“It’s a tree.” The human blinked.

Twilight steeled herself for Nix’s next puerile outburst. Her psychological bastion was assailed by silence. After a few seconds, she peeked at the human cautiously; he now seemed torn between the library before him and some old, rotting, broken thing he had come to consider a memory. The early Fall sun had begun to set, its orange light bathing the yellowing leaves of her home and making them shimmer a wild gold as they wavered in the slight breeze.

“That’s actually kinda cool,” he said finally.

“Cool? Pfft, please, I live in a house made out of friggin’ clouds.” Nix leveled a flat stare at Rainbow Dash.

“I was always more fond of Yggdrasil than Olympus,” he said. “The former’s gods were more awesome and less prone to bestiality.”

“Bees-chee-what?” the pegasus asked.

“You don’t wanna know,” Nix replied in unison with Twilight. They shared a short glance. “Anyway, this is no Yggdrasil, but it’ll do.”

“Until you get your own place,” Twilight added in a rush, before wincing at her own words.

“Yeah, trust me, I’m not any more fond of this arrangement than you are,” Nix replied dryly.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant-” she said rapidly.

“Sure it is.” He grinned down at the purple unicorn. “And it’s one of the most agreeable things you’ve said since I got here. Keep it up and we’ll be the bestest buds in no time at all!” He pinched her cheek and shook it like her Great Aunt Gertie used to do when she visited the family in Canterlot. His fingers were thankfully softer than a pair of hooves, but Twilight still shot the human an annoyed look. His painful pincers released her face and he motioned towards the door. “Shall we?”

Nix followed the group into the suspiciously darkened interior. Bright lights immediately flared and a barrage of gaily colored paper assaulted the airspace of the room around him.

“SURPRISE!!!” said a curiously small amount of ponies. He stared blankly at them, most of his drab focus on the manic-maned pink pony in the conical party hat that formed their vanguard. He had been afraid of this.

“Oh. My. I am so surprised,” he droned robotically. “Who could have guessed. That Ms. Pinkamena would throw me a party. After she said she was going to in Canterplot.” He turned back towards the exit.

“Wait!” a sweet voice rent with turbulent ravines of maniacal glee demanded. Nix’s shoulders’ slumped, but he continued walking. “I remembered what the letter we got from Princess Celestia said about worlds going boom!, and alcohol, and then I was worried about how Gummy might adjust to me being gone if I exploded with the rest of the world!” Nix began to step outside. “So I brought booze,” the voice concluded plainly. He spun on his heel and turned back towards Ms. Pinkamena, who sat near the center of the room next to a large table, its oddly shaped contents hidden by a tablecloth she had draped over the setting.

“Lots of booze,” she lilted slyly as she whipped the tablecloth to the side with the flourish of a bullfighter facing their imminent death, and wanting to make the best show out of things. A hundred different bottles of different shapes and different sizes, each containing a fluid of slightly different colors, glinted and glared brightly as the dying day’s sun flared through the alcoholic beverages from the window.

A keening mewl escaped Nix’s slightly parted lips. It was the sound that a colt or filly might make after their first day of school, having been finally reunited with the warm embrace of their mother after a torturous eternity. Nix’s lower lip trembled slightly.

“I could...” he stuttered in a voice several octaves above his normal register. “I could hug you!” He flung his arms out widely and began barreling towards the pink pony.

“I love hugs!” Pinkie squeaked, taken suddenly by the throes of friendship. Her deceptively powerful hind legs coiled before she shot through the air in a blur. She spread her arms wide and aimed at the imaginary bullseye in the center of the human’s chest. She gave the best hugs, and this one was gonna be a doozy!

A moment before she made contact and wrapped her pink hooves around Mr. Nixxie in a warm embrace, the human seemed to shimmer like the horizon of an arid desert before disappearing. Pinkie sailed right through where Nix should have been and impacted with the back of the couch in the library’s main entry hall.

Nix’s body refocused right before the alcohol, and he wrapped his long arms around the large assortment of beverages on the table. They greeted his warm embrace with cheerful tinkling as he gathered them together in his longing hug. He snuggled his cheek softly against one of the cool glass bottles, and smiled. “I missed you all so much.” He gingerly let the bottles settle, before quickly plucking out one that contained a clear liquid. Its label read ‘Stolichlion’—it was apparently an import from the griffin lands, a place called Pawland. His other hand shot out randomly towards another clear bottle of liquid, and returned with a drink called ‘Ketel Fun’. Both were vodkas.

Pinkie Pie stood up, a little woozy, before she shook her head and grinned widely at the human. “Couches need hugs, too!” she pointed out happily.

“Pinkie...” Twilight had a frown on her face as she examined the liver-destroying quantity of alcohol spread across the table. “How did you even get all of this? You can’t even legally purchase it for another year.”

“Ah,” a voice interjected, with a slight cough. A mint-colored unicorn stepped forward from the background, a white streak of hair hanging loosely over one of her golden eyes. “I may have purchased them for Pinkie Pie after I felt bad about ditching you guys in the park.” Her gilded eyes examined the ground at her hooves sheepishly.

“You!” Nix cried. A multitude of bottles jostled in his left arm arm even as he fought to unscrew the cap of Ketel Fun in the other. “Ms. Lyre-unicorn-thingy!”

“Lyra works, too.”

“So does Ms. Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy, but I digress.” Nix paused for a second, having finally liberated the cap from the bottle of vodka. He drew heavily from the bottle, a bit of the clear liquid escaping the prison of his lips and dripping down his chin. He withdrew the bottle and wiped the stream off his face with the same arm, before shooting an affectionate gaze at the multitude of bottles cradled in his other arm. “You,” he started, smiling widely, “are a goddess among horse-aliens.”

“Oh, you charmer, you.” She chuckled flatly. “I suppose I’ve spared my kind the unfortunate fate of screaming to death as their world explodes?”

“That depends,” Nix said, his eyes narrowing. “Who paid for all this?”

“The Princesses did!” Pinkie cheered.

Nix stared soberly at Lyra—it was one of the last sober looks that painted his features that night. “You,” he intoned gravely, “are the savior of your world. Goddess-speed, Lyre-”

“Lyra.”

“-whatever.”

Twilight’s brows furrowed. “Wait, the princesses paid for this? How?”

“Oh, silly,” Pinkie chirped in a patronizing tone that nopony ever actually felt was actually patronizing, “I borrowed the money from the package Princess Celestia sent to Nix!”

“Wait, so this all came out of my pocket?” Nix asked. “Sorry, Minty. World destruction’s back on. Ain’t no one mess wit’ mah paper, yo.”

“I’m gonna pretend I understood that,” the unicorn responded.

Nix frowned sadly. “Yeah, me too. I was never one of the cool kids. Or retarded.”

