“Alright, let me just say all this out loud, so I know it makes as much sense as I think it does.” Twilight stood with her back to the library’s front door. She had just finished a frantic set of pacing back and forth, as displayed by the noticeable set of scuff marks in the wood. She sighed and pointed to herself.

“First, judging by what you’ve all told me, I seem to disappear and reappear at random,” she said. “I don’t know when it happens, since time passes the same for me, I just notice when I’m back, since everything’s skipped ahead. I’ve got no idea what triggers it, or what’s actually happening to me when I’m gone.”

Rainbow Dash, seated off to one side, raised her hoof. “Also, something might be up with your magic. Unless you actually meant to blast a hole clean through that book back upstairs.”

“Uh, right… that too,” Twilight said with a slight hint of embarrassment. She scratched her horn for a moment and then pointed to Applejack, who sat opposite Dash. “Applejack’s body comes apart if she’s bumped strongly–”

“Or if a really strong breeze hits me,” Applejack cut in. She thumped her tail, causing her right leg to wiggle in place. With a stifled sigh and roll of her eyes, she steadied herself.

“–but, no matter what, she doesn’t feel anything, and her body appears to show no effect when it happens,” Twilight went on. “And then she can just stick herself back together, and she’s good as new.”

“…so, could anything else stick back on instead?” Dash wondered aloud. Her eyes flickered towards a small globe on a nearby desk. “Hey Applejack, wanna test something out?”

Applejack narrowed her eyes, but before she could respond, Twilight pointed between them.

“And then we have Pinkie Pie, who can… stretch.”

The others’ heads turned to stare at Pinkie. She hopped back and forth along the far wall of the room, balancing on her hind legs while using her front ones like jump rope.

“Works for me!” she chirped. She kept a steady pace with her skipping, counting down under her breath while changing direction to hop backwards.

“I gotta say, not the biggest change there,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, couldn’t she already do that?” Dash asked.

Twilight shrugged and turned to Dash. “Finally, we have Rainbow Dash, who still just dies. And dies. And then dies some more.”

“And may I say, that’s pretty much the coolest curse here,” Dash puffed her chest out. “Definitely way better than this sideshow stuff. Main event right here, for sure.”

“Rainbow, it’s not a competition.”

Dash smirked. “I know, I know, I’m just sayin’ is all.”

“Anyway…” Applejack stood and moved towards Twilight, dodging around a still-skipping Pinkie. “All this sideshow nonsense aside, don’t we have a book we should be chasin’?”

Pinkie turned her head, stopping herself and whipping her legs around to rest them on the floor. “Yeah Twilight. Except didn’t you say we had to be getting off to Canterlot right about now? What’s up with that? What about the book and getting Spike back?”

“That’s right,” Applejack said. “I doubt that sucker could’ve gotten far. It’s not like it blends in around here.

“Maybe we’re finally going to ask the Princess for help,” Dash muttered.

“The reason we need to go to Canterlot,” Twilight said, “is because I’m pretty sure I know where that book’s headed with Spike. And what’s going on there could be a whole lot worse than just this book being out and about.”

There was a pause in the conversation. Twilight moved back towards the center of the group, eyeing everypony in turn. She took a deep breath and began. “The book mentioned it, back when he was yelling at all of us. It muttered a name: ‘Mystar.’”

Twilight paused for a moment, glancing around and hoping the name would sink in. The others stared back blankly.

“So… should we know who that is?” Dash finally asked.

“Mystar the Malevolent? Nothing?” Twilight gestured to a small rack of history books on a shelf by the door. “Okay, he’s not the most famous name when it comes to old world magicians and warlocks, but that’s not for lack of trying. He was responsible for some of the most infamous magical acts of the early age. For instance, about twelve hundred years ago, there was this small village near what was now Canterlot, and one day he–”

“Uh, Twilight? Any chance we can skip the history lesson?” Dash asked, cutting into Twilight’s diatribe. “What with the hurry and all.”

Applejack and Pinkie nodded. Twilight blushed.

“Oh, right, sorry. Anyway, the book mentioned him, and once I had a moment to clear my head, I think I figured it out. See, Mystar’s body is supposedly buried in a crypt underneath Canterlot–”

“Wait, if he was so evil, why’d they bury him in Canterlot?” Applejack asked.

