June 14, 12:30 PM

Wayfinder couldn’t really say how she made it into the summit lodge. She lacked the strength to walk very far on her own, that much was obvious. Adding extra limbs to her back hadn’t given her the strength to travel much further.

By the time she made it into one of the oversized seats, Ruby was there with a steaming mug of hot chocolate, lit by the pale white of an electric lantern. Hazel settled next to her, so close her faintly insectoid body glittered in the reflected light. It was certainly a new experience to have so many people staring at her back like there was something meaningful there.

Because there was. Every few seconds, she’d shift in her seat just a little, adjust her position, and the wings would open again.

“How does it feel?” Ruby asked. Her expression was entirely different from the skepticism and reluctant aid she’d seen from her ex on the way up here. Only fascination remained, and perhaps a sliver of guilt. “Those things on your back like that.”

Blazing rolled his eyes, opening his larger wings to full size next to the seat. “Gee, I can’t imagine who you would’ve asked about something like this. Who could possibly know about the alien way of living with such alien limbs grafted to them? Back me up on this, bug.”

Hazel sat up a little straighter, eyes flicking to him, but he only managed a faint smile from her.

“I keep expecting them to come off like a Halloween costume. You know those crappy ones they used to sell at party stores that barely lasted long enough to wear once? Except…”

She turned to focus on it, her attention glued to the edge of the wing. It took about that much effort to keep it moving in the correct direction: her brain didn’t see it like just moving her leg. The joints weren’t where she expected, and much of the force came through her back. Can’t imagine how anyone is supposed to fly with these!

She finally got it there, over nearly ten seconds, stretching the wing mostly in front of her so the larger flight feathers splayed open. She’d never even seen the anatomy of a wing up this close. Helping Hazel with her grooming didn’t help; the kid had bug wings, and those were completely different.

“They’re so thick, the bones are all really there. Everything is… real.”

Ruby nodded once, then turned her attention sharply on Sunburst. “You’re responsible for this. Explain why you shouldn’t like—go to jail or something. What did you do?”

“Followed the hoofsteps of Starswirl, I suppose.” Aside from a brief surge of relief when he found her, Sunburst had been subdued since. Even now, he sounded like someone planning a funeral. “It worked—the Overgrowth spell. By any metric we can measure from here. I don’t have Equestria’s thaumic observatories, but if we did, I bet background observations have dropped firmly into the nanoharmonic range.”

Hazel moved closer to her, eyes never looking away from Wayfinder. Maybe she could see something Way couldn’t. “Why does my mom have wings, Sunburst? You said she was fixing the forest. They’re not like… leaf wings. Or fairy wings. Why would making all those trees outside make her like this?”

Wayfinder looked between them. “I know what an Alicorn is, thanks to the books you gave me. They’re the species that rule over your country, right, Sunburst? A fusion of pony tribes. Your spellbooks occasionally mentioned them as being required for ‘Imperial’ magic. It said some other stuff too.”

“All true.” Sunburst stood up and selected a spellbook from the crate they’d brought with them for reference. He turned it without even looking to a single page, one of many like it Way had seen.

It showed a simple diagram of the Equestrian—religious worldview? Solar system? She still didn’t know. “Alicorns rule our world because they have the unrestrained magical power of thousands of ponies all concentrated in one body. Raising the sun, bridging worlds, permanent transformation, nearly anything your spellbook said was impossible needs a little asterisk. Impossible for me, impossible for you until today. But now—you’ve just sailed over the edge of the map, Wayfinder. The ponies who made it there don’t tend to share much about what they found. When you wield powers that could make the planet uninhabitable, unleash an incurable disease, rewrite the minds of your adversaries—it’s good that they’re so rarely obtained by ponies who couldn’t use them wisely.”

He gestured at the graphic. “Where I come from, ponies govern the natural cycles of our planet, including the days themselves. The existence of magic also means there are threats genuinely beyond the scope of ordinary creatures to solve. Alicorns can confront them and repair the damage. They hold an enormous responsibility, one that lasts for life.”

He stopped just beside her, near her seat on the bench. “I didn’t know this would happen, Wayfinder. But I did know it was possible, and I led you to this anyway. If you want to be angry, if you never want to see me again—whatever you decide to do, I would completely understand. I am entirely at fault.”

“It was a rotten thing to do,” Ruby said, smacking her own levitated cup onto the table in front of herself. “You don’t send someone into surgery without informed consent about the risks!”

