“(Almost) everything is true. All that is permitted is what you can get away with.”

—Creed of The Assassins

“That day…that was the day everything changed. I guess, in a way, you could say things had always been as I found them out to be. Until then, I—and everypony else for that matter—had just been blinded from the truth by the bliss of ignorance. And we all participated in this ignorance willingly.

“But ignorance is a luxury I—and if I fail, everypony I’ve ever met—can’t afford to enjoy any longer. As I learned from The Assassins (and as I learned from myself), “(Almost) everything is true. All that is permitted is what you can get away with.”

“But you already knew that, didn’t you?

“I just hope I can get away with saving ponydom.”

—Rainbow Dash

Chapter 1

Nightshade crouched lazily in the shadows, her raven cloak and midnight coat blending in seamlessly with the velvety darkness, hiding her from the blissfully ignorant townsfolk far below. Today, if the intel from the spies were correct, was the day when The Arcanum would make their first strike. And if the intel WASN’T correct, then Nightshade knew whose throat would be tasting her blade instead of The Arcanum’s assailants.

Nightshade sighed, her breath coating the chill morning air with fine huff of steam. Though the Windigos had been defeated some years ago by the now famous advisors to the leaders of the three pony tribes, now united in the royal triumvirate and watching the proceedings below from the comfort of their thrones, the winter brought forth by the icy spirits was still dissipating even now. Patches of the dark magic floated in and out of The Everfree Forest, which covered most of the fledgling nation of Equestria, at random; one minute an earth pony could be trotting through the warm, sunlit forest to their farm from the safety of the city walls only to stumble upon a patch of freezing snow. The wizards were still working on eradicating all of those patches, but nowadays they were mainly a nuisance rather than a threat, at least this close to the City where the biggest patch of dark magic you were likely to find was akin to the cold air that had just swept by Nightshade and frosted her breath.

But, according to the intel, if The Arcanum had their way then the entire city would soon be witness to some of the darkest magic known to ponydom, even darker than the Windigos—for on this day The Arcanum planned to assassinate the leaders of the earth ponies the pegasi, leaving only Princess Platinum of the unicorn tribe alive to rule.

Nightshade shivered to herself, but not because of the cold. She would NOT allow that to happen. She was a proud pegasus, and she was NOT about to let some upstart unicorns with superiority complexes kill Commander Hurricane. She was NOT about to let the innocent earth ponies, who didn’t even know of this secret war between the elite squadron of pegasi and the defectors from the unicorn royal court, be caught up in political turmoil and racial slavery. She was NOT going to let Equestria, the first true beacon of unity in pony history, be a footnote prelude to a bloody war for unicorn dominance.

But even if Nightshade refused to surrender to The Arcanum’s plans, she was quickly losing the battle against boredom. The pegasus was, quite simply, bored put of her mind. Her orders were to be here before the festival in Everfree City far below ever even started, and so she had been, but now the festival was almost over and no sign of any suspicious unicorns had ever crossed the Square in all the time the jugglers and jesters had performed for the ponies blissfully enjoying Equestria’s annual unity celebration far below her hidden lofty palace perch.

Nightshade was a pegasus, for crying out loud! The speed, the adrenaline, the swift kills for the greater good—she could handle all that fine, but the waiting! It was driving her mad!

A flash momentarily blinded the dark-coated pegasus.

“What?” she whispered to herself in surprise. Scanning the crowd and then the rooftops above and behind them, Nightshade caught sight of the source of the glare—another pegasus, supposedly a guard on watch duty but who Nightshade knew was among her number. He was flashing his sword in the sun, the clear sign that—

Something had been spotted! Nightshade pulled a tiny cage out from beside her where an eagle was absentmindedly pecking at the seeds she had left out for it, opened the door, and released it from the palace’s tower top. Upon seeing the second signal, the guard glared down into the crowd and pointed with his hoof, knowing Nightshade was watching his line of sight and searching for where he was pointing to see—

There!

Nightshade saw it—er, him, rather. A unicorn, dressed in the same rubbishy garbs that most of the peasants had to wear in this new country, was making his way rather roughly through the crowd. Shoving other ponies out of the way, he drew closer and closer to the stage where the triumvirate was currently being entertained by a comically singing trio of earth ponies getting large laughs from the crowd.

