Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Chapter 43: Still Alive

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html>The Behemoth came to Canterlot

The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

First published 26th of April, 2020

And everything changed.

It was a pleasant summer day, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. The air was clear, and the Sun shone bright. Everyone in Equestria who'd been there at the time remembered that day, and they all remembered it like that. And not a single one could ever forget the day when the Behemoth came to Canterlot, and everything changed.

Ring a Prayer for the Falling

The sky was clear and the air was still, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot, and the sound of its steps over the mountain echoed in every street and through every window and door.

No pony dared speak, as the Behemoth walked through Canterlot, and the shadow it cast made the citizens shiver and the fountains freeze and flowers and plants close up as if it was nighttime.

And the souls of the living shrieked as they were ripped from their earthly shells and carried along with the storm, and the souls of the dead were raised alongside them and all they headed to shatter against the Behemoth.

Ripples on a Crying Mirror

'Where were you, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot?' became customary to ask. 'Where were you on that bright summer day when the Behemoth came to Canterlot?' or, perhaps, 'What were you doing that sunny afternoon, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot?'

It was a conversation starter. A way to get to know each other. Something every pony, every creature shared. Something everyone could relate to. Friends would ask it one another, colleagues would bring it up during breaks, family members would worriedly write about it.

Some, of course, didn't have an answer for that. Some hadn't been born yet back then. Some were too young to remember. But of those who had been old enough, everyone remembered exactly what they were doing as the Behemoth walked over Canterlot. Everyone remembered that day.

In the Dead of Dawn

The Everfree had grown restless in the months after the Behemoth's arrival. One could not walk inside it without hearing a commotion all around themself. There was a nervousness to the creatures and to the forest itself, something that could be felt thrumming up your legs from the ground beneath. Like a subtle vibration, a restless unease.

The forest was used to change. It itself was the product of change, a continuously shifting maze that evolved with time, carefully balanced just enough for its inhabitants to make sense of the pattern behind the evolving landscape, though still rather stable in its outer reaches.

But things wouldn't be the same. Change from inside was what the Everfree Forest thrived on, change from outside threatened to forever shatter the delicate balance of chaos that regulated it. Every creature knew that the forest would never be the same.

It wasn't an easy decision for Zecora, but seventeen weeks after the Behemoth came to Canterlot, she abandoned her house and moved to Ponyville, carrying as much as she could with her. No one was ever able to find her old house again.

Corpse-Watching

The city was in ruins, as were many others. And as with many others, rebuilding was in progress. Attempts at it at least, the early stages, digging through the rubble to find anything of value, moving things out of the way so it was possible to pass through. It was a slow process, and one not many enjoyed.

But it was a necessity, and there were always those willing to help. Not always out of the goodness of their heart though. It wasn't unheard of for some to keep what they found for themselves, and perhaps it wasn't unusual either. But at least the rubble was moved, and work moved on.

It was in one of those circumstances that the first scale was found. The first recorded finding, at least. Of course, no one knew what it was at the time, all they knew was that they'd never seen anything like it. And so, of course, everyone could guess it was there because of the Behemoth.

This caused quite a bit of controversy, at the time. Some wanted to get rid of it. Some wanted to study it. Some didn't want to even acknowledge it was there, and a few were rather interested in getting a good look at it. But, of course, the final decision came to the pony who'd found it. Though, arguably, only because the mare whose house he'd found it in was all in favour of getting rid of it.

Stone Brick, on the other hoof, happened to be among those interested in keeping the thing for himself. If nothing else, he thought it looked pretty, with its oddly glittering colour. He recalled quite well how he'd first found it, and how he'd not been the only one there.

There had been another stallion. Both of them were there to steal. Both of them knew they were there to steal. And so, of course, both of them had to pretend they were there to help. It had been only by luck that Stone had happened to spot the scale before the other. It had felt like the thing was calling for him, and luckily, it had fit beneath his hat. A quick sleigh of hoof had been all it took to hide it while the other was turned.

And so the first scale was found, back when they weren't yet even known as scales. A few more popped up around Equestria before the term came in use, after one was sold to Princess Twilight. Selling did seem to be the only use they had, but Stone didn't sell his. He felt there was something more there. Something to uncover.

And so much did that thought gnaw at him, that Stone Brick left the city a few months later, headed to the castle where Princess Twilight was said to be studying the scales.

Startracking - Part 1

Applejack was out in the fields when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. Working on the orchard, taking care of the apple trees. Canterlot was in sight, but it still took her a while to realise something was off. At first, all she noticed was a little shade covering the fields, but she assumed it was merely a passing cloud. Distant as she was, the Behemoth's shadow wasn't as cold over her as it was over Canterlot.

But then came the steps. She thought it was an earthquake at first, as unusual as it would have been, what else could have caused something like that? But there was something off about it. It had a rhythm, a cadence, it stopped and started back up again, like a series of blows against the earth itself. She'd never felt anything like that, not even a dragon's steps could compare to it.

Another shock came, stronger than the last, and all fruits still hanging from the trees were knocked off their branches. Her first instinct was to look towards the farm, suddenly worried the buildings could collapse if things kept up. Then, as her eyes darted around to find some sort of explanation, she looked up to Canterlot, and a shiver ran down her spine.

The silhouette stood out against the sky, framed by the light, half-translucent and seemingly fading in and out, subtly shifting in shape. It was massive. Larger than anything Applejack had ever seen, and she'd walked around the Dragonlands before. That she could still spot it all the way from Ponyville was a testament to just how unreasonably big it was. It put even the Tantabus to shame, never mind dragons or other creatures.

Applejack suddenly felt cold as she gazed at the creature. An odd sensation, not something she'd ever felt, a coldness spreading from inside rather than outside. A flower of ice blossoming in her heart and extending its roots and thorns all the way to her limbs. Time seemed to slow down for her, the sounds of the shaking earth distant and muffled.

There was something about the light that passed through the half-there, half-fading figure. It was like watching an eclipse through a thick glass bottle to shield your eyes, a distorted, surreal tinge to the images on the other side. But they couldn't possibly be that near, right?

Another quake shook her out of her stupor. She was suddenly aware of just how cold it had become in the orchard. Without the Sun's light, while the breeze kept blowing, things did tend to get chilly, but the shadow cast by the creature felt like it was sapping away the heat from all it covered. But she had things to take care of. Running through the trees and fallen fruits, Applejack headed back towards her house, calling out for her family to make sure they were safe.

The buildings remained intact, though in need of repair, and none of their inhabitants were injured. Applejack was glad that was the case, she knew very well the rest of Ponyville hadn't fared as well. The ruined harvest would be a problem, but in the coming months it became clear just how little of one compared to everything else. Still, Applejack never forgot that first day. When the Behemoth came to Canterlot, and she gazed into its shadow.

No-one's Land

It was mostly grey, about the size of a small village, and the fillies and colts liked to watch it sometimes. Some of the slightly older ones, those in the age where one tends to think of oneself as older than they are, occasionally dared each other to slip a hoof inside, or quickly jump in and out of the outer rim. No one ever did though. And they all knew better than playing near it, lest they lose some toys inside it.

It was cold, just to stand at the edge of it. Unnaturally cold. Even in the most scorching of summer days, it still sent chills down creatures' spines that no one wanted to experience. It wasn't safe to drink near it, or touch anything made of metal, and birds and other animals had long since learned to avoid it while travelling. Very rarely, someone came from around Equestria to see it. Even more rarely did they not regret the decision.

There was a section of it, just a bit, that was still inside Canterlot. But no one went there. No one lived in the portion of the city around it, and no one had any interest in getting close to it. A few said the cold grew even stronger there, and though no one bothered to check, no one doubted it was true. The rest of the city was still in use, if not as lively as it had been before, but that area was completely deserted.

Not that there would have been anything to see. All the trees had died, just like all the grass and flowers. The buildings had crumbled and turned to dust. The ground inside it was naked, grey, lifeless and cold. Flat, featureless earth, like the fresh layer of skin beneath a wound. No one had bothered to check how deep it went, but after all the time it had been there for, everyone guessed it would be pretty deep. Trees around it didn't grow on the side facing towards it, especially the older ones, and digging they'd found their roots had died and withered on those sides.

Every once in a while, one of the few, more determined researchers attempted to study it more in depth. Oftentimes someone from Princess Twilight's institution, the only place with any considerable resources for research. And they always failed. And so, for a couple days, citizens were treated to the sight of abandoned equipment right past the edge. Then, that disappeared too. No one knew when, or where it went, no one had any interest in finding out.

One time, Twilight herself had come to see it. She'd brought no equipment, no materials, and no one else with her. And she'd sat there, for a couple of hours, looking at the strange, abandoned, deserted land where the Behemoth cast its shadow. Then she'd left, without saying anything. She hadn't gone to the opposite end of it either. There in Canterlot, where the shadow began, where the Behemoth still stood undisturbed over the city, like the day it had first come there.

Like Tears in the Wind

Rose was out near the edge of the Everfree when she found her scale. Many would have found it inadvisable to hang around such a place, in truth. It had never been considered the safest thing to do even before the Behemoth came to Canterlot, but in the months following and with the evident commotion the forest displayed it was less a matter of superstition and more one of common sense. But she knew the chances of something actually attacking her there were slim, and if her cutie mark called then the risk was worth it.

Living in what had used to be a relatively minor town before Princess Twilight's arrival, running a flower shop had been pretty much the only reasonable path in life for her. She didn't mind, in fact she very much liked it, but it wasn't the only thing she was good for. Her affinity for flowers moved past simply growing and selling the few breeds that ponies liked, past the simple confines of her work. She kept up with the newest studies, discoveries and publications concerning botany, and she even had her own private garden where she kept more exotic, less common breeds.

Most of all, she understood flowers. The same way Fluttershy understood animals, or Pinkie understood parties, or Twilight understood magic. It was her special talent, her life's calling. Selling came afterwards, and really, she would have done what she did for free. But the bits were needed, and not unwelcome. But it was precisely because of her talent that she was there. Because most ponies would not have noticed it, but she couldn't ignore it. There was something different about the flowers, there near the edge of town, and it was spreading.

Standing there and looking closely at them, she had no doubts about it. Most, if not all of the usual species found there were undergoing severe changes. Whether mutations or very rapid evolution she couldn't tell, but it was impressive either way. And it wasn't all. She didn't feel she had the knowledge and experience to make a definitive call on it, but a fair portion of the flora she was seeing didn't look like anything she knew of. The geometry, the colours, the size and disposition of leaves and petals, the more she looked at them the more she was convinced she was staring at entirely new sets of species.

Tall stems with blue petals, stubby orange flowers that came up directly from the ground like bushes, grey-green leaves in patterns of seven or nine, thin vines slithering in swirling patterns across the ground ending with tiny pale pink blossoms, and a number of other plants that were like nothing she'd ever heard about. She would have liked to study them more closely, but she knew better than to go smell or taste a plant she wasn't familiar with. Especially one rooted so close to the Everfree. So she was left with sight, and so it happened that she spotted something else there. Certainly colourful, but distinctly not a flower.

So it happened that Rose found her scale. And so it happened that Princess Twilight, just a few days before the news of the other findings reached her, was made aware of the scales' existence and had a chance to study one for herself. Rose had brought it along, later that day, as she'd gone to tell Twilight of her discoveries at the edge of town. It had felt odd, when she'd found it, like the thing was calling for her. And odd leaving it to Twilight, even if it was the right thing to do, almost like she should have kept it as hers. And odd still, when Twilight had given it back to her, like a weight had been lifted off her chest.

She would spend the following months helping the princess study the changes in the flora around the town, and learning quite a bit about the matter simply by virtue of being there. So, almost by accident, Rose became one of the founding members of Princess Twilight's research institution, and perhaps the single most knowledgeable expert in the field of post-arrival botany. While she did not forget about it, that she'd also come in possession of a scale, on that day, became a rather secondary fact in the course of events. That is, of course, until Twilight made her first major breakthrough when researching the scales.

I am the Fury in your eyes

Ruins always looked different from up there. Sat on a cloud, drifting by as the wind carried him along, watching the world stretch out below him. It was all he could do, most of the time. Just watch.

There had been a time when things were different. Very different. Before the Behemoth came to Canterlot, others were watching him. It was kind of funny, in a way. Kind of ironic. But after the Arrival, there hadn't been much if any space for big shows and sporting events. And so he was left on the sidelines, watching.

