The room was oddly empty.

The lack of Napoleon's obnoxious fawning, Specter's blustering incompetence and even Ebony's weird presence was.....strange.

Nereza kept her eyes fixed on the slightly darker spot on the table, dragging a sharp nail up and down. She grew impatient. More and more impatient as time dragged itself through the muck.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. She could practically feel the minutes go by, each one agonizingly longer than the last. Had all of them forgotten about the meeting? Had Elvira been killed in the disputed territory between them and the Nightshades? Had she been blown up by a Netherbaneian land mine? Nereza would never know.

At the last possible minute, her mother decided to burst in, flaunting all her medals and dressed in full military attire, throwing knives at the wall as she did so. Obnoxious much?

"Mom? Where are Specter and Napoleon?" Nereza asked.

Elvira slid into a chair, flinging a knife an inch above Nereza's head lazily."Hanging out in the square. You have a perfect view of them from the balcony. Say hello to their corpses for me!"

"You did not-" Nereza started, not believing her mother would actually kill her half brothers. Yes, she joked about it all the time, but she couldn't be serious. Could she?

Elvira burst into a fit of laughter, clutching her sides. "Just kidding! You are so fun to manipulate!"

Nereza burned a bright red. Now her mother was playing some cruel joke on her? She grumbled and proceeded to storm out of the room, her chair crashing to the floor.

Shk! Shk! Shk!

One knife caught her cape. The other two snagged each of her sleeves. All three of which pinned her to the wall by lethal blades.

"Don't give me attitude," Elvira spat, licking the tip of a knife. "That's my job." She leaned against the wall, playing with a knife by throwing it in front of Nereza's face, and catching it just before it hit her.

"Now I know what you're thinking. What happened to Mr. Suck-Up and Mr. Incompotent. I didn't kill them. Yet. Truth is, you're the only one I can look at without being absolutely mortified. So, they're not here. Can you believe how embarrassing they are?" Elvira scoffed, as if she was a gossiping school girl rather than a ruthless world leader.

"No!" Nereza exclaimed. "Specter gets his ass kicked not once, not twice, but three times!"

"At this rate, I'll have to make Ebony the heir to the throne! And she's not even part of our family," Elvira groaned and sat back down.

"Actually, Empress...there's a problem with that," Nereza admitted. "Ebony failed with the assassination attempt on Sombra."

"Very funny, Nereza," Elvira half-snorted sarcastically. "Work on your jokes, they suck."

"No! Mom I'm serious! Ebony failed the attempt!" Nereza slammed her fist down on the table. "So, Sombra's corpse won't be arriving in the gift box with the little ribbon!"

"WHAT?!" Elvira jumped up. "But it was free shipping!"

Before her mother got too mad, Nereza continued speaking. If she made Ebony look bad, then she'd be the most likely heir! "Yeah, Ebony couldn't even kill him. She had to escape through a window. A freaking window, goddammit. Sombra's still alive."

"I did not go through 27 months of pregnancy and 100,000 jewels for this," Elvira said, rolling her eyes. "Paying the Song family for an alliance was supposed to be positive, not detrimental. And why do you guys always fail your missions!" Elvira demanded, plunging her knife into the table.

"If we're so incompotent, why don't you do the missions?" Nereza challenged, her arms sore from being pinned to the wall in a spread eagle position.

"The Equestrian war is child's play. Literally. I'm doing the real fighting against the Netherbane-Nightshade alliance, dumbass," Elvira explained. "I rely on you guys to handle the measly stuff. Divide and conquer."

"So, are we actually gonna plan or are we just gonna sit around and diss each other?" Nereza asked.

Elvira ignored Nereza's comment, and snapped her fingers. Two guards came in, holding a transparent, jagged crystal in between them. It was about the size of a decapitated head. They set it down, and exited very quickly.

"Do you know what this is?" Elvira asked her.

Obviously she didn't. She wasn't a jeweler, goddammit.

"That means you haven't been paying attention in your lessons! I knew I'd catch you," Elvira sneered.

Of course she wasn't. They were boring and stupid. Duh.

"Well, it's from Glaciera, the Song family's capital. It's a crystal of reflections. It shows the truth," Elvira explained. "My point is, you're going to place your hands on the crystal and wind time forward to see what will become of the Equestrians."

Nereza did as she was told, placing her hands on the crystal. It was raw with ice. She winced at the cold.

"Don't be a wimp. Worse case scenario you lose your hands. By doing this, we can foresee a little into the future, and plan how you and the others are gonna get your act together," Elvira continued.

Forward. Forward. Forward. Nereza gritted her teeth. Winding time forward was extremely difficult, and left her drained.

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. It felt like a clock's hands turning and turning, spinning faster and faster....,

"Go further! Go further!"

When Nereza opened her eyes, the room was a blazing blue that sent a headache pulsing through her skull like the way minutes went by. Elvira was up on the table, yelling inaudible things at her.

Nereza Lilith Alarica Dusk. GO FORWARD! FORWARD! FORWARD!!!

And then Elvira's piercing voice came back, along with the blinding glow, and an unpleasant bout of bile that forced itself out of her (And narrowly missed the crystal and a maniacal Elvira by a few inches).

Nereza slumped into her chair, groaning and wiping her mouth.

A hand slapped her. "Wake up! The images are coming!"

They flashed quickly. An explosion of black crystals. A boy with glossy black hair and red eyes that spewed purple and green smoke. A girl with blue-green hair shrieking as a snarling wolf leapt onto her.

The room fell silent. Neither woman talked, just stared into each other's eyes and away again, before repeating.

"Well, shit," Elvira muttered.

"What does this mean?" Nereza asked. "I mean, those two people were the way Ebony described Sombra and Chrissy but....."

"Why is Sombra looking like a wannabe genderbent version of me with different powers? And why is Chrissy looking like the time we taught baby Specter to swim?" Elvira spat sarcastically.

"Sombra's hand is crippled. There's no way he could have those powers. Chrissy...isn't a magician," Nereza mused. "They'd have to get some sort of power upgrade or something...."

"The Dark Side of the Moon," Nereza and Elvira said at the exact same time. " The swallow's beak points towards the moon. Keep following it Northeast, until you reach the Wings, jagged cliffs which are the feathers of its wings. So far North, you will be able to see the dark side of the moon. And underneath is the Wish Granter's hut. May all of your wishes come true."

"But...how would Sombra even manage to make the wish?" Nereza asked. The Wish Granter didn't give wishes often. And certainly not to crippled magicians with anger issues and crappy haircuts.

"A sacrifice. Some sort of sacrifice," Elvira replied. "But the sacrifice is specific to the person, and.....the Wish Granter may not appear for you. Only if you really want it."

"So he's a desperate, whiny teenager who turns himself into a monster. We all had that dream." Nereza rolled her eyes, tossing her hair over her shoulder.

"Ok. So he's definitely going to go and make himself powerful with some sacrifice. He's already very powerful. We saw that from the time Specter got his ass handed to him with a side of vodka."

Mother and daughter shared a laugh at that, before Elvira threw a knife at the wall, which clearly meant "focus".

"If he gets upgraded to an inferior, younger version of me, he'll be a threat to you guys."

Nereza made a face at that. "So, if we can't win this with power, we can win it with strategy. Does that mean we send Specter in to twist his mind or something?"

"Wow, so now you decide to catch up," Elvira quipped. "Yes. Maybe we could use Sombra as our own weapon. He is very close to the night princess after all."

"And maybe we'll get more bloopers of Specter failing epically," Nereza piped up.

"If he does it again, you know what that means."

Elvira shared a very peculiar look with her daughter.

"Disownment." 

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