Chapter 5: Sworn by the Horn of a Unicorn
At the Inn of the Prancing Pony
Chapter 5: Sworn by the Horn of a Unicorn
Celestia walked through the gates into Horn’s Reach. The space between the open doors was easily wide enough to let in ten ponies marching abreast, with two ranks of pegasi above them. Around her the unicorn soldiers involved in the recent skirmish were also entering, at their own pace. Before her was the taciturn Captain Sparkle, with the diminutive colt riding in one of the Captain’s saddlebags and looking back at her.
“Why did that adventurer say that you were driving their god mad?”, the colt asked, head tilted to one side. “It hardly seems within the reach of a commoner, really, though I suppose that it could have been dramatized, but why would they even claim that?” He still seemed to retain some of the same nervous energy that he had displayed upon the battlefield.
Celestia stopped to think for a moment. “I’m not really sure,” she said, finally. “I’m not exactly privy to the thoughts of a goddess, after all. As near as I can tell from those ponies’ reactions, She seemed to find fault with me the moment I met them.” She noticed that the Captain, although facing forward through this answer, most certainly had her ears swiveled to take in her words.
In truth, the question had been puzzling Celestia ever since Foaltus apparently ordered Her followers to stop talking to her. If She knew who Celestia really was, She almost certainly would have acted, considering how easily Celestia had been put down earlier. And yet if the goddess didn’t know who “Hope Springs” really was, why the odd reaction?
Seeing that the other ponies were starting to stare at her, Celestia began walking again. She noted that the town within the gates was populated almost entirely by unicorns. Not a single pegasus could be seen. As for earth ponies, there was a scrawny stallion a few blocks down, pulling a small covered cart and humming a merry tune. As she watched, the stallion left his cart on the side of the road to trot up to a door. He knocked a couple of times, and when the door was opened, presented a bouquet of flowers to a matronly unicorn, who quickly turned red with embarrassment. All this was accompanied by an absurd song and dance, the extra-loud chorus of which consisted of the words “he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s really, really sorry!” Nearby unicorns laughed cruelly at this display.
Celestia narrowed her eyes, looking around her more carefully. All of the doorknobs she could see were the round kind, the kind that could not be easily operated by pegasus or earth pony. And several of the businesses she passed had signs depicting silhouettes of earth and pegasus ponies inside “not” symbols.
“I hope you give that mudhoof what she deserves!” cried out a female unicorn who was leaning out of a second-story window and looking down at Celestia. “What all of those mudhooves deserve!”
Celestia sighed and put a blank expression on her face. Great, she thought to herself. They lose central leadership for two generations, and some of them are back to pre-Hearth’s Warming attitudes already.
“Miss? Miss Prisoner?”
Celestia looked over at the colt, who gestured at the Captain’s head.
“I said, did you speak to Her?” the unicorn mare asked.
Celestia was startled. She had half-expected Captain Sparkle to be a mute.
The colt took her pause in speaking as a sign of confusion. “Their goddess, I think, the captain means,” he said hesitantly, obviously trying not to invoke the wrath of the pony under him. He was relieved to see the Captain nod in acknowledgement.
“Gods do not pay attention to mortals,” the mare continued. “They only care for heroes, adventurers, and their own inscrutable aims. If you are not a hero, or an adventurer, then what scheme or plot have you become part of?”
“Well, I suppose that’s it, Captain, Ma’am,” Celestia said cautiously. “I approached them wishing to know more about them and their way of life. Perhaps She turned cold when She realized that I had no intention of becoming a hero myself. Of course, that assumes that Foaltus sees far more in me than I think She should.”
Very carefully phrased, that last sentence was. Celestia prided herself on a firm dedication to telling the truth whenever possible. Sometimes, she herself was unaware of how much manipulation she was achieving purely through proper application of said truth.
Celestia’s pride of phrasing was soon interrupted, as she felt yet another pair of eyes upon her, but these were coming from an impossible direction: beneath her hooves.
