Grit.

That was the only way he knew how to describe the sensation dragging across his knuckles as he slowly came to. Something gritty dragged against the backs of his hands, occasionally interrupted by something harder and wooden. Then came the realization that he was rocking slightly, something warm pressing against his chest. Then, the voices. He kept his eyes shut, and listened.

“He’s a harebrained foal for thinking he could take on that many timber wolves!” a scratchy mare’s voice complained.

“Oh, he’s definitely an idiot,” a voice replied in measured monotone. “The fact that we still draw breath, though-”

“Oh, come on!” the mare interjected. “He like, can’t die and stuff! Twilight said so.”

’So I’m told,’ the human thought to himself. ’Never saw much reason not to test out the idea, though. Constantly.’

“You misunderstand,” the bland voice spoke up, the stallion’s droning inflection almost expressing emotion. “It’s probably more telling to say that we’re alive. A breeding horde of timber wolves? That, I can handle. That, I try to make sure that even a unicorn Private like Ridge Dancer can handle.” Nix felt the warmth beneath him stop rocking for half a second, the back of his hands resting on cold earth, before the motion stuttered and continued. “But, when the horde feels threatened enough to combine their individual strength like that?” The stallion’s bored voice paused. “Short of a fully grown dragon or an alicorn, I can think of no foe else I’d rather avoid. And that one was much larger and faster than the first one I killed,” he muttered quietly.

The scratchy voice burst out laughing. “Spike beat one of ‘em single-hoofedly—err, ‘single-clawedly’?—by himself not too long ago. So you’re sayin’ Tall-Dark-n-Ugly—” the mare’s silence extended for a few seconds,”—so you’re saying TDU back there is almost as strong as a baby dragon, then?”

“How many timber wolves were in the group Spike ‘defeated’?”

“Uh, three, I think, why?”

“There were over a hundred timber wolves in that one back there.” The voice paused. “Spike would have had a chance if he were fully mature, though, I think.”

“Snkkkt-hahaha, so you’re saying he’s more powerful than a fully grown dragon? I don’t buy it. Seriously, he passes out like every 10 minutes.”

“I think it has something to do with his brain cells short-circuiting,” the stallion’s voice responded blandly. “Honestly, he’s spent most of his time here unconscious. Terribly unnatural. Or lazy.”

“H-he’s not lazy.” A second mare’s voice entered the conversation, pitched slightly higher than the first scratchy voice and much more melodic. “He’s just n-not used to Equestria and needs a little help.”

“No, I actually am lazy,” the human piped up, raising his head off the lime green barrel of the pony that was ferrying him through the forest. “I just figured the least you could do after stupidly putting yourself in danger was give me a ride home.”

His unicorn ride squeaked anxiously and zipped out from underneath him, sending him crashing to the ground. He frowned slightly and pushed himself off the cool earth, his head raising in time to see a pair of fearful, jade eyes peek out from behind the trunk of a nearby tree.

“Goddammit, Ridge Dancer,” Nix growled, regaining his feet. Her emerald eyes shimmered and widened, and her head peeked out a little further from the tree’s trunk.

“W-what did you call me?”

“Uh, your damn name?” Nix dusted the black soil from his black duster distractedly. “Honestly, I save one of your damn villages and I still have to hoof- have to walk my own lazy ass back to town.”

“Oh, the horror,” Glancing Shock muttered, his amber eyes almost rolling. Rainbow Dash snickered. The two continued their trek towards through the forest, the light blue stallion limping slightly and keeping his distance from the rainbow-maned pegasus. Nix looked back and saw the unicorn giving him an odd look, her curly, dark orange mane falling in sienna ringlets over one eye. She abruptly shook her head and blew the locks of hair from her vision. ’Whatever, she’s weirder than Swordspony, anyway,’ the human thought as he turned away, quickening his pace slightly to catch up with Scratchy and the white-maned sociopath. He took special note of the Guard-Captain’s uneven gait, and one of his wings seemed bent oddly, hanging limply at his side.

“So,” Nix said, “took a nasty hit back there.”

Glancing Shock kept his eyes forward. “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before...though I do feel remorse for the poor tree that broke my fall.”

Nix glanced back. Even though the sun had set, a small orange glow enveloped the forest behind the group. “That’s okay. I think the forest fire I set will put it out of its misery soon enough.” He summoned a cigarette from his breast pocket, lighting it with the fiery claw that consumed his forearm. He examined the claw for a second, somewhat surprised that his ability to draw on his power seemed akin to a small brook, compared to the trickle it had been before. He stowed the thought away for later, probably to be forgotten, and the flames that covered his arm changed color from a fierce yellow to a gentle white. The fiery appendage shot out and grasped Glancing Shock’s bent wing.

