The gentle sway of the ‘Four of a Kind’ as it rocked down the Trottingham River towards Big Buck was one of peace and serenity. A calm river, even one polluted by radiation, crab monsters, and death, was still able to make a boat into a soothing cradle that could rock anypony to sleep if they weren’t careful. Anypony except for me, that is.

“This book is boring,” the Nightmare said. I had been able to push her to the back of my mind with the help of the book Check had given me, but she still had a way of making snide comments from time to time.

While the voice in my head did not seem all that thrilled at the latest tome I had added to my collection, I was tearing through it with great vigor. Prophecies and Predictions Volume III was all about strange prophecies from throughout history. It didn’t just include Starswirl the Bearded or Clover the Clever, but even a few griffon and zebra diviners. While I wasn’t one to believe in non-magical races having divination magic at their disposal, what I had seen Tekash do and with the compelling case the book’s author made were beginning to slowly move my opinion from skeptic to open skeptic. This A.K. Yearling really did her research.

I was just reaching a chapter on the prophecy of Nightmare Moon’s return, which lead me to turn back to the publisher’s information page and discover that this book predated the Ministry of Image and somehow avoided Ministry Mare Rarity’s abominable book purge, when I heard a loud pop and Compass cry out from below deck.

“Check! The seals broke again and we’re all out of supplies! We have to get to land or we’re going to sink!”

“I see Gigaton,” she said before turning the wheel and steering us towards the docks on the edge of the settlement. “Just keep us afloat for a few more minutes guys.” Looking up at Melody in her makeshift crow’s nest above the sail, Check added. “Mels, fly on over to Gigaton and get some ponies ready to patch us up. Tell’em we’ve got the caps.”

“Do we?”

“Maybe,” she answered. Melody just sighed, shook her head, and started flying off towards Gigaton.

“Stay low to avoid the turrets, Melody!” I called out as she left, thankful that she gave a wave of acknowledgment before getting too far away for me to have noticed.

Using a piece of loose paper from my saddlebags as a bookmark, I stowed Soothsayers and Prophecies away so I could go below deck to help my friends. My first indication that things were not going very well below deck, much to Shadowbuck’s insistence that they could ‘handle things’ and that I ‘needed to rest’, was that my Pipbuck started slowly ticking the moment I stepped hoof in about half a foot of slowly rising brackish water. I watched in dumbfounded amazement as Compass, Light Change, and Shadowbuck haphazardly tried to plug the cracks in the hull while attempting to find buckets to bail out the water. Out of the three stallions below deck, none of them were having much success at any of their endeavors.

“Aria, what are you doing down here? This water is pumping out rads,” Shadow said, looking back over his shoulder at me as he leaned against the wall, trying to stop the river water that was spraying around his hooves and slowly rising to fill up the boat.

“It looks like I should be down here making sure we don’t sink,” I said, sloshing through the knee deep pool.

“Oh? You got a boat repairing spell up that horn of yours?” Light Change asked sarcastically.

“Nope. Just my usual energy strike spell.”

“Lightning is not going to help us here, Aria,” Compass said, gesturing to the water. “Especially since all this will conduct a lot of electricity.”

“Who said all I had was lightning? I’ll just use a different element. Shadow, can you please step aside?”

“Okay,” he said, obliging with only minor trepidation before releasing his cover on the leak. He scowled at the hill as water sprayed over his shoulder and bathed the lower deck in radioactive H2O.

Charging my magic into a blast, I made sure to change my focus from the determination needed to fire an electrical charge to the cold confidence that was required to lower temperature. Flakes of snow and ice burst off my horn in a wide blast, freezing a rather bland mural of permafrost to the hull.

“Since when could you do that?” he asked, stepping closer to inspect the icy patch.

“Since I was ten. I learned how to cast lightning bolts when I was eight, but I spent the next two years teaching myself a few more elements for my energy strike spell.”

“How’d you teach yourself magic?” Light Change asked.

“I had access to the Royal Canterlot Library’s magic section. Energy strikes require tapping into different abstract emotions to use the various elemental properties. You need determination for lightning, confidence for ice, and passion for fire, etcetera. It’s actually pretty tedious to figure out which emotions you have to tap into...”

Everypony was staring at me again.

“Aria moment?” I asked.

“Aria moment,” Shadow chuckled before shaking his head and smiling sadly.

“What?”

“Nothing. Can this hold for very long?”

“Probably not. It’s summer so the water outside will start to melt the ice almost immediately.”

"Alright. Come on, Compass. Let’s let Check know we should make it to Gigaton safely now,” Shadow ordered, nodding towards the stairs before ascending them. Compass, Light Change, and I quickly followed suit while our friendly doctor started giving us all a piece of Rad Fruit.

“I’m good. I’m pretty resistant to rads,” Light Change said, lifting a hoof to dismiss the gift. “We’re probably going to need to dry dock the boat to fix it, but a tar patch should do for a few days.”

“Yeah. We’re too pressed for time to dry dock right now,” Shadow agreed. “Check. We’re clear to make it back to Gigaton. Shipwright should be able to get us a tar patch.”

“Gotcha. Bringing her in,” our ‘captain’ called back as she spun the wheel hard to bring us into the old docks near the Trottingham Ruin’s most secure and largest settlement. Two stallions sitting outside an old boat rental shop near the docks had already noticed us and were hurrying over the end of the rickety old pier. “Howdy, bucks. Ran into some ornery mirelurks and need a quick tar patch.”

“Sure thing, Check. Anything for… No. No dice, girlie.” The older stallion’s sudden change of heart caught me by surprise until I noticed that he was staring daggers at me. “The Nightmare Knight isn’t welcome in Gigaton anymore.”

“What? What kinda bullshit is this? She saved your sorry asses,” Check said angrily.

"And destroyed a house of the Princesses! She's a monster!"

That hurt.

"If the horseshoe fits," The Nightmare giggled with a morbid glee and thoughts of burning them alive flashed through my mind. Shuddering, I shook them out of my head and opened my mouth to speak, but was immediately interrupted.

“What’s going on around here?” Iron Will said as he stepped around the wharf house, a low growl could be heard as he looked down at the two dock ponies.

“Sheriff Will,” the younger stallion said, his voice about three octaves higher than normal. His mentor was not as shaken by the brahmintaur’s appearance.

“She may own a house and you may have stopped us from burning it down, but a heathen like her isn’t welcome here.”

“I’m the law in Gigaton and I say she is welcome here.”

“Miss Nightmare Knight has done much more good than any perceived ill doing, Mr. Shipwright,” Steel Bill added, peering sideways over Iron Will’s shoulder.

“She destroyed Celestia’s Church.”

“Which should have been done years ago. It was a security threat.”

“It was holy ground. Celestia will smite us for her sacrilege.”

“She allowed Shadowbuck's dad, Elder Litwick, and Howling Buck to get murdered from her church so I really doubt she cares what anyone did to that fucking building!” Will roared, finally getting his intended reaction from the wharf master. If I hadn’t seen what an actual walking dead pony looked like, I could have sworn I was watching Shipwright ghoulify right before my eyes.

“Al-Alright, Sheriff. We’ll patch Check’s boat, but I’m not letting her step hoof in Gigaton.”

The cowed stallion still seemed to have some fight left in him.

“But we need to run in and do some trading with Brownstone,” Check said before turning to Shadow and Melody. "Maybe y'all can go?"

“Yeah! We need to go into town,” Melody shouted as she flew off the deck and to the shore, hovering in next to Iron Will.

“It’s alright. You guys go. I’ll stay with the boat,” I said, trying to seem strong, but I felt pangs of rejection that started to open old emotional wounds. Death had helped start to heal through my statuettes, but Shipwright seemed to have a knack at ripping away at them. Yet another ‘home’ didn’t want me. First Canterlot, then Stable Sixty-Three, and now I wasn’t wanted in Gigaton either. With everything that had happened to me, I was pretty sure that I was cursed to never have a real place where ponies would accept me.

“What was it called again? The Bastard’s Curse?” the Nightmare asked. Whether the jab at my self confidence was intentional or not, it didn’t matter. The damage had been done. “They say a bastard can never truly have a home or family. What’s the point in us searching so hard for something these ponies can never give us, huh?”

“Shut up.” I said mentally, imagining that I had just picked up the Nightmare Me, thrown her into the river, and let the current take her away.

“It’s not that easy to get rid of me. We’re a part of each other, Aria. I am you. You are me.”

“You sure, Aria?” Compass asked, looking genuinely concerned.

“I’ll be fine. You guys get your stuff done, and Check and I will deal with the boat.”

They didn’t seem very convinced, but slowly disembarked the Four of a Kind.

“Stay safe. We’ll be right back,” Shadow said, giving me a light nuzzle before following Compass and Melody to shore.

“I’ll be going too. I’m sure I can find some supplies to buy and flip to you Steel Rangers,” Light Change said before jumping to the dock. The old timber creaked under his weight, but it practically shrieked as Iron Will mounted the pier as well.

“I gotta talk with ya, Nightmare Knight,” Will said as he stepped past Light Change. Miraculously, the dock still stood and allowed Iron Will to climb aboard our boat.

“Permission to come aboard, Miss Check?” Steel Bill asked.

“Usually you ask that before coming aboard,” I said.

“Yeah, well, um…” Iron Will stammered.

“Honestly, decorum is not my brother’s strong suit,” Steel Bill said, drawing a groan from the brahmintaur’s main head.

“You ain’t my brother, Bill. Best case scenario, you’re my travelling buddy,” Iron Will said with the annoyance of a person who had said that line a thousand times too many.

“Even if you do not acknowledge our relationship, you are still a brother to me, William.”

“Anyway, y’all are all good, sheriff. I’m gonna go below deck and make sure Shipwright doesn’t try anything funny,” Check said before trotting downstairs to wait for the wharf ponies.

“You wanted to speak with me, Sheriff Will?” I asked before quickly adding, “And Bill.”

“Look,” he said, a bit out of sorts. “I heard you killed King yesterday.”

“You did?” I asked, feeling almost as uncomfortable as him. From what little I knew of the time between when the bombs fell and now, Starshine had helped Will and Bill build Gigaton.

“Yeah. Lilyrose's been flying around spreading tall tales about you and drumming up support in the Royal Flush. She’s using you as a common enemy to keep’em together.”

“Great. I’m a common enemy now.”

“Yeah, sucks a lot. I never messed with King, even when he started pulling this raider crap, cause I knew the power vacuum would be too much for me to handle,” Iron Will explained. He then looked down at me, another question obviously waiting for one of his heads to garner the courage to ask.

“You might as well ask her, William,” Bill said.

“Shut up. I was getting to that,” he growled before finally asking, “She’s also telling everypony she can that you turned into a demon and executed King. Even called you the Maiden of the Stars. Crazy, huh?”

I should have just agreed. Just saying ‘Yeah, that’s crazy,’ would have made things much easier. Instead, my attempted poker face failed miserably as my eyes turned away from the sheriff and to the river flowing around us. I didn’t want to tell him, I didn’t want anyone else besides my friends to know about The Nightmare, but my silence was confirmation enough. Will cocked an eyebrow and curled a lip in confusion.

“You’re kidding, right? She’s just being sensational and playing off of Tekash’s old superstitions and rantings, right?”

“Tekash’s rantings?” I asked, trying to change the subject, but realized I was just drifting slightly instead of actually turning away from The Nightmare.

“He’s been talking about zebra prophecies and preaching against you. He’s been blaming you for everything that’s been going wrong recently.” Snorting with frustration, he added. “Even saying that the bomb leaking was a sign of the doom you would be bringing on us or some hogwash. But that still doesn’t answer my question. Tell me Lilyrose is lying.”

Again, I fell to silence and its affirmation of my dark secret was deafening. I should have lied, but something was holding me back. Maybe the fact that I didn’t want to be the monster inside was stopping me from denying its existence. The whole time, however, The Nightmare laughed and whispered dark nothings into my mind.

“Miss Nightmare Knight?” Steel Bill asked softly.

“Not a demon. Shadow and Compass think it’s a mutation from when I got blown up by those balefire eggs.”

“You don’t look like a ghoul to me. When did you get blown up by balefire eggs?”

“Two hundred years ago, after my graduation from the Royal Guard Academy in Canterlot.” Will looked me over incredulously while Bill strained to catch a glimpse over their shoulder. “You don’t believe me.”

“You’re trying to tell me you’re over two hundred years old like me, but look no older than a teenager. It’s a tough pill to swallow. I gotta ask, how’d ya pull off the immortality thing?”

“I didn’t. I fell through time. That’s why Cherry Scones did what she did, Will. She forced herself into my memories to prove I was delusional.” I sighed. “The only thing it did was expose her to my memories of the timestream and drove her nuts.”

