EPILOGUE: NONDIS PATRICIA HAINES

After watching Celestia making her way elsewhere in an urgent trot, I walked out of the room to a bunch of reporters all asking a ton of questions. It was almost as if they were trying to swamp each other for information. I usually deal with the press and sometimes it's a bit of a scrum, but never like today.

Then again, there's a damn good reason why.

I walked to the stairs, seeing where Celestia had sat and the others had stood. I thought to myself for a moment and considered an alternative. I had no problems throwing my voice across a room, but I was tired of shouting and yelling, of basically loud shit in general. Even with me standing up there, I'm bout to get yelled at for questions. So I stepped down and stood in the ranks of all the reporters on the front row.

It was a given that there were plenty of microphones and whatnot plugged into my face like I was a power outlet. Everyone in the world wanted to hear what I had to say. The photography was incessantly bright and repetitive, I eventually learned to focus them out. I raised a hand to make a statement, and the room gradually became quiet.

Finally, some silence. Too bad I had to be the one to break it.

"I know a lot of you are wondering why I'm not up there to speak to you. But I feel that I don't want to get asked a whole bunch of questions pertaining to what happened to me over the weekend. So to avoid that, I will allow you to make your observations as I answer other questions. So get a good look at me, write down what you see, and don't ask me anything about it. That's all I want to say before we begin."

An older stallion with a shaggy appearance and glasses raised his hoof as I was undoing my jacket so that the others could better see my neck and arms. Many grew quiet while he presented his inquiry. "Sir, it's understood that the princess is highly protective of you, but I'm going to ask this question regardless of the situation. Why were you not able to defeat the monster on Friday night when you allegedly found out that you were an element bearer?"

I suppose he didn't know how the elements work, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. "To be frank, the elements don't work individually. They give you a temporary boost in an attribute, but it's not substantial in any way. You may feel a bit stronger, but the reality is that you won't have that increase for very long. And in addition to that, my friends did not come to this world prior to that conflict. So I did not have the ability to activate anything on my own. I know that there are some who understandably think that an element bearer has some individual ability that can greatly influence their powers and whatnot, but it doesn't fill out that way." I looked down to a young mare and selected her. "Yes?"

"Sir, I..." She paused for a moment, staring directly at the scar on my neck. I could see her face twist into disgust and shock as she threw out the question. "Uh... forgive me for asking when you requested that we shouldn't ask, but what happened to your neck, sir?"

I appreciated the fact that she showed genuine concern. So I politely answered her question. "That information is pending for an ongoing criminal investigation. I'm sorry, but I cannot discuss the matter further."

Another stallion questioned. "What are the scars on your arms for?"

"That information is pending for an ongoing criminal investigation. I'm sorry, but I cannot discuss the matter further."

The shaggy old reporter seemed to stir the pot further and asked me another question. "Sir, why is the matter of your health pending for an ongoing criminal investigation?"

I look back at him and give him a blunt answer. "Classified."

He immediately jumps right back in. "Sir, a good number of guards are dead because they defended the castle. The reason they defended the castle was to protect you, as many other sources have stated. Those sources were reporters on the grounds at the time of the initial, but temporary breaches. Why were young guards mandated to protect the grounds for your safety, a captain of the royal guard no less?"

The entire room was deathly quiet as I stared back at him for a moment. He seemed to not even give a damn for the fact that his question appeared triggering and damning, as though he wanted to obtain a reaction. "You like digging for trouble, don't you?" I reply to him before turning away. "Bottom line is that I was not only an element bearer, but I am also a protected species. And with my condition at the time, I was unable to fight for myself. Next question."

He continued. "Why were you unable to fight for yourself?"

"Classified." My eyes cut back to him, I began to lose patience.

He immediately jumped even further into my nerves, performing a perfect swan dive right on in. "You exploited a prostitute to meet the ends of your investigation, why did you choose her instead of a more stable resource?"

I pursed my lips and looked back at him slowly. "You're on a roll, aren't you, bud?" I turn right back around to see the same stupid look on his face. "First off, she's not a prostitute. None of the shit she had to endure in her life was ever paid for. Sorry for the language, but I think you need to stop with the bullshit sensationalism before I give you something to compare that ass-backwards logic to." He tilts his head like he doesn't even care that he began to piss me off. I kissed my teeth and nodded to myself before holding my had out to him, slowly balling it up. "Okay, I see now that you don't even give a damn, so I'll put it this way: This fist, it's been reworked. And I don't mind showing everyone in here the difference between a paid fighter and a victim of physical battery, not to mention you'd be able to easily identify the difference between the two. One goes home with a black eye and millions, the other goes home with the face of a racoon with nothing to show for it. So if you don't mind, I would highly request you stop playing stupid games before you win stupid prizes. If you want to keep digging the way you are, I promise you will fuck around and find out. And trust, I am not the one today."

I turned around looking for another hoof to answer to, he then responded. "I'm sure you are aware it's our job to ask questions freely?"

The reporters immediately start backing away from me, giving me more than enough space to get physical. Some of the others stepped away from him, already planning to look elsewhere should the first punch be thrown. Even they saw that this guy was just doing it to get a reaction. Meanwhile, I had it up to my scalp with his shit. "You got what you want out of me, didn't you?" I turn around one last time just to make sure I could hammer my point home. "Let me reason with you. Do you know what death smells like, it doesn't smell like anything by itself. Decay is another matter. I know what decay looks, smells, taste, and even feels like. You don't have to be out here doing what we do, to hell with what I do. Guards died defending the castle, there was even a whole insurgent group looking to collect the heads of the royal family, we've had young recruits dying to a bunch of seasoned thugs and assassins with magic on par with our special forces. But your first intuition is to say that they died defending one man. A little girl was circulated in the thick of the underground for years, forced to do unspeakable acts to stallions decades older than her, she even came before you and told you her life story unashamedly. But you have the nerve to call it prostitution. And then when I tell you that I don't want to talk about my personal health, you come with a request for an autopsy. That I do not appreciate in any capacity."

He just blinks at me. Not even reacting to me. So I kneel down to him and further illustrate my point.

"So here's what we're going to do. I'm gonna continue my press conference, but you are going to walk out those doors with your little notes and shit, take a right turn, head down those stairs, walk right off of the castle grounds, get back to your desk, pen your little story, and generate a bunch of clicks, or whatever the fuck you guys do to generate revenue. But I promise you that you can choose to leave here without so much of a single fucking papercut, all while I have to sleep in my bed with all these scars on me, reminding me of the hell I suffered this week."

He tilted his head yet again, and gives me this golden ticket of a response. "Well with all due respect, sir, I am going to choose to stay. So you can get used to me."

...Every inch of my being felt violence. My mind is consumed by it, playing out fantasies of me defenestrating this asshole through one of these stained glass windows. I imagine the carnage of him falling from the height of where we are, impacting the ground below, hoping he lands face-first. It's like everything around him blurs and all I feel is the overwhelming sense of giving him over to Umbra himself, just so he can find a way to torture and kill him.

But I hold on by the little red thread of restraint I have left. I sighed and gave him my last, and final warning. "You have forty-five seconds. If you are still here, I will find someone's ass to stuff up your ass. And I know that sounds anatomically impossible, but I know how to make that happen. I've been built to make that happen. And you'll discover just how that works." Only my eyes shift over, locking onto a middle-aged mare. "You."

She stammers as she asks her question. "S-sir, if we can get an account on the necro-terrorist's activities without delving into the criminal case in pending, what are the details would you be able to disclose?"

It was a fair question, but I still saw the asshole in my peripheral vision. I hold a finger up to her, politely speaking to her. "Can you hold on a sec, ma'am? I'll be right with you." I turn back to him and whisper. "Why are you still here?"

He tilts his head with his usual nonchalance. "Because I'm a reporter and I can ask whatever I need to. Now I've been in the biz for a long time and seen some things myself. So there's nothing you can say or do that will make me leave this room. As I said, sir, get used to m─"

The halls of the castle rumbled at the sound of my voice. A dark shadow appeared all throughout the room in a flash. In as little of a second, I find myself towering over him with my hands open, my fingers twitching with the intent to summon any weapon I could manifest. My vision runs red and I see him appearing small. He quickly broke out of his stoic nonchalance and fear sets in his face. He turns around and makes a mad dash for the door.

But in his place was a dark shadow that slowly receded into where I stood.

I stop for a moment, looking at myself with horror. I hold the side of my head, wondering what the hell happened to me there, why did everything sound so loud all of a sudden. I took a breath, only to discover that my voice was incredibly raw from screaming. I was left in a coughing fit, one that took some time to recover from. The reminder of what I am now sets into my mind, and I am mortified that it was revealed to everyone in the room, at least for that split second. I painfully cut my interview short.

"I'm so sorry you all had to witness that. But allow me to continue before I conclude."

One Week Later...

For Hearts and Hooves Day, Celestia threw together an alumni gathering in celebration of her former students who have gone on to become productive members of Equestrian society. There was a majority of unicorns, but some brought along their earth pony and pegasi friends. Personally, I felt that having a gathering on such an unusual day of the week was pretty weird, nobody really celebrates anything on a Tuesday unless it's a holiday in the winter. But it turns out that Celestia was trying to disguise the reason for having me tag along with her to a restaurant she rented out completely to have this moment.

I get it, it would look a little off that I would be joining the princess in a place she rented out for just the two of us exclusively. It would definitely turn a bunch of heads of the press, bringing a lot of attention to where it didn't need to be for the moment. So she rescheduled an event to this particular day on short notice. Those who couldn't come wouldn't, and those who could make the time showed up. There were very few ponies here. It was as if we rented the restaurant for a little over a dozen patrons. It appeared just as exclusive as she desired it to be, but also just as inconspicuous. She assigned me to security, and dragged me along for the walk.

When we arrived, she picked out our table, pretty much isolated from anyone else. Servers and cooks had provided a serving line for all of those in attendance, making it much easier for us to collect our food, just like any other event. But as the time went along, Celestia began to converse with the other ponies in the room. It seemed that she was trying to keep up appearances more than I was.

So I matched her effort.

I walked over to what seemed to be the only packed-out table in the whole establishment and started conversing with the six mares at the table. Thankfully at least two of the faces I immediately recognized, which made my attempt to socialize feel a lot less awkward.

"Captain! Hey there!" A blue unicorn mare called out with a shimmering smile.

"Hello, ladies." I hailed back to the enthusiastic unicorn.

One of the mares in particular jumped up with her jaw fallen to the ground. She shook her earth-pony friend as she exclaimed loudly. "Oh! My gosh!" She said, stumbling through her thoughts frantically as she appeared fan-frenzied. "You're actually here! You! You, the residential human! Octavia told me so much about you and how you play!"

I was taken by surprise by the energy she exhibited. "Oh, did she?"

"You are so talented! Wow!" She immediately goes for my hands, shaking them wildly. "Wow, your hands are totally different from hooves! Girls, you should hear him play! I mean I myself never got to hear him play anything, but there are others who can back me up!"

"Easy there, Lyra." Moondancer called out to the mint green mare. "Don't you think it's fair to give the guy his space?"

Lyra corrects herself. "Oh, I'm sorry." She replied to me meekly. "I just never thought I would get to see you in person. But it's such an honor!"

Lemon Hearts stepped in to give me some introductions. "Captain, I know you've meet with me and Moondancer. But these are the other girls that went to school with us when Twilight was still studying with us. The one with the blue and white mane, her name's Minuette Fresh. She's a local dental physician who loves to enhance the smiles of others, be it physically or even emotionally."

The mare nodded in introduction. "Pleased to meet you."

Lemon Hearts continued. "The one who almost ripped your hand off, her name is Lyra Heartstrings. She's a musician now living in Ponyville with her friend Bon Bon, who's also here with us."

Bon Bon extended a hoof politely, a stark contrast to her green counterpart. "An honor to meet such a distinguished hero."

"I'm no hero, ma'am." I replied quietly.

Lemon Hearts finished with her introductions. "And this one here, her name is Twinkleshine. She's a great mathematician who loves to crunch numbers."

"Oh, I'm just an accountant. Don't let her hype you up." The off-white mare replied.

Minuette immediately jumped in with her first statement before I could even get comfortable. "We know the past week's been pretty rough for you. But holy cheese and crackers, I just can't believe you're an element bearer!"

"Yeah, how did that feel for you?" Lyra asked in conjunction.

Lemon Hearts glanced to me nervously. "Uh, can we not ask about the element thing right now?"

"Oh why not, Lemons? He can tell us about the experience!" Minuette replied.

"Does Twilight ever feel comfortable with talking about how her home got destroyed by Lord Tirek?" Moondancer questioned critically, causing the group to quietly look amidst themselves.

Bon Bon quickly jumped in, putting a hoof to Lyra's muzzle. "We understand, that may still be a bit fresh on the mind. We accept the fact that you don't want to talk about it too much."

As we were still having our discussion, I looked back to see what the princess was up to. But she was just sitting at our table, sheepishly smiling back at me and waving before looking back down, appearing somewhat nervous. She seemed very quiet for some odd reason. And considering the fact that she's an extremely social pony, it's made all the more apparent that she's uncomfortable.

Was she jealous of me talking to the ponies here?

I quickly thought of an excuse to dismiss myself. "Hey, can you all excuse me for a moment? I need to go freshen up a bit. My breath's a bit tart."

"Sure thing." Moondancer replied as I rose from the table. While I was walking away, I could hear the mare scold all of her friends. "Girls, I told you to not ask him about anything this past week!"

"Sorry. I didn't know him being an element bearer was on that menu." Minuette answered back.

I walked into the bathroom, just to pretend that I was sprucing up so I could head back to the table with Celestia. Without warning, I heard a voice call out from in front of me. "Hey."

I look up, seeing a pony standing right behind me through the mirror. "SHIT!" I jumped and looked back to see no one standing behind me. So I turned back to the mirror to see Lemon Hearts blushing a bit. "Oh, it's you. Please don't startle me like that."

"Sorry, but I just wanted to talk. Can I apologize for the girls back there?"

I collected my breath and dismissed all foul. "It's all good. It's just a small question of curiosity. Though I appreciate not having to answer it all the more."

The mare nodded before looking in the direction of the bathroom's exit. "So I get that Celestia is looking a little, you know, concerned."

"Well, I mean she is really trying hard to hide the fact that we're in discussion."

"Don't you two have a device you can communicate with, at least while you're away doing something?" The mare questioned.

I instinctively patted my pocket, feeling my phone's shape. "Can't use it now. The portals that sent the signal through are done for. There is an active portal left, but its assembly is still in the process of being examined before the transfer. Even then, it'll take some time to reconnect any signals that were lost."

"Well I can assure you one thing, Princess Celestia looks absolutely miserable sitting by herself." She pointed out quite obviously.

"No joke." I agreed.

"I think she's nervous."

"What for?" I asked.

"A number of things. Like for starters, this is the first time she's done something like this, and I think it's the first time she's done it throughout the history of her rule. That's a mold-breaker, if I ever saw one."

"So you think she's upset that she has to share the moment?" I questioned her.

"On today no less, somewhat. She's trying hard to keep hiding the fact that you two are negotiating. But in reality, she just wants to be able to proudly commit herself."

I tapped my chin, already having a plan laid out. "I guess we can give it another three weeks before that changes."

"Yeah, but you gotta go back to her and interact. While you think it's just that bugging her, there's something else on her mind that's got her on edge."

"You don't think the others will mind us just being at the table to our lonesome, do you?" I asked. "Like if we start just going back and forth, do you think there'll be a big fanfare of it?"

"Oh no, that's not a concern." She answered before appearing timid about something. "So, you wanna hear the other half of why she's nervous?"

"Why does this sound like it's something I not going to like?" I asked the mare.

"Well... the thing is that... we all know you two are talking."

My heartrate just skyrocketed for a second as I nearly ripped the mirror off of the wall. "What!?"

Her eyes veered off to the side as she realized that I wasn't too pleased with the news. "Yeah. Twilight made sure it got around to trustworthy minds, my friends and I. Both she and I talked about it and we thought this was the best route to go. Plus we're all rooting for her anyways. It's not often you get to see Princess Celestia actually happy on a personal level."

"You realizes this could jeopardize our entire relationship, right?" I spoke to her firmly.

"That or help keep it preserved." She replied. "The circle of those who know is small. So we can at least look at it from that point of view. I might have confirmed it with the girls before coming here, but they don't talk about CSGU secrets outside of our circle. And Minuette may be talkative, but she's a firm believer in trust and preserving the smiles of others. Lyra is going to be kept in shape by Bon Bon, who's already secret agent working under Celestia herself. And the rest of us are pretty much your cheer squad." She held up her right hoof, putting the left on her chest. "CSGU honor, we hold to that."

While I could trust her to keep our relationship a secret, I wasn't wholly sold on everyone else. I could only go by Celestia's judgement. And the only way I'd know how she felt about it is if I talk to her about it. I gave the mare a stern warning. "I don't want anything to happen."

"The only thing that should be happening right now is you going over to that table and speaking with her." She suggested.

"I don't wanna hear so much as a peep." I pointed back at her.

"You'll get none from us." She replied confidently.

I left the bathroom and walked towards the table. I sat down and watched as the once-drifting princess' attention was squarely placed on me. She ignored the desert on her plate and the wine she held in her magic, smiling at me. "Back already. Is something the matter, captain?"

"No, it's nothing." I replied quietly as she glanced back to the table of her former students. "It's pretty odd that you bought out an entire restaurant to host an alumni summit."

"Is it?" She questioned coyly, trying to disguise her nervousness.

"On Hearts and Hooves Day?" I quirked a brow at her.

Her cheeks were rosy as she glanced away. "I didn't even notice."

I sighed back at her and uncovered the desert sitting in front of me. "You didn't have to take it this far, you know?"

"It'll be fine." The princess said as she took her first bite into the cheesecake that sat on her plate. "A lot of my former students, the alumni here, do wish to interact with you. So try not to be shy to move around to different tables, if you feel someone is getting a little too invasive in our appearance."

I glanced over to the other table, seeing both Moondancer and Lemon Hearts giving me a nod of affirmation. It appears that they want me to keep going. "I think I'll pass."

She leans in, bringing her magic in between my fingers. "Nondis, just try."

As both the two previous mares look back at the table, Minuette and Bon Bon wave their hooves for me to keep going. I did as I was told. "You know, I get the feel that you're giving off some shaky vibes."

"Vibes?" She questioned curiously.

"You know, inside feelings that tells you to do something?"

She taps a hoof to her chin in thought. "Instinct?"

"Yeah, we'll call it that." I conceded, trying to push the conversation forward. "I feel like there's something on your mind."

"You mean how I feel like you're trying to swing the opposite way of last week and recluse yourself?" She said quietly.

"No, that's not what I'm getting from you, that's superficial." I explained. "I feel like you want to say something a little more personal."

Her eyes wandered back for a moment before she lowered her head. "It's a topic for later."

"No, shoot." I urged.

"I don't think this is the place for it." She argued.

I went on to insist. "Cella, we don't get time together as it is, it's either now or never."

The princess took not just a sip of her wine, but a full gulp of the entire glass. I bucked my eyes at her as she appeared to use the drink for motivation. "Well you remember our conversation we had over the weekend."

"You mean on Friday night after the... you know." I said, referring to my time at the tavern.

She started playing with her fork, lightly scraping the utensil against her plate, not even touching the remnants of the cheesecake that sat next to it. "Not that one. I mean the Saturday morning."

...Ugh... that one. Definitely not my proudest moment. "Oh... that."

I might have had a moment of desperation shortly after my waking up. I wanted to make her have a different image of me than the one she had the night before. So I tried to get her to feel a bit enthusiastic about our short-lived interaction. But as I was going about it, I felt myself not really into the effort I put out. And it showed, both on her face and in the place where it mattered most for me.

In all reality, sex in that moment pretty much disgusted me. I didn't want anything to do with it, I couldn't really be as aggressive with her like I normally would. I couldn't run my fingers against her just how she liked it, I hesitated often, I questioned my motions, and even grew nauseous as the attempt went along. Celestia stopped me shortly after and we had a heart-to-heart.

And so she brought up the idea of a physical reset. Not that I was resetting myself physically, but just starting from square one of our physical relationship. Since I wasn't too great with physical contact other than hugging and handshaking, she requested that I keep myself at a distance. And even offered that if I needed the time to be romantically detached, she would give me the space to do so for as long as I requested it. I denied that idea, but accepted the idea of not engaging with her physically.

I'm sure it must be killing her inside. "I'm just worried that you might not feel the way that I did. Maybe I'm closing you off too much." And she just reinforced it.

I went on to assure her that her decision wasn't the wrong one. "No, you were right to say what you said. I'm not mentally ready to be physical right now. I couldn't even get anything going."

She went on to further express her thoughts. "You were trying too hard to make me happy, not caring for how you felt about it."

"Sorry about that." I apologized.

Celestia levitated my fork into my desert as a way to encourage me to eat. "It's a lot to process, I know."

I didn't immediately dive into the slice of sweet heaven on my plate, just only hovering my fork above before slowly sinking it back in, and pulling it back out subconsciously as I spoke. "It just feels surreal, you know. There's the aching reminder, the feeling of that initial moment and knowing it was gonna go south. And then what made it worse was the serum that was injected into my body, making it appear that I enjoyed it when it only damaged me further. It's almost like it plays on repeat in my mind."

She stops my fork to get my attention. "Nondis, if you need to recuse yourself from duties, please let me know now."

"I'm good." I quickly answered.

"Nondie─"

"I'm good." I repeated sternly. "Right now, our focus should be on getting that asshole dealt with."

She seemed disappointed that I would not allow for myself to take some time off. But she knew that I wasn't going to back down. So she continued on anyways. "The evidence is already stacked against him, even now. I trust the trial won't even be a whole day."

