Author's Notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1saRfFNtQa2Bz21-2R-hUcu3N5FdsHtNFW6Xj_oa3CB8/edit

There was no way Spike could keep up. I immediately lost track of him as Pyrite flew back into his volcano. He proceeded to descend for what felt like a quarter of a mile through a horrific haze of smoke and poison. It didn’t seem to bother me, so I assume dragons are immune.

When we finally got to the bottom, I found that there was a massive throne of obsidian over a huge dormant lava pool. He landed onto it and slammed me stomach first onto one of the claw rests. It was heavily grooved from where he had scratched it and I felt the jagged chunks of obsidian dig into my scales.

He placed one of his claws on my back. “For every lie you tell me, I will push you further. You disguise as a dragon, nearly start a civil war, collude with demons, kill for Celestia, and almost get a friend of mine murdered. The only reason you are not dead right now is because Reginald asked that I spare you. But if you push me, I will push back harder. Do we have an understanding?”

“I wanted to tell you everything anyway! Celestia’s lied for too long. I want to tell you everything I know so you will help me kill the demon of chaos!”

“...The demon of chaos,” he slowly said. After a few seconds of silence, he eased up on my back. “Reginald told me you were a human. He told me what a human was. He told me that your people fought the demon as well. Are you the only survivor?”

“No. I’m not even technically alive. I’m a… a golem of some kind, manifested from the past. But the person I’m a golem of was the last human to fight him. The one who created all life as you know it. I was the last human victim of Discord. As far as I know, there are only two survivors, but I wouldn’t even call either of them human anymore.”

“...That is a hard story to believe, Navarone. You say you created us. How?”

“I honestly don’t know. My memory is incomplete. But I do know where I created you. And I have a plan to get into it. I’m hoping I can find information there. If I find anything, I’ll be happy to let you and everyone else know.”

“Where is this location? I would go there myself.”

“...Do you know where the zone of alienation is?”

“Never mind.” That’s not a good sign, huh? “You call this demon Discord. Is that his name?”

“That’s what we call him,” I said. “Celestia had him imprisoned for about six thousand years. She managed to do it with the help of Reginald. I guess you never really heard about it, since… Well, your mind was addled.”

The pressure on my back increased. “You consort with the demon’s allies, human. That thing poisoned my mind at Discord’s behest!”

Char immediately started trying to say something to me, but I cut him off with, “That isn’t true. The thing in this mountain isn’t a demon or an ally of chaos. It was a weapon that I built all those years ago. Discord locked it into this mountain after we died since he couldn’t easily destroy it. When you unleashed a part of its power, Discord fled. It wasn’t trying to addle your mind, it was trying to get you to free it so it could finish the job.” Char grunted.

“...It issued many strange orders when it took over,” Pyrite said. “It sent some of my followers to Tartarus to get help. It was looking for the demon queen!”

“The demon queen is another human weapon. It got locked in Tartarus. The weapon in your mind, Char, was trying to ask his sister, Nestorats, for help. But first she had to escape Tartarus. Once I free the one in this mountain, I’m going to Tartarus to free the one trapped there.”

“Should you survive this encounter, that is,” he rumbled, pushing me a little further. “Were humans the first race to fight Discord?”

“As far as I know, yes. I think we… I think we created it. And it punished us for it. Eventually it got tired of living and tried to kill all of us in an attempt to kill itself. It killed most, but left some very powerful people alive. I was one of them and I helped create life to replace us, since we could no longer survive on our planet. The weapon in this mountain was created in an attempt to protect that life. There were other types created, as well. I have enough of the water weapons to free this one. I’ve already freed another fire.”

“And Celestia knew about this?” he asked, lowering the pressure.

“Yes. She didn’t believe me at first, but she finally found proof. Discord stole the artifacts that she used to lock him away and hid them all over the world. We’ve found half of them.”

He sighed and took his hand off my back. I pushed myself off the rocks. Several of them shattered and broke off in my scales. I shuddered and ran a hand across my belly, trying to dislodge them.

“She knew and she did not say anything. Typical. I believe you have been honest with me, human. I have many more questions for you, but before I ask more, I will return honesty for honesty.” He gently picked me up and moved me closer to his face, so he could whisper. His face was about the size of my body, so it came out more like a normal voice, but whatever. “There is no clause in that treaty to end it. Reginald is going to speak to Celestia and tell her she has exactly one week to give me every single egg or I will make her watch as I burn her empire to the ground. So I want you to know where you stand, human: Being Celestia’s friend does you no favors here. You will obey every command I give until I release you or you will die.”

“...I understand.”

He dropped me back onto the armrest. I slammed into it with a crunch and more obsidian shards slid into my scales. Thankfully, none penetrated. “Now. I have to go deal with Bahamut. I wish I had just killed him, but I’m afraid I really am out of practice.” He pointed to our right, where I could distantly see the entrance to a cave system. “Go to the caves and tell the guards that you are to be imprisoned until I return for you. Tell them your small dragon friend may not visit.”

“Before I go, I have something to tell you about Bahamut.”

“Speak.”

“I have access to a human artifact that allows me control over dreams. It’s part of what we did when we created new life. One of the things I can do is force someone who is asleep to sleep forever. As soon as you knocked Bahamut out, I put him in a coma that will last until he dies.”

He was silent for nearly half a minute. Finally he said, “Good. Now go.”

I hobbled to the edge of the seat and slowly flew over to the cave entrance. I really hate being small. As soon as I got to the entrance of the actual cave, I collapsed into a heap on the ground. A few dragons watched impassively as I painfully picked myself up and looked for anyone that might be a guard. The only one that looked the part was a female dragon about twice my size wearing a steel helmet.

I limped over to her and asked, “Are you a guard?”

“I am,” she evenly replied, looking at me through her helmet.

“I am to be imprisoned at Lord Pyrite’s orders. The small dragon that was with me is not allowed to visit.”

“Then come with me.” She either took pity on me or didn’t want to wait for me, so she roughly threw me on her back and carried me off down a few smaller side passages. Soon, she got to a row of cells made for someone about her size, all of which were empty. She grabbed the key from the wall and picked a cell near the middle of the room. She set me down and opened the door with the key. “Go.”

I limped into the cell and fell on the hard floor as soon as I was out of the doorway. She swung the gate closed behind me and locked it, then walked away without a word. I barely noticed that she didn’t hang the key back on the wall.

“Blaze, please tell me you found Twilight,” I sighed, rolling over into a less uncomfortable position.

“I have not, but I discovered what happened,” he said. “Celestia found out what Twilight was doing with the books. She locked her and the other water hosts in some kind of time dilation cells. Even if I could speak to them, their elementals would never hear it. Judging by Celestia’s abject fury, you are safer where you are. Especially when Reginald delivers Pyrite’s ultimatum. That said, Aerie is on the way to speak to the water elementals right now. I’m not sure they will be able to rescue you, but they will be appraised of your situation. She will tell them you told one of your crew in a dream, so they don’t know I am in you.”

“At this point, I think bringing them here would be a really bad idea. Not sure Pyrite is sold on the idea of you being the good guys. Having fourteen more show up on his doorstep’s liable to piss him off, especially if they start freeing the one who held his mind hostage for ten thousand years.”

“It wasn’t exactly ten thousand years,” Char flippantly replied. “And even if it was, all I ever did was help the big baby. All those retarded overgrown lizards think about is honor this and pride that. I helped him make quite a few very wise decisions by taking over and doing the dishonorable thing. I don’t understand why he isn’t grateful. Living with that much honor must be awful.”

“I know, right?” I said. “Man, you’re gonna hate the naga and griffins.”

“Ugh, the naga are still alive? I was hoping those cursed things would have gone extinct by now.”

“Nope. At the very least, they’re very loyal. So, were you a water elemental’s sex slave as well?”

I felt a blast of air on my back, almost as though something flew toward me but just barely stopped. A moment later, I heard Blaze clear his throat. “Well, brother?” he asked.

“...Did you almost just hit me?” I quietly asked.

“Well, brother?!” Blaze repeated. I sighed.

“...I was not,” Char cautiously replied. “That is a very… interesting question.”

“I was not a sex slave,” Blaze growled. “I was a prisoner of war!”

“Held by a water elemental that loved you with all her heart,” I replied with a smirk.

“That detail is not important,” he harshly replied. “Now we will move on.”

“So you fought in the war, brother?” Char asked.

“I did. Toward the end of it, I became… disillusioned. I decided to stop killing water elementals and just eradicate their hosts. One of the ones I spared fell in love with me. She stalked me and ambushed me after a fight, when I was weakened. She had her new supporters carry me to an island. Her name is Mist and you will watch yourself around her. She is insane and dangerous.”

“I see. And how many of them are left?”

“Thirteen,” Blaze replied. “There are three of us, one earth elemental, and Navarone found an air.”

“An interesting cohort and an uncomfortable number. It is good that the third fire is Nestorats herself.”

“No it is not,” Blaze said. “It absolutely is not. I believe that Nestorats does not wish to leave Tartarus. We are going to have to force her to come with us. It will not be easy.”

“Ah, but when she is on our side, life will be so much easier. She is worth twenty of those watery tarts in a battle, if I remember right.”

“There will be none of that,” I immediately said. “You guys are nearly extinct. It’s time to put your past bullshit behind you and move on.”

“I prefer being able to defend myself, human,” Char replied. “I did not fight in the war. It was pointless and foolhardy. I am not interested in fighting our cousins, but I will not be browbeat by them into everything.”

“Fair enough. And I know how you feel. The water elementals haven’t exactly been kind to me either.”

“I am not surprised,” Char replied. “They always had the hardest time keeping hosts. Even the slow and analytical earth elementals were better about it. I have no doubt they want to keep you for themselves. I am honestly surprised they allowed you to have a fire elemental.”

“They don’t know,” Blaze said. “And they will not be happy when they learn. He was a host to a water, but she abused him emotionally, physically, and sexually.” Char grunted in shock. “I offered to help undo any damage she may have done to his mind, but he is understandably reluctant to give me full access.”

“I see. It is an interesting world I am being thrust into. Still, for my freedom, I will not complain. Navarone, I suggest you sleep. It will help my brother and I heal you. We will wake you if anyone comes.”

I had a suspicion he just wanted to talk to Blaze without me hearing it, but my body agreed that sleep would be a good idea. After the shitty day I had, I was out almost instantly. I was too weary to make an attempt at the world of dreams, not that I expected it to do me any good anyway; it was too early and everyone useful was locked up anyway.

I don’t know how long I slept. There was no way to tell time in the cell. When I awoke, there was a small pile of gems at the cell’s door. I carefully stood and stretched my body, finding that most of my aches and pains were gone. Since I was able to walk, I plodded to the door and ate. My life is designed to be suffering, so my only choice was emerald.

My tummy was rumbling too much to let any of it go to waste, so I forced that awful shit down my throat. Once I was finished eating, I looked around the cell block to see if anything had changed. One of the cells at the far end of the wall was occupied by what seemed to be a large purifier in all of his armor. He was unconscious, barely breathing.

There was nothing I wanted from him, so I didn’t even bother trying to wake him. I just plodded over to the wall of my cell and tried getting comfortable against it. It didn’t work.

Minutes presumably turned to hours. In the relative darkness of the cell block, it was honestly hard to tell. Neither of the fires seemed interested in talking, so aside from the purifier’s labored breathing and a few echoes of what sounded like a party, it was silent.

After what felt like three or four hours, the purifier flinched awake, then groaned. He was barely able to look around and couldn’t see me from where he was lying. “Where am I?” he croaked.

“In Pyrite’s prison,” I replied.

He sighed and asked, “How many of us are there, sister?”

“Just me. And I’m definitely not your sister. You assholes are the reason I’m even here. As far as I’m concerned, you can rot.”

That made him chuckle, somewhat surprisingly. “So you are the little traitor, then, the one who murdered one of my brothers when he discovered you were a spy. I take it Pyrite didn’t receive you warmly. Perhaps you should have chosen your loyalties better.”

“I’d rather be in Pyrite’s prison than turned into a breeding sow for you creeps. I hope I get to watch Pyrite kill you.” He snorted and didn’t reply.

About two or so hours later, after the sounds of revelry died down, a large group of guards walked in. They all bypassed my cell and went to the purifier’s. He growled at them as they opened the cell, but was too weak to try anything. Two of the guards grabbed him and started carrying him out. He didn’t even spare me a glance.

Once he was gone, one of the remaining guards unlocked my cell and swung the door open. “Come with us,” he ordered. I stood and followed them as they walked back the way we came, toward the main cavern. We stayed behind the injured purifier the entire time.

Once we got to the edge of the lake of lava, I saw Pyrite sitting on his large throne. One of the guards flew over to him and presumably said a few words. When Pyrite started flying toward us, the guard standing next to me forced me to the ground. They did the same to the purifier.

Pyrite landed in the lava a few hundred meters away, sending waves of the stuff in every direction. He walked the rest of the way, treating the magma sucking at his feet like a minor annoyance. It presumably wasn’t too terribly deep.

When he stood before us, he moved his gaze between me and the purifier a few times before settling on the other guy. “Your loyalty is commendable but misguided, purifier. I will give you one last chance to serve me.”

The purifier spit blood on the ground and said, “I would rather die.”

Pyrite looked back at me. “Do you know why the purifiers wear armor?” he asked.

“No.”

He lifted a claw and watched as the magma fell off. “The earth’s blood is very calming to us. It is highly relaxing. They see it as a sign of weakness and cover themselves in metal so that they can never enjoy its pleasures. If they ever fall in lava with it on, well… You’ll see” He looked back at the purifier, then the guards holding him. “Throw him in.”

