//------------------------------//
// The Alicorn Door 
// Story: Tales From the Well - Pirene Shorts 
// by Ether Echoes 
//------------------------------//

In the small hours of the morning, a small herd turned a corner and gazed up a flight of stairs. Canterlot Castle glowed just a few blocks down the street, but the view wasn't what they had come for. Whispering among one another, the foals advanced up the wide steps, pressing close together and keeping their phones out for light, until they stood before the door. There, they had no need of illumination, for it glowed with its own inner radiance.
It wasn't a bright glow by any means. At any other time of day its bronze-like metal face would catch available light and flash it back, but in the dark of the early morning, its surface gleamed with a soft luminescence all its own.
A hissing rose up from the little herd, and a colt pushed forward - or was pushed - and squared himself. With as mighty a heave as his earth pony magic could muster, he threw himself at the door, straining until veins showed through his blue coat. Panting, he collapsed against the unbarred, unlocked, but unmoved portal.
“Okay, someone else take a turn.”
One-by-one, they did. A unicorn colt, precocious in magic, tried every spell he knew. He even wiggled a thread of telekinesis at all the gaps, looking for a weakness, but found none. A pegasus filly tried pushing from the top, then the sides. A pair of pegasus twins tried hitting it with lightning, but failed to so much as scorch the surface. One morbid filly bit her tongue and added a line of blood to the door, only to watch as it dried and cleaned itself flawlessly.
Lastly, a slight unicorn named Pepper Mint stepped forward, her vivid green mane and tail a mess and her eyes wide. She studied the door for a goodly while, and found it beautiful. Embossed on its surface was the story of the alicorns, with Celestia and Luna to either side holding up the sun and moon, Daphne within her star at the top looking down, and Cadance below with her crystal heart. Twilight Sparkle and her friends formed a circle with their elements, Phoebe and Wave Form with their harmonic technology, Caelia striking thunder from a cloud - there were so many, and beyond the door were many more.
“I don't know if I can do it,” Pepper Mint said in a quavering voice.
The pegasus twins stamped their hooves in irritation. “Come on, Pepper. You're not usually a chicken.”
Pepper Mint didn't usually find herself in situations like this, with a weight in her chest and her heart pounding at a mile a minute.
Yet, despite her fear, she stepped forward. This close up, finely etched channels were visible across the surface, like a circuit network, and they flickered silently with activity. She wondered if the door was alive in some way, like the golems built by the students within. Setting herself against the door, she pushed.
Despite knowing that, in all likelihood, she had no hope of opening it, when the door refused to budge she felt her heart sink. The others didn’t seem bothered, she hadn’t lost any face failing where they had already gone, but the sight of the door standing above her, immovable and fast, filled her with such a sense of despair that she was at a loss. Sighing, she placed her hoof to the door.
With a creak, it opened. The others gasped, staring at her, and she gazed down at her hoof in awe, warmth working its way back into her chest, her frozen blood thawing. “Oh Celestia. Am I…?”
Yet, when they looked up, they found a tall mare looking down at them, and Pepper’s heart sank into the stone. Her blond hair was shaved down the sides, making it look more like a horse’s mane, and she wore a grey crown that flickered with channels of light, not unlike the door itself.
“Can I help you kids?” the mare asked, her wings and horn marking her for what she was, even if her presence within the school hadn’t made it obvious. She had more than a little of her thick London accent left after all these years.
The other foals huddled together, quivering, but Pepper swallowed her disappointment and stood up. “We’re sorry for bothering you, Princess Phoebe. We were just trying to get in.”
“And none of you could open the door?” At the shake of her head, Phoebe gave her a gentle nudge with her wing. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Come back later after you’ve earned your spark, and it’ll open for you. No mortals are permitted in these halls.”
The others didn’t need to be told twice. They darted away, bounding down the steps, only pausing at the bottom when they noticed Pepper Mint wasn’t among them. She scrunched her face, looking up at the alicorn. “Why not?”
