Promises are promises.

The first blast of dark magic caught the Red Queen square in the face. It was disguised as pure force but carried a secondary matrix that enveloped and hardened around her head in an attempt to blind her.

The instant after the spell left my horn, I teleported one hundred and forty-four degrees to my left (centered on the Red Queen) and triggered the second matrix. A multiplied gravity field sprang into existence. It was a blobby X shape in cross section, which would cause far more damage than a simple increase in apparent weight.

Another one-forty-four displacement, and I threw an interlocking series of fast rotating shields that should have done to her what the grinder of a cider press does to an apple.

My next teleport brought me to the fourth point of the star pattern, and since there didn't seem to be much matter in the celestial realm we were in, I used hairs from my mane as hyperfast missiles, enclosed and stiffened in tiny cylindrical shields.

No mortal pony and very few monsters I knew of could have survived through my third attack, but the Queen was unaffected. Yet not unchanged. Though my lightning fast jumps and attacks gave me only a couple of seconds to observe her, she seemed—blurry.

Another teleport completed the star,[1] and I used two knife-like waves of super-heated air in an attempt to fillet her while simultaneously cooking her alive. I admit that the effort was a bit halfhearted. I knew by then that she was capable of resisting my attacks somehow, and was more interested in finding out how she was doing it.
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[1] The Star Attack Pattern is usually employed by a team of five unicorns, mainly to keep them from blasting each other when surrounding an enemy. Teleportation for confusion's sake was my own twist on the tactic.
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I continued winking from point to point, throwing ever more vicious spells, and noticed that the "blurriness" of the Red Queen increased in a way that matched the physically affecting portions of my spell. Interesting. Tirek's spell failed to affect her. A simple attempt to teleport her head two feet to the left didn't work. Combinations designed to fail in disastrous ways produced nothing more than a shimmer in the air.

After two more trips around the star, I stopped. The Queen hadn't moved or made any attempt to retaliate. I still kept a reflexive shield spell matrix on a hair-trigger. She came back into focus.

Pride or hubris or possibly a combination of both made me come to a halt facing the Red Queen from only a body-length away. I flared my wings and arched my neck, snorting in anger and frustration.

"You've changed since I last saw you, Twilight Sparkle," the Queen said calmly.

I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. I'd just tried to murder the creator of the world in several ingenious and appalling ways, and she was speaking to me as if I had just dropped by for tea. Maybe it was a situation she wasn't entirely unused to.

She looked me over, and I knew she was using more than physical sight in her examination. Her gaze paused on the two necklaces around my throat.

"You wear an encapsulation of my daughter's magic," she said. Her voice was still low and even, but her eyes narrowed slightly. "Did you kill her?"

That surprised me for several reasons. For one, it meant that the Red Queen didn't know everything that had gone on in the world while she had been imprisoned. She might be invulnerable, but she wasn't omniscient. It was also a strong indicator of the complexity of my life that I couldn't answer the question with a simple yes or no.

"Celestia, Luna, and I destroyed the physical part of Luna that had been imprisoned in the Wheel of the World with you. This is what is left of her magical essence."

The Queen lifted the Talisman of Night off of my neck and floated it over to examine more closely. Her levitation field felt perfectly normal to me.

"My poor girl," she said softly, and set the necklace down between her forelegs. She also took the Gem of Remembrance from me. I had a moment of worry that I would forget the Undiscovered West, but my memories remained clear.

The Queen's only comment on the Gem, before she placed it next to the Talisman, was a soft, "Odd."

If I couldn't defeat her, my next best option was escape. "Well, if that's all, I should be going," I said, brusquely. "I imagine that your return will have a significant impact on the world and I should be with my friends and family to help them through it all. Sorry about the attacks, but that was because of a promise I made to Luna. I'm sure you understand."

She tore all of the borrowed magic out of me with tiny motions of her horn. The zebra waganga, the poisoned morass of the Eye of Rushwa, and Discord's chaos magic all sorted themselves out into glowing balls of energy that floated in front of her chest.

I don't remember collapsing, but the sudden clarity of my mind was like falling into an icy river.

"Did you kill Discord as well?" the Queen asked, unconcerned by my uncontrollable shuddering and convulsing.

