She had screamed, and so those below had heard.
Part of Twilight registered what had now started to ebb into a still-desperate background babble, just before she was pushed out of the room. The noise of their entrapment, added to that which still seemed to be echoing within her skull, had covered up most of the earliest parts -- but even then, it had been there. There had been a certain tension in the meeting, and hearing the scream coming from above had almost unleashed it. Under so many circumstances, it would have sent robed and hooded ponies instinctively scrambling for the only visible exit as fear of discovery drove them to get out, trampling anything and anypony in their way --
-- but the older stallion had apparently said something, words which bought just enough time for more words, and so he was still on the stage, currently holding the crowd back with speech alone. Telling them that this wasn't unexpected, they simply had a few more ponies in attendance than the rest had known about, there was no danger and those ponies would be with them shortly.
Only he didn't describe them as ponies. He'd said 'guests'.
So many of those below wanted to run. But words held them back long enough for fear to, if not vanish, drop to a level which was easier to fight. The gathering was shifting, kicking out questions, they needed to know they were safe --
-- but then Quiet, the last to leave the room, shut down the device. And so Twilight heard nothing more.
She was not the first in the line being forced through the passageway: there were robed ponies in front of her, making certain she didn't try to go anywhere. Not that she could: her horn was restrained, her wings had been wrapped within netting, and she seemed to have very little true control over her legs. She mostly moved when prodded, shuffled along towards whatever would happen next. Trying to think and finding that every idea of escape had been equally bound, negated before it ever had the chance to work.
The others were being pushed along. None among their captors seemed to care about whether Applejack's flanks scraped the rough walls, and the single grunt of pain which couldn't be held back was met by a harsh burst of laughter.
"Don't." Quiet's voice, somewhere well behind her.
"Scraping a clod off on stone. You can't tell me that's not funny --"
"-- a Bearer," Quiet softly said, "is on her way to speak with the doctor. Try to remember that."
Her ears had not been restrained, and so rotated back and down, pressing against her skull. Trying not to hear him, and so much else. But it didn't form anything close to a perfect seal, and so Fluttershy's muffled sobs continued to reach her. There was only a single source of true silence, and the traveling sonic vacuum simply indicated Pinkie's shuffling position in the passage.
They had all been gagged, with one unable to see. But nothing been done about their hearing, which allowed the frantic approach coming down the passage to reach them all.
"It got past her!" A gasp from a desperate mare voice. "We're trying to find it --"
"The staff will lock down the castle," Quiet stated. "All the windows, all the doors. There are security workings which can be activated, and he can't cast. We can at least keep him from getting out." A pause. "And let me tell them to do it. Any words they might have to repeat should be safe ones. Can somepony escort me back to the main hall?"
There was probably a nod, because then there was a flash. And then Quiet was gone.
Up the passage. Back into the main halls. Marched down the ramp or, in Rainbow's case, levitated. The pegasus had been completely immobilized: wings, legs, jaw -- and, after she'd tried for a few too many whips, tail. Her magic came from movement, and so all the impotent rage was left to harmlessly radiate from furiously-darting eyes. Rainbow was picking out target after target for her revenge and couldn't reach a single one of them. Multiple loops of field had been added to the bindings of nets and ropes, and so her flight was no longer her own.
Spike. Spike's still free...
One little dragon against an entire castle.
She wanted to have hope. She kept waiting for somepony to kick a scaly body in front of her before laughing and putting a hoof into the crests.
Through the main hall, and a moment of what would have often been normalcy turned into surrealism: there were servants cleaning up after the party, and one mare thoughtfully got in front of them long enough to make sure no crumbs would impede their hooves: it wouldn't do for the prisoners to get dirty.
Quiet rejoined them as they used one of the exit hallways: something other than that which had been utilized by those attending the conference. He took the lead as they stopped at a wall, and faint sparkles tapped at stone. The new passage opened, and they went down.
This one was even narrower, and the working lights did no more than show them how much trouble they were about to have.
They moved, and Applejack repeatedly bit into her gag. Pinkie remained silent. Small bursts of gag-muffled muttering occasionally came from Rarity. Fluttershy cried. Rainbow's anger continued to build into something which felt as if it should have been producing ozone on its own. And Twilight shuffled forward.
Then there was wood in front of them. The colorless field pushed again and the hidden entrance swung inwards, cloth rippling along its forward edge. The scent of old paper filled Twilight's nostrils, failed to bring comfort.
