When Nix woke up, the sunlight that had poured through his cell’s iron-barred grate was absent, instead replaced with a flickering, muted illumination from the candles placed at each corner of the room. He summoned a brilliant white ball of flame and levitated it to the center of the room. He had always been a night owl and would spend many a lightless night simply staring at starry skies, but the flickering shadows across utilitarian brick walls was too great a reminder that he was in a dungeon, and the bright source of light reminded him of the civilized, well-lit rooms of his homeworld. ’Not quite 120V AC quality, but preferable to an atmosphere that’s better lent to the Spanish Inquistion.’

Testing his lifeforce’s flow, he found it to be at a meager trickle instead of the diminutive droplets it was before. A hair’s breadth more power than he could access for most of his time here. He was still annoyed by the severe dampening of his abilities; they were nowhere near the level they needed to be to get to a safe location, lightyears away, and expend all his energy in one go.

He may have been alive for a thousand years, but he had made several thousand jumps in that time. He only tried to stay in one particular reality long enough to teleport deep into empty space, burn off all his lifeforce, and then jump onto the next reality. The first 200 years, that’s all he had done, searching fanatically for his home reality. Of course, then he met Merlin, and things had changed a bit. He buried what little he remembered of the wizard. Of all things, this was one of the few memories he’d rather not recall. Not now.

He took in his surroundings now that they were bathed in a brighter, more sterile light. ’It appears my suite has been upgraded from medieval torture chamber to sanitarium. Glad they bought my defense by reason of insanity.’ His room had also been upgraded to the presidential prison cell in his slumber. Before, there was only an uncomfortable bed stuffed with hay in one corner, and a bucket for bodily needs in the other. While he slept, a table had been placed in an unoccupied corner, complete with a chair that was entirely too small for his frame but would probably suit its purpose as a sitting implement. On the table, a quill, ink, and numerous blank parchments rested, along with a twine-wrapped parcel and a wax-sealed letter.

They piqued his curiosity, but not as much as the lack of the pink forcefield that had previously sequestered him into one half of his cell. He immediately made for the cell door. It was made of iron bars that ran the height of the doorway, though attempts to summon fire to melt them fizzled out. He assumed they dropped the physical forcefield but left anti-magic spells in place. Made sense, after his previous display of power. Outside the door, a light green lump was curled up on a wooden bench, it’s chest heaving softly in its sleep. He assumed it was Dancie.

On a whim, he tried simply opening it. The door swung open almost soundlessly, to his great surprise. He poked his head out the doorway. The light green lump on the wooden bench outside shifted slightly but settled, lockes of a fiery orange mane concealing most of her features. ’Yup, Dancie. Is she supposed to be my guard or something?’ Nix’s eyes caught her cutie mark--a dandelion growing out of a gray stone, half its seeds blowing in the wind--before he withdrew to his cell, returning to the table in the corner.

He eyed the letter, first. Breaking the wax seal, he unfolded the parchment and began reading.

Dear Phoenix,

As you may have noticed, we have removed the forcefield and unlocked your cell. While we no longer wish you a prisoner in our land, we ask that, should you wish to leave your room, you be accompanied by Ridge Dancer. She is a guardspony above reproach, and while you may chafe under her supervision, she is there moreso for your own safety than others. She has been directed to guide you to the royal throne room first, wherein I or my sister, Princess Luna, will be holding court depending upon the time of day you awaken. Afterwards, you will be free to roam our palace at your whim (though still supervised).

Furthermore, having located our Guard-Captain, we have run a complete battery of magical tests and found him devoid of any trace of the Chaos magic inherent in your sword.

Finally, on a more personal note...thank you. I will refrain from phrasing any apology (which you most certainly deserve) until you may receive it in person from both myself and my sister.

Again, thank you,

Princess Celestia

Nix mulled over the letter for a few seconds before concluding it was a trap; the age-old trick of bludgeoning one’s foe into a pulpy mass of blood and flesh and then inviting them to one’s royal court was a rare ploy, but one he was all-too used to. Kind of. In that it had happened this one time 500 years ago, and the denizens of that reality were all sadist demons that expressed their generosity by non-lethal--though thoroughly painful--violence and were trying to curry his favor so that he would take care of a certain sect of theirs that utilized a slightly more death-inducing form of violence. Said kind demons did so by abusing him brutally in a manner that didn’t necessarily result in his untimely death. They were a weird bunch, but they weren’t all that awful once you got a few drinks into ‘em. The details were a bit fuzzy, but he was pretty sure he ended up killing all of them indiscriminately. They were demons, after all.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and tossed the letter aside flippantly. He hefted the paper-wrapped package in one hand. It felt light and soft. Undoing the twine, he removed the paper wrapping to find a simple letter atop a brightly colored cloth bundle. He sighed, but opened the second letter. He really wasn’t a fan of reading.

Dear Nix,

I am so, so, sosososososo sorry about your shirt, Rocky the Dimension-Traversing T-Shirt. At my insistence, the princesses approved a plot in the Royal Canterlot cemetary for its proper burial. Thankfully, I had a reference on the fashions of sentient non-ponies in my saddlebags, and having researched the material extensively, I had my good friend Rarity craft a shirt that should meet the needs of a primate that can wield fire magic.

Sadly, my friends and I have other responsibilities and will have returned to Ponyville by the time you read this. As soon as you get your bearings, please try and visit. I have some of the best friends a pony could ask for, and I’d love for you to meet them. Also, I’ll probably need your help convincing Pinkie Pie to stop stashing eyepatches in random places “to prepare for the Cakebeard Rebellion” at some point. I also have a lot of questions I’d like to ask you, but I understand if you’d rather not answer.

Don’t get into too much trouble! I’ll see you soon.

Your friend,

Twilight Sparkle

He pinched the bridge of his nose in mild annoyance. ’Not friends.’

Unwrapping the shirt, he laid it out on the hay-stuffed mattress in the corner. It was bright canary yellow, the collar would have extended halfway up the back and sides of his head, and the sleeves terminated in a frilly white lace. Sequined on the left breast were a multitude of rubies and jacinths. Picking the shirt up and pacing slowly around the room, he nodded once in final appraisal. The ashes that danced ephemerally to the ground after he set the godawful thing on fire brought him no small degree of inner peace. The various gemstones made a tinking sound as they hit the floor, where they were ignored as Nix began focusing his paltry lifeforce into a malleable form.

There were scalable degrees in the difficulty of manifesting his various abilities. Summoning fire and regeneration came easiest, for obvious reasons. So, too, did electricity. The three were the simplest expression of the energy that coursed through his cosmic symbiont’s lifeforce. Next up on the difficulty tier was spatial manipulation, as energy had to be converted to mass to replicate gravitational fields, without actually summoning objects of mass. He still couldn’t wrap his head around the explanation Odin had tried to drill into him, but he could do it. It allowed him a great variety of skills, from telekinesis to brief alterations of time as a direct result of the relativistic physics behind gravitational wells. The most difficult was the manipulation of quantum fields. Simply trying to modify something on a quantum level changed it, which, without forethought, might lead the manifestation of his lifeforce on a wholly unintended path. Compound this with the fact that even something as simple as teleportation required discrete mathematical calculations for the trajectory of every single one of the atoms that composed his being, and numerous modifications to correct for changes to his molecules simply from him being aware of them, and this level of manipulation quickly became a mess for someone with his attention span.

