The sky is filled with thick storm clouds broken by the sunlight, bringing chaotic fits of rain and sun in varying amounts. It’s a perfect representation of the mental state of Dragonrein. This morning is one of highs for them as they stand at the city gates, with a small crowd gathered around to wish them well, along with the high queen herself.

“I’ve already sent my finest soldiers to Jarl Drake’s aid,” says Queen Platinum. “They’ll be there by the time you arrive, and more shall come in the following day.”

Gauntlet stands at attention with a squadron of unicorn soldiers at his side. “The battle ahead will be trying, but if it will gain the Legion the upper hand in this war, we’ll take our chances,” he says, saluting the queen. “With your permission, My Queen, I’ll take my leave with my troops.”

“Permission granted,” says Platinum, planting a friendly kiss on each of Gauntlet’s cheeks. She then pats him on the back. “Pray, do be safe on your journey.”

As Gauntlet and his comrades trot beyond the gates in unison, Platinum approaches Dragonrein, eyes filled with respect. “I’ve never seen such a band of misfits in my life do something as daring as attacking a dragon and living to tell the tale, and apparently, that’s just one of many adventures you’ve shared, according that zebra fellow.”

“Divines damn you, Xephyr...” mutters Caro, for once not ashamed to be acquainted with the zebra bard.

Platinum gazes over Caro, taking notice of how his muscles have intensified in definition, and his grey hair is more finely groomed than before.

“So, I have the honor of having the legendary Dragonborn fight for my Empire.” She examines his chest, barrel and legs, touching them far more than Caro finds comfortable. He hikes his leg in defense, prompting the queen to back off, saying apologies under her breath. “Are you quite sure you don’t want any armor? We have reserves.”

Caro waves away the offer. “Armor is restrictive, ma’am. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I prefer to avoid it.”

The queen nods as Caro slightly bows, though she can tell it’s something he prefers not to do. She then walks to Tohro, who is basking in the attention of the send off, waving to the crowd and blowing kisses to a castle servant.

“Tohro Blackwing,” Platinum says to the now fluttering pegasus, his smile turning into a frown.

“You know?”

“The Imperial Legion is well aware of Shokenda’s practices, particularly the mark of a traitor.” The queen gestures to the scars on Tohro’s left eye. She shows him a reassuring smile, putting him at ease and making his frown fade. “You’re not the first defector to set hoof inside Everfree.” She nods to a passing soldier on patrol, who has similar scars over the same murky eye. “Rest assured, you’ve been cleared of all offenses against us.”

“I’ll be damned,” says Tohro. He returns Platinum’s smile and bows in mid-flight. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you, My Queen.”

Platinum beckons for him to land, then wraps her foreleg around his neck. “We all make mistakes, sweetie. We have enough to worry about without hunting soldiers without armies.”

The queen looks to Shae, who is currently wrapped in an embrace with white clad Princess Celina.

“You’ll come back soon, won’t you, Miss Shae?” asks Celina.

“As soon as I have the chance.” Shae lets go of her royal friend, waving her hoof about playfully. “How about one more, for the hay of it?”

Celina rolls her eyes and chortles. “Oh, very well.” She kneels down in unison with Shae. They dance their hooves back and forth, cover and reveal their eyes, clop their hooves together three times and (To Platinum’s mild surprise) wiggle their rumps at each other, all the while singing, “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!”

Platinum sighs happily, knowing that despite her condition and fragile demeanor, Celina has found friendship. She adds another mark to her mental list of times Dragonrein has given her hope. She’s never seen Celina so happy before.

Heartwarming moments must wait, however. “Dragonrein,” she says to the guild as a whole, “I understand you’ve decided to participate in what will be known as the third battle of Trottingham?”

“That is correct, ma’am,” says Caro as Shae and Tohro hop to his side.

“Excellent. No doubt the legendary Dragonborn can turn the tide of battle and...” Platinum trails off as a doubt crosses her mind. She speaks to Caro personally. “I... understand this is not so much for the Empire as it is your own well being.”

Caro tilts his head in a half nod. “She wants to make a tool out of me. My voice is not a sword.”

“And what makes your serving me any different from serving Shokenda?”

The Dragonborn smirks. “You asked.”

“Hmm, I did, didn’t I?”

“No! I did not!” shouts Tohro into the carriage mare’s ear. “I did not anticipate a Divine damned bandit to blow our carriage to smithereens! That’s your job!”

“You’re the ones carrying swords and magic...” she mutters, still trembling from the explosion. “I’m sorry, okay?!” She downs the rest of Shae’s healing potion, struggling to stand up.

Tohro takes a deep breath, holding his head to steady himself. He places his hooves on the mare’s withers. “It's okay, love. You just get your lovely green flank back to Everfree. We’ll walk from here.”

The carriage mare nods and gallops off, her limping becoming less severe as she travels uphill.

Caro emerges from the remains of the carriage, covered in soot with splints of wood in his hair and fur. He carries a sack of salvaged bits. “Well, that was an adventure in of itself.” he asks, cleaning the soot off his swords. He examines the wreckage. “How did they do this, anyway?”

“Let me take a look,” says Shae. She runs her hoof around the scorched ground and wood. She then sniffs what she picked up. “I think that’s sulfur...”

“Ah, here.” Tohro picks up a curved slab that doesn’t belong to the carriage. “Who knew bandits were smart enough to craft bombs?”

Caro takes the piece from Tohro’s hooves, slipping it into the pouch. “Maybe Jarl Drake’s crew will be able to replicate the design. It could gain us the upper hand in the battle.”

“Smart thinking, now...” Tohro surveys their surroundings. To their left is a stone cliffside, and over that lays the path to Everfree, so there’s no reason to take that route. On the right of the trail is a wooded area.

“Hold on.” Shae holds up a hoof, closing her eyes and igniting her horn. A magenta orb shoots forth from it, traveling into the woods and weaving between trees. She smirks at Caro and Tohro’s confused expressions. “Clairvoyance spell. Celina taught it to me.” She squints at the position of the orb, which has halted movement farther into the woods. “That should be the fastest way to Trottingham.”

“An alicorn?!” Caro and Tohro shout at once.

“Shush!”

