next to me, Princess Luna. She…" Her words caught. "Yeah. Ah owe a lot to her."

Rarity rubbed Applejack's back. "We all do."

After a minute of silence, Applejack sighed briskly. "Life goes on, Rarity. Like it or not, fight it however you will, life goes on. We can't stop it, an' he can't either."

"Hm."

"Life. It goes on."

Rarity sighed again. "In Furnace Creek, we said you'd hardly changed, but I think that's wrong. You've changed since Ponyville."

"Fer the better, Ah hope."

"For the best. I'll be meeting you there soon."

"Ah know it." She pulled in Rarity for a side hug. "Ah know it."

On the following day, Rainbow had come back from behind the ship. They were close enough to the mountains that they needed to be moving at their regular speed, and everyone except Twilight got out onto the deck to watch their destination approach. The entrance to the mines was close, but going would be painfully slow with the mantle of clouds that had settled over all.

For breakfast, they divided the last of their spinach among a ring of bereft salads. Octavia said she believed they had farms in the mines for things like mushrooms and truffles, but was not positive.

Pinkie knocked on Twilight's cabin door with the pathetic salad on her back. When Twilight shuffled within, Pinkie said, "Twilight, can I please come in?"

Twilight cracked the door and looked out at Pinkie, who looked on her with kindness and gentleness that she felt bad for faking. Her intent was not so soft.

Twilight let her in without a word and closed the door tight behind. The room was full of smoke, its floor littered with books, pieces of paper, half-finished sigils, and instruments that fit Rainbow's description of Twilight's attempts at divination. Twilight returned to her setup, a chalk circle ground into the floorboards underneath a plumb bob, swaying back and forth slowly from the hook she had pounded into the ceiling.

"Just leave it on the bed," Twilight said, staring angrily down at the circle.

Pinkie sat down and waited for Twilight's attention.

Finally looking up, Twilight sneered. "Are you here to tell me everyone misses me up there? I know I've been gone; I've been busy, as you can see."

"Wowee," Pinkie said. She had expected it to be hard, but Twilight's arrogance made the next sentence feel shamefully good in its utterance. "I'm not, actually. No one misses you."

Twilight's expression softened, brows contracting.

"You heard me."

"I did," Twilight said. "I'm a little shocked."

"We've been doing better up there, you know, getting over stuff. Lots of apologies and explanations. You wouldn't believe how many misunderstandings there've been." She paused, thinking of her argument with Fluttershy, still unresolved. "What have you been up to?"

"I'm trying to find a way to spy on Discord." She nudged the plumb bob into a circle that it continued of its own accord along the line she had drawn, but nothing appeared in the floor she stared at so intently.

"How's that working for you?"

"Clearly not well, Pinkie."

"Yeah." She got up and stood right over the circle, but Twilight refused to look up. Not for the first time, she wished she were better at the subtle dance of insinuation and accusation that seemed, of late, Twilight's preferred method of speaking. "So here's the deal, Twilight." She stopped the plumb bob's swing. "We're gonna land in the mountains either today or tomorrow, depending on what the weather's doing. We're gonna go into the mines and get some new Elements."

"The mines."

"Applejack flew us here, without your permission. Rainbow Dash, she went out back and helped speed us along with that funny sigil hat of yours, and that was without your permission too."

"You don't need my permission for anything," Twilight said moodily.

"We know."

Twilight met her eyes, and Pinkie saw impatience—but also anguish. From her sister, she was familiar with its various disguises.

"You gonna come out with us when we land?"

"Probably."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I'll do it." She smacked the plumb bob again. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

Pinkie stopped the bob.

"This is important, Pinkie." She pushed it again, slowly and gently, her eyes fixed to it as if the object had been the disobedient one in the exchange.

"Is it working?"

Twilight gave Pinkie a withering stare.

"I don't have to do this, you know!" Pinkie cried out, backing away. "I don't have to come down here and play the 'who can hide her feelings better' game with you, and I don't have to pretend that I like you very much right now. You know why?"

Twilight corrected the course of her plumb bob.

"Because I don't! You're being a real jerk right now, still, even though that was like a week ago now that Discord got us!"

"It's not like a week, it is a week. Seven days."

"Great! Good, that's straightened out! Mystery solved!" She stopped the bob again, hurting her hoof slightly; it was heavier than it appeared. "What is with you?"

