Harmony Consultant

by jqnexx

Phase 2: Escalation, Part 4

Some ponies would be surprised that the hedge maze of the Canterlot Royal Palace wasn’t patrolled by guards, but there were several good reasons for this.

The first is that inside the hedge maze, you couldn’t see very far. A guard inside would be almost useless.

The second was that getting to the hedge maze would require you to either bypass all the security of the surrounding areas, or the teleportation diversion field around the castle.

Ordinarily, the teleportation diversion field would first teleport the caster if they weren’t teleporting themselves along. Second, it would reset the destination for the dungeon. Third, it would divert all weapons to the Royal Guard evidence locker established for this purpose, and any explosives to a gorge in the badlands. Finally, it would place inhibitor bands on any horns present.

Mir’s teleport was aimed more or less right over the hedge maze. The diversion field attempted to obey its dictates in order. The first step would be to bring the caster along for the ride. Unfortunately, pony magical theorists tended to assume only Unicorns (or Alicorns using their Unicorn magic) could teleport. Thus, “caster” was formally defined as “the amplifier (read: horn) and everything attached to it.”

The amplifier in this case was the Tower of Ar Tonelico, and “everything attached to it” was the entire planet of Ar Ciel. Fortunately, the spell was unable to budge that mass at all.

Unfortunately, trying had overloaded the spell, causing all of the decorative inlay that was secretly its anchor to explode in showers of sparks throughout the outside of the castle.

Even more unfortunately, it never got around to doing any of the remaining parts of the spell. Thus, Mir and Croix popped back into the material world right over the hedge maze with all of their weapons and absolutely no inhibitor bands.

Mir did a fast front flip to stabilize herself, then landed with her front hooves together, followed by her back hooves.

Croix flapped once to kill his momentum right before landing. “OK, now what?”

“Now we…” A sudden glow to her right startled Mir from her plotting. As the two turned to face it, the glow coalesced into a shining yellow orb.

“Greetings, Sunset Shimmer. I am so glad that you have returned. Please make your way to the throne room, I wish to speak with you.” The voice was female, and sounded vaguely motherly to Mir, and a tiny bit like Shurelia, but mostly in that it sounded to her like someone with a great deal of life experience. Then it hit her. That was President Togasaki’s voice! She’d heard it in recordings.

“Huh, the program thinks I’m Sunset Shimmer? Then how could she be dead? Or maybe she’s undead and this is the vampire thing again.” Mir’s face had twisted into a scowl as she tried to process the insanity going on around her. Shurelia was going to pay.

“As you were my student, I will make one of the secret passages available to you so that we can be reintroduced.”

Mir grinned. This could be a trap, but she felt ready for anything. “Follow the orb.”

---

Celestia let out a weary sigh as she levitated the immense grip of documents before her. From in front she’d be entirely blotted out by over fifty sheets of paper or scrolls held in her yellow aura. Day Court’s morning session wouldn’t begin for a little while, and she had decided to catch up on her responsibilities to the School for Gifted Unicorns. If she was honest with herself, she preferred administering an educational institution to ruling a nation. If she felt she wasn’t needed, she’d gladly make a figurehead of herself and run the School full-time.

Sometimes a Pegasus or Earth Pony would ask why she didn’t administer the schools for those gifted in their particular magics. The answer was always the same: because Earth Pony and Pegasus magic couldn’t get out of hand on its own to the degree that she’d need to step in personally. After Twilight Sparkle’s entrance exam, the explanation wasn’t needed as often. Still, there was always something odd. Unicorns seemed to attract far more trouble than the other pony kinds.

“Really? Attempted suicide?” Celestia parted the wall of paper to gaze down at the pony at the foot of the throne. Dean Wellwisher had been Dean of Students for the School for almost two decades now. The brown Unicorn possessed a gray mane and a cutie mark of a shooting star. Celestia recalled that his special talent was a spell that granted small wishes. Nothing more substantial than candy usually, but quite impressive in its complexity.