But that wasn’t all—a peculiar bulge, rectangular and solid, shifted ever so slightly under the unicorn’s tunic as he wove his way towards the front of the proceedings. That had to be him, then; no peasant pony could afford so much as a knife to throw at their targets, having barely enough to buy food with. If this pony was carting something larger and much more suspicious, then who knew what dark magic it could bring?

Nightshade crept closer the tower ledge, still keeping to the shadows, peering down as the unicorn finally pushed his way out into the front lines. Then, with a pop and some very disgruntled ponies, he was free, standing there between the peasants and the line of multispecies guards blocking the triumvirate from their subjects.

She crouched, waiting for him to make his move, to confirm without a shadow of a doubt that he was sent by The Arcanum, her legs ready to leap into action, her wings itching to feel the joy of flight as she swooped down for the kill. As if they were an extension of her own body, Nightshade could even sense her blades’ bloodlust.

One of the earth pony guards, looking rather bored of the festival by now, trotted forward to greet the unicorn, probably thinking that he was the next performer waiting his turn to take the stage. With one fell movement, the unicorn slipped the rectangular object out from under his cloak and telekinetically brought it up to bash the guard on the side of the head. Dazed and distracted but relatively unharmed due to his helmet, the guard was helpless to stop the unicorn from leaping up and using the guard’s head as a springing platform to launch himself over the line of other guards and onto the stage, bursting through the chorus line of singing ponies and galloping up to the triumvirate with his object telekinetically outstretched.

It was time.

The unicorn shouted “This we do for The Arcanum! This we do for the good of all unico—”

But the unicorn never got to finish his line. Quick as lightning, Nightshade sprung out of her hiding place, unnoticed by the crowd below who was far too intently focused on the rogue unicorn, and sped down, her blades clicking out from her forelegs and the metal tips on the ends of her wings shining in the daylight.

Nightshade made one fell motion of her own, simultaneously landing on the platform and striking a bladed foreleg deep into—

. . .

Rainbow Dash breathed heavily, her back pressed to the inside of the schoolhouse bell, the cool of the metal chill against her overheated cyan coat. Gingerly, after having caught her breath, Rainbow leaned down and peered out from under the safety of the bell. Surely those ponies, whoever they were, couldn’t have followed her here of all places—surely they couldn’t find the pegasus in her favorite, most successful hiding spot…right?

As Rainbow looked out of the bell, though, she came face to face with a black-clad unicorn.

“Hiding in a bell tower?” the unicorn smiled darkly, glints in his eyes. “My, my—we’re getting a little predictable, aren’t we?”

Rainbow gasped and fell out of the bell, landing flat on her stomach at the unicorn’s hooves. Picking herself up again just as quickly as she’d fallen, the cyan pegasus whirled around to zoom off on yet another escape attempt—this would hardly be the first one of the day since these bizarre ponies had shown up—only to find herself surrounded by yet more unicorns on every possible side of the bell.

“Who are you ponies?!” Rainbow Dash demanded at last. “And how do you keep catching up to me so fast?!”

“What, you mean you’re tired of our little game of hide-and-seek already?” chuckled the unicorn who had greeted her first. “I was quite enjoying it.”

“Enjoy this, you creep!” Rainbow spat, turning tail and bucking the unicorn—hard—in the face. The unicorn cried out in pain and fell backwards, giving Rainbow the chance to spread her wings, crouch her legs, and spring into the—

“Oh no you don’t!” shouted one of the other unicorns, catching Rainbow in his telekinetic grip. Rainbow noted that this one was a dark shade of, well, dark; how appropriate. Rainbow flapped as hard as she could, straining against the magic despite how hard it pulled back at her, and almost broke free when the other unicorns joined in. Adding their telekinetic strength to the original spellcaster, Rainbow was helpless to get away.

“Let me go, you morons!” Rainbow shouted, straining every fiber of her being to escape despite the inevitability of her static state. That isn’t to say, though, that even though she was helpless to move, Rainbow didn’t give the dark-hooded unicorns a hay of a time trying to keep her motionless. A few unicorns were even drug forward a little, their magic straining to its limits.

“I don’t think we will, Ms. Dash,” spoke the slightly annoyed yet still poisonously oily voice of the first unicorn to speak as he raised himself up off the roof of the schoolhouse where he’d hit his head yet again when he fell at Rainbow’s buck. “We’ve tracked you too long and too hard for us to allow you to slip through our hooves when we finally found you.”

“But why?!” Rainbow snorted angrily. “What do you freaks want with me?!”

