Pinkie Pie circled around their gathering spot at the riverbank, ending with a sniff and a wail. “No more jellybeans! We’ve lost their trail!”

“I bet that’s what you was following back when we first come into this here forest, weren’t it, Trixie?” Applejack gave her best angry glare at the blue unicorn, still being fussed over by Rarity who had produced needle and thread to make a quick patch on the torn hat.

“Yes,” said Trixie in a dull tone, devoid of hope. “I’ve got a short-range tracking spell stuck on their wagon, but that was just so they didn’t run me over anymore. We’re lost in this carnivorous forest, with no idea where the kids are.”

“What about your loyal guard, whom I met briefly in the yard?”

“Huh? Where did you come from?” Trixie looked up at the pink ‘alicorn’ before scowling off into the night. “He’s not a Royal Guard. He’s a changeling who’s been posing as an earth pony masseur in the spa. He’s probably been eaten by now.”

“Do you mean Tallgrass, dear?” Rarity paused in her sewing with a far-off look. “He has the most magnificent hooves. I always wondered just how he knew where to rub to get the knots out.” Blushing furiously, she returned to her sewing with a secret smile and a shy, “Not in that way, of course.”

Trixie picked herself up and pointed downstream. “Let’s at least go blundering around in the dark before we get eaten. Maybe we can bump into them by accident.”

“Why do you think in darkness you should blindly roam, when I have lived here many years, in my forest home?” The disguised zebra did not look angry when Trixie turned around to look, but more concerned. It was probably the pink disguise.

“Look, if you have a better idea of where Twilight Sparkle is, tell us.”

“My Flower flees to where she first was placed, before her presence there I traced. She was broken, dying, cold and frightened. To my destiny there I was there enlightened.”

Trixie rolled her eyes and sighed. “Where is there?”

Zecora matched Trixie’s sigh with one of her own. “The castle deep within the Everfree, by where we live, in our hollow tree.”

“Wonderful. The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters in the Everfree Forest, like I said before. Why didn’t you just say so?”

“I did say so, you saucy lass. Try not to be a donkey’s—”

“Whoa up there, gals.” Applejack interposed herself between the two ponies, who had begun to approach one another with a certain look in their eyes that promised violence.

“You know your way around these woods, ma’am? And you can guide us to this castle place where you say the kids are headed?” Zecora responded to each question with a sharp nod, not taking her eyes away from Trixie.

“Let’s just get a goin’, then. Them little fillies are getting farther away the longer you two sit here jawing at each other.”

Zecora gave another brisk nod before turning to begin their trip. “True.” With a sharp sideways glare at Trixie, she added, “Shrew.”

The throne room of the castle ruins trembled to the thunderous magic of Nightmare Moon as five stone spheres flew into the walls with deafening cracks. Back and forth across the ancient room they crashed, smashing into wall, ceiling and floor with the same result.

“Open up, you infernal rocks! I am Nightmare Moon, and I command you!”

Raising a hoof, she smashed down at the five stone spheres, sending them ricocheting around the room, one of which rebounded off a knee.

“*!”

Light peals of joyous laughter echoed through her mind as the Nightmare fell to the cold stone floor, clutching a knee which felt as if it were made entirely out of shattered bone and raw nerves.

My Element doth express its distaste for my body’s current inhabitant.

“I don’t need these five useless rocks,” raged Nightmare, picking them up in her magic. “I need the sixth one! The one you lost. The one that made the others USELESS!”

Magic coiled around the five smooth stones as Nightmare used all her might to fling them through the castle window, shattering the last fragments of glass that time had not yet claimed.

My sister did find no impediment to their use. It was your actions that made Magic slip from our grasp, and your foolish pride that made you cast Laughter and Generosity away then, just as you have done now.

“I only need Magic to free myself from your rotting flesh! Where is it? Where did your infernal sister hide it?!”

The infuriating chuckle echoed around inside Nightmare’s head when she looked at her nearly unscathed knee, with only a small lump showing where the stone sphere had bounced off bone. The agony faded while she watched, with Luna’s laughter only getting louder once Nightmare realized the deception she had just fallen for.

Magic is only found with its friends.

“Then I shall follow the Elements to their ‘friend,’ and seize it!” Nightmare Moon flung the broken fragments of the window away, only to be thrown backwards when the stone spheres came plummeting out of the inky night, rebounding off her immortal alicorn coat with horrible thuds. Laughter was the last Element to return, making a special rebound off the furious alicorn’s helmet before settling down on the stone platform with its four other friends, just as they had been for the last thousand years.

The Elements of Harmony had returned home to await their last member.

Monster flattened her ears as she ran, drawing on her magic to maintain her breakneck pace through the forest with bursts of teleportation and frantic scrambles every time the spell threw her out into a new section of pathway. The all-encompassing fear which had wrapped her in a frigid embrace began to thaw while the familiar forest flowed around her, the soil thudding under her hooves and the humid, night-scented air filling her lungs. Even in the dark night, the whispers and feelings that permeated her being gave a sense of belonging, a dangerous monster in a dangerous wood, a creature in her own habitat. She could feel the urgent worry of her friends, falling behind when she teleported, but catching back up whenever Monster had to double back in the dark forest due to another landmark having been swallowed up by the darkness.

Not lost.

Never lost.

Just not in the right place.