“Starting that civil war between the Rangers that’s got everypony even more on edge,” Will said, connecting the dots in his head.

“Killing King and driving the Elder mad? You do seem to spread disarray wherever you go, Miss Nightmare Knight,” Bill said calmly. There was no hint of malice in his voice, but it still hurt the same as if he had spit out words propelled by hate and vitriol.

“I didn’t mean to hurt Cherry Scones, but she forced her mind into mine. And Starshine deserved it.”

“Starshine? How’d you know King’s real name?” Will asked.

“Because he was my mother’s husband… and her killer.”

The silence was loud. Louder than any gunshot or explosion. Louder than a freight train propelled by rocket engines through a bull infested china shop. It was so intense that I thought I would be ripped apart bit by bit as the void of noise tried to disassemble the very core of my being. A immense pressure weighed down upon me as Will stared at me, his beady minotaur eyes boring into me sharper than his horns ever could have. I asked anypony out there that could hear my thoughts to make it end.
And then, mercifully, Steel Bill spoke.

“I knew Starshine was a bit ruthless at times, but that is just awful."

“Makes sense. When I asked him about his family, he talked about his son a lot, but never his wife. Guess he had a guilty conscience,” Will added gruffly.

“You believe me?”

“Why shouldn’t we? Stranger things have happened,” Bill said.

“Plus it’ll be nice to have someone to talk with about the good old days without having to smell rotting flesh. Ghouls are fine folks, but when you’ve got two sets of nostrils and shared senses, thing can get pretty nasty.”

“Quite odiforous really.”

“There you go again, using big words for no reason. Just say smelly.”

“So you do know what that word means. My word a day calendar has been working hasn’t it?” Bill chortled, quite satisfied with himself.

“If by calendar you mean waking me up every morning with a new vocabulary word, then yeah.”

As the two heads started arguing, I couldn’t help but let a tiny little guffaw escape my lips. Will and Bill turned sideways to both stare down at me and I clapped my hooves over my mouth.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. We can be pretty ridiculous sometimes,” Will said, waving a hand as if to say it was no big deal. “You’re lucky though. I’ve really mellowed out in my old age. When I was just a normal minotaur I used to be a real butt head; pun definitely intended.”

“Really? I mean, you can snap sometimes, but you seem okay to me.”

“Oh yeah. I really was a monster. I even taught ponies how to be mean and assertive. Funny thing is that the one pony who ever stood up to me and beat me at my own game was the meekest pony of them all. Still can’t believe Fluttershy was my undoing.”

“You knew Ministry Mare Fluttershy?”

“Yup. Back when she was just a quiet little animal keeper in Ponyville. Taught her how to be assertive. Only thing is that I wasn’t teaching assertiveness. I was teaching her how to be a bully.”

“We are just full of puns today, aren’t we?” Bill said, giving a little chuckle.

“Ha. Ha. Very funny,” Will laughed sarcastically. “Look, kid. I don’t know what to think about this mutation you got or if you’re what Tekash says, but I know one thing. You helped save this city and for that I’m grateful.”

“You don’t care that there’s a monster inside me?” I asked, looking up at the two headed minotaur. Both Will and Bill shook their respective heads.

“Nope. We’ve all got a monster inside us, kid. We just have to fight it and make sure the Wasteland doesn’t bring it out of us permanently cause I can tell ya, Nightmare Knight, that, from one monster to another, it’s lonely being a monster.”

“Why?”

“It’s kinda hard to make friends when everyone’s terrified of ya. Most of these ponies just see the monster sheriff, not me. They follow me out of fear or need for the safety my strength and town can bring'em. The only people around here I can count as a friend are ghouls and this knot on the back of my neck,” he said, pointing to Bill who shook his head sadly.

“Downgraded to a knot. Oh, such is my lot in life,” Bill moaned before giving a sigh. “At least you count me as one of your companions.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, from one monster to another, I’ll be your friend,” I said, giving him my best smile.

“Really? I’m not one for this mushy stuff, but thanks Nightmare Knight.”

“Call me Aria,” I said, offering my hoof.

“Then call me Will,” he said, bumping my hoof with his fist.

“And you should call me Bill,” Bill added before hoofbumping me with one of his lower fists.

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintances,” I said with a smile, putting on a fake Trottingham accent to jokingly mimic Steel Bill’s.

“Not you too,” Will moaned. Laughing, I shook my head. A doctor, my niece, my Steel Ranger coltfriend, a flirtatious mare without an off switch, and now a two headed minotaur sheriff. My collection of friends in the Equestrian Wasteland was really shaping up to be an odd assortment of ponies and creatures. Although, now that I thought about it, I had more friends now than I had ever had back in Canterlot, two hundred years ago.

“What’s wrong, Fire Flanks? Will giving ya crap?” Check asked as she popped up behind us.

“As always, but at least now it is just friendly banter between companions,” Bill said.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about how crazy my life has become since I came to Trottingham,” I replied.

“Hey, that’s not just Trottingham; that’s the Wasteland in general. It’s anything but sane.”

With a dismissive scoff after Iron Will inspected Shipwright’s work, we were cleared to set sail, although it was much to the ponies of Gigaton’s chagrin. After the stallions and their brahmintaur sheriff had disembarked, Shadow and Compass helped Check shove off and steer us towards the opposite shore.

Big Buck was only a short boat trip from Gigaton so there wasn’t any real time for resting. At Shadow’s request, Melody helped me put my armor back on without using magic. It was silly to think that putting on my armor, which I had done numerous times before, would be a strain on my magical reserves, but my new coltfriend insisted on being far too overprotective to not be a little annoying.

“Or maybe he’s just afraid that if we get tapped out, then you’ll have to become one with me again. Do we really want a stallion in our life that is so afraid of us?” The Nightmare asked. My left eye twitched slightly, but I ignored her and tried to focus on something else. The only thing that came to mind was cracking open my new book, but I knew we didn’t have time for me to go diving back into A.K. Yearling’s writings, especially if the next chapter was to be as interesting as I thought it would be, if the opening paragraph was to be any indication.

Watching Gigaton and the hulking form of Iron Will shrink away from me, I didn’t really notice anything strange until I heard Shadow call to me from the front of the boat..

“You should come see this, Aria. Big Buck’s in view now.”

Turning, my jaw dropped. The upper two-thirds of the old clock tower were wrapped in a multicolored sphere of magical energy. Green mixed with blue and pink and purple as the arcane forces that seemed to be constructing the massive shield were working in tandem to form the magical bubble of protection. I had only seen a feat like this once before, when I was only two years old and all of Canterlot had been wrapped in a magical shield to keep a horde changelings at bay, but then it had only been Shining Armor, Ministry Mare Twilight Sparkle’s older brother, casting that spell. This shield was obviously the work of at least four ponies of nowhere near the Captain of the Royal Guard’s skill and talent.

“Pretty impressive, huh? Cherry Scones’ got the scribes that are siding with her making that big ass bubble. No matter what we throw at it, we can’t pop it,” Shadow said as Melody and I join him at the bow.

“I guess. When I was a kid I saw Captain Shining Armor envelope all of Canterlot in a shield by himself.”

“Now you’re just screwing with me. I thought only Celestia or Luna could do that,” Shadow said incredulously.

“Nope. He stopped an entire invasion of changelings for a while. I was only two, but I remember the pink sky and the changelings invading clear as day.” I shuddered, remembering the terror I felt as Grandmother held me close while we were barricaded in her room in Canterlot Castle. The hissing and clicking, the screams as they drained the emotion from the guards outside, the crack as our door was broken in. I still remembered those cold blue eyes. If it hadn’t been for Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, I don’t want to think about what could have happened to me. “But I can tell that they're getting weaker. The magical wavelengths are shifting pretty fast. I’d say that the shield only has about thirty minutes or so, maybe even less if the Steel Rangers on your side applied some pressure.”

“Really? You can see that from this far away?” Melody asked, squinting at the technicolor shield bubble around the clock tower. I nodded.

“That’s all I needed to hear. Star Paladin Buzzsaw, this is Paladin Shadowbuck. Do you read me?” he said into the small microphone inside his helmet. A few moments later he added. “Our E.T.A. is about five minutes, but the Nightmare Knight’s saying that their shield is weakening. Something about the wavelengths shifting fast.” He paused again before telling me. “Scribe Peanut Butter Cookies thinks you might be right. The knights are going to lay on the pressure, but he wants the Nightmare Knight there with us to help take Cherry Scones down. Buzzsaw thinks you’re the only pony with enough magical strength and expertise to be able to go horn to horn with her.”

“Great,” I sighed.

“What’s the matter, Aria?” Melody asked, putting a comforting wing over my shoulder.

“It’s just something those ponies in Gigaton said. Is that all I’ve become? The Nightmare Knight?”

“What? No. That’s not all you are,” Melody said comfortingly.

“Yeah, you’re smart and quirky and sexy,” Shadow said, the final item on the list forcing me to stare at him, wide eyed.

“Shadow!” I cried.

Melody giggled while he just gave me that grin that I both loved and hated. I really wished lote was a word. Or maybe hove?

“That gotcha out of your head.”

“Shut up,” I growled, punching him on the shoulder.

“You know you liked it cause I sure as hell did. I guess maybe we should keep him around after all,” The Nightmare purred. If she had a mouth, I was sure she’d be smirking at me right now.

Melody gave my neck a gentle nuzzle.

“It’s okay to be apprehensive, Aria. We’ve all been through a lot, but once we stop Cherry Scones, then we can get back to finding a way to repair the Stable door. That’ll be easier than fighting gang leaders and crazy elders, right?”

“Right.”

Because stopping a crazed mare with a megaspell was going to be easy, especially since, deep down, I felt partially responsible for what was happening. Most ponies would tell me that I was being foolish, Cherry Scones was the one who violated my mind, but she had seen something inside me that had driven her mad. She had looked inside of me and, ever since I had come to the future, my insides had become darker and scarier by the day. She had stared into the Nightmare and it had stared back.

“Paladin Shadowbuck. Lieutenant Aria. Glad you made it safely,” Star Paladin Buzzsaw said, greeting us at the makeshift bulwarks that the knights had erected around the clock tower. A large circle of wagons and sky chariots made a rather rickety barrier for the Star Paladin’s soldiers to defend. The earth ponies that walked the walls all looked ragged and stiff. Meanwhile, a small group of unicorns in dark robes tended the wounded or discussed things in hushed tones as they shot glances towards the shielded tower.

“You have scribes on your side too?” Melody asked as she trotted behind us with Compass, Light Change, and Check following up the rear.

“Not all of the scribes sided with Cherry Scones. A lot of them saw what she was doing and backed Scribe Evening Chaser and my vote of no confidence. We’ve got about ninety percent of the knights and over three quarters of the scribes on our side, but that shield is keeping us from taking the Elder down for good,” Buzzsaw explained as we walked towards the only break in the rusted metal barriers.

“Why haven’t you tried what Aria suggested?” Shadow asked.

“Because we can’t spare the firepower. Shadow… Boom’s gone too. An EMP grenade followed by a plasma one. We couldn’t save him. We’re all that’s left of the Brotherhood of Steel, Shadowbuck.”

“No,” Shadow replied, his voice barely a whisper, but a snarl still somehow escaped with it.

“Shadow, I’m so sorry,” I said, placing a hoof on his shoulder.

“Where do you need us?” Compass asked, his eyes already darting from one wounded Ranger to another.

“Wherever you think you’re needed. We have wounded that need patching up, tech that needs repairs, and troops that could use a morale boost. I think you three know where your talents lie,” he said, giving a very passive order to my friends. They all seemed to take the hint and dashed off to various ‘stations’ along the wall to help where they could. Then Buzzsaw’s eyes stopped on Light Change. “And who the hell are you?”

“Name’s Light Change, merchant extraordinaire. I’ve already made a deal with your subordinate here to sell to your side at barely above cost in order to help the effort and stop your former Elder’s crazed machinations.”

“And clear your conscience of the fact that you sold Crumpets the last balefire egg they needed,” I added, drawing a nervous look from the gigantic unicorn in the purple cloak.

“Speaking of Crumpets, she hasn’t gotten back to her mother, has she?” Shadow asked.

“Not that we know of. We intercepted some encrypted radio channel chatter between Cherry Scones and someone we’re guessing is Crumpets, but Scrambles is still trying to descramble the message.” Buzzsaw turned to look up at the multicolored sphere above us. “We’ve gotta get in there, but I don’t have too many troops left to spare without sending them to their deaths. That’s why I need your help, Aria.”

“You want me to go in on my own?”

“I hate to ask it, but you are our best bet when it comes to magical crap like that. Most of the scribes on our side are pretty new or not very talented in magic and stuff like that. The ones that are talented always tended to be taken under Cherry Scones’ wing or, should I say, horn.”