It was like trying to drive a car at 150 MPH on a road no wider than the car’s own width when, every time the driver realized he was driving it, a wrecking ball slammed into the side of the vehicle. For smaller items, like his weapons, it was either easier or harder, depending on the nature of the reality he was in and how those weapons’ energy signatures were affected. Even if he was in an existence with which he was highly attuned, he didn’t think he’d even have enough lifeforce right now to summon his pistol, Umbra--probably his weakest weapon, much less powerful than his other three. And after 1000 years, he still couldn’t wrap his brain around the energy of that duster Odin had given him before his assault on Heaven.

He let out a frustrated huff, annoyed at being sidetracked. He still wasn’t entirely sure how he had managed quantum transmutation to teleport himself in front of Tia with his lagging reserves. But, he hoped he could manage a bit of spatial manipulation, because he really needed a new shirt that wasn’t likely to be seen in one of Elton John’s stage performances.

Shaping the threads of his lifeforce into something of a tunnel, he sent the tendrils of his “magic” to a section of subspace that existed outside of all realities. Merlin hadn’t the power to create such a space himself, but he had shown Nix how to do it. Even now, attempting to access it sent waves of numbing fatigue through his entire body and caused him to greedily suck air in ragged breaths while connection was made. The tendrils of his wormhole finally made contact with the warped surface of his subspace storage and hungrily latched onto it. With a bit of manipulation of the gravitational fields within it, Nix summoned two small items and sent them through the dimension-defying portal. They popped into the present reality almost instantly and plopped to the ground. With a gasp he released the portal and immediately mirrored the items’ action as he collapsed to the stone ground, both both palms shooting out to steady him as a wave of dizziness hit.

“-and that is why, Princess Celestia, Agricultural Tax Act 1037B should logically result in an immediate decrease in agrarian subsidies to Appleoosa, Fillydelphia, and perhaps even Ponyville,” the grey earthpony concluded banally, but putting on a pleased grin nonetheless.

Celestia sighed inwardly as she carefully levitated a teacup to her lips. The coffee it held probably had enough caffeine in it to kill one of her subjects, but when you wake up before dawn for 10 millennia, something with a bit of extra kick was required. She momentarily wished she could sleep through most of the morning like her student before quashing the thought and focusing on her treasury adviser’s suggestions.

“You make a very good argument, Adviser. However, while your suggestion would largely not affect the three biggest farms in Appleoosa, 18 other homesteads would fall into bankruptcy. While the numbers are different in Fillydelphia, they tell a similar tale, and the change would drive prices up in Ponyville even if the primary apple farm there were largely unaffected. I’m afraid I’m going to have to deny your request to cease or decrease subsidization of the apple market that keeps our little ponies well-fed.”

“But, the royal coffers-!”

“-are still well in the black when it comes to the ledgers. We can simply tone down some of the pomp of this year’s Grand Galloping Gala in lieu of letting thousands go hungry. Is this not an agreeable exchange?”

“I- ...yes, Princess. I’m sorry to have bothered you at such an early hour.”

She doubted that. Even when she didn’t take up throne room duties this early, her treasury adviser always managed to hunt her down and nag her over some quibbling detail in the royal accounts. As annoyed as she was by his persistent intrusions, it was why she hired him. Over the years, keeping Equestria’s budget balanced aggravated her about as much as it aggravated her guardsponies to stand outside her bedroom door for hours on end, so she had finally relented to Luna’s suggestion for the creation of a Royal Treasurer’s position.

She managed a practiced warm laugh. “Not at all, Fiscal Slip. You know I always value your input even if we don’t always ag-”

She felt the gnarled twisting of her own essence as a gout of Chaos magic manifested even before she realized it had threatened to displace her sun below the horizon’s edge. She quickly corrected the celestial body’s course even as her mood darkened slightly.

“Uh, my Princess? Is something wrong?” Fiscal Slip asked meekly, confused by her sudden silence.

She flashed a practiced warm smile. She had spent far too much time over the millennia 'practicing'. “Not at all, my little pony. That will be all for today.”

As the grey earth stallion stumbled awkwardly out of the throne room--muttering to himself something about irrational nobility--Celestia motioned for Guard-Captain Glancing Shock. He waltzed over in his normal off-kilter fashion from his station off to her right, near one of the side entrances.

He immediately cocked his head at the departing adviser. “You know, the best way--I’ve found--to grant a pony some life perspective is to put them in mortal danger. Few ponies can so thoroughly distract themselves with quibbling bureaucratic details when they have an instinctual understanding of their own mortality.”

“Oh?” Celestia patronized, rolling her eyes slightly. “What is the best way to enlighten all your fellow ponies, then?”

“I hear there is a resurgence of Diamond Dogs just south of Las Pegasus. Slogging through miles of grimy, darkened tunnels under constant threat of death could be just what Fiscal Sleep needs to reaffirm what’s important in life,” Glancing Shock smiled widely, the mirth never reaching his distant eyes.

“For the last time, Guard-Captain, I will not authorize military action against the Diamond Dogs on the basis of rumor alone, and the fact that my little ponies are even capable of forgetting about their own mortality in their day-to-day lives is evidence of my success to bring a modicum of peace to my kingdom.”

“Very well,” he agreed plainly, his features unchanging.

“Have you ever considered that, occasionally, your actions are every bit as annoying as that of the bureaucrats you deplore?” she asked honestly.

“But of course. I know for a fact that you find me aggravating. I, however, serve a purpose,” for once, the appearance of smugness on his grin appeared to be genuine.

“Those ‘bureaucrats’ you despise are part of the reason why my orphans are fed, my homeless are sheltered and educated, and my ponies no longer remember the horror of war. I assure you, they serve just as much purpose as you, bland as their stations may be, and detest them though you do.”

“Of course, Princess,” his smile faltered a bit. “I just sometimes wonder if they’ve lost sight of the importance of their fellow ponies in pursuit of their forms, laws, paperwork, occupation, anything but what matters.” He was perilously close to actually expressing emotion, Celestia noticed. She immediately interjected.

“Of course they remember such things, even if they aren’t readily apparent. But there is a more important matter at hand. Our ‘guest’ has awoken and appears to be up to something. Can I trust you to investigate the matter without turning the situation into the Third Pegasi Crusades?”

“Of course, my Princess. I don’t have nearly enough swords for that anyway,” the pegasus stated evenly.

“Glancing Shock,” she added warningly, halting him in his canter. “I mean it.”

“But of course, m’Lady. I am, as always, in complete control of myself. Complete control,” he replied, hoping that his guard, Ridge Dancer, was unharmed so that he wouldn’t be made into a liar. ’Complete control. Complete. I have to be,’ he thought grimly as he exited the room, not noticing the small tendrils of electricity flicking between the feathers of his wings.