Discord? Oh stars and moon, what had I done?

It took me several moments to be able to speak coherently, let alone regain my hooves. "He's not dead," I gasped out. "But he's in danger. Let me go get him."

She didn't answer. She turned and brought a construct into existence with a pulse of her horn. It was roughly spherical, about a pony length in diameter, a translucent blue color, and looked rather like a head of broccoli. I took a few shaky steps toward it to get a better look.

The Queen took hold of the thing with her magic and made some adjustments. The little outer spheres that looked like broccoli florets faded away, leaving a smooth sphere with little spots of color where they had been attached. Structures glowed to life within the sphere as she made another adjustment, but not before I had noticed a much larger spot of color, similar to the little ones in every aspect except size. Something tugged at the back of my brain.

But I was soon completely absorbed in observing the sphere as it underwent a series of changes. If Luna and I hadn't become so close, it would have taken me much longer to realize what I was looking at.

"That's the Wheel of the Moon!" I said, surprised by the sudden shift in my assumptions that allowed me to recognize it. The construct was a five dimensional model of the universe!

The Red Queen didn't respond, but kept zooming in on the model until the cycles of the firmament faded away, leaving only the terrestrial sphere. "Show me Discord's location," she said.

I examined the globe. It wasn't anything like a map, and it took me a second or two to puzzle out the part that represented the Forgotten Lands. On the model, the spellwork surrounding the peninsula was actually visible as a network of spheres and cycles.

"There," I said, pointing with a wingtip to the eastern end of the peninsula. "About—"

I was going to describe the location to her, but when I pointed, the view zoomed in further. I kept adjusting the primary feather I was using as a pointer as the model enlarged, guiding it to the location of Twilight Town. The detail was amazing. Distance, time, and magic were perfectly represented down to the level of individual ponies.

I made some final corrections, and discovered that my fears had been justified. Discord was no longer in the town. I had been gone for less than an hour, and already Ao was leading a crowd of ponies into the forest toward the Yateveo tree. There was a dull mote at the center of the crowd that had to be Discord's disenchanted body.

"They're going to feed him to the tree!" I cried out. "We have to go rescue him!"

The Red Queen gave me a brief glance out of the corner of her eye, then reached out with one of her own feathers. She flicked the mote that represented Discord off of the sphere like I might brush a speck of dust off of a book.

Discord tumbled to the ground[2] at our hooves in a tangle of limbs.
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[2] There was no literal ground where we were, of course. Nothing that could even be called a floor, by the loosest of standards. But mundane stand-ins will have to suffice for extra-dimensional structures that have no descriptors in Equuish.
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I teleported the chains off of him and swept him up in a hug. "Oh, Discord! I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry! I know it wasn't your fault! I'm so stupid! All that dark magic had me doing stupid, stupid stuff! Please forgive me!"

I had my head buried against his chest so I couldn't see his face. Truthfully, I was afraid to look him in the eye after what I'd done to him.

He took a few deep gasps and then gave a weak chuckle. "You… you really had me fooled there, Sparky! Good… uhm... " He twitched a bit in my embrace. "Good prank. Yeah… had me fooled."

I sniffed, trying to keep from outright crying. "I've really messed up this time," I whispered, still not lifting my head.

So I felt it when he noticed the Red Queen. His body jerked like he'd touched an electro-thaumic transmission tower, and he shoved me roughly away.

By the time I looked around he was flat on the floor, prostrating himself. The Red Queen placed a hoof between his horn and antler and pressed down hard. Discord whimpered.

"Hey!" I cried out. "What are you—"

She glanced at me. That's all. Her horn didn't glow, but pain ripped through me as if her look had been twin burning spears. It only lasted an instant, but it left me screaming and writhing in agony beyond anything I'd ever experienced before.

So I missed the first part of their discussion.

"...even after I escaped, I opposed everything they tried to accomplish, I swear it! Believe me, Epona, I was true to my purpose! Always!" The Red Queen removed her hoof from his head and Discord looked up at her hopefully.

"Twilight Sparkle was concerned for you. She treated you like a friend. She should hate you, Discord. Explain that to me."

He glanced between me and Queen Epona several times, as if searching for a plausible answer.

