57: Suffer a Witch to Live

BARDO, THE UNDERWORLD

"Suspects?" Hades was taken slightly aback. "Like, what, suspects that you took the apples off her tree and brought them down here?"

Hera crossed to the window, looking out. "I'm sure she suspects that. But it's actually worse." She threw up her hands in frustration. "She asked me about Hercules' birth! About whether I held anger towards him!"

"Hoo boy…" Hades sighed. "So she's picking up on the fact that you've had it out for the kid since day one."

"It will only be a matter of time until she theorizes that it was I who told you the route to send your imps in order to steal the bastard child from my quarters!" Hera moaned.

"Or that you were the one who sent me to the Fates in the beginning to see how we could go about toppling the big guy," Hades realized. "Which, by the way, I would have thought of on my own."

"You wouldn't have."

"You have your version, I'll have mine. So what are we looking at? Rallying the troops as soon as possible?"

"Yes," Hera sighed. "And finally…the god who has been making both of our immortal lives into a Tartarus on Olympus will fall at our hands."

They'd each been scarred. Hera had begged and pleaded with Zeus to be faithful, but he refused, spending his time with mortal women. Hades, back when lots were drawn, had tried to complain to Zeus the downsides of having to make a kingdom in such a bleak place, away from the other Olympians and their benefits, but Zeus, high on the promise of ruling the realm of the skies (which Hades wasn't so sure Zeus hadn't rigged), had laughed him off with crude jokes, mostly involving puns about death. After Persephone's passing, Hera and Hades had come together to pool the sorrows brought upon them by the king of the gods and to define a plan to rid themselves of him and take Olympus for their own. When the Fates revealed that Hercules was a crucial part of the prophecy surrounding Olympus' doom, Hades found as much reason to hate him as Hera already had, and they put their heads together again.

"If anyone deserves to be king of the gods," Hera said at long last, "it is you. You have suffered so long."

"And if anyone deserves to be queen without being saddled with that jerk of a husband, it's you, babe," Hades consoled. "Trust me, as soon as we get the plan in motion, this is all gonna turn around. My army strikes the Olympians down except for you, Eris, and Nemesis, and once we put Zeus to rest, Kronos-style, we can rebuild exactly the way you want it."

"All the Olympians united under you and me," Hera said with a smile. "Perhaps then we can even put Hercules in his grave."

"Wouldn't that just be a dream come true? Anyway, you get back to Mount Olympus before anybody gets suspicious. I've got a trio of Furies to dispatch to Colchis."

"I am fortunate that you understand me, Hades," Hera said.

"No sweat," Hades replied.

He waited and watched as Hera left the room. Then he began to chuckle to himself. Softly at first. Then louder and louder.

The one thing he'd never revealed to Hera was that he never intended to let her rebuild the Olympus of her dreams after the uprising. He didn't even intend to let her walk free. When he took the throne, the position of the queen of the gods would be handed over to Maleficent, and the Overtakers would run Olympus. Then all would finally be as he wanted it.

THE SEAS OF OLYMPIC GREECE

Zoë deliberated as to whether she should speak up. The pieces were fitting together in her mind, the wheels were turning…but she wasn't sure after all. Besides, on a voyage to Colchis, there was more to worry about.

Rainbow Dash and Rarity were caught staring off the helm. "What are you two so pensive about?" Meg asked.

"I was just thinking about the last person I met named Alecto," Rainbow Dash spat. "She was NOT fun to deal with. I'm guessing she was probably named after the Fury queen, huh?"

"Probably," Meg confirmed. "Somebody named after a Fury, though? That had to be one messed-up family."

"Trust me, it was," Rainbow Dash said, thinking of Flora and Hestia. "But it was the worst for some of the people actually in it."

"And what's on your mind?" Meg asked Rarity.

"I think we're veering just a stitch off course," Rarity admitted. "To the left."

"Great," Phil sighed from elsewhere on the deck. "Now little miss perfect has to find every tiny flaw in how we're steering the ship. You want us to go on course? You can drive the boat."

"Oh, me, pilot a ship?" Rarity laughed nervously. "Why, I couldn't! I mean, I could. I'm adept at a great many things! But all the same, it's…a rather big ship…and if I WERE the sort of pony who could potentially crash it, well, I wouldn't want to do that."

"It's not actually as scary as you'd think," Hercules told her. "If you want, you can give it a try! We've got open sea up till the Symplegades. And even then, they've stopped clashing anyway. It's just an open chasm. You can't screw up that badly."

"Well…could I try?" Rarity asked tentatively.

"Give it a shot," Meg said as Hercules backed away from the wheel.

Rarity took the wheel in her hands, steering it. "Why…why, it's not so bad at all! This is much simpler than I OH DEAR SWEET CELESTIA I'VE PUT US FAR TOO OFF COURSE! WE'RE GOING TO CRASH! WE'RE – "

Meg reached over and shifted the steering wheel just a bit in the opposite direction from where Rarity had accidentally turned too far. She stifled a laugh.

"Yeah, we're going to crash on COMPLETELY OPEN WATER," Phil huffed.

"Thank you," Rarity told Meg honestly. "I'd thought we were doomed!"

"We're on open water!" Phil reiterated.

"Oh, that reminds me," Hercules said suddenly. "I should get the beeswax!"

"Beeswax?" Pinkie Pie asked.

Twilight was stricken with horror. "Oh, no," she guessed, "sirens?"

The Symplegades, the Clashing Rocks, had once been a chasm that opened and closed, threatening to crush any ship that didn't make it through in time. However, since Jason had sailed through it long ago, the Symplegades had stood as an open gate between Greece and Colchis.

Eris found that notion utterly boring. "What's the point of a journey without a few obstacles?" she said, clapping her hands.

The Symplegades began to move, to regain the old pattern of opening and closing that they had done for so long before Jason had passed through them.

"That's better," Eris said with a grin before vanishing. Not, however, unnoticed.

"To get to Colchis, we have to pass through the realm of the sirens," Hercules said, passing a pair of beeswax earplugs to everyone present.

"Can I get these in a more vibrant color?" Rarity, who'd surrendered the helm to Meg for the time being, asked. "Perhaps a lavender?" She was ignored.

"Sirens will sound like the most beautiful thing you've ever heard," Phil explained. "They'll call you to them, and then they'll kill you."

"That only works on men, though," Pit stated.

"Remember that time you thought Hydras could only grow nine heads?" Cassandra asked.

"Yeah…"

"And remember that time you thought Icarus was some kind of super-genius?"

"Yeah…"

"The women on this ship are wearin' earplugs," Applejack asserted.

Soon, all ears were closed, and the ship sailed in complete silence, which was disconcerting to Pinkie Pie. After quite some time, Zoë nodded to everyone to signal that the danger was past. All earplugs were removed.

Pinkie Pie took in a huge gasp of air. "That was the longest I've ever gone without talking when I wasn't sleeping! EVER! Unless you count some of the time I was singing. Does singing count as talking? I actually haven't sung a song in a while. I think we might need a sailing song!" She picked a tune and ran with it: "Oh, the water's blue and sparkling – "

Phil and Cassandra promptly put their earplugs back in.

" – The boat is not off course," Pinkie continued. "We're sailing over schools of fish and maybe a seahorse! Thanks to our beeswax earplugs, sirens' songs had no effect! And right now there is a stranger climbing up onto the deck!"

"WHAT?" everyone else said in unison.

All eyes turned to see the man who'd climbed up the side of the ship, out of the sea, and landed on the deck. His skin was the deep green of seaweed, his hair was a shade darker of green, fins were visible on his arms, and his face had a fishlike look to it. He wore a shimmering golden robe and a diminutive golden crown to match.

Zoë drew her bow and Pit brought out his blades; both aimed at the newcomer. The Equestrians held back, not knowing whether this was friend or foe. Hercules, however, ran toward the stranger, arms spread for a hug. "TRITON!"

"HERCULES!" The fish-man embraced Hercules tightly. "How've ya been?"

"Well, y'know, saving Greece and all," Hercules replied. "It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. With the help of the best friends and wife I could ask for, of course. You?"

"Me? Well, I'm kind of the prince of the sea now that I'm of age and all. Hence the crown. I'm STILL not allowed to mess with the trident, though. Dad will just not let that incident go…"

"Oh, I should introduce you!" Hercules turned back to the rest of the crew; Zoë and Pit put away their weapons. "Everyone, this is my cousin Triton, son of Poseidon! Triton, that over there is my wife, Meg, and you probably remember Phil, Pegasus, Icarus, and Cassandra. That's Zoë, Pit, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack."

"Hi!" Triton waved in earnest.

"So what brings you up here?" Hercules asked.

"And why did you climb up the side of the ship instead of waiting to dock it like a NORMAL person?" Icarus asked. "Are you UP to something? HMMMM?"

"Um…did Icarus just make a statement about normal people?" Triton asked.

"Yeah, he kinda did," Hercules admitted.

"I actually didn't know this was your ship," Triton explained. "I just saw the Symplegades start working again, and I had to come back and warn any ships that were headed toward them!"

"The Symplegades!" Zoë gasped. "It cannot be!"

"Yeah, well, it kinda is," Triton replied. "I'm actually pretty sure I saw Eris set them off."

"Of course it's Eris," Meg sighed.

"The bane of our journey," Zoë growled.

"Doesn't she ever quit?" Pit whined.

"Well, now that we know what's gone wrong," Applejack asked, frowning, "what do we do about it?"

"The rocks open and close in a set pattern," Triton said. "If you hit them at the right time, you'll have plenty of time to get the ship through!"

"And if we DON'T hit the rocks at the right time?" Twilight asked, twitching.

"Um…" Triton wasn't sure how to answer. "Crunch, I guess."

Everyone winced.

"But it's okay!" Triton followed up. "Because I can get you through those rocks! I can go down alongside the ship and tell you how much to slow down and how much to go ahead! Trust me, I know these currents!"

"Thank you!" Pinkie Pie chirped.

"Hey, I don't wanna see my cousin and his friends get crunched," Triton replied.

"Well, then, you should probably get on that," Rainbow Dash said, looking out over the helm. A great rock wall was coming into view on the horizon, and it was clear that the center of it was in motion.

"Want the helm, Rarity?" Meg asked.

"Goodness, no!" Rarity gasped.

"I'm gonna swim ahead and scope out what you've got to work with," Triton said. "Just remember, we can do this!" He turned and performed an elegant swan dive off the side of the ship, barely making a splash as he entered the water. Hercules, Icarus, Pinkie, and Rainbow Dash hurried to the edge to watch for him.

Rarity and Twilight met Meg at the helm. "Well, the good news is, we're headed in an exact straight line," Rarity stated.

"Wait a minute," Twilight realized. "CAN EVERYPONY HEAR ME FROM HERE?" she yelled.

"YES!" a chorus of voices replied from the deck.

"GOOD!" Twilight called. "HERE'S WHAT I WANT US TO DO! IF WE CAN'T MAKE IT, WE CAN STILL FLY OUT! PEGASUS, YOU CAN TAKE HERCULES, MEG, AND ICARUS!"

Pegasus whinnied his approval. Three was a lot, but he could handle it.

"RAINBOW DASH, YOU TAKE PINKIE PIE AND PHIL!" Twilight continued. "FLUTTERSHY, TAKE CASSANDRA! PIT, TAKE APPLEJACK! I'LL LEVITATE RARITY OUT!" Twilight cried. "Rarity, you have to take Zoë."

"That leaves you on the ship," Meg pointed out worriedly.

"Then that's what's going to have to happen," Twilight stated.

"But Twilight!" Rarity gasped. "We can't just LEAVE you!"