“That will all be made known to you in due time,” the unicorn answered, rubbing the sore spot where Rainbow’s back hooves had connected with his cranium. “For now, why don’t you take a little nap? We’ve a long way to go, and we don’t want you giving us trouble the entire way, now do we?”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” Rainbow spat.

“Very poor choice of words,” the unicorn chuckled. “But that will have to wait until you cease being of use to us. But for now, SLEEP.”

The unicorn’s horn flashed, and a blinding light took hold of Rainbow’s vision before bleeding into her skull and filling it with a black void of unconsciousness.

…

…

…

Rainbow sprang awake as the cold splash of water hit her hard in the face and cascaded down her mane.

Rainbow managed to gasp, but that was about as far as she could get with the gag binding her mouth. For a moment, Rainbow couldn’t remember where she was or what was going on, but just as quickly it all came rushing back to her. How those unicorns had shown up in Ponyville, how they had been looking for her, how they had chased her—and without the help of her friends to defend her, seeing as they had all been called away for various reasons to leave Ponyville in her charge, how they had caught up to the cyan pegasus and caught her.

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed as she remembered, searching the dark room she found herself in for anypony daring enough to face her wrath, even if she was currently tied to a chair, gagged and bound.

“So nice of you to rejoin us in the land of the wakeful, Ms. Dash,” spoke the oily sour sweetness of that unicorn from earlier as he stepped out of the shadows and into the light cast by a lonely orb of balefire hovering over Rainbow’s head.

“Mnnnvjajkjahjfjshgljsd!” Rainbow cursed through her gag.

The unicorn smirked at her inability to talk, clearly relishing this position of power, no matter how unfairly matched they were.

“I suppose by now that the questions of who we are, why we captured you, and what we want have been plaguing your mind, correct?” the unicorn inquired. Rainbow, unable to speak but still quite able to make use of her eyes, simply glared back at him. “I thought so. Allow me to make things a little less confusing for you.

“We, Ms. Dash, are The Arcanum.”

. . .

—the unicorn’s throat. Jerking the blade back and then slicing it in the opposite direction, Nightshade sliced the unicorn’s head clean off, where it fell to the edge of the platform and tumbled over.

The guards were all over the scene of the crime in an instant, pegasi guards unaffiliated with Nightshade’s group swooping down to the corpse while earth pony guards and unicorn guards who weren’t associated with The Arcanum (most didn’t even know it existed) leapt and teleported up to the center stage. By the time they got there, though, Nightshade was gone—and so was the object the would-be assassin had brought with him.

…

…

…

“Very good, Nightshade,” Commander Hurricane smiled, eyeing the ornately decorated box the only successful Assassin of the day had just laid respectfully on her superior’s desk. “Very good indeed.”

“Thank you, my liege,” Nightshade said graciously, glowing with pride at the honor of being congratulated by the leader of the pegasus tribe herself.

“I wonder what it does?” Commander Hurricane murmured, looking at the box from all angles. “It’s a rather strange murder weapon. Oh, well—our unicorn allies will undoubtedly be able to unlock, or at least fathom, its purpose. But for now, that is beside the point. For now, the point is that you, Nightshade my most loyal servant, have successfully prevented this box from achieving its goal. You have stopped The Arcanum’s first, and hopefully last, attempt at taking over Equestria.”

Nightshade beamed.

“However, our work, as you know, is far from over,” Commander Hurricane sighed. “And this box will have to wait for analysis at another time. Come.”

Nightshade followed her leader out the window of the pegasus’ office and up the tower to where the pegasi’ scientists kept their quarters, closer to the clouds that were a pegasus’ bread and butter. Touching down through the tower window on the cool hardwood floor, Nightshade smirked as she surveyed her hoofwork of the evening. The would-be killer’s body was laid out on a dissection table, where various pegasi were studying it and making sketches of its likeness to give to their spies. With any good fortune, the spies would recognize the pony from their travels and point the way to who The Arcanum was really made up of and where they kept their secret headquarters.

“What have we got, boys?” Commander Hurricane inquired, trotting over to the table and peering over a nervous pegasus’ shoulder at the clipboard he was taking notes on. “Please tell me it’s something good.”

