Aquitaine d'Anjou, formerly the 11th Grand Duchess of the Western Gates of Griffrance, and now a disembodied spirit bound to a mystical mask, circled Zecora slowly through the air, with her eyes narrowed and locked on the zebra as if she were her prey.

“You're really going to do this?” she asked, her tone turning upward with hints of both suspicion and hope. “What makes you so sure I won't simply keep your body forever?”

Zecora ignored Aquitaine's predatory gaze, instead squinting up at the strange red, purple, and bronze eclipse that had persisted for what had to be “days” now, neither the sun nor the moon budging at all from their positions far overhead. Huge, dense clouds passed quickly across the sky, moving west toward Equestria, and wherever they cast their shadows on the sky, twinkling stars could be glimpsed amidst the fiery backdrop.

On a high, steep cliff in the distance stood the Tower of Ibis, ancestral home of the Anjou family and seat of power of the current Grand Duchess, Aquitaine's younger sister Adelaide. The ivory building stretched up into the sky like a needle made of bone, so far that the tip of it was lost among the storm clouds. The gigantic red banners with two golden keys crossed upon them, which hung from the tower's balconies, were flapping violently as the wind billowed past them. Few griffons flew as the unnatural celestial phenomenon continued, but they could still be seen peeking out from its large, open-air windows.

Zecora's artificial spiral “cutie mark” had been itching intensely ever since the eclipse started. The way her whole body felt fine except for that one patch of skin had to be a sign, and it was one she felt compelled to act on. The risks were great, but she would have help.

“You wouldn't dare keep her body.” A low growl from the spirit of the cheetah Baqir materialized, along with his faded image. “If you do, we'll haunt you until the end of your days.”

“I'm sure,” Aquitaine remarked with a flick of her claw. “But, since you'd still be bound to your masks, there's nothing you could actually do about it.”

“That's not fair,” he said. “Or right.”

“Are we fighting about this again?” asked Moussa the ape, appearing from thin air to join the conversation.

“I'm only asking,” said Aquitaine. “This is a huge gamble on so many levels, Zecora. What if Isra isn't here? What if he doesn't know how to get the ingredients to disenchant the masks? What if they kill you? What if one of us takes control? I think you owe it to us to at least explain your reasoning for this insanity.”

“Isn't it obvious?” Moussa said, grinning broadly. “She's got the hots for the Princess.”

Zecora lowered her face from the sky down to the ethereal trio. Her eyes widened a tiny fraction. It was a rare occurrence for all three of them to manifest at once, but she closed her eyes and smiled anyway at the light jab. She shook her head slowly, then began to carefully construct an infiltration plan in her mind's eye, using the general layout that her griffon friend—no, her prisoner and murder victim, she reminded herself with an inward frown—had provided.

“Ignoring the vulgarity of that expression for now,” Aquitaine said, “that still seems like a bit of leap. So what if she does? After that business at the lake, Luna's never going to forgive her, no matter how many griffons she defeats or how many crimes she atones for.”

“That's really harsh,” Moussa said as he put a massive, protective paw on Zecora's back. “You don't know that.”

“It's the truth!” Aquitaine shouted, throwing her arms up in the air. “Do you honestly think she's going to take Zecora back, ever? Indeed, she wasn't too keen on the idea to begin with, as I recall.”

“The best advice I have to give,” Zecora cut in as she sat gradually lowered herself into a sitting position, where she could take off her packs and begin going through their contents, “is to prove your love by how you live. I don't care whether she takes my heart, as long as it is whole when I depart.” She kept up her smile, but inside, she felt as if the butterflies in her stomach were being sucked into a vast, empty pit, where not even light from the stars could reach her.

“That's deep,” said Baqir quietly, habitually licking his non-physical paw.

“Very romantic,” Moussa agreed.

“It is meaningless garbage,” Aquitaine said. She folded her arms across her chest as she hovered in the air.

Moussa laughed a gut-heaving, barrel-bellied laugh, which, Zecora had always thought, was the only way he knew how to laugh, no matter the relative humor of the situation. “Ignoring the vulgarity of that statement for now,” he said, mimicking the haughty, high pitched nasal tone of the griffon noble as well as an enormous gorilla could, “the fact is, we're staring at a possible ticket out of this world and finally onto the next. Isn't that what you want?”

“She'll never love you like you want her to, Zecora,” Aquitaine said very quietly, then became silent and turned her head toward the tower. Her wing beats slowed as she stared at it, and her beak closed even tighter. Her tail swayed back and forth.

“It matters to me not one whit,” said Zecora, filling the long silence with her deep voice and with the clanking of organizing her wide assortment of potions and herbs. “It won't be your problem once I have your ticket.

“And if my old partner does not lie inside,” she went on, turning her attention to the other two companions and gesturing with a hoof toward the tower, “then we keep looking, until all the earth has been tried.”

“Alright, if that's what you want,” Moussa said, clapping his big hands with volume and finality.

“So what are you going to do?” Baqir asked.

As she explained the plan, Zecora carefully concealed the masks under her cloak, but in such a way that she could access each one at a moment's notice. The blank fourth one she kept tucked away and tried not to think about what she was about to do with it.

Once the preparations were complete, she took the mask of the cheetah from its hiding spot. The apparitions faded away, for now. Then the familiar pain shot through Zecora as she placed the carved mask on her face. The wood pierced her skin and worked its way inside to wrap around her bones. Along with it came the potent magic that she had used to make it, with the soul inside following close behind. Her body twisted and warped, and so did her mind. As Baqir took temporary control of the body, she withdrew her consciousness a step and began to repeat a controlling, centering rhyme she had composed decades ago, when she had first begun her experiments in Timbucktu.

I walk on the edge of my soul, until, one day, my spirit will be whole.

