CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
COLOSSUS
SUNSET SHIMMER
The room had gone silent.
I'd known a little bit about what Celestia had been forced to do in the past, but as the general rule about her former apprentices applied, I hadn't heard about this one. I couldn't even imagine having to kill a pony she loved so much, and I hadn't even seen what those... things in the Crystal Palace had looked like and I still got chills when she told us that Chrysanthemum had become one of them: Twilight and Rainbow, who'd just come back from that horror show, currently had their mouths and eyes wide open in shock.
It was horrible. It was heartbreaking. But it left me wanting an answer, along with another thing she had yet to address.
"I'm sorry, Princess," I began, breaking the silence. Everypony turned to me at once, curious as to where I was going. "I couldn't imagine what you were going through after that, and I know it has to be worse with what's happened to those ponies in the Crystal Empire." Celestia nodded solemnly at first, but then, with a wit she rarely brought out from behind her ever-wise glance, she spoke to me with a soft grin.
"You have questions, Sunset Shimmer," she stated slyly. Naturally, this caused the room to break out in laughter, but it wasn't all relieving: I could feel the nervousness from where I stood, and I knew well that my cross-examination would do nothing to quell it.
"You mentioned earlier about something to do with Zephyr not be satisfied with your answers of how the world worked. It seems like this is a revenge plot for killing him, but you seem to be implying there's more to it than that." Celestia nodded grimly almost immediately before looking down to me with a piercing fierceness.
"Do you remember that journal I spoke of? The one he constantly scribbled in?" The room nodded in the affirmative, and it took a heavy sigh before she continued.
"I don't know exactly what happened, but I assume that he went mad after his attempt to revive Chrysanthemum went so awry. But before this all happened, he was never happy with my explanations of how our world itself worked. He always thought there was something more, and when he discovered the "power" that eventually turned his wife into an empty thrall--"
"--he thought he found it." That was Applejack, of all ponies, and Celestia nodded yet again to confirm her suspicions.
"He wrote much of Sombra, Tirek, the Pony of Shadows, and Nightmare Moon. He referred to them in his notes consistently as "The Dark Quartet": a group of individuals who had truly unlocked the secrets of the universe. In shorter terms, he didn't... doesn't only use the darkness, he worships it and believes it his duty to spread it to others. You may have heard him refer to it as his 'salvation'." Once again there was a contemplative silence, and I looked to the ceiling in thought.
Awesome. So he isn't just revenge-hungry, he's a revenge-hungry zealot who worships dark magic. Welcome back to Equestria, Sunny!
That wasn't the worst of it, though. See, there was something Celestia said earlier that hadn't really left my mind since she began talking about Zephyr, and I had a distinct feeling that it wasn't going to make me feel any better once I got my answer.
"Celestia, there's something else," I said quickly. I looked to Twilight only to see her nodding towards me knowingly: it seemed as if she and I had been on the same page. Celestia looked to me with her eyebrows raised, and I found myself sighing deeply before I began.
"Before you started talking about Zephyr, you said you only had three other apprentices," I explained. "So we have me, Twilight, Violet, Cobalt, Zephyr, and Silver Jubilee, who we haven't seen pop up yet. That's six... but that doesn't add up. You had one more, didn't you?"
Celestia's eye had twitched ever so slightly when I mentioned Silver--I had forgotten Celestia's vague and hurried explanation that she'd "died untimely"--but her eyes dropped to the floor in a defeated manner when I mentioned the student she hadn't accounted for. She closed her eyes for a second, thoughts almost visibly dancing around in her head before she finally looked up, looking to the entire crowd of ponies before her.
"I was going to address that next," she began. "I did have one more apprentice, sometime before Silver. She told me her name was Melody Waltz, but that was not her real one, I'd come to find. Melody was not who I thought she was, and she was devoted to a very different Chrys."
I could feel my jaw drop at those words, and a quick look around the room saw much of the same. Luna had remained silent and contemplative during Celestia's entire explanation, but she was looking to Celestia now with her eyes wide in horror. It appeared that there were even some things that Celestia wasn't wont to discuss with her sister, and it was the Princess of the Night who spoke next.
"And you never knew?" She asked quizzically. Celestia shook her head violently before answering.
"Twilight, why do changelings get caught when they attempt to impersonate ponies?" It was a question that certainly had no black and white answer, but I knew well that the mare I admired so often would prove deftly why she earned her former status as Celestia's pupil.