"I'm just trying to figure out what went wrong," Twilight said shortly, her voice small. She looked at her plumb bob again, but let it hang, motionless.

"I know what went wrong."

Twilight frowned. "Educate me."

Pinkie rolled her eyes. "We're not in harmony, duh! Do you remember fighting like we've been back in the day? Last year?" She lowered her voice. "Is any of this at all familiar to you?"

Twilight looked as if she might defiantly avert her eyes to her magic project, but shook her head instead, slightly.

"We're friends, not coworkers."

"Who was out of harmony?"

Pinkie paused. Her response, ready and hot behind her lips, was a single syllable: "you." She wanted to pop it in Twilight's face and watch as the unicorn's defense crumbled, shamed that it was obvious to more than herself.

Twilight knew it too; Pinkie could tell. She recognized despair, and she recognized self-blame. She also realized that destroying Twilight's defenses might not accomplish anything. As well as she might burst into tears and accept the tenderness that Pinkie held back as a reward for contrition, she might also withdraw further into her research, where she would be unreachable.

So instead, Pinkie swallowed her feelings and said, "all of us, a little bit." She recoiled inside as Twilight nodded knowingly, a fresh wave of bile threatening to overtake her.

"That's what I've been thinking too," Twilight said. "And I'm trying to find a way around that."

"You're not gonna find it cooped up in here."

Twilight pointed loosely into the room. "One of these books has something about how friendship magic grows and lessens as ponies change."

"Sure." She looked at one of the other divination implements. "You're gonna need to come up and socialize again."

"I thought I wasn't missed?"

"Yeah, not the older, meaner Twilight. If you can get back to being nice, we'll all be happy to see you."

Twilight snorted. "Meaner. Please."

"What do you call it, then?"

"Same as always, Pinkie," she said, impatience reentering her voice.

"Determination? A good work ethic? Or is this just 'getting serious'? Has our comfort zone shrunk down so bad there's no room for friendship anymore?"

"We're friends."

"Yeah, we're friends," Pinkie said, circling herself and pointing out of the cabin. "We all are getting over it, pulling ourselves back up." She thought for a second. "We're getting ready to go get another batch of Elements of Harmony, for Celestia's sake! Where's that leave you?"

Twilight looked back down into her circle. She croaked something, then repeated herself with a fuller voice. "Nowhere."

"That's right."

The two of them shared silence in the cabin.

"If it makes you feel better, you aren't the one with the biggest mistake under her belt on this ship."

Twilight looked up at her, and Pinkie stared back through the smoke.

"She's different," Twilight said at last.

Pinkie nodded, spine tingling.

She had agonized all night, but Twilight ultimately joined the rest of the crew for the landing outside the mines. She didn't know it, but Pinkie had told everyone to not make a big deal of Twilight’s reappearance. It would wound her pride, which, if she was anything like Octavia, was about all she had left to her.

A wide archway was bored into the icy mountainside, its sides scored with thin cuts as if the whole entryway had been stuck back together after being once shattered. A heavy griffon head, closed beak pointing directly down and eyes wide in an expression of utmost attention, formed the arch’s keystone, and they passed through only after a miserable thirty minutes of securing the airship to a flat bank of rock and deflating the balloon so it would not tear in the sheer winds, which had lessened overnight and then returned with sharp tufts of snow to ruin their visibility and swing the ship back and forth perilously on sharp, icy rocks. More than once, someone had to dodge back to avoid losing a hoof under its immense weight.

"I have performed here once," Octavia said at the entrance, looking up into a forest of icicles. "The Murgese Mines. Excellent acoustics, poor reception."

"Did you go in, or stay out in the, you know, the main area?" Rainbow asked.

"The vestibule, you mean, and I did not. I went deeper inside."

"How far?" Applejack asked.

"Not very. There is a great hall near here where we played."

Setting hoof under the open archway immediately brought about a change in the air, a warmth that took the edge off the storm outside, no more. Something small clicked on the ground, and they all started as light suddenly came alive above their heads, revealing a long, smoothly hewn tunnel, its floor tessellated with flagstones and its walls simple, grainy sandstone. Above, in a cradle of brass threads, there glowed a small crystal, bright yet soft.

"That is new," Octavia said as they pressed forward. "When I performed, the walls were lined with torches."