"Yeah, but there will still be room for the benefit of the doubt." I brought up.

"What room will there even be?" She quizzed in disbelief.

"The room he'll have if he's allowed to speak. Even if he can't get himself out of a jam, doesn't mean that he won't try to put us into one. Meaning that we're cleaning house doesn't mean that he won't be trying to return the favor. And you know exactly what kind of deflectionist bullshit this will lead to."

"Of course." She answered with a eyeroll.

"You said you're presiding over the case, correct?"

"I am." She confirmed.

"Have you gave any of the evidence a look?"

Celestia lightly scraped against her desert as she spoke. "I cannot for as long as I am presiding over the case. What Solemn and Cadance found can only be brought to me in court, it's to protect against preestablished biases."

"Well that's a bit pointless by now, ain't it?" I asked sarcastically.

"You can say that, but it still doesn't change what has occurred. I'm still in the position I hold, so there's no changing that."

I finally dug my fork into my desert with some intent to taste it. "Well if you can't look at the evidence, I want to know something. When you look into my mind, do you know what all happens to me, like every word I say and everything that happens, moment by moment?"

"No. Just flashes." She said before letting the fork land on her plate. "And even those are more than enough." She shoved her plate away, indicating her disgust.

As she was doing that, I was quietly complimenting the taste of the cheesecake slice I was offered. "Well the reason I asked is because I'm going to need your genuine reaction for what I'm about to propose."

"What are you up to?" She asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

As I took another bite, I casually explained my plan. "I'm going to try to expose him for what he is from the very first argument of the case. I'm sure the prosecution will know of the tapes he's produced, many of which detailing his logs of the experiments he ran. I am on one of those tapes. And since who we're dealing with is the sadist of sadists, I believe him viewing your first-time reaction will trigger a response of amusement. Any lawyer brave enough to take his case will have to face that music knowing they'd lose from the offset. And everyone in the jury, the fully cleansed parliament, will already know their verdict by the end of the first argument."

"Nondis, this sounds like you're about to hurt yourself more than you are helping anyone." She expressed with concern.

"Sometimes it hurts to help. That's a trade I am willing to accept. That tape will be played all the way through." I stopped biting into my food, looking at the princess directly. "And if I'm correct, he never cut it off when he went about doing what he did to me."

"Nondis, please don't do this." She pleaded, shaking her head.

"I have to. I don't like it, but it happened. I want that to be the first thing that drags him under before his defense team has a chance to peep one word of a counterargument. I want the nature of that monster to be laid out in full, so the world will know that we're justified in what we're doing."

The princess grimaced but showed no other objections aside from how I felt about having gone through it once already. "This is going to be very hard for you. Are you sure you can do this?"

"Even if I don't want to, I'll be sure that the tape plays all the way." I replied.

The high princess appeared disappointed, sighing with dejection. "I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you."

"I'm sorry that I couldn't protect myself better. But what more could I do?"

She looked at the tiara that sat next to her on the table. "If I could give you the crown, I will."

"I don't want a crown. I just want my peace of mind back."

She still had the humor within her to quietly levitate the item to the top of my head. It felt a bit weighty, but not insurmountably heavy like her chest plate. She even straightened it out as though I was some sort of royalty. "That comes with time. It may not be there all the way, but there are moments, and they do grow to outweigh the dark ones." She then picked up my fork and began to feed me my desert with a gentle smile. "I promise we will find your peace."

"Thanks." I replied before taking the bite she fed me.

Another Week Later...

With the trial done and everything already sorted out with the execution. I gathered a few of my friends into the royal morgue, now outfitted with a crematorium for the express purpose of offering yet another method to be disposed of after one's death. While there weren't many who were looking into getting cremated, Celestia still had one installed at my request. And this one was specially built with a crystalline door that would allow us to either watch from the outside what was taking place, or keep it opaque, treating it like a traditional furnace where you'd fire it up and come back in around an hour or two. Either way, I had a viewing option, and I was more than happy to use it.

Quietly, I watched as the morticians moved the young filly, once the young brain of the foul Congregant, from her crystal entrapment to the cremation furnace. As she was placed inside with care, my friends and brothers began to enter into the room. As the morticians gave me instruction as to how to monitor and operate the device, I continued to go over the manual they gave me for reassurance.

Almost as if there was a theatrical event to take place, we all seated ourselves in front of it, waiting patiently for the feature presentation. Though there were a few who had their reservations on the matter.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Blue questioned as she looked at the device with confusion, wondering if I had any idea of how to operate it.

"It's the only one we have." I replied.

"I'm just not comfortable with the fact that we're just waiting for him to spawn there." Mel replied.

"Well that's why we're here, to make sure that there's no mistakes." Alex replied, cocking a round into a shotgun.

"How do you know that this will work?" Blue inquires.

"If he doesn't do it, then he'll die where he's at." I answered confidently. "I'm honestly hoping that's not the case."

Stanton walked into the room, bringing in a number of snacks and drinks. He even brought in a pack of UNO cards and a few board games for us to play with. "This is one hell of a barbeque we're having, so I thought we should have a few goodies to help pass the time."

"Any goodies is better than none." I replied before looking to the reserved zebracorn, who was watching the furnace closely. "Kali, you good?"

"I am fine." She replied solemnly.

"Blue?" I asked the other unicorn in our party.

She summoned a bottle of her best wine, of course the illegal kind. "As long as I get to watch it all end."

"You and me both. I wanna watch every fucking minute of it." I said to her, cracking my knuckles.

Alex looked at Stanton as he was offered a hot bag of microwave popcorn. "I'm really getting around to the thought of it. It's awfully morbid to offer popcorn at a time like this."

Cliff giggled as he gladly took the offer. "Bruh, there used to be picnics over this shit. Where do you think the word 'picnic' came from in our world?"

"Picnic?" Alex questioned back.

"Pick a nigga." Cliff joked.

It took a while for the context to kick in before we all got it. Mel's jaw dropped as she looked away in discomfort, mixed between wanting to laugh and feeling uncomfortable about it. "WOW! Oh God, that's dark!"

Kalimba and Blue appeared the most confused about what was said. "Do you mind explaining dat one to me?" The zebracorn questioned.

"Later." I answered her as Stanton shoved an open bag of popcorn in front of me.

"Want some?"

I took up his offer and dug my hand inside. "Sure, I'm feeling a bit peckish."

The sound of the banging came from inside of the chamber, startling everyone in the room. I nearly knocked the bag from his hand before he resorted to levitating the bag. "Sounds like you're not the only one who's peckish."

"Well shit, he's actually here." Mel pointed out.

"That means his other body is smoked, right?" Blue asked.

"Well, let's go on and welcome him to the picnic barbeque." I replied, almost happy to be able to flip the switch to view the stallion inside of the chamber.

There were a number of burns all over his body, he appeared distressed as he shouted out to light source he shielded his eyes from. "Where am I!? What is this!?"

I knocked on the door and smiled back at him, putting on my best Texan accent. "Howdy, partner!"

He shifted up to see my face staring right back at him. Melanie soon joined beside me in welcoming him to the function. But he was a lot less calm and collected than he usually was. "Oh no."

"Oh yeah. Don't mind us, we're just having ourselves a good time living." Mel added as she smiled back. "I mean, it's about to get a lot hotter where you're going, so you might as well appreciate the nice cool AC you're about to get in a few minutes."

"It's hot in here! What AC!?" He complained loudly.

"Well, you know, the newly installed royal air conditioning, for deceased persons." Alex called out.

He started to try to shift himself around in the small space, pleading to me to release him. "Nondis! Get me out of here! GET ME OUT THIS INSTANT! I SWEAR TO YOU I'LL MAKE IT WORTH YOUR WHILE! WHATEVER YOU WANT! MONEY, REPARATIONS, ALL THAT, IT'S ALL YOURS!"

As he was pleading, I looked to both Blue and Kalimba. I brought them over as I felt they were the ones who were really waiting for this moment to come. I held out my hand to telekinetically grasp at the horn at the top of his head. I felt for the cracks and bent against them strongly, snapping his horn off completely. He gave out a loud and distressed scream as I spoke to him. "Somber Spiral sends his well wishes. Alabaster Charm sends his regards. And you killed me once, so I get a say too." I reached up for the switch and adjusted it to a low temperature. And since the device was built to get up to and sustain 1800° Fahrenheit, 'low' was a grievous understatement. "The scientific process is truly an arousing experience, one could even say... incendiary. Wouldn't you agree?"

Silence... and then...

The moment I threw his quote back at him, he started screaming and trying to dig his way out with his bare hooves. As he continued his manic efforts, Alex shook his head. "He's a doctor, right? Doesn't he know what happens if you keep inhaling air over a certain temperature?"

"His fight or flight's kicked in, and both are losing." Stanton added.

"You burn so bright." Melanie hummed quietly.

"We watch in delight, some real justice." Blue cosigned with Mel.

Rickey watched as the stallion still struggled in his captivity. "Don't you think this is a bit too slow? I can still hear him screaming."

"No." I bluntly replied. "I wanted a Texas-style barbeque, and his ass is gonna slow roast until he falls right off the bone."

"Kinda sadistic, isn't it?" Cliff asked curiously.

"Yup." I confirmed.

"Are we all sadists right now for wanting to watch this as much as we do?" Alex questioned.

"Yup." I answered plainly before looking over to Stanton. "Is there any popcorn left?"

"Yup." He answered, levitating a bag over to me.

"We have wine too." Blue reminded us as I pulled out a fistful of popcorn.

I grew impressed with the mare and started handing out plastic cups for us all to drink out of. "Good shit! I almost forgot. Pass that around, let's have a toast."

As the drink was being distributed, I took notice of how Umbra still struggled. But this time, he was slowing down considerably. I could hear grunts and moans of pain, he rolled repeatedly to avoid sitting on one part of his body, letting it get cooked against the metal sheet he laid on, but even that grew to be too much for him. His lungs were already being cooked from the hot air he took in with all the screaming. His flesh began to boil and the hairs on his body had completely been singed away, leaving only the incurring first and second degree burns. His hooves stopped digging at the walls and started rubbing against them. He turned, but slowly writhing in pain as he was slowly being cooked alive. Then finally, his hoof had dropped.

As I took my cup of wine, I looked to the stallion who seldom moved at this point. "To the bastard of the hour. A toast to you, Umbra Sanctus." We all drank from our cups as I guzzled mine to give my attention to him exclusively. I then called to him the many well-wishes I had for him exclusively. "May the contorted faces of your victims float in front of you for the rest of eternity. May they tear your body apart as you've done theirs and mine. May you never have the privilege to rot, and your bones remain to tell your story. May God and Faust both cast you down without a glance, never to rise again."

As his hoof landed against the metal sheet he was baking on, his chest slowly rose and fell. "He's still laboring." RIckey pointed out.

"Good, den maybe he heard what Nondis said." Kalimba said as she watched him grow more and more accepting of his fate.

I kept a close eye on him, watching and waiting for the moment his chest stopped moving. "And... he's..." After one final descent, his chest laid motionless, never to rise again. His horn was broken, his body unresponsive, his cries silenced, his efforts to cling on extinct. I nodded in confirmation. "Gone."

Melanie poured herself another cup, very much unaware of how strong that wine really is. "He's not braindead yet, but the fun thing about medical science is that you learn all sorts of fun facts. Such as this one: The unconscious brain can still feel pain."

"So he's feeling every last bit of that, isn't he?" Blue asked her.

"Not for long. His lungs are cooked from the inside out though, his brain is still trying to process things on the little oxygen it has left. Right now he's probably cycling through memories, that is if the juices in his brain hasn't come to a rolling boil."

"But he's dead, right?" Kali questioned the woman.

She got in closer, giving the stallion a look. She hummed and looked back to me as she took another sip of her wine. "Give him another two minutes on the grill, chef. I think I speak for all the ladies in the room in saying that we like our meat well done."

I poured myself up another cup, at least celebrating the fact that this was finally over. "You're the pit master."

As the time progressed, I cranked up the heat and stood by. We all started to play a few games of UNO and Monopoly, playing music that was loaded up on our phones, and even smiling as we paid zero mind to the remains that slowly turned to ash over the next hour. Even as the first cycle came to an end, we just turned it back on and ran it again. And yet again, it concluded it's cycle as we were still playing Monopoly. We elected to keep the oven on for as long as we wanted to keep playing our game. Eventually, there were three of us left in the running.

And of course, of those three, Blue was the one to take it all home.

⛧ 'Umbra' Sanctus Quorum ⛧
We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.
Burn motherfucker, burn.

2 Years Later...

It took a long time to recover from those events. A lot of the trauma I still deal with throughout the course of the night. I still fight with hideous nightmares recounting my experiences. And on occasions I have never not been in a situation where I grew paranoid of a dark corner or hallway. Those were the phases I had to push through in my life, the things I'll be contending with until my last days.

Throughout the years, I've gotten better at fighting, a lot better at magic, and even Starswirl the Bearded began to instruct me on things that a unicorn could do with their magic. Honestly, if I had fought against that thing with all of what I know now, I'd probably win a close contest single-handedly. But unfortunately for me, I was kept out of most of the serious circumstances that Equestria was made to put up with over these two years and some change.

But in the meantime, I did put forth the effort to fulfill some promises I made.

The first one was that I went back to Ponyville and got in touch with the inn owner. I gave her a sizeable donation to keep her family business afloat. She showed great appreciation for it, but also sprang the news of her wanting to leave town. She said that staying in Ponyville without her son made her feel depressed, and that the change in scenery was what she needed to properly move on with her life. So I wished her the best and she took her business skills to Fillydelphia.

The second was offering Single File the chance to come back home. Since there was no more guild members to hunt him down, I figured he was good to go in terms of coming back. But he didn't want to come back to Equestria, citing that he had already began a life here in Austin. He opted to stay in the human world, looking for other places he could stay. As time went along, he learned how to drive and do as what all other Americans do. He shortly made his move from Austin, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, where he's currently dating a young collections agent with a degree in paralegal. Birds of a feather, I guess.

It was hard to find the time to be able to get Rarity to New York City. There were a number of things I had to account for in the travel. I wanted to originally take a flight, but I realized that doing so would be completely difficult under usual means. So I picked up a spell from Blue, the spatial distortion spell to be specific. From there, getting past the security was easy. And since I had to just buy three tickets in first class, we landed in JFK Airport later in the day. We were able to take in the sights and speed of the big city. Rarity picked up more than a few ideas from our travel, and I had to be chaperoned by my loving girlfriend. Because Celestia wasn't about to just let me roll out to some city in the human world and not have an eye on me and Rarity. Either way, the three of us had fun.

Our relationship, once considered a closed secret to a select few, began to become more openly discussed. And while the two of us would never admit it to the public, others had unraveled the clues and tied the loose ends together. So it wasn't like it was some huge secret by the time Celestia had already put together her final roadmap for retirement. If anything, she was eager to get it out in the open so that she could proudly claim her love for me. I myself was never really into the telling my personal business to the public anyhow, so I was still trying to be quiet about it, even though our encounters had become the more visible.

The higher ups didn't like it either. They felt that my being a member of the guard assigned to such a position would generate a conflict of interest, especially with her name in the mix. Often times I was told to consider a break-up to keep things official and professional. Celestia wasn't even going to hide the fact that she did have a conflict of interest, she wanted me to be as bubble wrapped and carefully shipped as one of her precious vases. So the other officers went about having their spats with her decisions, and I was always the topic of discussion. So when it came to the idea of Celestia coming to her retirement, I started to look at my options as well.

And after some time of thought and careful consideration, I came up to my own decision.

"YOU'RE RETIRING!?"

Solemn's voice nearly wrecked the traffic flow of the entire hallway, both she and Humbreeze seemed in shock that I had even come to the conclusion. "Yeah, that's pretty much my go-to now."

But the guardsmare officer didn't completely accept my answer. "But what about your evaluations!? You could easily get a promotion if you'd ask for one!"

Humbreeze was also on her side, trying to convince me to stay. "Cap, come on. You're not even twenty-five! How can you retire so early on when you haven't even made it five years!?"

"Please think about this a little more. I don't think this is a great idea." Solemn argued.

The pegasus guard cosigned with the officer. "No kidding. The signs are all there too. There's bound to be a massive power vacuum on the horizon. Word is that Princess Luna and Princess Celestia are turning over their authoritative privileges. Probably to Princess Cadance too, she gets the high princess title, she's going to immediately be crowned as queen."

"Queen Cadance and King Shining Armor, I never thought I'd see the day." Solemn imagined for a brief moment.

"It's not them."

The both of the ponies looked at me quietly. "Okay." Solemn walked closer to me, asking me to lean down so she could whisper to me. "So what's your girlfriend saying, who's taking over?"

"You can already guess who it is."

The two took a short moment to ponder on the possibilities. And they quickly came to the right conclusion. "Princess Twilight!?"

"Why her? She's only going to be high princess at the end of it all." Humbreeze questioned.

"She's been pretty much slotted for the position since day one. Plus element bearer status, plus save the world, plus in standing power. Her resume is just about right." I briefly summarized.

Humbreeze still couldn't believe my announcement. "So let me guess, the reason you want to retire before the official power swap is so that you don't get any kind of rub-back for working with the new high princess like you have been for the past year and some months?"

"No, it's not just that. I also made a promise." I added.

"A promise for what?" Solemn inquired.

"That when she's done with her job, I'll come with her and we'd live in together."

Both the ponies started to blush as they realized the naughty implications of that decision. "You, living in, with her???"

"It won't be as cut and dry like you think it will." I informed the two. "It'll be more like putting up with two annoying siblings arguing with each other."

Humbreeze chuckled at my analogy. "I guess you have experience with that, don't you?"

"Boy do I."

"Can't you just stick around for another two years and some change, call it an even five?" Solemn pleaded. "I really think you could do more for the guard if you just stick around a little longer."

"Five isn't an even number." I pointed out to the officer.

"You know what I mean!"

I tilted my head at the mare and asked. "Are you afraid that you're gonna have to come behind me?"

She looked down quietly, rubbing the side of her neck. "Well... it's just that I can't."

"Solemn, you wanted this position for your entire career. Why is it now you don't want to even touch the position?"

"Because... back then I wanted it for a stupid reason." She confessed before glancing back to Humbreeze. "Don't ask, if you know, you know." He threw his hooves up and took a step back to concede to her.

I tried to offer a good explanation as to why the guard had to change, and why there was no better time than now. "Don't you think that it's better for you to try it now that there's going to be a change in power? There's no expectations, no bar set, no drama attached, none of that. Like think about this: Prince Blueblood was the second captain of the guard, Prince Fair Charity was the first one, one-two-skip-a-few, Crescent, Shining Armor─"

"YOU!" They both pointed to me.

"Yeah me, but that's for Celestia. I'd say that there's been at least sixty or seventy of those for her. You get to set the standard for guarding Princess Twilight Sparkle. And I don't think that's something you could ever write off, it's a high honor regardless."

"So?" She rebutted. "I still have to come behind you. An almost forty-year-old me going against a early-twenties you. No thanks."

I then offered a retort to her logic. "Have you seen what all I've done lately? I've been held out of so many critical situations all because of some favoritism. I don't think it's fair for me to hold the position when I've only done one serious thing, and that was two years ago. If all of you had to sum up my legacy to that, then it's only fair that I don't keep myself in a position that's almost become sort of a decorative position, at least for me. Let's make this position exactly what it should be instead of spear-toting trophy."

"Captain, you still did a lot for us." Humbreeze replied.

But I further argued my point. "Where was I in the moments that mattered? Where was I in the invasion of the Storm King, the matter of Cozy Glow, the reintroduction of the original pillars of power, the Scourge of King Sombra, the take-over bid by Chrysalis, where was I for any of that? Stuffed away in my world because I hear the words of 'Honey, I think you should take the time off for a while.' Like how do I feel being shuffled off like that?"

"I suppose it can make you feel pretty unimportant." Solemn agreed.

"Yeah it does. So I don't want to present that kind of image to the guards, that if you do one grand thing that you can just take it easy. That's not what the position is about. The only reason I kept the position for as long as I did and not give it up sooner was because Celestia wanted me by her side. I just so happen to love her enough to do it."

In a final bid to convince me of my worth, Humbreeze went down the list of lifestyle changes I made for the guard over the past few years. "Captain, you've improved the efficiency of our special forces. You've increased training regiment productivity, actively promoted mental health awareness, boosted overall morale, and even had us ready to take on smaller threats that we would've been scrambling against years ago. Another huge thing you did, you nullified that stupid marriage law that would've had more of us thrown in the fire because of some shitty politicians." He especially paused for that last one, taking his long departed sister into thought. "I truly believe Songbell didn't die for nothing. That glint of hope she gave to Prince Shining Armor, he gave to you, and you ran with it, you even made it come back full-circle when you saved me! When you almost died on that train, that hope almost died with you. Just imagine a world where you don't exist past that day."

Solemn quickly answered the hyperbolic statement for me. "That thing would still be out there. That horrible terrorist from years ago would still be out there. We'd be stuck in the same rut for years unending. I'd probably would've been captain then, but what would I have been able to do? I wouldn't have made any of this possible, not nearly as much."

"I honestly think Princess Celestia wouldn't even consider retirement if it wasn't for you." The stallion continued to pile on. "She's putting a whole nation behind her, all that power and access, for you. Like I don't know what you've got in the luggage, but she's eager to take the journey."

"You changed the world, introduced us to another perspective, your kind has brought us many new things to try out, new technologies, construction ideas, checks and balances of power, like that's a whole lot for a century of change, much less taking that leap in only two years." Solemn compiled emphatically.

"You've done a lot of political groundwork." He concluded.

"You've done even more to make everyone happy." She resolved.

