//------------------------------// // Start of Negotiations (Twilight) Part 3 // Story: dC/dt ≠ 0 // by I Thought I Was Toast //------------------------------// Minutes crawled by as I struggled to think of something to say. My thoughts swirled and surged and stuttered in at least ten different directions from what Prince Morpheus had said. What did he— How could he— Why would he— No! Focus! Deep breaths. It doesn’t matter if he was insane enough to hoof me his death warrant! This is bigger than that! He said it’s a contract. Contracts follow rules, so he won’t just instantly burst into flames. Exhaling mightily, I opened my eyes to arch a brow at the prince. “Ignoring… what you’re offering, I feel it prudent to point out that contracts can have loopholes.” The prince snorted. “I drafted it so your party is getting all the benefits. Ve expect you to at least give me a chance.” As he examined the paper with a scowl, he started drumming the holes in his hooves open and shut. “Celestia and Luna were ancient when this type of magic was first conceived. They’ve most likely seen all of its tricks and traps, and ve highly doubt my limited experience would let me pull a fast one on them.” He rolled his eyes as I squinted at him. “Why so bitter? Ve thought about it, but I am not that stupid.” I opened my mouth to inquire further, but a round of fireworks and scattered applause interrupted me as Discord popped back in with Celestia and Luna—the latter offsetting the former’s serene smile with her stormy scowl. “What, pray tell, is so important that you needed to interrupt my meeting with the griffins?” Luna stomped her hoof, causing several cracks to appear in the floor. “Oh, please,” Discord scoffed. “Those featherbrains? Equestria’s been at peace with them for centuries. All you would end up doing is drinking tea and eating scones while talking about the weather. I believe you’ll find my diplomatic meeting easily trumps yours.” “Tea and— I am not my sister!” Luna flared her wings. “We were just about ready to fly out to the Everfree to hunt some mandraboara when you interrupted!” “Yes, yes.” Discord waved his paw dismissively. “We all know how much you love to party with a bunch of big, sweaty griffins. Hunt the big game. Get the testosterone flowing. Prove you’re a real stallion. And drink them all under the table.” Literally steaming, Luna’s ears whistled like a tea kettle, spurting a fountain of tea into several cups conjured by Discord. “Discord.” Celestia was as patient as ever as she accepted the cup that was poking her. “Perhaps it would be better if you introduced us to your new friend instead of making fun of my sister.” She nodded to me and Morpheus, smiling. “Wouldn’t you agree, Twilight?” “I wouldn’t call us friends exactly….” Morpheus’ voice fractured slightly, and he gave a discordant chirp. “Whyever not?!” Discord gasped, slithering through the air to wrap around the prince. “Surely, I at least merit being pal? Buddy? Chum? Amigo?!” The last outburst was accompanied by him pulling chitin maracas from the changelings mane. “Princess Celestia. Princess Luna.” Morpheus shook off the draconequis and stepped forward into an extravagant bow. Falling to his knees, he held out his hoof and lowered his head so far his horn scraped the floor. “I am Prince Morpheus of House Sycadia, current ruler of the Hive of the First Father.” “You may rise.” Princess Celestia took his offered hoof in her own to pull him up only for him to kiss it. “Ah.” Her serene smile never wavered. “Trying to keep it by the book, are you? Poor Twilight must have burst into flames.” “Celestia!” I squeaked, blushing as my former mentor tittered. “The formalities should be observed.” Morpheus thrummed, kissing Luna’s hoof as she offered it before finally rising from his prostration. “If we could get straight to business, however.” He levitated the contract over to them. “My people are starving, and peace is the only option if we wish to avoid extinction. Ve know it’s most likely impossible for you to trust us, so we have prepared an… offering… in good faith. Something to show just how dedicated I am.” “Twilight.” As Celestia took the offered parchment, her smile flickered for the tiniest of moments, and I found myself on the end of her ‘Cold Fusion Number Two’ voice. “I am going to ask you politely whether or not you have signed anything, and you are going to calmly tell me the truth.” Deep breaths. “I didn’t—” “Good.” Celestia briefly looked back to the prince with a far harder gaze. Her smile was the same, but her eyes glinted like diamonds. “You’ll also need to give me a report on everything that has happened here so far, beacuse this—” She held up the contract. “—is very dark, very dangerous magic.” I meeped, taking a step back. “It is only dangerous if you let it be.” Morpheus’ expression was schooled. “Ve agree that knowledge of it should remain limited, but