The pegasus stallion’s eyes went from half-lidded to dinner plates in milliseconds, and electricity arced through the air from his blue back to the arm of the human. Nix recoiled immediately, glaring down at him. The pegasus stretched his wing to its full length, regarding it curiously, before he continued walking, his limp gone and his eyes surrendering to their characteristic apathy. “You’re welcome,” Nix muttered. He looked over at the other light blue pegasus, and on a whim, jabbed her in the wing with a finger.

“Gah, what the hey-!” She spun and clocked him on his jaw with her hoof, before her eyes widened and she drew back. “I- oh, horseapples, I didn’t-” She blushed furiously, the hoof rubbing the back of her neck moving faster than the speed of sound. “I forgot you’re kinda new here. Heheh.”

Nix blinked at her.

“Pegasus wings are...you see, when two pegasi like each other a whole lot...I mean, it’s like bees, and, uh, pollinating and stuff. And I think there are birds somewhere in this.” She continued floating backwards through the air in front of the stallion and the human, her face a deep crimson.

“What she’s trying to say, alien, is that wings are erogenous areas for pegasi. Same as the horn for unicorns,” Glancing said plainly. Nix scanned through the words he had learned from Twilight’s brain. The only thing he recalled was that one time he arm-wrestled a dragon. Except the dragon hadn’t asked for the contest and Nix accidentally ripped the reptile’s arm off. Heh, ‘accidentally’. Hard to burn down villages when you’re bleeding out from a severed limb.

“What’s an ‘erogenous’?”

Glancing Shock sighed mildly. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m a thousand years old, what do you-” Nix stood stock still, the subtext catching up with him. “Oh, hell no. Have I been-” His head whipped around to Ridge Dancer. She was blushing furiously. “Did I-” He ran his fingers through his golden hair. “Suddenly I want to be somewhere very far away from here.”

“That’s funny, I’ve been thinking the same thing since you first arrived,” the light blue stallion grumbled.

The four of them walked to the rest of the way to the edge of the forest within the not-so-soothing embrace of awkward silence.

They breached Ponyville’s perimeter well after darkness had fallen. The full moon bathed the quaint village in cool blue light.

Rainbow Dash yawned loudly. “Well, now that we’re outta the woods, I think it’s time I get some shuteye.”

“I don’t think beauty sleep will do you much good at this point, Scratchy,” Nix said, casually examining his fingernails. Rainbow froze in midair for a moment before clutching her stomach as a fit of laughter rumbled through her light frame.

“Heh, as if!” she said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “Who do you take me for, Rarity?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind,” Rainbow shook her head slowly, amused. “But, oh, hey-! That little black box you lent me stopped working.”

“Well, it probably ran out of batteries. Just use your freaky pegasus electric thing to recharge it.”

She cocked her rainbow-framed head to the side. “My what to the what-what?”

“You know, what he’s always doing,” Nix replied, jabbing a thumb back towards Glancing Shock. The mare looked at the swordspony with more confusion than a quadriplegic at a square dance. The stallion cleared his throat awkwardly. “He’s always got those weird arcs of electricity running through his wings.”

Rainbow Dash’s pupils shrunk smaller than the head of a needle, and she took a fearful step away from the Guard-Captain. “Y-you’ve g-got lectrosy?”

“That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” Nix mumbled under his breath.

“What I have,” Glancing Shock said evenly, “is a disorder. A disorder I took great pains to learn to control, I might add.”

Rainbow Dash took another step back, shaking her head back and forth. She looked up at Nix. “You don’t understand! His weather magic, it- if he touches anypony, they’ll-”

With a crash of air, the white-maned stallion exploded towards the rainbow-maned pegasus. She was too distracted by her explanation to the human to notice until it was too late. She stared, terrified, into Glancing Shock’s emotionless amber eyes as he rested a hoof on her shoulder.

“Like I said, I have it under control.” After a pause, he added, “Always under control.”

With a sharp intake of breath, Rainbow yelped loudly in his face and shot off through the night. “Gottagoseeyagoodbye!!!”

The light blue stallion’s head drooped imperceptibly before he righted it and looked back at Nix with his empty eyes. “It’s a genetic disorder. I can’t control a pegasus’s natural weather magic quite so easily as-”

“You have no idea how little I care, Swordspony.” Nix thought he saw the Guard-Captain’s eyes narrow slightly.

“Yes, I doubt very much something like that would concern you. Shall we continue?”

