The air didn’t quite agree with Luna. It was filled with smoke and the stink of raw meat baking in the sun, a rotting reek that would lay low the most robust constitution. But as she soared, looking down at the people, she knew that the citizens of Middenheim were hardened. They had faced the doom once before, stood at the end of days and faced down the immortal armies of wicked gods and hordes of slavering barbarian superhumans. Two provinces had fallen before the Adversary—the Everchosen of Chaos—marched on the White Wolf’s domain, and Ulric’s hounds still chased him off. Luna couldn’t help but be impressed by their tenacity, even in the face of such a surprise attack at present.

Do these fiends truly believe they can vanquish us here? Surely they jest.

Luna flew with great speed toward the nearest noise of a fray. All along her flight she beheld the aftermath of Shining Armor’s astute leadership—streets paved with the corpses of mutants and monsters, with civilians and militia stragglers already piling the monstrous bodies together into vicious funeral pyres. The fallen warriors were collected away from them.

A whirling column of autumnal colours burned high over the roofs of an intersection in the distance, bringing Luna’s attention back to the battle. A chorus of agonized shrieks echoed forth from the site, along with what sounded vaguely like the cackling laughter of a pyromaniac.

Ah, the Bright Wizards, she thought. How annihilative, their works to control the animal of flame.

No fortification, no bunker could protect from such ravenous waves, meaning that the exposed beastmen had little chance against the scorching pillar now roaring through the streets like a violent tornado, but with the scouring efficiency of a needle through a threader. The last, she knew, came from the many unicorn mages in support of the deadly human pyromancers, who could contain and help direct the usually unstable magic with their own fine-tuned control. Such was but one example of the progress made toward the cultural integration of the Equestrians. All sides had much to offer.

The pegasi were in a winning battle against their deformed counterparts in the flying melee. The winged ponies battled the monsters across rooftops or the air, with pairs of brawlers falling to the ground with conjoined screams and filling the air with bloodied feathers like morbid confetti. Like the creatures, the pegasi would often make weapons of themselves, wearing bladed hoof gauntlets or sharp, jointed armor along the forward edges of their wings.

It reminded her of the darker times of Equestria, of the founding of Canterlot which she and Celestia had led, the purge of the mountain of savage beasts, and the overthrow of the cold-blooded Draconian cave-dwellers who had glutted themselves off mining the luxuries of the crystal bounties in the underground caverns. The winter that year had been especially unforgiving to the nomadic ponies they shepherded, for plague and foraging losses threatened to undo them. By sending them away to face doom, caring naught for the refugees in their blind greed, the Draconians deserved to have their names devoured by time, and a grander history written in their place.

She’d be damned to Tartarus to entertain Tirek in tea parties for a century before she dared miss this.

On the glow of her magic, six onyx-black sabres materialized in as many inky-black clouds around Luna, and she spread them wide in the air like twin dragon claws. Her eyes sparked, then glowed white with cold fury.

“FLEE, YE MANGY CURS! FLEE FOR YOUR MISERABLE LIVES!”

Luna plunged headlong into the aerial scrap, sending the blades whistling towards a group of the monsters attempting to gain altitude to crash down on the pegasi. She kept her path true, with sharp and quick eyesight guiding her mind’s grip for each weapon like a bladed shadow-kraken as they created a rain of beheaded and eviscerated beastmen that fell behind her in a gory contrail.

Another shot her a panicked look, just in time for Luna to impale the creature from chest to withers in a single thrust of her horn, taking the full impact to her neck with barely even a wince.

“BEGONE!” she yelled in a voice like thunder, then sent a burst of magic through her horn which exploded the body off and away in a visceral vortex. Not a drop of blood stained the icon of her power.

The gruesome execution did not go unnoticed from either side. The near-frantic shouting of orders from the pegasi was now joined by jubilant cries of renewed conviction.

“It’s Her Majesty!”

“Princess Luna is here!”

“Vanquish! They do not deserve Her stars’ light!”

Luna smiled. This almost… almost… felt like home again.

A pair of mutants arced into view, one brandishing vicious claws and a mouth full of needle-like fangs, the other having barbed iron hooks grafted to their hooves. It had a flat golden tooth in his mouth, and Luna inwardly sighed, wondering if this stallion had previously come from wealth before succumbing to his madness.

A pair of bladed, black chakrams materialized into being before her. Years of patient practice and honed reflexes took hold. Taking only the briefest of moments to judge the distance, Luna pulsed her horn but once, flinging the disks forward.

Two razor-sharp magical blades found two misshapen beastmen. Both of the latter shrieked in pain, leaking tainted blood from vicious cuts into the streets below. And yet they were still flying.

Without hesitation, Luna partially folded her wings and dove downward, leveling off at a point where she could more easily engage. She spread her sabers wide, then turned to intercept the wounded fiends like a descending angel of judgment. The distance rapidly vanished until—

It was then that Luna noticed there was only one of them in sight.

Something hard slammed into her haunches with a crunch of steel, nearly forcing her off-balance.

The gold-toothed stallion had his grafted claws sunk into the segmented plates. The magic disk was deeply embedded in his lower jaw, bisecting it to the throat in a gout of blood with his feral roar.

Luna immediately corkscrewed to throw the stallion off, but he held fast, and started rippingaway at the first plate. Changing tactics, Luna dove downwards towards the buildings, held herself upside down, and slammed the monster between her mailed bulk and a tiled roof. A long skid of pulping meat, blood and shards of clay followed him until he finally fell off the edge of the house, tumbling to the road in a silent heap.

Don’t become complacent, Luna thought. Make sure it’s dead.

A large formation of freed-up pegasi was gathering behind Luna in her advance, supporting those yet to know of the aid.

The Beast-pegasi were in retreat, their remaining number scattering like crows with some getting picked off by a lucky musket shot from the defenders.

“Save the ammunition!” Luna bellowed, and instantly the guns ceased. “Lieutenants, to me!”

In quick order four such stallions came before her, each in the colour and heraldry of their respective forces.

“Names and command?” she asked.

“Verdant Storm, Tenth Air Muskets, Your Majesty!”

“Lemuel, Third Mixed C.Q.!”

“Cinder Smoke, Air Lances!”

“Lieutenant Sallow, Fifth Surveyors!”

Luna glanced between them for but a moment. “The Tenth will cut off the creatures at their ladders; shoot them as they climb. C.Q. regiment, scour the walls for the creatures’ survivors, the whole circumference. Cinder, support the ground advance. The Surveyors will be covered by the Tenth. Rip the ladders from the walls once their weight is lifted. Dismissed!”

The officers took off to their troops, barking orders for reformation and tasking.

“Your Highness!” A carrier pegasus approached, snapping a sharp salute. “A request from Princess Celestia; she desires your presence in the palace immediately. She understands your desire to take action for the common defense, but what she would like to review she feels is of dire importance.”

Luna’s sabres popped into nebulous clouds and dissipated. “I’ll be there. In the meantime, return to your post and await me. I will have my own messages that will need a courier.”

Ditto worriedly watched Karl Franz’s pacing at one end of the the table in the council hall. Each heel-turn made him flinch as if he’d suddenly lambast him for some failure. Soon enough, though, Franz leaned against the table and pinched his brows.

“Your Highness,” Ditto started, “I understand that my Queen said we could be anywhere, but it would be an overestimation of our capabilities to think we’re everywhere.”

“I know. I don’t overestimate you,” Franz replied. “You can’t just have informants milling about the woods, hoping to stumble upon something, even a besieging force of this size. But why? Why would the Everchosen be leading nothing more than the Beastmen and disappear once he makes himself known?”

“It may have been a ruse,” Celestia said from the far end of the table. She sat still as a statue, her hooves pressed before her lips in contemplation. “His intentions are too grandiose to limit himself to such a small thrust with no daemons or northern warriors. It must have been trickery to scare off the soldiers to salvage Fluttershy.”

“But even after that, Fluttershy jumped the walls,” Shining Armor added. “They weren’t planning on finishing the job.”

Franz let out an aggravated huff. “Sigmar’s blood, is it too much to ask to keep her penned in one place?” he said, more to himself than to the others. “Maybe I should have ordered her purification, after all—”

The bronze-inlaid doors, moulded to figures of millennia past, flew open before Luna as she strode in, levitating her beaked helmet at her side. Her covering was down to the padding which usually went under her armor.

She addressed everyone with the sharp raise of a hoof. “Hail, all. I have just arrived from the frontlines, and I am pleased to report that our honorless, craven foes are in a rout like farm fowls to the sight of a wolf!”

The room was silent, all eyes staring at Luna. She fixed her neck padding uncomfortably. “Is… there a problem? Is there something on me?”

Shining Armor coughed awkwardly. “No, no.”

Luna shrugged. “Well then, Shining Armor, I heard this as I drew near and meant to ask you about it. After the bout between Fluttershy and myself, the entire battle seemed to have moved on. It didn’t take too long. How did you manage it?”

Shining’s eyes were vein-railed, patches of his fur singed, and his mane disheveled. He barely suppressed a yawn.

“After first seeing Fluttershy in the streets again, I started thinking. If she was roused to help the Beastmen, that means Applejack failed to protect her. And if Applejack had either died, or joined them, who’s to say they didn’t also get to Rarity, or Rainbow Dash, or Twilight in all the confusion? So I got furious, rushed the destruction spells, and, well…” He circled his singed face with a hoof. “You know there’s a reason we don’t rush destruction spells.”

“Is Miss Sparkle still in the city?”

“I’m not sure,” Celestia said. “I tried to clear some things up with her, and she... “ Celestia raised a hoof to her cheek. “Took it harshly.”

Franz raised his head a fraction. “What did you tell her?”

“The truth I thought she needed to hear. We had arranged for her quarters to be in Altdorf just fine, but she didn’t believe me when I tried to tell her where she’d come from.”

“You—” Shining recoiled in wide-eyed disbelief. He collected himself rapidly, and his tone became bitingly harsh. “Your Highness,” he seethed, resting his hooves on the table. He appeared to be on the verge of delirious laughter. “In the continuation of my research into combat magic, I’ve found that the Celestial Wizards have a saying: ‘Knowledge is power. Hide it well.’

“I’d always despised withholding information like the state of a country, or what happened to a young filly’s father when he was conscripted, went to war, and didn’t come back. That’s the way of tyrants. But when the information itself is toxic, and the recipients are potentially volatile, I think I would have made an exception.”

Franz sat down and drummed his fingers on the table. “A runner must check on her quarters. If she isn’t there, we must assume the worst.”

“You’re naive as a child, Celestia. I thought you were better than this,” Chrysalis’ voice hissed from Ditto’s throat. His pupils were thin as daggers.

Luna frowned, staring daggers at Ditto. “Do we have the honor of having the Queen of Changelings among us, or do you need to be reminded to hold your tongue?”

“The former,” the commandeered Ditto replied without flinching. “Celestia, you’ve had over a thousand years experience ruling Equestria. I’ve had infiltrators listen to your speeches on occasion. I cannot, for the life of me, conceive of why you would drop such a bombshell on that mare’s already fractured perception.”

Celestia’s expression darkened. “I didn’t want there to be any more secrets. What would you have me do? What if I didn’t tell her, and she just kept living in blissful ignorance, building up more experiences and memories with Shining, Cadence, or Spike? And then somepony, at some point, would speak. Then all which came before she would see as a lie.” She regarded Shining Armor somberly. “And if she ever outlived you, and it was revealed afterward, there would be no making amends.”

Shining’s eyes sank to the table, and he gave a contemplative sigh.

“It was still a mistake to do it so soon,” Franz said. “With all the risk it entails, couldn’t it have at least waited until Ostland and Hochland were resettled? Until we had more machines for the provincial armies?”

“The Terror will always adapt,” Ditto said. “Whatever new trinkets you devise, they’ll think of a way. Ten years or ten thousand, they’ll match firepower with armor, shields with a yet sharper blade, and ingenuity with the creativity of mad beings not restricted by the laws of physics. Their forces evolve, even now. There is no secret their gods do not know, and as they’ve gained the converted minds of geniuses and madmen and ponies alike, they may assimilate the very same weapons.”

“Then we’ll simply meet them,” Luna said, her voice unwavering. “The Empire has withstood the terrors for two thousand five hundred years, rebuilt whole cities from ruins. And for every inch of ground they take from us, we shall bleed them in recompense tenfold. And we still retain a great advantage over them—intelligence. Our alliance still stands?”

‘Ditto’ nodded. “Of course. Intelligence for harvestable bodies for love energy. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then we’ll always remain one step ahead,” Shining said confidently. “The Inquisition has noticed a sudden rise in traitors caught which came immediately after our agreement; a surge of anonymous tips.” He emphasized the words with air quotes. “Particularly, a rise in busts of Slaaneshi cults, which you’ve probably been kidnapping members from. One of these cults was plotting an assassination on one of my top generals.” He chuckled. “I never did thank you for that.”

