Timing. It was all about timing.
Celestia had not only designed the castle, she had spent the last thousand years living in it, and knew it better than the back of her hoof. After all, she hardly looked at the back of her hoof, always cuffed as it was in gold, but every day she had to navigate the twists and turns of her palace. She knew all the secret passages, and the secret passages in the secret passages, and, most importantly, how to make her way around without being seen. Her sister, on the other hoof, had been here only a scant few years and was still learning the layout. Simply outmaneuvering her would be easy.
Luna's advantage was nearly insurmountable, however. Celestia's schedule was set nearly down to the minute, and her sister knew it as well as she did. Technically Luna should have been asleep at this point, or at least dining and relaxing after the night. The events of that night seemed to have given her an unexpected burst of energy, however, and it was becoming difficult to keep her at bay.
And so, timing. End a meeting a little early, show up to sign a law the teensiest bit late but with a distraction thrown towards Luna, flip around two appointments but then keep to the original schedule. Anything, as long as it kept her sister from cornering her alone.
Luna was brash and tactless, and cared surprisingly little for anyone's privacy, but Celestia knew how her mind worked. She'd want them alone for this confrontation, to let her focus her full attention on browbeating her older sister. She wouldn't want Celestia to be able to use another pony as an excuse to cut their conversation short, or to deflect questions, or to change the subject. Luna wanted her sister all to herself.
Sixty seconds until the end of the morning court session. Celestia hurried things along just a bit, finishing up the current case with thirty seconds to go, and announced that court was finished for the day. Moving swiftly–but not so much as to detract from her usual image of serenity–she moved to the throne room doors and waited just beyond the arc she knew the door would take as it opened.
On the dot of zero, the scheduled ending of court, the doors exploded open and Luna skidded in, the carpet leading to the throne bunching up under her hoofs as she came to a stop. By that time, Celestia had already slipped through the doors and vanished like a ghost.
Another hour, another policy meeting about something or the other. After centuries spent in such meetings–literal centuries in the meetings, if you added all the hours up–Celestia could listen and offer valuable input while not really listening at all, instead going into a kind of meditative state.
This time, her deep thoughts were focused on one goal: evading her sister. Again, she realized. The small smile that always graced her face widened slightly as she recalled all the other times the much younger Princesses of the Night and Day had chased each other through a castle.
But the penalty for losing this race was too steep, and Celestia fully intended to win. Avoid her sister for this day, and she would be safe; having stayed awake so long would mean that Luna would need to sleep that much more for the next few days. By then, she would either have forgotten, or Celestia would be able to feign ignorance about any dream she might have had several days ago. They fade so fast, dear sister, why, I can hardly recall my most recent dream, light chuckle followed by firm change of subject.
The meeting broke up, ponies filing out the door as Celestia stayed behind. She knew Luna was waiting outside, and this was one of the interior conference rooms, with just the one entrance. So Celestia waited a pair of heartbeats, then cast a teleportation spell with a bright flash of golden light.
There was a similar flash from outside the room, though blue instead, as Luna traced the spell and piggybacked on it to its destination. When the flash had faded, Celestia cast the spell again, this time teleporting herself.
She didn't quite appear at her next appointment, however. Instead she popped into existence on the walkway outside the classroom, to take in the view of an enraged Princess Luna splashing her way out of one of the palace's decorative ponds, Celestia's soggy notebook perched on her head.
In retrospect, tricking her sister into teleporting into a pond had been a bit of a mistake. No doubt by this point Luna was so out of her mind with fury she had completely lost sight of why she was even pursuing her sister throughout the castle, now solely seeking revenge.
As Celestia taught to the class, occasionally lecturing, occasionally demonstrating this point or another about magic, she kept catching small hints that Luna was stalking her. A quick flash of midnight blue at a window, the sparkle of a mane under the classroom door, the sound of hooves clip-clopping and angry snorting from the room next door. There would be no easy escape from this one. She'd need... assistance.