Twilight shook her head. “Alright, well, maybe evil is the wrong word to use for him. He got that nickname Malevolent for a few reasons. Look, he’s a bit of a complicated figure–”

“Whose history we agreed to skip,” pressed Dash.

“–right, right,” Twilight nodded. “The point is, if his remains are in Canterlot, then it stands to reason that’s where the book is going. Mystar was the sort who would leave a lot of… very personal, long-lasting magical artifacts lying around. The book included. And it’s a book that has a fair bit of power, but it can only do so much on its own. I mean, more than likely it’s a fragment of Mystar’s personality, and so it would want to try and reunite with the rest of him.”

Pinkie gasped, her legs twisting around her face in a tall spiral. “You mean another big baddie from Equestria’s past is going to try and rise again to destroy us all?”

The group stared at Twilight, who could only shrug.

“Uhhhh… maybe? Did I mention the part where he’s not exactly evil?”

“Well, stealin’ Spike an’ cursin’ the lot of us ain’t friendly, that’s for sure,” Applejack said. She pointed out the window. “It’s still all a bit of a stretch though, Twilight. Suppose that book just took Spike off in some direction that’s not towards Canterlot?”

“A worrying possibility,” Twilight said, “but we’ve still got to get to Canterlot. Because now I at least have an idea what I’m dealing with. Even if we don’t find the book there, we will find all the information I need to reverse these spells and track him down.”

“Also, the Princess is there,” Dash added. “Which might prove useful in a pinch. Or something.”

She grinned at Twilight, who shot her a cold look.

“Well, whatever you say, Twilight,” Applejack said. “I just wanna hurry up an’ find that magical varmint so we can get Spike back an’ get ourselves fixed up.”

“Quite right.” Twilight clapped her hooves together and glanced at the clock on the wall. “If I remember my schedules correctly, the next train to Canterlot should be leaving the station pretty soon. So let’s get a move on. And everypony, please try to not do anything that might, uh… freak anypony else out.”

Three sets of eyes cast wary glances on Dash, who sighed. “Yeah, sure, I’ll do my best to avoid bad things spontaneously happening to me.”

“Oh, and if Twilight disappears at any point along the way,” Pinkie chimed in, “be sure to remember what happens so we can fill her in later.”

“Uh, thanks Pinkie.” Twilight took a deep breath and bowed her head. “Alright, are you all ready?”

Dash watched as Twilight’s horn lit up. “See, I thought we’d just walked over to the train station. Because, you know, it’s really close, and we might see that book on the–”

A bright flash of light cut Dash off as it filled the room, leaving the library in an empty silence a moment later.

Dash landed face-first in the snow. She wiggled around in confusion until she finally popped back up through the powder. She took several hurried steps back, only to bump into Applejack’s torso and front legs right as she was screwing her head back on. A gust of wind blocked out Dash’s hearing for a moment, though a glance at Applejack’s mouth was all she needed to see that her friend was swearing up a storm as she grabbed along the ground in search of her remaining limbs.

“This doesn’t look like a train station to me!” Dash shouted. She glanced over her shoulder to find Pinkie and Twilight standing a few meters away. Beyond them was an endless white landscape, stretching out flat and barren in every direction. A sky coated in a thick layer of clouds churned overhead, ready to break out into a fierce blizzard at a moment’s notice.

“Did winter start early this year, Rainbow Dash?” Pinkie wondered idly. One leg wormed along the ground and went to work rolling up snowballs. Her other leg moved in a similar manner, only to pause when it bumped into Applejack’s left-rear leg. “Hey, did somepony lose something?”

“Over here Pinkie!” Applejack called, the frustration leaking out of her voice.

“What was that?” Twilight shouted back, cupping her hoof over her ear. Another gust of wind silenced the group, cutting a few choice remarks from Applejack as she dropped her leg following Pinkie’s toss.

“Twilight, what are we doing here?” Dash called out as the wind died down. She flapped forward, brushing past the light layer of snowfall. “What happened to just taking us to the train station?”

Twilight rubbed her horn. “Uh, well, I guess that I– hang on, does anypony else feel that?”

“Feel what?” Dash asked.

“Is it the ground shaking a lot under our hooves?” Pinkie asked.