Robed ponies turned at the sound. Saw him, then some of their fellows -- and then Twilight. But there were no shouts. No fresh outburst of panic, although one damp coating was slightly mobile: the overweight flanks beneath were shaking with poorly-repressed fear. Only one pony spoke, and the calm words easily reached her.
"Our true guests on this evening," the older stallion evenly stated, "have already been introduced. They have also been welcomed. Nopony here will do anything to change that. Clear an aisle for them, please."
Slowly, they were brought forward through the new gap. A myriad of eye colors watched them pass. Warm orange ones simply took a count.
"The dragon?"
Quiet sighed. "Still in the castle, Doctor, because we're locked down now: there are just ponies trying to find out where." Ruefully, "I had some ancient restraints in the secondary armory. I always have ropes for the hoofball practices. But somehow, over the course of all the centuries this place has been standing, nopony ever thought to purchase something that was meant to automatically stop a sapient who breathes fire -- and no, nopony was hurt, at least not by that. He managed to claw through cloth: the snout scratches are being treated. But it looked like he aimed the flame to miss. Clearing space for the run."
The older stallion slowly shook his head. "And all anypony saw was the flame, and so they gave him that space. Very well. Thank you for your efforts, my most devoted: I know you did what you could. And as we know he cannot break the security spells, we will simply trust to the efforts of the searchers. One of you, go back out and make sure everypony knows not to hurt him: from my time in his presence, I doubt he will attempt to use his flame for more than fear. And as he is no true part of what must come next, there is no need for additional delay. Would those at the front please shuffle back somewhat?"
Eventually, they were essentially sitting with the audience -- in the front row: hindquarters were pushed down to put them in that posture and, in Rainbow's case, uninverted. And finally, he nodded.
His most devoted...
She was overflowing with reasons to hate herself (with the largest source of flooding sitting silent on her immediate right), and so temporarily relegated that one to the back of the floodwater current.
"As I explained to those on this level while you were on the way," the stallion (whom she no longer wished to give the honor of a name) told them all, "you are here as my invited guests, and will be treated accordingly. It was necessary for the six of you to hear my words, whether it was from concealment or in the open. You always would have been among us at the end, and -- I had hoped you would trot down at my most devoted's side, of your own accord."
Looking right at her now, and her head dipped, eyelids half-closing. The only means she had of escape, and it wasn't enough.
"I know the scream was yours, Princess," he told her. " And I am sorry, for the truth having upset you so. I have some idea of what your life has been, because change can feel as if it will break you, and I have been through my own shattering. You were the personal student of Princess Celestia. You studied at the hooves of what you must have believed to be a deity and now, with what you have heard... I can understand a scream, because I remember my own from the night I lost my spouse. I learned a working to keep that scream from my nightscape, and I would be honored to be your teacher." He took a slow breath. "I had hoped you would trot in at Quiet's side. But you may still trot out. You are restrained -- all of you -- only so that you will stay and listen. I asked everypony here to wait for you, and so they have. I told them that the Bearers may be the most important part of our Great Work. For I know what you told Quiet. It is why I wanted you to hear me."
His calm gaze moved to Pinkie, moved over the lank fall of mane, dropped down to darkened fur. Went to Fluttershy, and there he could look at nothing more than the cloth of the blindfold, doing so for five full heartbeats.
He sighed.
"This too," he softly said, almost as if speaking to himself alone, "will be fixed..." And back to normal volume. "You must hear all of it, Princess. You, your friends, and the two among you who are mine."
His. The word could not foul her tongue, and so its sewage backwashed into her stomach.
"We left off," he reminded them all, "with an extremely partial display of the lives I have saved. There is no need to go over them all, for it would take us all the way to Sun -- and perhaps quite some distance beyond. I remember every last one of them, Princess, and I am proud of what I have given to Equestria. Proud of what they have accomplished. For those who call them monsters, a word I know has taken up residence in at least one mind, look upon the six who have saved us. The living reasons why everypony here still draws breath in a Sun-lit world, or can take a step across the land without feeling its surface turn to water. You are looking at our heroes -- and destiny does not accept monsters as Bearers."
Ponies were staring at them, with expressions impossible to read through the hoods. But Pinkie merely looked at the floor, and oversaturated cotton allowed one of Fluttershy's tears to seep through.