“Would you two be quiet!” Twilight groused. Nix held his arms up in surrender—the bottles he had under one arm clattered to the floor, all miraculously unbroken—and waved his hands around in mock indignation. He had kept a vice grip on the open bottle of vodka. The violet unicorn turned back to her pink friend as the human took another long drink. “Pinkie Pie, that was so he could find a place to stay,” she lectured.

Nix stood behind the purple mare and pantomimed her words with one flapping hand, his head bobbing side to side as his mouth downturned in an exaggerated grimace. Pinkie suppressed her case of giggles. Which is to say she only snorted a little bit while giggling openly. Twilight’s voice dropped suddenly to a harsh whisper. “You know, so that way the grumpy, fire-obsessed alien would have to spend as little time as possible in the big flammable tree around a thousand volumes of highly valuable tinder?!” She turned her head sharply to look at the human. He had an innocent smile on his face, his raised hand waving absentmindedly to her before he rested it thoughtfully on his chin.

“I think I’ll set the philosophy section, authors T through Z, on fire first,” Nix stated mildly before taking another draw on his bottle. “To show that Voltmaire fucker the best of all possible worlds.”

“Don’t worry, Twi,” Pinkie said. “I already asked around town and found him a place to stay with the left over money.”

“Oh,” Twilight replied, taken aback. “That was remarkably responsible of you...”

“It’s in the Everfree Forest!” Pinkie chirped contentedly.

Twilight’s face sank. Nix proffered her his now half-empty bottle of Ketel Fun. “It’ll take the edge off, Sparky!” he said with a grin. She scowled at him and slowly pushed his hand away with a hoof. “What? It’s not like you’ll catch a disease from me, and there’s only a little backwash.”

“I don’t drink.”

Nix scowled back at her. “Well, if we’re supposed to make ‘friends’,” he made air-quotes with his hands before he continued, “you had best acquaint yourself with the magical friend-making powers of alcohol.” He shoved the bottle back at her.

“How can you even get drunk?” she asked. “You’ve regenerated from having your skeletal system pulverized by the Royal Canterlot Voice and your entire right side being incinerated in a blast that destroyed almost an entire wing of the castle. The metabolic processes involved when ethanol is consumed by a mammal shouldn’t even come close to affecting you.”

“Same way I could die from a cup of Cakebeard’s coffee when other grievous injuries saw me still breathing,” Nix replied simply. “I suppress regenerative effects when it comes to drinking stuff so I can get drunk. Now’re you gonna take a swig or not?”

“Maybe later,” she replied doubtfully. Nix’s frown deepened and he narrowed his eyes. He withdrew the bottle in defensive reproach.

“Uhm, I’ll be okay to try that...if it’s okay with you?” Fluttershy managed to whisper out. “I’ve never drank before, but if I need to so we can be friends...” She offered the human a conciliatory smile in lieu of finishing her sentence.

“Knock yourself out, Bob.” He passed the bottle to her outstretched hoof. She sniffed at the vodka, wrinkling her nose a bit, before a look of determination came across her face. She took a dainty sip. Her mouth immediately twisted in dissatisfaction as she hurriedly passed the bottle back to Nix’s hairless hand.

“It tastes awfu-” She didn’t finish her sentence before her face slammed into the ground. She began snoring softly. Nix gave the yellow pegasus a rueful smile before suddenly smoothing his features.

“Five minutes in and already the first casualty-”

“Casualty?!” Twilight cried before rushing over to check Fluttershy’s pulse.

“-of the night. S’not looking good, Ms. Pinkamena,” he said to Pinkie. He pushed Twilight aside and tossed Fluttershy over his shoulder. “Ladies,” he said with a mock curtsy before walking over to the nearby couch and laying the pink-maned pegasus gently on Pinkie’s immobile hug-buddy.

“No worries, Nixxie! My party has yet to even begin fighting!”

“So long as you keep the alcohol running, I could give a fu-”

“Maybe a little music!” Pinkie’s grin extended beyond the boundaries of her face as she zipped behind a platform in the corner of the room. In a second, she had summoned a pair of very large speakers and a turntable on the stage from somewhere beyond Nix’s ken. ’One of these days I’m gonna figure out how she does that,’ he thought. Pinkie smiled with a glowing sense of self-satisfaction.

“Uh, and?” Nix stared at the manic earth pony.

The pink mare’s eyes popped open. “Oh, I almost forgot!” She disappeared behind the turntables, only to appear a second later with a white unicorn. Magenta shades hung casually on the bridge of the unicorn’s nose, and her multi-shaded blue mane shot wildly from the crown of her snow-white head. A pair of deep purple headphones hung loosely around her neck. Her head swung around in confusion before she raised a hoof to her goggles and brought them down a few degrees. Crimson irises peeked out from over top their edges as she flicked her eyes around nervously.

“Uh, what?” the unicorn said finally. “Where am I?”

“Hi!” Pinkie squeaked.

The unicorn gave the excited mare a surprised look, before her features hardened and she slowly nudged her shades up over her eyes. “Oh, it’s you,” she said dully. “Same deal?”

“Yeppers!”

“Fine.” Her motions sluggish with regret, she brought out a few brightly colored sleeves of vinyl records and placed two of them on her turntable. She didn’t bother donning her headphones, she just hit a switch and cringed a little as saccharine song seeped from her stage. She sighed and leaned back, crossing her hooves and willing herself to tolerate the music as its sickening sweetness spilled out into the room. Nix frowned, looking first at his bottle of vodka, then to Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy. Her glimmering eyes tore themselves away from the horror that was unfolding before them to meet his own. They pleaded desperately. Nix took a long swig from his bottle, before passing it to the mint green unicorn.

“It helps,” he said simply.

“Maybe after you’ve had enough to black out,” she muttered, shooting a longing gaze at the golden lyre on her flank.

An hour later, Nix was beginning to wish he had a hundred bottles of princess coffee as his ability to tolerate the bland melodies began to wane. Hillbilly and Snob had arrived not too long ago, a bit after the sun had set. He, of course, ignored them. He was too preoccupied with trading off various bottles of liver-slaying liquid with Ms. Minty-Lyre. The human and the unicorn shared a drunken slouch on the couch in the entryway; they stared catatonically into the distance and desperately downed the hard drink to drown the dancing din in the room behind them. Fluttershy still snored peacefully, lying between them. The ponies behind them continued their celebration to the tune of everything awful emanating from the room’s speakers.

Nix hated them.

A pink blur materialized in front of his face. “Hiya Nixxie! Are you having fun?! I hope so because I threw this party just for you and it would be terribadful if you weren’t and then I would have failed my Cutie Mark and that would make me sad and I’d probably have a mental breakdown and start having tea parties with inanimate objects again and mmmmffhhar hfhafffffmmmmmhhmm-” Nix’s hand closed around the pink pony’s snout.

