Limits of the Horizon

by Beware The Carpenter

3 - Inquest

Words were buzzing around Twilight’s head like bats. Everywhere she looked she saw verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and figures of speech flying in and out selected pigeon holes, and occasionally fighting with each other until Twilight came to choose which one of them to use and which to send sulking back into the vault for storage. It was a world of organized chaos Twilight had constructed over the years where she alone was queen. It was her mind palace; a mental projection she’d made with a combination of numeric memory technique and magic where she housed every thought and memory she’d ever experienced.

In the outside world, it was eleven hours after Twilight had been discovered. Her spell to clear Spike’s nose had worked then ultimately failed as Spike’s journey to the surface and failed to furnish any useful information. Meanwhile, The emotional situation had deteriorated completely. Even after the unexpected severity of Shining Armor’s outburst when he realized she was on board, Twilight had thought that after a few hours he would calm down and be grateful to have someone with her ability supporting him. Instead, he just grew more and more agitated.

If it had been just Shining Armor who was acting strange, Twilight could have ignored it, but it wasn’t; everyone seemed to be avoiding her, even Spike. Twilight knew he’d changed, but had still thought that he’d be happy to see her; and had even had the audacity to hope he might even leave his hoard to come give her a hug. Instead, since his trip to the surface, Spike had said precisely four words to her, ‘why did you come?’ when he didn’t like her answer, he turned away, and had downright ignored her ever since.

Twilight was going to prove them all wrong. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was that they were wrong about, but she was determined to prove that she belonged here, and there were few problems in the universe that could withstand the power of Twilight’s determined mind for long.

Aside from developing the spell to clear Spike’s nose; Twilight had maintained duties as the ships navigator and assisted in repairing a blown engine. Now, with some free time and without the magical drain of maintaining her disguise, Twilight could fully access her mind palace and condition herself for the Zaharren, as it now seemed probable that that was where they were going.

So far, Twilight had turned her body-clock back one hour to compensate for passing into a different time zone; replaced her metric setting of weights, lengths and measurements with the imperial system used in the Zaharren; and tuned the pipe organ of her vocal cords, giving her a natural Zaharren accent she would now use without conscious thought. With those things out of the way, Twilight had moved onto the Hall of Language.

Zaharren and Equish shared common roots and so anyone who spoke one language could make themselves understood in the other, but being understood wasn’t good enough. Twilight and the Sun Guards needed to be accepted and, if possible, trusted by locals who could help them, and that required extra work. Every phrase and figure of speech in her active vocabulary was placed under the scrutiny of Twilight’s best understanding of Zaharren culture. If something could be deemed offensive or misinterpreted; it was locked in her language vault where it wouldn’t escape through a slip of the tongue.

After that, Twilight opened another cabinet and began importing Zaharren phrases into her vocabulary; sometimes kicking out Equish terms that had been allowed to stay until now. If Twilight didn’t understand a phrase, she would put it aside in a basket and moved on, inserting the phrases she did understand and then interpreting the harder ones by the holes that were left, like a jigsaw puzzle, until only one phrase remained.

“Family is everything.”

What did that mean to a zebra?

Usually, all Twilight had needed to do was to look at the way a phrase was used to make an accurate assessment of its meaning, plug it into the right shelf, and then polish it to perfection later. This phrase however had appeared over a hundred times throughout the Zaharren texts Twilight had read, and either different authors had meant something different by it, or there was one massively complicated definition she was somehow missing. Twilight had looked it up in Zaharren dictionaries, but found it omitted, as the zebras apparently thought it too simple to need explaining. She’d read essays on the topic, but still wasn’t sure what it meant.

Twilight needed more information to create her definition and so a brief teleport later, she was standing at one of the myriad of connections between the two massive central chambers that made up the heart of Zaharren culture. All the artifacts she’d imagined from various descriptions, were cracked and covered in a thick layer of dust, to remind Twilight that virtually everything she knew about Zaharren culture came second or third hoof. This made her inquest difficult as nothing here could be considered authoritative, but when five or six semi-reliable sources told her the same thing, she took it as fact. Smaller side chambers furnished additional knowledge about certain festivals or beliefs, but ultimately, everything intersected in one or both of these two rooms which intertwined in ways Twilight struggled to understand; finance and family.

Twilight knew that many zebra families went to exorbitant lengths to stay together; often sharing their finances into a communal pot and building vast estates where dozens or even hundreds of distant relatives could live together. Defending family honor and reputation was considered paramount, betraying your family was considered the worst crime you could do and family businesses often continued for generations.

