The Temple of Rushwa made quite an impressive show when I flattened it. It must have contained a considerable amount of bound magic to explode the way it did. Probably a lot of trickery to awe the populace in addition to the defensive traps in the inner sanctum.

I paused to watch the burning stones arcing through the sky. There were a lot of zebras in the plaza doing the same thing. They didn't seem to be enjoying themselves anywhere near as much as I was, and none of them made the appropriate oooh and aaah noises that you'd expect at a fireworks show. "Tough crowd," Pinkie would have said.

I shielded myself against the falling debris and expanded my magical senses, searching for the Sultan. Nothing stood out immediately. There was a great deal of magical energy at work throughout the palace complex but no heavy concentrations that would indicate a cluster of defensive magic. In fact, there were even a few areas nearly devoid of mana. And the biggest gap was... right behind the throne room.

I grinned. Clever, those zebras. Just not clever enough. Hiding all of their magic left an eye-catching void.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I whispered to myself as I toppled the pillars of the arcade around the reflecting pool. Might as well make a pretense of being fooled, I thought. They obviously worked so hard on this.

I wondered briefly if the tactic was something they'd improvised or if they had thought to be prepared for an attack by some magically powerful enemy.

"What a shame," I muttered as the twin minarets fronting the Peacock Gate slammed into the ground. "I'm in the mood to play, and nopony else wants to!"

The magical void was moving away from the throne room; it was time to end my little farce. I leaped into the air and hovered over the spot where the Sultan was being hidden. I used a great deal of energy to rip the roof off the palace, so that there was another impromptu fireworks show as the molten bits of stone, brick, and tile fountained up into the night. I'm making a grand entrance, Rarity! Are you proud of me?

"THERE YOU ARE!" I cried out at the suddenly exposed crowd of zebras. It was a mix of guards, waganga, and heavily bejeweled mares, with one lone stallion who wore a fantastically complex headdress and more jewels than all of his harem combined.

I dropped out of the sky, not even bothering to flap once to soften my landing. Ornate tiles exploded into fragments under my hooves. "SULTAN ZATAR! I HAVE COME TO…"

An armored mganga to my right snatched a glass sphere from her harness and flung it at me in one fluid motion. I enclosed it in a little shield and it burst into searing green filaments of energy. I turned to the mganga, floated the contained spell over to where she could get a good, close look at it, and said very quietly, "If this sort of thing worked on me, I wouldn't even be here. You are a stupid pony and I am getting very, very tired of stupidity in general. How would you like it if—"

That's when the triad of waganga hit me from the other side.

They tried to pin me in position, literally. A unicorn mage would have used bands of force or a crushing increase of gravity, but the zebras took a much more direct and deadly approach. They threw tiny enchanted slivers of wood into the air that instantly transformed into large spears. The shafts shot downwards and would have pierced me in a dozen places if I hadn't reacted quickly enough. Unfortunately for the first mganga, tracking and incinerating multiple targets caused me to stop concentrating on the little shield containing her spell, and her own potion made a rather messy end of her.

The leader of the waganga lifted a curled, crooked staff and shouted, "O Mare of Night, my curse I send! The light of day will be your end!"

From within the curve of her staff, a burst of brilliant light erupted and passed straight through my shield. I winced and shielded my face with my wing. But aside from a great deal of heat, there was no pain, no effect at all, unless you count my sight being temporarily dazzled. I threw a few analytical spells toward the staff and was surprised to discover that what it emitted was only controlled, concentrated sunlight.

My first thought was that it was cover for a more potent attack. But no, the rest of the crowd was simply standing there, waiting in anticipation. I tried to grab the staff in my magic, but it was just as thaumicly slippery as the rest of the waganga's equipment, so I shattered it with a set of spinning, interpenetrating crescent-shaped shields. The light went out.

The ridiculously ornamented stallion waved away further futile attempts on my life and stepped forward. "You may take me, monster, but spare the others, I beg of you!"