“Hey, Lyre-Unicorn-Thingy, two hundred ccs of happy juice, stat.” He reached a beckoning hand over the sleeping pegasus while looking boredly at Ms. Pinkamena; her lips protruded from his clenched fist, opening and closing like the mouth of a beached fish. Her blue eyes glittered with amusement. After a few seconds, his drinking hand remained empty. “Uh, Lyre-Horse?” He looked over at his equine drinking buddy and found her curled up next to Fluttershy, her hooves wrapped around the bottle of what Nix could only assume was supposed to be whiskey. He frowned in aggravation and made to snatch the bottle from the mare before his hand stopped in midair. Not even he was cruel enough to rouse the mare back to this...this Hell.

“Mmmmffmf! MMMMFHMFFF!” Ms. Pinkamena’s fish-lips squirmed against his fingers. He released her mouth. She took a deep breath of air and raised her head. Right before she could let out a shout, Nix’s hand imprisoned her mouth again and her lips flapped and squeaked like a balloon releasing air. He held a finger to his lips before jutting a thumb at the two sleeping mares on the couch. Her eyes widened and she nodded slowly.

He released her again. She took a deep, gasping breath again. And whispered softly in his ear, “This is my jam,” before disappearing around the edge of the couch—nearly colliding with Ridge Dancer as she did so—and joining the main throng of the party. Nix tried to differentiate this newest song with the ones that preceded it, and failed. Tinny drums, cheerfully cheap synths in the melody of major, the works. At least the party ponies hadn’t broken out in song themselves. He gave up and looked at the lime green unicorn curled up next to the couch.

“Finally get tired of the party, Dancie?”

“I-I’ve been here the entire time,” she stuttered.

“Oh, I guess I didn’t see you there. Really, the entire time?” Ridge Dancer’s face wilted and she drooped her head.

“I’m not very noticeable, am I?” she asked after an awkward silence.

“Not particularly. But that’s not a bad trait to have,” Nix said sympathetically. The unicorn looked up at him curiously. “Ponies don’t pay attention to you, so they never see the carriage-sized hunk of marble you’re hurling at their faces. You’re like stealth artillery, Dancie!” The mare rolled her deep green eyes at the human before bowing her head dejectedly again.

“I just...don’t do well in large groups, that’s all.” She sighed.

“That’s okay, Dancie. You have a condition.”

“I do?!”

“Yes,” the human intoned gravely. “You’re what we in the medical field like to call a ‘goddamn dullard’.” The light green unicorn gave the human a withering glare. “But not to worry! We can fix this.” He dug through a pile of bottles on the coffee table in front of him, knocking half of them to the ground loudly, before he retrieved a miraculously unopened specimen of high quality alcohol. He gazed seriously at the unicorn guardpony. “Take two bottles of these and call me after the hangover.”

“But, I’m on duty and-”

“Shut up and drink the damn swill, Dancie.”

She gazed up at the human with glistening eyes. “You really- you really think this will help, Phoenix?”

“Yes. Now stop asking questions and fucking drink,” he whined breathily. “You’re so goddamn repressed it’s annoying.”

“Well,” she started timidly, “if it’ll help with the crowds...” Her eyes rolled to the scene behind him, welling panic apparent in her contracting pupils. She squeezed her eyes shut and lifted the bottle to her lime-green lips, chugging its contents hungrily.

“Attagirl, Dancie! You’ll learn to deal with crowds in no time at all! And most of ‘em make good liver donors!” He elbowed her shoulder before turning his head towards the object of her fear. There were, at most, a dozen ponies gathered in the library’s main room, all twitching spasmodically to the travesty emanating from the bored DJ unicorn’s speakers. The DJ’s mouth hung loosely and a drawn-out bit of drool dripped dangerously from her lips, its length almost reaching the deep purple headphones draped around her neck. Something clicked inside his fragmented mind, and he exploded of the couch.

“Hey. Hey!” he shouted. “Wait just one Goddessdamned minute!”

Lyra awoke with a start and a small, cute snort. “Wuzzah? I jusht what?” The half filled bottle of whiskey fell out of her hooves and the floorboards began imbibing the rest of its contents.

Nix grimaced at her. “Uh, sorry.”

She looked up at him blearily and summoned a lazy smile. “S’okay. Jusht blow the Equeshtria up quick, ‘kay? And the shpace screams world. And the-” She was unable to finish her sentence as her head was too busy reintroducing itself to the soft, unconsciousness-inducing cushions of the couch.

’God, that’s adorable.’

Nix shook his head and refocused on the task at hand: the headphones. He rushed with the drunken grace of a paraplegic ballerina towards the DJ, drooling apologies across the horrified faces of those who interfered with his chaotic choreography of physical incoherence. Finally stumbling up the stage, he steadied himself on the mix tray.

“Hey! Can I see those for a second?” he slurred over the subdued music playing neatly through the oversized speakers, sort of pointing in the vague direction of the headphones. The white unicorn manning the station snored slightly. Nix frowned. Sane volume or not, this close to the source, Ms. Pinkamena’s ‘jam’ wedged itself thoroughly in the parts of Nix’s brain that dealt primarily with annoyance and excessive violence. Without a second thought, he ripped the vinyl records from the record player and snapped them in half, then in quarters, violently. A blissful white hiss escaped the speakers as all eyes in the room turned towards him. Moreso than they had been, anyway, as he had been the drunk, hairless, extradimensional gorilla in the room the entire evening.

The blue-maned DJ snapped awake, head searching the room wildly. “Whu- Izza- The party’s over? Am I released from my vile task, my liege-lady?” she gasped out in a rush of words. From the back of the room, Pinkie frowned and shook her head, tsking to herself.

“Hey, welcome to the world of the living,” Nix said.

The DJ considered this for a moment, remembering what sort of music had blared through her sacred instruments for most of the evening, and concluded she very probably didn’t exist in the world of the living. At least she hoped she didn’t, if that was the tripe they listened to.

“Can I see those?” Nix asked, prodding her headphones.

The white unicorn recoiled. “Whoa, man, hooves off the merchandise!”

“No, no, I just wanna see something.” He summoned a small black box from his back pocket and pointed to a small portal at its base. “Could those connect to something like this?” he asked.

She stared at the ‘portal’ for a second before she lifted her goggles to her forehead and stared at the human. One of her eyes had developed a tic. “No, genius-”

“Oh, okay,” he said sadly.

“-headphones can not be connected to a headphone jack,” she finished sarcastically.

“Bitch,” Nix muttered.

“That and a lot of other things, plothole. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have to find my mas—my paying customer’s—spare records for the party?”

“I have a better idea.” The DJ raised one of her eyebrows. “You have a male-to-male connector for headphone jacks so I can plug this little box into your rig?”