"Because they aren't ponies," she answered simply. "They can mimic personality very well, but at the end of the day, they're pretending to be an entirely different species." It made sense: there were aspects of a changeling that was simply in their nature that was bound to bleed over, and there were aspects of a pony that a changeling simply could not emulate. Celestia didn't nod or commend Twilight, merely continue her lecture with the knowledge that the answer was correct.
"Melody was very, very gifted in many respects. She was extremely intelligent and remarkably cunning, both of which allowed her to mimic a unicorn almost perfectly, and I do not use that word lightly. I had fought Chrysalis and her changelings thousands upon thousands of times whenever they caused trouble, and I never even thought that Melody could have been one of them. She did not feel emotions very well, but she understood them like no other." Rarity spoke up next, raising her hoof much in the same way Pinkie Pie had done earlier. Celestia smiled for what had to have been the first time in quite a while before waving the gesture away.
"You all aren't quite my little ponies anymore, you don't have to raise your hooves. What is your question, Rarity?" Rarity had been glowing red from the slight embarrassment, but she got over it quickly enough as she posed her inquiry.
"You mentioned that she was almost perfect. What happened?" That was a very good question, and the room turned to the Princess of the Sun for an answer.
"She was perfect when she played the character of Melody Waltz, since she created her. She could mimic the subtle things a pony does flawlessly, unlike other changelings, but when it came to mimicking real ponies, there were simply quirks she could not replicate and information she couldn't know. I eventually caught her when she attempted to impersonate somepony who I'd known far too long to be fooled by an imposter." Before anypony could speak this time, however, Celestia raised her hoof to the crowd. She looked down for a few seconds, mulling over her next words before speaking.
"I know you all still have lots of questions," she began. "I don't know where Silver is, and yes, Melody could be here among us for all I know. Cobalt, Violet: I've been over the moon to see you return to me, and it fills me with a joy that I cannot possibly describe to you all. But with Zephyr doing such horrible things in the Crystal Empire and the possibility that Melody and Silver are roaming around somewhere... I'm very tired, and I have much to think about. I say we all get some rest before we proceed any further." I nodded in agreement, along with the rest of the ponies, but there was plenty of concern that I wasn't willing to voice out loud.
Yeah guys, just rest up. There might be a shapeshifting sociopath in this very room, but we'll be all good.
I certainly wasn't planning on letting myself get too comfortable, but I could see the logic in Celestia's words. There were ponies long dead who were returning to Equestria at the prime of their youth, and we still didn't know why. It was a tense time, and though everypony was set on edge, thinking about how to approach a problem with a clear mind was much better than attempting to solve it in a panic. Once we settled down and thought about our next move, I was certain we could get the ball rolling.
Everypony in the throne room seemed to be breaking up, and I quickly scanned the area for Violet before I found her on the other side of the room. I trotted over to her and saw that she was in the midst of a conversation with Cobalt, though I couldn't quite make out what it entailed when I got to the pair and spoke up.
"Hey, Violet. You wanna go back up to the room and put on some more records?" One of the bigger things that enthralled Violet from the modern world was the music, and for the past few nights, we'd been listening to tons of records from all sorts of periods in Equestria's history.
She smiled in response, but nodded her head over to the right where Cobalt was standing.
"In sooth, Cobalt has invited me on a perambulate through the castle garden. I trust you accede to such leisure?" I couldn't help but chuckle almost immediately, waving my hoof in dismissal. I may have been overseeing her, but I certainly didn't have any say in what she did or who she did it with.
"You don't have to ask me for permission to go for a walk, Violet. Have fun!" The two nodded eagerly before heading off to the gardens, chatting away as they'd been moments before. I watched them go off, eying Violet's gait in relation to Cobalt's.
Well that's an interesting development, I thought, feeling a sly smile curl across my lips. I watched them walk until they disappeared behind the wall before truly taking a moment to take in my surroundings: it seemed now as if I were the only one here.
"Sunset."
I instinctively turned around. I remembered that voice summoning me countless times in years past, and I almost hated that even after all that happened I jumped at the chance to heed my former teacher's call.
Almost.
Celestia's smile was warm as her sun, even through the hurricane of emotions she'd been going through in the past few days. Luna, on the other hand, seemed to be deep in thought, her eyes drifting to the other side of the throne room as her lips barely mumbled her inner dialogue.