In the center of his room, a crumpled piece of cloth and an elongated white and red box had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He wheezed in exertion as he crawled slowly towards the pile. ’This is so goddamn emasculating,’ he thought angrily. Having reached the pile, he tore the top off one end of the box, his hands tremoring violently, and extracted one of its occupants: a smaller white and red box, ‘Marelboros’ plastered across every edge of its exterior. He stared dumbly at the name for a second before deciding the present reality had forced a change to integrate the item into the weave of its existence. He uttered an annoyed curse about horses before crawling back to the edge of his cell bed. Leaning against it, he slowly tore off its plastic shell, throwing the detritus errantly over his shoulder somewhere, before solemnly flipping the lid on the box to reveal it’s contents: 20 cylindrical tubes of highly addictive pleasure warmly met his joyous gaze.

’Oh, cigarettes, how I have missed thee. The melodious oxymoron of your cancerous influence and my own perpetual immortality ‘twould scribe a story of blissful reverence that would drown out all other prose. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was he just thought because he used some of Sparky’s vocabulary, but he ignored his own stupidity for the moment and instead plucked one of the paper tubes from the box, placing it between his lips. Raising his hands to the tip of the cylinder, he summoned fire, but instead was met with red sparks and a puff of black smoke. He tried again and met the same results. He dropped his hands and sighed. Looking at the nearest candle in the corner, impossibly high up the wall, he judged his ability to stand up and traverse the grueling 5 feet without blacking out. Finding his chances too slim for his liking, he gazed blankly at the wall opposite to him in his cell, his unlit cigarette hanging limply from his lips. ’Figures.’

“Performance issues?” an upbeat, if slightly slurred, voice sounded with a mischievous undertone. He whipped his head around to the voice. Dancie stood in the open doorway to his cell, looking a little groggy.

“I don’t suppose you can manage a little fire magic. It appears I’ve exhausted my god-like reserves.”

She snorted. “Fire is one of the first things a filly learns in Magic Kindergarten.” As her horn began glowing a dark green, a small lick of fire poofed into existence a few feet from his face. He leaned forward and touched the tip of his smoke to the flame. “The painful burns are actually a large part of why unicorns don’t like remembering the class.”

The flame caught on the paper immediately, and he inhaled deeply, the orange embers racing satisfactorily down the white cylinder as it burned. He tilted his head back and exhaled the smoke. ’My God, I would have never been such an ass if only I had my delicious, delicious cigarettes and...’ He paused.

“I don’t suppose you have beer here?” he asked the pale green mare suddenly.

She held a hoof over her nose as she scowled at him. “Beer?”

“Yeah, malted barley. Ethanol. Alcoholic beverage?”

“Oh, alcohol? You mean hard cider, wine, and whiskey?”

He thought for a second. He supposed he could stomach whiskey, maybe hard cider. The wine was a no-go, though.

“What about vodka?”

“You’d have to ask the griffons about that. They’re the resident potato farmers,” she said, scrunching her nose up. “God, that smells awful.”

He took another heavy drag of his cigarette, delighting in the deep burn in his lungs, before exhaling his smoke at Ridge Dancer. She coughed violently, glaring daggers at him. He just grinned and opened his pack. “Want one?”

“Absolutely not! The dangers of tobacco smoke have been well-researched by unicorn doctors all over Equestria!” she exclaimed. “It’s bad enough when Canterlot citizens smoke their pipes in public, but that smells even worse. I’m in danger just being around you!”

“Come ‘ere for a sec,” he replied, his cigarette dancing in his mouth as he spoke, tendrils of smoke twisting chaotically around his brilliant blue eyes. She simply stared blankly. Nix sighed, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth with his index and middle finger.

“Seriously, come here. I’m not going to hurt you. If I wanted to do that, I’d have done it while you were dozing off on that uncomfortable-ass wooden bench outside my cell.”

Ridge Dancer shifted slightly, sending shooting pains through her lower back from sleeping on the damned wooden thing, before trotting cautiously forward. Nix kept his cigarette at arm’s length, away from the both of them, as she approached. She seemed uncertain and nervous, so rather than asking for permission, he just palmed her forehead and shot a tiny wave of his lifeforce through her, which was all he could manage. She shuddered at the electric warmth as it flowed through her, feeling the pain in her back vanish immediately, but couldn’t help herself at the unwarranted contact and immediately used her magic to toss Nix into the nearby wooden table, shattering it.

“I- I-” she stammered, but was interrupted by his laughter.

“Yeah, when you can’t die, and you love drinking as much as I do, being tossed into a table every now and then is no big deal.” Nix dusted himself off after standing on shaky feet, collected his lit smoke off the floor, and plopped back down against his bed. “Also, I wouldn’t worry about the health effects of my bad habit. You’re kinda immune now.”

That was understating things a bit. He had such little control over the expression of his lifeforce that he may or may not have made her immune to all bacteria, viruses, and genetic defects. He hoped she wanted a long life...He tried to repress thoughts about certain physical scars in her that he inadvertently sensed in the process. Gazing sadly at her, he realized that wouldn’t be all that difficult, given his condition.

“...what did you do to me?!” she scowled.

“Uh, spared you from being sick for a while?”

“YOU PUT YOUR DAMN HANDS ON ME WITHOUT PERMISSION!”

“I know,” Nix replied. “But given that there is no marble here, and the fact that I’m practically immortal, I figured I’d take my chances. Although now that I’m technically free, it seems a bit foolish to goad you into tossing me through my cell’s walls so I can escape. So, my machinations of escape terribly dashed, I suppose I just did it because I’m a bastard.”

She looked at him piercingly, her jade eyes shimmering with anger.

A wild thought appeared in his head. “You wouldn’t happen to have a sister in the guard?” he asked innocently. Her anger dispelled immediately, which she quickly replaced with shame as she dropped her gaze to the floor.

“The guardpony uniform is enchanted with a glamour that makes all of us appear the same,” she muttered quietly. “It was me. I’m the one that ‘tortured’ you. I’m sor-”

“No,” he interrupted curtly.

“You have a problem with accepting apologies or something?” she frowned.

“I’m normally not around long enough to warrant them, but that’s not it. I broke your leg and boorishly placed my hands on you without permission. You shouldn’t be the one apologizing. I am sorry.”

Her mouth gaped in surprise. He mockingly aped her shock and sarcastically blurted, “Jesus H. Christ, the scurrilous alien can be civil when he wants to. Your world is shattered!”

“I...no, it’s just,” she paused, searching for the right words, “apology accepted, I guess.” She was silent for a moment. “What’s a Jeezus Aytch Kreist?” she asked suddenly.

“That’s-” his statement was interrupted by a sudden flash of a very old memory.

The Nazarene was nailed brutally to a golden cross set on a pedestal in the center of the pearly white hall, thick spikes puncturing his arms from his hands to his shoulders, like some sort of trophy on display. The gilded crown of thorns dug into his skull, penetrating much deeper than his skin as more than just blood leaked out onto his gaunt face. A spear was run through his abdomen and poked out of his lower back. As if responding to Nix’s entry to the large room, he suddenly shuddered.