I smirked and interrupted their arguments with one that they easily provided for me. "So what you're saying is that I do deserve to retire?"

Their praises came to a halt as they realized that their words only fed into my logic. Solemn was at a loss for words. "Well..."

As was Humbreeze. "I mean..."

I knelt down and dragged the both of them in, looking to take my time with both of them and tell them what they do right. I started with the officer to my left. "Solemn Oath, I recognize that you are the long-tenured professional that you are. You've proven yourself to be adaptable and show great leaps of understanding critical thinking. You went from doing just because it's what your higher-ups ordered you to do, to following your intuition and guiding others with a scale of compassion and order all the same. You knock it out of the park, girl. Get yours." I turned to the pegasus on my right. "Humbreeze Highwind, you went from wearing your sisters helmet to outgrowing it. We both came out of the crucible at around the same time, but look at you now. You're a proud leader that others want to follow. I hear the new recruits all cheering you on, they love the leader you've become. You're a strong flier who's learned his own way, not trying to fit in the same wear his sister wore before him. You've grown not just out of your sister's helmet, but out of her shadow." I brought the two in for a hug, probably surprising the both of them. "I'm more than proud of the both of you. That's why I feel like I can just leave this to you and not worry about the country falling apart when I do."

Humbreeze made a bit of a sniffle as he spoke. "Stop trying to make us cry, captain."

I broke away from the two. "You two will do great. Besides, it's not like I'm going off and dying. And I'll be here for another month. That's plenty of time to prepare for me not being here."

"The guard won't have another you, captain." Humbreeze saluted.

I saluted him back. Solemn walked up to me, giving me a grin and a light warning. "The princess is very special. You take good care of her."

I snickered at the mare. "Like I won't."

Two Months Later...

After a month of eventful elemental shenanigans involving three notorious villains looking to take over the world, a few wendigos trying to make Equestria freeze over on a summer day, and a decimated castle later, our plans for retirement had hit an unexpected snag. Celestia and Luna had to help Twilight and the others bully down an evil trio looking to unleash unparalleled havoc to the world.

Meanwhile, I was placed in charge of evacuation and restoration efforts. I'm sure there could've been a lot of ponies looking at me to somehow alter the fact that the castle was totaled, but I can't stop magic that powerful, nor will I even try. So I chalked up that L and kept it moving. It took a month to completely restore the city to it's peaceful self. And with the other races coming by to help us rebuild, it took the castle just as long to get repaired. Two birds with one stone, we were pretty much all set. As soon as the coronation date was established, I was given my discharge papers and surrendered all of my security clearances. Solemn took the wheel, and I took my motorcycle to view the countryside.

But I wasn't alone in my trip. Luna and Celestia both flew most of the way, the other times we spent just touring towns we ran into en route to our final destination. But once our journey came to an end, we were given a quiet welcome before taking a hotel room to stay in until I could finalize the sale of a seaside home. Two days later, I was finally cleared to select a house for purchase. And within a few selections, I came to view what I believed would be a great home for the future.

That future only took an hour to materialize.

The realtor gave me the keys to the home, showed me the wharf, and gave me a place to go shopping for a boat if I ever needed to take a moment to sail out into the waters. And on that note, the house was officially ours.

Luna, Celestia, and I walked into the foyer of our new home, relieved that we weren't stuck in the close quarters of a motel room. "So here we are." I said, pointing around, watching as both the former princesses walked past me and took in the sight of our new home. "I'm sure it's not as grand as you're used to, but it feels comfy enough to have that inconspicuous look to it."

Luna sighed happily as she commented. "Finally, someplace nice and quiet. It's nice to be able to not hear some other ponies getting their mating affairs in order."

Celestia glanced over to me for a moment, and then looked back at the halls home. "It is pretty relaxing."

"So, who gets the master bedroom?" Luna questioned sarcastically. "Surely you would not separate a dear sister from another of her own blood, would you?" Then in typical little-sibling fashion, she mocked her older sister. "Or maybe you would, even going so far as to accept me into your bed."

I looked back to see Celestia already getting annoyed. I stepped between the both of them and urged for peace. "This is such a nice home. How I would hate for anything to happen to it before the insurance policy gets a year into the lease."

Celestia didn't mind the idea of giving her instigating sibling a retort. She yanked me by the collar of my shirt and made her demand. "Nondie, where's the master bedroom? I think we should have a bit of a housewarming party."

In many other circumstances, I didn't mind entertaining the thought. But Luna ran over to give me a peck on the cheek. "Aw, you're so cute. I find it funny how you're just going to take my boyfriend away from me, Tia."

I could already start to see the violence manifest in Celestia's eyes. I quickly reached for her horn and snapped my fingers to imagine myself in the master bedroom. That image became manifest and we were in the room within the second I snapped my fingers.

It's a good thing I learned how to teleport.

Celestia smirked at me as she looked at the large bed in the room. "Ah, so you've had your mattress shipped here already?"

"The mattress, the frame, the headboard. All we're missing now is our luggage." I replied before snapping my fingers once more to summon two bags full of our clothes and personal belongings. "Well that didn't last long."

The former princess walked closer to me, slowly pulling me down as she propped herself upward. "Now... where's our other luggage?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." I said to her, playfully acting innocent.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She growls. "Your little kit to make sure that I'm... how should I say it... housebroken."

I licked my lips, already knowing exactly what she wanted. "Oh, so you wanna get this up and going like right now?"

"Well it ain't like we're in some motel anymore." She answered, giving me a sultry sweep of her tongue against my chin.

I began to hold her by her neck, already plotting in my head the ways I would be able to break her open. "Well I'd be more than happy to make our own noise after what happened last night."

"You couldn't stop thinking about it either, could you?" She asked. "The shamelessness of it all."

"You wish that was you." I whispered into her neck.

She unfurled her wings, using her magic to press my head into her nape. "Such vulgar behaviors like that? I wouldn't know what to do with myself."

"Imagine if the world discovered what your voice would sound like enraptured by pleasure." I teased her.

"I'd be so embarrassed. I'd probably die." She replied as she sat herself to the ground.

I moaned greedily into her ear. "I bet you'd love my fingers inside of your right now, don't you?"

A drunken smile crept to her face as she cooed. "Yes, sir."

"How many you want?" I asked as my hand began to wander down her chest, her magic eagerly guiding me to where she wished for them to be.

"Yes." She whispered. "I can take it."

"But you know I can't give that to you." I said, retracting my hand from just above the warmth of her nethers.

"No." She pleaded, holding my arm in place. "Please? I've been good."

"Bad Tia!" A voice called out from the hallway. The both of us quickly withdrew from one another as Luna walked into the room. She immediately started spraying her sister with a spray bottle full of water. "Down, down!"

Extremely irritated, Celestia lashed at her sister. "Luna!"

The midnight mare looked to me and gave me only one squirt to the face. "Now you know better than that." As she walked back into the hall, she took her luggage and another suitcase. She gave us both a smile of satisfaction, knowing that she spoiled the moment for us both. "Now since you two were going to have your little housewarming without me, I'm going to have my housewarming party with some extra supplies."

Celestia quickly glanced at the other bag she carried. "Wait, what is that?"

The midnight mare smirked as she opened the suitcase, filled with a number of leather whips, cuffs, and paddles. "Were you intending to use these tonight? Well as unfortunate as it may be, these items have been lonely in their captivity, much like how I've been left alone downstairs while you two went on without me. So I'll be taking these, thank you very much."

"Luna, those are mine!" She screamed.

"No, you have your toy. I do not." She replied coyly. "So these are mine now."

"And who's going to use those on you!?" Celestia questioned, absolutely incensed.

"Unlike you, Tia, I can do bad all by myself." She said with a tongue poked at her sister. "Later."

Luna disappeared with all the items in her possession. I tried to snap for them back, but I couldn't identify where they and the midnight mare had gone. So Celestia and I had to sit in the room without our tools for the evening. And unfortunately, that already placed her in a bad mood.

I could only hope that Luna's antics weren't going to be a recurring theme throughout our stay.

One Month Later...

Luna was beyond an annoyance, she was a troll.

All for the past month, Celestia and I have been trying to quietly restock on our goods. It was already hard enough to buy the stuff since this was a mostly older town with a lot of ponies following closely on family values. And then with my new job, it was difficult for me to just walk around and be seen visiting the only sex shop in town. And older ponies around here love to do two things; Judge and gossip.

Luna made it to where either I had to earn the disapproving scowl of parents for looking up such kinky things, or risk her Celestia taking a hit to her still prominent reputation. Meaning that there were no paparazzi out here doesn't mean that word don't get around fairly quick. So it's been leaving me and her to try to come up with ways to meet with one another at the house and try to get some time in.

Only the problem with that was Luna was a social introvert who loved silence.

If I came home from work, she was shacked up in her room reading a book. If I wanted to take a moment to find even some personal relief, Luna would either try to watch or offer to join with me. And since Celestia was also home by the time I was, that only made the situations worse.

But Luna, on the other hand, she was adept at finding ways to enjoy herself without getting caught. Some days she would visit the library for a new book to check out. And when she came home with that book, she wouldn't leave the house for anything. Even if you'd ask her, she'd be stuck here. There was no such thing as five minutes without our third wheel sucking the passion dry from our lives. And all while that was happening, she was quietly getting hers all by her lonesome.

One Saturday morning during breakfast, Luna was sitting quietly, really engrossed in her romance novel. Celestia offered the mare her plate and Luna wouldn't move for some time as she was reading. So she gave me a nod to say that we could possibly work our way upstairs quietly and have a little breakfast in bed. That was easier said than done, as the chair I sat in creaked whenever I moved. And with the slightest movement I made to make that chair creak, Luna would subtly shift her book down to glance at what I was doing.

The former night princess giggled as she made fun of me. "Getting a little antsy, aren't we?"

"Luna, I'm just going to the bathroom." I lied. "How is it that my going to perform a bodily function is what gets your attention?"

"It's not about what you're doing that has my attention. It's your body language that ultimately gives it away." She replied as she temporarily went back to reading. "And also, don't think I haven't been paying attention to you, Tia."

Celestia rolled her eyes at her sister. "What is your problem?"

"What else would it be, sister? I can't really bother to live in a place so noisy and busy. And you two would probably turn this into some sort of sex dungeon if I don't keep you both in check." She noted before glancing to me. "Now as for you, weren't you the one who championed the idea of abstaining from sex until you two got married?"

"First, I said 'intercourse'. And second, that's none of your damn business." I replied to her.

The mare lowered her book and marked it with a folded page. "It's my business when we have to share a roof. It's my business to know what you do with my sister. It's my business when Celestia made it her business to see what we were doing on that one day I gave you the transformation spell."

"Seriously, that was years ago. Are you still mad about that?" I questioned her.

"I've been locked on a floating rock above the planet for a thousand years. Do you honestly think I don't know how to hold a grudge for two or three?" She said with a smile. "Can you imagine the urges I had to suppress while in banishment? The thousand estrus cycles I had to endure? I promise you that you can endure it for a little longer."

Celestia confronted her sister, slamming her hooves on the table as she did so. "So I stop you from making a critical mistake that others made before your return, and we're supposed to suffer because of that? I'm almost thinking about banishing you to the bay."

Luna, being the troll that she was, smiled back at her sister. "Tia, do you know what your biggest problem is? It's that you have someone you can play around with, causing your emotions to override the simple things you'd often accommodate for. Like for example, the courtesy of not inhabiting the same space your family lives in, and utilizing that same space for sexual gratification."

While she was frustrating to deal with, I could understand her point. She had to live in a house with her sister, it would probably be awkward to hear how her older sibling was getting done over. So instead of arguing with the mare over the spaces we inhabited as well as the things we wished to do in those spaces, I proposed an alternative. "So what you're saying is that if we find some way to outsource our little adventures, we wouldn't have to deal with you?"

"Seems like you're the only one listening, Nondis." She said as she glared down her older sibling.

Celestia instead argued with her sister. "You do realize you're free to leave to pursue your own home, right?"

"Aww, and I thought that my sister actually loved me." She teased.

"Luna, I love you, but you've got to get your own space. This is more than annoying." Celestia commented.

I did agree with my girlfriend that this wasn't supposed to be a trial and a half, but I also recognized that we all previously agreed that Luna would stay in with us up until we had gotten married. So I quickly came up with an alternative solution, one that could possibly give both parties the space we need to not kill each other so early on. I had another eleven months on homeowners insurance before the policy kicked into full swing. Any more of this and we might be buying another house to replace this one.

"Okay, so I understand what you both are trying to get done. So how about this, why don't we take a leave and find someplace to rent out whenever we feel like we wanna have some fun?"

"And why should we leave the comfort of our own address!?" Celestia debated. "You bought the house, now we have to leave it to have a little fun? I'm not visiting some motel where some eavesdroppers will be trying to detail what we do and how we do it!"

"Okay, well I guess we can commission the construction of a guest house." I suggested.

"Great idea, only one problem." Luna rebutted. "The homeowner's association in this town has a building code. We wouldn't be able to get one done because of the noise ordinance. Plus this is a NIMBY district of the town. You'd have to literally bring it up before the city council for a vote."

I lifted my head and groaned in despair. "Okay, I thought I retired from both military and political work. I'm not fighting another law to be able to get kinky with my girlfriend."

"Plus with Tia's big mouth, you'd be violating the noise ordinance anyways." Luna joked, causing her sister's ears to run red with embarrassment.

Again, she had a valid point. Celestia screams during any kind of sexual long haul, so I had to take that into consideration as well. "Hmm... maybe we could get a boat?"

Luna looked back at me and replied. "Actually, all you would need for that is a permit to park in the wharf. It's just outside in our backyard anyhow."

"A boat would be fine, but I don't want this to be out in the open." Celestia stressed.

"Tia, once you're out in that water, no one's hearing you." Luna added.

"A yacht!" I called out loudly. "We could get a yacht. Something sizeable to where we can do our business inside of, It'll have a bed and a kitchen in it, we could use it to travel, we can drive it, we can park it out back, and when we want to have any kind of 'discussion' away from the any prying eyes and avoid the noise ordinance, we can just go a mile out in the water and debate things that way."

"That sounds like a really expensive endeavor." Celestia replied.

"Babe, we have the money. I could easily throw it on the insurance. Luna stays out of our hair, we don't mess around in here while she's reading, and we can keep it cool."

Celestia looked at me with concern. "Nondie, are you sure?"

"I'll go out browsing today. The morning is still young and I can still get a few errands in before our run on the beach this afternoon. No problem."

The midnight princess smiled as she opened her book and went back to reading. "Then it's agreed."

"You are still stubborn." Celestia complained as she stormed out of the room. "Nondis should never have to do something like this when it's his house he bought!"

"Cella, I promise we'll enjoy the investment." I said to her before she left. She was still visibly upset. I looked back to Luna and warned her. "You know, I don't think you should keep doing shit to trigger your sister."

"Well it's only fair that I give her the grief a little sister should give to her elder." She replied with a smirk. "And also, it's fun having to watch you try to control your sexual urges."

"There is nothing fun about watching me try to find some time to get it in with my girlfriend." I replied.

She waved me over, snickering all the while. "Okay then, how would you react if you found out that I was masturbating right now?"

Honestly, anything sexual can bring me to a boil, but understanding that this was also my girlfriend's sister was all I needed to keep myself from meeting an early end to my life. But I won't lie and say that the month here didn't have me arguing with myself over how I was going to somehow negotiate with her quietly. Still, I managed to exhibit self control. "Luna, I'm gonna need you to not play these games right now."

"You still haven't answered my question." She grinned.

"I wouldn't say anything, okay?" I snapped back at her. "Just don't get my house blown up is all I ask for."

She smiled as she closed her book. "Well in that case, I'll do as you ask and leave you alone."

"Thank you." I said as she hopped off her seat. But as her tail scooted off the seat, I took notice of the equine shaped sex toy propped on the chair, as well as a puddle of creamy fluids both on the chair and on the toy. My eyes expanded and my mouth dropped open as she looked back at me with a wink.

"I think you want to get to buying that yacht now." She whispered before teleporting out of the room.

...Yeah.

That morning was probably the first time I walked through a town of retirees with a raging erection, a sack full of gems, and an almighty need to buy a boat. I tracked down the nearest dealer for one of the best damn yachts they had in stock. And I didn't even walk out of the dealer, I rode my new luxury yacht with a young skipper nice enough to give me the starting tips and hints on how to sail. He safely docked the sizeable vessel in my back yard, I paid him a large tip, and he quietly went about his way.

Once I was done with that, I put on a transformation spell, ran to the tiny sex shop in town, bought some new toys, and gladly ran down the street while looking like a thief in market. I grabbed some scented candles from the herbal store, a few fruits and chocolates from the grocery, and started looking at the possibility of postponing our run on the beach for some time out in the water.

To hell with the insurance, I got a girlfriend to molest... consensually of course.

Just as I intended, Celestia and I sat out for the sea and had no intention to look back towards the house until our time out was done. While I was still trying to learn how to skipper the yacht, Celestia already had experience with the operation of a number of differing vehicles for ceremonial purposes. While most often she would perform the acts for grand openings, celebrations, or even for social gatherings, she was very astute and well-read on the mechanics. I chalk it up to her being the princess of a nation needing to make appearances, she simply chalked it up to years of experience. Either way, she was very skilled in taking the ship out to sea and back.

As we had finished our voyage, she and I went over the various features of our new yacht. There was an entertainment area, one with plenty of room to host more than about a dozen visitors. There was also a kitchen, a dining area, a viewing area for both the port and starboard sides, a hot tub, two bathrooms, and a master bedroom. While I admit that I didn't see the entire catalog for what this thing contained, I was pleased with the accommodations and space available. We had more than a little bit of privacy, we essentially had a second home... which was leagues more expensive than the one on land.

Still worth it.

The sun began to go into it's decline past the horizon. I sat on a chair on deck, watching the calm waters chop against the bow of the ship. I looked back to the former princess, who looked as if she was thoroughly enjoying her retirement. "You okay over there?"

She didn't even budge as she sat in the bubbling hot tub, her eyes closed as she expressed herself. "I couldn't be anymore concerned, yet relaxed at the same time. This is a really huge purchase."

"All paid in full." I said as I walked over to her.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" She asked.

"Better this than Luna getting in the way again." I replied, thinking of the midnight mare's antics from this morning. I was already starting to build some arousal on the scene replaying in my mind.

She opened her eyes to see the sun setting in the distance, it's dying brightness reflecting brilliantly over the sea. "The weather is so nice out here. The salty air, the endless horizon, the sun falling further into the sea. I've sailed before, but never quite like this. Never have I had a moment so exclusive in my life such as this."

"Living a thousand years and this is the first moment of exclusive privacy in that long. Pretty crazy, huh?"

"More than." She said as she sat up to offer me an invitation. "You should jump inside, the water's nice."

"It's still smaller than your old bathtub." I pointed out as I walked by her.

Celestia giggled as I sat myself on the lip of the hot tub. "I'm trying to think if I really needed all that size."

"It did double as an indoor swimming pool." I joked.

"That it did."

I summoned a bowl of fruit from within the fridge onboard the ship. I peeled off the leaves from the top and offered the fruit to her one-by-one. "Strawberry?"

She relucted in taking my humble offering, cutting an eye at me. "You know how I feel about being catered to." She didn't even seem to care that I had clothes on, she yanked me into the water and waded her way towards me. "Now... you may feed me."

I summoned a bowl of warm fudge and levitated it in front of her, to join with the strawberry I initially offered her. "Chocolate?"

She dipped her strawberry in the sweet desert and devoured the bit of fruit whole. "You know, that's a bad sell if you want to have some intimate moments shortly after."

I dismissed her warning. "I've been told that before, but I think you deserve all the feel-good you can get."

She took another strawberry and offered me one that was dipped in fudge. "Too much and there won't be any room for the main course."

"So you're saying I'm on the menu?" I ask as I was about to take a bite.

"More than." She said as she pressed her lips against the fruit.

Before I knew it, she had left me with the taste of chocolate and fresh strawberry, but also partaking in the taste with her own tongue in my mouth. I swallowed my half and she did the same to hers, greedily seeking more of me than the snack we shared. Her hooves wrapped over my shoulders, her eyes lidded part-ways as she indulged on my present lips.

My eyes popped open as I started to feel my arousal come to a notable peak. I teleported myself away, knowing that if I tried to escape, she would hold me down. "Now before we get too heated, I got something to show you."

"What's that?" She asked curiously as I summoned a small chest of items.

"Yarrrgh, it be some buried treasure, young lass." I answered in a poor attempt of a pirate accent. I popped open the chest to reveal an assortment of toys, vibrators, cuffs, whips, paddles, and adjustable restraint bars. "♪Tada.♪"

Her eyes grew to the size of dinner plates as she observed the many items I began to levitate before her. "Oh wow, when did you get all of this?"

My mind flashed back to the moment when Luna stood up from the table earlier. I simply withheld the context and skipped to the result. "I might have been encouraged to grab a few things on the way to you."

She grinned as she watched me pull out an assortment of gags and whips. "And you hid them here on the boat?"

"Oh yeah. Don't want your sister appropriating them like last time." I answered with a wink.

I placed the gags back into the box and pulled out an adjustable aluminum bar with leather straps fixed to each end. I extended the bar to it's maximum length and looked towards Celestia with many more ideas running through my head. She caught the expression on my face, her ears slowly reddening with anticipation. "So, what are you going to do with that?"

"I think you'll find out soon enough." I compressed the bar back to it's minimum setting. Afterwards, I issued her the bowl of fruits and chocolate to snack on. "How about you take on these while I take my shower. And after you take yours, meet me in the bedroom."

She looked towards the tinted glass walls housing our bed and commented. "I'm more surprised this thing has one."