With her hooves replaced with swift, silent paws, Zecora stalked toward the Tower of Ibis, her sleek new form low to the ground, hidden in the dry, sparse grass. She stopped at irregular intervals in order to make sure any watchful eyes passed her over as just a wandering animal, or a gust of wind.

The spire loomed larger and larger, until it dominated her vision. Zecora circled the perimeter of the tower slowly and carefully, observing it and comparing it to the plan in her mind. The grand entrance was over thirty-feet above the ground, and its massive portcullis was lowered. There was one smaller door hidden among a pile of rocks on the ground level, guarded by a pair of griffon soldiers with their distinctive red tri-corner hats resting atop their heads. Sharp rapiers glinted in the harsh light, as did their elegantly waxed mustaches. While Zecora dabbed two blowdarts in a bottle of sleeping poison, the two conversed.

“—yes, Guillaume arrived with the news just an hour ago,” the first said, reclining against a rock and sharpening his talons with it.

“It has to be fake,” said the second, with a derisive snort. “Can you imagine it? An army of ponies? The image makes me faint with laughter.”

“Perhaps,” the other replied as he examined the edges of his claws. “Them having a queen now seems to be true enough though, from the report.”

“Oh, please,” the grinning soldier said. “Do you also believe those ridiculous tales of unicorns levitating and launching Ursa Minors like catapults and pegasi flying faster than sound?”

“No, of course not.”

“Good, I was worried about you for a moment. I do hope the part about Celestia stepping down is true though.” The laughing griffon leaned forward eagerly. “If she is actually gone, they're ripe for being shown what a true army looks like.”

“You know our royal family won't do that,” his compatriot said, with a very slight sigh. “Although, I've heard that the duchess had a sour encounter with this new 'queen' of theirs. Maybe she'll decide to launch an expedition of her own.”

“That would be most amu—“ Thwip. He slumped to the ground as a dart pierced his neck, its fast-acting paralytic effect preventing him from even uttering a sound.

The second dart was narrowly avoided by the first griffon, who spotted the gray-and-black colors of the cheetah's fur a fraction of a second early enough to dodge. Zecora growled, then lunged out from her hiding place in the grass. She tackled him by the shoulders, but she was unable to place her paw on his throat before he could let out half of a shriek. As she struggled to keep pressure on the soldier's windpipe, Zecora tried to reach back and grab the bottle of poison.

Her letting go of the pin slightly allowed the griffon to rake his claws against her legs and back. He couldn't reach his blade, but his sharp talons were still causing a great deal of damage. Zecora grimaced and clamped her teeth over her lip as blood poured down her sides. Just as the pain was about to become unbearable, she managed to grab hold of the bottle, then pour a shot down the griffon's gasping throat. She relaxed her hold on his neck as the slight overdose took immediate effect, his eyes closing and his legs going limp.

Zecora climbed off of the guard, quickly stowed away her potion, then immediately dashed for the side of the tower. She was barely in time, as several griffons inside had heard the commotion and were leaping out of windows above to start patrolling the air. Zecora studied the little barred gate as she pulled some bandages out to staunch her bleeding. She winced at the agony of binding them up so fast, but she had to move as quickly as possible.

The doorway led directly into a torch-lit stone hallway, but the gate blocking the way had no room for handles or keys. As she suspected, the passage was controlled from inside. Her blundering miss of the second guard had taken too much time for her to construct a contraption to attempt to reach the controls, so instead, Zecora reluctantly made use of some of her magically bottled supply of hydra's spit, which corroded the metal on contact. She heard more griffons shrieking just above her. They must have spotted her handiwork. Before they could land, Zecora pushed her way through the melting bars carefully. She hadn't given the acid enough time to work, so even with her care, some drops of it still splashed onto her, completely burning away bits of hair and skin before she could dab it off.

Repeating her mantra in her head was becoming more difficult through the haze of pain. She felt her consciousness drifting away from control of the body, right as focusing on the layout of the building was most critical. Though Baqir's consciousness was making no moves to take her place, she decided to be cautious and chew an entire paw-full of numbing tapdragon leaves as she ran down the hall. The effect on her pain was fast, allowing Zecora to speed through the narrow passageways of the lower level in relative comfort.

They were cramped and twisted, alternating between sloping up and down, left and right. There were no windows at all, making this an especially torturous prison for the sky-dwelling griffons. Plenty of torches lined the halls, however, many of which Zecora snuffed out in a random pattern as she ran by, hoping to confuse the pursuit as well as darken the area for added stealth.

Zecora sniffed the stale air. As a zebra, she would not have been able to make out the faint odor of rust and excrement coming from the path leading down to the dungeon. Using her superior cheetah senses, she could mostly follow the correct path, with the occasional hasty diversion to put out torches and spread her scent along different passages.

She could hear the steps of her initial pursuers, as well as shouts and openings of doors coming from above her. They were still far in the distance, but she needed to make up as much time as possible now that she had bungled her entrance.

As the smells of the prison became more intense, Zecora slowed her pace, her eyes constantly scanning all directions. There was a thick wooden door with metal bars to the prison itself, one of very few she had seen in this twisting labyrinth of storage rooms and dead-ends. She came to a stop right before it, then urgently rapped at it with her knuckles.

“Eh?” A griffon's face appeared at the bars at the top of the door. “Who's there?” At first, he didn't see her, as his eyes were expecting a figure much higher from the ground. As soon as they widened at the sight of a cloaked cheetah, Zecora spat the mushy remains of the tapdragon leaves she had been chewing in his face. They had no special effect left, other than the surprise of having a thick green wad of muck suddenly blocking his vision. He almost screeched, but Zecora leaped up, pushed her skinny forelegs through the bars and wrapped them around the guard's neck. Pulling him forward tightly, so that the metal was cutting off his airflow, she whispered.

