Chapter 14: The Truth, and Its Consequences
At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 14: The Truth, and Its Consequences
Hope felt herself being dragged down one street after another. In her current state, she no longer cared where they were going or why.
Midnight peered desperately down one pathway after another. Finally she stopped. Before her was a dark, dank alleyway between two decrepit buildings, the overlapping roofs denying any sunlight to the space within. The foul stench of death and decay drifted out from its unseen depths. It was the sort of place where a mortally wounded animal would drag itself to die in peace, a place for which the term “gods forsaken” was invented. It was exactly what the unicorn was looking for. The cart she had also dragged all this way was left outside as she stepped out of the harness, and into the gloom.
“Now. Talk.” Midnight demanded, her hooves on the other pony’s withers. “How do you know for sure that Alicorns can’t...she did, didn’t she? The one we aren’t supposed to name?”
Hope looked down at the ground, covered with scraps of paper and other refuse, and then back up to the unicorn. “Your family, Midnight,” she said. “What if you had to banish the only family you had left, forever, to save the world? And what if the whole mess was your fault?”
Her lavender eyes went wide as she backed away from “Hope.” “Nno...” The conclusion she suddenly reached felt like a slap in the face. “I won’t answer that question because you aren’t Hope, are you? I’ve heard of possessions, of the divine taking mortal bodies to taunt the living but how...you cannot be C...” She stopped herself, eyes then narrowing. “What did you do with the real Hope? Burn her mind away for your convenience?”
Celestia narrowed her eyes and rose to her full height. Despite being significantly shorter than the unicorn physically, she suddenly seemed to tower over her. “I do not play by their rules, Midnight Sparkle,” she declared. “I do not inflict pain or manipulate minds for pleasure. An alicorn is earth pony, unicorn and pegasus in one...or any one of the three she wishes to be. Since we are all being observed every second by the gods, I cannot be myself, I cannot be truthful with anypony, not without being found, and the last time they found me they gave me the one thing I thought I wanted more than anything.” She paused for a pregnant moment before continuing. “I am going to stop them, no matter who or what stands against me. What, then, are you?”
Midnight’s expression of anger fell, then her pride—that bastion of her strength—evaporated. She couldn’t take her eyes off the pony in front of her, as her hooves began to shake. An errant thought reminded her that she had supposedly conquered that particular nervous tic a decade ago. “I’m just...” she said, trying to form a worthy answer for the being standing before her. “I’m just a unicorn...who’s lost everything...and doesn’t know what to do...I’m just a fool! Am I serving you then? Is that what I must do now to survive? A dead god in the flesh, more swift of mind and more brilliant of intellect than any living soul, what could I do for you but die? I could not even save Firebelle.”
The proud earth pony’s expression softened. “Is...is she not going to make it?” she asked, suddenly on the verge of tears.
Midnight looked away to delude herself into thinking she was talking to Hope, and not Celestia herself. “They don’t know. I’ll tell you this, though: showing them her record sheet was like night and day. They wouldn’t even lift a hoof to help her until I gave it to them. The injuries were so severe...they will wait until they have the best resources to bring her back...I bargained my title and all of...all of your gold for it, and they said they would call on all the power they could.”
Celestia dropped to the ground. “If I could be myself for one second,” she said softly, “I could have saved her. At any time, I could have saved her. They might have taken me, but it would have been worth it. Except...who else would have been able to stand against them? I hate this!” She kicked out at a nearby rock. It didn’t go sailing into the horizon, or smash through the wall of the nearest building. It just skipped a little, like a stone struck by any mortal pony. “What do I do?” she asked herself.
A hoof slowly came to rest on her back, as Midnight carefully sat beside her. “You...have a plan of some sort. A goal. No need to tell me what it is, I am out of my depth to the degree where knowing it would probably just ruin it. But all I have left is a half-hatched idea of capturing an adventurer’s spirit to use for my own. Not much...not much hope in that working.”
