//------------------------------// // Chapter IX // Story: The Spirits of Harmony // by TinCan //------------------------------// “Faster, faster! He’s out there watching us, I just know it!” Pinkie shouted to the pair of earth ponies pulling the ambulance. In spite of how she zig-zagged back and forth from one spot of cover to another, she still had to slow down to keep from outpacing the white, cross-blazoned wagon as the three of them hurried through the moonlit streets back to Golden Oaks Library. The emergency responders, Ponyville General’s own Nurse Tenderheart and Traction Splint, an intern from Baltimare, ran as fast as they could to keep up with Pinkie. The powder-blue nurse pony was worried. She’d seen enough of Pinkie’s antics in the past to get used to her bottomless energy and strange moods, but it felt different tonight. There was something guilty and frightened and hopeless that seemed to hang like a shroud over the mare who was normally Ponyville’s four-legged ray of sunshine. The nurse knew the signs, and that pony was definitely in some kind of altered state. “So haveya... told the cops ’bout... this guy pretending... to be an alchemist... or whatever?” Splint asked between gasping breaths as he pulled the ambulance along at a gallop. The stallion, while quite skilled at medicine, wasn’t at his physical peak. “I would, but there’s no time! Twilight isn’t safe, and besides, I don’t have any proof yet.” Pinkie sprinted ahead to an intersection to check around the corners, expecting an ambush from the shadows at any second. “But he’s a really, truly, one-hundred-ten-percent evil alchemist! I know it!” Tenderheart shushed Splint when he began to reply. “That mare is on the verge of a breakdown. Don’t egg her on!” she hissed to the trainee. “Now Pinkie,” she said to the pink pony in as comforting a voice as she could muster while running, “You said your friend got poisoned in some sort of laboratory accident? Are you certain you weren’t exposed to any of it yourself?” “W-what? No!” Pinkie exclaimed. “It wasn’t an accident, it was an attack!” The color drained from her face as she considered the second part of the question. “But, well... I’m not really sure. I mean, when he got everypony at Sugarcube Corner, he must’ve used a gas so I must’ve breathed in some too.” She flattened herself against a wall before peeking down an alley. “That’s when he lied to me about who he was and I totally believed it! I bet the gas made us all suggestive and stuff.” “Suggestible,” Splint corrected her. Tenderheart shushed him again. “Pinkie Pie,” she said, speaking as she would to a foal, “There are some dangerous chemicals out there that can make you see things that aren’t there, or make you think that somepony’s out to get you when—” “Yes, that’s it!” Pinkie interrupted, nodding rapidly. “That's what he did to Cosmic and that other guy, it must be! So you believe me, right? Twilight didn’t and... and she...” The mare shuddered. “Don’t you worry, Pinkie,” Tenderheart reassured the frantic pony, “We’re going to take care of Twilight, and then we’re going to give you something that’ll make you feel better, and after that you can tell us all about this big, mean alchemist, okay?” Her co-worker blinked. “She will? But I thought we were going to tranq—” Without missing a step, Tenderheart swung her head over and sideways-headbutted the clueless intern. “Ooh, you’re drifting a tad there, Splint!” the nurse said with false cheer, giving him a warning glare. “Just keep your eyes on the road and let me do the talking, okay?” The olive-green stallion shook his smarting head. “Betcha... five bits... she just hallucinated it all... and her friend’s fine,” he sullenly mumbled between pants. The trio rounded the last corner and came in sight of the library. “Whoa!” the other pony of the team hollered. Tenderheart and Splint dug in their back hooves and skidded to a stop in the loose grit of the town’s streets. Despite the late hour, the windows of Golden Oaks Library were all lit up, and the glow from within reflected off the helmets and spears of over a dozen royal guardsponies standing in a cordon around the building. “Five bits? You’re on,” Tenderheart deadpanned. Splint sighed and began undoing his harness while Pinkie let out a squeal of relief and rushed toward the soldiers, shouting unintelligibly about Twilight and alchemists. Meanwhile, in the basement below the library, there was even more shouting going on. For once in her life, Twilight didn’t mind a noisy library at all. In fact, she wished more than anything else she could join in. “There’s