I suppose they weren't really any less intelligent than average, and their little traps and ruses may have worked on somepony else. But it all seemed blatantly obvious to me. The "Sultan" was big and powerfully muscled. Beneath his finery, I could see scars crisscrossing his neck and shoulders, and there was a fresh one under his eye. I ignored him and scanned the rest of the guards. In the very back was a soft-faced stallion with a hay belly so big he couldn't buckle the girth strap of his ill-fitting armor. I plucked him up and dropped him to the floor between my front hooves. His helmet fell off, revealing wide, terrified eyes and a brow soaked with sweat.

"Spare me, oh mighty demon of the night!" he whined. "I bow before you! I will serve you as a faithful follower and obey your every command! I beg you to spare me, great Nightmare!"

"Y—you think I'm Luna?" I laughed and laughed. "Okay… I get it! Sunlight! That wouldn't have worked even if I was Princess Luna, by the way."

"Then… who are you, oh mighty one?"

I reared and snarled, "I AM TWILIGHT SPARKLE, PRINCESS OF FRIENDSHIP!"

The sultan fainted. The waganga and guards made assorted expressions of disbelief. The mares of the harem began to weep, except for the one that went up in flames.

Flames? Green flames?

"Uhmn..." said the changeling, edging away from the rest of the harem. "I'm not really with these ponies, Your Highness. Can I go now?"

It wasn't Ket. She was one of Chryssy's. "And you are…?" I asked. Nicely.

"Lieutenant Khahrvveen, ma'am, of the Ghastly Gorge hive, attached to Her Majesty's Foreign Service. Just observing. Really."

"So, you'll be telling Chrysalis all about this, then?"

"I—I guess? Well, maybe if you don't want me to, I could forget what I—"

"OH NO! Oh, excuse me," I said, dragging the trembling changeling closer. "No, I want you to tell her all about it. Stay and watch the fun!"

"D-do I h-have to?"

"YES!"

"O-okay."

I nodded and smiled in satisfaction.

Then, I ran a few thousand volts through the sultan to wake him up. I flicked away the acrid smoke and smell of singed hair while he recovered his wits. Once he managed it, he began grovelling again.[1]
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[1] What is it about an obsequious whiner that makes you want to stomp them into the ground?
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"Oh, majestic one! I will serve you faithfully! All my treasures are yours for the asking!"

I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Shut up."

"I obey, perfect one!" He flattened his face against the floor.

"Can't you imagine anything other than a master/slave relationship?"

He slowly lifted his head and stared at me in blank incomprehension.

I sighed again and gritted my teeth. "I am the Princess of flipping Friendship! I am here to SOLVE A FRIENDSHIP PROBLEM!"

The sultan moved his mouth, but nothing came out other than a few strangled squeaks. A lot of his court seemed to be having the same problem.

I took a few deep breaths and tried again. "This whole thing started because you wanted to annex your brother's kingdom, and thought that using the Eye of Rushwa to smite it with a magical plague seemed reasonable. That's not very friendly. I don't think you've ever had a true friend in your life, and I think that's because you lack any sense of empathy. You don't understand how other ponies feel when you treat them like mere things."

"I—I shall mend my ways, oh beauty of the night."

I permitted myself a tiny smile. "Good. That's the right attitude! And I'm going to help you with that."

Maybe it was the way I said it. I tried to keep my voice perfectly even and reasonable, but the sultan's eyes went wide and his pupils shrunk to pinpoints. "What—what are you going—"

I was suddenly tired of the whole charade, and wanted to get it over with. "I'm going to teach you empathy. You were going to put thousands of ponies to a slow, horrible death just because they were in your way. I'm going to show you exactly how that feels."

He tried to crawl backwards away from me, moaning out, "No! No! Mercy, great one! Spare me! I will—"

I couldn't stand another pitiful, self-serving whimper out of him. "I'm returning your plague spell to you," I said. I vomited up the modified disease magic and shoved it down his throat.

He tried to scream but only managed a choked gurgle. He tried to stand but his legs kicked uselessly. Large boils rose up under his skin and blood began to drip from his nostrils and eyes.