He looked at that. And then he did not look away so much as through, before returning his attention to Twilight.
"Later," he said, "if all goes well, I will ask you of Snowflake, Fluttershy, for I remember both your words and letters." (He wasn't looking at the caretaker when he said those words, although it could be argued that there was very little point.) "How you trust him to look after the cottage while you are here, think of him as something very much like a brother. You should think of him that way, for the two of you are so very much alike. More intelligent than others give you credit for. Stronger than anypony believes --" which brought out a small, brief smile "-- although for him, that takes some saying, does it not? But the two of you also share that fear of being among others, and... essence. For I harvested from lost siblings, and so new siblings were born..."
Fluttershy sobbed. He smiled, and she could not see it.
"I have longed to tell you that," he softly admitted. "I often have, within my dreams. And Princess... Ratchette was so happy about the talks the two of you were starting to have, when I saw her last. She seldom finds anypony she feels comfortable speaking with. You have been a comfort to her. She would never tell you that, and so I wished to. I could speak of so many -- but there are ponies waiting. Some have been waiting for a very long time. And so we go on."
And with that, he once again began to pace across the stage, with the injured hind leg dragging.
"I brought those to Sun who otherwise never would have trotted and flown under its light," he continued. "But even when channeled during one of the two great moments of destiny, essence could not change a race. I continued to use it, for Equestria was better off in having a number of extra hoofsteps about. But I was starting to experience doubts. There was but one other possible moment before me, only so long it might be postponed, and I did not know if my attempt could work. There was no evidence. None of those I had helped displayed a single external change. So many of the young were having difficulties. And so I focused my search on yet another path, for Princess Cadance had not been born from the Elements. It meant there had to be another way. But everywhere I looked -- secrecy. She arose when Princess Celestia had something much closer to full control over information getting out of the palace, before portions of the press became so -- inquisitive." A sigh. "Or, in too many distressing cases, creative. But in reviewing the stories from that time, it seems that most ponies simply believed a long-long relative had been discovered in a place nopony had ever heard of. I went to that place, to find only ice -- and the Barrier around what was still Sombra's lands. Star Swirl wrote of what had happened to the siblings who traveled with him, and thus there was an account to uncover. But for Princess Cadance... silence and swirling cold."
He sighed, briefly glanced back at the shimmering main door.
"I began to despair," he softly said. "I can admit that now. And the question of resources had already begun to arise. I knew I would need more than one pearl, and I had more than one. Many more. But... I kept using them. Every foal saved was a pearl temporarily expended. Oh, they could be recharged with the energy of fresh chaos -- but there was but a single source. I spent so many Moon-hidden nights in the palace gardens, ready to teleport away at the first sound, pulling out the residual energies from the core of the statue. Long hours during which I sometimes began to think I --"
Stopped, with head dipping as his tail briefly dropped.
"Perhaps I did," he confessed. "Perhaps it was more than fear, lack of sleep, and imagination combining to make me believe that there was something still alive within the stone. After all, the proof for that became -- active. But it could not have been aware. No awareness, and no memory. Still... a weary mind sometimes believed there was at least a dream of... resistance. And I had to be careful in more than not being found within the gardens, because to take too much would leave nothing which could rebuild for the next harvesting."
It was Discord's mission: the detail she hadn't even told Quiet. And ever since the madness had begun, the question of why the draconequus would do that had echoed through everypony's mind. Fluttershy had only believed there was a true reason, to go with true caring. With Twilight, even after they'd met her, there had been rather more doubt -- and nothing had appeared to create a motivation.
But every other rule had broken, and so more fragments crashed through her mind.
He was harvesting Discord's essence. Something where a living subject has to be horribly weak, unable to fight back, something which would normally kill...
And Discord... remembered.
This isn't a mission. It's revenge --
-- no. He could have come here himself. Even with the Princesses trying to monitor everything he does, he could potentially have gotten away with a lot. Maybe even -- deaths. But he sent us, because he was...
...was what?
...afraid?
It could have been the fear of once again finding himself trapped within stone: it felt as if there was some sense to that. And yet the storm howling in her mind would not let the concept find a safe haven of belief.
He harvested from Discord. Over and over...
...what... what would that have done to the bindings? He had to reach inside and create channels for the power to escape. He could have been creating cracks...