Before anypony could respond, a massive blast of snow and dirt erupted out of the ground a few meters away from the girls. An enormous worm with snow-white scales pushed its way out and into the open. A series of glistening spines along its back led up to a pair of small, beady eye stalks, which swung around to star the girls down. Its carriage-sized jaws opened, and it let loose a mighty roar that shook the ground even more.

Applejack fell backward into the snow, nearly losing her leg in the process. Pinkie hopped over to help, only to see a long sliver of ice shoot past her into the snow. Looking back, she saw that the creature’s roar had fired a barrage of sharpened icicles towards the group.

“Hey Twilight!” she called out. “I don’t think that thing’s very happy to see us!”

Dash opened her mouth to agree, only to have one ice shard shoot through her face and rip off her jaw. In a flash, the lower half of her head was missing, leaving a few stray rear molars and a tongue hanging loosely in the wind. She flapped it back and forth for a few seconds, unaware that she was missing a mouth. Her throat gurgled against the loose strands of skin sagging around her larynx, while a cracked tooth in her upper jaw managed to wiggle its way free and fall onto her tongue. Blood fell out of both sides of her jaw line, splattering the ground below. She eventually noticed she wasn’t saying anything more than various wet sloshing sounds, but before she could do anything about it, a second icicle skewered her through the throat, a third through the shoulder, and a fourth through the abdomen. The sudden impacts from the icy projectiles sent Dash's now limp body cartwheeling through the air, leaving a streak of bright crimson along the snow.

Her lifeless body landed a few meters away, pinned in place by yet another icicle that impaled her through the eye. As soon as a new version of her reappeared, the creature roared again. Pinkie and Applejack screamed as the creature lunged forward towards the group. Twilight braced herself against the snow and lit her horn up. Just as the worm snapped its jaws down, the group vanished in another flash of light, leaving the beast with nothing more than a jaw full of ice.

An indeterminable distance away, on a small patch of smooth dirt in the midst of a large mountain range, the four ponies reappeared. Each fell to the ground in an undignified manner, although Applejack managed to keep hold of all her legs this time.

“Twilight, what was that?” Dash asked, flexing her wings to loosen off some dust.

“An’ just where exactly did we end up?” Applejack asked.

Twilight took a moment to brush several small rocks out of her mane.

“Well, judging by the icy surroundings and a very-clearly not hibernating Ice Worm, I’d say we were somewhere pretty deep in the Northern Wastes. Which means I somehow teleported us all about a thousand kilometers farther than I meant to, if not more. As for why we ended up there…” she trailed off, rubbing her horn and staring into space. “Looking back now, I think that using my magic to teleport us after find out that I was experiencing some rather severe magical difficulties due to this curse may, uh, not have been the best choice. So, um… sorry about that?”

The other ponies groaned in unison.

“Ya think, Twilight?” Dash rubbed her hoof over her forehead. “After what happened in the library, you definitely should’ve known not to–”

A giant yellow fist came smashing down, shoving the rest of Dash’s words down her throat, along with her head and neck. In an instant her body was a flat puddle of goo on the ground, where the fist smeared her around in a carefully controlled circle. Her blood soon painted the ground in a wide arc. Several bits of bone that managed to escape unsquashed between the fist’s knuckles popped up intermittently like tiny islands in a red sea. Her pulverized body squelched horribly against the tough mountain dirt, as the merciless fist continued to grind her until her remains created no more resistance.

A meter away, a fresh new Dash popped into place.

“–go try and use your magic on the rest of us,” Dash said without missing a beat. She motioned to keep speaking, only to pause as she noticed the horrified reactions of the other three. “Wait, did something just happen?”

“See? I told you so,” said a deep, smug voice from somewhere high over Dash’s shoulder. She gulped and turned to find herself staring at three tall dragons. Two blue dragons, each easily clearing twenty meters in height, loomed on either side. A slightly smaller yellow dragon sat between them, his head bobbing on his long neck while he scraped what little remained of Dash’s body from his outstretched claw.

“Huh, how ‘bout that. I guess you were right,” one of the blue dragons said. “But can you really blame us?”

“Yeah, it’s still pretty weird,” the other dragon said.

“Uh, Twilight?” Applejack whispered, doing her best not to move too much. “Any chance we could split about now?”