Nix jabbed a finger into the emotionless pony’s shoulder and a small bolt of electricity shot down his arm and into the pegasus, causing Glancing Shock to leap a few feet off the ground. He glowered at the human with the force of a sloth examining its own three toes, but Nix ignored his gaze, his eyes distracted by something ahead of them.

“Payback for earlier. Let’s go, looks like something’s up over at Yggdrasil Jr.” All the lights were on in Twilight’s tree, and a black chariot, unattended, stood outside the door. Nix’s scanning eyes revealed a few dark-colored ponies lounging against the second-story balcony outside. As the trio entered the plaza, one of them pointed a hoof in their direction and shot off inside. The other merely turned lazily to face them, resting on the balcony and grinning openly at them as they passed underneath, towards the door. Nix opened it and took a step before a blue glow surrounded him and he was dragged violently beyond its threshold, an insect disappearing into the den of a wolf spider.

Ridge Dancer shot a paranoid look towards Glancing Shock.

“Oh, dear,” the stallion muttered to himself, his odd grace flowing through his body as he followed after the human projectile. Ridge Dancer’s legs trembled before she rushed hurriedly through the door, reappearing after a second to gently close it carefully with her magic before the sound of her hooves echoed away from the stoic wooden barrier.

* * * * *

“Dost thou possess the slightest inkling of what thou hast wrought?”

“Hiya, Lu! Always good to see ya’! But you keep dropping by after dark like this and the townsponies might begin spreading untoward rumors.” Nix smiled smugly, enveloped in the blue field of the lunar princess’s telekinetic magic and pressed against one of the shelves that bordered the library. The wood behind him had begun to crack under the force that held him against it.

Luna remained silent. Her forelegs bowed slightly and her horn lowered threateningly, an azure glow dancing along its spiralling edges. Her pupils were lost in a sea of white—light blue lightning crackled about their edges almost as much as around her glowing horn. A malicious scowl matched her deeply furrowed brow. Nix smiled warmly at her.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure, Lu?” The tendrils of lightning around her horn danced more quickly as she stalked imperiously towards the human. She paused a foot away from his face.

“Thy reckless actions nearly unmade all existence, and harmed our beloved sister,” she snarled.

Nix pressed against her telekinetic forcefield and leaned forward, inches away from her face. His cold blue eyes stared humorlessly into her own, and his smile became decidedly less warm. “Put. Me. Down.” Her eyes narrowed and the blue aura around her horn glowed more vibrantly. “Now,” he whispered out the last word of the command as a hiss.

Luna bared her teeth challengingly. Nix’s eyes flared a bright blue as his smile melted. The magic holding the human warped and twisted around him. The blue aura wavered before shattering into myriad geometric shapes and a collection of glowing threads. The redirected telekinetic tendrils hammered around the human, impacting the books behind him forcefully and showering debris around him and the alicorn in a blizzard of paper.

Luna’s horn began shooting off sparks as she lowered it towards the human’s chest. Her magical fireworks immediately sputtered as she felt something cold pressed against her chin. Nix stared into her eyes as their white flaring faded, and her hurt blue irises reappeared. He held Lux steady, its barrel thrust against the bottom of her pouting mouth. A single finger rested threateningly on its trigger as the human lost himself in the alicorn’s enraged eyes.

“We continue this in private,” he said evenly. Luna merely glared daggers back into the human. He withdrew his weapon and holstered it, stepping around the princess and towards the stairs leading to the second floor. He kind of liked talking to the lunar berserker on the balcony, all things considered. He reached for a smoke-

A blue aura enveloped him and Princess Luna flared her wings violently before the two shot through the nearest window, sending a cascade of glittering glass tinkling gaily to the floor of the library.

Twilight, Ridge Dancer, and Glancing Shock all stood numbly, avoiding each others’ gazes and trying not to look at the hole in the wall where their night princess and the godslayer disappeared.

“Well,” an even voice suddenly interjected. Glancing Shock turned towards the two mares. “Who’s up for a cup of tea?” Twilight Sparkle turned her head slowly towards him, her left eye twitching slightly as she gawped at him blankly.

Author's Notes:

Yeah, another short chapter. A 10k+ word monster chapter every week or two, or 2-3k words every coupla days?

I'd say, "You decide!" like it was suddenly your choice, but I'm playing this storying thing by ear for now. And I'm drunk, and drunkenness apparently impedes one's ability to detect melodious tunes. Or something. Look, I'm too drunk to make a good metaphor, just roll with it.

And Luna is pissed. Next chapter should be a lotta fun to write.