//------------------------------//
// Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown 
// Story: Mad, With Power 
// by Aragon 
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"It was then that the Griffon Ambassador said to my Sister, “Oh, Celestia, Praise your Selfless Nature.” I laughed, for he was wrong, and I said, She Is Quite Full of Herself, Actually.”"
 
—Princess Luna, Politics, or, How to Make Dinner Unpleasant. 
 
 
 
 
 
Thunk!

The hatchet vibrated as it swung up, keen and sharp, as if it were humming with delight. 
 
Thunk!
 
Only the dry sound of the hatchet burying itself inside the neck—not a scream, not a grunt, nothing. Total silence.
 
Thunk!
 
There was no blood. There should’ve been.
 
Thunk!
 
The name of the stallion was Rose Thorn.
 
He was lean, and strong, and young, and mean. He was sharp of tongue and sharper of mind, and he had seen many things in his life. Some had been good. Many hadn’t.
 
It’d been the many that had brought him here, this night.
 
Thunk!
 
He swept the sweat off his brow and looked down, eyes red with fury. Celestia lay in her bed, sleeping peacefully, the hatchet buried more than halfway into her neck. Rose Thorn had been chopping at it for the last forty seconds.
 
And there was still no blood.
 
Rose Thorn picked up the hatchet once more—he had to pry it out of Celestia’s neck—and nervously looked back over his shoulder.
 
It wasn’t supposed to take this long, he thought. The plan was to get in, kill the princess, and get out. Not an easy job, but a quick one. How hard could it be to kill a pony in her sleep? 
 
Very much so. Apparently.
 
It was the lack of blood that got to him. He’d sawn halfway through her neck, and yet the bedsheets were still pristine, her coat still pearly white. Not a single drop had fallen.
 
Rose Thorn knew Celestia wasn’t normal, but this was too much. He leaned over the bed, heart in his throat, and risked a glance at the wound.
 
He had to stop himself from screaming.
 
Celestia was whole. Like bread, like wood; there was no inside. Everything was flesh, no organs, no blood. Rose Thorn had cut into her neck, but there had been no wound—just endless white, arsenic white, soft and dense and whole.
 
Then he made the last mistake he’d ever made: he looked up.
 
And saw Celestia’s unblinking eyes, staring straight at him.
 
“Oh,” she said, her voice weak. “Oh, dear. I didn’t want to ruin the mood. My apologies?”
 
Rose Thorn couldn’t suppress a scream, now.
 
In a frenzy, without thinking, he grabbed the hatchet once again. Maybe it was the fear that gave him strength, maybe it was the rage—maybe it was simply pure desperation. It didn’t matter, as long as he had his weapon, and he did the only thing he could.
 
Screaming, yelling, careless, he brought the hatchet down one last time.
 
THUNK!
 
The blade bit into the pillows, burying itself deeper than before—and Celestia’s head came free and rolled away, all the way out of the bed to the other side of the room, till it hit the wall and stopped.
 
One last scream, then silence. Rose Thorn stepped away from the bed, breathing hard, thinking he had to go, he had to go now and—  
 
Click.
 
The most horrible sound.
 
The door had been locked behind him.
 
“No,” Rose Thorn whispered, as he ran towards it—but there was no use. The handle wouldn’t work. He tried pushing, he tried pulling, nothing. He was trapped.
 
The window? Maybe. He tried it, but—no. He was at the top of the highest tower, and had no rope. The fall would be fatal. No way out.
 
Then:
 
“Ggggrgh.”
 
A sound.
 
“Ggggrrrrgh.”
 
The head, by the corner, was twitching.
 
Twitching and turning, like a cube full of worms. It came from the neck—what was left of it—it was moving up and down endlessly. Turning the head around.
 
Rose Thorn took a step back, until his back hit the wall. 
 
The body, in the bed, was moving too.
 
A grotesque ballet followed, both parts of the Princess moving and twitching around. It wasn’t the movement of a dead body coming to terms with its new reality; it was the jitter of a nervous child, or maybe a childish adult.
 
Rose Thorn turned around and hit the door as hard as he could, but his hoof bounced back. He tried the hatchet, to no avail. It was unbreakable.
 
Another growl, and then a wet sound, like a mare giving birth.
 
It glistened under the moonlight. It looked like saliva, or maybe amniotic fluid. It poured from Celestia’s neck—both from the body and from the head—and it filled the air with a sickeningly sweet smell. Sugary tea, Rose Thorn thought. It smelled like sugary tea.
 
“Gggrrrhghg.”
 
