“Are you ready, Shining?”

Though Shining did his best to look calm and stoic there was a bead of sweat slowly making its way down the side of his face. In front of him were his baby sister and her friends. Each mare looked solemn as they stared back at him, their brows furrowed and their eyes piercing. The looks made Shining nervous. For some reason he felt like something was looming over his head; the threat of doom or something as equally foreboding.

His sister and those friends of hers had something pointed at him that he’d really, really rather not have pointed at him :the Elements of Harmony. The most powerful magical artifact ever known to ponykind; a weapon that had stopped some of the most evil and vile and powerful creatures ever, was being pointed at him with intent to use. And boy did he not like it.

Shining knew that what was about to happen couldn’t be helped. Cadence and Ares had been looked over with a microscope by Celestia and Luna and… something had still possessed them. If it possessed them then it wasn’t out of the question that whatever was in Cadence and Ares was rooting around in everypony that had been near them. And if Princess Celestia and Luna, easily by and far two of the most powerful magic users in the world, didn’t have the power to purge whatever this thing was, then the Elements would surely be able to get the job done. At least that was what they were banking on.

Was it a little overkill? Probably. Was it a good idea for a regular pony to get blasted in the face with super magic? Shining didn’t think so. Had ponies been getting blasted for most of the morning anyways? Ab-sol-utely.

Shining didn’t think that he really had anything to worry about. The elements probably didn’t hurt good ponies and he liked to think that he was a good pony, or at least not the kind of pony that warranted the elements attention. If everything went how Twilight, Luna, and Celestia thought it was going to go the blast would either do nothing or it’d clean out anything bad in him and he’d be right as rain.

But, like anyone staring down the barrel of a gun, or a group of mares that were wielding a villain smasher in this case, in the back of his mind Shining was having some last minute doubts about his character. What if he wasn’t that good of pony? What if the elements thought that he needed to spend some time as a statue or that a trip to the moon would be good for him? What if it did something to him that changed… him? What if it did none of those things and just blew him up?!

They were silly questions that probably didn’t have any merit but Shining couldn’t help but think them. And because he was thinking them the unicorn was admittedly afraid about what was going to happen to him in the next few minutes. But even though he was half expecting to be Statue Armor by the time Twilight and the gang was through with him, he wasn’t going to move.

Both of the princesses had taken their medicine in the form of concentrated magical energy without complaint. Flash and the Captain had been enveloped in their walls of blinding white light without making a sound. Now that it was his turn he sure as sugar wasn’t going to wuss out. Shining was going to stand there and take his medicine like a big boy, even if he was freaking out on the inside.

“No,” the unicorn said, shutting his eyes tightly as the elements started to glow.

The air around him quickly became charged and there was this quiet humming sound that started to get louder and louder by the second. Shining’s fur stood on end and he had the sudden but powerful urge to get out of that hallway.

“Don’t worry, Shining,” Flash called from a safe distance. “It doesn’t hurt at all! You’ll barely feel it!”

“Hold onto your butt, Private!” Echo added, poking her head back out from around the corner of the hallway to stare at him.

Shining started to rock back and forth, biting his lip. The wait was killing him. He just wanted to get this done and over with. “Twilight, will you—”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Shining gasped as the elements’ power hit him full force. The magic flowing around him felt cold; terribly cold, almost like he was trying to swim up a stream in the middle of winter. Taking deep, deep breaths, he dug in his hooves as the force of the elements blast pushed him backward. He could feel the elements’ power tugging at the fringes of his body and mind, searching, seeking something to purge.

Shining could tell that if they wanted to the elements could reduce him to ash with the slightest of ease. There was more magic pouring through his body than he had ever felt in his life. It was like he was staring up at something big and scary and beautiful and he was completely at that things mercy. There was nothing he could do; no magic that he could wield that could stop it. He could only hope that he would allow him to continue with all of his quarks and bits intact.

“And….. done! Good job Shining!”

Shining kept his eyes closed a little longer before a poke to his chest made him crack open an eye. In front of him was his darling baby sister, all smiles and giggles.

“…Oh thank Faust,” Shining muttered, sitting down in the middle of the hallway as his legs turned into noodles. Looking down at his person, and ignoring Twilight and the other girl’s good-natured teasing, he checked to see if everything was where he left it.

“Oh it wasn’t that bad you big baby!” Twilight said, nudging him again.