They ducked into the entrance tunnel, some of them reluctantly and others more than happy to leave the biting wind behind for a time. Vinyl cast a look behind herself, trying to steal a last glance at the airship before following, at a distance, behind Colgate, who still walked with a slightly dazed air. Vinyl didn't blame her; the spectacle had her a little thunderstruck too. In her life, she had heard of mines, but not in the context she saw those into which the other Elements boldly stepped.

As the quiet march slanted downwards, more tiles clicked and more crystals sprung alive, pulling them deeper with their light, illuminating every crevasse and corner. No decorations adorned the walls and no litter cluttered the floor.

Soon, their walk ended at a vast door, which Octavia approached with the fearlessness of experience. Lifting the brass ring, she sent a pair of deep knocks resonating from the stone throat, and was swiftly answered in kind from the other side before the door growled on unseen hinges to admit them.

"Unless this has changed as well, there are five doors," Octavia said as the first slowly widened. "They were described to my bandmates and I as airlocks of sorts."

"They're just letting us in without asking our business?" Rarity asked.

"Ponies probably come in from the cold all the time," Fluttershy said. "I'll bet they'll ask us once we're safe inside."

She was correct. In the first wide room, they met a pair of sparsely armored guards who, after a minute of shock, asked them what they were doing. Applejack spoke for the group, and the guards admitted them without further question.

Through the second, third, and fourth chambers, they passed, surprising each pair of guards with their presence and again with their purpose.

"Why five?" Pinkie asked one guard, whose eyes hardly strayed from her for their entire, brief encounter.

"Just how it was built, Ah reckon," Applejack said, and the other guard nodded along.

They had no way to measure how deep they had gone under the mountain by the fifth chamber. There was no natural light to be seen, neither in vents nor in splits—the mines, a different guard informed them, had been restored months earlier. A small group of magicians from Snowdrift had come down to make repairs, and even help rebuild what smaller details their large spells could not. Where they had gone next was not known.

The group clustered by the wall where the final opening door would allow them their first glimpses of the mines proper, and were at first disappointed. The darkness beyond was complete, a deep and impenetrable lake of shadow that gave no definition or depth to the thick, columnar structures sliding into view in the foreground. As if superimposed upon a black canvass, a colossal stalagmite rose from some distant abyss, but as the entrance widened, they saw the lights. Its sides twinkled with tiny lights like artfully arranged stars, twin spirals crossing each other at even intervals up the structure's body, covered near the middle by the hard edge of a cliff, onto the back of which they spilled like unaccustomed tourists.

The darkened ceiling was visible as a moil of folds and holes in the rock above, some places soft-edged as clouds and others like broken glass, a hanging garden of rock formations, all too distant for clear details. At the front, Rainbow mumbled a minced oath, her jaw slackened as she stared upwards.

Beside the first column, there was a second, which reached even higher to the ceiling, its top wide and offset from the central pillar like a kinked mushroom, its infundibulate stalk encircled in places with rings of lights, between which thinner veins of lit windows formed ribs. It reminded Pinkie of a piece of thick-sliced celery, Colgate of a slightly curved pegasus wing bone.

Eerily, few sounds reached them where they stood. There was no hum or rasp of machinery and no tumult of conversation or panic, nor any wind or snowfall to break the stillness as they slowly approached their precipice. On delicate, white posts, crystals the size of golf balls lit for them as they traversed a hoof path.

"If I recall, the great hall was along this path," Octavia said. "We had to descend a lengthy set of stairs. I believe they were marked fairly obviously."

"Is that where we should start?" Twilight asked.

"It's as good a place as any," Applejack said.

"Is it impolite if one of us puts on a light of our own?" Rarity asked. "I don't want to make like these little crystals aren't sufficient, but… they're not exactly comforting. Especially with that ahead of us," she said, gesturing at the wall of darkness that hung behind the twin columns.

"Do ponies live in those?" Vinyl asked.

"Yes," Octavia said. "I have not been to one, before you ask."

"Okay, Colgate?" Big Mac asked, stepping a little closer to Colgate, who shied at him with a terse "fine."

"There's someone," Rainbow said. "Hey! 'Scuse us, hey! We're looking for…" She turned to Applejack. "What are we looking for, anyway?"

"Directions," Applejack said. "Just directions fer now."

The pony shouldered a broad-bladed hoe and ambled over to them, her lank, ratty mane pulled back in a bun that looked about two good swings away from coming undone. Her patched overalls crinkled as she had to put her hoe down to allow herself to shake hooves with the travelers. Applejack eyed the hoe curiously, but didn't comment.