"See?" I said quietly, leaning down so that he would be sure to hear me. "Not very nice, is it?"

"Twilight Sparkle, stop this at once!"

It was hard for everypony to tear their eyes away from the writhing horror that the Sultan had become, but they managed it. I sighed tiredly and looked up.

She glided down out of the night on huge silver-white wings and came to a gentle landing beside me, her hooves barely making any sound as they touched down.

"It's alright. It's over." I said, not quite looking her in the eyes.

"It most certainly is not over!" Rarity snapped. "You release that poor pony from whatever spell you've cast on him, this instant."

"It's the spell that he had his witches make to infect his brother's kingdom." I chuckled. "Not exactly a dose of his own medicine, but in the same spirit. Still want me to release him?"

"Yes, I do!" She gave a stamp for emphasis and cracked one of the beautifully patterned tiles. She looked down and gave a little cry of dismay.[2]
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[2] With all the wanton destruction surrounding us, I was amazed she had any thought for a single bit of flooring, no matter how aesthetically pleasing.
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Rarity stepped between me and the moaning Sultan and pushed her head under my chin so that I would have to look at her.

"Twilight, the bad behavior of other ponies is no excuse for imitating them! You are better than that! You are a good pony who sometimes—"

My bark of harsh laughter interrupted her. "A good pony? No, I'm not. I'm officially not a good pony. Just look at me!" I roared at her and bared my fangs. I arched my neck and loomed over her, topping her by several heads. "I AM A BAD P—"

She slapped me. Hard.

Suddenly, the patter of little bits of masonry occasionally falling from the shattered walls seemed very loud.

"You are not," Rarity hissed, rearing and putting her forehooves on my chest so that she could press her muzzle against mine. "No matter what some judgmental rocks may think, you are a good pony, and I am not going to let you deceive yourself into thinking otherwise."

"I—"

"I know what you did, Twilight. Ket was aboard one of the zebra airships and saw you ingest the Eye and... well… the waganga."

Yes, I thought. Having a hard time reconciling that with the idea of a "good" pony, aren't you?

She shook her head. "That dark magic is affecting you. Clouding your thinking. You have to get rid of it, Twilight!"

That made sense. What did I need with all that black magic for, anyway? Of course, my traitorous brain immediately came up with several interesting experiments I could run…. "No! I mean, yes. Yes, you're right, Rarity."

She let out a huge sigh of relief and dropped back to all fours. "Oh, I'm so glad, darling! You'll feel so much better! You'll see."

I nodded.

"So, if you'll release the Sultan…"

"No, I don't think so."

There was a very long pause before she said, "What?"

"He won't die," I explained. "He'll suffer from the plague for a year and a day, and then it will leave him. Maybe it will teach him something. Maybe not." I shrugged and shook out my vast wings. "I'm going now, Rarity. I have to find somewhere far away to release all of the foulness inside of me. If I can do it. It certainly won't be safe to be anywhere near me."

"Dear, are you sure you won't let the Sultan…"

"He's lucky I don't set him on fire as well!" I paused to think. "I could. Wanna see?"

"No! No, I think he's properly regretful as it is!"

"Are you sure?" I couldn't resist. Rarity is so adorable when she's flustered.

"Absolutely, darling! I think it may be best if you did leave." Her look of alarm softened into a sad smile. "Twilight, please be careful! You know I'd go with you, but I don't know when I'll lose my wings and…"

"Huh," I said, suddenly realizing how long it had been since I'd activated the crystal engine. "You should have reverted to normal a long time ago. Maybe there's something prolonging the effect. Some… thing… oh, Sun and Moon!"

Rarity took a step back. "Twilight? What did you…"

I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Most of the zebras took the opportunity to escape, but there were a couple who stayed, notably the brave guard captain who had been willing to give up his life for his worthless father. The changeling scuttled around to take cover behind Rarity.

"Twilight, please! I'm becoming concerned."