“I AM THE SON OF GOD!” he bellowed loudly, his booming voice filling the room as he rolled his head, his eyes focused on something far too distant for anyone but him to see. His chin dropped sullenly to his chest as his gaze seemed to draw far inward. ”No I'm not please release me please please please I won't hurt you please yes please,” he rapidly whispered.

“FOR THIS IS MY BLOOD. IT IS SHED TO FORGIVE THE SINS OF THE MANY!” he shouted, his head jerking around the room, his blank eyes searching an audience of specters as he spoke. ”Please please yes please just let me go I’ll be good this time I promise I won’t act against you please yes release me please,” he rushed out in a hushed mania.

Nix cringed at the state of his predecessor, the old Vessel of the Phoenix. He knew the man had wandered a different, more peaceful path than he himself now walked, and that he had tried to illumine the minds of man against their sadistic creator to weaken the being over time. But, Nix had never discovered the ultimate fate of the Nazarene, nor the Vessel that came before him, Mithras. It appeared that Sammael had opted not to outright kill him, even if the cosmic lifeforce abandoned him. Instead, the Nazarene was cruelly put on display in the Halls of Heaven as a reminder to the other Gods.

”Pleaseplease release me please release me.”

Nix drew his silver pistol, Lux, and slowly leveled it at the Nazarene’s head, a lump growing in his throat. “I will...I’ll release you,” Nix whispered grimly.

“NO ONE CAN COME TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME! Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-”

The deafening report of Nix’s gun echoed throughout the hall, fading rapidly as a repressive silence settled upon the chamber in its stead.

Ridge Dancer waved a hoof in front of his face as his eyes came back into focus and he shook his head.

“You alright? Lost you there for a second.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, wondering if it were actually true. “Right, ‘Jesus H. Christ’. It’s just...an expression we used back where I’m from, usually in surprise or exasperation.”

She mulled thoughtfully for a second, before replying, “Oh, like ‘Oh my Goddess’?”

“Close enough.”

Silence fell between the two as the well of conversation dried up.

“Oh, dear, I meant to check on a prisoner, but instead I have wandered into a wake. Who died?” a flat, lilting voice suddenly uttered. Nix whipped his head to the door, where a light blue pegasus in a leather brigandine now stood, head wandering between him and Dancie expectantly. Nix took special note of the sheathed swords crisscrossing his back.

“I’m Nix. Pleasure to meet you, too,” Nix replied dryly, extinguishing his cigarette on the stone floor of his cell. Looking around the room errantly, he shrugged and tossed the butt towards the corner that held the broken table.

The pegasus simply stared, his gaze still flitting between the two of them.

“I-” Ridge Dancer started. “No one died, Guard-Captain. Just nothing to talk about.” His question answered, Glancing Shock eyed the spent cigarette butt, and then the trashed table. He flashed an angry eye towards Nix. Ridge Dancer, understanding Shock’s mistaken presumption, spoke immediately.

“There was a misunderstanding and I put him through the table,” she rushed out.

“Ah, I see. Wholly unsurprising, coming from you,” he paused. “I trust that, during this ‘misunderstanding’, you were...unharmed?”

“He didn’t lay a hand upon me,” she lied. “He even healed my sore back from sleeping on that awful bench outside.”

Glancing Shock chuckled emotionlessly. “Yes, not the best resting spot for one of my soldiers. Why don’t you report to the barracks and get some decent rest?”

“But Princess Celestia-”

“Now,” he uttered simply, quietly. Ridge Dancer's eyes flew between her superior officer and Nix, unsure, but she had just been given an order from a commanding officer. “Yessir!” she replied, a hoof drawn to her forehead in salute. She pranced towards the doorway, Glancing Shock entering and stepping to the side to let her pass. She paused as she entered the hallway, turning around and blowing a lock of orange hair out of her eyes with the side of her mouth. “It was nice talkin’ to you, Nix.”

“No, it wasn’t. But thanks, anyway,” the light-skinned primate waved her off. She turned, a look of concern crossing her face and giving her pause, before she galloped off down the hallway.

“So, alien,” the pegasus said with synthetic cheer dripping from his even voice, “I hear you hurt quite a lot of my guardsponies in attempting to escape.”

“Is that so? I heard they were attacked by a rampaging server’s cart. Nasty things, those. Completely understandable how such well-trained guards could be taken by surprise.” Nix himself was surprised by the speed with which the sky-colored pegasus closed the distance between them. He had almost even missed the pony drawing his sword, which was now placed gingerly against his own throat. He began pouring his lifeforce into his muscles, inwardly cursing at how long it took. It didn’t help that he was perplexed at how the pegasus ‘held’ the fencing sword to his neck. It just appeared to be a regular sword, handle and all, but it seemed firmly attached to the flat bottom of the pegasus’s hoof.

“How are you even holding that? Magnets?”

Princess Celestia trundled slowly down the hallway toward the palace kitchen, a scowl on her face, her mane a drooping shimmer that almost reached the floor. Every time a servant would pop out of a doorway or some hidden side hallway, she would instantly straighten her back and her gait took on an outward expression of regal authority; her brilliant mane floating airily in the cosmic winds, she would smile warmly and nod approvingly at each one until they rounded the next bend in the course of their manic tasks, whereupon the visage would immediately drop and Celestia would continue her trudging march. ’Need. More. Coffee,’ she thought dourly.

“Princess!” a high-pitched voice yelled off to her side. She swung her head sluggishly to the direction of the sound even as she tried to hastily to resurrect her authoritative facade. She barely had time to register the blur of green before Ridge Dancer slammed her galloping hoofs to the ground and skidded along the smooth marble floors, hitting the deep red carpet and tumbling forward with no small amount of momentum. She crashed into Princess Celestia’s side, barely eliciting a twitch from the Goddess, before bouncing off and landing deftly on her own hooves.

“Private Ridge Dancer. A pleasure to see you. I trust our guest is not too far behind?” she asked, arching her head down the empty hallway from which the unicorn had raced, frowning slightly at his absence.

“Pri- Princess,” Ridge huffed, out of breath. “It’s Guard-Captain Glancing Shock. Something’s wrong with him, I know it!”

Celestia’s brow furrowed in concern. “Come, my little pony,” she uttered hurriedly, and took off down the hall, Ridge Dancer hot on her heels.

Meanwhile, at the juncture they just exited, a nearby door opened and an orange pony popped out, a pot of coffee in one hoof and a pre-filled cup in the other. “Preencess? Eez zat you? Ze royal coffee eez done!” The mare looked around, greeted only by silence. “Preencess?” she offered again timidly, again receiving no response.

“Well, zat eez zat,” she sighed. Glancing at the cup in her hoof, her eyes glanced warily from side-to-side before she lifted the cup to her lips and took a small sip. She scowled at the bitterness. ’Ze princess should not be drinking zis swill,’ she thought before a heavy pressure hit her chest. She clutched her heart grimly before collapsing, thinking, ’I never got to see Pari-’ She blacked out before completing the thought.

“I find it difficult to believe my guards could be bested by such a bumbling fool,” the Guard-Captain stated emotionlessly, though uneven currents wavered slightly in the depths of his uniform tone. Nix noticed small arcs of electricity dancing between the feathers of his wings. He also noted an all-too familiar presence niggling in the back of his mind. ’Full medical scan, my ass, Tia.’