“So they’re extra loyal to her. Almost to the point of brainwashing actually,” Shadow said before adding. “But I object to her going in alone, sir. At least let me sneak in with her. If we had a Stealthbuck or two we could get Melody and Compass in as well.”

“I do have a few of those buggers for sale,” Light Change proposed, patting the side of his jacket that I now realized held a lot more things in its pockets than it should have been physically able to carry.

“I wonder if The Doctor knows that there was a merchant with a cloak that ripped off his bigger on the inside shtick?”

“Sounds like a good plan. Get all the Stable dwellers over here, get them cloaked, and get-”

I felt the disturbance before it happened. It was like a massive vacuum of magical pressure had descended upon the area, sucking all the latent energy out of the air. Being so magically inclined, it actually became a bit harder to breathe and my stomach tied in knots. Whether it was from the sudden arcane shift or the sickening feeling of something very wrong happening nearby, I looked up to the tower at the exact moment the shield vanished.

I opened my mouth to call out a warning, but it didn't do any good. All the magical pressure that had been removed from the area came bursting back out, sending a silent shockwave with enough force to knock me off my hooves and send me sprawling to the pavement a good ten or so feet away from where I had been standing. I moaned, blinking away the spots that flashed across my vision, before forcing myself onto my belly.

My EFS wasn’t showing any red blips so that was at least a good sign. The fact that Trottingham wasn’t a crater, and I wasn’t a ghoul or in another time period was also a plus as it meant that Cherry Scones had not just completed the balefire bomb and set it off. As the Rangers, Scribes, and my friends started trying to get their bearings, a unicorn stallion in scribe’s robes came galloping over to Buzzsaw, somehow completely unfazed by the erie non-explosion that had just ripped through the square.

“Star Paladin! I cracked their encryption! I know what Cherry Scones is going to do!” the scribe shouted, garnering a snarl from the still unsteady BoS leader as he stumbled to his hooves.

“You don’t need to shout, Scrambles, just tell me what the fuck that was.”

“I think it was an arcane vacuum followed by an explosion,” I said as I started to force myself into a standing position.

“In non-horn pony speak, please,” Buzzsaw said, his frustration already rearing its ugly, hornless head.

“I think she’s talking about the effects of a ritual. Whatever Cherry Scones did drew in all the ambient magic in the area, used it for some spell, and then released it all at once. It must have been rushed to cause the kind of backlash we just experienced.”

“That was a backlash?” Shadow half questioned/half moaned as he started to join us in the land of the upright and fully conscious.

“Yes, sir. An arcane one that’s usually caused when a spell is forced to complete without enough power to accomplish it. It’s kind of like when unicorn’s get burned out.” I winced at the mention of the personal hell that burnout was to me. “That’s why the explosion had no sound. Magical energy exists between dimensions. It’s kind of a fourth state of matter that-”

“Right, right. Brainy pony stuff. Got it,” Buzzsaw groaned while waving for Scrambles to be quiet. “Anyway, what were you saying about the scrambled signals?”

“Yes, right. My Pipbuck finally cracked the scrambling signal Cherry Scones was using to broadcast to her loyalists.”

“Where did you get a Pipbuck?” I asked.

“Not off a corpse, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he snapped defensively. I hadn’t been, but I played along.

“Really?”

“Yes! I bought it from a former stable dweller in Stableton. He said he didn’t need it anymore. We are not high tech raiders like the rest of the mainland Rangers,” Scrambles said, tension and anger underlying the worry in his voice.

“She’s not accusing you of that, Scrambles. Aria’s on our side. Can you play the message for us?” Shadow asked, trying to soothe the slightly neurotic stallion.

“Oh, okay. Yes. Here,” he said, removing the earbloom from his ear before pressing a few buttons on the Pipbuck around his left foreleg. For a few moments, only the dull whine of radio interference filled the air, but it was quickly replaced by a familiar voice with a thick Cockney accent.

“Oi, mum. You there? It’s Crumpets.”

Another five second of silence followed before a slightly annoyed Cherry Scones responded.

“That’s Elder Cherry Scones, Knight Crumpets. What is your status?”

“Sorry m- I mean, Elder. Anyway, I got the balefire egg you need and I’m almost to Big Buck, but there’s no way in Tartarus that I’m going to be able to get past Star Paladin Buzzsaw and-”

“Do not call that traitor by his former rank!” Cherry Scones bellowed, which I’m sure had to have made Crumpets wince since I had to against the crazed mare’s verbal assault. “I’m doing this to save everypony! That stupid dirt pony is just too stubborn and ignorant to know what’s good for him. I’m ending this war. I-”

“Mum… Please don’t use that term,” Crumpets said, cutting her mother’s rant short. I could almost feel the pain in her plea, cutting deep as empathy started digging a hole for Crumpets in my chest. How could Cherry Scones talk about earth ponies like that when her own daughter and late husband were earth ponies themselves.

“I-I’m sorry, Crumpets. It just makes me so angry. I… I have an idea. Are you coming on hoof or by boat?”

“Boat. Some fisherponies let me hitch a ride before they go fishing near White Tower Island.”

“Perfect! Tell them to drop you off at the SPP tower. I’ll meet you there with the other eggs and your father’s armor.”

“Dad’s armor?” Crumpets asked, obviously confused.

“That little bitch is here.”

“Huh?”

“The Nightmare Knight. Shadowbuck must have enlisted her aid to break the shield. Don’t worry. I’ll be with you shortly, Crumpets. Then… Then we’ll save the city,” she whispered into the microphone, the madness starting to creep into her voice and send chills down my spine.

“That’s it,” Scrambles said as he turned off the audio playback.

“So she teleported to White Tower Island?” Buzzsaw asked.

“I don’t see how that’s possible. I mean, Cherry Scones has been researching the spells and data Shadow brought back from the M.A.S. hub last year, but I don’t think her and five scribes could teleport that far without line of sight and carry the balefire eggs with them. There’s no way they would have come close to having enough magical power between the six of them to cast it.”

“What about that matrix casting thing you said they were using to make that shield?” Buzzsaw said as he continued his questioning. Scrambles shook his head.

“Maybe that’s what caused the backlash. They just barely made enough power or were a little short,” Shadow added. I shook my head in unison with Scrambles.

“I’m with Scrambles. Six unicorns that had been casting a shield for that long wouldn’t have enough power to come close.”

“Right. They’d need at least three ponies at full strength to pull it off by the skins of their teeth. I just don’t see how she could have done it.”

“Sir!” a knight shouted as she rushed out of the tower.

“What?”

“It… it’s horrible up there. You… Celestia save us,” she said after running up to us. Her knees buckled as the weight of what she was saying hit her.

“The hell are you talking about?” Buzzsaw bellowed, but a feeling of dread sank down upon me like the night as it overtook the day. Remembering that wrong feeling that came from the tower just before the arcane detonation, I had a sneaking suspicion of what Cherry Scones had done, but I still couldn’t believe it. She couldn't have fallen that deeply into madness. Looking up to an open hatch in the side of the clock face, I focused in on it and let myself slip out of existence, only to appear on the other side of the opening and inside the inner sanctum of the Trottingham Steel Rangers.

And what I saw before me was just shy of the horror that I had accidentally unleashed on Spelunker. My stomach turned and unleashed every last bit of my breakfast onto the already filthy floor. Thankfully, only stomach acid and bits of bread and strawberry preserves came out. The rainbow colored mutagen that usually followed one of my transformations into the Nightmare did not come forth this time.

Wiping the bile from my mouth, I braced myself as I slowly cast my eyes upon the tapestry of gore laid out before me once again. Bodies, or what I could only assume had been bodies, littered the floor. I say I could only assume they had been bodies because they were more pony shaped mounds of inside out flesh wrapped in robes or power armor. All around the corpses, an impressionist painting of blood and organs made a strange circle that had pooled in the center of the room. Even the Steel Rangers, clad in their power armor, had been imploded and then exploded as large holes had burst from the chest of the two Rangers who had still had their helmets on. The massacre that was spread out before me still teemed with a magical energy that twisted in my gut; there was only one type of magic in this world that could have done this and would have allowed Cherry Scones to teleport away to the radio tower.

Blood magic.

A forbidden form of unicorn magic similar to zebra necromancy in its dark and vile origins. If you couldn’t figure it out already, blood magic used life force as an external source of magic, draining the very lifeblood out of either the user or, more commonly, its sacrifices in order to fuel even the most powerful or taxing of spells. While most spells relied on the natural magical reserves and talent of the caster, blood magic required the pure energy of a living creature’s life force. It didn’t matter if the sacrifice was a unicorn or not, their life was all that was required. The fact that Cherry Scones had used such a horrific form of magic showed me just how far she had fallen over the past couple of days since she peered into the time vortex within my memories.

“Death take me,” I whispered, trying my hardest not to dry heave.

“Kinda busy here,” she whispered, and, for the briefest of moments, I thought I saw her shadow standing over the twisted, mutilated corpse of a sacrificed Steel Ranger. However, when I turned, all I saw was more carnage splayed out before me.

“Aria, wh-” Melody said as she flew through the open hatch behind me, but she was immediately cut off as she set eyes on the massacre within. Her wings locked up and she tumbled to the ground, landing in a pool of blood that smeared all over her forelegs and barding, before letting out a high pitched scream. Rushing to her side, I scooped her up and held her tights as she sobbed and screamed into my shoulder. It took me a few minutes to get her to calm down to a quiet sob while she shook violently with each dry heave.

Less than a minute later, Compass and the rest of my friends rushed through the door and immediately saw why Melody had been screaming. Ever the dutiful boyfriend, Compass galloped over to us and helped me console Melody after checking her for any injuries.

“Holy hell,” Check swore.

“What did Cherry Scones do?”

“Blood magic,” Scrambles and I said in near unison as the scribe stepped around Shadow to take a closer look at the remains of his former compatriots with the cold composure of a mortician.

“Two scribes, six knights. That leave Cherry Scones with only two knights and six scribes. Most likely she sacrificed the least experienced in her group so that should make identification a little easier,” he said, moving from one ripped up set of armor to another. “What could have possessed her to do this?”

“We need to go,” I said suddenly. “She’s already got nine eggs and has relocated to the radio tower. We can’t wait any longer. We need to get there before Crumpets.”

“Right,” Shadow agreed, turning to the others. “Let’s move guys. We’ve got even more of a reason to stop Cherry Scones now.”

“Melody, are you okay to come with us?” I asked as I helped her back into a standing position. She nodded, although her quivering lip and shaking knees told me otherwise. We didn’t have time for breakdowns and shellshock. If we couldn’t stop Cherry Scones at White Tower Island, then nothing else would really matter. Death may have been stalking the halls of Big Buck at the moment, but if we failed, then she’d be working overtime like she had two hundred years earlier.

Have you ever truly contemplated how massive the sea is? As we exited the mouth of the Trottingham River and skirted the coast while making our way as fast as our sails could take us to White Tower Island, my mind began to drift towards that line of questioning. We were just one small boat on a churning, seemingly endless mass of salt water that appeared almost unfazed by the war’s ravages. The farther we got from the mouth of the river, the less consequential ponykind became in the eyes of the Marediteranean. Billions of fish, crustacean, and other life had to have survived beneath the waves while the surface had been scorched by balefire. The untold gallons of water beneath us hid so many mysteries.

Then my mind began to wander to thoughts of the sky and the space beyond our world that The Doctor had shown me. Thousands upon thousands of stars, many with their own Equestrias, were just beyond the cloud cover, hiding an infinite number of possibilities that my mind could not even begin to fathom. And when I thought of that roiling sea of time that Timestream watched over, I quickly had to turn my mind to something as small and inconsequential as a strange, birdlike creature soaring above us on an unseen thermal.

“That’s a radgull. They’re pretty much harmless. Worst they can do to you is hit you with a big glob of shit,” Buzzsaw said after catching me staring up at the mutated seagull.

“It looks bigger than a normal seagull.”

“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a normal one before. Regular ones either died out or the bloodwings got them all.”

“That’s sad,” I sighed.

“Really? I had heard that seagulls were pretty fucking annoying back in your day.”

“They were, but they didn’t deserve this. No creature does.”

“Some say ponies and zebras do,” he said somberly. I was about to correct him on the correct pluralization of zebra, but I decided against it as a small fishing boat pulling up to the island caught my eye. Buzzsaw must have seen it too because he swore and called out to Check. “Any way we can go faster?”

“Sorry, Buzzy, we’re going as fast as we can,” Check said, trying her best to steer us so we’d have the best breeze filling our sails.

“I could teleport a few of us there,” I suggested.

“How many?” Shadow asked as he joined us at the rail.