Ditto’s mouth curled up in a thin smile. “Then there may be hope for us after all.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The dust from this latest debacle has yet to settle.” Franz rose and made his way for the door. “I’ll get a runner to check Sparkle’s quarters. If she isn’t there, I am going to declare a state of emergency throughout the entire province. We can’t afford to lose track of her at a time like this.”

The meeting abruptly adjourned, and Luna insisted that Shining see himself to the medical wing to treat his injuries and get some badly needed rest. Ditto was left back in control of his body and slinked away under the guise of a palace aide, unable to hide his uneasy face.

“Can I speak with you for a moment, Luna?”

The night princess nearly paused in her steps, not so much at the question but the tone it was couched in.

Luckily, the greater hall outside the conference chambers had at least one balcony overlooking Middenheim proper, and with a curt yet understanding nod Luna turned gracefully to the left and stepped out onto the flagstones. The whisper of the high wind carried up from Middenheim’s plateau greeted her immediately; along with the persistent odor of smoke and ashes. However, Luna found that she didn’t quite mind the latter anymore when she knew part of it was her own doing.

She looked back and up at the intimidating height of the castle, and laughed internally as to what could possibly have possessed the monsters to attack such a bastion.

All of a sudden, however, the wind stopped, as if time itself was frozen. Luna jolted in surprise. No matter how she turned her ears, she couldn’t even detect the slightest whistle of air from outside the translucent golden bubble—

Wait… bubble?

Luna’s eyes expected an unobstructed view of Middenheim from above, but now it was like looking through a lense, and one you could only notice if the light hit it just right. Her gaze moved upward, tracing the faint outline of the dome-shaped partition all around the perimeter of the balcony on which she stood.

“Luna?”

With no competing sounds, the voice from behind her rang as clear as a bell. Luna turned, and beheld Celestia, Princess of the Sun, her sister, staring straight at her with an intensity of equal parts apprehension and… confusion?

“‘Tia?” Luna replied, slowly and carefully. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the shield which enveloped the entire balcony. She knew this spell. It was one that allowed warding of an area against nearly all sound short of the mighty Wolf’s Head Bombard’s roar of fury and death. Casting it successfully without allowing any leaks—not even wind—to pass through required the precision and power that only highly-trained unicorns, and perhaps some elves, could muster.

She knew this couldn’t be because of something on her face. “What is it you wanted to speak to me about, sister?”

Celestia flinched the instant the last word left her mouth, a brief crack in the cold, uncomfortable stare she was still leveling at her. She didn’t respond.

Luna tried again. “‘Tia, please… what troubles you so? Is it what happened with Twilight Sparkle? Are you worrying about her, or nursing feelings of guilt?”

Her sister showed no reaction, simply keeping up the laser-point focus on Luna. Any mortal pony would have to be possessed of a legendary willpower to not shrink away from that wall of intimidation, but Luna was determined not to back down. She stepped forward, and decided to change tactics.

“Are you afeared of the storm that lies ahead, dear sister?”

Another flinch.

“I tell you now, I have just returned from the field of battle right below our hooves, and I have witnessed incredible acts of courage and harmony among our ponies and the humans both. Our enemies fall like the worthless mongrels they are, no match before our joined blades and steeled hearts united in purpose. So it shall be for the Northmen, for the Everchosen, and for Chaos entire, dear sister,” she declared, straightening her posture. “Do not forget that I will stand by your side, no matter what comes, no matter how great the struggle. Harmony yet lives on within us.” She raised a hoof to her chest. “We will have a future, ‘Tia.”

She closed the last few feet from Celestia and nuzzled under her chin comfortingly with one hoof gently hung around her neck. “We must not despair,” she said softly, “for that would be our doom.”

Luna was smiling inwardly. She hoped her sister’s worries were that simple, because then they were something she actually knew how to fight. Something she could meet with passion and poise, to chase away like a malignant nightmare and have it begone.

“It’s you…”

Luna paused mid-cuddle, and lifted her head confusedly at the quiet statement. She never got the chance to ask, though, as Celestia wrapped her free front hoof over her withers and pulled her in close and tight as though she was a lifeboat in the middle of a roiling ocean.

“S-Sister? What…”

“The… The moons,” Celestia stammered out, her eyes smarting with joyful tears. She let go and pointed to the dustily visible orbs which stared down like the mismatched eyes of an astral onlooker. “Don’t you see, Luna? When Mannslieb and Morrslieb were out together before, you turned into the Nightmare.”

Luna stiffened. Her ears perked up sharply as a hound’s, and her eyes widened with sudden realization. “I—”

“But even with both of them up at once now, you’re still here! I thought she might have been playing some kind of cruel trick, and I had to see for myself…”

A smile of relief such as Luna had never seen in centuries began to spread over her sister’s face. Luna watched, barely even blinking, as the carefully-layered masks and defenses her sister maintained every day fell apart.

“You called me ‘sister’...” Celestia continued. “But without spite, or resentment. You… truly cared. Nightmare couldn’t possibly have shown that kind of love… not even to hide herself.” She looked at Luna then, long and hard. Her expression made it seem like an enormous weight had just been lifted from her shoulders. “It’s really… it’s really you…” Fresh tears rose to Celestia’s eyes, and finally her already-flimsy composure began to break down.

All thoughts of the haunting, cat-eyed visage in Luna’s thoughts fled her focus at once. All that mattered right now was her sister. She returned the desperate embrace with all she had, extending both her wings to wrap the shaking alicorn in a feathery blanket.

“Tia… I’m here.”

It was all she needed to say.

Celestia leaned into her chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

“She’s gone... she’s finally gone…”

­Fluttershy bore her friends with little hindrance, and ran for fully a day until they met the Sea of Claws at the Empire’s northern coast. It was raining, a downpour which softened the clay-ridged beachhead, turned the sand to slush, and made everything beyond a few hundred feet ahead a grey blur. It didn’t seem to bother Fluttershy too much, as she didn’t react to the exposure beyond a short sneer at the sky when it began.

Fluttershy laid with a wing extended to the ground in a giant metal lean-to which the others took refuge under. Each ‘feather’ was easily the breadth of a small boat’s oar. Applejack stayed out in the rain, using it as a shower to wash and scrape off the fungal growths and crusty mold caking her skin. She then coaxed Apple Bloom to come and get cleaned up as best as possible.

Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Rainbow Dash finally had the opportunity to collapse of exhaustion. Where Sweetie rested against Rainbow’s shoulder, the entire left side of the pegasus had turned to stretches of Flamer-flesh, sagging off in smoking folds and idly swishing tentacle-vines like she was half lava flow. She blew puffs of smoke with each snore.

Twilight noticed Rarity’s gaze hadn’t left the sea for some time, absently digging her talons into the sand, and nudged her. “Are you getting worried about them?”

“A bit,” she said, then pressed a finger to her chin. “He’s been out there for a long time.”

“You mean ‘they’?” Twilight replied.

“Hm?”

“You know Pinkie Pie went with Spike, right? ‘They’ve been out there a long time.”

“Oh, um, right. Thank you.”

Twilight smiled knowingly as Rarity returned to her absent-minded view. “You want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?”

“Well, other than the wistful staring into the distance, I… Not sure how to describe this. I can see something’s really bothering you.” Twilight squinted and leaned closer, to Rarity’s discomfort. “It’s like you're slowly on fire… but purple.”

Rarity’s face soured, and she groaned and sat back, resting her head against Fluttershy with a dull thunk. She knew what Twilight was talking about. Auras. All who sat under the makeshift awning emitted some different color, depending on how they felt. She and Twilight seemed to be the only ones who could see it.

Rarity didn’t know what the different colors meant, except when it came to Fluttershy, who turned the aether a blood-red, angrily-churning mist as it passed through her.

“It doesn’t feel so long ago that he was just a toddler,” Rarity started. “He’s always been such a gentle-drake. He was really worried about my mental state in Middenheim.” She curled her knees up to her chest, and blew out a lengthy sigh.

“I just don’t know. Sometimes when I look at him, I think about that little toddler he used to be, just for a second too long. Uurgh... It feels like I’m falling for a five-year old.”

Twilight suppressed the urge to laugh. “Maybe it’s all those times you were just humoring his crush coming back to bite you.”

Rarity gave Twilight a shove, smiling thinly. “Oh, shush.”

Returning to scan the sea, she could make out Pinkie Pie’s face breaking the water’s surface, which was soon joined by a scaly purple head.

Rarity quietly gasped watching him. The slimy waters gave Spike’s scales a glassy reflectiveness, with the light reflecting off his muscles. The more of him that left the water, Rarity couldn’t help but feel a sense of gigantism about him, features sculpted over many years to create a powerful being whose aura glowed gold to accent his proud stride. In each claw Spike held two fish, and another stuck through on the spines of his tail.

Pinkie Pie waddled up the shore with a fat belly bouncing under her like a water balloon, and ribbons of seaweed making dark-green highlights in her mane. In spite of the weight, she easily kept up with Spike, and even snached the catches out of his claws and gulped them down herself.

“As you can see, our little excursion was a complete failure.” Spike smiled as she crouched under Fluttershy’s wing, sat beside an amused Rarity, and showed a pair of empty claws. He swept his tail forward with the fish still stuck on it, and planted his chin on his fist. “They’re just not biting today, are they, Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie shook her head as her bulbous stomach lurched into her throat. She bowed her head and threw up a deluge of seawater and a dozen or so large blue and silver-scaled fish, many of which were still twisting and flipping about.

“Nope, not a one,” she gasped.

Rarity made a face at the display. “I think I’ll rinse mine back in the water. I don’t think anypony knows what… fluids you put ou-oua-ah-ACHOO!”

Her shoulders’ wyrdstone crystals shot out like exploding glass. They shattered against Fluttershy’s body with sparking pops, lighting up the shadows and sending everyone ducking. Rarity groaned aloud, pinching her nose. “Sorry, everypony… Oh, Spike, your arm!”

Spike brushed off some shards which were shallowly embedded in his forearm and the back of the claw. “It’s alright, I think. Doesn’t look like any got past the scales. Smarts, though… Pinkie Pie, do you mind cutting up the catch?”

Pinkie was flattened to the ground with chattering teeth while a smoking line of slightly off-color fur ran along her spine. “Sure… Why don’t you get the fire started? Don’t want anypony catching a cold in this weather, ya know?”

“Hah!” Applejack blurted out before she caught herself. She kept smiling, returning to straightening out the pouting Apple Bloom’s mane, and muttered, “A cold… heh.”

Spike blew a fiery breath to ignite the wood. A small table had been fashioned out of bits of scrap metal found stuck to Fluttershy’s barbs and spines. Pinkie bit off the fishes’ heads in quick order, sparing them a slow death out of water, then flayed them with great swiftness of her claws and set three on the slab.

Rainbow Dash coughed at the rush of smoke from the fire’s inception, which stirred her from sleep. She shook herself a little, waking the two fillies up, and her smouldering flamer-flesh partial transformation regressed to normality. The others let her dwell in her grogginess. They’d all had some unpleasant experience catching her taking an on-the-job siesta back at home. Rainbow stared into the fire for a minute or two, letting the warmth wash over her.

“So... now what?” she yawned.

“I think we’re in a good position,” Spike replied. “Fluttershy’s footprints will lead anyone searching for us to the beach, but the tide will wash her prints away every day. They won’t know how close or far behind they are. And with what Pinkie and I caught, it should keep us stocked for a good while.”

Twilight picked a fish up and sank her fangs into it. Her expression and the shape of the wide-mouthed vertebrate both wrinkled at the same rate. She turned and spat into the sand. “Ich… its blood tastes like fish-oil medicine. I think I’ll take my chances hunting in the woods.”

“Ohoho! More for us, then!” Pinkie chirped as she snatched away Twilight’s dried out meal and scarfed it down.

Rainbow glanced between the four before her. “And you really think we can just waltz into the north, take the Elements, and then zap ourselves back to normal?”

Rarity shrugged. “It’s worth a try. We play the part, hope to high heaven they don’t know what the Elements are, and voila, we’re back. Maybe even undo the evil wrought on the northmen as well.”

Rainbow snorted. “That sounds like the biggest day-X machine I’ve ever heard of.”

“Deus ex Machina,” Twilight corrected.

Rainbow waved a forehoof. “Whatever. If the Elements are all it’ll take, then I say we go kick Artichoke’s lights out and get him to hand them over!”

Rarity waved her hand in a so-and-so manner. “Eeeh, provided we even know where he is and get him alone...” Rarity projected an image of an elaborate spired castle, a bastion of thick walls, turreted towers, and little soldiers milling about the defenses. “Archao—”

“Don’t say his name!” Rainbow Dash snapped.