He'd helped, of course. When he could, how he could, he'd always tried to help. But the thing was, really, there was only so much he could do. He knew his limits. He wasn't the strongest, he wasn't an expert on anything beyond his own field of work, he could only help so far. And that annoyed him, very much.

Not the lack of attention. Not being put on the side. He wasn't that kind of pony, he knew the world had far more important things to focus on. But that feeling of powerlessness, that knowledge that all he could do was watch. He was one of the best in his field, but in the world as it was, that was useless. He lived in a world that didn't need him anymore.

That had led him to quite a few moments of reflection. Were all cutie marks equal? Were there ponies out there whose entire purpose wasn't needed by the world around them, leaving them stranded and alone? The best answer he'd managed to give himself was that he'd not been useless when he'd found his talent. Not in that version of the world. And in the new one, the one he lived in now, ponies wouldn't get a useless talent. The world wouldn't produce them.

But he was not an expert, and perhaps he was too old to study such things. Sometimes, he did wonder about going to Ponyville, to Princess Twilight, to maybe study something there, anything useful. But he knew he didn't have the motivation for it. He'd never been good with books. He was good at flying fast, and that was about it.

And so he watched. Absent-mindedly, trying not to think about it, trying to ignore the burning frustration at being forced to just watch the half-destroyed remains of towns across the country while he couldn't do anything about it. Maybe he would go to Princess Twilight. Maybe... Maybe just to see the castle there, maybe just to talk to Rainbow.

Lazily, with no real motivation, he pushed his cloud in the vague direction of where Ponyville was supposed to be. Staying low, close to the ground, just in case he met someone worth talking to. And as chance would have it, he did meet someone. A unicorn, watching the road from the edge of town, and staring at a map.

A unicorn who was planning to go to Ponyville, too. To deliver a message to Princess Twilight, about something they had found while clearing out the rubble. A message that would have been sent by magic, but as it seemed, the spell just refused to work, not unlike others. Soarin''s wings itched as he listened to the unicorn. Yeah. That was something he could help with.

A Brief History of Terms: Behemoth

As with many things, it was Princess Twilight who first utilised the term Behemoth to describe the creature. As with many things, the term came from a book. It had been used, in ancient times, to describe a large terrestrial creature, by a tribe or a species living somewhere roughly near the location of Chrysalis's old hive. Probably. Centuries by the dozens had muddled the waters and there simply wasn't an original source of information to study, rather a multitude of reports all far more recent than the time they talked about.

It was, for example, impossible to tell who exactly had used the term first. Was it a tribe of ponies? Or a different species? No way of knowing. All the texts said was that ponies had learned of the creature from a population of sorts. It wasn't possible to say whether or not the creature had been real or simply a myth, either. The population apparently told stories of it, and goodness knew what that actually meant. Reports agreed that no one had ever seen it, but then again, there were no mentions of ponies travelling in that territory, just of the exchanges that happened at the border.

The description itself of the creature was weird. Rather lacking in many aspects, oddly specific in others, at times contradictory across different sources even from the same time period. The only thing everyone agreed on was that it was big. How big, though? Some said like an elephant, some said like a mountain. Some said the earth shook beneath its steps, other talked about being able to mount it just by jumping off a tree. Some theorised it was in fact just a giant tortoise, while others spoke of horns or tusks or claws.

The name too was of debatable origin. Between the culture the name came from likely having spoken a different language, the shakiness of the translation process, and several instances of transcripts where the pony working on them clearly thought they knew better than the one who'd written the original and had tried to correct perceived mistakes, never mind the language differences across hundreds of years, it was anyone's guess how much the name was actually the right one anymore. It might have had a meaning, at some point, but all that was left was a set of sounds rearranged through time.

Still, it had been a fitting name. Perhaps even more fitting given its mysterious origin. Whether or not the thing in Canterlot was the Behemoth of legend, Twilight had no idea, but it certainly fit the description. Some versions of it, at least. And so, she'd called it that. A large creature, its steps enough to shake the earth, that had come out of nowhere and settled itself in Canterlot, forever changing all of Equestria with its mere presence. Some had argued that perhaps it was a construct, not a creature. No one had dared go near enough to check, so the name stuck. It had a nice ring to it, most ponies found.

Startracking - Part 2

Rarity was there, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. Not exactly where the Behemoth stepped, of course, but she was close. Very close. She was in her boutique, talking with Sassy, making sure every order would be on time for the next event and already planning the one after that, when suddenly the ground had trembled. Just briefly, just a little, but it was a worrying thing. Canterlot was not known as a town prone to suffering from earthquakes, it would not have been wise to build a city on the side of a mountain if that had been the case in the area.

Then the second step. The second quake, a little stronger, lasting a little longer, and then another pause. Rarity had looked at Sassy, then the two had dashed towards the exit, right as the third step had come. The walls creaked, cracks appearing in them, a little rubble falling from the ceiling. Enough to make the unicorns stop for a moment, to make sure everything was alright. The fourth step came, and made it clear the building wouldn't last forever. The fifth shattered the glass windows, just as the two had reached the door, and the sixth came as they walked outside, while inside the stairs collapsed.

And that's when they saw it. Having been inside a building, they'd had, like many others, no way of knowing what was going on. But they, unlike many others, came very, very close to the creature. It was right there, as much as it could be said to be there, its odd and flickering translucent form fading in and out just mere metres ahead. Rarity's breath was taken away as she looked up, then higher still, and still she could not spot the end of it. It had been walking down the street, with one of its legs at least, and had it been just a few metres to the right it could have stepped on the building itself.

Rarity would have remained stuck there, petrified by shock, had Sassy not dragged her away in the direction opposite to the one the Behemoth was walking towards. And so brief was her time spent near the creature, and so filled with adrenaline, she did not even notice the cold chill it sent across her skin to be so close to it. The two unicorns then rushed and dashed across the ruined city, following the trail of wreckage left in the Behemoth's wake, running with no direction as the ground shook harder and harder with each step of the creature. Only when they reached the park did they stop, far enough from buildings to be safe from any of them collapsing.

It would be unfair to say there were no pauses in their running though. Rarity did stop, briefly, on more than one occasion, to ensure ponies safely left buildings, and to otherwise help others make sense of the chaos around them. And when they all reached the park, and none showed signs of injuries, and all turned towards the impossibly tall shape of the Behemoth, only then did Rarity finally let herself go and dramatically pull out a couch to collapse on. And there she wondered to herself, about the mysterious creature, about what would happen next, and about what the uncertain future might hold for all of them.

Cracks in the Light

She sat at the edge of the cave, studying the pattern of cracks on the ground just outside. It looked stable enough, and with a rather clear path through it. Safe. But was it worth the risk? There was nothing in sight. She could try to scout the surroundings, but for how long? If she found nothing, and came back, it would be a waste of energies. And worse, what if she strayed too far in search of something, and the pattern changed, leaving her trapped?

She weighed her options, throwing a backwards glance at her supplies. She still had food for a couple of days, definitely enough to make it until the next major shift. If she played her cards right and was careful, maybe enough to carry her until the one after that, too, in case the next one brought nothing good. But if that left her stranded too, then she would be out of luck. No more food, no more ways to get more.

What were the odds of the next shift screwing her over? Heh. Knowing that would have made things a lot easier, but there was no way to tell. Not as far as she knew, at least. So it really was just about making a guess. Stay inside, wait, hedge her bets by making sure she'd have a second shot if things went poorly next round. Or go now, while she could, and hope to find something, and if that failed hope luck would be on her side when the next shift came.

It was a solved problem, in a sense. There was a correct course of action. It wouldn't necessarily ensure her survival, but it would give her the best chance. The results of the next shift remained unknown, and would still dictate how she would fare later on, but the world outside the cave was set. It was there. Just knowing whether or not she could find something would have made all the difference, and solved her decision.

But instead, she couldn't know. And that drove her nuts. The kind of aimless rage that couldn't be unleashed on any target, and ended up feasting on the one feeling it in the first place. All because of those light cracks. There could have been a fruit tree, right there, not eight metres away from her cave, or a patch of grass, or a banquet table filled with cakes, and she wouldn't see it! She couldn't see it. Because there was a crack there, meaning a blade of light shot up from the ground and covered whatever was behind it like a curtain.

She could, at least, take minor solace in the fact that there probably wasn't food there. It was most likely just another barren chunk of grey ashes. There could be food, yes, but the chances were slim. Very slim. If she extended her gaze, though... The cracks and lights hid everything past a certain distance, but what were the odds of there being something behind them? And how long would it take her to get to them?

About ten minutes or so, to get there. In half an hour, she could be way past that point. The cracks wouldn't shift for at least two hours, she would have time. But it would wear her out, as walking near the cracks always did. And... And the thing was, yes, there could be something out there, but what were the odds of her finding it? That was the real problem.

She couldn't see anything from the cave. So if something was there, either it was far, or it was small. And if it was small, there was a very, very large chance she'd miss it. Her visibility would be constantly hindered by the cracks, and while she could walk a fair distance she could only cover a rather small amount of the fields before her in terms of area. One wrong turn would mean entirely missing any potential resources she might find, and a wrong turn was far more likely than a right one.

So, well... It seemed, unfortunately, the wise thing to do was also the frustrating one. Wait there, do nothing, don't waste her energies. Hope things would be better the next time around. Or the one after that. It was... It was hard to describe, actually. Would she have rather gone out to find nothing? Of course not. But staying inside wasn't pleasant. Feeling powerless, at the mercy of chance and luck, was not pleasant. But it was her situation, no matter what. Better make peace with it and pick her best option. And so she waited.

HhHhH

Zecora set the tiny blue bottle back on her desk, and caught herself staring at the upside-down view of the world on the other side. It always gave her a sense of childish amusement, for whatever reason. A little thrill of wonder. It was nice.

But she didn't have much time to spend on staring at the world through a bottle. She had experiments to run, and there was research to be done, and while she wasn't in any particular rush it would still be for the best if she got through it all efficiently. She quickly scribbled down the results of her last test. It was an entertaining activity, at the least.

And it was no wonder she'd been picked up for it. Chemistry was a lot like alchemy, and ever since the Behemoth's arrival the line between the two had been muddied. And when ponies said that, what they really meant was that the already slim confine separating the disciplines had been shattered like a window being hit by a train, and what was left was more of a box containing the mangled remains of the two in a state so messy it was no longer possible to tell what pieces belonged to which subject.

And so, testing. The main point of separation, ideally, was to classify reactions as belonging to one category or the other based on whether or not they released magic as a side product. That was why the occasionally buzzing mana detector was there on the table. Of course, testing everything would be an absurdly long and complicated process, so for the moment the tests were more focused on the individual results than on any bigger picture.

Zecora was rather glad she could be helpful. She would have liked to help more, of course, but unfortunately her potions could only help so far now that at least half of them didn't work right. Some had at least the decency to do nothing, but the charred hole left in the floor of the last laboratory she'd been using had taught her it was safer not to try them all out. Just in case. It was safer to do more basic testing first.

Twilight had done a very impressive job, setting up her institution. She'd given ponies something they could trust, something stable they could hold on to. A beacon to remind them that not everything was lost despite the turmoil around them.

And she'd also done a great deal in terms of research, and the quality of it. The sheer amount and rate of new discoveries being made between the walls of her castle was astounding, the institution as a whole was buzzing with creativity. It was partly because of how much yet uncharted territory there was to explore for science after the Arrival, no doubt, but even still it was impressive.

Zecora herself found the environment to be rather pleasant, as well. The other creatures there were all extremely nice, perhaps as a result of the shared hardship of the reality around them. In particular, the zebra was fond of that red-maned mare going by the name of Rose. They were considering the possibility of carrying out a set of shared experiments, to verify the potential alchemical applications of the newly discovered species of flowers and plants Rose was cataloguing.

Zecora was also rather interested in that oddly reflective trinket the mare kept tucked in her mane. She hadn't gotten a chance to ask about it yet, though. Maybe during the next lunch break. But for the moment, more testing. She picked up a red bottle and flipped the page on her notes, then began to experiment anew.

Ad Astra

Stone Brick laid down his pillow at the edge of the cliff and then sat on it, looking down at the wasteland hundreds of metres below as he sipped from the bowl of soup in his hooves. It was mostly dark grey, down there, with some red in places. The path a river had used to run through was still visible, but the water was all gone, and all that was left of the trees in the area were a few charred stumps and consumed branches.