“When Princess Celestia gave me this campus, I told her my concerns - alicorns gather mortals around them, and those mortals find themselves swept into our destinies. It suppresses their own potential to grow and become one of us. I built this gate as a test, and a reminder. We stand apart, but only so that mortal kind may learn and struggle. It’s why Celestia stepped down as ruler, to give others a chance to grow without relying on her, even if she’ll be there to offer advice.”
“It doesn’t seem very fair.”
“We try our best to make the world fair, but it often isn’t. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
Pepper Mint sighed, nodded, and turned to go. “Good night, Princess.”
“Good night.”
She rejoined her friends at the bottom, but not for long. They were all up well past their bedtimes on this little jaunt, and so they parted, scattering to their disparate homes. Pepper Mint’s path took her to the palace, to one of its many little side doors, where the security detail scanned her and permitted her to go to the private apartments on the bottom floor where the servants with family slept. Her mother Mint Breeze remained where she was, dead asleep on the couch from a long day standing guard over the offices of the Consulate, and, after a moment’s thought, Pepper Mint hopped up and wormed under her wing in lieu of her bedroom. Mint Breeze cracked an eye open, tucked her head and tail about her filly, and said nothing.





Celestia’s presence had a way of dominating a room, regardless of its size. Objects and individuals found themselves snared in her gravitational pull, like the sun itself drawing in all things, imposing upon them a kind of order. Even in the darkened halls of the school, her skin radiated light of its own, as if ever there were a spotlight on her, her brilliant white coat reflecting it.
Phoebe liked the subtle lighting of the school, she should, after all she designed it, tastefully laid out the aesthetics for her golems to diligently maintain. The further one got into the school, the more it shifted from the grand aesthetic of Canterlot, shifting to the flowing curves of Moonrise, itself an echo of the past: Phoebe’s past. Light, where it existed, was subtle and angled away from the fillies and colts cantering through the halls of the sprawling estate. To Phoebe, the message was clear and expressive: you cast your own light, in all you do. However, there were voices of dissent from time to time.
“Channing.” Celestia asked with a frown. “You’ve been staring at the same papers for the past six minutes. It is Channing again, isn’t it?” Her voice veered hesitant, and Phoebe had a moment to roll her eyes at the way the royal alicorns always seemed to tiptoe around her identity issues, eager to respect it without quite understanding it.
“Phoebe and Channing are both fine, one is as valid as the other.” She shifted the papers away with a hand and tucked them into her desk. Canterlot ponies sure liked their elegant scrolls and seals. Noting Celestia’s discomfort, Phoebe’s body shifted like water, a tall alicorn mare taking her place.
“Everything is in order then? I’ve had golems waiting for weeks to get to it.”
“So long as this campus exists, and funding is not diverted from it, you may have your second school.” Celestia frowned. “I still don’t think it’s necessary, but Luna and I decided long ago to trust your judgment.”
“I’ve already been over this.” Phoebe sighed, steepling her hooves on the desk. “According to Kerry’s findings, the issue is deeper than we know. The Wyrd is a real factor that we have to account for, like gravity, we don’t completely understand it. Hell, the two might even be related. Gods have more gravity than mortals, and when a mortal gets sucked in, it can be difficult for them to ever escape.”
“It seems so counter-intuitive,” Celestia murmured. “Students become teachers, and take students of their own. What could be more natural?”
“Reality is often counter-intuitive, Princess. Why do you think Aeterna keeps all its recruits far from the other humans?”
Celestia pursed her lips, tail flicking. “I will not be Thane.”
“Why should you be? That’s my job, anyway. Even Equestrians need a hard ass, and Loam hasn’t earned her wings, yet.”
“Just make sure they’re ready,” Celestia murmured. “War seems increasingly likely.” Her shoulders sagged, and for a moment the light dimmed, showing all her thousands of years.
“What happened?” Phoebe asked, her voice hushed, Celestia doesn’t dim easily.
“There was another alicorn in the states, she had… outbursts before the Hippocrene could find her. Aeterna dispatched their own people to capture her.” Celestia paused. “By all accounts they tried to take her alive, but the situation escalated, and she died.”