Shae had just dropped the chandelier about Celina’s unique condition, per request from the princess herself. She had asked Shae to tell the rest of Dragonrein but nopony else. She only waited until now to say so due to the presence of the carriage mare.

“How is that even possible?” Caro scratches his head. “Epona and Fauste be damned, we share this land with a physical goddess...”

Shae shakes her head and her hooves. “No, no! She’s no goddess, not by any stretch of the imagination. She’s just another pony, albeit a rarity, but still, we shouldn’t give her any special treatment.” The shocked stares of her comrades make her shuffle in place. “I mean, uh...” She looks to the trees. “Just, who’s to say it’s anything but a birth defect, like she said?”

Tohro coughs and laughs. “No, no, no. Shae, sweetie...” He points to his eye. “A birth defect would look more like this. Let’s face facts, we should all just burn down the churches and convert to Celinaism. Eh?” Both Caro and Shae get a laugh out of that one. Tohro pulls Shae into a half embrace. “Don’t worry yourself. God or no, Celina is our friend, and we’ll treat her as such.”

The magenta orb jumps about in place ahead of the group.

“I think our little apparition is getting impatient.” Caro trots towards it.

A snap rings through the air as Caro is lifted off his hooves, caught upside down in a glowing rope. “Oh, for the love of-” He’s not sure which Divine to curse to.

“Are you well?” asks Tohro. “Just hanging about?”

"How's it hanging?" Shae asks, trying not to laugh.

The earthwalker, strained by the change in orientation, struggles to grab ahold of his broadsword with his teeth. He bites down on the handle and unsheathes it. He swings at the rope, only to get deflected and drop his sword. “Dammit! Why am I not surprised?”

As galloping sounds out in the distance, Caro urges his comrades away. Tohro takes Shae under a wing and takes her behind a nearby tree.

He winks to Caro as he ducks out of view. “Hang tight!”

“Fuck you.”

The gravelly voices of several bandits rings out as they come into sight. Their manes and coats are entirely covered in filth, obscuring any color they may have had. “Did we get ‘im?!” asks one of them.

Another, a unicorn without one eye, looks up at Caro and curses under his breath. “Nawp, ain’t the zebra.”

“Agh, dammit!”

“It ain’t mah fault! This lil’ creep jus’ came in at the wron’ place and the wron’ time.”

“We’re still gonna gut him, right?”

“Hey!”

“Well, a’ course we ah!”

“HEY!” Caro yells, his draconic eyes filled with rage and his face red from hanging upside down. He shoots several furious glares at the bandits “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Tohro strikes himself across the face. That’s the one thing you never ask a bandit...

One of the cretins steps forward, yellow teeth clenched in a depraved smile. “Ah should ask you the same thing, laddie, settin’ hoof in our territory...”

Caro spits on the bandit’s face. “You own nothing!” He struggles to get loose from the robe by force, only to have the bandit’s horn light and snare the rope tighter around his legs.

“Ah don’t ‘preciate a pompous earthwalka’ tellin’ me what Ah can n’ can’t do! We ah above all a’ you!” The bandit paces back and forth with his grungy ilk cheering for him upon every word. “Yer not worth the dirt on ya’ hooves. We own dis land, cuz nopon else come and claimed it! Ah don’t see a sign dat says it ain’t ours! We can do whateva’ we want, cuz we know betta’, fight betta’ and kill betta’ than you!”

Caro just groans from the bandit’s rambling.

“Dat lil’ queeny a’ yers ain’t got nuttin on us! Wut she got? A purty palace? Nice hair? Ah tell you wut ah think a’ her; ah oughta storm dat purty palace and bend her ova’ her purty throne, and shove her up full a’ my-”

“YOL TOOR SHUL!”

A fireball shoots forth from Caro’s mouth as his eyes widen with rage. The fire engulfs a large portion of the grass, turning it dry and desolate, and the unicorn bandit is caught in the blaze. He cries out as his flesh burns away, galloping off into the woods. Caro looks to where he disappeared to with a sadistic grin on his face. He turns back to the offset crowd of bandits. “What? He talked too much.”

“Kill him!” shouts one of mares. Her horn alights as she draws a bow and arrow, along with several other archers. They fire in unison at the prone earthwalker.

As the arrows travel his way, Caro shouts, “FUS!” knocking them out of the air.

Meanwhile, Shae and Tohro watch from afar. Tohro is smirking, already having laughed from seeing Caro burn the talkative bandit. Shae, however, is crouched over, constantly flinching as Caro dodges and deflects arrows and sword swings with varying success. She cringes as he takes a nasty cut to the neck. She then puts on her best war face. “I’m going in,” she boasts, pulling her hood over.

Tohro’s hoof grabs her by the shoulder. “And just how do you intend on going about this?”

Shae mimics Tohro’s prior smirk. “Huh, I wasn’t aware I was traveling with the legendary Dragonborn and a turkey.” She leaps out of their hiding place, her horn lighting up and enveloping her body. She disappears. “Thank you, Eavesdrop...” she murmurs.

Shae’s hoofsteps in the grass are the only way for Tohro to keep track of her movements, but she steps lightly enough to not disturb the ground.

The helpless Caro is growing tired. Though arrows have done little but graze him, his Thu’um is becoming less effective with each use. Dammit, Otar! You didn’t tell me the Thu’um had limitations! he thinks. He’s a sitting duck for attacks from the bandits’ weapons, striking him across the head, neck and shoulders. He takes a swing from a mace to his forehead, knocking him dizzier than before. The world begins to sway before him.

“Ha ha!” cackles a unicorn bandit as she nocks an arrow and aims for Caro’s eyes. “Dance, pinata, dance!”

Shae reappears behind the bandit with an ethereal blade extending from her right hoof. She stands on two legs, uses her left hoof to cover the mare’s mouth and shoves the sword through her back, letting her go when her muffled cries damper.

In the midst of all the shouting, nopony except Caro and Tohro have noticed Shae’s stealth act. The earthwalker keeps his eyes away from the silent mare to not give her away, and Tohro readies his wing blades for a toss if anything goes awry.

The silent unicorn does the same impalement on two other bandits, but the last one manages to let out a very audible gasp of pain that most of the others notice. All eyes fall on Shae, who now feels like she’s up on stage in Master Frosthelm’s classroom, giving a semester presentation. Only now there’s more than a decent grade on the line. She awkwardly waves to the red eyed mooks. “Uh, hi?”