“Be at ease. Stay silent, and use the keys.”

Grunting and choking, he reached to his belt and put the keys in the lock of the door. As soon as she heard the latch turn, Zecora pounded the griffon's skull against the door hard enough to knock him out. She pulled the door open, jumped inside, then shut it again as fast as she could while still keeping relatively quiet.

The prison was a massive pit that plunged down hundreds of feet. The wide, earthen walkway that spiraled down along the pit's edge was dotted with cells, but almost all of the ones she could see were empty. The few griffons in sight were frail, sky-starved husks. They tried to see what was happening above, but were too far away. Zecora spared the pit a long enough glance to determine that no other guards were approaching, then went to work.

With her now half-empty bottle of sleeping potion unstoppered, she pulled the guard's beak open and put in a few drops, ensuring he would stay unconscious for about an hour. She snatched his keys from the lock, then grabbed his collar in her teeth. Zecora dragged him over to the plain desk he had presumably been sitting at, then hid him underneath. She crept out and began a quick but still-cautious descent down the spiral of prison cells.

The smell was overwhelming to her new nose. The cells here were rarely cleaned, and the dark bars were thick with flaking red rust. The few griffons behind them regarded the passing cheetah with a mix of apathy, surprise, and hunger. One tried to reach out and grab her, but Zecora dodged out of the way, leaving him holding only a few threads of cloak and fur.

Halfway down, Zecora stopped in her tracks. In a dungeon full of creatures crossed between lions and eagles, the Arabian horse inside this cell stuck out instantly, despite lying down in the cell's darkened rear with his eyes closed. Though his brown coat and black mane had lost their youthful luster, and he had become thin and ragged with age and starvation, his face could be no other's. This was Isra, the scholar who had advised and guided her when she first enrolled in the University of Timbucktu. And who, the last time she had seen him, had strapped a knife to his forefoot to attempt to cut off her face and make it into yet another of his—their—masks.

For a long moment, Zecora was unable to move. She could feel phantom steel pressing on her neck. Beads of sweat fell to the floor. With steady breaths, Zecora forced her heart to stop beating so quickly, so that she could focus on finding the right key from the guard's chain. As she approached, she saw that Isra's eyes had opened, and the dark blue irises were boring into her. He lifted his head to get a closer look, making one of Zecora's rear paws inched away reflexively.

“I don't imagine you're here to free the rebels, then,” Isra whispered faintly and hoarsely in his dusky accent. “Do I know you?”

Zecora said nothing and focused on trying keys in the lock. She growled at how many there were. There couldn't be more than a dozen prisoners in the place, yet the warden apparently kept keys for every single cell on the same ring.

“Let me save you the trouble,” he said, straining to raise his voice above a whisper, and coughing from the effort. “If you have come here to kill me, know that I am marked for execution anyway. If you have come to free me, know that, no matter how far I may flee from this place, freedom will forever be beyond my grasp. In either case, you are wasting your efforts.”

Zecora struggled not to look at her partner in alchemy—and crime—from years ago, instead concentrating firmly on the keys, which she was still fumbling with by the tenth one. Her ears perked up as she picked up raised voices and eagle's cries getting closer. She looked at the decrepit state of the metal holding the Arabian inside. There was a much quicker way to do this. There was likely to be some sort of physical confrontation soon as well, so the form of Baqir was losing usefulness.

Digging her claws into the side of her neck where the magical wood had fused with her, she tore the mask off so quickly that it had the appearance of flesh while it was still partially attached to her, presenting the gruesome and bloody image of a cheetah ripping its own face off.

“No,” gasped Isra. His eyes bulged out of their sockets at the sight of the cheetah's body growing and deforming into that of a zebra, and one he recognized, as distant in his past as she was. “No!” His voice was too dry and out of use to raise to a shout, but it was still loud enough to potentially draw attention. “Guards! Down here!”

“Silence, you damned fool,” Zecora hissed as she put Baqir's mask safely back into the straps inside her cape, then brought out the huge mask of Moussa the ape. “I will save you from this fate so cruel.”

“I don't believe that for a second,” he replied. “Help!” He resumed his pained pleas. “Down in the dungeon!”

“Believe it or not, then,” she said. “I am taking you from this pen.”

Zecora slapped the mask onto her face, its material burrowing into her neck while she was still gushing blood from the violent removal of the previous mask. Her eyes narrowed and watered, but thanks to the lingering effects of her herbal sedative, she was not in agony—yet. As her body more than doubled in size and its previous owner's spirit was called up from the depths of her psyche, Zecora knew that she would need more, or larger, neck rings to hide the scars from this day.

Isra had fallen silent as he watched her form break and twist into a hulking, black-and-white haired gorilla. She emitted not a single utterance of pain the whole time; bones cracking and flesh ripping and stretching became the only sound from her. The brown, hooded cloak Zecora had been wearing looked almost comically undersized attached to her now-bulging neck, but Isra was not laughing. When the gorilla grabbed the bars of the cell, Isra backed into the corner, shaking as Zecora used her new strength to break the rusted metal apart completely.

Steps came closer and closer. Zecora grunted and hefted the prisoner onto her shoulder with one mighty grab. Isra's emaciated muscles attempted to resist, but they were no match. Holding him in place with one hand, she bounded back up the spiral.

A party of four griffon soldiers suddenly slammed the door open, rapiers drawn. Their beaks gaped open at the scene before them, but they bravely trained their blades on Zecora nonetheless. Two of them jumped up and performed a flying charge at her. The first she slammed into the floor with an open-palmed slap, knocking him out instantly, but the second dodged her follow-up backhand and drove his blade into her arm. She roared and tried to grab him. The soldier darted through the air, letting go of his sword to avoid her swings.

