//------------------------------//
// Argument 
// Story: Dialectic 
// by Broken Phalanx 
//------------------------------//

There’s a certain amiability that can be found in an empty room, but only when the slightest hints of a violent row whisper and shriek through the cracks of the foundation; it’s the contrast, I suspect.

And yet the mood of sickening sentimentality remains like a comforting phantasm; the palatial walls fade into the durable memory of century-worn cobble and mortar, and still I’m not entirely opposed to the idea that even loneliness loves us all. It might even explain how I’m still sane after… everything.

If plotting the premeditated murder of a foal can be considered sane.

The volume rises a moment later, and the peaceful ghosts are exorcised; I sigh, even as even the palace walls prove incapable of imprisoning the passions of the speakers.

The seeds were sowed a few scant hours ago, and already I feel this turmoil nurturing them like fresh fertilizer.

I rise, aching with phantom pains that even magically restored youth cannot banish, and pass by two guards: Mended Drum and Silent Knight.

I named them. I named their parents, and theirs, and so on for generations. I’ve named an entire lineage of ponies both great and small. And before all of them, I named myself.

Name Rater.

The shouts deeper within the castlabate for a moment and I find myself halted, rocked by the memory of a question.

Who named me, though?

My parents, obviously; old though I may be, senility is hardly a concern. And yet even my recollection of that time is faded, and the trip down memory lane is fogged and filled with monsters.

My name was… George. And what a dreadful name that was. It lacked meaning, pithiness, and substance, as well as any number of other essential qualities a name ought to have. It’s… frankly, it’s an ugly name.

And yet it was the name they gave a new-born me.

This pointless recollection has to wait, however; once more has some regal soul has become inflamed by what I plan to do.

Twilight, bless her, tries to explain why this deplorable act has to be done, tries to explain the stakes, but our eldest Alicorn will have none of it. Not that I’m surprised; she has almost made an art of obfuscating the less glamorous actions she has taken on behalf of Equestria. Celestia knows, in her mind if not her heart, that there is a fundamental law that must be upheld if peace is going to continue for our ponies.

Little Antithesis is dangerous, and the dangerous must either be contained or destroyed.

‘But why?’ asks some noble fragment of my mind that I have taken to calling George. It’s an ugly little daemon, and must at times be battered down for the greater good. Like now, for instance.

“Because we’ve seen how this story ends,” I, or, at least, the Alicorn named Name Rater, replies. “The princesses defeated, the tenets of friendship cast aside for the sake of power, the Ur-Bane and the death of magic.”

There is nothing that remains but madness and despair should Antithesis be allowed to live freely, and given there is no barrier of sufficient strength to contain her…

Something wells up in my belly and scratches at my throat; I realize too late that it is bile. I clean the mess as well as I can, interrupted occasionally by convulsive dry-heaving.

I suppose this is something I ought to be proud of, this weakness of the mind. It is proof, at least to me, that as monstrous as this necessary action may be, monster I am not.

‘That isn’t how it works,’ George protests, but I ignore it, if only to settle my stomach.

I march to the noise of heated argument, consciously willing my body to breathe. It’s only a moment later that I realize I’m laughing, or maybe sobbing; when in the world did I become somepony Twilight would argue with Celestia for? Somepony that could compel a meeting of Alicorns?

Twilight. Celestia. Luna. Cadence.

I named them all. I’ve named eternal heroes alongside immortal villains.

It’s a thought that reminds me of my parents, and like flint and steel cracking together within my head the memory reveals the monsters to be mere shadow and the fog to be simply that.

I remember my mother. I remember her terrible attempts at gardening, her spotty vision, her desperate artistic hopes strangled by a zeitgeist that demanded agriculture above personal desires. I remember her hugging me close like a shield and her whispered, hoarse, advice, the sort that she herself was far too afraid to follow; I remember, young though I was, asking about my own name.

I don’t remember what I said, but I can recall the reply as crisply as a summer morning rain.

‘A name is the first gift a parent can give their child,’, she said, and the daemon George echoes, even as the momentary revelation fades once more into the dark and monsters resume their watch within my head.

What does that make me?

I falter in my step even as I feel a renewed kinship with the ponies who raised me: Celestia is the mother of Equestria, so does that make me some sort of demented and forgotten father?