Rarity slapped a hand over her mouth in reflex. Then blinked. “Wait, why not?”

“There might be some spell or something on his name that lets him know where anypony who says it is! I read about it once in Daring Do and the Rod of Stars.”

Rarity gawked in confusion. “That’s not… the stress of maintaining that kind of net over all—”

“Daring nearly got caught by the evil king of Armistan in fifteen minutes.”

“Well then, you-know-who,” she rolled her eyes, “could be in the tallest tower of the most heavily defended fortress in the world for all we know. Not even Fluttershy could rush that.”

Fluttershy turned her head to look back with an amused grin. “Is that a challenge?”

Rarity immediately dispelled her projection. “No, no! Just brainstorming.”

“He was in a private tent right among his soldiers back in Equestria,” Twilight broke in. “A lot of Northman cultures are nomadic, like the Hung or Kurgan, so they might not have castles, but mobile yurts. At the very least, we know he doesn’t have some kind of floating citadel like Cloudsdale. And even if he does have a fortress, well… that just lets us know where he is all the better. There can’t be that many mega-fortresses in the north.”

“You’re starting to talk my language now, Twi,” Rainbow laughed. “But still, are you really sure about this? This is gonna be one hay of a Hail Merry pass. Is this really worth ditching your brother and Cadence?”

Twilight shook her head, but the hesitation before she spoke and wistful staring at the ground said more. “I’m not ‘ditching’ them. I don’t have anything against them; they were duped like I was. Cadence has her own job to do with the Crystal Ponies, but maybe I can try and bring Shining Armor around.”

“How’re you gonna contact him?” Rainbow glanced at Rarity. “Didn’t find any papers? Quills?”

Rarity shrugged again. “I didn’t imagine we would be writing letters, so no. Perhaps if we come across a dwelling we can ‘procure’ some.”

Spike hummed in agreeance after busying himself tending the fire, then noticed Pinkie Pie looming over his shoulder. Strands of syrup-saliva dribbled through her teeth in an uncomfortably close white, yellow, and orange grin. Her eyes seemed utterly fixed on the sizzling fish.

“Do you want the first one?” He guessed.

“M’hm. it looks really... w-wait!”

Everyone stared at the candy-mare’s sudden shout. Pinkie was shaking, her eyes darting between her friends. Her speech came out in a blurb. “I need something to put on it. It has to be right!”

Rainbow blinked. “What? What are you tal—”

Pinkie squirmed as if there were ants biting her flanks. “I’ll be back!” She shot off into the rain, nearly bowling over Applejack and Apple Bloom.

----------------------------

The memory had to be perfect, as if it were the last meal of her life. Pinkie had to commit her Departed to memory in taste if anything, to commemorate him, until the day they’d be reunited. The fish wasn’t enough. It needed to be flavored, spiced. The last time she’d dressed the Doctor up and had him for an ultimate meal, that was just a sloppy warmup.

Pinkie begged her nose not to fail her, to sniff out berries, wild mint, anything at all to put just a little uniqueness into the meal, and she’d savor it forever. But the rain was churning the air, disrupting her senses.

She didn’t keep track of how long she was away, and once she thought on it, considered turning back. The cold of the rain was biting to her bones. They’d be going along the coast for a long time, so there would be more chances at fishing and finding a suitable topping.

But the forest ended before she made a decision, opening to a flat field. Large rocks were everywhere, looking alien for nature, but almost organized and slightly sunken among the grassless mud. Pinkie raised a tongue to the air to test the wind. It was blowing from inland, and all of the boulders’ colored faces pointed the same way. Pinkie recognized fat veins of raw materials in each rock; iron, coal, and aluminum, to name a few.

It was a rock farm. Pinkie smiled as memories of home trickled into her mind.

There had to be a house nearby, then, and soon Pinkie spotted it through the fog. A lonely one-story domicile, out of place among the openness of the field as if it had fallen from the sky in one piece with no rhyme or reason. A couple of windows were glowing yellow with light. There was a fenced-off area beside it, hopefully a garden.

Pinkie moved swiftly, taking no chances despite not immediately seeing any occupants, and stuck to the cover of the larger boulders while closing the distance. She hopped the fence and took inventory of the enclosure. Carrots, cabbages, and onions were planted dominantly with smaller spaces allotted to low-growing fruits.

Closer, her nose was of much better use, and she quickly found a rank-and-file congregation of stickly-branched apple trees, and but a single lemon tree. With deft stretches of her tentacle-tongues, Pinkie picked three of the yellow treasures and gobbled down several apples to tide her over until she got back to her friends.

A distant wet slapping of muddy hooves made her start. Scanning the fog, she spotted the figure of a pony in a raincoat making a dash across the field toward the house. Pinkie dropped the lemons, vaulted over the fence, and took after them like a hound. They were no match in speed, and Pinkie tackled them into a skid in the mud. Wrapping a couple of tongues around their head to block their muffled feminine voice from attracting help, Pinkie dragged them to the side of the house, out of view of the nearest window where another pony’s shadow passed by. Pinkie restricted the mare in a tight bear-hug.

“I don’t wanna hurt you!” Pinkie grunted to the mare. “Please stop moving so much!”

They wiggled a foreleg free and punched Pinkie in the chest. She was stronger than Pinkie would have ever thought, and was starting to break her grip.

Pinkie immediately reeled her silencing tongues in, sucking the mare into her mouth, down to the shoulders. She wrapped several more tongues around the mare to hold her steady, tilted her head back, and pushed them down her throat with her claws, eliciting a muffled shriek. In a few more gulps and forceful downward yanks, the victim’s hind hooves disappeared from the outside world. Pinkie’s esophagus pulsed rhythmically to work the mare into her stomach, ending in a soggy splash and a round bump in her middle.

In waiting for the mare to stop fighting, Pinkie remembered how good it actually felt as she was still shaking with adrenaline. The catch, the flavor, the feeling of an entire pony kicking and thrashing inside her body. Her chest ached wonderfully, the pain flaring up with each heartbeat.

Her stomach jostled and bulged for a couple of minutes before they finally resigned to its confines. She quieted a burp with a hoof against her mouth.

“I told you to stop fighting, but ya didn’t listen, and look where that got you! I didn’t want any trouble. Can you even hear me? Hello?”

Pinkie shook herself around, splashing the mare about her insides.

“Yes! Yes! I can hear you!” the mare replied, her voice muffled and fearful. “Please, stop!”

Pinkie sighed and settled herself back. “Good. Listen, I don’t wanna have to keep you in my tummy too long, so I’m gonna need you to cooperate, m’kay? Just gimme a minute or two, and I’ll let you out.”

There was a bit of wiggling before the prisoner responded, “...Okay.”

It wasn’t long into Pinkie’s pondering before she got distracted by the unique flavors her stomach was starting to absorb from the mare. there was a lot of banana, on account of their raincoat, as well as a sweet, bready taste. Pinkie Pie struggled to put her claw on it.

Pound cake? Coffee cake? No, no, definitely—

The sound of a door opening around the corner broke her musing. A few knocks of hooves on hardwood came out, then a bell rang.

“Marble!” a voice called. “Come on in; breakfast is ready! ...Marble?!”

Pinkie felt her prisoner start kicking again, and screaming. “Blinkie! Get the gun! Get the gu—!”

Pinkie frantically pushed down on her gut, smothering the walls against the mare’s face, despite her screams already being severely dampened by the thickness of her flesh. Pinkie pressed her back against the house, stiff as a board, and held her breath.

“You know how Marble is about the chickens,” Another mare inside the house said. “She’ll come in when she’s ready.”

“I just don’t want her to catch her death of cold out there.”

The door closed again, and Pinkie loosened her grip to let her captive breathe.

“Marble?” Pinkie muttered. “Blinkie?”

She felt the subtle, sporadic movements within her, down to her captive’s very breathing. She was sobbing, no doubt in despair about her failed alarm.

“Hey, your name’s Marble?” Pinkie asked. “Marble Pie?”

The mare’s gasps stilled instantly.

“Marble?” Pinkie asked again and gently squeezed her gurgling belly. “Please. It- It’s me... Pinkamena. I might look like a candied frankenpony, but it’s me!”

Pinkie’s entire torso convulsed, forcing the pony-sized lump back up her throat. She set them in the rain to wash off the thick coating of stomach acids. Pinkie kept a tongue wrapped around one of the mare’s hind legs in case doubt took over.

Marble adjusted her strapped-on hat, and Pinkie Pie squirmed in place as if her gaze itself were painful. She grew quite self-conscious as Marble glared at her body; the swirling eyes, licorice-red mane, candy cane-striped coat, and identical crustaceous claws ending the forelegs.

“I remember that look from when I threw our first party in the silo back home; our first home,” Pinkie said with a thin smile, and lightly tapped her claws together. She regarded Marble’s small gasp with a wide, candy corn-filled grin.

Marble stepped a little closer, shakily raising a hoof to Pinkie’s face. Pinkie rested her cheek in it and giggled. “I don’t bite, sis. Much.”

“Oh my…” Marble whispered. She didn’t resist as Pinkie swept her up, swinging her sister left and right and squealing gaily.

Pinkie suddenly paused as her stomach rumbled like something bubbling up from the depths of a slimy ocean. She dropped Marble, and ran only a short distance before throwing her head down and spilling sick into the ground.

“Pinkie, what’s wrong?” Marble asked.

“I ate you alive!” Pinkie gasped and then swallowed heavily. “I could’a digested you and not even known who you were! And the worst part is, you were delicious—hurgh!” Pinkie gagged again, and the purge renewed itself.

“And that’s basically how he got away,” Rarity concluded, and took a bite of the last bits of meat on her fish. “Pinkie’s words, not mine.”

As she expected, she was looking into five dumbfounded faces. The sixth was behind her, blowing a gust of hot air which whipped her mane with each breath. Fluttershy had gotten lonely and turned to meet her friends, extending her wings to form a dome over them. While there was more space, it was dark, save the light of the fire and the burning orbs in Fluttershy’s eyes. Rarity was hiding her uneasiness. She felt like some toy being watched by Fluttershy, feeling the weight of her gaze.

“He blew up his screwdriver in Pinkie’s face and it cut open her body?” Rainbow asked with a scrunched face, and thinking of dissected frogs. “Eeuch... That’d explain the stitches.”

“Maybe it burst like a pulsar?” said Twilight, trying to make sense of it. “The energy could be channeled in specific directions and then it cut in a beam?”

“You know none of us know what a pulsar is,” Rarity scoffed.

Spike raised a claw. “I do. Lived with her. It’s kind of like a star whose energy only goes in two directions.”

“Okay, but seriously,” Rainbow Dash said, “You guys know the Doc could have killed Pinkie with that stunt?”

“He was just done, I suppose. He’s calculating,” Rarity said. “Jumped ship the instant he saw his chance and cast everything else to the wind.”

Spike looked between Twilight and Rarity. “It makes me wonder if he really cared about you guys.”

“He cared,” Fluttershy said, her face actually softening to mere agitation. “Whenever I’d get mad or sad, he’d try to cheer me up. He was always there when I needed somepony to talk to. He was my friend.”

“He has a funny way of showing friendship by blowing up Pinkie Pie and vanishing without so much as a goodbye,” Rarity replied.

There was choler in Fluttershy’s voice. “Pinkie Pie’s the one who scared him off.”

“Guuuuyyys!”

Fluttershy lifted her head, allowing enough of an outside view for her friends to see Pinkie Pie bursting from the treeline with Applejack and Apple Bloom lagging.

The sisters had gone for a walk after cleaning themselves up. Applejack had been especially giddy that after getting the unnatural muck off her hooves, which entailed scraping them raw, her touch lost its lethality. Following Pinkie, her form was much easier on the eyes. The blonde fungal stalks still hung from the cracks in her partially-exposed skull, but she almost looked to be flesh again, sporting vestiges of orange fur and dry, grey skin.

Pinkie Pie was a blur, jumping to the crown of fluttershy’s head in a single bound and shouting, “I got a surprise for you guys!”

Fluttershy snapped a claw up to grab Pinkie from her head, but the mare had already jumped down. Pinkie ran circles around her friends in a pink tornado and didn’t give them a second to respond.

“Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go! Follow me!”

She rocketed into the woods again and Applejack groaned in exasperation as she and her sister had just caught up, and made to turn around. Fluttershy swept them both up and put them with the others on her back.

It was just a couple few minutes run before Pinkie stopped Fluttershy at the edge of the forest clearing. She assured her friends she knew the inhabitants of the home.

And Rarity didn’t believe her.

She sat cross-legged, and her body of light departed her body of substance. She followed Pinkie towards the small house on the farm. Rarity’s anxiety became confusion when Pinkie started talking to an ash-grey mare who was waiting for her. Rarity couldn’t see any resemblance between them when it was brought to light that they were sisters. Rarity’s memory of Pinkie’s old bouncy curls and mile-per-minute speech was a perfect contrast to the smaller mare’s tightly bound mane-bun and slow articulation. Rarity returned to her body once Pinkie made to come back.

