You know those situations that, when explained to someone without context sound entirely improbable? Funny thing, those. One says that, for example, fighting hoards of tentacled monsters in the middle of a hole in the ground, surrounded by a pretty nice frozen landscape.

This being said, I’m currently fighting hoards of tentacled monsters in the middle of a hole in the ground, surrounded by a pretty nice frozen landscape. And holy shit, is that terrifying.

“Watch out!” Cloudchaser screams, diving to squish a bunch of some small, slimy scoundrels that attacked Bon Bon. I drop on the ground; near me, Candy grabs something shapeless by its tentacle, spins it and throws it at a bunch of similar creatures.

“What the hell is going on here?” Vinyl asks.

I’d like to know, myself. It seems to me that the start of the rocket with Aryanne and Kyrie unearthed a bit of the ancient town and it was just like turning over a rock to see that there are a lot of worms under it. Except in this case, the worms are the size of a train.

Inkie stands up and fires her crystal gun; to my surprise, the weapon works, which means that one of those black, bat-like creatures that flew out of the hole in the ground probably had testicles. I fire my favourite spell to check that and indeed, another such creature screams and falls to the ground, clutching its balls with its wings.

“It’s no use!” Hexie shouts. “Bullets don’t work against them, magic barely works… What can we do?”

“Fry them!” Flitter cries, flying above us with the flamethrower on her back. “Die, motherfuckers!”

“Remain calm,” Blackcurrant Muffin says. I see there are a couple of bullets stuck in her – apparently someone confused her for a monster in the heat of the battle. I’m afraid I shot her too. “Those are household appliances.”

“Really?” Trixie points at a spiky flying ball. “What does that do?”

“Clean ceilings,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. “But not when the young one tries to shoot it.”

“Ruby, stop shooting,” I say.

Something explodes next to us. I smell burning alcohol and turn to see the Rusty Shitter flying behind us. Some creature gets sucked into its fan and changes into a billion of gelatinous bits. In the cockpit, Cherry Berry and Berry Punch gesture towards us.

“Run!” Daring Do exclaims. “We need to regroup!”

She doesn’t have to say it twice. Vinyl is the first to cheese it, but I follow her rather close, mostly because some tentacled vacuum cleaner is chasing me. Ruby apparently ran out of pellets – she’s throwing snowballs at it, but I grab her with my magic and carry her to the open door in front of Cherry Berry’s new toy.

The inside of Rusty Shitter is pretty spacious, though I’m sure it’ll soon get more rusty with all that snow we carried on our hooves. As soon as everyone is inside, Cherry closes the door and flies up, way above the range of those of the creatures who can fly.

“Millennium hand and shrimp!” Cherry Berry exclaims. “Just watching those thingies can make you insane!”

“You’re already insane,” I reply.

“That’s the point.” Cherry Berry looks at me and I notice that her gaze is surprisingly sharp. “I went so insane that I made a full circle and I’m normal again.” She looked around. “Holy shit, I built this?”

“Don’t forget how to fly it…” I turn to the rest of ponies in the plane. “So, anyone has any ideas how to get to those rockets?”

“I’ll do that,” Daring Do says. “Or I’ll die trying.”

“Something that doesn’t involve sacrifice?” I ask. “Anyone?”

“Ask Bon Bon for a nuke,” Flitter says. “But it’ll take long and Aryanne already is in space. How did she even get past them?”

“They were on standby,” Blackcurrant Muffin says. “The noise from the rocket woke them up.”

“Let’s go back, get Hot Coco and shoot everyone to hell.” Hexie smirks.

“Won’t do, they’re mostly bulletproof like Blackcurrant Muffin,” Vinyl says.

“Blow them with magic!” Trixie exclaims.

“Magicproof too.” Vinyl turns to Trixie. “We may end up blowing them if we fail, though.”

“Let’s see if you have better ideas.” Trixie groaned. “Trixie doesn’t think so.”

“Fly to the rockets?” Inkie asks.

Flitter looks at her as if she wanted to throw her out of the plane. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to land and they’ll gang up on us.”

“Oh, bugger yourself, winged lady,” Cherry Berry mutters. “This baby can stop in mid-air and if I’ve seen those rockets correctly, the door is pretty high above the ground.”

“They can still end up in the fans,” Cloudchaser says. “How many of them can we grind before we fall on the ground?”

“That’s where you come,” I say. “Flitter, Cloudchaser, Daring, Wild Hunt…” I look at Tyluan. “Anyone who has wings. You’ll get out and keep them from hitting something important.”

“Knowing my luck, I’ll be the one to hit something important,” Blossomforth says.

I ignore her. Wild Hunt already stands up, spreading her wings and baring her fangs. “Nice occasion to get some new scars…”

“What happened to your ear?” Blossomforth asks, her eyes wide. I’m not surprised. I guess anytime Wild Hunt wants to take an airship, airport officials prepare rubber gloves.

“An unfortunate rodeo accident.”

“A bull bit it off?”

“No.” Wild Hunt smirks and looks at me. “I was the bull.”

“Trixie would say it’s bullshit, but she was there,” Trixie says.

“I’ll tell you about this later,” I say. “Cherry, bring us closer to those rockets.”

The pegasi and bat ponies take off and Cherry locks the door. The engines roar and the plane enters a shallow dive, escorted by a formation of ponies. I can see the rockets from there; tall, metallic spires in the underground pit, aiming at the sky. How do they even work?

“Blackcurrant Muffin?” I ask.

“Yes?”

“How are we supposed to steer those?” I point at the rockets.

“You don’t have to,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. “They’re automatic. Just push the red button inside and you’ll be fine.”

I have my reservations against pushing unknown red buttons in unknown machines, but I have to keep them to myself. Especially since the first wave of creatures strikes at us. Something heavy hits the windscreen. I can see a lot of teeth, but then the thing is kicked away by Wild Hunt, who salutes us.

“Get closer!” I shout, watching Daring Do grabbing something by its tentacle and spinning it to smack another flying creature. Cherry Berry lowers the plane, trying to approach one of the rockets. I notice some faint glow around them. Of course, the whole thing is protected with magic – else they’d fall apart aeons ago.