His two conscious comrades ran at Zecora at ground level. Right as she finally managed to get her hand around the airborne griffon, she felt the blades of the other two pierce her legs. She screamed, and her vision began to blur.

...on the edge of my soul, until... until... what—what rhymes with soul? Zecora's mind reeled. Moussa, overcome with the thrill and rage of battle, moved in to fill the vacancy her spirit was leaving. He was so intent on the feeling of joy the experience was giving him that he didn't realize Zecora was slipping. She tried to reach out and grab him, to shout and yell at him, but he was busy punching griffons in their faces, howling, laughing, and beating his chest. The last thing she felt before falling into darkness was an itch in her hand, a longing to hold a mug of beer, just like in the old days, before she was murdered...

When Zecora came back, her eyes shot open, and they were now glowing with a soft yellow light. She groped through her cloak for something, anything to help her focus. Her hooves—she was dimly, distantly aware that she should be pleased that she had hooves—seized upon a bulbous purple flask. Inside was a brew of fermented lavender root mixed with sea serpent's tears. It was normally most useful as a food purifier and preservative, but it also had a strong alcoholic kick that Zecora sorely needed. At least, she hoped it was her who needed it, and not someone else.

She examined her body. She was only partially relieved to discover it was that of a zebra again, because she was lying in a pool of warm blood, which was still dripping from the rips in her neck and the sword wounds in her limbs.

Zecora expanded her investigation. She was lying on her back on a smooth balcony of polished ivory. It must have been higher up the tower, because the clouds looked close enough to touch. Zecora stopped herself from childishly reaching out for one, instead incorporating the motion into a slow, painful struggle up to her feet. She glanced inside her cloak in the process, noting with a sigh of relief and a cringe that Moussa's mask was stowed inside, its edges caked with flesh that it had torn off of her neck.

“Might I have some of that as well?” asked Isra as he stepped from the shadow of the balcony's doorway. He glanced at the flask she was putting away.

“Not a drop for you,” she said in a throaty rasp, glaring and forcing her shaking legs into a tense, defensive stance. “I am not the fool you once knew.”

The Arabian backed up slightly with a forced laugh. “Zecora, I just watched you take on an entire wing of griffon chevaliers, then climb halfway up the side of a tower, carrying me over your shoulder the entire time. If I harbored thoughts of harming you, they have long since been cowed and banished.” He lowered his neck and closed his eyes. “Use me as you will.”

She sternly regarded his craned neck, which bore only a couple very old scars. She looked to her own, which was littered with scars currently hidden by blood, and shuddered. The pain is somewhat numb, she thought, but what have I become?

“It is almost sad to see,” Zecora said, trying to shove that thought aside, “what you have come to be. Where is your fire? That passion I used to admire?”

Isra had come to represent so much to her over the years, in her weaker moments when she thought that far into the past. In her mind, he was this dark, menacing figure who served as a warning about the need to be constantly vigilant when uncovering less-than-savory knowledge. He towered over her psyche at those times, silently reminding her that charisma and intelligence are noble things, but they can be so easily twisted.

Now he was this skinny, quiet thing, and Zecora was angry at him for it, so thoroughly vexed that all she could do was fume. It was like he had betrayed her all over again, as if trying to kill her had not been enough. Now he had the nerve to be so gentle and calm after everything they had done together? How did he have more right to be at peace than she did?

Yet, she also found that the rhymes were coming more easily to her.

“The fire is still here,” he said, placing one hoof over his heart, “despite many years of prison-keepers trying to smother it. I have surrendered it to a greater power now, where it is out of their reach.”

“Does that hollow fetter truly make you feel better?” Zecora frowned and shook her head. “You follow a religion we did deride, and suddenly you are whole inside?”

“I never said that.” Isra sighed heavily. “Look, clearly this is not a wise topic of discussion. I am sorry.”

“You do not get to say that, you useless, sniveling rat!” Zecora raised her voice, and might have been shouting if the searing pain in her throat was not putting a limit on her volume. “If you possessed any flame, you would not be this tame.”

Isra's eyes opened for a moment, and for that moment Zecora leaned forward in heavy expectation, but he only glanced sidelong at the sky before lowering his head further. He said nothing. Zecora ground her teeth.

She was surprised at the vehemence of her own words, until she remembered the last time she had been this angry. It was when Twilight Sparkle and her friends had burst into her hut and accused her of being an evil witch, after she had tried to warn them that they had been standing in Poison Joke. But they had been very apologetic when she made them believe she wasn’t one—at least, not anymore. Maybe she should do her old mentor the same courtesy? She sighed, stopped grinding her teeth, and tried to look at Isra how the ponies of Equestria had taught her to look at all living things. Seeing the light in him, as they said, was no easy task. If his faith has set his life right, then that is some kind of light. I must learn not to project. He does not live to be what I expect.

“All I need to know,” she said slowly and deliberately as the rage ebbed away, “is where I must go.” Zecora gestured up with one hoof. “Tell me how many bricks until I find your bag of tricks.”

“My tricks?” he said, opening his eyes to look quizzically at her. He quickly shut them again when met with her hard, unblinking golden stare. “You mean my ritual components? What little I had left is kept under lock and key by the duchess, whom I'd imagine is toward the top.” He gulped. “Do you mean to forge me into a mask as justice for starting all this, and trying to kill you? That's... very poetic.”

“I...” Zecora looked out at the sky. Still red, still eclipsed. Her memory flashed to that fateful moment in the field, when her face had been so close to Luna's. The Princess's beautiful eyes—the exact same color as Zecora's, when they weren't glowing like they were now—were briefly bright with hope and possibility, and they must have once been even brighter. Maybe, she presumed, a little bit like her own. An old, powerful murkiness had crept over Luna's eyes, but they still shined. It was when Zecora had seen the way the light and dark of Luna's gaze mingled and shifted together that she had become truly smitten. She had obviously misread Luna's signals, but how could she do anything but attempt to kiss her in that perfect, balanced moment?