no mystery about it, sister; this has their hoofprints all over it!” Princess Luna bellowed, punctuating her statement with a stamp that left her own print in the wooden floor. Her sibling and co-regent simply would not see see what was right in front of her snout, and it exasperated her. Princess Celestia did not immediately respond, instead focusing her concentration on yet another amalgamation of powerful spells she sent washing over Twilight Sparkle’s motionless body as rays of golden energy. Spells that softened petrifaction, thawed frozen time, alleviated numbness, broke trances, and a dozen other things, even one that purged venom, all coursed though the little lavender unicorn, found nothing for their virtues to heal, then dissipated back into the ether. A pang of dread grew steadily beneath the sun princess’s serene countenance. Twilight watched the spells fizzle from her imperceptible vantage point, her own heart sinking in tandem with her mentor’s. When both princesses and a retinue of royal guards had teleported directly to the library in response to Spike’s cryptic message, Twilight had been sure the matter would be settled in moments. Celestia had to have encountered this sort of thing before in her centuries of rule! There was no way Luna, who could see into ponies’ own dreams, could fail to notice her floating here! But... they hadn’t. Twilight had flitted around the room and did everything she could to get their attention. She tried thinking at them as loud as possible, going back into her abandoned body, which was disgusting, and she even made one attempt at passing through the princesses which was disgusting and also deeply disrespectful. They hadn’t noticed any of it. She had found where Verity had hidden herself in a cabinet and demanded, pleaded, even tried to annoy her into speaking for Twilight, or doing anything to reveal herself. Verity ignored her so utterly Twilight wondered if she’d become imperceptible to the spirit-filly along with everypony else. While she’d wasted her efforts, Spike had told the princesses what he’d seen as well as he could understand it. Celestia was baffled, while Luna seized the opportunity to resume what was apparently a long-standing argument between the royal sisters about the existence of alchemists in the present day. “Do you not see?” Luna tried again, “The unaccountable inflation of the gold supply, that mysterious outbreak in Bridle Vale, and now this! It’s all of a piece. This is what I have been saying all along; the Order of Alchemists has not been eradicated! They have only skulked in the shadows, biding their time, waxing stronger, and waiting for the chance to strike! If you had done as I—” After having borne her sister’s spiel in silence for as long as she could stand, Celestia rounded on her, all of a sudden looking so furious that even Luna was shocked, and the rest of her rant died on her lips. “Alchemists? Alchemists!?” she shouted back. “My most faithful student, my greatest hope for the future has been grievously hurt or worse, the sixth element is lost again and you’re still talking about a bunch of muttering, peeping old fools who were dust a millennium ago! You sent the element to her. If you thought there were alchemists hiding behind every tree... why? Were you using her? Are our subjects just bait to you? An acceptable sacrifice if you can prove your pet theory?” “Sister! How dare you?” Luna cried, incensed, “Not only did I warn her of the danger, I would have done far more had I not trusted your word that the order was as extinct as the smilodon.” She scowled toward Twilight’s body, “I freely admit that was a mistake.” Celestia whinnied in frustration. “Don’t you place the blame on your imaginary conspiracy! To let her keep the Element of Magic herself was just asking for trouble. She may have tried to damage the element to study it and it blasted her in self-defense. She could have even tried to summon a spirit for all we know!” Twilight felt a sense of chagrin, and would have flushed if she still had a circulatory system. The younger princess shook her head with her usual brusqueness. “You told me that the art of drawing spirits from the vasty deep had been forbidden, forgotten and then entirely lost to history,” Luna argued. “Besides, even if she had, the spirits are harmless so long as they aren’t physically embodied. Are you saying your student is such a prodigy as to single-hoofedly re-discover summoning, yet also such a fool as to make that elementary mistake? Twilight Sparkle of all ponies ought to know the danger posed by an enfleshed spirit!” What