“At this distance? Probably three plus me without straining myself too badly.”

“Then take Compass, Shadow, and Star Paladin Buzzsaw. Scrambles and I’ll steer us in while Melody can fly after y’all,” Check said, sounding almost like a real captain. Maybe having her own boat was going to her head, but in a good way.

“Sounds like a plan. Can you get us over there now?” Buzzsaw asked.

“Gather around me, guys,” I glanced over at Melody. “Be careful flying out there, okay?”

“You guys be careful too,” she said before giving Compass a quick kiss. “Stay safe.” Compass blushed slightly and nodded silently.

“Try not to kill anypony there, team. They’re just following Cherry Scones’ orders and probably don’t know what she’s actually planning,” I said sternly. “That’s not an order, only a suggestion.”

"I still think they're traitors," Buzzsaw growled.

"Duly noted, Buzzsaw. Just try, okay?" I asked, getting a reluctant nod out of Shadow's superior officer. “You asked for my help so we're doing this my way. Alright, here goes.”

“I would brace yourselves,” Compass warned Shadow and Buzzsaw as I focused in on the small ridge of rocks to the left of the tower. Clear line of sight, nothing to accidentally teleport into, weather conditions clear. After a small checklist, I was ready. Wrapping our group in an aura of blue magical energy, the world disappeared in a flash, only to be replaced by the rocky outcropping on White Tower Island.

From our new vantage point, we had a clear path to the radio tower entrance, however it also gave us a clear view of what the fishing boat had been blocking. Namely, a disembarking Crumpets, a large lead case strapped to the back of her power armor, being greeted at the dock by six scribes. The shotgun toting earth pony stopped, frozen in place as she stared up at us, before the six unicorns turned to see us as well.

Their momentary confusion and hesitation at our sudden appearance gave us just enough time to act. Compass and Shadow dove behind the rocks to use them as cover while Buzzsaw, chainsaws already whirring to life, charged towards them. Throwing caution to the wind, I drew my shield and sword and followed suit.

“Crumpets, run!” one of the scribes shouted before firing off an arcane bolt that fizzled harmlessly against my shield. “You’re the only one who can get the Elder to safety. Get her through the bypass shield.”

“You sure?” she asked, hesitating slightly as we quickly closed the gap between their party and ours. A whisper on the wind was instantly followed by a spray of blood from the scribe’s shoulder, coating Crumpets’ armor red. The robed unicorn screamed before she collapsed at the junior Knight’s hooves. Shadow had already begun his work and that was all the motivation Crumpets needed to beat a hasty retreat for the tower door.

“Crumpets, stop!” I shouted, but she just ignored me as she charged through the door. Bringing my shield up, I slammed it into the nearest scribe, a disgusting crack filling the air as a hail of magical sparks filled the air. I winced, realizing I had broken her horn and negated the spell she had been trying to cast. “Ouch. Sorry.”

“Nightmare Knight, go,” Buzzsaw ordered, leveling his blades at the remaining scribes. Wide eyed and lacking in any form of armor, they retreated to the boat for cover so they could continue firing at us from some iota of safety.

The fisherponies, who were already trying to shove off, weren’t all that pleased by the scribes boarding their ship without permission. The three of them were hurling some of the most colorful, not to mention vile, curses I had ever heard, but they didn’t seem to have the courage to kick the spell slinging unicorns off their ship just yet.

“But-”

“No buts, we’ve got this,” Buzzsaw said sternly, stepping between me and the scribes. Pink and blue bolts of magical energy peppered his armor, but the Star Paladin didn’t even stumble under their assault. A chunk of the boat exploded as one of Shadowbuck’s bullet shattered the wood paneling next to a rather frantic stallion. “This no killing’s getting really annoying.”

“There’s still four of them and three of you.” As if waiting for me to say something along those lines in order to be ironic or make me feel foolish, a flurry of pink laser bolts rained down upon the boat, a few even striking true and covering the scribes with burns while sending them trying to find better cover. From above them, Melody unleashed a suppressive fire at them, trying her hardest not to kill them, but also to avoid hitting the fisherponies that were already running for cover below deck.

“Go!”

“Right,” I said, looking up to Melody and giving her a nod, before dashing off after Crumpets.

Inside, I was greeted by a near spotless lobby. Ministry posters covered the walls, telling us to report suspicious activity or espousing the glory of the princesses. A large semi-circle shaped desk with a terminal and a callbox sat in the center of the room while chairs and tables littered with old magazines flanked the entrance. The room had a faint smell of plastic to it and my hooves gave off a hollow clop on the linoleum floors, however my attention was on the stairs behind the receptionist’s desk and the two ponies standing outside the dual elevator banks. A soft ding rang through the lobby as one of the twin elevators opened up behind them.

“Cherry Scones!” I snarled, teleporting to the top of the stairs.

“Pathetic,” she scoffed.

Winding back my sword, I grit my teeth as I swung it at her neck, not bothering to follow my own suggestion. With a spark of her horn, magical energy struck me hard in the chest and sent me tumbling back down the stairs, landing in a heap under the desk. Seeing stars, I was also able to make out the glow of another spell in the process of being cast. I rolled to the side just in time to avoid being blasted sky high like the desk and terminal behind me. Sparks and splinters flew, peppering my armor and scratching at the back of my neck, but I didn’t have time to stall or cry out.

Forcing my eyes to focus, I knew I couldn’t let them get away. I charged back up the steps only to be greeted by the elevator doors closing with Cherry Scones and Crumpets inside. Slamming into the metal doors, I could barely hear Cherry Scones on the other side say, “Top floor. Authorization granted by Ministry of Wartime Technology. Trottingham Steel Ranger’s Elder Asiago Cheese,” before the numbers above the door started lighting up, one after another in ascending order.

Pressing the call button, I jogged in place as I waited for the other elevator to descend down to the lobby. Never have I hated a countdown more than at that exact moment. It was as if the elevator was a bomb in and of itself. Watching those digits light up and waiting for the elevator to get closer and closer was agony only trumped by breaking my back when that brahmintaur had almost gored me and getting stabbed through the chest by Starshine's rapier. Okay, so maybe I’m being a little over dramatic, but it was excruciating knowing that Cherry Scones was getting away.

When the elevator finally arrived, I rushed through the doors and was immediately confronted with an odd panel where the buttons should have been. Instead of the usual controls, this elevator had a speaker and a thin, bendable microphone sticking out of it. It took me a moment, but I suddenly realized why Cherry Scones had spoken to the elevator. It had voice controls.

“Top floor. Authorization granted by Ministry of Wartime Technology. Trottingham Steel Ranger’s Elder Asiago Cheese,” I said quickly. I winced as a loud buzzer went off and a soft robotic mare’s voice said, “Identification in use. Access denied.”

“Um, Top floor. Authorization granted by, um, Princess Luna. Lunar Guard Lieutenant Aria.”

“Name not on file. Unable to request updated data at this time. Access denied,” the voice said after another round of buzzing.

“Cud. Guess it was too much to ask for that to work again,” I cursed, trying to think of something else I could do when suddenly a bolt of plasma whizzed by head, singeing my bangs and filling my nostrils with the pungent bouquet of burning hair and ozone.

Hitting the floor, I spotted a red dot on my EFS moving quickly to my right. Charging electricity through my horn, I watched the enemy marker move back to the center of my compass and waited for my attacker to ascend the stairs. Just as I thought, the scribe, brandishing a plasma rifle in his telekinetic grasp and forming a small magical shield in front of himself, climbed to the top of the landing. Firing off my lightning bolt more on instinct than anything else, it fizzled against the pink shield while he raised his weapon above it to fire down on me.

Rolling aside, I narrowly avoided another high charged glob of green magical energy, but I no longer had a clear line of sight on my attacker. Forfeiting any initiative I had left, I drew my shield and sword, swallowed hard, and jumped up, ready to charge.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three bullet holes sprouted from the scribe’s chest while the fourth bullet sparked against the already flickering shield. Mouthing wordlessly at me, his eyes glazing over as the life quickly drained from them, the scribe crumpled to the floor and his little red dot vanished from my EFS. Behind him stood Compass, Pipbuck glowing and pistol levitating by his side, with a worried and apologetic look on his face.

“Sorry. I know you said not to kill them but…” he said, trailing off before looking back outside. “I think we’ve almost got things under our control. Hurry up, Aria.”

“Thank you, Compass,” I said, giving him a supportive smile.

“Um… Aria.”

“Yeah?” I asked, poking my head back out of the elevator.

“You don’t have to become the Nightmare to be a hero. Just be a knight, okay? Just be Melody’s hero,” he said timidly before turning and trotting back out the door.

“I’ll try,” I said softly before returning my attention to the control panel. There had to be some way up top without being a Steel Ranger. If only I knew somepony who worked here during the war, but that would have been impossible. “Except I do. Top floor. Authorization granted by… Ministry of Awesome? Um, Pipsqueak?”

“Access granted. Welcome back, Engineer Pipsqueak,” the mechanical voice said happily before the doors slid shut and the elevator raced towards the top of the impossibly tall tower.

“Engineer… Good work, Pip,” I said sadly, staring sadly at the little voice box in the wall.

It made sense that Pip had been an engineer on this tower during the war, he seemed like a pretty smart cookie, although I couldn’t understand why he would put in voice controls instead of buttons for the radio tower’s elevator. It made even less sense when I took into account the fact that it didn’t have voice recognition software. Wouldn’t it have just been easier and safer to use buttons and key cards. There was no reason to make a system like this unless…

“Unless it was put together by Rainbow Dash or one of her cohorts in the Ministry of Awesome,” I said out loud the moment I noticed the MoA insignia at the bottom of the control panel.

If I remembered correctly, these radio towers were the only thing anyone knew that the Ministry of Awesome had ever done. Rainbow Dash was too busy fighting in the war, leading the Shadowbolts, and being ‘awesome’ to deal with her own ministry. It made sense that her or her lackies would focus on something that looked cool over something that was practical. It just seemed stupid since there was a complete lack of security in this system.

“It’s no wonder ponies lost the war,” the Nightmare chuckled in the back of my mind.

The elevator dinged as it came to a quick, yet somehow smooth stop and the doors slid open.

“Oh. There’s the security,” I groaned as I stepped out of the elevator and into an empty lobby, the outline where a desk had once sat was silhouetted in the center. Behind it was a hallway leading down towards a set of double doors, but a pretty obvious countermeasure was in place to act as the security that the elevator seemed to lack. Giving off a dull buzz and glowing with a blue ethereal light, a magical barrier spanned the length of the hallway just like at the Ministry Hub.

I didn’t know how Cherry Scones and Crumpets could have gotten through the barrier, but I had an overwhelming feeling that they did. Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the barrier and my suspicions were confirmed as two dots, one red, the other yellow, appeared on my EFS, no longer hidden by the shield’s magic. Cherry Scones seemed to have been expecting me since her voice, strained and tired, broke out over a speaker next to the door.

“I’ve been waiting, Lieutenant Aria. Waiting for you. Please, come in.”

Drawing my sword and shield, I carefully walked to the door and opened it with a sharp creak. I was greeted to the inside of the tower’s control room by Crumpets, her twin shotguns pointing in my direction, and a massive set of power armor behind her. At least head and shoulders taller than Buzzsaw, the armor dwarfed the Steel Ranger guarding it. Behind the armor I could see the faint glow of a stack of ten balefire eggs on top of a very familiar enchanting circle. Thankfully, the circle’s ritual to create the megaspell had not been activated yet.

“Where’s your mother, Crumpets. Where’s Cherry Scones?” I asked. Crumpet’s head moved slightly as if she were glancing at something, but under that helmet I couldn’t follow her gaze.

“Why are you and Buzzsaw doing this? She’s trying to save ponies. She’s going to end the war with the Flushers,” Crumpets said.

“It’s not what you think, Crumpets. Cherry Scones isn’t well. She… she saw something in my mind and it’s driven her mad.”

“She’s not crazy!” Crumpets shouted as she cocked her shotguns, but held back on firing. “She’s a genius.”

“I know she is,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “But think about it, Crumpets. Jack and the ghouls in the Royal Flush would welcome a balefire bomb going off. A bomb can’t be used as a threat against them.”

“But it will. King didn’t want the Gigaton bomb leaking so he definitely won’t want a balefire bomb going off.”

“King’s dead.”

“What?”

“King’s dead, Crumpets. I killed him myself. Cherry Scones’ plan won’t work,” I said firmly. Crumpets took a step back before turning to the massive armor.

“You hear that, mum. We don’t have to make the bomb anymore. We can stop all this fighting.”

“No!” Cherry Scones’ voice snapped from within the armor, the metal monstrosity suddenly moving as hydraulics at the joints roared to life, its forehead glowing with magical energy.