“I don’t think I can control where we’ll end up!” Twilight hissed back.

“Anywhere’s better than here!” Applejack hissed back.

“It was a real pain, let me tell you,” the yellow dragon said. He thrust out a claw, pointing directly at Dash. “That one just wouldn’t stay down. I wasn’t sure what to do, none of the other ones I’ve come across have ever done that.”

“It’s new to me,” his companion said. He glanced over at the other three ponies, seemingly noticing them for the first time. “Hey, do you think they all do that now?”

“Ugh, I hope not,” the other blue dragon said.

“Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out,” the yellow dragon said with a smile.

Dash flapped back to the ground, joining the others in a tight huddle. “Seriously, Twilight? Any time now.”

The three dragons pivoted towards the girls and took in three deep breaths.

“Twilight, let’s go!” Applejack yelled.

The dragons exhaled, sending three fireballs directly onto where the girls were standing. Flames consumed the spot in an instant, cooking the ground so hot that rocks melted away. The blast sustained itself for several seconds, until one by one the dragons stopped to take another breath. A patch of smoke hovered over the ground, and the yellow dragon eagerly leaned in to brush it away and view the results. His companions leaned in behind him, their eyebrows raised expectedly.

The smoke cleared, revealing a scorched spot of dirt and nothing else. The yellow dragon snooped in for a closer look, poking around at the ground with a single claw.

“Well? Anything?” the first dragon asked.

“I think we’d know already if they’d come back,” the second one said.

“Yeah, there’s nothing here but ash, dirt, and more ash,” the yellow dragon said. He pulled his neck back in and shrugged. “I guess it was just a temporary thing.”

“Thank goodness for that,” the first dragon said, exhaling with a sigh of relief.

“I’ll say,” said the second. “No telling what kind of chaos that could’ve caused.”

Four ponies splashed down into the middle of the ocean and disappeared under the surf. Twilight was the first to resurface, spitting salt water out of her mouth and treading back and forth in a hurried doggy-paddle. Behind her, she heard another head emerge into the air, gasping and kicking around just like her.

“Well, that’s one way to dodge a little fire,” Applejack said, pausing to cough several more times. “Hang on, gotta make sure I still got all my legs.”

“I think my magic is just overshooting my mark by a few extra thousand kilometers,” Twilight said. She paddled over to Applejack, though she found herself straining against the current. “I think I can compensate for it next time… probably.”

A pinkie shape fired out of the water next to her, drenching Twilight’s head with a fresh splash of water. Twilight sighed and brushed her wet mane aside to see Pinkie’s smiling face.

“Hey guys, check it out! My legs can float!” Pinkie’s grin expanded as her legs stretched and slithered through the water, wrapping themselves around Applejack and Twilight and pulling them in close. True to her word, her stretched limbs floated evenly on the surface of the sea, bobbing gently along with the current.

“I always knew you weren’t very dense, Pinkie,” Twilight muttered to herself, letting slip a small smile. She glanced around, her smile turning to a frown when she saw nothing but flat water in every direction. “Uh, does anypony see Rainbow Dash?”

“You caught her when you took us all away, right?” Applejack asked, looking around as well.

Twilight shook her head. “I don’t see how I could’ve missed her.”

“Hey, there she is!” Pinkie grew her leg past Twilight’s head to wave off to one side. “Rainbow Dash! Over here!”

Dash bobbed in the water a few meters away, a blank expression on her face. Pinkie’s leg made its way over.

“Come on Dashie, this is no time to be lounging around,” Pinkie said. “We’ve got to get together and get out of here! There’s magical books and dead evil sorcerers to fight!”

“Again, not exactly evil…” Twilight started, before shaking her head and deciding not to bother.

Pinkie’s leg prodded at Dash’s shoulder. Dash slumped backwards in the water, floating on her back and swinging her lower half up. Or rather, the remnants of her rib cage and spinal column that now constituted her lower half. Everything south of Dash’s stomach was missing, leaving only jagged muscles and lacerated skin sticking out at irregular intervals along her waistline.

The three ponies stared.

“Hmmmm… think the dragons did that?” Applejack asked.

“Or maybe she got spliced in half when you wooshed us away, Twilight!” Pinkie said. “That’s a thing that can happen, right?”

