Long Shot scrambled up the hillside, hooves digging for purchase in the grassy turf. The unicorn colt’s face was wreathed in smiles as the afternoon sun beat down on his smokey-grey coat. Today was the day! The day Father would come home!

The colt giggled like a filly as he crested the hill. Below him spread the village of Canterlot, a loose assortment of wooden houses, grass huts, and the occasional granite garden wall. It wasn’t much to look at, he knew, but the colt had called this place home for almost six years and there was nowhere else he would rather be.

Below, the pegasus army assembled on the Field of Valor. Long Shot had always loved to watch them muster, his father had often told him that the pegasi were the truest of warriors, and that it was their determination and bravery that protected Equestria from the monsters of the Everfree Wilds.

Long Shot smiled and closed his eyes, letting the wind tussle his mane and caress his face. He’d always loved the wind in high places. It made him feel as if he could almost fly.

The feeling darkened his thoughts for a moment, but the sight of a thousand pegasi rising into the air quickly swept the melancholy aside. The colt gasped and dug his hooves into the ground as the fierce winds produced by the ascending ponies buffeted him.

With the recent encroachment of the Timberwolves on frontier pony settlements, Princess Celestia was ordering the army in to deal with the bandits. Long Shot’s father, Reaching Shadows, was returning on the same day from his patrol near Stalliongrad.

With a peal of unnatural thunder, the pegasi departed, passing overhead as the stunned colt followed them with his eyes as far as he could.

Long Shot let out a wistful sigh that soon turned into a grunt as something large and fluffy tackled him to the ground. The colt squealed and rolled with the force of the blow, throwing off his attacker with practiced ease. Picking himself up, he turned to face the assailant.

Scuzzy, full name Scuzzy Bastard, a roguish young griffoness with matted black feathers and tangled grey fur. On a daily basis she reeked of spilled cider and stale food and she was constantly fighting with anypony she came across, winning more often than not. Oh, and she was Long Shot’s best friend.

“Sup, pipsqueak?” Scuzzy grinned, making a show of preening her feathers with a talon, though her efforts produced nothing more than a stream of insects and bread crumbs.

Long Shot returned her grin and set his hooves apart in a ready stance he’d learned from a book. “Not much, Scuzz. Watching the pegasi go off to war, waiting for Dad, and kicking your flank up and down this hill.”

The griffoness laughed and popped an unidentifiable morsel into her beak, crunching down on it with reckless abandon. “Is that so, groundling?”

The unicorn’s horn glowed with power and he charged, but the older creature was ready for him. With motions so deliberate they looked in slow motion, Scuzzy fell to her back, raising her hind legs to propel the reckless colt over her and down the hill. Chuckling dryly, she dived after him, pulling him out of his wild roll and into the air by his armpits.

They flew like that for a time, enjoying each other’s company and feeling the wind rush past them. When her arms grew tired, the griffoness alighted her passenger upon the spongy turf of a freshly-plowed field before flying off to find a comfortable cloud. When she returned, cloud in tow, she found the unicorn studying the dirt with a determined look.

“You know, Shotty,” she called out to him, “I might be fine eating the occasional worm but I don’t think that fits in with your pony vegetation principles.”

“It’s not ‘vegetation’,” Long Shot answered absently, “it’s ‘vegetarian’, and I’m not looking for worms.”

Scuzzy shrugged and plopped down atop her cloud, watching her only friend through half-lidded eyes.

Half an hour passed before the griffoness finally grew bored enough to ask her friend what the hay he was doing.

“What the hay are you doing?! You’ve been staring at the ground forever! It’s dirt, it’s not going anywhere!”

“But that’s where you’re wrong,” Long Shot told her.

Scuzzy blinked and hopped to the ground. “Say what now?”

The unicorn pointed a hoof towards the fresh soil. Peering at it closely with her telescopic vision, the griffoness could see he was indeed right. Moving at an almost imperceptible pace, the individual grains were indeed rolling to the south.

“So what’s it mean?”

“It means the ground is eroding,” her booksmart friend informed her. “In a few centuries, this entire place is going to wash out. Maybe even the entire valley.”

“Ha, that’ll be a sight to see.”

Long Shot shrugged, “Maybe, maybe not. I’m sure Princess Luna will figure something out before that happens.”

Scuzzy looked at her pony friend, “How come you always say Luna when you talk about the princesses? Most ponies ever talk about their precious Celestia, who raises the sun and makes everything pretty.” She said the last bit with an exaggerated expression of overwhelming love and joy.

The unicorn shook his head and started trotting away, back to the village. His companion hopped back on her cloud and followed him with lazy beats of her wings.

“I’m afraid that’s where you’re wrong, Scuzz. Princess Celestia doesn’t make the daytime pretty, she only gives it light. The day would be just as beautiful without her. But Princess Luna, she creates the night!”

Scuzzy made a few half-hearted gagging sounds as her friend’s eyes lit up with wonder and adoration.

“She decides which constellations get to come out, she even makes knew ones! She paints a different picture every night in the heavens for ponies to enjoy, and she doesn’t ask for anything more than somepony to look up at the sky and say ‘Wow, that’s beautiful.’”

The griffoness shrugged and flipped over to her back, closing her eyes as instinct guided her path. “I don’t care. Your pathetic pony princesses could never compare to the might and awesomeness of Carniferous!”

It was Long Shot’s turn to make gagging sounds. “That ‘Dragon God’ you’re always going on about? If he’s so great why doesn’t he ever show himself?”

“Because, fool! He’s too vast and powerful for mortal minds to comprehend. If he showed up than he’d crush the entire town under his claw and not even bother to scrape it off his scales before going on his way!”