“No, no I do not. I have a sound set up worth thousands of bits, but it can only play vinyl records,” she deadpanned. She shot a searching glance at Pinkie, who merely shrugged and nodded slightly; the DJ summoned a cord from behind her turntables, plugging one end into her mixer, and the other into Nix’s little black box.

Her goggles plopped back into position and she smiled greedily. “So, what’s yer poison?”

“Gimme a sec. Just need to find my theme song.” His fingers danced across the screen for a few moments before he drew his hand back. He stared at his little black box for a few seconds before his eyes rose in horror to unicorn’s the magenta shades. “I can’t read.”

“If you’d like, I can find you a nice box of crayons to chew on? Right after I get some tunes spinning.” Her hoof moved towards the cord connected to his device.

“No, wait, I can read, it’s just in a different language than I remember!” His eyes shot daggers at a certain lavender unicorn at the far end of the room. Twilight winced.

“Uh-huh. Hold on, I’m sure the nice librarian has a cute little book with pretty pictures in it that you can slobber on for the rest of the party.”

“Pictures! That’s it!” Nix’s cry was perhaps a tad too victorious.

“Yeah. Maybe even some with shiny glitter on them.” Her hoof moved towards the cord again but was swatted away quickly by an annoyed set of hairless digits.

“Just need to find the album cover...and ‘Hell’ and a pair of parentheses...got it!”

“I’ll be sure to talk to Cheerilee about a whole page of golden stars just for you, champ. Now if you don’t mind?” Her hoof paused in its third attempt to disconnect his device as sound erupted from the speakers.

”Sangre Sani. Sangre Sani~” The Gregorian chant began to fill the room, it’s beautiful, melancholic melody dancing slowly through the stilled air. It wailed softly of desires unmet; of sorrow dancing through the calm midnight air, gently swaying and swirling ghost-like clouds at its softly urgent passing; of brushing against the very heavens themselves, yet never gaining entry; of those lost, and their loving, confused, wanton taunts from the other side of the vale. ’Join us,’ they implied, hoped, whispered. Everypony in the room became enraptured by the merciful bereavement, the horrifying comfort, that filled the room in sonorous tone. Even Rainbow Dash and the white unicorn DJ, who had both looked more than a little let down at the melodious song at its start, stood in quiet contemplation, even approval, as the song wore on. The party had, for the moment, become a funeral parlor basking reverently in the glow of those passed.

Then the song spoke of fury. The simple, chugging distorted guitars hit at the one minute mark like a freight train impacting a concrete barrier, and like Death tolling its gnarled, discordant bell for every pony in the room. Their eyes forced themselves comically wide as the hissing growl of a voice spat out the first lyrics. Nix frowned; he no longer understood the lyrics. But something gleamed in Rainbow’s eyes.

As the song passed the two minute mark, the weird, horrifying song seemed to be winding down, and the gathered ponies had almost telepathically decided to utter a collective sigh of relief.

Then the rapid staccato of the distorted electric guitars fired off like a shrieking bullet, punctuated and matched in violent velocity by the urgent percussion. Rainbow Dash’s pupils narrowed to pinpricks and her mouth begin to widen in a manic—a psychotic—grin. This was better than the rock music she used for her routines. This was energy, power, force distilled into a searing, piercing essence. This was the wind battening against her face as she tore through it and screamed through the sky. This was the world disappearing from beneath her in an instant, in the sudden flap of light blue wings pining to ascend the heavens and beyond. The chorus hit, twisting, drawing, forcing the tempo and fiery charge of the song upwards, ever upwards into soaring heights of climactic release. This was...

“Speed,” she mouthed breathlessly. Her wings flared and she shot across the room towards the stage, the force of wind coming from her wings bowling several shellshocked ponies over. She slammed into Nix, staggering him, and grasped the shoulders of his black trench coat with her hooves.

“This. Is! AWESOME!” she shouted, punctuating every word with an increasingly enthusiastic shake of his shoulders. His light blue eyes seemed to flicker for a moment before igniting brightly. He shot his hands up to her shoulders.

“No shit! It’s my theme song!” he shouted back, his voice barely registering over the blaring speakers. He withdrew his hands and snapped his fingers. Two bottles of Ketel Fun appeared in the air above him. He drunkenly swiped at one and caught it, barely, between two fingers. The other sailed through his hand as it rocketed towards the floor. Rainbow rocketed faster and caught it inches from the ground. A wry grin plastered her cyan face as she cocked an eyebrow and shook the bottle scoldingly at Nix. His mouth quirked and his eyes narrowed. She held the bottle out to him primly, mockingly.

“Oh, Hell, no!” he yelled right as the quiet, acoustic bridge of the song hit. He glanced around the room and coughed awkwardly to ward off the numerous stares leveled his way. All thirteen of them, by his count. Or was it nineteen? He’d had a lot to drink. He refocused on the blue pegasus in front of him and pushed the bottle back towards her. “Catch and release, Scratchy. You catch it, you have to release the contents.”

She frowned slightly and cocked her head. He smiled. “Like this.” He cracked his bottle open and began releasing the contents into his mouth. A quarter of the way down, he stopped. The pegasus was just looking dumbly at her bottle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I-” she started.

His hand erupted in flame and he flicked a burning blue talon across the top of her bottle. The cap and some of the glass sailed into the nearby wall. A perfectly smooth opening at the top of the bottle remained.

“Drink, dammit! I’m already a quarter of a bottle ahead of you!”

Her ruby eyes flashed and a wicked smile grew on her face. Nix ignored her and began chugging the rest of his bottle. Rainbow Dash crossed her arms casually and waited. The human was halfway through his bottle by the time the epic outro of the song hammered through the speakers. The rainbow-maned pegasus smiled wanly, before upending the bottle into her mouth. She was done before the outro began to fade. The human wasn’t. He gawked at her.

“That isn’t- that shouldn’t be-” he stammered out.

Rainbow snorted derisively. “For you, maybe.” She tossed the empty bottle at his chest. He fumbled but caught it. His fingers were starting to rebel against the commands of his brain under the weight of his inebriation.

“So, are you guys, like, done with the demon screaming and anger issue music, then?” the blue-maned DJ asked.

“You done being a sarcastic bitch?” the human retorted.

“Hey, I’m just here because I owe the Pink One. What’s your deal, anyway?”

“What’s your name, DJ?”

“Vinyl Scratch. You Hockrates now or something?”

“Right, ‘DJ’. Here’s the deal: you sell me a pair of your headphones so I can listen to my music all the time, and you can play whatever the Hell you want. I’ll smooth things over with Ms. Pinkamena. It is my own damn welcome party after all.” He mentally crossed his fingers.