“She’s coming back,” Rarity said, slowly rising from once motor control returned.

“So what was she doing?” Twilight asked.

“It’s her family! Three of her sisters on the farm.”

“Oh! She told us about them!” Scootaloo exclaimed, getting confident smiles from the Crusaders. “They were all dull and boring all the time, but she eventually threw them their very first party when Rainbow did her first rainboom, and got her cutie mark!”

“But then she said that’s how Equestria was founded,” Sweetie Belle added. “Sooo... I dunno what to think about that.”

Rainbow Dash raised a brow. “Wow. I’m more awesome than I thought! I fixed their family without even trying! Up top, Scoots!”

Their hoof-clop heralded Pinkie’s return. “Okay, Fluttershy, uh, would you mind going around and coming up the path? Gotta keep the field tidy, you know?”

She shrugged. “Fine.”

Pinkie trotted in place and squealed. “Thanks! Everypony else, come on!”

Rarity cast up a magical shield against the rain as they took down a thin row-path across the field while Fluttershy orbited along the treeline.

Pinkie eagerly knocked at the door, and Marble opened it. Behind her, two more mares made quiet gasps. One was pale purple, looking up with mud-brown eyes behind a straight-cut grey mane. The other wore a somewhat dusty blue-green frock, banded around the barrel by a wide black belt. She seemed the least perturbed by the guests, her otherwise disinterested eyes had merely opened a little wider.

Pinkie shot past Marble and swept up her other siblings, planting a kiss on each of their cheeks as if stamping them as her own.

“Girls!” she squealed, smiling fit to split. “Everypony, these are my sisters, Marble, Blinkie, and Maud! And girls, these are my bestest friends in the whole wide world: Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Spike, and Applejack!”

“Twilight?” Marble repeated. “You mean... ‘Twilight Sparkle?’ She gave a quick scan toward the purple, bat-winged alicorn, and gasped. “You… you’re the Elements of Harmony, aren’t you?!”

Applejack raised her head high, and crossed her legs with a smile. “Guilty as charged.”

Blinkie giggled and wiggled out of Pinkie’s grip. “Oh goodness, I’ll be right back! Please, everypony, come in! Come in! Out of this weather!”

Spike was first to couch under the doorway, introducing himself to Marble after Pinkie finally set her free. She could only react to a bonafide dragon in her house with a trembling smile and a ‘Luna, preserve me’ under her breath. Rarity and Maud were quickly engaged in a conversation on the earth mare’s wardrobe.

“Me and Apple Bloom’ll stay out here,” Applejack said somberly. “Ain’t sure you’d want us in a closed space.”

“Wait,” Twilight said, coming back to her. “What if I tried this…”

The violet glow of Twilight’s magic encased the Apples. Twilight squinted in focus, settling it to be as transparent as possible in the form of a full-body envelope.

“Can you move?” Twilight asked.

Applejack turned around in place, not appearing hindered by it at all.

“Fits like a glove!” Applebloom chirped happily.

Twilight bowed and motioned into the house like an usher. “Then after you. The quarantine shield I just put over you both should stop any spores or germs from escaping.”

“Woohoo! Alright!” “Wow, thanks, Twi!” The apples sounded off together, trotting in after their friends.

It was then that Blinkie returned with a thick book under one leg. “You’re all the Princesses’ saints! The Lectio Divina says you disappeared in the Fall, but by the gods, you’re alive!”

Rarity’s laugh came out as if she were already hoarse. “Saints? Surely you jest. The Princesses aren’t gods.”

The Pies instantly fell silent. They glanced between each other uneasily, but before any of them could reply, the entire house began to shudder to a heavy beating noise like tremendous stones smashing into the earth nearby rattling several wall fixtures off their mounts.

“Oh, no. Please watch your step,” Rarity said to herself, looking to the ceiling.

“Is that another one of your friends, Pinkie?” Blinkie asked worriedly, to which Pinkie beamed.

“Oh, yeah! That’s Fluttershy! You guys are gonna love her!”

Blinkie ran to the kitchen and caught the teakettle as it juddered off the counter’s edge. With minimal spillage, she exhaled in relief and looked up, finding that the view through the window was replaced by a giant black pit staring right through her with a burning ball for a pupil.

“Hello,” Fluttershy rumbled.

Blinkie was nearly petrified. She slowly backed up, clutching the kettle, right into Pinkie Pie who whispered in her ear, “She doesn’t like it when others are afraid of her. Don’t be shy.”

Pinkie stretched a tongue over to the window and undid the latches, then pushed Blinkie forward again. Blinkie set the kettle on the counter and shakily opened the window. A dozen thoughts were rushing through her head; how Fluttershy was a little bigger than their own house, how easy it might be for her to destroy it—

Blinkie forced herself to focus on the giant’s glowing eye. “Hi,” she said, managing to keep most of the hesitation from her voice.

“What’s your name?”

“Blinkie Pie.”

Fluttershy moved away a little and lined herself up with the window. “Is there some place I can get out of the rain?”

“Um… The barn might have plenty of space? Biggest building on our property.”

“Thanks.”

Fluttershy stomped off then and there. Blinkie watched her titanic legs stamp craters in the mud. Once Fluttershy had passed, she leaned against the counter, trembling and gasping for air.

Pinkie Pie supported her smiling all the while. “That’s gotta be the best anypony new’s reacted to her! You did awesome!”

Blinkie shot her a desperate look. “And how… does everypony else do with her?”

“Screaming, running, shooting her with cannons. But compared to that, you’re great!”

The Princesses had deemed it too dangerous for Cadence to stay in the Empire with Middenheim attacked twice with Fluttershy at the fore, and confused reports of the Everchosen himself having led the attack, perching himself on Fluttershy’s shoulder to proclaim his unholy war renewed.

The attack was defeated, though, and without a sign of him since he first arrived. Preparations were made for Cadence to leave for Marienburg the next day. She had a heartful departure from Shining Armor, and had recently crossed the border from Middenland to the Republic of the Wasteland.

Cadence’s procession was well guarded by four columns of forty of the Phoenix Guard. Wrapped in shimmering gold scale and their faces wreathed in fiery brass wings on their helmets, the Crystal Pony detachments of the Guard had the advantage in the sunlight, where their crystalline forms became blinding to so much as look at.

To the rear of the group was the baggage train, carried on the backs of unthinking, long-faced horses. Among the soldiers’ luggage was a treasure trove of parting gifts and trade goods from the towns Cadence had visited.

There was a great emptiness in the carriage. Spike had usually ridden with her as the last wall of muscle and flame in the unlikely event the Guard should fail. As such, the carriage had to be specially built to accommodate his stature. Now she was looking across at an empty bench, and listening to the squeaks and rattles of the coach instead of the dragon’s imaginative stories which he could make up as quick as he could speak. Cadence hoped he made it through the beastman attack in one piece.

She pulled away the veil of a window to look outside at the Guard. Aside from the common regalia, each type of pony had their own equipment custom made. The Earth stallions were encased in heavy armor which made them look more like equine-shaped machines. They sported bladed edges along their legs, spiked guards at every joint, and all bore either unicorn horn-like conical spikes or tulwar-shaped, bullish horns atop each helmet. Their superior strength allowed them to carry all that weight while still maintaining plenty of mobility in combat. The unicorns were superbly trained, each carrying a heavy chakram over their back—a giant circular throwing weapon with rims serrated like the blade of a saw. As backups, they carried a short sword on each foreleg, so that ten unicorns could produce twenty telekinetically-controlled blades at once.

Flanking the encirclement were hedgerows with sinisterly-reaching branches, looking ready to swipe at them, should they suddenly grow brains. The vegetation made it nearly impossible to see beyond ten meters anywhere from the road.

Cadence had heard stories of bandits in the Empire, who honed career thieving to an art, but she had yet to see if such rumors held up.

The carriage slowed to a halt, and Cadence internally cursed that she may have just jinxed it.

A familiar stallion, captain Bolide, casually trotted up after a minute and leaned by the window. The crystal pony’s coat was akin to a dark-purple jade, bearing a single nick in the bridge of his snout. He spoke in Eltharin, the native tongue of Ulthuan.

“Your Highness, we’ve found a tripwire set up; some trap a blind man is evidently not supposed to see. We’ll disable it and keep a wider perimeter.”

His body language was very loose for such news. To Cadence, his undisturbed demeanor and use of Elven language suggested he was trying not to tip off any potential hidden onlookers.

“Good eye, captain,” she replied archly in the same way, affecting an easy smile. “Let’s get moving again as quickly as possible.”

Bolide nodded and turned away with a fake laugh, addressing his troops in an almost conversational tone, as though making orders for a campsite. “Column one, keep rearguard over the train. Two, three, and four, dissolve. Find your corresponding number in the other columns for ten groups of three and fan out twenty paces. Flush them out.”

The formation immediately began to take the new shape. Cadence sat back, took a deep breath, and wondered. How difficult must it be for the Empire to have to patrol every inch of its roads? How many unfortunates fell victim to career criminals?

After less than a minute, a great commotion sprang up all around, accented with guttural shouts and clangs of steel.

Bolide shouted over the noise, “Circle the carriage! Alternate; tight ring!”

The Guard moved swiftly, forming a dense formation around the carriage which left no possibility for the enemy to flank. The unicorns telekinetically spun up their discs, and one launched his into the brush. It shrieked on impact with a thin tree trunk, cleaving through with no loss in momentum and vanished into the greenery. He drew it back a second later, stained red with blood.

The forest immediately sprang to life with roars and battle shouts as dozens of dark elves burst through the hedgerows in black and purple armor and leather padding, some dual-wielding hooked or double-bent swords.

Corsairs, Cadence thought grimly. You’re out of your league, Druchii.

The sunlight produced a dazzling display as it reflected off her guards’ bodies, glaring into the eyes of the attackers and making some of their strikes miss the mark or attempt to block a halberd thrust at the wrong angle. Cadence watched a raider get easily overpowered by an earthen juggernaut, tackled to the ground to have his chest stamped flat under his hooves with a gout of blood spurting from his lips.

The assailants’ luck shattered even further when they tried to encircle Cadence’s carriage through sheer numbers, and the party’s rearguard thundered out of the undergrowth and plowed straight into their flanks. Half a dozen corsairs died instantly under the ruthless charge, and still more were simply thrown to the side as the defenders’ momentum carried through.

The cruelly-sharp swords of the High Elves’ dark cousins were little help against their opponents, as even when they tried to slip a blade past their armor they merely rang uselessly against the crystal ponies’ diamond-hard skin. Pained screams and shouts of dismay mingled with Druchii battle cries, punctuated by the shrill shrieking of unicorn chakrams tearing bloody paths through their ranks.

Cadence thought the attack was futile as the circle was reinforced, and so exited the carriage while preparing her strongest shield spell.

She glanced around at the fruitless bloodshed and wondered. Druchii were smarter than to throw lightly-armored pirates at the elites of Ulthuan. They should have withdrawn the instant they realized their weapons were useless.

It was at that moment that she saw a new figure emerge from the bushes. And Cadence’s mind went reeling in disbelief.

He was tall, slim, armored in deep crimson plates and an under-robe of mail. He carried a tremendous sword which looked to be too large for his gaunt arms, but he brought it to the ready deftly as his looks betrayed his strength. He strode with no rush, in calculated steps, silent and hollow-eyed behind a grinning grille-mouthed skull mask.

It all happened at once. Calmly, as if reaping a harvest of wheat, he brought the weapon sweeping down on the one of the earth stallions. The wicked blade shattered both his forelegs with contemptuous ease, a burst of emerald shards trailing the blade on its follow-through. The steel sang as it vibrated like a tuning fork, harmonizing with the stallion’s scream of pain and teardrop rain of the shards of his limbs.

Cadence immediately leapt into action. A pair of razor-sharp shuriken panged uselessly off her crystalline exterior as she slammed the carriage door shut behind her. Her horn flashed with magic, and a glistening blue umbrella bloomed around the guards’ formation, forming a transparent partition between them and the enemy. The raiders immediately halted their attack upon noticing the descending curtain.

The Princess carefully watched the pale, panting faces of the corsairs, their cursing at the shield, and the unmoving, silent patience of the broadsword-wielding Executioner. The latter brought his weapon to a resting position, the blade tip down in the soil with his hands resting on the pommel. It was as though this was all some kind of game, and he was just waiting his turn.

Cadence’s eyes flashed about desperately. Something was wrong. The wounded stallion had been safely brought back behind the formation, a wall of alicorn magic separated the parties from one another, but—

“Incoming!”