Shining ignored her, moving his head this way and that. To his ever-mounting relief he saw that he looked relatively normal. He looked a little… fluffier than he remembered, and there was a good deal more fur on his chest then he remembered. His skin was all tingly as well, like he had just taken a bath in Alka-Seltzer, but other than that he looked and felt like himself.

Sighing, Shining looked back at his little sister with a small smile. “Alright, with me done that means that everypony that interacted with Cadence and Ares got blasted right?”

“I wouldn’t call it blasted but yes, Shining, you are correct,” Celestia said, appearing by his side. “Everypony that we know of has been cleansed of any evil that may or may not be in them.”

Luna nodded solemnly. “Aye and we have guards keeping an eye out in the city.” Making a face she looked over her shoulder at the “room” where they were keeping Ares and Cadence.

If one wasn’t looking carefully they would have thought that the section of the wall wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But the color of the wall was just a little bit off, and if you looked at it hard enough it seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. If you looked even harder you might have even seen the barest outline of a door that was covered in strange runes.

This was the most powerful sealing magic that both Celestia and Luna knew of. Nothing, pony or otherwise, could get out of it with maybe the exception of Discord and only the two Celestial sisters could open the “door”. It was the perfect spell to use in this situation, and while both sisters were glad that they didn’t have to go to even more extreme measures to keep the general populace safe it still hurt them to use it. This spell was for monsters; the creatures that Luna and Celestia had fought long ago; creatures that shouldn’t see the sunlight ever again. This wasn’t for their niece and her lover.

“Though we haven’t used the elements on everypony yet, sister mine.”

The smiles on every pony’s face seemed to vanish and they all found themselves looking at, for lack of a better term, Ares and Cadence’s prison. Though not one of them said a thing each of them had a good guess to what the other was thinking.

“I fear that we cannot use the elements on them yet, Luna,” Celestia said. “Though it pains me to say we need analyze the situa—”

“And let them rot in that darkness with that evil stewing in them?” Luna snapped, glaring at her sister. “Thou know what magic does to—“

“I saw what was happening to Ares, sister,” Celestia interrupted, her tone sharp. “I know what might happen to him if we let that magic stay in him for too long. But we cannot dive into that
room thoughtlessly!”

Luna flinched as her sister’s voice rose until it was just under a yell. “But—”

“If this magic is killing our friend what do you think the elements would do to him? Do you think that Cadence would ever forgive us if we saved her but—” Taking a shaky breath, Celestia looked down at the floor. “…I do not even have the heart to separate the two even if it might have been beneficial f-for them. “

The princess seemed to sink into herself. “T-The very least I could do was let them be together u-until we can find a w-way to save t-them both.” Tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes. “I will n-not lose one to s-save the other, Luna. I will n-not.”

Taking a step toward her, Luna extended her wing and wrapped it around her big sister. Sniffling, Celestia leaned into her sister as Luna nuzzled her cheek.

“We apologize for the outburst, sister,” Luna murmured. “Thou art correct; we must battle this… thing with the knowledge of how to combat it.”

“How could this have happened to our little niece, Luna?” Celestia said, wiping her face with a wing. “I thought that we had all done our best with Cadence. The nightmare shouldn’t have been able to do anything to her.”

As he stood there Shining Armor had a thought. A very unsettling one. Looking over at the wall he felt the fur on the back of his neck stand up. “What if it isn’t the nightmare?” he muttered quietly, as if he was afraid of someone overhearing it. “And what if whatever that thing is didn’t come from Cadence?”

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

The wind howled in Ares’s ears. The sound was all-encompassing; it drowned out nearly everything, his breath, the sound of his feet crushing the snow underneath him, even his very thoughts were overwhelmed by the whipping wind.

All around him was white. There was no other color other than this white for as far as he could see in all directions. Because of this he didn’t know if he had walked five feet or five hundred miles, but even still Ares forced himself to put one foot in front of the other. If he stopped walking he’d want to lie down. If he lied down he’d freeze to death.

Pulling his tattered and far too thin hoodie against his half frozen frame as best as he could, Ares continued to shuffle forward. He could feel the snow and ice invading his sneakers, numbing his feet and sending spikes of pain up his legs and buttock with each step. His hands felt wrong too. They barely opened and closed when he tried to move them, and they were so swollen his fingers looked more like sausages than fingers. Even their color was wrong. Where once were two hands with a pinkish and lively color to them now they were grayish, almost blue in this dim light.