“Let’s start over. Hi, my name is Nix! What’s your name? Also, do you like swords?” The pegasus’s eyes slowly began to fill with anger, replacing the shiftless neutrality that had occupied them when he entered the cell. “I’ve got some pretty nice swords. One of ‘em can be a real bitch, though. It’s quite a bit different than your rapier and,” he eyed second sword, still sheathed on the blue pony’s back, “a short sword, is it?”

“Gladius. You may call me Glancing Shock for the short time I’m going to allow you to live,” Shock stated bluntly, the electricity in his wings now seeming to dance across the surface of his entire body. He applied more pressure to Nix’s neck with the rapier, summoning a rivulet of blood.

“Damn. Already gave the name ‘Sparky’ to another pony. I’ll have to think of a nickname for you, later.”

“You will not distract me with your fool games,” Glancing Shock stated, a hint of malice finally bubbling to the surface of his voice.

“Ah, Christ, this is getting old,” he deftly swatted the blade of the rapier away from his throat. “Let’s just-”

The speed with which the pegasus flicked his blade surprised Nix, even as he felt it sever the arteries in his own neck. Glancing Shock looked at him with open disgust before sheathing his sword. It was pathetic that such a lowly creature could make a fool out of his own guard. He’d have to discipline them. Discipline all of them. The alien’s knees bent as he began to collapse, his blood spilling out over his hole-ridden shirt. Snorting derisively, Glancing Shock turned to leave. The sudden pain in his flank, followed by the much greater flare of agony as his face impacted the cell wall, completely destroyed his self-control. He stood up, quivering with fury, as arcs of electricity jumped around his form and into the floor. He whipped around, his lips drawn back in a snarl.

Nix stood across the room, crouched down after his kick had landed squarely, with a small grin on his face. The last licks of white flame petered out across his throat as the mortal wound Glancing Shock had just dealt disappeared from existence. He stood slowly.

“A wolf is not afraid of a barking dog,” Nix uttered quietly, his grin widening to show all his teeth as his tongue played across one of his canines. Glancing Shock snarled and charged.

Celestia galloped down the hall for all she was worth. Insufferable aliens may crack jokes about her figure, but she was no slouch when it came to staying in shape. She would not allow herself to decay, mentally or physically, so long as she remained steward over her many ponies. In truth, there were few ponies in Equestria who could match her stamina, a fact all too obvious when she heard Dancing Ridge collapse behind her, weakly gasping out, “Sorry...princess...” before Celestia rounded the next bend and started her descent down the stairs to the dungeon.

She winced slightly. No time to pick the poor unicorn up. She was mollified by what the Guard-Captain might do, or even worse, what Phoenix may do if he really possessed the powers he claimed he did. The image of a burning Canterlot and charred pony corpses flashed across her mind briefly. She pushed herself faster, ignoring the surprised looks on the faces of the guardsponies as she sped past them into the entrance of the dungeon.

Shock flashed from his corner towards Nix, his two swords blurring out of their sheathes an instant before he made contact. He brought the gladius down in a vertical swipe, causing Nix to dodge to the side as he fell back on one leg. Shock immediately lunged forward with the epee, taking advantage of his opponent’s change in balance. Nix pushed off the floor with his back foot, shooting himself forward as he grinned wildly. Glancing Shock overextended the blow as his back hooves slipped on a few gems on the ground. The lunge sailed harmless past Nix's back as he spun, grabbing Glancing Shock’s left hoof with his right hand and ducking under a quick horizontal swipe from the pegasus’s short sword. Still holding the mad Captain’s hoof, he thrust his left palm towards the pony’s flank, twisting his torso to add momentum to the blow. As it landed, he released his grasp on Shock’s hoof and the pegasus shot across the room, slamming into the wall again with impressive force.

“You know, you’re pretty quick,” Nix stated plainly as Glancing Shock immediately recovered and renewed his attacks with the manic fury of a berserker. Nix weaved and dodged around numerous slashes and lunges, finding it difficult to fully predict the sanguine motions of the clearly well-trained Guard-Captain. Difficult enough that, after 10 seconds, there were a multitude of small white flames dancing across the surface of his skin over nicks that he wasn’t able to fully dodge.

He began molding his lifeforce into the charge that would purify Murasama’s taint on the pony even as he still desperately dodged the deadly pony’s strikes. A wild swing by the gladius that was awkwardly off mark by the deadly pegasus momentarily confused Nix before he felt the charge of his spell wink out, the expended energy recoiling back violently into him like a shockwave. He stumbled backward, and was immediately lanced with Shock’s rapier in his left shoulder. ’Did he just-?’ Shock brought his gladius around horizontally in a decapitating blow, but Nix leaned into the rapier, gritting his teeth and getting close enough to the Guard-Captain to grab his left hoof with his right hand, stopping the mortal strike midair. Glancing Shock snorted in frustration, a puff of steam shooting out of his nostrils, before the lightning that coursed over his body focused into the hoof that Nix held and shot through the human’s own body from the point of contact. Nix twitched at the electrical current, then leaned forward until he was inches from Glancing Shock’s face. “Teehee, that tickled,” he said in a sing-song voice.

Glancing Shock bellowed in rage, rapidly withdrawing his rapier, before thrusting forward with a flurry of lunges that even Nix had a hard time following. Not that it would matter, seeing as the human was being perforated several times per second by a very fast, very pissed off swordspony. The white flame of his regeneration magic pretty much consumed his entire upper torso at this point, but he was beginning to feel tired. ’Well, fuck. Plan B, anyone? Anyone?’

Luna trotted down the august hallways of her and her sister’s palace, a nondescript parcel bobbing happily behind her in tune with her steps. As tempting as it had been to claim Phoenix’s darkly enchanted ‘katana’ to compare it to her own collection, she wasn’t one to ignore a blatant warning without cause. Instead, she had taken one of the two small, angular weapons; he had said to leave the swords alone, which she had. Moreover, she was every bit as driven as her sister to protect her citizens, and she was not content to allow alien weaponry sit unattended alongside the most precious relics of their kingdom without first assessing whether they were a threat.

She rounded the corner and saw a group of ponies gathered in a circle around an orange unicorn on the ground, all of them speaking worriedly. She immediately picked up her pace, the group of ponies separating and bowing to her as she came upon the fallen pony. A cracked teacup and an upended coffee pot lay nearby. A grey pony in a white outfit had his hoof placed gently on the fallen pony’s throat, but removed it upon Luna’s arrival.

“We would know what ails one of our little ponies?”

“Hullo, Princess. T’appears tha’ poor dear had a mild heart attack, but she’s still breathin’.” Luna lowered her horn, touching it to the orange unicorn’s side, before closing her eyes and sending a surge of magic through the pony. She sensed minor scarrification on the heart, and...poison?!

“‘Tis no mere heart attack, physic. Take thee the stock of her age, and of the chemicals in her veins. ‘Tis attempted murder, plain and true.”

“Aye, s’what I thought at first, too. But tha’ coffee pot over yonder was yer sister’s brew, see?”