you’ll find a responsible user will not abuse it.” Celestia’s mouth drew into a line, but she didn’t respond to him. She simply looked at me—ears perked—as I tried to figure out where to start. “This is important, Twilight. I need you to leave nothing out. “It—” I bit my lip, glancing at the prince to see him watching me with glassy eyes. “It started when Discord woke me up this morning…” Celestia hadn’t immediately turned Prince Morpheus down after my report, but she had listened to me with a stoney mask that I rarely saw on the princess. Her not-quite scowl remained as she worked with Luna, combing through the contract for traps. “Found anything suspicious yet, Lulu?” Celestia had erected a small illusion of the spell matrix in front of her to get a better view of it. She scoured it relentlessly for some twisted loophole or an exploit. It spun, flipped, and zoomed beneath her hooves as she examined it from every angle. “No, and I’m starting to think we’re not going to.” Luna scrunched her muzzle with a huff -- her face adorned with pair of pointed glasses. “If anything, it seems he’s the one asking us to take advantage of him.” “I know.” Celestia shook her head. “It just doesn’t make sense. We have to be missing something. Morpheus, where did you say you put in the section on limitations to changeling magic?” “You’ll find it in circle seven, sub-circle eight, inscription seventeen.” The prince was lounging lazily on a pillow, and languidly waved a hoof at the illusion. “The syntax might be different than you’re used to. It took a good two months of travel down beneath the equator to dig up how to deal with creatures that contain more than one type of magic.” My ears perked up at this. “Changelings have more than one type of magic?” Morpheus nodded, a soft thrum coming from his throat. “How do you think we imitate ponies? Every changeling has a moderately sized pool of their own unique changeling magic and three much smaller pools to emulate each of the three tribes. Our pony magic tends to manifest in different ways than most ponies use theirs, though.” I opened my mouth with more questions, but Celestia cut me off. “Twilight, I know you’re curious, but now is not the time. Care to explain the difference in syntax, Morpheus?” “Well, it’s pretty simple.” The prince waved to the piece of the illusion that was highlighted. “The first sigil depicts that this inscription’s purpose is to bind a creature’s magic. The second sigil tells you how many types of magic the creature has total and how many types of magic are going to be sealed. Next comes details on what types of magic are to be sealed, and, finally, comes details on how to release the creatures binds.” He flashed his fangs in a grin. “Ve were quite detailed on that last part. I may be desperate enough to sign this, but I’m not leaving myself entirely defenseless. Most of those stipulations are for cases of self-defense, however…” Celestia tensed more and more, ears flicking as Prince Morpheus continued to detail the exceptions he’d be placed under. The sight of her doing so made me squirm, and I ruffled my wings, preening a few loose feathers as I tried not to think about what it’d be like to have no magic. “Tia, I just noticed something. I’m probably wrong but…” The rest of us looked towards Luna as she squinted at her own copy of the contract. Morpheus arched a brow. His eyes glassed over for a moment before his gaze sharpened dangerously, and a menacing scowl came to dominate his face. “Ve could have sworn I wrote everything perfectly. Did one of the other lords try to sneak something in? I swear to the First Father, if someling ruined my only chance, I will personally destroy the one responsible.” “Peace, Prince Morpheus, it may just be a mistake.” Luna tilted her head to the side, frowning. “I didn’t really notice it at first; I was too busy looking for all the standard traps, but a couple of items appear to be missing.” She looked between her copy of the spell and Morpheus. “First and foremost, there are no readily apparent obligations for Equestria written into the contract. There are clauses on things we can do, such as the clauses on how to release you from an obligation, but there is nothing we must do.” She shook her head. “Even the most amateur of con-ponies knew enough to at least appear to ask for something in return. I cannot help but be suspicious at your complete willingness to sign a contract that amounts to your enslavement for no cost on Equestria’s end.” The prince flicked his wings and frowned. “What could I possibly gain from doing that?” There were several moments of silence that I hesitantly broke. “You were the one who insisted on using the ancient forbidden spell in peace negotiations, right?” I could hear the gears whirring in the Morpheus’ brain. “I only brought that for my end of the deal.” He licked his lips. “In what way would it be productive