The changeling pursuing in her hoofsteps no longer filled her heart with terror, but a strange feeling of kinship, because the love she sensed within him was a part of the energy she had stolen from his hive and used to kill his queen. Farther back, she could feel the hooves of mom and other ponies, led by the strange blue one who commanded the changeling.

Trixie.

She knew that name.

A small face, screwed up into a scowl, demanding attention. A shrill voice. A blow that knocked her book to one side. A loud shout that made her cry. Monster remembered seeing a frightened pony on the inside of that fragile shell. But not a bad pony.

The bad pony lurked far ahead, screaming and cursing in the scary stones that lay next to home.

She made the white pony go away into the sun.

She wanted to hurt mom and her friends.

She was a threat.

Tallgrass had long since stopped cursing while he galloped in pursuit of the little fillies. He needed his air too much for mere words. Fire seemed to fill his throat, cover his coat, and armor his hooves as he galloped. A mindless rhythm filled his head, of chanting and hammering hooves, as if the entire ground beneath him pulsed to the beat of far-off drummers while he ran—

raiti

—turning right to duck between two trees into a narrow forest path, over a fallen log and splashing through a narrow brook. A coiling vine narrowly missed him, brushing over his back as if repelled by his sweat while the changeling scrambled up the creek bank, hitting his full stride on the narrow path—

kushoto

—and turning left to leap across a low log which snapped at him, far too late to even get a bite from the delicious creature who galloped so fast. Deeper into the forest he ran, getting farther away from his little charges with every step.

Monster’s hooves slowed in their gallop as the suddenly cold forest air began to compress around her, holding her in a grip that sucked the air from her lungs and made her gasp for every breath. The suffocating fear had returned. The fear stood between Monster and the bad sister. Tall dead trees around Monster loomed inwards, towering over the frightened unicorn, reaching to embrace her with skeletal branches. Gaping mouths on the dead trees snapped at her perceptions while more fear rolled in like tar.

In the woods around her, dry branches rustled as Timber Wolves sensed her weakness and were drawn near. Monster cantered to a walk, then a halt, frozen in the glare of the surrounding trees as they held her in their power.

Power

Monster needed It. If she had It, she would not be afraid. She would be able face the bad sister and make her not hurt mom and her friends. brother did not need It anymore. It was her It. There was too much fear here to face by herself.

The changelings had used love for power. This place used fear.

Monster could use fear too.

With a blaze of violet light, Monster began her spell.

“Holy Celestia’s Terrible Teats,” gasped Trixie as the horizon blazed with sheets of purple light, with a sudden wind whipping the trees around them into a frenzy and driving the seven ponies together for protection from the storm.

“W-what’s happening?” gasped Fluttershy, holding onto Pinkie Pie’s neck with a vice-like grip.

“It’s a spell,” shouted Rarity to be heard above the sudden roar of wind.

“Really?” Trixie bellowed in response. “I never would have guessed!”

The purple glow flared into eye-burning brilliance, illuminating the entire forest with a shriek and flash, stopping just as abruptly as it had started.

Spitting out a fragment from the falling leaves all around them, Zecora let out a low chuckle.

“Unless my old eyes have been deceived, an item my Flower has retrieved.”

“A retrieval spell?” Trixie looked uneasily at the horizon where the purple glow had nearly been like a second sun. “They take power in a logarithmic progression. Whatever she retrieved, it must have been critically important, like a spellbook or a weapon.”

Or the Elements of Harmony, she silently prayed.

Monster stood in the center of the ring of burning trees and laughed. It was a strange sensation, unlike anything she had felt since she was very small. Her eyes watered, her ribs hurt, and she could barely breathe, but she could not stop laughing.

Resting on the ground in front of her was It. And a little something extra.

”Shiny!” The room shifted in her perception as Twilight trotted across the kitchen floor to put both hooves up on the table where Shining Armor was engaged in a very NOT bedtime story related activity. He held a needle in his magical grip, with a long black thread trailing after it. On the table was his junior cadet’s uniform, with one sleeve laying flat and a loose fabric chevron being ever so carefully sewn into place. A look of fierce concentration occupied Shining Armor’s entire face, with the tip of his tongue sticking out of one corner of his mouth and every single stitch that tacked his newly-won rank insignia resulted in a tiny little grunt of effort.

“What’cha doing, big brother?” The stubborn brother did not even acknowledge his adorable sister’s presence, but continued to place one stitch after another into his stupid jacket and that stupid little piece of cloth. Bedtime was five whole minutes ago, and he had promised to read her a bedtime story tonight. She had picked out her favorite, Clover the Clever’s Third Treatise on Particle Transformation Through Quantum Tunneling (Foal’s Version), and been waiting patiently in bed for three whole minutes. After giving him sufficient time⁽*⁾ to properly respond to her question, she dragged a chair over to the table and positioned herself in the proper place to be heard, about four inches from his left ear.

“SHINY!”

Monster finally managed to slow her laughing long enough to pick up It. It was difficult to see through the joyful tears streaming from her eyes, but It seemed to have several small rips and tears sewn up in neat stitches, just as precise and well-spaced as brother’s uniform, in addition to a new pair of mismatched buttons sewn on for eyes. And just like his uniform so many years and a whole lifetime ago, the tablecloth he had been sewing on was just as precisely stitched onto the back of It, giving the impression It had a long, flowing white dress with a floral pattern.

(*) By counting to 100 by primes.