Chapter Eleven

"This is an evacuation," came Jill's voice through the cell phone. "Code blue! I repeat, this is a code blue!"

"Damn it, Fluttershy!" I muttered.

Over my shoulder, the pegasus whimpered. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I... I might have overreacted-"

"A 'starvation diet' doesn't mean they're starving the 'little kitties'!" I hissed. I lifted the cell in my hand and added my own frantic question to the conference call. "Crazy Dan, what's the word on Twilight?"

"We owe her a set of Harry Potter books," came Dan's voice. "She saw some kids trying to hiss at the anaconda in the reptile house-"

"This is Linda, and I need towels!" Came Linda's voice, accompanied by a very familiar giggle. "Pinkie wanted to swim with the baby polar bears- she game them new toy floatie balls!"

"What's the word on Rainbow Dash?" I asked.

"Got her," said Jill. "I think she might have bit somebody. We're on the aviary."

"You mean... in the aviary," suggested Linda.

"I said what I meant! Just because you can't see her wings, doesn't mean they don't work!" said the angry barista. We all ignored the 'hell yeah!' that echoed over her line in familiar, tomboyish tones. "I can see the koala pen from here- they are wearing adorable, tiny hats. I repeat, they are wearing adorable, tiny hats."

"Tell me one of your friends can behave in public!" I hissed.

"I'm sorry!" said Fluttershy.

"What's the big what, now?"

Both of us -though Fluttershy was pretty much aimed wherever I was looking, at the time, given her position- turned to see Applejack. The earth pony was sipping on a lemonade and carrying a family of stuffed pandas. There was a granny panda, two sibling pandas and a baby panda. Adorable.

"We have to break out of the park," I explained.

Applejack sighed. "Ah figured this'd happen eventually. Ya know, Ah can't take them anywhere?"

"No kidding," I deadpanned.

"Let's go climb a fence, then," said the farm pony. "This is Jasper's Amusement Park all over again."

'Metaphors can't do this justice,' I thought, looking back over my shoulder. 'It's like that story with Moses, except I'm leading a bunch of grumpy bat ponies instead of Jews, off of a beach instead of over a desert, and I'm a fluffy flying pony instead of a prophet, and... yes, that metaphor didn't last too long at all.'

The sea spray was sharply cold, even at the center of the mile-wide shelf of rock we were walking over. This last stretch, we were all walking at night. Hundreds of ponies, cloaked or crammed into one of the two carriages they had somehow... acquired... followed tiredly. A large number were tucked into my own little vehicle, and Satin had been joined by Midnight in pulling.

Another elder, by the name of Starlight, appropriately enough, signaled for us all to halt. She was watching the stars, and the moon, and it looked like she was plenty satisfied by what she'd found. With a quick, semaphore movement with her wings, the group began to dissolve. Cargo was unpacked, cloaks were cast aside, and the carriages that I neither knew nor wanted to know the source of were weighed down with stone and sent into the crashing waves below.

Artemia approached me by hoof, even as flocks took to the air by the dozen. They would make it to the distant shoreline, and the safe spaces beyond, just fine.

"I have received a request by several of the youngsters," she informed me. I already knew, of course, but I controlled my face the best I could for the sake of the look of things.

"Oh?"

"Indeed," said the mare wryly. "Six of them insist on... learning from you. Midnight has the ultimate goal of producing a thestral library, and I'm inclined to allow him- his sister will be leading the flock someday..." she muttered something which might have been 'ancestors save us', "and she's thrown her support in on the idea. I'm not entirely opposed to it myself."

I grinned, and even the last five days of trying to keep a bunch of ponies that managed to be stereotypically spooky and as hyperactive as children at the same time in line couldn't break my mood.

"It would be a pleasure and an honor," I said.

Artemia leered, just a bit. "A soft heart for strange things, you said."

"Like attracts like," I said. "And you don't get stranger than me."

Artemia sighed and trotted away to share a few quick words with the six idling youths, who stood awkwardly apart as their kinsmen took off around them. Then Artemia left and we were, basically, alone together.

"Alright, kids!" I said, in my best 'camp counselor' voice. "Time for bed- you're all diurnal for the time being. If you can't sleep, I have some candy that will drug you to a happy slumber. Satin, that's not an excuse for free candy."

I hopped inside the cart. But as the vehicle gently shook and the air behind me distorted, I remembered suddenly that I had the only shelter left in our group. I felt my ear flick thoughtfully, shrugged, and wandered over to the bed.