We hear a terrible roar somewhere below us. Inkie looks through the window and recoils in horror, fainting immediately.

“What was that?” Vinyl asks. “Does it make ponies insane when they look at it?”

Blinkie walks to the window, carefully stepping over her sister. “Some really ugly motherfucker. Nothing special, except it’s much bigger.”

Ruby raises her eyebrows and looks through the window too. “I can confirm that it’s indeed one ugly motherfucker,” she says. “But there’s something more to it. I can’t see the whole thing at once.”

“He exists in more dimensions than your mind can comprehend.” Blackcurrant Muffin smiles. “Don’t worry, he’s not hungry and can’t really reach us here.”

“Good to hear,” Trixie says.

“But if someone falls, he’ll kill them for his own personal pleasure.” Blackcurrant Muffin shrugs. “So, you could say that if he had a mother, he’d have inappropriate relationship with her.”

“Thanks for that really educative explanation,” Blinkie says, trying to wake up Inkie.

“You’re welcome,” Blackcurrant Muffin replies. Blinkie raises her eyebrows, staring into her eyes, but it’s hard to find a face more honest than our gelatinous friend’s.

The whole plane shakes. Cherry Berry starts cursing and yanks the stick, trying to approach the rockets while keeping the whole thing steady. The rings with our fans screech, changing their positions. Outside, I get a glimpse of Cloudchaser and Tyluan fighting some little thingies with suckers trying to grab our plane. I hope they don’t eat metal or something.

“Don’t worry, they don’t eat ponies,” Blackcurrant Muffin says. “They were used in foundries to collect scrap metal and break it into smaller pieces.”

Oh shit. They do.

“Whoa!” Trixie exclaims, jumping back when one of the thingies pokes a hole in the fuselage and gets inside. She aims her horn at it and fires a magic bolt which changes the creature into slightly crispy jelly.

“Cherry, open the door!” I shout. “We’ll get to the rockets, somehow.”

“They’re too far!” Lyra exclaims.

“I’ll get as close as I can and teleport.” I rush to the front of the plane. The door is slightly ajar and I can see the entrance of the rocket about a hundred metres from me. One could say it’d be easy to get there, but the whole way is filled with something that looks like flying needles. What the hell is that? Surprise vaccines?

I look at the entrance and focus on it. My teleportation has been a little shaky lately, but it’s now or never. I close my eyes and disappear.

The way is rather rough. As if someone caught my hoof right before I teleported. Due to that, I overshoot a bit and instead of landing at the porch, I end up on the very top of the rocket… With Vinyl holding my tail.

“What the fuck?” I ask.

“You didn’t think I’d let you go alone?” Vinyl asks. “I’d like to boldly come where no pony has gone before too…”

“So far, we need to come down because of you…” Fat chance. We’d have to go down the five metres of a smooth wall, at least. With those metal needles now surrounding us and waiting for our move.

I hear the sound of another teleportation. Vinyl looks down. “We’re saved!” she exclaims.

“How so?” I ask.

“Worry not and jump!” I hear. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is there to catch you!”

“Fuck. We’re dead,” I mutter.

“Maybe you.” Before I can stop her, Vinyl jumps. I hang from the antenna at the tip of the rocket and look as she falls before she hits a field of blue magic that carries her to the rocket’s door.

“Your turn, Minuette!” Trixie shouts.

I look down and almost throw up. “You must be fucking crazy to think I’d do that…”

“Trixie left her comfortable casino to go around the world with you and teleport on a million years old rocket to fly to Yoghurt with you! If that’s not fucking crazy then Trixie doesn’t know what is!”

True. From a certain point of view. “It’s called Yuggoth!” I yell, letting go of the antenna. I have a feeling that the whole flight is painfully long. Will Trixie catch me? It wouldn’t be the first time she screwed up…

The blue barrier embraces me. I barely have time to gesture everyone to get the fuck out before Trixie levitates me and yanks me inside. The needle-like things follow me, but I immediately lock the door and hear as they’re blasted away by magic protecting the rockets.

“You’re heavier than Vinyl,” Trixie says.

“I’m pregnant,” I reply. “You don’t have such an excuse, though. You’re just fat.”

“Curvy,” Trixie replies. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is pleasantly curvy and don’t forget that.”

“Only the three of us again!” Vinyl exclaims. “What new adventure the life has in store for us?”

“Having to explain to Daring Do that we didn’t take her for a ride,” I reply, shrugging. “If we survive, that is.”

I look around. We’re in some well-lit white room, somehow devoid of any sharp angles; everything is rounded and the walls are a bit soft, as if they were padded. There’s absolutely nothing inside, except of the door—a closer examination of it reveals that it’s, in fact, an airlock—and three circles on one of the walls.

“Hmm, it looks like a cell in a nuthouse,” Vinyl says. “But not exactly?”

“How do you know how a cell in the nuthouse look like?” I ask, though I can see her point. Everything is soft and inoffensive, so no one gets angry and hurts themselves.

“Long story,” Vinyl says. “How do you turn this thing on?”

Welcome. If you wonder why I’m speaking to you in your language, I tuned directly into your brainwaves.

Trixie looks around. “Did you hear that?”

Vinyl collapses, covering her ears. “Aargh! The voices! The voices! They’re plugged into my brain!”

“Vinyl, you don’t have a brain,” I mutter. “Who are you, strange voice from beyond?”

I shall be your guide in the trip to Yuggoth. I assume you’re test subjects, right?

“More or less,” I reply. “We are on a mission from, umm… the mission control.” I shrug. “How do we get in space? We really need to hurry.”

There’s no reply. Instead, the three circles on the wall move up, revealing three chairs. Each of them looks like a half of a sphere resting on a plastic pedestal. The problem is, they’re facing the ceiling and way beyond our reach.

Climb to the pods and fasten the seatbelts.

“Do we have to levitate ourselves?” I ask. “We’re not in the best shape for such stunts.”

The seats immediately lower towards us. I sit in the middle one. It’s actually pretty comfortable. I’d say it’s like a womb, but maybe that’s because I’m pregnant. Maybe part of my intelligence is already being transferred to the baby. Anyway, Vinyl sits on my left and Trixie jumps into the pod on my right, which screeches under her weight. While I fasten the seatbelts, the pods go up.