As she walked away towards the kitchen, I made my way into the bathroom and started undressing for my shower. I stared at myself in the mirror, seeing the multitude of scars all over my torso, limbs, and neck. I couldn't help but to think back at the journey that I had to take in order to get to this point.

Immediately after my recovery from the lab years ago, I began to feel uncomfortable looking at myself. It was so bad that I couldn't stand the sight of my own body. It was like everything that was a part of me was torn up and violated in every aspect. I couldn't think about sex without thinking of how I was forced upon. I couldn't look at my own face without seeing myself on someone else's body, which I often convinced myself it was. I couldn't see myself as strong or secure in my own image without feeling the shame of knowing what all had happened to me. It was terrible.

That's why in that first year I never really returned home. Everyone would come and visit me, but I couldn't come back with all of this on me, not that soon. I couldn't bear the thought being asked millions of questions about it, nor did I have any answers that didn't bring up uncomfortable memories. It took me almost a year for me to find any desire to engage physically with Celestia, and that part of our relationship made me feel terrible about it. It was like I had felt that she deserved much better, and that she should probably find someone else if being with me was so much trouble. But she remained firm in saying that she would stay with me, no matter how distant I felt from the world and even myself. She made sure that I had all the space I needed to heal mentally, that I had all the counseling I needed to keep myself from going through suicidal ideations. She pulled me away from every major event, knowing that my potential failures would be contrasted to the success of that one cruel encounter. She shielded me in every way, making sure that I would never have to reopen wounds that I wanted closed.

As the time progressed after, I grew so emotionally attached and dependent on her. I grew so dependent that I almost followed her every move. Wherever she went, I followed like the loyal captain I needed to be, it was almost creepy. But I was working hard to not be able to keep myself that way. I had to find ways to keep myself separated from her, not show so much amorous devotion when we were nearby, not to be so clingy to everything she does. I started to search for my own confidence, my own ability to walk wherever without the stigma of my scars crawling up my spine and whispering in my ear to find comfort in an even larger presence. Even when I moved here, I still had some problems with that.

After a while, Celestia proposed that we'd both engage in some exercises to make us feel more comfortable with our own traumas and scars. For me, it was pretty much everything pertaining to being in my own skin. For her, it was being in a position of helplessness, to be detained physically and to know that not all measures of physical suppression has to be nonconsensual. It took months for us to finally reach our breakthroughs, but in those breakthroughs we discovered the desires we held within ourselves, the roles we began to assume in our brief and sparse sessions.

In the end, I grew comfortable enough to stand before her with nothing barring myself from her sight. And she grew more than comfortable in being submissive and trusting. She allowed me to toe the line with her wings, to pull and rake at them without cruelty. She gave me permissions to detain her, so that she could be immobilized and know the security that all she had to do was request it, and it would end. She permitted me to blind and bind her in however way I saw fit, letting the fear-inducing sensations of her past fade into new expectations, all while maintaining a safer mental and physical environment.

In time, she began to shy into her more intimate desires, growing more open minded of the options she had at her disposal. She went from going with whatever I wanted to try for the day, to quietly requesting that I'd impose more restrictions. From there, we had let our physical absence from one another fester into tension built for our next session. I imposed a rule saying that intercourse was forbidden until marriage, but all other interactions was fair game. Although we had the Approval Process Law extinguished, we still wanted to role play so we could have that moment for later, to allow our imaginations of that moment to run wild. And though she was vehemently against it, I had ways of convincing her that the reward was worth the wait.

After my shower, I walked into the bedroom with nothing but a robe on. I had brought up the box of items and picked out the ones I wanted to use for the evening. I took the extendable restraint brace, a paddle, a whip, and a vibrating wand, sitting them on the bed for Celestia to see when she finished with her shower.

As soon as she walked in, she had appeared before me a giddy smile set on her lips. "You're looking pretty in this light."

"Oh my..." She whispered as she looked at the bed, as well as getting a better view of the contents of the box. "You really went all out."

"You deserve the best." I replied.

She took a gander at the wand and watched as I turned it on. She briefly placed a hoof to her chest, giving a breathy moan. "Oh, I am about to lose my breath, aren't I?" I turned back off the wand, watching as she gazed at the paddles and whips on the bed. "I'm still thinking about our mini sessions in the dungeons. I had to be so quiet then."

"That was then, this is now." I replied. "We're about a nautical mile or so out. You can be as loud as you want to be. So don't be ashamed to show me that you're having fun, or even if you need me to give you a break."

I placed a few scented candles on the nightstands next to the bed. I pinched my fingers against the wick, letting my magic cycle between my thumb and index finger. When the wick ignited, I withdrew my hand and did it to the others. But in the midst of my performing the simple action, her mind had already began to drive her towards kinkier pastures. "Ooh... that looks warm."

I lifted the aluminum restraint bar and placed it next to her legs, measuring how far apart I wanted her to spread. "Excited?"

"Very." She answered as I applied the spreader bar to her hind legs. I promptly set the bar to one of it's higher settings, leaving her with very little options to keep herself hidden from me. I levitated a crop from the box and ran it up the length of her left hind leg. She started to tremble, thinking of her compromising position. "Terribly... excited."

I could already begin to smell the musk she started to give off. I placed the crop to her wings, slowly gliding it against her. "Now don't start melting down just yet. I've barely got you sucking my thumb."

"I almost can't wait to get started." She announced with a tremble in her voice.

I pointed the crop at her. "You know the drill. Safe word?"

She pursed her lips in thought as she came up with her key word to stop the session. "...Luna."

I began to laugh. "Yikes, any other suggestions?"

"I think she's a mood killer as it is. That's perfect enough for me." She answered confidently.

As I started to walk a circle around her, I initiated a check-up of her condition and comfort. "Are you hydrated?"

"Yes sir." She answered happily.

"Comfortable?"

"Yes sir."

"Wings bothering you?"

"No sir."

I tilted my head with a smirk, levitating the crop to the base of her tail. "Tail down?"

The mare blushed, but appeared begrudging with her reply. "Yes sir."

I brought the crop back to me, placing it under her chin. "Are you going to keep it down?"

"Yes sir." She began to pant.

"You'll tell me what you like and what you don't?"

"Yes sir." She replied, quickly losing track of her breathing.

I had ever seen her so excited before, maybe she had been impatiently waiting for something like this for the three months we haven't really touched up like this. It was making me anxious to have her as well. "So who am I?"

"My king." She replied breathlessly.

I moved the crop and placed my hand on her cheek. "When I say stop, you stop. When I say go, you ask where. Understood?"

"Yes sir." Her mouth left agape, she allowed for my thumb to sink inside.

"Are you ready?" I asked as I ran my hand down to her neck, softly grasping at her throat.

"Yes..." Her mane started to fade to pink exclusively. She was more than ready, she was begging. "Sir..." She tried her best to keep her tail stationary, but I could see the arch in her back already forming at my slightest touch. She was pent up, ready to explode at a moment's notice.

While it would be cruel to leave her unfulfilled, I still desired to have her wait for her release. I gave the mare a brief introduction of our tongues before I pulled away. She leaned into me, trying to maintain contact as I held her back. The dizziness in her eyes already indicated she was lustfully engaged. Now the redness of her ears told me that she was getting even hotter. She wanted to just drive into me again, but she acknowledged her role and remained in good standing. "Good girl." I praised her, pinching a little hard at her neck. "Assume the position."

No hesitation, she moved and planted her head to the floor, she arched her back and gazed up at me, begging as though she was in heat. "I am ready, your highness."

As she looked up to me, I couldn't help but to feel myself against the front of my robe, my mind already festering with many immoral fantasies. "Such a pretty face. I truly wish to defile it beyond reason."

Celestia, however didn't like how I began to guide my fingers along the length of my shaft through the robe. "Your highness." She urged.

"What is it?"

"Please refrain from self-ministry, my lord. I should be of use to you... or do you feel I am not enough?"

She never liked it when I touched myself in front of her. To her, it only reinforced the idea that she didn't do enough to please me. Instead, she insisted that I'd relegate that duty to her and her alone. I'll admit it made many of our brief sessions a bit frustrating, but I was just as pent up as she was at this point. So she understands that a mere hand wouldn't really do it justice.

"Are you enough? We shall see." I replied to her, walking to her elevated posterior. I trailed my crop to outline her voluptuous curves, watching as the mare trembled at the threat of being struck. I leaned into her ear a warning. "However, I do not appreciate you speaking out of term."

"Sorry, sir." She whimpered.

A shriek erupted past her lips. She tried her best to keep her head down as the welt I gave her left a stinging impression on her flanks. The spreader bar rattled as she made the effort to remain still. I could tell she was waiting months for that impact, to feel that sensation against her body once more. And I couldn't wait to see the expression on her face once I had given her that.

While I wanted to simply plant my hands all over her body, I had to convince myself to maintain restraint. The grip I had on the crop tightened further as I mentally struggled with my urges to breed her. "Even the slightest sign of disobedience is a breeding ground of disorder. And it must be corrected."

I gave to her yet another welt, this one on the other cheek for fairness. She stood firm through the slow stinging assault, trying to gain a rhythm of her breaths. She never could properly breathe once pleasure racked up to a certain point, especially when pent up for so long. So I had to wait until she finished inhaling before issuing her another blow.

Another to her left cheek, situated high above her thigh, barely getting in close to where her growing heat needed to be quenched. Her head remained low, her jaw literally resting on the floor as she gasped and panted. Worst off, whenever she was like this, she had an uncontrollable urge to salivate. At first, she was shy about it, but now she does so unashamedly, advertising the sexual inebriation she suffered from.

A repeat of the previous strike to the right, only this time my reach crept past her tail. It was intentional, to lightly tease the mound that I know was winking underneath. Her hind legs began to develop a small collection of droplets, probably from the immense arousal she experienced. Her legs shook as she waited for the next blow to come in.

This time she stumbled, she tried to avoid the next hit, but was stopped as my hand went under her belly to hold her from falling over. "Don't you move." I sternly warned her. "Bring it back up. C'mon."

"Yes sir!" She mewled, slowly repositioning herself. As she rose back to her form, I slowly traced the place hidden behind her tail. She erratically squeaked and gasped, hyperventilating as her posterior swayed for invitation. I could tell the words wanted to leave her lips, the words she forever felt were beneath a mare of such social standing. She instead allowed that to translate into her body language, to make her wants known.

"Don't give out yet. We just started." I commanded.

"Yes sir!" She called with the very last ounce of her breath.

I walk behind her, dragging the crop up through the inside of her legs. As the tool rose, I could see the fluids pooling on the leather fixings. I began to feel for the place her body had met with them, scraping up and through the slight indentations that outlined where she sourced her arousal. I could feel from the slight initial resistance where she winked. I slightly pulled back from her, leaving her to only taste the slightest sensation of a foreign entity threatening to enter her. She tried her best to not lift her tail, knowing that I would punish her for it. Her greedy rump swayed more, trying to quietly invite me in. But I refused her welcome and withdrew the tool from under her tail.

A vertical strike to her left cheek was issued, introducing the forbidden bounty of her bodily nectar to acquaint with the rippling flesh of her succulent, sun-marked mounds. She was unable to withstand the effective mode of attack, collapsing to the ground and crying out in a violent shriek her apex. Her eyes clenched shut as her hips instinctively rocked inward on pulse. Her body jolted with every thrust. She laid on the ground, her body slightly unable to hide herself from my eyes. A thick white fluid oozed from within her, bridging itself between her sex and her tail.

My bathrobe was becoming increasingly uncomfortable the longer I wore it. I wanted to free myself more than ever. But before I could entertain that idea, I checked in on my beautiful subject, her eyes cascaded by the pinkness of her mane. "Breathe. Look at me." I urged as I cleared her mane from her eyes. "You know you were supposed to hold that one, right?"

"I'm sorry sir." She moaned with a slight smile, knowing she wasn't going to try to hold in her excitement past her usual breaking point.

"That's gonna have to cost you. You know that right?" I snarled, holding her by her throat.

"Yes sir." Even in her post-orgasmic recovery, she was already eager for the next one. It seemed in her pent-up state, she grew very insatiable.

I pulled her back up to her position, where she eagerly swayed her hips while waiting for the next hit. I felt the dampness of her body growing, she began to sweat. I leaned into her with a comment on her inability to keep herself from climaxing "One thousand years, and you still don't know how to control your O's."

"I'm sorry, sir." She whimpered.

As I held her, I realized that I too had lost my patience. We were finally alone again, and without any real time limit. I wanted to sink my hips into hers, willing to make a mess of her, hear her cry out my name like she was in danger. I wanted everything of her, to hell with my promise.

But I couldn't do that, she would hold it against me. And I'm not sure if I was quite ready yet to feel her without any of her personal restrictions in place. It's already around the time for estrus as it is, I'm sure that it would hit her like a rocket, that she would crush me without a moment's notice. And just from the sight of her now, I'd be asking for my hips to be mashed to graces. Glory glory, what a hell of a way to die.

We haven't had an undisturbed moment yet, this would be the first. I still had to learn her, to tame her before I unleashed a hell I couldn't escape until a month from now. So we settled with this, to identify the means to gradually taper off that beast inside of her.

I picked up the vibrating wand and looked at the princess' eyes as she watched it activate in my magic. "You know, it has been a month." I levitated the item to her posterior, where it sat between her haunches, lightly teasing her. "Actually, it's been more like three. So I guess today's session should be a little different." She looked at me as though I had tortured her in some way, doomed to suffer the perpetual teasing, even in the midst of a climax. "I'll let you sit on that low setting for a while."

"Yes sir." The gasp from her lips told me that she was unprepared for what was next. Being teased continuously wasn't something she was used to in any capacity, so she was very much surprised by what was taking place, and all the more anxious for what was to come next.

"Open your wings." I ordered.

Uncertain as to what I was going to do to her, she still obeyed my command without question. "Yes sir."

Her wings unfurled, leaving them to relax on the ground. I lifted one of them and began to run my fingers along her extensions, tickling her lightly. "You've been neglecting your wings again, haven't you?"

"No sir." She replied with a shiver sent throughout her body.

I began to preen her wing, slowly and carefully, tickling the portions of her body that had little to no attention paid to them. "I'm gonna know if you didn't."

I'm not afraid to admit that I personally enjoyed watching the former ruler of this land squirm at my touch. She forever made the distinction that she wanted to have more personal relationships in her life, and now this was the fruit of that wish. To peel away at the indecisions, the timid exterior hidden behind walls and pillars of societal opinion, the moat of powers and greed, a field of whispers and thoughts, all to rescue a princess trapped in her own machination founded on the traumas of her past and restrictions of her previous present. The liberties of just one simple thing, of my touch against her wings, overwhelmed her immensely.

She always hated when I focused on her wings for too long, she never wanted to bear the cost of them being toyed with, knowing how sensitive they were to her. But this day was the day she found out just how much attention she sorely lacked, and wanted in the same breath of air. Something so innocently taboo, the attention my fingers gave to the crevices and pits of her wings, combined with the low-set vibrations amidst her sex was all she could contemplate. I knew it would break her easily. But sure, what's the problem with another orgasm? Hell, why not a few more?

Why not set a high score after so long of not having?

"Sir, I'm close!" She announces loudly. I didn't show remorse in my ministrations, I did the exact opposite. Why mercy now when I know that she's waited for so long? Would it make her jaded for any other times we clash like this, it could. But I could always just build it back up again, reestablish the tension.

I flicked the switch of the wand to a moderate setting, all while stretching myself between the attention given to her wings and the one thing I chose to ignore no longer; Her horn. Her eyes widened as I leaned from one part of her equine body to the other, realizing that my metaphorical wingspan could accommodate for both extremities of her enchanting anatomy. I watched as she panted in panic from the moment my lips and tongue discovered the crevices of her spiraling indents. Her eyes rolled back as a spurt of magic warmed through her horn, her wings stiffened, her hind legs tensed so strongly that she broke the bar that was to restrain her.

Poor thing, she blacked out for the moment. I never knew an orgasm to be so potent that it had knocked her senseless and rendered her immobilized. She fell limp to the floor, quickly breathing very shallow breaths. I leaned down and tapped her on her cheek, trying to wake her. She eventually came to and I scolded her for her lack of respiratory control. "What did I tell you about breathing?"

"I'm sorry, sir." She replied very weakly.

As much as I wanted to continue, as dire as my own need was, I could not continue without making sure she was okay. Even in roleplay, I had to coach her into remaining healthy. At the very least, she was showing that she was very well hydrated with how much she perspired. "Deep breaths." I urged, placing my hand over the scar on her chest.

"Yes, sir." She nodded, taking a minute or two to get her bearings. She looked back at the spreader bar and apologized. "I'm sorry for breaking it, sir."

I stayed true to my role and addressed her. "You know, that toy of mine was fairly expensive. I should have you repay me for that."

"Whatever you wish, sir." She replied, sitting back onto her haunches. Her head rose in looking up at me. She was a tired and sweaty mess, and the sight of her sitting before me made me mad.

I wanted her. "Get it up."

"Yes, sir." True to her restrictions, her posterior rose once more, her tail still held down as she swayed in a more subtle motion.

I circled my hand in telling her to turn around. "To me." She made no response as she faced away from me, gently plopping her moistened posterior to my crotch. Only the robe and her tail separated the two of us from union. I watched as her pristine form slowly grinded against me. She promptly grew the distance between us, only to instinctively ram herself back towards me. I drove my hips to her in return, using my hand to swat at her. Her flesh rippled against my impact, disrupting those caused from our hips meeting. "You want me to fill you, don't you?"

Her eyes closed to imagine the moment, she picked up her speed. "Yes, sir."

"With what?" I questioned.

"Sir..." She asked shyly, still not comfortable with such crude language.

"With. What?" I slowly asked, teasing her over the minor discomfort.

"Thick. Cock." She stopped ramming into me, motioning her hips up and down to grind against me. "Demean me... please."

Damn woman... she knew that I was up to the hairs on my scalp in holding back. Seeing her tease me like this was the only thing she had to do in order to push me into revealing myself. I had to remove myself from behind her before I sought the liberty to take things even further. "You're a naughty little girl talking to me like that."

"Yes sir." She said with a giggle.

I sat on the bed, undoing the robe and allowing it to fall haplessly to the bed. "A naughty little girl like you needs to keep that mouth full so you don't say anymore dirty things."

Her eyes didn't notice anything of me, but thoroughly feasted on the mast standing at attention for her. "Oh... sir." She was quick to approach, sitting herself between my legs.

"That's right, it's your first time seeing it up close like this, isn't it?" I began to hold her chin with one hand, guiding the now-revealed tool against her lips.

"Yes, sir." Her warm breath ticked against my turgid stature. I inhaled deeply to take in the sight of her lavender eyes becoming eclipsed by my resting on her face.

At last, it was my turn. "Down." She slid her muzzle beneath my loins, looking as longingly as I did to her. "Kiss." I whispered slowly, already at my wit's end. She did as I requested, slowly planting her soft lips against the bottom of my shaft. Even her withdrawal seemed hesitant, the skin of her lips sticking for fractions before separating. A throb surged through the mass that rested from her lips. "Again." Once more, she took upon the invitation to worship. Her lips were continuous in greeting my base, her muzzle rested in the skin of my loins, her eyes occasionally glanced to me to check how I received her actions, I replied by grabbing the side of her head, filtering her mane through my fingers. "You're so drunk, aren't you?" I questioned the lustful mare of her promiscuity.

"Yes, sir." She whispered as she nestled under me, taking in the scents of my soap and sweat.

"Lick it." I begged. "Slow."

I watched as she unleashed her tongue from her maw, glazing the underside of my length as her royally maintained eyes darted between her slow work and my reactions. She turned her head, lubing the side of me in whole until she had reached the top. Her tongue retreated for a short while, only to acquaint itself onto my tip, crowning me with a presence most precious to me.

I let out a soft moan, whispering my thoughts. "Okay, suck."

I didn't think she had heard me, but the sensation of her lips wrapping around me had nearly set me off. I gritted my teeth as I sat up to watch her work. My hand began to caress her head in a show of approval for her diligence. Her mouth welcomed me with a warm reception, her face was already appearing concentrated. I could tell she was being hard on herself, but her performance was nothing short of stellar. The years of her being a magnificent kisser translated well to her adaptiveness.

I had to make a demand of her. "Slower." I didn't want to be broken so soon, I wanted to enjoy her warmth as much as she enjoyed our first time together.

My palm rested atop her head as she sank in and withdrew. But as the initial moment of my request passed, she picked up her speed, and also increased the depth of her work. I trembled, whispering and begging for the moment to come. But she remained diligent in not immediately offering me that request. It almost felt like she had held this as a long-time secret, this incredible gift of her mouth was so precious. Her tongue swirled around my head, even poking into it with the intention of pressing against a hidden button that could prime me into my oncoming release.

She stopped for a moment, taking in a deep breath. And then she sank down, devouring me whole as her tongue rested against the bottom of my loins. Her gags sounded guttural, the concentration on her face as she tried to focus on my reaction, the temporary withdrawal afterwards to perform the feat yet again... repeatedly... in tempo to my breathing... until my fingers began to tense against her scalp.

"Oh fuck." I pressed my hips upwards into her throat, trying to keep myself from not exploding. "Keep me there, don't move." I begged, trying to stave off what was already in manifest. Instead, she moved my hand and forced herself further down. Her magic wrapped around me and milked me for my seed. "FUCK!" I thought I could retract myself, but her strength was too great to overcome. She wanted me to mark her throat as mine, and got what she desired. A powerful jolt had me crying out loudly to her. I gripped the sheets of the bed, watching as she ruthlessly sank and retracted herself repeatedly throughout my surges. I nearly cried from my release, seeing stars wash my world in a brilliant light before looking down to see my seed coating her tongue in various spurts. She wanted to immediately close her mouth to swallow, but I called to her. "No, stay right there." I pulled myself from her mouth, releasing what little I had left to her face. The former princess giggled naughtily all while I fell limp to the bed.

