Ren woke with a start, eyes snapping open. He jumped out of reflex from whatever it had been that he saw in his dream. What it was, he didn’t remember. It must have been hours since he clocked out of the waking world, the room dark apart from a single stubby candle. Murr snored on next to him, still in unicorn form. He must be trying to get used to it, he thought to himself. He picked himself up out of the chair, groaning a bit as he stretched stiff muscles that had been slept on wrong. He walked into the immaculate kitchen, wondering absently if Twilight ever used it. He came upon Spike, getting a midnight snack. Spike waved to him, mouth full. Ren smiled good-naturedly and yawned. Spike swallowed a mouthful of the sandwich he had made.

“Nice to see you back in the world of the living,” he teased. “I’m not gonna lie, that light show was pretty cool.”

“Light show?”

“Yeah, after Twilight gave out, you kept going. You looked like you were about to quit too, but then you started glowing and the spell finished running its course. I don’t think you’re quite as good at magic as Twi, but you can last longer than her at least.” He took another bite.

Ren made a noise. “Pfft, I doubt that. I remember looking for the extra reserves that my Isparian form has, but I don’t remember finding them at all.”

Spike held a finger up, still chewing. He swallowed. “I don’t know what you did, but whatever it was it worked. I wouldn’t question it if I were you.”

Ren nodded. “You’re right.” His stomach growled.

Spike chuckled. “Let me finish this sandwich and I’ll see what Twi has by way of groceries. I haven’t checked the pantry in a couple days, so I don’t know what we have. Can you cook?”

"Technically, yes. But I can only cook over an open flame, and I don't see any place where one of those could be."

"I would hope not," Spike laughed, "That just screams 'set my wooden treehouse on fire'."

"You'd be surprised how little that happened back at Dereth. Keeping an eye on it does wonders for safety."

The soft clip-clop of hooves striking the wooden floor announced another presence in the room. Ren twisted around, greeted with the not-very-pretty sight of a groggy Twilight Sparkle.

“Wh-what time is it?” she asked shakily, pausing to yawn.

“A little past one in the morning.” Spike said matter-of-factly.

“What’re you two doing up so late?”

“I was getting a midnight snack, and… uh, what’s-his-face…”

“His name is Ren.”

“Yeah, Ren just came in. I think he just woke up too.”

Twilight sighed, bringing a hoof to her face. “I was coming to get breakfast, I thought it was later than it is.”

“It is technically morning.” Ren chuckled. Twilight groaned at the terrible joke.

“Not this early, please, I need my coffee.”

“That’s almost unnerving. You have coffee too?”

“Um, yeah, have had it for a few centuries now.”

“Sweet.”

“No, coffee is bitter—wait, this is one of those colloquial terms, isn’t it? Sweet? Doesn’t it mean, like, ‘good’ or something?”

“Yeah. Can I have a cup when it’s done?”

“Sure, I just hope this doesn’t turn out like the time I gave Pinkie a cup.” She shuddered. The holes in the walls had taken months to fix. The unicorns yawned and sat at the table, next to where Spike was sitting. Spike had gotten up, occupying himself with starting a pot to brew. “Thanks Spike, you always know how to pick me up.”

“Hey, what do you keep me around for?”

“Because I value you as a dragon and I’ve raised you from a hatchling.” she said, slightly miffed at the insinuation that she was using him.

"Calm down, Twi, I was joking." the little dragon laughed nervously. The last thing he needed was Twilight angry at him already.

There was an uncomfortable silence between Ren and Twilight while Spike was tending to the coffeemaker. Twilight decided to break it. "How were you disappearing when you dueled Murr? You had to have been abusing physics pretty badly to do that."