Tia, from where she lay curled protectively around Luna, glanced over sleepily at the group before dismissing them and dragging both herself and her sister into my side. The six thestrals quietly started piling my endless pile of rugs against the base of the cot, and started piling themselves in next, so close that I felt Dawn and Midnight through the thin padding of my bed. It seemed they'd just assumed that... no, I told myself. This was how they always slept, in a ridiculously large pile in whatever cave they called home at the time.

I'd spent... a lot of time alone. Occasionally I'd observe normal pony families, but hadn't ever wondered what sleeping arrangements would be like. I wondered if, had I ever gotten involved with an actual herd, in the classic sense of the word, if this was how I'd always spend my nights. A warm press of bodies, soft snores, and quiet hums.

Hell, neither Winter nor I had stopped... looking, even during the heights of our relationship. But with us being who we were, getting anybody to look back more than casually had been an exercise in futility.

But this warm huddle of sleeping others, this placeholder herd...

I never slept so well.

Equestria -Terra Equestriana, still, really- somehow managed to be better than the Paradise Estate in every single way. Whether it was the close living provided by the united tribes that kept away the predators and dark, or the way that I was walking over unblighted land for the first time in many decades, or just the general sense of newness, it was there.

The upper reaches of the forest that served as a barrier to the rest of the future Equestria, where it met the cliffs that served as the shore there, became home. Like in Amaranth's second, shanty town location, I just began adding on sections to the sides of the cart. A little 'out room', a workspace for my new students, and a tiny platform up top with the beat-up old telescope that Winter had left behind.

"Midnight, stop staring. You'll give me ideas," I warned my first student. In true teenager fashion, he sputtered and blushed.

"I've just never seen a day pony infant," he said in his defense. "Not really. Minus the bump on her head, she sort of looks like one of us."

I glanced down to little nursing Luna and grinned. "She's got her dad's colors. Stick some downy wings on her and call it a day," I said. "But yeah. A couple weeks and she'll be toddling around and causing me no end of trouble. Like Tia," I added, as the sound of violent crashing echoed from the nearby bushes.

"We're quite alright, herd mother!" called Thicket, trying to maintain her composure from a distance.

"Another thing, you keep calling me that," I said, rolling my eyes. "My 'herd' consists of one plushy potato," I gestured to Luna, "and one ballistic missile," I gestured back to where Satin was trying to keep watch of Tia.

"But... you're an elder," said Midnight. It was the same answer I always got from the little flock. My ego wasn't certain of whether to be pleased or bruised.

My sense of humor, though...

"Are you saying I look old?" I asked, forcing my eyes through long practice to go bright and teary.

Midnight jolted. "No! Never, of course not! Forgive me, witch, if my words-"

"Mama!" My ballistic missile wrapped herself around my head. "I found a frog!"

I straightened the new kink in my neck and sighed. "And is the frog now on me, silly filly?"

"His name's Bip! I want a skirl, now!" said Tia. That was a 'yes' then.

"Say it with me," I said, focusing on the important part of our little back and forth. "Sku-whir-uhl."

"Sku-whir-uhl! Please can I?" she asked, hanging off my head and looking me pleadingly in the eyes. Above her, 'Bip' looked at me pleadingly, too. Probably hoping to be returned to his pond.

"Ask Midnight," I said, and the missile leaped off of me and charged the young stallion who was far out of his depth.

Then I felt it. The cold, the blight, the screeching hunger that must have been in my head because nobody else had ever mentioned it. I looked northward, through the narrow trees of the forest's edge. The distant sight of Pegasopolis had turned dark and roiling, and thick clouds rolled closer past it, down from the frozen north.

The windigos must have finished consuming the Paradise Estate. Gorged and following the feuding tribes, they had given up what little subtlety their animal minds were capable of.

"Everybody to me!" I shouted, stopping Midnight and Tia dead in their places and marking the rustle of the other five approaching thestrals. I'd never yelled in their presence before. Dawn, Satin, Thicket, Tilter and Penny raced into the little clearing.

"Everyone together," I barked, pulling up Luna mid-meal and holding her close. She began to cry.

"Mama?" asked Tia, but she quickly followed the lead of everyone else and looked at the sky. "Inside, now?"

"That won't help. Come here and hold your sister," I said. "Midnight, hold the two of them. Everybody get in as close as you can." I more or less pushed them into a pile and stood out in front of them, facing the oncoming front.