“Yes, your majesty. Starlight Glimmer had been behaving oddly for quite some time now. She’d refused to give any information on her project to her advisor for almost two weeks. We’d been about to confront her a week ago, ask her if she was taking her studies seriously, but she was gone.

“Three days ago she was found at the outpost North of the Everfree Forest wandering in a confused state. The guards put her on a train to Canterlot and one of them escorted her back to our custody. She seemed better, so the dorm’s RA let her go back to her room.

“She didn’t leave until this morning. The RA entered the room to find her passed out on her bed, and was unable to wake her. We rushed her to the School medical facility, where the doctor detected traces of Somniarch in her system. Her condition is stable, but we’re unable to get any response out of her.”

“Somniarch?” Celestia could vaguely remember that term.

“It’s a powerful sedative. Sometimes a patient must be placed into a coma due to brain injuries, and it’s generally used to start the process. We… don’t know how much she took, or where she got it. It’s theoretically possible she simply conjured it into herself.”

Celestia closed her eyes to think. Suicide was quite rare in Equestria, and had become even rarer since Luna’s return to dreamwalking. She opened her eyes again. “Do you know why she might have done any of this?”

“Well, not really. There was a letter, but it’s encrypted.”

“Encrypted?” Celestia’s eyebrow raised. That was an unusual attribute for a letter.

“It was enclosed in two envelopes. The outermost one was addressed to you, actually. Inside it was a second envelope marked only ‘for them.’ Within that was a letter covered with letters and numbers in a meaningless jumble, but it seems quite likely to be some sort of code.”

Celestia closed her eyes once again. I wish I had more time to devote to my students. I wish I could devolve some of my responsibilities to Twilight, but since that nasty business with the Changelings and her brother, her own insecurities have been consuming her. And now we have another promising young mare I’ve been unable to help, it seems. “I’ll take this letter, the codebreakers are idle until we can find any evidence of Changeling communication.”

“Really? Devoting Guard resources to help some mental case?”

Celestia turned her head to the right, looking directly at her new Captain of the Royal Guard with a glare that could slay dragons. The tall mare had a dark gray coat and a striking red mane and tail, with a cutie mark of a red arrow smashing through a blue shield. Unlike most unicorns she possessed no stripe in her mane or tail, and unlike most Royal Guards she disdained armor, wearing only an enchanted manticore-leather bandoleer for her darts.

Under her glare, Red Cell flinched almost imperceptibly, then took a breath to center herself. “I apologize, your majesty. I did not mean to denigrate one of the students of your… School. I merely wish to conserve resources to focus on the Changeling threat.”

Celestia softened her glare slightly. Before becoming a Royal Guard, Red Cell had served in the EUP’s North district, fighting monsters threatening Chicoltgo, Detrot, and other cities and towns. She’d thought of everything in the calculus of lives sacrificed and saved. Sometimes the hardened warrior beneath slipped out from under her new mask. “Remember that the Guard is a policing force. I see no harm in providing a task to resources which are otherwise idle. If we find something Changeling for them to work on, I shall de-prioritize my request.”

Red Cell gave a curt bow. “Your majesty’s will be done.”

Celestia levitated a form and a quill to herself, then began to write. “See to it that this is carried out promptly.” The completed form hovered over to Red Cell.

“Yes ma’am.” The yellow aura was exchanged for a red one, and after giving it a quick review, Red Cell folded it and passed it to a Unicorn guard, who took it and exited the throne room.

“Now, we…” Celestia’s words were interrupted as a guard rushed in.

“Your majesty! Something has taken out the teleportation wards for the castle!”

“WHAT!??!” Red Cell had rushed between the throne and the guard. “Give me a detailed report!” She turned to a nearby guard. “You! Go and sound the alarm!”

“Just now the matrix was shattered due to an overload. We’ve sent teams to search the grounds.”