Zecora winced. She was going too long without fulfilling her internal rhyming compulsion, and her mantra was now too tainted by trauma to help with it. Perspiring slightly, she tried to funnel her thoughts into couplets again.

If our hearts had only been aligned, perhaps I too might have shined.

Zecora doubted there was much of a spark left in her own eyes, but there must have been a tiny bit of good in her for the Equestrians to accept her as much as they had, or for Luna to invite her on her quest.

She also thought of the last time she had seen her love—broken and bleeding on a cold, dark floor, lost and alone, pleading for her not to leave. Zecora wanted to reach back through time and touch her, to shout her true feelings to the heavens. They would have been mere words to the Princess, but at least then she would have been left with something besides betrayal and silence.

Perhaps they would have meant nothing to you, but... She paused. “You” was an incredibly easy Equestrian word to rhyme, but memories of Luna were clouding Zecora's every thought. But they would certainly have been true. She managed to finish, sweating harder now.

However, saying anything to Luna would have made the trio of unicorns suspicious, made them scrutinize her more closely. They might have discovered the tiny vial she had hidden up above right before diving into the lake, in which she kept the memory of their hiding place. They might have realized that she was going to come back for them.

“I am sorely tempted,” Zecora finally continued, “but from death you are exempted.” Isra, although he was shifting his feet after Zecora's long silence, still would not look at her. “I am going to break this curse if I can, and put an end to the pain we began. I have the knowledge to banish this vice, and for it I have paid a heavy price.”

Then again, she had done much good with the masks. With Baqir's claws, she had torn up the infestation of strangler vines that had been encroaching on Ponyville. She had swatted countless massive, blood-sucking house-flies with Moussa's hands. And there was the time she and Aquitaine had flown a lone, broken-winged pegasus, stranded on a solitary cloud, through a swarm of angry flying monkeys to get her to safety. Could she give up such power? Moreover, would she stand a chance at defeating the unicorns who caused all of those woes without it?

Most importantly, why was she having these doubts now? She needed to get moving.

I climbing up this tower, and—no... Zecora clenched her teeth and tried again. I am trying—trying to climb this tower, but wasting time pondering power.

She glanced around urgently, immediately noticing how much more yellow-tinted her vision had become. Zecora had never drifted this far out of control of her body before. She had not fought actual soldiers before either, much less done so while weighted with guilt, wounds, and sorrow, so it made sense. To use another mask now would be foolish, but it was the quickest way up, and she had promised...

She held the feathered mask of the former griffon duchess before her, so that she was gazing into the eye holes cut in the wood.

“I place in you my trust,” she said. “Go up and do what you must.”

“What about me?” said Isra, lifting his head back up slowly. He finally watched her with rheumy, distant eyes, and there was a tight frown barely visible on his features.

“When the task is done,” Zecora said very slowly, with long pauses to think between phrases, “I'll return, and then you will run. If you truly wish to die, then do it close to home, not under this foreign sky.”

“That's it?” He sighed through his nostrils. “All the trouble of breaking me out, and you don't even care what happens to me? ...Zecora?”

Zecora was barely listening, having placed Aquitaine's mask in position on her face. As her shape shifted grotesquely, she instantly felt her body and spirit under assault. The griffon was yearning to see her sister once again, and Zecora had to improvise a quick series of meaningless sonnets to keep her actions from being overwhelmed by that desire. She stuffed every last bit of tapdragon root she had in her beak and tried as hard as she could to bring her soul back to its center.

She hovered in the air for a few moments as she chewed, then came to a decision with a firm nod. She grabbed Isra as delicately as she could and tried to bring him up too. He might have been useful as a distraction, but after everything, she could not leave her mentor behind. It felt right to bring him along to see this. It was a struggle to carry him though. Her wings flapped furiously, only to fly up at a crawl.

She had never been a good flier under the best of circumstances, but Aquitaine had been decent enough. With that realization, the second presence inside her body stepped forward and claimed a small fraction more of control. Absolutely numb to almost all sensation, even the vertigo at seeing how extremely far away the ground was, Zecora ascended, happily oblivious to the cliff her mind was balancing on.

At least, she thought distantly, the guards would be looking for an ape or a cheetah, not a fellow griffon. If questioned, she could say she was transporting the prisoner under Adelaide's orders or something. In the yellow fog that surrounded her sight, it seemed like a perfect plan. There were a few griffons circling the skies, but none of them seemed to notice her.

Isra, meanwhile, had closed his eyes again, and his lips were muttering a common Arabian prayer.

“Let me live as long as life is better for me,” he said in Arabic.

“And take my life if death is better for me,” Zecora finished with him, to her surprise and chagrin. He smiled faintly, despite the claws that were wrapped around his torso. Zecora smiled back in spite of herself as she stealthily glanced inside each window she passed.

Most were well-furnished but empty rooms, with lavish red curtains that could be opened or closed by the occupants. All the curtains but one were open. Zecora hazily realized that her instincts were taking her toward the closed one. A pale green light was emanating from its edges. There was some sort of enchantment that blocked all sights and sounds from leaving the room, and, she somehow knew, it also served as an alarm.

That will not halt my motion, she said to herself. For that, I have just the potion. It took her several tries to find the correct rhyme, and she wasn't sure if she got the meter right, but it was something. She was still slipping, but slipping a little more slowly.

Zecora shifted Isra around so that he was clinging to her back. He neither yelled nor resisted, but meekly did as she wished. It was still hard to believe this broken thing had once seemed so wise and confident. She chuckled bitterly when she realized that the same thing could apply to her as well. If the citizens of Ponyville could only see her now. Then again, his appearance could easily be deceiving her, which also applied to her more than they knew.