“Miss? Miss?” the voice of the colt called out to her, but it seemed to be from a million strides away.
Celestia froze as she realized that saying Foaltus’ name out loud had the unwanted side-effect of attracting Her attention. She felt that unblinking gaze penetrate all the way through her. It saw only the earth pony part of her, but still it remained upon her, as if confused.
The Captain stopped, turned, and examined the unmoving figure of Hope Springs.
A minute passed in silence, and then Celestia finally gasped in relief as she felt herself released from godly scrutiny. Having been the subject of similar magics far too often in her life, she was certain that her secret had not been discovered...this time.
To the waiting Captain Sparkle, she blushed and looked away. “Sorry,” she said. “Panic attack.” This was only a slight exaggeration of the truth.
The captain nodded to herself with a disparaging snort and resumed her walk into the outpost of Horn’s Reach. The colt looked back and forth between the two mares, confused and a bit worried.
After that, a deep silence descended upon the trio, as the earth pony was led into a denser part of town. Stone walls closed around them, leaving only enough room for the three ponies and the increasing number of guards that lined the alleys. The unicorns who actually lived in this part of town, by contrast, were dressed in rags, sitting on street corners with bowls to receive alms.
The bowls were invariably pulled away whenever Celestia got too close. “Go back to your hole, mudhoof!” an anonymous voice cried out after she had passed. Celestia refused to acknowledge it.
Finally, they arrived at a squat one-room building, its single iron-banded door defended by one of the biggest unicorns Celestia had ever seen. Guard unicorns looked down at them from stations along the roof. After the Captain whispered a password into the ear of the doorpony, the portal was slowly opened, revealing the walls of the building to be nearly as wide as a pony. Celestia felt the weight of more than a dozen unicorn guards staring down at her, assessing her as a potential threat to whomever was within.
The guards stepped aside, revealing a staircase leading deep into the ground lined with magical torches. Without a word, a guard fell into line behind her as she and the Captain descended into the depths. Several minutes passed before the stairs opened up into one of the cleanest hallways Celestia had seen since waking up. A hidden castle, she suddenly realized, built into the dark under the poorest part of the city. No adventurer would think to raid here.
“Come on, you need to keep going,” the colt beckoned, when Celestia paused.
“Of...of course,” Celestia said with a nod, before continuing onward.
The click of hooves on stone floors echoed around them, while hallways and doors passed them by.
The young scribe seemed to calm down as Celestia watched, comforted by being in a safe area at last.
After a few more moments, the quartet arrived at a door, which Captain Sparkle opened but did not enter. Inside, a stallion in robes sat on the other side of a table.
It seemed clear that Celestia was expected to enter this room alone. After a quick glance at the unicorn guard behind her, she turned back to the two ponies who had led her here. “Thank you, Captain, ...” She realized that she never got the name of the colt, or his title (if he had one). “...Sir,” she said by way of substitution.
The two turned and left with the guard once Celestia was on her way in. She thought she saw the colt giving her a worried look for a moment. Before she could be sure of this, the door finished swinging shut by its own weight, leaving leave Celestia stuck in a small room with this stern-looking stallion.
Behind the stallion was hung a large painting portraying a tall white unicorn mare, old but still coldly beautiful. She had a long sharp horn, a gray mane with accents of its former golden color, and pale blue eyes. She was wearing the traditional crown of the ancient kingdom of the unicorns and draped over her back and neck was the purple robe of the monarchy, trimmed with white ermine and secured by a gem-studded peytral. As usual for a pony portrait, the subject was posed so that her cutie mark, a yellow and blue compass rose, was visible even as she looked at the viewer. Or, in this particular case, looked above the viewer, for the mare’s nose was clearly in the air. She wore an expression of faint contempt as she looked down upon the stallion, Celestia, and anypony else who she deigned to remain in the same room with her. A golden nameplate embedded in the rosewood frame identified this queen as “PLATINUM IX”, an unbroken continuation from the famous Princess Platinum’s grandmother.