The interior of the house. The years spent looking at photos or images at countless cooing colts and fillies. The names, the titles, the days and nights of isolation. It’s not a place where age and death exists, just one where a pony gets older listening to imagined laughter. Everything else is lost, thankfully; I could not endure if that were not the case.

Painful memories are often forgotten; was I a painful memory? Is this why I feel something inside me twist and tear and weep when I hear my old name?

The present is a poison to introspection, and I slam snout first into an ornate door; a chilly sort of light filters through its edges, the sort that echoes of dueling ideologies and desperate arguments.

I snort in irritation, as does the flickering recollection I have of George: it’s almost always in these quiet rooms, smoke-filled and tinged with brandy, that history is made; a thousand warhawks silenced by a single document penned by those who, more often than not, had never tasted a hint of conflict.

But now there are outliers, infiltrators in the ranks, and the quiet necessity of our proposed action is considered with the seriousness it deserves: Twilight, warrior princess; Cadence, Empress in her own right after ripping her own land back from the thrall of another; and Luna, eternal foe of Nightmares and other such things that go bump in the night.

Can those in power do what must be done?

I enter the room.


***


Nothing of note happens while within that place. Luna sides with Celestia and Twilight with me even as Cadence dithers, clearly sighing with relief when we make the decision, unanimously, to take a break.

Sycophantically sisterly to the end, I think Luna glares at me. Celestia merely frowns, as if in thought. Twilight retreats to some corner of the castle’s library to sniffle in solitude, too afraid to take her friends with her to Canterlot for fear of them discovering the morbid truth.

Cadence is the one who surprises me with her approach, and we tour the castle’s museum of art together.

“So, Name,” she said, “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? How’s the search for a special somepony going?”

Of course. When all else fails, when a pony is confronted with two equally unacceptable courses, trust them to revert to old certainties.

“I’m not looking for one,” I reply, uncaring that my words are rushed and charged with irritation. “Same as the last time we met, and the time before, and so on.”

“Hm,” is all she replies in that infuriatingly self-certain way all the more … established Alicorns did. It’s enough to set my blood to boiling, but I remain silent as we both gaze, thoughtfully, at the painting before us.

It’s a simple thing to describe, abstract to the extreme; it’s a night-sky, speckled with chips of light so bright they’re almost agonizing to look upon. Honestly, if it weren’t for its name, it’d be a forgettable piece.

“Huh,” Cadence says at first, squinting at the nameplate, before asking in an almost conversational tone, “Why do you think it’s called-”

“-Asphyxiation? Because that’s what it is,” I reply evenly. “What do you see?”

“I see freedom,” she says even as I sigh. “I see infinite potential, and a land without boundaries.”

“As you would and as you should,” I mutter, even as we near the canvas. I see by her expression that this is not enough, and rejoin her questioning glance with, “Only the winged or the horned see the heavens as achievable.”

Cadence, witty to the last, merely ruffles her feathers and twitches a few sparks from her horn; in unconscious sympathy, my own follow suit.

“I guess I simply see my past as more powerful than my present,” I reply, stiffly, even as I cast an even more critical eye upon the painting.

Tricky beast, art; one can design and craft a toilet, and all the declarations that it is a throne will be treated as the rantings of the mad. But art, well, the name is part of the thing, shapes it and crafts it all the same as the thing itself; toilets become thrones, love turns to loneliness, and the limitless becomes so truly limiting.

Was that something my wife had said?

Cadence, gift that she has, seems to note the change in my posture, my eyes. Or maybe something in my aura shifts, as I dream of wildflowers and calm meadow streams. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose.

“Tell me about her,” Cadence beckons, softly.

I am no romantic. Poetry eludes me. I suppose that’s why the couple of guard-like shadows at the other end of the exhibit shuffle uncomfortably during my rant.

“-breath like that rotten cheese Luna demands these kitchens stock and a snore that could wake the dead. Her frown might as well be etched in granite for all it changed, and she had more lines on her face than a piece of graph paper-”

And through it all Cadence nods quietly, smiling and frowning at the tones rather than the words. It’s only once I begin to pant from lingual exhaustion that she finally says, “You miss her.”

I remember carrying her, my knees trembling and sagging under the weight; a body shouldn’t be that heavy, and yet her’s was. I remember shoveling, digging away, and the lonely funeral that followed. She had friends, though none were in attendance; she had outlived, outlasted them all. I had been too sturdy an anchor for her, it seems.