"Yes, you can," Twilight argued. "There will be another Element of Magic someday. I mean, I got it after Celestia and Luna lost it, right?"

"Oh, but that's not the point!" Rarity moaned.

Twilight sighed. "I know. But it's better than all of us getting crushed."

"I've got a better plan," Meg said.

"What's that?" Twilight and Rarity asked as one.

"We don't get caught in the Symplegades," Meg stated firmly.

Triton surfaced next to the ship. "Slow down!" he commanded. "Take up the sail!"

"Right!" Rainbow Dash said with a nod. "Fluttershy, let's get that sail!"

The two winged Kentaurides fluttered upward, taking the corners of the sail and rolling it up.

Triton went back down to judge the currents again. When he came back, he ordered, "Let the sail down!"

"Right!" Fluttershy replied, and she and Rainbow Dash put the sail back in full position.

"We're getting pretty close," Meg pointed out.

"Just keep going at full speed!" Triton advised. "You'll make it!" He dove below the ship, hurrying ahead.

The ship entered the Symplegades just as they parted, careening over the water; everyone onboard held breath. The rocks reached their outer zenith and began to move back inward when the ship was not quite half through.

On the other side, Triton surfaced, watching the ship. Perhaps he'd misjudged the currents, or perhaps the wind had worked against them, but it seemed as if the ship just wasn't going to make it.

"We're going to have to fly out," Twilight said. "Rarity, go get – "

"We're almost there!" Rainbow Dash grunted from near the sail. "You know what? I'm helping this along!"

Her clothing transformed into that of the weather witch, and she raised her sword. When she slashed downward through the air, a gust of wind puffed into the sail, speeding up the ship. Rainbow Dash then landed on the deck for the rest of the ride.

The ship made it out just before the Symplegades crashed closed.

Twilight was immediately sheepish. "I…I guess I should have thought of that," she muttered.

"It is much better than sacrificing you," Rarity pointed out.

"Eh, it happens," Meg stated.

"YEAH!" Triton cried from down in the water. "You made it!"

"Thank you!" Fluttershy called down to him. "We couldn't have done it without you."

"No sweat. Anyway, I've gotta go back and warn everyone on the mainland that the Symplegades are working again," Triton said. "Catch ya later!" He dove downward, out of sight.

"Seems like a cool guy," Pit remarked.

"Erm, Meg?" Rarity asked. "Now that we've escaped certain doom and are back on open water…might I be able to try my hoof at the helm again?"

"Be my guest," Meg said, stepping aside.

Rarity was actually able to steer the ship into the harbor at Colchis. From what everyone could see, Colchis was a wealthy enough kingdom set on the seaside, with polished buildings and a white palace in the distance. People walked the streets happily, going about their daily business.

This struck Twilight as odd right away when the group disembarked. "I thought there would be an apple tree here because of Cassandra's vision," she said. "But no one's going crazy."

"Maybe everyone came to their senses," Hercules suggested.

"Or perhaps," Zoë posed, "there is no tree, and the Furies will come to take Colchis anyway."

"I just get this feeling that something isn't right," Twilight muttered.

The group began to walk toward the palace. Passersby smiled at them. Vendors called out from stalls to offer them merchandise.

"Something is DEFINITELY not right here," Twilight stated.

"Or we got off easy this time," Meg countered.

"You're right," Twilight sighed. "I should just lighten up. There's nothing to worry about yet."

She remained in that belief when a woman with dark curls and eyes heavily outlined in black liner stepped out before the group, staring them down. She wore a gown of black with a black hooded cape over it. "Go no further," she said.

Hercules, Meg, Icarus, Cassandra, Pegasus, Phil, and Pit all leapt back in shock. Anaklusmos was drawn, as were Pit's golden blades.

"What?" Rarity asked; the six Equestrians and finally Zoë followed suit and stopped. "Who is she?"

"BAD news," Phil said. "REAL bad news. The Furies might not actually be our biggest problem right about now!"

"It WAS too good to be true!" Icarus lamented. "She's going to destroy us all before the Furies even get here!"

"Typical," Cassandra sighed.

"Are you really…?" Hercules asked.

The woman nodded. "I am Medea. And I have come with a warning for you."

"Oh yeah?" Hercules countered. "Well, we'll just see about that?"
"A warning," Medea repeated. "Not a threat. I suppose you're going to strike at me because of what you've heard about me."

"If you don't stand aside now," Pit threatened, "we'll make you!"

"If you challenge me," Medea replied, "I will have to defend myself." Her hands crackled with blue plasma.

"EVERYPONY STOP!" Fluttershy cried. "What's wrong with all of you? What happened with her?"

"That's Medea," Hercules stated. "And she's an evil witch! She sabotaged Jason after the quest of the Argonauts!"

"She killed the Corinthian princess Creusa with a cursed wedding dress that set her on fire!" Phil added.

"They say she murdered both the sons she had with Jason," Meg added coldly.

"And let's not forget that she tricked King Pelias' children into killing him too," Cassandra brought up.

"She is just ONE NASTY LADY!" Icarus affirmed.

Fluttershy turned toward Medea. "Is that true?"

"You're ASKING the witch to tell the truth?" Pit was stunned.

"I want to hear what she has to say," Fluttershy answered. "She hasn't attacked us yet!" She turned back to Medea. "Um, I'm sorry if this is out of line, but did you really do all that?"

"Yes," Medea answered. "But I had my reasons. And now I have reasons to protect Colchis. You can listen to me, or you can ignore me and walk into your doom."

"Protect Colchis!" Icarus snapped. "You're the one Colchis needs protection from, sister!"

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash summoned her sword.

"Not yet, Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy cautioned. "I don't think we know the whole story!"

"It isn't common for others to defend me," Medea stated, confused. "Why do you?"

"Because from what you say, it sounds like you're just trying to help," Fluttershy said. "And I feel a little bad that everypony just started attacking you…"

She realized: her wish. To be able to help everyone she felt bad for. She could use that power. She turned back to face Hercules and Pit. "You're going to put down your weapons NOW!"

They both did so without even thinking about why.

"Now," Fluttershy went on. "Have any of you ever met Medea before?"

"No," Pit admitted. "But the stories all say – "

"Your track record with what stories say is still awful," Cassandra pointed out.

"I've never met her either," Hercules admitted, "but she did just confess to everything!"

"I had my reasons," Medea reiterated.

"I think we need to hear her out on everything," Fluttershy said.

"That is not important," Medea stated coldly. "First, you have to see what is happening to this kingdom. It is not peaceful as it seems. It has already been attacked."

"But everything's fine!" Rarity protested.

"So it seems," Medea stated. "In truth…" She tensed up. "She's here. She knows."

"What do you mean?" Fluttershy asked.

Medea raised her hands over her head, building up blue plasma in them. Pit and Hercules went for their weapons, thinking she was about to strike. When Medea threw her arms to her sides, the plasma rippled over the entire kingdom in a wave of blue, and everything changed.

Several intact buildings became rubble. The people roaming the streets dissolved, and others were visible hiding in alleys and behind debris, shuddering in fear. The smell of smoke permeated the air.

A blazing blue light stabbed at the peripheral vision of all who looked at Medea; Medea's gaze was fixed upon the source of the light. Twilight, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Hercules, Meg, Cassandra, Icarus, Phil, Pegasus, Pit, and Zoë all turned to look as well, and recoiled in terror. Above them hung a great bird, like a phoenix, composed of blue fire. Riding the bird was a woman garbed in a green and gold gown, with slits up each side of the skirt to show her bare-footed legs while the upper half of her head was hidden by a low-slung hood.

"Why you little – !" this woman spat. "You weren't supposed to be able to do that!"

"I have learned a lot since I have been here last," Medea replied.

"Who is THAT?" Rarity cried.

"Tisiphone," Medea answered.

Twilight gasped. "I can't believe I didn't think of it…you said Tisiphone was a master of ILLUSION! That's why everything seemed okay!"

"My sisters and I have already made this kingdom our own!" Tisiphone bragged. "And I was just about to make sure you didn't get in our way. Until the witch got in the way! Let me guess, Medea. You're out of your timeline!"

"I remembered when I was away that you would come back to destroy Colchis, and that these heroes would stand against you," Medea replied. "I prepared myself to come back."

"Messing with the timeline is the worst crime a human can commit against the universe!" Tisiphone accused. "If Alecto hadn't thrown our regard for the law out the window when we took this assignment, I'd be legally obligated to kill you where you stand for that!"

"I'm not changing anything that didn't already happen," Medea said. "I didn't know what the outcome would be of the attack on Colchis. When I heard the Fury queens invaded it, I turned a deaf ear. For all I know, I did appear here to stop you, even when I was on the mainland in my younger years."

"Well, none of it matters," Tisiphone said, "because I was going to kill you anyway!" She stroked the neck of the bird. "You take care of the whelps, my lovely, while I strike the bitch dead!"

The bird gave a scream and dove downward in a wave of blue flame. Tisiphone shot through the air toward Medea.

Zoë was the first to draw a weapon, shooting arrows of light at the bird. It flinched as its wing was pierced. Pinkie Pie's pistols hit it next, shooting aura pellets that caused it to slow down. Rainbow Dash and Hercules leapt into the air in tandem, each slicing at the bird, one with rainbow aura and the other with Celestial Bronze. Rainbow Dash crossed under the path of Anaklusmos, and the result was an X that gleamed upon the belly of the bird. This gave Pit, Applejack, Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy enough time to draw their weapons. Applejack's whip formed a rope collar around the bird's neck; it tried to fly up and away from its myriad attackers, but she kept it reined in. Rarity's arrows peppered it.

Tisiphone attacked Medea directly, either unaware or not caring that her familiar was losing badly to its intended targets. She rained lethal blasts of plasma downward; Medea retaliated, firing her own plasma energies straight upward until the two forces collided and cancelled each other out. Medea then surrounded herself with a light blue translucent shield of magic, which Tisiphone's blasts bounced off harmlessly. "Why won't you just die?" Tisiphone taunted.

Medea said nothing. She merely dispelled the shield, taking advantage of Tisiphone's distraction to fire a plasma bolt at her. The Fury took it to the stomach, reeling backward – which, given her position, meant upward, into the sky.

Twilight cast a blast of Glacius at the bird; this sent a shudder through its fiery essence. It gave a cry of fright and broke through the rope collar at last. Tisiphone, seeing this, leapt aboard the back of the bird. "This isn't over!" she snapped, the bird carrying her away. "We WILL defeat you!" The bird sailed out of view.

"Am I the only one who has no idea what's going on?" Icarus asked.

"I think Medea did something with time that made Tisiphone angry," Pinkie Pie observed.

Medea nodded. "Very – "

"Are you a clockmaker?" Pinkie asked her.

"No, she's a time traveler," Twilight corrected sternly.

"There's obviously a LOT we need to get cleared up," Applejack pointed out. "But we're not exactly in a good place to do it. Can we get somewhere a little less…out in the open where the Furies can see us?"

Medea nodded. "I can take you."

"I'm not sure we can trust her," Hercules stated. "She's a murderer!"

"She helped save us from Tisiphone, and she showed us what the Furies really did to the kingdom," Fluttershy pointed out. "Maybe she just needs a second chance. We won't know whether or not we can trust her unless we try."

Hercules sighed "Okay. We'll follow you, Medea. But you do have a lot of explaining to do."

"Wait! NO!" Phil cried. "We are NOT trusting Medea! Of all the people you coulda picked! What next, you wanna have teatime with Circe?"

"No one wants to have teatime with Circe," Meg practically seethed. "But Fluttershy's right. Medea did just save our lives."