He was no expert in geology, but as far as he understood it, the place must have always had all that lava beneath it. The Behemoth's arrival had just moved things enough for it to come out. Either the chunk of land he was on had risen or the one in front of him had sunk, and then all that molten rock and liquid fire had bubbled up from the ground and burnt almost everything that was left down there.

There were still a few lava pools, scattered around. They looked rather pretty from up above, he had to admit. And they weren't the only thing there, apparently, which was why he was staring at the scenery. Well, that, and the fact he had nothing better to stare at. The trees behind him were rather monotonous, and his tent wasn't exactly a sight to behold. Plus, he'd get to see the sunset too.

Just as he was taking another sip of his soup, it happened. With a sound halfway between a hiss and a splash, a tall jet of water shot up from the ground far below, and then crashed back down. So it was true. He'd heard about such a thing in some parks across Equestria, back when he was a colt, but he'd never actually seen one. So they really were a thing there too, now.

That was good to know. At least he hadn't taken that deviation for nothing. Not that it would have particularly mattered, actually, the path that passed from there was just as long as the other and seeing the lava pools alone would still have been interesting, but he was still glad he got that on top. Finishing his soup, he kept staring, and soon enough a second jet shot up some distance from the first.

He sat there, watching the Sun go down past the horizon as a few other geysers occasionally went off, then got back to his hooves and took the pillow back to his tent. The night would get cold there, and it was probably for the best if he got inside quick. Not too cold, maybe, but still unpleasant, and besides he had to get up early in the morning. Closing the entrance, he sat inside.

The road to Ponyville wouldn't cover itself, he reminded himself as he stared at his map. It would still take him a couple of days at least to get there, provided everything went well. But he did have supplies for about twice as much, just in case. Lying his head on the pillow, he took a long look at the scale he'd left tucked in a corner of the tent, then closed his eyes. He'd get there soon enough. He just needed to keep going.

Burn Out the Stars

It was a wonderful piece of silverware, Celestia considered, as the shiny grey metal tool glittered in the golden glow of her magic hold. Truly a beautifully crafted instrument. The fine engravings alongside its surface had been carefully carved in with marvellous precision, the geometric patterns pleasant to the eye but not too prominent or wide or deep, as to not be a distraction to the touch should a pony without magic have to hold it. The metal itself was some of the finest, a flexible but sturdy league of steel with inserts of gold in a weaving pattern reminiscent of wheat.

It also cut wonderfully well into her cake.

The alicorn brought the tiny bite at the end of her fork to her lips, quickly wrapping them around it as the morsel of sugary deliciousness melted inside her mouth. Cream, mostly, but with just a hint of cherry laced into it. Just the right consistency for it to disappear inside her mouth without the need for chewing, while still not leaving her unsatisfied, still having a certain weight she enjoyed feeling over her tongue before it disappeared.

It was a very nice cake. She would have to make sure the restaurant was paid for it, as they'd insisted she eat there for free. She expected it would be a fair amount of bits to cover for the whole thing, she was eating in the town's priciest restaurant after all.

It wasn't hard to see why their prices were so high though. The food was fantastic, the service impeccable, and the view...

Celestia looked to the side, past the confines of the relatively tiny disk of floating rock her table was seated on, away from the set of crystal staircases connecting it to other such disks below it and further inland and eventually leading back to solid ground. She looked instead towards the larger floating crystals not too far from her, and at the rivers of water that streamed around them in all directions, and at the way the light was caught and warped by them as the Sun set behind them.

Yes. The view was certainly worth it.

Bit of a shame about the ponies whose houses had used to sit on the portion of land that had suddenly decided to ignore the known laws of physics and scatter into tiny floating fragments hanging in the air between land and sea, but at least it made for a very pretty piece of scenery.

Celestia took another bite of her cake.

She'd need to invite Twilight there at some point. The younger alicorn would surely enjoy it.

Startracking - Part 3

Pinkie Pie was in Ponyville, inside Sugarcube Corner, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. Baking a cake. The least active part of the baking process, that being the waiting done while the cake sat in the oven. So to compensate, she was also mixing a bowl of butter and sugar to use for her next cake, balancing it atop her head as she stared at the cake through the stove's tinted glass.

The following trembles and quakes came as a surprise to her.

Now, if talking about any other pony and almost every other creature, that would have been nothing unusual. Of course the surprising and unforeseen event would come as an unforseen surprise to them. But Pinkie was most definitely not any other pony.

Despite her appreciation for surprises, she rarely found herself on the receiving end of one, at least when considering physical events. Creatures could still surprise her, yes, despite her meticulously detailed folders of data on them, but the purely material consequences of their actions were generally something she could see coming in advance. The sudden and repeated shaking of the earth definitely fell closer to falling objects than surprise birthday parties, and therefore in the realm of things her personal brand of clairvoyance was prone to picking up on. Especially so when it was something so massive.

But instead she'd felt nothing. Not a twitch or a shiver or an itch or a quiver or a tingle running up or down her spine or ears of legs or tail or nose or eyelids or any other part of her pink equine body. Not a single thing that could hint at what was coming.

This of course caused quite some trouble for her. First and foremost, it made it rather tougher to balance the bowl on her head. Of course she could have set it down or grabbed it with both hooves, but that would have required also setting down the other bowl that was held in one of her hooves as she mixed the eggs and flour inside it with the spoon in her mouth. And while that could have been set on the floor, by the time she caught up with what was happening the second step had come down and now the other bowls and cakes that completely filled the table threatened to fall off and the bags and boxes of ingredients on the shelves were slipping out and drawers were sliding open and cupboard doors were swinging this and that way and the thrid step came and then the fourth and Pinkie was rushing towards a corner of the room a second and then running to the opposite one the next as the shelves tilted and the walls creaked and the tables bounced and the earth shook and shook and shook.

About thirty seconds later, the room looked like a very large version of a tiny dollhouse room that someone had thrown a set of poorly mixed cake ingredients into, wrecking havoc upon the miniature mobilia. It was, instead, in fact, a regular-sized room, which had been filled with a much too large quantity of poorly mixed cake ingredients.

From somewhere beneath the pile of half-broken wooden panels, wet flour, and cracked eggs, Pinkie Pie emerged, coughing, spoons and other tools in her mane and more frosting than usual splattered across her coat. Eyeing the widening crack in the ceiling and the dust that fell from it as the ground shook yet again, she decided it was best to leave the room and perhaps the whole building.

Outside, once she'd made it past the empty but possibly even more damaged main hall and through the now shattered entrance door, the rest of the citizens in the area and particularly the Cake family were rather relieved to see she was as alright as could be hoped.

And Pinkie turned towards Canterlot, following the direction many a other pony around her were looking in, and her gaze set on the waning, uncertain shape of the Behemoth. And Pinkie thought to herself that it was definitely weird.

Yes, she thought. It was very odd and strange indeed.

Chess; but not really

It was a nice chessboard. A very large chessboard. Oddly misshapen, asymmetric, missing a few squares, and with clearly more colours than necessary, but it was still a nice chessboard. It was indeed a chessboard. That was his story, and he was sticking with it.

It even clearly had the pieces on it. Over there, that tower was - well, that was clearly a tower. And that statue on the other side of the garden, that one was clearly a knight. And that large writhing mass of tentacles and eyes, well... Huh... Maybe a queen? Yeah. Probably a queen.

It was very clearly a puzzle, there for him to solve. Yes, that large building on the other side of town was the enemy king, and indeed the one he stood on top of represented his own. Now he just needed to figure out a way to move that pile of rubble, down there to the left, diagonally to the right and up and then - Oh, oh great, wonderful, the ball of tentacles was moving on its own and had just eaten one of those little duck-shaped decorations that served as pawns. Fantastic. It was one on its team, no less! How was he supposed to plan if the pieces didn't play fair!?

Mad? He wasn't mad. He was absolutely not mad. Just because Scarlet Ribbon said he was mad, that didn't make him mad! She wasn't even a real doctor. Yet. And just because everyone else in town agreed with her, that didn't make her right. Lots of popular books were objectively terrible, after all. The voice of the masses had no bearing on the truth. He was not insane, no matter what everypony said.

Having eaten that shiny thing he'd found inside the river did not mean he was mad. He needed a place to keep it, after all. He didn't have any pockets, and he couldn't risk losing it, and there were animals around that could steal it. And what if he hid it, but then someone or something came along and took it? No, he had to keep it safe. That was why he'd eaten it. Now it was safely with him.

He'd also realised how he needed clothes. He needed pockets. Why did ponies almost exclusively wear either no clothes, or useless and purely cosmetic ones? Pockets were such a wonderful thing. He'd stolen a pair of pants and a jacket from the half-destroyed clothes shop just an hour after finding the shiny thing. The pants were a bit too large and the jacket a bit too tight, and maybe both were a mare's model, but now he had pockets.

There wasn't much in his pockets. A few bits in his pants, a couple chess pieces in his jacket, some of which were broken. But he had pockets.

Meanwhile, the queen ate the windmill. He hadn't actually figured out what piece exactly the windmill was, but not that it mattered much now that the tentacles had eaten it. Oh well. With the queen there he really couldn't win anymore. In fact, it looked like she would be coming for him next.

At least he'd tried.

He jumped off the building's roof, away from the chessboard and the steadily approaching mass of not particularly friendly-looking appendages. He'd be more lucky with the next puzzle he found.

Stairway to more stairs

Soarin' set down the package, and pulled out a map of the region, alongside a compass. He had about three more hours of flying in the same direction, and then he'd be at the Wall. If everything went according to plan, at least.

Not many reasons to expect it wouldn't, but the possibility was always there. He could always get caught in a manastorm, after all. Or, more likely, have to stop and wait for it to pass before he could proceed. Rainbow was just about the only pony crazy enough to attempt flying through one, and probably the only one skilled enough to actually pull it off.

He did like the sound of a challenge, when it didn't involve risking his life, but he wasn't about to do anything dangerous when he was carrying something. Especially not something as valuable as what he had.

He took a moment to stare at the package again. Wrapped in plain light brown paper and slightly consumed string, it could have passed off as ordinary were it not for the emblem of Princess Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark stamped on top of it in pink-purple ink. Of course, one would have noticed that there was more than met the eye either way, upon picking it up.

The metal casing hiding just beneath the paper was rather heavy, its segmented texture very peculiar to the touch. Going by what he'd been told back in Ponyville, it was basically the strongest box in all of Equestria. Multiple plates of magically reinforced steel disposed in a carefully constructed pattern designed to absorb or deflect any impact and blow. It would ensure the contents would remain safe, should the package be lost.

The only way to make it stronger would have been making the box a sphere, but you couldn't exactly shove a book inside a small one and a larger one around the existing box would have been impractical to carry alone.

Not that he was completely alone, he reminded himself. Throwing a glance behind him, he confirmed how Lightning Dust was still there, hovering in sprinting distance, flying low enough not to be seen by those who didn't know what to look for. A security measure he hoped would not be necessary, but the possibility of someone wanting access to Princess Twilight's research results was not one they could ignore.

In case it happened, their instructions were to leave the package behind and rush back to Ponyville. It was near impossible that whoever chose to ambush them would actually be able to open the box, and Princess Twilight had installed a long-distance magic switch she'd use to burn the contents once informed that the package was lost. But Soarin' was rather doubtful that his companion would run away rather than fight.

They would be safe once behind the Wall. Princess Cadence had been warned ahead of time about their imminent arrival, and she'd be waiting for them there. In truth, he looked forward to spending a day of rest in the Empire, and he knew Lightning did as well despite her refusal to admit as much.

So, barring manastorms, barring assaults by wild creatures, and barring any attempts made to steal the package, they still had three hours to go. Soaring picked up the map, the compass, and the package, and slipped them all back inside his saddlebags. Just three more hours.

With a kick from his hind legs, he took off, and began flying northwards again.

Weavewalker

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There and Again - Part 1

Shining sighed, setting his sword down against the cold crystal wall. He took off his saddlebags, took one last look at both ends of the tunnel, then finally convinced himself he was safe and sat down. Rolling his shoulders back and forth and stretching his hind legs, he lay back against the wall behind him and sighed again. His hooves needed the rest, even if he didn't want to admit it. They were getting a bit sore.