did that mean, Twilight wondered. “Something else, then! There are hundreds of horrible things that may have happened. You shouldn’t have done this. She wasn’t ready!” “I had to, sister. The elements are ours to keep no longer. She and her friends have been chosen as the new bearers. Though I take no joy in what befell Twilight Sparkle, we could not justly deny her request.” “Couldn’t we?” Celestia asked. She reached out a hoof toward Twilght’s frozen form, faltered, then withdrew, her anger at her sister’s rashness fading back into doubt and remorse. Her senses could detect no magic in the petrified pony. Not only was there no externally imposed enchantment of some malicious spell, but even the inner spark that all unicorn ponies ought to possess was absent. This should not happen to a living being. It should not be able to happen, and now that it had, even the Princess of the Sun wasn’t sure what it meant or what to do. She only knew that it was bad; very bad. “If you had known it would all turn out like this... ” Seeing her sister so worried made Luna immediately regret her outburst. “I did not... I am sorry. I only thought...” She lowered her head and spoke softly, but with iron conviction. “You remember the final time you wielded the Elements of Harmony. They were right there with you when the need arose. What if they had not been readily at hoof on that day? What would have befallen you, or our subjects, or, or... ” her voice faltered, then regained its strength. “I would not see that happen. I will not. I will not rest until the perpetrator of this foul deed has been captured, forced to undo her evil, and left to rot behind bars or moulder as stone. This I swear upon my crown!” Twilight thought it was a moving speech, but her mentor only shook her head. “This is not the time to go flying around, terrorizing our subjects until you can browbeat a pony into admitting being an alchemist, Luna!” Celestia admonished. She was unimpressed by the oath, which she’d heard variations of ever since her sister started on this conspiracy kick. Worse, she took these promises very seriously. “We need to get Twilight to the palace. She’ll be safer there, and I can get Equestria’s best magical minds to take a look at her. Have the guard go and escort the other bearers to Canterlot as well.” Luna smiled slyly. “The alc—ah, the thief’s goal was almost certainly to steal the Element of Magic, not to harm Twilight Sparkle. As you said, none of this would have happened to her except that the element was with her at the time. We need every stallion of the guard back at the palace to defend the vault lest the thief or any accomplices attempt to seize the others. Besides, surely Twilight Sparkle’s fellow bearers have retired for their night’s rest by now. I will send the guards back myself, and then use my singular talents to apprise the other bearers of the situation, rouse them from slumber, and bring them safely to Canterlot.” Celestia looked skeptical. “And you won’t be turning Ponyville upside-down hunting for alchemists the moment we’re away, will you?” “Sister, please!” Luna protested, affecting a wounded tone. “Surely we are above such crass deceptions. Twilight Sparkle is my subject and my friend. As I bear the brunt of the blame for her state, I must... ‘travel on one limb for the extra mile!’ I must redeem myself!” With a sigh, Celestia relented, wondering if Luna mangled modern aphorisms and figures of speech on purpose for their disarming effect. “I understand. Go, then, and bring the bearers to the palace as soon as possible.” She lifted Twilight’s paralyzed form off the ground with telekinetic power, but paused before teleporting the two of them away. “Please, please don’t drag another terrified pony back in chains as a ‘suspected alchemist’ again.” “There would be no point; you always ignore me and let them go,” Luna grumbled. “But never fear, even if my intuitions are somehow misplaced, I will pursue the truth fearlessly no matter where it leads.” Celestia decided this was the best she was going to get, and, with Twilight’s mortal portion in tow, vanished in a flash of radiance. “Now,” said Luna, smiling deviously, “to deal with our little eavesdropper!” Does she mean me, Twilight thought. Princess Luna! You know I’m here? It’s me, Twilight! She placed herself directly in front of the princess, but Luna passed right through her on the way to the back of the room. As Twilight collected herself after the gross perspective, the Princess of the Night strode up to the cabinet where Verity had been hiding and threw open the door. The tiny pony