"And it seems to me there is more to Medea than you believe," Zoë argued. "Cassandra did not see her in a vision of destruction. I do not think she is the villain you think she is."

"Fine, fine," Phil huffed. "Medea. Get us out of here."

Medea nodded again. She spread out her hands. A great sphere of blue enveloped all of the present party, and they vanished.

They reappeared in what appeared to be a wine cellar, deserted. "Did…did you just perform a Side-Along Apparition without physically touching us?" Twilight asked Medea, her jaw practically on the floor.

"Yes," Medea said. "It is one of many powers I learned on my journey."

"What journey?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"No, we're starting from the beginning," Pit said. "Medea, you say you have reasons for what you did. You're going to tell us why we should believe you."

"If we're starting from the beginning," Fluttershy suggested, "can somepony tell us what the story is about her in the first place?"

"Tell them what they say of Jason and me," Medea agreed.

"Well…" Hercules recounted the tale as best he could. "King Pelias told Jason, one of the greatest heroes, to go find the Golden Fleece. He looked for years, but couldn't find it. He never gave up, no matter what! Then he found it in the kingdom of Colchis, but the king, Aeëtes, refused to let him have it. Medea was the daughter of Aeëtes and…and…who was the queen?"

"There was no queen," Medea answered. "My mother was the goddess Hecate."

That caused a collective flinch among those native to Greece. "That doesn't do you any favors, you know," Pit pointed out.

"Who's Hecate?" Twilight asked.

"Goddess of magic," Phil answered. "Nasty piece of work. We've tangled with her more than once. She's too hot for even Hades to handle!"

Twilight began to wonder why they'd heard nothing from a goddess apparently so dangerous during such chaotic times.

"Anyway," Hercules went on, "Medea helped Jason beat all the challenges Aeëtes set for him and got him the golden fleece. Then she ran away from him. Aeëtes tried to stop him, but Medea distracted him by killing her brother Absyrtus. When Jason and Medea got home, Medea killed Pelias. Jason was horrified! So he left Medea to marry Princess Creusa, but Medea killed her too. And Jason and Medea already had two sons, who Medea killed." He looked at the subject of his story. "I'm sorry if any of that was…you know. Offensive."

"No," Medea answered. "It is good to know what they say of me."

"So is it true?" Fluttershy asked.

"Yes," Medea said, closing her eyes. She needed a moment to gather her thoughts. "But it is not the whole story. Absyrtus attempted to stop me by violence. I killed him in my own defense. I did not even know if I should return to defend my home because of how my family treated me, but I could not let Colchis fall."

"Was Absyrtus a son of Hecate?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"His mother was Neaera, a Nereid," Medea replied. "My father denied her marriage."

"Tell us more about what happened with Jason," Rarity encouraged.

"When we reached the mainland, we discovered that Pelias had been abusing his powers and attempting to conquer other polises," Medea went on.

"True," Phil recalled. "He gave Thessaly a run for its money. We almost had a full-scale war on our hands!"

"It was clear that Pelias was a tyrant king," Medea said. "Jason and I agreed that he should be killed, and so I did the deed. It caused the Corinthians to hate me. I turned a deaf ear. I would not allow them to make me feel as though I had done wrong. Even though it soon became clear that Pelias had told Jason about the fleece so that he would not be able to challenge and overthrow Pelias. Pelias' daughter Creusa was the most outspoken against me. Eventually, Jason stopped listening to my words and started listening to hers. Jason and I had two sons already, but Jason declared that he could no longer love a witch, and without officially divorcing me, became engaged to Creusa. He had sworn to be with me no matter what, and he left me alone to the people that hated me and wished me dead. That is why I wove the cursed wedding dress for Creusa. When she placed it on her skin, she burst into flame and died. It was then that those who hated me set out to attack me, with Jason leading them. I…" She stopped. Closed her eyes again. Swallowed hard. "I murdered our children because they had no fate remaining. Not when they came from the house of a pariah. They no longer had the protection of Jason. That is what I thought at the time, that death would serve them better. I…was wrong. I was wrong to kill Creusa as well. It was something I did in anger. While the deaths of Absyrtus and Pelias weigh on my conscience, I know I did right in committing them. Creusa and my children should never have died. This is the burden I live with each day. The hatred of others does not matter to me, but I am haunted by what I did in the heat of passions I did not understand."

It took a while for her words to settle in. Meg was the first to speak: "Believe me, Medea…people can do horrible things when their hearts are broken. Killing Creusa wasn't right, but there was a time when I…probably would have done the exact same thing."

"Besides, Jason sounds like an awful stallion!" Rarity said in disgust. "What he did to you was completely unfair!"

"I don't like what you did," Phil sighed, "but seein' how we're stuck together on this, I will give ya credit that after the Corinthian royal family was gone, Pericles was able to get the democracy bandwagon rollin' more easily. That is NOT sayin' I wanted any of them actually DEAD."

"I also do not think we can fault thee for what thou truly dost regret," Zoë concluded.

"I ask not for your pity or even your approval," Medea said. "What I ask for is enough of your trust to have your help. After I fled, I studied more powerful and darker magic than I had previously known. I learned spells that would allow me to move through time, as well as spells strong enough to counter Tisiphone's illusions. The blood of Circe and Hecate in my veins allowed me to learn quickly. I have since then been devoted to my studies, and I have tried to find a place in time where I may finally be at peace. A time before Jason met me. However, when I heard of the attack on my homeland during my time of exile, I did as I told Tisiphone. I avoided news of it so that I would not know whether my self from the future would go back to save Colchis. When my magic was strong enough, I prepared to return here at last. I only knew that I would be facing the Furies and that a band of heroes from the mainland would come for the same purpose. That is why I wish to ally. We all wish for Colchis to be saved. Together, we may just be able to oust the Furies. After that, you need never see me again. Will you help me?"

"I'M IN!" Pinkie Pie shrieked, bouncing up and down.

"So am I," Fluttershy said.

"And I," Rarity added.

"Count me in," Twilight said.

"I shall help you as well," Zoë agreed.

"I'm up for it," Applejack stated.

"And I'm game," Rainbow Dash added.

"I'm in," Meg stated.

"And so am I!" Hercules announced.

"Then sign me up, sister!" Icarus continued.

"Eh, why not?" Cassandra said with a shrug.

Phil sighed. "FINE. We'll help."

"Man, that leaves me…" Pit also let out a sigh. "Okay, fine. But no funny stuff, okay?"

"Agreed," Medea replied. She knelt on the floor, waving her arms over the stone. In a glimmer of blue, twenty bottles of a strange liquid appeared. "I did not know how many of you there would be. This is a specialty of mine, one of the first spells I learned. It grants invincibility, but only for twenty-four hours."

"Is it easy to make?" Twilight asked.

"It takes a year to create properly," Medea answered.

"Would you mind teaching me how anyway?" Twilight asked shyly. "I mean, when this is all over. I study magic a lot too, and it seems like this spell would come in real handy on our adventures."

"And how do we know this isn't more poison?" Pit said.

"Choose a bottle," Medea said.

Pit pointed. "That one."

Medea picked the bottle up and removed its stopper. "If there is anyone comfortable enough to observe me applying it," she said, "I would prefer privacy from most of the crowd, but you will have to see proof for yourself."

"Comfortable…?" Icarus was confused.

"The oil must be applied to every inch of skin," Medea clarified.

Icarus blushed deeply. "Oh."

Even Pit turned crimson at the thought.

"I work in fashion," Rarity told Medea. "I can observe you in a purely professional sense without all the silliness."

"Then follow me."

Medea and Rarity moved behind one of the wine racks for privacy. Pit shook his head to try and clear it.

"Thou findest the thought of thy hated enemy attractive when she is in a state of undress," Zoë observed.

"No!" Pit growled. "At least, I don't WANT to!"

"I suppose," Zoë conceded, "it is better than if thou acted as a pig about it."

"We actually need to start strategizing," Twilight said. "We've got three Furies, and I'm pretty sure they're not all going to be in the same place. We should split up again, but this time, because we actually want to find the Furies, we can do three teams. And we have more people this time around than we had against the Gorgons. The bad news is, if Megaera and Alecto are anything like Tisiphone, they're going to be a lot stronger than Gorgons."

"The Furies can be harmed by blades of Celestial Bronze," Medea said from behind the wine rack. "Twilight, I am not sure how powerful the Elements of Harmony are at this stage, but they will also be potent against the Furies."

"Hang on," Rarity said. "How did you know about us?"

There was a pause; Medea was putting her clothing back on. "Oh, and the spell seems to be legitimate," Rarity said as the pair walked back toward the others. "At least, she isn't dropping dead on the spot."

Medea rolled up a sleeve. "I beg someone attack me with a mortal weapon. I have not yet tested this spell against Celestial Bronze or Eldritch weaponry, but the Furies will only be using physical force and magic against you."

Twilight drew her wand. "Will this work? It's magical, but…"

"It will work," Medea affirmed.

"Diffindo," Twilight cast, pointing the wand at Medea's wrist. The spell flickered against her skin, but where it would have normally produced at least a scratch in the skin, nothing happened. "Wow," Twilight remarked.

"To answer your question," Medea said, rolling down her sleeve, "this is not the last time before the future I come from that you visit this world. And you will probably visit futures beyond mine. I know you quite well."

"Just how well DO you know us?" Meg asked with suspicion.

"Well enough to know that if I told you everything, Megara," Medea replied, "most of you would be more frightened of me than you already are."

"Okay…movin' on," Applejack said, "what we know is that we gotta have the Elements of Harmony in one faction, and Hercules and Pit in each of the others."

"If I may have a say," Medea replied, "I would like to accompany the bearers of the Elements to take on Alecto. Your magic combined with mine will be enough to overpower her."

"That sounds like a good plan," Twilight confirmed. "Okay, so the other groups. We know Alecto's in the palace, but we don't know where the other Furies are. So you might encounter either Megaera or Tisiphone first."

"If we're able to be invincible," Meg pointed out, "that makes Cassandra, Icarus, Phil, and me a lot less useless in the fighting department."

"YEAH!" Icarus agreed. "Wait, 'useless'?"

"She has a point," Cassandra said. "We might not be able to do much, but if we can't get hurt, we might as well try."

"So we'll have four invincible but untrained fighters," Twilight stated, "one experienced flying steed, and one warrior with a divine weapon to assign."

"I will go with Pit," Zoë volunteered immediately. As much as she wanted to be on the opposite team, she knew she had to quell her feelings for Hercules. They would only bring her tragedy in the end, she felt, if not tragedy to Hercules and Meg as well.

"And Wonder Boy and I are kind of a team," Meg teased as she and Hercules each put an arm around the other's shoulders. Yes, Zoë thought, she was making the right decision.

"I CALL YOUR TEAM!" Icarus gravitated to Hercules and Meg.

"Then I call the team he's not on," Cassandra said, moving toward Pit and Zoë.

Pegasus stepped toward Hercules, Meg, and Icarus, leaving Phil to choose Pit and Zoë's team for balance.

"Take the oil and use it," Medea commanded. "It must cover every inch of you."

"I suggest using the wine racks as changing screens," Rarity said.

Everyone picked up a bottle (Hercules taking two, one for Pegasus) and retreated to a different part of the cellar to make use of the invincibility ointment.

They all regrouped in the center. All eyes were now, instead of on Hercules or Twilight or even Rainbow Dash, on Medea. "Are we ready?" Fluttershy asked her.

Medea nodded. "It is time. Let us go."

Phil protested when Zoë and Pit picked their path. They had chosen it for a particular factor that he had wanted specifically to stay away from.