"Essence," the false doctor went on, "was always easier. There are forever more graves." Sadly, "And forever one more foal I was unable to help, whose essence would be asked to save another. Essence and pearls, I could gather -- but the pearls came with a cost. It is not easy to find chaos terrain: it lies in those places where ponies fear to tread. I knew of a few roughly mapped areas -- but after that, I needed to hire scouts. Then the search expanded beyond Equestria, for the Discordian Era was his rule over the world entire, and so pearls existed within the other nations. And while I could cross a continent by using a sufficiency of safe points at the borders of my range -- to travel beyond, and hope to return to the cellars... no. Even personally searching within Equestria was becoming more difficult: my fame was spreading, and more ponies calling for my services meant more chances to save lives -- and less hours to gather the things which could do it. That meant paying ponies -- and eventually, others -- to go into chaos on my behalf while never understanding what I intended to do with the results. It is not something a sane sapient treats as a low-risk venture, and they charged accordingly. One might think it would be easier to simply purchase the ones which had already made their way to the public -- except, of course, for their being the single rarest gem to exist. I did what I could there as well -- but when it came to resources, I had inherited wealth: enough to comfortably live on the interest. Now I was spending the principal. And my income as a midwife... nowhere near enough to replace it."
During their time in the underground room, it would be the only time he fully looked over Twilight. To where the robed ponies listened.
"And thus," he quietly said, "all of you. I knew that there had to be others who wished to purge the taint of sin from their blood. Some were around me. Others had to be found, starting from the suggestions of those who were the first to help. I approached carefully, spoke of my pain -- and you gave to me. Replaced the bits I no longer possessed, with the understanding that I would devote them all to the Great Work. You gave me your hope -- and in every moon of my life, I channeled that hope through chaos pearls and essence, in the name of going forward."
He seemed to be looking at somepony specific now: his head had stopped moving, eyes focused --
-- but then he was pacing again.
"But I had no evidence," he admitted --
-- and stopped in front of Pinkie.
"-- until the day I met a miracle."
She didn't look up. She didn't seem to be looking at much of anything.
"One who hosted a party in the hopes that it would make her father love her," the older stallion stated -- and now there was a faint wash of rage coloring the words. "A party for a pony so angry and hateful and hidebound that he promptly concluded the supplies for that party had been purchased using money stolen from his coffers, with no thought as to how a filly who lived on a rock farm could possibly reach a store -- and he wouldn't exactly have been all that accepting of the truth, either. But he hated you in those mistaken beliefs, didn't he, Pinkie? There were so many days when he kicked you, and it led to the one where you finally kicked back, just before you ran away. Do you remember the wild zone? The party we had together after destiny let me find you, to celebrate going to Ponyville? I found myself with a party hat upon my head, one gifted to me by a pony with no saddlebags. A hat which hadn't existed until the moment you wove it from dream."
There were little gasps behind them now, murmurs racing through the crowd. Waves of disbelief, laced with the foam of something which might have been prayer.
But Twilight didn't know what they were praying for.
"For those whom I had saved were finding their marks," he told them, no longer looking at the baker. "Essence is part of what defines us, and as their manifestations took place, that new essence expressed itself in their magic. Outer transformation had not been achieved, but an inner alchemy was bringing forth new miracles every day. Essence defines -- and now it had redefined. My own were willing to talk about their discoveries, if often to nopony other than me." Another smile. "They were, after all, speaking to their first friend. I advised many to keep a few things hidden, recognized that others had yet to explore their full potential -- and if any thought to look for a true source, then none of it was ever placed at my hooves. I had learned that I could grant new magic -- and so hope was reborn, and the training continued."
He returned to the blackboard, and his field began to sort through papers again, delving somewhat lower into the stack.
"We have yet to speak of her training," he said, "other than the part which the snitcher played in it. And some degree of summary is necessary, because it took place across a lifetime. I wrote enough about it to create -- and bind -- my own books, and perhaps when we finish here, the Princess will be interested in reviewing my work."
Once again, she didn't have words. But this time, it was simply because she didn't know any curses which would have been foul enough.
"The snitcher..." A soft chuckle. "I may be one of the few to use it for its intended purpose. I needed to know just how close she was to her mark at any moment. There were some early years of relative peace: I was fairly certain I would be safe until we'd reached the world record for youngest manifest. But she had to be taught. And the first lesson -- was that I loved her. In spite of her being broken, in spite of everything, I would love her. And so she loved me too. She was remarkably bright, rather quick to master certain subjects..."