My mind worked desperately. I had no idea how long it would be between the onset of the cold and whatever it was that the three hangers-on to the tribal leaders were meant to do. I had never asked exactly how 'Hearths Warming Eve' had first happened. It hadn't been relevant, and anything that Twilight Sparkle might have mentioned would have been colored by history.

"Tham'ra, did I get those blasted directions right?"

It seemed too absurd, really, that I hardly believed it even after recognizing the voice of the grumpy stallion pushing through the brush. He stepped into the clearing, noisily shaking the foliage from his bells.

Starswirl's eyes alighted on me and he glared. "You had to pick an ancestors-forsaken forest to park that contraption of yours in! Being mad is no reason to be inconsiderate, you know, and are those thestrals?"

I glared. "Starswirl! Get useful or get in that pile!"

He looked confused. "This is all rather sudden. Usually a mare ought to get a fellow flowers, first-"

"Argh!" I stamped over, grabbed the wizard, and spun him in place. "Icy sky monsters! Put up a barrier against wind or shut up and stop being useless!"

He stared up, wide-eyed, from under the brim of his hat. "Oh, stars. The meeting, my princess! My student! I have to get back, right now-"

"There's no time," I told him.

"No, my new Blinking Step cantrip, I can cover the distance, I can!" His horn began glowing a bright, blistering gray. I tapped it, sending him almost crumpling to the ground.

"You'll put yourself halfway into a tree," I growled. "They're miles away, your spell's not complete yet, and you're a moron!" I forced myself to breathe. "Star, you have to trust that your student can handle this."

The unicorn stared. "Handle this? How can anypony handle that?!" He gestured off toward the roiling clouds- faces were appearing in them, now.

I clenched my eyes shut. "Starswirl, you've asked me how I know what I know, and never questioned that I knew. Believe me now when I say that this is happening, and the best that you can do is pray that Clover is every bit the mare that you've trained."

"Then why are you so intent on putting up a shield?" he asked, stammering.

"Because I'm a very paranoid mother," I explained. He nodded, and settled himself at my side and began casting.

Between chanted syllables, he said, "You're telling me this will all turn out fine?"

"It better have," I said, scripting vapor into a pattern I'd been practicing off and on for the better part of a decade, just in case. "It cost ponykind Paradise Estate, it better be buckin' worth it."

"Those things killed what was the only world we've known for centuries, and now they're here?" asked the mage, redoubling the power he was putting out. "Witch, I am not okay with this!"

"Neither am I, wizard. But, yup," I said, simply enough. "But now my children will know summer."

"And the, er, thestrals?" asked Starswirl, straining.

"Ongoing project."

"Ah."

Over the thick shape of Starswirl's protective ward, I wrapped hot, wavering air into a stubborn sheath. The first breezes to reach us were gentle, almost tentative in their movements.

Then came the winds.

I watched through the combined, wavering barrier as frost crept over everything. There was no true snow, but the space outside grew so horribly brittle and white. I spread my wings, as if trying to encompass the whole of the world and telling it to shove off in the same motion. Starswirl bent almost double, horn aimed ahead as if he were trying to take a more direct approach and stab at the cold with everything he had.

And then we waited.

An hour, two. The tiny herd behind us watched in silence, wincing as branches from the trees around us turned brittle and fell to the ground with sharp snaps.

I began shivering. Not, mind, from the cold- our space was still safe. It was the strain. My little 'knack' drew from the same wellspring that fed my pegasus magics, and even almost ninety years of practice could only push a self-trained somebody so far. I was held to such scarily effective standards because I was clever about what I did have, and lied my ass off when necessary.

"Tham'ra..." Starswirl was peering at me from out of the corner of his eye.

"M'fine," I muttered through dry lips.

He shook me. And why- the bastard had stopped! God damn it, but if I were in a state to move, I'd give him such a kicking!

"Tham'ra, it's over," he insisted. "Look. Feel!"

I blinked. My vision had turned blurry as it had gotten harder to keep my eyes wet, but... the distant clouds had turned a more natural color. The ground beyond, even, looked just a bit healthier than it had before the frost. That pervasive aura from before had disappeared as if it were never there.

"Oh. Oh, good," I said, before raising my voice. "Midnight! Dawn! Help me back over there!"

I let my weight sag against the two ponies who were at my side in an instant. 'Good little minions,' I thought warmly.

"What was it, mama?" asked Tia, cantering up worriedly with frog and sister in tow.

"Monsters," I told her. "Some brave ponies chased them all away again, though. You remember Clover?" The foal nodded excitedly. "She helped them. You make sure and say 'thank you' next time she visits. Satin, put on some tea, would you? We have a guest."