Everything was hurting, everything was aching. He had stopped shivering ages ago. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see ice and snow caking on his face. His body felt heavy; far too heavy. Every step that he took was a trail that seemed to only get harder with each step. But he needed to keep walking. He needed to find someplace to get out of the cold, out of the wind. He needed find someplace warm or he’d freeze to death.

And he didn’t want to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to—

I͓̤̖͆ͩ́͋͠c͙̩ͭͭ̀̊̕E͉͓̭̤̳̾͑ͧ̽͝ͅ ͏̖͕͉a̦̱̪͖̋ͅN̸ͦ͗̿̈́̽̄d̶̬̚ ̗̥̬̳̻̬͖̔̈́̈́ͨ͊͊̄͞Ḅ̻͉ͮ͑̉͑ͤl̻͉̦͗̃ͯ̋ͨ̃̋O͑̈̃o͚̭͍̮̫̰ͨDͭ͂̎͛ͥͥ̀͏̘͈̘̰͓̣̝
̬ͭ͡iͧ҉̬̫̼̼͚̤̹Ċ̏ͩ̄e̵̹̳̦̝ ̹̙̮͎͔̼͔ͬͬ̀̏͛͞Ä̫͓͕̰̖̜̊͋ͅn͒̈̽ͩͣͨ͊͢D͙̮̻̞͉̖̗̓ ̷͉̖͚̓̌b͚͇ͥ͐̅̍L̗̻̺̀ò̶̭͍̰̺͉̑͒O̤̮͍̜̳ͫ̓̾̃̽̚ͅd̠̹̬͝
̠̮̬̫̅ͧ̌I͔͙͇̗̞͊̀C͈̏̋ͤ͗̈́Ḙ̥ ͈̝̻̞͎̽̓̎̈́̏̅A̲͚͓̯͙̦͐̅ͥ͋́N̳̰̭̱͚̓ͩ͑D̳ ͓̼̪̥̮͖̤̎̇̒̾ͬͪB̡̓̐̈̓͊L͙̖̺͓Ǫ̞̣Ơ͐ͥ̔̄̃̓̉D̬̖̻̣ͥ͐͐̎̍ͯͥ

With a yelp Ares’s eyes snapped open and he sat up. Panting like a racehorse he frantically looked around. Wha… what… no…heh…

Giving himself a quick pat down he noticed that he was covered in sweat. If he was covered in sweat that meant that he wasn’t freezing, and if he wasn’t freezing that meant that he wasn’t out in that bleak whiteness or out in that howling wind. That meant that the cold and the wind had been a dream. He was safe. He was okay.

Clutching his chest he let out a shaky but relieved sigh. “Motherfucker,” he mumbled aloud, trying to calm his still pounding heart. “Fuck that dream. Fuck that dream all the way to Fuck You town. Fucking, fucking, fuck…”

“A-Ares?”

Ares’s eyes snapped over to the corner of the pitch black room. There, huddled under a bundle of blankets, was Cadence. Or at least he thought it was Cadence. The mare was covered head to hoof in the blankets; the only thing that Ares could see of her was her horn sticking out of the top of the cocoon that she had made for herself.

“Candy?” he said, getting to his feet. Looking around again he finally noticed that he was no longer in his room. In fact he had never seen a room like this in the castle.

Though he was shaky and sluggish and his head felt three sizes too big, Ares took a step toward his mare. Then another. Then another.

The crystal floor was cold against his feet as he shuffled closer and closer toward her. He was close now; close enough to see even though she was covered with blankets his Cadence was shivering underneath them. Shivering himself, Ares squatted down and started to paw at the blankets covering Cadence.

“What the hell are you doing, babe? And where ar—“

“S-Stop! Please!” Ares nearly fell onto his butt as Cadence tightened her grip on her blankets and pulled herself away from him. Whimpering, the alicorn seemed to sink in her blanket burrito. “I don’t w-want to hurt you…”

Now frowning, Ares started to paw at the blankets a little more aggressively. “Hurt me? What the heck are you talking about you silly horse? You’d never hurt me.”

“B-But I did hurt you. I’m h-hurting you right n-now!”