Her head snapped in the the direction of the alarm. One of the raiders made it under the shield before it closed, leaping into the formation and taking the full brunt of three halberds sticking into him without even slowing down.

He was different from the others. Buck naked and heavily tattooed with runes of the Druchii, he was pale as a spirit and nothing but skin and bones. Only one marking was easily legible on his upper arm: an image of a bloody hand gripping a spiked iron crown with dual chevrons down a small face plate.

Kaela Mensha Khaine.

The jumper flashed Cadence a blood-soaked smile before the large, burning barrel harnessed to his back exploded.

The air departed, sucking the breath out of her as it bloomed away from a thundering fireball—condensed neatly into the tight quarters of the shimmering blue shield. The pressure sent shockwaves of pain through the princess, straining the bonds of her form. The Guard was thrown back, several getting swallowed up in the merciless flames. One smashed into Cadence, toppling them both into the dusty dirt. The carriage launched onto its front wheels, listed, and crashed onto the Princess.

“Okay…” Spike tapped a pencil against his chin, staring alongside Rarity and Twilight at a map of the Old World.

Maud had kept a copy after her obtaining a degree in geology from the University of Salzenmund. The sheet was heavily marked and weathered from years of age and note-taking. Most of the notes seemed to involve the mineral makeup and locations of particularly large boulders or abandoned mines.

“We can head for Wilhelmskoog, get a boat, and sail across the Sea of Claws, cut through Norsca, and make the final jump to the wastes. Or the all-land route through Kislev, Troll territory, then it’s across the mountains.”

“And both ways we’ll freeze our flanks off,” Rarity murmured. She idly tapped a finger on the squat-legged wooden table in thought. “I think I remember Fluttershy being able to survive underwater. She probably won’t need a boat; not that we could find one big enough, anyway.”

“But nopony can walk a straight line without sensory input,” Twilight cut in. “She won’t be able to see or hear down there. She could end up veering off into open ocean, or walking in gigantic circles.”

“What if I guided her myself? I could probably give my soul some visibility and keep her on track.”

“I doubt any of us have experience navigating on the water, though. And I never made it a point to learn.” Spike shook his head in resignation. “The fastest way, which I think is most dangerous, would be going through Kislev, Troll country, then the eastern Norscan mountains. It’s dominated by dwarfs and griffons, so we might need to double-time it through there. Then it’s across the Frozen Sea. Not sure if it’ll support Fluttershy’s weight or not, though.”

Rarity grunted in frustration, and pinched her brow. It was always one thing or another with Fluttershy. She might be able to smash entire legions of undead like it was nothing, and chip any trees they might be hiding behind into sawdust, but forget so much as getting her through a door.

She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor mare, though, what with not even being able to get inside when it rained or even put back whatever she knocked down without leaving a claw mark the size of a bear.

“Why couldn’t she be Big Macintosh’s size and not two stories tall?” she groaned.

“Yeah, that’d be a whole lot easier,” Spike nodded. “That reminds me—where did Rainbow Dash say she was going to take her again?”

“Back to the coast to help her blow off steam,” Twilight replied. “If there isn’t anything for her to smash, I’m not sure how Rainbow Dash could help.”

Pinkie Pie never did understand why Rainbow Dash said that her sister Maud never sounded happy and always spoke in some dull monotone. Maud had practically been bursting at the seams with excitement ever since she found them. She was just really, really good at not exploding from it all, that was it. Not even Pinkie could hold everything in sometimes.

“Looks like you’ve all gotten the hang of this,” Maud said from her spot on Pinkie’s back.

The rain had passed maybe hour ago, so Pinkie had taken her sister up into the trees on her back to watch her friends. Rainbow Dash had gone outside to experiment with fanciful forms. And she was really good at it, too! From minotaur, to elephant, to flying spaghetti monster, it didn’t look like anything Dash could imagine was out of her reach. Except maybe cupcakes. Pinkie Pie doubted she could become one of those. A shame, too… she kinda wondered what that would tas—

Pinkie shook herself like a maraca to clear out the bad thoughts. This caused the tree branch she was straddling like a coiled snake to bob up and down in protest, sending a few wet leaves fluttering to the ground.

“Mm hmm!” She nodded at Maud’s assessment. “All these weird poky limbs I’ve got now were a bit of a doozy to handle for a while, but… oh, you’re comfy, right?”

“Snug as a bug,” Maud replied calmly. Pinkie’s tentacles were wrapped over her back legs and torso, holding her in place like an organic seatbelt, yet allowing her shining expression of happiness to peek out just to the side of Pinkie’s head.

“Maybe she could turn into a rock.”

Pinkie giggled at the thought of Rainbow Dash as a nice big geode full of shiny, shiny quartz. “Mayyy-be… She does like to nap a lot, and she wouldn’t have to move if— Oh! Oh! She’s trying something else!”

Pinkie stared at Rainbow’s protean, shifting form, a palette of swirling colors like gallons of different paints being mixed together. “Hmmm…” she muttered, narrowing her eyes to a squint. A massive, metallic form began to take shape from the mass. “Hmmmm…”

A sudden gurgle in Pinkie’s gut distracted her. The funny feeling spread out from her stomach throughout her body, tingling softly in her limbs. She shivered on the branch, watching a bushel of leaves swish at its end.

Reaching over with her tongues, she broke off the branch and practically inhaled it and its foliage. Her body rumbled in acceptance of its momentary appeasement.

“Oooooh!” she exclaimed, seeing Rainbow’s transformative state collapsing on itself. She then pulled a pair of candy-cane sunglasses from nowhere and slipped them over her boggly eyes. “This is gonna be guuuuud!”

------------------------

Rainbow practically exploded from the shifting primordial mass at once, slamming four legs as shiny as chrome half a foot deep into the wet sand around her. She towered almost as high as Pinkie’s tree (which was thankfully a safe distance off), bristling with steel spikes all over her back like a bed of giant nails. She lifted her head high, the motion causing a consistent churning of metal on metal, and leveled two cerise-red eyes the size of cannonballs at Fluttershy with a defiant smirk.

“All systems… GO!” Rainbow proclaimed, raising a foreleg into the air in a triumphant pose.

And then Fluttershy slammed straight into her like a hundred-ton steel avalanche.

The tremendous force of the crash echoed outward in a deafening shockwave. Caught off-guard, Rainbow was immediately forced into a crouch, her armored hind legs gouging deep trenches into the turf.

Fluttershy’s booming laugh was almost as loud as the screech from the bodies of the two iron titans locking together. She gained greater leverage over Rainbow and toppled her backward. Rainbow crashed down hard, throwing up a geyser of sand into the air.

“Gaah! What the hay, Fluttershy?!”

Her friend giggled, looming over Rainbow triumphantly. “We’re here to have fun, right? I thought you were all about surprises.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes with a reluctant smirk. “Yeah, got me there. Just let me…”

Rainbow rocked herself like a turtle, grunting and trying to twist her legs around. After a bout of fruitless effort, she looked cringingly to Fluttershy.

“Help me up?”

Fluttershy’s laugh roared out, terribly loud and hoarse, augmented by the fluttering bellows-lungs behind the sizable hole in her chest.

She rolled Rainbow onto her side, and she got up from there.

“Got enough outta that show?” Rainbow sneered playfully.

Fluttershy nodded, still sputtering out the last playful sniggers.

“Right. First, let’s see what you got.” Rainbow reared up on her hind legs, the limbs locking and shifting for easy counterbalance. She raised her balled-up claws before her face in a guard. “Gimme a punch.”

Fluttershy copied the stance, grinning, and raised a fist. Rainbow shot a claw forth, grabbing hers by the wrist. She made a mock punch wit the other, stopping just before Fluttershy’s muzzle.

”Don’t wind up. It gives too much warning.”

Rainbow released her grip, and Fluttershy followed through in a hammer blow, creating a starburst of sparks between her fist and Rainbow’s cheek. Rainbow caught her own fall, propping up on one leg and manually rolling her jaw with the other.

“What’s wrong, Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy jeered. “You said to give no warning!”

Fluttershy stopped smiling when Rainbow made a pained groan. “Oh, you’re really hurt? I thought you could take that like I could.”

“I don’t even know,” Rainbow grunted.

Fluttershy lowered her head to get a better look at the possible injury. In that moment, Rainbow Dash lunged headfirst into Fluttershy’s chest, hugging her by the middle and laughing as she slammed her friend down into the surf.

-------------------------

“This is great,” Maud said. “I never would have imagined I’d see anything like this in real life.”

“Me neither. I never told the others, but out of all the things Fluttershy could have turned into, I think this is totally the most awesome.”

The spar between the giants was like two dancers of opposite styles trying to meet in the same tune. Rainbow struck rapidly, keeping Fluttershy on the backfoot, and favoring precision and knowing where to block and jab. Fluttershy on the other hand used her whole body as a weapon, shoulder tackling and making broad sweeping attacks to bring the full momentum of her tonnage to smash aside Rainbow’s blows.

“It’s so surreal,” Maud said. “Like thinking I would ever see you again.”

Pinkie nuzzled at Maud’s cheek. “Hey, you think after this, we could make rock candy necklaces afterward, like old times?”

Maud looked back at Pinkie. The faintest hint of a smile curled the edges of her mouth. “Sure.”

Those were the only two ways. Norsca, or Troll country. The oversea route was clearly out, as even if Fluttershy could follow them properly underwater, they would have no way of knowing if she’d walk into a trench and get stuck, or if the immense depth pressure would finally be too much for even her immense body to handle. Bailing her out in the former case would take an enormous effort, and the latter was simply too big of a risk.

Spike and Twilight continued to pore over the map for any alternatives, up to and including the outlandish, such as Rainbow turning into a full-grown dragon and flying them all the way to the North.

Rarity, however, had a better idea knocking around in her head.

“Spike, what do you think about me using magic to find another way?”

Spike turned her a curious look. “What do you mean by that?”

The sorcerer twiddled her skeletal thumbs. “I mean, I could perhaps… If I were to use the Warp to see further than this piece of paper can tell us, then...” she left the rest hanging.

Spike sat back, sighing as he stared half-heartedly at Rarity for nearly a minute. He had the look about him of someone who knew exactly what was happening. “Do you know what creatures live in the Empyrean?”

Rarity counted on her fingers, “The Chaos gods, their daemons, uhh...”

“That’s just in the Realm of Chaos, which is only part of the Warp. Enslavers, Spectres, Furies, and Khymeras literally made of the stuff of nightmares—as a start—inhabit the rest. And where there’s one, there’s usually hundreds more just waiting around the next corner. And I say ‘corner’ very metaphorically, because even the terrain—if there even is any—could just decide it doesn’t like you and disappear right out from under your feet.” He regarded her gravely. “What’s the longest time you’ve been outside your body?”

“Um… Fifteen minutes?”

Spike sucked on his teeth. “I could end it right there, but… Have you ever tried to see the Warp before?”

“No,” Rarity sighed. Her face scrunched hard and she folded her legs upon the sofa.

Twilight rolled up the map, looking at her worriedly. “You’re actually going to try?”

“I’d have to start at some point. I’ll just take a peek—”

Spike’s claw landed heavy on her shoulder with a firm grip. “Trust nothing. Nothing you see, nothing that approaches you. Sorcerers’ souls have a strong presence in the Warp, so there will be entities after yours. Got it?”

The sudden cold look Spike gave Rarity sent a chill up her spine. She nodded in assent, and Spike pulled back. Twilight was wringing her hooves.

“Are you wondering if you could come with me, Twilight?” Rarity asked.

“Um, yeah. Just also thinking whether or not I’d be able to control myself because, well… I’m a daemon, sitting next to a sorcerer's soul, as Spike just said.”

Rarity suddenly became very aware of the display of vampiric dentistry in Twilight’s awkward frown. “The only times you’ve lost control were when you were blood-starved,” she pointed out. “Other than that, you haven’t gone crazy at the drop of a hat. And don’t you worry, Spike. Just a peek around.”

Spike sat back, working a claw over his mouth in contemplation. “Go on.”

Spike and Twilight went outside. Best for Rarity to keep a calm concentration without waiting, expecting onlookers.

Rarity sat up straight and controlled her breath. The feeling of a million tiny pinpricks buzzed in her brain as usual in her more complex conjurings. Her flesh grew cold, and she took her first shallow steps into the empyrean. Her soul slipped out of its corporeal vessel and took the subconscious pipeline. What felt like midway through, gravity reversed, and she was falling into a blackness, unceremoniously crashing on her back among a million brushing sensations.

Her head pounded, and she arched her bluntly shocked back off the ground, mouthing a silent scream. A nauseating rush of vertigo persisted as she leaned herself up.