Celestia alighted beside Red Cell. “How could this have happened? In order to overload the matrix, it would require the unauthorized teleport of thousands of ponies worth of mass. Surely an army that size can’t hide in the palace grounds?” What could even teleport that much mass in one go. Discord might be able to, but I doubt it. His abilities were focused on illusions and mental control. Tirek? No, I would be able to sense him if he was that powerful. The Smooze? Not much of a teleporter. There’s no way I couldn’t recognize a Nether Horror within the radius of the wards. What could…

At that moment, a glowing ball emerged from the stone side wall of the throne room. Red Cell turned to it and lit her horn with a snarl, but Celestia forestalled her with an outstretched hoof. “That is one of my notification spells. It tells me that the secret passage there is being used by somepony I invited.”

The ball chimed once. “Sunset Shimmer is here.”

Red Cell’s horn ceased to glow, but her grim expression remained. She pushed the upraised hoof out of her face and took a step forward. “Your majesty, with all due respect, this could be a Changeling plot.”

Celestia raised her right wing, completely blocking the orb from Red Cell’s sight. “I very much doubt that. Queen Chrysalis was unable to disguise the resonance signature of her horn, if I had paid more attention to the color of her aura we could have been spared the invasion. My spellwork, however, very precisely identifies all those I wish to allow into the castle’s secret passages. Now, my little ponies, let’s get ready to greet our guest.”

Red Cell groaned. When Celestia says “my little ponies” it means she isn’t going to take the arguments of her “lessers’” seriously.

Red Cell stood at attention at the foot of the throne, slightly off to the side. Celestia returned to her seat with a few flaps backwards, then adopted an expression of studious boredom.

There was a click, and a sliding sound as the wall opened where the orb had appeared.

---

Croix flapped into the room, hovering so that he wouldn’t have to try to walk on three legs with the lance strapped to his foreleg. The black and red unicorn at the base of the throne looked extremely alarmed and opened her mouth to say something, then closed it with a seething glare. Up above was a very large white “Alicorn” sitting on a throne. That sure does look like Shurelia’s style of avatar. Except for the size.

Mir followed him into the room at a trot, keeping up with his languid hover but moving with a fierce energy. If she weighed more, her hooves might have cracked the marble where they landed.

“You’re… not Sunset Shimmer.” Celestia’s expression had turned to abject confusion. How could this be? Did they somehow modify the spell?

“Shut up about Sunset Shimmer you old hag!” Mir punctuated her sentence with a stomp as she began to move towards the throne.

“Ca… can I help you, my little pony?” Celestia’s mind had blanked out, and she went with her default petitioner-handling voice.

“Of course, Shurelia.”

“Shur–” Celestia tried to place the name, but it sounded entirely unfamiliar. Why is she calling me that?

“Hold still!” Mir lept from the base of the throne to the top, sending a flying power-slap directly onto Celestia’s muzzle.

As everypony in the room stared, flecks of spittle flew from the surprised Princess’s mouth as her head wrenched sideways.

Mir landed at her feet, glaring up at the larger pony. “I’ve had it with you messing with me, Shurelia! You’re going to get it now!”

“Shurelia?” Celestia was still too confused to muster any counterattack or defense.

Oh. Oh no. If she’s not Shurelia… then… maybe the reason I can’t sense the Binary Field… is that this is real. This is all, somehow, real. And I just assaulted a second Princess. Mir's expression shifted from anger, to confusion, to an awkward attempt at guilelessness. “I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I said that I was the ambassador from the Sol Ciel region of Ar Ciel, would you?”

Celestia glared down at her. Mir leaped backwards, doing a flip over Croix and landing behind him.

At that moment, the first of the additional guards that Red Cell had called for entered via the side passage behind her. “Assassins! Seize them!”

Mir began to sing.

Comments

[Schroedingers_Katze]

*heavy cat breathing noises*

[Clayton the hunter]

Well then.

[kakkaohjus]

FINALY!

[jqnexx]

6979847
6982330

You guys are going to be so mad when the next chapter opens with Applebloom or Sunset Shimmer.

[Schroedingers_Katze]

6983865
*screaming cat noises*