She turned her head to see Celestia staring intently at her. “Could you do that?” she asked. “Do you think that could actually work? Because, I’m going to confide in you, my plan at the moment went like this: go to the Inn, find out how the gods operate, and mess it up.”
“Well...” Midnight brightened considerably. “I may now claim to be as well thought out a schemer as a goddess, that gives me some credence, does it not? But in more serious matters...if a sigil to you would not help, as you are...”
She poked Hope on the shoulder.
“Still decidedly undeific, I only have Phyletus and...well...I had another idea of a sigil to use...” Her expression took on a bit of fear while looking to Hope.
“Not safe to say out loud?” Celestia asked.
“It’s been said aloud many a time without recourse of late...a certain Mare of the moon.”
Celestia looked up at the moon. “Hmm…” she mused. “There’s a small chance that might work. I highly doubt the Nightmare would be happy to steal Equestria away from anypony but myself.”
“Was she really your sister? Not some figment but...did you love her?” Midnight whispered, as though cursing in a temple, her hoof still present on Hope’s back.
“I failed her,” Celestia said, the tears coming back into her eyes. “Running off to form a family when I should have defended her from the tormentors who drove her insane. In the end, she was the only one who understood me. More than my family, she was my friend...my only friend. I was surrounded by sycophants and schemers, a husband who was well meaning but...we are not meant to have families, Luna and I. We were made to rule and fight and remember together...nothing more.” She rose to her hooves, and fixed her eyes to the rooftops, to the area of the Summer Hexagon, a bitter smile on her face. “Yes, the name of Luna doesn’t frighten you, does it?” she declared. “No wards to spy on any who say that word. The day will come when I will make you feel fully justified in what you have done to any who dare to speak my name aloud. This I swear!”
“You really are...What’s it like to be a goddess?” Midnight asked. Now her curiosity was in the pursuit of science, her suspicions all but gone as she tried to use this unpredictable and powerful resource to her advantage. “What sorts of magic could you use?”
“A bit of a loaded term, ‘goddess’, don’t you think?” Celestia asked with a lopsided smile, looking down at the seated Midnight. “It attracts a lot of adjectives that don’t apply to me. But then, I don’t think they are truly gods, either. After all, a true god could have created a world from scratch to play with, instead of hijacking this one.” She looked out of the alleyway, where two fillies pranced by, one painted over to have a pink coat and mane, the other to have a blue coat and mane. “In some areas I never reached my limits,” she confessed. “Magic was an intellectual exercise to me. If I could understand it, I could cast it. Unicorn magic, pegasus, dragon, you name it—all of it was open to me.”
“So, you were more of a poly-thaumic creature then. That has implications. Could you teach me draconic magic?”
“In the abstract,” Celestia replied. “There are limitations of the flesh that would prevent you from casting any non-unicorn spell. Some sorcerers were able to convert spells from one school to another. Ironically, being able to cast any spell leaves me without the necessary feedback mechanisms to be able to pull off these conversions myself. I remember having to cast Avalanche Reversal more than a thousand times on a pile of pebbles for Father to observe before he was able to come up with the unicorn version.”
“Fascinating...I don’t suppose you know any rune magic then, that I could etch into my shielding?” Midnight moved to the cart and pulled the roll of coated metal from the barrel. Now a deep purple-black color, it flexed easily as she unrolled it onto her cloak which she had laid down on the cart floor.
“Aluminum coated in...well, a lot of things,” she explained to the disguised alicorn. “I tried to make it a magical sink, a dead zone that would absorb magic like a sponge. But without some sort of Rune or Sigil of power, there is nothing to use up or attract that magic in the first place.”
“Yes,” Celestia said studying the shield metal spread before her. “Yes, runes would be perfect for this. In fact, I would have crafted a rune-enchanted circlet for myself much earlier if I had only remembered. It’s the unfortunate fault of having so many years of memories—being unable to pull up the proper one at the proper time. I know a few runes...but my library holds many more. The trick in fact is not merely blocking, but blocking while creating the illusion of powerlessness.”