Then:
 
Chlof.
 
“Oh, dear,” came Celestia’s voice, still perfectly calm. “Well, this is uncomfortable.”
 
“Indeed,” came her voice, a second time. “The smell is nice, however.”
 
“Maybe a little too sweet?”
 
“Really? I think it’s perfect as it is.”
 
Rose Thorn was biting his lip so hard it was bleeding.
 
There were two Celestias in front of him, now.
 
Neither were complete. The one on the bed had a small head—a deformed caricature, maybe half its normal size. The eyes were too big, and there were no ears.
 
The one by the corner had a small body—one leg was much longer than the other three, and there were lumps all over the stomach. The cutie mark was faded and cracked, but recognizable. There was no tail.
 
Their voices, however, were perfectly fine.
 
“Well, the bedsheets are a mess,” said the one on the bed, looking around. “Luna is going to get angry.”
 
“She will say it would have been wiser to stop the beheading before it got to this point,” the one by the corner said. “And she will probably be right.”
 
“True. Then again…”
 
“Yes, I know. Luna has always been really sensitive when it comes to beheadings. I feel she has never quite got over all those times she got dismembered as a child.”
 
The Celestia on the bed chuckled. Then, she blinked with her horrible eyes. “Oh,” she said, looking at Rose Thorn. “We’re being rude.”
 
“My,” the other Celestia said. “You’re right. Better not to waste time. You, or me? Who goes?”
 
Silence, as both Celestias looked at each other. Then the one by the corner nodded. “Me, then. It’ll be easier.”
 
“Quite.”
 
They jumped at each other.
 
The wet sounds came back. Rose Thorn had to look away, nausea gripping his stomach. Pony teeth are not made to cut, they’re made to mush and break. No blood came out, but the sweet fluid came back, and the air got denser and denser.
 
The hooves gave Celestia the most trouble. They were too hard to chew, so she had to swallow them whole, and each one sounded like she was going to choke up until the very last moment. 
 
Finally, she swallowed. 
 
And then there was silence.
 
Rose Thorn felt tears down his cheeks. The hatchet fell from his grip and hit the ground with a loud clatter, but he didn’t have the strength to pick it up again.
 
And Celestia, the only one once again, perfect and whole like she’d always been, no would or crack in her neck, looked at Rose Thorn with nothing but love. “Apologies for taking so long,” she said. She smiled. Her teeth were normal. “I needed the nutrients, see?”
 
Rose Thorn couldn’t answer. He was beyond words at this point. He just screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
 
Celestia took a step towards him.
 
 



 
 
“And then he just jumped out of the window?” Luna asked.
 
“Indeed.”
 
“Huh.” Luna frowned, and took a sip of tea. “Well, that is just silly.”
 
Morning had come, as it usually did, and with it, breakfast. Celestia was not a fan of gossip—she’d never been—but no big sister would ever let her sibling miss a chance to say I told you so.  
 
“I feel like I should have talked to him, at least. To thank him, perhaps?” Celestia was looking pensive that morning. She had barely touched her tea. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
 
“Did you ever find out why they keep trying to behead you, Sister?”
 
Celestia smiled. “I don’t need to. I see the passion in their eyes, Luna, every single time. I know they do it out of love. Only the strongest of emotions can fuel that kind of fire in the heart of a pony.”
 
“Well.” Luna took another sip of tea. It was extra sugary this morning. “I don’t know. You are the social one.”
 
“You know, Luna?” Celestia put aside her teacup, and looked her in the eye. “Somehow, I feel like it might be my fault. I should have locked the window, too. I know they have a tendency to run away after they’re done…”
 
Luna nodded. “Out of embarrassment?”
 
“Yes, now you’re getting it.” Celestia flashed a smile. “But it just never occurred to me that he would jump out the window, of all things. He wasn’t a pegasus, see?”
 
“He wasn’t?”
 
“He had no wings.”
 
“Well, then this is even sillier,” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “And you should not blame yourself. The fault lays on him, for forgetting he could not fly. Also, Sister? I think I finally understood why our subjects aren’t immortal.
 
Celestia blinked, and her ears perked up. “Yes?”
 
“They aren’t as good as us at not dying.”
 
 
 
 

"It was then that the Griffon Ambassador said to my Sister, “Oh, Celestia, Praise your Selfless Nature.” I laughed, for he was wrong, and I said, “She Is Quite Full of Herself, Actually.” I do not think he got the joke."
 
—Princess Luna, Politics, or, How to Make Dinner Unpleasant.