My sleep was uneasy, and I woke up even later than expected. Rainbow Dash, Spike, and Pinkie Pie were already somewhere else, but Applejack was still catching zees. I decided to speak with Fluttershy and Rarity.

I knocked on their door. "Just a minute, dear," Rarity called out, and I heard the sound of aerosol spray. About twenty seconds later, the door opened. Rarity's mane was a bit mussy, as though she'd been taking an uneasy nap. The air smelled strongly of cherries and something else a bit sour I didn't quite recognize. I could see that Fluttershy was lying down in the bed, pretending to sleep.

"I was hoping I could come in for a chat," I said, smiling a bit sheepishly.

"Of course! Come in, Twilight," said Rarity, practically yanking me into the room. She shut the door behind us. "You five have kept to yourselves so much it's almost like Fluttershy and I are on a vacation by ourselves," she added, a twinge of resentment in her voice.

"I know, I know. I'm sorry, Rarity," I said, sitting on the bed. Fluttershy made a soft "eep" noise (I must have sat upon her tail at first, oops), and then pushed herself upright, body still beneath the covers.

Rarity nodded. "Well, hopefully tonight's dinner party should fix everything up. We really miss our friends, Twilight," she said, pouting. She placed a hoof around my shoulder, sitting on the far side of the bed.

"Oh, yes," said Fluttershy. "I can't wait! Twilight, I know you're afraid to trust us right now, but I promise things are going to be just so wonderful for everypony, and very soon."

Rarity pulled me forcefully down onto the bed, and sandwiched me between her body and Fluttershy's. "We heard that Pinkie Pie had been giving you lessons," she whispered in my ear. I must have been blushing really hard, and for some reason I lost control of my wings.

I reacted out of instinct, teleporting to the door. The light from my horn shone on Fluttershy's face momentarily.

"Wellthat'sgreattohearguysIlookforwardtothedinnertonightgottago!" I said, quickly exiting and closing the door behind me. Not before hearing playful giggles coming from both of them, though. I forced my wings down with my hooves, and tried not to think about how awkward things were becoming.

Fortunately, the discovery I made during the teleport was sufficient distraction. Just as this ink I'm using is visible only under magical light, something appeared in Fluttershy's earring when my magic activated. It was a replica of Big Macintosh's cutie mark. I'm not sure how Rarity did it: you can't alloy a nonmetal like quinine with metal, so she must have found a different approach. Either way, it's clever.

At first I worried it meant something dire, but it's just her coltfriend's cutie mark, so it made perfect sense. However, I realized I might be unwittingly wearing some kind of badging mechanism. I rushed back into my room and looked in the mirror carefully. Magical light revealed nothing in the marble surface of my earrings, fortunately.

I currently presume that Cadance's earrings bear Shining Armor's cutie mark. Possibly the cap as well, but I don't really want to think about that at the moment. But then, what about Pinkie and Rarity? I don't need to know who their coltfriends are at the moment, but I'm a little concerned that Rarity gave Pinkie Pie a set of copper earrings without any warning about the symbol that might be on them. That suggests either Rarity knows who Pinkie Pie is dating, or gave her a blank pair like mine, or gave her a pair with an arbitrary somepony's symbol (but I can't imagine Rarity doing such a thing).

I'm going to have to resist the temptation to look at Pinkie Pie's earrings. No matter what I would see, it's probably none of my business and it won't help me unravel the mystery anyway.

I walked into Applejack's room to ask if she wanted to follow me to the library, and I discovered her in the bathroom up against the full-length mirror. She was trying to look at something. Something in, um... a sensitive place.

"Oh! Sorry Applejack, I didn't see you there," I said, covering my eyes and walking out.

"No, wait! Twilight!" she said. "I, um, I need your help with somethin'." She sounded embarrassed.

I sighed. "Okay, let's just do this and get it over with. You need me to look down there, right?" I asked.

AJ nodded. "Yeah, but just on the rear side of my teats," she said. "Ah'm real sorry about this Twi, but I have a strange tingly feelin' and I don't think it's the natural type... if you catch my lasso."

"Wait, you think it's a Flutterbite? When did this happen?" I asked.

"I presume," said Applejack, "sometime while I was in the room alone last night. 'Cept, I guess I wasn't alone after all."

I steeled myself and crouched behind my friend as she lifted her tail. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I couldn't help but catch a glimpse "up above", and while she wasn't as, er, "out there" as Cadance, she still looked very little like me. Her vulva was wiggling a bit, and looked wet for some reason. I averted my eyes at that point. Privately, I have to wonder how much of these differences are due to "experience", and how much of them stem from natural variations in anatomy.

So, onto business. I presumed that Applejack meant caudal by "behind", and this supposition was accurate. A few centimeters caudal from her teats (and a bit off-center) were the same unmistakable marks I had previously seen on myself. As a strange aside, that odd scent from Rarity's room hit my nostrils again, but this time it wasn't masked by cherry-scented aerosol. It was sour and rather foul, but somehow pleasant nonetheless? Very weird. The wound was clean, so it shouldn't have an odor to it, but maybe that's not where it was coming from.

I stood up and shivered for a moment, and the scent subsided.

"What's the verdict, Twilight?" Applejack asked, turning to face me.

I nodded. "Yep, you've got the bite marks alright. Fortunately I have just the spell memorized, and..." I froze in place. "Oh horsefeathers."

"Oh no. Twilight, cussin ain't what I need to hear right now," AJ begged. "Please tell me you can fix this."

I grimaced. "I can, but not without modifying the spell first. I'm pretty sure I remember all the details, but I just realized it was specifically designed to affect the caster only!" I revealed.

"Well, how long is that gonna take? Like, an hour? Half a day, maybe?" she asked, nervously.