"I'm not stupid," I interjected, shakily getting to my hooves and desperately hoping that I wouldn't get another disapproving glance from the Queen. "He tried everything he could to undermine the magic of friendship, then he suddenly became my friend? I wasn't fooled for a minute."

Epona cocked her head in an invitation to continue.

"Friendship is powerful," I said, constructing the excuse only heartbeats before it left my mouth. "He tried to break it from the outside, and it didn't work, so he infiltrated. Subversion from within has always been a good tactic for an inferior force. I pretended to be his friend the same way he pretended to be mine."

Discord gaped at me for a second and then gave a shake of his head. "Oh… yes! That's it! Ha, ha, Sparkle, you're certainly the clever one! I had no idea that you had seen through my plot." He turned to Epona and his lion paw and eagle claw entwined in a nervous dance. "You see? I've been loyal to you!" His grip suddenly tightened and he turned to face me, frowning. "Wait a minute, Twilight! Did you just call me 'inferior?'"

"A statement of fact shouldn't upset you, Discord. You're too used to making your own reality to acknowledge the baseline everypony else shares, I suppose." I was putting on the upper class condescension act so heavily that I think my Canterlot accent got a bit thicker. "I'm sorry this had to happen. I was enjoying the game."

While Discord sputtered, I turned to Epona and gave her the angled nod that overstuffed nobility use in place of a proper bow. "What now, Your Majesty?"

She hesitated. She actually hesitated before she peeled me like an onion.[3]
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[3] Not literally, but that's as close as I can come to conveying what her in-depth magical scrutiny was like.
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It wasn't painful, but it was extremely uncomfortable and humiliating. I was all too aware that if she could use her magic to read my mind as well as examine my body, I would be rendered helpless if not killed outright, but either the examination didn't include such details, or I got lucky for once.

I staggered when she released me. It left me feeling dizzy and violated. But at least I felt whole again.

Epona spoke directly to me, but it felt like she was giving a detached summary for her own sake. "Superior intelligence, excellent physique, and truly exceptional magical capacity, but still only an ascended alicorn. A shame. Your genetics are nearly perfect for a natural birth." She considered for a moment. "Perhaps with the addition of some superior pegasus genes… I will preserve you in case the project can be salvaged."

Preserve? Sun and moon, I hoped she didn't mean it in the way that pickles are preserved.

"Project?" I asked. I tried to keep my voice level and confident, but there was a slight waver in it.

Epona had turned back to the model of the world… the universe, I suppose, and had expanded it to include the celestial spheres and the little spots again. She nodded at it. "Yes," she said. "The project."

Oh. Oh, horseapples.

She hadn't blasted me, and her reply had been conversational, so I cautiously asked another question to cover the fact that I was counting the connection spots that dotted the sphere everywhere and trying to analyze their pattern. "You're attempting to produce naturally born alicorns? What about yourself and your daughters?"

She chuckled. It was so unexpected that it took me a moment to recognize the sound. "I only look like an alicorn here," she replied in a distracted manner.

That off-hoof comment started the pieces dropping into place. The universe model had looked like a head of broccoli for sound mathematical reasons. From the largest scale to the smallest, the Fibonaggi Sequence guided the development of natural structures. Fractal shapes could be found everywhere in nature, from broccoli florets to… universes evidently. Of course the Red Queen looked like an alicorn in our universe. She appeared as she did for exactly the same reason I had looked like a mostly bald, tailless monkey in another.

I risked taking another step closer to the model. The little patches were where other worlds connected to our own. They were smaller than our universe and operated under different conditions in accordance to the underlying structure of the—megaverse? Multiverse? Science fiction had several terms for what had been, until then, a purely hypothetical situation. One of them had to be different.

Yes, I spotted it easily as soon as I knew it had to be there. It was one of the small spots, identical to the others in every way except one. The spot was very like an iris, and the magic of the diary kept that iris slightly open. I squinted and thought I could make out the tiny thread of energy that bridged the gap. Once I could see the magical structure all at a glance, I understood why the opening of the portals would be timed to the cycling of the heavenly bodies. It was all part of one intermeshed system.

I suppose I was obviously staring, and evidently the Queen noticed. She gave me a sharp look.