A burly pegasus draws a horrendously large buster blade and flies towards Shae. “It’s the earthwalker’s bitch! Get ‘er!” He swings his sword at her. She ducks and teleports above him, bucking him in the back of the head. She teleports back underneath him and bucks upward, sending him airborne. She strikes him down with a lighting bolt, frying his skin and stopping his heart.

She raises a shield, deflecting three arrows, then picks up the arrows with her magic and flings them into another charging bandit’s legs, causing her to stumble over.

The lavender mare is breathing heavily after using so many spells in conjunction. “See, clearly you have me wrong...”

Two colts with bladed gauntlets double team her, cutting her cheeks and forelegs with a diving attack. She jumps and casts simultaneous flame and water spells, spraying boiling liquid on them. They thrash a little before continuing their attacks.

Ducking and weaving the blades with varying success, Shae continues to protest. “I’m not his bitch, I swear!” She touches her hooves to her horn, wrapping them in lightning, and strikes both colts down in two punches, leaving them twitching on the ground.

As she faces the remaining bandits, noticing some have dropped dead with wing blades in their backs, she says, “I’m just saying, he and I are friends and nothing more.”

“Silence, bitch!” Another sword swing grazes Shae’s horn, evicting a brief scream. The unicorn clenches her teeth and summons a magical rapier, then casts it into the swordsmare’s broken armor. The plates break, allowing for Shae to impale her.

There’s a lurch in the back of her head, followed by dizziness. The world moves slowly, leaving echoes in her vision, and begins to fade. She strains her eyes to realign and her body to steady before she’s thrown out of balance again, her back crying out for relief.

Tohro leaps into the fray, seeing Shae getting utterly broken by a hefty unicorn levitating a battering ram. It takes him back to when he was the victim of the executioner in Gallopagos Keep. “Good times,” he says, flying ahead to land on the large one’s back. He locks his hind legs around his neck and drags him onto his side. Tohro then takes his wing blades in each hoof and shoves them both into the batterer’s neck.

The white pegasus looks to Shae with newfound admiration. “Who are you and what have you done with the cowardly filly we found in the mountains?”

“I just decided. I’m nopony’s damsel in distress.” Shae turns on one hoof and fires an explosive blast at a bandit trying to get the jump on her. The bandit is broken on a tree. “I’m a child of Wintercolt!” Shae boasts with a flip of her mane.

“Glad you’re on our side, love.” Tohro stands and stares down the remaining stragglers, all of which are scrawny young ones shaking in their boots. He waves them off. “Just get the hell out.” They all drop their weapons and bags and take off in a hurry, tripping over the bodies of their fellow bandits.

As Shae dispenses of her magic rapier, Tohro snatches what little gold the bandits dropped. The weapons of the survivors are chipped, rusty, and many other kinds of useless.

“Um, hello! Friend still trapped up here, remember?” Caro is still trying to untie himself from the conjured rope, to minimal success. “Agh, dammit...”

Still recovering from the ghastly bruise upon her head, Shae awkwardly stumbles to Caro’s vicinity. Steadying herself, she says, “It’s okay. That type of rope has a limited casting time. It only lasts for four minutes.”

Caro eases himself and stops his thrashing. “Fantastic. How long has do you wager it’s been?”

“How are we supposed to know that?” asks Tohro.

Shae counts by tapping her hoof and looking up to the sky. “I’d say it’s been.... three minutes and fifty eight-”

The rope disappears. “WaaaAA-!” Caro’s surprised shout is cut short when he impacts with the ground, then continues when he turns over, clutching his right hind leg. “Krii faal Epona fah waan nust lost duun wah mi!”

“Pretty mouth you’ve got on you.” Tohro leaps to Caro’s aid and brings him to three hooves, the injured one left hovering. “Come on, easy...” He glances at his friend’s leg. “Doesn’t look too bad. It’s not broken, but you definitely damaged something important.”

“Ah, dammit...”

Shae’s mind cycles through every possible remedy for a general limb injury before she stamps her hoof and lets out a chipper “Aha!” She disappears behind the brush, chammering to herself. “Silly Lancer, you told me delving into volume three of Magical Mystery Cures of Mysterious Magic was a waste of time, but now, here I am, recovering the very flower that, when combined with a regular healing potion, can mend any severe injury in a manner of minutes! I showed you, didn’t I?” When she emerges again, she holds two rocks and a lime green flower in her levitated grip. She slams the rocks together, grinding the flower into a paste. She then uncorks a vial of healing potion and mixes in the paste. “There you are.” She passes the mixture to Caro, who accepts it with a gracious nod.

“Much appreciated on your part.” He tilts the vial back.

“Be forewarned, it’s going to taste horrendous.”

The Dragonborn has to hold his mouth shut to resist regurgitating the foul concoction. He swallows with a grimace. “Urgh, tastes like minotaur bogies and death.”

“I tasted death once. It was called Saddle Arabian bread,” Tohro says, taking the vial from Caro and sniffing it out of curiosity. He then coughs tosses it back to Shae. He looks back to the earthwalker, who is wiping excess potion from his mouth and tongue. “Can you walk?”

Caro stands without effort, shaking his previously injured leg. Nickering, he boasts, “Fine as fine can be. Shall we go?”

Tohro holds up his hoof and points ahead. A dissonantly serene voice can be heard further into the woods, humming gleefully to itself. Dragonrein cautiously approaches the sound. “Do you think it’s a siren?” asks Caro as he retrieves his dropped sword.

Shae shakes her head. “It can’t be. We’re still sane. If it were a siren, we’d drop everything and gallop to their voice, regardless of hazard.”

Tohro leaps ahead and peaks over a line of bushes with his wing blades brandished. He groans and puts them away, waving Caro and Shae forward. “I’d rather it be a seapony or an octopony than an infuriatingly annoying zebra bard!”

Dragonrein leaps over the bushes to find the musical zebra out cold on the ground next to a stream. He’s still humming, as well as spouting off nonsense. “Mmmm... got shackles on my words are tied...”