By contrast, a smaller sketch filled in with watercolors was hung on the further end of a side wall, bounded by a simple oak frame. By its angle to her current position, it was hard for Celestia to make out clearly. Eventually she was able to work out that it depicted the very stallion sitting before Celestia, along with what must be his wife and three children. The eldest of the two daughters was none other than Captain Sparkle only a few years after her cutie years, while the male foal suspended by the wife’s magic was probably the nameless colt from earlier, confirming that this work was executed nearly a decade ago. The wife was the only unicorn in the portrait besides the foal with even a hint of a smile upon her face. Her unusually tall stature, her white coat and blonde mane, and especially her cutie mark identified her as a relative of the Queen. The younger daughter, on another hoof [1], was the most serious of the quintet, having what was very close to a scowl upon her features. She had a dark blue coat with a white mane and lavender eyes. Her cutie mark was most unusual: an open flask seated on a stand over a small flame, with bits of metal suspended in the liquid within, and curved arrows looping out from each piece of metal to the outside air. Each arrow ended in the symbol of a little triangle resting on a cross, with smaller circles at each apex of the triangle. It looked like it came right out of a chemistry textbook.
Editor’s Note #1: The phrase “on another hoof”, while a cognate of the human phrase “on the other hand”, has the significant difference that there is expected to be as much as three alternatives available, instead of the single alternative implied by the latter phrase.
Celestia reflected upon the locations of the two portraits. The portrait of the queen was positioned to intimidate those this stallion dealt with on a daily basis, but he never had to look upon it himself. The family portrait, by contrast, was there purely for the stallion’s benefit, and not that of his visitors.
The earth pony’s contemplations were interrupted by the voice of the pony before her. “Please sit,” he said. “My name is Duke Comet, and from what I understand your name is Hope?” He was relaxed but firm, with a presence not unlike a father scolding his child for a minor transgression. Wearing robes over his nearly ceremonial armor, the dark grey coat was marked with scars along his forelegs, which held a small stack of papers.
“Your Grace,” Celestia said quickly with a bow of the appropriate depth expected for a duke, and with the proper degree of reverence in her voice. She wondered how this pony knew her name. Beside the adventurers, she had only introduced herself to Stride Eater; nopony else bothered to refer to her as anything other than “that pony with the heroes”, or “the prisoner”. That meant that this duke must have already interrogated the earth pony general, and done so quickly. It looked like the Duke was rather interested in knowing more about her.
Celestia decided to say nothing to confirm that Hope was her name (and thereby avoiding lying), but nothing in her expression suggested that she would answer to any other name. “How may I serve you?” she asked. Once again, this was the proper thing to say as a prisoner of war. It was expected that a gracious leader would not take advantage of such a prisoner’s lack of rights, but there had never been a law enforcing this preference. Her eyes remained on the wood of the table, because one in her position (as a captive or as a peasant) needed permission to look up upon her superior.
Celestia maintained these rituals when she became princess because of the effect that forgiveness and leniency had upon her enemies—and such gestures were meaningless when they were mandated. She was about to find out if the decision not to overturn those rules was a wise one to leave to her successors.
“I have no need for you to serve me, necessarily,” the duke said with an amused tone, “though in all likelihood your cooperation would be appreciated nonetheless.” The stallion looked down to his papers and moved one behind the another. “Where were you born?” he asked.
“The village of Oriano,” she said, “about twenty days walk to the southwest of here.” It was nearly the truth; to be exactly right, she would have had to say, “In a cave on the borders of Equestria that Discord later moved next to the Canterhorn and turned into a plain, upon which the village of Oriano was eventually founded,” but it was close enough.
The stallion nodded and shuffled his papers again before looking up at Celestia. “And your parents’ names? Just for the record.”