to make any of my hive’s demands in that contract? It would only encourage any lingering mistrust, and there isn’t time to deal with that.” He looked between all of us. “You heard that the hive is starving, but you don’t know how badly. Ve and several of our trusted advisors did the math: worst case scenario, I have half a year to convince you to let three thousand harvesters cross the border. Anything less and we may well reach the point of no return.” There was a sharp intake of breath from somepony—maybe me. That was a lot of changelings to keep track of. The prince paused for a response, but silence reigned. “They’ll all need their own identities to avoid any of the issues that would arise from replacing somepony, and that means they’ll need even more time to establish a social network.” He shook his head. “It has to be a large network too. If it’s too small, I can’t ask them to collect anything in good conscience. There would be a risk of over collecting from an individual, and that would be inoptimal for relations.” He wings buzzed slightly as his echo fractured for just a moment. “Factoring everything together, ve expect I’ll have only a month to convince you that my goodwill is earnest, maybe less. Ve cannot run the risk of alienating you with magically binding demands when you have no reason to trust me. The contract is a sign of goodwill, nothing more, nothing less.” Looking back at Luna, Morpheus’ glare could cut bone. “Do not assume that means ve have no proposals for Equestria. I will get to them in due time. The first step is for me to gain your trust.” Luna met his gaze for a moment before hesitantly looking back to the contract. “A-alright then… I-I suppose I should bring up your second omission.” She gestured to the illusion, manipulating it in various ways. “I have found the various places that require the signature of my sister and I, yet it always seems that the slot for your own signature was absent.” Morpheus smiled morbidly at Luna. “You’ll find it’s there. We just already signed. If you want to know what to look for, look at the very center of the contract. That’s where the final signatures for consent go.” Celestia zoomed in on the place in question. “That’s… a magical sigil, not a signature.” Her eyes narrowed at Morpheus. “What does it do?” Morpheus opened his mouth to answer when Discord’s dark chuckles filled the room. “Why isn’t it obvious, Tia?” He rose from the floor, displacing and distorting it as if it were a viscous liquid. Small waves of stone lazily slid across the room as the floor slowly settled in his wake, knocking over the cardboard cutout that had replaced the chair where he’d been snoring only moments ago. He floated towards the illusion, drawing it into the palm of his paw. “You just need to look at it another way.” He crushed it within his fist and let go. Suddenly, the illusion expanded. What had once been a two-dimensional drawing of a spell matrix was now a three-dimensional exploded view. It didn’t change much at first glance. Then we noticed the sigil Morpheus called his signature. The prince sighed. “Horseapples and bugbits…. That was the one thing I was hoping you wouldn’t find.” “Why?” Celestia asked, starting to examine the twisted knot of inscriptions that was the sigil. There were thousands of intricate layers to the sigil. “Is it a trap?” Morpheus sat in silence for a few seconds. His face was set in a contemplative frown, and his stare bored into the ground. Finally, he responded with a flat, emotionless drone. “It is a mercy. It is the only mercy ve can provide if I fail.” He glanced at me briefly before returning his gaze to the floor. “I see a chance for success, but ve are starting to think coming here was the most foalish thing I have ever done. I must beg that you do not ask what that sigil does. If you find out, I fear it will only make things that much harder for both our respective nations.” Opaque blue lens clicked over his eyes to further hide them from everypony. “If there is one thing I say that I ask you to accept in blind faith, let it be when I say that signature will bring no harm to the pony race.” Celestia and Luna turned to each other, saying everything and nothing they needed with a glance. Looking back at Morpheus, they spoke as one. “We cannot allow this question to go unanswered. What does are you trying to hide from us? Answer honestly, and we promise to withhold judgment to the best of our abilities.” The changeling’s stare continued to bore into the stone for several seconds. Finally, he looked up and stared deep into Celestia’s eyes. The blue lens retracted, and his gaze was revealed to be cold and unflinching, daring the princess to go back on her statement. His wings buzzed with harsh ferocity. They vibrated fast enough to create an illusion of wings twice as large, and filled the air with a menacing thrum. “Zoom in far enough, and ve’re