Phoebe frowned, weighing her words carefully. Celestia was not as perfectly calm as her people imagined her. She was, after all, the sun itself. Even now, she could see the fury warring under the mare’s peaceful surface. The same fury Amelia had drawn out with the bridle, twisting the sun into a nightmare of itself.
“I’m sorry, Celestia. I know how you feel, like every alicorn is your own child, to care for and teach. I feel that way for a lot of the kids here, but, war?”
“You misunderstand,” Celestia said, her voice tight. “The alicorn was my niece. Luna’s daughter.”
Channing’s heart dropped. “Holy shit… oh Celestia, I am so sorry.” She glanced back at her tablet. “I guess that explains what happened in Moonrise, is everything… is she under control?”
Celestia nodded. “She and her foal are reunited; death refused to claim her. That blessing aside, they still killed her, and my sister is reunited with her dark half. Even were that not true, my sister would be howling for blood, if anything her silence until now is… it’s caught me off guard, Phoebe, whenever I mention it, she gets a grim distant look to her.
“Add to this my own daughter, who’s become very popular within the government, and she’s been aching for a fight ever since she decided to negotiate with the titans. The Storm is not at home in times of peace, as they say.”
“There’s always going to be opposition to peace, Princess.” Phoebe frowned. “Still, I don’t think Caelia will vote for all out war, maybe just support little unplanned skirmishes? That seemed more her style in the past.”
“I’ve no way of knowing what she’ll say when she hears the news of her lost cousin,” Celestia replied, “and I’m afraid to tell her.”
Phoebe snorted, and then covered her nose with a hoof. “Sorry, I just have a hard time imagining the great Princess Celestia being afraid of anything.”
“I suspect I’m afraid of more things than most!” Celestia exclaimed in mock offense. “It keeps me active.”
“Well, I should get back to work.” Phoebe said, abandoning tact. “Is there anything else I show know?”
Celestia shook her head, then frowned. “Was the gate truly necessary, Phoebe?”
“What? What’s wrong with my gate?” Phoebe frowned, raising a brow.
“I spent hundreds of years turning my school into a place that would not alienate the common pony.” Celestia explained. “You shut your school behind a gate that none may open, save gods.”
Phoebe shrugged, her wings shifting at her sides. “It’s meant to be affirming. You know, something that tells new students: “You belong here.” She gestures with a hoof, making a sweeping welcoming motion.
“Besides, take a look at this video I recorded the other day,” she continued, shining her horn and calling up an intangible interface before the princess, runes lit up, activating latent spells, and the interface was replaced by a lifelike hologram. Fillies and colts from all over Canterlot had turned the gate into a game, hushed herds arriving in the dead of night, each of them taking a turn to try and shove the gate open.
The vision faded, replaced with a grinning Phoebe.
“See, it doesn’t just give the kids a chance to acknowledge what they are. It gives the others something to conquer, an obstacle to overcome. If they just tried once or twice and then gave up, I’d agree with you, but that hasn’t been the case. If you see a foal out there trying to shove the gate open, overwhelmingly, you’ll see them the next week, trying again. Many of them go home and explore their own magic, preparing for their next attempt.
“So, sure, the gate is gonna make a few old timers crotchety on the news, but the future isn’t about them. It’s about the kids, they’re the future.”
Celestia considered that for a time, and then turned to make her way out.
“Well enough, Phoebe,” she said softly, her voice carrying through the room. “I won’t occupy more of your time.”
“Right, see you for tea next week?” Phoebe asked.
“Implying you ever show,” Celestia snorts. “Caelia misses you.”
“Yeah, well. Tell her I miss her too, okay?”
Celestia nodded, pushing the massive doors to Phoebe’s office shut.





Phoebe sighed, trotting circles around her room, passing the hearth and its mantle, upon which her mother’s crown was set, shimmering with living magic. A pair of golem servants maintain their silent vigil as slumbering stone that would wake at an uttered command. Phoebe climbed the stairs of her tower, leading up a more private space, her bedroom resembled—as close as she was able to manage—the room of her birth, memory crystals dangled from the ceiling like stars, and Phoebe’s horn lit up, drawing one of the larger shards into her hooves. The mare hugged it close, flopping sidelong into her nest of blankets.