“Safflower and Oleander.” Now here she had to lie. One of her parents was far too well-known for her to use any of his aliases. (Although it did amuse her slightly that in the play, Clover the Clever was always played by a mare nowadays.) The ponies she named were the parents of her namesake. She had never met those two ponies and so, in naming them, it was her own forebears that she imagined. Perhaps that’s why her voice trembled with a hint of irritation when she said “Oleander.” Even as a fictional father, there was still a stain attached.
“I see. Were they adventurers, explorers, or heroes?” he asked quickly, as he leaned forward.
This was not part of her prepared backstory, but now that she was thinking about her parents, she was perfectly willing to find an excuse to express her feelings. “He had some...ambitions in that area,” she said, making it sound like a reluctant admission. “It did not go well, for either of them.” Especially not for her.
The Duke smiled apologetically before driving the point home. “So you thought you could do better? Or did this other group of so called ‘heroes’ prove your preconceptions as being worth their weight in gold?”
Celestia blinked in surprise at his perspicacity. “I was seeking knowledge,” she said. She thought over the scenario Duke Comet had presented, and what he might conclude based on her collusion with this particular band of adventurers. She was worried that he would think too badly of her. “I dare say that one data point does not make a set. I was...most unpleasantly surprised by how that turned out.”
“Knowledge, an intellectual then?” the duke concluded. “Or even a scholar if you had the chance? High ambitions for an earth pony. It’s a shame, you seem to have a good head on your shoulders.”
...too bad it doesn’t end in a point, Celestia mentally completed the sentence for him. She cursed herself for getting caught up in her thought experiment, and giving too much of herself away, all because she didn’t want the pony before her to be fooled in the wrong way. “If you say so, Your Grace,” she replied humbly.
He smiled at the silent mood shift, and leaned away from her, holding up her papers in his magic. “Officially, you are an adventurer without a license,” he told her, “who has surrendered herself to our judgment.”
Celestia quietly cursed the one enemy she could never vanquish: bureaucracy. She highly doubted that the adventurers themselves gave a speck [2] for whether they or the ordinary ponies they invited into their company had a piece of paper with them or not.
Editor’s Note #2: A speck is a unit of paper currency equal to one one-thousandth of a bit. It is one of the few forms of exchange that are worth precisely as much as the paper they are printed on.
“I suppose your...willingness could provide you with a certain amount of lenience,” the stallion said, putting on what Celestia judged to be a pretty good poker face, “though more important than even that is the possible knowledge you may have regarding those you recently traveled with, and their goals.”
They were now in the bargaining phase of the interrogation. The duke possessed the ability to grant Celestia her freedom, and Celestia possessed some facts that she knew the duke would appreciate knowing.
“No license!” Celestia exclaimed in mock dismay. “Oh dear. My ignorance is even vaster than I thought!” (Of course there was no way Celestia was going to let the permit issue drop without a snarky comment, regardless of the damage it might do to how the other pony perceived her.) “They were after some...object in your possession. A magic...staff, I believe?” She tossed this off like she wasn’t aware of its significance.
“Oh, just a magic staff?” He shrugged and looked away, as if running a mental tally. Celestia knew then that this would not be an easy bargain for her to make. “Such a shame we don’t know which one. If we did we might be able to seek out those who have revealed its location. By any chance was it in the armory?”
Celestia suspected that he knew precisely what staff she was talking about, and was just trying to get her to reveal her ignorance. “No...it wasn’t the armory,” she said, scratching her chin with one hoof. “The...pillory? It was next to the pillory. One of them cast a spell to find it the last time they were visiting the area.”
“I see, the pillory! Well, that is quite the find. Thank you for that.”
There was a pause while he wrote something down on his papers. He then looked up at her and smiled. “And what was your assignment, or job in all this? As much as the adventurers are prone to abduct or accept wandering ponies, they usually assign some task.”
Celestia smiled inwardly at his attempt to entrap her. It was nearly worthy of her own interrogations. “I was guarding their treasure,” she said simply.
The Duke waited for her to say more. When she did not, he raised an eyebrow. “That is all?” he asked. “Surely they would want you in combat, or doing something in town to cause a diversion. They simply had you watch a box?”