"You six I recognize. You four I don't." She broke into a gap-toothed smile. "No matter! I guess ol' Lilac was right enough. You look like you lot haven't had a decent meal in a while."

"We are fine," Octavia said. "If you could simply—"

"We're pretty hungry," Rainbow said. "Er, if you can spare a little something—"

"Rainbow, now—"

"Of course," the stranger said, picking up her hoe again and flashing another smile, wide and guileless. "Come, come. I've got this spot to tend to still. Go up the path just ahead there, and I'll catch up."

"We don't want to impose," Fluttershy said weakly.

"It's no trouble, believe you, me." Her lips pursed in thought. "Fluttershy, right? Always wanted to make yer acquaintance."

"Were you expecting us?" Twilight asked, eyes narrowed.

"Ol' Lilac was," she said, and tapped her head with a grimy hoof. "Precog. A little short upstairs nowadays, but generally reliable."

They moved down the path as instructed, Pinkie staying behind to talk more with the stranger, and the two of them soon rejoined, both engaged in a bout of laughter that seemed doubled in size as it echoed off the bare rock.

"Ah gotta ask," Applejack said, laughing a little herself. "What's with the hoe? Ain't no soil down here."

"Scraping dust," the pony said. "Name's Between Rain, by the way. You can just call me Rain; that's what ever'pony else does." Her long, braided tail swished on the flagstones. "So who y'all got with ya? I don't recognize any of these friendly faces."

"Octavia Melody, Vinyl Scratch, Colgate, and Big Macintosh," Octavia said. "It is good to meet you."

"Likewise, Octavia Melody. So what brings you to the mines? Why, it must be months and months since we've had a visitor down these parts."

The sound of wings beat out in the darkness beyond their crystals' light, and some of them stared out as they walked.

"We're here fer a kinda sensitive reason," Applejack said. "Ah'm not sure Ah can divulge too much."

"Fair enough, fair enough," Rain said. She stopped them at a slab of carved stone set into a wide, broken column, and knocked twice on it. "Make no mistake, I'd be suspicious as anyone if just any ol' ponies wandered in without a reason, but since y'all are the Elements of Harmony." She paused a moment as the doorway scraped open, and they passed through the entryway. "I'll give ya the benefit of the doubt. Hey, Anomie! C'mon out here! You'll never believe who I just found wanderin' around the front door!"

They faced a simple staircase of carved stone, but Rain's voice bounced down with perfect clarity, and they descended. Smaller crystals the size of peas came to life as their hooves clicked on floor panels.

"Y'all came at a neat time, what's more," she said.

"Why's that?" Rainbow asked, doubt coloring her voice.

"Got us a procession in a couple days."

"A procession?" Vinyl asked. On the stairs, her voice, too, found its way.

"Ya know, lights and music and ponies walkin' all in a bunch, with streamers and floaters and all such good times?"

"Oh, a parade," Rarity said.

"Sure, if ya like. A puh-raid." She chuckled to herself.

More wings flapped ahead, and they could see the beginning crescent of light at the bottom of their stairs. An aquiline face peeked through the archway and looked up at them, a brown-speckled beak on white feathers, vivid golden eyes glinting in the magic light. The face broke into a tense, griffon's smile, and she vanished back into the main chamber with another beat of wings.

"That's my wife, Anomie," Rain said.

The main chamber, lit from above by a great crystal suspended in a chandelier of beaten metal, was arranged with long piles of hay and rough, wooden furniture around a central point, where stood a statuette of a griffon wielding a lance against an unseen foe, its stone wings extended in a fierce, fanged C around its rude body, the stone carved in great, smooth pieces, as though its subject's gross muscularity had seeped into the stone itself. It was almost too perfect a depiction, and Rainbow couldn't take her eyes off it as the others took in the faded wall hangings, the pilasters inlaid with moss, the trickle of water from the ceiling into a marble basin at the foot of a decorative block of black stone.

Aside from Anomie, there were only two others in the room, another pony and griffon who shared a pile of hay and a hookah pipe, filling the room with the saccharine smell of rose and mint. Anomie stood in another staircase, waiting patiently with Rain, who had crossed to her immediately, as the others took in the room. They descended another level, introducing themselves again for the griffon, and emerged into a wider, more furnished room with no radial arrangement. Most of the room was dedicated to a kitchen, with a small, circular table pushed into the corner, almost as an afterthought. More hay lay scattered in bundles for them to sit and lie on, and Rarity did so with a quiet sigh as Anomie busied herself with the table, moving the simple vase of dried flowers and arranging a spiraling tablecloth.