“Oh, please. Nothing’s that big.”

“You’re just jealous because your pretty pink pony princesses are weak and tiny.”

Long Shot glared at his friend. “Don’t go insulting the princesses! They’re the nicest, gentlest ponies ever and they’ve always made everypony they meet feel like they’re important! Why, Princess Luna’s shaken my hoof six times!”

Scuzzy snorted from behind her cloud. “Only because you kept getting back in line that one time she came to Canterlot to talk to the mayor.”

The unicorn smiled proudly, “And she shook my hoof every time without complaining!”

A muffled snort was her only reply as the pair continued on their way in silence.

Evening Sparkle was a young, studious unicorn mare who lived on the edges of Canterlot in an ancient tree she’d converted into a house using magic. It was to her that the ponies of the small village turned when they were confronted with problems that could not be solved with wit and might.

Long Shot raised a hoof and knocked politely on the red door. There was a series of muffled curses from inside, followed by a blinding flash through the windows and the sound of glass shattering.

“Um, Ms. Sparkle,” the colt called, “you alright?”

A pretty lavender unicorn poked her head through the door, “I’m fine!” she yelled. “Perfectly fine! Everything’s. Completely. Fine.”

“Your head is stuck in the door,” Scuzzy deadpanned.

Evening looked down at herself. “Stupid intangibility matrix!”

The mare disappeared as she pulled her head back through the door. There was another flash of light and the door swung open, revealing Canterlot’s resident magic expert in all her glory. Evening Sparkle was lavender in color, with a dark red mane, permanently crossed cyan eyes, and a cutie mark made up of seven stars. If it were not for the perpetual expression of complete annoyance with life on her face, she could have passed for any other noble unicorn.

“Sup, crazypants?” Scuzzy asked, marching inside without an invitation, bringing her cloud with her.

Long Shot followed, smiling apologetically at the slightly frazzled mare.

The inside of the tree was quite spacious, rows of bookshelves lined the wall and a dozen mysterious devices were set out on tables scattered about the floor. Half the ceiling was covered in scorch marks, the other in glaring pink frosting.

“How did you get frosting on the ceiling?” the colt asked.

Evening teleported away, reappearing atop a precariously perched ladder in the center of the room with a fresh cake in one hoof and a knife in the other. She began scraping frosting off the ceiling and onto the cake. “I needed cake.”

Long Shot shook his head and brushed a few crumpled pieces of parchment off a cushy armchair and sat down. He’d learned long ago not to question the older unicorn’s quirkiness, it usually ended with a twelve-hour long lecture on pudding followed by a week of smelling like dog food.

Through sheer force of will, he managed to retain his seat when Evening teleported next to him and a professional-grade carrot cake landed in his lap. Long Shot eyed the pastry warily, the last time he’d eaten his friend’s cooking he’d grown gills for a month.

“Don’t be a weeny!” Scuzzy shouted at him, she’d moved her cloud directly overhead and was watching the cake with open greed.

“You want this?” The unicorn asked her.

Scuzzy ran her tongue along the edges of her beak, “No.”

Long Shot threw the cake at her.

The griffoness laughed and snatched it deftly out of the air and bit into the concoction with relish. A moment later, her feathers turned white and her fur a striking shade of blue.

Evening looked up quizzically, “That’s not right.” she murmured, tapping a hoof to her chin. “It was supposed to turn her into a seapony.”

“Stop screwing around, Evening.” A gruff, familiar voice grumbled from overhead. A of green flames erupted in the center of the room, disappearing a moment later to reveal a ferocious-looking young dragon.

The creature was easily twice the size of a pony, with royal purple scales and rounded, crimson spines. His lithe, muscular build spoke of great strength and greater speed.

“Hi, Pyre,” Long Shot greeted him, waving a hoof fondly.

The dragon acknowledged him with a nod before stalking over to his mistress, moving on all fours to avoid knocking over the tables with his impressive wingspan.

“You know what he’s here for,” he growled to the unicorn, craning his neck down so he could look into her eyes. Even crouched down he was still a head taller than her.

Evening pouted, “Aww, you’re so boring Pirey-wirey. You know that things have to move according to schedule!”

A food-stained scroll appeared out of nowhere.

“And according to my schedule, right now is cake time!”

Pyre took the scroll in a claw and looked at it. “Evening, this is a grocery list from the garbage that you scribbled ‘I love my plot’ on.”

The mare nodded enthusiastically. “Yep yep yep! I love my plot.” She froze and the scroll crumbled to ashes as she turned horrified eyes on Long Shot. “Foals shouldn’t read such things!”

Pyre face-clawed, Scuzzy burst out laughing, and the colt felt a slow blush begin to creep up his cheeks.

“Moving on,” the dragon murmured. “Long Shot’s here for his appointment,” he turned his blood-red eyes on the little pony, “aren’t you?”

Long Shot gulped and nodded nervously. Something fluffy settled around his shoulders, he glanced up to see that Scuzzy was staring at the wall while her tail squeezed him affectionately.

Evening’s expression morphed instantly into one of melancholy.

“Of course,” she murmured, sad eyes looking over the colt. “Right this way.”

The young unicorn nodded again and followed the mare down a previously hidden trapdoor to the treehouse’s basement. A cavernous room lined with tree roots and loose soil held in place by their mistress’s inexhaustible will.

Long Shot allowed himself to be strapped into the familiar machine; the hum of gears and clanking of pistons filled the air.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Sparkle asked, her voice noticeably devoid of emotion as she pulled on rubber boots and set a pair of ruby-tinted goggles over her eyes.

The colt closed his eyes. “To live or to die,” he murmured, “it’s all in good fun.”