The class filed out as their lesson ended, save one light green colt who Celestia knew could use some extra credit after a simple mistake with a levitation spell and a bucket of paint had cost him several points on the last exam. She told him what he needed to do and he agreed eagerly, bounding out into the hall.
“Um... Princess Luna?”
The Night Princess spared a glance down at the young unicorn before her, quickly returning her eyes to the door of the classroom. “Yes, young one? Do you require my assistance?”
“Well, um, yes. Can you tell me how to spell 'distraction'?”
“Ha! A simple enough feat.” Luna instinctively held her head high, eyes closing in a regal pose as she spelled. “D-I-S-T-R-A-C–”
Her eyes popped open in horror as she realized what she was doing, just in time to catch sight of a multi-hued mane disappearing around a corner down the far end of the hall. Nervously, the small unicorn backed away from Luna as lightning started crackling in the air. Far too late, he was recalling that this Princess had once been known as Nightmare Moon.
Celestia winced as the yelling and screaming began behind her. From the sound of things, the Royal Canterlot Voice was being employed to full effect.
She'd make sure that unicorn got a lot of extra credit.
Celestia cursed herself. She'd gotten sloppy, and Luna had nearly caught her after she'd made the monthly Royal Inspection of the Royal Library. Large potted plants hadn't been added to the halls merely as decor, however, and now she held her breath as she crouched behind one.
Just under the edge of the leaves, she watched silver-shod hooves trot past. Through a gap in the plant, she was able to watch them continue down the hall, then stop. Suddenly, they vanished.
It nearly took too long for Celestia to realize what that disappearance meant, but she still just barely had time to shove the plant out into the middle of the hall, intercepting Luna in mid-flight. The Moon Princess was hardly slowed as she crashed through the branches, but it gave Celestia enough time to scramble to her hooves and run down the hall in the opposite direction.
“CELESTIA, GET THY FLANK BACK HERE!” bellowed Luna, hooves kicking up sparks on the marble as she hit the floor and executed a perfect 180 to go charging after her sister.
Celestia ran, seemingly blindly, taking random turns and ducking through various secret passages. They were, however, all ones Luna knew about, so that when she finally cornered Celestia in a secret passage that dead-ended in a wall, she thought she had won. It was a small passage, but Celestia had designed the entire castle with her own size in mind, so it had just enough room for her to turn and face her sister.
“All right, Celestia,” panted Luna, “I've got you, and you're going to talk. But before you do, I'm going to make you pay for every–”
Celestia's back left hoof kicked out softly, striking a very specific part of the wall. The floor beneath her disappeared and she dropped into a long, dark chute, Luna's howls of rage echoing after her. It would take her time to find that hidden trigger, time enough for Celestia to disappear again and–
A flash of light lit the chute as the floor above exploded. Splinters and sawdust began to rain down around her, Luna's cries growing louder.
Or, Luna would destroy the trapdoor rather than searching for the trigger.
At the bottom of the drop the walls flared out, giving Celestia room to spread her wings and slow her fall to the point where she wouldn't damage the floor. Luna, she noticed a moment later, did not bother with such niceties.
Her familiarity with the surroundings let her get ahead of Luna, who had to react to Celestia's sudden direction changes and dives through hidden doors and panels. Finally having gained enough of a lead, she dove through the hidden door that had been her goal, leaving it open just enough for her sister to notice.
Notice it Luna did, skidding to a halt and racing back. Flinging the door open, she dashed inside, stopping barely in time to avoid smashing into the wall at the back of what had turned out to be a small alcove.
Suspiciously she peered around, kicking at the floor and banging on the walls, listening for hollows. Finally convinced her sister hadn't actually gone into this room and ducked out another hidden door, she resumed her chase down the main passage, trotting at a slower pace now that it was obvious Celestia had eluded her somehow.
After a moment, the panel in the ceiling of the room slid back and Celestia climbed down. Leaving the small hidden room, she went back the way she'd come a pace or two, opened another hidden door into a similar alcove, and kicked the wall there, dropping down another floor.