Financially; the Zaharren had scarce natural resources, yet was one of the wealthiest nations on earth due to endless, international trade that flooded through its capital, Timbucktoo. It was a city that predated the solar war, which could fit all of Canterlot in its great marketplace where, without government regulation, anything could be bought for a price... even slaves.

Technically, the Zaharren was ruled by an alicorn steward named Ferric, with power over the earth’s magnetic fields, but a hundred and eleven years ago, he vanished beyond the reach of even the most far-reaching searches. This led to the collapse of Timbucktoo’s once legendary metal industry and eventually ended its relations with Equestria as there was no longer anything either nation could sell that the other couldn’t buy cheaper elsewhere. Technically, there was a line of stewards that ruled Timbucktoo in Ferric’s absence, though it wasn’t much of a secret that real political power was scattered between the official government, an enigmatic religious order known as Shamans, and three or four dozen ridiculously wealthy ‘great houses’.

Shifting allegiances among the great houses, combined with the diversity of the civilizations they traded with, divided and united the city. Divided in that each house essentially governed itself, causing rules and customs to shift so radically that some said there were a dozen countries inside the one massive city. United in that everyone’s fortunes rested on Timbucktoo’s reputation as a safe place to do business, conflicts needed to be covert and collateral damage kept to an absolute minimum.

It all seemed grotesquely chaotic, and Twilight wondered how the city avoided killing itself every few weeks, but whatever they were doing seemed to be working; for the most part. Four years ago, a brutal civil war had shook Timbucktoo when a sub-sect of the Shaman Order had tried to seize power. It lasted only a few months though the death toll had still reached into the tens of thousands; though aside from that, the last major conflict had been almost a century ago.

For mares however, family and finances could take on very different meanings; in that they may have no choice in the former, and be considered a part of the latter. There were some exceptions; but, for the most part, every filly in the Zaharren was born as a slave to their father. From their early childhood, they would be expected to help their mothers cooking or doing household chores, and then in their late childhood, they would be sold as a wife.

They would not choose a husband, they would not fall in love, they would be sold for a pile of money to a stallion who might be more than twice her age, who she may have never met before their wedding, and who might be married to three or four mares already! After that the course of their lives was pretty much set; they would do whatever their husbands told them, however he told them, or they would be beaten. They would cook his food, mind his house, bear his children and eventually they would die, never having had the chance to write their own destinies.

Some mares might have a better life then this, but only if the stallions in her life gave it to her. When discussing the ‘bride price’, a girl’s father and prospective husband would draw up a contract of what ‘privileges’ the filly would have; 'privileges' such as… not needing to sleep with her husband if she didn’t want to or, setting limits to how badly he was allowed to beat her. The more ‘privileges’ the filly had however, the lower the bride price would be, and so if her family was poor, if she’d been disobedient or if her father simply didn’t care about her, she was pretty much done for.

Of course, some the great houses had laws in their territories that vaguely resembled defined the anti-abuse laws that every pony took for granted in Equestria. A few houses even required a filly to consent to her marriage; but none considered mares the full equal of a stallion and most saw fillies as nothing more than property to be beaten, sold and raped.

This was the biggest reason why Twilight had always wanted to visit the Zaharren; and the only reason Twilight was glad she had never married. She was a genius world-class spell caster, with full financial independence she’d earned through having been immensely successful in multiple careers in which she’d never worked for a stallion, but had had stallions work for her. Twilight wasn’t exactly sure what she thought she would accomplish, but she carried the vague notion that if zebra mares could see that they didn’t need to be dependent on the stallions in their lives; and if the stallions could see a mare who could outsmart their top professors or flatten a few of their top soldiers, maybe she could change things.

Twilight had thought about it, and had estimated that finding and restoring Ferric would be her best bet. Records on him were a bit sketchy, but although he had been known as something of a philanderer; all of his love affairs had been consensual and overall things had been far better for mares under his rule then without him. The very fact that many of his lovers had been ranking members of his government proved that.

Twilight had thought that maybe if she could find him, not only would she have restored a less chauvinistic stallion to the reins of government, but also demonstrate that one brave mare could succeed in a task where tens of thousands of stallions had failed. Not to mention that if Ferric had been in some kind of prison and she rescued him, he would probably be very grateful, and if her chosen reward was that mares were treated well from now on he would probably grant it.