A diplomatic air replaced Luna’s concerned features. “Oh, ‘tis merely simple folly, then. Fare thee well,” she continued her journey to her lab, a couple nurseponies loading the hapless creature onto a stretcher behind her as she rounded another corner and began climbing a circular staircase up into one of the towers.

Celestia had begun panting as she twisted around into the hallway containing Nix’s cell. ’My kingdom has almost no crimerate, why did I make this dungeon as large as I did?! she thought exasperatedly, shortly before she remembered that she constructed the castle shortly after Luna’s rebellion. ’As soon as the royal budget allows, I will remodel this section entirely.’ She scowled as she thought about how much the nobles would protest if she redirected the funds for the Grand Galloping Gala to such a task, but banished the thought and pressed forward to Nix’s cell.

She could hear peals of Glancing Shock’s triumphant, maniacal laughter echoing from the open door as she neared her destination, sending icy tendrils of worry through her heart. ’No. No,’ she thought numbly as she reached the door.

Nix redirected all his lifeforce from healing into the fibers of his muscle, and into the neurochemical reactions that processed his thoughts and physical responses. He immediately coughed up a mouthful of blood, but as he made the switch Glancing Shock’s blows transitioned from blindingly fast to moving with the consistency of molasses across a flat surface in subzero temperatures. Ignoring the searing pain in his chest, Nix released the hold he had on the hoof wielding the gladius and artlessly slid to the side, boredly regarding the rapier as it inched closer to his previous position. He simply reached out and grabbed it, mildly amused by how it slowly began bending before his magic expired and time sped up again.

There was a flutter of shock in Shock’s eyes as his opponent seemingly teleported a couple feet to the side, but he seized upon his freed arm immediately and swung the gladius at Nix’s head. Ducking well below the strike, Nix jerked his hand over his head and the epee was loosed from light blue pegasus’s hoof with an audible popping sound. ’Really?’ Nix thought as he rolled under another attack, landing him about six feet away from Glancing Shock.

He immediately leapt to his feet, his opponent glaring at him in sudden frustration, before he waved the rapier around blindly in the air.

“Haha, monsieur!” he said in the worst fake French accent he could mangle. “Now I have ze sharp ting zat does ze hurty stuffs!” He waved the sword around randomly again, mockingly. “En garde!”

Glancing Shock, far beyond the point of reason at this point, would have only heard incoherent gurgling as more blood than words escaped Nix’s mouth. He charged forward, flailing his sword at his hated foe, small bolts of electricity dancing around his body, weapon, and the floor around him. Nix channeled all his available lifeforce into his reaction speed-

Luna finally arrived at the door to her laboratory. She nodded to the guards at the entrance, before deciding it might be safer if they were elsewhere should her experiments go awry.

“Abandon thy posts and make haste to thy commanding officer without delay.” They nodded promptly, galloping off down the stairs. Closing the door to the lab behind her, she turned and immediately fought the wellspring of nostalgia that washed over her as she entered her old bedchamber. One half of the entire tower structure was simply glass wall, an array of telescopes of various shapes and sizes pointed at different targets in her night sky. The other half of the room’s architecture was comprised of a midnight blue moonstone she herself had brought back from her own celestial creation. She vaguely remembered the deeply primal act that led to the creation of her moon, a mirror of her sister’s source of light and yet not, but she expelled the distracting thoughts and instead focused on the task at hand.

Sitting down on a black-painted bench before a table holding various alchemical tools, she placed the parcel and immediately unwrapped it. The small, dull black metal weapon glinted softly in the light of her moon as it shone through the windows. Luna levitated the odd piece of metal, turning it around with her magic to get a closer view. Her brow furrowed in confusion, but behind her eyes played a dangerously curious light.

-Nix deftly parried or blocked every single one of Glancing Shock’s harried blows. By that point, he had whipped the Guard-Captain into a fury; he did it more out of necessity--the little bugger was faster than he was with his impeded lifeforce, and pissing the pony off made his attacks easier to predict--than he did to confirm the pony had been infected by his demonic katana. Of the latter, Nix was absolutely certain.

He stifled a yawn with one hand while the other whipped around in a blur, deflecting all the crazed pegasus’s attacks. Gazing lazily at his palm, still deflecting every strike and shoving Glancing Shock back whenever the pegasus tried to overpower him, he mindlessly plucked a cigarette from the pack in his front right jean pocket and placed it lazily in his mouth.

“Hey, do you think you can hurry it up a bit? I could really go for a smoke right about now...not to put you out or anything,” Nix’s intoned flatly.

“Raaararararraaaaghg!!!!” Glancing Shock responded, his form now manifesting physical shadows as he was completely subsumed by the dark essence of Nix’s katana.

“Cool story, bro,” Nix summoned a small ball of fire and lit his smoke, inhaling deeply. Removing the cigarette from his mouth, but becoming quickly annoyed by the clanging of sword against rapier as his foe attacked ceaselessly, he began charging up his lifeforce with the purification spell that the little pegasus bastard had previously fucking cut. ’And I seriously thought only I could do that. Gonna have to lift weights or pick up hot chicks or something to restore my masculinity, now.’ He took another drag of his cigarette, abandoning the smoke in his mouth as his right arm dropped limply to his side. Glancing Shock leapt back, the tendrils of lightning that had been coursing through him all focusing into the short sword he wielded. He jumped high in the air, the weapon raised over his head, and with blinding speed brought the weapon down towards Nix’s skull.

For his part, Nix lazily brought the epee up to block the attack, inhaling deeply on his smoke. Off to his side, blocked from the pegasus’s vision by his own body, white flames danced along his fingertips. Right before Glancing Shock’s weapon impacted with his own rapier, Nix simply dropped the weapon and twisted to the side, dodging the blade and using the motion to bring his fist around to connect with the rabid, light blue pony’s skull in an explosion of white light and scattered embers. Shock flew across the room, his jaw cushioning his impact with the hardened ceramic plates.

He lied on the ground in silence for a few moments, before slowly standing up. Holding a hoof to his jaw, he shook his head. Turning around and scanning the ground, he located his gladius and promptly sheathed the weapon. He turned his head up, noticing his rapier at the feet of Nix. Nix raised an eyebrow as the Guard-Pony met his gaze and said, modestly, “Garofflguh splungnuh deluadsgifl,” his broken jaw flailing about uselessly in his attempt to communicate. His eyes immediately dropped to the cell floor in shame.

“You want your sword?” Nix asked.

The pale-blue pegasus jerked his head up and nodded rapidly, his useless jaw flapping about uncontrollably with the motion. Nix flicked the blade into the air with quick motion of his foot, caught the handle, then dextrously flipped the sword in the air, catching it by the blade and offering the hilt to Glancing Shock. The small pegasus took the epee with a grateful glance and sheathed it, stating with an air of gravity, “Rogaghagh dafahafhanaga.”

Nix burst into laughter. “Hold still.” As he reached his hand out to Shock, the Guard-Captain recoiled, his eyes widening in fear. “I’m not gonna fucking hurt you, hold the fuck still,” Nix reiterated, annoyed. The pegasus cowered further into the corner until Nix’s hand finally made contact; Glancing Shock squinted his eyes in terror. A warm, tingly current ran through Nix, but he ignored it and sent out a small burst of regenerative magic. Glancing Shock’s jaw popped into place immediately.