That only made it worse. I flopped down and rolled onto my back, kicking my legs in the air like a filly, and howling with laughter. "Don't—" I gasped. "Don't be con—concern… oh, ha ha ha ha ha!" I couldn't get it out.

Rarity backed away a few paces and waited it out. The zebra prince approached her cautiously and spoke to her in a low voice. She nodded and he went and made a mat of some discarded capes and lifted his father onto it.

"Okay," I gasped, when my epic fit of laughter had finally ebbed away. "It's kind of a funny story. When you were unconscious down in the labyrinth, I cut open your head and stuffed a magic gem into your brain."

"You… what?!"

"No, no, wait! I told it wrong."

"I'm waiting." Rarity was the only pony I knew who could manage to give a short line like that a simultaneously frosty and horrified tone. She's a multi-talented pony.

"It's based on rapid amplitude deviation of… uh… yeah… never mind." I cleared my throat and began again. "After Lee Helm was killed, I realized that it was pure luck that none of you were hurt or killed. I was near panic at the thought of losing any of you, so I came up with a way to fix the situation, you see?"

"No, darling, I'm afraid I don't."

I waved a hoof at her. "The gems! They are capable of recording and transmitting incredible amounts of data. Magical and physical. All they needed was a structure with enough storage capacity and power to make them work."

"The engine?"

"Yes! You see now?"

"Sorry, darling. But you said, 'record' and 'transmit,' didn't you? Record and transmit, what, exactly?'

"You!" I'm sure my jagged mouthful of fangs made smiling a less than reassuring sight, but I couldn't help myself. "All of you, physical and mental! The gem transmits it to the engine and the engine stores it and feeds it back, making sure your form and thoughts are maintained in an optimal state. That's why you're still an alicorn! I should have realized that the recording wouldn't kick in until after the starting pulse elevated you into a higher state! That's why you're going to be an alicorn from now on!"

"I… you…" Rarity fell back onto her rump with a thud, and her voice rose into a squeak so high that if there had been any diamond dogs within a league, it would have set them to howling. "I… I'm going to be an alicorn... for the rest of my life?"

I laughed and lowered my muzzle until it was nearly touching hers. "You're going to be an alicorn, forever."

Rarity just gaped at me. It was clear she didn't understand, so I bit her. She gasped and jerked her wing away, holding it up to her face to inspect the damage. There wasn't any, of course.

"See? Instant reconstruction. Even if you get obliterated by something really nasty, the engine will build you back up and you'll start right back where you left off. Neat, huh?"

"I… I don't know what to say…"

"Say goodbye… for now."

"But you can't go!" Rarity protested. "The others will be here in a little while and they… they…" she paused and frowned. "You should have asked us, Twilight. I'm… well, I'm delighted, but perhaps Fluttershy and Applejack won't feel the same way about…"

"Too late! No take-backs!" I rose and stretched my wings again. "And I really need to go now, or I'm going to forget what a good pony I am and I'm going to stomp every one of Zatar's guards, waganga and courtiers into greasy little smears. Really… I'm practically salivating at how good their corrupt guts will feel under my hooves."

"Oh." Rarity blinked. "Well, maybe that's for the best, then. When will we see you again?"

"I don't really know." I shrugged. "Sorry for leaving you with this mess to clean up. Explain things to the girls and take care of Nebula and the crew, won't you?"

"Yes, darling," Rarity stepped forward and gave two flaps of her wings so that she was high enough to kiss me on the cheek. "You take care of yourself, and come back as soon as you can."

"I will," I said. "I… oh, roadapples!"

"What is it?"

The interstitial exit vortices were forming with alarming speed and power, and there were only two beings in existence that could create such high energy teleportation spells. To my horror, I found myself instinctively preparing to fight both of them. If my first reaction was to attack Celestia and Luna, I needed to be far away from… everywhere.

"Gotta go!" I yelled, and tore my own hole in reality.

Author's Notes:

Thanks to statoose and PresentPerfect for editing and pre-reading this chapter.