“Tell ya’ what. You let me play my music and not that pink abomination’s, uh, abominations, and you can have one of my spares.” She stared at him plainly, no emotion detectable through her opaque magenta goggles. Nix almost thought he caught a slight tic in her cheek, maybe a tensing of her shoulders.

“Deal,” he said, extending an open hand.

“Right on!” She spat on her hoof and slapped it across his hand. She disappeared beneath her rig and popped up a moment later with a pair of white headphones detailed with intricate, deep blue accents. She tossed them over to the human, and he brought his gaze sharply to her goggles. She gulped under the searing intensity of glimmering blue heights that she beheld in his eyes. He smiled warmly.

“Thanks! Blast away, DJ-Pony!”

The satisfaction on her face contained more happiness than in all the contrived, revolting songs that had assaulted his ears that night. Nix kinda felt good about that. He took another swig of his bottle only to find it empty, and stumbled off to find a replacement.

“Alright, everypony!” Vinyl shouted. “Are you ready to party?!”

She was met by a confused murmur by the small gathering in the library.

“Just say ‘yes’ at the top of your lungs, and we can get this started.” The DJ massaged her forehead exasperatedly with one hoof.

“Y-yes!” the demi-crowd hollered hesitantly.

“Close enough,” she muttered, jamming her headphones on, smashing her goggles into place, and slamming a pair of records onto her turntables. She rammed a big red button on the corner of her table, and steam hissed from the metal contraption as towers of multicolored lights began rising from their hidden compartments. The solid metal front of the mix table began to segment and fold into itself, revealing two gargantuan subwoofers. Her face split into a wicked, toothy grin, and the floor began to vibrate as her hoof hovered over the master switch.

“Hey!” Scratchy called after him. Nix turned away from the table of booze, two bottles in hand and swaying in a manner that a repressed socialite might call ‘slight’, and that a normal pony might call ‘Holy heaping horse-apples, let’s get you to the hospital!’ He fumbled at one of the liquor bottles caps before staring dumbly at its sibling in his other hand for a moment. He set the second bottle down and twisted the cap off the first.

“Whattaya want, Scratchy?” His eyes closed blissfully as the bottle closed the distance to his mouth. “I’m busy.”

“Busy? What, giving your liver a stress test?”

“Something like that, only it’sh lesh of a test and more of a...stress...thingamabob...thing...” Nix paused. “Fuck you, I’m drunk.”

“Whatever you say, tall, dark, and ugly. I just wanted to borrow your music box to set up a new flying routine.” She hovered next to him, sending a few hoof-jabs into the air. “It was so intense I could fly something incredible with it spurring me on! So whattaya say?”

“Maybe you should get through puberty before bothering me, colt,” he said in a higher pitched voice littered with cracks. “Sheriously, leave me alone.”

“That’s a shame,” she replied. “And here I was gonna give you a bottle of the finest Cloudsdale Rainbow Brew, circa 1193, if you let me borrow your music box for a bit.”

“Rainbow Brew? You’re not gonna take me into a bathroom shtall and ashk me to do things to embarrass your politician father, are ya’, colt? ‘Cuz I only putsh one thing between these lipsh, and that’s...” Nix stared numbly at the bottle in his hand before shoving it towards the sky-colored pegasus. “...That’s this thing! Whatever it says on the label.”

“Alright, alien, let’s get one thing straight,” Rainbow commanded. Nix held both arms up mockingly. “I just drank an entire bottle of that crappy griffin swill. Do I look even the slightest bit drunk?!” Nix shook his head. He wasn’t sure if he was replying to the mare or just staving off the creeping black at the edges of his vision. “That’s because I’m not. But two shots of this Rainbow Brew, and I start acting dumber than you are right now-”

“Hey-”

“-and I can get you an entire bottle. All you have to do is lemme borrow that black box for a coupla days.” She finished her argument with a winning smile.

“Oh. Well, when you put it that way...” Nix snagged the black media player from his back pocket and tossed it her way. She caught it deftly in her mouth, and zipped over to a pair of saddlebags next to Fluttershy’s sleeping spot. Ruffling around inside one pocket, she produced a pair of earbuds, slapped them into both ears, and plugged them into the black box. Donning her saddlebags, she zipped back towards the human.

“Okay, how do I get it to play?!” She was trembling with far more excitement than the human’s double vision really wanted to deal with, but he snatched the media player from her hoof, fiddled with the screen for a bit, and passed it back to her.

“Presh-” Nix stumbled slightly. “Press that to play music, and that button to skip to the next shong. I put...I put a few more on there than you heardsh tonigh-” He scowled and nearly fell over. “Urgh, hold on a shecond.” His deep blue eyes flared the color of a midafternoon sky for a second before dimming down. His head shot up and he immediately looked around the party, seemingly refreshed.

“Ah, much better,” he said to no one in particular. “What I was trying to say is that I made you a playlist of pure, unadulterated awesomeness, with lotsa cool songs. All you have to do is...did I really just give you my memory storage unit?”

“Heheheh,” Rainbow chuckled, scratching at her sky blue chest with one hoof as her eyes pointedly avoided the human’s. “Well, it’s been real. Gotta go!”

The pegasus flashed out the door of the library in a blur of color and wind, and began her ascent towards the night sky. As she climbed, she hit the play button on the human’s media box and let herself fall into the speed and power of the music that crashed forth out of her earbuds. Her adrenaline rose instinctually at the aggressive thrum of electric guitars and pounding drums, and she didn’t even notice the cone of air forming in front of her as she pushed herself faster, harder, through the cool night’s wafting breeze.

She grinned madly, her eyes tearing up as the cone of air began to crackle with multicolored bolts of electricity. As the song reached its climax, she snarled with glee and tore apart the night sky with a cacophonous explosion of multihued color and light. A loud boom rattled the foundations of every building in Ponyville; a shrieking rainbow trailed the cackling pegasus as she streaked away from the epicenter of her signature move.

All across Ponyville, curious lights flickered to life in the previously lifeless windows of the town’s many houses. In more than a few of the newly glowing abodes, doors slammed open, proffering grumbling ponies in nightcaps and nightgowns and all manner of garb suggesting nighttime and sleep. These ponies were now not asleep, and clearly aggravated by that fact. They mostly glared towards the center of town, where an overly large tree was thrumming under the assault of an addictive bassline as flashing lights escaped its numerous windows. A great lot of them grumbled to themselves and began stumbling towards the tree to give the lavender librarian a good verbal thrashing, and have the unicorn explain all the noise. Halfway there, the half-somnambulist throng of pony zombies began slightly bobbing their heads to the growing beat that shuddered through the ground, beneath their hooves. By the time they reached the door, nightcaps, nightgowns, and all manner of nighttime garb had been discarded, and the ponies were all openly rocking their heads to the aural assault.