The purifier’s eyes widened as the guards grabbed him and tossed him into the lava. The purifier almost immediately began yelling in pain as the metal melted through his scales and seared into his flesh. I tried to look away and cover my nose, but the guard who pushed me down forced my head toward the grisly scene.

I watched as the steel armor slowly burned into his scales and body, fusing with him. His struggles became weaker and weaker until all he could do was shriek in pain as his flesh cooked. Finally, Pyrite pulled his smoking body out of the lava and tossed him back onto land. The smell was truly awful, like burned steak and boiled blood. The dragon groaned in agony and managed to twitch occasionally.

“Take him back to his cell,” Pyrite ordered. Two of the guards hurried to obey, dragging the poor bastard away. I know I said I wanted to watch Pyrite kill him, but… not like that. Pyrite’s gaze moved back to me and I couldn’t stop myself from flinching. “Fly to my throne and lie on the claw rest. I will be back for you soon.” I immediately took off, flying to the great big chair. There was no one else present, so I just laid down on the armrest like he ordered, wondering where in life I went wrong.

It wasn’t too hard to figure it out: being born.

Pyrite wasn’t one for wasting time. He flew back almost as soon as I landed and made myself as comfortable as possible. It was a waste of time, because as soon as he landed, he put a claw on my back again and pressed down. “Bahamut has still not awoken,” he said.

“Where is Spike?” I asked.

“He is safe. Your loyalty to him is commendable, though I advise you spend more time worrying about yourself.”

“I have absolutely no plans to do anything to make you hurt me. I already told you that I will answer any question you ask.”

He pressed down a teeny bit harder. “Perhaps. Now you have seen what disobedience will earn you. Tell me more about these weapons.”

I did so, telling him everything I could think of about all four different types of elementals. I included the war and how most of them became trapped and how I was doing my best to free them.

When I ran out of things to say, he slightly eased off my back. “The one in this mountain is named Char,” he said. “And you seek to free it. Him.”

“I do. If you want Discord to finally die, you’ll let me.”

He pressed down so hard that I heard my back pop. “You will watch your tone, human.” I frantically nodded, not able to speak. After he was sure I got the message, he eased up a little, letting me catch my breath. “I watched this… Discord murder my blood kin through dark magics. And when I fought it personally, it beat me with ease. Tell me about this demon.”

I told him everything I knew, starting with what the old version of me told myself back in the past. Unfortunately, I didn’t have nearly as much information as I wanted. Thankfully, it was a lot more than he had and satisfied him. When I finished telling him what I knew, he pulled his claw off my back and slowly began petting me. It felt really weird and a little bit creepy, but I didn’t say a word.

“This is very troubling,” he finally said. I sagged in relief when he stopped petting me. “You said there are two human survivors. Tell me about them.”

I did so, starting with Athena and then moving to Arachne. I didn’t have too much to say about either of them since I did my best to avoid them both as much as possible.

When I was finished with that, he put his claw on my back again, but didn’t force me down. “What was your plan in Iceland, human? If you sought this fire elemental, as you call it, why didn’t you come here first?”

“I didn’t know exactly where it was and I wanted to help Spike find his parents. I also wanted to learn more about your people and the treaty with the ponies, since Celestia and Reginald refused to tell me anything. He didn’t even tell me that he was public enemy number one, which is why I allowed a purifier to take us to Bahamut.”

“Hm. Again I say, your loyalty is commendable.” He removed his hand again. “Reginald told me about Spike. He was one of the eggs from the treaty that was somehow hatched. Do you know what caused him to hatch?”

“Celestia split the eggs up, giving them to various guardians. One of them was a group of mages, who apparently used it as part of a test for new students. One of the students was very powerful and somehow managed to hatch it.”

“You understand that I am not pleased to hear this.”

“...I also hope you understand the phrase ‘don’t shoot the messenger’.”

That actually made him snort and I felt a burst of heat on my back. “What happened was not your fault, that is true. And it seems that you were wholly ignorant, but sought to help the hatchling anyway. You will return to your cell. In a few hours, I will have a talk with Spike. If he corroborates your story, you will be allowed some small amount of freedom until I decide to let you leave. If he contradicts you, you are going to stay in your cell until I have need of you. Either way, do not forget that your value as a hostage depends more upon how well you behave than how much Celestia may or may not care for you. Now go.”

I decided that going was in my best interest, so I flew back to the cave and found another guard to lock me back up. Once I was back in my cell, I walked over to the wall and collapsed, unable to stop myself from shivering. I legitimately hadn’t been that terrified since I was in the bunker, and the darkness of the cell was making me start having flashbacks.

Surprisingly enough, it was the injured purifier that brought me out of it. It took him about half an hour to realize he wasn’t alone. When he finally did, he groaned and hoarsely said, “Please, talk to me.”

I really hated everything he stood for, but when my eyes took in his mutilated body and pitiful face, I gulped and started talking to him. He could barely reply, so I eventually stopped asking questions and just started telling stories, trying to bring my mind away from where we were. I guess it did him some good as well. Eventually his labored breathing slowed and he passed out from some kind of horrific pain.

After a few minutes of watching him twitching, I entered the dream realm and turned his nightmare into a golden dream. It was the least I could do to ease his suffering, and it definitely helped calm me down. Once I was done with that, I finally decided to look around for the dreams of any of my crew. I couldn’t find anyone left in Canterlot, but after a few moments of thought, I decided to think north toward Watcher.

Sure enough, the old bastard was asleep. I jumped over to his dream and took a second to look into the white fog. It seemed he was dreaming about a campfire with a pot over it. He was much younger, looked like a day guard, and surrounded by a motley crew of other races. Most of them were wearing some various types of armor and I could tell there was some meat in the pot. All of them had bowls, interestingly enough.

I knew he wouldn’t know how to look for a message, so I carefully pulled my way through his dream and sat in the circle. His eyes glanced over me a few times as we all ate some surprisingly good pork stew, but he didn’t say anything until I was done eating.

When I was, he nodded at me. “My lady.” Just like that, I felt myself change from my original body to my horribly fucked up one.

“You’re looking surprisingly young, Watcher,” I replied. “I didn’t know Celestia had so many soldiers of different races.”

“This was actually my first solo mission,” he replied. “I infiltrated a group of bandits. They treated me a lot better than the guard did and the food was a huge step up. I’ll never forget my time with them. It’s a shame most of them chose to fight it out.” He looked around the campfire again and most of the bandits started fading away. Soon, only three were left. “These were the ones I convinced to surrender.” He nodded at one of the ones who did, a really young female unicorn. “Would you believe that’s Sentinel?” he asked. “She was a bandit before she even got her cutie mark. Before we busted them, she kept talking about how she wished it would be a cudgel or a gold coin…” He sighed and shook his head.

“How did she go from being a bandit to a guard?”

“Me,” he replied. “I saw potential in her. In all of them. But I got her put in a special program at the castle and told her she had two choices, prison for life or the guard. She chose the guard and excelled while doing it. The dog there,” he said, nodding at one of the other survivors. “He and I were pretty close. I had the feeling banditry fell into his lap and that’s all he had. I made sure he didn’t get much time and set him up as a private investigator over near the border with Mexico. He sees a lot of awful stuff, but he’s happy to finally have a real job.”

“What about the third one?” I asked, looking at the slimy looking adult female unicorn. Her horn had been broken off at some point and her eyes had somehow been dyed. “She looks like a nutcase.”

“Oh, she was,” he said. “But she was the toughest nutcase out there and insanely loyal to whoever she felt she owed. That happened to be the private eye, and she helps him on the tougher cases. She also gets a lot more guard attention than he’d like, but I think it evens out.”

“You know all kinds of interesting characters, don’t you?”

“Would you believe that you’re the most interesting of all?” he idly mused, stoking the fire with a stick.

“Yeah, actually. Not everyday that you run into a walking reanimated golem of the extinct original race in existence that created everything that came after. Especially one that’s been so heavily magically modified.”

“Well, those are a few of the reasons. Anyway, I’m sure you came here for a reason. Are you already done in Iceland?”

“Sort of. It’s kind of a long story. Basically, I almost started a war because Celestia didn’t give me enough information, then I murdered a dragon guard and got snatched by Bahamut and used as a hostage in an attempt to murder Reginald. Then I healed Pyrite’s insanity and watched him beat the everloving shit out of Bahamut. Now I’m a prisoner of Pyrite, who is threatening to destroy Celestia’s empire and make her watch if she doesn’t do what he says.”

“...Oh. I’ll admit I’m very flattered you came to me, but there’s not much I can really do for you right now, Nav. I suggest talking to Celestia and Twilight.”

“I think you need to hear the full story.” He shrugged and poured himself another bowl of soup. Since there was so little competition left, there was a lot more to go around. I grabbed some as well, since it was pretty dope. Once we were both situated again, I started telling it from the top, including everything I had done in the dream world.

Once I was finished, he poked at the fire for a few minutes, just thinking. Finally, he looked at me and grinned. “I officially no longer have claim to the biggest screw up in Equestria’s history,” he said with a nod.

“Fuck you too, old man,” I replied, making him age thirty years.

“Low blow!” he groaned, rubbing at his back. I flipped him off, which only made him chuckle. “Well, here are some points. First, I wouldn’t get used to the idea of being in a relationship with Celestia anymore. She might not be interested at this juncture. Second, it sounds like Kat and Twilight are seriously in trouble. Kat moreso, of course. Third, Celestia has been secretive for too long. She almost caused a war because she refused to give you enough information. Reginald is also guilty. Fourth, you just greatly shifted the political landscape. Now that the dragons are fully unified behind a healed Pyrite, they’ll be unstoppable. If he chooses to go on a rampage for revenge, that would be the end for Equestria. It sounds like this trip was a grade A clusterfuck, as you would say. Oh, and fifth, you trapped the soul of the purifier you murdered in a gem.”

“...I did what now?” I slowly asked.

“Oh, I see. You didn’t know. Well, now I feel bad. Do you know what a blood gem is?”

“Some kind of really rare gem that comes from Tartarus,” I replied.

“Sort of accurate. Blood gems are created by murdering someone on a gem that’s growing in. For smaller veins, shedding enough blood on them works, but the truly large veins have to have an entire body. As far as mages can tell, doing this traps someone’s essence inside the gem. Every time gems are harvested, the soul gets splintered, leaving the victim smaller and smaller of an area. Eventually, all of its soul gets harvested and the gem returns to normal. The soul can be used to power all kinds of dark magic. The victim’s life force is drained away until it’s finally gone. They’re incredibly rare because no one wants to murder someone to be able to harvest them. They’re valued in underground and draconic communities. I’ve heard stories about necromancers of old trading entire undead armies for just one.”

“...I would have been very happy not knowing that,” I slowly replied.

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t have wanted to know either. I just told you ‘cause you made me old.”

Oh yeah, totally fair. “So, any suggestions, o great old wise one?”

“Three come to mind. First, next time you see Celestia, you better have a whole bunch of flowers and a big ol’ apology ready. Maybe a really cute dress and an idea for a date. Second, do every little thing that oversized lizard tells you. Third, get both of those fires out of your head as soon as possible. What were you even thinking?”

“...Mostly about how nice it would be to spite Aqua and Flo.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ugh.”

“So do you know which flowers Celestia likes the most?”

“Daffodils,” he replied. “They remind her of being an innocent filly.” I stared at him in silence for a few long seconds. “It pays to know these things when you’re pink.”

“...You’re gonna explain some things to me one day.”

He snorted. “My lips are sealed. I’ll see what I can do to pick some from here. It’s surprising what kind of flowers grow when it’s warm enough, even when it’s perpetually dark.”

“Neat. When are you heading back to Equestria? If I’m here for much longer, I might need a contact in the city. Blossom doesn’t dream and I don’t want to get Fleur involved in going after Celestia.” At least, not directly.

“I was planning on being here for the next several days. I don’t have any way to get back until the ship gets here. Trains don’t run that often in the winter because the tracks are usually frozen over.”

Shit. “Any useful suggestions, then?”

He shook his head. “It’s out of your hands at this point anyway, Nav. Celestia knows you were trying to steal her books and she knows she doesn’t have much choice on whether or not to return the eggs. She’ll do the smart thing. With luck, you can get out of Iceland as soon as she does.”

“...Until then, I might be stuck in a cell and harshly interrogated every day. Pyrite seems to believe what I tell him, but it’s some pretty far-fetched stuff. Sometimes I get the feeling he’s just humoring me.”

“As long as he’s letting you stay alive, that’s good. I wouldn’t suggest even trying to run. Celestia probably has the ability to save you, but I think she knows it would be unwise and she probably wants you to be punished anyway.”

“What a bitch.”

“Hey, you’re her consort, not me.” Maybe not for much longer. “Now, I’d like to talk about what you said to Luna.”

“I really think she can change,” I said. “It’ll take some doing, but I think she can get better.”

“Yeah, if my soldiers are willing to give her a chance. She stabbed us all in the back, Nav. Well, she figuratively stabbed us in the back and literally stabbed you in the chest. I’m not even sure if I want to trust her.”

“I’m going to try to talk to her a lot more. I hope after all this time, you guys trust my judgment of character at least a little. If I get any bad vibes, I’ll call it off. But if I think it can work, I’d like you to help me talk the others into giving it a shot.”

“...I’d like to speak to her myself before agreeing to anything. She can do that, right? Invade my dreams?”

“She can. I’ll try to schedule something when we can all be there at the same time when I get out of prison.”