"We totally are. It's a type of 'cast', short for 'casting style', and there are three major ones, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The one that I was using is called the powerslide. Basically, we're putting just enough magic into our movement to mask our position. This makes it difficult for opponents to target us, as to them we appear to be rubber-banding all around. There's no method to the madness, it's completely random. It makes it simple to evade most things, but skilled mages and even good archers can see right through it. There's another one called the fast cast, and it does exactly what you'd imagine it does. It allows you to complete the casting sequence of a spell a little earlier than normal. The advantages are obvious, but if you don't execute it exactly right you might hit something you weren't intending to. I've seen it backfire on the caster, even. The third and most normal one is what I like to call the 'stand there stupidly while everything in a country mile's radius completely schools you' cast. Believe it or not, it has an advantage. It allows those who are physically capable to better defend themselves, in the rare case of a well-built mage."

Twilight's eyes widened as far as her condition would allow. "Wow. There's quite a lot of thought put into fighting people where you come from. What's an archer, exactly?"

"Well, we are kind of gridlocked in a civil war of sorts. Archers are people who aren't capable of magic but can use something similar to it, if all you want to do is fire projectiles at someone."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Civil war?"

Ren nodded. "Kind of. Neither Asheron nor Bael'Zharon have any official influence over the government, but there are minor skirmishes happening between various places. They tend to be of different kingdoms, but they're all on the same continent."

Their conversation was interrupted by Spike setting two mugs of steaming coffee before the unicorns, who thanked him. He yawned. "Well, I'm gonna get to bed. I have to get up early so I can go help Rarity tomorrow, and if I want any decent sleep I need to get it now."

"Thanks again Spike. Goodnight." Twilight said, ignoring the logical fallacies in his statement. She turned to Ren, taking a sip of her coffee. “So… your species…”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“Not gonna lie, they sound pretty violent to me.”

“Only when we have to be, because some jackass got it in his head that he wanted what someone else had and decided to attack them for it.”

“Huh. What do you eat?” she was genuinely curious now.

“Most everything, really. There are some things that kill us if we eat them, and we stay away from those, but we tend to have an ‘anything not intelligent enough to be a companion’ kind of diet in reference to everything else.” Twilight’s expression hardened, and she cringed, just imagining Fluttershy’s reaction to this was terrifying. She’d have to keep this a secret from her. “Technically speaking, our digestive systems don’t handle meat too well apparently, or so they’re telling us now. But we developed canine teeth for a reason, didn’t we? Maybe it’s not so essential for us to eat meat now, maybe it became something we needed to survive a long time ago and we just never grew out of it. I stopped eating meat a while back, after I had to gut a ursuin and sleep in the carcass to survive one particularly cold winter night.” He shuddered. “Not fun.” Twilight’s gaze softened a bit. So he, at least, didn’t eat creatures. Not anymore, at any rate. “Man, I even gave up bacon. That was my favorite. But I couldn’t so much as look at it without smelling those awful smells, and feeling so slimy and disgusting…”

“Does Murr eat meat?”

“Not that I know of, he had to do the same as me and swore it off the same as me last I knew.”

“Do your people travel in packs?”

“Not really, families usually stay together, sometimes groups of roaming families stick around one another, but you don’t see entire towns worth of people pick up and run off.”

“That answered what would be my next question, so I’ll move on to the one after that. What are the… er, mating habits of your species?”

“Monogamous. Sometimes if the wife dies the husband takes a new bride and the same goes for a widow, but unless he or she’s an asshole they don’t go after multiple people.”

“Is there a mating season? Do your females go into heat?”

“If they do, they’re damn good at hiding it. Mostly we just have kids whenever we feel like it. Of course, I wouldn’t know. I’m too busy for settling down and getting married.” He sighed. “By the time I’ll be done with running around and helping people, I’ll be far too old for having a family of my own. Guess it’s an occupational hazard.”

She felt a twinge of pity for the guy. She knew just as well as he what it was like to be romantically starved. “Moving on… who acts as leaders in your societies?”

“Well, usually it’s the guys who lead the helm, but for the past ten or so years there’s only been a Queen of New Aluvia. Her would-be husband died in an attempt at a coup on the Olthoi Queen, who had enslaved all of the first-run Isparians who made it to Dereth. She’s the one who landed the killing shot with her bow. Kind of what made her Queen.” He snorted. “She had impeccable timing, she shot the queen just as it skewered poor Cragstone through the chest.”