“Oh, thank Aramis. Your arrival brings fortune, if you can help us.” A clothless, puce colored earthwalker with a striped green mane approaches from across the stream with a pail of water in her teeth. She slowly empties the pail into Xephyr’s mouth, spilling most of it. She shakily puts it aside and gestures to another naked mare, this one with a spiked magenta mane and black coat. “I’ll tell you my name. I am one called Symphony. Now she will tell hers.”

The dark unicorn clears her throat. “Rhapsody. Of bard college and entertainment we thrive!” As she speaks, she stamps her hoof upon every other syllable.

Caro’s ears involuntarily twitch. “Pray, why do you speak in such an odd manner?”

“Rhapsody said why,” says Symphony with annoyed twitch of her mouth. “We come from the bard college. It’s in Everfree.”

“Speaking in poet...” Rhapsody pauses, holding her hoof up to her forehead. She casts it forward. “Speaking in poet’s speak! Immersed in art’s voice, we are!”

Both Caro and Tohro share an identical glance that tells each other they’ll become annoyed with these two mares very quickly. They focus on the more important matter. “What’s happened to Xephyr?” asks Caro.

Symphony says, “He and us, we were...” She hides the blush on her cheeks. “Looking for flowers, that’s all. He became quiet.”

“Smell of the local flora. Took his conscious mind into the realm of dreams,” says Rhapsody. “Waking him. It is unknown how!”

Xephyr’s sleeping form lets out a joyous laugh that causes Caro and Tohro to jump, before he curls up, chewing on his jagged mane. “Raise up to your ability...” he mutters.

“Clearly the flower he smelled intoxicated him,” says Shae. She traces over Xephyr’s body with her horn, examining for any unusual bodily activity. “His breaths and heartbeat are slow, but it’s nothing to throw a fit about. He’ll be along in due time, depending on the type of flower and amount he inhaled. What did it look like?”

Tohro groans loudly. “Never ask a poet to describe things...”

“The flower was green, bright with a yellow center. That is all we know,” says Symphony.

Dragonrein all turn to each other and exchange worried glances. They all think the same thing; if it’s the same green flower they had used to mend Caro’s leg, and they had all come in contact with it, then what will happen?

Shae’s hooves shuffle back and forth as her eyes widen. “Oh no oh no oh no, no, no!” Slapping herself, she falls onto her haunches. “Fauste damn me! That flower wasn’t a maylarsin, it was a descendant of maylarsin called blossomforth. It has the same healing properties but it’s also an incredibly powerful hallucinogen! Damn me! Damn... Huh, would you look at that?”

Caro and Tohro turn their attention to the sky, which has dimmed from its mixed clouds and blue sky to a bright purple. “I truly hope I’m not the only one seeing this,” says a smiling Caro as his legs begin to sway. He collapses in a mad fit of laughter, clutching his sides as he tries to stand back up. His laughing stops as he notices a strange sight; small, luminescent tendrils snake through the blades of grass, enveloping Symphony and Rhapsody’s legs.

“Wrong. Is there something of it?” asks the latter before she and her fellow mare disappear into sparkles.

Stars cascade from the shaking trees. They turn into pools of pure light as they collide with the ground. The stream becomes bathed in the radiance as more tendrils spread out from the center. As they crawl up Caro’s legs, he laughs at the ticklish sensation. “This... This is amazing. Tohro! You must try this.”

“Ju-Just a moment, mate...” Tohro approaches an ethereal projection of another pony, which takes a bow and begins dancing around him. He takes the it by the hoof and leads it in a slow ballad, taking synchronized steps and leaps. The projection fades as Tohro spins it around by its hoof, leading him to wear a face of disappointment. “Drat, where’d you go?” He takes a few steps forward before bumping heads with Shae, who is holding herself steady and straining her eyes to face ahead.

“Calm down, the both of you... The only way to keep the hallucinations under control is to stay calm!” she shouts. She gasps as a cold appendage touches her cheek, and she turns her head to see an old green maned friend, eyes wide and tongue dangling from her mouth. “Sundance!”

“Hiya, Shae! Shiny Shae, shimmering Shae, all the livelong day!” Sundance pelts Shae with more licks than a slobbering house dog. Shae laughs loudly with every lick.

“Wh-What are you doing, Sundance?”

“Oh, Shae, I just love you so much I could eat you up.” Sundance’s face, for only a second, turns hollow, with her teeth becoming razor sharp and her eye sockets empty, before snapping back to her perpetual smile. A brief shriek escapes Shae, who falls over in a panic. “I’m just saying, honey, you taste so good.”

Sundance quickly removes her academy robes, prompting Shae to tilt her head. “You make no sense, Sunny... Aaahh...” She moans uncontrollably as Sundance throws herself onto her vulnerable body and runs her salivating tongue over her neck, chest, and... “No! Not there!” Shae raises her hind legs and shoves Sundance away, tossing her into the river.

Tohro is having a sensual experience of his own, leaning up against the base of a tree with two more equine projections playfully kissing his cheeks and fondling his body. Their laughter is simultaneously innocent, but also sinister, something he doesn’t pay any mind to. Instead, he merely relaxes his head against his forelegs and enjoys the show as one of the projections spreads itself over his lower regions.

The projection leans closely to Tohro’s muzzle. He expects it to give him a kiss, or at least a lick as he puckers up, but instead it curls its mouth and cackles, breaking Tohro out of his arousal. He reaches for his crossbow only to have his hoof stayed by an armored hoof. The rest of the projection takes physical form, cloaked by an ursa fur cape. Gold eyes belonging to an albino unicorn stare Tohro down, drawing sweat from his brow.

“Why are you afraid of me, my sweet Tohro?” asks Shokenda Blackwing as she pushes her muzzle up against his. “Am I not the object of your affinity? The one that looms in your mind whenever you take a mare or stallion? You lust for power. I am power. You lust for me, and you belong to me. Everything you ever do will always be in the name of me.”

Tohro grits his teeth, shaking his head back and forth hysterically. “No...”

Shokenda’s eyes fill with a harsh golden glow as her hoof drags along the edge of his wing. “Oh, yes... You know it’s true...”

“NO! SHUT UP!” The crossbow is in his grasp. He points the tip between Shokenda’s illuminated eyes and fires. Her scream causes the whole of the forest to tremble, dropping leaves and stirring the water. The once warm glowing tendrils in the grass turn a harsh crimson, coating the forest in a hellish new luminance.