Come to think of it; he would probably be quite impressed by such a noble gesture; and he’d probably be rather impressed by her heroism and intelligence in finding him in the first place and since she’d been trained by Celestia, and was experienced with immortal stewards, he’d probably like her a lot. Maybe he’d-

Twilight stopped; realizing she was already cantering down the stairs to a rather steamy section of her mind palace’s fantasy wing. Not that Twilight necessarily objected to what was down there, some of it was quite fun, but she’d spent many lonely nights working on those tunnels when she was younger and over the years they’d grown into a complex maze of interconnected scenarios. It was easy to get lost in, and sometimes the doors jammed behind Twilight meaning that once she was down there, it was easy to waste a lot of time. Besides, when she did indulge, she usually came out feeling lonelier than when she’d went in.

Twilight turned, careful not to slip on the on the moist stairs and returned to the Zaharren’s understanding of family, leaving behind Ferric, and a dozen lives that they could have had together. It had been a dream she’d never gone on; she’d planned expeditions to search for him several times, but then something else always came up. The first time, Cadance got sick, and with political instability keeping Shining Armor busy, Twilight dropped everything to help with their kids. The second time, her plans got derailed by Spike’s incident with the diamond dogs and the third time, a professor from the school for gifted unicorns had left on short notice and Celestia had asked Twilight to take his place.

Twilight had to choose between one last adventure with a small chance of success that could lead to changing the world, or a safe, meaningful job she knew she could do that left her with her family and friends she’d neglected for so long. She’d thought it over, talked it over with her friends and family and had never regretted her decision; until now. If Twilight had done something to change the Zaharren years ago, would the buffalo have still attacked Ponyville?

It didn’t matter. She’d made the decisions she’d made, she was in the situation she was in and it was her duty to make it better; that meant preparing for meeting the zebras which meant understanding what they meant by ‘family is everything’.

Twilight warped a connection between the vault of Zaharren culture and her hall of language and stood between them; using the former to began reshaping the definition and then trying to fit it into the holes left to it by the rest of her language, but it didn’t go in. How could zebras say they placed such a high value on family, when half the family was considered property? Twilight tried again, but no matter how she twisted or reshaped her definition, it never became sufficient to accommodate every instance where she had seen the phrase used used.

If Twilight got the definition wrong, it could lead to a misunderstanding and jeopardize the mission, she needed – Twilight felt a light touch on her shoulder and a familiar voice rumbled through the walls of her mind palace.

Not yet.

Twilight needed to get the definition right before waking up; she only needed a few minutes, on the outside world a few seconds, so if Shining Armor would just wait a moment she could finish this. Twilight began hammering the definition out and refolding her interpretation of the Zaharren definition of family, the new definition didn’t work either and so she tried it again, but this was even worse than before. Maybe –

Fuchsia magic washed over her, dissolving the walls of Twilight’s mind palace around her and leaving her work unfinished. The next thing she was aware of was sitting on Point Star’s bunk below decks, with Shining Armor sitting beside her, gently rocking her back into consciousness. “Twily; are you awake?” Twilight opened her eyes slowly, and somehow failed to find the warranted annoyance for having her meditative spell disrupted.

For a while neither spoke; daring the other to break the silence. Shining Armor looked more relaxed than she had seen him for days, but underneath, she knew he was tense. “Do you remember,” He said finally, “When we were foals and you were trying to pair me up with Cadance? You told her that I was the best big brother in the world because I always looked out for you.”

“I remember.”

“That’s what I’m doing now.” Shining Armor passed a scroll to Twilight which he allowed her a moment to examine. “There are three rivers that run almost parallel underneath the desert. Each river is studded with wells creating three natural routes across the desert. We just passed over a village built around a well on the southern route and they sold us this map; it’s old, but they swear to its accuracy. I want you to take this map, and walk home.”

“Why?”

“You don’t belong here.”

“Don’t belong?” Twilight unfolded the cocint on the forearm of her brother’s armor. The small crystal screen flickered; then lit up with three dozen unique signatures, marking the locations of each Sun Guard; allowing Shining Armor to track his team through ultrasonic radar, capable of passing through most forms of wood and stone. “Who invented this?”

Shining Armor didn’t respond because he couldn’t without admitting her contribution. “If you want to be a Sun Guard, you’ll obey your commander. If you want to masquerade as a Zaharren mare then as you’re not married and our father is dead, authority over you passes to me. I’m ordering you to return to Equestria. If you refuse, I will arrest you.

“Why?”

“It’s too dangerous for you to be here.”

“Dangerous?” Twilight snorted. “More dangerous than following a half-crazed Captain of the Royal Guard into the Everfree Forest after Cadance and Storm disappeared?”

“That was different.”

“More dangerous than excavating the remains of a draconequus curiosity factory!? You know that I’ve been in far more danger than I’m in now, with much less at stake and you didn’t try to stop me. I’m not stupid; I know there’s something you’re not telling me. What is so bad about this mission?