He reached over and placed a hoof over to my shoulder. “Stay strong, Nav. And don’t drop the soap.”

“Don’t worry, the only other prisoner is a horribly tortured and mutilated purifier. I wouldn’t be surprised if his sheath is fused closed with iron.”

“...That is a mental image I did not want,” he replied, pulling away.

“That’s for telling me about blood gems.” I replied with a smirk. It seemed like he was done with me, so I said, “Sleep well, Watcher. With luck, I’ll see your curmudgeonly old face in person soon.”

“I think I’ll be happier to see yours, my lady. You can be pretty cute sometimes, when you try.” I flipped him off again before stepping out of his dream. When I was gone, I noticed the bubble was now gold. It slowly dipped down into white again after a few seconds.

Since nothing was going on and I was pretty much in limbo for the moment, I let myself drift off to real sleep, hoping the fire elementals would wake me up if something happened.

They didn’t, the lazy bastards. What woke me up instead was the horrible clanking of my cell door being opened. I flinched awake and looked up, blinking. Two large guards were standing there. The one that opened the door said, “Get up and come on.”

I got up and went. He shut the door behind me while the other guard started leading the way down the hall. I followed that guy, wondering where I was being taken next. With luck, it would be somewhere with water, since they hadn’t given me any of that yet. We took about a dozen twists and turns into the dark caves before we finally arrived at a little cave offshoot that both of them were too large to enter.

“This will be your new room,” the guard leading me said. “You will remain here until you have permission to leave.”

“Can I see Spike?” I asked.

“He will be visiting at some point. Pyrite is still speaking with him. But you will not be sharing a room and you will be watched while he is present.”

“Alright.” The two of them watched until I walked in the room, then fucked off back to who knows where.

This room had a small cluster of rubies and an even smaller bubbling spring. It also had an overgrown moss bed. That’s about all there was room for. It was shitty, but it was much better than the cell. I drank as much water as I could and then ate my fill of rubies. When I was satiated, I sank down into the moss, wondering how long I’d be a prisoner.

Some amount of time later, I finally heard another set of claws heading my way. It was eerie how silent the place had been otherwise, so my ears were incredibly sensitive. About a minute after I started hearing it, two dragons finally came into view. One was Spike and one was a teenager that looked right about the age to start becoming a quadruped.

As soon as Spike saw me, his nervous expression disappeared and he tried bolting into the room, presumably to hug me. The other guy, who I guess was a guard without a helmet, snatched him by the arm before he could move. “Be patient,” he said. “Now wait here.” Spike sighed and crossed his arms as the other guy left him there. He walked further in and stopped in front of me. “Lord Pyrite has decided to allow Spike to visit you once per day, pending your behavior. After this visit, I will lead you back to Lord Pyrite. I suggest you behave yourself.”

“I have no intentions of dying a horrible death in these caves. Or any other kind of death, for that matter. I know my place.”

“Good. Spike?” The named dragon rolled his eyes and finally walked in. Our supervisor walked back to the entrance and just stared at the two of us.

“It’s good to see you, Nav,” Spike said. He honestly sounded relieved. “After what Pyrite was saying… I didn’t know if he’d let you live…”

“At the moment, both of us are more useful to him alive,” I replied. “He presumably knows about my relationship with Celestia, which makes me a good hostage. He also knows that I know a whole lot more about Discord than he does, which makes me a good source of information. And you’re…” I eyed the guard for a moment before deciding some things are best left unsaid. “...Important for his relationship with the ex-purifiers. That said, he has made it very clear that he doesn’t need me as a hostage, so I’m not about to push my luck.”

“Yeah… Do you know what they did with Bahamut?” he asked.

“No clue. Not that it’ll matter. He’s never going to wake up.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Pyrite didn’t hit him that hard.”

“Yeah, but my dream powers did. He’ll be in a coma until he starves to death, guaranteed. I’m not sure where Pyrite put him, but I also don’t care. The dude was a complete piece of shit and I wish Pyrite had just killed him when he had a chance. But whatever. How has he been treating you?”

“Oh, like royalty. My room isn’t as big as this, though.” He looked around for a moment before shrugging. “I also have actual meat, occasionally fish, and more types of gems. Oh, and a real bath. It’s really nice. How about you?”

“First he tortured me, then he locked me in a cell, then he let me out to watch him torture someone else, then he tortured me some more, then he locked me back in the cell. He finally let me have this room a few hours ago.”

Spike slowly looked my body over. “Um. How did he torture you, exactly?”

I rolled over, showing off all the gashes in the scales on my belly. There were still a few shards of obsidian stuck in there. “He pushed me into the grooves of his big chair until I answered his questions. I’m not sure how much you know about obsidian, but it’s extremely sharp and extremely brittle. There are human cultures that actually used to use it as a weapon.”

“...That sounds really unpleasant.”

“Yeah, it was. And so was being pushed into a fucking chair. I’m looking forward to going home.”

He didn’t reply for a moment. His eyes were still on my stomach. After a few long seconds, he walked in and started pulling shards out of me. I sighed in relief; most of them were too small for my claws to pull out.

Once they were all out, he sat against the wall and sighed. “Nav, why do I always get treated really nice when we get captured but you get tortured?”

“Because my life is suffering and it’s only gonna stop when I die. Duh.”

He shook his head sadly. “That’s just depressing.”

“Yeah, well, I just spent a day getting tortured. I imagine Pyrite’s probably not gonna be too gentle today, either. Given who I really am, I’m lucky he’s sticking to just torturing me. I’d be dead right now, if it wasn’t for Reginald.”

“Tch. Didn’t do me any favors,” he muttered.

“Bitch, you didn’t need him to. You’re being treated like fucking royalty. I damn sure wouldn’t mind trading places. Especially after you made me murder that fucking dude for you.”

“Hey, I didn’t—I told you to kick his ass, not kill him!”

“What the fuck was I supposed to do? He might have been younger than me, but he damn sure knows his body better! Did you really think I’d be able to just beat him bloody? Knock him out so we could run or whatever? Come on, dude.”

He shivered and looked away. “That was… awful. I’m sorry I put us through that, Nav.”

“Not as sorry as he is.” I decided not to tell him about the blood gem thing. “But whatever. Do you have any news from Celestia?”

“No, they won’t let me have any paper and she hasn’t sent anything. Do you think she’ll take long to give the eggs back?”

“Not if she’s smart, and I don’t take her for an idiot. She found out that Twilight was looking for information about you and threw her into a time dilation prison, so I can’t contact her. And I guess Celestia’s using magic to keep herself awake, because I haven’t been able to find her, either. I spoke to Watcher earlier, but he’s nowhere near Canterlot. At the moment, I think we’re pretty much just stuck in limbo.”

“...This bucking sucks.”

“Yeah.” I’ll have to remember never to try to help Spike again. “So does Pyrite know anything about your parents?”

“No, but he told me Reginald will get the records of all the eggs when he returns with them. I’ll find out then. He said if they’re still alive and on Iceland, he’ll see to it that I get to meet them in person!”

“Fucking awesome. I probably won’t be able to be there, but I’m still really happy for you.”

“What? Why not?”

“What part of ‘I’m a prisoner’ don’t you understand? If I walk outside that door without permission, Pyrite will straight up kill me. My ass is sitting right the fuck here until he says otherwise.”

“...I’ll try to talk to him, then. He mostly wants to talk about you anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re the other half of the reason I’m still alive. Apparently going way out of my way to help you made him really happy.” At least it did me some good, even if I’d much rather be in Canterlot right now. “If I get a chance today, I’ll ask about news. It’ll be good to know what Celestia’s doing.”

“Are you sure he won’t… I dunno, crush you?”

“No, I’m not. But I don’t think he will. I’m not looking forward to finding out, but I really want to know that I won’t be here for much longer…”

He looked around the room again before shrugging. “I kinda like it here. I think being a part of his horde might be nice.”

“I told you once that if you found your place in the world, I wouldn’t ask you to leave it behind. If you think this is it, that’s awesome. If not, well, there’s still a few parts of the world we ain’t been to yet. You still got time. Hey, maybe you can even find some more cute boys to—”

“No!” His eyes darted to the door, where our guardian was just watching us with a bored expression. His eyes met mine again and he frantically shook his head. “No thank you!”

“Hey man, you know I don’t judge. But whatevs.” I rolled back over onto my belly and stretched. “I wouldn’t mind finding a few cute boys to play with, at least. All this stress with no relief is starting to make me feel awfully pent up. If I had a door, I’d be very carefully testing how sharp my claws really are.”

“...That’s not really something I wanted to know,” he slowly replied.

“Why don’t you care about my girl problems, Spike? You’re supposed to be my friend, right?” He rolled his eyes. “Fuck you too, Spike. Last time I ever tell you about how horny I am…”

“Good. You’re way too old for me anyway, if that body’s anything to go by.”

“Wow, and now you’re calling me old? Talk about rude. I bet you never treated Rarity this way!”

“Hey, I was the perfect gentlecolt… er, gentledragon, and she thought I was gay! I thought you said girls liked… what was it… negging?”

I slowly face-clawed, wondering where in life I went wrong. That’s when I remembered I already decided it was when I was born, so I lowered the claw. “Spike, I didn’t tell you girls liked that. I said that some guys in my world used that to great effect. Trust me, you don’t wanna be one of those guys. That said, I do kinda wonder what you’re doing talking to me when you could be macking on some hot dragon honeys right now.”

“...They’re out of season. Apparently it’s pretty rare for them to have sex unless it’s spring. Guys like uh… Fizzle aren’t uncommon.”

Why would the male dragons still be horny if the females aren’t in season? Way to go, nature. “Then it shouldn’t be hard for me to get laid, if I ever get out of this cell.”

“Oh, no. Every dragon in the entire volcano knows who you are, by now. And what you really are, of course. I don’t think any of them would even speak to you, let alone try to sleep with you. I’ve been trying to tell them all that you’re cool, but none of them are interested in hearing it.”

Go figure. “Then I foresee a whole lot of schlicking in my future.”

“What… Oh. Ew.”

“I don’t need your judgment, Spike. I’m filthy, I’m a prisoner, I don’t know if I’m going to ever get released, I don’t know if I’m going to die here, and I’m really stressed out. I’ve also been in a lot of pain recently. Forgive me for needing some relaxation.” That said, getting it in the dream world might be a lot safer. These claws are kinda scary.

“I think you’re just a slut.”

“That hurts, Spike.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Tch, prove it doesn’t.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Anyway, they’re letting me go pretty much anywhere and do anything, but I usually have a guard. Is there anything you need? I can probably bring it to you.”

“No, they’re only letting you visit me once a day. And honestly, I don’t think there’s anything here you can bring me that would help. I wouldn’t mind a bath, but I’ll survive without one.”

“Then I’ll try to talk to Pyrite and get you out of here. I know you’re not really a dragon, but this is just… not right. You’re a hero, not a criminal!”

“...Spike, you watched me murder someone.”

“That wasn’t—”

“Dude, yes it was. I attacked Claw first, unprovoked, and then I killed him. He may or may not have deserved it, but either way, it was murder.”

“You… you murdered someone for me…”

“Yeah, I did.” Technically speaking, not the first. Well, assuming you count the stupid slave rebellion.

“...You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, Nav.”

“That’s kind of sad.” He shook his head a few times before walking over and hugging me. I awkwardly hugged him back.

A few seconds after he started hugging me, the guardian at the door growled and then said, “That is enough.” Spike wasn’t interested in stopping, but I pulled him away from me and set him down. “It is time for you to leave, Spike,” he said.

Spike sighed and nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Nav.”

“Be careful, Spike. I know you’re currently free to roam around, but Pyrite might be leaving you just enough rope to hang yourself with.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, waving a claw. “You’re the one I’m worried about. Stay safe, Nav. I’ll never forgive myself if you get hurt trying to help me.”

“I’d never forgive you either,” I replied. “Now go. I’ll hopefully see you tomorrow.”

“...Alright.” He finally left, though he looked back for a moment right before leaving to walk back the way he came.

The teenager who walked with him crossed his arms and continued staring at me. When I couldn’t hear Spike’s claw-steps anymore, he said, “You’re close to him.”

“Yeah.”

“Tch. Why he’d want to associate with a lesser species is beyond me. Now get up and come on.” As much as I wanted to smack him around a little bit, I decided staying silent and following him would be wiser. Thankfully, he decided he also didn’t want to associate much with what he considered a lesser species, so he didn’t bother trying to goad me anymore.

It took us a few minutes to get back to the lake of fire. When he did, he told me to wait and then took off, flying toward Pyrite. He spoke to the big bastard for a few minutes before flying back and telling me to head to Pyrite myself. I did so with a sigh.

Once I got there, I hovered in front of him, barely flapping my wings to stay upright in the hazy air. “You already know where you belong, human,” he said after staring at me for a few seconds. “Assume the position.” God dammit. I landed on his armrest and laid back down. Before I could even try to adjust myself, he placed his claw on my back. “Due to my… condition, it was difficult to keep up-to-date with the world. Tell me everything you know about Celestia and Luna.”

“...Everything?” He increased the pressure on my back. “Okay, got it!” He eased back. “Alright, here’s what I know…”

I happened to know a lot more about Celestia and Luna than I did Discord, even if the knowledge was choppy and broken up over six thousand years. I didn’t include any of the details about my relationships with either of them, though. I figured he couldn’t care.

I was wrong, of course. “Reginald told me that you know the two of them personally,” Pyrite said. “Tell me about your relationship with the two sisters.”

Ugh. “I mean, if you want to hear about a bunch of weird interracial sex, sure.”