“You...you can touch me?! And your body isn’t immediately ravaged by my energy?!” Glance asked, surprised.

“Usually takes dinner and a movie to get me to that point, sailor,” Nix deadpanned tiredly, trudging over to the bed in the corner and plopping down, his legs stretched out before him as he leaned his back against the wall. One hand wicked the sweat from his brow as the other dropped limply onto the bed, the cherry of his cigarette resting on the flammable material.

The pegasus floated after him, a wide-eyed look of shock glued to his face. It was such a common expression on the faces of the horse-alien-things with which he dealt that Nix was quickly becoming annoyed by it. He lifted his cigarette to his lips, noting the bright orange embers on the bed where his smoke had just rested. “But, you should be dead!”

Nix laughed bitterly, his cigarette rollicking about his lips even as he swatted absent-mindedly at the embers that glowed on his mattress. He met the gaze of the guardpony who had just spent the last three minutes trying to kill him, the glowing light blue in his eyes a flickering, icy reflection of a glacier on a cloudless winter day.

“If I had a nickel for everypony who said that,” he grimaced at the unintentional ponification of his statement, “I could buy every reality in existence and simply schedule a nice cruise back home.” He sucked deeply on his cigarette.

Glancing Shock prodded him in the arm with one hoof, arcs of electricity shooting into hairless skin at the contact. The pegasus burst out into gleeful laughter. Nix merely scowled at him, taking one last drag off his smoke before flicking the butt into the pile of broken wood that was once a table in the corner. ’Hope that catches on fire and burns this house of crazy to the ground.’ Nix was quickly becoming annoyed by the light blue pony’s loud outpouring of mirth when Celestia appeared in the doorway.

Luna rotated the strange device before her. Formed of matte black metal, and possessing a bit more sharp angles than its chrome counterpart in the alien’s arsenal, she couldn’t help but feel as though it served a special function even if her tendrils of magic came back blank from her initial probes into its magical nature. Phoenix’s two swords bore the clear magical signs of sorcery, schismatic though their nature may be, but the curious thing about the L-shaped weapon before her was that such sorcery was completely absent. Instead of alighting at the touch of her magic, all attempts to scan the weapon evaporated into the thaumaturgical aether, as though the item housed a great void that swallowed all magic.

She pursed her lips in thought. Perhaps the item was not necessarily a conduit of magic and instead operated on mere mechanical principles? She stared thoughtfully at the shorter section of metal, the one that was most probably the handle given the way the weapon hung in its sheathe.

“I...what is going on here?!”

“I’ve been wondering that since my first felony charge of assault with a deadly vegetable, honestly. He one of yours?” Nix motioned to the tittering blue pegasus.

Glancing Shock’s eyes rolled fearfully at her voice, but his manic relief overcame his sense of duty. “Princess? Look. Look! I can touch this one!” he jabbed his hoof at Nix, tendrils of electricity shooting from his limb into Nix’s crossed arms, a cross look playing upon the alien’s face.

“That is really, really getting old. Seriously, Tia, get him some chocolate pudding and toss him back into whatever nursing home he escaped from.”

“Guard-Captain Glancing Shock, is this behavior becoming of the leader of our Royal Guard.”

Something flickered behind the Guard-Captains eyes, a brief flash of familiarity.

“But,” he interjected, confusion weighting his furrowed brow, “I...I touch him and yet he lives? That- that isn’t possible...”

“Guard-Captain,” Celestia added warningly, “I trust I won’t have to contact Shining Armor on this matter?”

At the mention of the previous Captain, something shifted in the blue pegasus’s eyes, as though they were hardening and becoming more distant in the same instant. He slowly turned his head towards Nix’s aggravated glare. He immediately removed his hoof from the hairless alien’s arm, shades of revulsion and shame both playing momentarily across his features before they were banished and replaced with a grating evenness.

“Oh, dear. It appears I’ve up and made a fool of myself. A thousand apologies, Princess Celestia,” the tone of Glancing Shock’s words had the consistency of something manufactured en masse. He hopped off the bed, his walk to the door equal parts utilitarian march and carefree dance. Nix’s thoughts over how he managed to do that were interrupted as the blue pegasus turned at the door, stating simply, “It would be glorious to spar with you again. Simply sublime.” He spun and shuffled off down the hallway.

“Well, Phoenix...” Celestia searched every avenue of diplomacy she had picked up over the years.

“He’s a barrel of fun,” Nix responded dully.

“I suppose someone with such a brusque personality might appeal to you, though I must add that he was not in his right mind,” Celestia replied tentatively.

Nix picked up a crumpled piece of parchment next to his bed and began reading aloud. “'We have run a complete battery of tests blahblahblah.' And what the Hell is ‘Chaos magic’?"

Her eyebrows raised a millimeter in poised surprise. “What is Chaos magic? I assumed you knew what it was, as you utilized both it and Harmony magic in tandem numerous times since your arrival.”

“I don’t use ‘types’ of magic. I shape the lifeforce of the universe into tangible effects. I summon pure energy and shape it to-”

He paused, a nauseous thought passing through his consciousness.

“I thought I told you to leave my weapons alone,” he whispered quietly.

“Your weapons are untouched-”

“No they aren’t!” Nix shouted angrily. “I can ‘feel’ someone manipulating one of my guns!” His swords were dangerous enough, but his guns drew from his very lifeforce. If somepony tried using one of them, their lifeforce, their very soul, would evaporate, killing them instantly. The resultant discharge would only result in a small explosion, but from what little he knew of the population density of the castle’s servants and guards...his eyes flickered wildly with urgent blue flames.

He attempted to summon the weapon to his person, but the same muddled field of the present existence impeded his efforts. He desperately tried teleporting himself, the fire behind his eyes dimming as the exertion failed more wretchedly than his first option.

“You have to teleport me to my gun, Tia.”

Her brows furrowed. “You want me to take an unknown, possibly dangerous being to a weapon said being swears is too volatile to handle?” She thought for a moment, a wave of relief crossing her face. “The only other pony besides myself who could possibly access your weapons is my sister,” she chortled knowingly, “and I think you’d find it difficult to harm her, seeing as she is every bit as immortal as I am. At the very least, we should-”

“This isn’t a fucking joke! The fucking thing was designed to slay immortals!” Nix spat furiously, Celestia’s eyes widening in sudden realization, before he fully comprehended what she had just said. ’An Immortal?!' If a normal pony utilized his weapon, it would suck their soul from their bodies and discharge the energy into a small explosion, possibly taking out a few rooms in the palace. But if an Immortal-?

Gilgamesh stared dumbly at the man-child whose heart he had just pierced with his blade. Manifestation of the Eternal Fire notwithstanding, the boy should be dead. Instead, his body levitated before the swordsman, white arcs of lightning shooting out around him even as a swirling gout of flame gained velocity around the corpse’s feet. A brilliant white light erupted from the man-child’s eyes as he slowly drew the sword from his chest, a white tempest burning where his blood should instead flow.