With her claws free, she found her pouch of cockatrice dust and sprinkled it around the edges of the window. Once the ward was broken, she parted the curtain with a single talon and peeked inside.

The high-ceiling room was sparsely decorated. The colorful tapestries and paintings of famous battles and Anjou family members looked starkly out of place surrounded by little else but white, smooth-cobbled chunks of bone. There were a couple of doorways to adjacent rooms, a couple of cabinets with glass flower vases resting atop them, a bed with red silk curtains encompassing all four sides, and a rich, dark wooden desk. Adelaide d'Anjou, clad in a golden-threaded, red cloth tunic, sat at the desk, quickly scribbling notes on parchment. She jumped up when she heard Isra's hooves being set on the floor, followed by Zecora's claws.

“Sis?” she said without thinking, her eyes widening at the sudden sight before her. “What are you doing here with—” She gasped and flapped her way toward the exit. “Oh, no. You're the intruder!”

As Adelaide reached for the door handle to call for help, the distress on her face reminded Zecora of the fear and fury Luna had felt when she was imprisoned by her students. How could she have done that to someone she loved?

“Wait!” Aquitaine shouted, taking full control of Zecora's voice.

Zecora barely noticed the coup. Wait. The word reverberated across her drifting consciousness. Was it actually love? Luna was a walking epic poem, a book containing thousands upon thousands of stories, all bound up into one beautiful whole. To be so obsessed with such a thing, even though it now likely wished her dead, made the storyteller within Zecora glow and sing. But in order to love someone, did you not have to consider what they wanted? But she had done that. Luna wanted her to be better, to be pure and noble, didn't she? And how could she be pure in and noble unless she corrected her greatest mistake? She thought that was what Luna would have wanted her to do, but Zecora realized, far too late now, that she had never asked.

“I've taken control of Zecora's body, little Sis,” Aquitaine said. “I don't know for how long. Hopefully forever, but it will at least be long enough for us to talk.”

“No, this is a trick.” Adelaide scoffed, but her claw dropped from the door handle. “Do you think I'm a fool, Zecora?”

“It's true. Think. Don't you remember that Zecora has a compulsion to rhyme? I am not rhyming. It's really me, Adelaide. Please believe me.”

“But...” Adelaide dropped to the floor, but only with her hind legs, so that her eagle claws could be ready to strike in an instant. “But why is he here, then?” She gestured toward Isra, who had backed into a corner of the room. His head was bowed in deference and prayer.

“I suppose Zecora got sentimental in her last moments,” Aquitaine said, waving him off dismissively. “We can throw him back in the dungeon momentarily. But we truly do need to talk first.”

Zecora became aware of a very new sensation: falling. She attempted to reach out, to yell a warning to Aquitaine.

“No, Zecora,” she said in her throat, inaudible to her sister. “I'm not done yet.”

Zecora wanted to shout something about Aquitaine being a traitor, but she was overwhelmed with bitter amusement about the tragic irony of that thought. She could not find a rhyme in time anyway. Wait, something about rhyme and time...

The room she had been in only had a light breeze, but now wind was whipping through her coat at an increasing rate. The golden filter on her sight was fading, replaced by darkness. She saw herself, or what had been herself, hugging a stunned and crying Adelaide, and then all was emptiness. Zecora found herself in a black, moonless, starless night. The feel of the wind on her body slowly dissipated. She imagined that she was still falling, but there was no point of reference around her to be sure. She could just as well be floating.

So what did she feel for the Princess of the Night, then? While that feeling too was fading rapidly, it was the only emotion she had left, so she spent a great deal of time examining it. It was awe, and lust, and morbid curiosity. It was danger and excitement. It motivated and inspired her. But she still could not say whether or not it was love.

Love. Shove. Dove? No, unless speaking of the bird...

The bird. Feathers. Griffons. Zecora's mind seized on that train of word association like a lifeline. That was it. If she turned her imagination around like so, like turning a mental key, the mask should start to automatically unwind from her bones. It was a good thing she had thought of that contingency years ago, before this delirious day, nearly the most violent and confusing one she had ever experienced.

Far, far above, after several minutes of tearful conversation attempting to sum up the past twenty years, the feathers around Aquitaine's neck began to saturate with blood. The mask was slowly unwinding from her spine and trying to pull out of her skin. She growled and swished her tail around.

“Sis, what's wrong?” Adelaide said, reaching out to dab some cloth on the widening wound.

“It seems Zecora put in some kind of failsafe,” said Aquitaine, swatting away the cloth, “in case something like this happened. I doubt I have much time left. Listen—“

“Damn that zebra!” her younger sister shouted. “Hasn't she tormented us enough?”

“Be quiet,” the elder commanded. The spark of rage in Adelaide's eyes subsided for a moment, but it did not go away. “Good. Now, when my time here is up, Zecora should be unbinding me from this mask. Whether she actually does or not is irrelevant. You must let her go either way.”

“What!?” she shrieked. “Never!”

“I told you to be quiet!” Aquitaine could feel her skin trying to pull itself off. She grasped her neck in an attempt to keep it on just a little longer. “Zecora is the only one who can stop the necromancers who have seized control of Equestria. If she doesn't, there will be chaos, maybe even war.”

“Good,” Adelaide said, puffing out her chest as she defied her sister's commands to be quiet. “I'm not afraid of an army of ponies.”

“How about an army of your fallen comrades, then?” Aquitaine asked softly.

“Then I'll raise our banners and destroy them now, before they have the chance,” said Adelaide. Her feathers became less rustled and rigid, belying her confident words.

