FSE

Furry search engine

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"... and then I met Fluttershy, while she was using the cockatrice to petrify ponies. We were making good progress when we slipped up and let Discord realize he'd won. Speaking of which..." I looked to Fluttershy, noticing a lack of basket.

Fluttershy said, "I returned him to the forest. He was very tired."

To Cheerilee, I asked, "So, all set?" - she was.

Now that I was done with the things we couldn't risk reaching Spike's ears, I picked up the pace a bit to catch up with him, sweeping through the tall grass as best I could. We were heading in the general direction of the Blue Valley, which had me a little nervous.

Applejack pointed out, "You must be really hungry."

Almost before I could allow that she was right, Rarity had produced a lunchbox. "Indeed! I brought this for all of us, but you can't graze - we can. Take it."

As I was gratefully accepting, Twilight Sparkle yawned and said, "I'm not sure I can stay awake to graze. I've been up for... what would have been three days straight, if we still had days and nights? Or is it four?"

Her yawn was highly infectious, hitting everyone but me - and as fortune had it, it also infected Spike. Within a minute he'd curled up under a solitary tree.

Applejack, still yawning, said, "I'll watch him."

"Nonsense. I may be hungry, but I've had plenty of sleep, unlike you. Go. Get your rest."

After a few minutes, Cheerilee came from the grass and joined me. I was ripping up dried grass while waiting for my digestion to work on the one sandwich I'd started off with. She sat next to me, facing Spike. I didn't say anything at first, just tried to look supportive.

"I'm so scared, Omar. I... I don't know how I was able to do it with the apple."

"Discord probably numbed everyone's pain for a bit so you could all fall for it."

She looked at the sky. "I feel like it's all ending. Equestria itself is coming apart at the seams."

"We only just now regained the power of the Elements of Harmony. Things are going to improve. And Discord isn't so bad, if you know how to handle him. And you do... look at what we did together."

"And if he decides I'm too effective, he can just turn me into a zombie again! I... I'm not running off to do good like they are, I'm just..." She cried.

I put my hand on her neck and gently pulled her face against my chest, ready to release if she had resisted. On the contrary, she accepted the invitation and buried her face in my windbreaker - and, so hidden, cried even harder for several minutes as I stroked her neck.

Crunch.

I stood up in alarm, holding Cheerilee down for safety. Macidexia was only thirty paces off.

She was even more shocked to see me than I was to see her. "You?"

If I can convince her that I haven't experienced the X-zone spell yet, I can make her think she has to leave me alone to avoid paradox! So I went for a taunting tone. "Thought I'd just run away, eh? What are you doing outside the castle? Didn't find the reading material you were looking for?"

She hesitated. She was still a ways away, too far for me to see whether this was her younger or older variant.

I continued: "Ah, I can see it in your eyes - heh! We cleaned it out, didn't we? Great news!" I shook my head with a bemused grin.

Macidexia looked at me oddly, but then snorted. "Oh, you 'cleaned it out' all right." She wasn't very good at hiding that she knew I would get 'blasted out of time itself' instead of doing any looting. And from her lack of skepticism, I figured she thought her truth enchantment was still up. It was only then that I realized I'd believed my twisted truths, before. I resolved to stick a little closer to the truth in the future, in case she pulled that again. Speaking of which, did she just renew that? To check, I tried lying outright to her instead of asking misleading questions... and couldn't. Craaap. Okay, must stick close to the truth here...

I shrugged. "I'm curious what you were after, anyway. What was so important that you needed the palace? What was worth the risk of taking down the princess?"

Macidexia growled and reared up on her hind legs, raising one foreleg as a fist, "Power. Sheer power." She shifted her shoulders, and the sun caught on her jewelry - a necklace of a fist-sized greenish gem. Maybe larger - I didn't have a good sense of scale against a rhinoceros on its rear legs.

"Oh-kay... and what brings you here, specifically?"

Macidexia approached, and I saw she was the younger one. Crap! She really does have paradox armor like she thinks I have! "There is a dragon nearby. He is taking too long to answer the summons. I am to fetch him. Don't think I can't do it, even with you surviving to 'loot the library'."