"I've always said we've gotta face the enemy head-on," he grumbled, "but I didn't think that meant we could just walk into the middle of a fire like idiots."

"We do not know there is a fire," Zoë reminded him. "It is simply the smell of smoke and burning."

"So basically, it's a fire," Phil reiterated.

"Calm down," Pit said. "We've handled fire before, right? And if we look for the biggest disaster, that's where we're going to find a Fury!"

"You're strangely calm about this," Phil said to Cassandra.

Cassandra shrugged. "I'm invincible. I've got nothing to worry about."

"We're all invincible," Zoë pointed out. "Fire will not hurt us."

"Yeah," Phil remembered. "Man, whatever Fury we get is gonna get one Tartarus of a surprise when she finds out she can't spear us!"

"Unless she battles us for a full day," Zoë pointed out.

"Like we won't have her taken down in two seconds," Pit bragged. "This'll be easy!"

"SHH!" Phil suddenly hushed the group. "Y'hear that?"

All four stopped, listening. They heard the sound of hooves, of a herd of many animals. Yet there was a strange metallic ring to them.

"Beasts of metal?" Zoë asked.

"Khalkotauri," Phil clarified. "This is bad."

"What now?" Cassandra asked half-heartedly.

"Bronze, fire-breathing bulls native to Colchis," Phil cleared up. "Man, you do NOT wanna tangle with one of those. And from the sounds of it, there are at least…more than ten, no, twenty – "

"Headed toward us," Zoë realized.

The sound of hooves grew louder and closer. The bulls were making their way through the streets toward the square where Zoë, Pit, Phil, and Cassandra had just entered.

"But how do they know where we are?" Pit asked.

"Perhaps they can smell us," Zoë suggested.

"Or perhaps I told them where to find you!" a female voice bellowed from the rooftops.

Clad in her breastplate and helm, Megaera stood from her vantage point, propped upon the insectoid legs that sprouted from her back. The four barely had enough time to register her presence before she leapt upon Pit, pinning him to the ground.

"NO!" Zoë screamed.

The Khalkotauri stampeded into the square.

The bulls, larger than ordinary bulls and made completely of bronze, snorted heat, red-eyed with anger. They crashed into Zoë, Phil, and Cassandra, knocking them about; had it not been for Medea's oils, they would have all been trampled to death immediately, but as it was, they were simply bounced around the square, separated from each other.

Megaera raised an insectoid appendage high in the air, then brought it down fast to pierce Pit's heart. She recoiled when it clanged against his chest as though he, like the bulls, were made of metal. "What is this magic?" she growled.

"You're never gonna believe this," Pit said, struggling to draw his blades from his lying position, "but it's Medea."

He slashed the blades up at Megaera, attempting to send her back to the Underworld, but she was faster than him. She sidestepped, then gripped his wrists in her own and squeezed. Even though Pit couldn't feel any pain and his bones were not shattered, the reflexes in his muscles were triggered and he dropped both blades. Megaera then picked him up, using his wrists as leverage, and flung him into the mass of bulls.

The Khalkotauri soon discovered that they could not gore their targets with their horns, and concentrated instead on fire. Zoë had felled bull after bull with her light arrows before noticing that her dress was aflame. Quickly she dropped to the ground, rolling. The many hooves that trampled over her helped to put out the flame.

Landing at the farthest edge of the square, Pit became boxed in by the bulls. They charged him head-on, and having no blade, all he could do was try to push them away with his hands. Eventually he just let them converge upon him, knowing he'd just have to wait for them to give up.

Megaera knew the course of action she wished to take. She leapt from the back of Khalkotaurus to Khalkotaurus until she found Zoë standing, her garments singed. The Fury took the Hesperide by the throat, pulling her upward. "You may be impervious to my attacks, but that does not mean you are safe!" she growled as Zoë struggled to break free, grasping at Megaera's hands with her own fingers that seemed weak in comparison. "I will personally see to it that you are all captured and escorted to the Prison of the Damned! And you will be sadly mistaken if you think that Hades or my sister Alecto will not find a way to kill you there!"

"Ha…des…" Zoë gasped, now having confirmation that the god of the Underworld was involved.

"HEY!" Phil snapped, having leapt upon the back of another Khalkotaurus. "Beetle brain! You wanna mess with friends of my trainees?"

"I suppose I do," Megaera replied, turning to face Phil with Zoë still in hand.

"Then you're gonna see what happens when I got nothin' to lose," Phil told her. He then bolted toward her, letting out a war cry that sounded like the bleat of an enraged goat.

Megaera did not expect the satyr's fists to land such heavy blows on her face. She dropped Zoë, who immediately began searching the ground for her bow. Megaera was knocked temporarily to the ground, where Phil landed five consecutive punches before the Fury was back on her feet and then her other appendages, throwing Phil into the seething mass of Khalkotauri.

"My Khalkotauri will keep you imprisoned until you can be transported!" she stated. "You WILL be imprisoned!"

During all the confusion, Cassandra had made her way to the outlet to the widest street. A nearby chiton boutique caught her attention. Not even bothering to feel sorry, she barged into the store, grabbed the most voluminous garment she could find, and ran back to the end of the street, looking in at the Khalkotauri.

"HEY!" she snapped, waving the fabric.

Every single bronze bull in the square stopped. All heads, all angry red eyes, turned to focus on Cassandra.

"You want it?" Cassandra waved the fabric tantalizingly. The bulls followed it with their eyes.

"Then come get it!" Cassandra began to run, trailing the fabric. The bulls followed her in one massive stampede.

"NO!" Megaera roared. "YOU WILL NOT – "

Before she could finish her sentence, Zoë, having found her bow, struck Megaera through the heart with a light arrow, and she disappeared in a shower of golden dust.

"We gotta help Cassandra!" Pit cried, taking to the air and following the stampede. Zoë took off on foot.

"You kids go," Phil panted, out of breath. "I'll catch up."

Hercules, Meg, Icarus, and Pegasus made their way in the opposite direction. Before they could begin to contemplate how they knew they were even going the right way, they heard a high-pitched laugh echo through the air.

"Tisiphone!" Hercules cried.

"Hang on," Meg said. "This could be another one of her illusions."

"Which is EXACTLY why we need to follow it!" Icarus cried. "It will lead us right to – "

"Our doom," Meg stated. "We need to be more careful about this." She turned to Pegasus. "All right, Horsefeathers. You can hold all three of us up, right?"

Pegasus nodded.

"Tisiphone was riding around on that bird of hers," Meg rationalized. "We'll have an advantage if we get in the air too."

"Good idea," Hercules agreed.

It took the three of them a while to become comfortably situated on Pegasus, but he was strong enough to handle all three of them, especially given that Meg and Icarus were quite light. With a couple pumps of his wings, Pegasus was in the air.

Turned away from where Megaera had done battle, the four didn't see the stampede of Khalkotauri that chased Cassandra down the streets. Instead, they saw where the urban streets of Colchis gave way to agrarian farmland. A glimmer of bright blue was visible in the open fields. The bird.

"You think it's a trap?" Hercules asked.

"I don't know," Meg said. "We'll have to be on our guard. There's nothing she can do to hurt us, but I still think we should watch out."

"CHART A COURSE FOR TISIPHONE!" Icarus commanded. Pegasus obeyed, diving toward the blue.

Tisiphone stood in the field beside her familiar, seething. Medea's dispelling of her illusion had a lasting effect. She was having trouble casting any other illusion that remained stable, and supposed she would until she could either reverse the effects or they wore off. She hadn't expected Medea to have grown so strong, but at the same time, held no belief that the witch could overpower Alecto. In the meantime, Tisiphone had to make do with her other spells and a secret weapon held in a bag tied at her sash.

Pegasus landed, and Hercules, Meg, and Icarus leapt onto the grassy ground to confront Tisiphone. "It's over!" Hercules threatened, drawing Anaklusmos.

"Is it?" Tisiphone asked. Throwing her hands out before herself, she let a barrage of bright white plasma fly.

Hercules, Meg, and Icarus all raised their arms to shield their eyes from the blinding lights. Pegasus covered his eyes with a wing. They felt an immense pressure as the magic washed over them, but it soon subsided. Medea's ointment had negated all of the effects of Tisiphone's attack.

"That witch thought of everything, didn't she?" Tisiphone snarled. "It doesn't matter. All I need to do is capture you long enough to take you to the Prison of the Damned!"

"The wherenow?" Icarus asked.

"The island prison formed from the Hecatonchires Aegaeon, an ancient being that broke a blood oath with Zeus. It now stands to contain all those who break blood oaths. But under our current command, it can be used to contain whoever gets in our way!" Tisiphone explained. "And once we get you there, you'll stay there until you die!"

"Nice try," Icarus scoffed, "but you'll never take us!"

"Not without some help," Tisiphone admitted, drawing the bag from her sash. She undid the drawstring that fastened it, removing several long, sharp fangs from it.

Had Phil been there, he would have known that these were the teeth of the dragon of Colchis. He would have been able to warn everyone what would happen if the teeth were planted in the soil. As it was, he wasn't there, and no one was prepared when Tisiphone cast the fangs before her into the soil; they landed in a semicircle due to her deft throw. They all pierced the ground, sinking into the dirt.

Then, from every place a tooth had hit the ground, a skeleton wearing armor erupted from the dirt, having grown from the tooth.

"Spartoi!" Tisiphone commanded. "TAKE THEM!"

One of the Spartoi seized Meg around the waist. Another grabbed Icarus, wrenching his wrists behind his back and holding them there to keep him still. Three Spartoi charged Hercules with rusty blades and swords, and Hercules found himself swinging Anaklusmos wildly to parry their blows.

Tisiphone rose into the air, laughing madly. Pegasus shot upward after her, but the great bird of blue fire rose between them like a curtain of blue fire. Pegasus recoiled in fright.

Hercules slashed the three Spartoi keeping him busy in half at the waist, and all crumbled to the ground as piles of bones. He turned to free Meg, but she had already kicked the skeleton hard, forcing it to let her go, and knocked it to the ground; all it needed was a final blow from Anaklusmos. After dealing that, Hercules slashed at the soldier holding Icarus captive.

Tisiphone threw dozens of dragon teeth toward the ground, and an army of Spartoi leapt up. Hercules, Meg, and Icarus charged the horde bravely.

In the meantime, Pegasus kept trying to get to Tisiphone. No matter which way he turned, the bird blocked him. So he barreled upward at his top speed, wings beating wildly; the bird gave chase, knowing Pegasus was trying to get around it. Pegasus led the bird on a course through the sky, trying to increase the distance between them both, to escape the bird. It seemed, however, as though the bird was gaining in distance rather than being lost. Still, Pegasus would take what he could get. With one sharp turn, he was headed toward Tisiphone, with the bird directly behind him.

He slammed into Tisiphone, sending her spinning head over heels. "You…filthy…ANIMAL!" she cried, launching a great projectile of white-hot energy that just bounced off Pegasus.

Pegasus skimmed low to the ground, and the bird, in pursuit, hovered over the Spartoi. Pegasus landed, joining in the battle, kicking as many skeletons as he could to be skewered upon Anaklusmos. The bird's flames transferred onto most of the remaining Spartoi, charring them into ash; their rusty armor and weapons thudded into the dirt uselessly.

"Get her!" Meg told Hercules. "We'll hold off the rest of them!"

"But without Anaklusmos – " Hercules began.

"Don't worry!" Icarus tried to reassure him. "I've GOT this."

It had to be good enough. Hercules leapt aboard Pegasus' back and the two took to the air.