In the back of my eyes was the image I've longed to see for years, the princess' face covered in my seed. I thought to finally recover from my perilous drop, but she had other plans. A surge of overstimulation wracked through my body as quickly as I offered the same cruelty to her. I looked back up to see her semen-stained face back at it, her eyes seeking to snatch the remnants of my soul as her tongue sought to snatch the rest of my seed.

I called to her for a moment to pause, feeling beyond stimulated and very much unprepared for it. "Wait wait wait, labrat."

She stopped her work, gazing at me with concern after hearing me use my safe word. "What's wrong?"

I looked at her and shook my head in disbelief. "This is your first time going this far with me, you're not supposed to be this good."

The initial compliment had made her smile glow the more incandescent. She took my praise as an opportunity to bashfully give her confession. "Well I've done my research for many a night before bed. Why do you think I always ordered a banana before going to sleep?"

"Wait, that was all you did?" I asked her, still not believing it.

"Well..." She said eagerly as she pumped me clean to clear me off. "Plus, a certain zebra has managed to give me a few hints on what makes you go off. Plus it took me the better part of a month to overcome my gag reflex."

Without missing a beat, she swallowed down on me and rose back up, clearing her mouth with another satisfied gulp. "Oh wow." I said, feeling my soft downturn taking a curve back upwards.

She continued to prime me as she spoke. "I know you're still taking lead, but can I get you ready to go again?"

"Might be a minute." I replied.

"I don't think you understand. A minute might not be quick enough for me." She replied a second before she went into trying to stimulate me back into form. Her lips sank onto me yet again.

"You must really want me to dominate you some more." I said, pointing out her eagerness.

"Oh please." She begged with a great effort, priming me back to full form.

"Well I'll get to that in a sec, but first..." I pulled her up from me, forcing her lips to seek another item to embrace. I passionately shoved my tongue into hers, increasingly turned on by her acquired work and effort. She was surprised by the gesture, pulling back off of me to call me out.

"Nondis!" She said loudly. "Don't you realize what I just did!?"

"Okay. It's me. It's not like I'm doing this after you've done someone else." I plainly explained.

And just like that, her tail poked right up as she blushed all over. "Oh..."

I waved my hand in front of her face, seeing if I could snap her attention back to me. "You okay?"

Her eyes wander to the box with childlike amusement. "Can we do the blindfold and hot wax next? I lifted my tail, I need to be punished. Hard. Like really hard."

...Yeah, it's probably a good thing that I didn't quite break the seal on her estrus restriction yet.

4 Years Later...

After some time of really getting to know each other, our peeves, our discomforts, and our limitations, we at last decided to settle on the idea of getting hitched. It was more of a matter of when moreso than where. Two years out of our finally retiring, we originally had our big day penned out to be a beautiful spring morning, when the sun rose from over the horizon. But upon a longer thought, it was probably better that we didn't set up our wedding to be so early in the day. Then came the ongoing issue in our world, the pandemic that made it hard for everyone to travel. I didn't want to risk a spread here in Equestria, so we postponed sending invitations for a year.

Then we started hearing the news of the vaccinations, the mask mandates being lifted, and some of the travel bans being retracted as well. We talked to the others, seeing if they could at least have one dose of the vaccination and quarantine for a good two weeks before coming by. Once that was agreed on by Alex's family, Stanton, mom, and dad, they did as they were asked and came around shortly after. They each booked their stay for a month, wanting to take in some of the sights of the country. Melanie and Rickey were especially mandated to do that since they moved to Ponyville, mainly with them already catching the bug and recovering from it after a while. Cliff didn't have to do anything, he moved to Ponyville City with Sunset Shimmer a year after graduating, so no COVID restrictions for him.

We had a pretty wild time when we got the squad back together. I even brought them aboard the yacht. Their faces were absolutely frozen when they saw me sail up to the dock. And then came the week going into the wedding itself. For tradition sake, they kept both me and Celestia separate until it was time for our vows to be exchanged. I think I had to spend a long time trying to write what was on my mind. But then when it came to the wedding, I just tossed them aside and spoke from my heart. She did the same and we were both a mess coming out of that chapel.

The reception grew to be pretty big, there were two of them apparently. There was one with all of our immediate friends, family, and associates. Along with them were some dignitaries from other species, countries, and walks of life. We had our fun... but so did the city. The 'second' one was more of a parade for us. It wasn't really planned to be a parade, but it turned into one because of the news spreading around the town like a wildfire. A lot of the creatures cheered our exit along the way, many guards proactively lining the streets to treat us like royalty for one last time before we took our airship back home. But when we arrived back home, we were greeted with yet another surprise.

Luna had packed her belongings and left them in the foyer. She finally broke the news to us that she would be moving into a home a few addresses down, leaving the entire house to us. I watched as she tearfully bode Celestia farewell, despite the fact that we were going to be neighbors. Shortly after, we shared our first night together, still soaking in the fact that she was now my lawfully-wedded wife.

That word still takes some getting used to saying.

While I was happy to share the moment with her, she had a more organized itinerary. From the moment Luna closed the door behind her with all her bags in tow, she immediately fell into her roleplaying mode. And of course, there was no more restrictions in what we could do with one another. That only meant one thing to her...

It meant that there was no more holding back.

She let me know from the moment we opened the door to the master bedroom that she wanted these bedsheets to smell like we abandoned all measure of civility. And she was quick to drag me out of my tux. She carefully navigated her way out of the dress, finally wearing nothing but a specially designed lingerie. Her eyes seemed concentrated on me as I navigated myself towards her. She sat herself on the bed and assumed her position without my commanding it. She pulled me in with her magic, guiding me to press against her. Her head turned towards me, revealing a beautiful smile, needing eyes hidden in the shortened locks of her mane.

Her magic held me in place as she swayed herself against me, allowing me to feel the warmth behind the black satin of her panties. She didn't just lift her tail for me, she wrapped the tamed length of it around my waist as her magic would. Slowly, she teased me and waited for me to take the initiative. But even I knew that her patience was subject to wear thin if I did nothing.

I complimented my wife on her appearance in the dim candlelight of our room. "You are absolute perfection right now."

She fell away before falling back into me a few times, giggling as though she were naught but a naughty teenager. "Then maybe you should show me what you would do with this 'perfection'." She sat herself up, and leaned against my chest, saying the five words that told me her intent. "We have time now, babe."

I leaned into her lips, to taste once more the flavor that was chosen by my wife. I felt her guide me where she wanted me to be the most, not hesitating with any foreplay. Her tongue lashed at me in a feral manner, her wings spreading as my hands glided across her chest and underbelly. I pulled away from her lips, nipping at the nape of her neck. She spoke a whisper of affirmation.

I continued to nibble at her body's features, playfully teasing both her horn and wings. She activated her magic in the course of the chaos I gave her, pulling my last defense from her away from me. And in the course of feeling me thump against her, she rushed to pull her exquisite clothing aside. Her eyes locked to me as she guided me for the first time to meet with her.

"Oh, fuck." I sighed in feeling the heat her body gave off at our first contact. I slid my hips into her, just barely avoiding an entry. I repeatedly allowed myself to warm between her flanks, allowing me to see the pink access she offered.

My hands slid up the back of her neck, my fingers grasping a hold of the hairs in between them. Celestia giggled lightly. "Not so much to grab now, is there?"

"I didn't marry you for your mane." I said as I glided within the crevice of her warm and inviting posterior. "I always said that I liked the change-up."

"You apparently liked it so much that you almost took me on the couch." She recalled. "You must really like it now, that or you like playing with your food."

I leaned in to kiss on her neck again, nibbling at her ears also, causing her to lift her rear to me, encouraging me to make my entrance. I went back to teasing her wings, making her breathe a bit erratically. "I can enjoy more than one thing at a time. I don't have a one-track mind."

"Then tell me what's playing in your head." She said as I pressed my hand into the small of her back. "I thought you'd resort to that eventually."

She lowered herself, allowing me to become free of her. I looked down to see myself in full immersion of her body. I looked as she gave me a wink, urging me to fill her. I guided myself to partake. "Oh my God, just let me─" The tip of my sex kissed against the moistened folds that greeted me so gently. I received their welcome and took to enter into her folds. My eyes widened from the warmth that slowly surrounded me with every inch I slowly gave.

"Yessss." She moaned passionately, feeling me hilt out within her. "Oh... You like it?" She asked, backing herself into me.

I lifted my head, almost celebrating the moment as I briefly withdrew to insert myself once more. "I love it."

"Really taking your time with me, aren't you?" That was her way of saying I could go faster. "I'm not fragile, you know that."

Personally I didn't care how fragile or sturdy she was. For me, this moment was six years in the making. The sight of me entering into her was what she aptly called after the wedding a 'high score'. But for me, this moment with her was nothing shy of a world achievement. And I wanted to bask in the warmth that embraced me.

I seemingly basked for too long. "Honey." She looked back to me as I secretly enjoyed my victorious pause. "Why'd you stop? Is something wrong?"

"Just taking in the view." I answered as my fingers ran across the succulent curvature of her flanks. "There's not many males who have gotten to take this in, are there?"

"I may know one or two, at least willingly." She joked lightly.

I continued to let my fingers feel out the indentures of her shape before my eyes were lead to the arch in her back. I slowly pressed and retracted my motions, letting her adapt to me. "Such a beautiful form, how it just runs so smoothly along my fingers, the dip that sinks in just so slightly. So perfect, so straight." I retracted my hand and slapped her flanks, watching the sun ripple from my blow. "It's a shame I'll have to break it."

"Nondis─" She couldn't gather words quick enough before I drove my hand into the back of her head, sending her into the pillows. I used all of my size to overwhelm her stature, climbing to the bed to fully take her. She watched as my right leg took anchor in the mattress by her. She felt the rough impressions I issued to her body, her prior concerns quickly shattering away as another question came to her lips. "How many you want?" She mewled into the pillows, inquiring me of how many kids I wanted from her.

"All of them." I answered as my hips rammed into hers repeatedly, trying to match the rhythm of her breaths.

"Yes sir." She said as she issued her magic in a bid to milk me whilst inside of her.

Instead, I caught her off guard by pulling from the base of her tail, dragging her upwards into me as I pressed, and pulling her off when I retracted. Her eyes began to roll into the back of her head as I ordered her from above her contorted body. "Don't run from it."

"Yes sir." She replied, her front hooves digging into the bed.

"You take it." I said with a slight tug of her mane.

"Yes sir!" Her head raised, her tongue fell from her mouth as she began to lose track of her breathing again. Before I could find my own rhythm, she began to convulse, pressing her wing against my chest in a bid to give her pause. "Wait, stop. Stop." I did as she instructed, but she still continued to impale herself onto me. Her head rocked as she thrashed herself throughout the course of her orgasm. She sounded as though she had laughed, but then seized into a small crying fit.

I was initially caught guard, concerned if something had happened. "Cella?" I started to withdraw myself immediately. "Tia!" But as I called her name, she used her magic to keep me in place, guiding me back inside of her, ushering me into slow motions. She didn't respond to much of what I did, only acting out of some inherent instinct to press onward. She quickly increased her pace again, squeaking with every moment I hilted into her. She thrashed and thrashed wildly until she made no noise, her wings drawing me over her trembling body until she had finally collapsed to the bed, finally drawing breath after several seconds of depriving herself of much-needed oxygen.

I held her head up, her chin covered in drool. She slowly looked back to me and asked. "What happened?"

I was almost speechless. I know I've heard of something of the sort, but I never thought I lived to see one caused by my own doing. She apparently had what many would call it a super-orgasm, or a quick succession of two or more orgasms. Sometimes they do happen, but I have never seen one to be so violent. But in Celestia's case, she seemed to have been overwhelmed by the moment, coupled by sexual overstimulation.

Honestly, I was between scared and proud. Proud that I could break her, and scared because I actually broke her. I checked in on her. "You blacked out and went wild for a sec, you okay babe?"

She still felt aftershocks from her incredible climax. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't breathe. I got lost in it is all." She confessed as she softly guided me back within her.

I pulled her up to me, whispering in her ears to be more careful. "Babe, you have to breathe. You can't just have an orgasm and not breathe. I know you feel great right now, but you can't just black out on me."

"I'm sorry." She answered. "I just haven't had this in over a thousand years."

"That's fine. I understand." I replied as I removed myself from her.

"Wait, no!" She pleaded, trying to use her magic to usher me back in. "Please, come back." I flipped her over, making sure she could see my face as I climbed onto the bed. She looked up to see me hunching on top of her, reissuing my sex to within hers. As I sank back into her, she took notice of how small she was in contrast to me. "Oh honey, I don't think I've ever felt this tiny before."

I leaned into her, whispering to her. "Now I get to keep my eyes on you. I don't want you sitting here and taking in anything if you ain't breathing. Now, deep breaths, okay?"

She shook her head in denial. "Nondie, it gets really hard when you're just giving me a good time like thi─" I cut her off with a strong thrust, causing her to take a sharp intake of air. "Oh fuck!"

"See?" I teased her. "Deep breaths, it'll let you focus on relaxing your abdominals. You'll get to have better circulation of oxygen, your pelvic floor relaxes better, your orgasms will feel better."

"Oh really?" She asked, appearing genuinely surprised. "I always thought it was just... you know... in and out until it goes... boom."

I couldn't help but laugh at my wife's thoughts. "Sweetie, oxygen is required for your brain to go 'ah'. Your brain can't go 'ah' if you're too busy breathing through your teeth. You don't get any value in it if you're acting like you're Plus it ain't no fun if I'm just getting into a rhythm climbing the ladder and you're already diving off the top board. You can't go any higher if you're already up there, relax. You said it yourself, we have time now."

She was already starting to gradually speed up her breaths, her mouth taking in all the air it could handle. "Okay. Deep breaths."

"Nose." I ordered. "Through the nose. Slow it down."

"Okay." She said as she took my advice.

Already, I began to notice a difference in how I was being received. Instead of her clenching up on me so readily, she allowed herself to take me. I slowly entered and exited from within her, quietly working a slow rhythm to match her pace of breathing. My hips were slow in giving her what I had, and her body gladly took it. She looked up at me as I praised her for her progress. "Yeah, that's right. Slow and relaxed. Start there."

While she didn't show it, her body began to show signs of improvement. She started to let her chest rise and fall more consistently. Her wings wrapped around me as she gazed down to where we joined. As she watched, the wetness she produced increased greatly, leaving on me a creamy essence that was thick with her own musk. The former princess cooed as she watched me slowly refine more from within her. "Oh my goodness... Is that us?"

"Mhmm." I nodded to her, giving her an intimate exchange of our lips. "That's right."

"I know I've only been mounted on, but I never really had the chance to actually see what goes on." She confessed. "It's pretty interesting."

"If you want to, you can focus on me." I offered.

She looked back to my eyes, seeing the reflection of herself in them. She appeared entranced for moments at a time while I produced my slow work. She didn't smile, instead pulling my head into her to fully partake in her lips. Her soft gasps fell between the frequent moments our lips met, offering a suggestion. "Honey, can I turn over?"

"Why?" I asked her.

"It's nothing bad, I promise." She said as she gracefully pushed me away for her to adjust. She laid on the bed, her tail shifted aside as her limbs were stretched outward. She craned her neck to look at me. "Could you possibly take me in this manner? I feel that you having me like this would be better for me." I obliged in her request, applying myself within her, pressing my weight into her with every shove. And it showed on her face moreso than the last position we shared of how much she enjoyed it.

I suppose it only felt natural to her to look up to me from behind. She looked so needy as I readjusted my position, anchoring myself into the bed with one knee, using the other foot for leverage. I planted my hand beside her, she placed my hand upon her shoulder and nodded for me to continue.

"Yes baby, c'mon." She mouthed between breaths.

I started to see that this was the position she truly desired, the one that mixed both the slow and deep strokes I preferred giving her, and my offering her the dominance she hungrily craved. Her eyes closed for moments to take in the moment. Our sheets started to stain beneath us, the bed creaking as we moved in our rhythmic motion. She still maintained her deep breaths, but this time her moans became frequent but quiet. Out of habit, I slid my hand to her neck, lightly pinching into her. She dropped her head away from my grasp, then raising it to look back at me with an inviting sigh.

I moved in to kiss her against her ear, suckling her nape as I maintained my rhythm. Her hoof reached to the side of my face, pulling me into her lips. Our unity on that front was as disgraceful and feral as mere animals, our mouths opened to welcome one another, our tongues waging skirmishes until the moments our lips came back down. She licked the top of my lip to bring me back in for yet another battle. As we broke away, she bit her lips as I paused to gauge myself.

Our eyes still locked to one another as she moaned a request. "Daddy, please don't stop."

"What you call me?" I asked, giving her another deep thrust.

"Daddy." She whispered.

Even I failed to withhold myself at her answer. I firmed my resolve once more to tighten my grip and increase my speed. She rocked back and forth between our motions. I moved with the intent of only one word that repeated in my mind; Breed. I longed for years to breed this mare and I was going to stain her as mine. I worked hard for this, I'll be damned if I don't do it now.

"Fuck." That was the word she whispered in between her deepening breaths. "Daddy. Yes."

Our sheets stained even more as she broke down into her next orgasm, my thighs became stained in her juices as she squirted onto me. Upon each thrust I gave, our bed became wetter and wetter. The pressure within my loins began to build, I had to bring her up to me one more time before I felt it coming.

I hauled her up by her chest, holding the climaxing mare as she squeaked. "I can take it. Come on."

"I'm gonna cum." I moaned to her, trying my best to hold back as much as possible.

"Yes, sir." She moaned as she still suffered her climax, stalling out as I continued. "Daddy."

I let out a pained grunt, feeding to her a few more thrusts before I had suddenly become overwhelmed by the surge. My fingers clenched into whatever surface I held, my arms tightened around her abdomen as I carried her to take my seed. I unleashed a guttural scream as my loins seized almost painfully with how worked up I had become in our session. My voice trembled as I sent forth several more spurts into her womb. She placed a hoof to my head, pulling me in for yet another kiss, as feral as the last.

In the course of my release, I leaned down on top of her and still slowly worked myself against the mix of our juices. She purred happily as I rode her out of my descent. "You came a lot, didn't you?"

"I came inside my wife, that's what the fuck I did."

She smiled as she gauged my energy. "You spent?"

I rose from on top of her. "You know how it is. Give it a few minutes." I said, giving her a slap on her rump.

She looked down to the sheets, seeing the mess we've made. "I think I might have relaxed a little too much."

"You kidding me, that's how it's supposed to be."

"It's so nasty though." She giggled.

"And you mad about it?" I asked.

"I know I'll be throwing these sheets in the wash tonight." She answered.

"Well ain't no harm in a little more work." I replied with a smile. "Since we got a midnight load to do, why not take these sheets for another spin cycle?"

"This room is going to be such a musky mess, it might take days to clean the air." She added.

"I call it that 'marriage certified' smell." I joked, earning a playful hit from the former princess.

Celestia scowled back at me and said. "Are you seriously going to be this revolting throughout our marriage?"

"Tia, you married me because I am this revolting." I answered with a smirk.

"And I wouldn't have it any other way." She yanked me into another kiss, pulling me back into the bed. "Now let's go again and see if we can put a crack in this bedframe. I promised a broken bed, and by Faust we'll have one when we're done."

"That's my girl!" I praised.

5 Years Later...

Our marriage had been a quiet but wild affair. Our honeymoon phase was especially filled with passionate runs and romps that rivaled the recounts of the Russian rogue Rasputin. And they didn't just take place in one setting. Sometimes we would go out to sea, making sure that the neighbors couldn't hear us. Even a little later, we even had the opportunity to have our actual honeymoon over in my world, more specifically the Maldives.

However, shortly after our return home, we began to run into a few problems pertaining to Celestia's health. While we confirmed that it wasn't COVID, it was actually something completely different. In all actuality, it had to do with her ability to raise and lower the sun. Since that kind of magic apparently takes a toll on the user, it hadn't really seen much effect until Celestia began to do it less and less. And as a result, it affected her body in a negative way.

Namely, that was was in the manner of being able to give birth.

She wasn't sterile because of it, but the complications her body had undergone due to the magical interference in her physical structure often disallowed her from suffering the full brunt of estrus, but also making it harder for her to conceive. I took up the task to do what I could to research ways we could circumvent the issue, especially since this is a rare case to which one's own magical properties interfered with their bodily functions. I even wrote to Starswirl on the matter, seeing if I could help in any way. But with magic research on the topic being so limited, there was very little that could be done other than hope for the best. So I came back to Celestia empty-handed, but very much willing to study for how to help deal with pregnancy as an expecting father, including any and all emergency situations. Of course, the sex continued, but we had an ulterior motive for it now.

It took a lot of effort to get her pregnant, it didn't matter the form. Our first successful attempt of germination was with me turning into a pony and impregnating her that way, since we figured it to be the safest option. We had the whole first-timer showcase. Morning sickness, unusual cravings, strange impulses and mood swings, a whole four months completely normal... and then it just ended. One day we were walking down the aisle in a supermarket and then ponies behind us started complaining about stepping in blood. Celestia's eyes grew dim as she soon realized what had actually occurred.

Miscarriage.

The second one was with her turning into a human, where our attempts to germinate were massively successful. She even stayed in human form for four months to help promote growth. Same symptoms applied, morning sickness, all that other stuff for three months... but yet again, miscarriage.

She began to worry that her body would disallow her to have kids at this point. So I reached out to Twilight to see if we can work something up that would help boost our chances. Maybe since this was a magic issue, it could be rectified with magic, at least that was the standing theory. We both remained our respective species and tried to conceive that way. The germination wouldn't occur until our thirtieth attempt. Everything seemed normal at first... but then Celestia became incredibly ill and the baby didn't make it past the third month.