He sighed, as his eyes briefly closed. But then he was looking at them again, and papers moved. Course subjects. Titles consulted. Study schedules.
"It made me think of what she could have been," he told them. "What she could still be, if only the Great Work could be completed. So I trained her for what was, at the time, just about a singular occupation. I trained her to be a Princess. She studied government and diplomacy. Negotiations and arbitration. There was a..." (And to Twilight, the pause felt odd.) "...passing attempt towards mastering bureaucracy, but with only the two of us, there didn't seem to be much point in passing papers back and forth. And magic. She learned about workings she could not cast, techniques with no wings to drive them. Everything I could perceive as going into the life of a Princess, I taught her. When I could not learn a subject myself, I provided books. And when even books ran out... I had found those who were willing to help in the name of hope, and some of you came to me for a day. Went down into the stone and in doing so, learned that I had also taught her to be gracious, welcoming, and kind. So many in this room contributed to her education, and I thank you again for that. She needed to master so much, and... her mind had to be right. Not just for what she would learn, but for what she had to believe. And the difficulty in that..."
Sheets went down. Sheets came up.
"She needed to learn how to be a unicorn. She needed to dream of possessing the abilities of a pegasus." Wryly, "Fortunately, excepting certain rather limited circumstances, there isn't any real magical need to learn about being an earth pony --"
There was a squeal of stressed metal as multiple chains went tight, and Applejack stopped pushing at her bonds at the moment before the failed effort would have sent her crashing chin-first to the floor.
"-- and so I was able to excise a certain amount of material from the curriculum," he smoothly went on, having ignored all of it. "She has some concept of what earth ponies are, of course. But I needed her to think of her identity in a single way: as broken. To have that burning desire to become something other than what she was." Thoughtfully, "Actually... now that I think about it, she may have wound up associating a degree of broken status with earth ponies as a whole. But I taught her the most important aspect: that she was not the pony she should have been. That there were ponies all over Equestria who shared that status, and she was to blaze the trail which would save them. And she was..."
He took a deep breath.
"...well, nervous would be fair," he admitted. "It is, after all, rather a lot to ask of a single filly. But I told her how much I believed in her and in time, she began to believe in herself. She studied. She learned. And as a snitcher has no known maximum sending range, I could monitor her ongoing potential for manifest from afar."
Every sheet came down, leaving the blackboard bare. The papers restacked themselves.
"There were years of safety," he said. "And there were years of fear. There was so much to learn. To reach manifest too early, before her studies were complete... might have produced something less than a true result. We passed the youngest known age in safety. We had quite a bit of time after that. But then... there would be times when her deepest magic began to rise. And it always seemed to happen when I was outside her halls. Little advances, for the most part. Small surges moving up, during the years when I still felt her education was incomplete. And to prevent any of those surges from leading into a full-fledged manifest, I had to keep going back, calling for her, distracting her, finding new subjects to talk about and... well, those of you with children will be familiar with their universal magic of somehow making themselves hard to find within a limited space. There were days when I almost swore she had come to teleportation earlier than I had, and done so without a horn. And others when it felt as if her mark was getting too close to her fur, that if I didn't find some way to excuse myself and cross a dozen gallops in under a minute, everything would fall apart. And perhaps I was wrong: I can admit that now. There may have been times in her youth when she was on the verge of true insight, and it was my silly concerns about her needing a few more books which held everything off. In the end... well, we nearly set a new record: that for most postponed mark..."
And that made every wave crest, deluges of excitement crashing through the room.
"It happened?" somepony called out: the accent was a Canterlot one. "She manifested? Doctor, did you call us here tonight because -- because it worked? Because she's an --"
-- and he was smiling.
"-- yes, I thought you would all pick up on the wording. Settle down, everypony -- no, I mean it." With just a little more insistence, "Be calm. We will not continue until some degree of false peace is upon this room."
It took about two minutes, along with repeated tries: there always seemed to be somepony who felt their question could be answered immediately. And all Twilight could do was wait.
None of you have seen her... you don't know what broken really is...
What was the older stallion trying to do? To tell them about what had really happened...
She remembered her reaction upon seeing the mark, multiplied it by a full room, one whose occupants now seemed desperate to believe, and pictured a different kind of backlash.