The bird rose between them, but one stroke from Anaklusmos caused it to dissipate into nothing, leaving Tisiphone unguarded in the air. With a growl of anger, the Fury, throwing her hands out before her, created a shield of blue aura that stymied Hercules for a minute – Anaklusmos bounced off it – until the force of the blade striking the shield, which surrounded Tisiphone completely, sent the shield toward the ground as if it were some sort of giant ball. It crushed the remaining Spartoi. Tisiphone discarded the shield, rushing upward.

Hercules threw Anaklusmos directly downward.

The two, Fury and sword, met in midair, and when Anaklusmos hit the ground, it was covered in golden dust from the cloud that Tisiphone had left behind in one puff.

"Nice goin', Herc!" Icarus commended as Pegasus landed.

"Thanks," Hercules replied, dismounting. "Now we can go help…um…does anyone else hear that?"

Hercules, Icarus, Meg, and Pegasus turned their attention to the streets, where there seemed to be loud noise – some sort of stampede of hooved animals.

Cassandra was beginning to wonder if saving her friends from the clutches of Megaera had REALLY been worth it. She was running as fast as she could, but the Khalkotauri were gaining.

Mostly, she found it utterly stupid that if this was how she was going to die, she of all people should have been able to see it coming.

The screech of an eagle sounded through the sky. Talons grasped Cassandra's shoulders, lifting her up; her feet left the ground and running became pointless. The eagle, or whatever it was, flew Cassandra out of the path of the running bulls, setting her down on a rooftop.

When Cassandra turned to get a good look at the animal that had rescued her, she only caught a glimpse of the eagle disappearing into the clouds. Its feathers were a bright teal color that she found all too familiar.

The herd of Khalkotauri was thinning anyway. Zoë and Pit were still striking them down from behind. Only about five of them remained when Hercules entered from the other direction, taking them head on, cutting all of them down to dust with Anaklusmos.

"Nice timing," Pit remarked.

"But where is Cassandra?" Zoë asked.

"What about Cassandra?" Hercules responded.

"She distracted the Khalkotauri and took off runnin'," Phil explained, finally catching up.

"NOOOOOOO!" Icarus fell to his knees. "NOT MY DARLING! MY REASON TO LIVE! I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT HADES WILL BE SO KIND AS TO LET US REUNITE IN THE UNDERWORLD!"

"Geez…" Cassandra hopped down from her rooftop safety into the street. "Y'know, I considered the benefits of letting you think I was dead, but if you're going to talk about me like THAT, I'm going to have to look into becoming immortal."

"What happened?" Meg asked.

"Okay, you're gonna think I'm making things up, but some eagle just picked me up and dropped me off on the roof," Cassandra stated. "A teal one."

"Hmmm, teal, you say?" Icarus reiterated suspiciously. "Teal…LIKE THE CLOTHING WORN BY THAT WOMAN-STEALING THANATOCRATES?"

"Okay, NOW you're crossing from insanity into irreversible madness," Cassandra sighed. "But, yes, if you want to go there, it was the same color."

"Well, we're glad you're okay," Meg concluded.

"We should head for the palace and see how Medea and the others are doing," Hercules suggested. "I mean, can Alecto really be stronger than either of the Furies we just faced? I'm kind of assuming you met Megaera."

"And took her down!" Pit bragged.

"We got Tisiphone," Meg replied.

"And it was all thanks to me!" Icarus boasted while Meg shook her head and mouthed "No."

"Bad news," Phil said. "Alecto is stronger than both her sisters. COMBINED."

Medea halted outside the doors to the palace. "I must warn you of what we could face," she said. "My kingdom had three defenses my father used against those he wished dead. First were the Khalkotauri, the bronze bulls that breathed fire. Second the Spartoi, the undead warriors that grew from the teeth of the dragon of Colchis. Third and finally, there is the dragon of Colchis. It is invincible as we are now. It guarded the golden fleece. The only way I could allow Jason to take the fleece was to take him past the dragon as it slept. Alecto most certainly has control over that dragon."

Fluttershy shuddered involuntarily, a little fear left over from her old phobia of adult dragons. Rainbow Dash put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

"So what do we do?" Twilight asked.

"Whatever stops her," Medea answered before proceeding to the gate.

Medea, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Twilight, and Pinkie Pie entered the spacious hall of the palace of Colchis together. At the opposite end of the room, Alecto sat tall and regally on the royal throne, her piercing eyes framed by her snow-white skin. The six Kentaurides all felt shivers of cold upon seeing her.

"Where is my father?" Medea asked, seemingly unfazed by Alecto's presence.

"Dead," Alecto replied simply. "Though I do not suppose that matters to you."

"There was no love lost between my father and myself," Medea said, taking down her hood to reveal her long black curls, cascading past her shoulders. "That does not change the fact that you have committed an unforgivable crime against my kingdom."

"I am the one who will judge what is an unforgivable crime!" Alecto snapped, rising to her feet. "NOT YOU! You are stained with crimes, Medea. Your soul is painted red with the blood of five! It is fortunate for me that you have decided simply to approach me, for now I can give you at last the punishment you should have received long ago!"

"NO!" Fluttershy cried, stepping forward. "Medea did a lot of bad things, but she regrets them! If you ask me, she's been punished enough!"

"I no longer care," Alecto stated. "Regardless of the witch's presence, I have been awaiting you so that I may destroy you."

"Tough luck," Rainbow Dash laughed. "We're invincible."

"One of our witch's tricks, no doubt," Alecto guessed.

Medea remained silent, staring Alecto dead in the eye.

"Your invulnerability will not matter," Alecto said. "There are many fates much worse than death or physical harm that you can suffer at the Prison of the Damned. It simply befalls to me to take you all there."

"A prison!" Rarity gasped.

"A prison crafted from one of the oldest beings to grace this world," Medea clarified. "An Old One, as you think of them." She turned to look at Twilight meaningfully. Twilight nodded. Somehow, she knew, this would be relevant later.

"I will make you suffer," Alecto vowed as the entire throne room began to shudder.

"I don't like this," Applejack said nervously.

The white tiles of the floor cracked and splintered into fragments. Something very large was making its way up through that floor into the throne room, breaking the central tiles into smithereens in order to do that. A sleek black dragon, studded with spines at every vertex of its body and spreading a pair of batlike wings, emerged from the pit it had just made, crawling up into the throne room. It lifted its head upon its snakelike neck and gave a hiss of warning toward Medea and the six Equestrians. Then it stood stock-still until Alecto levitated off the ground and landed on its back, sitting between two large spines. She took hold of a golden rein attached to a bridle slung around the dragon's neck, and she twisted the rein hard. The dragon reared its head back and then let a great blast of flame loose at Alecto's enemies.

Medea instinctively threw up her hands, creating a shield of blue aura that reflected the flame back toward the dragon. "Attack Alecto," she said before letting the shield down. The dragon had run out of breath.

Medea's hair twisted and writhed. It grew out longer than it had been, reaching her waist, then her ankles, twisting like vines. Then it whipped upward, fashioning itself into a hair-shaped beast head with a mouth that clamped on the dragon's neck, struggling with the beast. Alecto was thrown off the dragon's back as Medea's hair threw the dragon aside; Medea kept her hold on the dragon while the six Equestrians shifted into five Mahou Shoujo and one weather witch.

"A skilled trick of Dark magic," Alecto remarked, glancing at Medea and her monstrous hair. "It is no matter." Yet if it was truly no matter, Alecto probably would not have brought attention to it, nor looked so perturbed about it. She quickly regained composure, turning to the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.

The six had known as one to mobilize and initiate the power of the Elements; the sphere of light surrounded them and the rainbow burst forth. Alecto put out a hand, and from it emitted a column of darkness that took on the form of a shifting viscous black liquid. Alecto's darkness collided with the rainbow of the Equestrians, and Twilight was reminded of the struggle against Dark Danny; Alecto's magic was pushing back harder than Twilight and her friends could produce to counter it. This time, however, there was no Lightning Dust to stab her from behind. And the overtaking was happening more quickly than it had with Dark Danny.

The rainbow was engulfed in darkness. The black goo erupted over Twilight, Fluttershy, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie, throwing them against the wall and sticking them there, covering them.

"EEEEWWWW!" Rarity cried, writhing like mad to break free of the slime, but the bond held.

Hearing Rarity's cry, Medea whipped her hair to throw the dragon's head against the wall; it was dazed. Medea's hair retracted to its usual length and she rushed at Alecto, drawing a pair of broadswords from Hammerspace. She leapt into the air to bring the swords down upon Alecto.

Alecto surrounded herself in a protective shield of shadowy aura. "You have learned many Dark tricks," she remarked.

"I have had a lot of time to study," Medea retaliated, hammering at the shield. "Why does my father's dragon obey you?"

"Upon his death, it relinquished itself to me," Alecto answered. "Cease your attacks, witch! They are doing you no good!"

The swords vanished from Medea's hands, but were replaced by balls of orange flame. These were flung at Alecto's shield, where they crashed harmlessly into nothingness. Alecto, fed up, took down the shield long enough to sling a mass of black goo at Medea. Medea was caught in it, forced to a crouching position where she was stuck. The witch pulled at her bonds experimentally, but they didn't break.

"You all belong to me now," Alecto said.

"No," Medea answered.

Black fire enveloped Medea, catching on all the sticky darkness Alecto had used to tie her down. It all melted away into a pool of liquid the consistency of black water, and Medea stood, unharmed by the fire, which was dying down. Six more columns of fire enveloped Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash, burning their bonds away and freeing them from the wall.

"I shouldn't be surprised," Alecto muttered under her breath before reaching for Medea's throat. Medea blasted at Alecto with a bright blue bolt of plasma, which had no effect. Alecto retaliated with a bolt of red plasma, which similarly had no effect on Medea.

As the two exchanged fruitless blows, Twilight looked toward the dragon, which still seemed to just be standing in place, staring ahead with a confused look. "Why isn't it attacking us?" she wondered out loud.

"Who cares?" Applejack replied. "It's GONNA attack us, and soon!"

"Not if we can help it," Twilight said. "Our Elements didn't work on Alecto, but they can work on that dragon, and I have an idea how. Medea said she got Jason past it when it was asleep. So we're going to sing it a lullaby. Fluttershy, you remember that song you used to sing back in Ponyville?"

They decided on a plan. The sphere of light surrounded them once more; as the rainbow washed over the dragon, it carried upon it Fluttershy's voice: "Hush now, quiet now, it's time to rest your sleepy head. Hush now, quiet now, it's time to go to bed…"

The dragon heard her words. It was soothed. It wanted to close its eyes, to rest a while. After all, it wouldn't come to any harm with the singer of that song to watch over it…

"NO!" Alecto rushed away from Medea, planting her feet on the dragon's back, gripping the golden bridle tightly. "DO NOT LISTEN!"

The dragon shook its head. The rainbow dissipated. The dragon roared, looking at the Kentaurides with murder in its eyes.

Twilight put the pieces together just as soon as Medea figured it out. The only way the dragon could have resisted that was with assistance from Alecto, and the Fury's method was obvious. The two acted in tandem without even realizing it. A blue plasma bolt from Medea crossed with Twilight's casting of Diffindo, and the dragon's bridle, the famed Golden Bridle that would allow the rider control over any animal that wore it, was severed from both sides.

The dragon's head swiveled on its great neck, looking toward Alecto. It roared in anger at its false master. Its great spiked tail whipped upward, knocking Alecto off its back. The Fury was thrown against the very throne she'd sat upon proudly, in a great moment of poetic irony.

In the absence of King Aeëtes, the dragon turned to its rightful next commander, his daughter Medea. Medea pointed at Alecto, and the dragon approached the Fury as Medea drew her swords – not Celestial Bronze, but shining silver – from Hammerspace.