“You might be hurting my feelings by not letting me get in on some of that cuddling under the blankets action but other than that I don’t know what you’re talking about. I feel fine. A little cold since this fucking room is freezing for some reason, but fine.”

Though Cadence did her best to stop him Ares did eventually manage to grab onto the inside of the blankets and started to open the burrito up. “A-Ares stop!”

Ares ignored her, too focused on the task at hand.

“A-Ares, please… I d-don’t want you t-to see me like this!”

Inch by inch Ares pulled the covers apart. Cadence’s hooves pawed at his hands, trying to bat them away from the blankets.

“What the heck’s gotten into you, Candy?” Ares asked, mostly ignoring the harmless little slaps as he got a good grip on each side of the blanket. “Quit being a baby and let me get a look at you.”

Cadence let out another whimper as Ares began to slowly open Mi Amore’s cocoon. “H-Honey… P-Please…”

“Hah! There we… go?”

Now naked to the world, Cadence did her best to shield herself from her human’s gaze. The mare, at least to him, looked like she had had a field day in a Halloween party store. Even in the darkness of the room Ares could see that she was sporting fangs and reptile-like eyes and wings that looked almost bat-like. Cadence also seemed physically larger, with one of those crazy moving manes that both Luna and Celestia had. Ares blinked, just staring at his marefriend for a few seconds before his nose scrunched up.

“…You didn’t want me to see you because you got a little bit bigger and turned into a silly vampire horse?” Cadence let out a surprised gasp when he touched one of her wings. “I don’t see what the big deal is…”

Cadence’s wings slapped his hands away and she just stared back at him with a mixture of confusion and shock. “W-What the hay are you talking about?!” she demanded, frantically gesturing to herself. “Look a-at me! I’m a bucking m-monster!”

Leaning a little bit closer Ares noticed that the fur on Cadence’s face was wet. His mare had been crying, and for a while by the looks of it.

“I think that your definition of monster is a lot different from mine, Candy,” he said, using a thumb to brush away the tears from her face. Though Cadence shied away from his touch at first she eventually leaned into his hand, nuzzling it with a sniffle.

He might have had a lot of questions about where they were, why Cadence was freaking out, why she looked like she did now, but Ares didn’t want to voice any of his concerns at the moment.Right now he needed to make sure that his mare was okay.

“You might think that you look like a monster but I think you look adorable. Kinda like a royal, pink bat horse or something like that.”

The remark earned him another long stare as he reached down and grabbed one of the many blankets that were now on the floor. “Goddamn is it cold in here… You’d think that they’d make this castle a little more insulated or something…”

Cadence’s eye twitched ever so slightly and she sighed, as if she was trying her hardest to stay horrified about her change. “Ares, this is serious! The two of us are in really big trouble!”

With a grunt Ares spun around and sat down next to Cadence. “Oh I’m sure that it’s not that bad,” he said dismissively, leaning against the crystal wall with a grunt. “Hey, could you do me a favor and pass me another blanket for my feet? I can’t stand when my toes are—“

E͉̻͈̻mB҉̬r̡A̤̘̝c̬̜͎̼̟͝E̶̫̻̼
̣͕͔̠ͅt̴̗̘̳̹H̘̟e͚̺̜̯̣
͍̫̥̟̹D͕̜̙͈ạ̼͝Ṟ̠̰̦͢k̹̜̱̦͡

Ares gritted his teeth as pain erupted throughout his head. Closing his eyes he quickly grabbed his head as the sound of static rang in his ears, his fingers digging into his scalp. Something felt wrong with his head. It felt like something was rooting around up there poking at things that he’d rather not have poked at. Breathing through his nose and out of his mouth, Ares focused on that feeling and tried to will whatever it was to go away.

Cadence, seeing that something was wrong, scrambled to her hooves. “A-Ares?!”

Get out, get out, getout, getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout!

Ares’s toes curled as his fingers started to move sporadically. Repeating his little mantra in his head over and over and over again he focused on the pain in his head with everything that he had. He had no idea if what he was doing had any effect on what was happening. He had never felt like this. He had never thought that something was in his head doing stuff. He had no idea what the hell to do in this situation; if he could even do anything. But it wasn’t like he was just going to sit there and do nothing! He was going to try to fight even if he couldn’t.