We could still wind up with him being trampled.
The brief, vicious fantasy brought her no true comfort.
And finally, "Thank you. So. We are close now, I promise you. I simply wish to provide our guests with a little more concerning the methodology --" and then he looked directly at Twilight.
"-- although I believe that with what she's heard so far, our Incarnation of Magic has begun to work some of that out."
The weight of a phantom necklace pressed against her fur.
Essence. Essence and chaos and...
He looked at her widened eyes, and simply nodded.
"In the typical pony's life," he confirmed, "there are two great moments of destiny. The Princess and I briefly discussed them in the birthing room, for one is birth -- and the other is the manifestation of the mark. Consider what happens during the latter. Something within us shifts, and we find ourselves with new magic. It is the moment when a pony's body is clearly the most receptive to change, because that is the instant in which change is already occurring. I gave her the snitcher and over the years, I added to it. Chaos pearls, charged with carefully-selected essence."
But there were mountings for thirteen of them. How much essence was he --
The partial answer cut off the rest of the unspoken question. "I believed that I would need more than the single pearl I used for births. At a minimum, the process would have seemed to require two: one charged with unicorn essence, another with pegasus. But the Diarchy was part of a sextet. That increased the number. And I was not working with the Elements. Even Star Swirl still had questions about certain parts of that process, and to attempt duplication without them... It was a rather large change to be making, and so it seemed to require an equally large amount of power. Eventually, I felt I had enough to try. And given that there would only be one attempt possible..."
He smiled again.
"Her mark came," he said, looking at her alone. "And in the instant it began to appear, I attempted to channel all of the essence and energy into her form, in the only possible moment of her life when her body might accept new magic without displacing any of the old. Her body took it in. And..."
His fur seemed to shine. The radiance of a personal truth.
"...it was beautiful."
She looked directly at him, and another kind of transformation took place. It only occurred behind her eyes, it changed him, and it was permanent.
He blinked. Almost took a hoofstep back --
-- but that was when the room began to erupt again, and he cut them off with two words.
"We failed."
And with that, the herd began to revolt.
"You failed?" somepony screamed. "We gave you all that money, we did everything we could to back you, protect you and --"
"-- my family, my family is never going to be --"
"-- I knew it!" There was now something vaguely familiar about that voice, the perpetual anger within that singular west coast accent, the refusal to listen. "I knew you were a charlatan! Monsters and nothing more! Playing with chaos for decades -- what does that do to a pony's head? You're a fake, you got money out of everypony else and you called them here tonight to excuse the waste, but I'm not going to --"
"Stop talking." For the first time, it came across as a patient, oddly even order. "Now."
"-- forgive it, even on a first meeting! Somepony has to stop you, and --"
Which was where what little reason that Duke had ever possessed ran out, and the overweight body charged. Went right past Twilight, jumped onto the stage, the point of the hood showing where his horn had been angled to hurt --
-- stopped, as silver glow wrapped itself around his body. Silver without a single sparkle present.
"And what's this?" The sheer bemusement had momentarily frozen him. "Do I look like a pregnant mare to --"
-- and then there was only the scream.
It was a familiar scream, for Twilight had heard it shortly after coming to Trotter's Falls. It was the cry of a pony with no way to escape from their pain, somepony facing a lifetime of agony and wishing for that life to end. The desperate prayer for death that came from a body which had turned against itself, and it dropped the Duke's robed body to the stage floor, twisting and kicking, as the older stallion quietly looked at him with a patient, almost relaxed regard.
Looked and nothing more, with the double corona blazing, as Twilight watched in horror and the audience pulled back.
"Somewhat," the older stallion stated, timing the words through the bursts of torture. "You're heavy enough, although in your case, that may be because you're so full of yourself that it's starting to bulge out the sides."
"What..." The word was broken, and that too was familar. "Please... stop, please, what, stop..."
"What you are feeling," the older stallion calmly told him, "is my field. I just gave your heart a rather minor squeeze, which provided rather shocking proof that you had one. I currently don't care to make the same investigations for your brain. But if you wish to prove that possession yourself --" and his horn went dark "-- you will return to your place on the floor. And you will listen."
I... Celestia, Luna, I...
Differentiation had initially been wounded by a single stallion's horn, and the tear had spread.