"The Elements," she commanded.

"NO!" Fluttershy cried in horror.

"The Elements, now, or she will kill us all!" Medea insisted.

"Not like this!" Fluttershy insisted. "If you kill her, it'll be another death on your hands! It won't just hurt her. You'll end up regretting it, and you'll be hurt too!"

"I hold no grief towards a Fury," Medea growled.

"I said," Fluttershy asserted, "DON'T."

Medea's hands trembled. Then the silver swords disappeared.

The doors to the throne room were thrown open. Zoë, Pit, Hercules, Icarus, Cassandra, Meg, Phil, and Pegasus barreled in, weapons drawn.

"I suppose you think you have me beaten," Alecto stated. Then she vanished in a cloud of darkness.

"She knows she was outmatched on land," Medea said.

"You think we should have killed her when we had the chance," Fluttershy guessed.

"Your words had a strange effect on me," Medea accused. "Were they magic?"

"I…I made a wish," Fluttershy admitted. "To be able to help everypony I felt bad for. I wanted Alecto to stay alive, and I also didn't want you to have guilt over killing her."

"Couldn't you have just used Celestial Bronze on her?" Twilight asked.

Medea shook her head. "The only weapons I carry with me are silver. I did not want any Fury to escape me alive. Silver is the most certain way to kill magical beings. But to your question…I do not think I should have killed her. Fluttershy…I am glad you stopped me."

BARDO, THE UNDERWORLD

"Good news," Hecate greeted Mozenrath. "Basic training ends today. After this, I get to turn you loose on the world."

"I'll almost miss this," Mozenrath admitted. "Learning to take on more power than I'd ever held before. But as lovely as this was, it won't measure up to getting to use it in the field."

"You'll be useless in the field if you aren't connected to the darkness itself," Hecate told him. "That's what we're doing today. Connecting you to the darkness of the cosmos. Making you a complete Dark wizard. There are just a few safety warnings I'm obligated to give you."

"Such as?"

"Weak minds and unprepared souls don't do well with this part," Hecate said. "I know far too many people that have tried to give themselves to the darkness and ended up with it overrunning them completely. Some of them get possessed by other sorcerers or demons. Some just die."

"Well, that's comforting."

"Do you think you're going to die this way?"

"Well, that's an interesting question." Mozenrath thought it over. "I'd like to think that I'm more than prepared. On the other hand, death is a fear I've had to live with ever since…" He looked down at his right hand, then clenched it. "But I have lived with it. I haven't let it rule me. I guess I'm not REALLY afraid to die anymore. On the other hand, losing my identity to something or someone else is a price I'm not willing to pay."

"I'm not asking you to pay it," Hecate said. "I'm just asking you to risk it in exchange for greater power."

"Well, you were the one who trained me," Mozenrath pointed out. "I think I'm ready. I FEEL ready. But if you've been building me up all this time, you're the one making the biggest investment in whether I'll fail. So you tell me. How much danger am I in?"

Hecate thought it over. "After what I've seen from you…almost none."

"Then tell me how."

"Remember when you connected with the Dementor?" Hecate asked. "Find the darkness down that road. You'll know it when you see it. Head straight for it and don't hold back."

Mozenrath nodded. "Oh, I won't hold back. And I'll come out of it better than ever."

He shut his eyes, searching. Searching for that link within him, that bond that connected his soul to the darkness. He located it easily; he'd found it time and time again when ordering the Dementors around. It led down into a great black oblivion…a place where everything was permeated with power, with magic.

He plunged. As his body stood still in the crystal hallway, his soul let itself fall, deeper and deeper, risking getting itself lost.

Hecate watched as he stood stock-still. For almost a moment too long, and she feared that all she'd done had been for naught, that he'd been lost to the darkness and would any minute be destroyed. Then his fist clenched harder. A burst of dark energy radiated from it before simmering to its usual blue. Then a column of darkness rose, surrounding Mozenrath, bathing him in shadow before it subsided.

He opened his eyes. He smiled.

"Are you still you?" Hecate asked.

"Yes," Mozenrath answered. "And I have to say…" He laughed. It was all within him, swirling like ocean tides. "I've never felt better!"

"Congratulations," Hecate said. "You passed my little class."

"WE PASSED!" Xerxes cheered.

"Oh, brother," Lukos groaned as he and Aetos rolled their eyes.

"I take it I've learned all the basics," Mozenrath said with a thoughtful nod. "How much more is there to learn?"

"There will always be stronger spells," Hecate told him. "Even now, I couldn't teach you to wield Sepulcaphs or speak the Deplorable Word. You wouldn't just die in the process. You'd probably be turned inside out first. And that wouldn't be pretty."

"I'd like to argue that I'm as pretty on the inside as on the outside…" Mozenrath smirked and winked.

Hecate sighed. "Humorous. Well, now that you've realized your true potential, what's the first thing you want to do?"

"Hmm." Mozenrath thought it over. "Well, there is one thing I've always wanted to do. Something I wanted back in the Seven Deserts and never got."

Hecate grinned. "I'm listening."

COLCHIS, THE BORDER OF OLYMPIC GREECE

In the aftermath of the battle against Alecto, everyone needed a while to get bearings. The refugees and survivors of Colchis were coaxed out of their safe houses. The group of heroes provided medical aid here and there, doing whatever they could to patch up what the Furies had broken. Meg and Fluttershy were especially kept on their feet and hooves, administering assistance to the wounded.

They didn't really begin to regroup until sunset. Most of the group ended up headed into town to stock up on provisions to last them the ship voyage back to the mainland. The only ones who held back were Meg, Fluttershy, Rarity, Medea, and Twilight. The former two, the medics, had found themselves tired and in need of just a few moments to rest before gearing up for another voyage; Rarity also declared herself tired and decided to stay and talk with Meg and Fluttershy for a while. Medea and Twilight had gone off somewhere to talk about magic.

While the majority of the group headed into town, Zoë realized that it was entirely possible she'd never find a better moment to bring up what she had to say. So, as they moved down the street, she blurted it:

"I know Hades is involved and I have reason to believe Hera is as well."

All others turned to look at her in shock.

"When did you get proof that Hades was in on it?" Hercules asked.

"Megaera said so when she attacked me," Zoë recounted.

"THAT?" Phil raged. "THAT IS WHAT YOU PICKED UP ON OUT OF THAT SENTENCE? SHE JUST ACCUSED HERA OF CAUSING THE MESS WE'RE DEALIN' WITH! Zoë, why would HERA go against Mount Olympus?"

"For revenge," Zoë said. "I have continued my investigation in secret. With Amphitryon, and I have spoken with Hera herself. I know something that…that may seem hard to believe. A secret kept even to Olympus. Thou shalt have to trust me enough to believe me, that I am telling the truth."

"I KNOW you wouldn't lie to me," Hercules said, and that was all Zoë needed. Her heart felt as though it had been tied to wax wings that lifted it ever higher into the sky, even though there was the all too terrible looming prospect that the sun would burn.

"We trust ya," Applejack added. "You ain't told us one lie since you got down here."

"Dost thou remember when Nemesis accused Hercules of having mortal parentage?" Zoë said. "Alcmene lost a son she called Iphicles shortly before finding Hercules. Hera has admitted to me that Zeus tricked Alcmene into bearing his son. Iphicles and Hercules were one and the same. Alcmene is Hercules' true mother, not Hera!"

"What?" Hercules breathed. "But…Hera is…and Alcmene was…!"

"That actually makes sense," Cassandra pointed out. "I mean, we all know a ton of other demigods Zeus fathered. He's had more kids with mortals than he has had with Hera. Actually, Hera being Herc's mom makes less sense than anything."

"THE PLOT THICKENS!" Icarus cried.

"DUN DUN DUNNNNN!" Pinkie added.

"Hera claims to bear no ill will toward Hercules," Zoë said. "And yet she was angered at his existence, and angry with Zeus for cheating on her with yet another mortal. What would make more sense but for her to join forces with the other god who had most reason to hate Zeus and kill Hercules? What would make more sense but for her to enable Hades to kidnap Hercules from her palace…" She suddenly stopped midsentence. "Her palace," she repeated. "The palace of Zeus and Hera, guarded by countless enchantments and divine devices."

"There would be no way for Hades just to break into it!" Hercules read Zoë's mind. "Hey, we only ever just guessed Hades was the one who took me off Olympus because he had it in for me."

"SHE STATED IT OUTRIGHT!" Zoë cried. "How would she have known it was Hades' doing, or even that of his minions, if it was only ever a guess?"

"These are some pretty hefty accusations," Phil pointed out. "You're sayin' the queen of the gods went traitor against Olympus."

"But she WAS really angry!" Pinkie pointed out. "It makes a whole lot of sense!"

"You're only sayin' that because you don't know her that well," Phil replied.

"And that's probably what Twilight would say if she was here," Rainbow Dash pointed out. "She knows all the Olympians by name. But we're just coming in from the outside. We're looking at the gods you've always trusted with our eyes. And Hera looks like she has a LOT of reasons to be in on this."

"So Hera, Hades, Eris, and Nemesis are together in a big conspiracy to overthrow Olympus?" Pit stated.

"As implausible as it seems," Zoë stated, "that is what seems to be happening."

"And it wouldn't be the first time we found a conspiracy of about fifty villains," Applejack pointed out. "Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, y'all remember when Gothel was workin' for Maleficent, the Stabbingtons were workin' for Mozenrath, and Discord was behind everything?"

"THAT still puzzles me the most," Rainbow Dash stated. "Discord. Where is he in all this?"

"Maybe nowhere," Applejack mused. "It's a big multiverse, after all. It's possible he found some chaos to create somewhere else, and the reason the mists brought us here was to deal with Hades, Hera, Eris, and Nemesis."

"I still say no way," Phil asserted. "Hera is NOT involved."

"There is only one way to know," Zoë stated. "To interrogate her."

"WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN!" Pinkie Pie squealed. "If we find what she's doing when the sun's gone, she might be doing something really suspicious!"

"And how are we gonna get to Olympus?" Phil asked. "Most of us are mortals, one of us has been banned to the mortal plane – "

"And one of us is me," Pit concluded. "We can get as far as the gates, but if we need to go beyond, I'll handle that! I can get a confession out of her!"

"How exactly are you going to do that?" Cassandra asked.

"With my charm." Pit winked.

"Ugh." Cassandra rolled her eyes.

"Well, we have our plan," Hercules said. "And without our team strategist. I wonder where Twilight is, anyway?"

Twilight was furiously copying notes onto a scroll as Medea told her the recipe for the invincibility ointment. The pair walked through the side streets. Many peered out at them, afraid of Medea because of her reputation but awed that their princess had come home.

"When the solution has turned clear," Medea concluded, "it is finished."

Twilight wrote the last information down, but didn't roll up the scroll just yet. "Thank you so much," she gushed. "You have no idea what this means to me."

Medea gave a small, almost imperceptible laugh. "To learn Dark secrets from a villain."

"No, to learn new magic from someone who's also interested in it. Listen, maybe I am giving you too much credit, but I just met you, and you don't seem that bad to me. Besides, I've already got worse for friends."

"Your friends all seem very kind."

"The one I'm talking about…isn't here," Twilight stated sheepishly. "He's probably killed a lot more than you and with a lot fewer good reasons. Long story short, you being a 'dark witch' and 'evil' doesn't scare me off as much as it could."

"Then I thank you."

"Medea…do you mind if I ask you a few more questions? You know so much more than me, and I'm still learning."

"Ask me whatever you wish. I will answer."