His horn lit up. The button holding his bags closed came undone with a satisfying pop, and held by the glow of his magic the little sealed tray of food he'd brought along levitated towards his lap. He clicked his tongue in anticipation, while his hooves worked to undo the silver-grey wrapping.

The shreds of it had yet to hit the ground when the smell of food hit Shining's nostrils, and a moment later the stallion practically threw himself onto the small tray. Goodness, he'd been hungry. Way more than he'd realised. Years of guard training meant he could ignore the need for food for a while and not be distracted by it, but it also meant he wasn't exactly conscious of the fact he was doing it.

Cadence's food was good as always. He didn't mind cooking for himself, but she'd insisted on doing it and he certainly wasn't going to refuse the offer.

He slipped the last bit of food past his lips, staring at the now empty plate on his lap. That had been nice, yes. He lit his horn again, and pulled out a clock from his saddlebags, bringing it up to his face. He could still afford a few minutes, yeah. Setting the clock back inside his bags, he stretched his legs, then placed his hooves behind his neck as he leaned back and began to whistle to himself.

Things had gone well, if boringly so. Nothing seemed to have snuck in the tunnels as far as he'd explored them so far. There would probably be something up ahead, he'd have found it worryingly suspicious if nothing at all turned out to be there, but it probably wouldn't be anything too bad.

He really wasn't sure why Cadence worried so much about him going there. Sure, they didn't exactly know what more they could find, but so far there was no reason to think it would be anything more dangerous than what they'd already found. He'd never come out of it with more than a few scratches, and even in the remote chance things went bad, he could always teleport out of there.

Shining got up. The tray and the shreds of wrapping were levitated back into a separate pocket in his bags, then the bags themselves were closed and slid onto his back once more. He took hold of his sword, and then began to trek down the tunnel again.

That's when a bit of movement caught his eye. Up ahead, on the floor, a darker shade of blue slithering away from him. Another crystal lizard, it seemed. Craning his neck back and forth, he stepped forward, and started to follow the creature. There was no need to rush it. Not as long as it was just one, at least.

Clocks

Twilight sat on the wooden bench in the shop, looking at the clocks hanging from the walls around her. There were a lot of clocks there. None were particularly loud, but all together they made quite the amount of noise. It was at least a regular noise, and after a while it was easy to ignore it, as her brain treated it as just a background to her thoughts.

She unfortunately didn't have much else to do. Just wait, and stare at the clocks. It was actually quite convenient that there were clocks there. That way she could easily tell how much time had passed. It shouldn't take too long. Maybe just a few more minutes before she finally got something else to do beside waiting and looking at the clocks.

They were nice clocks. Some were metal, and others wooden, and they all must have taken quite a while to make. There was something funny in there. About clocks, and the time spent making them. Definitely something to work with. Maybe she could do that. Write something about the clocks. Not then though. Nothing to write on, not enough time to do it. One day, maybe. When it was all over. She didn't exactly have much free time. She didn't allow herself to.

There were a whole lot of clocks there. Maybe she could count them? Maybe not. It would be boring. Waiting wasn't the most entertaining thing, true. But counting the clocks might have been even less entertaining. And she wouldn't have time to count them all. She wouldn't have to wait much longer. She could tell, there were quite enough clocks around her to tell that she clearly wouldn't have much longer to wait.

Why there? Why by the clocks? Not that it was a bad choice. Most other choices, while deemed safe, could perhaps hide some unforeseen danger. Perhaps just to reduce the risks to a minimum? It could certainly make sense. And yet it didn't, not fully. It felt like a justification. It was too peculiar a place for it to be just a matter of safety. No other place was quite like that shop, and clearly it had been picked for a reason.

So, clocks. Maybe she would ask why. It wouldn't take much longer before she got a chance to, she confirmed with a glance at the clocks. What colour was the wall? White? Yeah. It was white. It was hard to spot behind all the clocks. Was it white behind the clocks too? It was probably yellow, or grey, or maybe black, after all the time it had been covered by the clocks. Was the wall really white when most of it wasn't?

Maybe Twilight would buy a clock, one day. A pretty one, not too big, not too fancy. One made of wood, with floral patterns carved on the surface. With large painted numbers that made it less precise when read, so for twenty minutes straight you could still say it was twelve o'clock. And she'd hang it in the kitchen, where she could see it from the table.

A set of clicks, and the door slid open.

Startracking - Part 4

Rainbow Dash was in Ponyville, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. On a cloud, half napping, her mind occupied with nothing in particular. Resting in the shade of another cloud higher up in the air, letting the faint breeze run over her feathers and through her mane. Just relaxing, not doing much of anything.

She didn't notice things immediately. Being on a cloud, far from the ground, being out of the Behemoth's shadow, being far from Canterlot, there wasn't much for her to notice. No cold chill over her skin or vibration running up her hooves, no ground shaking where she stood or buildings dancing around her. So it took a moment, before she noticed something was amiss.

It was the commotion in town that woke her up. The nervous yelling, the occasional scream, the thumping of hooves as ponies ran this way and that and rushed out of buildings and called to each other. Her first reaction was to stand there for a second, confused, looking about as she tried to understand what was going on.

Her second reaction, just a moment after the first one, was to swoop down from her cloud and begin helping others. Understanding what was happening could wait. The earth was shaking and half of the buildings in town were threatening to come down, and she had citizens to save. Dashing back and forth across the streets, she pulled many a creature out of buildings, more than once through the windows, and helped more than a few find each other in the confusion.

Only when every direction she looked in from her hovering spot above the town yielded either dangerous situations devoid of creatures or groups of creatures devoid of dangerous surroundings did she allow herself to unfocus from helping others, and once more let herself question what was happening and why.

That is when, while turning around to look for clues, Rainbow Dash first saw the Behemoth. And her first thought upon seeing it was that it was big. Really big. Which in fairness was the same first thought a lot of other creatures had upon first seeing the Behemoth, and it would have been so for an even greater number of them were it not for those running for their lives either because of collapsing buildings or because of the Behemoth itself.

Rainbow just hovered there, about as still as one could be while bobbing up and down under the beating of their own wings. So. Unreasonably big, mysterious, and seemingly supernatural thing in Canterlot, wreaking havoc all the way to Ponyville and likely across the whole country with its mere presence and steps. The rainbow laser might not work, depending on whether it was intentionally destroying things or it had merely found itself there it might not even be needed.

The sensible thing was consulting Twilight. Who'd probably already know what the thing actually was, being Twilight and all. A lucky coincidence that going to her meant getting closer to the thing in question too. Rainbow cast a last glance around, making sure everycreature was safe, then shot off towards Canterlot in a blur of colours.

There and Again - Part 2

Shining took a peek behind the corner, into the corridor where the crystal lizard had slithered. Did lizards slither? Kind of, right? Either way, it was there now, quietly looking around.

Crystal lizards were not the brightest creatures, but not the dumbest either. It knew Shining was following close behind. But it did not have any real concept of how close he actually was. Once past the corner, he was no longer in sight, and so to the lizard it was the same as if he wasn't there. That the pony in question was near, ready to jump out if he so wanted, did not and could not cross the creature's brain.

They were simple creatures like that. Pretty sturdy though. Could take quite a few hits, in terms of blunt damage. But then again, that was why he was carrying a sword, not a mace or a hammer. Not that all hammers were blunt weapons, war hammers in particular were a far cry from construction hammers and their hits were arguably closer to arrows than punches given the spiky bits and pointy ends, and really- And really, he was starting to rant about weapons. Again. Thank goodness Cadence was at least willing to listen to his rambles when he went on one, bless that mare.

So, anyway. He had a sword. Crystal lizards were actually pretty resistant to cuts as well, but that wasn't what the sword was for. Well, it was, generally, but not in that particular context. The sword was there to dislodge the bits making up the lizard's core, which it turned out was the most efficient way to get one to disassemble. Literally. Yes, a pole arm would have been more efficient, but the cracks were thin and the core fairly far in and the corridors not that tall, so a sword was just more convenient. Yes, he could have had some more specific tool built, but the sword was better in case something else showed up. You never knew.

Crystal lizards were more of a nuisance than a real danger. They were sort of like rats, if rats were the size of a large dog and had razor sharp teeth and claws and crystal plating that reflected magic blasts like a mirror. So they weren't really like rats, except for how they ate supplies. They could probably eat a pony too, though. They never had, but on the other hoof, they'd always found supplies. No one was really willing to test out if they were omnivores or not.

The lizard turned its head towards the opposite end of the tunnel. In a blink, Shining stepped behind it, and jammed his sword right past its armour and into the core. Just a sideways push on the blade, and the creature exploded into splinters of rock and crystal. Shining smiled, and began to walk away. That particular one wouldn't give them trouble for a couple of weeks. It would take a while for it to reform, and a while longer before it felt daring enough to come in that direction again.

They were like timberwolves. Crystal instead of wood, a manifestation of the Wall's magic rather than the Everfree's, but essentially the same type of creature. Which was about as fascinating as it was annoying. The Wall did not have the centuries of history the Everfree did, and the confines of where the ponies' territory began and the wild things' ended were not yet defined. Still, so long as it was only lizards coming that close, Shining supposed it wasn't too bad. Not too bad at all.

At the End of the

It wasn't really a restaurant. It had no set menu, the dining area amounted to a few tables hastily thrown together from planks of wood, the stallion running the place was the only one working there, and half the time you might not even get a plate to eat on. It was more like a place that happened to serve whatever food happened to be prepared that day, at whatever time it happened to be prepared at, all run by the same pony who happened to cook that food. But inspectors had come, they'd checked and verified that the kitchen was clean and the food was properly stored, and so the place stayed open and kept serving whoever happened to pass by.

And that was a good thing. Because that one pony made some darn good food.

They'd never learnt his name, and he'd never learnt theirs. Neither had ever asked. They'd shown up there, one day, soaking wet while a thunderstorm raged outside. Asked for food, no matter what it was. And, darn it, it'd been the best food they'd ever had.

They kept showing up, whenever they could. Whenever they could afford to pass from there, and the place happened to be open. Didn't even need to ask for anything anymore at that point. They just sat down, and a bowl of whatever was being served that day got to their table. Eat, leave the bits behind, wave goodbye as they walked out the door.

Sometimes, there was stuff to drink, too. There was a water pump outside the building, clean stuff, connected right to an underground spring there in the mountains, but sometimes there was something else too. Usually served in the same old glass stein, the bottom so worn out from use and polishing sessions it would have been a hole if it hadn't been so thick. Always nice stuff. Cider, or grape juice, or pomegranate juice, or a bunch of other things. They had no idea how he got his hooves on any of it, and they didn't care.

Not like the food was any more consistent or less headscratch inducing. They were pretty sure half the plants served there didn't even grow in that side of Equestria, much less high in the mountains like that. Maybe the place just had the world's weirdest storage hidden underneath, and he just fetched stuff at random.

The building was old, mossy, the many stones that made up the walls misaligned and sticking out, the roof's cover planks looked like they were just waiting for the first hailstorm to break apart. Inside, though, it all disappeared. The fireplace cast its warmth and glow over huge, rough but solid chunks of stone that made up the walls and floor, and the ceiling's wooden support beams looked like they'd been bought just the other day.

They always enjoyed eating there. Especially after a rough day, especially when it was raining outside. And then, just like every time, they left their bits on the table, the bowl or plate or whatever cleaned from every last speck of food, and they walked out by themself, once more alone for a while in the outside world.

Cry for me, Acanthite

The door was locked. That was not usual. Especially not for her house. She usually didn't lock the door. Especially not in the middle of the day, especially not when she was still inside. But the door was locked.

Well, he would just have to find a way to open it, of course. It would have been easier if she'd opened it herself, but it looked like she wasn't going to. Which was annoying, admittedly, but not the worst. He just needed to figure out how to get the door to open. He quite liked the challenge, actually. He always liked challenges. Riddles and puzzles and such, and that's what that was, no? A puzzle. He always liked puzzles. He was good with puzzles.

So. Details, details, details. Context. Clues. It was about that, no? Clues. Contextual clues. Deciphering the context of the puzzle to identify its elements. It was all about that. Careful observation and deductive reasoning, logical, critical thinking. And he was good at that, right? Yeah, he was good at that. He had experience and such.