As the first of them reached the door, they shoved it open, not bothering to knock, and the pulsing of electronic bass exploded in violent escape from the chambers therein. A brilliant rainbow of lights strobed and flashed across the large hall in the center of the tree, which contained a dozen dancing ponies lost in the thrall of the music. Then two dozen. Then half a hundred. Then a few hundred, their revery spilling out of the tree and into the plaza surrounding it. Somepony started a large bonfire in the middle of the group. Then everypony awoken by Rainbow Dash’s impromptu Sonic Rainboom, grumpy and angry at being roused from sleep, found themselves dancing, laughing, and drinking large quantities of alcoholic beverages, within the tree and without; over half the town found themselves eschewing sleep for dance as the clock approached midnight.

In the far corner of the main room in the tree, her hooves a senseless blur as they spun records and flipped switches and slammed down on a synth keyboard, a white unicorn unleashed a crazy smile and bobbed her head harder to her own beat.

Vinyl Scratch was very good at her job.

Nix was distracted from the surging crowd of dancing ponies in the room by a slight tugging at the leg of his pants. He looked down at the trembling light green and dark orange mass of pony at his feet.

“Dancie!” he shouted over the music with a wide smile. “How’s the crowd treatin’ ya?”

The unicorn’s deep green eyes rolled wildly in panic over the mass of ponies before centering on the human’s glittering blue gaze. “Please,” she wheezed out. “Help me.”

“What?! I can’t hear you over all the...this,” he shouted, flailing his arm towards the growing party. He bent down, one side of his head cocked nearer to the light green mare’s mouth.

“Help...me!” she whispered harshly into his ear. He drew his head back and looked into her shimmering, desperate eyes. She was terrified and appeared to be on the verge of tears. She mouthed something else that he couldn’t hear, but pony lips or not, he recognized her pleading appeal clearly.

Please.

“Fine,” he sighed. “Come on.” He started walking towards the stairs that led to the second level of the tree before stopping and looking back. Ridge Dancer remained in a crumpled pile on the ground, her eyes flitting crazily between the multitude of ponies that surrounded her. Nix sighed and dragged his hand across one side of his face in exasperation. He walked back to the guardpony and picked her up, cradling her in his arms, before turning towards the stairs.

“Honestly, Dancie,” he said as he climbed towards the second story, “you’re almost as big as I am. This is fucking embarrassing.”

“I- I’m sorry,” she said, hiding her face in the lapels of his black duster. He headed towards a door that Twilight had pointed out to him earlier in the night. Kicking it open, he tossed Ridge Dancer unceremoniously onto the nearest bed. She bounced off and landed on the floor behind it with a thud as Nix closed the door behind him.

“There. You’re saved. I’m a veritable fucking knight in shining armor.”

The mare’s head popped up from behind the bed, her curly sienna locks flopping down over her eyes before she blew them aside with pursed lips. She regarded the human at the door calmly before looking away.

“Th- thank you,” she said finally. “I grew up in the mountains, a-and was never really around large groups of ponies and-”

“I don’t want your damn life story, Dancie. And don’t thank me,” Nix replied flatly. “Apologize that it was necessary in the first place.” Ridge Dancer’s head drooped dejectedly. “Honestly, you have a problem with large crowds and they made you a goddamn Royal Guard? Are the military officers here fed a steady diet of paint chips and hallucinogens or some shit?”

“I am...there are,” she paused, steeling herself. “There are extenuating circumstances behind my admission to the guard.” She clamped her mouth shut.

“Whatever, I don’t care. I won’t be on this world for long, anyway.” He sat down on the edge of the bed opposite to hers and plucked a smoke out of his pocket. He easily summoned a fireball and touched the tip of his cigarette to its fiery fringes before dismissing it with a half-hearted flick of his fingers. Ridge Dancer canted around the foot of his bed and sat down before him. She stared at the human thoughtfully.

“What?” Nix asked in an annoyed tone. He blew a puff of smoke into the unicorn’s face. She coughed violently for a spell before turning back to the human.

“Why?” she asked plainly.

“Congratulations, you finally got through a sentence without a single stammer. Why what, Dancie? I’m not a fucking mind-reader, despite what Sparky downstairs may think.”

“Why do you go out of your way to treat others horribly even if it hurts you to do so? You’re not a bad pony, Nix.”

“Hurts me?” Nix laughed bitterly. “I don’t give a single flipping fuck about your feelings, brat. Maybe you should work on your own issues before you start pretending you know a single thing about the dimension-traversing godslayer alien, huh?” Ridge Dancer remained silent, matching the human’s gaze. Nix stared into her vibrant jade eyes. There was a light behind their emerald sheen, a flicker of knowledge, perhaps sympathy. Nix leaned towards the mare. “I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your princesses. I don’t care about your shitty little world. I just want to leave and go back to my own.” He stood and headed towards the door. “I. Do. Not. Care,” he reiterated over his shoulder.

The human stalked out of the room and headed towards the balcony, snapping his fingers to summon a bottle of alcohol on the way. He posted up next to the railing and looked out at the throng of ponies dancing in the courtyard below. They annoyed the shit out of him, so he instead looked up into the sky, and tried to forget Ridge Dancer’s piercing, vigorous green eyes.

He tipped the bottle back and washed his throat with the alcohol, chugging it desperately. The world around him disappeared in the haze of the past.

”Loki, what the fuck?!” Nix whipped around as he rose from the ground, and his eyes widened. A twisted reptilian thing, its skin pockmarked with burns and one of its bat-like wings a blackened, skeletal husk, had burst through the rubble right behind where he had just been standing. The gnarled, obsidian blade it wielded was buried to the hilt in Loki’s chest.

Nix howled in rage and drew Umbra in a blur. He fired off numerous shots so quickly that their report sounded as one. The demon evaporated in a shower of blood and ash. Loki looked confusedly at the thing in his chest, then at Nix, before collapsing on the ground. Nix rushed over to the god and tore the sword out—Loki screamed. Nix shoved his hands onto the red stains spreading across the trickster god’s white shirt and channeled everything he could into the wound, willing it to heal. The white threads of his regenerative force danced around the smoky blackness of the puncture. He forced the healing threads harder into the wound—Loki looked up at him sadly—but they slipped along its edges like oil across water.

“I have to- I have to-” Nix stuttered out in shock.

“Ha...” Loki wheezed before choking up blood. The crimson fluid painted his clean-shaven chin. “Cursed...blade...kid. Haven’t learned...to, ha...heal that.”

“Hold on, Loki! We’re getting out of here! I’ll get you to Odin! He’ll know-”

Loki’s arm tremored as he fought to lift it. He rested it on Nix’s shoulder and shook his head. “Too late... for, ha, that...newbie.” More coughing, more blood.

“No, fuck you! Fuck you!!! I’m saving your stupid ass!”