Push the red button on your right when you’re ready. According to the current position of the planets, the journey should take a month.

“A month?” Vinyl exclaims. “We have a world to save!”

I’m worried about something else, myself. “You use astrology to navigate?”

Not astrology. I calculated the path taking gravity assist into account. Also, there’s another rocket currently in space and you’ll probably be happy to know that their path is not so short. In fact, we may keep up with them.

“But what are we going to do during that month?” Trixie asks.

The pods close. The other half of the sphere is made of something transparent, but it still means that we’re trapped inside.

You shall be hibernated once we’re in space. For you, the journey won’t last longer than an hour. During this time, you will be entertained by our systems. We will also perform the medical checkup.

“Can we have sex during that time?” Vinyl’s voice can be heard even through the glass. “Asking for a friend.”

Yes. The voice in my head sounds slightly irritated. Just push that damn red button already, okay?

Hmm, to think about, it’s probably how I hear it. And since it uses my brain as a template, it sounds like this.

That’s exactly what happens.

Oh, shut up. I push the red button and the whole thing starts to shake. The seatbelts pull us closer to our seats as the rocket slowly moves. Thank goodness the roar of the engines is muffled by the glass of the pods, or else we’d be deaf. And spread flat on the wall, since they also seem to reduce the G-force.

“We’ve lost something!” Vinyl shouts, trying to get out of her pod. “This thing is falling apart!”

That was one of the stages that ran out of fuel. Don’t panic. We’re currently in mesosphere. The temperature outside is -70 degrees Celsius.

Good we’re inside, then. On a side note, I keep wondering what the hell is that Celsius in the name of the temperature unit. The history books don’t mention any pony with that name.

He was a Swedish physician.

That doesn’t help, dear disembodied voice. Or rather, whatever technological mumbo-jumbo that uploaded itself into my brain. Swedish? That’s a word?

I could upload the history of everything that happened since the founding of Sweden until now into your brain, but there’s a 98.5% chance that you’d get insane in process. Besides, are the Masters sending pregnant mares into space now?

“Yeah, they do,” I reply. “Is that bad?”

Your pregnancy will follow according to the schedule during the hibernation. I’ll stimulate your body so it goes well, but you may suddenly feel bigger and heavier after waking up.

“No problem,” I say. Suddenly, I feel a sting below my shoulder.

I just removed several cells from your lung. In twenty years, they’d turn cancerous.

Huh. Can I somehow take one of those pods home? That’d be a real revolution in medicine. You go inside and get out twenty years younger.

You wouldn’t really be twenty years younger. Besides, I estimate that your body is only at 25% of its biological wear and tear, so I guess that’s fine for you.

“So, I’m gonna live until I’m one-hundred twenty?” I ask. “What will I do with all this time…”

You can always get killed earlier. Also, we’re now in space. The hibernation process will start soon.

I look out of the glass pane of my pod. On the screen in front of me I can see the silent void filled with millions of stars. Holy shit. Even a hundred and twenty years wouldn’t be enough to reach all of them. Geez. I’m more afraid of being weak and old than of being dead, but hell, that’d be creepy if my dead body just orbited somewhere there, all alone.

You wouldn’t feel alone for the simple reason that you’d be dead. Also, the hibernation starts right now. During the process, I’ll show you the estimation of your future life, based on what I know from your mind.

“How does this hibernation even work?” I ask. “Also, my whole life?”

Nah, more like next ten years. Also, I never hibernated anyone before. You’d better hope it works…

Wait, what? And you’re telling me about this only now? Hey, voice? Where are you, you bas–

Basking in the rays of sunset, I look through the window of my Manehattan office. Judging by my reflection in the glass pane, the grey strip in my mane is now almost white and the blue one is a bit lighter. I also wear horn-rimmed glasses. When I try to take them off, I notice that I became far-sighted. That is, my vision is fine, but when I want to read something, it turns out my hooves are too short.

I lean back in the armchair standing in front of the large conference table. This must be that vision of the future the voice from the rocket told me about. I look down at the table and see a red button labelled as “intercom”.

Having nothing better to do, I push it. “Grace?” I ask, somehow knowing that she’s my secretary. “Could you come here?”

A minute later, the door opens and Grace Manewitz walks in. Unlike me, she didn’t change at all. Maybe she bathes in the blood of young virgins or something.

“Ms. Pinch sent a message from Chineigh,” she says. “Sheep Sheep’s unnatural inclinations got them into a bit of trouble, but she says it’s fine. If everything goes well, they may get back by the end of the week, unless the change of the government will be necessary.”

Ms. Pinch? I have no idea who the hell is Sheep Sheep and what unnatural inclinations he or she possesses, but I can’t imagine Ruby solving that in a week, whether it involves a change of the government or not.

“Remind her that we’re not supposed to interfere with politics,” I say. “At least not on such a scale. Also, remind me, how old is she?”

Grace scratches her mane. “Last week she turned twenty-one.”

Oh yeah. Ten years. No longer a swearing, sarcastic brat. More likely a foul-mouthed, ruthless young mare of cunning wit. Who else she can be, raised by Berry Punch, me, and Vinyl?

“I’d like to remind you that you have a scheduled meeting with Ms. Tiara from Barnyard Bargains. They’d like to renegotiate their contract with us,” Grace says.

“Ah, Filthy Rich thinks his daughter will eat me for breakfast,” I mutter. “Highly unlikely.”

Hmm, I wonder if I can tell Diamond Tiara that with the new government of Chineigh on our side we can easily screw them over. Guess I’d be a good supervillain. To think about it… I need to get rid of Ruby before she realises she’d be a better one.

That’s why you’d better watch out when you get richer.

Excuse me?

It’s me, the voice. I’d like to inform that we’re getting close to Yuggoth. Did you enjoy your vision?

“More or less,” I reply. Damn, did this pod get smaller or what? “I didn’t get to the moment when I become a princess and put Celestia in Tartarus to proclaim the Technocratic Empire.”

This won’t happen.