At the heart of the crystal, life stirred, memories of a young woman being held in a man’s arms played and repeated. Sometimes, an imperfection would slip through, a false memory of a stallion and a mare, and Phoebe would quietly scrub the shard clean. Would that her memory crystals were as perfect as her mother’s; her own design was fragile, subject to emotional tampering, especially from the original source.
“Oh Adam,” she sighed. “What’s going on? Are we just… fated to lose control?”
Not for the first time, Phoebe buried her face in a pillow, and tried to banish the possibility that, real as the Wyrd might be, it may be a pernicious influence, entirely.

The following day, Pepper Mint found that she could think of little other than the door, even if her friends had by and large forgotten it. She sat in her desk at school, staring out the window down the road towards what had once been Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and that now, everyone knew, held miracles. She imagined she could see the door flashing at her, and the teacher had to clear her throat twice before she realized she was being called on.
“You’re not going back there, are you?” her neighbor hissed at her, frowning.
Pepper Mint shook her head, but knew it to be a lie.
That night, she found herself alone by the door again, looking up at its bronzed glory. She pressed herself at it, hooves scraping on the stone beneath her, but to no avail. She came back the night after, and then the night after that, and so on, for nigh on three weeks. Each night made no more progress than the last, each night became a personal punishment that began and ended with nothing gained. She fell behind in school, forgetting her homework and her assignments and bombing a big test that she really ought to have passed.
The night at the end of the third week was sweltering, and sweat dried her coat into stiff little cones and slicked her hair across her neck. Today was the Summer Sun Celebration, and in just a couple hours Princess Celestia would raise the sun. Pepper Mint, tucked up against the door, stared blearily out at the Canterlot skyline, wondering why she couldn’t let this go. It wasn’t even that she particularly wanted to see what was inside. It was as though the door itself had become her enemy, mocking her for her pitiful mortality and reminding her that she would always, ever be nothing more than what she was.
Though she didn’t quite mean to, she closed her eyes, and fell at once into sleep.
A hoof nudged her. Voices murmured.
“Hey. Kid. We kinda need to get inside.”
“You okay there?”
“I think she’s coming around, Ashley.”
Blearily, Pepper Mint’s eyes fluttered open. The sky was pale with the predawn light, and two mares blinked down at her. One had a long mane rich with all the colors of autumn and both her horn and wings, her eyes deep wells that seemed to fall straight to the root of the Nine Worlds, while the other, a pegasus, had a coat the color of a pale star and a powder blue mane, a scar faintly visible across her chest.
Belatedly, Pepper Mint bolted to her feet, swaying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get in your way,” she said, only half-slurring.
“It’s fine,” the white mare said with a small smile. “Are you okay? You didn’t hurt yourself trying to get in, did you? Do you have a name?”
She put a hoof to the door and it opened easily, without so much as a creak. Pepper Mint sighed up at it and lowered her head, ears flat against her skull. “I’m okay. My name’s Pepper Mint.”
“I’m Asteria. I’m, ah… Princess Luna’s daughter, and this is Asphodel. She’s - well, she’s Death herself, but it’s kind of a long story.”
“Pepper?” a mare called, and from the sky landed a pegasus in the black body armor of the Consular Guard and her  spear strapped to her back. “Oh, honey, were you sleeping out here all night? You weren’t trying to get in again, were you?”
A crowd had gathered, young alicorns arriving for class and passerby from the street, among them stood a sandy-coated, freckled earth pony adolescent with dirty blond hair in a braid down her side and an orange-coated blond with a cowgirl hat, a unicorn’s horn spiraling up just beneath it. Great, she’d been holding back a Princess and her daughter, too.
Dejected, her cheeks red, Pepper Mint passed between the pair and made her way to her mother. “I just thought… it was stupid. I’m sorry, Mom. I won’t come out here again.” Tears shone in her eyes and her tail tucked between her legs.