Scarlet Ribbon's house had been built thirty years before, roughly. The small town was expanding at the time, after an influx of ponies moving there from the bigger cities. It had been built with wood from the local trees, during spring, finished by the time summer had rolled around. Some twenty years later it had gone near abandoned after the owners had moved again, maybe bored of the quiet life of the town as they were getting older, and five years or so later Scarlet had bought the place, after working enough to get a place of her own. Her parents were proud of her.

There was chip in the white paint on the front wall, two thirds of the way up to the second floor window. Roughly shaped like a square. Clearly relevant, part of the puzzle. There was a smaller chip on the door, to the left, three quarters of the way up. That one looked more like a small triangle. Probably important as well. The doorbell was there, but it made no sound, it had been turned off from the inside. The button still slid in and out though. He liked the button. He liked buttons. They were nice to press.

What more? Well, further back, if he turned around, there was another paint chip in the fence. And on the lawn, a small depression in the ground, likely caused by a mole digging a tunnel underneath. And then the tree, of course, the tree. The branches bare, it was autumn after all, a few of the red and yellow leaves still by the trunk, more wet than dry at that point.

And yeah, he could see it. He almost had it, yes, he was almost there. He could clearly see the connections, those bright thick wires from one thing to another, the yellow one running over the front wall that connected the paint chip with the tree, and the green one that passed beneath the ground and below that depression and had its ends at the two remaining paint chips, and then there was a red one that went up from the button and up to the roof and then-

A drop of water hit him right between the eyes. Oh, it was starting to rain. Well he couldn't be out in the rain, he'd get his clothes all wet. Oh well. Not the worst, not the worst. He'd have to visit Scarlet another time.

He turned around and quickly headed towards the centre of town, while a drop after the other began to pour down from the sky. Such a shame though. He'd almost solved that puzzle.

Map to the Scars

Luna's axe came down, and the silver snake splintered in a shower of bright orange sparks and white-hot dust. It was the third one that night, the eighth one that week, the twenty-seventh that month. She was getting a bit tired of them, to be perfectly honest. There was nothing particularly engaging about hunting them. They were more of a nuisance than anything.

A sound to her right drew her attention. Somewhere behind the cover of leaves and twisted branches, something was moving. She turned, and readied her weapon, narrowing her eyes. Not another silver snake, it seemed. Too small to be one of those. Maybe even smaller than her, judging by how subtle the movements appeared to be.

The alicorn waited, patiently still, ready to strike at the first sign of aggression. But nothing came. The movement seemed to halt completely, not even the faintest trace of it left. Everything was quiet again, as if nothing had happened. Curious, cautious, she took a step forward. It could very well be a trap. But it was just as likely that whatever had been there simply wasn't anymore.

She got right in front of the bush, and still no signs of anything. Very slowly, very carefully, she brought the tip of her axe towards the leaves and branches. And then, just as slowly, she pushed them aside, to reveal the space behind. Nothing there. With a barely audible sigh, she pulled back her weapon, as the tension in her muscles eased just a bit.

She turned away, and gave a look around. There didn't seem to be anything nor any other creature there for the moment. Just trees, and thankfully only the neutral kind. Not that she would have had anything against the friendlier ones, but the hostile ones were far more common around the area, so getting trees that didn't attack was already a plus.

Shrugging, she took off. The beats of her wide wings pushed her upwards as she began to soar above the forest, looking below her to spot any other signs of movement or commotion. There didn't seem to be any, not as far as she could see, certainly nothing major. She'd already dealt with a few, true enough. But she doubted it would be all for the night.

Her gaze turned upwards, above her, where the rest of the forest lay. Her wings pushed harder, and in a few moments there she was, soaring over the trees with her back towards the ground and her belly towards the sky. Thankfully, she'd been there enough times to learn how to gracefully roll around in mid air without interrupting her flight.

Her gaze was once more cast downwards at the ground. Once more searching for signs of strife. It didn't take long, this time, before her eyes spotted something. Trees bending as the creature erratically crashed into them, the heavy thuds of its steps echoing in the air. Axe at her side, Luna swooped down, ready to take out the beast.

Startracking - Part 5

Fluttershy was in the Everfree Forest, near the border, when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. She was going back to her house, after spending some time tending to the manticore she'd befriended there.

Before the ground shook, before any other sign, she felt something was amiss. She felt it around her, a quiet unease, a thrill of nervousness that ran through the creatures of the forest. A jerkiness to their movements, a sudden awareness that something wasn't quite right. Fear, in a sense.

She had just a second to notice it and wonder, then one to prepare. Then the ground shook. Feebly, at first, distant and barely noticeable. But still there. The unrest in the creatures around her came to a halt, but it wasn't calm. Just stalling, the tension building up one moment after the other. A second quake, stronger, as every creature held its breath. Then the third one came, and the stillness broke.

Creatures went running, flying, barking and howling and crying, no direction to their movements, no destination on their minds, only an unbearable need to move, to do something, to get away from something that was everywhere around them. The increasing intensity of the subsequent quakes did not help.

And Fluttershy stood there, in the middle of it all. She couldn't see it all, most was hidden by the trees or simply too fast to follow, but she could hear it. She could hear them, all around her, and through the forest as their cries echoed to her. She had never seen the creatures of the Everfree like that.

Whatever it was, whatever was happening, it wasn't normal. It wasn't natural, not even by the forest's standards. And that had her worried. A different pony, in her situation, might have been concerned about their safety and about the animals running around them. Flutterhsy, however, knew that whatever they were running from would be far more worrying.

But whatever that was, she would have time to evaluate the situation later. In that moment, instead, her thoughts went to the animals in her sanctuary, and she immediately began to run back towards it, out of the forest. If the animals in the forest were afraid, the ones there would probably be terrified, and far more confused about what they were feeling.

Because they would be feeling something. Because even she had felt something, if just for a moment. A normal pony wouldn't, but spending enough time with animals had led her to share some of their instincts, or at least have a better understanding of them. Something she couldn't quite explain, some unconscious reaction about subtle details she couldn't quite point out.

She got to the sanctuary as quickly as she could, and there managed to calm down the commotion. Only a while later, once everything had been taken care of and things had calmed down, did she actually go into town and inquire about what had happened. And as the ponies pointed towards the mountain, and she turned her gaze to follow, she felt it again. That shiver down her spine, as she first saw the Behemoth, and wondered just how much things would change from that moment on.

15 Acres of Broken Glass

Things were going well, ever since she'd found the city. Definitely a whole lot better than they had before. Food was always there, and she didn't mind helping search for more when the need for it arose. And she had a real bed to sleep on, which as far as she was concerned was worth all the inconveniences that came with living there.

Besides, honestly speaking, what was the alternative? Was she really willing to go back to the uncertainty and struggles of the world outside? No. Life in the city had its flaws, its uncertainties too, but it was far, far better than the only alternative they knew. She was safer than anywhere else, she was protected, she wasn't alone. Abandoning it all would have been foolish.

She knew it, just like everyone else in the city knew it. Unrest occasionally stirred the population, but it was always held back by that knowledge. That fact that no matter what, even if things were harsh sometimes, even if the Mirror threatened to give out on occasion, being alone out there would always be worse.

She was afraid that the whole thing could fall apart, sometimes. That someone could use that fact to impose their own decisions over the city by force, and no one would be able to go against them if the alternative was being kicked out. She'd fight back if that happened, of course she would, but how many other ponies there could manage to do the same? How many of those scarce few wouldn't already have been bribed by those in charge at that point?

That wasn't her only fear about living in the city. And it wasn't the biggest one, either. There was something else, always on everypony's mind, even though they tried not to think about it. What if the Mirror broke? If the cracks got past the wall, they'd all be done for. The city would be no more. Would so many ponies even be able to stick together out there? It would be utter chaos. Again.

The Ziz be damned, she didn't have the faintest idea of how the Mirror even worked. Maybe she should study that. She was never the best at studying, yeah, but that didn't mean she couldn't try. Especially with something so important. As far as she understood it, if the Mirror broke there was no chance they'd be able to make another, but maybe there was something there? Maybe...

Maybe no. Maybe she was just annoyed, again, by how useless she felt when it came to that. The brightest unicorns available to them worked day and night on running the thing and making it work, did she really think she'd be able to figure out something they'd missed just by picking up a book? No. Of course not. But at least she'd be doing something. Just to make herself feel better.

Could she really be blamed for feeling like that? No. But it didn't mean she could go out and act on it, just because. She had more important things to do there in the city, there was work to do and food to find. But maybe she would pick up a book on the matter, later on. She did have some spare time to fill, after all.

RRR

She studied the graphs splayed out on the table in front of her, adjusting her glasses. There had to be a pattern to them, right? She hoped so, at least, because it sure didn't look like there was one. Now that, that would have been annoying. And maybe even a problem. She'd need to keep charting them to be sure, of course. Unless she figured out a pattern.

She pulled her eyes away from the table and forced them onto the ceiling. It was so frustrating. Insightful, but frustrating nonetheless. Perhaps she should try to focus on the interesting results, not on those she wasn't having. For example, she'd never expected there to be so many of them. And she'd never thought one would be so near, she was honestly pretty surprised they'd never found that before then.

Although maybe someone had found it. In which case, she hoped they were alright. They probably were, maybe they just went around telling stories about it and no one believed them. But there was no guarantee of safety, it was why they were having to set up warning signs and fences around every one they found. Which admittedly drew some suspicions, but it was still a necessary precaution.

How many more were out there? How long would it take to find them? She had no idea, and it bothered her to no end. If she'd known what she was signing up for years before, she might've decided to go a completely different way in her life. Although... Her eyes wandered to the photographs she kept on her desk. True, the younger version of her probably wouldn't have thought that would be worth it. She had a different opinion on the matter.

Her gaze returned to the pile of papers on the table, pictures and maps and graphs and countless aimless attempts at equations and formulae that had come up short of any solution every single time. Frustration hit her like an improperly thrown brick, only with less nose bleeding and broken glasses. A cup of something that was halfway between coffee and chocolate levitated towards her in the glow of her telekinesis, and she downed it all as quickly as she could.

What time was it? She gave a look at the clock on the far wall. Just a few minutes away from one o'clock. In the morning. Maybe it was time to go to sleep. Leave her notes, take the whole issue out of her mind, hope stress would make her pass out before the caffeine kicked in. It was not the best of plans, but it was better than the one she was following in her attempts at studying the matter. So whatever, right?

Stepping away from the table, even as her mind refused to follow along, she headed towards the stairs. Yeah. Sleep did sound nice, and was probably needed. And maybe even a pause the day after. She had to go out and buy food anyway, maybe she could spend some time outside, maybe not alone. It never hurt to catch some sunlight, after all.

Why Don't You Cry?

Cadence always liked to watch things from up there. As much as there were things to watch from there. Which, in truth, was very little, and that was why she enjoyed it. It was peaceful. No distractions, no worries, she could pretend for a moment that nothing had ever changed. Almost. The unnervingly huge chunk of crystal she sat upon was still an inescapable reminder of the world she lived in. But, at least, not much else had changed up there, between the puffy white clouds and the clear blue sky.

Many of her guards would have had quite a few things to say against her being there. That was why she didn't tell them about it when she went. Most of the time, she even got away with it.

She took in a long, deep breath. Clear, fresh air. That seemed somehow harder and harder to come by back in the city. It wasn't, of course, but it still felt like it. The tension running through every creature down there was impossible to ignore, and that only made everyone more nervous. She did hope things would calm down eventually, once the citizens had grown used to how things had changed.

Shining at least seemed to be taking it quite well. He'd been active helping around town, he'd personally taken part in the process of reestablishing some forms of communication between the Empire and the rest of Equestria, and he'd even started exploring the tunnels, all while keeping up with his royal duties. Maybe he was just excited by the adventurous feeling of change, he definitely was that kind of pony. It did make her worry, on occasion, that he was just growing bored with how their life was before.

Well, no more of that for a while. She would have no doubt preferred it, but it looked like the universe or fate or whomever had different plans for all of them. Far more disruptive plans, and she was genuinely afraid at times that they hadn't seen the end of it yet. Far from it.

That was why she spent time there. On her own, away from the stress and commotion of her life, away from the earth far down below her and everything and everyone on it. She didn't hate them, or even dislike them. But sometimes, it was nice to just let go for a while. Leave her troubles to another time, another space.