“Did I stutter?” he hissed, pressing down even more. I groaned in pain, but couldn’t talk until he eased back very slightly. “You will tell me every. Little. Detail.”

Fucking pervert. I told him every little detail, though. Getting crushed is a pet peeve of mine, after all. Telling him all of that took about as long as telling him everything I knew about the two of them.

When I was finished, he eased the pressure off and started tapping his claw against the armrest, right in front of my face. Each tap sent small shards of obsidian shooting toward my face. I tried to hunch up and kept my eyes closed, though I still flinched at each one.

After several uncomfortably long minutes and a few new rivets driven into the chair, Pyrite finally pulled his claw away. “You have been very forthcoming, human,” he said. “I hope that it was not entirely out of a desire to keep yourself alive. Your princess has expressed concerns with my treatment of you. She asked that I move you to better accommodations and consider… gentler methods of persuasion.”

“Not gonna lie, I’ve had better vacations,” I replied. “I’ve also conducted nicer and more productive interviews.”

“So this is what I have decided. I will no longer… aggressively persuade you. In return, you are going to tell me about every living ruler you know and then I am going to send you back to your room. I will dictate a list of questions to one of my guards so they can write them down and present them to you. You will think about them overnight and then return to me and answer them in the morning. If I find your answers agreeable, you will be given a guard that will escort you around the caves at your leisure, though you will not be allowed to leave. If you do not find this agreeable, you will return to your original cell.”

I hastily nodded. “Sounds good to me!”

“Then tell me about this… Chrysalis.”

I gulped and did so, really hoping he didn’t take a disliking to her. I knew Reginald abandoned her at some point, so I had a feeling he wouldn’t approve of her.

When I was done talking about Chrysalis, he began asking me about the political climate all over the world. It sounded like he was looking for the strongest economic and military powers and I really wondered if he was planning a power move. Or looking to trade. I honestly couldn’t tell and he didn’t give many hints either way.

By the time I finally finished, I kinda felt like I was betraying everyone. That said, living is a lot more important to me than fucking over another ruler. I’m pretty sure Pyrite knew he would be ganged up on really quickly if he tried anything, so I was hoping he was just looking for an easy reintroduction to the world.

Once I ran out of things to say, he put his hand back over me, making me flinch down to the ground. But he just started tapping his fingers again, not putting any pressure on me. The dude was really starting to piss me off and I promised myself that I’d give him some serious nightmares the next time I saw him asleep.

Or, you know, put him in a coma for the rest of his life. Whichever.

Thankfully, he didn’t keep his bullshit up for long. About a minute or two after he started, he pulled his claw back. “You have given me much to think about, Navarone. Go. I will have the questions to you soon.”

With luck, that would be the last time I ever had to see that chair again. I happily took off, eager to get away from that piece of shit. A part of me was really hoping that Celestia got her shit together quickly. Another part of me felt that all things told, I might be safer with Pyrite protecting me from her.

I landed next to the teenager, who was chilling with his feet in the lava. He rolled his eyes when he saw me and started leading me back to my shitty room.

About halfway there, I looked up and realized that he had stopped and we were surrounded by four dragon females about my size. The teenager didn’t seem very impressed and just crossed his arms.

The chick closest to him said, “Change of orders, kid. Beat it.”

“Pyrite’s orders don’t change. Move.”

One of the other ones spit on the ground. “You ever wanna fertilize an egg, kid? Because if you don’t leave right now, you’re never gonna get the chance.”

I had no clue who these dragons were, but the kid immediately backed down. He held up his hands and fucked right off. As soon as he was out of the way, the first chick said, “Keep your mouth shut and follow us.”

“I’m uh… I think I’d rather go back to my cell.”

Two of them put claws on my back and the first one narrowed her eyes. “That wasn’t a question.”

God dammit. They forced me to walk with them deeper into the main cavern. Soon, we were further than I had been yet and we were passing a lot more regular dragons. The four girls carrying me just smiled and acted natural, so no one paid us any mind. I realized then that no one else in the cave ever knew what I looked like; I probably could have ran at any time.

That said, the idea of getting caught made me stop considering it.

We got so far down into the cave that we finally stopped seeing dragons. Five minutes after that, we started seeing more of them. But after I looked for a moment or two, I noticed it was nothing but females. My ‘escort’ dropped their smiles when we were there and then finally let me go. Everyone else was staring right at me, so I decided continuing to follow them was a safe decision.

Somewhere around ten minutes after we got into female territory, we finally came to a huge cavern, covered in what looked like the treasury of ten Scrooge McDucks. My mouth literally dropped at the absolutely massive hoard before me.

My escort didn’t give me a chance to take it in and shoved me forward when I stopped. My eyes slowly looked over the huge pile of gold before me and I stopped really paying attention to where we were going.

Finally, my eyes started seeing a few weird things. In the largest pile in the room, it looked like I could see body parts. Golden wings, golden legs, golden claws, a golden tail, a giant golden body. As we got further into the room and closer to the pile, my eyes started moving closer in and I saw a long golden neck. Then a large golden head. When we finally stopped, I saw its giant golden eyes staring right at me.

Then it moved. Billions of dollars worth of gold began tumbling to the floor as the pile of treasure in front of us turned into a dragon. When enough of the gold was gone, I could tell that it was a female dragon, though she was also gold colored. Her appraising eyes stared me down for what felt like an eternity before her eyes moved onto the girl that was leading the party. “Who have you brought before me?” she rumbled, her voice sounding almost as deep as Pyrite’s.

With her eyes off me and her talking, the spell was broken and I was finally able to look more closely at her body. It was still encrusted with gems and gold bars, as though they were forced directly into her scales. She looked larger than Pyrite, but that made no sense; there’s no way she could have gotten this far into the cave being that large.

Before I could really get a grasp on her, my lead escort replied, “We bring you the one who cured your son, Lady Tintaglia.”

The huge dragon gasped and then moved forward in a flash, placing her head right in front of the one who spoke. “This is the one?!”

“This is the human Navarone, yes. Are you… sure you want to speak to her?”

“Yes! Now leave us, dearie. I would very much like to have a talk with the one who saved my son’s mind.”

One of the girls behind me started muttering, but they all bowed and left, leaving me alone with what I could only assume was somehow Pyrite’s mother.

Once she could no longer hear them (I could, but I guess her ears were full of gold), she said, “Are you truly the one?” she quietly asked. “Did you finally cure my Pyrite of madness?”

“Uh, yes ma’am?” I replied. She stared at me for another few very long seconds. “Um. W-why do you ask?”

She grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and quickly looked my body over, front and back. When she was staring at my stomach again, she shook her head. “You save his life and this is how he treats you?! I am gonna give that young man such a talking to!” To be quite honest, my mind just straight up blanked as she started ranting about how he was shaming her and making her look bad in front of the clan and this and that. It was… beyond surreal.

Her tirade lasted about four minutes, during which time I somehow managed to get over the fact this gigantic dragon was swinging me around, ranting about how her son the dragon king, scourge of Equestria, needed to get spanked.

When the old lady was finally done, she breathed out a sigh of frustration and then realized she was still holding me. “Oh, I’m so sorry, dearie!” She set me back down and gently patted my head. “Don’t you worry about a thing, little missy. You’re going to be staying with Momma Tintaglia from now on. Pyrite won’t lay a single talon on you and when I get done giving him a talking to, I guarantee you he will apologize!”

“Uhhh… Can you do that?” I slowly asked.

“Why couldn’t I, hm? If he even thinks about sending someone to get you, I’ll lock the female quarters down before he can even blink! If he ever wants to see you again, he can apologize first!”

“Um. Okay.” That was really all I could think to say.

She nodded once. “Then it’s settled! Now, let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” She held out a hand for me. After a moment, I slowly got onto it. She rubbed my head with her other claws before carrying me to a large cave waterfall with a grate under it, leading impossibly deep into the ground.

She gently set me down on the grate and the cold water immediately knocked me to the ground. It didn’t hurt because of the scales, but the pressure was so high that I honestly couldn’t stand. For some reason, that made her chuckle and she walked off. While she was gone, I struggled to pull myself out from under the water and almost made it before she came back with a gigantic bar of soap, just about as large as I was. My eyes widened.

She once again grabbed me by the scruff of my neck to place me on her other claw, then started covering me with soap. Holy shit, what the absolute fuck is this lady doing?

Washing me, apparently. She made sure to wash behind my ear spines, under my wings, all down my tail, and in… every nook and cranny. After a few minutes, she started humming some nursery rhyme.

Oh my god, I think I’d prefer the cell!

When she was finally satisfied with the state of my cleanliness, she pulled me out of the water, then blasted me with flames. I flinched back and tried not to scream as the heat comfortably washed over me and dried all the water. After a few seconds of flames, she let the fire drop and carefully hugged me. “Oh, you’re just the cutest! We’re gonna have so much fun together!”

“C-can I go back to my cell now?” I weakly asked.

She pretended to not hear me (or maybe actually didn’t hear me, since her ears are bad), but finally let me go anyway. “It’s been so long since I got to see the sun, little lady. Would you care to tell Momma Tintaglia all about the outside world? I’d be ever so tickled!”

“O-okay?” I decided not to complain about Pyrite’s chair anymore.

She chuckled and started walking to another one of the walls. She had to go around huge piles of treasure. As she walked, she prattled on about how her son was so lost and lonely when his mind was fucked up and about how she felt so sorry for him. And now that I finally saved him, she’s gonna make sure he shows gratitude. At that point, all I really wanted was to go home and get the fuck away from crazy-ass dragons forever, but I had a feeling she wasn’t interested in hearing that.

When she finally got to the far side of the cavern, I saw that there were a lot of square holes carved into it. I could barely see a few objects resting within some of them. She reached into one of them and closed her eyes and she felt around. Finally, she gasped and withdrew her hand, holding a stoneware bottle that was about my size with a screwtop. She daintily sat down, sending tons of gold shifting everywhere. She set me on the ground in front of her, stomach up, and unscrewed the top.

“How does the sun feel?” she asked with a grin. “It’s been ages since I could leave!”

That question was a surprise. When I finally looked at her face again, I noticed she seemed… really desperate. I guess not many people really wanted to speak to the huge crazy dragon lady. Unfortunately, I was being forced to and after thinking about my chance of successfully running, I started talking.

As I told her all about how nice the outside world was, she pulled a brush out of the top of the jar and started dragging it down my stomach. The liquid hit my scales and felt like fire on them. Every time they dipped into a crack, I felt it slowly begin to close. Those that still had obsidian in them popped the stones out, shooting them into the cave. I slowly relaxed as she healed all the damage Pyrite, Bahamut, and Claw had done. I honestly didn’t realize how hard it had made breathing, since my body couldn’t bend right anymore.

When my entire front side was healed, she flopped me over to my back and began healing all the damage on it.

Once I was complete once more, she closed the jar and placed it back in the hole. I rolled back over and she placed herself over me, with me in between her claws. When she grinned, I immediately felt extremely vulnerable. “You truly are such an adorable little dragoness, aren’t you?”

“...Um.”

She sighed and looked down. “You know, Pyrite’s father was struck down by the demon just a few thousand years after we had our boy. He’s my only hatchling… And he wanted to avenge his daddy.”

I’m really not sure if I like where this is going.

“He lived, but… I don’t know if I’d call what he had a life. He was never himself again!” She actually started crying, huge gorilla tears that made me scoot back before I got waterboarded. She didn’t notice and kept going, unsurprisingly. “I helped him as best I could! But it took him thousands of years to adjust to that… that thing!”

Char snorted, but Blaze hushed him for some reason.

“And then you… you… you save him! Like it was nothing! One day, mad. The next day… my little boy, all grown up!”

She finally wailed and hugged me again, just barely stopping herself from breaking me in half. She was holding me so tight that I couldn’t even hug her back and I quickly found myself wondering if I was about to die the shittiest death ever.

Thankfully, she realized quickly she was choking me and eased back up a little, but still held me a lot tighter than I would’ve liked. Before too long, she calmed down and finally set me back on the ground, then cleared the remaining tears away with one of her long talons.

“You could never understand how much this means to me, outsider,” she happily said. “And you know, I believe I know just how to begin repaying you.”

“That’s not necessary!” I immediately said, waving my claws in front of me.

She smirked and said, “It’ll be a big reward for myself, as well.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “You see, I never had a daughter…” I scampered away as quickly as I could, but she immediately snatched me and pulled me in for another hug. “Oh, this is gonna be so wonderful, dear! Just wait until I tell your new brother!” I immediately started pushing away from her, trying to escape her grasp.

That just made her begin carrying me to the middle of her cave, giggling in horrific glee.

Nope, there’s literally no chance I’m getting out of here alive. Someone please just kill me now!

No one listened, as usual.

Once she got back to the center of the cave, she plopped back down on her bed of gold. Thousands of gold coins and gems tumbled to the ground under her weight and it felt like my entire skeleton was jolted. She set me down on top of one of the remaining spires of gems and then fucked right back off, harmonizing a song I swear I heard Celestia hum before.

As soon as she passed a few of the columns of gold, I quickly looked around for any witnesses before taking off, flying back to the entrance and dodging around towers of wealth. I made good time and got to the entrance before she arrived wherever she was trying to go.

I landed and tried to look as nonchalant as possible while walking back the way we came, hoping I could get back to somewhere without a giant insane lizard.

Of course, I’m not allowed to have nice things. Less than half a minute after I left the massive cavern, I found myself surrounded by five female dragons, the smallest of which was still half my size. The one in front of me grinned and said, “Where oh where do you think you’re going, hm?”