Sean looked at the demi-god with revulsion. He could feel so much power coursing through him that Gilgamesh’s meager soul was an insulting imposition before the raw force of his burning life. He couldn’t die. Sean cackled madly as the white flames of all creation consumed him, the cataract of energy building deep within him as he resurrected back to life. As his summoned soul impacted violently with his mortal manifestation of being, a shockwave shot out, instantly flooring Gilgamesh and flattening the surrounding buildings in an explosion of dust and force. But the energy kept pouring in, filling Sean to the brim with untold amounts of potency. He felt giddy at the influx of power, as though he might burst.

Luna frowned as she turned the item over again in her magic, a blackened hole at the end of the elongated piece of metal meeting her gaze. Her telekinesis tracing over the odd weapon, she accidentally moved a curved piece of metal that protruded from the weapon near the top of the handle. Her satisfaction at the tangible click the motion made was immediately deflated by the sudden icy ball that grew in her chest. She felt a hungry fatigue expanding in her breast at the action as she wavered on her hooves, desperately trying to keep her balance even as she saw motes of energy being drawn into the open hole of the weapon bared before her. Her knees buckled as she felt more energy stricken from her, the barrel of the weapon a foot away from her face and glowing more with every second.

“No,” Nix breathed out in a whisper, almost gently. “Oh ye Gods, no, not that.”

His mind reeled as a thousand years of failure railed against his consciousness; a thousand years of trial, thousands who had perished under his guard; so many dead, so many hurt, so many he was powerless to help, all dancing to the macabre dirge of his very first manifestation of power.

“No,” he whispered again harshly, something loosing violently deep within his soul. He swung a melancholic gaze to Celestia even as yellow flames burst forth from his shoulders into majestic wings, the individual ‘feathers’ gathering heat until they were furious, blinding, light blue flares. “I’m sorry,” his mouth wrenched in sorrow. With a wave of his hand, the area around Celestia seemed to warp inward before settling back to its original appearance. She was shouting something, but it was for ears that were millennia away. Nix flared his burning wings, illuminating the room in blinding light, before flapping them downward and bursting upwards towards Luna’s tower. A violent explosion rocked the room as Celestia shuddered, her horn glowing as she instinctively erected protective magic around her.

The silence that fell after his departure was immediate. Motes of ash from the completely incinerated bed in the corner danced peacefully through the air, outlined in silver in the light of the breaking dawn, before softly coming to rest on the blackened glass of what had once been the stone floor of the cell. The ceramic walls that hadn’t been outright destroyed in the shockwave of his departure had begun to sag viscously, partially melted. In the center of the room stood Princess Celestia, a perfect circle of virgin stone around her amidst the obsidian glass and ash that comprised the rest of the room. She numbly walked forward, one hoof coming to rest atop a piece of black cloth on the floor, the other placed on the invisible forcefield that had protected her from Nix’s explosive exit. Gazing at the smoldering hole Nix had left in his passage straight through her palace, she frowned. This...was beyond her.

’I.'

Nix twisted and dodged to the left and right as he exploded through the numerous floors of Canterlot Castle, making a beeline for a distant tower.

’Must.’

A couple servants wandered the hall a hundred yards before him. He could sense their lifeforces without seeing them, and modified the angle of his breakneck race to Luna’s tower almost instantly. He burst through the floor of the room directly next to them, wincing inwardly as the door of the room exploded violently, showering them with splinters of wood.

’Atone.’

He tore through the floor of Luna’s tower and immediately shot towards her kneeling form at the far side of the room. She was gazing placidly into the barrel of Umbra even as it was almost fully charged and about to fire.

Flying between her and the pistol, Nix immediately grasped the handle. It was too late to abort a discharge, now, so instead he began pumping as much of his own burning, chaotic, white lifeforce into the pistol to displace the silken, soft blue soul that had charged the weapon. He had displaced most of the soul that was gathered in the weapon, much of it returning to the prone alicorn, before something flashed in the weapon and the brightly glaring gathering of energy at the tip of its barrel reached critical mass. With what little power he had left over after displacing the Night Princess’s substantial investment into his world-destroying weapon, Nix tried desperately to put her into subspace to spare her what came next.

The gun emitted a high pitched whirring sound as Nix’s vision was suddenly replaced with blinding light.

’Well, fuck you too, Fate.’

“But 6 bits per carrot is simply too much!” Flowing Needle huffed in exasperation.

“I’m sorry, miss, but given the current taxes, I really can’t sell for any less,” the stall vendor replied with no small bit of exasperation.

“I have two colts! How am I supposed to feed them at such outrageous prices?!”

The merchant merely shrugged.

Flowing Needles slumped, her eyes glistening sadly under the weight of her own inadequacy as mother, before she calmly met the carrot vendors eyes. “Very well,” she said with subdued resolution to the dark orange vendor. “My boys can’t go hungry, after all.” She smiled wanly, reaching in her saddlebag for the bits.

The deafening boom struck her ears at the same time as a violent concussive shock wave knocked her off her feet, spraying the contents of her saddle bag across the stone pathway. Her few bits, having finally gained freedom from her bag, rolled merrily across the ground in a race for freedom. Every window on the market’s street had shattered under the force of the blast, peppering fleeing ponies with shards that glittered in the early morning sunlight.

Her ears ringing violently, she didn’t register the confused shouts of the other marketgoers; instead her panicked gaze drove her frantically lolling head to find the source of the chaos, seeking some foundation in the sudden confusion, before she noticed the beam of light piercing skyward from Canterlot Castle.

One of the towers that had been there for as long as she could remember was simply gone, consumed instead in bright yellow flames as the stone and glass debris of its corpse showered down all over the city. A few bricks smashed close to where she sat, dazed, before the carrot vendor grabbed her and dragged her underneath his cart. The clouds had parted widely where the blinding beam had sundered the heavens.

As the ringing in her ears subsided, she became dully aware of an entire city's screams of panic. She closed her eyes tightly. ’My boys. Please let my boys be okay.’

’FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK.’

Eloquence was the last thing on Nix’s mind as he sailed through the air in egregious amounts of pain. He noticed Lu falling right next to him and immediately tried to grasp her with his right arm, but somewhere between his brain and his arm, something short-circuited. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. He calmly turned his head to his right arm, as if to engage it in conversation and ask if everything were alright. What he saw where his arm should be was empty space--cauterized skin, a few blackened ribs, and a splintered, exposed collarbone were all that remained of his right side.

Weird runic patterns of interlocking white and black began forming at the corners of his vision. He flipped in the air and grasped the dark blue pony with his remaining arm, noting grimly the several thousand foot drop below them as they both sailed past the boundaries of the city. Nix’s wings sputtered uselessly as whatever reserve he had suddenly tapped dried up. He maneuvered himself underneath the lunar princess to absorb the brunt of the fall, and dumped whatever paltry lifeforce he could muster into creating a gravity well to soften the landing.

As the interlocking patterns of darkness and light washed over his vision completely, he suddenly recalled the tinny laughter of his two sisters. He fell through the air, unconscious, the valley several thousand feet below him hungrily gobbling up the distance between him, Lu, and the hardened earth below them.