“You don’t know me yet…” I mutter.

You’d be assassinated quickly if you did. Beware of the Ides of March.

“Is it another allusion to something from the previous world?”

One of them, yeah. Also, you’re now fully awake. You must leave the pod and get to the lander.

Oh, surely. The pod opens and I get out. Huh. Either the gravity of this place is screwed, or my own centre of gravity moved a little bit.

A closer examination reveals that the latter is true. In other words, I’m now a bit more round, my belly somewhere between my knees. Damn. This is ridiculous. How long does it take before the bun leaves the oven? Does it at least come with not being nauseous?

As I’m getting used to the changes in my body, I hear the other two pods open.

“Woo-hoo!” Vinyl shouts. Her fur seems slightly brighter and her voice is slightly less raspy. “That thing in there repaired my lungs and liver,” she says, staring at my stomach. “If I say that I feel like a newborn foal, will you smack me?”

“You’ve just said that,” I mutter.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie thinks the gravity is lower here.” Trixie gets out of the pod. Looking at her, I wouldn’t say so – it seems that she’d lost some weight during the stay inside. I really hope they didn’t reuse her fat as nutrients for all of us. I mean, that’d be pretty awkward.

“Whoa, Trixie…” Vinyl’s eyes widen. “You look fuckable again!”

“Hey! Trixie was always fuckable!” Trixie stares at Vinyl. “Besides, the voice told us to go to the lander. Where is it?”

I look at the floor. There’s a shiny arrow on it now, pointing to some hatch under the main screen. We follow it and get into some cramped little shithole, filled with various instruments. Finally, some machinery I can interact with, not just that big red button in the main compartment. If only I could read those labels…

Everything is already programmed. Don’t touch anything.

“Well, fuck you too, voice,” I mutter.

“Damn it,” Vinyl says. “When Trixie got slimmer, Minuette got fat. Can’t you do something with your belly?”

“Yes. Give birth,” I reply.

“Now?”

“No, in a few months. Suck it up, Vinyl.” I look through the small window. We’re orbiting some small, yet very colourful planet – something taken out of the dream of a stoned modern artist. It seems to shimmer in the light of a very distant sun.

After a while, I notice that something else is orbiting the planet. I take a closer look and it seems like another rocket, just like ours. Something small falls off of it and flies towards the surface of the planet.

“Seems that Aryanne is scheduled to land before us,” Trixie says. “Let’s hope she doesn’t get much headstart.”

“We can always make it faster.” Vinyl looks at the buttons and levers covering the walls. “Artificial intelligence will never win against natural stupidity.”

“And we won’t win against the vacuum outside,” I reply.

Luckily, we wait for only one more revolution around the planet before the lander disconnects itself from the rest of the rocket. It makes a somersault and flies towards the surface. I look through the window and watch the rocket, slowly getting smaller until it’s hard to tell it from the distant star. What if we don’t come back? I could try to learn that sex-change spell again and start a colony on Yuggoth.

“Hmm…” Vinyl looks towards the planet. “How much would it cost to make a party there? Seems like a perfect location.”

Damn. With Vinyl’s and Kyrie’s genes, I don’t think my colony stands a chance.

“Trixie thinks it’d lack atmosphere,” Trixie says, making me groan.

While Yuggoth itself is too small to have an atmosphere, it’s maintained by a powerful spell left by the Masters.

“Awesome,” I mutter. “Hope this magical air doesn’t cause cancer or something.”

It shall be cured on the way back. Also, while we are at it, the atmosphere is thinner and the gravity is about twelve times weaker than what you’re used to. You’re not pegasi, so it shouldn’t be a problem, but in the past, a few test subjects ended up reaching the outer space and suffocating.

“I was just wondering…” Vinyl looks at the ceiling of the lander. “Does the voice of Aryanne’s rocket speak Pferdisch?”

“Most likely,” Trixie replies. “After all, it’s plugged into our brains, or something.”

The whole lander starts to shake. I look outside, but all I can see are the flames. What the hell?

Don’t worry. The lander is heating since it entered the atmosphere.

“That doesn’t sound reassuring!” I shout.

But it won’t last long.

Indeed, after another revolution around the planet, we slow down and start to float towards the ground on a couple of parachutes. I even notice a few details on the surface of the planet – a hill with some ruins on it, surrounded by forests. Or maybe some field – the plants there are too short to be trees, and look more like gigantic flowers. On the other side of this meadow for giants, there are a few rocky clearings and it seems that’s where we’re headed.

“Over there!” Vinyl exclaims, pointing at the clearing. I look in that direction and see another lander, just like ours, standing in the middle of the plain. Someone just left it and I can immediately tell it’s Kyrie; she tries to fly and, surprised by lower gravity, makes a somersault in the air and drops on the ground. As she’d probably say, ein kleiner Schritt für ein Pony, aber ein gewaltiger Sprung für die Ponyheit.

This being said, it’s our turn to land. I hear the roar of engines slowing us down before we hit the ground. Pretty hard, I must say, despite the braking. Luckily, it’s cushioned a bit by the artificial gravity of the lander turning off, allowing us to experience weighing only a few pounds.

Right after the shaking stops, I kick the door open and look around. Damn, it looks like a tubular music video from my youth. Everything has a purple tint and we’re in the forest full of some magical mushrooms or other shite.

“Okay, let’s find Aryanne and kick her ass.” Vinyl shoves me aside and jumps out of the lander. Thus, these are the first words spoken on this planet in the living memory. Hope she’s proud.

Trixie and I get out and look at another lander, parked about half a mile from us. I can see Aryanne taking an unnaturally long leap away from it and disappearing between the mushrooms. Kyrie has no such luck: she tries to fly, but every flap of her wings sends her way higher than she expects, making her somersault.

“It’ll take her a while before she gets there,” Trixie mutters. Meanwhile, Vinyl jumps forward, beating both the high jump and long jump world records at the same time. Impressive since she jumped without running; less impressive since she weighs less than a newborn foal.