“Uhhh… Lord Pyrite told me I’m supposed to be in a cell, so—”

“Lord Pyrite has no authority here, outsider,” she said.

“Well—”

The one in front of me reached a claw out and placed it against my mouth, silencing me. “I am going to give you two very unique and very mutually exclusive opportunities, outsider,” she said. “Would you like to hear them?” She didn’t move her finger, so I just shook my head. “Too bad. You can either turn around and go right back where you’re supposed to be or my sisters and I can beat you until you can no longer move and then give you to Pyrite, telling him we found you trying to escape. What’s it gonna be?” I felt my ear spines press against my head as she finally pulled her claw back.

“Can I… Can I have a moment to think about it?”

One of the larger dragons to my right popped her knuckles, making me flinch. “Lady Tintaglia doesn’t get many visitors. None of them make her smile. You hurt her feelings, we hurt you. Understand?”

I looked back to the cavern and bit my lower lip. I legitimately didn’t know which fate would be worse. After a few agonizing seconds of thought, I finally decided that horrific emotional trauma was marginally better than literally being crushed to death. With that, I sighed, dropped my head, and turned to walk back in.

“That’s a good girl,” one of them said. “You better pick that head up and smile. If you’re anything less than a perfect guest, you’re gonna regret it.”

I really should have just picked death… It was too late at that point, though. Tintaglia had gotten back to her spot and realized I wasn’t there. She was frantically looking around the room, but finally spotted me and let out a giggle of glee as she sprinted towards me, throwing massive piles of gold out of the way like they were nothing. My eyes widened and I couldn’t stop myself from dropping into the fetal position, trying to protect myself from the mounds of gold flying everywhere.

She didn’t notice and immediately wrapped me in a hug when she got to me, then started carrying me right back to the middle. Not even gonna ask what I was doing, huh? Fine by me. She placed me down on what was now the only remaining spire of gold and leaned in really close to kiss me right on my belly. What the absolute fuck.

Once she got done doing that, she popped open another stoneware bottle and pulled out a very pink brush. “I know just how to help you relax from your brother’s cruel ministrations,” she said, lifting the nail polish to one of my claws. “Just you sit still, honey!”

Maybe this is what Celestia meant when she demanded I have better accommodations. I bet she’s watching and laughing her ass off right now. I did my best to wear a smile while the crazy old lady started painting my claws bright pink. Given the horror I was feeling, it probably looked like I was having a stroke, but she didn’t mention it. Instead, she started prattling on about the good ol’ days or something.

Once she got done painting my claws, she began very gently brushing and then flossing my fucking teeth. It didn’t really feel too weird until I took a minute to really think. My dragon body is about the size of a tree and I was able to knock a healthy tree down pretty easily. This literal fucking giantess was flossing my razor-sharp teeth and singing a happy song. After a moment of listening, I realized she was singing about ripping flesh and chewing on bones.

It was right then that I decided to take a long hard look at my life. I came to the realization that if the Buddhists were right, I must have been a serial killer in my past life.

I just gave up and let her do whatever she wanted, at that point. It was a lot less painful and I could drown it in all the booze I could get my hands on later. And all things told, being bathed and babied by an absolute giant wasn’t completely terrible. It just meant I was a doll in a very uncomfortably large dollhouse full of gold.

That said, being helpless really fucking sucks.

I had to have lost track of time at some point. I guess it’s really easy to do when you’re so far underground. It’s probably a huge part of what drove Tintaglia into stark raving insanity. Hell, who am I kidding? My perception is so far skewed that I don’t know what’s insane or not anymore.

Anyway, when Tintaglia was halfway through knitting me a dress, we got a visitor. Or rather, she got a visitor. At the moment, I was just sitting in stunned silence, literally in awe. Or maybe in fear. Or laziness.

Look, I had a really weird day.

The visitor was another female dragon who entered the cavern with a fairly large note. She flew it over to us, though the thing was so large that it billowed behind her. She dropped it over us without a word and left, presumably trying to escape before finding herself in my position. The note landed on my giant matron, who eyed it for a moment before daintily picking up and and reading it. “Oh my. It seems my little baby boy is sending you letters. Would you like me to read them for you, dearie?” she hopefully asked.

“I… I can read,” I said, the first words that left my lips in what felt like hours.

“Oh… Then I’ll keep working on your dress!” She handed me the massive fucking note and continued knitting like nothing was the matter.

It was the list of questions Pyrite had. I found myself wondering if he even knew I had been taken by his mother yet. Jesus Christ. Maybe this is his way of torturing me.

Although judging by everything I had seen, I came to the conclusion that no, he legitimately had no idea I was out of his grasp.

I suddenly felt myself very, very helpless and alone in this old senile dragon’s hoard.

Blaze finally burst into giggles at my realization. “If we come to get you, it’s gonna be like saving the princess from the dragon!”

“Only the dragon is a senile old mother,” Char coldly replied. “Lost and forgotten, hidden away in a dark cave by the son that just wanted to protect her. Would you believe that Pyrite longs to kill her, Navarone?”

What? Why? I know she’s crazy, but…

“Imagine what terror she would wreak if she was free,” he said. “Look at the size of her. And as you said, she is mad, brought that way by the defeat of both her beloved and her son. I do not have all of Pyrite’s memories. He was too powerful for me to ever wrest full control of his mind. But I know that he loved his mother and never wanted to see her like this, so he hid her away in the only place he knew she could never escape. I stayed his claws from killing her more than once. Now he is too large to get to her and none of his servants are powerful enough to do it.”

And it seems that she didn’t want to be forgotten.

“No, she absolutely did not,” Char said. “She built her power, worming her way into this mountain like a disease. It was easy, since Pyrite was using the mountain to hide his hoard. The weak and poor flock to the strong and rich, after all. In time, the female dragons decided to band together deeper into the mountain, coercing the male dragons into bringing them more wealth. Those who obeyed were rewarded. Those who did not were never allowed to breed. I suppose I never realized how far things had gone. If I had, I might not have stayed his hands.”

I guess you didn’t realize that dragons grow in power with the size of their hoard, huh?

“...I did not. She is insane, but I don’t think she means harm,” Char said. “She’s just a lonely old woman who lost her husband and son and wants company.”

Great, so now I’m her company. What, is this supposed to be a life sentence?

“Well, the ship doesn’t really need you,” Blaze said. “And you angered Celestia quite a lot. She might be happy to have you out of the picture. Luna’s currently powerless. Twilight’s still in prison and would be in no position to help you without the magical amulet, which Celestia has apparently taken for herself. I managed to find the pink pony and used her to contact the water elementals. They’re currently holding position on their little island, but I imagine most of them would be happy to leave you to rot. At least then they’d know the last human would finally be safe for eternity. Judging by the size of this dragon, they wouldn’t be able to fight her anyway. They certainly wouldn’t be able to fight the hordes of them between the two of you. And of course, I am in no mood to die for you. Maybe if there was even a chance, but not like this. So yes, I do believe this might be a life sentence.”

...Please tell me you’re joking. About any of those.

“You have managed to alienate some of the most powerful people on the planet,” Blaze solemnly replied. “Did you really think it wouldn’t have consequences?”

Char finally shut him up. “There is no such thing as a perfect prison, human,” he said. “You know that she is insane. You know that she doesn’t want to hurt you. You know that she loves her son and her family. You can use this. Use her insanity as your power. She is a psychological crutch for her son. If you can get her on your side, his power could be yours.”

Look dude, I don’t give a fuck about power. At this point, I just wanna be back to human and done with this dragon bullshit. If you have a plan, lay it on me.

“...I don’t think either of you understand,” he said. “With me and Bahamut out of the way, there is nothing stopping Pyrite from world domination. All he has to do is decide that he wants something and it will be his. And dragons are made of desires. What they want, they obtain. And they want everything. If you don’t find a way to use his mother to control him, Pyrite will bathe the world in flames to sate his greed and there is nothing anyone could do to stop him. By asking me to free his mind, by locking his only rival into stasis for eternity, by breaking Luna’s mind and shattering Celestia’s will, this is what you have wrought. You and that crazy old woman are all that stand in the way of a world of ashes, human. So wipe that horrified look off your face, put on a real smile, and start thinking of how to use this woman before there’s nothing left to save.”

Well when you put it like that…

It took me a several more minutes to come up with some manner of plan, and I really hoped it was a good one. When she finished pulling the dress over my scaley body, I asked, “Momma, do you know Bahamut?”

She paused, her hands quivering slightly. After a second, she blinked and nodded. “I believe I’ve heard the name, honey. But you don’t need to worry about that big meanie! Your big brother will keep you safe from him!”

“Py—Er, my big brother already beat him up,” I replied. “He unified Iceland, in fact.”

“...Really?”

“Yes, Momma. Bahamut tried hurting me, but I cured my big bro and he saved me.”

“Well, that’s wonderful news! I’m glad to know you two are really getting along. How do you like your dress?”

“...I love it,” I replied. Rarity probably wouldn’t, though. It was bland and grey, made with moth-eaten silk she presumably had lying in a corner somewhere. “Thank you, Momma.”

“Don’t even mention it, my precious little baby girl! Now, are you getting hungry, hm? It looks like you could use some more muscle under those scales!”

“I’m fine, but—”

“Nonsense! You’re gonna eat and that’s final!” She giggled before carefully grabbing me and ferrying me to a massive stack of gems. The pile was easily three times my size. She sat down in front of it, more evenly distributing its weight, and laid me down on my back. Once I was out of her grasp, she carefully grabbed a single cut gem of a type I hadn’t seen before, and held it right in front of my face. “Come on, dear, eat up. Mother’s always right!”

I shrugged and let the old bat feed me. After everything I had been through, it honestly felt like par for the course. She also had a bunch of gems I hadn’t tried yet, all of which were exquisite. That said, I really wasn’t too hungry. After about two dozen unique and very tasty gems, I rubbed my belly and said, “I’m kinda full, Momma.”

Her mouth tightened a little and she lightly poked me in the belly. When I didn’t make any kind of reaction, her eyes narrowed and she proffered another gem. “Don’t you wanna grow up to be big and strong like your brother?” she asked.

Uhhh… “No, I wanna grow up to be nice and beautiful, like Momma,” I finally replied.

She paused for a moment, as the insanity in her brain struggled to come up with some kind of reply. Finally, she smiled and set the gem down so she could hug me. “Don’t worry, honey. You will! You’ll grow up and fall in love with a nice strong dragon and give me plenty of grandhatchlings!”

I wonder if she already forgot I’m not actually a dragon. “You already have two granddaughters,” I replied.

Her eyes seemed to light up and she actually squeed, dropping me so she could shake her front claws like crazy in joy. Since she was huge and loud, the squee rattled a lot of the treasure around us and started avalanches of gold all over the place. The pile of gems started tumbling down and I had to jump up and out of the way before I was crushed. Before I could move too far, she snatched me up and hugged me again.

“I wanna meet them!”

“Well you see, that might be a problem…”

She gasped and pushed me back so she could look me in the eyes. “What’s wrong?! Are they sick? Are they hurt?” Her grip got very tight and her pupils narrowed into slits. “Did somebody HURT MY GRANDHATCHLINGS?!”

“NO NO NO!” Her gripped loosened and I sighed in relief. “They’re… they’re both fine. But… Well, they aren’t dragons. I adopted both of them, like you did with me. The others wouldn’t let them into Iceland to see you.”

She snorted a huge wad of smoke. “We’ll just see about that! Nothing will stop me from seeing my newest family members!”

Oh Taya, I’m so sorry for doing this to you. I get the feeling Eva will love it, though. “One of them is a pony and one of them is a changeling. That doesn’t matter, does it?”

She took a moment to process that before shaking her head. “Family is who you make it dearie.” One of her claws gently booped me on the snout. “You should know that better than anyone here! After all, I’m your new mommy!”

“...Right. But uh… I think Pyrite might want to hurt the ponies. And the changelings. And, you know, maybe everything else. He’s been asking me a lot of pointed questions about how strong each race is. If he starts attacking the world, he might hurt my beautiful little girls…”

She stared at me for almost an entire minute before her eyes narrowed and she dropped me. Before I could say anything else, she sprinted to the entrance of the cavern. “ATTEND ME!” she roared into the opening. It was so loud that I could hear it echoing all around me for about a minute, though it didn’t take anywhere near that long for dozens of female dragons to come running. Most of them glared at me, assuming I upset her or something.

The largest one that showed up bowed to the great gold beast and said, “How may we serve you, Lady Tintaglia?”

“My wretched son is planning to hurt my grandhatchlings! You will send him a letter at once telling him he will do no such thing! If he ever plans to attack the mortal races, he won’t have a home to come back to! And if any of his supporters want to help him, they’ll never see a female dragon again in their infinite lives! You hear me? I WON’T ALLOW IT!”

All of the gathered female dragons started whispering and several more of them began glaring at me. The one that spoke up first lifted her head and stared at Tintaglia in concern. “Are… are you sure, my lady? Whatever this outsider told you, I’m sure—”

“I HAVE SPOKEN!” Tintaglia roared, making everyone flinch. “I love my family! I won’t have them hurting each other! You will tell him at once!”

The large female dragon at the front of the group slowly looked at me and her vestigial eyelids blinked before she looked back at Tintaglia and nodded. “As you command, Lady Tintaglia.”

Wow, that was easier than I thought. The insane lady immediately calmed down and smiled. “Such a good girl,” she said, patting the female dragon who was about Reginald’s size on the head. “Go on now! And do make sure to send my love to my precious little boy. It’s been ever so long since I could see him. Oh, and let me know if he’s taking care of himself, please.”