I remember that meek exhalation, that quiet ‘sorry’ that she muttered.

“She was my dawn,” I reply, softly; the lights of the painting blur, if only for a moment, before I choke down the lump of pain in my throat and grunt, “You get used to losing folks, I suppose. Or you find ways to keep them around.”

“What was her name?” Cadence asks, and the words seem to lash at me like the thorns of roses.

“I named her-” I try to say, but a hoof as soft as a ghost’s cares halts me.

“Her real name,” Cadence clarifies. “Not her title, not what was on the birth certificate, not what she legally changed her name to. What you called her, and what she answered to.”

She demands the impossible. There are some things we sacrifice to forget, things that would likely destroy the paradigms of more naive Alicorns; the being before me has loved with the strength and passion to manifest miraculous magic, but she has yet to grieve with equal abandon.

The final step of grief is killing the ghosts of loved ones stuck inside your head, after all.

And yet my mouth hinges open and a voice not quite of my own volition spills out, saying, “I… called her Gneiss.”

The daemon George has struck again, and at the recollection of the pet name I recall (or perhaps re-realize) an old pain in my chest. I whimper so quietly it is more thought than sound.

And Cadence looks at me as if there is hope for me yet.

But then the bells chime once more, and we are summoned to deliberate on murder once more.

Can those in power do what must be done?


***


They clearly cannot, if such a debacle can be expected from every gathering. Twilight is wavering in her conviction; where once her voice was unbreakable rock is now as soft and pliable as magma. It’s only in the faintest glimmering twinkles in Celestia’s eyes that I realize Twilight was not as alone as I had imagined.

The most I can truly claim is a similar, if far more subtle, shift in Cadence’s feelings. Still, she does not back me, and I suspect this is a vote she shall never commit to.

We… I am losing traction, and this is a conflict I cannot afford to lose.

I remember the draught I drank of, a sort of seer’s syrup, and recall the abominations that are allowed to transpire should Antithesis truly come into her own. There is no ‘activation’ to halt, no wings or horn to sever, no ritual of great and terrible importance to subvert; just a scared filly in possession of more power than she ought and the ability to corrupt that which is pristine. A robbery of light where the culprit is their own greatest victim.

A frigid, disturbed fragment of my own past shambles to the forefront of my mind and chuckles, at least as much as a revenant truly can; of all the threats to face this land, from berserk Alicorns, mad gods, foul and sapient shadows, a plague of shape-shifting bugs, to even some twit capable of throwing us all for a relativistic loop, and it’d be some hornless filly who’d kill us all! It baffles the mind, and yet there’s a certain… rightness to it all.

But such a part is only a fragment, and I beat it back shortly enough.

I feel the ire in my guts grow with every stolen glance at Celestia, whose eyes never quite abate in their glimmering; some part of her seems to be reveling in this charade, enjoys making a mockery of my prognostication and the seriousness it carries. It, admittedly, drives me to act in a way I regret, in retrospect.

I’m not much of a Unicorn, and even less of a Pegasus. Earth, however, never fails me, even when I slam upon the stone-table with enough force to drive it into the crystalline floor like a nail into wood.

And I look upon the table, now flush to the floor, and remember how the dangerous must either be contained or destroyed.

“I … need a break,” I finally say, even as the rest of the room’s inhabitants stare at me as if I’ve grown a second head; it’s a petty victory, but at least Celestia no longer seems just amused at this debacle.

I disappear from the room in a flash of magic, only to reappear in another cell; where I go is only as real as the most vivid of dreams, an illusionary place crafted from memories and hopes with enough rigidity to build an admittedly glass-like fantasy. I am not nearly gifted enough to create something even this insubstantial; it is both gift and condemnation from the purple princess, who demanded we test every variable, every moment of every second foretold, to see if the future is malleable.

For the thirty-seven thousandth, two-hundred and eleventh time, I watch a mare borderline explode as vital organs are inverted, forcible shifted from innards to out-ards. The spell that forces time to stretch like taffy activates just a second later, just in time to see a filly go from weeping over her mother’s corpse to laughing at the thrill of murder; an inversion of her own innocence.

Seconds pass as hours here, and I take a deep breath to steel myself even as the next few days are quietly dreaded. I have become numb to blood through all this testing, and yet it’s always this moment, this transformation, that forces my breathing to hitch and me to wince. This is not a story of heroes and villains, just one of necessary evils and victims.