She was even on time for the meeting.
Which, as it unfortunately turned out, was a budget meeting.
It's not that she wanted to be impolite, but it was nearly impossible to pay attention to anything that went on in these meetings. Given the rather healthy economy of Equestria, there was little need for strict budgeting, but there was always somepony obsessed with saving every last bit. And, Celestia had to admit, there was no need for waste when it could be avoided.
She just wished the meetings weren't so boring.
She had been busy all day, plotting her way around her sister, and had just finished up a several-miles-long chase through her castle halls. She was, to put it bluntly, in no condition to listen to a pony drone on about market predictions for corn sales.
It started with long, slow blinks. Then there was a yawn, quickly stifled. But her head began nodding after that, and soon enough she had drifted into a light doze.
And found herself standing on a field of stars. She was looking around, confused, when a voice behind her cried, “There you are!”
She turned, to see Luna trotting towards her quickly, a vicious grin upon her face. “You're not getting away this time–”
Thousands of years of life will teach one certain skills, more out of a need to retain sanity than for survival. When that life includes things like Discord, Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Tirek, your own sister turning into a being of evil, and being forced to banish said sister for a thousand years, the ability to wake yourself up from a nightmare is vital.
“NOOOOO!” screamed Celestia, sitting bolt upright and slamming her hooves down onto the table. As she looked around the room, trying to clear her head, she found all the other ponies staring at her. “Oh. Um–”
“Yes, that was exactly my reaction when I first heard the long-term prospects on soybean futures,” said Black Ink, nodding and then gesturing at the chart he was standing in front of. “But, if you'll look at graph 2-A, you'll see how encouraging investment into high yield–”
Celestia slumped back into her chair. The stress was getting to her. She needed a break.
And here it was, the grandest moment of the day. Celestia was already licking her lips as she pushed the door open, revealing a table set with plates and a serving cart off to one side–
And there, at the head of the table, sat Luna, a triumphant grin on her face.
A pitiful whining noise emerged from Celestia as she stood rooted in the doorway, looking back and forth between the empty spot at the table and the safety of the hallway behind her. The noises intensified as she pranced in place, unable to choose which doom she preferred.
Finally, with a defeated whinny, she hung her head and took her place at the table.
“It is good to see you, sister,” said Luna, smiling wickedly. “We have so much to talk about.”
Another whine tried to make its way out of Celestia's throat, but she stopped it as the serving pony began to wheel the cart over. She would be strong; this conversation was a sacrifice she had to make, for the greater good. Whatever consequences talking with Luna had, whatever horrors it wrought, they would not be as bad as missing her afternoon cake.
Obligatory, yes, but definitely not unwelcome.
Really? Five more pagebreaks? You now have fifteen pagebreaks in 4.7k words. That's simply way too many. You breaking up the chapter into several parts disrupted the flow of the chapter, and you could easily just add an extra sentence or two instead of using a pagebreak in most cases here in this chapter. Having all of those pagebreaks just feels really lazy. People like seeing long developed scenes, not just scenes that you've cherry-picked. On top of that, we get that Luna is trying to talk to her sister; you don't need to reiterate it by writing variants of the same thing, and at this point, it feels like you're just trying to boost word count.
You're taking the story on a tangent when I think it would be better to actually be developing the story that you advertised in the description. I understand you have to build up to it, but still, most of what you have here feels unnecessary. You left us with a cliffhanger at the last chapter, only to not resolve it in this chapter. Because of that, this chapter feels lacking and unfinished.
I don't understand why you wrote an entire chapter of Luna trying to chase down her sister, and because of this, both Celestia and Luna are out of character. Having Luna try to talk to her sister, only to be avoided all day is very strange, especially given the fact that she was missed by her sister for a thousand years. Furthermore, having Celestia feel ashamed/not wanting to talk about her love for Twilight is kinda strange. Since they've lived together, outliving entire generations of ponies, you would think that they would know how much it hurts to know that you're going to outlive their current lover by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Lastly, I still say that you write well, grammar-wise, but you need to work on structure. What you have published doesn't feel like a story yet, only a bunch of loosely-connected scenes.