"Great!" Twilight broke into a great smile. She then had to decide what she wanted to ask about: Side-Along Apparition without touching, the dark fire, the hair…at last she settled: "Well, you're traveling through time. So are my friends and I. In fact, we're kind of writing history right now that we heard ourselves in on another…in another…somewhere else. What would you say is important for us to know?"

"Always know where you are in time," Medea advised. "Keep a record. It will allow you to more easily know what is going on."

"Huh." Twilight thought it over. She realized that some of the territories she'd tread were considerably forward or backward in time from others. She also knew that others had reached different points in their own timelines, but were still on the same place in the cosmic timeline. This was to say nothing of the people that traveled between them, few and far between as they seemed to be, and how their aging would be factored in. "I haven't really been keeping a good record of when we've been. Just where. I should start." A more pressing question occurred to her. "Back when we were fighting Alecto, she talked about a prison, and you said it was made out of an Old One. Then you looked at me. What was that about?"

"I know that the future rests on the conflict between the Old Ones with their chaos and the order of the cosmos as it stands," Medea stated. "Aegaeon, the Hecatonchires, is older than Greece. Older than this world. He fought a war against the Primordials, but when Zeus created this world, Aegaeon rebelled against him and was punished. He broke a blood oath to Zeus that had been forged in the age of Legend. Since then, his body has served as the prison for other breakers of blood oaths. He was killed, but as the conflict escalates, no Old One stays dead for long. The others will seek him out. So long as you are involved, it is important that you know."

"Thank you," Twilight replied, taking notes furiously on her scroll. "That definitely sounds like someone Discord would be interested in."

They both new that neither would have to explain Discord to the other.

The pair emerged from the alleys onto the coast of the city, where Meg, Rarity, and Fluttershy sat on a nearby bench, watching the ebb and flow of the sea. "How's your time off?" Twilight asked.

"It's going well," Fluttershy answered. "We were just talking about a lot of things."

"Mind if we join you?" Twilight asked.

"Go ahead," Meg replied. Twilight and Medea walked closer to the three.

Rarity sighed, looking out over the waves. Picking up from what must have been an earlier conversation, she groaned, "I know love will find me someday. Between the deal I made for my powers and the sheer odds given the time I've got to look, it has to happen. I just can't fathom why it hasn't already! I'm not repulsive, am I?"

"No," Meg reassured Rarity. "Love's a tricky thing. You've gotta go through a lot of bad apples before you find a sweet one."

"I haven't loved since Jason," Medea said. "He committed what was to me an ultimate betrayal. And yet I know that somewhere in time there exists for me someone to love."

"If it'll make you feel better," Meg added, "I can tell you my story. About the jerk that dumped me."

"Oh, but that's one of your most well-guarded secrets!" Rarity gasped. "I couldn't ask you to betray it! Not at all!"

"It was a long time ago." Meg shrugged. "When I really think about it, it doesn't matter."

"Well…if you wish," Rarity replied.

"Kinda funny, thinking about him now," Meg said, looking out at the sea. "He was a traveler. One of those types that's been to exotic lands and seen strange things. Charming, confident, had a real way with words…he swept me right off my feet. I really thought we were gonna be something after, what, maybe one date? You know first love. It's weird. He had this…problem, though. This curse. He got mixed up with some bad magic, and it was killing him." She paused. "Okay, Twilight, you're smiling."

"Just because it reminded me of someone," Twilight said. "Keep going."

"I don't really remember anymore if it was me who thought of it or if he asked me to do it," Meg went on, "but I wanted him to live. I guess I was a little bit selfish. I thought I could deal with anything as long as he was happy, but when it got down to it, I just wanted him to live longer so we could be together longer. Anyway. I got the idea to make a deal with Hades for his life. Hades would have me as his personal servant to do whatever his bidding was, and my man's thread of life would be spun out longer. Selling my soul didn't seem like such a big deal. It just seemed like one of those sacrifices you make for a great love. Not to mention that my man and I didn't exactly have the greatest moral compass. I was mixed up in trading Lethe water on the black market, and he was studying Dark magic. It wasn't a real big leap to start doing dirty work for Hades.

"Anyway, after the deal was done, I told my guy all about what I did to save him, and it made him happy. Way too happy. The next day, I hear he's run off with Circe. Turns out he just needed someone to buy him some more time. Wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason he picked me out in the first place. If he faked all of it just to get me to trade my soul for a few years for him. I've always kinda resented Circe for it, but I guess I can't really blame her. The only reason I can't blame him is 'cause he went missing. On another one of his travels, I guess. And that's where I was when Hercules found me."

"My aunt Circe." Medea gave a slight smile. "She has had many men. None to her liking. It is probable that your old love currently lives transfigured as a dog chained in her basement."

"Now, that's fun to picture," Meg said with a chuckle. "Though, thinking back on Gauntlet Boy, he'd probably prefer to be an eel or something weird."

"WHAT?"

Twilight nearly stumbled to the ground as she cried out. She felt absolutely chilled, inside and out. The realization had hit Rarity and Fluttershy at the same time, and they looked to Twilight with concern.

"Twilight?" Meg asked. "You…okay?"

"His name," Twilight said quickly. "What was his name?"

"The guy who dumped me?" Meg asked to clarify. "His name was – "

Twilight spoke it at the same time she did: "Mozenrath."

"Wait, you know this guy?" Meg asked, now stunned herself.

"I know him," Twilight said, shuddering. The words were difficult to get out, but once she began to speak, they kept on pouring. "We met when I first started this journey. We started out as enemies, but we kept getting closer. We kept on meeting in weird ways, and we talked all about everything, about magic, about the gauntlet and what it was doing to him, about my friends, about his past…and everypony knew it was a bad idea for me to even talk to him, and even I knew it was a bad idea, but so far, it hadn't actually turned out bad. I haven't seen him in a year, but I haven't been able to forget him that whole time. I keep thinking about him and if I'll ever see him again. But he's horrible."

"Your friend who worked with Dark magic," Medea inferred.

"Hey…" Meg said hastily, noticing that Twilight was growing ever more disturbed. "What happened to me doesn't have to mean anything about what happened to you." She couldn't see how any dealing with Mozenrath could, in fact, be good, given how he'd mercilessly used her as a pawn, but she would lie for Twilight's sake. "I mean, it's not like you did what I did."

"I did EXACTLY what you did," Twilight wailed. "I made a deal with a creature that just meant to kill me off and harvest my entropy. That's what gave me a lot of my new powers. That's what made this amulet go – "

"Black?" Meg and Medea said as one.

"IT'S BLACK?" Twilight screamed. "That means I'm almost done turning into a horrible creature! I'll lose my mind! I'll try to hurt everypony! And I did it all in exchange for a wish! I WISHED THAT MOZENRATH WOULDN'T DIE!"

Meg was struck speechless.

"I'm an idiot," Twilight went on.

"No, you're not," Fluttershy asserted.

"YES I AM," Twilight insisted, eyes wide, limbs trembling. "He probably had it planned out from the start! He KNEW I'd wish for that!"

"Now, Twilight, let's be reasonable!" Rarity cried, beginning to panic. "He was nowhere near, and we know Kyubey was sent by Discord! There was no possible way Mozenrath could have known that far in advance what would happen! It's all just a coincidence!"

"OR IS IT?" Twilight hissed. "He's got a twisted mind. He used Meg! He could figure out how to get me to do what he wanted! And I've just been stupider and stupider, getting close to him and listening to him…and I even called him my FRIEND!"

"But you are friends," Fluttershy stated.

"No," Twilight insisted. "I'm just another cheap way for him to escape dying. He'll be done with me, and he'll be laughing all the way. And to think I even…I even…!"

Meg realized it, but bit her lip.

Medea was less tactful. "You loved him."

"I LET ONE EPISODE OF STABLEHOLM SYNDROME TAKE OVER MY HEART, AND I HAD ACTUAL FEELINGS FOR HIM!" Twilight screamed. Then she took a few deep breaths, attempting to calm herself. "All this time. I was an idiot. You call me the team strategist for so long, and you say I'm so smart, but I fall for something as simple as that."

Rarity noticed Twilight's amulet pulsing. "Twilight, no! THE AMULET!"

"Who even cares?" Twilight responded. "If I go, there'll be another Element of Magic. One who won't get tricked so easily."

"It's affecting the way you think!" Fluttershy gasped.

It was then that Twilight's very presence in existence began to waver. The outline of a Kentauride was suddenly filled with flickers like static, blocking out her true appearance. Soon she was just a Kentauride-shaped ball of static.

"TWILIIIIIIIGHT!" Rarity shrieked.

What was left of Twilight's body turned its head toward Rarity. "I'm just an idiot," Twilight's voice said.

Everyone in Colchis heard the entropy explosion when it happened.

The rest of the group had been on the way to the beach to meet up with Meg, Fluttershy, Rarity, Meg, and Medea. The sound of the boom brought them more quickly. Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie gave a simultaneous gasp when they saw the large, iridescent symbol of the six-pointed star hanging in midair.

"She…she didn't…" Applejack muttered.

"What happened?" Hercules asked.

Meg leapt to her feet. "Twilight was right there, and then she blew up!"

"She became that symbol?" Zoë asked.

"What symbol?" Meg and Hercules asked at once.

"The symbol that matches the star from her flank," Zoë answered. "It is right there in the air!"

"It is a portal," Medea stated in awe.

"She could still be alive!" Hercules cried. "WE HAVE TO GO AFTER HER!"

When he ran at the portal, both Meg and Zoë chased after him. They nearly touched the shimmering symbol before Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, and Applejack all grasped at their arms, pulling them back.

"You can't go in there!" Rainbow Dash insisted. "If you get too close, you'll get a Witch's Kiss, and things will get even more messed up! It's me, Rarity, Fluttershy, Applejack, and Pinkie that have to go in and get her out!"

"It was my fault," Meg lamented. "If I hadn't told her that story…"

"It would have happened sooner or later," Rarity told Meg. "It's the curse of our powers. We each made a wish that was supposed to backfire on us and send us into despair. If you hadn't triggered it, something else would have. Fluttershy, Applejack, and I are still in danger of the very same thing. Rainbow Dash already went through it, and Pinkie Pie…just defies the rules of pretty much everything anyway."

"Only our Elements can save her," Applejack said. "But we CAN save her."

"But what is she like?" Fluttershy asked. "She was already powerful and magical. What if she's a meaner witch than Rainbow Dash?"

"WE. CAN. SAVE. HER," Applejack repeated.

"I would like to go with you," Medea stated.

"Why do YOU want to come?" Rainbow Dash asked in suspicion.

"If you do have doubts about your ability to stand against what your friend has become," Medea said, "you should have assistance. I find it hard to believe there is dark magic in this universe that can still harm me."

"Well…you can see the portal," Applejack resolved.

"You should come with us!" Pinkie concluded. "It'll be like a field trip!"

"Yeah," Applejack sighed. "Just like…a field trip. But we have to go NOW." She turned and walked into the portal, entering the labyrinth.

"Applejack is quite right," Rarity said, following.

"Everypony else just stay out here!" Pinkie Pie ordered. "We'll be back in a jiffy!" She bounded through the portal.

"Come on, Medea," Fluttershy said gently, and she led the witch through the portal.

"Twilight," Rainbow Dash muttered, "you better not be any worse than I was." With gritted teeth, she charged into the portal.

The labyrinth was styled as a library. Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie, Fluttershy, Medea, and Rainbow Dash found themselves in between two bookshelves that were incredibly tall, stretching up into infinity. There was no ceiling or sky, only blackness. The carpet was a rather tranquil shade of blue. That was the only thing remotely comforting about the place. Whispers were heard between all the books. It took a moment for Twilight's friends to figure out that every single whisper was some perversion of Twilight's voice – made deeper, made higher, made faster or slower. "Clock is ticking," the whispers said. "If I can't find a friendship problem…I'll make one!" "I'm sorry I wasted your time."