The god smiled warmly, suddenly. The sarcasm, the cynicism that flitted behind all his mirth for as long as Nix had known him, had evaporated. His jade eyes rolled around quizzically before settling on the human’s piercing blue eyes. He calmed suddenly, and his contented smile widened slightly. “But...you’ll...save us...all...” The mischievous glint in Loki’s eyes flared once, then faded forever into the infinite pools of his empty stare. His hand slipped from Phoenix’s shoulder.

Phoenix stared into the god’s glazed eyes. “No,” he whispered. He grabbed the god’s shoulders and shook. “Get up,” he whispered, begged, hammered on Loki’s chest with a whitened fist. ”Get up!”

The ground had begun to shudder as the forces of Hell recovered from Phoenix’s attack. They massed and were charging forth. Phoenix laid his friend to the ground, and stood unsteadily. The shudders of his rattling breath didn’t reach his face—his mouth hung open limply, and his eyes were empty and dull, still focused on Loki’s pale face. His hand fumbled at one of his holsters. Something slick and warm covered his palm, and his hand kept numbly slipping off of the chrome surface of the weapon before he sluggishly wrapped his fingers around the handle. He drew his silver pistol listlessly, deliberately. He still stared at Loki’s face, the flickering glow of both their gazes having abandoned the two completely. His arm twitched as it struggled to raise the gun to the horizon, to the rampaging horde of Hell’s minions. Phoenix was lost. Lost in the murky bog of his friend’s dead green eyes.

For the first time, Phoenix charged Lux to full. Seconds later, Hell ceased to exist.

Nix took a heavy swig off his bottle of liquor. It tasted vaguely like rum, with a hint of apple cider. His lips broke its drunken kiss with the alcohol and he let it hang limply from his grasp as he leaned onto the deck’s wooden balcony. He stood in silence for a time. Time enough for the the thrumming electronic music below to peter out and trade places with muted silence. Time enough for the revelry below to flicker and fade as ponies slowly filtered out of the plaza in exhausted contentment, back to their homes for a few hours rest before their day began anew. Time enough for the large bonfire in the center to flame, flutter, and finally wane into a pile of glowing orange embers. Time was one thing he had in great abundance, so he waited quietly. Finally, he released an annoyed sigh, and craned his head skyward. Countless pinpricks of light glimmered gleefully in the velvet blue darkness of the night sky.

“Well, you at least got something right, over the millennia,” he said abruptly, his eyes lost in the myriad streams, patterns, and organized chaos the endless sea of stars. “It’s beautiful.”

“We thank thee for thy kind words, Phoenix, though we wonder how long thou hast been cognizant of our presence,” Luna replied. She rested easily above the wooden deck, on the roof behind him.

Nix continued staring out over the wooden banister. He pointed towards Canterlot. “Celestia is about a hundred kilometers that way, a few thousand meters higher in elevation than here.” He pointed a different direction, past the outskirts of town. “Discord is holed up about two kilometers away, same elevation as us.” He pointed behind him. “Dancie is a few meters behind me, hiding around the corner of the doorway and trying to eavesdrop.” He grinned to himself as he heard a sharp gasp, felt a flash of magic, and felt her lifeforce receding deeper into the tree, presumably to their guest room. He doubted she’d rejoin what little remained of the party below.

Luna floated down to the deck beside him and furled her wings. “‘Tis an impressive feat thou possesses.”

The human gave the princess an annoyed look. “Not all that difficult, once I’ve memorized your respective lifeforces. Now, enough with the ‘Ye Olde Equestrian’ speak, Lu. If you can slip in a ‘bullshit’ instead of whatever analogue you all use here-”

“Minotaur-patties.”

“-right, that, you know enough of my dialect to speak normal.”

Luna paused. “I...I had actually been practicing the common tongue for quite some time before your arrival. I still feel more comfortable with the old speech, however.”

“That’s more my speed. Although a bit prim for my tastes. I don’t suppose you could curse like a damn sailor any time soon?” Nix asked. “No? Oh, well.” He plucked a cigarette out of his duster’s breast pocket, and lit the tip with a single claw of flame he summoned from his index finger. “So, what brings you here? The goof troop down below, the painfully awkward unicorn guard, and the annoying patchwork serpent nearby not babysitters enough for the irreverent flammable god?”

“You’re not a god, human,” Luna corrected. “Or would you prefer ‘godslayer’?”

“Oh, you do so flatter me, princess,” Nix mused sarcastically. “Though it’s hard to inflate an ego that’s as large as the Universe itself.”

“One can only fit so much hot air into one place, no matter how hotly one’s fires burn,” Luna retorted. Nix’s witty response consisted of burying the bottle of apple-rum in his mouth. A few minutes passed in silence as the human continued gazing towards the stars, the souls, glittering in the sky.

“‘Tis been a great while-” Luna said, piercing the blanket of quietude, “I mean, it’s been awhile since I last saw my little ponies dancing quite so happily. It certainly brings back memories.”

“You think of a way to let me bring back memories at will, you let me know,” the human retorted dryly. “Actually, there is something you can help me with...you said you recognized language I spoke when I first arrived?”

Luna cocked her head to the side. “Yes, it’s considered a dead language, now, unspoken for thousands of years. ‘Tis a small wonder my sister didn’t recognize it at first, even still.”

“Good. Hold still.” He placed his palm on her forehead and her eyes widened as she felt a tingle course through her brain.

“You dare?!” She flinched away from him and focused magic through her horn, but the tickling sensation in her mind faded away.

Nix grunted and turned back to the balcony, staring out over the throng of dancing ponies. “Least I can understand my own damn memory box when I get it back from Scratchy, now.”

The glow in Luna’s horn sputtered out, and the pair sat in silence for a few moments, the alicorn regarding the human curiously.

“What’s the deal with all the dancing and singing, anyway?” Nix said suddenly, motioning to the mob below.

“These ponies are,” Luna paused, considering her next words, “harmonic fragments. The Grove into which my sister and I were born was one of perfect harmony. When I broke that harmony to search for our parents, it didn’t disappear, it merely split into slivers, and those pieces took the form of imperfect copies of my sister and I. Not that my sister and I are perfect, mind you.”

“Yeah, I caught that. If I recall correctly, and I probably don’t, your curiosity seems to have gotten you into quite a bit of trouble over the years.”

“Oh?” Luna smiled enigmatically at the human.

“Well, you did kinda break the paradise your parents made for you. That much I remember.” Nix drew on his bottle of apple-rum.

“Over the millennia, I began to think that maybe that was their original intent. As deeply as I cherish my sister, and prone though I am to flights of solitude, passing the years alone with only her for company strikes me as...depressing. I don’t think our parents ever wanted Celestia and I to live out our lives like that, in truth.”

“Hmm,” the human grunted. Silence fell again.

“I trust your first day in Ponyville was a good one?”