“Twily I’m begging you. All your life you’ve been curious and headstrong; just this once, don’t ask questions, just go.”

Twilight looked into her brother’s eyes; she knew that he was hiding something from her; she also knew that in the lifetime she had known him, he had never betrayed her trust. “…Alright.” She muttered with thinly veiled disgust, “I’ll go to Los Pegasus where the reserve forces are gathe-”

“No!” Shining Armor shouted before he could stop himself. Twilight watched him mentally curse himself; then resign himself to continuing; “I need you to leave this desert, and never come back. Go to Canterlot, stay with Cadance, write a book, I don’t care; do anything you want just don’t be here.”

Shining Armor’s charade was crumbling around him; one solid blow would shatter it to pieces. Twilight gently places her hoof over his, and softened her gaze; “… If there’s something you need to tell me; I can keep a secret.” She cast a silencing spell over the room, “I promise that the rest of this conversation will not leave this room. Why do you want me to leave?”

“… If I tell you; you’ll go?”

Twilight nodded and a faint smile creased Shining Armor’s lips then faded into a sigh as he turned to face the wall; “Do you trust me when I say I love you Twilight?”

“With my life.”

“What about Princess Celestia, do you trust her.”

“Even more so.”

“What about Cadance, Apple Jack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Silent Storm, and Spike; do you trust them?”

“Yes.”

“Then please believe me when I tell you, that we’ve all been lying to you, for a long time, for your own protection.” He breathed deeply, “Twenty years ago, you came to the Zaharren, and some very bad things happened. You didn’t know how to deal with it and so you tried to kill yourself; that’s how you got the scars. We couldn’t find any other way to help you, so Celestia and I combined our magics and blocked two and a half years from your memory.”

Twilight was dumbfounded; she also didn’t believe him. The scars she had were different ages, they’d been inflicted different ways, there was no way they could have been from attempted suicide unless “… how many times did-?”

“Seventy-four.” growled Shining Armor; predicting her question; “…You were very determined.”

“No.” Said Twilight after a moment, “I don’t believe it. I couldn’t have gotten that low; you wouldn’t have let me.”

“Me?” Shining Armor turned slowly to face her, “You hated me.”

“Don't say that; I could never hate you.”

“You tried to kill me! And when you failed, when Celestia was holding you back, you looked me dead in the eyes and you promised that if you ever got the chance, you would kill me in the most painful way you knew how, and I knew you meant it.”

"... and that’s when you started drinking?"

Shining Armor said nothing, betraying his guilt, “The mind block we put on you is stronger than the one Celestia gave Derpy, but I don’t know how strong it is or what could be a trigger so I don’t want you to risk anything you don’t have to; I don’t want you seeing zebras, I don’t want you hearing their language, I don’t want you in their desert ever again.”

What Shining Armor was describing did not make sense; but if Shining Armor was going to lie to her to make her leave, this wasn’t the lie he would make. He was staring at her anxiously, trusting desperately that she would keep her end of the promise, unwilling to accept any other reply. “… If whatever happened left me hating the people I love most and trying to kill myself… I don’t want to remember. I’ll go back to Equestria.”

Shining Armor turned and drew her into a tight hug, “Thank you!”

Chapter Four >>> Full Circle

Author's Note:

Deleted Scene - The Scenic Route

Comments

[the other sans]

So then, would all those times she wanted to go back to the Zahharen be 'planned' coincidences? There is more to this than meets the eye. We must go deeper and never turn back. Wait, that sounds like a terrible idea... but I'm doing it anyways

Now Twilight is getting the short end of the stick of things so to speak. But maybe, just maybe after 'recovering' (more or less) she can reface her past of what had happened and perhaps shed some new light on things. They say that time can heal all wounds, but how deep are Twilights?

[Beware The Carpenter]

4245944

5. Invented term for the device though I admit not the most creative of names; Precient means marking out a location; so I combined it with the word compass.

Thanks for the corrections.

[Beware The Carpenter]

4245944

As for the 'coincidences'. the first and last ones were planned; as for 'Spike's incident with the diamond dogs' I'm working on the vague story idea that Spike finds a illegal Diamond Dog casino that uses gems for chips, getting a gambling addiction, working up some huge debt and Twilight learning to count cards to help him.

It could be interesting if developed properly but I don't want to pen myself in yet in saying what happened except there was an... 'incident'.

[winterdragon]

nice job doing you research on middle eastern culture, especially with the mares( woman). I always like when people do there research
also, is derpy's memory block covered in another story?