At that, the gang stood up from where they were hidden - Twilight Sparkle threatened, "I think I will think that. I mean, you can't."

I warned them, "Don't try..."

Macidexia laughed, realizing. "Oh, fantastic! As I suspected - you've met my future as well!" She ran past me, toward Spike. I followed at a decent distance, unsure what I could do, even if I'd been able to act freely.

There was a flash of magic up ahead, and Macidexia stumbled for a moment. As Rainbow Dash came in for an attack swoop, Macidexia deflected her with a swipe of a lump of magic shaped a bit like a tennis racket. Applejack delivered a sliding ankle kick which landed square but did little to the massive rhinoceros. Macidexia, reaching Spike, picked him up by the nape of his neck with her mouth, and sat down.

Fluttershy swept in front of her, livid. "Put him down!"

Twilight Sparkle, a ways back through the grass, added, "We can make things... very unpleasant before we let you go." She'd been gathering magic; Rainbow Dash had recovered and was circling around to her rear.

Macidexia dropped Spike in her lap. Her mouth free, she declared, "Warp." The air around her shimmered; she and Spike were gone.

Twilight Sparkle shouted to Rainbow Dash, "Get up and look down! She's not strong enough to teleport far." Rainbow Dash took off like a rocket. At first, up, where she looked around, but then ahead to where Spike had been heading. Fluttershy also flew up a bit and looked around a bit more, but did not pursue.

I returned to the tree. Rarity, Pinkie, Applejack, and Cheerilee gathered around. When we were all together, there were no further rustling sounds, and Twilight Sparkle wasn't there, so Rarity called out, "Twilight?"

Twilight Sparkle stood up and approached. "Sorry. Just... look at this thing!"

She held up the necklace, its chain severed. As she approached, we could see that it wasn't simply green, but had a prominent red shape in the center. "It's... It's almost alive! It's beyond any magic I've ever heard of! With this, I could... I could raise the dead!" Her eyes were going wild.

Applejack said, "Whoa there, Twilight. Are you sure it's not just magic that makes you think you can raise the dead?"

Twilight Sparkle paused. "Maybe so. Find something dead."

We hunted around; momentarily, Cheerilee handed her a smushed-up worm, convincingly deceased.

Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath. She drew magic into her horn, and said, "Life."

The worm, now noticeably less squashed, wriggled off her hoof.

"Holy fucking shit." I ran my hand through my hair. I'd seen mystical mists, levitation, teleportation, lightning, time travel, launching mountains into the moon, and petrification... but I wasn't ready for this.

Rainbow Dash landed, saying, "No sign of her anywhere. Looks like she can jump further than you thought."

Twilight Sparkle barely acknowledged the report as she put the gem down. "This is... I don't know what to think. It's so easy. There must be a catch. Some hidden cost." Then she blinked. "Oh fuck. FUUUCK."

"What?" we all asked - and Cheerilee clearly meant, 'What does that word mean?'

"I just burned up a fifth of my accumulated magical potential! That took me five years to gather! For a worm, who doesn't even look all that great."

I pointed out, "There may be a secret. Macidexia used this verbal magic alongside her horn magic. Or maybe restoring life takes it out of you more than other things."

She frowned. "There's no mention of that in the... description."

"That thing gives you inline documentation?"

"Like I said, it's so easy! It explains itself. Anyone... Applejack, would you try this? Don't set it off, just..."

Applejack hesitantly took the crystal. She stared at it, fascinated. She squinted at the center, then along each edge. We watched for ten seconds before Twilight prompted, "Well?"

"I... I don't know how I know. But there it is - Cure, Fire, Poison... I could..." She dropped it and backed away. "It's not right. I won't."

I picked it up - and, sure enough, I knew the words - but the only one I got the impression I could cast was 'Poison'. In the center of the gem was a red shape. It was a little hard to make out what with the gem's refraction, but it looked like a human girl. "Terra" I whispered.