P.S. You used the wrong it's/its in the last paragraph. It should be its.
Nothing is worth missing your cake, NOTHING! I feel for Celestia, but sometimes you must accept defeat to eat the most joyous of things. I can't wait to see how things continue.
Yeah, I have to agree with Abyss here. Way too many pagebreaks. Also, I agree with you on that author's note. Celestia probably did have a lot of time to learn so many skills.
luna should have been smart and just wait for cake time, it how to get her sister to do anything
this is hilarious
Celestia's skill with architecture does make sense. We've seen what the sisters did to their previous castle, and all of those traps are still in perfect working order.
It wouldn't surprise me. I mean, there is that hidden cave system that Cadence was trapped in during the wedding. It's better to have and not need than to need and not have. Besides, what sort of castle doesn't have secret passage ways and such?
LOL LOVED IT hope to read another chapter soon
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I can understand the tangent thing, but the pagebreak thing? It's a montage. It's a bunch of small scenes, all connected in a single idea. That's the whole idea of the chapter.
7202327 The more practically fortified castles, designed to hold against sieges.
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That's not always the case though. Regardless of how well built the castle, if the attackers have a decent supply line, and can keep the castle from receiving any, then eventually the besieged will either die or surrender. Starvation kinda wins out on that one.
Best chase scene I have ever read on this site.
7202470 Those castles should most certainly have secret passages and such, otherwise they're boned when an invading army comes knocking. No castle can hold against an enemy siege forever, it's impossible. All the enemy needs is a good supply line and patience, along with the occasional flinging of diseased animals into the castle to inflict disease on the defenders.
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Agreed that the page breaks work fine for a montage chapter. Some people might prefer long, single, well-developed scenes but not everyone and not all the time. Also, this is a comedy, so angst and drama about lovers' mortality and sisterly bonding take a back seat to the Rule of Funny.
Fine job so far! Can't wait to see more.
7202645 I agree
I will go further that I like the visualization too. Instead of saying how anxious she was
I absolutely love this line, the picture it paints in my mind is perfect with the actions and noises backing up the obvious discomfort. Show, don't tell. What talented writing IMO.
7202648 Actually, I believe you're wrong here. Internal secret passages don't help against a siege, through a hidden entrance is a must. In case of an assault, secret passages aren't really helpful as well, as they cannot be big to avoid detection, and once an entrance is sighted, attackers will force it open.
So, the two main uses of secret passages are 1) for spies to be able to listen to guests' talks and 2) for the castle's owner to escape a sudden killer or pursuer. And Celestia demonstrates 2 quite well.
Why have a castle when you can have a castle-cum-secret-door-playground-maze?
7202616 7202648 A castle can hold against a siege if A the attacking army is poorly supplied, or their supply lines aren't completely steady, or B if they can out wait their enemy and hold long enough for the main army to arrive and help push away the besieging invaders. Also secret passages save for the escape tunnels are a structural weakness, if one stone from an opposing armies catapult hits the right place, then he whole tunnel could collapse and what ever wall it was attached to.
Eh. Chase scenes are very hard to do well in written form, even harder to do in montage written form, and hardest to do when they're ultimately pointless and fail to service the plot in any way other than an admittedly interesting headcanon. Against all odds, you succeeded.
EDIT: For the sake of clarity, the phrase in red has been added because I originally opted to subtly imply something, when I should have remembered that I was on the Internet.
I like it!!!
This will definitely end up in my favourites...
I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. I don't care if the rest of this story ends up being bad this is going in my personal favorites library.
Much better than the first chapter. Great improvement.
Oh, that's just too good.
Celestia is my favorite because I believe she is the architect. The mare behind the curtain pulling all the little ponies strings.