“That’s terrible! How could you find that funny?” she asked, disgusted.

“I’m not laughing at the situation, I’m laughing at the irony. I’m allowed to do that, aren’t I?”

“I guess…” So he’s got a dark sense of humor. She changed the subject again. “So are you all capable of magic, or is it limited to your equivalent of unicorns?”

“As far as I know, everyone has the spark necessary. It takes a lot of learning and practice to actually apply it, and not many people are willing to put that kind of time and effort into their studies. Most have other things to worry about, like how they are going to eat if they spend all their time with their nose in a book.”

“Are there winged Isparians?”

Ren stifled a laugh at the thought. “Nope.”

“Is there anything else I should know about you?”

“Well, we have hands, with fingers and opposable thumbs, making it a small feat to use tools.”

“I noticed. While you may have an advantage against an earth pony or even a Pegasus, I doubt your hands could hold a candle to the manipulation abilities unicorn magic gives you.”

“Maybe not, but they manipulate better than hooves and they have feeling to boot, an advantage over magic, which in my experience is like working within a glove if you can feel it at all.”

“Like I said, a leg up over earth ponies and pegasi, but not unicorns.” she said somewhat smugly.

“You underestimate the power of feeling, touching and knowing what it is you’re touching. Aside from that, some people are really skilled with their hands. I am definitely not, but I don’t think even you could stand up to a master craftsman.”

“You want to put your money where your mouth is?” she said cockily, smirking.

“I would, except I have no money and there’s no way for me to get ahold of a master craftsman.”

She deflated. She hadn’t thought of that. “Well. Is there anything else?”

He scratched his chin, deep in thought. “Not unless you want to study my psyche,” he said finally. His eyes went wide when he realized what he said.

“That’s actually a good idea—“

“No, no it is not. I am a bag of issues and screws, Twilight. Mages are always a little touched in the head, but I’m an outlier to the outliers.”

“… What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Seriously, now you’ve piqued my interest. What are you talking about?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“C’mon, talking about my problems always makes me feel better—“

“Twilight, do not push me on this. You will not like where it ends. I will tell you what I will, when I will, and that is if I tell you at all. Am I understood?” he said through clenched teeth.

Twilight didn’t get the hint. “You won’t surprise me at all with anything you have to—“

“I burned down my house when I was a boy, and my family died in it! I blame myself for their deaths! It’s how I figured out I could do magic! ANY MORE QUESTIONS?!”

Twilight shrank back. “N-no…”

He scowled at her, and looked away. “Good. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go back to bed now. Give myself a headstart over my nightmares.”

“N-nightmares?”

“Well, I wasn’t having them before, but I will be now that that happened.” He huffed, walking through the doorway and leaving behind a half a cup of coffee sitting on the table and a very confused and scared Twilight Sparkle.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Renald woke to the smell of smoke. He got up quickly, and tried to run to his mother and father’s bedroom. His path was blocked by a fallen beam from the roof, still ablaze.

“M-Mama! Papa! Everyone! Wake up! The house is on fire!” he screamed.

The bodies bolted out of their beds, his parents finding immediately that yes, the house was on fire, and that yes, they were just as boned as if they had stayed in bed.

“Boy! What did you do?” his father bellowed over the crackling flames.

“Nothin’, Pa! I swear!” his small voice replied.

“Don’t lie to me, boy, you’ll only make it worse for yerself,” his father scolded, voice calm. Even when they were about to burn to death, his father was the epitome of coolheaded. He never raised his voice or his hand to anyone when it wasn’t needed, and he was roundabout the nicest guy you’d ever meet. He’d give you the shirt off his back if it would help you. But even the best of men can be wrong, and Ren’s father was no exception.

“I’m not lyin’! Honest, pa! I just woke up and the house was burnin’ down!”