We follow her. Long leaps seem to be the best way of moving forward here, especially if one also can reach the tops of the mushrooms; those are rather bouncy. Soon, however, I discover that the purple magical bubble surrounding the whole planet and holding the atmosphere together is hanging about a hundred metres above us – not a good news when you can jump ten metres high, bounce off the shrooms a few times and become the planet’s new moon.

Not to mention that it gets a bit tiring after a while. Even though we’re in the best physical condition after hibernation in the pods, I soon find myself a bit short of breath. But that’s nothing in comparison to Kyrie.

We can see her from there. She apparently figured out how to compensate for lower gravity while flying, but she still spins out of control from time to time and nearly reaches the top of the atmosphere. Aryanne is far ahead of her, almost in the place where the mushroom forest is replaced by some tall, thorny flowers. Meanwhile, we can almost hear Kyrie’s swearing.

“Hey, Kyrie!” Trixie bounces off the top of a tall shroom and tackles the pegasus in mid-air. Normally, it’d be a killer move, but Trixie lost a lot of weight in the pod, not to mention that we all move in slow-motion. However, it’s enough for Kyrie to panic. She flaps her wings and, with Trixie on her back pierces through the magic barrier.

“What the–” Vinyl stops in mid-air, watching the view while gently falling to the ground. Above her, Kyrie thrashes, but in vacuum, there’s no way for her to stop herself for flying away from the planet. Not to mention that they’re flying further and further away with Trixie, both of them wide-eyed, trying to catch a breath.

“We have to do something!” Vinyl shouts.

“What?” I ask, staring at them as they fly away. “They’re in outer space!”

Suddenly, I see the magic blast right above the bubble. It soon repeats, this time in the atmosphere. Holy shit. Even without air and in extremely low pressure, Trixie did the only sensible thing – she teleported herself and Kyrie back into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, they’re also pretty away from us, falling towards the thorny plants. Trixie floats past them, but Kyrie, apparently born under unlucky star in the middle of a buffalo burial grounds, gets caught by one of the flowers, moving at a great speed for something that’s supposed to be immobile.

“Whoa.” Vinyl nods. “We’d better get to them.”

It takes only a few jumps to reach Trixie. She’s lying on the ground, bleeding from her nose and ears, but when we stand by her, she opens her eyes and looks around. The veins in her eyes also look terrible, either because of decompression or because of a hasty teleportation.

“How are you?” I ask.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie feels like she has a terrible hangover,” Trixie mutters. “And that she shat herself like she never did before.” She tries to get up. “Where’s Kyrie? Trixie hopes she left her in space…”

Suddenly, a large drop of something that looks like spit falls on the ground near us. We look up and see a humongous flower, now close, with a bit of a blonde tail protruding from it.

“No shit,” Vinyl says. “Whatever forces rule this universe, they do love to throw this mare concrete life buoys. Straight into the anus.”

“Indeed.” Trixie nods. “Do we leave her like that?”

I shake my head. “That wouldn’t be nice. Sure, she’s an idiot, but leaving her to be digested…” I shudder. “Which stem does this flower grow from?”

We look up at the thorny kudzu, trying to find its whole way down. It takes a while – all those damn stems look the same, but finally we locate the right one and aim our horns at it.

“On three…” I mutter. “One, two…”

The magic blasts hit the stem, snapping it in half. The flower twitches and slowly tumbles to the ground, hitting other branches, leaves, and buds on the way. It hits the surface not far away from us, opening upon impact, causing Kyrie to roll out of it.

It seems that the time spent in the pod healed her bruises, right in time to make a place for bloody marks from decompression, a layer of goo in her coat, and the mane partially burned by the plant’s juices. Hell, she probably died from all that damage.

“Scheisse…” she mutters, proving once and for all that imbeciles are immortal. “Wie spät ist es? Ich muss wegwerfen… Kaffee machen…”

“What is she talking about?” Trixie asks, eyeing Kyrie and wincing.

“Some random shit,” I reply, trying to recall my Pferdisch, but vocabulary fails me. Not to mention grammar, because it’s never quite been there. Finally, I do recall one word. “Dummkopf.”

“Deine Mutter ist dick,” Kyrie replies.

Well, that was low. No one’s gonna be offending my mother. I levitate Kyrie rather brutally, mostly because she’s lighter than she should be. Then, I mobilise my poor language skills. “Kein Zeit für talking, verstehen? Aryanne wants die Welt explodieren, und du hilfst her, moron. And you can’t even do that well. We keep have to save your ass.”

Kyrie tries to free herself from my magic. “Was hast du gesagt?”

My brain finally manages to form a coherent sentence. “Wir haben dein Arsch dreimal gerätet already!”

“Thank you. I am very grateful.”

I nearly drop her. I mean, she’d exhibited some knowledge of Equine before, but that doesn’t sound as her usual choppy single words said with an accent that could kill.

“Hey, she can talk!” Vinyl exclaims.

Kyrie smiles sheepishly. “I tries learn Equine but Aryanne say I have cat food for brain,” she says.

“For a good reason,” Trixie mutters. I glare daggers at her before turning back to Kyrie.

“What else did Aryanne say?” I ask.

“Voice from the rocket help me learn,” Kyrie says. Apparently their rocket never heard of past tense, but well, those voices use one’s brain to work, so there wasn’t much power to harness. “And Aryanne world not explode.” She smirks. “She make demons listen to her and rule die alle Welt. But she say she make them your Augen explode. She not like you.”

“My what?” I ask, to which Kyrie makes a round gesture.

“Ovaries?” Vinyl shrugs.

“Eyes,” Trixie replies.

Kyrie nods. “You think she mistaken?”

“Totally,” I reply, if only because I like my eyes. “Knowing such demons, they’ll rip her anus apart at the first occasion.”

“As opposed to Uranus, which is over there.” Vinyl points at the sky.

“I don’t get it,” Kyrie says.

I sigh. “The point is, Aryanne is your friend,” I say, trying to speak loudly and clearly. “Friends don’t let friends have their arse made into a bagpipe of a blind idiot god, right?”

Kyrie groans. “She’s not my friend!” she shouts. It’s fascinating, like watching an angry hamster. “She always push me or pull me or beat me and I have a scar on mein Arsch! Left me here to be food of die große Sonnentau!” She points at the plant.