Yo̯͉̺̭̘U̴̬̤̩̲r͕
̣̣̘̗F͙̦̯l̯̮͜E͏̯̪̪̲͉͔s͇̹̮̙̯̖͓H̶̥̝̞̞̹
i̗̮͉̪S͕̝̖
̝̯̟͞o̧̩̺̬̟U̟r͉͙͕Ș̵̟̟ͅ

Get out, get out, get out, get out!

Y̹̺̙͔oỤr͚̮͎̞͇ͅ
̴m̞͟I̞͎̫̙͢nD͏̩͕
̖͜ͅw͔͢I̲̦̮̲̝ĺ͓L̸̻̟̬̟̙
̪̠̮̝̤b̙̥̣E̸̠̯̮ͅ
̲̭̟̼͝n̬̣E̖̜̼̩̯x͟T̫̩͖̯̫

Getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetout!

I̲̣̗̻̣̬ṱ̰̹̞̘͖̟
͕I̵̹̜̠̞ͅṣ
͍̳̺̖̰O͏̝̻ńl͇̪̳̬͇̥̮Y͏͔͉̙̯͙͚͙
̩̳̙̦̞ą̮̗̜
͕͕͍͕̭Ma̢̩̹͔T͇͉̥͈ţ̭̱̬E̮͓̦͍̦̮͇r̹̲̲̝̺
Ǫ͚f̠
͏͕T̵̗͇̳̭i̦͔Ḿ̰e͡

After what felt like an eternity of struggling the pain in his head began to subside, leaving Ares
sitting there with his eyes closed bathed in sweat and panting like he had just run a marathon. He felt exhausted, both mentally and physically, and there was this sense of wrongness that was twisting his gut but even still Ares found himself smiling. It was a small smile, barely a smile at all in fact, but it was there and it was triumph.

“Hah… Take that… whatever the… fuck you… are,” Ares mumbled. “Leave… my fucking… head alone…”

Cracking open an eye he saw that Cadence was sitting in front of him crying her eyes out. Sitting next to her was a lit oil lamp, which was bathing the once dark room in a dim, eerie light. Now that he could properly see her Ares noticed that even Cadence’s fur had changed color. Where it was once a vibrant and playful pink color now it was reddish; nearly the color of blood.

Ares lifted a hand up to comfort her when he froze in shock. What he lifted up to boop his marefriend’s snout wasn’t his hand. Whatever it was was too pale, too shrunken to be his hand. The nails on each finger seemed longer and pointed at the ends. If he didn’t know any better he would have said that this was a claw and not his hand. Not able to tear his gaze away he tried to open and close it. To his horror he found that it responded to his command.

“Cadence,” he croaked, dread twisting his stomach. “You don’t happen to have a mirror lying around anywhere do ya?”

Cadence’s eyes snapped open. “A-Ares?! You’re alright?”

“I don’t know about being all alright but I’m not dead I guess.” He found himself saying, looking back at what had to be his hand as he opened and closed it again. “Could you get something for me to see my face? A mirror, a piece of metal, something?”

Wiping away her tears Cadence scurried off to the other side of the room, coming back with a mirror in her mouth a second later. Grabbing the mirror, Ares took a deep breath and looked into it. He very nearly dropped the mirror when he saw that the thing looking back wasn’t him.

Just like his hand his face was ghostly pale and shrunken. His hair, usually cut short, had grown about three inches longer and was blacker than he had ever seen it. Even his eyes looked different. Just like Cadence’s his eyes were reptilian, their usual green color giving way to an almost brownish, blackish coloration.

He brought a hand up to his “face”, Ares touched his cheek. “Well… I hope that you didn’t start dating me just for my looks, babe,” he said, opening his mouth. He immediately shut it when he noticed that he now had a set of long dagger-like fangs. “C-Cause unlike you, me and the u-ugly stick had one hell of a—“

Ares stiffened as Cadence knocked the mirror out of his hands and pulled him into a hug. Though he wanted to return the hug he kept his shaking arms away from her. He didn’t want to touch Cadence with these hands. He didn’t want Cadence to have that monstrous face of his against her chest. He wanted her to hug the real him; not the thing that he turned into.

Ares was forced to blink as tears started to invade his vision. Though, at first, he was successful in keeping them from making everything that he saw blurry they soon started to come faster than he could blink. A quiet whimper escaped his throat escaped his throat as Cadence began to run a hoof through his hair.