Tohro looks over the remains of his kill as he draws labored breaths, and sees the bloodied corpse of an orange earthwalker child. “Treesap...”

The panicked screaming goes unheard by Caro, eyes shut in ignorant bliss as the tendrils continue to wrap around his body. They fill his nostrils with scents of nostalgia. Wheat, leather, iron, the burning coals of the forge. He feels like a child smelling a bakery. “Ah, Ironwright Forge...” he dreamily mumbles. “Master, will I call this place my own someday?”

Caro opens his eyes slowly to gaze upon the faces of a mare and a stallion, blue and green, respectively, both earthwalkers, very stalwart and clad in Imperial armor. Their names are Goldheart and Earthquake, but he knows them as...

“Mother. Father. You’re...” He rises, breaking the tendrils from his head and back. They reform and reach for him once again. He doesn’t notice, instead focusing on his parents. “You look no different from the day you said goodbye. But,” his mind brings forth a painful memory of loss. “Why are you here? How are you alive?”

The answer comes from Goldheart, whose head hangs low. “We are not.” She leans against Earthquake, her expression somberly. “Why couldn’t you save us, son?”

“Save you...” Caro looks to his father. He isn’t solemn like his mother, but instead he looks grim with disappointment. Caro grimaces. “You have no idea how often I ask myself that question. But what could I do? I was merely a child. My hair was bronze back then. Now look at me." He gestures to his masculine figure. Even he still carries surprise at how much he’s changed in so little time. “This is the body of a hero. A Dragonborn!” His pride falters. “If only I had awakened sooner. Maybe then I could have helped.”

"You've become one of them. I'm surprised you can still feel regret at all,” says Earthquake.

Caro does a double take. "One of whom? The dragons?”

"If you have to ask..." Goldheart shakes her head.

Caro was sure that his parents would look upon him with admiration, or at least pride that they had given birth to such a legendary being, but they only look ashamed.

They accuse me of becoming the very thing I’m meant to kill? Where is the logic in this?!

"I'm... No, you speak nonsense! I'm still me! I'm your child! I'm the... I'm the bloody Dragonborn..."

Both of the figures before him speak at once. "Yes, but we are not dragons, are we?"

Caro backs away, his eyelids refusing to close. He nearly falls into the illuminated stream in his stupor. "Don't say that..."

“It’s your fault, little Caro. We are dead because of you.”

Caro neglects to look his at his parents, lest they look on him with discontent. “No. It wasn’t me! I didn’t- It wasn’t me! I’m not a senseless murderer!” He clutches his head to keep himself steady. “I’m not a dragon!”

He finally dares to look as the two ponies before him twist into a grotesque merged form, then grow and shift into a ghostly image of Nahkriin. “Oh, but you are!”

Her roars turn into sickly cackles, mixed in with the distorted screaming of Mother, Father... and Master. Caro forces his forming tears back into his eyes as he charges at Nahkriin unarmed. "I'M NOT LIKE YOU!!" He cocks his hoof and buries it into the dragon's snout. "I'M NOT!" He reels back and lands another punch, followed by another. "I'M NOT! I'M NOT! I'm not..." His pounding turns into weak flailing as the dragon's head turns into a bloodied skeleton.

Caro wraps his forelegs around himself and lets out a screaming sob. "Motheeeer... Ahaaaagh...”

~Caro~

“My parents are dead. Their bodies burned at Ghastly Gorge. I was only a child then. There was nothing I could do. I was small, scrawny and several miles away. Then again, nopony can do much to prevent a bomb cart from exploding. One bad apple spoils the bunch, as they say, only in that case it was a premature fuse, sparked by a stray flaming arrow. Nopony knows to this day which side cast the arrow, only that it killed twelve soldiers and five Blackwings. That prompted Platinum to outlaw use of bombs in the Imperial Legion. That’s what my parents died for; a Divine damned weapons ban. That’s when I lost all faith in the Empire."

I place my hooves on the table, exhaling after delivering such a long-winded speech.

"I’ve never told anypony that.”

King Hurricane nods slowly, his hoof to his chin as he considers his plate of gelato. “Some say war is glorious. Others say it’s hell. I happen to see it as glorious hell. Yes, there are horrors beyond recognition. Death, despair, paranoia... But, then there are those smaller moments of victory I used to savor, the looming hope that I had made a difference by the deaths of my enemies.”

“I relish that feeling,” I say, the screams of Pyro and Ember echoing in my ears. Indeed, I still recall every gory detail of bringing justice. Justice tastes good. Or is that blood? My mind fails me again. I instead focus on my own gelato. I’ve never had this sort of treat before. This is a taste I can actually describe. Sweet, tart and easy on my throat.

Discord, sitting at the head of the table like before, is sipping a cup of tea, only I swear he’s drinking the glass instead of the liquid. He even has his pinkie claw out. The expression on his face shows boredom.

He shakes his head. “I can’t believe it,” he says to Tohro. “So high off your minds you actually managed to wander into my dimension! You mortals, forgetting what’s impossible and what isn’t. Then again,” he turns the tea into a poppyseed muffin and eats it whole, “I thrive on impossible!”

“For the record, I am not comfortable with this.” Shae hasn’t touched a bite of her honey yogurt. The remark Discord made about lead poisoning must still linger in her mind. She gladly passes it over to Tohro, who’s already on a second helping of tofu salad.

King Hurricane taps my hoof, grabbing my attention. “What say you of my wife? Is she well? I assume she misses me so.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure she’s in good company. I should know, I visit her every night!” Discord winks suggestively at Tohro.

“Platinum was uncommonly fast to believe us about Discord and this alternate plane of reality,” I say, “but that’s only because she’s still heartbroken, and wishes only for your happiness.”

Shae glances up from the table to see Discord making gagging and choking motions.

“Her thoughts are still of me. This is good news.” Hurricane looks pleased for a moment, but then his misery returns. The clouds overhead begin to build. “No, no it isn’t. I left too much of an imprint upon her. Her longing for me is a distraction.” He shoves his gelato aside, slamming his hooves on the table. “Damn it! The kingdom could fall to the Blackwings, only because I left her alone to her troubles!”

Discord snickers. “Her troubles are troubling indeed. They say to never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. It troubles me so that she is troubled, but; are her troubles really worth the trouble?”

