//------------------------------// // Spare The Rod, Spoil The Promised Child // Story: In the Company of Night // by Mitch H //------------------------------// SBMS132 I chased Cherie out of the quarantine room, and left the ladies to shake the prisoner while he was scattered and distracted, see what fell out of him. I'm not sure what you say to a filly whose refusal to respect the laws of physical reality and, well, walls meant that you can't really send her to your room, but I tried my best. Luckily, she didn't seem to take all that White Rose prophesy jabber to heart, thought it was just a madpony being a madpony. I didn't want her paying attention to prophesy. Nothing good ever comes of listening to prophets, especially not in our line of work. Pests ought to be crucified whenever they stick their shaggy, unshaven muzzles out of their stylites or anchorholds. Now that I thought of it, all my troubles began when I didn't have the armsponies string up that damn Pythian in Hydromel. Did the others take what the rebel spy was saying seriously? Would they, if they continued their interrogation? The Spirit certainly knew what Cherie could become, she had been very clear in her disapproval of the whole matter. But she also clearly had her own soft spot for the little thestral. The two were almost inseparable at times. That might be what the old jenny had meant with her impenetrable verse and vague prophesying. I realized that I actually had very little knowledge of what exactly the rebels believed, what they were expecting. Some bits picked up here and there, I knew it was an eschatological sect, that they were awaiting the rebirth of their holy figure, the White Rose. That the reappearance of the White Rose would either herald the birth of a new age, or lead a second crusade to wipe the undead from the face of Tambelon. I wasn't at all clear about the details there, and I got the impression that maybe nopony else was too sure, either. But the White Rose had run a continent-spanning military crusade for over a generation now, without any sign of a holy child or a Prophet Militant, and they were doing just fine, more than fine for that matter. They didn't need little Cherie to dance the tarantella all over the Imperials, they were doing that just fine on their own hook. I realized I was trying to take too much upon my own shoulders, and reached down where the Spirit always lurked in those days, at the bottom of my mind. And then she was there. "Cherie, you wicked little filly, what have you done?" boomed the great Spirit, shifting black to blue as she materialized. "What hath we told thee about showing thyself to heathens and outsiders?" "Eep! Princess? Mistress?" The growing filly looked up at confusion, as the Spirit wavered in her Aspect, rippling like water disturbed by something shifting under the surface. "Never you mind your titles, child! Are you or art thou not our own? Maketh thy mind upon it, and commit thyself to your decision! Thou canst not be one thing and another and another and still be true to all of them at once!" "Y-your servant, Milady! Of course! Please, I didn't mean - I don't know what I did WRONG? What was that pony talking about? I don't understand! Are you both angry at me that I'm an imp and an imposter? An imposter of what? I wasn't even dressed up for the play!" "Princess, please. We're not helping matters," I intervened. The great Spirit turned on me, eyes blazing like galaxies dying. "THOU ART NOT HELPING, ACOLYTE! THIS WERT THINE FAULT AT ITS ROOT!" I withstood the blast, and returned the volley. "I did not plant mad prophesies in the minds of the White Rose's damnable god-botherers. I did not prompt that fool of a spy to go mad with fanatical lunacy in Cherie's mere presence. I certainly did not plot to introduce Cherie into the situation - in fact" and the Spirit bent down, snarling in my face, "IN FACT, I had been arguing against the idea when Cherie took the decision out of my hooves." "Sorry, sorry!" apologized the filly from beneath her fore-hooves, cowering on the infirmary-hall's floorboards. "Perhaps this might inspire you to think before you flit about like this in the future, Cherie?" I said around the semi-transparent bulk of the fuming Spirit, making eye-contact with the little thestral. "It's a big world, full of ponies that have ill intentions for you and yours. Today it was a religious fanatic, although we had no idea what he was until he went off under your hooves. Tomorrow it could be a lich in disguise, or an Imperial agent." I stepped around the Spirit, who was uncharacteristically silent, listening. I bent down to where Cherie was crouched. "Look, what the Princess is worried about, is what happens when other ponies realize how special and important you are, and they start doing something about it. That mad fool in there currently thinks you're pretending to be yourself, that you're something more like a lich or, well, the Mistress here, wearing a semblance." The Spirit and I exchanged an ironic smirk over Cherie's head. "The real problem comes when that spy, or some maniac who thinks like that spy, starts suspecting that you're not something else pretending to be you, but might actually be, well, you. Because they've got some destiny-smiths and fate-stirrers who might have heard echoes of you in the world-stuff, and gotten all excited. Everypony who lays eyes on you, and knows what they're looking at, is going to get excited about your future. Because your future isn't set - there's no fate but what we make - but you've got so much potential. "We found you, the Company did. And the Company itself has far too much potential itself. Look at this terror we managed to conjure from our own collective subconscious!" "SAWBONES! SHOW OURSELVES OUR DUE RESPECT!" "Yes, your Majesty. But because I know what you are, so do you. Please don't let us confuse the filly, she's confused enough as it is. And she's seen the echoes, same as I have, same as you have." I turned back to Cherie, now resting her head upon her hooves and looking up at the two of us. "I think your life will be mostly about managing potential. A little power can make or break a pony. A concentration of power can make or destroy a city. And you and the Company separately are concentrations of such potential that we could individually lay waste to - well, I've heard my own prophesies." I leaned down, and lifted Cherie off of the cold floor-boards. "Let's figure out how to defy prophesy, hmm?"