“It’s alright, baby, it’s alright,” she said, nuzzling the top of his head. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Shaking hard he finally wrapped his arms around Cadence and held her tightly, soaking her chest with his tears as he began to cry his eyes out.Though she was just as much of a mess as he was, Cadence wrapped her wings around him, muttering reassurances as she rocked him back and forth.

All his life Ares had been taught not to cry. Crying was for sissies, crying was for girls. He was a man; even if he was at his lowest point or scared out of his mind he wasn’t supposed to cry. But as he sat there, his now horrifying face burned into his mind, Ares couldn’t help but cry. It was all that he could do at this point.

He could feel… something at the back of his mind waiting. He could feel its need, its hunger. He knew that it had turned him into this inhuman thing. It wanted to turn him into worse; it wanted to turn him into something that would suit it. To it he was nothing more than a lump of flesh that it needed to walk around with the living. No matter how you were raised or what you’ve gone through a revelation like that would be scary for anyone.

Through tear-riddled eyes he saw something come from his arm. In the dim glow of the lamp a shadow appeared to materialize from his arm and started to move to and fro in the air. The light in the lamp flicked as the shadow moved toward Cadence, the ends of it splitting into five parts like some malformed hand.

Ares watched as it moved toward his marefriend with wide eyes. In an instant the fear and hopelessness that had turned him into a sniffling, crying wreck turned into rage. A red tint formed out of the corners of Ares’s eyes as his lips pulled back into a snarl. The shadow pulled away from Cadence as if it had been burned by something, its “fingers” collapsing so that it was once again formless.

He might have been scared out of his mind about what this thing that had just come out of his arm was or why it was messing with his head, but the instant that it tried to go for Cadence everything had changed. It might have turned him into a monster, this shadow might have been the devil itself, but he wasn’t going to let it hurt his girlfriend. It wasn’t going to lay a fucked up claw on her. Ares was going to make sure of that even if he had to beat his head against a wall to keep the shadow away.

Ares continued to stare at the shadow, and after a few moments he took all of the anger and fear now inside of him and put it all in a single thought:

Get. The. Fuck. Away. From. My. Girlfriend. Now.

Almost faster than he could see the shadow retreated back into his arm from whence it came. With a shaky sigh Ares rested his head against Cadence’s chest, all of the strength ebbing out of him. He blinked as stars exploded across his vision, doing all that he could do to not pass out so he could hold his Cadence. Exhaustion like he had never felt before overcame him, and it wasn’t the good kind of tired either. He could feel it down to his very bones; the kind of tired that hurt the soul. But even still he held onto his Cadence.

The human and alicorn were silent for what seemed like an eternity, both of them slowly swaying to and fro, one waiting for the other to gather up enough courage to say something. It didn’t have to be heartfelt or meaningful; the other just wanted to hear their mate’s voice.

Finally, Ares broke the tense silence with a weak chuckle. “It looks like we got ourselves in one hell of a mess, huh Candy?”

Cadence nodded, nuzzling the top of his head once again. “Yeah,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We might be in a little bit of trouble.”

“Are Celestia and the others trying to figure out a way to help us?”

“My aunt told me that they’re going to do everything in their power to help us.”

With a sigh Ares relaxed his grip on Cadence ever so slightly. “I’m sure that we’ll have nothing to worry about then. Sun horse and purple are a couple of smart cookies, and with Luna thrown into the mix I’m sure we’ll be fine by the end of the week.”

“Do you think so?”

His head spinning, Ares pulled away from the hug slightly and looked up at his marefriend. A nearly genuine smile came to his face as he looked up at her. “As long as I have you I know I’ll be fine.”

Almost immediately Cadence snorted. “That’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said with a sniffle, fresh tears coming to her eyes.

Though his hands were still shaking and they felt like they were made of lead, Ares reached up, cupped his mare’s face, and kissed her on the lips. “That doesn’t make it any less true,” he retorted with a wink.

He felt like he was going to drop at any moment. The edge of his vision was fuzzy and his head felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls into it. In fact if his marefriend wasn’t holding him right now there was a good chance that he wouldn’t have the strength to sit up on his own. But Cadence didn’t know that; and he was going to do his best to make sure that she continued to not know.

“Now where’s the bathroom in this room? All this crying’s got my stomach grumbling in a way I don’t like and I have a feeling that all the chocolate we ate yesterday is gonna come back to bite me on the ass.”