“It is indeed, Commander!” piped up an elderly pegasus from the far corner from where he was tinkering with some of the magical artifacts found in the unicorn’s pockets with one of the pegasi’s unicorn allies. Not many non-pegasi were in on the secret organization of pegasi that Commander Hurricane had set up to counteract The Arcanum’s plan for unicorn-only rule, but there were a few in Princess Platinum’s court (excluding the airheaded princess herself, of course) who were either for unity enough or able to be bribed enough to support the pegasi’s cause of maintaining the unity that the three tribes had fought so hard to achieve. The elderly pegasus rose creakily from his chair and trotted swiftly over to the Commander’s side, bowing before continuing. “I am pleased to inform you that we have a very likely lead on The Arcanum’s lair. According to one of our unicorn allies, this beheaded buffoon has been seen making his way in and out of the old potion manufacturing mill out by the river for the past few months. It’s very likely that The Arcanum is stationed there, or at the very least has a strong safe house hidden away inside the place.”

“Excellent!” Commander Hurricane exclaimed, smiling. “This is going more easily than I thought. If you’re right, all we have to do is take out that mill and we’ll be rid of The Arcanum once and for all!”

“Indeed, Commander!” the elderly pegasus agreed heartily.

“And I think I know just who to send for the job,” Commander Hurricane mused, turning to face Nightshade. “I’ll give you a full squad of Assassins. Are you up to it?”

Nightshade nearly squeaked with pride.

“Absolutely, Commander!” the black pegasus bowed low.

“Just what I wanted to hear,” the Commander smiled again. “I want you to pick out the best ponies we have and make haste to the mill. The sooner we get it destroyed, the sooner The Arcanum will be out of our manes forever—and the less chance we give them to escape.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Nightshade agreed.

Trotting back to the window, Nightshade leapt into the cool night air and flew up to the tallest tower in Everfree Castle. The general public was led to believe that this was the headquarters of the pegasi’s weather team. She, of course, knew otherwise—and landed through the window among Equestria’s greatest defense against The Arcanum and anything else that threatened the unity of the new nation: The Assassins.

. . .

“Though of course you have no idea who The Arcanum are, do you, my little Dashie?” the unicorn questioned as he paced the room, watching with obvious delight Rainbow squirm in a futile attempt to free herself. “Though you have heard of us—you’ve been living in our shadow all your life. For most of your life, you knew us by our public name—Spell Works Incorporated.”

Rainbow gasped through her gag. How could these brutes be the largest manufacturer of enchantments and potions in Equestria?! They had to be lying.

“But selling amenities to the general filth that comprises the non-magical portion of the population is simply what funds our true project,” the unicorn continued. “Which is to ascend unicorns, the highest breed of pony, to be the rulers of this nation like we so rightfully deserve to be—while all the rest of ponydom serves out the only purpose that it can be useful in: being our slaves.”

Rainbow’s eyes went wide for a moment in shock, before she burst out laughing. Even through the gag, such a guffaw was clearly audible, and it even more clearly both perplexed and severely agitated the unicorn who was trying to make a dire point.

“What, Ms. Dash, is so amusing?” the unicorn inquired, motioning to one of the two guards at either side of Rainbow’s chair. A telekinetic grip ripped the gag off Rainbow’s mouth, which only made her laughing that much easier.

When the pegasus finally settled down, she looked at the unicorn with tears of mirth in her eyes.

“What’s so ‘amusing’ is that you guys are all crazy!” Rainbow chuckled. “I’m best friends with unicorns, and they’d never want to rule Equestria and enslave all the rest of us!”

“It is true, Ms. Dash, that even most unicorns are unaware of our existence,” the unicorn admitted. “But even they will have to see the truth when we reveal ourselves at long last.”

“The minute you guys do anything, if anything you’re saying is true anyway, you’ll be arrested by the Royal Guard for high treason,” Rainbow laughed. “You’re hopeless!”

“That, Ms. Dash, is where you are wrong,” the unicorn smiled darkly again, cutting Rainbow’s laugh short. “You see, we are far older than you would probably have thought. Back in the early days of Equestria, after the Windigos had been defeated and ponydom was united at long last, there was a faction of Princess Platinum’s royal court of unicorns that disagreed with this idea of ‘equality.’”

The unicorn seemed to spit as he said this last word.

“These unicorns were expelled from the royal court of the unicorn tribe for their beliefs that unicorns alone should rule Equestria,” the unicorn continued. “They formed their own group, separate from the nation and the government, and called themselves The Arcanum. We of The Arcanum have been striving to realize our founders' goal of unicorn domination ever since.”

“Give me a break,” Rainbow scoffed. “A bunch of crazy treasonous ponies could never have gone that long without anypony noticing.”

