Large buildings have the uncanny habit of appearing larger still when they are empty, as if the accumulating silence could add up to extra space somehow. Then again, walking alone in such a building after the closing can inspire a feeling of the walls closing in ever-so subtly, and thus break the symmetry of abandon by the lightest tread of leatherbound boots on stone. His fellow guards often remarked about similar sensations after their shifts, as a rule hiding their true thoughts in jokes, but

Valeria. She had looked up the name once in a dictionary when they’d been staying overnight in the city library, looking for unlicensed shelter among the steep shelves of old teak. It was a name with roots in health, strength and bravery. Valeria wasn’t a girl in whose world words, especially printed ones, had a whole lot of meaning, but this one had struck a chord within her chest, if only because she now virtually knew more about the origin of her name than she did about her actual

Lonesome hoofsteps clacked on the grass-consumed cobblestones as a twin-tailed earth pony trotted along, passing an abandoned building after another in pace slow enough that his mind could linger on each and imagine who had once lived therein. The site must’ve been part of the castle complex, a home to a few hundred servants and labor ponies perhaps. The road itself seemed older than any ruin around however, the flagstones worn smooth as silk over the centuries, though his must’ve be

Everypony has routines, and in case of nopony is that more true as with supervillains, their habits of excess cultivated across all aspects of life. By now Sombra’s day-to-day schedule was so determined that a deductive mind could read it by the imprints left on the carpets of his castle. They always started and ended in the bedroom chambers, parked in the dining hall after a brief visit to the torture chambers (mostly out of routine as he hadn’t had any prisoners rotting there in ye

Agret and the Tourist Season





The Sparkling Sea hadn’t earned its name for nothing. The calm waterbed was like liquid mountain crystal in its cerulean of a thousand shades, scattered across the limpid vastness by the painter nature’s whim. Islets of pearl-white sands littered the seascape, their roots of coral transcending the color spectrum in cascading structures of submerged, fantastical rainbows of ge

Three Friends’ Cake
For Neutrality
This is how it goes…
Start with a saffron stem, the rightful medow’s diadem
let powdered grain, cinnamon reign
a couple peppermint clots, nutmeg just a shot, and don’t forget
to add sugar a –
“Lots of spooks!”
Zecora’s spine curved like a cat had just ran its claws over a chalkboard next to her ear, the table set with two dozen carefully arranged bottles rattling ominously as the sound wave shook the whole cabin

Cruel Cruising
For Rathalos
By Stanku
Canterlot University had its spring break about to end, which meant the campus was once again populated by freshpony students coming from all over Equestria and even beyond. As a rule they moved in groups or pairs, with the exception of some individuals whose narrative paths yet remained untied to any life-lasting link that would be forged in these walkways and lecture chambers over the coming years. That’s what CU’s motto non scholae, sed vitae