“No, not its forehead. Its horn,” I thought, realizing just a little too late that the massive suit of armor had a few add ons that were not standard to Steel Ranger armor, the most obvious of which being the metal unicorn horn on its head and the large metal saddlebags at its sides.

Cables sparked and fed energy up the armor’s sides and into the horn. The energy collected at the tip and I barely had enough time to lift my shield before a beam of green magical plasma hit Golden Star’s Aegis with a force I had never felt from any normal unicorn’s spell. Staggering back, I blinked and gritted my teeth while trying to regain my focus and keep my shield between me and Cherry Scones. Crumpets, on the other hoof, was taking a less wise tactic.

“Mum, what are you doing? She’s the Nightmare Knight. A hero. You’re both heroes, you shouldn’t be fighting,” she said, pleading with her mother to stop now that the scales of daughterly love had been lifted from her eyes. The armor slowly turned its head to stare down at Crumpets. “You’re my hero.”

“Crumpets,” Cherry Scones whispered, her voice tinny and unreadable through the intercom of her husband’s armor. For a brief moment, I thought that perhaps Crumpets had gotten through to her, that she had somehow broken the spell of madness that the Time Vortex had placed upon her with the power of their love.

But this wasn’t a fairy tale.

“And that is why I must save you too,” she said coldly before her horn burst out another wave of energy, this time a bolt of lightning arced through the air and coursed through Crumpet’s armor before I could even attempt to get her out of the way. Crumpet’s screamed before she collapsed to the ground. My breath caught in my chest. She wasn’t moving.

“Murderer!” I screamed, firing off a lightning bolt of my own that fizzled and sparked uselessly against her armor’s plating.

“Savior is more like it,” she said before firing another plasma bolt in my direction. Diving to the side, I deflected the blast instead of taking it head on like before. Whatever this armor was, it was able to cast spells that were near Celestia and Luna rank in their strength and potency. “Impressive. What is that shield made of? To take two of my magi-tech armor’s spells without so much as minor scoring would seem impossible, and yet your shield remains intact.”

“Please don’t tell me we’re going to fight while bantering,” I groaned before taking off into a gallop to avoid another magical blast.

“Don’t you want to know all about what I’ve done to my late husband’s armor? It truly is a testament to my genius,” she bragged. However, I wisely kept my focus on running as another blast of magic struck a few paces behind me. “Just the fact that I repaired his power armor is a feat of the upmost magical engineering, however I have gone beyond mere mechanics and patch jobs. I have done the impossible. I have created the first magical enhancing set of power armor.”

This thing was powerful and seemed to be impervious to any spell that could come to my mind so I was glad to let Cherry Scones talk. I really doubted that my sword would be much of a match for it either. Maybe if I targeted the cables, but stopping to swing at them just asked for an easy stomping. Running in a tight circle, I used the only visible weakness, the armor’s slow and lumbering nature, to my advantage. Firing off a few more lightning bolts, each just as useless as the first, I jumped and dashed past explosion after explosion.

“It is only a matter of time. You will tire and then I will return you to the other side where you belong! Where we all belong!”

And then the blasts stopped. It was only for a brief moment, but it was noticeable. Each attack came, one after another, and left a small depression and scorch marks in the metallic floor behind me. However, for a second, Cherry Scones hesitated. Thinking I must have passed over Crumpets’ body and hoping some shred of Cherry Scones the mother was still in there, I looked back. Only, instead of seeing the form of a Steel Ranger, I saw the pile of balefire eggs. That was a mistake.

As I took my eyes off the ground ahead of me, I failed to notice that Crumpets was actually in my path as I circled the magi-tech armor. Leaping aside, I narrowly avoided tripping over her. Even worse, I was not expecting another blast in front of us and so close to Crumpets. Suddenly she and I were sent head over hooves back towards the pyramid of balefire eggs.

The world was spinning, a little meter was ticking softly in the upper left corner of my EFS, and I coughed up little flecks of blood and phlegm as I rolled onto my side. My sight started to focus on Crumpets still form next to me, her armor melted away and a fresh wound burned into the left side of her face. I let out a small sigh thought as I noticed the one thing I couldn’t see when her helmet still existed, she was still breathing.

The onslaught halted, but my little breather ended abruptly as a metallic hammering started to crash towards me. Shaking away the cobwebs, I pushed myself back up and lifted my shield defensively. Slowly, Cherry Scones clambered towards me. She obviously wanted to crush me with her powerful hydraulic hooves instead of risk her precious eggs, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of squishing me like a radroach.

Focusing my thoughts on door, I teleported behind Cherry Scones. With only had a few moments to think up something, I took in the room and searched frantically for anything that could help me. I needed more time and, as Cherry Scones began to turn towards me, it finally it hit me. Not how to beat her, but at least how I could buy myself more time until the ponies with the chainsaws and armor piercing bullets could show up. Dashing over to the control panel near the door, I started pressing random buttons, desperately hoping luck was on my side and I would find whatever command would drop the forcefield outside.

“Stupid girl,” Cherry Scones laughed before firing off another plasma blast. In the blink of an eye, I was forced to teleport away. There were only two problems with this last ditch physical displacement. One was the fact that the control bank took the full force of Cherry Scones’ high powered attack, vaporizing my only hope of reinforcements, the other being that I just teleported towards the only thing I could see when I turned to look at my opponent, her.

Appearing beneath her, all I could see was the metal tree trunks the armor used for legs and a canopy of wires dangling from above. Cherry Scones let out an angry grunt as she started to move around in a clumsy circle, looking for me, but coming up empty horned.

“Come out, you coward. What kind of hero hides like a insipid foal on Nightmare Night?” she snarled, her every hoof step forcing me to shuffle underneath her. The shockwaves of each hoof fall sent tremors throughout my entire body and made my teeth vibrate uncomfortably in my skull. “You’re just delaying the inevitable, Lieutenant Aria. I have to save everypony in Trottingham.”

“We should be working together. With my power, we could melt through this bitch’s armor and cook her alive instead of hiding under her belly,” The Nightmare said, her voice like tainted honey coating my subconscious. It was so tempting, the thought of giving in and being infused with that sickly sweet power. The flame returned, dancing before me as an ever tempting lighthouse of balefire that drew me towards the salvation it promised.

“You don’t have to become the Nightmare to be a hero. Just be a knight, okay? Just be Melody’s hero.”
Compass’ words sprung into my mind, extinguishing the flame and sharpening my resolve. Be the knight, not the Nightmare. I wasn’t beaten yet, I just had to stop a crazy mare in an unstoppable suit of magi-tech power armor without giving into the Nightmare. No pressure, right?

Taking a deep breath, I readied my sword, leveling it towards the cable barely hanging within my view on her right side before rushing forward, queuing up my swing with SATS for good measure, and striking true. An electrical shock coursed down my sword and out the hilt as the cable was severed, but thankfully I was levitating the Sword of Everfree in my magical grasp; if I had been an earth pony or pegasus, I would have been electrocuted for sure.

“What? What’s- There you are,” Cherry Scones snarled, turning her head to fire at me. I turned to my left, quickly cantered behind her as her lightning bolt struck Golden Star’s Aegis with far less strength than it had before, and jumped for the other cable as I rounded behind the slowly rotating behemoth.

Time slowed as SATS took over again, its magic guiding my blade. I watched with trepidation as my steel cut deep into the cable, nearly severing it completely. Only a few golden threads of electrical wiring and a small bridge of casing held it together, but I didn’t have time for another swing. The world around me returned to normal as I landed and skidded to a halt before dashing back the way I came. I had to keep behind her and out of her horn’s blast radius. It was the only-

Crash!

What I failed to realize was that the reason I didn’t completely severe the cable was because Cherry Scones had put her armor’s immense weight in her front hooves and as I started rounding around behind her for a third time, she lifted her back legs and unleashed the strongest applebuck I think the world had ever seen. If not for the fact that my shield took one of the hooves and my hip took the other, I’m pretty sure that kick would have killed me right there.

I was sent hurtling through the air, partially stunned by the intense pain of her shattering the right side of my pelvis, and landed in a crumpled heap near the far wall. My shield and sword clanged against the metal floor and were scattered in front of me while I twitched and convulsed beneath a poster of Princess Luna raising the moon. I couldn’t breathe, I could hardly move, but I knew I was dead the moment Cherry Scones turned around. I needed to act fast, but my body was too broken for anything better than a shaky crawl.

“Did you really think that would work again? You’re too predictable, too slow witted. Too stupid to see the brilliance before you,” Cherry Scones gloated as she started to wheel around to face me. “I may be slow due to the size difference between myself and my husband’s armor, but my brain is far superior to yours. Did you really think I would just allow you to keep running behind me?”

I couldn’t talk, but I could press a few buttons on my Pipbuck and queue up the Super Restoration Potion that Light Change had given me before we had left him behind at Big Buck. He had said I would probably need it and would charge me after use. I needed it now so I would happily pay the price when we got back. Grabbing the healing elixir and pouring it down my throat, that familiar cooling sensation rushed through me as it tried to heal my broken body. I pushed myself up, the pain forcing tears to my eyes, but it soon passed as my Pipbuck told me that my broken bones were healed and my shattered hip was now just extremely bruised.

It was too late. Cherry Scones had already turned to face me as a greenish glow started to form around her horn. Reaching out, I scooped up my weapons in a vain attempt to protect myself. The plasma was primed and a ball of energy pulsed at the tip of her horn. I tried to lift my shield, but it was too late. Was I always doomed to be too late, to not be good enough to save anyone? This was the end of my story.

Or it would of been had a massive feedback spark not shot up the damaged cable and burst the bubble of plasma dancing above her armor’s head. A shower of green energy bathed the magi-tech armor’s helmet, coating the head of her mechanical goliath in a layer of corrosive arcane goo. Taking a step back, Cherry Scones shook away the plasma and laughed.

“You think you have me beat, Aria?” she said before two cannons fell into place out of her armor. “This is my husband’s armor, after all.”

“Biscuits!” I shouted, diving out of the way. I had no time to teleport as two missiles streaked past me and struck the far wall, bathing me in heat and peppering my battered and dented armor with shrapnel. A shockwave struck my back, knocking the wind from my lungs, but somehow I managed to land on my hooves. For a moment, I stumbled, trying to breathe in the arid, super heated air near the explosion as fire consumed the wall behind me, but I forced myself forward, driven more by adrenaline than anything else. I couldn’t let her fire another volley of rockets, I had to get somewhere safe, and there was only one place I knew she wouldn’t fire.

Teleporting back to the balefire eggs, my head swimming as I realized how much magical strength I had wasted on all my teleporting, I quickly glanced down at Crumpets. She was starting to stir and her face was matted with sweat so I quickly pulled out a potion and a bag of RadAway. I forced the potion into her mouth and let gravity do the work while I left the bag of vomit flavored anti-radiation medicine next to her. It seemed stupid to focus on her while Cherry Scones was about to kill us, but if I somehow won, but Crumpets had died, then I don’t know if I ever would have forgiven myself.

“And one choice that will haunt you the rest of your life,” The Doctor’s words whispered in the back of my mind. I wouldn’t let this be it, but I needed to survive in order for anything to haunt me. I had to find some way to destroy Cherry Scones’ armor, but how could I destroy a literal tank on hooves.

“Someone else already did,” The Nightmare said coolly. My eyes widened as memory became realization. This was all or nothing gambit so it was time to roll the dice. It was time to be the Knight, and not just the Nightmare.

Scooping up the only weapon that could defeat Star Paladin Orange Marmalade’s magically enhanced armor, I pocketed it in my saddlebags before I charged Cherry Scones. She was almost turned around and had held off firing at me for fear of destroying her balefire clutch just like I had expected. I had one shot at this, so I had to make it count.

Leaping into the air, I swung Golden Star’s Aegis as hard as I could into the helmet, severing the horn and caving in the remainder of its head.

“You little bitch!” she screamed, her air of superiority falling away as I destroyed her only means of seeing inside that massive suit of power armor. Then sliding underneath her, I watched as the head popped off and Cherry Scones strained to force her own through the new opening. Looking around and unable to see me, she laughed. “Using the same old tricks again, Aria? I thought you were supposed to be smart?” She reared up, bringing her ponyhole sized hooves up to crush me, pivoting slightly on her back hooves so she would definitely catch me underneath their two ton force. That was when I pulled out my secret weapon and her eyes widened in terror.

“I am,” I said, teleporting back to the stack of nine remaining balefire eggs and watched as she tried to twist herself away, somehow managing to move clear of the egg with a grace I would have thought impossible for such an impossibly slow suit of armor. However, a shot suddenly rang out behind her that I couldn’t explain and, to take a page from Death's book, won't spoil just yet since I didn't discover the truth until much later. Anyway, the shear force of the bullet actually moved the armor enough to fall on the egg, shattering its necrotic shell and releasing a hellfire of green and black flames that consumed Cherry Scones whole.