I closed my eyes. "Five days, maybe a week. I might be able to pull it off in two days, but I'd need a way to give myself multiple different kinds of magical bites to do it, and I don't think the dwarf sheep they raise here are the magical-biting kind. And even those projections are assuming the spell is easy to modify, which I don't think it will be. It was a very unusual spell, and poorly documented," I said, my voice pained. "Oh, Applejack, I am so sorry. Please forgive me."

Applejack looked downcast, but then put on a resolute face. "It's okay, Twi. Ain't nothin' to forgive. I'll manage as best I can, and give you updates," she said. "At least in the worst case, you can chart the progress of the bite and find out what happens, exactly."

"Okay. It didn't start to get really bad for me until about, oh, 36 hours after. Give or take a few hours," I said. "If you want us to drop everything and push to find a cure, just say the word and we'll do it, Applejack."

The farmpony shook her head. "Nothin' doin'. We ain't got much time left, in all likelihood, and you need to spend it researching somethin' we can actually use in the meantime," she said. "I'll hold this fort down as long as I can, and I'm sure we'll make it out of this smellin' like a batch of roses. You and me been in tougher scrapes than this before, filly."

Applejack grinned half-heartedly, and I hugged her tightly. I know we both hope her optimism holds true. She told me she'd be exercising outside of the castle in the meantime, to keep her mind occupied off of the odd sensations, and that sounds like a good idea to me.

Ugh, I really need to find Spike to send that letter. I probably should have done it last night, but I was just so tired. Fortunately, Spike left a note in the bathroom saying he would be at the library working and waiting for me to show up. For some reason, he seems to have taken my magical scrolls with him, because I can't find them in my saddle-bags. This shouldn't be problematic, though. Even if somepony broke in and stole my scrolls (which I doubt, since I've been around them almost constantly) I can just get more at the library main office. The last time I came to the Kingdom they had plenty of Celestia-addressed magical scrolls there.

I'm at the library now, and we have a big problem. Spike doesn't have the scrolls, and (of course) Prince Shining Armor came by two days ago and withdrew the entire lot. Fat chance I'll see any of those. I may be able to conjure up a way to communicate with Princess Celestia remotely without scroll technology, but it would probably take a day or two before I could even perform the first experiment and we just don't have that kind of time available. I should have distributed valuable items like these among the entire herd, but I didn't think far enough in advance. Stupid, stupid, stupid alicorn!

Fortunately, Spike really came through for us this time. He made excellent progress on two separate fronts. The first (and more amazing of the two) is he somehow located an ancient book that speaks of a prophecy involving (surprise!) six friends and a flower-box. The description is in an older dialect, so it's going to take a little work for me to determine just exactly what it's trying to say. I checked it out so I can work on it later (and I even have permission to take it on an extended sabbatical back to Ponyville; being a Princess does have its advantages).

The second front is less amazing, but much more important. Spike discovered that one of the books we'd been looking for which discusses the Lunar night guard was held behind the counter. I suspect it was intentionally reserved so we wouldn't be able to access it, which means we are definitely on the right track this time. I can't check this one out, so I'll write down what I find a little later. But first, I need to research the ring I saw on Luna's horn.

Okay, I found information on the ring in a Canterlot history book, and well, it's not looking good for the home team. Apparently, it's called a ounckse (not entirely certain how to pronounce that correctly: my best guess is OONK-say). An ounckse is a specially-enchanted ring made from cold-wrought iron that completely suppresses all horn-based magic when worn by a unicorn or alicorn. The reason I've never seen one before is that they're proscribed by law! They became illegal hundreds of years ago because they were deemed too stigmatizing to be seen in, and other advances in enchantment technology made them unnecessary. (Today we use temporary enchantments of the horn itself, which are invisible to the eye, when transporting unicorn detainees; we also use local enchantments on rooms, metal bars, and the like for long-term magic suppression.)

Well then. Princess Luna's horn may have been intact, but her magic certainly wasn't. It's just like Rarity and Cadance, but a little less conspicuous, and much more temporary. Despite that, it's even weirder than a missing horn: being unrestrained, Luna should be able to remove her ounckse at any time. Why would she want to prevent herself from using magic? Was she trying to resist some kind of temptation to use her magic during our brief contact?

I'm afraid by the time I'm done here, Princess Celestia may be the only authority figure I can trust anymore. We have to leave the Crystal Empire the moment the train station opens for departure.

Last notes from the library. I'm not sure how relevant this is, but the Lunar royal guard are composed of nightwing ponies, a subrace of pegasus ponies with greater strength, lower mobility, a nocturnal cycle (rather than diurnal), and excellent vision in low light. All known male nightwing ponies in Equestria vanished one thousand years ago when Princess Luna was banished, because Luna kept every single one as her personal guard (which isn't all that odd, considering there weren't many to begin with). The females interbred with other Equestrians, mostly pegasi. Nightwing ponies are still born in nature, but this is an extremely rare event and the nightwing will usually lead a solitary life because they're nocturnal. (Oddly enough they look just like Flutterbat, but I must assume the similarity is only superficial.)

That's pretty much all it says in the book, but I can put together some more pieces from what I already know. Princess Luna returned almost four years ago, and later on we learned that her royal guard returned with her. The nightwing ponies, all of them male, must have been unconscious for one thousand years, just as their Princess was. They served her as Nightmare Moon, but they had little choice in the matter and it was for less than a day so I don't think that's anything to be concerned about. There were two dozen or so males in her guard (according to the book), so they presumably all live in Canterlot now and will take their wives from among the general populace. I have to imagine they're very popular among the elite (rare, specially talented, royal: the trifecta of high society).

I just checked the time, and I've been here for several hours. I'm going to have to head back now and get ready for the dinner. I honestly have no idea what will happen next.