Celestia furrowed her brow, trying to follow his true goals behind this line of questioning. “Causing a diversion? Well, that would be an excellent plan in principle, but I believe the army of fanatical earth ponies was being used for that purpose. One more earth pony could hardly make a difference now, would it?”
“Ah, so you knew that the army that they had amassed was being used for a diversion,” he said with a smile, causing Celestia to inwardly groan. “That is curious; many adventurers that are new to all this would have assumed that they were a crucial attack force. So many ponies became victim to their fervor...”
This was a serious accusation. Celestia honestly didn’t think she could have done anything to reduce the number of pony casualties on either side during the siege, but she was upset to realize that she had never given the matter a moment’s thought at the time, so intent was she on escaping her captors, and ideally hurting them in the process. It was a lapse unworthy of a princess. But that realization had to be a guide to her future behavior. For now, she had to prove that she didn’t actively plan for the injuries of anypony. “They were remarkably candid to me about their motivations, Your Grace,” she said. “Almost as if they didn’t think me capable of doing anything about them. By and large, they were correct.”
“I see.” There was more scribbling on the papers as his silver sheen tapped the quill across the page. He then looked back to Celestia and took on a puzzled expression. “Why did you choose to leave them? Was it just their ruthlessness, or something more?”
“They had been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.” That was what she wanted to say. It was a quote she was perhaps too fond of. Instead, she said, “It was becoming increasingly clear that they were a danger to everypony around them, including, inevitably, myself. And, I wished to have no part with what they were planning next.” She was preparing to tell him about the tomb the adventurers planned to loot, which would almost certainly lead to the release of untold numbers of monsters upon the land. It was her trump card, the one she was certain would buy her her freedom.
Instead of asking the inevitable question, the Duke abruptly set the papers and quill aside and leaned in to examine her as clearly as possible. “Your vocabulary is quite impressive,” he observed. “Is there a university in your home town? What was it called again?”
Celestia couldn’t stop herself from gasping slightly. She had revealed her intelligence, to one who probably believed that only unicorns deserved to be educated. It was jail for her for sure, unless she found a way to play the stallion’s certain prejudice against him. “Oh dear,” she said, scraping one hoof on the floor. “The fact of the matter is...that I am very well read. My father was a very ambitious pony. I...hope you aren’t too upset with me. The ponies in my village feel that reading rots the brain, so I generally try not to let on about that sort of thing.” In this way, she hoped to play on his beliefs about what earth ponies did back in their mud-caked little villages.
“On the contrary,” he said with a smile, “I find that only employing and associating with the well-read is a sure plan to success.”
Celestia’s eyes went wide, as she realized how badly she had misjudged this pony.
“You’ve told me you have found these adventurers to be...untoward,” the duke continued, “but how certain are you in this aim? I am a politician first, you see, and a military man second. In all the political dealings I am forced into I find that adventurers never solve a problem. At best they apply a temporary solution that wastes time and resources. You are an intelligent pony, what would you do to change this world, to rid ourselves of these imbeciles with too many swords and not enough words?”
His speech had the sound of a political one, as though he was campaigning to Celestia, and if she were anything but a politician herself it would surely be compelling.
Celestia looked upon Duke Comet in awe, not because of the power of his words, but because he was permitted to speak those words aloud at all. After all, Foaltus had clearly demonstrated Her ability to manipulate minds. And yet here before her was a pony not under the influence of her enemies. She had to know more.
“I...I lack the information, Your Grace,” she said with an air of false nervousness, “although I agree with your goal, if it is even possible. I believe...I believe you would have to stop the source of their power. After all, they are but ordinary ponies before...before whatever it is that turns them into adventurers happens. That is something I still need to discover, before I can give you a fuller answer.”
Comet’s smile couldn’t be more confident, as he stood and turned to the wall behind him. His horn glowed and on that wall an image took shape, glowing a bit brighter than the heatless torch on the wall.