I raised a magical shield, focusing the last of my strength into the barrier, but the force of the blast was too great. My horn flared as I tried to stop the cracks from forming, but every inch I filled in was replaced by four ever growing tendrils of weakness. Unable to stop it, my shield collapsed, shattering and vanishing as the egg’s final shockwave struck it. A mighty wind swirled around me as the air that had been inside my barrier was consumed by the flames. I braced myself for them to consume us, closing my eyes against the oncoming death it brought, but was forced to open them when, after a few moments, the white alicorn with the sunglasses didn’t come. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flutter of purple, but when I turned, no one was there.

Dumbfounded, I stood in silence, allowing the scene that lay before me to soak in. My shield had absorbed the brunt of the explosion, leaving what was left to harmlessly tousle my mane and dry my skin with radioactive heat. My Pipbuck was ticking like mad, at least five rads a second were washing over me, but I had won. The eggs hadn’t detonated, Crumpets was still alive and registered as a yellow dot on my EFS again, and Cherry Scones was dead, engulfed in the bonfire of veridian flame and metal that burned in the center of the room. I let out a sigh and went to sheathe my sword and shield before turning back to Crumpets.

Pow!

I stumbled as a bullet slammed into my side, stopped by my armor, but punching hard into my ribs. Turning and trying to pull my shield, another gunshot rang out as the bullet bit into my shoulder between the plates and my underbarding. I screamed as my magical grasp on Golden Star’s Aegis imploded and my knees buckled. Gritting my teeth against the pain, it was at that moment I noticed the red blip from within the inferno as a figure slowly hobbled out of the flames.

Its mane was burning with a baleful hue while its clouded, dead eyes stared at me with a hate that pierced through its cataracts. Pieces of metal and wiring were burned into its sagging flesh while chunks of skin actually shed off to expose the muscle and sinew beneath. The worst was its face, everything but green tinged bone was missing from the neck up to just beneath the eyes while its teeth somehow formed a vengeful smile even without the curve of its lips. It limped towards me, its horn aglow and holding a spent shotgun in its magical aura.

“Cherry Scones?” I coughed, half terrified and half unbelieving of what I was seeing. Somehow, someway, the crazed Elder had survived the balefire blast and, like the unlucky few before her, had been ghoulified. Did the universe hate me or what?

“This is it. This is all I needed. I know now that this is what I’m supposed to do. I’ve been given another chance to complete my work. I’ve been given another chance just like you. I am the hero, not you,” she laughed as she drew my sword from its scabbard and let the shotgun fall to the floor with a hollow clang. I tried to stop her, but my magic was too weak to wrench my sword out of her grasp. I felt my stomach clench and watched as my RAD meter crested the six hundred RADs mark on my EFS display. “I will save everyone, not you.”

“Why?” I asked, trying to get her to focus on talking while I reached out for my shield. If getting the villain to monologue worked for Daring Do, I really hoped it worked for me.

“Why? You’re the reason why,” she said as she started hobbling closer and closer, bringing my sword to her side as she swung it around playfully. “I saw it. I saw the other side. It was glorious and terrifying, but I saw it. There is another side to this life, another world. I will bring us all into that world. I will save everyone from this world of darkness and bring them into the light. No matter what the other side is like, it can’t be as bad as the world is now. I will be a savior and lead Trottingham to the promised land you showed me, Lieutenant Aria.” She lowered my sword to my neck and grit her teeth into what I can only assume was a smile. “And you. You will be the first. It’s time to return home. I’m sending you home.”

“Not likely,” I said, rolling backwards and pulling my shield towards me. The blade nicked my neck and my shoulder screamed in protest, but Golden Star’s Aegis slammed into the back of Cherry Scones’ skull. I tried to roll onto my hooves, but my many wounds refused to allow it. Instead, I just flopped on my belly and looked up just in time to see zombie Cherry Scones moving towards me with the Blade of Everfree.

Grunting, I strained my horn to lift my shield, deflecting her clumsy swings with my slightly less clumsy blocks and started shuffling backwards on my belly. Everything hurt, my Pipbuck showed that my RADS were pushing near seven hundred, but I had to keep fighting because there were only two ways for my pain to end; to win and have Compass patch me up or to lose and die. And I was not as inclined towards the later option as I had been two days earlier. I had to keep fighting to make sure nopony else ended up like Spelunker.

With each wide swing of my blade, she pushed me back, and each block sapped more and more of my strength. I needed something, anything, to turn the tide, but I was nearing the end of my rope and, apparently, the end of the line. As I took another shuffling step backwards, barely able to lift my shield any longer, my back legs met with air as I slid out through the smoldering hole that Cherry Scones had left in the far wall. She had been leading me into a trap the entire time. Dropping my shield, I clawed for dear life at the solid ground before me as I uselessly kicked by hind legs hundreds of feet in the air.

“It’s over. I win,” she said, her voice already taking on that harsh sandpapery tone that all ghouls seemed to have acquired during the ghoulification process. Stepping close, she lifted my sword, ready to deliver the final blow. I stared up at her defiantly, drawing on the last of my strength to fire one last blast of icy cold energy that coated her chest and face in permafrost, but did little else besides seriously pissing her off. “You’re dead!”

“Let me help you. Give me your rage. Give me your hate and we can beat her. We can kill her for everything she’s done to us,” The Nightmare said desperately, begging me to give her something I couldn’t.

“I can’t,” I whispered under my breath.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Aria!” I heard Melody scream from below, but it was too late. My sword started to come down as Cherry Scones laughed with triumphant glee. I closed my eyes, readying myself for the end.

“Because I don’t hate her. I pity her,” I said, stopping Cherry Scones for just a moment.

“What did you-”

Boom!

Cherry Scones was sent sprawling as a round of buckshot tore through her side. Standing to her right was Crumpets, her mouth gripping the bit of her dual mounted shotguns. I had to act fast, this corner of the room was far less radioactive, but would still be enough to heal the now necrotically animated elder. Pulling myself back into the room, I scooped my dropped sword up in my teeth and charged, swinging with all my might at her head.

With a sickening slice, I cleaved right through bone and cartilage and extinguished the flame consuming her scalp. Ducking under my swing, I had failed to decapitate her. However, what I did cut off forced a horrifying scream from her gullet and turned my stomach to the point where I would have puked again had I had anything left in my stomach to expel. Lying on the floor, a pool of blood and sticky marrow oozing from its severed base, was Cherry Scones’ horn. Steeling myself against the atrocity I had inflicted upon her, I leveled my sword and Crumpets aimed her shotguns.

“How can you betray me like this? I am your Elder! I am your mother!”

“Not any more,” Crumpets said sadly, her voice choking slightly as the words escaped her lips. She then looked to me. “You’re the hero here, Nightmare Knight. Can you please finish this. I… I can’t.”

Staring down at the mutilated Cherry Scones, every bit of her turned into the monster she had sought to become, I slowly pressed the tip of my blade to her throat. The pain and suffering she inflicted on me, the ponies she killed and sent to their death in her madness, I had to end this. She had done the deed, but it was my memories of the Time Vortex that had pushed her over the edge. Maybe I was just blaming myself again or maybe it was because I remembered something deep down inside me that The Nightmare nor the Wasteland could take away.

I was a pony. A member of the Lunar Guard in service to Princess Luna. I was a Royal Guardspony of Equestria and this was not our way. This was not my way.

“It’s over,” I said, keeping my sword at her throat.

“What?” she hissed.

“You are a member of the Equestrian military and are charged with murder, attempted mass murder, abuse of power, and treason. You are under arrest, Cherry Scones. You will stand trial and be court martialed by a jury of your fellow Steel Rangers,” I said, sheathing my sword and grabbing a line of rope from my saddlebags. I quickly hogtied her hooves like I had been taught at the Royal Guard Academy for situations when arrests were necessary, but hoofcuffs were not available. “I’m placing you under arrest by the authority of the Lunar Guard and Princess Luna, in whom we serve.”

“You’re mad!” Cherry Scones screamed.

“No,” Crumpets said sternly. “She’s a hero.”

“Aria!” Melody cried as she flew through the hole in the wall. Rushing over to me, she took me in a hug that was far too tight even if I didn’t have bruised hips and torn muscles. My eyes widening in agony, I sucked in gulps of air.

“Ow. Ow. Ow.”

“Oops, sorry,” Melody said, letting me go carefully before looking down at the ghoulish visage of Cherry Scones in horror. “What-I-You-You didn’t kill her?”

“No. I arrested her. She’s going to face a court martial by the Steel Rangers,” I said before adding. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“The right thing? What would you know about the right thing?” Cherry Scones moaned.

“But how are we going to do that? Only the two of us can pass through that barrier. Mu-She destroyed the control panel that lowers it,” Crumpets said, gesturing her head towards the smoldering hunk of metal on the other side of the room. She had a point. Looking down at the fallen Elder and then back to Melody, I forced myself to take a deep breath and ask something of Melody that I knew she wouldn’t like.

“Melody, she’s bound and there is enough rope left over to drag or carry her. Do you think you could fly her down through the hole in the wall?” I asked, already seeing Melody’s lip curl in disgust at the thought of carrying the freshly undead ghoul hundreds of feet down to the ground.

“Is it the only way?” she asked. I nodded, but I couldn’t help showing my own distaste at the idea.

“I think so.”

“And you can’t teleport her down?” she asked, practically pleading with me.

“I’m pretty much tapped out. I had to use the last of my magic to tie those binds. Any more and I’m pretty sure I’ll burn myself out again.”

“Okay,” she moaned. Slowly walking over to Cherry Scones, Melody swallowed hard before grabbing the end of the rope and dragging our prisoner towards the opening in the wall. “Sorry,” she added as she continued to drag Cherry Scones across the floor.

“Gah! Let me go, you clumsy winged idiot!” Cherry Scones shouted.

“Okay, now I’m not so sorry,” she replied before giving a sharp tug to pull Cherry Scones over the edge. Slowly, she lowered her prisoner towards the island below like the world’s most disgusting piñata.

“Nightmare Knight…” Crumpets said weakly.

“You can call me Aria, Crumpets,” I said, giving her a tired smile as I started moving to collect my shield.

“Aria... thank you. Thank you for not killing my mum,” she said before asking the question that I’m sure Melody was wondering too. “But why?”

“Because I’m not a monster. I killed King. I know it was the right thing to do, but part of me feels wrong about it. I was judge, jury, and executioner. No pony should act with such authority except the princesses,” I explained, stowing my shield before turning to look back at her. “And I’m not a princess.”

As we descended in the elevator, Crumpets and I did not share a single word. We were hurting and exhausted, emotionally and physically, and we had said all that had needed to be said upstairs. Personally, my mind had returned to that moment when my plan had almost failed and Cherry Scones had moved to avoid crushing the egg. The bullet had come from the near the doorway, but no pony besides myself, Crumpets, and Cherry Scones had been in the room. The question that kept running through my head was simple, yet infuriatingly confounding. ‘Who fired that shot?’

The elevator came to a halt before I could make any significant progress and the doors slid open to reveal a very relieved Shadowbuck.

“Aria, you’re okay,” he said happily, taking me into a hug that, although not nearly as tight as Melody’s, still made me wince.

“Good to see you’re okay too, Shadow.”

“What’s she doing here?” he asked, breaking the hug and glaring at Crumpets.

“Oi! You got a problem with me being here?” Crumpets growled back.

“She’s a traitor, Aria. Why isn’t she bound and out of her armor?” Shadow said, a little more than miffed to see his younger cousin.

“I’m no traitor!”

“She’s not,” I said, stepping between the two of them. “She didn’t know what Cherry Scones was trying to do and she didn’t know she had gone crazy.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, making sure I had just enough firmness in my voice to drive the point home. “She didn’t know and when she found out she got hurt because of it. Then she was still willing to help me stop Cherry Scones. She even saved my life.”

“But…” Shadow said, trailing off as the steam of passion started to dissipate.

“Cherry Scones was her mother and Elder. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t have done the same and not noticed anything wrong if it had been your mother,” I said, standing strong, but still giving him a sympathetic look. I knew it would hurt, but I also knew it was the only way to drive the point home.

“You’re right,” Shadow said, casting his eyes down towards my chest. “I’m sorry, Crumpets. I was out of line.”

“Whatever,” she said, not really angry, but more apathetic.

“Buzzsaw’s got Cherry Scones on the boat and radioed ahead. Everypony’s waiting for us back at Big Buck,” Melody said before taking to the air. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Aria and Crumpets look like they could use some medical attention,” Compass said.