"I'm immeasurably grateful that you're looking after Violet," she began. "Luna's been talking to her at nights to clear the air between the two of them, and she tells me that Violet is doing alright. I wanted to ask you if that was the case, though, because you've been so close to her these past few weeks." Luna had snapped out of her trance sometime during the middle of her sister's request, nodding along silently before following up.
"She's a wonderful mare, and I'm glad I've eased her mind," she began. "But she seems scared." It was my turn to nod, and I made it curt before replying.
"Violet is a crazy smart pony, Celestia. But she's been thrown into a world beyond what she could possibly imagine where almost nothing makes sense to her. She feels dumb, especially since every conversation is filled with slang and topics that she doesn't have a chance to keep up with, but... she's a trooper. We've been listening to records lately, and she loves all the new music she's been listening to. I've been trying to teach her some modern Equestrian, but I think she's too afraid to use it so far." That garnered a few laughs, as expected, and during a time where my nerves were almost entirely shot I couldn't help but laugh along with them.
Once we were done, Celestia looked towards me with that curious glare I'd seen on her face many times throughout my tenure as her student, her single-raised eyebrow always a giveaway that she had a question that she wanted answersing.
"And what of you, Sunset?" she asked me. I had a short-term plan mapped out every since Twilight left for the Crystal Empire, so I didn't skip a beat when I responded.
"I'm going to make a trip back to the human world tomorrow. Cobalt told me he wanted some blueprints and parts for their technology once I told him about my experiences there." That drew a sly smile and a playful roll of her eyes from the Princess of the Sun, but I wasn't quite finished yet.
"But first," I began, drawing that curious single-eyebrow raise from Celestia and Luna. "I'm gonna go see a friend of mine who might need somepony to talk to."
Her presence wasn't something that was put simply, but put simply, Twilight Sparkle was extraordinary.
Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, Tirek, Sombra, the Pony of Shadows, Starlight Glimmer, the Storm King, Cozy Glow, and, of course, myself: I've lost count of how many times Twilight Sparkle has either saved the world herself or led Equestria's premier friendship-powered strike team in the process. She'd created her magic and ascended to princesshood, and she'd made it her absolute life's goal to spread her message of peace across the entirety of Equestria.
Some days, Twilight Sparkle didn't seem like the mare prone to a nervous breakdown or the mare that drank too much at pretty much every party or gathering she'd ever been to. She didn't seem like the dorky girl who liked trashy romance novels and classic rock music, who liked board games and watching hoofball.
Some days, Princess Twilight Sparkle seemed like a goddess. She was a pony that history couldn't forget if it tried, an individual so remarkable and influential that she'd become a household name in a matter of years. She was the pony everypony strove to be, and in a world of ancient magic, immeasurably powerful artifacts and beings as old as time itself, Twilight was a colossus amongst its denizens.
And right now, she was scared.
When I walked into her room, Twilight Sparkle did not exactly shimmer royal radiance as she sat calmly on her bed in the midst of brushing her mane. Her hoof, which she'd badly injured during her encounter with Zephyr in the Crystal Empire, was wrapped intently at her side atop a white cast, ensuring it wouldn't move for quite some time. Her face was marred by a large scar running all the way across it, another memento from the horrors she'd seen, but she ensured me during our short walk to the throne room that the now-pronounced scar would fade to obscurity in due time.
The magic danced through the strands of her hair, brushing out the knots and straightening it deftly. She brought a handheld mirror up to her face that had been resting on her wooden dresser, and she turned her head at every angle before setting it back down again with a satisfied nod. I sat down right next to her at the bedside, and she turned to me immediately with a sly smile.
"What's my favorite color?" she asked jokingly. I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I returned the grin, though if that was all I needed to do to prove I wasn't a changeling, I wasn't going to complain.
"Blue," I answered immediately. "And nachos are your favorite food." Twilight raised her eyebrows in feigning impressiveness before letting a light chuckle escape her lips.
"The ones Spike makes, if I'm being pedantic," she started. "Something on your mind?" I shook my head in the negative before playfully bumping her on the shoulder.
"I came here to see what was on yours," I told her. "You've had a rough couple of hours. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay." In response, a warm smile washed over Twilight's face, the kind of glowing beam that made you feel like everything was gonna be just alright.
"The girls came by just now, actually. Guess I'm not so good at hiding anything, huh." She picked up the mirror with her magic again, and I could tell that this time she wasn't looking at her mane: she focused it on her scar, bobbing her head ever-so-slightly in every direction to fully take the protruding cicatrix in.