Nix snorted and shook his head before motioning back to the inside of the tree. “You know, right now they all think I’m a real bastard, and they’re absolutely right. So yeah, I’d say it went about how I planned it to. Although those ponies out there, they have no idea how callous their princesses really are.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “Do tell,” she demanded icily.

“No, you tell me. You know full well I have no intention of making nice with the locals. Hell, you know I’ll go out of my way to make sure they never wanna see my face again. Yet your sister has issued some royal decree that six of those mares down there are supposed to help me make friends here? And you went along with it? Really?” Nix shook his head disgustedly. “How do you think Sparky’s gonna feel when she has write her idol, and tell her she’s not only failed, she’s failed miserably, and everypony in happy little sing-song Ponyville hates the everloving shit out of the alien visitor?”

Luna regarded the human calmly. Nix swung his head towards the alicorn and stared at her coldly.

“It’s going to crush her. It’s going to tear her friends apart with guilt because they’ve failed Sparky. It’s going to destroy Dancie, because she’s failed in her mission as a guard. ” He dropped his gaze and took another drink. “And you knew this would happen and requested the impossible out of each of them, anyway. Some fucking royalty you are,” he concluded darkly.

“My, Birdy, could you perhaps be...sympathizing with the little ponies you so despise?” Luna asked with a ghost of a smile.

“Don’t waste my time with pointless questions.”

“Are you suddenly running short of time, Phoenix?”

“No, just short of patience. With you and your ponies. They’re just going to end up hurt, either by me or...” Nix trailed off.

“And yet hurting them is what you intend to do to achieve your own selfish ends?” she shot back.

“Hurting them is what I intend to do to keep them alive!” Nix shouted suddenly. “You tell me, you fucking smartass. You’ve apparently got a better grasp of my memories than I do. How many of the ones I’ve allowed into my trust, I’ve stupidly allowed close, how many of them are still breathing? Hmmm? I might be able to remember fuck-all of my past, but what I do seems to suggest a curiously high mortality rate for anyone who happens to be near me for an extended period of time, so you fucking tell me, you arrogant bitch!”

“More than you give yourself credit for. More than you know how to give yourself credit for. Phoenix, you have saved more souls than you can possibly imagine, literally and figuratively, and it saddens me that you are incapable of realizing this.”

“Bullshit,” Nix growled. He flicked his cigarette off the balcony and took one last drink from his bottle before tossing it after the butt. It shattered with a flat echo on the ground below. “Just give me my damn weapons back and let me leave. I’m sick of playing along with your big sister’s little charade.”

“‘Tis no charade, Phoenix.”

“You had better hope it isn’t, because if it is and I regain my powers, I’ll get my weapons back, anyway. And I won’t be asking nicely, Lu,” Nix said coldly. “And if your subjects get hurt as a result of you refusing to listen to me...”

“Are you threatening my subjects, ape?” Luna asked with a diamond-hard edge in her tone.

“No, Princess,” Nix responded. “I’m threatening you.” He turned away from the balcony and headed towards the door. “Good night, Luna.”

“You don’t have to face your life alone, Phoenix,” she called after him. “There are those who would happily, lovingly share your burdens with you if you would allow them, who would be there for you when you needed them, and not just them you.”

He paused at the door to the tree. His thoughts were displaced by a single image barreling through his mind. Empty green eyes stared blankly. “Yeah, right up until they aren’t,” he breathed out almost inaudibly. Luna cocked her head, having missed his final sentiment. The human stomped inside, slamming the door behind him.

Luna stared after him for a moment, before the edges of her lips rose slowly.

“There’s hope for you yet, ape,” she whispered quietly to herself, before spreading her wings and taking to the night sky.

After half an hour had passed, Ridge Dancer quietly slipped from behind the curtains next to the balcony door; she had overheard everything, including the human’s parting words. She crept up to the guest room where she and Nix were sleeping for the night, and found him in bed, apparently asleep. She breathed a relieved sigh, and released the magic concealing her lifeforce from detection. She was quietly thankful she had happened across the spell in her...extracurricular studies, though she never imagined she’d be using the thing in a situation like this.

She inched her way towards her bed—the last traces of her soul’s signature had vanished from the pillows she had stuffed under the blankets when she dispelled the magic’s effects—before a pained moan sent icy tendrils of terror through her chest. Nix was groaning and thrashing numbly beneath his covers. ’Night terrors,’ she thought grimly. She had suffered the same for years before she had found her purpose and joined the guard. With a concerned frown, she trotted silently to the side of his bed and hesitantly rested a hoof on his shoulder. He slowly seemed to calm. Her mouth quirked as she pondered something momentarily, before she nodded to herself and gingerly crept onto his bed. She gently curled up next to him on top of the blanket, and rested her head on his chest. She’d just stay here for long enough to calm him, she told herself. Just long enough to give him a moment’s peace.

Her head rose and fell slowly with his even breaths as he finally seemed to settle. He was so warm, and the slow, calm rise and fall of his chest was hypnotic. Ridge Dancer’s eyelids slowly began to close.

Author's Notes:

Wow. First off, sorry this update took so long. I know it's only been two weeks, and some authors get by with updates once every month or two, but given the rabid pace I wrote and released the first few chapters of this story, I feel the need to apologize.

Having said that, at 10k words, it's a beast of a chapter. If you're not one to slog through 10k words at a time, well, sorry, but a chapter's a chapter in my head, be it 3000 words or 11000. A chapter's done when it's done. Sorry for my inconsistency, but I'm crazy—and probably drunk—so you'll just have to console yourself with the fact that, above all else, I use em-dashes. Proper em-dashes. I hammer that 'ALT + 0151' code like my life depends on it.

Now that me being drunk and annoying is outta the way: that song that Nix played? It's "I Am Hell (Sonata in C#)" by Machine Head. Yes, it is his theme song in my head, even though it's technically about a female arsonist. And yes, it's every bit as awesome as Rainbow Dash thought it was, if you're into that sorta music–personally, it's tied with Makkon's Deae Lunae for my favorite song, ever. And no, I will never link to songs in the body of the story. Not that kinda fic, here, you see?

As always, if something seems off, wrong, or just plain dumb with my story, please tell me. I won't be mad, I promise. And if everything seems peachy? Well, you can tell me that, too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to take a several-day sabbatical to power through Bioshock Infinite. My birthday was last week, and a friend gave it to me as a present, but I've been putting it off so I could finish this chapter. By which I mean, 'procrastinate on reddit and drink lots of beers before finally finishing the rest of this chapter 30 minutes ago'.

I'm going to try to make the next chapter or two less dialogue-intensive, but the characters will do what the characters will do. Barring any distractions, Nix gets to prance through the Everfree Forest...

Thanks for sticking around this long, guys and gals. I'm still having a lot of fun with this story.