“No, Pinkie, my teleportation doesn’t work like that,” Twilight said. “And the dragons didn’t do that... at least, the fire didn’t.”

“True. She doesn’t seem crispy or burned at all,” Pinkie noted.

Twilight eyed the loose entrails leaking out of Dash’s abdomen. A higher-than-usual wave jostled the semi-pegasus around, and bits of her liver oozed out into the sea. The water around her grew progressively redder as smaller chunks of unidentifiable meat floated to the surface. “Actually, it looks more like a bite.”

Pinkie scratched her chin. “Did one of the dragons lean in close enough to chomp down on her?”

“I don’t know, I was kinda busy lookin’ at Twilight an’ waiting for her to get us out of here,” Applejack said. “Plus, why would they wanna eat her? Seems a bit petty.”

“At any rate, that’s just a dead Dash,” Twilight said. “Where’s the live one?”

Slightly to the right of her corpse, Dash emerged from the water in a flurried fit of coughing.

“Oh hey, there she is,” Pinkie said. She brought her leg back up to its original waving position. “Hi Rainbow Dash! We were just talking about you.”

“I think… that we… should get out of here… right now,” Dash said, pausing between words to spit more water up. She shook her head and flapped up into the air.

“Uh, I think somethin’ just brushed my hoof,” Applejack said, throwing an uneasy glance towards the water.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Dash let out an exasperated sigh. “This water is crawling with–”

“Look!” Twilight pointed over the water. A series of large, gray dorsal fins sprouted up out of the water. Each moved towards the ponies at a high rate of speed.

“Aw, cool, sharks!” Pinkie said. “I bet Fluttershy would love this part. Hey, whatever happened to her?”

“Guys, focus!” Dash shouted. “We’ve got to get out of–”

A great white shark leapt from the water in an impressive arc, jaws open and hungry. Dash turned, almost in slow motion, watching the coming fish with a mixture of annoyance, anger, and more annoyance on her face.

Twilight took a breath and lit her horn. The scene flashed brightly, leaving only a group of very frustrated fish behind.

Twilight burst forward across the library floor, sliding along the wood until she reached the wall. She blinked several times, getting her head together in time to see Applejack appear in the air next to the stairs and plummet to the floor. She split into pieces on impact, her legs scattering along the shelves and her head rolling away. Her body lay still, acting as a landing pad for Pinkie when she reappeared a moment later.

“Oof! Easy Pinkie!” Applejack’s head said from under a desk. “I can still feel myself over there!”

“Sorry!” Pinkie reached her legs up to a ceiling beam to pull herself off. “Nice exit there, Twilight.”

“I’m working with what I’ve got here, Pinkie,” Twilight said. She looked around. “Oh shoot, I didn’t forget Rainbow Dash, did I?”

An enormous crash upstairs caught their attention. Everypony looked up to see a large grey fin smash through the railing by the staircase, showering the floor with wooden splinters. The back end of a great white spread out into the air, its front half still caught on the upper landing. Pinkie ducked around to avoid the thrashing tail, curling her legs around her head as a protective dome. The shark jolted back and slammed into a bookshelf, hitting with enough force to blast it to pieces. A stray plank flew through the air and clocked Twilight in the forehead, sending her to her knees in a daze.

The shark writhed back and forth violently, working to keep itself from falling down and giving in to the oncoming suffocation in the open air. The more it jerked about, the lower the body slipped along the landing. As its head became visible, the girls saw that its jaws were clamped down firmly on one of Dash’s rear legs. Dash, for her part, was busy trying to flap forward and keep her front legs wrapped securely around a nearby table leg. She was now the only thing keeping the shark from crashing down to the first floor.

“Whoa! Rainbow Dash, where’d you get that thing?” Pinkie shouted

“I think you were a little slow on the draw back there, Twilight,” Dash said. She kept at it with her wings, working to hoist up the two ton predator.

The other ponies stared, slack jawed.

“Uh, little help, anypony?” Dash grunted. She shot a quick glance back at Twilight, who was still seeing stars.