Celestia began to fall into a depression, for three years, we tried and tried to put something together where we could have our family. But it seemed that fate had issued her a bitter conclusion. I felt myself becoming smaller and smaller, unable to do much other than try what I could. I remained the husband that she wanted me to be, even as she started to push the idea of me using someone else to be a surrogate mother. I couldn't agree with the idea and we tried again out of my request. Six months later... stillbirth.

Long nights grew into fights, fights grew into sustained arguments, and those arguments grew to a lot of crying sessions we had together. I felt like I was probably affected by the mass amounts of experiments that had been done on me over a decade ago, and she felt like her magic had wilted her fertility since her first initial pregnancy. She once more proposed the idea of having a surrogate mare being the mother of our child, but I exploded on her for having brought it up again. She remained insistent that I'd go with her first suggestion, but I walked out of the room, not wanting to even hear her choice. I couldn't bear to have my own from her, then it wasn't going to work. A few days later, we finally decided to go through with a plan for adoption.

...And then we find out that she's pregnant again after a spat of morning sickness.

I don't think I've ever seen so much despair on her face as she had the moment they told her she was with foal once more. I watched as she almost tore the doctor's office apart. She even openly requested an abortion, just to avoid the pain of having to suffer yet another failed pregnancy. I convinced her to wait this one out, to see if any of the symptoms change... But they didn't, and it began to worry me by the time the fifteenth week came and gone... then the twentieth week... the thirtieth week... the fortieth week... then came the forty-eighth week... And then her water broke.

All throughout the course of this pregnancy, we were on edge. We didn't plan for baby shower the first, there was no real plan other than to keep doing what the doctors told us to do throughout the checkups. We were just waiting for the moment we knew complications were set to arrive. And we were still waiting for everything to go wrong. But when the cramps kept coming, the doctors wheeled her into the maternity ward. The nurses suggested that I'd stand by if I felt I needed to wait until it was all done, I insisted that I stayed by my wife's side.

Luna waited outside of the room as long as I stood inside with her. She seemed to be the one still in connection with the outside world as I was staying busy with tending to Celestia. I even gave her my phone to keep the information moving. And while she was busy playing secretary, she kept an ear turned to the door should anything go wrong.

It wasn't until the dilations started to occur when I began to draw the highest hopes. Celestia was the same way throughout it all, she was just waiting for this to go wrong somewhere. She wanted to just hear the bad news and keep it moving. But it never came. And she eventually came to the decision that she was tired of being in pain, that she would try to have the baby as quickly and naturally as possible.

That turned out to be a major miscalculation on her part.

The instruments came up, and I was growing more and more hopeful by the minute. I became the cheerleader for the angry skeptic Celestia still was to some degree, only this time she was an angry skeptic in child-bearing pain. "Keep going honey, you're almost there."

Celestia screamed out in pain. "You know, this is not easy!"

"I know, that's why I'm here." I said as I held her hoof, watching as she pushed.

She still performed her deep breaths, trying her best to endure the pain without the aid of an epidural. "This hurts like hell, you asshole!"

"I know, I know!" I replied, summoning a towel for her forehead.

"You know, I could simply have you feel what I'm feeling!" She said as her horn started to spark up.

I wrapped my hand around the base of her horn, giving her a smooch on her forehead. "I love you, but I'll pass."

After dealing with a particularly painful cramp, she began to hasten her breath as she dealt out yet another complaint. "Oh mother of me, I never knew this to hurt so much!"

"Honey, focus on breathing!" I chided towards her.

We heard a loud knock on the door, distracting the midwife as well as us. "Can you both pipe down!" My sister-in-law shouted through the door.

"SHUT UP, LUNA!" Both me and my wife called back out to the trolling mare.

As the mare walked away from the door with a giggle, I continued to speak to my wife, still trying to encourage her. "Babe, the fact that we even made it this far after so long, all this did was─"

She yanked me by my collar and seethed at me. "Don't you fucking jinx this, Nondis!"

"Okay, okay." I said, retracting my previous statement. I wiped her brow and kissed her on her cheek, jokingly pointing out a fun little reminder. "You know, you said you wanted another seven."

"SINCE WHEN HAVE I EVER SAID THAT!?" She seemed almost appalled at the idea of having yet another foal for the moment.

"When we first started getting into each other." I pointed out.

"THAT IS A LIE!" She hollered out painfully.

"Well to be fair, this is attempt number five." I recounted.

"SIX, ATTEMPT NUMBER SIX!" She stressed.

"Which attempt did I miss?" I asked her curiously.

As she struggled to breathe, she angrily hissed her reply. "Nondis, which one do you think I'm talking about?"

"I thought we were only counting the ones we tried for together." I replied.

"Right now I have this symptom called 'WHO GIVES A SHIT!'" She raged as she screamed through her labor. She gave yet another scream after to push through another ache.

I wiped her forehead as the midwife informed her of her progress. "Head's out! You got a little more to go!"

"See that honey, you're almost done!" I cheered proudly, still excited that I was so close to being a father in the moment.

"You could help other than talk!" She barked angrily.

I nodded and shifted my position to stand alongside the midwife. She looked to me with concern as to why I was positioning myself between my wife's legs. "Sir, please!"

I poked out from over the drapery covering her and gave her yet another boost of encouragement. "Okay, last one, you and me. We got this."

As I leaned down, I didn't mind the scenery as much as many others would, I've already seen far worse. But the main thing was that I had undergone several exercises and drills to make sure that I was ready to help Celestia give birth under any circumstances. But I also made a stubborn promise to myself that if any baby was going to be born into this world, I would have my hands on them first. I promised that to Celestia from the beginning, and she was watching if I would stay to it.

The midwife was held back by Celestia's magic, she frantically called out to the both of us. "Sir, ma'am, you can't just do something like this, please move out of the way and let me work!"

I didn't pay the midwife any mind as long as Celestia was giving me the chance to make good on my promise. I chanted to myself as I placed my hands on the infant's head, being sure not to pull her as opposed to guiding her out. "Careful, Nondis." Celestia leaned up over the drapery and I peeked over. "Okay, deep breaths, you push. I'll guide."

She agreed with a strong nod before she went back to screaming and straining. While I watched the young baby's face become revealed to me, I tried to remain emotionally collected. Slowly, the role of fatherhood was placed in my very hands in what would otherwise be a very messy situation. But for me, I couldn't be anymore hopeful and proud. "Sir!" The midwife cried out, struggling to free herself from Celestia's binds.

The foal's shoulders began to appear as well. I was watching carefully for any umbilical cords around the little one's neck, making sure that the young one could breathe. I began to grow nervous as I looked for the bulb syringe to clear her little nostrils. I sought them out and quickly cleared her nasal passageways as best as I could, all while guiding her away. My words were soon directed to both the baby guided by my hands and the mother of my child. "Breathe." I pleaded to the pair.

The doctor screamed at me one last time. "SIR!"

I tried to control the trembling of my hands as I waited for the final moment where gravity would do it's diligence. I pleaded with the little one to join with us in the world of the living. "Come on, you're almost..."

My laboring wife unleashed a final push with all of her might. "GET HER OUT!" She hollered loudly, causing the windows to rumble, also sending the midwife into a bit of a panic.

I announce to Celestia. "She's coming along... and... there!" Just as I called it out, the little one fell from her mother's warmth and into my arms.

Oh God, she was so tiny.

As Celestia stopped having to push, only to deal with the pains of the aftermath, her bindings on the midwife weakened and the mare carefully levitated my arms to her as she brought a towel to aid her in cleaning the little one off. "Sir, move!" She said, taking the baby out of my hands to perform the tasks to make sure that she was okay.

I walked over to my wife absolutely trembling as I kissed her. "You did so good, honey."

She was understandably not in the same mood I was, especially having to do all of the work. "Oh, if you patronize me one more time."

I buried my head in her chest, praying to God that I would hear the noise I needed to hear. "Oh father in heaven... please... please..." Celestia, while in pain, held onto my back to join with me in my pleas. I waited quietly, whispering my prayers into the chest of my labored wife. And then...

The mare who held me shook greatly as I called out in celebration. "Ah, there she is!"

I collapsed to my knees, finally able to hear the cries of my daughter. Celestia, still in pain, found the humor to tease me over my emotional display. "Why are you crying, like you did anything?" I stood back up to hug my wife, she swiftly used her magic to hold me back as the midwife wrapped the little one and brought her over. "Oh no, you lost baby privileges from the moment all of this got started. Now move for the real baby."

The midwife gently laid the little crying filly next to Celestia. I tried to not cry as much, but I couldn't help but to be so elated in the moment. "She's so pretty." I said in a broken tone.

"Oh she's so loud." Celestia joked as she watched as the young filly eventually started to grow quiet. "She's so... small."

"Congratulations, mom and pa!" The midwife announced proudly before tugging at the back of my shirt, pulling me to the side. "Sir, a word outside."

Celestia watched uncomfortably as I was escorted out of the room. "Alright, I'm about to go get in trouble now."

Celestia couldn't even get a word in as the mare closed the door and started chewing me out over what happened. "I want to confront you about your actions earlier."

I then tried to explain myself. "I understand, I just acted on my wife's words. And it was a promise I made to my wife, you know─"

She quickly cut me off. "I get it, you're a first time father experiencing the wonders of childbirth. I understand the excitement, but you cannot put yourself in the way of an operating nurse like that. First off, there are a number of germs you carry that could compromise the baby's health. Secondly, I wasn't secure on if you were knowledgeable of birthing protocols, such as not to pull the baby or any of that stuff. Thirdly, you cannot use magic for the sake of moving things along quicker, you could injure the baby or worse."

"I'm sorry, I was a little overzealous."

She continued. "I get it, your wife is screaming in pain, she had no epidural, and she wants a natural birth which would make this all three things: Loud, messy, and painful. But she cannot guarantee the safety of that baby if you just go running in and trying to be a hero. She held me back from doing my job. I just want you to know that what you both did was HIGHLY irresponsible. Say that baby dies in the next hour because of the stunt you two pulled."

As she explained the seriousness of the situation, I lowered my head in apology. "I'm sorry."

She took a deep breath and explained the things I managed to do right. "Now in the meantime, I am pleased that you did what you did correctly, which was to guide the baby, making sure to keep her nostrils clear, no umbilical cord around her neck. You did your homework and knocked it out for a first time go. That's great, it showed that you were prepared for any emergency situation and that's greatly appreciated."

While I could simply accept her praise, I simply told her the truth. "Actually, she and I have been trying to go for a kid for the past five years. I kept studying because I was hoping against hope. We were really scared that it wouldn't happen for us. That first miscarriage really fucked me up, and I wanted to be ready to call out whenever something goes wrong and identify it quickly.... It's a long story."

"Okay." She said with a nod. "So yeah, good job. But don't ever do that again." She warned sternly.

"Yes ma'am." I complied.

"Okay, now go in there and do your dad thing." She said as she opened the door for me to go back into the room.

As I walked in, I noticed Celestia staring at the little one sitting on her chest quietly. "You okay?" I asked with a whisper as I sat by the two.

"I'm in pain, but it's a good pain." She answered weakly, looking down to our daughter.

"She's a tiny little thing." I noted, feeling myself drawn to my new daughter.

"Ugh, I can tell I'm going to be fighting her for your attention." Celestia said with a faint smile, occasionally wincing through some pains.

"She's daddy's little girl alright." I agreed as I laid on my wife's chest, staring at the sleeping young filly. I poke my finger in, but growing afraid to touch her due to the warning the midwife gave me. I instead thought to tease my wife a little more. "So... changing your mind about having more?"

"Go somewhere, you." She groaned. "We still have to worry about this one, I'm still aching from her alone. Can't we just do this one at a time?"

"I wanted to do that, but you insisted five." I jokingly pointed out.

"I am so sick of you." She said with an eye roll.

"I love you." I said soft and sweetly.

"I want a divorce." She replied in the same manner.

Her comeback had me snickering as I marveled at the sleeping newborn. "She has your eyes."

"I pray she doesn't have your mouth." Celestia joked.

"You know you in trouble, right? I got me a little pranking buddy now." I said softly.

"You'll be looking up and find out you'll have diaper duty for the rest of your life." She warned.

I tapped my fingers lightly against her stomach. "That would require one child a year out of you. Be careful what you wish for. You're the one who has to give birth."

"You're the one who'll help conceive." She debated.

I leaned up to kiss my wife's cheek. "That's a battle you know you won't win. And I'm sure it's one you'll enjoy."

"If I didn't enjoy it, then we wouldn't have this little one here." She replied with a growing smirk.

The filly yawned quietly, the both of us watched as we watched our little seedling of hope finally manifest into the moment we sought to have for years on end. "Oh man, I remember the time when I was a kid. Now here I am with one. It's so crazy."

Celestia's eyes began to well with tears as she thought aloud. "I'm beginning to dread the idea of watching the years go by."

"Why?" I asked her.

I summoned a box of tissues and wiped her eyes for her. "Because a year doesn't even feel like a year to me, it feels like a week, just with an abundance of naps in the schedule."

"I can see it now, her first day of school." I started to reminesce.

"I wonder how many friends she'll make." Celestia said worriedly, but also eagerly.

"Oh man, I'm already thinking of all the boys I'm gonna have to chase off." I chuckled.

"She's going to be so beautiful in her first prom dress." Our minds began to go in fast-forward thinking of our daughter's life.

"I'm gonna be pretty emotional watching her walk across the stage."

"Walking across the stage? You're gonna have to be the one to walk her down the aisle."

"Oh my God, grandkids." I started to laugh out loud before covering my mouth shut in an effort to not be too loud.

"None of that will take any time to come up." She said as she pulled me closer to her. "Oh Nondie, we have our first child, after so many heartbreaks, so many miscarriages. I felt like it was really over for us to have this. I'm so blessed to have you being the anchor of my hope, even when I'm just floating out in a sea of despair." Celestia began to cry once more, praying quietly as she held me tightly. "Please let her live as long for us to see her grow that much."

I looked down to my own scars, remembering the hell I suffered, as well as the stories I was told by many in the past. I nuzzled against the recovering mare. "There's a lot of harm and foul out there. We gotta do our best to protect her."

Celestia looked to our daughter as she stirred, and began to sing softly.

While we were so enchanted by the sight of her, I realized a crucial thing we hadn't done yet. "Oh God... We haven't even made up a name yet. What do I tell mom and dad when I finally break the news?"

Back during the first pregnancy, she and I had collaborated on an idea of naming our child. Since I was a human and she was a pony, we thought to get creative in deciding how the name would come to be. So she had the assignment of coming up with the human name, while I was given the assignment to come up with a pony name.

Since I was the one who asked the question, she was the first to give an answer. "How about... Estelle?"

Estelle, a French name meaning star. It seems like I wasn't the only one who did their homework. "Estelle, that's a beautiful human name."

She glanced to me, waiting to hear my response. "So, what about you, what do you think you can come up with?"

I quickly thought of the name she gave her already and revolved my answer around hers. "...Stellar Sunshine. Stellar Estelle Sunshine."

"That's so adorable." She praised as I sang my own little tune to the sleeping filly.

"Oh gosh..." Celestia began to cry, carefully clutching onto both the filly on her chest, and me standing next to her. "Oh please don't take her away."

The fear and uncertainty started to take root in the both of us, I held my wife tightly as I tried to offer courage. "We'll get through this, together."

"I love you." She sniffled.

"I love you too." I said as I hugged my wife, beyond proud of the family she provided for me.

As we embraced, the door opened and Luna stepped inside. She could already see the little one resting on Celestia's chest, "Is that who I think it is?"

"Sister." Celestia answered so sweetly. "Say hello to your niece."

Luna choked up as she watched the young filly resting, her small, fragile alicorn frame. Luna slowly approached, whispering to her sister. "Oh, I wonder what she dreaming of right now."

"Well it is her first dream." I pointed out to her.

Luna lowered her head as her horn glowed slightly, a quiet blue glow sat upon her as she began to gaze into our daughter's dreamscape. She immediately started tearing as she opened her eyes. "What is it?" Celestia questioned.

"It's so pure." Luna announced, wiping her eyes. "Her dream is filled with love and wonder, so much color, so many suns rising in the east, a far green prairie, and it's just the three of you. You have truly been blessed."

I rested alongside my family, thinking aloud before dozing off myself. "Oh, I'm gonna be such a daddy's girl."

10 Years Later...

All throughout the course of those first twenty-four months, Tia and I acted almost as secret service for our daughter. Everything in our world revolved exclusively around her. Her meal times were done exactly on the dot, we made sure that she was fed, her diapers were changed, she was clean, she got her rest exactly when she needed to, she got the best toys, we made the entire home access safe just so that nothing bad could happen. Vaccines, we got them. Checkup's, we made them, slightest hint of illness, I took off work just to care for her. Like we were paranoid to the tenth degree, doing what we could to make sure she couldn't come down with anything unusual. I think I might have gained a few gray hairs stressing over that one. But then again, I was thirty-three when she was born.

When she was three years old, she made a profound request.

She wanted a little brother. And both Tia and I were more than willing to oblige. It was also just in time for the estrus season, so my wife was more than agreeable with the idea. In fact, I didn't have the option to refuse. She dragged me out to the yacht and said we needed to make it work somehow. Though her episodes were tamer than most, she was still ravenous, and much more than usual.

Eleven months later, we gave birth to a healthy young girl, we named her Ivory Elizabeth Charm, or Bella for her shortened name. We weren't as guarded as we were with Stella, in fact we were a little more liberal with her since she showed all the signs of being a perfectly healthy girl. However, we still had a promise to keep with Stella in giving her a brother. So again we tried, and again we had another foal. This one was a boy, and we named him Alabaster Gabriel Shine, or 'Bastion' for short.

Over the years, our quiet little home grew very noisy. We had kids running around the home, drawing on the walls, setting things on fire at a whim, and even utilizing their magical prowess to get into all sorts of crazy shenanigans. We even found out one day that Estelle could very much lower and raise the sun at will. We found that out after she had been trying to use it for a nightlight because she was so scared of the dark. We had to have a long talk with her after Princess Twilight ran an nation-wide investigation of who kept bringing the sun from out west. It took her a week to finally let that ambition go, but she soon found out that she could move the other stars in the sky. And thanks to that, she started making random constellations that many royal officials had charted as new developments.

...Yeah, she was a handful by herself.

Bella had her own little quirks too. She could phase through walls and teleport without any kind of issue. She was extremely adept in magic, and often romanticized the idea of being just like Princess Twilight. She even had me play a game where I had to be captain of her royal guard, doing what I could to stop the evil fire-breathing dragon from destroying her kingdom...

...You guessed it, Bastion was the fire-breathing dragon. And he was appropriately situated to play the role too. He was a hot head, and I mean a literal hot head. Whenever he threw a tantrum, his mane would resemble flames like his mother would when she was angry. He had her exact iris color. But the only thing was that he was just as obnoxiously overbearing on his older siblings like I was when I was a kid. It was like looking at the perfect fusion of both my wife and I. He was magically gifted in some areas, but his thing was his damn brain. He was way too smart for his age, always looking to pull little pranks on me with his mother. I though I had a pranking buddy with Stella, not even close to how those two coordinated. He was his mother's child.

But then, I came to find myself in an unusual yet complicated matter.

It was a Saturday morning, the kids had finished eating their cereal and watching some cartoons, and then they went about their daily session of annoying the daylights out of one another. Tia was feeling a little down today and I elected to take the load off of her completely.

That was a mistake.

"Daddy!" Bella screamed from upstairs.

"Yeah?" I called up.

"Alabaster won't give me my doll back!" She replied.

I ran over to the bottom of the stairwell, shouting up to my son's bedroom. "Alabaster, are you playing wrestling with your sister's dolls again?"

"OFF THE TOP ROPE! BOOM! SUPLEX CITY!" He shouted, jumping off his bed and landing against the ground with a loud thud. Boys will be boys.

"Stop it!" Bella called out before I heard a second thud landing a little heavier than the first.

"Dad! Ivory's sitting on me again!" Bastion called out.

"Oh these kids will be the death of me." I muttered to myself as I climbed the stairs, my joints popping a little from the fact that I was firmly in my forties now. I opened the door to the room both Bella and Bastion shared, then I firmly called them by their pony names as I corrected their behavior. "Ivory Charm, get off your brother! Alabaster Shine, give your sister back her dolls!"

Then of course, I hear the voice of my eldest calling out to me from downstairs. "Daddy!"

"What is it, Estelle?" I called out to her, still trying to separate the two belligerent siblings.

"There's somepony at the door for you!"

I drew a sigh of exhaustion, my mind was already straining to the last cell over the mess taking place right now. "Who is it?"

"I don't know! He says he wants to talk to you!"

I shook my head and left the room, only to hear the two already starting to get back into the swing of things with one another. I had to put that to the side and answer the door. As I walked down the stairs, I questioned my daughter. "You didn't ask for his name?"

"Sorry." She apologized.

"It's okay, just remember to always ask." I tell her as I heard another crashing noise from upstairs, followed by the usual candidate for victim of the day.

"Get off of me!"

I rubbed my eyes and pointed up the stairs. "Go tell your sister to get off your brother while I take care of this." She quickly left to do as I requested while I had come to the door, looking down at a zebra unicorn stallion sitting at my door with some guard physical training apparel on. I looked at the saddlebags he wore, thinking he was just here to pass out brochures. "Good afternoon to you, young buck."

"Good afternoon." He replied with a thick accent, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it sounded vaguely familiar.

"Pretty heavy accent for a unicorn. Where are you from, son?"