Midnight nodded eagerly, half amazed that she was able to keep up with the thoughts of a magical genius with centuries to perfect her craft. “Excellent!” she exclaimed. “I will admit I was looking forward to decorating this with moons and suns, but more potent runes would be preferable. Should we...I hate to suggest it, but should we return to your castle?”
Celestia smiled mischievously. “I saw a sign for a guided tour tomorrow. Sounds like a fun and completely innocuous activity, right?” She held out a hoof to assist the unicorn in rising to her hooves.
“Sounds like it could just as easily get you found out,” Midnight pointed out as she got up. “Why did you let me figure this all out anyway? You made it remarkably easy for me to figure out who you were, even though I’m still having trouble not wanting to think you a liar.”
“I don’t like lying to ponies,” Celestia said seriously. “And besides, I don’t see this ending any other way than by revealing myself at the final confrontation. It would have been rather awkward for you to find out that late in the game. There would be nothing worse in a big dramatic showdown than for you to start making smart remarks about my prismatic mane.”
“Your mane is truly a rainbow?” Midnight smirked, a hoof over her lips as she tried not to laugh. “That is very nice. Was Luna’s a field of stars, by chance?”
Celestia put on a mock pout. “She really lucked out in the mane awards,” she said. “Mine merely has a mind of its own, while hers contains the entire night sky. I used to ask her to keep changing positions, so I could brag that I had seen both summer and winter constellations in the same night.”
“I cannot...” At this point Midnight truly was laughing. “I cannot bring myself to believe this. Yet it appears by all rights to be true. My life has gone mad and is bringing me with it. Next I will be told that I shall have to defeat Discord himself with a...with a foil cape and a dagger!” she gestured at her cape, still laughing.
“Oh that would never work,” Celestia said, suddenly serious. “I once battled Him to a standstill in a suit of armor constructed entirely of bread.”
“Bread?” squeaked the unicorn incredulously.
Celestia winked. “It was a rhetorical battle, but I believe it still counted. He was quite mad, you know.”
“Well...well I simply don’t know what to say to that! You see, I had thought at first that you were a spy, first meeting you. Then I thought that you were a rare earth pony scholar sent to steal my research. Upon reaching that blasted cloud city, I had to admit you were something more, but to find out and know without a doubt that you are, in fact, Celes—”
The earth pony removed her hoof from Midnight’s mouth, and then looked at it. “I am really gaining an appreciation for these beauties, now that they are my primary physical attribute.”
“Yes...well...you might want to wash them,” Midnight muttered, wiping her lips off on a cloth.
“But I thought everything my hooves touched turned to ambrosia?” Celestia said with a self-mocking smile. “My advisers are most mistaken.” She laughed gaily—it felt so good to finally be free to be herself once more, in the mind if not in the body.
Midnight rolled her eyes but smiled as well. “Goddesses...But...what now? We cannot seriously stay here until Firebelle recovers. We will go to the library then...just run through the Everfree? I still have little to no confidence in my prowess in the field of battle.”
Celestia frowned. “No offense to Firebelle, but I’d rather she didn’t accompany us. She has entirely the wrong mindset, our enemy’s mindset. I hope that she one day forgives us and goes on to become a capable defender of whatever home she eventually settles in. But no, battles are not the solution, they are the problem. They are what the gods want—amusements to satiate their bloodlust. I am going to try to get us through this without any more battles, if I can possibly help it. And if I can’t...well, I think you did very well the last time, despite some very unfair odds.”
Midnight bowed her head briefly at the complement. “Well thank you, but I don’t think my vomit did anything for our survival. But since I have no reason left to doubt who you are, I am sure that you of all ponies can get us through this without a fight.”