Way held up her wing, a little higher than she meant to. It shifted her center of gravity forcefully to the side, and she very nearly fell over. She steadied herself on the table. “He did tell me. He said there were risks I’d change forever. He also said he wasn’t willing to let anyone else do this. That it had to be someone like me.” She reached back, touching the length of wings along her back. “I assume this is why?”

He nodded. “To be honest, the math on casting this spell was asking for a miracle. We had to try, or hostile magic would keep spreading across your planet, transforming more humans and accelerating the cycle. You saved many lives here today, Wayfinder. I don’t know what consolation that will be after many years, when you look back at this moment. I am proud of what we accomplished here. And I would do it again.”

Blazing stretched low, then extended his wings, yawning so wide that everyone had to turn and look. He finished what he was doing, making no sign of slowing until he’d finished and straightened again. “Sorry, I just—call me out of turn if you want. But I think we’re blowing things a little out of proportion for Princess Blue.” He hopped up atop a nearby supply crate, opening his wings wide as he did and holding that pose for at least a second. “She’s got wings! Amazing! Yay, hooray, confetti showering down from overhead…”

He hopped down abruptly, and the whole lodge shook from his weight. “So the hell what? She can fly. She needs to spend another half hour preening them every few days. She’ll adapt, and eventually Princess Blue will forget she ever went without wings. We’re getting so caught up about this we haven’t talked about radio messages back from Denver.”

He gestured to their equipment, tucked up in one of the dining booths. “I’ll tell you what’s happening. The whole city saw something huge happen. The map redrawn, the forest pulled out of most of the city, while getting so thick where it touches that getting inside would be like blasting a mineshaft through rock. People are freaking the hell out, and their Captain just isn’t there. A few of the messages from city police make it sound like they think you knew this was coming and ran.”

In some ways. She’d caused it, so that certainly covered knowing it would happen. Running implied she didn’t plan on returning, though.

“If the spell worked, then—from what I remember, we should be directly at the center of it up here.”

The Summit lodge seemed more or less unchanged by the spell. Maybe the view out some of the windows was a little darker. But it had already been dark when she came back, not exactly the best conditions to get a good view.

“Yeah? Doesn’t change what’s happening back there. Unless they’re right and you really did run away. Which—hey, screw them for sending Ruby and I to jail over a few pieces of computer equipment. But a lot of people back there were trusting you to keep them safe. You kinda turned the whole city upside-down.”

“Way, please—” Hazel muttered from just beside her. “Your wings, my face…”

She blinked and saw. Sam’s accusation made her open her wings and puff out her chest in a way that no unicorn could. She winced, forcing the wings back down so Hazel wasn’t shoved into the wall. “Sorry, sorry!” She turned. “We’re going back. But we’re not going to hike down through a mountain covered by forests in the middle of the night. In fact…”

She eased out of the chair, sliding across the room towards the radio gear. Before all this, she wouldn’t know where to start with equipment like this. Fortunate that she’d had so many chances to learn.

She switched everything on, made sure they were on the right channel, and listened. When no one else interrupted, she spoke. “Base Camp, this is Captain. Do you read? Base Camp, this is Captain, Over.”

It took a few seconds before the voice of one of their drivers came over the speaker. She had no headset, so the signal just echoed into the room. “Read you, Captain. Sounds like you’re in one piece. Denver will be happy to hear that, over.”

Don’t drown me in your enthusiasm all at once. She thought. “Advise Denver that we’re finished here and we’ll be descending tomorrow. I’ll send Blazing up to check the lifts for obstructions, but I’m expecting to find them. If there’s anything wrong with the lift, it might take us a day or two to hike down. Tell anyone listening in Denver that the Overgrowth is safe so long as they don’t try to go inside. I know what happened, and I’ll be sharing it with everyone when I get back. We don’t know road conditions, but we’ll stay in touch as we get closer. Over.”

The reply was faster this time. “Understood, Captain.”

Wayfinder spun in place, and nearly tripped over her hooves doing it. Returning from a world beyond time and space hadn’t left her overflowing with strength. And still no sign of Zalenka, either. A problem for another time, when she was back on her hooves again. And hopefully, in one piece.