"Everything always works in the end," she started. "That's what I've been telling myself. That's what I told AJ and Rainbow and Rares and Pinkie. But I don't think I believe it." She turned her face back to me, and I saw something wash over her countenance that I'd seldom ever witnessed: genuine fear.
"All of Celestia's students are rising from their graves, and young, no less," she explained. "Supposedly, three of them are on our side, though Celestia doesn't seem too thrilled at the prospect of reuniting with Silver despite claiming she's a good pony. And then you have Zephyr, who almost killed me, and now there's apparently a changeling who can mimic ponies far better than the rest of her species. On top of that, we were both weirdly drawn to Canterlot, and I'm sure that has something to do with all of this." She let out a large sigh that I could almost hear the defeat in, and she gently put the mirror back down on her dresser before she continued.
"Every time we have a problem, I get on a trail to fix it. Whether it's a book, or a pony, or an artifact, whatever. But right now... I feel like I'm even more damn clueless than I was when this whole mess started, and I'm certainly worse for wear." She hung her head down low, watching her back hooves swing from side to side. I wrapped a hoof around her, making sure to mind her injury.
"Everything always works in the end," I mimicked, drawing a short laugh from the Princess. "Sure, things are really weird right now. But Fluttershy is going to be here soon, and Starlight is coming back once she's done helping Trixie, right?" Twilight nodded knowingly, and the slight relaxing of her face let me know that the thought of her two friends arriving made her feel a little bit better, at least.
"So there you go. We're gonna figure out why this is all happening, and we're going to go do it together. You hear me?" She nodded yes, and I could tell by her expression that my little pep talk--simple as it may have been--did at least a little to calm her down after the hell she'd been through.
"Yeah. We will," she replied, though she didn't sound like she was trying to convince herself this time. "Are you still heading to the human world tomorrow? What are you going to get for Cobalt?" That wasn't an easy question, but thankfully, I had this all planned out quite swimmingly. I wasn't anything if not a mare of mystery, though, so I could almost feel the glint in my eyes and my lips curl into a devilish smirk as I responded.
"Oh, don't you worry," I began. "He tells me he can build anything, and I have a few ideas."
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"Everything will work out in the end" such a loaded phrase when you think about it. Things will be fine "in the end", up until then, oh things can get bad!
I wonder what fun human toys she is going to have constructed? Just thinking of what is publicly available and what could be extrapolated from simple diagrams?
Deliberate Freudian slip because Sunset is the narrator?
9348332
No, but I'll take credit and pretend that was the plan all along.
Fixed, thanks!
Wait, it's been weeks since Violet returned? Did I miss a time skip? Or was Twilight and Rainbow's adventure in the Crystal Empire that long?
9359554
It's been a quite few weeks, yes. The main timeeater was when the group traveled from Canterlot to Our Town via carriage (and back), and Twilight and Rainbow did the same thing for the Crystal Empire, which is at the top of the country. (EDIT: this only took a full day, as Twilight fell asleep during the ride and woke up when they arrived).
That's probably my fault for not making that more apparent: I'll see if I can make it more clear somewhere in the story!
9359650
Ah, okay, that's where I missed it. I thought they were taking sky charriots.
9347257
Yeah, World War 2 was fine in "the end".
9363845
The black plague was fine, in the end.
Looking forward to where this goes, because this story has me entranced.
9378925
I'm glad to hear all the positive feedback for the story! I'm chipping away steadily at the next chapter, so be on the lookout!
Eh? So if this is post-Season 8, then that means most of the Changelings are reformed, so it'll remain to be seen if Melody Waltz falls in with Chrysalis or with the Changeblings. Though given Celestia's emphasis on her being devoted to Chrysalis, Melody may go find Chrysalis instead.
At least they're finally being a little savvy and discussing who and what Celestia's past students were and what they were like.
9414015
This is indeed current in the timeline!
So the question is, who is the bigger bad that is coming from this imbalance?
Human world hype!
9364006
Yeah but the Spanish flu outbreak during WWI was worse but it turned out fine in the end..... though I don't think that I could say the same about the Permian Extinction though with 96% off ALL total life on Earth going extinct.
To say what
9347454
did more directly:
Guns or other weapons for this fight?
9881557
I'm hoping she becomes involved in the fight against Zephyr, but I'm also hoping she doesn't go all 'Thorax' on them, and is ashamed of what she is.
That's one of my biggest pet peeves with changeling co-existence stories, including canon. There's never any nuance to it, it's always just a black and white "they prey on ponies, so they're evil".