“I will pretend I did not hear that.”

At this point, what with having met the queen, talked with the last living Precursor and learning there’s an alicorn in existence, trotting into Discord’s realm for the second time is of minimal shock to us. Though waking up to his mismatched eyes after that horrid experience... Needless to say, he had to do away with our weapons once again.

Xephyr is here too, having wandered in as well during his intoxication. Much like before, he’s dead scared of Discord to the point of silence. He keeps his attention to his Saddle Arabian alfalfa dumpling.

So, here we are, eating food that I’m sure will drive us to insanity, but I’m hungry beyond all reasoning, so... “Mmm. Tohro, try this grape juice.”

“Ah, you’re a stallion of good tastes, Dragonborn. It’s kosher too!” Discord equips a monocle. “I’ve had that particular brew stashed underneath the table for at least three hundred years. It can only get tastier with time. Quite lovely.”

Hurricane sighs and lets his fading rainbow mane fall in front of his eyes. “Yes... Yes, she was...”

A flickering, ghostly image of Platinum, sans her grey hair and several years worth of wrinkles, emerges from the center of the table. She flaunts her rather revealing pink dress that emphasizes her curves beyond moral standards, especially from a queen. Her sultry wink at a younger Hurricane gives me a hint as to what the late king is reminiscing about.

The images of the youthful, madly in love ponies passionately kiss, only breaking apart for seconds at a time. The images fade as Hurricane’s hoof begins to slip under Platinum’s garment.

“That was our first time together. We were lovers for the night, yet by the time we woke we were mortal enemies once again. The ongoing conflicts of the three tribes forced us to remain in that twisted romance.”

“We’ve heard of this already,” I say. All this romantic schlock is beginning to grate on my nerves, and based on Discord’s constant yawning, I can assume he feels much of the same.

I hear Tohro pipe up with a mouthful of juice and leaves. “With respect, Your Majesty, I doubt constantly droning over your wife will put you at ease. Is there something else you want to get off your finely toned chest?”

The king considers this with a tilt of his head. “Well... Perhaps I could speak of what came before.”

“Half the pegasus military, I presume,” says Discord with a snort. He slithers underneath the table, coming up behind Hurricane and grabbing his withers, much to his discomfort. “See, this old colt used to be quite the heartthrob back in his prime. Love ‘em and leave ‘em type. His number of heads taken almost matches the number of heads he received!”

“Within good reason!” Hurricane shoves the mad god away and removes himself from his seat. As he trots along the length of the table, more ghostly images appear over our food, this time being tall and handsome soldiers dressed in ebony armor, equipped with wing blades. “When the Great Blizzard began, the first kingdom to fall under famine was Olympus, the pegasus homeland. Trade with the earthwalkers proved problematic. We had to conserve food and resources, and as such, Commander Zeus ordered a reproduction limitation.”

“Ah, I heard about that,” says Tohro. “Only one child allowed per household, was it?”

“You can guess what happened whenever somepony broke that law!” Discord drags a talon across his neck, severing his head and placing it on the table centerfold. Shae very nearly falls out of her chair in shock. I have to resist bursting out in laughter. “Very pragmatic of them, really. Get rid of the chaff in the wheat. Wonder how many of your own bastard foals suffered that fate?”

Hurricane does his best to ignore all that. He faces away from us. “Yes, and although it was necessary, it was taxing on our bodies, being unable to mate for fear of overpopulation. We in the militia, being surrounded by other stallions of physical perfection, well...” The soldiers above us begin to stand awfully close to one another. Bloody hell, they’re nuzzling! ...Oh.

If I could see Hurricane’s face, I’d assume he’s cherry red at this point. The memory of his younger self is giving affectionate kisses to a rather meek and feminine soldier. “I had a few affairs-”

“Understatement of the millenium! Believe me when I say it’s not as fun to watch as you’d think.” Discord sifts through the memories, summoning several more soldiers that look upon young Hurricane with lust and admiration. If all pegasi eventually fell under this sort of rampant sexuality, then Tohro’s behavior makes way too much sense.

I was wrong. Hurricane isn’t blushing, if anything, this is just standard fare for him. “It gave us something worth fighting for, especially when the war began. Like or not, a pony needs to find love. There was little love to be had in the Great Blizzard.”

“So your bodies weren’t the only things that were blue?” Discord cocks his head.

While Shae, Tohro and even Xephyr are beginning to relax, gazing at the tender acts of affection before us, they sit right back up when the memories change to a bloody battle on an epic scale. Right when things were about to get explicit, too! ...Ahem.

Through the snow drenched fields of what I assume are the Great Plains, earthwalkers, pegasi and unicorns alike are locked in brutal combat. Shae grimaces as a pegasus soldier impales a unicorn with a full set of wing blades.

While the brutality of hundreds of starving and freezing soldiers wages on, young Hurricane watches from afar on a cliffside, standing amongst his fellow pegasi. He then turns to see an absolutely enormous and heavily scarred white stallion, covered from head to hoof in glass armor and carrying a glare that could make a minotaur cry.

“I’m going to assume that’s Commander Zeus,” I say.

“Our legion desires blood,” says the projection of the mighty one, his voice overwhelmingly deep. “The dirt mongers and the filthy witches have come to satiate our appetite. Let no horse think they stand a chance. Let nopony look to the sky with hope, because we will be there, our blades bathed in the light of the holy sun, ready to strike them in the heart. Such is how we wage war. Faster than the wind itself, deadlier than the reaper!”

“HOORAAAH!!”

I must give the pegasus military credit for their war cries. The whole lot of them spread their wings and join the battle in unison. All except for one, that pink haired mare-like colt from earlier. He’s on the ground, shaking like a rattle. “Private Pansy, huh?”

Hurricane returns to the table. “He had a noble heart. Unfortunately, not one of a noble warrior. Still, he was my favorite.”

“Wasn’t Zeus’ favorite, that’s for certain,” says Discord as the old commander gives the cowardly private his stare.

“PRIVATE!”

Pansy leaps nearly a mile in the air. “Y-y-yes, sir?”

“I oughta have you COURT MARTIALED for even THINKING you could dodge this fight! I didn’t even hear a WAR CRY! WHAT are the elements of a WAR CRY, Private!?”