within, instead of being startled, gave Luna a bored glance and then turned her back to the princess. For her own part, Luna was the more surprised. She’d been expecting some thuggish alchemist with a poisoned side-spur, not a little girl. Why in Equestria would a filly be down here in a cabinet? Was she another victim of the alchemist? The spell Luna had prepared to incapacitate the interloper faded from her horn and she leaned down to peer at the blue pony. “Come out of there at once and tell me who you are and what you are doing here,” Luna demanded. Remembering she was speaking to a small child, she softened her voice as much as she could manage and added, “you need not fear me, little one. I am your ruler and protector.” The little pony appeared neither comforted nor frightened but indifferent, and continued to ignore her. “Have you been wounded? Did you see who assaulted Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked. Please, Verity, tell her everything, Twilight pleaded, hanging unseen over the princess’s shoulder. She’s good, she can help us! Verity scowled into the dark. More questions, more demands, and no doubt more abuse and defamation if she obeyed. She snorted derisively. The immortal Princess of the Night was not used to being treated in this manner, and found she didn’t much like it. Some ponies feared her, others bowed and scraped or slathered on the courtly cordiality, and a small but growing number liked her and counted her as a friend. Never before had a pony deemed her unworthy even of acknowledgment! She frowned severely at Verity’s back. “Now see here, youngling! Do not turn your back upon your princess! Answer her when she asks you a question! Offering the chilled shoulder is no way to treat an elder.” “It’s ‘giving the cold shoulder,’ ” Verity muttered, unable to resist correcting the error. “What?” The spirit-filly turned to face the princess. “The idiom. You got it wrong.” “Clearly you understood me, what does it matter if—” Luna caught sight of Verity’s mismatched back leg and gasped. “Your leg! What is—how did—oh, oh no!” In an instant, her surprise was replaced by hostility and her horn lit anew with a threatening azure aura. “Get out from there, spirit! It seems I owe my sister an apology after all. Tell me what you did to Twilight Sparkle at once or suffer the consequences!” Somewhat cowed by the power of the spell Luna had prepared, Verity clambered out of her hiding place. “I didn’t do anything to her,” she stated truthfully. Luna telekinetically lifted Verity up by her trotter, leaving her dangling upside-down before the princess’s scowling face. “Lying, mischievous imp! Tell me the truth or I’ll trap you in stone forever, just as I did your wicked cousin!” At being accused of dishonesty yet again, Verity’s patience ran out entirely. The look of blazing, abject hatred she shot at the princess actually caused Luna to take a step backward and brace for an attack. “Stupid, misguided pony!” Verity snarled, “you don’t deserve to know the truth!” As she spoke, the entire room seemed to shimmer and distort like the air above a dark road on a hot, humid day. Princess Luna gritted her teeth and began casting protective spells over herself, still holding Verity in a magical grip. “You’ll get an untruth instead,” the spirit continued. “That’s all you ponies want to hear, after all. Know this: You didn’t think I was here, you never saw me, and you definitely never bothered me with inane questions whose answers you refuse to accept.” The world now looked so twisted and smeared that Twilight could no longer identify what she was seeing. What was going on? Was Verity doing this or was Luna? Before she could wonder further, the room suddenly snapped back to clarity. Things were not as they had been before the distortion descended; the cabinet was shut, Verity was back inside it, and Luna was in the center of the room where she’d been standing when Celestia departed. In fact, the basement was still brightened for a split second by the residual glow of Celestia’s teleportation spell. It was as if the previous minute had never been. “Now,” said Luna, smiling deviously, “To deal with... with...” She paused and blinked, drawing a blank. What had she been about to do? Then she remembered. “...to send the guards and the bearers on their way and begin my investigation!” Luna briskly ascended the steps back to the library’s ground floor and Twilight followed her, gnawed at by a sense of existential dread. In the darkness of her hiding place, Verity whimpered as porcupine quills slowly protruded through the hair of her mane.