Of course, it couldn't last forever. Ponies would notice her absence eventually, and it wouldn't do if she stayed there and ignored duties she had to attend. It really wouldn't do. She could maybe wait a couple of minutes longer though. Just a couple.

She still had a lot of day to get through. And then another whole day the day after, and then another one, and then another one, and on and on and on like that. It was annoying, yes. But it was what she had to do. She could just hope that things would change for the better, when they did.

Deadline

Spending most of your evening out at a party that was only supposed to last about half an hour and then coming home with barely any time left to do what you're supposed to get done by midnight was not high on Starlight's list of things she wanted to try. That did nothing to stop it from happening. She really should have seen it coming, knowing Pinkie Pie.

She also should have probably started to work on her report. Instead of playing cards with Trixie and Sunburst, like she had been for the past hour.

Would it really be so bad if Twilight didn't find anything the morning after? Probably not. She was only being chased down by the stress of her impeding coronation. So really, it shouldn't bother her that much. What's the weight of a single school on the shoulders of a pony who's supposed to rule the entire nation?

Oh. A three. Interesting play on Trixie's part. Risky. Starlight looked at her cards. It might be bait, an attempt to shield an ace. But the points were still worth it. It was Cups on the lead that game, and Starlight set down the Knight.

Sunburst upped it with the King. Now that was annoying. Sometimes, some ponies just got all the luck.

Starlight threw one distracted look at the empty paperwork she was supposed to be filling. Oh well. She wasn't about to stop playing until one of them got a three-point lead over the others, and that could still take hours. It would be fun.

Absent-mindedly, she looked at the card she'd just drawn. The Ace of Swords. She looked at what the others were throwing down. Nothing worthwhile. Yeah, maybe it was worth just getting the points.

Lay all your LLLL on T

It was almost visible there, a faint purple glow in the air around her. And she definitely felt it, it made hairs on her coat stand and her bones itch. It was the most intense she'd ever seen it be, and definitely much, much, much more intense than what was considered safe. If it had been up to Twilight, or really to anyone else, they'd have told her to stop hundreds of metres before. That was why she didn't tell them.

It was a very stupid thing to do, and she fully realised and acknowledged it. But someone had to go there. Oh, they would spend hours and hours discussing what to do, no one willing to put someone else in danger, no one willing to let another go in their stead. And however it ended up going, one of them at least would have to go, and they'd get hurt. So it was for the better if she went instead. She was tougher than all of them, anyway.

Sending a princess wouldn't have made any difference. They could take more, but they were hit harder. Twilight herself couldn't even stand near the border of the safe zone without getting nauseous, and sure as Tartarus that mare would try to go in there herself. She was stubborn like that. That just wouldn't do.

The sound of falling rubble up ahead snapped her attention away from her thoughts. As she carefully kept treading towards her destination, she was reminded of why exactly she liked to get lost in her own thoughts when walking around there. The base of her horn hurt. A lot. Like a piece of red-hot iron jammed in her skull, sending bolts of lightning into her head. Somewhere halfway between a broken bone healing and a tooth growing, only worse than both.

It wasn't even the only part of her body in pain. Just about every bone she knew of started to protest if she moved wrong, and she'd even discovered a couple new ones that way. Her muscles, particularly those on her torso, seemed equally unhappy about her situation, and sometimes made her feel like she'd just completed a full set of exercises.

And then was the matter of her hind legs. That, admittedly, she was legitimately scared about. The hooves could still feel, and the legs a little too going up from there. But everything between her tail and the end of her thighs was dull numbness, and she could just hope it wouldn't give out.

Still, it hadn't so far. Spending more time soaking in radiation wouldn't help matters at all, but she was there at that point, no use going back until she'd found everything she was there for. Thank goodness, the explosion had at least pushed everything away from the centre, so there was no need for her to walk right up to the fissure itself.

Stumbling just a bit down a slope of rubble, she reached another set of broken white walls and tiles and torn chunks of table, housing yet more of Twilight's and her team's research notes and results. She carefully took hold of them in her hooves and slipped them into her saddlebags. Maybe it wasn't so much of a problem that she couldn't use telekinesis. Between the radiation and how much what was there of her horn hurt, magic might have been out of the question either way in there.

Startracking - Part 6

Twilight was in Canterlot, when the Behemoth came there. She was in the castle, in her throne room, pacing up and down the length of the wall as she munched on her bottom lip and reran the same set of thoughts through her head for the twelfth time at least that afternoon alone.

It was the speech she had to give later that evening. Her first big speech as Princess, barring her coronation. Her first post-coronation speech. And despite every sign and previous example pointing towards her being perfectly able to deliver a good speech, and her being perfectly aware of that fact, she still most definitely did not feel like she was going to.

She really had to ask Celestia how she managed to deal with that. Assuming the alicorn did, and wasn't just as much of a nervous wreck, simply good at hiding it. But she wasn't a good actress. Either way, she definitely knew how to deliver a speech.

It was at that moment that something drew Twilight's attention away.

A voice. Barely a whisper, so quiet she wasn't sure if it was even there or she'd simply imagined it. Far too quiet to understand what it had said.

The floor shook, just barely. Twilight felt an itch at the base of her horn, a prickle of electricity in the joints of her wings. The ground shook again, with a touch more intensity, and something akin to a sudden static discharge travelled down her hind legs, starting at her cutie marks.

The Sun's light from outside the stained glass windows of the room got just a smidge less intense, slightly distorted. There was something like a shadow on the other side, like leaves against the sky when you look up from beneath a tree, like clear water you can barely tell is there. Something moving. Something looking at her.

The ground shook, hard enough for the floor to crack and rise in uneven, broken chunks. The windows shattered, fragments of broken glass flying into the room on a cold gust of wind from outside. The entire castle creaked, as cracks appeared all over walls and pillars and crawled upwards like reverse lighting. Screams of ponies echoed through the halls, and all through the streets of the city below.

And Twilight, standing still, gazed at the impossibly large and only half-there creature, as it lifted its head away from the now broken windows and stepped forward again, shaking the ground like an earthquake and tearing down what was left of the room's outer wall.

And Princess Twilight Sparkle watched, frozen there in her throne room, as the Behemoth came to Canterlot, and walked over its streets. As the buildings fell and the towers collapsed. As the creatures screamed and ran and cried. As the ground split open and the fountains froze and flowers and plants closed up as if it was nighttime.

And the souls of the living shrieked as they were ripped from their earthly shells and carried along with the storm, and the souls of the dead were raised alongside them and all they shattered against the Behemoth.

And Twilight watched, frozen there, as the Behemoth stood over Canterlot, and cast its shadow over Equestria. Unmoved, unmoving, silently watching the mayhem it had caused.

And Twilight watched, from the torn and broken edge of the room, through the hole that had once been a wall and now spanned the whole length from one side to the other. Like an actress on a stage, looking at the audience. The whole world outside her castle, and her inside.

And the knowledge that things would never be the same once she stepped out into that world.

The End of This | For Thine is

They met her one winter evening, while standing under a tree. It was snowing, that evening, not too hard but still enough to make flying uncomfortable. They were waiting for it to end, under the tree. The tree was a pine, an old pine, pretty tall. They liked leaning against the trunk, watching the snow fall down around them.

She appeared almost at their side, only a few metres away. To their left, to be precise. Just outside the edge of what the pine's branches covered. Standing over the snow, more snow softly falling over her as a few flakes were caught in her blonde mane. She looked around, almost seeming a little dazed. Then, a snowflake landed on her nose, right between her eyes. She gave a shrug, almost a shiver, beat some snow off her body with her wings, and walked towards the trunk of the tree, beneath the branches.

They just stared at her, silent. Undeniably, a part of it was confusion. But once she walked up to the tree, she too saying nothing, acting like nothing of notice had happened and it was perfectly normal for a pony to be there when she hadn't a moment before, they decided they would stay silent too. They liked the silence, and the quiet sounds of the forest, after all.

And so the two of them sat there, side by side, watching in silence the snow fall against the darkening skies, leaning against the pine's rough bark as they waited for the weather to change.

She met them on a winter evening, while looking for a place to spend some time in. She did that often, when she had the time. Just exploration, aimless wandering around the country. It was fun. It was kind of like travelling, but without the annoyances of the trip, without the costs, without the problems of distance. Distance wasn't a problem for her, it had stopped being one a while before in truth.

They were standing beneath a tree, alone, watching the snow. She hadn't known it was snowing there, or that there were trees. She'd learned to avoid trees, at least. But it took her a while to notice it was snowing. And a snowflake landing on her nose.

They noticed her when she showed up. And they were confused. That was normal. Most creatures were, when she showed up like that. It was why she generally avoided doing it inside buildings. That, and walls. She still wasn't as good with walls as she was with trees.

But even if they noticed her, they said nothing. Perhaps they were really that confused. Perhaps they simply had nothing to say. Perhaps they were mute.

The snow was cold around her hooves as she walked towards the tree. They'd had they right idea, sitting there, sheltered from the snow. The tree was tall, its branches spread fairly wide, the tiny, pointy leaves on them still there. Maybe it was a pine.

She got to the trunk. They still said nothing, and now they looked more amused than confused. She said nothing either.

She had nothing to do, and she was there to kill some time. So she sat there near them, and watched the snow fall against the darkening skies, peacefully relaxing as she listened to the silence around them.

Like Silence Breaking Sound

"I am sure you must be rather confused right now. About how you got here or even where 'here' is, about who I am, about everything that's happened up to this point, both to you and to the world. I assure you, it will all make sense, eventually.

"I have to admit, and I'm being honest, I didn't think anyone would find me so soon. And I certainly didn't think it would be you. But I see it was with her help, so I can understand how things went down. She was one of the most likely candidates for who would find me first, after all. Either her, Princess Twilight, or perhaps Rainbow Dash, those were my guesses. Instead, it looks like it was you.

"No matter. Not a problem at all, really. In fact, I am actually rather entertained by it. It's something I hadn't considered planning for. That makes it exciting. And, as I said, this is far sooner than I expected. I was prepared to wait decades, in the worst of outcomes. I am quite sure this will speed things up nicely.

"I'm sure you're starting to realise where we are, right? You're a smart pony. You've been looking around while I was talking. Look down again for a moment if you wish, I won't mind you taking your eyes off me. And I promise I won't jump at you while you are distracted. I would never do that. As you might guess, I am not one to keep my actions hidden. Although, yes, perhaps there is some irony in that, given I was hidden by them.

"I should clarify, at this point, that this isn't my decision. This whole thing, you see? It's more complicated than that. Far, far more complicated than that. I am a part of it all, but I am not the driving force behind it. Truth be told, I am not sure if there is a single will driving the events here. It seems rather like the consequence of many different, individual parts, and outside the single control of any one of them. Almost a coincidence, perhaps. Though I'm sure some would call it fate.

"Who am I to judge? I see how little you know, maybe I'm just as ignorant. Maybe there is someone else behind it all, pulling the strings. But as far as I'm concerned, that doesn't matter. I'm just here to play my part, and I don't care much who that benefits. I never had much of a choice anyway, you see?

"And I am sure, very sure, that you must be wondering what exactly my part is. Surely, though, you don't think I will simply tell you. I do have the unfortunate habit to talk a lot, true, but can you blame me? It gets rather lonely up here. But you're a smart pony, you know I won't just tell you what you want me to by myself. And you're thinking to yourself how you can force me to, are you not?

"Believe me, that is not something I recommend you do. I won't stop you from trying. But I will make sure you regret it, should it happen. Instead, and I should make it clear I am talking to you, not anyone else who might be listening, why don't you just ask? I'm sure there must be a lot of questions on your mind. I don't promise I will answer everything, but it never hurt to try, right?"

End of Prologue

The Moon shone bright in the sky, lighting his path towards the castle. He'd been travelling for almost a week at that point, only ever stopping to sleep, and given his schedule he should have actually stopped again a few hours before. But seeing how close he was for the capital, he'd decided to simply ignore rest and get there. He was carrying vital information, and a swift delivery was imperative.

Even if it meant harm to him. Something which would no doubt happen. Hours of ceaseless marching with the added weight of his armour on were bound to have consequences, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He was at least very glad he hadn't had to deal with any attacks. Not from ill-intentioned ponies or other creatures, not from monsters or wild animals. He'd gone seemingly unnoticed, staying away from cities and villages, and as far as he knew no one had spotted him.