He appeared serious, seeming as though he had some sort of warrant for my arrest. "I am from Canterlot. I come to look for de one called Nondis."

I still questioned him on his method of speaking. "Yeah, that's a pretty particular accent you got there. I don't recognize anyone speaking like that in Canterlot. So is there like an issue, perhaps a summons of some sort?"

"Do you know who I am?" He questioned out of the blue.

"No. I'm afraid I don't." I answered bluntly.

He hummed quietly, still keeping his stern demeanor as he asked me another question. "Do you know of de one called Gala Gallaria?"

I thumped my finger against the stubble of my chin, wondering if I had known anyone of that name. "Gala... Gala..." A faint but uncomfortable memory played in my mind as I answered him. "I remember a Gala. She's a blind girl I know of. Why?"

"Dat is my aunt." He replied straightaway.

"Your aunt? Then who's your mom?" I asked.

"Kalimba Mavembe." He answered with his heavy accent, the cadence of his vowels and consonants immediately ringing several bells.

"Oh! You're Kali's boy!?" I laughed loudly, leaning down to greet the stallion with hardly of the animosity I once held in his initial appearance. "Holy Tartarus, kid! You sprouted up like something fierce! Dang! How the world did you get here?"

"Well I am setting out to a base near here." He briefly explained.

"Oh, the new military school and training grounds on the northern edge of town. Yeah, that's the place they just opened like maybe two years back. Yup, I was told they were gonna start posting guards there. Most ponies here are pretty critical of the company it'll bring, especially since a lot of them are retirees. All I know is that a bunch of retail and stuff started sprouting up here because of it. There's already some older ponies raising cane in the city board meetings because of all the development, bunch of NIMBY stuck-up idiots who don't like change."

He apparently had no interest in the social political chatter, only nodding along as I concluded my statements. He then made his. "Well I am assigned here for some time."

"That's good." I nodded before inquiring of his mother. "How's your mom? She didn't get sick or anything, did she? We haven't talked since some years back. It's been a while."

"She's doing fine." He confirmed.

"That's good, that's good. Your aunt?" I questioned next.

"Hopeless romantic." He replied with an eyeroll that told me more than enough of what I needed to know.

"Well, that's how it is sometimes." I replied with a light chuckle.

He immediately cut to the chase. "I was told dat you know of my faddah."

"Your dad?" I asked, thinking for a moment of who could be his father. Instead, I had a number of ideas in mind... especially one stallion who matter-of-factly bragged that he took advantage of Kalimba way back from those decades ago. "...Oh... son..." I was at a loss for words, not able to succintly point out the possibility that his father could be who I had put to bed in my memories for a long time. "I don't know what to tell you, I don't know who your father is."

"You should know him fairly well." He said as he started to dig into his saddlebags, presumably to pull out a photo.

"Okay, I'm gonna reason with you and tell you something you might not like to hear." I tried to inform him before he gave me an envelope, it's seal long broken and browned from disuse. I looked at the stallion and questioned him. "What is this?"

"It is a paternity test." He answered.

I stared at the envelope he gave me, then back at him. "What are you implying?"

"Well... I wanted to know more about my faddah." He replied as he sat quietly, waiting for me to read the results.

I quirked a brow and removed the contents from the envelope, seeing what the hell was on these papers. From the moment I pulled them out, I was assessing the validity of the documents, noting the date in which the documents had been filed. It seemed to have been twenty years ago when these were done. I skimmed through the findings to see the stallion's name, Kalimba's name, and the name of an absent DNA donor. I flipped the page to see the file on the donor, seeing my face in the top-left corner. It was an old picture of me when I was still Captain of the Royal Guard, young, lively, and not a gray hair in my image.

I handed the document back to him in disbelief. "Okay, so I think this is a mistake."

Next thing I heard was the sound of my wife's voice coming in from behind me, interrupting herself as she saw the young stallion in the doorway. "Honey, you never did bring me my coffee─oh. Hello, young sir."

"Hello to you, ma'am." He replied with a subtle nod.

Tia looked up to me, wondering why I had gone quiet. "Nondie, you're pale. What's wrong?"

"Nothing! It's just... some weird mail just came to me." I said initially to try not to let this become an argument.

She was quick to levitate the documents from me as she questioned me on them. "What's this?"

"Honey, uh, I don't think that's─"

She raised a hoof to stop me from speaking. She flipped the page to see my face and promptly looked to the stallion. "Oh... So you're Kalimba's son."

"Yes, I am." He answered with another stoic nod.

She folded the contents and placed them back in the envelope. As she did so, she looked up to me. All I could do was try to apologize for both of them. "Okay, I don't know how this happened but─"

Tia cut me off, politely moving me off to the side as she walked out the door. She gave the papers back to the young stallion and called him by name. "Nafasi, please come this way. We'll show you around the wharf."

He followed her instructions as she pointed him in the direction of our side gate, leading out to the dock where we had our yacht. "Honey, I don't know what's going on." I answered nervously.

She glanced to me with folded ears, already appearing as though she was guilty of something heinous. "Nondie... we need to talk. Just come with me to the yacht."

I looked off to the stallion who waited on us, then spoke to my wife. "You knew about this?"

She raised a hoof, begging for reason. "Please, not in front of the children. Just come with me and I'll explain everything."

4 Years Later...

It was almost like our interactions were the same as back then, the carbon-cut responses and reactions to any statement I might have had. Just how I remembered Kalimba being, he was the exact way. Cold responses, sometimes leaning into indifference, distrust in others, even the way he spoke. It was like I had every bit of her walking right next to me... only he was my son, twenty-one years of age.

To think I had a grown-ass man of a son that my wife knew about.

We had more than a heated argument over that. I almost exiled myself to the yacht for several days over that conversation, feeling like I had been betrayed. It took my innate desire to connect with him to finally get me to come back ashore and rejoin the family. And once I landed, I decided that it was time to get to know the son I never knew I had.

It started off both extremely awkwardly and very frustrating, he had his own interests for being a twenty year old, he had a lot of young mares trying to nab a bit of exotic flavor, and he was like me in the regard of obliging. He was a knucklehead who liked sneaking off of base for a bit of hotel hijinks. Then he would get chewed out over his actions and get sent to bust duty, where he had to clean bathrooms using only a small toothbrush.

Academically speaking, he was a struggling mess who only focused on girls and the desires of living a life filled with dangerous byways. I couldn't believe it honestly, it was almost like the very thing his mom escaped from was the thing he sought to fulfill himself. And he didn't care much for what the officers told him either, he just wanted to get dumped so he could go about living his risky lifestyle. And he wasn't much for listening to me either.

Eventually, I had to bring an end to it. So I put back on my captain's garb one last time.

I challenged him to a sparing match, and adamantly informed him that this was a non-refusal, meaning he had no other choice but to show up. And I warned him too, if he didn't show up, I was gonna take the Congregant powers for a quick spin around the old block, and rock his block with some shit he ain't seen before. And even though I was over forty, the augmentations in my body still held firm. I knew how hard to hit and how hard I can actually hit. Plus busting down doors was no issue either. But all I wanted for him to do was to simply fuck around with not listening to me, just so he could find out how bad it was going to get. And as a sweetener, I have him two weeks to respond by midnight of the fourteenth day, to meet me at the local buckball field.

He was just like me, rebellions and hard-headed. And he always liked turning a blind eye to instruction. In his words, I wasn't there for him then, so why try to be there now. He didn't care that I had gave him a warning, constantly leaving notes in the door of his barracks. As far as he was concerned, I didn't have any clearances, so I wasn't a threat to be taken seriously. All he had to do was stay on base while I had to get stuck in a checkpoint somewhere.

He went about his usual cycle for a whole two weeks. And as he was showing his ass to the sergeants, I quietly walked on base and showed my old credentials, and got an audience with the base commander, getting my permissions to set things right with Nafasi as quickly as possible. They didn't mind me making an appearance, in fact, they gave me a job. After some fifteen years of retirement, I was back in an officer's uniform to promise a 180° turnaround in four years. And in doing so, I was also given his entire juvenile record to show for it, giving me a guideline of how to deal with him in a way that would certainly alter his perception of things. So with all of that done quietly behind the scenes, I let Nafasi do his usual thing until midnight going into Saturday morning.

The irony of that timing.

Not only did he ignore the curfew, he was completely off the base. He was sitting in a bar downtown, looking to get himself a nice college-aged girl who looked to become a local librarian. I couldn't help but laugh because it felt like I was like looking back into the past. But I waited until he got outside.

Before she could send the signal that he was going to get lucky, I snagged his ass into the shadow and dragged him to that buckball field like I had been dragged through the streets of Canterlot. As soon as he was surfaced, I was the first and only face he saw. I threw him on the ground and told him to get back up. He looked at me like I was crazy and started to walk off, I don't think I ever grabbed anyone by the head as quick as I did his. And I swept his legs one good time, just before telling him to get back up.

He tried to teleport away, but he wasn't very good at magic like his mother had become over time. So I quickly relocated him, dragged him back under surface, and dropped him back off in front of me. This time I warned him that I would not keep holding back if he didn't retaliate. But then he did the worst thing he could do; Not take me seriously in a fight.

He playfully launched a few bolts at me, that I swiped aside. He then tried to teleport behind me to launch another, but forgetting to take into account his casting ability as well as his mental fortitude to be able to cast those two spells in conjunction. I then showed him how to do it properly... eight times... in a row... without flinching. By that point, he was really pissed off and decided he was going to try to same-day ship me to the local funeral home, unleashing an angry blast of magic before realizing he exhausted all of what he had after that initial blast.

Now it was my turn. I snagged him into the shadow, dragged him back in front of me, gave a few jabs to the face, swept his legs from under him, and slapped him in his chest. I levitated him up into the sky and blasted a number of bolts at him and then dragged him tail-first to the nearby cemetery, where I had a lovely pinewood box waiting for him in an empty plot. And every time he tried to speak, I blasted him in the chest with a magic bolt. I dumped him in the coffin and closed the lower half, locked it to where he couldn't get out, and left the top half open to let him watch as he was being lowered into the ground. From there, I moved the dirt to his lower half, letting him hear the sound of him being slowly buried alive.

He was more than quick to show some emotion in the moment, begging and pleading for me to stop. I merely informed him that what he was going through was easy, that all he had to do was accept it like he wanted me to accept the fact that he didn't want to correct himself. And as he sat in the coffin, I began to regale him with a story of how I found his grandfather the morning after he died. I told him just how hard his mother cried over not being able to make things right with him before that happened, also telling him in conjunction the story of how his aunt was made blind. And I kindly told him if he wanted to know anymore information of that day, ask his mom and his aunt about it, just to see if I was wrong.

After promising to try to get himself together, I raised the coffin and dumped him back out. And I gave him a firm warning, telling him that the one moment he would slip up would be the one where I would make this mock funeral a lot more realistic. He nodded his head rapidly and ran straight back to base, where he was promptly grilled by several sergeants for breaking curfew, made to run some more, and sent to bed for two hours before having to wake back up for the morning bugle. And at first light, I introduced myself on base, telling the new recruits that if any of them stepped out of line, I would make an example of them in the worst way possible. I then glared at Nafasi, who would sweat at the mere thought of going through that ordeal again.

Once that was finished, he began to apply himself slowly and gradually. While I didn't want him fearing the thought that I would reappear from his own shadow, I still used that intimidation to get him to focus. And while he was quiet to me at first, we began to slowly talk. After that first year, he and I began to share experiences, diving into his past while I dove into mine back in the human world. We'd sometimes go out to eat, maybe have a few drinks at the bar, and still try to make sure he didn't break curfew.

We also bonded over some marksmanship practice. He seemed like he wanted to really learn how to use the newer weapons they had. I asked what they were, it turned out that they were making bolt action rifles for equines now. I wasn't fond of the thought, but that's just how technology is for any species looking to advance themselves. The weapons themselves were still a century behind what I was used to way back when, but their effectiveness was all the same. I spent some time teaching him how to shoot, how to adjust for windspeed and direction, how to perfect his aim, how to manage bullet drop over longer distances.

By the end of that second year, he was already surging to the top of the marksmanship rankings. The higher-ups quickly put him in more target-oriented training courses, seeing how he performed under duress, how strong he was in his mental adaptability. All of that, he passed with flying colors. They wanted to make him a specialist right on the spot, but they concluded that his core scores were too low to consider that as an option. He was still struggling to maintain average scores to be considered anything as high as a specialist.

That's where Tia came in.

She invited him on the yacht, she took him out to the sea, made sure there was nothing but peace and quiet so that she could teach him all he could absorb. It wasn't just in his core scores where he had to improve, but also his magic adaptability, endurance, and usage. She broke him in with her methods, getting him to show drastic improvement over the year she worked closely with him.

That final year was where it all finally came together. He locked in, applied himself, used his newfound discipline to break his own limits, and he showed out in every aspect. His core scores were right where the base commander wanted them to be. His magic surged and he could multicast as easily as any applied magic student could. He took his final evaluations in front of the entire base staff, and flew through everything. That next graduation ceremony, he was given the rank of specialist.

It was a pretty big event for the family. Stella, Bella, and Bastion all grew close to him over the years as well, he and Bastion especially got around to interacting very frequently. Nafasi learned what it was like to be an older sibling, also learning the patience of having those younger siblings get on his nerves a little more. Tia simply called it 'adaptive responsibility assessment'. And I'm sure he didn't have any aspirations to have kids anytime soon.

Of course, he was still trying to talk to that little librarian girl he visited often.

The day of the ceremony, his mom came to town to see him graduate. And while Tia was up in the rafters cheering with the kids, I was backstage watching as a proud father would. As he donned his uniform, I pulled out my old one and wore it with pride, despite it fitting a bit snug. When his name was called, I could hear the entire gym erupt, especially from one particular part of the gym where the kids were.

It took a little while for the ceremony to come to a close, and we waited to let Kalimba have first dibs on her son's fresh digs alongside a surprisingly sprouted Gala. She rushed the gun and tackle hugged her nephew, still looking to be an older sister in age. "Aw, Nafasi! Look at you!" She said as she dusted off his uniform.

Kalimba appeared more gray than periwinkle nowadays, but she still exhibited the warmth I saw her show to him way back when. She slowly hugged her son. "I am so proud of you. You've done very well."

"Thank you, mama." He answered with a soft smile.

Granted, she was still momma. So she was gonna probe him for answers. "You do me so proud. How did you ever come to a place like this and learn so much? I never considered you to be the markspony you are now. Now you are at the top of your class, and graduated with honors. When did you discover your drive?"

"I had a helping hoof." He replied proudly.

"A tutor?" She inquired.

"Two of them. One taught me in magic and educational studies, the other taught me in weapons and long-range ability."

Kalimba smiled as she started walking towards the exit with her son. "I never thought you would have such strong tutors. You must have me meet them."

"Seriously, you crushed everyone else in your class! That is great!" Gala added enthusiastically.

"Well to be fair, my tutors are hard to reach out to at times. They so often stay on their yacht." Nafasi stated as they left the building.

"They have a yacht?" Gala questioned as she adjusted her glasses. "How rich are these ponies again?"

"Comfortably well off." Tia answered as she surprised the two, standing at the front of the three other alicorns. "To be fair, we are pretty fiscally conservative."

While the shortened mane threw them off for a moment, Gala more than recognized the voice. "Oh my goodness... Princess!"

Ivory's eyes sparkled as her head darted everywhere. "Princess!? Where!?"

"Princess Twilight is here!?" Estelle asked excitedly.

"I wanna see the princess!" Ivory cheered once more.

As the two mares appeared lost in the sight of the four alicorns standing together, I snuck up behind Kalimba and tapped her shoulder. She looked back and jumped nearly out of her skin. "Hi there."

Many years ago, she wouldn't ever greet me with such excitement, just outwardly hugging me as she saw me would be out of the question. But that was then, this is now. We're older, more mature, and accepting of our emotions. She yanked me down quicker than I could react, and immediately snagged her hooves around my neck as she embraced me. "Hello!" She started to giggle. "My, what a surprise! As soon as he said something about marksmanship, I should have known! How have you been!?"

"Getting old." I replied as I tried scooping her up before hearing a pop in my back. "Ooh! Exhibit A right there."

While the kids looked on confused, Tia was accepting of it, showing that she didn't mind the display of platonic affection taking place before her. Nafasi stood between both me and Tia while proudly explaining to them what our roles were to him for the past four years. "Mama, Baba came around and taught me everything I know on marksmanship. And Mrs. Valkyrie-Haines taught me everything I need about magic."

"Wow, I can't believe this." Gala called out as she looked to the smaller ponies gathering around Nafasi to congratulate him. "Aww. And who might you little ones be?"

"I'm Stellar Sunshine." The eldest introduced herself first.

"I'm Ivory Charm." The younger filly announced happily.

Gala leaned down to the runt of the litter. "And what's your name little one?"

"Alabaster Shine." He answered in a shy manner, probably crushing hard on the young mare.

The mare petted his head, causing his ears to redden. "Oh my, such a name for such a distinguished young gentlecolt! I'm sure your mom will have to start batting away those other fillies for your attention, won't she?"

"I'm sure she already started." Another voice called out. We looked up to see an old friend approaching us with her dragon assistant. She stood proudly with her mane swaying enchantingly as her mentor's once did.

Ivory gasped as she saw the high princess standing before her. "Wow!"

"It's really the princess!" Alabaster called out loudly.

"It's an honor to meet you, your majesty! I love your mane!" Stella complimented with a bow.

Twilight giggled with a hoof to her muzzle as Spike answered for her. "Well you really should've seen who she got it from."

"Your highness, I am so revered to be in your presence." Stella continued to say before I had to tap her on her back.

"Okay, you can cut it out now." I told her before addressing the ruling mare. "I didn't expect you to drop by. So I take it you came around for ceremonial purposes?"

"Of course, it's only customary that a princess watch her guards grow." She commented before giving me a playful glance. "And it seems I got a bonus out of it. Look who's back in the guard."

"Nah." I said, motioning my hand against my neck. "I'm back to retirement in a month, so you can kiss those dreams goodbye."

Spike looks at the young stallion and adds his own praise. "For years I've been given the chore of keeping close tabs on Nafasi's development over the decade. He used to be quite the troublemaker, now he's top of the class. I don't know how, but he's really had a serious turnaround."

I looked over to my side, seeing Ivory pull at Tia's wing. "Mom, can I get my mane just like the princess?"

Gala smiled as she watched the young filly pull at her mother. "They are some curious little ones, aren't they?"

"Indeed they are." I answered as I kissed my wife's forehead. "These three are the result of a lot of hard work and prayer, they're our world. And while I didn't get a chance to watch Nafasi grow, he's more than welcome to join it."

Meanwhile, Ivory was still begging the princess about the secrets of her mane. "So is there like a fan that you carry that makes it do that?"

Twilight giggled as she pointed to Tia. "Well I would tell you, but I wouldn't quite describe it better than how your mom could."

"My mom's mane doesn't flow like yours though!" She argued.

Twilight walked beside Tia, taking off her headband. "Oh, but it used to."

Tia didn't want to bring too much attention to herself, so she reached for the headband back before her hair could really get back to moving like it used to. "Wait, really?" Stella asked as she watched Tia stop her mane from flowing, knowing that if it did, it would eventually grow back out.

Twilight continued to go about teasing her old mentor. "Of course, she used to be the princess after all."

The three foals glanced back to their mother, quiet for a moment as Tia rolled her eyes in reaction to being ousted by the current ruler. "Oh well, here we go."

Twilight appeared confused that their reactions were so fresh, she looked at me like I was supposed to go against my wife's wishes and tell them what all we used to be. "Wait, you two didn't tell them?" She walked over to Ivory and questioned the young filly. "Do you know who your mother is?"

"My mom's my mom." She answered completely unaware.

For years, we agreed to keep our past lives in a capsule, only to be revealed when we felt that they had come to the age where they were mentally mature enough to understand who they were, who they came from, and to do both of those things without feeling any sense of superiority to the others around them. While we lived a life of privilege, we didn't want them to act as though they were entitled to more than what everyone else had. We loved them and gave them the world, but we never wanted to give them too much of it. And Tia's biggest fear was the possibility telling them the truth too soon, causing more harm than good in their social development.

Even when Nafasi came around, he knew who and what we were, but respected our wishes to keep that secret concealed. But Twilight took that play away from us, unwittingly of course. Tia facehoofed and peeked an eye over to me, wanting me to finally break the news for her and the others. "Well, cat's out of the bag now, so we might as well." I said as I knelt down to Ivory, pointing up to her mother. "Bella, your mom and your aunt, they were princesses for some time... give or take a thousand years."

The shock and wonderment on her face grew to astounding proportions. The filly's eyes twinkled like she had seen fireworks over the harbor. "Was she!?"

Twilight confirmed our account. "Oh yeah, she taught me everything I know now. Back when I was growing up, I used to look up to her." She then looked to me. "And don't even get me started on your dad."

The young filly's wings flared open as though she was about to jettison into flight. "Does that mean we're royalty too!?"

"Now slow down, Bella." I said, keeping her tethered to the ground before she could take off into the air and start shouting. "Your mother isn't a princess anymore."

"Aww! But why not!?" She asked, becoming greatly disappointed.

Tia walked beside our middling foal and petted her head gently. "Because I wanted my time to have a family, to be able to have all of you. And I couldn't do that when I don't have any time to be a mom." She started to issue some of the reality of her past to the young filly. "Like for example, can you imagine a life where you have nothing but homework?"

Ivory acted out in disgust. "Eugh! That's bad!"