Suddenly reminded of the day pony in their midst, the tiny flock tensed up. "Go on," I insisted. "All of you. I'll explain to the old stallion, alright? He's a friend."

And like that, he, I, and the two foals had a good amount of space to ourselves. Tia ignored her rapidly escaping frog to run up and hug the fellows front legs.

"Hi, Starswirl! Pleased to see you! Um..." she wracked her brain, "Nice weather!"

"She's just the politest thing," I cooed, sweeping both of them up together. Luna burped.

"She?" asked Starswirl. "Tham'ra, I'm not half as old as I might look, but-"

"Magic," I said.

"Magic!" echoed Tia.

Starswirl's eyes all but crossed. "I'm almost entirely certain the the school of transmutation..." He trailed off at my glare. "Ah, magic was it? The darndest thing." He cleared his throat. "I've met... a fair few ponies who've had trouble with magic. A quick illusion and a dapper wizard's robe, and none say that there was ever a problem, aye?"

"You've a very nice beard, Star," I told him. The somewhat small unicorn, voice eternally, practiced gruff and as surly as anybody, went still.

"It's... quite a good beard, isn't it?" he asked, stroking at it. "But if we could make yet another, completely unrelated change of topic?"

"Sure," I said, smiling pleasantly. "Which topic? The monsters are already gone, so that's a bit of a dead end there-" and I thought, 'and you'll not pry it out of my own dead lips,', "but what else could you mean?"

He frowned, back to business as usual. "The thestrals, mare! You've a load of imaginary ponies running around and making you tea!"

At the shout, Satin looked over from the heating kettle and waved.

"Less imaginary than you'd think," I said. "These are my students. With any luck, future thestrals won't have to remain quite so imaginary. What brought you out here in the first place?" I asked.

"Just hoping for some more of your uncanny insight, I suppose," said the stallion. "The mages of the dawn and dusk temples have been straining without their usual arcane monuments. More of them have been coming down with exhaustion. Building new ones will be a work and a half."

"Easy," I said. "Have the pegasi scout out some likely places, further into the land's interior. I'm sure you can fit together some artifacts that'll indicate ley lines. Heck, maybe one or two mountaintops. I know how you unicorns love your towers."

"Tower equals wizard, wizard equals tower," said Starswirl knowingly. "But I doubt the pegasi would help us in that respect even if it meant the sun otherwise stalling in the sky altogether!"

"I think you'll find that, by the time you get back, things will have changed," I said. "Thank you, Satin."

The mare had appeared and hoofed each of us a mug of sharp black tea, and Tia had gotten one full of juice. I managed not to wince as she tucked her full face into the sticky, sticky substance.

"One of these days you're going to spill it all," said Starswirl.

I grinned. "Oh, but I have, at least, for the most part." I sipped at my tea, then said, "Of course, you don't have Winter's persuasive... charms."

"I don't need to know that badly," declared the wizard.

"No I didn't!"

"Oh yes you did!"

"Girls?" I prompted, and both fillies froze, eyes on me. Instead of reprimanding them, though, I motioned for them to step back. They did, and got those little conspiratorial grins as I wound up, breathed, and bucked backwards with both hooves.

The oak tree I struck shuddered, and out fell two thestrals. Thistle, uptight, clever Thistle, fell on her feet and immediately began fixing her mane. Midnight managed to fall on his head.

"What did I tell you about that?" I asked.

"Ooh!" Luna, of course, knew that whatever else was going on, the bigger kids were in trouble. Only Tia knew enough, in a little kid sort of way, to look visibly embarrassed for both the thestrals' sakes.

"You, um, you said-"

And that was as far as Midnight got before Satin fell on his head.

"Tia, what's they doing?" asked Luna.

"They were kissing up there," whispered Tia in a too-loud voice.

Then of course I, in a too loud voice, had to ask, "You three were kissing?!" I put a look of faux shock on. "Oh, Midnight, if Dawn's up there I'm going to be quite creeped out."

"Lady Tham'ra!" shouted Midnight, shuddering at the mention of his sister.

"I do believe she found a tree with Tilter in it," said Thicket, looking utterly and delightfully shameless. It was hard, I thought, to tease the ones born with so much poise.

"Good for her, I suppose," I said. "You ponies watch the place, and get to working on that tree house! I won't have my cart soiled by your youthful indiscretions. Private time is for private places."

Midnight began choking on nothing at all, but Satin just smiled and said, "Yes, herd mother!"