sure you’ll understand when you see it.” His voice had dropped an octave. It fractured, splitting  to create an almost chorus-like effect in a manner far different from his earlier outburst. Before, the echo had simply created the effect of more than one creature talking at once. Here, each echo was modulated and morphed. It filled the room as if we were surrounded by others, and each echo waxed and waned so we could never quite tell the location it came from. The intensity of it sent shivers shooting down my spine, and something told me we would be better off not knowing what he was talking about. Celestia wouldn’t leave anything to chance, though. She was already quickly zooming in. Layer after layer of inscriptions flew by, but even after a minute their contents were not any clearer. “You may wish to go faster, Princess.” The prince dared taunt her—the mare who raised the sun. “I assure you. The point at which it will become legible is quite small, and I only have so much time. My subjects are starving, you know. If you want to see the truth, then I suggest you pick up the pace!” Celestia said nothing, the thin line of her mouth becoming a frown. When the inscriptions finally sprang into focus, both princesses stared at them. Their eyes slowly trailed along each one, holding their breath as they looked for whatever trap had been laid. As far as I could see, though, they were just plain old words. If anything, it looked like one massive story. “Tell me, Twilight Sparkle.” Discord spoke from quietly behind me, making me jump a good meter or two from my seat. “What do you think a signature in a magical contract normally looks like?” I stared at him from above, heart racing, but he just patted my vacated seat like nothing was wrong. Slowly sinking back into my spot, I ruffled my wings. “I don’t know….” I expected a joke at my expense, but Discord merely chuckled, an offsettingly small smile on his face. “Magical contracts are ancient, powerful things.” He seemed to be avoiding looking at the inscriptions surrounding us. “Their signatures can only be crafted willingly from a pony’s own magical energy as they sign the contract, and it takes the form of that which defines you. Since you ponies are, thankfully, not boring or dull enough to only be defined by one thing, it often takes the appearance of a story.” He waved at the illusion. “The little princeling did not lie about having signed the contract, but you have to ask if there’s more to his tale. I dare say that one of the princesses will get it in about three…“ “It’s nothing but an extremely long signature.” Celestia tilted her head, zooming in to see if she’d missed something else. She walked around it to view it from another angle, yet she still could spot no discrepancies. “Two…“ “There has to be something more,” Celestia murmured. “One…” Luna’s intake of breath was sharp and sudden. Her eyes had been slowly traveling from one inscription to the next, but now they traveled in leaps and bounds. “Tia, it’s not just one signature.” Celestia looked at her sister. “What?” “It’s thousands— No, it’s tens of thousands of signatures!” Blue light engulfed Luna’s horn, and she highlighted each signature she could find with a different colour. “It is thirty-three thousand nine hundred and forty-seven signatures to be exact. In addition to me, it is every nymph, drone, lord, breeder, infiltrator, warrior, analyst and harvester we have left.” Prince Morpheus’ gaze had yet to leave Celestia. The dare still held. Celestia held her anger in. Luna was not so subtle. “If that is the case, then what you are proposing amounts to genocide.” Her voice was deathly quiet yet remarkably more terrifying than the Royal Canterlot Voice ever was. Morpheus still had his gaze locked on Celestia. She seemed to have frozen still in an attempt to divert all her control to managing the anger that one could literally see radiating off her. “It is genocide on my head either way if I fail.” The echo in his voice was almost silent when he whispered back. “Does it matter if ve make it quick and painless compared to slow extinction from starvation?” Luna flared her wings and stomped the ground. “You would dare to presume such a thing?! Even if you are telling the truth about your species starvation, you would dare to presume that your own death would destroy any hope they had of finding another solution?” The prince bared his fangs with a hiss. “Yes, ve would dare such a thing! If I die, one of the remaining lords will take our place, and they will not consider peace an option after I fail!” He snorted, and the holes in his legs drummed open and closed. “Either they will be stupid enough to try another invasion, or the changelings will return to hide in the shadows as they’ve always done—slowly wasting away.” The drumming was punctuated with a stomp. “My subjects are as good as dead either way if I fail! Why