“But we have, Ms. Dash,” the unicorn went on. “For the past many millennia, we of The Arcanum have sought long and hard, escaping every adversary from the Princesses to The Assassins, to discover the only thing we have come to realize will make our dream a reality.”

“Who’re The Assassins?” Rainbow wondered casually, not really taking anything this pony was saying seriously anymore. Anypony with a crazy story like that had to be stark raving mad, and they also had to leave clues behind. Even if one pony couldn’t take them all at once, even if that one pony was Rainbow Dash, then surely all her friends would follow this ‘Arcanum’s’ hoofsteps and come to rescue her. They might even bring the Royal Guard, and then this whole business would be shut down just like that—after all, they couldn’t really have gone for thousands of years with nopony noticing…could they? “And what ‘thing’ are you talking about?”

“The Assassins are your ancestors, Ms. Dash,” the unicorn grinned. “And they stole from us this ‘thing.’ For millennia The Arcanum have sought after ancient artifacts of a lost civilization that hold tremendous magical power. With their help, we could overpower the Princesses and anything else that gets in our way. But at every turn, The Assassins—who were founded by Commander Hurricane with the explicit purpose of stopping us—have cut us off and reached these artifacts before we were able to get to them, hiding them from us. But with your help, we can find out where The Assassins hid them.”

“I wouldn’t help you even if I did believe any of this was true,” Rainbow said defiantly. “Besides, my friends will come looking for me when they get back to Ponyville and find that I’m gone. My friend Twilight Sparkle is even tight with Princess Celestia; she’ll bring the Royal Guard down on all your flanks!”

This time the unicorn looked shocked before bursting out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Rainbow demanded ironically.

“You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” the unicorn laughed. “Your friends won’t BE getting back to Ponyville. The only reason they left is because we needed them gone to get to you—we tricked them all into leaving with false letters from grandma and promises of free spa getaways. They’re all held in different Arcanum safe houses across the country by now, all locked up nice and tightly.”

“WHAT?!” Rainbow gasped. “That—that can’t be true! You’re lying!”

“I am telling you now as I have told you all along, Ms. Dash,” the unicorn said slyly. “I am telling you the absolute truth. Your friends are in our captivity, just as you are now. We knew you’d be the most difficult to catch, so we saved you for last—and now we have even you in our clutches. But don’t worry; your friends will be safe so long as you cooperate.”

Rainbow hesitated, unsure. Could these nut-jobs really have her friends? The cyan pegasus knew she would do anything to ensure their safety—but nothing the unicorn had said so far made any sense, so how could she know they weren’t lying?

“I want proof!” Rainbow insisted. “I want to know you’re telling the truth about having my friends.”

“As you wish,” the unicorn agreed. With a spark of his horn, a mirror was levitated out of the shadows and set in front of Rainbow. The multicolored flier recognized it as one of the magic mirrors sometimes used by the wealthy to instantaneously communicate across long distances. Rainbow’s reflection rippled and blurred as she watched, to be replaced by an image of Twilight herself bound and gagged in a similar room.

“Twilight!” Rainbow called out.

“She can’t hear you,” the dark unicorn spoke. “I’ve turned the sound off. But rest assured, what you see is very real, and so too will be her death—as well as the deaths of all your other friends—if you fail to cooperate.”

Rainbow turned to the dark unicorn, the loathing in her heart shooting daggers at this monster of a pony. She knew she would do anything to help her friends, and so she would—but she would also see to it personally that this criminal was brought to justice…one way or another.

“I’ll cooperate,” Rainbow sighed at last. “IF you promise not to hurt my friends.”

“Not a hair on their manes will be harmed if you truly do as we say,” the unicorn promised. “Now, about how exactly you will help us find these missing artifacts…”

The unicorn made another  motion to one of the guards, and the guard slit the ropes binding Rainbow with his horn. Everything in Rainbow’s being urged her to race forward and deliver another swift buck to the head-unicorn’s face, but the thought of what her friends would go through if she did restrained the pegasus.

“Follow me please, Ms. Dash,” the head unicorn instructed, leading Rainbow into the shadows. The orb of glowing balefire followed overhead, illuminating where they trod. The group came to what appeared to be a bed, though several complicated contraptions, the likes of which Rainbow had only ever seen in Twilight’s laboratory, were sticking out from its sides. “Now, get in.”

“Into that thing?” Rainbow pointed. “What is it?”