"Come on, girls," I said, beginning our long march to town. I did my best not to see my children trade promises of ribbon from the town for candy which Satin seemed to regularly get a hold of, despite never visiting civilization. They didn't get much, allowance-wise, but they could do with it whatever they wished.

The walk was as peaceful as it ever was. Three years of living on the outskirts of Earth Villa had, as any life did, developed a kind of routine. I worked the thestrals' brains thin, then stuffed them back full of knowledge. We all added to the living space we had. The girls learned woodspony lore on top of whatever classical tidbits I manage to cram into their heads, and I got a visit from Starswirl or Clover every couple months to trade books and courtly gossip.

Tia wanted to learn to be a witch, someday, and Luna just wanted to be a little tree-monster. Or something. The girl had a rich inner life, if nothing else.

The habit of shouting at the wildlife had taken a bit of getting used to, admittedly, but at least she kept away the rowdier squirrels.

"Mama?" I became aware of Tia shaking my foreleg.

"Hmm?" I noticed the girls were both standing in front of me, looking back worriedly. "Oh. Did it again, didn't I?" I asked, and they both nodded. "Nothing to worry about, let's keep on."

I had to take a sharp right to continue along our path, though. I turned sometimes, daydreaming, or even sleepwalked and always found myself pointing towards the southwest. Never when I needed my concentration for something important, but...

'It started after Hearths' Warming,' I thought. 'Something's going on and you keep trying to look at it, even if you're not certain just why. Like you felt the Windigos, this is a danger you're only feeling because you know it's going to happen.'

Maybe. Or maybe senility had finally hit and my still-young body was just hosting a brain turned to sludge.

"Alright, now, let's not let things get too quiet," I said, smiling back at the girls who were in their autumn cloaks. Tia had demanded wing slits, unwilling to go quite that far in mimicking me. I'd admit that the feeling of restriction on one's flight limbs never completely disappeared, and she didn't care to pass herself off as an earth pony as I sometimes did, only to carry two trump cards on her back. Not when she was still a couple of years from them fully developing, anyway.

"Luna? You start- name the twelve magic circles. Tia? Let her talk, and fill in any she misses after she tries."

The little unicorn grinned and belted out, "Kinessic, 'Lusory, Ampify, Stashial, Chantment, um..." She glared down, cross-eyed, at her own nose. "Markayshum."

"Very good, Luna- that's half," I said. "Now, you said 'Kinesthics', first- what's that one all about?"

"Pushing!" said Luna proudly.

"Right. We push -we impart velocity- to move things. If we give something speed going up, it floats. There's plenty more, too. The next one, Illusory magic, is all about..."

"Pictures! And music!"

"Those are a big part of it, yes," I said, and started leading first her, then Celestia through the basics of illusion.

"When do we get to learn it, though?" asked Tia.

"When you're big," I replied.

The little pegasus pouted. "You said yesterday that I was already a big girl."

"Bigger, I mean," I said with a grin that I didn't try too hard to conceal. "I want you and Luna to learn your tribal magic, first. The more you start with, the better you'll be as witches."

"I am a witch," said Luna, pointing up at her nub of a horn. The barest of sparks fluttered away from it.

"Nope! Unicorn magic's different," I told her. "I want Tia throwing around storms, and you sending up fireballs before I teach you witchcraft." I bit my lip. "Not in the house, mind you. Books burn too easy."

"Yes, mama," sighed Tia. Luna sent another spark out, apparently trying to measure it against 'fireball' status, and was surprised that she didn't manage to incinerate a passing tree.

I tried -and couldn't quite manage- to connect these two foals with the near-deities of the future Equestria. Especially since, not three days ago, I caught Luna eating a bug.

"What I wouldn't give for a camera," I muttered quietly.

The impromptu home-schooling lesson ended at the same time as our trek did, walking into Earth Villa. Like Amaranth, the entire place felt more than a little temporary. Though that, I acknowledged, might be the feel of all frontier towns everywhere. Already, routes were being laid out to the south for those who weren't content to live at the site of the last Windigo Freeze. Reports were being sent back of an... empty country.

Wild, yes. Different than the Paradise Estate? Well, the populace was faring a lot better, and a lot more safely, so that, too, was a yes. But there were ruins there, and signs of past habitation. I knew for a fact that there were other nations that the settling ponies hadn't yet reached, but none of them had made so much as a token appearance.

Frankly, I all but itched to go and see just what it was all about, but there were still the thestrals to consider, and I didn't want to go dragging my girls around when they needed at least some stability. Even if it was a very odd sort of stability.