“Little Sis.” Aquitaine sighed. “Oracle will intervene if you try to invade Equestria without obvious provocation. There are more important things you have to focus on. I can tell from your bare claws that you haven't married yet, and I saw no children—”

“Seriously?” Adelaide let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-roar. “The world is, according to you, teetering on the brink of chaos, I have your killers in my grasp, and the important thing I have to worry about is getting married and popping out a kid!?”

“Yes,” Aquitaine said seriously. “You're the last of our line. Unless you have a legitimate daughter before you die, our family's lands will pass to the crown, after which they will likely be divided among our enemies. Please, Adelaide. You have to stop dwelling on the past and look to the future...”

“Dwelling on the past? So you're perfectly fine with what that monster did to you?” Adelaide narrowed her eyes. “Wait. This is a trick, isn't it? You haven't really taken control of her body, have you?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Sis,” Aquitaine said, her voice straining as another tear opened up in her neck. “No, it's me, and I have not and will never forgive her, but I'm trying to be realistic. There comes a time in everyone's life when they must choose which scars they will continue to pick at forever, and which ones they will leave be. The dance of grudges has to end somewhere, and it is the duty of the strong and powerful to put their feet down and stop it themselves. Are you going to be strong, Adelaide?”

“Spare me your lectures, you striped freak,” said Adelaide as she pulled a thin, silver necklace with a single small key attached to it off of her neck. She tossed it to Aquitaine. “To think that you almost fooled me, Zecora. Take the ingredients you need. Release my sister's spirit from this curse, and I promise to make sure you're dead before I eat you. If you try to trick me, you won't be so lucky.”

Tears welled up in Aquitaine's eyes. They dripped to the floor and became lost in the small puddle of blood she was standing in.

“I wish I could have seen your wedding, Sis,” she croaked. “You would make a lovely bride.”

Her feathers flattened sharply to two dimensions, forming something like a black, inky, abstract painting of a griffon. They flowed up her body, as if being sucked forward to her face. She continued to mouth tearful words as her sister stared, motionless and silent. There was a blinding flash, the rattle of wood hitting the floor, and then Zecora was standing in Aquitaine's place.

“That is rather tough talk,” Zecora said, her voice scratching and gurgling as the ripped, bleeding flesh on her neck took its toll, “for a sheep far from her flock.” Gold-tinged smoke streamed from her eyes.

Adelaide's wings stretched out and her brow furrowed into a glare. “I'm not afraid of you.” She moved slowly to her bed, but always, Zecora noticed, with her eyes fixed on her. Adelaide reached underneath her canopied mattress and pulled out a long, curved white box, carved gracefully out of a single femur from some large beast. It slid across the floor until it smacked into Zecora's hooves, coming to a stop. “My soldiers are just a short call away, while you have no one but a pathetic husk of a horse to help you, if he even will. Besides, you're not looking so well, whereas I am perfectly healthy.”

Zecora spent a few minutes unlocking the box, trying to stay slow and steady. She needed to keep a watch on the duchess's twitching talons, and she needed to move carefully, lest her blood loss and dizziness adversely affect her.

Opening it, she sighed shakily, punctuating the sigh with a hacking cough. Not even that pain could dull her smile. Inside the bone case was everything else she would need for the ritual she had been given by Luna's students. Amidst piles of mandrake roots, tapdragon leaves, and bags of multi-colored ash, there was a vial nearly full of dragon's blood. Along with the small supply she had benignly conned from the dragonling Spike, saying she needed it to cure a disease he had not actually had, it would be enough to release all three masks, with a little to spare.

She looked at Isra. Her soft blue eyes were barely visible behind the sunny glow surrounding them, but they had a hint of expectation, a silent question.

“No,” he said quietly from the corner. “You don't need my help. Whether you realize it or not, you're trying to use me to make peace with your past. I won't sacrifice my own peace for that. If you desire absolution, that is a path you will have to walk alone.

“Yet...” He gazed solemnly at Zecora as she began to arrange the ingredients, starting by sprinkling a circle of purple powder on the floor. “Consider what you're doing. You are about to make everything we did amount to nothing, in the end. Yes, it was wrong, but we discovered so much. You cannot simply throw such knowledge away. If you will not use the masks, then you should give them to someone who will.”

Zecora came to a gradual halt. She stopped etching lines in the ivory with her hooves and frowned deeply. The weight of the masks hidden under her cloak seemed to increase, causing her to stumble and awkwardly attempt to correct her balance, although blood loss probably had much to do with that. Her itchiness, long-masked by more acute pain and by mind-altering substances, now grew more urgent. Zecora scratched at the spiral mark on her leg as she thought.

“That is not a righteous course,” she said, “but it would be good to have a horse. These three were somewhat less than saints, but adding you would draw no complaints.”

She took a step toward Isra, then, seeing him flinch, she drew two steps backwards. She shook her head furiously and squeezed her eyes shut. All she could see now was golden light, which continued to stream out from underneath her eyelids.

“O beloved protector of night,” she whispered, “impart your wisdom unto my sight.” All Zecora got from her plea were memories of her own lies and deception. She stifled a cry and stamped at the floor. She paced back and forth, back and forth, hooves clicking loudly.

“Hurry it up,” Adelaide said, tapping her claws on her desk and rolling her eyes.

Zecora's eyes shot open and flashed, the glow completely overwhelming all other color in them.

“Despite what your sister has said,” Zecora spoke in a low tone, “I may just take you instead. It would be trite to give up the gift of flight.”

She altered her course clumsily toward Adelaide. Zecora reached inside her cloak to pull out a long, jagged obsidian knife, but her hoof fumbled with it and it clattered to the floor. As she tried to retrieve it, her rear bumped into a cabinet, and one of the vases resting on top of it fell and shattered.