Well, crap. That’s not what I expected. But a good general can quickly change the battlefield. “Well, there’s a tiny little chance that she may succeed,” I say. “You wouldn’t want her to rule the world, right?”

“Think how much she’d push you and pull you then,” Vinyl says.

“I know not.” Kyrie shrugs. “She is…” She looks at us, scanning her limited vocabulary for a right word.

“Cum-gobbling cuntbagel,” Vinyl mutters, causing Kyrie’s eyes to widen.

“Yeah, this,” Kyrie says. “But I still love her.” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Dammit.” Trixie rolls her eyes. “Trixie thinks it’d be easier if you two got a room and talked it over. Without any of you trying to get those Stones of the Undead?”

“The Undead only complicate matters, you know,” I say. “Especially when it comes to love life.”

Kyrie nods. “Sure. Where’s Aryanne, then?”

Shit. We’re still in that creepy forest and Aryanne may be putting her hooves on stones of the undead right now. I look around, but I can’t see shit. I try to jump, but I can’t get too high as the flowers are looking for a catch. Apparently they evolved to eat anything that flies, which, in low gravity, makes a lot of sense.

At the third jump, I finally notice a top of a hill a few hundred metres from us. There are some black stones protruding from it. An interesting rock formation, I’d say. Maybe some ancient ruins, like the legendary Heldskalla at the bottom of the ocean on the Plowmare’s Planet. Well, except of all the water.

“Let’s go east,” I say. “There must be some civilisation in there.”

In fact, I have no idea if it’s east, especially since my stomach feels like the whole planet is spinning in the wrong direction. Or maybe it’s just the foal? Anyway telling them to go east sounds like I know what I’m doing.

Which, frankly, isn’t much. We walk towards the hill, slaloming between the trunks of the giant plants and scaring off something that looks like large moths with unproportionately small wings – I guess I know what those plants eat when ponies aren’t around. The moths aren’t dangerous. They just fly above our heads making high-pitched sounds.

“Hey, do you think they’re trying to control our brains?” Vinyl asks. “It seems to be a common thing for everything those Masters do.”

Correction: the moths may be dangerous.

“We’d need somepony with a brain to check that,” Trixie says. “But since no one with a brain volunteers to fly on this planet, they can’t show us their true colours.”

Trixie’s implication turns out to be more or less right as soon as we reach the hill. The rock formation I observed consists of a couple of spires made of black, slick, and shiny rock, looking a bit like anthracite. More slabs are scattered around the top of the hill, hidden in purple grass. Nothing beside remains. And among that, Aryanne stands, scratching her mane. She shudders and looks at me when I approach her.

“Rocks.” She grins. “Nothing but rocks. I arranged them in a circle.”

“We’re so proud of you,” I mutter, staring at the circle placed exactly between the spires. “Now stop being crazy and let’s go home.”

“Das ist Scheisse,” Aryanne says, weighing a stone in her hoof. “It doesn’t work.” She twitches.

“We come too late.” Vinyl nods. “She went mad.”

“I’m not mad!” Aryanne stands in the middle of the circle. “This doesn’t work!” She drops on the ground, panting. “I went to another planet and all I got was that crappy stone!”

“Try to put that on a t-shirt, you’ll earn millions,” I say. “Maybe those aren’t the Stones of the Undead. No use wasting time to find them.”

“Yeah, this place blows.” Vinyl looks around. “Maybe the stones are over there, near that clearing.”

“Don’t give her ideas,” Trixie mutters. “Those demons are already taking over. We’d better run.” She backpedals, revealing Kyrie, who was hiding behind her.

“Oh, Kyrie. You’re alive.” Aryanne smirks and throws the stone at Kyrie. It bounces off her wing doing no damage due to poor gravity. “It’s your fault that they don’t work!”

“And that’s what I call a toxic relationship,” Vinyl says. “Kyrie, you should leave her and shit on her doormat on your way out. Unless you’re into burning houses down, then you can do just that.”

“Dafür, kann ich ihr den Hals umdrehen?” Kyrie stretches her hooves.

“Sure, go and snap my neck.” Aryanne sighs, throwing another stone at Kyrie and missing. “The whole meticulous plan went to Scheiße...”

Trixie walks to me, watching as Kyrie approaches Aryanne. “We should intervene. They may kill each other or something.”

“Wait,” I say. “They’re gonna sort it out.”

Oh, how wrong I was. As soon as Kyrie walks between the black spires, she freezes for a painfully long second. Then, she drops on the ground, covering her ears. Aryanne watches it, stone-faced. For a moment, I think it’s her sadism, but then she looks at me and I notice her bloodshot eyes.

“My head is gonna explode soon,” she says in a happy tone, not matching her words at all. “Those stones work. They just let me go for a moment to take care of her and… use us… To free...” She freezes, gritting her teeth.

Well, shit. Behind me, Vinyl has enough and runs away, screaming something about her head exploding. Trixie stands still, but when I look back at her I notice the struggle between loyalty and common sense painted vividly on her face. I’m torn too. Leaving Aryanne and Kyrie here is an option, but if those things can use them to free themselves…

Well, I may take a chance, huh?

When I step into the circle, I expect pain and the feeling of the brain peeling off my skull. Nothing like that happens. I sense a surprise and mild pressure on my ears, which quickly increases. Words… Or not words, pictures form in my head. Both at once? Hell only knows.

Did you say ‘hell’? Because that’s what we’re gonna do to you.

We’ll turn you inside out like those two!

Hey! This one has another one inside! Also, nothing for aeons and a whole crowd now!

“Shut up!” I shout. I can sense a faint, trembling halo around Kyrie’s body and a bit stronger one around Aryanne. “What are you?”

Heard it? She told us to shut up! What is she thinking?

You don’t need to know what we are!

I see some dark silhouettes around me. Not sure what creatures are those, but I’d rather not see them in bright light. Definitely not ponies. I’m not sure they have any shape that’d be recognisable by someone used to three-dimensional space.

You done thinking? Better look when you can, or else…”

The pressure on my ears will soon make my head burst. “Just out of curiosity…” I mutter. “Is it true what they say? That the stones can control you?”