Mint Breeze slid her wing about her and nuzzled at her poll. “It’s all right, honey. You aren’t any lesser for it. I’m sorry you had to be disappointed.”
They started away, but Pepper Mint paused as a light touched her back. At the cliff face a few blocks away, Celestia was raising the sun, and the door caught the first rays. She turned her head back to look. Asteria paused as she was about to enter, watching Pepper Mint’s face. She shut the door and pulled Asphodel aside. “You can do it,” she whispered, her voice just carrying.
The mares behind them watched, the younger looking to see the little unicorn filly shrug free of her mother’s wing. “Oh. Kid, you’ve already tried the door - come back after you’ve found your Legend and-”
Applejack stuffed a hoof into her daughter’s mouth. “Hush, dear. Don’t interfere.”
Mint Breeze frowned down, her eyes worried. “Honey… I know you’re disappointed, but it’s okay. I love you, and we have each other.” 
Pepper Mint didn’t hear her, though. She had eyes only for the door, shining in the light of the newborn sun. It did mock her with its stupid, immovable perfection, its ineffable divine aloofness. She hated it, she hated everything about it, and she hated how inadequate it made her feel, how much like a piece of mud scooped up from the earth and given pony shape. She pushed her mother’s wing aside and stamped her hooves, snorting.
With a scream, she charged.
She didn’t even care if she could get inside, she didn’t care if it opened. In that moment, the only thing she cared about was showing the damned door that she wouldn’t slink away, beaten and lost inside. The people watching didn’t matter, no matter how embarrassing and foolish this was. If she failed, so be it - all that mattered is that she tried.
Thoom!
The gong sound of her impact rippled across the watchers in a wave, stirring dust and ruffling feathers. For a moment, the door stood - and then, ever so slowly, toppled back.
Thoom!
A dazed Pepper Mint, seeing double, lay flat on the fallen door. A strange feeling filled her, a strength the likes of which she’d never known. She looked around, seeing two Phoebes and a dozen odd alicorn students staring back at her from the rotunda inside. Looking back, she blinked a few times and saw her mother, hooves pressed to her mouth, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
Stepping forward, Applejack swept off her hat. “Well. I’ll be. Looks like that was your Legend all along, kid. That door was your hill to climb.”
“What?” Pepper Mint asked, eyes wide.
Asteria got her nose under her and helped her up to her feet. She smiled like the summer sun. “You hit that door so hard, I think they heard it all the way back home in Moonrise.”
“What?” Pepper Mint’s eyes somehow got even wider.
“Legionnaire Mint Breeze?” Phoebe called. “Why don’t you and your daughter come with me? I think we have some matriculation details to discuss.”
“What?”
Mint Breeze stepped forward, laying a wing on her back and nudging her inside.
“I… I don’t understand. I don’t belong here, I’m not a…” Pepper Mint pressed against her, trembling. She looked down at the door, and realization dawned at last. The fire within her filled every part of her as her heart leapt for joy.
“You are. I’m so proud of you. My daughter - the alicorn.”
“I did it,” she whispered, and squeezed out warm, happy tears that stained her cheeks. “I opened it.”
“That you did. Now, come along,” Phoebe said. “You have the beginning of a long, long future to discuss.”
They put the door back after she moved on, but, strangely, Pepper Mint didn’t mind. Every day she walked from her mother’s apartment in the basement of Canterlot Castle to the door, all she had to do was push, and the door would open, no matter how much the sight of it made her heart seize up, as if afraid that one day it might fail to open and Headmistress Phoebe would realize her mistake. One night, after a late evening studying First Age alicorn artifacts in Wave Form’s class, she saw a group of foals peeking around the corner, staring up at the gate. Pushing it closed with a rear off, she trotted down and faced her old friends, eyes gleaming in the dark.
“Well? What are you all waiting for?”
They shared glances, and darted forward, charging up the steps.
Grinning, Pepper Mint shook her head and gazed back at the door. No matter anxious power it still had over her, she had beaten it, and never would she be barred from these halls. She smiled, put aside her fear, and made her way home, head held high.