“Of course, my lady,” she coldly replied. She cast me another short glare before the group started dispersing.

Lady Tintaglia pranced back to me with a huge grin on her face. Of course, for her, prancing probably caused an earthquake above us. I know it definitely shook the ground and knocked a few rocks down from the ceiling. Thankfully, none of them landed anywhere near me. When she got to me, she laid on the floor and said, “That’s that. Now, where were we…?”

As she started doing more weird girly shit to me, I began forming another plan to get away from her grasp, preferably without ever having to come back.

About an hour after she ordered her subjects to send the note, I heard a distant roaring echoing through the caves. She either didn’t hear it or ignored it and continued to apply moldy makeup to my face. It stank to high heaven, but I wasn’t about to try to tell her no. Man oh man, if Rarity could see me now, she might have a heart attack. Ugly as shit dress, clashingly painted claws, and a horrible makeup job. I can already hear her whining.

At that point, I was pretty tired. I’m not really sure how long I had been awake and I had no idea what time it was, but my body was starting to really want rest. Tintaglia ignored my yawns for a while, though I had a feeling she definitely noticed them.

It took the messenger from Pyrite about half an hour or so to get back to us. When she did, she flew straight to the big dragoness, who was in the process of trying to tickle me. It wasn’t doing much since I was covered in scales, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

The messenger landed next to me and bowed. Tintaglia didn’t look up until the chick cleared her throat. “My lady, Pyrite would like to speak to the outsider.”

The old lady blinked a few times, then looked around the cavern. “There aren’t any outsiders here, dearie. Just me and my daughter!”

That kinda stumped the messenger for a second. She looked down at me, confusion in her face. I could only shrug. She sighed and looked back at Tintaglia to say, “Pyrite would like to see… his sister. He said it’s very urgent.”

Tintaglia snorted. “Well that’s just too bad! He was picking on her. If he wants to see her, he can apologize first. But it’ll have to be in the morning. Just look at her! She’s all tuckered out, the poor thing…”

“I don’t mind going,” I hastily said.

My ‘mother’ reached down and placed a claw against my mouth. “You aren’t going anywhere until your brother apologizes, little missy! Especially not with how tired you are…” She looked back at the messenger. “Now you run along and tell my son that he can speak to his cute little sister if he very politely apologizes. And he better mean it, too! I’m gonna read the letter he sends first, so it better be sincere!”

“...I don’t think he’s gonna like that, my lady,” the messenger replied. “In fact, he uh… he wasn’t very happy with your last message, either.”

“I don’t care if he likes it or not! If he wants to speak to my sweet little daughter, he has to apologize! And if he even thinks about trying to take her from me before apologizing, he’ll have to go through all of us to do it!” She nodded once. “You can tell him he has until she wakes up to deliver a heartfelt apology or… or… or he won’t get any more presents for a decade!”

The messenger just stared at Tintaglia blankly for several very long seconds, presumably thinking back to all the decisions she made in life that led her to this point. Finally, she quietly said, “As you command, Lady Tintaglia.” With that, she fucked right back off.

The big beast nodded once before carefully scooping me up and walking me over to the largest remaining pile of gold. She used the other claw to scoop out a bed on it before placing me into it and then covering all but my head in gold. “Now you get your rest, honey,” she said. “You need to be at your best when you see your brother tomorrow! He’s the king, after all.” She leaned in and kissed me on the forehead. “Goodnight, dear.”

“...Goodnight, Mommy,” I replied, trying to sound loving. The way she was beaming, I figured it worked.

I didn’t much want to go to sleep while still wearing a disgusting dress and makeup, but I wasn’t about to wipe it off while she was staring at me. Instead, I just closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep, hoping she wouldn’t do anything to knock the pile of gold over.

I checked the dream anteroom several times that night, but I never found anyone overly useful asleep in Canterlot. It was… disconcerting. I also never saw Luna in the anteroom, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

When I finally woke up, it was to Momma Tintaglia staring at me from the exact same spot. It honestly didn’t look like she had moved at all and her smile seemed a little too… manic. But that was exactly what I had come to expect, so I did my best to push down the uncomfortable feeling I had and smile back.

“Good morning, sweetie,” she happily said, finally backing away.

I sat up and stretched, trying not to shiver at the feeling of the caked-on makeup slathered across my face. “Good morning, mommy,” I replied.

“I have excellent news! Your brother finally sent a really sweet apology letter. Are you ready to see him?”

I really didn’t want to see him while I was wearing a horrible dress, had painted claws, and covered in makeup, but I was also absolutely tired of being a prisoner of a crazy lady who was convinced I was her daughter. My eyes found the waterfall, but I looked back at her and nodded.

Unfortunately, she saw me look away and followed my eyes to the water. When she saw it, she gasped. “Oh, I couldn’t send you to him without a bath first! You have to look your absolute best, after all!”

“That’s not—” She grabbed me and pulled the dress right off, then waddled over to the waterfall and set me down under it again. I once more found myself forced down onto the grate while she went to get her huge bar of soap. I just sighed and let her clean me again. Fighting wasn’t worth the time or effort.

Once she was done with that bullshit, she bathed me in flames again and set me down. “Oh, you’re just so… so… so precious! Come along, now!” She started walking to the entrance of the cavern. I hurried to follow, hoping I might finally be free of her crazy ass. Once she got there, she slammed a claw into the ground, sending a nasty cracking sound echoing into the tunnels.

It didn’t take long for one of her many servants to show up and bow. “How may we assist you, Lady Tintaglia?” the newcomer asked.

“I would like you to escort my pretty little daughter to her big brother, dearie,” my ‘mother’ said. “It would make me ever-so-happy. And if you could keep her company until she gets back, it would just warm my heart!”

The female dragon eyed me with distaste for a moment before looking back at the big crazy bitch. “As you command, my lady,” she slowly replied. Her eyes turned to me again, once more full of disgust and distrust. “Come with me.”

I started to follow, but before I could finally get into the tunnel, Tintaglia snatched me up in one more hug. “Oh, I can’t wait for your next visit! Ooh, maybe you can bring my new granddaughters with you!”

“M-Maybe,” I groaned, trying to push myself away from her.

Once she had her fill of lovey-dovey bullshit, she set me down, kissed me on the forehead, and let me finally leave. I followed behind the sexily wagging tail of my new guide, wondering just how pissed Pyrite was gonna be when he finally saw me.

I was guessing very and I didn’t know whether to be scared or resigned. My only hope is that he was willing to do anything to keep his mother happy, even if it meant letting me leave in one piece.

While we were walking through the female quarter, all the chicks we passed glared daggers at me. It was very obvious they had expected my meeting with Tintaglia to go a… slightly different direction, I guess. At the very least, they weren’t expecting me to be adopted by her. They certainly weren’t expecting her to demand them all to refuse to help her son take over the world.

None of them said anything directly to me, though. I guess they all knew that if anyone confronted me, someone else would tell Tintaglia and she would find herself exiled. Still, my escort didn’t waste any time. She presumably wanted to wash her hands of me and let me become Pyrite’s problem.

Once we got into the regular part of the mountain, we stopped getting nearly as many looks. I was still an outsider, but I guess outsiders were a lot more common closer to the entrance.

Soon enough, we were back at the massive pool of lava. My escort stood right at the edge of it and just stared at me. I could barely see Pyrite on the throne through the haze and smoke. I almost bothered to say a short prayer before realizing it would be pointless. Instead, I just took off and flew toward what I was hoping wouldn’t be my doom.

As soon as Pyrite saw me, his mouth snapped shut and he just glared at me. It was like getting hit by twelve thousand years of raw hatred all at once and it almost made my wings falter and send me into the lava, but I barely caught myself and managed to hover in front of him.

We had a kind of strange staring contest for about thirty seconds before he slowly held out a claw, palm up. I looked at it for a moment before cautiously landing on it. He leaned back in his obsidian throne and just stared at me for a little longer.

Finally he said, “There is exactly one reason I am not tearing you to pieces right now, human,” he said.

“Look man, I got dragged there against my will. All I could do was roll with it.”

“You will be silent until I give you permission to speak.” I decided nodding might be wise. “My mother is a very lonely dragon. It appears she was grateful for what you did to me. I am not going to kill you because of that. It seems that in her delusions, she… adopted you. And I’m not sure what you told her, but she has… informed me that it would be unwise to extend my influence. This has put me in something of an interesting position. Most of Bahamut’s ex-supporters want me to attack the ponies. Thankfully, Celestia has agreed to return the eggs. Half of them are already en route, along with all of the notes she has on them. The other half will be on the way tomorrow. Once they are safely here, I will allow you to depart on one condition. Would you like to take a guess as to what that condition is?”

“...That I never come back?”

“Incorrect. It seems that my mother was… unfortunately quite taken by you. I don’t see why, but it is what it is. I will allow you to leave on the condition that you return often to visit her to keep her happy. If you do not, I will send someone to get you. And if I have to send someone to get you, you will not be leaving again. Do we have an understanding?”

“Wait wait wait… You want me to come back?!”

“No, I do not. But you will be coming back, one way or another. You will come back and you will keep… our mother happy.”

“Look, Pyrite… Your mom is crazy, dude. I guarantee she’ll forget about me in a few hours. If you just let me leave, I’m sure she won’t—”

“I have spoken, human. Do not make me repeat myself. If she likes your company, you will give her company. And if she demands that I stay my claws and withhold my flames… then so be it. I’m afraid I am living in a volcano divided. She has far more power than she should. Until I find some way to take that power from her… I will have to appease her. No matter how degrading or disgusting the act may seem. And since you appease her, you will be her perfect daughter. If you do anything to upset her, I guarantee that you will regret it. Do you understand?”

“...How often do I have to come back?”

“I will send messages via Spike if your presence is needed. Now leave me before I finally lose my temper.”

“Um… Where am I supposed to go, now? I kinda wanna see Spike, but—”

“There are no words to express how little I care about what you want, human. You will return to my mother at once and keep her company until you are summoned again. With luck, she’ll quickly grow tired of you so I can tear you to pieces for daring to stand in my way. Now leave before I truly lose my patience!”

Leaving sounded like a good idea. I hopped off his hand and flew back to the edge of the lava lake, where my escort was bathing. It looked pretty nice, but before I could land next to her, she pulled herself out and shook herself off, sending super hot chunks of magma all over the place. Once she was clear, she started walking back into the tunnels without a word. I sighed and followed.

She led me straight back into the belly of the beast. Or I guess more accurately, into the den of the crazy lady. When we were once again in the cavern, I found that Tintaglia did her best to clean the place up a little. A lot of the gold and gems had been pushed back into piles and she was once more lounging on the largest one, though she hopped up with a huge grin when she saw me again.

“How was your visit?” she happily called over.

“It was alright,” I yelled back, continuing to walk closer to her. I didn’t want to fly because I honestly wasn’t in a hurry to get closer. Unfortunately, she didn’t feel like waiting and hopped off her pile to walk over and hug me again.

“Did he apologize again?” she asked.

“...Yes,” I lied. “He seemed very regretful and promised to never hurt me again.”

“Good! Oh, I do so love it when my hatchlings get along…” She gently set me down and started walking back to the wall with all the holes, where she presumably kept everything. “I know just how to celebrate, too!”

Oh boy. “That’s uh… that’s not necessary! Him being happy is enough for me!”

“But not for me, dearie!” Ugh. I gave up and followed her, wondering when someone would finally put me out of my misery.

I’m going to pretend I forgot all the indignities I had to go through as she celebrated her two children making nice. I know I’ll probably never actually forget, but not writing it down helps.

For better or worse, I survived her attempts at beautification. After what felt like an eternity of suffering, I finally realized I could lie about being tired and then force myself into the dream realm when she let me go to bed. So that’s just what I did.

As soon as I got there, I looked around for anyone useful. The first person I looked for was Celestia, and I immediately found her golden dream. Sleeping the day away, hm?

“She’s been taking short naps throughout the day,” Blaze said. “I believe she’s been staying up all night, and has been for the last day or two.”

“...Huh.” I summoned a few dream guards and said, “Lock this dream down. Nothing but me gets in or out.” They hurried to obey. “Let’s go say hi,” I said with a small grin.

Neither of my elementals replied, so I hopped into Celestia’s dream. As soon as I entered, the world turned into a black void. A moment later, Celestia appeared before me. “What do you want,” she said. It definitely didn’t sound like a question.

“Information, if you don’t mind,” I replied with a cheeky grin. “Pyrite isn’t exactly keeping me in the loop and I’d quite like to see my daughter again. What’s going on?”

“Reginald… persuaded me to return the dragon eggs. I sent the first half of them today, along with one of my few remaining loyal servants to ensure that Spike is being taken care of. Now that I have an assurance that he is okay, I will send the second half tomorrow. Once that is done, Pyrite has agreed to release both of you. The instant you are released, you will return Spike to me. I have much to discuss with my son.”

“...I think he might want to discuss some things with his actual parents, first.”

“I’m afraid what he wants is not something he will obtain, this time. I must speak with him first. In person, not by letters. Spike is special. He is destined for greatness. I was going to teach him that in time, but now that you ruined everything, I’ll have to try to make him understand. He can’t wallow in mediocrity, living a dull dragon life with his apathetic parents.”

“...Wow.”

“Now you understand, Nav.”

Yeah, I understand that you’re a truly rotten bitch. What you want is more important than what your son wants, I guess. “Yeah, I think I do.” I understand that it might be time for a new ruler in Equestria.