Pansy looks like he’s about to faint on the spot, too scared to even run from Zeus. “Uh, uh... Screaming and hollering... Uh, loss of control...”

“AND!?”

“P-passion.”

“PRECISELY! NOW! Since you clearly know what makes a good war cry, GIVE ME ALL YOU HAVE!”

Pansy inhales and lets loose a soft “...Hoorah...”

That only makes Zeus all the more enraged, veins showing in his neck as he shoves his face closer to Pansy’s. “HORSEAPPLES! YOU DIDN’T CONVINCE ME! TRY AGAIN!”

“Hoorah...”

Tohro and Hurricane simultaneously bury their faces in their hooves.

“Louder!”

“Hoorah.”

“LOUDER!”

“Hoorah.”

Spit flying from his mouth, Zeus goes all out. “LOOOOOOUDEEEEEEEER!!” I swear Pansy’s mane is sent flying backwards from the force of the shouting. I wonder if Zeus was Dragonborn too. Whatever the case, it’s too much for Pansy to take. His eyes go askew and he falls over backwards. Zeus nickers and trots away. “Clearly it’s too much to expect the mule of the military to have some sort of reverence for the art of war.”

Pansy nods, eyes squinted in shame. Poor thing. If it weren’t only a memory, I’d help him up and buy him a barrel of mead to help him forget this. What a trooper, trying to stand up despite the fear and loathing.

“How was he in the sack?” Discord asks, glancing up from his bored sitting position.

Oh, how I wish Zeus were in physical form right now. I’d like to see how much vigor he’d carry with two swords dragging along the sides of his neck...

“Oh, don’t even bother,” snorts Zeus, giving Pansy a kick. The colt’s whimpering only makes me more furious. “Just lay there and wait for your fellow soldiers to pin you down and fuck you like the mare that you are-”

“Silence!” There’s young Hurricane. He leaps into the fray, sliding to a stop between Pansy and Zeus. He comforts Pansy with a touch of his hoof. “That’s enough, Zeus. You’re needed elsewhere.”

Zeus reluctantly backs off, cracking his neck and standing at ease. “Soldiers need discipline, Lieutenant. Clearly you’ve forgotten that, talking so rudely to me.”

“As if you have the right!” Hurricane advances on Zeus with his wings spread. “My superior be damned, I won’t have you-”

“Wait, I seem to have stopped caring.” With a flip of his mane, the old commander gallops off the cliffside and takes flight, leaving Hurricane to spit at where he stood.

“Epona damned brute!” he curses, assisting Pansy onto his hooves and embracing him. The private is squinting, holding back tears as he seizes Hurricane in a tight embrace.

Discord’s head comes up behind the two of them, causing the memory to snap in half. “Hurricane and Pansy sitting in a tree..."

“Very... mature.” The Hurricane of the present dismisses the memory, aside from a still image of Pansy that drifts closer to him. The young butter yellow colt is smiling meekly. I have to admit, seeing such a scrawny fellow in that heavy duty armor is adorable.

Hurricane’s eyes begin to water. “Oh, sweet Pansy. You didn’t belong on the battlefield, yet you never gave up. Perseverance, that was your finest quality.” The image cracks like glass and shatters. “Perhaps if I hadn’t wasted your time comforting you with love and affection, you could have become the great warrior you were destined to be.” The king buries his face in his empty bowl. “Maybe... maybe I could have saved him... I never even said goodbye...”

Discord seems to have taken the cue, summoning somber violin music from nowhere, acting as if he’s playing along. The face on the other side of his head (Where did that come from?) looks annoyed and begins making faces.

Shae clears her throat, quietly teleports to Hurricane’s side and lays a comforting hoof on his back, pulling him away from the bowl. “Isn’t it enough for him to have known you cared? Clearly you loved him.”

“Loved him?” Hurricane’s rainbow mane has fallen flat and mussy. Shae uses her levitation magic to pull it back into place. “I... I forgot.”

“Oh, Your Majesty,” Shae says with a chuckle. “I may be young, but I know love when I see it. You may have married Platinum, but you loved Pansy with all of your warrior heart, and that was enough in the end.” The unicorn passes Hurricane a bowl of pea soup, which he uses to examine his reflection. It fills me with relief to see his confident smile. There’s a face I would follow into battle, and I despise following anypony.

“You’re right.” The king looks to the sky, which is beginning to clear. The fog in the surrounding dead woods lessens as well, and I begin to relax with the warmer air gracing my coat. The king seems to be enjoying the sight as well. He hops onto the table, prompting me to save the plate of biscuits from his childish stomping. “You’re right! The affection I shared with Pansy and the true love I found in Platinum weren’t worthless. They both shaped me into a finer stallion.”

“Yet the old battleaxe would never go for a threesome, huh?” Discord interrupts again. “Clearly all of you have forgotten why I summoned you here to begin with. You’re supposed to help me escape, not listen to him drone on about who he stuck his sword in!”

Tohro rolls his eyes. “You’ll get your escape, we assure you. Our best option is to keep listening to His Majesty until all the putrid thoughts are out of his head.” He nibbles on another biscuit. “You do have a point, though. Why doesn’t anypony give polygamy a chance?”

Discord nods. “There will be plenty of time to answer such profound questions later. Let us keep this party moving. Oh, Your Majesty!” In the middle of Hurricane’s adorable trot, two hands apparate from the tablecloth and grab ahold of him, setting him back down in his seat. Discord slithers over and wraps his lion arm around him. “So, we’ve all heard of your bedroom experiences and frankly,” the mad god’s face turns green for a moment, “most of us, and by that I mean me, are sick of it. Why don’t you just skip to the end so I may take absence?”

Hurricane ponders that, dragging his sight across the much more beauteous world inside his mind. “I can’t think of anything else,” he says after a while.

“And yet, here we are!” Discord howls. His perpetual grin disappears. “You disappoint me, Your Majesty. Don’t you remember at all what drove you to insanity? What you spent countless waking hours brooding about and losing your lovely mane over? Your perfect failure?”

Hurricane looks ignorant at first, but I see something change for him. I spot beads of sweat as he pulls at his hood.