"Haven't had a visitor in a long time," she said. As with many griffons, her voice was as smooth and pleasant as any pony's, though hers had a cultured edge that immediately placed her in a class above Rain's. "I'm glad it's you all." She leaned in and added quietly, "Lilac said to expect you, but I wasn't so sure." She winked, and Rain was bustling about in the kitchen.

"We do not require but little," Octavia said.

"Nonsense! It's plain to see you've traveled quite far," Rain called out, "Anomie, do we have any biscuits left?"

"They might be in the pantry," Anomie said.

"Bring up some leeks too, hm?"

"We're coming from Moondrop," Twilight said at the first pause in Rain's words. "So yes, anything you can spare would be much appreciated."

"Hmm, can't say as I'm familiar with it. Is that near here?"

"It's east of Roan," Applejack said. "So not exactly."

"My land," Rain said, shaking her head and wrestling a pot out of a cabinet. The kitchen was more modern than they had expected from the floor above, with an electric stove, a toaster oven, and even a coffee machine in the back. From the smell of coffee that still hung in the air, it had been used recently.

"We've been in the air for a while," Vinyl said. "It's just good to have solid ground under my hooves, for one."

"And to be out of the cold," Twilight said.

"Is it snowing up there yet?" Anomie asked, returning.

"Oh yeah it is," Rainbow said.

"That's good." She set a pair of leeks on the counter and went back down.

"Is it?" Pinkie asked. "I don't like the cold myself. Too… well, cold!" She giggled.

"Snow's important 'round these parts," Rain said. "Not really for our pillar, but for the back two, yeah."

"Well, it's good you like it," Twilight said.

"This is a lovely home," Rarity said after a lapse of quiet. "Very charming."

"It's cozy," Fluttershy said.

"Thank you kindly," Anomie said, a sack of biscuits tucked under one wing. "Hon, why don't you go tell Lilac who came? I can take care of our guests."

"Ya sure?" Rain asked.

"Go to him," she said softly, reaching with a wing to caress Rain's shoulder. "I can't offer too much, but I'll give what I can."

"Anything is appreciated," Rarity said, accepting a biscuit as Anomie passed them out. "A home-cooked meal of any sort, really, is great for us."

"Did I hear you say you flew here?"

"We have an airship," Vinyl said. "It's parked outside, in a little cleft between ridges."

Anomie laughed; it was a short, harsh sound. "Ah, my apologies. We don't have much space for airships, I'm afraid."

"Where did you park when you performed here?" Rainbow asked Octavia.

"We were flown on a smaller ship that returned to pick us up," Octavia said.

"You're a performer?" Anomie asked.

Octavia was silent for a minute. "I used to be."

"These are stupendous!" Pinkie cried, spraying Colgate with crumbs. "Is this honey in here? There's no way you got honey in here, right?"

"Not in these, I'm afraid. We can only afford agave nectar," Anomie said. "If you want honey, you'll need to go to the greater pillar."

"How?" Twilight asked, trying to get her biscuit down. "Also, can I get some water?"

"The greater pillar has flowers for its bees," Anomie said. "Right at the top."

"Where it's easiest for the sun to get in," Vinyl said, nodding.

"No sunlight, no." She gave Twilight her water. "We use pressure crystals for everything."

"It's a genius idea," Twilight said. "Are these all piezos?"

Anomie looked at her for a moment.

"Never mind. They really are lovely, though."

"This whole place is lovely," Fluttershy said. "I was expecting something more claustrophobic."

"Something dirty," Rarity said.

"Me too," Applejack said, "but this is incredible. That view ya got out there, it's really somethin'."

The pan sizzled as Anomie threw in some diced leeks and a couple potatoes, and the room was filled with the smell of rustic home cooking. For a while, they sat in silence, listening to the quieting sound of vegetables sauteing and the bump and scrape of their host's wooden spoon in the pan. Muffled voices came from below and above, and though they were far underneath the mountains, they did not feel it. Two crystals ensconced in wire holders gave the room ample light, and, for the first time since leaving Moondrop, Twilight let out some of the ready tension in her chest with a sigh. Between them and Discord, there was not only the air space of an entire country, but uncountable feet of solid stone and ice as well.