What she really wanted was a private moment to talk to Sunburst about this whole thing. Not because she blamed him like Ruby; she’d known and accepted the risks of casting this spell. Technically, she’d paid it so she could meet the needs of Denver’s ponies—because she needed his help. On her own, Wayfinder never could’ve understood everything involved in running a city. Just because she had a little more insight about the usefulness of magic than the last captain didn’t mean she’d be suited for everything it took to run a city.

She got that about an hour later, when the two curled up together in a storage closet they’d turned into a temporary bedroom. One with thin walls, not exactly the place she could relax and actually relax with him. But from the way Sunburst crawled into the sleeping space without once touching her, maybe she wouldn’t need to worry about that at all.

The stallion remained on the edge of the bed, deliberately looking away from her. He tucked his tail between his legs, hooves in front of him, and attention fixed on nothing. He might’ve stayed like that for the whole night if she didn’t say something.

She deliberately moved closer to him, moving up against him. Normally, it wouldn’t be her on the outside, but—desperate times. “I’m not mad. You don’t have to keep acting this way.”

He tensed when her hoof reached around and rested on his shoulder, freezing in place without retreating. There wasn’t exactly anywhere for him to go without outright getting out of bed. “I know,” he said. “I believe you mean it now, Wayfinder. But you’ve been an alicorn for a few hours. You have no idea what it means. Nothing you read in those books can prepare you. And there’s—not a lot I could do to help, for that matter. I’m not an Alicorn! It doesn’t matter if I wrote the spell, that’s not the same! Starswirl wrote the one that elevated Princess Twilight. But he couldn’t cast it!”

“Are you saying…” she sat up on the piled blankets and pillows. “Look. I know that this means a lot to ponies. Maybe when I realize how different it is, when the weight of responsibility is on me, I’ll be all upset. But Sunburst—that kinda happened right after I transformed. First I was rescuing Ruby, then keeping my friends safe. Eventually I was looking out for the whole damn city because I knew things nobody else did and it would be irresponsible of me to do otherwise. For all I know, this transformation means that I’m going to be able to do things I never could’ve before. Maybe I’ll be able to help people even better. If I can do half of what you said I should be capable of—could make me pretty good at running a town. Maybe some of that magic could even help find a cure! I’m saying it might be a good thing, Sunburst. And even if it isn’t, I don’t know why it would change anything between us. You’re my—”

She still felt him recoil when she touched him. Would he do it again if she reached for him now? “I’m not upset at what happened. But if we drift apart after this, if we don’t stay together and… if you leave and don’t want to help me anymore—then I’d be upset. I’m the same pony I was yesterday, wings or not.”

He stared back, long enough that part of her worried he might actually get up and leave her there in that room, maybe never to see her again. But then he did speak, and it was almost worse. “There’s precedent in Equestria for it. I cared for a young princess produced by the union of an alicorn and a unicorn for the Crystal Empire, so it’s—it’s not that.”

He sat up next to her on the pile of blankets. His horn glowed, and light flowed over his mane, smoothing it back into something like the proper shape.

“Then what?” she asked. “Please tell me, Sunburst. There’s nothing you can’t say at this point—I’m practically Equestrian royalty now! So why don’t you tell me?”

This time, he did. He rose from the bed, pacing back and forth in the narrow space, his tail flicking towards her face, then back the other way as he moved. “Nobody thought your world would get an Alicorn in my lifetime. When I volunteered to cross and help you, I knew it would be for life. Only having an Alicorn would prove your world had enough magical power and maturity that it didn’t need our help anymore. What in Tartarus could some unicorn ever tell an Alicorn about how to do her job? And it had to be you; even if one of ours was willing to move here, that would be so much more like occupying you than helping. So I came, knowing I’d never see my friends or family ever again. I accepted that sacrifice.

“Only now, it’s gone. It’s nothing you did wrong, Way. It’s the opposite. This is—incredible. We had no idea any of you would adjust so well to the transformation. No concept that you might not need our help after all.”

“That part’s not true!” Wayfinder whispered, urgent. “I didn’t do this on my own. Without that spellbook, I’d still be levitating things, badly. I didn’t make the spell, you did!”

He shrugged. “Either way. It changes things. It means that one day, I could go home. And maybe… as painful as it would be, maybe I should think about going back. This is your world, and now you have your own Alicorn, you don’t need me.”

Wayfinder had a choice to make.

1. I wouldn’t want to keep you from seeing your family again.
2. But I need you, Sunburst!