For a moment, I hear silence. Like, really hear. It’s more than just an absence of sound. It’s so silent it’s almost palpable. Then I tremble under the collective laughter of all the things that are out there, trying to, in their words, turn me inside out.

Why’d you need that? one of the voices asks. Even if you could destroy any of them to gain control, we’d never let you do tha–

Shut up! I sense a mental equivalent of being kicked in the leg. Several silhouettes move, surrounding one of them, who is waving its appendages and shouting in an high-pitched tone.

Think, Minuette! Before they look back at me, I aim my horn at one of the spires and fire a spell. It sends sparks around and hits the rock leaving a small dent in it.

Hey! Who let you do that?

I chuckle. “Blame that idiot who just told me how to control you…”

I hear thousands of shrieks, as they all start yelling at that one voice who shouts back in a grumpy tone. The pressure on my ears decreases; I can see Kyrie move slightly and Aryanne taking a deep breath.

I blast the spire with my magic. Some debris crumbles off, causing the creatures to scream. “Trixie!” I yell. “Destroy it!”

Not sure if Trixie hears me, but Kyrie definitely does. As I strike for the third time, she gets off the ground and rams into the weakened spire. It shakes visibly and, as I fall on my knees, reaching the reserves of my magic, it slowly topples, accompanied by the sounds I’ve never heard in my life before.

“Shut up!” I shout. To my surprise everyone shuts up. I can still see the silhouettes, albeit a bit more clearly. It doesn’t make them any more appealing, though, especially now when they apparently look at each other, trying to shift the blame.

What are your orders?

That’s it? What are my orders? Really, I’m sick of this shit. There’s only one order that comes to my mind.

“Go fuck yourselves!” I yell. “Eter-fucking-nally!”

I sense the cries of terror, as if a million voices suddenly found themselves on a receiving end of surprise buttsex. Will it always be that way? It doesn’t have to.

“And I don’t want to hear you anymore!” I shout. “And leave us alone.”

Everything disappears, leaving us in the middle of debris from the broken spire. Aryanne rubs her temples and takes a deep breath.

“Everyone okay?” I ask.

“Yes,” Aryanne says. “Now, if you’d be so nice to let me control them–” She doesn’t finish, instead dropping on the ground when Kyrie smacks her in the back of the head with a piece of a rock.

“Cum-gobbling cuntbagel!” She turns to me. “Good?”

I can’t help but smile. “Good.”

Wasting no more time on this little, creepy planet, we find Vinyl and drag unconscious Aryanne back to her lander. Kyrie ties her with duct tape with a skill that is almost uncanny. Guess they’re all into bondage. After that, we get back to our lander and after a while, we’re back in our respective rockets, orbiting the planet.

“What do you think will happen now?” Vinyl asks, watching Kyrie’s rocket flying away.

“Well, two months will have passed when we’re back on Earth,” I reply, sitting in my pod. “I wouldn’t count on the world waiting for us to accomplish our mission.”

Trixie sighs. “Too bad. Trixie got used to being worshipped.”

But of course. I shake my head and get comfortable in the pod, waiting to hibernate.

I sense a month of very realistic porn in my future…

The hibernation passes way too fast. When we wake up, we’re about to reenter the atmosphere, which means that currently we’re flying around the globe, while the system tries to calculate how to get back on the surface as close as to the starting point as possible. Why did it wake us up now, I have no idea. Maybe just so we can watch the flames around the rocket when we tear through the layers of increasingly dense air.

I’d rather stay in the pod, myself. Since another month passed, I’m now pregnant as fuck and feel really heavy. Not to mention that all those continents flying under me make me dizzy.

Finally, with a quiet puff, the parachutes are deployed, and we slowly drop into the sea by some frozen shore. I have a hard time pushing myself through the hatch, but when we finally climb on the rocket, I notice Kyrie, waving at us from her vehicle. She’s sitting next to grumpy-faced Aryanne, who is conscious, but still tied.

A bigger surprise awaits us on the shore. There’s an igloo there and in front of it, there’s Hexie. She’s wearing a bomber jacket and holding a fishing rod, apparently trying to catch something for dinner.

“You’re scaring the fish off!” she yells.

“Nice to see you too,” Trixie mutters. “We saved the world. How about you?”

“I’m fishing,” Hexie replies. “But some damn rockets keep falling into the water.”

Someone crawls out of the igloo. Lyra. “That’s because your approach is wrong,” she says and turns to us. “Don’t mind her. I keep telling her that she doesn’t know how to fish, but she keeps saying something about her father, the fishing fanatic.”

Hexie gives her a nasty glare. “Pytał się ciebie kiedyś o coś, kurwa, ktoś, kiedyś, coś?”

“Are you arguing again?” Inkie gets outside and smiles. “Minuette! Vinyl! Trixie! You’re back! We were waiting for two months!”

Lyra nods. “After you flew away, Daring Do paid Berry for your services and decided to explore some temples in Neighsia.” She shrugs. “She seemed pretty pissed that you left her here. Berry took Ruby back home, saying something about school and missed classes, and we stayed here with Blackcurrant Muffin.”

“Who’s still sorting out that supernatural mess,” Hexie adds. “We once were attacked by some slimy motherfuckers, but she fend them off. Oh, Vinyl, and you have a kid.” She points at the last pony to crawl out of the igloo – a small, foal-shaped blob of yellowish jelly, who trots to the shore and looks at Vinyl.

“Hello, mom!” it says.

“Aww, shit,” Vinyl mutters. “What’s your name, little one?”

“Muffin gave him some unpronounceable name,” Inkie replies. “Lyra called him ‘Extended Play’ and it stuck.”

“Well, some still call him ‘Little Shit’.” Lyra looks at Hexie and shakes her head.

“Why no one welcomes me?” Kyrie asks.

“Because they hate us,” Aryanne replies. Before Kyrie can tell her anything else, we hear some strange sound coming from under water. A moment later, a rusty submarine resurfaces next to Kyrie’s rocket.

Hexie throws the fishing rod on the ground and groans. “Really?!”