It was a discovery. It was something which could have been the subject of a thousand journal articles. But in that moment, it was nothing more than nightmare, one which had sent Twilight into almost instinctive prayer --
-- one nopony would ever hear.
The Duke got up, eventually. Nearly fell again upon reaching the floor. Staggered through the crowd, and the hoofsteps didn't stop until he'd reached the absolute back of the room.
The false doctor sighed.
"Again," he told them, "I apologize. I should have foreseen an outburst, and arguably been less dramatic in my speech to begin with. But this is not the waiting area outside my birthing room, and so I will not permit anypony to attack me. Please allow me to continue, because there are more words to be said -- and then, there will be something which was worth coming to see."
Nopony spoke. They simply waited. And Twilight, her own magic restrained, had to wrench her eyes away from that mauve horn, because there was no point in watching for an event she couldn't do anything to stop.
"We failed," he repeated. "Or... perhaps I did. Or it could have been her, or both of us. In that way, this failure echoes the first. The death of her mother -- which was followed by my bringing her to Sun."
This scream was only internal.
Did she ever see Sun? Once in her whole life until you pushed chaos and death into her, because you'd told her that was right?
"I fail... and I succeed," he quietly finished. "The pattern of my life. I did not create an alicorn. Instead, I simply brought forth a miracle."
The shimmer coating the door vanished. A little prod of his field opened it, just enough for a glimpse of the wide stone corridor beyond.
"Come to me," he called out. "Give them something to believe."
There was a moment of silence, as everypony stretched out their senses. Strained to listen, see, feel...
Hoofsteps, coming down the passage. Heavy ones, created by a pony who was larger than the majority moving at a slow, even pace. A deep purple foreleg, one so dark as to almost shade into black, came up, planted itself on the back edge of the stage, pushed...
...and she was in attendance. The guest of honor at what had truly never been a party.
There was a new emotion in the room, thick enough to scent. A miasma of disappointment and regret filled the air as the earth pony slowly made her way towards the front of the stage, with the one who had summoned her quietly watching --
-- and then there was a snort.
It was a familiar sort of snort, and just about everypony else missed it. The sound wasn't one which indicated hatred or loathing. It was simply an exclamation which said that Rarity had just gotten her first good look at the horrible, clearly homemade disaster-in-approach which was that dress, and it was the only normal thing which happened during the entire meeting.
It was normal, and so a tiny part of the inner storm began to calm.
She's -- moving well. Better than I've ever seen her move. And there aren't any twitches. Like her pain is --
-- no. She stumbled a little there. But it didn't look like pain. More like there was a second when she wasn't sure about planting her forehoof, and --
-- her eyes...
Blue, in this form. But also slightly -- hazy.
Just a little unfocused, even when she's mostly looking at the back of the room and nothing else, and add that to the light sway of her head...
Drugged. That has to be it. He didn't find a cure for her pain: he's just given her something strong enough to drive it down for a while, and she trusted him enough to take it. And we're so close to the stage, but none of us can talk...
She stopped at that front edge, and finally risked looking down.
It wasn't a position where she could see Twilight, not first. Instead, her eyes found Fluttershy, and only wet cloth looked back.
Her head quickly went left. Right. Saw all of them, and her body began to pull back as her questioning, panicked gaze desperately, instinctively sought the older stallion, three body lengths away on her right --
"-- there were complications," he gently told her. "But they are here to listen. And if all goes well, you may find yourself speaking with them. Very soon."
She nodded. Took a breath and then forced herself to look forward again, with most of her focus directed at draperies.
His words had traveled farther than they normally would have: the relative lack of volume would have been stopped by even minimal buzz among the crowd. But nothing came from them, for everypony was waiting.
What is he trying? He could keep them here for enough time to see the change, but --
"For a few here," he said, "this is the second meeting. And this, but for a greater degree of mass, is how those ponies know her. But for nearly everypony else, this is their first encounter. And so it is my honor to make the formal introduction. Fillies, gentlecolts, Bearers..."
It happened all at once.
The dress bulged at the sides, revealing what Twilight had taken as ill-fitting folds to be deliberate rips. A rush of color moved across the fur, with a different hue racing along mane and tail. Legs slimmed, the rib cage shifted, eyes were suffused with shade and --
-- dark purple wings beat at the air, then folded into the rest position against the tan pegasus' sides.
"This," Gentle Arrival proudly stated, "is my daughter. And I believe the time is now right to take a few questions."