shouldn’t ve spare them from facing a slow, agonizing death?!” “Genocide? I don’t think I’ve heard that word before….” My face scrunched as my brain tried to tease meaning from the new word. It had to be important with how… intense Luna’s reaction was. “I know ‘cide’ is the suffix used to describe crimes involving systematic killing, but ‘geno’ is a new prefix for me.” Celestia’s head snapped sideways as I spoke. She had been successfully holding her anger in, her muscles clenched tight to lock down any reaction to Morpheus as she returned his stare in full. Now, she stared at me wide-eyed, and I cannot say for sure what she saw in me. Whatever it was, it made her livid. Princess Celestia Solaris Invictus, Diarch of Equestria, and Commander of the Rising Sun, turned to glare upon the our visitor with a baleful, burning gaze. “You have placed me in a very difficult position, Prince Morpheus.” Oh, no…. That was her ‘To the Sun’ voice. “I was quite willing to give you a chance before you offered this monstrosity of a spell to us. My sister and I never had any intention of signing, yet we humored you to get a better judge of your character. If it had just been you bound by this travesty of a spell, I could have accepted it as the offer of good faith you clearly meant it to be. I cannot and will not condone what you’ve done here, however.” Her horn flashed a brilliant gold before turning a blinding white. Her eyes filled with light, and her mane burst into flames. “The only reason I have decided not to smite you where you stand is that I cannot, in good conscious, take the chance I am sentencing the rest of your species to an agonizingly slow death at the same time.” The floor shook almost violently, and my bones ached from the vibrations. Princess Celestia was surging. For once, I was terrified she would actually carry through with the voice’s namesake, and I quivered in my chair. The contract burned in her magical grip while the sigils and stories of the changeling race that surrounded us melted all around us. Circle after circle appeared behind the princess as she forged a spell of incredible strength. She gathered the molten slag of pure magic left behind from the contract and began to craft it anew. What had taken Morpheus months by his own admission took the princess less than a minute to complete, and as she finished the spell the contract blazed with the light of the night sky as thousands of miniature suns formed where her signatures were needed. The surge ended, but the voice remained, and a small sheet of paper hung before Prince Morpheus. “If you truly desire peace, you will accept this new contract and sign it in your name only. You will find all the stipulations you drafted before in place, but there are also several clauses to check and make sure you never try to abuse this spell again.” The prince opened his moth only to shut it at a look from Celestia. “It is a bit extreme and hypocritical. I know that. But it is also the quickest and most efficient way for me to make sure you have not done anything else this despicable in the brief time you’ve had access to the spell. I will give you your month to convince me that I can let other changelings into Equestria. Just know that if you fail now it is most likely because of this stunt you pulled. Take that as you will.” With her ruling given, Celestia motioned to her sister. The soft light of the moon joined the light of a thousand suns upon the contract, and the sisters strode to the exit. Celestia stopped there and spoke to me, refusing to look back in the room. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, you have heard my judgment. I humbly ask that you take Prince Morpheus into your home and let him stay in Ponyville for his month long trial. If anypony has even the smallest chance of convincing me of his worth, it is you. “However—” she paused, voice quivering as she struggled to maintain the little composure she had regained “—I must ask that you keep the specifics on this meeting a secret from everypony—even your friends. Magical contracts are dangerous. I should have known they would eventually be rediscovered, but we cannot afford to let anypony know about it for the time being.” She sighed, glancing back at Morpheus with… pity? “If the wrong pony found out about this… I’m sure you can imagine what might happen.” With that, she and Luna left. I didn’t have time to mull her outburst over, though. Discord might have disappeared, but I still had a bug to deal with. Celestia had given me a mission, and I would see it through. That was the beginning, as best as I can recall. It was a rather abysmal beginning, but it could have been so much worse. The fact that Mo was given a chance shows that. You’ll probably want to schedule him for the next review, though. His first real day living in Ponyville was rather… unique, and I think he’d prefer talking about it himself.