The sound jolted Zecora like a shock. Her head shot up, her ears became erect and rigid, and her eyes darted around wildly, surveying the area as if making sure she was truly where she seemed to be. She thought she heard screams, pleas for mercy, familiar voices begging not to be hurt. She thought she heard her voice whispering sad, hollow reassurances, the kind her parents had given her when she had been frightened by shadows as a child. She thought she felt her victims’ blood all over her body, but it was only her own.

“Obviously you need some time to think about this,” said Adelaide, inching farther away from the bloody zebra in her room. Without warning, she unleashed a loud, guttural cry of distress, which drew shouts from all over the tower. “Luckily, there is plenty of room in the dungeon.” She quickly assumed a defensive stance, but Zecora was not moving toward her.

Zecora was instead focusing all of her attention on her breaths, letting each one fully into and out of her lungs. Unexpectedly, it was not the words of Luna, whom she thought she had such intense passion for, that came to her then. She heard the recent words of Aquitaine, who had stood firmly, if judgmentally, with her in struggle and adversity in a mystic forest for so many years.

It is the duty of the strong and powerful to put their feet down and stop it themselves. Are you going to be strong...?

“I must let go of our hollow tale,” she said in a rough, choking whisper, “if I am going to prevail. Luna, this is what I must do, but not only for you.”

As the sounds of dozens of griffons approaching from every angle grew louder, Zecora hastened to finish assembling the ritual components. The whispers in her ears slowly coalesced until they formed three distinct voices she knew well. She swallowed hard and refused to allow their dying words to enter her head.

“My dear companions three,” she said, “can you perhaps forgive me?”

“I do,” Moussa said in a booming tone that banished all the whispers. “You've come a long way, and I understand why you do what you do. Doing this for us is good enough for me.”

“Maybe,” said Baqir, much more quietly, but there were still no dark whispers behind him. “It depends on where you go from here. I am both relieved and sad that I won't be around to see it.”

“Absolutely not!” Aquitaine screeched. “Especially not after you threatened my sister. I appreciate all the good you've done, but it doesn't balance the scales in the slightest. I hope whatever afterlife awaits you is as cold and hollow as your heart, Zecora. Although...” Her volume dropped, so that it no longer hurt Zecora’s ears. “I would be satisfied if you only lived a difficult and painful life, then got to rest in peace afterward...”

“So a no, a maybe, and a yes,” Zecora said, a smile slowly forming on her lips. “I can and should expect no less.”

Adelaide opened the door of her room and let out another shriek. Soon, the thump of boots, the click of talons, and the whoosh of wings were heard down the hallway, drawing rapidly closer.

With the circle complete, Zecora poured the dragon's blood into the geometric grooves she had carved in the white floor. The red fluid filled the lines and began to glow, bathing the entire room in dark red light. Zecora, her body lit from below by the blood, and from above by the yellow light in her eyes, pulled forth the mask of Aquitaine first, placing it in the center of the circle. She vocalized the chant using her lungs as much as possible and avoiding overusing her throat. It was scratchy and raw, but instead of distracting her like before, the pain was now allowing her to focus and complete the ritual quickly.

It took only a few seconds before Zecora felt a strong tug in the pit of her stomach. There was a snap audible only to her, and then a piece of her soul was gone. At the same time, the wood rotted and decayed at an incredible rate, leaving only a small pile of black organic matter after mere seconds.

The feeling made her retch and shake, but only because that piece had been there so long, not because it was truly hers. It was an alien thing that she had grafted on with dark magic. She felt empty and purposeless for it not to be there, as if her stomach, her “gut”, had been taken out, but she had lived up until her days at the University without it. She resolved that she would have to learn to do so again.

There were griffon shadows in the hallway as Zecora reached for the next mask. After another hasty yet potent chant, Moussa's soul left her as well. Now she felt like her lungs were gone, or perhaps more appropriately, her liver. The ability to speak, and the ability to filter out toxins; she felt as if she had lost both, and she would soon die without them.

Slumping to the floor, gasping for air, Zecora struggled to place Baqir's mask in the center of the ritual circle. It slipped out of her hooves and slid across the floor, right as an entire squadron of griffons-at-arms burst through the doorway. She tried to curse, but only succeeded in gurgling and planting her face into the ivory floor roughly. She struggled to find purchase with her hooves and lift herself back up, but they kept slipping in blood, or simply having their strength give out.

“Take her alive,” Adelaide commanded her guards, who were on the brink of stabbing Zecora dozens of times before the duchess spoke. “But don't hurt her any more than necessary, and see that her wounds are tended to well once she's down there. I want her to look presentable when her pony Princess comes to save her.”

She scowled and wiped the last of her tears away with a fierce flick. “Bring me some more parchment as well,” she said. “I have a letter to send to Equestria.”

Adelaide looked down at Zecora and smiled in the fearsome, hungry way griffons do so naturally. “This 'queen' cares for you a lot, doesn't she?” she asked, but she did not wait for a response. “She risked a dragon's wrath to save you, after all. She'll come to rescue you and, assuming her and her little play soldiers don't get torn to pieces by dragons, she will die here at the talons of a true griffon army. Hopefully those 'necromancers' you mentioned come too. Then I'll be able to exact retribution on you by taking someone you love before executing you, and I'll also be saving the world in the process. That doesn't happen every day.” Her smile widened. “I'm so glad you decided to come here, after all.”

Zecora's last sight before being bound, blindfolded, and beaten into unconsciousness, was Isra creeping out from the corner and sliding Baqir's mask into the center of the crimson circle. The last thing she heard was Isra perfectly repeating the chant she had just used, with the deep vigor he had in the old days. Her last sensation was the final piece of her overgrown soul being ripped free at last. It felt like her heart was removed, something small and subtle, but powerful and important.

Without any of those organs to drive her, what was she now?