“Alright, I believe ya, just get yer sisters and brothers outta the house, now!” the man bellowed as another beam fell down from the roof, cutting off the adults’ escape by the lone window of their bedroom. Thankfully, he wouldn’t have to repeat himself, the young boy already bolting off to wake his siblings. The man wrapped his arms about his inconsolable wife, trying to soothe her. “Darlin’, cryin’ like that ain’t gonna do anythin’ to fix this,” he said to her softly. “Unless ya were plannin’ on puttin’ out the fire with your tears, that is,” he chuckled lightly. Oh, they were completely screwed. “I love you.”

Ren ran into his younger brother Mark’s bedroom, shaking the boy awake. “Get up, Mark! The house is on fire!” he wailed hysterically. The last thing he saw before the support beam for the upper floor fell on his head and knocked him out was Mark’s terrified face.

-

He woke up again, outside the smoldering remains of what used to be his house. His mind only vaguely registered what had happened, and a dull throb had set in from the impact the support beam had made on his cranium. He groaned as he stood on unsteady legs, gasping and choking up when he wheeled around to see what remained of his old life.

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever was left, apart from a few still-burning hunks of wood. The rest was ash. He wheeled all around, in a vain attempt to see if perhaps somebody had survived.

Nothing. No one.

His eyes filled with tears as he realized just how alone he was.

And his family.

He killed his family. He was responsible for this. The second-to-last thing his father told him drilled deep into his mind. “Don’t lie to me…” He had to have done something. Something had to have happened, and if it was his fault… it was his burden to bear. The boy took off running, tears streaming down his face as he made for the nearest Guard’s Outpost. He had done a bad thing, worse than anything he had ever done. And he had yet to be punished properly for it. (Phrasing? I couldn't have done that any better than I did, but it still sounds wrong.)

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Twilight watched Ren’s face contort worriedly, the sudden changes in expression between fear, sorrow, confusion and anguish setting off all of the mental alarm bells she possessed. She may not be terribly good at empathy, but she’s been learning, and she can tell exactly what he’s feeling.

A voice from behind her caused her to jump. “He’s having that dream again, isn’t he?” Murr said, yawning.

“I don’t know what dream you’re talking about, but he did say something about nightmares before he went back to bed…” she trailed off.

“Perfect. Just what I needed.” He walked closer to the prone stallion before screaming in his ear, “Wake up, dumbass!”

The stallion’s eyes snapped open and he almost hit the ceiling from the force of his jump. He glared daggers at Murr, who grinned, saying, “You wouldn’t wake up.” A smile slowly slid into place on Ren’s face, recognizing the situation he was in.

He wasn’t unresponsive, Murr just wanted payback. Typical. He’d hold his peace over it for now, the enchanter-turned-stallion had actually bailed him out of a particularly traumatic portion of that reminiscence-gone-wrong. “Thanks, buttface. I needed that.” He yawned. “Seriously, I was in a bad way.” That was their code phrase for ‘Yes, I was having that dream again, and I needed out of it before I killed myself.’ He looked to Twilight, who acknowledged his gaze with a somewhat fearful one of her own.

“G-good morning…” she said quietly, not knowing what his reaction would be, and not wanting a repeat of earlier that morning.

To her surprise, he seemed to have gotten over it. “You too.” He yawned again. “I feel I need to apologize for my overreaction earlier this morning, you didn’t know what you were getting into and I assume you were running on the assumption that whatever I had going through my head wouldn’t be that bad.”

It was Murr’s turn to act confused. “Okay, what did I miss?”

“She kept digging deeper into my mind after I told her no and I kind of blew up at her.”

“You didn’t tell her about that, did you?”

“Yes, I told her about that. The fact that she can still face me tells me she isn’t going to let it bother her. Honestly I’d have expected her to throw us out by now if she was.”

“Why wouldn’t I be able to face you?” Twilight asked. “It was an accident. It’s not like you meant to do that. I know that much, at least.”