The shark dangled in the air like it was hanging off a fishing line, kept up only by the strength of its mouth crunching down on Dash. The pegasus managed to keep herself from moving any further, and for a moment the two hovered in place, the only real movement the constant jerking of the shark. Its tail slammed into the lower bookshelves, tossing paperbacks in every direction. Then there were a series of loud cracks, and Dash’s leg began to come apart. The skin stretched open just above the razor-sharp jaws, popping open blood vessels and tearing muscles down to their very limits. The bone deep inside, already snapped in half from the weight and pressure, showed itself as the leg finally ripped apart, sending the shark falling to the floor. Dash instantly shot forward, propelled by the motion of her fast-flapping wings, and went headfirst into another desk on the far wall.

The shark flopped on the floor of the library like any self-respecting fish would. It chewed up what it could of Dash’s leg purely on reflex, while the rest of its body concerned itself with taking out as much of the library’s remaining furniture as it could before it expired. Chairs, desks, shelves, and stools were obliterated in the melee that lasted several more seconds until Twilight was finally able to right herself, take aim, and teleport the animal away.

An unsteady silence hung in the air as the splinters settled.

Twilight waved her hoof in the air to clear some dust away from her face. “Is everypony alright?” she asked, coughing several times.

Pinkie wrapped her legs around herself and spun around in a circle three times. “Still in one piece!”

Dash’s voice filtered in from the upstairs landing. “I’m missing a leg, but otherwise I’m juuuuuuust peachy.”

“There’s a few down here, Rainbow Dash,” Pinkie said, “but I don’t think they’re yours.”

She quickly scurried around to police Applejack’s loose limbs. “So where’d ya send that shark, Twilight?”

“Back where it came from,” Twilight answered. She paused and rubbed her horn again. “At least… I think I did. Pretty sure.”

“Gotta think hard here, Twilight,” Dash said. “Hope you didn’t just drop that thing in somepony’s dining room… whoa, getting kinda woozy up here. Hang on.”

“I got us all back here, didn’t I?” Twilight replied. “So odds are good that I got that shark where it needed to be.”

“I wonder where that fish did go…” Pinkie’s front legs twirled around her head as she tried to concentrate. This concentration was soon broken as she launched into a series of hyperactive giggles.

“Pinkie, would you cut that out?” Applejack snapped. Pushing off with her jaw, she rolled her head back along the floor towards her torso, where her legs were waiting to join back up. “I dunno about the rest of y’all, but I’m gettin’ good an’ sick of all this craziness that’s been goin’ on today. Seems like it’s always somethin’, until it becomes somethin’ else! Gotta get a break here or somethin’, I’m tellin’ you, or else I’m liable to just up an’–”

“Applejack, please,” Twilight said. “This is no time to be like that, so just pull yourself together.”

Pinkie giggled. Applejack rolled her eyes. “Oh, real mature there, Twilight.”

Twilight frowned. “Why, what’d I say?”

“Yup, definitely woozy up here…” Dash said again, voice fainter still. “Also, I was wrong about what I said before. I think I got part of a shelf shoved into my forehead. Wait, let me… okay, yes, it’s definitely in there tight. Dunno how deep. Or if it’s a shelf. I can’t actually see anything right now, just a lot of brown and grey. Also, there’s a lot of weird fluid leaking out of my ears. Also also, my leg stump itches.”

“Don’t scratch at it, that’ll just make it worse!” Pinkie warned.

“Rainbow, how can you know it’s itchy if you can’t feel anything?” Twilight asked.

“You don’t have to feel an itch to know something’s itchy!” Dash said. “Anyway, just hang on, I’m gonna give this board a tap, see if that doesn’t fix things.”

There was a loud knock on the floor.

“…wait, one more time…”

Another loud knock sounded out, this one accompanied by a pungent, squishy noise. Two more knock and squish combos swiftly followed. Then a limp thud onto the floor, a few creaks and rattles from a body convulsing, and a noticeable *POP*. Dash flew forward and down to join the others, looking good as new. She smiled and helped Applejack attach the last of her legs. Everypony then turned to Twilight.

“Well, that was fun. So, Twilight!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. “Where to now?”

Twilight surveyed the damage. The whole entryway to the library was in ruins, with shelves in pieces and books scattered across the floor. Dust still hung in the air, and she could hear more creaking upstairs as more pieces of furniture began to give in to their injuries. She then glanced at the clock and sighed. “We’re going to the train station. Only… let’s just walk this time, alright?”