The image consisted of a set of arcane symbols, and it only took Celestia a moment to connect them with the names beneath them, and then to their meaning: Foaltus, Kelogto, Cutbelt, Calorus, and Howard. It was a pantheon.
With his hoof pointed at the symbols, he opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t say their names!” she exclaimed, lunging forward to attempt to block his mouth with her hoof. Of course, his magic stopped her instantly.
“I was going to warn you of the same,” he said with a smile as he set her down, quite indulgently considering that she had attempted to assault him. “You recognize these as the names of the gods that give the adventurers, at least most of them, their power. It may be foolhardy, and I may be playing my cards upon the table too quick, but if there is one thing I know it is spies. You are not a spy, Hope Springs, yet you act like one. You know more than any earth pony I have met. Would you be my spy?”
He stood up and looked at the earth pony, tentative, his smile more cautious now.
He clearly knew that Hope Springs was more than she appeared to be, and yet he had stopped trying to tear her story apart. This measure of trust filled Celestia with hope. Her eyes rested on his for the first time in this conversation, silently judging him, letting her full personality and intelligence show. “There is a pony in your territories,” she told him, “a pony who once was a hero: Rigged Bee. I need to speak with her—she may be the key to all of this.”
“I can get you to her,” he said, using the tone of one speaking to an equal for the first time. “Under the guise of serving my younger daughter, who seems to refuse to stay in one place for any length of time, you can get nearly anywhere. She has been driving my colleagues mad with her own plans anyhow. Though I must have your allegiance if I am to place this power in your hooves, and if you are to be in the company of my own child. Will you ally yourself to this cause?”
At the word “allegiance”, Celestia’s hope had ebbed, as she feared that the duke would demand that she swear fealty to him. But a request that she merely ally herself, with no diminishment of her status, was far more than she had dreamed of achieving on entering this conversation. “My cause is that of every free pony in Equestria: earth, pegasus or unicorn,” she told him. “You ask for my allegiance, not my subservience. You shall have it.” She held out her hoof, not as a peasant, but as something at least as politically powerful as he was.
The Duke hesitated only for a moment while looking Celestia over, before he held out his own hoof.
“If treating an earth pony as I would a unicorn will help save this world,” he said solemnly, “I will do so.”
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For those interested in such things, it will take a few days this time for the inevitable blog post on an unrelated subject to show up. I've picked a gem of a subject this time around, one that requires the proper degree of research to do properly.
Speaking as the actual as opposed to the fictional author, this chapter marks the true beginning of my collaboration with Hope. So if you see a distinct rise in quality starting with this chapter, then all credit goes to her. And if in retrospect you think the quality started to go downhill with this chapter, well clearly that's my fault for not using her talents correctly.
For the portrait of Queen Platinum, I'm thinking something between this and this.
I find it amusing that Duke Comet is both clearly racist and an essentially reasonable pony.
I found an error. I believe a word was dropped. The questionable passage is underlined following.
4519516 I think you give me too much credit, Poodly.
Whoever came up with that pantheon lacked imagination:p Howard. I hope he's not a duck.
4519787
Fixed.
I'm definitely liking Hope's new traveling party, or traveling companion at least. Though that does make me wonder if more party members might show up.
I like the Duke. In spite of the inherent racism that his society has descended into, he jumps pretty rapidly into recruiting a non-unicorn to help save the world.
An error you may have missed:
While the sentence is technically correct in isolation, was would make a better word in this location.
4527488
Got it, thank you.
4519787
One is reminded somewhat of abolitionists, most of whom disagreed with slaveholders only on how to treat people who were obviously naturally inferior, rather than on their judgement of inferiority itself.
Yay, Fantastic Racism! Such a fun trope to play with.
I'll admit I liked this chapter a lot more than the previous ones, but that had mainly to do with its tone. Looks like things are starting to look up for "Hope!"
Secret Agent Mare?
Filthy dirt ponies, they should be glad to have such superior beings like unicorns to rule over them.