“Not going to lie to you, you’d be among the first to believe that.” Murr said softly, remembering that time almost five years ago when the story made the rounds through the academy. Ren had been so miserable, because people either wouldn’t leave him alone (out of pity, or alternatively, anger) or wouldn’t give him the time of day. He just wanted to be considered normal again, but they took that from him. The two put up with it for an entire year before they went to Asheron, who talked to the rest of the students. They didn’t dare disobey him.

“See, Isparians and Derethians or whatever we should call what we are, don’t trust others very easily. People tend to take advantage of other people, and that tends to make all but the most naïve of people jaded and cynical about others. There’s always an ulterior motive to someone helping them, though what that motive is they don’t always know. They can’t accept that someone would help them just out of the goodness of their hearts, or to fight their own inner demons.” Ren explained a bit more, getting off topic a bit. “People make their own conclusions based on what someone said and what they believe. Kind of like ponies do, but on a larger scale. Entire wars between factions have been fought over mere hear-say.”

Twilight tilted her head. “I doubt anypony wouldn’t believe you. You just have to tell them the truth.”

Ren’s eye twitched. “Ever considered that maybe I don’t want every single person, or pony, as it were, on this plane of existence to know my most intimate of secrets?”

“Ren…” Murr warned. His friend was starting to lose it again. “Don’t let her get to you, she’s not trying to get to you.”

Ren sighed. “I know. Look, I’m sorry, okay?” He looked at Twilight, expression reflecting his weary state of mind. “You didn’t get the message I was trying to send, but that was no excuse to blow up on you like I did. It was inexcusable, and I hope you can forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you. We all have our moments.” Twilight shrugged. “Let’s just go get breakfast, I still haven’t gotten around to making it yet and I am famished. I can only imagine how you two must be doing.” As if on cue, the stallions’ stomachs growled in unison.

They all shared a laugh at that, making their way into the kitchen. After the breakfast was made, they sat at the table, eating in something resembling companionable silence until Twilight broke it. “Do you have some sort of scaling system? To see how you stack up against each other? We have a few, though we don’t use them for anything but sport and placement in classes.”

“We do. We use the old Empyrean system, putting you at a level somewhere between one and two-hundred-seventy-five. It’s kind of outdated, because while it scales beyond that for creatures, people cap out way too often for it to be a reliable indicator. Myself and Ren both are measured to be at two-hundred-seventy-five, but if I had to pin Ren anywhere it’d be in the low four-hundreds. I’d be in the three-fifty range.” Murr paused to take a bite of his meal.

Twilight nodded in understanding. “So that’s why you capped out there on my reports, it was using a different scale. Unicorns are rated in the thousands on the scale I was using. Murr maxed out at two-seventy-five, not having a pony form at that time. As for Ren, I think it was confused because he has a unicorn form but wasn’t in it, so it took the two values and averaged them out.”

“I’m curious, what did he max out at exactly?” Murr asked.

“About eight hundred. Seven-ninety-six, to be precise.”

Murr grunted in acknowledgement, still chewing. Ren did the math in his head, kind of disappointed in the number that resulted. “So my unicorn form is in the low thirteen hundreds.”

“Something like that, but like I said it could have been confused. I don’t think it’s ever really been used on somepony who has two different forms at their disposal but isn’t in the one that the spell was meant for.”

“What do you max out at, by any chance?” Murr asked, taking another bite.

“Last time I was measured I topped out at about sixty-five hundred. But that was before I came to Ponyville, and a fair amount has changed, so I’d say I’m at somewhere between sixty-seven hundred and seven thousand.”

“So what do you do for fun, anyway?” Ren asked, changing the subject. That had hit him right in the inferiority complex.

“Mostly I read and go out with my friends.”

“What are the odds, that’s mostly what I did between cramming and sleeping.” Murr said, smiling. Ren chuckled at the memory.