She looked around, taking in a vast grassy plain, glistening with early-morning dew as gently as nighttime stars under the purple and red-brushed dawning sky. The wind pressed her with warm waves, carrying the scent of the plain, some distant wildflowers in bloom. In the distance was a series of jiggling dots, which upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be some sort of grizzly-looking six-legged buffalo, dipping their heads down to the grass.

Rarity held her position as calmly as possible until the sick feeling in her being finally abated. Replacing it, however, was a powerful thirst, as though she’d just run several miles. The rough, sandpapery sensation in her dry mouth proved to be immensely distracting, but she didn’t let her focus slip for even a second. Keeping her aura one of placid calm was imperative to not let her body of light flare up as a beacon for hungry warp-beasts.

She was rewarded for her patience by the faint sound of running water, coming from beyond the pine needle-strewn treeline of a very thick wood not too far away.

Heading for the trees, Rarity kept double-taking on the innocent-looking bison creatures. Spike’s warning still echoed through her mind.

Trust nothing.

Still, if it was an illusion, it was a beautiful one. She let her hands brush against the tall grass as she walked. How majestic must the real Empyrean be if all this was to simply be comprehensible to her smaller mind?

She looked up from the glistening plain, finding, many miles away, a great, snow-capped mountain. Its summit billowed a leaning column of smoke and ran rivulets of lava down its black slopes.

Rarity paused. That was certainly a change worthy of note. Questioning the illusion probably meant breaking it, though, and so she turned her focus back on the forest.

Eerily, she found nothing living under the branches, and absolutely no sounds—not even insects—came forth from within. It was as though nature itself had declared the area a ghost town… or it was like a new construction still devoid of tenants.

It wasn’t long before she came upon the stream and its shimmering clear waters. Immediately she stopped, carefully scanning the banks of the water for anything suspicious. Everything seemed okay. The plants here looked little different from each other, just another old growth forest as one might find in abundance on the northern border of the Empire.

Everything looks benign enough… but…

Rarity bent down, rubbing a single bony finger against the wet sandbank, and tentatively touched it to her lips.

Two seconds. Five. Ten.

Nothing.

She sighed out in relief. At least she could try a sip; better that than deal with this thirst that left her throat scratchy and consumed her concentration. Rarity knelt fully on the bank of the stream, scooped up a cold handful, and slurped a bit into her mouth—

A hellish chemical burn coursed across her tongue, striking her throat like a hot branding iron. She screamed and shot to her feet, throwing down the sticky wad of molten slag the water had become.

It was then she saw that the calm stream had changed into a rushing river of ash and red-brown mud. A multitude of corpses of men and stallions clogged its width, being swallowed up and resurfacing at the whim of the surging rapids.

Rarity hacked her own blood into the mess, each cough setting her chest pounding. Her voice was lost. Whipping fire blinded her in a multi-hued cacophony of color, giving way to a barrenness of a plain coated in ash and littered bones of humans and the tusks and skulls of beastmen—or daemons. Fat flakes of flame rained from the lightning-stabbed, blackened sky among buffeting gusts of wind.

Things, as far as Rarity could see through her teary, stinging eyes, things were killing each other with every kind of weapon conceivable. The noise; a million voices screaming impossible pitches, the screeching grind of metal and thunder. Her ears didn’t ring, didn’t give the relief of deafness from the cacophony.

One of the creatures charged Rarity, a cloven-hooved being with no skin but bloody red muscle and a flaming two-handed axe in its claws. Its yellow, serpentine eyes gleamed with murderous intent.

Bloodletter! Rarity’s dazed mind screamed in terror. One of Khorne’s own servants, and among the most deadly purveyors of carnage and death. A will that knew only bloodshed.

The daemon shrieked in a beastial frenzy, leaping with its cruel weapon held high over its head. Rarity raised a hand in a futile attempt to block.

But the strike never came, as the thing was suddenly vaporized by a blinding blast of white lightning, followed by a tremendous, near-deafening thunderclap that left Rarity’s ears ringing. Nothing but ashes remained of the bloodletter, so fine they flittered away like dust on the wind.

Terrified of the mad battlefield, Rarity tried to crawl away along the porous, rocky ground. She didn’t make it far before something seized the back of her neck in a crushing vise grip, jerking her into the air.

“Just in time,” chuckled a feminine voice. A great skeletal hand spun Rarity around as if some being she couldn’t see were examining her.

“Wow. It’s so small,” another, softer voice giggled.

The hand twisted Rarity about, again, and again. She stared, but saw nothing but an obscured, off-white blur. The ‘head’ of the thing seemed to shake as she watched. “Look at you… so weak. This is not your place, or your time. Go back, before you ruin this.”

The claw tightened its grip, and Rarity’s neck snapped under the force.

Applejack circled one of the Pies’ apple trees appraisingly. She scanned up and down the trunk, knocked at the roots, and picked up the freshest-looking apple that had fallen off. She took a bite, chewed thoroughly, and the wad of chyme fell out through a hole in her neck.

“Golden Russets ain’t supposed to be this soft,” she said, turning to Blinkie who was up a ladder against the neighboring tree, picking and dropping the fruit into a wicker basket.

“Really?” Blinkie asked.

“Sure as the sun is bright. Take it from a veteran apple farmer. Looky here.” Applejack stood before a criss-crossing of roots between the trees. “Them roots are already startin’ to strangle each other. Spread ‘em out more and they’ll get all the nutrients they’ll need without invadin’ each other’s space.”

The Pie sister stepped down, regarding the trees skeptically. “Well, we don’t exactly have that much space in this patch… already put up the fence and all, y’know.”

“Hmm… I’m sure you could plant ‘em past the fence. Anything that can threaten your trees’ll think no problem of it. Vampire fruit bats, apple maggots, they just go right up.”

Blinkie hummed thoughtfully. “It’s either going to be backbreaking work, or really expensive to move four or five full-grown trees, roots and all, though.”

“Yeah, that’s true...” Applejack scratched at her chin, and caught a glimpse of the Pie family’s barn. A smile slowly spread over her crust-caked face. “Unless…”

-----------------------------------

Fluttershy dug her claws deep into the ground on either side of the last tree, and tore it straight out like pulling up a weed. The awesome feat barely seemed to faze the metal powerhouse. She hauled the huge tree well over the fence, and placed it roots-down in a pre-prepared hole she’d dug out with her claws. Compared to digging trenches around Middenheim, this was a cinch.

“Ya know, this is the first time I’ve seen ‘er smile in a long, long time,” Applejack remarked.

Blinkie, who up to this point had been staring fish-mouthed at the whole scene, finally shook her head. “Jeez… I’d hate to see what happens when she’s having a bad day.”

Applejack nodded sagely. “You really don’t wanna know.” Raising a hoof, she waved to her friend. “Thank ya kindly, Fluttershy!”

The giant chuckled good-naturedly. Doing something constructive for her friends seemed to liven up her mood considerably. Before she could respond, Rainbow Dash climbed out of the tangle of iron chains that formed her mane.

“Finally!” she breathed out in exaggerated impatience. Rainbow leaned down from Fluttershy’s forehead, peering upside-down into her eyes. “Now let’s get a move on to the beach. We’re gonna have some fun, you and I!”

“Oh… Oh!” Fluttershy beamed in comprehension. “I almost forgot. Are you… um… sure you can really turn into… that?”

“What, are you kidding? If I can turn into Arky-con and get his voice down in one go, that won’t be a problem.” Rainbow sniggered. “You shoulda seen the looks on their faces back in Middenheim. Priceless!”

“Really...?” Fluttershy queried, drawing the word out in interest. She began stomping away towards the property’s main path, listening intently “What’d you say to them, exactly?”

“Oh, I was all like, ”Cower before me, humans!” And I’m waving the sword around, like, “The Storm of Chaos has arrived! Your end is…””

As their voices faded into the distance, Applejack and Blinkie took the time to review Fluttershy’s handiwork. The soil was packed down well enough; a few more rainy days and it would be worn flat. Blinkie found herself walking into one of Fluttershy’s large claw prints.

“So if that’s one of the first times, she must be a hoofful the rest of the time,” she noted.

“Oh!” Applejack threw a hoof to the air in an exasperated laugh. “Yeah. It’s hard keepin’ on her good side, since she gets angry at darn-near anything. She’ll even get mad if she thinks you think she’s already mad. So, you’d be right; she’s already mad!”

Blinkie chuckled. “And then what about Pinkamena? Marble told me about their run-in where she ate her whole? Does that… happen often?”

“Oh, about that. She’ll usually keep herself full on anything, whole world’s a great big buffet ta her; wood, dirt, rocks, leaves… people...“

Silence hung between them for several seconds. Applejack absently kicked a rock aside.

“But, ya know, she tries not to let it get to that point, ‘specially after Rarity started gettin’ involved in her diet fer… I really don’t know why. But sometimes I do wonder, after she’s stuffed herself silly, and its gone in an hour, ‘where does it all go?’”

Applejack took one last glance at Fluttershy before she disappeared into the treeline. She seemed oblivious, barely missing stepping on a slouching man.

She did a double-take. Wait…

A figure stood just on the edge of the treeline, facing in their direction. Applejack couldn’t quite make him out over the distance.

“Hey, were y’all expecting somepony?” she asked uneasily.

“No. We don’t get many visitors,” Blinkie replied. “Do you see somepony?”

Applejack pointed him out. “Right out there. Clear as day. He’s just standin’ there. Don’t think he’s friendly.”

Blinkie squinted in the same direction. Her face turned grim. “I’ll get our rifle.”

Applejack headed up to the stranger while Blinkie went to the house. The closer Applejack got, the stranger he looked. He only had one eye, dessicated arms, and ragged, muddy clothes.

“Hey! Who are you, and what’re ya doi’n… here…”

His jaw dropped slackly, letting a small swarm of writhing black roaches spill out onto the ground. His cracked lips curled into a smile. “Hello, child.”

Applejack craned her head back, refusing to break eye contact with the rotten man. “Blinkie! Ya almost found it?!”

A reply came back faintly from the house. “Got it!”

“I don’t want her to think you mad,” he groaned. “She cannot see me. Besides,” He casually swiped his hand at the nearest tree. The limb passed straight through the trunk like an incorporeal specter.

“I cannot harm her.”

Before Applejack could respond to the display, Blinkie returned at a brisk trot, carrying a short but thick-looking rifle attached to her right foreleg.

Applejack blinked. She was used to seeing guns that the humans used by now, but this one didn’t have a buttstock. The trigger mechanism, rather than sitting on the bottom of the rifle at hand level as she remembered, instead sat on top of the metal frame, with a leather strap wrapped around it and feeding back into the wooden body of the gun, making it look more like a crossbow.

“Right, where is he?” Blinkie asked, scanning the woods. She was standing no more than ten feet from the phantasmal zombie.

Applejack did another double-take. The figure raised a rotting, four-fingered hand, waving it at the Pie sister in a greeting gesture. Its head turned towards Applejack, smirking to display rows of misshapen black teeth.

She stammered out, “I, uh… scared him off! Yep! Took one look at me and high-tailed it faster than a snake spottin’ a mongoose!”

Blinkie made a thoughtful ‘hmmm’. She raised her gun-bearing foreleg toward the woods, then tilted her head slightly to sight down the barrel. Moments later, Blinkie turned her fetlock in a sharp downward twist.

The rifle fired with a crackling peal, causing several small birds to leap from the trees in fright. Blinkie turned her fetlock back, which apparently re-cocked the weapon, and then repeated the action three times more.

“There. That should keep him scared off.” She turned back to Applejack with the faintest hint of a smirk. “There’s still a lot I’ve got to do before the sun goes down. Mind keeping an eye out if he comes back?”

Applejack glanced at the zombie-thing whose teeth were grinning through a lipless mouth. “Um… Sure.” She double-taked again, glancing at the still-smoking firearm strapped to Blinkie’s leg. “So all ya have to do is turn your hoof? How do ya stop it from goin’ off when you bend down to pick a carrot or something?”

“Heh…” Blinkie gave her a thoughtful look. “You much for long explanations?”

The zombie frowned. “Stall all you like, but your friend can’t wait.”

Applejack ignored him.

“Ok.” Blinkie lifted her foreleg, pointing out a thick leather strap wrapped around the bottom half below the joint. “See this?” she said, then bent the leg at a downward angle. The strap followed her motion, stretching just as easily as a rubber band.

“There’s a switch on the frame—” Blinkie sat down, then used her free foreleg to point out a small slider on the side “—that acts like a catch. Like this, the strap can extend all the way. With the switch off, though, it goes rigid, and I couldn’t bend this leg even if I tried.

“That’s just what helps with aim and recoil, though. The firing mechanism—” she pointed to her fetlock, which was wrapped with a separate strip of leather “—I can just turn on and off with another switch, which covers the gap between the hammer and cartridge with a sheet of brass. Pretty crude, but a decent safety.”