“We can do that on the boat,” I replied, starting to head for the door. Crumpets did not follow. Turning, I asked, “Crumpets, are you coming?”

“No,” she said simply.

“What? Why?” Melody asked.

“I just can’t. I can’t go home to watch my mum die. I-I think I’ll just stay here for now,” she said, lowering her head and looking away.

“Crumpets,” I said, my voice heavy with worry. “You’re not…”

“What? No!” she exclaimed. “I just… I need some time to think.”

Coming up to her, I gave her the only medicine I knew could help a pony at a time like this. Giving her as warm a hug as two ponies in metal armor could give one another, I took a deep breath.

“Please…”

“I’ll be alright. I promise you, I won’t do anything crazy.”

“Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”

“I promise,” she whispered, breaking the hug and giving me a sad smile that she was trying so hard to make into the confident and cocky one that Shadow always gave everyone. “You lot get going. I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?” Shadow asked.

“Yes! Now get your asses out of here!” she snapped, giving off an air of mock frustration for good measure. “You’ve all got work to do. So do I.” With that, she spoke a name and commanded the elevator to go back to the top floor before disappearing behind the sliding doors.

We left the radio tower in near silence. Any breaks in the void were mostly just pleasantries from Compass or Melody about how they were glad I was not hurt. I was hurt, but not bad enough for it to be considered ‘hurt’ by Wasteland standards. On the ship, Check greeted me with the biggest, most heartfelt, and painful hug I had ever received, obviously very happy to see me alive and in one piece, before informing me that Buzzsaw and Scrambles were below deck with their prisoners. Once everypony was on board, Check resumed her role as captain and we shoved off back towards Trottingham.

Bang! BOOM!

Spinning around, my heart almost jumping out of my chest and making a beeline across the sea back to Canterlot, I turned back towards the tower to see the remaining glowing smoke and green flames of a balefire explosion. For a few moments, I thought the worst had happened, but when I realized that the explosion was not inside the tower, but in the sky outside I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Standing in the gaping hole in the side of the tower was a lone figure that could only be Crumpets. Another glowing orb shot out of her, probably from some sort of makeshift launcher she had attached to her armor, and a few seconds later the crack of a rifle was followed by another massive explosion that filled the sky with fire and light. I’m pretty sure she was making the most devastating and beautiful fireworks display the world had ever seen.

But these explosions had a side effect that I’m sure Crumpets hadn’t planned on. The second shot had made it just under the cloud cover and the force of its explosion had ripped a hole in the permanent barrier between Equestria and the sky. As the fire faded, a bright beam of sunlight pierced the veil and what had once been dark clouds had been replaced by the most amazing shade of blue.

Explosion after explosion ripped through the cloud cover as Crumpets continued to aim higher and farther from her position near the top of the world. Melody rushed down to get Scrambles and Buzzsaw and they joined my friends in watching Crumpets’ awe inspiring display. While it was great to see the sky again, I was more struck by the sense of wonder that had taken to the faces of all my friends, especially Melody. The sight of the sky, the wondrous blue infinity was bringing her to tears. I knew up there was were she belonged.

And on the eighth explosion, the ponies of the Four of a Kind were treated to something that I don’t think any of them had ever thought they would ever see. The moment the egg exploded and wiped away a new section of cloud cover, a powerful warmth overtook the boat as we all stared up at the newly revealed sun. Everypony gasped at the sight of it and I smiled, diverting my gaze.

“Don’t look directly at it, everypony. It’s so bright it will hurt your eyes if you do,” I warned them. Reluctantly, they looked away, but seeing the sun had already taken its effect on the residents of Trottingham. I could already see that it had filled them with something everyone down here in the Wasteland needed.

Crumpets had given them Celestia’s sun, but more importantly, she had given them all a little more hope.

The court martial of Elder Cherry Scones lasted just over twenty minutes. The tribunal was headed by the newly and appointed Elder Buzzsaw, elected unanimously by the remaining rangers and scribes, although he was now calling himself by his real name, Marble Cake. Joining him was the overwhelmingly elected Head Scribe, Scrambles, and the newly appointed Star Paladin Shadowbuck. The evidence and testimony were brief, the defense by Cherry Scones was crazed, and the fact that Crumpets had not shown up was not lost on the Steel Rangers in attendance. She was sentenced to death by firing squad and was led away.

I did not attend.

The trial had been fair, Cherry Scones had been guilty, and death was the punishment for treason and unrepentant serial murder. Yet I still felt sick to my stomach as I left Big Buck and boarded the Four of a Kind once more. With only Check, Melody, and Compass at my side, Shadow of course had to stay behind to oversee the string of trials and executions, we returned to White Tower Island to pick up Crumpets.

“I don’t feel right doing this,” Melody said as we entered the tower lobby.

“But Buzzsaw said Crumpets has got to stand trial too,” Check replied.

“But she saved Aria,” Melody argued.

“And helped Cherry Scones get that tenth balefire egg,” she gave as a rebuttal.

“You have been pretty quiet, Aria. What do you think?” Compass asked, coming up beside me and giving me a reassuring look.

“I… I’m going up to talk to her. You guys wait down here,” I said, unable to wrap my head around what I was feeling.

How could Buzzsaw, I mean, Elder Marble Cake, ask me to bring Crumpets to an obvious death. The three scribes that had been taken alive had also been found guilty of treason and put to death so there was little chance Crumpets would get any less. Best case scenario, she’d spend the rest of her life in prison. She had just been trying to help her mother and be a good soldier, she didn’t know what Cherry Scones had been planning. It was just so unfair I wanted to scream. If it hadn’t been for Shadow’s objections to the order, even though Scrambles and Marble Cake outvoted him, I would be absolutely furious at every Steel Ranger in the world.

“We understand,” Melody said, trying to seem sympathetic.

“You got it, Fire Flanks. See ya when ya get down.”

“Top floor. Authorization granted by the Ministry of Awesome. Engineer Pipsqueak,” I said into the intercom and the doors slid shut.

Sighing, I closed my eyes and sat on the floor of the elevator as it made its steady climb towards the clouds. Rubbing my right hip, I winced at how painful the bruise hidden beneath my dark fur had become. Melody had fixed the dent in my armor with a magnet she kept in her repair kit and Compass had given me potions and magical healing, but without a Super Restoration Potion, the bone would remained bruised and have to heal naturally. I had put on a tough face, but I let my facade fall now that I was alone.

Speaking of alone, I really didn’t want to be alone at the moment. I wanted to be talking books and knights with Melody or reading with Shadow. Or kissing him. That would have been nice. Hell, I would have liked to have been joking around with Check and trying to avoid her occasional flirtations instead of doing this, but here I was.

“Why am I even here? I’m not even a member of the Steel Rangers. I’m barely even a Lunar Guard. Biscuits! I’m pretty sure a low level Lunar Guard still outranks Steel Ranger Elders,” I complained to nopony in particular. Maybe the universe would hear my whining and finally cut me some slack. Only the whirring of the elevator's motor replied. “Nothing? Thanks for nothing.”

Ding.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened to reveal a chair sitting just on the other side of the magical barrier. Stepping through to get a better look, I could see on the chair was a clipboard with a piece of paper attached to it. Squinting at the poorly written scribbles, I was able to decipher the awful mouth writing after a few moments.

“Okay,” I said to myself, blinking a few times as I tried to right the strain Crumpets’ letter had put on my eyes before turning around and heading into the elevator again.

“One floor down? Authorization by the Ministry of Awesome. Engineer Pipsqueak.”

The elevator almost instantaneously lurched down a floor and opened again to reveal a simple hallway, the entrance of which was blocked by another blue barrier, leading to rows of doors on either side. Passing through the barrier like it was nothing special, I continued down the hall until I reached a door marked ‘Radio Control Booth.’ Pushing it open, I found Crumpets, sans armor, banging on a sound mixing board and grunting angrily.

“I think ponies started realizing that hitting things tend not to make them work some time around the dark ages,” I joked as I entered. The sounds of DJ-Pon3’s broadcast were coming over the speakers inside the control booth, but somehow Crumpets had drowned out Sweetie Belle with a loud, drawn out, and quite obnoxious sigh.

“It’s not working. I can hear DJ-Pon3 and his music, but the microphone inside the damn booth is busted. Shadow told me you’re a smarty pants. Can you fix it?” Crumpets asked.

“Well, this is more Melody’s thing, but I’ll give it a go,” I said, approaching the soundboard. Looking it over, I noticed that all the knobs and sliders were all over the place, Crumpets’ doing, I guessed, and started trying to at least make them more equal and less annoying should some OCD afflicted descendant of the Ministry Mares ever enter the engineer’s booth. The inadvertent pain Crumpets would have inflicted on such a poor soul would have been catastrophic. Flipping a few switches on and off, I hummed softly. “I don’t see anything wrong here. Maybe the problem’s in the broadcasting booth?”

“I dunno,” Crumpets said with a shrug.

Inside the booth, I gave the controls a once over. Everything seemed fine until I noticed one little problem that explained everything.

“The microphone’s unplugged,” I said, picking up the audio jack off the ground and plugging it back into the sound board. “That should do it.”

“Go ahead and call him,” Crumpet said, her voice filled with an almost child-like glee while bouncing slightly.

“What? Didn't you want to talk to DJ-Pon3?”

“I, um, well, you’re the big hero out here. I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you and…” she said, trailing off and looking away from me.

“And you’re really nervous to talk to a celebrity?” I asked.

“No! I-I just don’t want to be the one to tell him Howling Buck is dead. He’s still saying Trottingham’s gone dark and he doesn’t know what’s happened out here. At least he’s got a lot of news about the Stable Dweller to fill up his broadcast,” she said defensively.

“Right. The Stable Dweller,” I replied, trying not to call her Lightbringer or Littlepip. “Well, time to give DJ-Pon3 a ring.” I said, pressing the button marked 'Station-To-Station Remote.' “Hello? DJ-Pon3? Is anypony there?”

Silence. I waited with Crumpets, who was holding her breath nervously and bouncing in place.

“Hello? DJ-Pon3? Can you hear me?” I asked again. A few more seconds passed before finally the dull hum of the speakers broke out with the familiar stallion’s voice.

“Who is this? Where’s Howling Buck? If you hurt him-”

“We didn’t hurt him,” I interrupted before adding. “But... I-I have some bad news though.”

Silence again, but only for a few moments.

“What happened?”

“Ace, the new Ace, killed him. Pipsqueak got hit by a bullet intended for me,” I said, feeling a lump of shame rising in my throat. Toffee Biscuits, Brass Bugle, Spelunker, Bulletstorm, and Pipsqueak, the ponies I couldn’t save. The ponies who were dead because of me.

“Meant for you?”

“My name is Aria. Pipsqueak, I mean, Howling Buck went to Gigaton to meet me and got killed because of it. He called me the Nightmare Knight,” I admitted, slightly embarrassed and feeling even more guilty.

“You’re the Nightmare Knight?” DJ-Pon3 asked, sounding rather impressed. “You’ve been doing some good work, or at least that’s what Buck told me. Killing Ten and Ace and going off to save Gigaton. I’m guessing you were successful since you’re not all dead.”

“Yes, ma-sir,” I said, catching myself before I made a mistake and either looked like an idiot or exposed a secret I should not and could not possibly know.

“And she killed King and stopped my mum from blowing up the city,” Crumpets added.

“Who’s that and how was your mother going to destroy Trottingham?”

“My name’s Crumpets, sir. I’m a big fan. Your biggest fan, probably.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Crumpets, but could you explain what has happened while the tower’s been dark?” DJ-Pon3 asked politely.

“I guess I can,” I sighed. Clearing my throat, I started telling her/him about defusing the bomb, killing King, and stopping Cherry Scones, although I left out the parts about turning into a radioactive monster to accomplish most of those feats. When I ended my quick recap, DJ-Pon3 gave an impressed whistle.

“Damn. Good work, kid. I’ll have a lot to talk about on my next news update.”

“I… Crumpets, can I speak with DJ-Pon3 alone, please?” I asked. A thought had occurred to me after I had narrowly dodged revealing that DJ-Pon3 was really a mare. Something that The Doctor had told me about butterflies and the future.

“Aw, but I wanted to talk to DJ about possibly taking over for Howling Buck as Trottingham’s DJ,” she said, pouting at me for added effect.

“What? Really?” I asked, shocked by her sudden proposal.

“Yes, really. Somepony’s gotta take over for Buck and fight the good fight,” she said calmly, although something was off about her mood.

“What’s the matter? What about the Steel Rangers? Are you just going to quit?”