"Is she close?" Rarity asked softly.

"I think those are just…echoes," Fluttershy offered.

"How do we find Twilight?" Medea asked.

"We start walkin'," Applejack said.

So they did. The bookshelves led them through twists and turns. Unlike Rainbow Dash's labyrinth, the surroundings seemed consistent, not throwing any surprises at its entrants.

Pinkie Pie glanced over at the books to see what was on Twilight's new shelves. "Huh," she remarked, taking one off the shelf. "That's a funny title." Thick black letters printed on a maroon cover declared the book to be called "FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC."

Pinkie Pie opened the book, leafing through the pages. It wasn't much of a book at all, she realized. It only seemed to say one thing over and over:

"FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC. FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC."

With a shudder, Pinkie put the book back. She looked down the row of books on the shelf. The spines varied in thickness and in color, but all of them were also entitled "FRIENDSHIP IS NOT MAGIC."

Eventually there was a clearing; the shelves opened out to a circular area. The blue carpet gave way to a glass floor, beneath which a great clock, all gears exposed, was ticking away. Every tick echoed loudly off the shelves. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.

Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy paused. Medea stopped only because they did. After nothing happened for a while, Applejack admitted, "I kinda thought this'd be the place. Kinda like how it opened up into a big area when we found Rainbow Dash."

"You mean when we found Regen…Reg…" Fluttershy struggled to come up with the name.

"Eh, Twilight's probably got some fancy witch name the Old Ones are gonna be talking about," Rainbow Dash remarked. "Let's keep going. This place isn't big enough to hold her anyway."

The group set out again, entering another path marked off by shelves. Then something faded into view, showing out of the darkness: a dark blue wall. A set of wooden double doors adorned it. The doors were brightly polished wood with a great golden snake embossed on each door.

"This is probably the place," Applejack said. "Everypony ready?"

"READY!" Pinkie Pie squealed as four Mahou Shoujo and one weather witch were transformed into being.

Medea stepped forth to pry open the doors.

The room beyond was brightly lit, and in fact looked like a giant version of the entry room of the Ponyville library. The shelves were lighter in tone. Great windows let shafts of light shine through. The ceiling was actually visible. Were the room not so giant, it might have been pleasant. There was also the matter of the books. The shelves were empty. All the books – in fact more than could have fit on the shelves – were piled on the floor. They sloped upward from where the six stood, creating a massive mountain, a layer of books that made a new floor.

"I don't like this," Applejack remarked.

"I wanna climb it!" Pinkie declared, hopping up the slope onto the book mountain.

The books shuddered. Something massive moved beneath them.

"PINKIE PIE, GET BACK!" Rarity rushed after Pinkie, pulling her away, back toward the double doors.

The creature burst from beneath the books. A giant dragon, snakelike, a sick shade of green, emerged and roared. Its neck was thicker than Ladon's and its head had more spikes protruding from it than the dragon of Colchis.

Büchenwyrm eyed her visitors with hatred, giving them another roar to show them just how much distaste she held for them and how soon she wanted to destroy them all.

"GO!" Applejack ordered, and the sphere of light surrounded the five remaining bearers of the Elements of Harmony. At the same time, fifty books rose from the great ocean of pages and covers, flying into the sphere, pelting the Kentaurides, breaking the spell. Büchenwyrm dove beneath the surface of the books, her snakelike body breaching the surface before the tail at long last flicked under.

"Find her," Medea said all to calmly before running atop the books. The others followed.

Büchenwyrm surfaced again, whipping her head about and using it to knock Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash toward opposite walls. Medea, she didn't seem to care about just yet. She dove down again. While her head was out of sight, Rarity loaded up an arrow, firing it at the slither of Büchenwyrm's body. Pinkie Pie got the same idea, firing her pistols.

Büchenwyrm was unaffected. When she was gone, the others attempted to run to each other and converge in the center, but then Büchenwyrm's head resurfaced, and clusters of books levitated alongside it. Six clusters broke off, building walls of books around Medea, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity, encasing each in a cylinder of books. Rainbow Dash found her sword couldn't cut the books, nor could Fluttershy's katana.

Medea's book prison was engulfed in black fire, burning the walls that tried to hold her. She quickly set fire to the other five cylinders of books as well, freeing the Kentaurides. The black fire traveled down into the mass of books that Büchenwyrm used to hide, beginning to spread.

Rainbow Dash called upon the wind to cycle round and round, hoping it would put out the fire, but instead, the fire was picked up on the wind, and a black flame maelstrom surrounded the room, cutting off the view of the glass windows and empty shelves.

Enraged, Büchenwyrm burst from the books, spreading a pair of almost transparent wings. As she climbed up into the air, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Medea grabbed ahold of her scales, pulled up with her. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flew alongside.

Büchenwyrm breathed pure ice at the walls, putting out the fire. Now the shelves were covered in snow and ice, glistening and glittering. Medea took this time to climb closer to Büchenwyrm's head, forming a collar of blue plasma around her as well as a blue chain that led back to her hands. Büchenwyrm roared and twisted, but when Medea yanked the chain, it was clear that she was in control. Büchenwyrm was kept still.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, having free hands, each prepared her final attack: a rainbow shockwave permeated with lightning rushed at Büchenwyrm from one side while flower shuriken darted from another.

Upon the impact of the forces of energy, Büchenwyrm roared. Her wings ceased; she turned and fell towards the burned remains of the books scattered on the ground.

Medea formed a blue sphere around herself, Applejack, Pinkie, and Rarity, holding the four of them in midair. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy quickly rushed to the sides of the sphere.

"Do it," Medea said, letting herself fall from the sphere.

The unfinished rainbow of the Elements of Harmony shot from the sphere, striking Büchenwyrm just as she hit the pile of book debris. She sank down again, but not before a glowing light emanated from her and joined the rainbow. The rainbow glowed ever brighter.

Medea turned a flip in midair before landing on the book debris on her feet, crouching to absorb the shock.

The entire scene was engulfed in blinding white light. When it faded, Pinkie, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash stood on the Colchis beach in their plain clothes. Medea got to her feet nearby, dusting herself off. Twilight lay in the sand before them.

"TWILIGHT!" Her five friends rushed to her, crouching near her.

Twilight's eye blinked open.

"Are you all right?" Rarity asked concernedly.

"SPEAK TO ME!" Pinkie Pie yelled, grabbing Twilight by the shoulders and shaking her.

"GAAAAH!" Twilight cried in response to Pinkie's action. When Pinkie let her go, she smiled. "Thanks, everypony. I'm fine."

"I'm so sorry – " Fluttershy began.

"No," Twilight corrected. "I'm sorry for…well…for all that." She got to her hooves, and the others did the same.

"You don't still…believe you're an idiot, do you?" Rarity asked.

Twilight shook her head. "No. I mean, I still think maybe I could have done better, but I think a lot of what I was saying actually was being fueled by the amulet. I don't think I'm stupid. Not really." Then she scowled. "I'm just really, really angry at Mozenrath."

Chapter 57:

· Hera is 75% based on the GoW version. Pretty sure I can have her swear if I want.

· Basically, the rundown is that after Persephone died, Hera and Hades both hated Zeus, so they planned the next Titan invasion together and each got a reason to kill Hercules. And that continues into today. But as you can see, Hades plans to backstab Hera. Now, the question is…does she have her own agenda against him as well?

· I was originally going to put in more locations from the Argo adventure, but backtracking to Thrace would have been pointless…

· Triton is another one-ep HTAS character, a son of Poseidon who was kind of a geeky awkward kid. I wanted to catch up with him a few years down the road as well.

· I constantly love to make Medea sympathetic. Ever since I heard her myth, I felt bad for her. I don't consider her a villain. I consider her someone abused to the point of snapping. I REALLY wanted to make her prominent here.

· I searched for an already existing version of Medea to draw from. While I suppose given the fandoms I'm using, it might have made more sense to look into Caster from Fate/Stay Night (a friend of mine used to watch it all the time), the first place I saw Medea as a visual was in that corny Hallmark film adaptation of Jason and the Argonauts, so that's ultimately the one I saw in my mind, and I brought her stoicism into it as well as her particular invincibility ointment. And, as always, anything from "Heroes of Olympus" is OUT of the question.

· I adjusted the myth a little bit. I made Pelias the father of Creusa just to tidy things up.

· Also, you can see I kind of retconned the HTAS ep "Argonauts" out of existence, though I still kept the idea that Jason searched for a long time, and that's also where I got my design for Gegeines.

· It's well known mythological canon that Circe is the sister of Aeëtes. It's only speculation that Hecate is Medea's mother, but I thought…why not?

· Finally, Medea's time travel is going to be a reference to a time paradox in Greek myth itself. Medea is Theseus' stepmother, but he kills her in his youth. Then he joins the crew of the Argo, which sails to Colchis, where Jason…meets…Medea? Most likely the myth writers were just kind of using her as a stock villain and didn't care about chronology, but I decided it's time travel time. It also gives me an excuse to power up Medea through the idea that she's had several years to learn before she came back.

· Khalkotauri, Spartoi, and a giant dragon are all ripped directly from the Argo myth.

· Yes, the teal eagle is Panic. Couldn't resist!

· I explain the Prison of the Damned (the opening stage in GoW Ascension) a bunch of times because it's super important.

· I do believe Alecto is stronger than both Tisiphone and Megaera combined, seeing as when she first shows up in GoW, it's after Kratos has beaten Tisiphone and Megaera at the same time…and she just knocks him down in one shot.

· I hope I'm right in assuming that no one will miss Aeëtes. He was a jerk in the original myths anyway.

· The golden bridle is something that appears in myths, but more importantly in the HTAS ep about Bellerophon. The animal that wears it has to obey its owner completely.

· I just made up the stuff about the control of the Colchis dragon in order to add a layer to the battle, give Alecto and Medea each a chance to employ the dragon in combat, and set up how things work in Colchis.

· The hair attack Medea uses is ripped from "Bayonetta" while the fire should be recognized as Dark Firaga from KH.

· Sepulcaphs and the Deplorable Word are…shall we say…HIGH-level dark spells from Abarat and The Chronicles of Narnia respectively. Maybe we'll see those later.

· Yeah, I tried for a fakeout with Meg and Adonis. I've often played with the concept of Meg and Mozenrath having had a relationship, and Mozenrath being the one who betrayed Meg so that she would sell her soul and extend his life. The "babe" he dumped her for was Circe, leading directly to the flashback Hecate watched of Moz revealing to Circe that SHE was just a chance for him to conquer Aeaea. Of course, given Twilight's wish…it was the perfect catalyst.

· Suggested companion song: "Stupid" by Sarah McLachlan. I was listening to it while thinking about their relationship.

· And the labyrinth was inspired by the song "Hyperactivity" by Flutter Rex. Good ol' Flutter Rex…you can always count on FR for really dark and creepy pony-inspired music. I also listened to "Time is Running Out" by Omnipony a lot.

· The clock in the floor was admittedly kind of hijacked from American McGee's Alice (which is REALLY sad because I plan to incorporate AMA into this story). I thought it well reflected Twilight's obsession with "clock…is…ticking!"

· As for the doors, you'll notice the snakes on them as reminiscent of the snakes on the doors to Mozenrath's citadel.

· "Büchenwyrm" is a little pun. "Büchenwurm" is German for "bookworm" (and I SO lucked out that it still contained "wurm" in it). Whereas a "wyrm" is a general term for a dragon. She's a book-wyrm!