The hatch of the submarine opens, revealing another white pony with a blond mane, tied in two braids. She’s wearing leather shorts, long socks, and a green hat. She also levitates a large mug of beer.

“Kriegsmarine!” Aryanne exclaims. “Free me and let’s run! Kyrie went insane.”

“I can’t. They made me cooperate,” Kriegsmarine replies, pointing at the ponies leaving the submarine with her. Which are, in order, Bon Bon, Flitter, Cloudchaser, and those two agents we met in the Trottoman Empire. Belka and Strelka, I think.

“You two are arrested,” Cloudchaser says, pointing at Kyrie and Aryanne. “By half of the civilised world. In the Griffon Empire, you were sentenced to death for stealing an airship, but those two, umm…”

“Comrades,” Belka says.

“Yeah.” Cloudchaser sighs. “For some reason, they want Aryanne to spend twenty years in some remote facility where you dig up stones from the quarry and where your piss freezes before it hits the ground.”

“Stones?!” Aryanne pales even more – an impressive feat. “Never! I’d rather be killed.”

“Not so fast,” Bon Bon says. “The international council gathered and they decided that the biggest of your crimes was causing serious environmental pollution in Zebrica…”

Vinyl stands up. “Well, technically it was–”

“Shut up,” I mutter.

Bon Bon glares at us before continuing. “And thus, you’re sentenced to five years of studying friendship.”

“What?” Aryanne asks. “Zat’s ridiculous!”

“Worry not,” Flitter says. “You’ll study friendship in Zebrica…”

“No!” Aryanne screams and thrashes, but Flitter and Cloudchaser carry her away to the submarine anyway.

“For the record, Kyrie did nothing wrong,” I say, seeing that the pegasi are coming back to seize her. “She helped us catch Aryanne.”

“And where exactly did this happen?” Bon Bon asks. “And when?”

“Planet Yuggoth,” I reply. “Beyond your jurisdiction, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, really?” Bon Bon shrugs. “Guess that creates a serious legal problem, right?”

Strelka salutes. “In Hooviet Union, we solved serious legal problems long ago!”

“One bullet, one lawyer,” Bon Bon mutters. “The whole world rejoiced.” She turns to Kyrie. “I guess until your problem is solved, you may consider yourself under house arrest. Wherever your house is.”

Kyrie looks at the submarine. “I can study friendship with Aryanne…”

“Yeah, that’s how they call it nowadays…” Vinyl smirks.

“Trixie doubts it’ll work…”

I sigh. “We’ll worry about that in five years. Now, can somepony give me a lift to Ponyville? I’m freezing my ass off!”

“And that’s, my dear children and grandchildren, how the story ended. More or less. A few months later, I gave birth to son, who, as you can see, isn’t exactly a bat pony. Except for the eyes, I guess. His father tried to woo me again, but with the amount of travel we were both doing later, we could hardly ever meet in one place on the planet. And thus, he ended up with Wild Hunt. Apparently stallions do dig scars.”

“Yeah, mom. They gave me seven screeching siblings.”

“Oh, great. Despite being a half-bat pony, my son is kinda racist. Guess it’s auntie Ruby’s influence.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t argue, Ruby, you really have your moments, sometimes. Anyone have anything else to say before I try to conserve myself in alcohol? You, little one? Who are you?”

“Raspberry Jam. Cherry Berry’s second cousin’s seventh son.”

“Ah. No wonder I don’t know you. What did you want to ask?”

“What happened to Aryanne and Kyrie?”

“Ah, that’s an interesting story. One’d think they finally got together and lived homosexually ever after, but the truth is–”

Suddenly, I’m interrupted by the sound of something heavy hitting the wall. The party guests ran away, collectively diving behind the bar. All of them except Hexie, but over the last couple of decades, she gained enough muscle mass to bench-press the whole pub, so a mere wall is nothing for her.

The debris settles and I see Kyrie sitting in the middle of the pandemonium, shaking her head. She didn’t change a bit, maybe except of her hair getting a bit lighter. Also, she’s wearing some strange device, spewing smoke and flames in random directions.

“Did I make it to the party?” she asks when the dust clears. “Sorry for that, mein jetpack malfunctioned,” she says, looking at the mess she made.

“Well, you missed the whole story,” I reply. “What’s going on?”

“You need to go with me.” She stands up, the remains of her jetpack setting fire to the remains of the table. “Aryanne…”

“Is she trying to start an evil empire again?” I ask.

“Worse.” Kyrie opens a saddlebag that somehow survived the crash and produces a canvas from it. “She decided that she needed a hobby and chose this…”

I look at the canvas. “Holy shit! Who told her that she could paint?”

“Nopony.” Kyrie shrugs. “But when I told her it was hideous, she tried to blow my hut up.”

I nod. “So you’re telling me to go all the way to Zebrica to convince her that she should stop painting?” I throw the picture into the fire. “To Zebrica? It’s no country for old mares…”

“Worse still, her painting is so bad, every time she finishes a picture, the earth opens and demons come out, trying to worship it,” Kyrie mutters. “It’s pretty annoying, even for zebras, who are used to weird Scheisse like that.”

“Fighting demons?” I ask. “No way. I’m too old for this.”

“I’m fifty-five and just flew across the ocean with a faulty jetpack,” Kyrie says.

“Yeah,” one of my son’s ‘seven screeching siblings’ says. “Also, two days ago you kicked Moonlight Sonata across the room, because she told you you were old, auntie.”

“Yeah,” Ruby nods. “And ponies live over a hundred years anyway.”

I shrug and smirk at Kyrie. “Demons, you say? How many?”

“Enough for the two of us?” Vinyl asks.

“Three.” Trixie stands up.

“Four,” Ruby, Hexie, and Inkie say in unison. After a short discussion, Ruby agrees on “five” and Inkie gets a six.

“Okay…” I get out of the pub through the Kyrie-shaped hole in the wall and take a deep breath, standing in the middle of the airport. The evening sky is surprisingly inviting. Was I really planning to spend the rest of my life remembering the old days and ruling my family with an iron hoof?

Bullshit.

I grab my goggles and turn to Kyrie. “So, which way do we go?”

Author's Notes:

And thus, after two years, we're done.

...

For now.