I must admit that I agree with Abyss here
this whole story (so far) leaves me completely confused, because it was supposed to be about something else
I do understand pagebreaks in first chapter (as it is several memories on a time-line)
but here it is unnecessary not to mention that no matter how I try I can't find WHY Luna trying to catch Tia in a first place
I love it, keep up the good work!
7209950 7203041 I don't understand the upset that seems prevalent here. This chapter made perfect sense to me, honestly. Sure, Luna may have seen the dream that Celestia had, but seeing it doesn't compare to being a good, devious sibling and grilling her on if and how she'd act on the feelings that must have inspired that dream. The chase was on the instant that Celestia woke up, and they both knew it.
If this chapter was meant to be pointless fluff, the in betweens could have been filled in place of the breaks, and the pacing and energy would have suffered for it. Instead we got what I felt to be a light-hearted chase with the highest stakes possible between these sisters: near-mortal embarrassment. If this sets the tone for the rest of the story, it will remain atop my list of things to watch.
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there is a difference between being confused and being upset
I have Codex in my watch, not because I would like to make rebukes or being a jerk, but because I like his/her - not sure - work
It is just that in this specific case I've expected something else - I've expected something more closer, personal between Celestia and Twilight, maybe funny like in Changeling Courtship Rituals, but also romantic
this here is everything but what I've expected so far but it doesn't mean that I'm upset or that I hate this story, or that I try to presuade others to feel the same way
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Thank you for your input, random stranger. I definitely care what your opinion is about this thing.EDIT: I am genuinely sorry. Nobody reading that sentence believes me, but it is true.
I understand the humor intended in the chase chapter, and the student distraction was absolutely hilarious, but it felt like Tom and Jerry filler and did nothing to advance the story. It doesn't help that as a Tom/Jerry sequence it's really the chaser that's the underdog, because we all know Tom never wins. So the humor is a bit lessened for Celestia's tricks compared to Luna's, of which there aren't nearly as many.
Also, the cake break could have used some foreshadowing instead of just being revealed at the same time Luna uses it to catch her.
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Pretty much nailed it. If you have any younger sisters or brothers, or older ones for that matter, then you know the worst thing that can happen is them finding out you have a crush on someone. Trust me, in the same situation, you'd run. Everyone runs.
And it's a bit more obvious in the next chapter, but Celestia isn't running solely from Luna. She's running from talking about it with Luna, and from acknowledging it at all. She's running from her feelings. Perhaps its a bit heavy-handed and cliched of a metaphor, but it works.
7214518 I would like to sincerely apologize for the callous way in which I responded to your comment several days ago. It was very rude of me to act that way, and I genuinely hope you can either find it in your heart to forgive me, or belittle and mock me in a way that the general public will find entertaining.
Luna!
That's dirty pool, forcing your sister to choose between the cake she so loves and avoiding the discussion she so dreads!
... I couldn't be more proud of you. *sniffle*
That was just hilarious. I especially like the mental image of Celestia roping down from a ceiling hiding spot.
Does that count the big fight when you banished her to the moon?
That's almost as good as handing them a paper that says "I prepared explosive runes this morning."
For this chapter, I HAD to listen to the William Tell Overture finale. Twas PERFECT for the job!
To those of us who did not have this looping through their head the entire time:
For shame.
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.. I could swear I have read that before...hmmm
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If I remember right (been a while since I read that far back) the 'paper that says explosive runes on it' gag is from the Order of the Stick webcomic, which you can find here: http://www.giantitp.com/
Yeah, it was order of the stick for the explosive runes. Not sure why that was brought up in the first place, but that's the source.
I like the fact that she played hidden-doorway tag with that much aplomb, among other parts of the chase, but lost because she wanted cake.
Hilarious! (I can't blame her...)
Just started, and enjoying it a lot! Thank you for writing.
Wow. Give Celestia credit for sheer audacity.
Poor kid...
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You're profile picture is so befitting of that comment
All this chapter is missing is Yakety-Sax. (The Benny Hill music.)
Ah good old Luna and Celestia, being silly and running around like a bunch of thousand year old fillies. Love it. XD
It was all for naught