No until he'd gotten close to the capital, at least. There, of course, he'd been spotted. The guards were keeping an eye on him from the walls, he knew that even if he couldn't see them. Soon enough somepony would reach him and inquire as to who he was. No one was allowed to get near the castle without reason, it was not something the Crown could afford.

Sure enough, a guard descended from the sky to block his path. She wasn't displaying any obvious hostility, but he recognised the standard approach to unidentified ponies. Standing at an angle to block as much of the road as she could, wing ready to grab the sword at her side, legs prepared to spring into action. "Hey, you there!" she barked at him in a raspy tone. "Identify yourself."

He had to hold back a smile. It was always nice to see properly applied protocol. He didn't answer. Instead, he pulled out a sealed letter from his saddlebags, and threw it towards the mare. "That should clear it up." He then watched as she carefully picked up the envelope and opened it, and the way her expression changed as she read its contents.

After that, it didn't take too long for him to reach his destination. The mare escorted him inside the city and past the guards, all of which simply gave a salute as she passed by them. He was getting tired of the walking, and almost ready to pass out, but there was one last thing for him to do. The reason he was there in the first place. The door to the throne room stood in front of him, and the mare nodded for him to walk in.

And so he did. The doors closed behind him with a heavy, metallic thud, and his eyes drifted towards the far end of the room, where Her Majesty sat upon her throne. "My Queen," he said in a low, respectful tone, kneeling and bowing his head. "I bring you the results of the tests conducted in the Empire, as you ordered. Your faithful subordinate wishes me to inform you that there has been a breakthrough in understanding the phenomenon."

Up on her throne, on the opposite side of the room, Nightmare Moon's expression shifted, moving to something almost similar to a smile. "Very well."

Implausible Deniability

"Discord!"

Twilight's voice echoed around the path to Fluttershy's house, and louder still echoed her steps as she made her way through it. "Discord!" she called again, as the rest of her friends walked behind her.

"Ugh. Come on!" Rainbow Dash shouted, rising slightly in the air and looking around. "Where is he hiding?"

"Indeed, where is he?" Discord asked, toying with his beard, a serious expression on his face. The rest of his body slithered out from its hiding spot behind Twilight's neck, and he too began to look around. "Who are we looking for, anyway?"

"Discord!" This time, it was Rarity who spoke out.

"Oh, me?" The draconequus put his paw to his chest, drawing back in surprise. "Well in that case, there I am." He pointed towards a nearby set of two palm trees, and at the hammock hanging between them. On it, Discord peacefully lay, sunglasses over his eyes and a tanning reflector held in his arms.

The group of six ponies looked between the trees and where Discord had been floating up until a moment prior, only to find he was no longer there. Rolling their eyes, they all headed towards his new location, Twilight choosing to directly teleport there in front of him.

"Nothing."

She stopped for a moment, her mouth half open. She ate the question she'd been meaning to ask back up, and instead went with a more simple, more immediate one. "What?"

Discord folded his reflector, the hammock, and the trees, and tucked them behind the frame of his glasses. He then removed his glasses and folded them away from reality. "I had nothing to do with any of this." He gestured vaguely towards Canterlot. "And much to my displeasure, I know just as little about it as you all do."

"Sure, and Fa-"

Pinkie was cut off suddenly, but it took Twilight a moment to realise why. She first had to turn towards the mare, and see her five friends frozen in place, even those above ground. "Discord," she flatly uttered, turning back towards him.

"It's hard to juggle a conversation with six different ponies," he replied while casually juggling six balls, each with the colour and cutie mark of one of them. "Besides, this gives me a chance to talk to you in stopped time in circumstances slightly less dire than the other time. And space. And us." He let the balls fall towards the sky. "But I'm being honest, Twilight," he continued, watching them go. "I know nothing about what that thing is, why it's here, how it got here, I know nothing."

That got him a flat, skeptical look.

Playing with a dial that had appeared in the air and watching Pinkie move slightly forwards and backwards in time, it took Discord a moment to notice Twilight's expression. "Oh come on. You bring the entire country to the brink of ruin three to five times, depending on how you count, and suddenly everyone thinks you're behind the giant mysterious monster that came out of nowhere and is bringing chaos everywhere."

"Yes."

Discord looked to the side. "Okay, fine, it's a fair conclusion to draw. But really, Twilight, think of it. It has not been two months since I last almost doomed us all. Don't you think I have learned my lesson for at least a year or so?" As he said that, he coiled around Twilight, beaming a smile at her.

"Alright, fine." Twilight brought a hoof to her face. "I trust you, and we need you. Will you at least help us figure ou- What are you doing?"

Discord pushed his suitcase closed. "As I said, I know nothing about this. So, since I've decided to make myself forgivable after the recent Grogar kerfuffle, I'm going to do some research for once." He snapped a door into existence, and began looking for a key out of a set he was suddenly holding.

"Research? Wait, where are you going?" Twilight stepped to his side.

"The library, of course. That's where all the knowledge is."

The key turned in its hole, the lock clicked, and the door opened. Behind it, rows of bookshelves stretching out as far as the eye could see, impossibly tall, thin bridges suspended between them to walk from one to the other. Twilight stared, her eyes wide, her mouth wider. Only because Discord pushed it closed with a talon did drool not leak from its corners.

She turned to look at the draconequus. "So you're saying there's a dimension out there of just books? Of all the books?" She threw another quick glance past the door. "And you never told me?"

Discord looked back at her. "If I had let you in, there would not have been an Equestria left for you to go back to once you were done with it. Maybe not even a planet." He looked forward once again. "And there are things in there better left unread." His tone grew far more serious for a moment as he said that. "Anyway. I might take a few eternities in there. I'll try to get back around two years from now or sooner. But in case I'm not back in the next two centuries, leave me a note saying I took too long."

And with that he stepped through the door and closed it behind him.

"-rything is- Hey, where did he go?"

A Rock and a Sharp Place - Part 1

The sunlight took on a green tinge as it passed through the leaves of the trees above him, with occasional patches of yellow cast on the path in front of him where it passed unobstructed between them. He hadn't started moving until about halfway through the morning, having slept in late, but it likely wouldn't be a problem. He was pretty sure he was close to his destination.

The portion of the path he was on went up a small hill, the space behind it hidden from sight. Sure enough, once he actually made his way to the top, the city of Ponyville appeared to him further down the road, still maybe an hour's walk away. He would be there before noon. Then he'd decide whether to go to Princess Twilight's castle immediately, or find a place to eat and possibly stay first, depending on what the locals said.

Speaking of the castle, it really was rather jarring to see it stand out like that against the plain scenery around it. Ponyville was no different from what one would expect when picturing a small town in the countryside, with perhaps a few more modern additions, and the building instead looked more like something out of a toy set. Although, to be perfectly fair, the crystal-tree-castle hybrid would have looked out of place just about anywhere in Equestria.

Perhaps it was more in line with the architecture of the Crystal Empire? He'd only ever seen a few pictures of it though. Never been one to travel much at all, something he was actually starting to regret a bit. There was a lot out there, such a shame he had to wait until it was all in ruins before going to see it. Then again, he would not have travelled in the first place had it not been for the Behemoth. Maybe he would visit the Empire too, one day, even if what he'd heard was not encouraging.

"Hey you, down there!"

Stone Brick suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky, where the voice had come from. Sure enough, a pegasus was there, hovering in the air, staring down at him with his green eyes. "You going to Princess Twilight's castle?"

"How did you guess?"

"Well, it's either that or the School that creatures go through the trouble of coming here for nowadays," the other replied. "You look too old to be a student, and not responsible enough to be either a teacher or a parent, so I figured it had to be the castle."

"Maybe I'm here to be janitor, what do you know?" Stone said back to him, barely holding back a smirk.

That got a chuckle out of the pegasus. "You know what? You got me there. Name's Soarin'. I was going back to the castle myself, I can lead you there if you want."

"Stone Brick. And sure, go ahead. I don't mind the company." The earth pony went back to walking down the hill, while Soarin' floated by just above him.

"So what brings you here to Ponyville, anyway?"

Stone paused for a moment, thinking back to the thing hidden at the bottom of his saddlebags. "Oh. It's a long story."

An Empty Room

"You too?"

It was a simple question, one posed almost innocently. It still left Celestia at pause. "I..."

The pegasus turned towards her, curious, and amused. "Well? It's either yes or no, right?"

Celestia looked down. Down below past the puffy white clouds, towards the remains of what had used to be a city. "I can't honestly answer no. But I really do not wish to say yes, either." Something that looked like a smile but didn't feel like one curled her lips. "So I suppose I just choose not to answer."

"Why?"

Celestia was silent again, for a moment. She kept staring at the city in ruins, munching on nothing, deep in thought. Then her eyes turned upwards, towards the sky, and still for a second longer she was silent. And then she said, "Fear, I suppose. Not fear as one usually intends it, but a shade of fear nonetheless."

"Oh?" The pegasus' head tilted to a side. "And why is that? What is it?"

"I don't know." Celestia's answer was immediate this time, instinctual. Something she'd prepared for, ran in her head many times. "And I don't want to know. I've never tried, and I don't plan to." She looked at the pegasus. "You can see why, I'm sure. You can understand why I would be afraid."

"I can. But I have my doubts it will work forever, Celestia. It's not something you can ignore. The fact alone that you know it's there should tell you as much. You can feel it, and sooner or later it will come to the surface."

"Not if I have a say in it." There was a more prideful, authoritarian note in Celestia's tone, something she rarely used in her ruling days and even less so after passing on the crown. She sat a little straighter as she said that, her wings rigid and spread just a bit wider.

"I'm afraid you don't." The pegasus just rolled around, uncaring of the alicorn's display. "None of us did. It always just happened. How do you think you can stop it when you don't know what it is?"

"I can try."

"Try what? Try to do absolutely nothing? You can't. It will happen, Celestia, whether you like it or not. You're just delaying the inevitable."

Celestia looked away from the other, back towards the ground, and for a few moments she was silent again. Her long mane drifted along the light breeze around them, as the Sun she'd once used to move slowly made its way towards the horizon. Finally, after feeling the pegasus come to sit at her side, she broke the silence once more. "It's something strong. I can feel it. Whatever it is, it's powerful."

The only answer the other pony gave was a tap on Celestia's back with a wing, encouraging her to continue.

"I don't know. It could have been any other alicorn. It should have been any other alicorn."

"Feel like you're getting too old for this?"

Celestia didn't answer, that time. Something that felt closer to a smile curled her lips, and the two of them watched the Sun disappear behind the mountains in the distance.

Welcome Home ([R])

"We can't keep doing this. It's the third one already."

"Conspirators. They had it coming."

"You know it won't be like that forever. We'll run out of those eventually, do you think she'll have us stop? We'll move on to other criminals and prisoners, and when the cells are all empty we'll move on to civilians."

"You keep talking like that, and you'll be the next one lying on that table."

"Like you're not thinking the same."

"I am. But whining won't solve the issue. We can only figure out what it is we're doing wrong, and try to fix that."

"What we're doing wrong? Oh, please. Everything about this is wrong. How do we know there is a way to make it work? What if there isn't? She won't listen to reason, and you know it."

"We'll figure something out. We have to. Unless you want to try running away from here, but you saw what happened to the last pony who did."

"Oh, I didn't see it just once. I pass there on my way here, they still haven't cleaned away the stain. How long has it been? Two moons at least, hasn't it?"

"Maybe. I've lost track of time, my sleep schedule has been a mess as of late. Any plans for the next test?"

"No, and I don't want to think about it. We should just ask for more time and tell her to wait on that, she can't expect better results if the tests are all so close to each other."

"It's conspirators, remember? She doesn't care if they make it through. I'm pretty sure she expects them not to. As far as she's concerned, we're doubling as executioners."

"Don't remind me. This isn't what I signed up for."

"I know, right? She isn't even paying us for that."

"Shut it. She could just convert them. Why doesn't she just convert them?"

"Do you think this is something she came up with on a whim? Because it's not. She planned this, for years. Maybe decades. Why doesn't she convert them? Because then she'd have nopony to send here. Because she'd have to force civilians to come. Because ponies are scared and mistrustful if they know they could be taken away at any moment, but nopony cares if a sentenced criminal dies in a lab or in a prison."