She sighed in relief. “Good. It seems we’ve fought so much the last few days that… Well, I thought I couldn’t rely on you anymore. We also need to have a talk in person, Nav. And with how much stress we’ve both been under… perhaps we can do a bit more than talk.”

I kinda gotta agree with Bloodbeak on this one. I’d sooner take a viper to bed, at this point. “Maybe so,” I said with a fake grin. That said, I think I might talk to Fleur and Blossom first.

She gave me a genuine smile. “I’ll be waiting.”

I took that as my cue to leave. I had the information I needed. I looked around for anyone else useful, but found no one. Instead, I dismissed the guards around her dream and decided to go dream busting.

Several dream-days later, which equated to about six or seven hours in real time, I finally found the dream I was looking for. Fleur was in the middle of a golden dream about eating infinite doughnuts handed to her by sexy stallions.

As nice as it must have been for her, I kinda needed to talk to her. So I jumped in, made sure I was a dude, and then stuck three doughnuts on my dick. She eyed me with a grin and started to reach her mouth out to get one. That’s when I realized to her, I was still just part of the dream.

I decided not to disabuse her of that notion. After all, I did need some stress relief…

Once she got her cream filling, I summoned a chair and sat down. “So you know I’m the real Nav, right?”

“Hm?” she asked around bites of another doughnut. Apparently none of the stallions minded the fact that her face was still dripping with my seed.

“I know how to dream walk. I’m the real Nav. I’m inside of your dream right now.”

She blinked a few times before recognition came to her eyes. “Oh! This… this is a dream!”

“Yep.” I grabbed one of the doughnuts she was being offered and started eating it, then grabbed another one and slid it down her horn. “I gotta say, this is a nice one.”

She slowly looked around at the group of stallions around her. “I suppose it is…”

“Anyway, I need your help,” I said.

“Oh! Anything for you, Nav,” she said, turning back to me and beaming. The juices on her face kinda ruined it a little, but it was what I wanted to hear.

“Good. How do you feel about the title Empress of Equestria?”

She blinked a few more times. “Um. I’m not so sure…”

“Well, we have time to think of a better one. If Celestia doesn’t get her act together very soon, you and I are going to cast her down.” Her mouth dropped. “Assuming Blossom supports us, that is. I want the two of you to be ready to move within an hour’s notice. From the moment I say it’s time, Celestia will have one hour to live. After that, I will become king and you will probably become my queen. Or I guess I’ll become queen and you’ll probably become my queen consort.”

“You… you can’t…”

“The world is going to be surprised at what I can and cannot do, Fleur. Celestia is rotten to the core. I’m going to give her a chance to redeem herself, but I don’t think she’s going to take it. If she does, she’ll lose most of her power anyway. Soon, there will be an immense power vacuum in this world. I aim to fill her spot as quickly as possible, preferably with someone who won’t be that evil. Will you help me?”

That seemed to knock her out of her stupor. “Yes! Absolutely!” She cleared her throat for a moment before saying, “Blossom and I have discussed this in the past, Nav. She’s been waiting for this moment ever since Luna confessed. That is the moment her loyalties shifted from the monarchy to Equestria. And it’s her opinion that the monarchy of Equestria might be one of the biggest problems with Equestria. The majority of the army of Equestria is yours, Navarone.”

“...And the nobles?” I asked.

“Will not be hard to convince. Celestia turned you into a victim, Navarone. You don’t truly understand the power you wield because of it. There are some that fear you, but the vast majority understand that you have been wronged by both princesses, and would support you against them due to the sheer injustice of it all.”

“What about the people?”

“...They might be harder to convince.”

I crossed my arms and leaned back in the chair. “How does the sun move, Fleur?”

Her ears drooped down. “That is my one hesitation, Nav. I know I’m not powerful enough to move the sun for you. I’m sure we could find a solution, though!”

I shook my head. “Wrong answer. Celestia could never move the sun.” Her eyebrows lifted. “That was a lie she came up with to force the ignorant pegasi and earth ponies to support her. She and her sister used powerful magics to convince everyone that they raise the sun. The truth is a lot simpler. The planet spins around the sun once every year. As it spins, it rotates once every twenty-four hours. This happens naturally. It involves zero magic. And I can prove it mathematically.”

“...What?”

“How hard do you think the people would be to convince if we had proof that Celestia lies about moving the sun and censored most of history? How hard do you think the people would be to convince if they saw her executed and then watched the sun continue moving across the sky? How hard do you think the people will be to convince when hundreds of history books appear that detail the truth? I want your help, Fleur. But before that, I want you to understand that this is the right thing to do. If Celestia can’t be redeemed, she must die. There’s too much at stake to leave it in her evil hooves. I want you to do this because you understand that it needs to be done, not because I’m asking you.”

“...One year ago, I would have called you a fool and ran to find the closest guard. But now… I want your proof. I will support you, Navarone. One way or another, I will support you. But if you want me to truly believe in you over Princess Celestia, I will take whatever proof you have that she is a liar.”

“At the moment, you’ll have to take my word for it,” I said. “When I get back to Canterlot, I’ll show you and Blossom the truth.”

She smiled and nodded. “I look forward to it, Nav. Do you know when you’ll be getting back?”

“I’m afraid not. Celestia decided not to tell us that the dragons hated her guts and were about one bad day away from a civil war over eradicating the ponies, so I’m currently a prisoner.” She gasped. “With luck, I’ll be freed tomorrow. But after that, I still have a few things to do here in Iceland. I pissed Celestia off and got some of my crew arrested, so I can’t even do anything there.”

“...She released them,” Fleur replied. “Kat came back to my home this morning. If you have time tonight and are able to see her dreams, I suggest that you talk to her. I believe she needs your help.”

“So she finally woke up?”

“Indeed. And she has quite a story to tell. And an interesting new ability. I think she’ll need to tell you about it herself. I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand it.”

“Then I’ll keep an eye out for her dreams. I’ll be coming to see you when I get back to Equestria, Fleur. Until then, I’ll leave you to your happy dream.”

I stood to go, but she quickly said, “Wait.” I lifted an eyebrow. “How did you get here, anyway?”

“Luna found an artifact that gives dreams to all the species humans created. She managed to access it with magic and that lets her access dreams. She gave me the same access to it.”

“Hm. And you can access any dream?”

“Now, yes. When Luna originally set it up, it was just the dreams of ponies. I managed to unlock it for every race.”

“I see. What can you do in these dreams?”

“Anything I want,” I said, waving a hand and making a bouquet appear in it. “I usually help those having nightmares. I also use it to communicate, like this.”

“...And get free blow jobs.”

“Only on people who I know would be happy to do it in person,” I replied. “That said, I might or might not have a habit of giving people more wet dreams than they’d normally have. I just don’t make a point in appearing in them personally.”

“So you have the power to do anything you want here… Do you have the power to make anyone you want?”

“Yep.” I created Big Mac and gave him a plate full of doughnuts. She grinned and took one. “Any requests before I go?”

She eyed Big Mac before standing and walking around him a few times, looking him up and down. Once she had him fairly well appraised, she lowered a hoof between his legs and started feeling around until she got the reaction she wanted. When she did, she gasped. Once she was over her surprise, she lasciviously grinned and looked at me. “As a matter of fact, I do have a request…”

I left her red dream behind a few minutes later, a smile on my face. It felt good to finally make up my mind about Celestia, even if my decision was a dark one. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that following that decision through would be easier said than done. With that in mind, my next destination was the dream of Cadance.

Surprisingly enough, she was actually having a nightmare. I took a peek and it was about her baby being hurt. That couldn’t stand, so I hopped in and fixed Skyla up right quick, instantly turning the skies gold.

I let Cadance play with her hateful baby for a few minutes before clearing my throat. It took another minute for Cadance to finally look up and realize I was still there. “Oh, hey Nav. Do you wanna play with Skyla?”

“Does she hate me as much here as she does in the real world?”

“What are you… Oh. Oh!” She looked around, and then up. “...This is a dream.” She looked back down with a grin. “Then she’ll love you with all her heart.” She proffered the foal, who stared up at me with joy in her eyes.

“Then fuck it, whatever,” I took her and she giggled at the feeling of my fingers. I cupped her against my chest and started rubbing her belly. She began cooing. “Man, if only she wasn’t this evil in the real world.”

“I think we both know better than that, Nav. She loves everypony!”

“...Except me.”

“I said everypony. And I guess every dragon. And every changeling. Really, everyone but you specifically. I’m honestly really curious why.”

“I’m honestly really hoping she’ll get over it,” I replied. “Imagine what a vindictive little princess with her magic powers could do to a guy.”

“I can assure you, I will not allow that to happen. Anyway, how can I help you, Nav? I know you don’t typically just do social calls and I imagine you’re busy at the moment.”

“I’m actually a prisoner at the moment.”

Before I could keep talking, she gasped and asked, “Do you need me to mount a rescue?!”

“No, no. That’s just me saying I’m not busy. Shit hit the fan the moment we got here. Celestia didn’t give me any information at all and I walked into the middle of a cold war between pro-Equestria dragons and anti-Equestria dragons. Or I guess, a pro-dragon group and an anti-Equestria group. Either way, I ended up getting captured by the side who wanted to eradicate Equestria. I got carried to the fortress of the pro-dragon group and used as a hostage. I cured the dragon king’s insanity and he beat the everloving shit out of the guy that captured me. He then proceeded to capture me himself and torture me for two or three days. Now that Celestia’s releasing all the dragon eggs she had as hostages, I should get released soon.”

“Alright, back up. What dragon egg hostages?”

“I guess you didn’t know about that, huh?” I told her everything I knew about the treaty. By the time I finished, she had a very calculating look on her face. “That whole thing is what sparked the cold war. At the moment, I have a huge influence over Pyrite, and he absolutely hates it. He wants me gone as quickly as possible to save face. Joke’s on him, because I’m not leaving until I find Spike’s parents.”

Her ears fell flat. “I’m… I’m afraid that’s not possible,” she said. “Unless Celestia chooses to tell you herself.”

“...Why?”

She sighed. “I asked her that myself, several years ago. She told me she didn’t know why the mages had a dragon’s egg, but that she would ensure Spike was raised properly. She showed me the book the mages had about his past, about how his egg had moved around time and again, but there was no origin for it. The book she showed me may have been an incomplete copy, but… I believe she had that information erased! I just… I don’t know why she would do that!”

“Because she never wanted to tell him,” I coldly replied. “She wanted all the power over him. She doesn’t want him to have anywhere else to go but back to her bosom. Celestia wanted a pet dragon, a replacement for Luna and Reginald. I imagine she saw the signs that Luna was finally returning and decided she didn’t need him anymore. Now Luna’s gone and she’s desperate to have him back.”

“...That sounds very cold, Nav. I know love. I can feel it between two people. Celestia does love him, Nav. Never forget that.”

“I bet she loved Luna, too. That didn’t stop her from turning her into a weapon. What I said was cold, but so is Celestia. That woman uses people until she uses them up and then casts them aside. First she threw Luna to the moon, and now she’s thrown her away again. She threw you to Sombra to die. She threw Spike to Twilight when Luna came back. She can feel love for Spike all she wants, that doesn’t mean Spike won’t still have a horrible fucking life.”

“...Why are you here, Nav?”

“The last time we spoke, you said the world needed a leader. Do you remember that?”

“...I do. And I remember that I suggested you.”

“Cadance… I don’t ask you this lightly. And all I can ask is that you take it in confidence. Would you support me against Celestia?”

She didn’t hesitate a second. “Yes.”

“Oh.”

“You could have asked me since the second Luna confessed and the answer to that would have been yes. The instant she told the world that Celestia knew she was torturing you and did nothing, I lost every ounce of respect for either of them. When Luna looked at you in that crowd, and I saw you and I saw that you were armored and armed, a part of me hoped you were there to start a revolution. The instant you give the word, I and the entire Crystal Empire will turn on Princess Celestia. We will fight to the end, even if it means we lose. I don’t want to live in a world where the most evil person alive is regarded as a saint.”

“Well alright then. I’m giving her a very narrow path to redemption. If she chooses to follow it, I’ll work with her. But if she falls astray, she has to die. It could literally mean the end of everything we know if she’s allowed to live. Discord put her in power for a reason and if she continues her dark path, I think we’re gonna figure that reason out firsthand.”

“...Agreed. You’re walking a very dangerous road right now, Nav. Despite her recent losses of power, if she catches wind of what you’re doing right now, she will eradicate you. When it’s time, you better be ready. She won’t go down easily.”

“And I’m not gonna give her a single hint of it until it’s time. I want her to choose to become better, not become better out of fear. If it ever becomes time, she will never see it coming.”

“Don’t be so sure, Nav. It might surprise her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t have ways to counteract what you can do. Ever since you helped Pinkie and the naga, she’s been watching you. She’s been building up a list of all your strengths, all your weaknesses, your opinions, your relationships, what you know, everything. And she worked with Luna on ways to stop you in any number of situations. She knows who and what you are, Nav. You are chaos incarnate, an agent of insidiousness, a spreader of dark truths, even if you don’t mean to be. You are the wrench in her plans, the monster under her bed. Every time she tries to control you, you slip away from her and ruin even more plans. That’s part of why she wants to be in a relationship with you. She believes if you finally settle down with her, she can keep you under her hoof and make sure you don’t destroy her nation. Part of the reason she chose to use you instead of kill you is because she knew killing you would create a lot more problems in the long run.”

“...You know, if she had just left me alone from the start, none of this would have ever happened. She forced me into this life. One way or another, she’s gonna regret it. But if she won’t learn her lesson, she won’t live to regret it for long.”