"Lady Tham'ra! Girls!"

"Clover!"

In an instant, I was left behind as the violet unicorn mare at the entrance of the market square was overrun by Tia and Luna. They really did idolize her.

A lot of ponies did, really. It said a lot to the progress made recently that a unicorn could travel through the earth tribe's temporary capitol unmolested, but then news had gotten out over Clover, now 'the Clever', Private Pansy, and Smart Cookie. The three mares who had gone from right-hoof aides to the most powerful ponies in the world, to being the heroes who pushed back winter eternal.

I trotted closer and scooped up the girls, sketching a quick bow to the younger mare. "Hello, Clover. What brings you out east of Unicornia today?"

Clover laughed nervously. "You do, actually. The princess was looking to seek your aide in something."

"Starswirl twisted her hoof again?" I asked, recalling Princess Platinum's... distaste for me.

"Of course not!" said the other mare, eyes too bright and shifty. "I'm actually here to get the chancellor and Smart Cookie, too. We have to include everypony in big decisions, now, after all!"

"Of course," I said. "Well, I promised the girls we could browse the market first. Are we on a very tight schedule?"

"I suppose not," said Clover numbly, having gotten an eyeful of Luna and Tia's pleading expressions. "We're getting a pegasus escort. One of the other court mages has managed to put an extension spell over a carriage- pegasi can draw them through the air as if they were being pulled over level ground!"

"Sounds terrifying," I said, and smiled. "I'm looking forward to it. Girls, go with auntie Clover, I have to do a thing."

"A-auntie?!" stuttered Clover as I made my escape.

I wandered between the simple thatch-roof homes until I found an out-of-the-way place and made a wing-assisted leap up onto one of the sturdier buildings.

"Hello, Tilter. Did you hear that?" I asked the cloaked pony who was lounging in the shadow cast by a chimney. She nodded. "Mind letting the others know we'll be gone for a bit?" Another nod. "You know you're all a bunch of creepy stalkers, right?" Another, more embarrassed nod. "Well, that's alright," I told her, leaning in for a quick nuzzle to show there was no harm done. "Just try not to terrify the locals."

She saluted, and I hopped back down to ground level. Creepy, adorable bat ponies.

"Remember, girls," I said, boosting the fillies up into the carriage. "When this thing inevitably falls apart, you grab hold of me and I'll get us back down safely."

"Okay, mama!" said Luna, who looked disturbingly excited at the prospect.

"And what about the rest of us?" asked a voice from behind me.

Without looking, I answered, "Grab the steadiest-looking pegasus you can, or grab Clover. I think unicorns bounce."

"Tham'ra!" said the violet mare, appalled.

"What, you don't bounce?" I asked.

"I meant stop scaring my friend!" said Clover.

I turned and, not for the first time, had to stop myself from staring too hard at a too-familiar face. Smart Cookie was the spitting image of Applejack. Beyond her was, horror among horrors, Pinkie Pie incarnated as an elected official. Applejack in particular looked extra pale.

"I... I, I beg your pardon, Lady Witch! I didn't mean to cause insult!"

I was disappointed on two levels. First, that I'd somehow managed to scare a face I'd known to be both familiar and friendly. Secondly, that this familiar face didn't come with an adorable accent.

"I'll let you know if you do," I said. "Hurry on up, and don't stand on ceremony. I think I and the young ones are just here for ballast, so we might as well get to me being useful."

"Right you are!" said the Chancellor, passing Smart Cookie with a bounce in her step. She was obviously older than Cookie or Clover by far, all amiable confusion and manic cheer wrapped in a candyfloss mane with a few streaks of gray. "Hey, there's mini-witches in here! Neato!"

"Mini-witches, say hi to the Chancellor," I called. There was a tiny chorus of sheepish 'hi's.

"Ready, Clover?" I asked, and the unicorn cut herself off as she made a quick double count of the passengers.

"Looks like!" she said. "Um, be kind to the Chancellor, please. I think she's a bit... out there."

"Aren't we all!" I replied, and grabbed Smart Cookie, who was still looking frozen in fear at me. "Come on there, Apple, there's work to be done."

"Ah... uh... wait, how'd you know I was an Apple?" she asked as I pushed her aboard.

"Girl, your kin are everywhere," I told her. "Lovely ponies. I think your great aunt was one of my old assistants. Four years, and she never gave up her recipe for fritters."

"I should think not!" said Cookie, before remembering to be nervous.