"It is, I know!" She replied. "And when you're a princess, you have to do all of your homework to make everypony happy, and sometimes you weren't allowed to take breaks. If you wanted to travel somewhere, you'd have to do an essay on the very place you're going to. Imagine having to write a book report on every town, city, and country you visit. You don't get to have fun very often. You don't get to fly when you want to, you don't get to have a special somepony without the world making fun of you, you can't even sleep until all your homework is done. And then you have classes almost every day from sunup to sundown. If I was still that, neither I nor your aunt would ever see much of you." She then hugged Ivory, nuzzling her all the while. "And that would make me very sad."

"Trust me." Twilight added. "I might not mind homework, but it's not fun for everyone."

"And not all of it is fun either." I cosigned. "Can you imagine dealing with a bunch of loud, whiny classmates who wanna see you do bad all the time, and scream when they don't get their way? And you can't just sit on them like you do your little brother, that's not allowed."

Ivory quickly became disillusioned with the thought of being a princess once we briefly explained the reality of the position to her in the way she could understand. But that didn't change her mind about having that kind of mane style. "Well at least the hair is nice, I still wanna look like it."

For a moment, Stella watched quietly as she took in the news of her mom being a princess. And then another idea came to her mind. "Mom, our school is having a field trip this upcoming weekend. Our teachers say it's supposed to be in Canterlot, where we're supposed to view some of the monuments and memorials. Could you come with us to be our chaperone? Please?"

Tia didn't mind returning back to the city, but she was always mindful of how I began to feel about that place after so many years. She appeared concerned that I was going to volunteer myself to possibly reopen some old wounds. I took her cue and gladly volunteered to stay. "You want me to watch the others while you two are away? It'll be a good mother-daughter trip."

"No daddy! We wanna go too!" Ivory insisted, wanting to tag along with her mother.

Then Bastion chimed in. "Can big brother come with us, please?"

Without warning, I heard Gala shriek in my ear. "That's a great idea! We could make it like an extended family day." She glanced up to see me rubbing my ear from having my eardrums rattled. She bashfully toned her volume down. "Well, not that we're actually blood related or anything."

"Dat means you have to come too." Nafasi said to me, firmly trying to push me into going.

Tia looked concerned, but I wasn't going to refuse. And even if I had an episode or two, she'll be right there to remind me that I'm no longer in that same place all those years ago. I folded my arms and gave my affirmation. "Hmm... If only we could take a boat."

Then came the other obstacle that was sure to give me a headache and then some. Celestia proposed an idea. "Well we could go by airship."

Twilight quickly shot that idea down with an update. "Unfortunately, the airship is down at the moment, undergoing maintenance due to a damaged rudder from a freak thunderstorm. It'll take about another two weeks to a month before the repairs are complete and the parts are outfitted with more weather-resistant shielding. Spike and I actually took the train over this way... but..." She looked to me and silently inquired about my willingness. "Well, I don't want to tell you to brave this one out─"

"Ugh..." I groaned, holding my head.

"What's wrong?" Nafasi asked.

"Your father doesn't like trains very much." Kalimba explained.

Ivory wrapped herself around my leg, pleading with me to come. "Daddy, daddy, please!? Come with us!"

I grimaced and sighed, not wanting to disappoint my girls. "...The things I do for love."

15 Years Later...

Tia was not playing around when she said the years would go by much quicker the older you got. I went from watching Nafasi going off to be a specialist for the E.U.P., to getting Stella ready for prom night and graduation. And not too long after that, we watched both Bella and Bastion fly from the nest, only a year apart from each other. The home we once had that was so boisterous and filled with life had become much quieter.

Nafasi Nyingine got up to the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 3, he became the guy that even some of the lower officers feared the most. And with his stern crimson glare that could break concrete foundations, he pulled the look off very well. That relationship with the local librarian dissolved once she moved to a larger city. He was initially heartbroken by the break up, but he found himself dating another mare shortly after. They've been steady for the past five years. They have a kid now, but they're set to have the wedding next year.

Stellar Sunshine, daddy's little girl, I walked her down the aisle shortly after she graduated from college. And it only took a year for her to produce to us our first grandson of the pack, taking that achievement away from Nafasi by a total of two years. She's also an astronomer, taking up her business in the local observatory. Since she was already good at adjusting the stars and whatnot in the sky, she brought forth a lot of new stars that were yet to be discovered, even creating newer ones herself... a pretty hefty feat.

Ivory Charm became a fashion model, she went superviral online for some of her selfies and often took up advertising gigs in larger cities. She got picked up in Manehattan and barely had a chance to look back. Her life was so fast, way too fast for me and her mother to keep up with nowadays. And despite being awfully small for an alicorn, she took on the role of leading the siblings to whatever hijinks they wanted to get into.

And then there was the runt of the litter... who didn't really stay a runt for very long once puberty hit. He didn't just reach his mother's height, he passed her by a few inches. He was the enforcer of the group, much more of one that even Nafasi didn't want to take on in a true contest of guts. Ironically, he does gaming streams and vlogs much like his younger sister does. And he often has a crowd of girls wanting to stake a claim on him. It got so bad that Stella and Bella had to actively beat girls away from being too obsessive. However, he'd post some thirst trap on ClipClop and the cycle would soon repeat itself.

The four of them came back together on today, spending time on the beach for a siblings retreat. As per usual, Bella led the pack on what they would do next, and the others followed suit, including an unamused Nafasi who claimed he was getting too old for their hijinks. Even then, he'd join in just for the hell of it.

However, this wasn't just a retreat for them.

Over the years, Celestia grew sickly... often. Sometimes her health would pick right back up from where it should be in the matter of hours, but in some cases it would last days... weeks... and even months. And each time she recovered, she'd grow all the more weak. Some mornings, she wouldn't be able to get out of bed without me helping her along, Others, she'd hop right out like she still had a kingdom to run. But even those days grew far and few between. The magic began to leave her body too, she grew quieter, more soft-spoken from the fiery mare I married. Luna visited frequently, checking in on her sister before she pulled all of us to the side to explain what was taking place.

Luna briefly explained that what Celestia was going through were similar symptoms of what their parents had endured thousands of years ago. And with her not using her powers as often, combined with having foals, her health declined, her magic sustainability decreased, and her mental awareness slipped every so often. In recent mornings, she'd wake up crying, thinking that Luna was still banished to the moon. Other mornings, she'd be holding a flower pot whispering out to Fair Charity. Some mornings, she'd complain about her wings being plucked clean when they were still as feathery as yesterday. It was like the kids and I was watching her surf through the millennium of her life, unable to decipher which Celestia of which era we were gonna get.

Then today, she woke up just fine, but stated how very tired she was.

I was old enough to know what that meant, sixty-two years of life showed me all of what was to come next. So I got her up out of the bed, placed her on the back porch, brought her whatever she wanted. I let her sleep for as long as she needed to, protected her from the sun, kept her hydrated, and stayed by her side for the moments she felt like moving about. I began to cook a little something in the kitchen for her, making sure she stayed fed throughout the day. I wanted everything for her to be perfect. She deserved that much.

I walked outside and brought her a plate we could share. She opened her eyes, looking at me with a beautiful smile, her face and body failing to show any signs of aging while her mane and tail faded to a stormy gray. Her mane wasn't short anymore, reaching to about it's original length. "Hey there." She greeted softly.

"Good morning, sleepyhead." I answered. "How you feeling right about now?"

"I feel... relatively good." She answered slowly. She was probably still feeling tired.

I sat beside her and presented the plate to her. "Well I hope you're hungry, I got dinner warm for you."

I dipped my fork into the plate of food I prepared for her, the very same meal we made when we had our dinner date back in the castle. I held the fork for her to eat from. "You always do what's best for me." She complimented so gently.

"You've done it for me for all these years." I replied to her as I wiped her face. "So why not return the favor?"

As I fed her, there was a lengthy silence, only the sounds of the waves crashing against the docks as we ate our food in the relative quiet. After we finished, I went about wiping her face as she softly called to me. "Honey."

"Yes?"

She started to appear sad, looking to the setting sun across the water. "Do you think we'll ever see each other again when it's all said and done?" She looked to me, appearing small. "I mean, on the other side?"

"That's not a question you'd typically ask." I replied to her, swallowing any desire to change the subject out of my own comfort.

"I know. It's just that now that I feel weaker, I find myself being scared." She lifted a hoof, indicating for me to hold her.

"Because you don't know what'll happen?"

"Yes." She confirmed so meekly.

I closed my eyes, trying not to break down in front of her. "Well you won't have to worry when it's done."

"My spirit will be afraid." She whispered.

"Tia, you're not gonna be alone." I answered.

"What if I lived the wrong way for all these years, just now learning to live right?"

I kissed her on her cheeks, feeling her growing all the more colder even in the summer air. "We all make mistakes, Tia. I'm sure everyone has put it behind them."

"...I suppose it's only right that this happens."

"It's natural." I reassured her, still holding back any desire to cry. Even my throat began to ache as I resisted.

She placed the hoof I held against my face, weakly stroking my chin. "I still remember the first day you took care of me."

"Was it when we started seeing each other?" I asked.

"Oh... I think it was before." She said, taking a moment to recount what really happened. "Ah, it was. I think I sneezed on you that day."

"That stuff feels so ancient ago." I said with a slight chuckle.

Her eyes met once more with the sun, staring off into the distance. "I have lived over eleven-hundred years, and not once has anyone ever took care of me so well."

As she struggled with her own mortality, I began to find a moment of weakness, almost begging to have even more time to spend. "I wonder what it would feel like to live that long."

"It's tiring, Nondie. It's very tiring." She answered with contrarily more energy than she had throughout the day. She gave me a serious look, offering the warning of a long-lived being suffering the blues of immortality. "Have you ever imagined living so long that you'd watch your children grow up, grow off, grow old, grow weak, and die? Many close friends have I watched simply wilt. We've seen the birth of our grandchildren, Nondie. Can you imagine what it would be like to watch them go on before us?"

"I'm already experiencing enough of that with you." I said, my voice breaking for a moment.

"Then you understand." She answered, going back to the softness she had once before.

It was so hard hearing how resigned she sounded in her words. All throughout her life, she had to accept others going before her, living through generation after generation of watching birth and death alike. Meanwhile, I in my sixty-two years of life feel cheated. After nearly meeting my end so many times early on, here she was going ahead without me. It broke my heart to know that I could feel so selfish, all while feeling justified in wanting more time.

I couldn't let her go... I don't want to let her go. I can't live in this world alone. But I had no other choice but to accept it. "Do you feel up to one more ride out in the water?"

"Oh..." She quietly groaned with a growing smile on her face. "I would love that. Another adventure out into the sea."

I didn't have the strength to carry her on my own body anymore. Time had took much of my strength away, my flexibility, the same vigor that had me sweep her off into my arms. What I did have was my magic, and I could recline her so gently to the top of the deck.

I kept the course slow and steady, chasing after the setting sun in the unreachable distance. It almost felt like I was chasing after the last bit of strength Tia had in her, bargaining for it to come back and reside in the wilting mind of my beloved wife. We shared everything together in these years, I always figured that I would be the one to die before her, that she would get used to the pain of knowing death yet again before living another thousand years to experience more.

But then her words rang in my head once more, the conviction she held in condemning such an extended existence. Again, I was selfish, but I didn't care. Oh God, please don't take her away from me. Not today, not now, and if you are taking her, please let us share a few more words before the sun sets on her life.

She sat comfortably in her chair, looking past the bow of the ship to the orange son setting into the darkness. I rushed out to the deck as fast as my aged bones would let me. I could hear her weakly humming, letting me know she hadn't gone yet. I leaned down to kiss her brow and smiled as best as I could. "You know, you should write a book on your life."

"You should take your own advice." Her voice was even weaker than before.

I tried to laugh at her response, all while my heart had broke on the inside. "I might. I'll probably give it to the kids to read."

"It'll tell many stories of what happened to you." She verbalized softly.

"I'll be sure to find whoever I can to help fill in the blanks, I can't remember it all too well." I said, turning away from my wife for a moment, just a moment to finally hide the tears that fell from my cheeks.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea." She hummed.

I clenched my fists onto the railing looking at the waters below, seeing the partial refractions of light from the dying sun. I then questioned myself. "Where would I start?"

"You should start wherever you feel is best." She answered sweetly.

"I agree."

I looked to the sun once more, seeing the colors change slightly from orange to a deeper shade of red. I closed my eyes, thinking back to the times we shared together all throughout the years. I wiped my eyes, deciding that I had finally recovered enough to finally speak without the slightest hint of my voice being broken.

"It's so beautiful out here, then again it's always been this way."

I didn't hear her speak back. I waited for a moment, to see if she was just slow to respond like she would be these days.

"Ah... I know, low energy moment." I said as I turned around...

...And there she sat.

I walked to her, quietly looking to her as she gazed to the beauty of the red sun. I placed my hands upon her cheeks, no longer feeling the warmth she once had. Her chest remained stationary. She was so peaceful, so quiet... and she was gone. I knelt down, placing my head against her, finally able to express the pain of my heart as my wife, my darling Tia, had left me behind.

"Still and always... my Cella."

♱ Celeste 'Celestia' Delanise Valkyrie ♱
Long live the Queen

4 Years Later...

Following my wife's advice, I took to writing my story as quickly as I could with as many details I could fill in on my own. I knew where to start, I knew where to end. I had gotten to the point where my magic had activated on second-handed nature, jotting down the thoughts that ran across my head.

But I was so tired of writing. I wanted to say so much, I wanted to put in so much of what all happened. I didn't want to leave anything out. So I asked for some help, getting everyone I knew who could help contribute. And it took me up to three years straight to finally get to this point where I am now.

And so here I am, staring at the very last chapter in this book, wondering what I am going to put in here next.

It's getting harder to stay up. I don't know why, but something inside of me is telling me to keep writing. I might not have had any sleep the past few days, but I'm okay with burning the midnight oil for a few more minutes, maybe an hour or two.

I hear a set of hooves walking up to the room. The door opens and my sister in law takes notice of me. "Nondis, are you still on this chair?"

"Ah, just a little... I'm just trying to stay awake." I answer, yawning as Luna takes the quill from my possession and places her hooves on my hands to quench my magic.

"You haven't slept in a few days. Come on, let's get you to bed." She's still as young as she's been all these years.

I shake my head, trying to get back to the work desk. "I don't wanna go to bed, Luna."

"You have to. You need your sleep, you can't just sit in front of that desk all day and drop off when you feel like it." She says as she guides me away from the desk, and finally towards my bedside. "The grandkids are coming tomorrow, so you're gonna need to be rested."

I narrow my eyes and think for a moment, trying to recall who was visiting. "Are they?"

"Of course they are." She confirms.

"Who's kids are coming again?" I question her.

"Estelle's." She answers.

I groan and lay myself into the bed, suddenly feeling the need to sleep. "Ah, they don't want to spend time with an old kook like me."

"They love you regardless. I don't know why you act like they don't."

"I'm too old, not enough energy for kids these days." I answer her sarcastically

"You'll have plenty of energy when you wake up. Now get some sleep." She orders. As I start to close my eyes, I feel a familiar warmth sitting on my back. I turn back to the empty side of the bed, feeling the indenture of where my wife slept for the rest of her days. I touch the depressed form of the mattress as Luna reminds me of the truth. "She's gone, Nondis."

Even now, I felt her presence here in the room. It's almost as if she's waiting for me to join her in the bed, as though she warmed the room as she did so many years before. "It just feels like she's in here right now."

"I'm sure it does." Luna answers as she walks out of the room. She looks back to me before closing the door behind her. "Good night, Nondis."

As the door close, I settle under my covers and close my eyes. But the warmth increases throughout my body. I feel a beautiful airlessness suspending me in the moment. I see a beautiful red sun before me, a wilting tree behind me, and on my back is a beautiful smiling mare who kisses me on my cheek. The lavender eyes I haven't seen in years, the sweetness in her voice, they welcome me back home.

"Good morning, sweetheart."

🕈 Nondis Patricia Haines 🕈
Terminus

In the fading moments of life, Nondis' pen continued to etch the last thoughts of his mind until they finally came to rest, as did he. The grandchildren who looked to see their grandfather one last time had come too late. Stellar Sunshine called the others, weeping as she informed them of what had occurred. They soon gathered and found the final notes of their father's memoirs situated on the work desk, a pen resting at the foot of the book with the ink firmly dried on the otherwise blank pages.

They planned out all of what needed to be done. A statue was commissioned to gaze upon the visage of his deceased wife, who he would lay beside. Her eyes gazing up to him as he stood in his immortalized image of his tenure as Captain of the Royal Guard.

Days later, it was confirmed by medical examiners that the manner to which the gentleman had perished was by means of sudden cardiac arrest. The last of his memoirs were taken in by none other than Princess Twilight Sparkle, who took to the effort of chronicling the events of his works into a comprehensive piece that could be read by the ones he left behind.

Shortly after the funeral and repast, the four siblings gathered and listened as their father's final will and testament was read to them, issuing fair distribution to all. "And to my beloved children, all of whom I love very much, I bequeath to all of you even share of all my most valued possessions." The princess reads to the four siblings, who couldn't care less of what they received.

"Aunt Lulu said he just went to sleep." Alabaster mentions, shaking his head as he still felt the pain of such loss. "I didn't think our time was so short on him."

"Daddy." Stellar continues to weep for her father, who she could no longer embrace. "Oh daddy, why did you go so soon?

"Both mom and dad are gone." Sniffles Ivory, who hugs a portrait of their father. "I hate it. I hate it so much."

Princess Twilight keeps her silence as she opens a small wooden chest. Her eyes water for moments as she looks to the final testimony of a departed friend. She began to manifest the contents of the chest, issuing them to all within the room. Nafasi, who remained quiet throughout, would often hide his tears from everyone around him. But as a book lays before him, the tears inadvertently fall from his face. "What is this?" He questions, holding back the ache in his voice.

Princess Twilight hugs the specialist of her guard, all while informing them of what they received. "It's a memoir of his time here in Equestria. It took him all these years to finish it, but he stuck it out as best as he could. I even went through it and added a few perspectives from everyone around your father. I have a finalized version with everything in it, but these books I'm giving you now omitted a lot of the... sensitive recounts of prior experiences."

"Yeah, I'm still processing dad's passing. I don't think I need to read on the story of how we all got here." Alabaster replies, causing everyone in the room to find a bit of humor in the absence.

The princess sighs as her cheeks flush red. "I figured as much."

Stellar Sunshine opens the book and reads the title in font of the introductory page. "'It's Complicated?' Isn't there a better title to this story?"

The princess smiles as she opens her copy, reading to herself the moments that resonated deeply with her. She chuckles from the nostalgia hidden within the pages. "Your father was never an award-winning author. But he tried his best, despite missing out on a few things."

"So what's in it?" Ivory asks.

The princess smiles as she goes through and skim the first few chapters. "It's just the story of how he first came to Equestria, how he first met all of us, how he grew his relationships with everyone around him, and all the trials he had to face." Her smile disappears as she flips to a part in the book that appeared closer towards the end.

The zebracorn specialist take notice of the princess' solemn expression. He takes a deep breath and makes his request. "If it's without any controversy, may I have a copy of the unredacted version?"

The princess looks to the specialist, her eyes widening at his request. Upon deeper thought, she realizes that a lot of what happened between her and his father will be laid plain before him, as raw and uncensored as he depicted their intimate interactions. She blushes, looking away from the stallion. "Oh... Are you sure, Nafasi?"

"Please." He answers quietly. "I didn't get to spend much time getting to know him, but I remember one time when we sparred. He said something about what he was doing to me that day was easy compared to what he endured. So I wish to know what happened to him in his entirety."

The others look on as the eldest sibling stands firm on his request. Princess Twilight closes her eyes, closing the book, and swapping the one in her possession with the one in his. "I'll let you have my copy." But before Nafasi opens it, she uses her magic to keep the cover shut, offering words of discrection. "But be warned, the content is not for the faint of heart."

"I can accept that." The zebracorn answers.

She quenches her magic, allowing the stallion to take on the book. From the moment he open it, he notices how different it feel to the others. It's noticeably heavier, containing pages of exploits and adventures, friendships, conflicts, emotions, and above all else, the uncut truth of his father's past. "So how does it start?" Stellar Sunshine asks, watching as Nafasi opens to the start of the first chapter, reading out loud to the others the account of the human who penned it.

All while reading, he hears his father's voice reading along with him.

Well... this is it.

I never thought I would actually see this day come, but here we are. I can't exactly say what I'm feeling in the moment as I'm writing this. But I can say that my emotions have gone elsewhere in recent days, which is why this chapter had been delayed. Allow me to explain why.

Throughout the past two weeks, storms have been hitting us here in the south like there's no tomorrow. And while I and my family were not personally affect, there are others who were.

From 2018, I had a friend who I called Uni, a shortened name for her old gamertag on PSN (Unicorn_Queen09). She and I had been friends for that long. And often times we would play Overwatch, Minecraft, Apex, Uno, Monopoly, stuff like that. However, we always played on Overwatch because of the fact that our coming to know each other was rooted explicitly in that game. She often had a soft-spoken voice, with a knack for cussing me out whenever we were talking our shit to each other. More friends came along, some we didn't keep along the way, other stuck around, but it's been mainly me and her doing whatever.

That all changed two weeks ago when a EF3 struck her home in New Orleans. As she and her family was still inside, the tornado lifted her home from it's piers and swept it into the street. She was trapped underneath the home for some time until emergency workers could get to her. I couldn't answer her initial call because I was at a rehearsal at the time. But her fiancé and I kept in touch, as did she and I. The family originally had this gofundme, mainly made to help her get around a little better since she was in a wheelchair.

Sadly, last Thursday, she passed away.

Her funeral is set for today, and while I send flowers her way, I never could find the time or the money to pay a visit. While some of the money is now being used for funeral arrangements, her family is without a home and her.

So instead of making this author's note about the long journey to this final chapter, I decided to push focus elsewhere. So I dedicate this chapter to her.