"This is… the whole universe, isn't it?" I asked, hoping that she hadn't noticed exactly what I had been studying and that I could distract her with an obvious, stupid question. She'd been imprisoned before Starswirl's time, and she didn't know we knew about other worlds. I was desperate to keep her in ignorance.

The following moment of silence was one of the most stressful things I've ever suffered, and her answer was more shocking than I could have imagined.

Epona finally spoke. "You are quite intelligent. Yes, this is your actual universe. How does it feel to know you could reach out with a hoof and kick stars from the sky or obliterate a continent?"

It wasn't a model.

I sat down hard and put my head between my forelegs, trying not to pass out. Which also gave me a way to hide behind my mane as I examined the big spot. Just like the portal interface that was kept open by Sunset's diary, the large iris was dilated and held open by a brilliant red column of magic.

"It's much more difficult to manipulate from inside, of course," the Red Queen continued after I didn't reply. "But that's something that your ponies have become very good at. Not quite good enough for my purposes... not yet." She zoomed in again, and the celestial spheres vanished. The outer surface of the world vanished, too, leaving the exposed Great Wheel and all the intricate cycles and epicycles that drove the magic of the world.

Epona sighed. "What a mess," she said.

From our perspective it was easy to pick out all the changes Celestia and Luna had made. I love them both dearly. I have the utmost respect for their abilities. They are, beyond doubt, two of the most powerful, clever, and skillful magicians in the world. But I had to agree with the Queen; it was all cobbled-together hackwork.

Epona looked over at me and I realized I had groaned out loud.

"Yes," she said. "Quite a mess. Obvious, even to you. I suppose it will be simpler to dismantle it all and start again."

"What? No!" The last time I'd shouted at her, I'd paid quite a price, but she only stood patiently, waiting.

She had given me a clue in regards to her motivation, and I thought I had a slight chance of convincing her not to crumple up our universe and throw it away like an ink-spotted first draft. There was no way I was going to let her learn about my niece, though.

"Look there," I said, pointing to a tangled cluster of mandalas. "That structure is drawing power from the fragmented cycle underneath. Removing it would collapse the primary ring, but not if we alter the output first. Repurpose the energy to reconstruct the original pattern and it'll practically repair itself."

"You seem very eager to meddle with the natural laws of your world," she observed dryly.

"As an alternative to being 'dismantled?'" I said. "You bet your cutie-mark I am!"

I'd just snarked the creator of my universe. I didn't even have the excuse of having any dark magic left in me. I held my breath until she decided to chuckle rather than strip me down to my component molecules.

"Cutie marks," she said, sneering. "What a horribly misguided idea."

"Wait. Cutie marks aren't natural?"

Epona spun the world and pointed to another tangle of rickety spells. "There's the matrix that produces them. Does that look like a naturally evolved process?"

Well, that explained CMDD[4] and associated illnesses like the Cutie Pox. Without thinking, I reached out and spun the globe to get a look at the other major alterations. I wasn't fundamentally opposed to magic-based social engineering, but it seemed like the majority of the alterations were some form of subtle mind-control, and that made me uneasy. "Ah," I said, catching sight of one fairly simple mandala. "That explains why we haven't had a conflict with the dragons for millennia. This must tie into the bloodstone crystals on the Dragon Lord's crown."
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[4] Cutie Mark Disassociative Disorder.
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"Very good," Epona said. "Your assessment that is, not the idea itself. If my ponies had been at war with the dragons from time to time, they would have been pressured into advancing much further, and I might now have all the alicorns I need."

"And thousands, perhaps millions would have died needlessly," I countered. I was becoming more comfortable with her. It seemed she was willing to engage with me on the level of a senior scientist in consultation with a junior.

"The number of survivors of a period of war or peace five hundred years ago would be identical. The advancements would not be."

It was a flawed and foolish argument. She was viewing the situation entirely from her own ideological standpoint. I could have argued the assertion, but as illustrated by the fact that Discord still cowered behind the Queen, trying to remain as silent and motionless as he could, her apparent willingness to engage as near equals was only a thin veneer over a ruthless personality.

So, I nodded instead. "Good point. Well, in any case, I think I can help you restore the world to its original condition. The firmament looked to be in good condition, aside from that weird thing that looked like a crack in the Sphere of the Stars."