“Ah, yes, there it is!” Discord warps onto the table, suddenly clad in a cruel replica of the king’s battle armor. “The mighty King Hurricane! Hero of the pegasus military! Ruler over the newborn land of Equestria! Owner of a royal sword that makes stallions and mares alike shiver with arousal! Is there anything he can’t do?” A tilt of an eyebrow and a psychotic smirk are enough to make Hurricane lean back in his seat.

“I... I know not what you imply.”

“Reaaaally?” Discord says with deadpan. He holds out his hoof and summons another image, this one of a young pegasus. I have to lean over to get a full view but I spot a light blue body with a slick violet mane. “You’re quite sure this means nothing to you?”

The king goes through many expressions, first surprise, then sadness, then a squint of remorse, and finally... loathing. I’ve never seen somepony so tragically enraged before, his reddened eyes following the projection as it hops onto the table. “Squall...” growls Hurricane. He brings up his hoof. “Squall!” He brings it down on the table, just barely missing the pegasus. “SQUALL!”

“Prince Squall?” mutters Tohro as he backs away. Shae, Xephyr and I follow suit as the king keeps making desperate attacks on the projection, tears and sweat dropping in his wake.

It’s happening again. Hurricane’s mental world begins to collapse, cracks forming at my feet as the sky clouds over. Red bolts of lightning rain down, striking the trees and snapping them apart. One begins to topple over, with Tohro in harm's way. I leap from the crumbling ground and throw myself onto him, dragging us both to safety.

I look to the king. He has his bastard sword drawn, swinging it about madly at flickering projections of Squall. Discord is trying to calm him down, to no avail. “Okay, Your Majesty! I only wanted to make you somewhat angry, not hell bent on destruction! Now stop destroying things!”

Hurricane is unaware of all but the projections before him. No matter how many he cuts clean through, another appears behind him. “GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY LIFE! YOU’RE DEAD! YOU ARE DEAD TO US! SQUAAAALLL!!”

The haunting sight of King Hurricane screaming at the stormy sky is the last thing I see before Discord envelops us all in his reptilian body, taking us away from the king’s mind once again.

Discord feigning innocence truly irks me. “You crossed a line,” I say, taking steps over nothing. I’ll never get used to the space between planes of reality, or dimensions, whatever it is they’re called. Another contributing factor to my frustration towards this draconequus.

“How do you know? Ever think about asking the line how it feels?” Discord asks.

“Discord!” Tohro approaches him. “I don’t understand Hurricane’s grievance with Prince Squall either, but surely you must, I mean, you’ve been with him for how long?”

“Long enough to know he refuses to bring any of his grievances to the forefront unless he speaks to his fellow equine. Poor fellow just doesn’t trust me! I’d have jumped ship long ago if it were possible.”

Shae lets out a groan of concern as she keeps Xephyr steady. The cowardly bard still trembles just from being in Discord’s presence. Shae says, “Perhaps the zebras are right to fear you. Clearly you have no remorse for driving innocent ponies mad.”

“Mad? My dearest unicorn, I am mad!” Discord summons a wine glass filled with more of that brown substance he had drank before. He takes a swig. “In fact, the only reason I even began dimension hopping was because the others had already given into my sweet reign of chaos. True story.”

It’s clear enough to me we’re dealing with a living contradiction, but I think I know how to appeal to his inner demon. It shouldn’t be too hard; he wears it on his shoulders. “True as it may be,” I say, “your reign of chaos won’t spread any further if you insist on making our task difficult.” I point accusingly at the mad god. “If you insist on driving Hurricane into his grave with your tomfoolery,” I cross my forelegs, “then I can’t guarantee we’ll provide service for you.” There it is. An offer even he cannot refuse.

Discord’s head, for some odd reason, turns into that of a smiling owl’s. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.”

Head reverting to normal, Discord sighs and drains his glass. “Very well, Caro. I suppose good things come to those who wait.” He turns his head to look into the nothing in the distance. “I’d best tend to the king. In the meantime, you all skedaddle.”

The spilled liquid turns pitch black and begins to engorge, consuming the nothing around us and sending Discord off. I expect that when the darkness fades, we’ll be back in the forest with massive headaches from the blossomforth.

How wrong I am.

This is new, yet strangely familiar. I’m not in the realm of nothing anymore, though this place still feels like a void, like if I were to step beyond its borders, I’d still find nothing.

Still, there’s something here. I’m standing on stone shore overlooking a vast ocean, and overlooking that ocean is the moon, several times larger than it should be.

“What are you doing so close to us?” I ask.

“Close... more than... was...”

That voice. It belongs to that ambiguous child that keeps appearing to me in my dreams. It seems that I fell asleep upon my return to Equestria, or something along those lines. Either way, this is different. Beforehoof, the child had only spoken two words; my name, and ‘please’, leaving me with a burden of confusion. Now she speaks in fragmented sentences.

“You... here... see you... happy...”

I assume that means it’s a pleasure to see me, and honestly, after growing somewhat attached to this odd child, I’m happy to see her too. Her voice is distant, seemingly audible from the night sky itself. I wish I had a body to associate with the voice this time. Sure, she was featureless before, but she was actually there.

My wish is granted.

There she is, taking partial form amongst the stars, her head and neck resting against the moon. This is the most I’ve seen of her beyond an empty body. For once, she’s actually looking at me. For a long moment, that’s all she does. She just... looks. I see the faint outline of her lips curl into a smile, and for some reason I feel inclined to do the same.

“Are you okay?” I ask for some odd reason.

“Wake... I... will not... yet...”

“Wake from what? Are you asleep?”

She doesn’t respond, prompting me to speak again.

“Do you need somepony to wake you up?”

“I... do... not...”

Her broken speech reminds me of Rhapsody, only not nearly as annoying. “So, you’ll wake on your own time?”

“When... ready... I am... I will...”

All the pieces of this puzzle fit together, at least with what little pieces I’ve been given. I raise my head. “I think I understand. You’re incomplete, and you need somepony to know you exist, so they’ll be able to, uh, find you?”

It takes a while, but eventually I see her nod. I’m uncannily excited at this point. Perhaps after all I’ve been through, this innocent little pony, or whatever she is, can provide me with a dose of innocence. I would love to meet her.

“You’ll send me a sign when you’re ready, of course.”

Her smile broadens, and so does mine.

It’ll probably be some time before I wake up from this dream, though it hardly feels like a dream anymore. This little mare is very real, I just know it.