“You should practice your speech for when it happens,” she said with a cheeky grin. “There’s nothing like the dashing hero telling the wicked villain all their sins right before slaying them.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I sarcastically replied. “Thank you for your support and your confidence, Cadance. I hope I’ll never need it, but if I do, I’ll call on you first.”

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Are you gonna tell Shiny yourself? Or do you want me to tell him?”

“Will he support me?”

“Absolutely. He would have supported you after the second Europe party, when Celestia wiped his memories and he later found out what she did to you. We’ve had this talk before.”

“...Really?”

“After Pertz was condemned to Tartarus, he invited Fleur to the Crystal Empire. She’s made a very remarkable transformation. All thanks to you, she was quick to point out. She was able to tell us… quite a lot. When she left, Shining Armor and I sat down together and decided we were on your side, no matter what. Everything that’s happened since then has just reinforced it. I’m not sure how useful we’ll be, but you’ll have us.”

“Then I’ll let you tell him. Do you know if Twilight will support me yet?”

She sighed and floated her baby from my arms into her grasp. Skyla seemed disappointed for a moment to be away from my fingers, but seeing her mother’s face perked her right back up. “I think Twilight will need convincing. But I think she can be convinced. Shiny and I should be there when you try it.”

“Then we’ll see what we can do after I get back and you guys come to Canterlot. If Twilight joins us, the rest of the Elements will be right behind her. I already spoke to Fleur. She has the support of the nobles. Blossom’s already with me and she has the support of the army. I think Bloodbeak will side with me and I don’t think Chrysalis will be hard to convince. Pyrite hates my guts, but he hates Celestia even more. The cats will go wherever the wind blows. I think the dogs just want to stay out of everything. The instant I say the word, I want her entire safety net gone and I want her tried and executed in less than an hour. Work with Shining Armor on plans for how to make that happen.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll introduce the two of you to Blossom and Fleur properly when you all get to Canterlot. Shiny’s shield might be the only way we can plan this without Celestia finding out.”

She shook her head. “That’ll just make her suspicious. We might need to think of a way to distract her while we meet.”

“We’ll figure something out. I know you’re not stupid, but be careful with what you say and who you say it to. We’re planning treason. If this gets out before we’re ready…”

“I know, Nav. Shining Armor has learned at least a little subtlety since we got here. Do you know how long we have to prepare?”

“Not yet, unfortunately. I can’t do it until after we get back from Tartarus. If we have to kill Celestia, we’ll be in the end-game. I have a feeling Discord will get pissed that we threw a cog in his bullshit and decide to end this stupid game. Before we can kill Celestia, we need to be ready to at least contain Discord.”

“Tartarus is going to be a long trip, I imagine,” she slowly said. “A lot can happen in a few short months… I wonder if Luna will attempt to avenge her sister.”

“I’m already working on getting Luna on my side,” I said. “She feels really betrayed by her sister in a lot of ways. For a good reason, too. I found out that she’s currently in Tartarus.” Cadance gasped. “She’s going to help me when I go there. I’m gonna try and help her change. She’s tired of being evil and being used. With luck, I can finally cut that umbilical cord between them.”

“Perhaps. Five thousand years is a long time.”

“Yeah. It’s a long time to suffer. And when you’re looking at another five thousand years on the horizon, do you want to keep living in agony and misery, or do you want to free yourself? Luna was given a bad hand in life. I’m offering her a better one, a chance where she thought she was chanceless.”

“...Hope is a powerful thing, Nav. Be wary of what you offer to Luna. If you fail to deliver and let her hope wither away, she might turn on you. If you offer her a place by your side if she helps you kill her sister, she won’t be happy to find that you intend to use her the same way.”

“Good,” I replied, making her eyebrows raise. “If I ever become anything like Celestia, I want to be killed anyway.”

“We’ll make sure that never happens,” Cadance said with a smile. “I’ll talk to Shining Armor in the morning. He might have suggestions for how to win Twilight over.”

“Then I’ll leave you to your dream, Cadance.”

She floated the baby away from her grasp so she could get up and hug me. It felt… a lot nicer than it should have, and I hugged her back. “Goodnight, Navi,” she finally said. I leaned back and kissed her on the cheek, then left.

She said she would handle Shiny, so I didn’t bother jumping into his dream. Instead, I looked around for Watcher and quickly found him. It looked like he might not have been in the Crystal Empire anymore. I jumped to his dream and quickly discovered it was red.

I jumped to Twilight a moment later, resolving to deal with Watcher in person. Thankfully, Twilight was already in the dream realm, so I didn’t even have to enter her dream. “So you finally found me,” she said.

“Sure did,” I replied. “I heard you ran into some trouble.”

“Princess Celestia locked me up,” she coldly replied. “She locked all the hosts up. Now that she let us out, she hasn’t told us anything and the water elementals don’t know much. What’s happening, Nav?”

I explained everything as best I could. I went over my talks with Pyrite, what I learned about Tintaglia, how I accidentally stopped Pyrite’s plans of conquest, and what Celestia was working on. I even mentioned that the information about Spike’s parents was wiped out.

When I finally finished, Twilight just looked at me in mute horror tinged with disgust. “What are we gonna do, Nav?” she finally asked.

“We’re gonna bide our time,” I replied. “We’re going to build allies, we’re going to watch the world, and we’re going to come up with a plan. Nothing’s changed, Twilight.”

“No, Nav,” she quietly said, shaking her head. “Everything has changed. I don’t think I can learn from Princess Celestia anymore. Not after what she’s done to both of us. For the first time in a very long time… I feel lost. I honestly don’t know what to do...”

“For now, we plan,” I said. “We need a way to stop Discord. The Elements of Harmony have done it once, but I don’t think that’s gonna be enough to do it again. We need a way to end this permanently. I am going to kill a god, Twilight. And you are going to help me.”

“I will be by your side the whole way,” she solemnly replied. “And my friends will be right there with me. We won’t let you down!”

“Good. Is Kat still in a coma?” She didn’t need to know how and why I already knew.

“No, she came out of it while we were in stasis. I was actually hoping to speak to her in her dreams tonight so I can get more of a grasp of what she went through and what she can do now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The key no longer works, Nav. Kat got its curse.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah. She wasn’t really able to describe what happened very well to me. I was hoping she could show me in a dream. I know it did something to her, but she didn’t have time to figure out just what exactly it did.”

I thought about her and felt my head turning. “Then shall we go ask?” I asked.

“Let’s,” she said with a happy little nod. We both stepped toward Kat’s black dream. “Have you ever looked into one of her dreams?” she quietly asked.

“No. I resolved to stay away from them as much as I could. Some things are better left unknown.”

She stepped forward and swept some of the smoke aside. “...It’s a maze,” she said, her voice sounding awed.

I walked up to it and took a peek inside. “Whoa. It’s… a-mazing!” She kicked me in the shin for that, but I stand by it. The maze in Kat’s mind was massive, and looked nearly never-ending. I could barely make Kat out in the center of it, mindlessly trudging along through dull passages. “Well, what do you think?”

“I always preferred crossword puzzles.”

“I always preferred doing nothing. Man, if this is what she goes through every night… That’s kinda haunting. What the hell is Cascade doing?”

“I don’t see her anywhere in there. How could she allow Kat to have dreams like this?”

Twilight’s eyes turned blue and she looked up from the dream. “Cascade no longer has access to Kat’s subconscious mind. Something is protecting it, keeping it hidden from her tendrils. I’m not so sure we will be able to directly access it through her dreams, either.”

“What the hell did she go through…?” I whispered, looking back down at her.

“There are no answers here,” Aqua said. “Shall we?”

I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of a reply, so I hopped in and landed behind Kat. Before I could say a word, she spun around and slashed me across the face with her claws. I hopped back and summoned my sword. Two daggers appeared in her hands. “Kat, it’s really me,” I said, carefully backing away. “You’re in a dream.”

She snarled and darted forward just in time for Twilight to appear. She grabbed Kat with magic and forced her struggling form against the wall of the maze. “Illusions and lies, tricks and deceit!” she hissed. “Even in my dreams, you haunt me! Was completing this maze once not enough?!”

I dropped my sword and walked in front of her. “It’s me, Kat.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “Look at me. You’ve never seen me like this.” At the moment, I was completely normal. No wings, male, brown hair. “I’m here to help you, Kat.”

Her eyes darted over my body a few times before she sagged and the daggers fell from her limp paws. Twilight let her go and she started to fall to the ground, but I grabbed her and held her up. “I need rest,” she whispered. “But even when I sleep, I find myself back here…”

I gently set her down against the wall and left just a single hand on her shoulder. “Kat, what happened? I need to know everything.”

She took a deep breath and slowly let it out before standing again. “We need to keep moving. We aren’t alone in this maze and getting found is… unwise.” She started stalking off further into the maze. Twilight and I followed.

“What else is here?” Twilight asked. “Where is here?”

“I’ve seen all manner of monsters,” Kat replied. “And illusions. And memories, both mine and those of others. This place is cursed. It drags its victims down and turns them into part of itself.”

“Start from the beginning,” I said. “You were breaking into the archives. You passed out. Then what?”

“Then I found myself here,” she replied. “Alone. Naked. Unarmed. This place is massive, Nav. Larger than any construction I’ve ever seen. And the walls are unscalable.”

“So what happened?” Twilight asked. “Did you just keep walking until you found the way out?”

“...It wasn’t as simple as that,” Kat quietly said, her head hanging low. “I ran into monsters and died, then appeared back in the maze. Over and over and over… I experienced more deaths than I could ever deliver, in variously horrific ways. Along with… other indignities. I spent several lifetimes in this maze, trying to find my way out. All of the walls are the same. No marks I left stayed when I died. I… lost count of how many times I attempted to escape before finally reaching the center.”

“What was there?” I asked.

“A key. The key. As soon as I touched it, I knew only blackness for some time. Then I woke up in a cell with Twilight and Sunshine Smiles. That was…” She looked back to Twilight, confusion in her eyes. “How long ago was that? Has it been weeks? Months?”

“It’s been less than a day, Kat,” Twilight slowly said. “Nav, we need to get her out of this place.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Kat, take my hand.” I held it up for her. She stared at it for a moment before her eyes met mine.

“I can’t touch you, Nav. There’s something wrong with my paws. Almost everything I touch… changes.”

I withdrew my hand as Twilight asked, “Changes how?”

“Boxes I touch either seal shut or blast open permanently. I touched a guard who was leading us out and his eyes became… vacant and he no longer said a word. I touched one of the doors of the palace and couldn’t close it behind me. There’s something very wrong with me, my lady. I… I don’t think I will be of use to you anymore…”

“We’ll figure this out, Kat,” I said. “We’ll figure it out together. I got cursed and I’m still going. You don’t have to let this ruin everything for you. We just gotta understand how it works.”

“...I’m afraid,” Kat said.

“Well, this is fucking horrifying,” I replied. “I understand why you’re afraid. Most of the reason you’re afraid is because you don’t understand what’s happening. Once we figure it out, you’ll see that it’s just one more thing. One more piece of bullshit.”

“And it might be a valuable tool,” Twilight said. “If there’s some pattern to what you can do, it’s possible you could learn to use your new… abilities.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I quickly said. “Kat is cursed, Twilight. If we can figure out how to use it to our advantage, that’s great. But first we have to figure out just what the curse is. Kat, hold still. We’re getting out of this maze.” She finally stopped walking and let me put my hands on her shoulders again. With a thought, I forced all three of us into a sunny pasture, a place I was very familiar with from a past life.

Kat gasped when the maze disappeared and took a few steps away from my hands to ensure she wouldn’t disappear again. When she stayed in place, the entire sky turned gold and she turned back to face us with a toothy grin. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Happy to help, as always,” I said. “Tomorrow, get some gloves and see if touching things through those still causes the effects. Then get with Twilight or Fleur and start experimenting. I’ll start helping as soon as I get back. I’m gonna need your skills soon, Kat. You can get through this.”

“...With your help, I know I can,” she said with a nod.

Twilight smirked. “It’s nice to see the two of you learning the true magic of friendship.”

“Thank you for showing me the way, Twilight,” I answered, doing my best not to sound sarcastic. She actually gaped. “Kat, we’re gonna let you get some rest. It sounds like you need it. I’ll check in on your dreams every few hours to make sure you’re still having good dreams.”

“Thank you, my lady. I won’t let you down.”

“I know,” I said with a smile. “Come on, Twilight.” I stepped out of the dream. Twilight was just a step behind me.

“I’m proud of you, Nav,” Twilight said when we were alone again.

“Neat. Do you want your luck back now, or should we wait until we can do it in person?”

“It’ll be more fun to get it back in person,” she said with a smirk. “From the sounds of things, you still need it a lot more than me, though I really hope I don’t get arrested again. I’ve already come up with a few ways to celebrate your return…”

“I can’t wait,” I dreamily sighed. “Though no offense to you, I’m looking forward to seeing Taya even more.”

“I understand. She’s nowhere near as cute as me, of course, but she has a filly’s charm.”

“Gonna have to disagree with you there, Twiley,” I said, booping her on the nose. “She’s much cuter than you are.” That made her pout. “But you’re sexier.”

“...And prettier?” she hopefully asked.

“She’s a teensy bit prettier, but you’re a lot more beautiful. I hope that’s enough.”

She smiled and nodded. “That’s plenty, thank you. Would you… perhaps care to return to my dream, Navi? You can keep my luck for now, but I wouldn’t mind kissing a few other parts of you…”

“After you,” I said with a wide smile.