“Meanwhile I was off relieving besieged towns, and taking care of infestations of things in my spare time. I’d have been in the thick of the wars too, but I didn’t have enough time on my hands.”

“Yeah, you were quite the one-man army. You could strike fear in the hearts of just about anything short of Bael’Zharon himself.”

“You didn’t do too bad yourself, Murr. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Yeah, the guy who can’t even bend a fifth-level lightning arc to his will. Really doing good for myself there.”

“Fifth-level?” Twilight spoke up.

“Yeah. There are seven levels to each spell. Well, eight, really, but getting the eighth-level spells are a bit of a pain. The lower the level, the easier it is to cast. If you can’t cast a fifth level lightning arc, you are either in your third year at the academy, or you just suck at magic.”

“I have all of my eighth-levels.” Ren bragged.

“And I have all of my eights in enchantment.” Murr said.

“Even sevens are a pain to get ahold of, if you think about it. You have to do research with various glyphs and inks and quills to make the scroll that the spell is learned from for eights, while with sevens you have to go out and find the scrolls because the scriveners can’t just mass-copy them like they can levels one through six.” Ren mused. “Of course, if you aren’t willing to do what’s needed to obtain the spells, perhaps you will want to reconsider being a mage.”

“And we came right when they stopped making us do the research for all of the levels. We still had to practice, but people were suddenly allowed access to entire arsenals’ worth of spells because they had the time to learn the concepts and apply them from a scroll, instead of hours of research for one spell.” Murr elaborated.

“Sounds to me like that’s just you people being lazy.” Twilight deadpanned. Ren looked at her incredulously.

“You mean to tell me that I should spend literally what remains of my life to grasp one branch of magic? With the scroll system we use, we can actually get out and help people because we aren’t spending all of our waking hours reading.”

Twilight fixed him with a skeptical look. “It just sounds to me like somepony wasn’t prepared for something that they signed on for.”

“That might’ve been true when I first started, but I’ve grown into it over the past few years.”

“It still sounds too much like a cop-out to me.”

Ren took a deep breath. “That’s your opinion, and I will respect that.”

“Fair enough.”

“Murr, how are you doing with eating in unicorn form? I can’t get my hooves to work right.” Ren regarded the older mage, struggling with a fork.

“I’m doing okay. Mostly because I’m using my magic to manipulate the utensils.” Murr responded.

“Like a sensible stallion.” Twilight added, eyes dancing with mirth.

“Oh. I, uh, I kind of forgot I had that…” He flared his own horn, the utensil obeying his will. He smiled, finally able to take a bite of his own breakfast.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

About an hour later they still sat at the table, just talking about life and praising Celestia that they had been able to eat at last.

Ren was currently telling a story about the last “raid” on the young but promising town of Ayan Baqur he had to sit through.

“… And then, the guy just comes up and whacks me with a giant stick! I was all like, ‘Dude, that hurts, cut it out! And he just kept hitting me! So, in the end, I just recalled. I was just done with that noise,” he finished.

Murr chuckled at the memory. True, the first few of the raids had been very bloody endeavors indeed, the two arriving just in time to stop a massacre of the last defenders, who, to their credit, were fulfilling their duties to protect the citizens to their last breath. But that last one had just been a joke, there had been no reason to call on them.

Twilight laughed. “That sounds less like a war and more like a practical joke to me.”

“That one totally was. The first few times were serious business, but the influx of raiders stopped when they started to realize we’d just show up and hand them their asses every time they were feeling froggy.”

Murr started to speak. “Ren, why don’t we take care of the dishes here? Save some effort on the part of our gracious host?”

Ren sat up and stretched. “Yeah, sure.” He started to get up, but Twilight shut them down.

“That’s quite unnecessary, you two.” She flared her horn, the plates and utensils rising to her whims. “Magic, remember?”

Suddenly, a pink pony burst through the door. “It’s paaaarty time!” she yelled out to no one in particular.

Next Chapter: Never A Dull Moment Estimated time remaining: 34 Minutes