I sighed. "Girls? Smart Cookie here is afraid of me. Do something about it."

"Stop hurting mama's feelings!" shouted Luna, the filly with the largest lungs in all the world.

"But I didn't-" Smart Cookie looked horribly conflicted.

"I said stop!"

Tia groaned, and did her best to ignore the new back and forth as I leaned into Clover to be heard above the noise.

"So, not that I don't mind a good adventure," I said, "but why me, specifically?" I gestured toward the fillies. "I'm not looking to go into combat, here."

"Oh, it's not!" said Clover. "I mean, you won't! It's just, master and I are still certain you're the best linguist we've ever met! And there's this spot on the Canterhorn mountain we've been looking at for, well, it's just about the most perfect crossing of ley lines we've ever seen!"

"Ley lines aren't words," I reminded her. "I hope you don't need me to read them."

"Oh, no," said Clover, chuckling. "There are just some... strange ruins near the top. We've never seen the writing there, before, and if anypony has a chance of figuring them out, it's you!"

"Brains of a feather flock together," announced Chancellor Puddinghead, leaning in. "Only Clover here hasn't any feathers! This is a travesty!"

"Isn't it just?" I replied. Puddinghead had nothing on her... descendant? Reincarnation? Freakishly similar future pony? It wasn't as if they shared cutie marks or anything, so I just chalked this one up to mysteries that I didn't much care to answer.

And then the Chancellor whipped out a pair of false, neon-green wings that she hooked onto Clover's side.

"Much better!" declared the pink mare, wandering off to lean over the front of the carriage and interrogate our pegasus drivers.

"They look good on you," I said, keeping a straight face. Clover groaned.

We had stopped at Unicornia to pick up Starswirl, the princess, and a few other mages. A second carriage had arrived with both Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy. Tia immediately strode right up to the commander and demanded to learn just how she could throw around storms.

"Kid, that's the most awesome thing I've ever heard a filly say," admitted the frustratingly familiar, rainbow-maned mare. "But give it a couple years first, aye? I'm sure you'll make officer material in no time at all."

Luna, not to be outdone, turned to Clover and demanded, "Fireballs! Puh-lease?!"

I cackled.

We flew through the rest of the day, stopping for the night at the Baltic Mare, which was an inn that had sprung up and which had, in turn, had a few small houses spring up around it. My inner child was giggling at all the available puns, and I couldn't help but wonder how 'Baltimare' would look, someday, as a true city. If it was anything like the American east coast, it would be classy as hell.

Not for the first time, I wished I'd done more traveling before my little world-hopping incident. The middle-of-corn-fieldsville Minnesota had left me stunted, I thought. Which was probably why I'd spent so much time on the road here, come to think of it.

When it came time to set of the next morning for the Canterhorn, I stumbled out of the little room I'd shared with the fillies with their slumbering forms still slumped over my back. I grunted, Princess Platinum grunted back, and we both tried to suck every ounce of nourishment from our morning tea. She, of course, had insisted on a full set of china, served by a nervous-looking unicorn colt. I made do with my mug.

The two pegasi were just disgustingly awake -lousy military types that know what a sunrise looks like- and polishing their armor. Private Pansy had the same look of peace on her face that I remembered Fluttershy having, only she wore it while inspecting a gladius. Trippy.

To my embarrassment, I zoned out twice more on our trip westward. At least I didn't try to stumble my way to face another direction. Tia's discrete nudges kept me aware and, on top of that, aware that whatever I was looking at, we were headed right for it.

Some kind of magical artifact that only interacted with the brainwaves of a human crammed into an adorable pony body, maybe? Or perhaps one or two of those old prophecies I had squirreled away in my archive had lodged themselves in my brain on a trail of old magic, telling me I had to play 'the wise old mentor' to some sort of 'chosen one' griffon liberator. That could, I admitted, be fun.

The Canterhorn was a tall, beautiful piece of landscape that was utterly alone on a great, wooded plain, but for a few nearby foothills. Dimly, I remembered old geography classes and tried to figure out what natural forces had come up with a mountain that seemed to rise out of nowhere.

There was a wide shelf of stone, a small natural plateau, that served as our landing pad. A number of ponies were already there, laying the groundwork to what I knew would one day be Canterlot. I grinned at the thought of what kind of magic and engineering would go into extending that shelf out over thin air, making space for an entire city.

We landed, and immediately spilled out, stretching as we hadn't been able to since our hours-long flight had started at dawn.

"Woo! A girl could get stuck, sitting like that for so long!" declared Puddinghead, all the while stretching out her unnaturally limber legs.