I manage to watch Equestria fall halfway into ruin before the slowed twinkling of teleportation magic hints at an unwanted visitor. I turn around, expecting purple.

Instead I see white gold.

“So this is where you’ve taken to hiding yourself,” she says with remarkable calmness, given how phantom blood paints the walls around her.

She watches the projected end-times pass, I watch her face shift and twitch with carefully managed displays of emotion. She is serious for a change.

“She told you where to find me,” I say, even as the future phantasmal Twilight is corrupted into villainy; I say it without a trace of bitterness, a non-accusatory observation of reality.

The other Alicorn nods in reply; harmony dies as we stand together in awkward silence.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” I finally say, the words short and clipped from swallowed pride and copious shame. “I’m sorry.”

“I should’ve been taking your warnings more seriously,” the white Alicorn replies, her tone more melancholy than I could’ve anticipated. And yet, before I can adjust, she continues, “I forget, at times, the respect others are due, simply because I disdain the subject being discussed. And I forget how poisonous bitterness can be.”

“Hmm,” is the sum totality I can muster in reply; foreign territory, I’m beginning to suspect, is not my strong suit.

“This is her?” Celestia asks a moment later, snout gesturing at the tiny filly gamboling through her early life. I nod as the filly nuzzles her mother, and Celestia murmurs, “Sweet thing.”

“For now.”

Harmony and friendship once again prove ineffective against the unyielding future this little filly promises.

“Where are we?” she asks before blinking at my expression; a morbid chuckle follows even as she adds, “True. If they cannot handle this, we’re likely dead.”

“So we agree on that much, at least.”

“On that much, yes.”

“...you’re still going to oppose me. Even after testing every conceivable variable.”

“In spirit, if not in form. At least for what you currently plan.”

“Your greatest student faces a fate worse than death and you still think my option is worse?”

“Infinitely so.”

“Why?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, instead choosing to survey the middle-distance placidly even as I shuffle in poorly contained outrage. Finally she asks, “How many times do you think the world has ended?”

My reply is to simply look at her in askance.

“A hundred and seven. I have seen over a hundred civilizations fall in my life. I remember the first, an empire of sapient ice; the seventh perished when Lord Minos’ drowned; fourty-sixth, a coup went terribly wrong and the army imploded upon itself quite literally. I’ve seen a hundred ways Harmony has disappeared from the world, and a thousand-fold more wars that promised the same. It has left me somewhat… selfish, admittedly.”

I snort in impatience. “Our future is dwindling while we speak. I get it, you’re old; what does this have to do with her?”

Her eyes twinkle as she replies, “I’ve combatted every aspect of societal poison and corruption I can find, going to any lengths to do so as long as it didn’t compromise my own morals. And now I see this ‘doom’ in its most naked form, and it’s one of the innocent I’ve strived to protect.”

“And she’s going to destroy Equestria.”

“I suspect that Equestria will perish on a far more fundamental and important level if we do kill her. We are leaders, and to justify her death, well, where that mentality goes is too bleak by far.”

“And when we all die, what then?”

But that daemon George already knows, and whispers the words a quarter of a second before she does; “Then we die knowing we did right. We remain a bastion others may strive for, a light untouched by corruption. We die free.”

The mood is somber, and yet somewhat relaxed; this is a funeral, held by the dead for the dead.

“And yet we still die,” I say, softly.

“Perhaps.”

“You’re placing stock in miracles, aren’t you?”

“I find they have a high return on my investments, Name-”

The mood is dashed as I turn upon her like a wolf, teeth chattering land clacking like dozen explosive cartridges lined alongside each other. Perhaps I speak, perhaps it’s George the daemon; I suspect they are one and the same at times. “This is not the place for falsenames, Susan. A name is a gift, the first. What I give is just a sham and we both know it.”

“It’s only as much of a sham as you allow it to be, George.”

“Hmph.”

“I’m still not exactly happy with you either, Na-... George.”

I sigh even as I reply, “Nor am I, in hindsight. Had at least four other Alicorns to speak with, and I pick-”

“-pick the one who, moreso than any of us, ought not be forced into these sorts of decisions.”

“Why? Because she threatens traditional ideals and is a revolutionary little fire-cracker?”