"She could have the whole nation pinned down under her hoof. Every single pony. Why doesn't she do that instead?"

"She tried. She failed. She couldn't run the whole thing on her own, had to ease her grip on the population, give ponies some freedoms. What do you think this is all about? The Guard? Nah. This is about her. She's working her way back up there, and we're here to build her a ladder."

"She has wings."

"You know what I mean."

"Alright. How do you know all this, anyway?"

"Went snooping through the archives."

"And you say I'm the one who risks ending up on that table!"

"The thing is, Starburst, you actually care about not being melted into a puddle as a result of a failed experiment. I, personally, would see it as an improvement."

"I told you not to call me that."

"Alright, Starburst. Wanna go back in there?"

"Do you think the smell has gone away now?"

"I don't think the smell ever will go away. But enough of it should have stuck to our coats for us to have gotten used to it by now."

"Well. Alright then. But you're cleaning up this time, I did the last two."

Painting the Orchids Green

The ice inside the glass rattled as the drink was set down, and Rarity took a moment to look at it. It was always interesting to see the way light reflected and refracted, between the glass, the drink and the ice. Eye-catching. Perhaps she could make some designs inspired by that. At a later time though.

"Twilight said she found another one," Rainbow Dash said from the other side of the table. "A couple hours' trip from here. For someone who's not me, of course. Maybe even three or four, there's mountains on the way and I don't know if it would be faster to go through or around."

"I suppose you're going to check on it." Rarity took hold of the glass and began to drink. It was cold going down her throat, but she didn't mind. She aimlessly turned her gaze towards the window, looking at the snow-covered park just outside. "I'm surprised you even bothered to come here instead of flat-out rushing there."

"There's no reason to rush. I like relaxing too sometimes, you know?" Rainbow replied with a cheeky smile. Her own drink arrived, and she quickly took a sip of the steaming hot chocolate, only to bring the mug away from her mouth just as quickly and fan her tongue.

Rarity couldn't help but chuckle at the sight.

The other threw her a faux-annoyed glare, then blew a little air on her cocoa before trying to drink it again. "Laugh all you want, at least I'm not the one asking for an iced drink in the middle of winter." She gave a nod towards Rarity's own, now half-finished glass.

"Can't handle a little cold?" Rarity took another sip. "Anyway. You didn't call me here just to tell me about Twilight's discovery, did you? I'll have you know, I have a very busy schedule. Right now I could be having a long private meeting with one of the bottles I keep locked in the basement, for example."

"Why do you even keep those locked away if you go grab them so often?"

"I can't have Sweetie Belle going in there. I am not letting my collection go to waste on a teen's drinking spree. That's Applejack's job." Another chuckle, another sip. "I'll take away the lock once they're old enough to appreciate the finer kinds of drinks. Though I might still have to leave it when you come around, I don't think you'll ever learn."

Rainbow Dash just rolled her eyes, as amused as she was annoyed. "Alcohol is alcohol, Rarity. You're not better than me because you get wasted on wine and not beer."

"It's called being high class drunk, Darling."

"Which is kind of like how a gold knife is high class. Less efficient than the alternative, but it costs more. Well, at least you're not like Pinkie."

Rarity shuddered, and gave a nod of agreement.

"Well, anyway." Rainbow took another sip of chocolate. "Like you said, I wasn't just gonna tell you Twilight found another one. I was meaning to ask, wanna come help me out there? I could get there way faster by myself, but I could use somebody else. Especially if it's anything like last time."

Rarity took a moment to think. Her glass lay drained on the table, the ice slowly melting. "Sure," she finally answered. "I'm always ready to lend a helping hand."

Startracking light

Starlight was in Ponyville when the Behemoth came to Canterlot. Working at her desk in the School of Friendship. Supposedly so, at least. In practice, a lot of her head lying on the table was involved, alongside quite a fair bit of her eyelids sinking threateningly low over her eyes. The natural consequences of staying up until late the night before, and she should have known better, but she would still blame it all on Trixie if asked.

The good news was at least there wasn't much work to do, it being summer and all. The less good news was her staying up the previous night had also come at the cost of work she was supposed to do then, meaning her workload that morning was doubled and she was late on the delivery.

Despite all of this, she still spent a considerably large portion of her time lying motionless as she fought back her sleep, and an equally significant portion of the time spent differently either watering or petting Phyllis. In fairness, it was one of the few things she could manage without risks of messing up, given her conditions. And even then, she'd almost given her coffee to the plant.

It is important to keep her condition in mind when considering the events that followed. For example, the way she took far longer than any other creature to notice anything was wrong. Her first instinct, upon feeling the vibrations in the ground, was to assume students were running through the hallways and mutter something against them, too tired to put any effort into her words or to get up and go take a look.

It took a few more quakes, enough for them to get stronger than what yaks jumping out of her door could justify, before Starlight actually realised there were no students possibly there to cause all that. What followed was a very confused attempt on her part to get up from her desk, grab Phyllis, and run out of the room. She mostly succeeded at the last two, but the first resulted in far more tripping and hitting her head than she would ever be willing to confess.

She was about halfway through her second corridor when she remembered that the throbbing cone of pain and headaches attached to her forehead had uses besides moving plants, and teleported outside the shaking building in a flash.

"Is everyone okay?" she asked immediately upon reappearing outside the school and seeing the group of creatures already gathered there. Setting Phyllis down, she started looking around to see who else had made it out.

Sunburst gave a nod, as he too checked to make sure no one was missing. "That should be everyone."

Starlight gave a sigh of relief, and exchanged a brief hug with Trixie as the two of them found each other. "What's happening?" she asked, as another, yet stronger quake shook the earth.

Trixie pointed a hoof towards the mountains in the distance. "That."

Starlight followed the direction with her gaze. "Oh."

Out of The Flood

"Did you see that?!" Scarlet Ribbon asked in alarmed tones, vaguely pointing a hoof towards the corner of the street. "There was a pony there! And then she just wasn't!"

"No, Scarlet. I did not see a pony there." Silver Lace kept trotting at her friend's side, an unamused expression on her face as she stared in the direction the other mare was pointing towards. "Are you sure you aren't seeing things?"

"I'm not!" Scarlet answered back, turning towards Silver. "I swear, she was right there. A grey pegasus with a blonde mane. And then she just went poof -" She stopped, and made a vague gesture with her front hooves "- and suddenly she wasn't there anymore."

Silver stopped and turned to her friend. "Are you sure you haven't just caught the crazy too?"

"Don't call it just 'the crazy', Silver, that's so unscientific," Scarlet half-whined. "It's a real condition and we just don't have a name for it yet. Probably. I need to study it more." She bit her lip and looked to the side.

Silver knowingly raised an eyebrow at her. "Gonna be hard to do that if you keep avoiding him, right?"

"Yeah." Scarlet gave a nod. Then, after a moment, her expression cleared and she went back to looking at the other mare. "But anyway, there's probably no way I caught it, he seems to have gotten it from eating that thing he found and either way a condition like that is probably not contagious and, well, actually, I don't really have any idea if it's contagious or not and it could be and he did come to my house last week and oh no Silver what if it's contagious and he's going to spread it all through the town and what if I already have it what do I do!" She ended the sentence just barely not screaming, and almost shaking the other mare as she held her shoulders.

Silver pushed her away with a hoof and walked back. "Well first off don't come this close to me if it is contagious, what if I catch it too? And don't ask me what you're supposed to do! You're the doctor here."

"I'm not a real doctor yet!" Scarlet clutched her head in her hooves. "What do I do what do I do what do I do what do I-"

A grey pegasus with a blonde mane ran between them, and disappeared in the middle of the road.

The two mares looked at each other in silence.

"You infected me!" Silver screeched, drawing back.

"See? I wasn't crazy!" Scarlet said, at exactly the same time.

They looked at each other a moment longer, as each heard and processed what the other had said. Then they laughed.

"Alright then. Disappearing pegasus mare. Why not?" Silver said as the two of them got back to walking down the road.

"Did you hear about the tentacle monster?"

"I did hear about the tentacle monster," replied Silver in her most melodramatic tone.

"Thankfully the guards took care of that."

"Yeah. Wanna come to my place for tea, later?"

"Sure."

Still Alive

"How long have I been out for?"

The question was calm, almost unemotional. Nevertheless, it still tore the silence of the room like a knife through a canvas.

Tempest didn't lift her head to ask. She didn't move from her position on the bed, she didn't look around, she didn't make any noise. She just opened her mouth, a little bit, and asked.

Twilight's head jerked to the side, towards the bed. There was worry on her face, and relief, and feeble traces of an anger never meant to last, and the signs of more than a few hours of lost sleep. But just a moment later, it was all gone, tucked away beneath the surface. She wore the same kind of calm expression Tempest had while she answered the question. "About a week."

"What time is it now?"

Again, the unicorn's voice was calm, and again, Twilight answered it in the same matter-of-fact tone.

"Pretty late. Just a couple hours to midnight, I'd say." She looked out of the window, towards the stars in the sky. "I haven't checked after coming in here though. I'm not sure."

Tempest took a breath that was just a little deeper than the previous ones. "How long will it be before I can get out of here?"

"I don't know. The doctors will have to run exams on you, only then we'll be able to tell. Speaking of which." Twilight got up from her chair, and walked to a small table resting near Tempest's bed. There, she tapped a small crystal with her hoof, and the gem began to glow purple in response. "They will be here soon. A couple of minutes at most, probably."

"Twilight?" There was a slight, subtle crack in Tempest's voice, and silence followed her question for a while.

Twilight finally looked towards the other mare, whose head was only barely raised to allow her to see the alicorn behind her.

"I can't feel my hind legs."

If any shadow crossed Twilight's face, she hid it too quickly for anyone to notice. "It's the drugs." Then, in a softer tone, she added, "We had to numb the whole area. You wouldn't stop screaming otherwise." She bit her lower lip, and her mask of detachment cracked. "I can tell you, if you don't want to see it yourself."

Tempest didn't answer. She lifted a hoof past her white blanket, took hold of it in her grasp, and pulled up just enough for her to curve her neck and look down.

Then she set her neck straight again, put the blanket back in place and straightened it, and tucked her leg back under it. And then she gave a brief chuckle.

"You think it's funny?"

"In a way," Tempest answered. "Entertaining, I suppose. Seeing it there, and knowing it's your body, and feeling nothing at all. Will it hurt, when the meds run out?"

"Like Tartarus." Twilight began to walk towards the exit, as the hoofsteps of approaching doctors and nurses were heard echoing closer down the hallway.

"Twilight?"

The alicorn looked back, her hoof on the doorknob.

"I'm sorry."

"And I'm glad you're okay."

Next Chapter: Heart | Spades Estimated time remaining: 31 Hours, 49 Minutes

Ring a Prayer for the Falling

Ripples on a Crying Mirror

In the Dead of Dawn

Corpse-Watching

Startracking - Part 1

No-one's Land

Like Tears in the Wind

I am the Fury in your eyes

A Brief History of Terms: Behemoth

Startracking - Part 2

Cracks in the Light

HhHhH

Ad Astra

Burn Out the Stars

Author's Notes:

Startracking - Part 3

Author's Notes:

Chess; but not really

Author's Notes:

Stairway to more stairs

Author's Notes:

Weavewalker

Author's Notes:

There and Again - Part 1

Author's Notes:

Clocks

Author's Notes:

Startracking - Part 4

Author's Notes:

There and Again - Part 2

Author's Notes:

At the End of the

Author's Notes:

Cry for me, Acanthite

Author's Notes:

Map to the Scars

Author's Notes:

Startracking - Part 5

Author's Notes:

15 Acres of Broken Glass

Author's Notes:

RRR

Author's Notes:

Why Don't You Cry?

Author's Notes:

Deadline

Author's Notes:

Lay all your LLLL on T

Author's Notes:

Startracking - Part 6

Author's Notes:

The End of This | For Thine is

Author's Notes:

Like Silence Breaking Sound

Author's Notes:

End of Prologue

Author's Notes:

Implausible Deniability

A Rock and a Sharp Place - Part 1

Author's Notes:

An Empty Room

Author's Notes:

Welcome Home ([R])

Author's Notes:

Painting the Orchids Green

Author's Notes:

Startracking light

Author's Notes:

Out of The Flood

Author's Notes:

Still Alive

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