"I highly doubt you'll ever have such a problem, Chancellor," said Pansy with a small grin.

"Mare's gonna outlive us all," muttered Smart Cookie.

"Do come along, everypony, if you would," said Starswirl, looking to head off another argument such as we hadn't seen since three hours ago. When Puddinghead had tried to get us all to sing the chorus to 'Ninety-Nine Flagons of Meade On the Wall'. Worse still, I think I might have been the one to introduce that song to ponies, some six decades beforehand.

I turned as I moved, both trying to take in the growing settlement and also because I was somewhat compelled to. It was unnerving, really, that whatever had been catching my attention was here. Was it that convergence of ley lines Clover had mentioned? Such things had never piqued my attention before- natural convergences were just about everywhere, after all. You couldn't throw a bit without having it bounce off of a mystical convergence, sometimes.

"In here," said the wizard, pulling our attention to what looked like a natural recess, a cave whose mouth was far too wide to qualify as actual 'shelter'.

"You know," I said, "I didn't have to come out here. Didn't anybody think to do tracings of these words?"

There was quiet as the whole group suddenly went silent.

"We... didn't think of that," admitted Pansy.

"But you're here now, witch, so get to work!" said Hurricane. In retaliation, I cast a grayscale illusion over her mane. The mare had no idea why the rest of the group was stifling their laughter.

It grew dark near the back, out of the direct noon light, so the unicorns lit their horns out of habit. The cave wall was... a mess. An absolute mess. Lines were scratched over almost every surface, pale and chalky against the dark stone of the mountain's heart. I stared, and couldn't help the frown that something seemed utterly familiar about it.

It took me a minute to see past the horrible state of the hoof-writing, and the weathering, to take note of an especially large space that had been cleared just above head-height, all to accommodate a single, jagged message. In English. Plain old English, as I hadn't read from something I hadn't myself written in over eight decades.

'Tamara look behind you.'

There was the barest moment of incomprehension. A second of wondering just how I was supposed to fit this surprise into my current world view.

That tugging was back, and it was behind me.

I let my wings slip gently out from under my cloak and slowly turned. The others had their eyes on me, which was all wrong. The tall, misshapen figure cast hardly a shadow. Its eyes gleamed yellow, red, and mad. Its teeth, especially its abnormally long canine, were a sharp white.

"Why hello, there. My goodness, but when I felt my time to once again rise had come, I hadn't expected... this," came a smooth, male voice from a mouth that grinned wider than actually fit its face.

I didn't have just my own foreknowledge to blame on how I reacted. Really, in the bowels of history, scribed on tablets by peoples who no longer were, anymore, the shape of a draconequus was a familiar one.

I whispered something, all but inaudible.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, little pony," said the mad god, leaning down and turning his ear toward me.

"Run," I said raggedly, harshly.

He looked surprised. "Now why would I-"

The cave exploded in light and sound, as I unleashed every bit of myself in a spell that I had affectionately named 'God Killer'. It was the single biggest display of pyrotechnics I'd ever crafted out of spell script and vapor, and a long streak of stone on both the floor and roof had simply ceased to exist.

But my 'God Killer' hadn't killed a single damn thing, and I knew it.

"Run!" I shouted, grabbing the girls and throwing them on my back.

"What was that?!" called Platinum, meaning either my spell or the creature.

"What wasn't it?" asked Cookie back, staring at where the chimeroid had been.

"Draconequus!" shouted Starswirl, the most read of the rest of the group. "Evacuate the mountain! Evacuate everything! Flee for your lives, you morons!"

We fled. We all did, ducking around the molten streak of stone and out the cave whether by initiative or primitive panic instinct.

"Starswirl, I demand," Platinum huffed, "That you tell me what just happened!"

"Mad gods, appearing all throughout history!" the stallion shouted. "Better to be struck down by an invading army- at least then death would be our worst option!"

A stallion with the proper flair for the dramatic, I knew he was just being realistic.

"Mama, what happened?" asked Tia, hooves wrapped around my neck. A glance back showed Luna had latched onto the other girl's tail with her teeth.

"He's, that's..." I struggled to think of something appropriate. "I won't say his name, I don't know if he can be summoned, but this is a time where it's okay to be very, very scared!" To the group at large I shouted, "Get everybody you can to disperse! Numbers are not a strength, here! Meet back up at the Baltic Mare in one month, and make sure everybody you love is away and safe!"

Discord had come. The chaotic king had arrived to take his throne.