She grimaced for a moment, then chuckled knowingly. “I got tired of all the awkward metal clinks, though, so I opened the thing up and just tied a bit of an old cloth rag to it. Works like a charm, now.”

“Huh.“ Applejack nodded approvingly. “Seems real simple, actually. This come from that Empire place that makes all them fancy cannons? ‘Null’-somethin’?”

“Nah, it’s local,” Blinkie shrugged. “A human gunsmith in Wilhelmskoog was looking for a challenge, so we commissioned him for it. What they’re doing over in Nuln probably led to this, though…” She trailed off, looking at Applejack curiously. “Why? Are you looking to get one, too?”

Applejack couldn’t help but laugh darkly at that. “It’s a nice idea, but…” She glanced down to the crusty fungal growths on her forelegs that still wept a thin trail of fluid. “Ah don’t think mah body would agree with it.”

“Repent your words, my child,” the ghostly zombie chuckled good-naturedly. “You need no device save your own gifts.”

Shut up, Applejack seethed inwardly.

Blinkie, oblivious to the rotting apparition, made a half-turn and glanced back at Applejack. “Well, I’d better get back to work. If he comes around again, let me know, alright?”

The farm pony nodded. “Sure thing, sugarcube.”

Applejack slowly walked along the forest’s edge, watching Blinkie walk into the distance. She then barged up to the zombie who, inexplicably, was now sporting a long white beard, smoking a polished wooden pipe, and his arm was reattached.

“Finally, she’s gone,” he coughed. “She’s disgusting. If she keeps up working like that, she’ll have at least another fifty-seven years in her.”

“Who… are you?”

“Of course, how rude not to say it sooner. Nurgh-leth.” He plucked the pipe from his blistered lips and waved it about fancifully. “Lord of Flies, Plague Lord, the Great Lich, and Father of All; et cetera, et cetera.”

“Nurgh-leth? So yer related to that Nurgle guy, ain’t ya?”

The zombie shrugged and replaced his pipe. “You’re not wrong.”

“I’ll have you know you ain’t in friendly company.” Applejack’s nostrils flared, and she pointed back at the house. “We’ve got a—”

“A dragon, an alicorn, a giant juggernaut, a shapeshifter, an anorexic sorcerer, three fillies, and a binge-eating candy-creature,” he interrupted, ignoring Applejack’s sneer. “I told you I mean no harm. I come to warn you of the sorcerer’s health.”

“Yeah, thanks to the likes ‘a you, she’s a walking sandbag! I can imagine it’d feel crummy!”

“No, no. She’s dealing with magic she doesn’t yet understand, and it will destroy her if you don’t listen.”

He drew a fungus-encrusted cane from nowhere, glistening with secretions and crystalline salt deposits, and headed toward the house.

Applejack paused. He knew so much. Did he even know if she’d follow him?

By the time he was halfway there, she started trotting after.

“I’m pretty sure yer lying,” Applejack deadpanned. She ducked under the sill while Nurgh-leth was conspicuously peeping in.

“Am I now?” he said, stepping aside and pointed the cane to the window. “Take a look for yourself.”

Applejack grunted and leaned over the sill, just in time for the glass to explode in the wake of an eldritch screaming originating from inside. Applejack stumbled back and ducked out of view again.

Nurgh-leth’s dry laughter came like that of a victim of consumption, getting a good look at Applejack’s glass-sliced face. She shot him a vicious glare.

“I know how you can help her.”

Applejack snorted. “Help ‘er? All you wanna do, all I can do, is hurt ponies.”

“Just spit in the tea.”

Applejack cocked her head sideways. “...Pardon?”

The zombie articulated clearly, maggots falling from his jaws. “Spit in the tea. She’ll recoil at first, but down a cup if you do it without her looking. It will soothe her.”

Applejack stifled a laugh, but before she could rebut, the undead went on. “I’ve done much the same for the Glott brothers.” He regarded her confused, yet interested look.

“Fine triplets they are. Their mother would have miscarried them if not for her pleading my aid to undo a miserable little hag’s curse on her. Three healthy and hearty men they grew up to be, all a labor of love that I give freely to those who simply ask.”

“Well... I didn’t ask fer my lot,” Applejack frowned.

“I know, I know.” he nodded solemnly. “Ah, Feyotr and Braeburn, always my most zealous sons.”

“Hey! Braeburn ain’t no son a’ yer’s.”

“Well, I don’t take them. They give themselves to me. They find unity, brotherhood, and their good works proclaim my glory.”

“Glory?!” Applejack’s gaze turned venomous. “Get out of here.”

“Applejack, my child. I only want your happiness.” He reached a bony hand towards her, palm upraised. “You think Braeburn and Macintosh suffer by their flesh, but they only suffer without you, without Apple Bloom—”

“Get out!”

Applejack swung an axe-headed hoof into Nurgh-leth’s head, disintegrating it into a cloud of ancient dust. Swarming insects gushed from its deflated skin, consuming the remains of the body in mere seconds, and then frantically burrowed into the ground.

Applejack grinned at the rout of the bugs. “N’ stay gone.”

“Phew, what stinks?” whispered a voice from the window.

Applejack sprang back up to the sill. “Ya rang?”

Spike started in the middle of retrieving a tea kettle. “Oh, Applejack. I, uh, didn’t know you were there. Were you here the whole time?”

Applejack put on a crooked smile. “What makes you say that?”

“Your face is full of broken glass,” he deadpanned.

“Oh! Um…” the farm pony sighed. “Alright, fine, I was watching. I’m just worried about Rares, that’s all.”

Spike sighed, glancing back inside with a solemn expression. “Yeah… she’s not doing too well, as you can probably imagine. She went literally ice cold in seconds. Plus, there’s no wood in the fireplace, and no time to pile some in. And…” He paused, cringing. “Ah, damn, the pot’s gone cold.”

Spike set the pot down, then rubbed his claws together and puffed a breath of verdant flames onto them. Even with his talons glowing with heat, Spike didn’t even flinch. He grasped the heavy metal pot, letting the heat carry through to boil the liquid within.

Applejack absently pulled a shard of glass out of her chest, then stabbed it into her neck to join another three pieces until she could find a place to dispose of them. “If yer in a hurry, I won’t keep ya. Give Rarity my best.”

Spike nodded quickly, then turned to withdraw into the house. “I will.”

Applejack mused on his haste, how he was always willing claw and foot to help Rarity back in Ponyville. She glanced on the kitchen counter just inside, where small spots of fungal growths were rapidly sprouting. They all formed a ring around where the teapot had been.

She blinked uneasily.

Some a’ that couldn’t have gotten in the pot, could it?

Night had fallen, and Pinkie Pie was remorseful that everyone was so separated across the property during dinner and afterward. Fluttershy was given shelter in the Pie sisters’ barn with Twilight to keep her company in their sleepless nights. Spike was dutifully occupied tending to Rarity, with her sputtering gibberish and inability to sit still even for a moment. Applejack and Apple Bloom couldn’t even enter the house, and the three mortal sisters simply had apprehensions of Sweetie Belle’s fiery disposition. In the end it was only Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo, and the Pies around the table.

Rainbow Dash took up most of the conversation, ever the glory hound, with stories of her exploits from Ponyville and answers to all the questions the Pies had about her captivity in Cloudsdale. They were particularly interested in the city itself.

Rainbow Dash felt it a bit cringe-worthy that they referred to it as a ‘holy’ city. It was Rainbow’s old home, and she took pride in it, no doubt, but it had certainly become a theocracy. That its citizens lived as if it were one city-sized church made Rainbow sick. As far into listening to current events in Equestria she went, she knew Celestia and Luna to be completely secular in how the population looked up to her.

But now, the church was the State.

The Pie sisters took turns relating their transition into Imperial society, finding a home, sending Maud to complete her education, and how her skills helped improve resource output. The arms factories in Norden paid heftily and ate up all the coal and iron they grew, which spurred digging the farm out of debt.

The mood took a turn for the worse when Pinkie Pie asked where their parents were. Their mother had succumbed to illness three years prior, and their ‘Papa’ had been conscripted into the army. Since the Adversary’s last invasion, Nordland was desperate for troops to stem the tide of the chaos Ostland had fallen to. Pinkie practiced the greatest restraint in not devouring the whole table to drown her grief, but offered to polish off any refuse and scraps after dinner.

The Pies would end up missing two plates and several pieces of silverware.

Rarity had soon after either fallen asleep or passed out. Spike and Pinkie couldn’t tell. Spike departed to try to put together a new window to replace the broken one, and Pinkie Pie assumed a watch over Rarity.

Pinkie laid with Rarity on the couch, the candy-mare sprawled with her head on Rarity’s lap. Her friend was damp in sweat and cold as the unused side of a pillow. Her lips silently uttered words Pinkie couldn't read with sporadic twitches and scrunching her face in terror or a scowl. Rarity seemed well under control, at least for the time being, and if she got distressed, Pinkie would be right beside her.

She shut her eyes to at least sleep off the boredom of the night, and not look at what she could see her mother as having been.

“Pinkie… Pie.”

Pinkie launched upright, catching Rarity’s barely-open eyes. “Oh! You’re awake!”

“Put your head back. Put your head back,” Rarity moaned.

“Oh… um, okay.”

Rarity cradled Pinkie’s head against her chest for the abundant body heat and sleepily scanned over the pink and white-striped body connected to it with a hand stroking the length of her neck.

“I’m kind of jealous, Pinkie. If I were marked by Slaanesh, my mind could flow free. Oh, what I could create with such a blessing.”

Pinkie wasn’t listening. She rumbled a steady purr, and one of her legs kicked like a dog as Rarity’s hand moved its massage to her middle, and plucked at the stitches criss-crossing up the center.

“And this... this bottomless pit you’ve got here. Eat as much as you like and never gain a pound. Oh, you torment me.”

Rarity retrieved her hand, and wiped a buildup of frost off her shoulder. She shivered. “Could I… go inside?”

“You’re already inside,” Pinkie said groggily. “Ceiling's right up there.”

Rarity rested her hand on Pinkie’s belly. “No. In here.”

Pinkie’s gut made a low groan at the request. She felt a tension along the stitches as her middle strained to open up. “O-Oh, I… I don’t think I’m done with dinner yet, and besides, I Pinkie Promised I wouldn’t eat—”

“I’ll call it off, just for tonight, eh?” Rarity murmured, her eyes flickering different shades of blue and green. “I’m just so cold.”

Pinkie swallowed excess drool that was already building up. “Really? B-but for how long? I don’t wanna make a mess of you.”

“Why do you think you couldn't absorb Twilight before?”

Pinkie shrugged.

“Because she doesn’t truly have ‘flesh’ anymore. Her origins are quite peculiar.” Rarity sharpened one of her fingers and pricked her palm and let fall a trickle of sand. “And me? Heh... Skin and blood left me some time ago.”

Pinkie sat up. Her stomach was already growling impatiently in anticipation for dessert. “Um… You’re really, really sure about this?”

“If what happened to Twilight is anything to go by.” Rarity wiggled her toes. “Feet first?”

Pinkie immediately scurried off the couch and raised Rarity’s sharp talons up. “So just tell me if you start feeling itchy, because that means I’m starting to melt you down, okay?”

Getting only a grunt of affirmation in return, Pinkie let her mouth hang open for several black tongues to sweep forward. She kept up a smile to assure her wincing friend that everything was alright as they coiled around her legs and torso, and pinned her arms securely to her sides. Pinkie hesitated for a few seconds with a twofold purpose, letting her tongues lick up the imaginary taste of vanilla ice cream and white chocolate from her friend’s body, and to wet her down for smoother passage.

Pinkie Pie carefully moved forward, sliding Rarity’s feet and legs down her gullet, slurping up to her haunches before her jawbone popped loose, her mouth was forced to stretch out further, and the friction demanded more effort.

Her first swallow made Rarity squeak as she was drawn down, bringing Pinkie’s lips around her abdomen. Pinkie moaned at the feeling of Rarity’s talons scratching the bottom of her stomach, and how she shifted her long legs in her throat to get a feel for her devourer’s insides.

Pinkie’s stomach growled loudly at the stimulation. She could feel it constricting on Rarity’s legs, desperate to be filled with something as delectable as the white sorcerer.

Pinkie hoisted Rarity off the couch, balancing the alabaster mare with her head tilted back to align her esophagus. Pinkie pulled down with her tongues and swallowed again, closing her lips around Rarity’s chest, and another convulsion left only Rarity’s head in open air.

“Oh… oh my,” Rarity murmured as black tentacles wrapped over her face.

In another gulp, Pinkie closed her lips around the crown of her head.

Oh, yes, Pinkie sang in her head, overwhelmed by the myriad sensations of her entire body writhing with activity to ingest the sorcerer.

Pinkie hummed blissfully and raised one claw to the sinking lumps in her neck, and the other to her belly which stretched out generously to accommodate the size of the meal.