“No, because she’s still a child herself, and adults must bear the weight of the world until the young are strong enough.”

Of course she would claim that; a smothering yet loving influence to the end, a worried old watchdog that simultaneously knows it’s well on the way to relaxation and retirement yet forces yet another day from its fragile bones simply so the puppy doesn’t face the hungry darkness alone.

‘And yet she’s right,’ mutters George the daemon, and I cannot help but feel my neck nod in agreement.

We watch the end a few dozen more times, occasionally tweaking some inconsequential variable only to witness a future that refused to change. In time, we retire once more to that most frigid of conference rooms.

Can those in power do what must be done?


***


Twilight is not here, though she left a letter declaring she had shifted her vote to one of ‘abstain’.

I would’ve long since departed to find an adequate coffin were it not for Celestia leaving in the same manner as her disciple. And so this charade continues; conversation has withered into non-existence, much like the flowers on the center of the table, and only the desperate and somewhat inane comments from Cadence keep this from devolving further.

Luna glares at me, and I think the walls threaten to crack from the chill alone. I return the sentiment with a grunt and a growl, even as I slump against the table; cloaking deserved fear in the facsimile of fury is exhausting. Cadence looks between us, clearly somewhat torn in her loyalties, but unwavering in her adamant refusal to vote or abstain from the proceedings entirely.

And so we stew silently, the three of us, ‘immortal’ fools to the last.

What makes us rulers?

The two of them are looking at me. I must have pondered that aloud.
“...power, pure and simple,” Luna says, simply; she looks melancholy for a change. “Immortality tends to tip the scales in our favor for almost any conflict; that which cannot be stopped in the moment can almost certainly be outlived.”

Cadence, for her part, looks appalled at this answer. “What, just like that? Longevity is no basis for a functioning government!”

“But isn’t it?” I ask, tired beyond belief, and the two other Alicorns seem shocked I would agree with Luna on anything.

We’re all a bunch of fools and we deserve every weapon we’ve crafted.

Oops. Said that aloud as well.

I find myself pondering the future after us, if only to drown out the shouting. I always reset the vision after Twilight becomes a husk of her former self, but now I wonder, what then?

There is fire, death and misery, that much is certain. But such things cannot be sustained eternally, surely?

Food for thought, if nothing else.

The shouting dims and slowly ceases.

I look to Luna, passionate and somewhat abrasive as always. Of the two eldest, she is the warrior poet, painting a night sky with constellations even as she banishes nightmares. A veritable stone-wall of willpower, she cannot be outlasted, not by me.

“Nothing is going to change your mind,” I observe, more sleepy than irritated; there will be nightmares tonight, I can feel it. “We’re just going to be circling this subject until the stars go out.”

“Correct.”

“Hey, I might vot-”

“No you won’t,” Luna and I interrupt Cadence, albeit somewhat gently. Luna looks at me for a moment before continuing, “If you were, this would’ve been over hours ago.”

“Go to lunch, be near your child, and talk with your family,” I add with a sigh, before muttering, “Goodness knows it’s more productive than being here…”

Cadence leaves in a blur, pausing only to hug Luna and, far more surprisingly, me.

And then there were two.

“Name Rater,” Luna says in acknowledgement.

“Monica,” I return, and I think I see her smile for a moment as youthful, nostalgia-tinged memories flood back to her.

“We’re going to be at this until the world ends, aren’t we?” Luna asks, tone clipped and business-like.

“World’s ending a lot faster than you might think,” I reply, equally curtly.

“So you say. And yet, here I stand. Or sit, as the case may be.”

“Hm.”

We stare at each other for perhaps an hour before she speaks again.

“All things are yoked together by will alone, Name. Harmony will not falter; trust in it.”

“I’ve seen contrary.”

“Then trust us, George.”

“I do trust you all. I trust you all to do the right thing. Even if it seems stupid.”

“Look-”

“And I trust you to never back down from a cause you believe in, which is why I’m abstaining at this point. Congratulations on your victory, Monica; I just hope you’ve got a better solution than murder. Fare well, because goodness knows I won’t.”

I kick open the door as I leave, despite knowing full well how utterly unnecessary such an action is. I shout over my shoulder, “And tell those lazy sacks of garbage they can name their own stupid kids; if I so much as get a letter, I’m burning it.”

And with that, I blink away.