“It’s a bed,” the unicorn said simply. “But it’s been fitted with a number of magical apparatuses to aid us in contacting you when you’re asleep.”

“Huh?” Rainbow wondered, confused.

“Allow me to explain,” the unicorn sighed, motioning for Rainbow to get into the bed. Fearing for her friends but also fearing for herself, Rainbow complied. All in all, despite the circumstances, Rainbow had to admit that it wasn’t all that uncomfortable of a bed. “We of The Arcanum have, after much experimentation, discovered some very interesting things about the natures of ponies. The first is that each pony holds not only the memories of their own experiences within them, but also the memories of the experiences of their ancestors. With a special spell devised for just such a purpose, we discovered that we could unlock those memories and allow the subject the spell is cast on to relive their ancestors’ memories in a virtual reality.”

“Right…” Rainbow muttered, completely disbelieving the unicorn’s theories on memory. She’d heard Twilight talk about some wacky, far-out, and seemingly impossible things you could do with magic, but even she had never talked about something that sounded this ridiculous. Then again, if The Arcanum was powerful enough to pony-nap her friends, then what else could they do? Maybe this stuff wasn’t as crazy as it seemed after all.

“You doubt us, Ms. Dash?” the unicorn asked. “I see no reason why you wouldn’t. Nopony in the history of Equestria, not even that traitor Starswirl the Bearded, ever even considered such a thing a possibility. But not only is it possible, you, Ms. Dash, are going to live it.”

Rainbow gulped uncertainly.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” the unicorn smiled again. Rainbow was really starting to hate that smile. “We’ll be starting with the first artifact that The Assassins stole from us. We’ll be sending you into the virtual mind of your distant ancestor Nightshade, right-hand mare to Commander Hurricane herself after Private Pansy. We’ll be able to contact you throughout the simulation, just in case, but mostly you’ll be on your own in there. Try to remember, though, Ms. Dash—this is merely a simulation of a memory. If you don’t live it out as it actually happened, then the mnemonic illusion will collapse and you’ll have to try again. And it wouldn’t be so good for your friends if you had to try again.”

Rainbow nodded, understanding.

“One more thing before I go under, if this really even works at all,” Rainbow said to the unicorn.

“Yes?”

“One way or another, I’m going to make you pay for this,” Rainbow promised. “Remember that.”

“My dearest Ms. Dash,” the unicorn smirked. “I’ll remember it till my dying day. Now, the spell—try to relax and clear your mind.”

Rainbow did so, though it wasn’t so easy to relax with a bunch of monstrous ponies using her friends as hostages.

“Animus!” shouted the unicorn, and Rainbow recognized the telltale sound of a spell in action as the unicorn’s horn spark and a wave of magic washed over her.

. . .

“What is it, chief?”

“What?” Rainbow dash looked up, glancing around in surprise. Just a moment ago, she’d been lying in a bed, and now—

“Do we have a new mission, master Nightshade?” asked the same voice that had spoken before. Rainbow focused on the source of the noise to see a tall pegasus stallion wearing what appeared to be a hooded white cloak, various weapons and other apparatuses of battle strapped to him. As Rainbow turned to further scan the room she suddenly found herself in, she saw dozens of other pegasi, all similarly dressed. And who was master ‘Nightshade?’ Wasn’t that the pony that monstrous unicorn has said was her ancestor?

Wait a minute…

Rainbow looked down, to see that she too was clothed in the same white cloak and weapons as the rest of the pegasi in the room. And the hooves sticking out at the ends of the cloak weren’t sky blue…they were midnight black.

“What?!” Rainbow gasped. It couldn’t have been true, could it? Such a thing wasn’t possible—

Rainbow turned to see the rest of herself, and her suspicions were confirmed. Stretching out behind Rainbow was not the body she remembered. Instead was an unfamiliar mare’s dark coat, blacker than even the unicorn who had sent her here. Stretching out farther than that was a silvery tale, and looking up Rainbow could see the same silver in a mane that almost covered her eyes.

It WAS possible. They hadn’t been lying or crazy after all. Well, they hadn’t been lying, but they were still certainly crazy, even if very powerful and crazy.

“Something wrong, master Nightshade?” the stallion inquired, looking concerned.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Rainbow assured hastily. It would be awfully hard to explain to these ponies—even if they were just virtual reality made from memories like the unicorn had said—that the thing that was wrong was that she WAS Nightshade.

. . .