Mine. All mine.

When she felt the last of her friend get squeezed into her gut, she let her tongues hang out in a long sigh of satisfaction. licking her lips, and sat back with her plump, fuzzy belly splayed out on the floor. A chorus of glottal groans from within signaled the overactive digestive sack was already beginning its work.

Pinkie gave Rarity a while to get acquainted with her surroundings, and sucked on bits of loose white and blue hair left in her mouth to bask in the afterglow of the fun. It felt as if she had just tanked two-dozen cartons of ice cream and a whole bottle of blueberry syrup. And it was wonderful.

“Oh, thank you, Rarity. You’re one of the tastiest ponies I’ve ever had. You comfy?”

“It smells. Whatever this slop is is chunky, and I think there’s something sharp sticking me in the bottom.”

Pinkie’s ears fell against her head. “Oh… really? I mean, I told you my tummy wasn’t done with dinner.”

“But… You’re plenty warm, and soft. I swear, you must metabolise like a fire to wood.”

Pinkie squirmed in ecstasy at Rarity rubbing her belly from the inside. She slowly climbed back onto the couch so as not to jostle her guest, the effort particularly hard with the extra weight that made her gut sag like a bag full of rocks.

Stretching her legs, she said, “You’re really heavy for being so skinny. Anyway, mi estómago es tu casa. Lemme know if you need anything.”

Pinkie relaxed her head on the armrest and watched the squirming mound in her middle for a few minutes. It shook and made squishy, bubbly noises as Rarity must have been adjusting herself. The magician’s hands and talons pushed outward intermittently, the flavors of her body mixing well with the partially digested fruits and vegetables from dinner. Pinkie giggled at the ticklish prodding, and when the organ made a strong convulsion in response to the stimulus, some air was forced out in the form of a harsh burp.

Pinkie pondered who could be the next meal to try. Rainbow Dash? It would take some persuading, or make it a condition if she won some bet with her. Pinkie unconsciously licked her lips imagining what the pegasus might taste like. But she cringed a bit at the memory of sampling the concentrated, raw rainbow juice at the Rainbow Factory back in Equestria.

Ick. Spicy.

Applejack? Certainly not; that would be quite literally eating rotten meat. She lingered on the thought of Spike; what a feast he’d make, but the odds of getting him willingly were slim to none, and she really didn’t want to find out what dragonfire would do to her insides.

After a while, her paunch shrank and settled into a lumpy dome, vaguely showing the figure of Rarity under a thick sheet of gurgling, pulsing flesh. The movement inside soon diminished greatly, and Pinkie gently rubbed at Rarity’s back.

Looks like she finally found a good position. Get yourself nestled in.

Her gut’s slow shifting and rocking ended Rarity’s movement all together, and Pinkie chuckled to herself, realising she would have to explain her late-night snack to Spike once he came back. She figured she’d cross that bridge when she got to it, and shut her eyes to follow Rarity’s example.

She felt her cheeks getting wet, and reached a hoof up to wipe the tears from her eyes. She giggled inanely, and wondered why she would possibly be crying. She had a full stomach, helping a friend as her sleeping bag, and even though she knew she’d have to leave her sisters again, she was already making plans to come back once the whole mess was over.

Pinkie wiped her eyes again, rested her claws on her chest and sniffled.

“Huh… weird.”

That ocean, that roiling sea of thoughts and souls. So beautiful, so dangerous. Rarity could remember it so vividly. The grass, the noise, the fire. It all swirled around in a splashing soup of memories. Those monsters. She could almost feel their claws crushing her neck, their nails drawing rivulets of blood. She could still remember vividly the touch of one muscled-thing, so searing hot it may as well have been a flaming blade from Khorne’s own forge. It roared, deep and bellowing like every beast of nature in one.

Get away!

Rarity stirred, finding nothing but pitch blackness before her, and the feeling that one of her legs was rigidly extended. She drew it back, making a wet sucking sound against some elastic surface which fit around it like a tight sock.

A terrible chemical bitterness on her tongue reminded her vaguely of a green and purple, scaly thing telling her something. ‘It’ll warm you up,’ it told her. ‘I’m right here.’ Whatever she was fed, it tasted awful, like milk set out in the sun, a week past the expiration date, and it still lingered.

She felt partially submerged in some sticky liquid up to her elbows and, lifting her head, she felt the wet slapping of her mane against her neck, and a pitter-patter like a faucet that was left slightly open.

Whatever force was gently rubbing at her back, she didn’t want it to leave. A dozen more sensations were running across her body, like a multitude of warm ropes, wrapped in all the right places. A deep, double-beat thumping echoed over her head, synchronized with quiet rushed of air, seemed like it was to a beat; an organic, mechanical order that gave her a feeling of calm security.

She raised an arm from the heavy liquid and lit her hand in a sapphire-blue glow.

A headless black serpentine thing was coiled around her arm, its length scaleless and glossy in the light, and tapering thicker as its form led under a pool of frothy ooze. Similar tentacles were all over her, crawling across her body like greasy limbs, rubbing her over with the slime like brushes basting a roast for the oven. Rippled walls of pink rubber gurgled and throbbed in a living cage, sweating a mixture of runny fluids, and massaged them into her fur to coat her completely. The slime ran down the walls into the pool, or dripped from the roof in thin strands.

Rarity thought little of it. Thinking hurt. Though it all did feel nice.

“Here,” a voice said. It sounded distant, just on the edge of her hearing.

Another one sounded a ‘thank you’ much louder and closer. The chamber vibrated slightly with its words. “Sorry for waking you up so late. I really needed this,” it said.

“Just try to get as much sleep as you can. We’re leaving at daybreak.”

“I know… She’s fine! Would you stop worrying? I felt her kick just a minute ago. She’s gonna be alright with auntie Pinkie Pie taking care of her! Go on back.”

After some time of only the sound of a heartbeat and watery dripping to keep Rarity company, she put out the light. The chamber shifted and made a low growl, followed by a warm, seasoned smell filling her nostrils. Rarity relit her hand. A fish was sliding down the pink wall. It was rigid, the eyes shriveled and scales browned. One of the tentacles peeled itself off Rarity and blindly felt around for the morsel, and dragged it under the liquid once touched, where it immediately began to fizz.

The body sighed, and a slow shifting of gravity indicated it was on the move. The chamber swayed easily, making the oddly sweet-smelling soup slosh around like amber wine in a bowl.

The body spoke softly, as if it weren't even trying to hear itself. “What would Rarity say? ‘Don’t give up hope’?”

It grunted, and seemed to come to rest as a more firm and flat surface pushed the flesh up at Rarity’s back.

“He’s looking for you, Pinkie Pie,” it said. “Yeah.”

Rarity nestled her head in the soft flesh and closed her eyes to race an oncoming migraine to sleep. She let the sound of the body’s workings and enveloping warmth occupy her mind. Little by little, all sensation faded away.

Fluttershy was never much of a talker and, for once, Twilight was thankful for it. She didn’t know how to keep the giant’s thoughts on ice, but Fluttershy was relatively calm. For now.

Fluttershy barely fit the width of the barn, with little room to move without knocking tools over or scratching support beams. Twilight was on the upper level, laying across some hay bales and attempting to emulate Rarity’s visionary magic.

The way the sorcerer made a looking-glass of her own arms was intriguing, but in practice it was clearly easier said than done. The most Twilight had managed to yet conjure was an incoherently churning cloud of warp-stuff which whispered in gibberish and flashed indecipherable images. She swore at one point she made out a strange pink and white… cat…? with a middle that looked like some kind of rectangular pastry.

She occasionally took a glance down at the idle giant who only seemed to be brooding on some stubbornly repeating thought. Eventually, she spoke as if she knew Twilight was watching her.

“I miss my cannon,” Fluttershy finally said. “It’s still got the grooves.”

“Do you need any help?” Twilight asked. “Maybe I could take a look and see what’s wrong.”

Fluttershy hummed thoughtfully, which came out as a throaty grumble. “I’d really appreciate that, actually. It’s just… not the same without it.”

Twilight dissipated her warp cloud, and teleported before Fluttershy. “Here, show me.”

Fluttershy laid her claw next to Twilight. The alicorn studied it, noting the sectional grooves in the palm. She put a bit of telekinetic force on one plate, and slid it back. Fluttershy immediately drew her claw back, hissing loudly.

“Don’t force it!”

“I didn’t!” Twilight said, and backed up a few steps. “I think I heard something.”

Fluttershy flexed her claw a couple of times and put it forward again. Twilight put her ear to the palm. She slid the same plate back slowly. There was the smooth echo of ball bearings rolling, and then a small click.

Fluttershy’s claw twitched, and the giant grunted. “That feels weird.”

“Well, here. There’s some blockage, I think.” Twilight felt around the gap between the rest of the palm and the sliding plate with a tendril of magic, finding an out of place obstruction. “Okay, this might hurt.”

Fluttershy cringed.

Twilight gave no time for Fluttershy to worry or have second thoughts, and yanked at the object. Fluttershy clenched her jaw to avoid screaming, and Twilight teleported out of the way just as her finger blades slammed inward.

Twilight set down a hunk of deformed silver and smiled. “There! Looks like you stepped on that in the field.”

Fluttershy opened and closed the ring several times. The bore was rifled, and must have led all the way through her leg. A horrific sulphurous stench came from it like a poisonous air vent.

“Perfect,” Fluttershy grinned.

The barn doors creaked open, and the iron giant lifted her head.

“Hey, girls,” came a masculine voice.

Fluttershy gave a short, plaintive groan, which came out like a rain of nails on sheet metal. “We’re a little busy in here, Spike. What do you want?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to talk to Twilight.”

The alicorn in question turned to the door. “Sure, Spike, but why so serious all of a sudden? Is it about Rarity?”

He leaned against a nearby support for the barn, staring at her long and hard. “Not really. I mean… I’m worried about her, too. But that’s just it. Look what happened to her just by glancing into the Warp,” he pointed out. “Have you girls actually fought any daemons, yet? The real, twisted kind?”

Only the not-so-distant rumbles and clanks of Fluttershy shifting position answered him for nearly a minute. Finally, Twilight replied, “Not really… We’ve dealt with plenty of orks and skaven in Mordheim, and some Khornate warriors and undead on the way out, plus…” she gulped uneasily.

“Middenheim,” Spike finished for her. Twilight nodded glumly, looking at the floor. Fluttershy made no sound, instead simply looking off to the side with a faint smirk on her face that neither of them caught.

“How do you react when warp-phenomena is happening around you? Like Rarity casting spells? Any twinges or weird sensations?”

She shook her head. “Mostly it’s just blood. I can’t really go too long without getting some, or… well, you saw what happened. But no, I don’t really feel that much beyond intermittent fluxes in the thaumic field around me with active channeling going on, even with really complex prestidi...gitation… w-why are you smiling?”

Spike’s face immediately fell, and he waved a claw dismissively. “Oh, nothing, just... nostalgia, that’s all.”

Twilight blinked, but shrugged slightly and kept going. “And I was able to stand right next to Celestia just a few days ago without even getting distracted. So regular magic use or the presence of enormous ley energy sources doesn’t seem to affect me.”

The omission of the eponymous ‘Princess’ prefix did not escape Spike’s notice, but he didn’t press. “I’m just worried about what might happen down the road. We’re heading straight into Chaos territory, you know. There won’t just be marauders and chaos warriors; there’ll be sorcerers by the dozen conjuring up any number of daemons and warp-spawn, and the line between reality and the empyrean will be at its thinnest on this plane. And if you’re really a daemon…” His face looked haunted. “I really, really don’t want to lose you again, Twilight.”

“I’ll kill them,” Fluttershy snapped, lurching her head forward. “Anypony who tries. Nopony messes with my friends.”

Spike frowned. “That’s a sledgehammer fix—”

“That’s worked pretty well so far.”

Twilight put a hoof on Spike’s shoulder to distract him from Fluttershy’s smug grin. “We’re not going to be separated again. You want to know why?”

Spike reluctantly surrendered his heated staring contest with Fluttershy and took a breath to calm himself. “Why?”

Because you have no idea how it feels to have missed… well, this!” Twilight gestured to the whole of him. “Just, you growing up. I must have missed fifteen years of you becoming such a noble dragon, and I don’t want to miss the rest.”

Spike blushed slightly, and crossed his arms. “You know, some of this isn’t really mine.”

“I know.” Twilight’s fragile smile fell. She held Spike’s claw, briefly studying his broad palm. “What Celestia must have done to you…” She paused, and muttered under her breath, “Shining…”

“Come again?” Spike asked and leaned in closer.

Twilight let go. “Spike, I know it’s late, but, would you mind taking a letter?”

The dragon blinked in surprise. Slowly, his face spread out in a broad smile. “I… I thought you’d never ask, Twilight.”