“Yes,” she said after a moment of trepidation. “I can’t live up to my dad and I can’t live down what my mum tried to do. I think you’ve shown me that there’s another way I can be a hero. It doesn’t have to be in power armor with two shotguns strapped to my back.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, putting a gentle hoof on her shoulder.

“Yup. Plus, since only you and me can pass through the shield-”

“You and I,” I corrected.

“Sisters above! Shadow is right. You’re such a Grammar Legate. Next your going to tell me the correct plural of zebra is zebra,” Crumpets said, obviously a little perturbed at me.

“It is?” DJ-Pon3 asked.

“It is,” I responded.

“Huh. Sounds weird to me though. I’m going to keep saying zebras.”

“Me too,” Crumpets agreed. I sighed. “But yeah, only the two of us can get through so since you be the hero and I’ll be the DJ keeping everypony up to date on your adventures. You’re going to be as famous as the Stable Dweller.”

“You’re definitely going to be up there after Crumpets and I do our reporting.”

“What? Really?” she asked, pushing me out of the way to get closer to the microphone.

“I don’t see why not, but you need a DJ name. Crumpets just doesn’t have that pizzazz somepony in our profession needs.”

“I agree completely. What do you think should be my DJ name?”

“Don’t know, what do you think, Aria?” DJ-Pon3 asked.

“Me?” I said, pointing at myself even though the mare pretending to be a stallion could not see me. “Um… How about DJ Clear Skies?”

“Huh?” they both asked, Crumpets staring at me in confusion.

“Well, because you shot those balefire eggs into the clouds and burned them away for a few minutes. You literally cleared the skies around White Tower Island.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, pausing in thought for a few moments before nodding her head. “I like it.”

“So do I. Welcome on board for the good fight, DJ Clear Skies.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down,” Crumpets said, giving the microphone a salute. I guess some habits die hard.

“Now can I speak with DJ-Pon3 privately, please?”

“Sure. I’ll go say ‘hi’ to your mates downstairs,” she said before turning towards the door.

“How’d you know they were here?”

“Cause you don’t go anywhere without your little group,” she said with a grin before trotting out the door and leaving me alone with DJ-Pon3.

“So what did you want to talk about, Aria?” she asked.

“I wanted to ask you not to report anything about me any more,” I said calmly, but apprehensively.

“What? Why? Equestria needs to know its got heroes," he/she argued.

“But it doesn’t need to know about me. I can’t let news of my exploits effect the Stable Dweller’s decisions in any way. It’s best she knows nothing or as close to nothing as possible about me or Trottingham.”

“And why is that?” DJ-Pon3 asked, sounding very suspicious as to my motives.

“Because I’m from two hundred years in the past and I know that the Stable Dweller has a great destiny ahead of her. I don’t want my actions screwing with that promised future,” I said, realizing I sounded much crazier than I had meant to sound.

“Really now? You’re a a time traveler and a clairvoyant, are you?” DJ-Pon3 said, sounding a lot less sarcastic than I thought he would have been. I at least expected a snarky remark about the two hundred years thing.

“Yes. No. Time traveller, yes, but I have my sources and they haven’t steered me wrong yet. Littlepip needs to make her own path and save Equestria like she's supposed to do.”

“Her name’s Littlepip?” DJ-Pon3 asked.

“Yes, but don’t let her know you know or how.”

“You’re really asking me to believe a lot here, Aria.”

“I know, but her destiny is important," I said before a wicked little idea crossed my mind. "And it’s tied to yours, Homage.”

Silence. It was only for a few seconds, but it confirmed everything I had seen in Timestream’s Hall of Heroes.

“I… How did you know?” she said, dropping the voice changing spell or device that made her sound like a stallion and started speaking in her normal voice.

“Like I said, I have my sources. If I told you, you might believe me even less.”

“But you’re saying the Stable Dwellers is going to save Equestria and my fate is tied to hers? How?” she asked, genuinely wanting to know. Blood rushed to my nose and cheeks as I remembered the scene I watched unfold before me and tried desperately to block it out of my mind.

“I-I’ve said too much. I don’t want to change anything more than I have. That’s why I need you to not talk about me anymore. Say Trottingham hasn’t been blown up or radiation poisoned and leave it at that. A friend of mine who knows a lot about time travel and stuff like this told me about something called the Butterfly Effect. I don’t want my actions screwing up a good future,” I explained calmly, hoping she would listen. “I’ll still do my part and try to make Trottingham better, but no pony back in mainland Equestria needs to know about me.”

“Because of your Butterfly Effect? At least until after the Stable Dweller saves the world, right?”

“Right.”

"What does that even mean?" she asked.

"It's whenever time travel is involved. The more I do, the more it effects the future because I'm from the past. I'm not supposed to exist in this time."

"But what if you are supposed to exist now?"

"I'd rather be safe than sorry," I said, pleadingly.

“That’s good,” she said. I cocked an eyebrow at the microphone.

“Huh?”

“That means I don’t have to lie. I just have to withhold the truth until later,” she giggled. “You’re a tricky one, Miss Nightmare Knight, but I think I get you. I’ll hold off on telling your story and make sure the Stable Dweller doesn’t know anything about her future.”

“Thank you, DJ-Pon3.”

“Please, call me Homage,” she said politely. “But are you sure you can’t tell me a little about my future? My friend Joke Blue and I ran into a fortune teller once that told us exactly what would happen to us the next day, but a look farther into the future would be amazing.”

“Sorry, Homage. No can do,” I said, chuckling softly.

“Can you at least tell me if you know if the Stable Dweller likes mares?” she asked, catching me off guard, but I quickly recovered.

“Spoilers.”

Leaving the elevator, I smiled as I saw my friends and Crumpets chatting in the main lobby.

“So Aria said I should be called DJ Clear Skies, and DJ-Pon3 said he liked it and told me I was hired. I’m going to be Trottingham’s new DJ,” she said excitedly.

“That’s so cool. I’m sure Howling Buck would be proud of you,” Melody said cheerfully. Check was the first to notice me and gave me a worried look over the brim of her sunglasses.

“Hey, Fire Flanks, are you sure about this? What about Buzzsaw?”

“I’m sure. Elder Buzzsaw will just have to deal with me,” I said, trying to sound confident. I had just barely survived a fight with a massive set of power armor driven by a pony that wanted me dead. I did not want to add another one to that list.

“What are you guys talking about?” Crumpets asked.

“Buzzsaw wants you brought back in and court martialled,” Check said bluntly.

“What?” she gasped, looking to me for confirmation. I sighed and nodded sadly. “But… I-”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Crumpets. I promise.”

“Are you sure you can make that promise, Aria?” Compass asked, obviously worried I might emotionally crash again if I failed.

“I’m sure and I will. You’re going to be okay,” I said, giving the former Steel Ranger a small smile.

“I trust you,” Crumpets said, her voice low and nervous. Suddenly, her entire demeanor shifted back to her usual bravado. “Alright, mates, let’s get going. I’ve gotta give Elder Buzzsaw my two weeks notice.”

“He’s going by Elder Marble Cake now,” Melody pointed out to Crumpets.

“Really? His real name is Marble Cake?” she snorted. “It doesn’t really suit him.”

“No, not really,” I said, heading towards the door. “Let’s go. They’ll be waiting for us.”

I swallowed hard and tried to stay in front of the group. I didn’t want Crumpets or the others to see me looking so worried. I felt sick to my stomach, or perhaps that was hunger since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had thrown that all up, and I had this impending sense of dread. As we shoved off, Crumpets gave me a grin that I tried to return in kind.

“I’m not adding you to the list, Crumpets. I will save you,” I thought, trying my hardest to make myself believe.

“You really like cashing checks that you don’t know you can cash, don’t you?” The Nightmare said. “Don’t worry, Aria. I’ll be here if you need me. You just have to give me what I need.”

Staring down at the bleak and dreary water flowing by our boat, I couldn’t help but feel even more regret. The beauty of the sea was gone, replaced by that brownish color that had taken over the entire world. Was it really worth it? Was a bunch of lumps of coal worth turning the world to ash? Was the perceived evil of Princess Luna worth so much death and decay? As I peered into what had once been the sparkling waves of the Maredeteranean Sea, wishing to see blue waters and happy fish again, I knew now that the war I had been so passionate about Equestria winning had not been worth it.

“Nothing is worth the world we created,” I said to the sea, hoping the ocean and the rest of the world would forgive me for my sins. Maybe I should have been like Octavia, protesting the war instead of prolonging it in a vain attempt at 'victory.' Almost in response, the waters below me started to glow and sparkle, turning a brilliant blue and shining with an ethereal light.

“Hello, Aria,” a familiar voice said from the deep as her face shimmered into form before my eyes. “You seem troubled.”

“Of course I’m troubled, Timestream. I’m leading an innocent pony to what might be her death.”

“Yes, Knight Crumpets. Or should I say DJ Clear Skies now,” she said coolly. “Perhaps this is the new fate you’ve made for her.”

“The fate I’ve made?”

“Yes, Aria. The new fate. The most powerful current that Crumpets was supposed to take should have had her travelling the seas to Hoofington as a Knight, meeting another hero, and becoming a member of Applejack’s Rangers,” she explained, a mix of contempt and intrigue in her voice. “But you and your influence here in Trottingham has changed that. Cherry Scones no longer leads, Crumpets no longer follows, and King no longer lives.”

“How can you say this is my fault? You’re the one that said that there are too many branches in the flow of time to see anyone’s future clearly?” I said defensively.

“But not hers. She is, or was, but an ant in the grand scheme of things. She had neither impact on Equestria nor branches in her path until much later. You changed that, Aria. Time is reworking itself around you and I want to know why.” The way she was glaring up at me from underneath the waves was starting to send chills up and down my spine like a frantic spirit was playing the xylophone with my vertebrae. “You have become the pebbles that is diverting the mighty river, Aria, and I’m starting to believe that you might be who Death says you are. Only she has this kind of power and knowledge, but I still cannot be certain you are her.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable about this conversation.

“I mean to pose a challenge for you, Aria. Are you the genuine article or are you just a pathetic unicorn who just shares her appearance? My husband has an ill fate in his future. All streams halt at one point for him, but you have a power I have only seen once before. Change his fate, Aria, and I will concede to Death and Dream. I will accept you as who they say you are. Help me and I will help you,” she said. “Prove to me who you really are, Aria. Prove it to me.”

“Wait!” I shouted the moment I saw her image start to fade, but it was pointless. She was already gone.

“You okay down there, Fire Flanks?” Check asked, looking down on me from the helm.

“I… I think so.”

“Psyche again?”

“No. Timestream.”

“Which one’s that one?” Check asked before rolling her eyes and shaking her head. “Let me guess, God or Goddess of Time?”

“Goddess,” I replied, still staring down at the water as it rushed by us. Not a trace of the mystical blue light of time remained, only the brownish gray of the tainted sea.

“It’s like ponies name their kids and then they ended up getting corresponding cutie marks half the time. What are the odds of that, by the way?" She then shrugged. "Whatever. That’s why I like my name. You’d think I’d be good at that stupid board game, but my talent is in explosives,” Check joked. “Look at your name. The universe would expect you to be a singer or a florist, but you’re just Aria Rose. You kick flank and take names as the Nightmare Knight.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said half-heartedly. My mind wasn’t really processing Check’s attempt at humor. It was still trying to wrap itself around the new mystery that Timestream had laid out before me. “Another mystery from the Eternals. Just great.”

Now on top of this stupid prophecy, the identity of my father, and why I had survived the balefire blast back in Canterlot, I had another question the enigmatic alicorn gods had placed in my head so it could help eat away at my sanity.

Who am I?

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk: The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well: A mysterious mare will aid you in combat and deliver a devastating attack 5% of the time. Must stay on the right side of justice and harmony for this to remain in effect..
Speech Skill: 50
Author’s Footnote: Chapter Thirteen is finally done. Thanks to all my readers who have been so patient with my release schedule’s sporadic nature. I know it’s been four months since Chapter 12, but with school getting tougher each semester and the fact that I was asked to write Chapter W in the ABC’s of FO:E project, which has finally been released and can be read here ( http://www.fimfiction.net/story/188516/the-abcs-of-fallout-equestria ), this left very little time for me to write. I hope everyone enjoyed it. This chapter and the entire story is a labor of love for me.

As always, I’d like to thank my editing team, Chimpso and Pistol Whip (Tuneout just changed her screen name, I haven’t replaced her). With summer coming up, I’m hoping I can get chapters out faster. Anyway thank you all for reading and I’ll see you guys next time for Chapter Fourteen.

Also, I’d like to dedicate this chapter to my grandfather, or as we always called him, Pop Rouge, who passed away Wednesday, May 8, 2014. He always believed in me, encouraged my writing, and loved books and learning. I miss you, Pop Rouge. Rest in peace.