“Thank you for your faith in me. I think we’d better find lodgings for the night, before all the good ones are taken. You would not believe how bad it feels to have a sore body after so long with a tireless one.” She led Midnight back out into the light.
“Hmm...faith in you. That could very well get me killed, couldn’t it?” Midnight asked as she repacked her things into the cart.
Celestia sighed. “It is indeed a perilous path we face. But I’m glad we are facing it together.”
“Oh no, I mean that the gods will kill me if I become your follower,” she said matter-of-factly. “Rules of the adventurer and all.” She finished packing and hooked herself up to it, waiting for Hope to lead.
“Please don’t be my follower,” Celestia gently pleaded. “I’ve had so many of those, and they’ve always gotten themselves in trouble, hurting themselves and others trying to second-guess me, getting themselves hung up in whether they were ‘worthy’ of this or that in my presence. When I had a friend, the two of us saved the world a half-dozen times in a single year. I know it is a lot to ask, but could you consider being my friend instead of my follower?”
Midnight’s eyes went wide at the impossible task that had been set before. “Oh of course,” she said lightly, trying to cover up her nervousness, “but for now...” She gestured toward the road. “You know where the places to stay likely are—let’s hope this is not too much following. Wouldn’t want one of them glaring at me while I sleep.”
“Alright,” Celestia said with a smile. “I think I saw someplace where we can sleep under a tent next to the market. Should be a good deal cheaper than the inns.”
“Good. Good. You know, if you get all your power back...do you think you could stick me in a lab somewhere?” She rubbed one hoof nervously against another. “It...doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“Royal patronage of the arts and sciences,” Celestia declared, thrusting a forehoof into the air. “It’s a line item in the budget!”
“Excellent, excellent. I look forward to spending months on a project to have you, all sparkly and rainbow colored, come down and tell me that I’ve missed something huge. It’ll be great,” she laughed.
Stats
Page generated in 0.039 seconds
Total duration
1,075 users online
1,957,466 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Big reveal. Mane jokes.
Wow, apparently I was more right than I suspected in wondering when Midnight was going to figure out Hope. Well, not so much figure out as demand answers, but in the end, same difference.
Heh, gotta love Celestia, "Find out how they work and mess it up". Good thing she plans on her feet so well, and I say that completely non-sarcastically given what we've seen her get up to in the 'verse this is being fictionally written in. Midnight has decent parts of a plan, too, and now that Celestia is aware I bet she'll be able to make use of them very effectively.
So they are planning on operating under Luna's name or something instead of Celestia's? I'm torn between loving that and wondering about the reasons behind that, as well as the details about Celestia investing time into having a family right when her sister was falling and needed her. Haven't we more or less come to the conclusion that Luna is the author? Makes me wonder how much of the backstory is fictional and how much is biographical.
I love it, and again, I really have to wonder how much the character of Midnight is being informed by the author's acquaintanceship with Twilight.
5110705
That is a filthy lie, for Celestia has no feet to plan on!
Hooves, on the other hoof...
5110974 Technically speaking, horses have feet, their feet just happen to have hooves on the bottom in the same way that humans have feet that end in toes.
5110705
You, you did read the note atop the last chapter, yes, about past events being fictional? Well that note applies here as well. I can assure you that my sister most certainly did not lose her mind after losing her chance at a family.
In addition, thank you for the comparisons to Miss Twilight Sparkle--they are indeed deliberate, a cribbing of sorts considering the historically inspired characters of Morningstar and Eveningstar Sparkle in The Best of All Possible Worlds. And since I know full well that Miss Sparkle is reading this story, I'd like to let her know that I am open to anything she has to say on the matter, either in public or via this site's private messaging function.
5111041
If you want to be all fancy and semantical, suuuurree they have the same bone structure, buuuut!
Midnight = Twilight Sparkle analog?
5112589
???
*peace
5418045
Homonyms, my mortal foe!
And thank you, dear sir, for spotting that one.