It took her a few heartbeats to react, and I desperately tried to look like I was lost in thought, staring at one of the cobbled-together magic clusters. I had been able to reach out and turn the world in my hooves, but I had no idea how to "zoom" out to the level I needed. Epona would have to do it for me, and if she suspected what I was going to attempt…

She did it. She expanded the view until the little dots where the other universes touched our own were visible. More importantly, the big dot where our universe touched hers appeared.

"Show me," she said.

"It's right here…" I replied, quickly reaching out with both hooves and grabbing the outer edge of the big iris disk. "...you monster!"

I caught a small fraction of the pain from her gaze before I wrenched at the disk, twisting it against the lay of the fibers that defined the opening at its center. She screamed in anger as the iris closed, cutting off the red trace of power.

I teleported to one side, narrowly escaping a blast of her magic. A force lance of my own caught her behind her right shoulder and staggered her. As I had suspected, her "blur" defense was based on the connection to her home universe. Either it was some sort of alien magic, or she had simply retreated far enough into the interface to be immune to my own.

All that was left was to defeat an ancient, unknowably powerful alicorn to prevent her from reopening the portal.

Discord immediately dove in and snatched up the sputtering sphere of chaos magic, stuffing it down his throat like it was some delicious candy.

"Do something!" I screamed at him, dodging another blast from Epona's horn.

He did. He turned and jumped into the universe, disappearing as he dwindled down to an invisible size.

I didn't waste any breath cursing him. I teleported again, setting myself up to recreate the Star Pattern Attack, but realized that there wasn't any place I could start from that wouldn't put me at risk for hitting the universe sooner or later. I had no idea if my magic would be harmful to it, but since I had manipulated it using only my hooves, it was a risk I couldn't take.

A gravity flux hit me and I was barely able to create a counter flow in time to avoid being crushed. The pressure half stunned me anyway, and I stumbled and went to my front knees.

There, just in front of me, was the Talisman of Night. Wisdom is one thing, survival another. I reached out with my magic and slapped it around my neck. A surge of magical strength flooded through me as I teleported again and got behind the Queen. I knew I had the edge on her, and my horn flared to life as she realized where I was and began to turn.

I couldn't spare her. I couldn't risk trying to disable rather than kill her, because the fate of my entire world was at stake.

But I had made a terrible mistake. The power of the Talisman was the magic essence of Epona's daughter, and when she looked at me, and knew her defense would come too late, I hesitated. What unimaginable monster could strike down her own mother?

I cringed and poured energy into the shield I had raised to ward off the Queen's counterattack. Her magic sizzled and burned away at my own, as the contest became one of pure strength. It was a contest I was losing. My shield matrix deformed and cracks spider-webbed out from where the lance of force hammered into it.

And then she stopped. Her horn's aura faded away and her gaze lifted from where I crouched, my shield crumbling away.

"Hello, Mother," Celestia said.

The Red Queen took a step backwards and Luna walked out of a swirl of shadow behind her. "I beg thee, resist us not," she said.

Cadance appeared in a twinkle of light and wore an expression of determination that bordered on fury.

I recognized their relative positions, and I stood and moved to cover the fourth point of the star.

Discord made his big entrance, complete with spotlight, cane, and top hat. I suppose he couldn't help himself, even in a deadly serious situation. Especially in a deadly serious situation. "Looks like checkmate, Queenie!"

She didn't go quietly, of course, but the end was quick.

Celestia manipulated the sphere until it showed all the small universes that covered the surface of ours, and then she went further, revealing the even smaller realms that budded from the small universes. I supposed the fractal sequence must have continued like that until each new universe was not much bigger than a proton, but the tertiary worlds were sufficient to our purposes.

I guided the paralyzed form of Epona into one of the tiny, non-magical worlds and twisted the iris portal closed.

"I hope she will be happy there," I said, and cringed at how stupid it sounded when the words left my mouth. There was a pause while I gathered up my courage to face Celestia. Luna stepped to my side, wrapped a wing around me, and gently touched her muzzle to my cheek. It helped.

I sighed and looked up. "Now what?"

Author's Notes:

Again, my grateful and inadequate thanks to my kind editors.