By Luna’s Light: Celestia
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
Lightning looked down at the quadrupedal pony in front of him. It was a little strange to think of her, the pony who retained her natural form, the form that she had been born with, as though she were the strange one, but there it was. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed pony was a freak.
And there was too much blindness in United Equestria.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean…perhaps later-“
“She will not see you,” Sunset Shimmer repeated, as though he were too dense to get the message.
He probably was. He’d certainly proved his density in other respects.
“Never?” Lightning asked.
Sunset stared at him, and did not speak.
“I was her friend, you know,” Lightning said, feeling stupid and petty for saying it but at the same time unable to stop himself. “I know you might not think so, and I’m not saying that it was always so…but I was her friend. I cared about Twilight, a great deal.”
Sunset Shimmer looked up at him, her gaze even and inscrutable. “Admiral Lightning Dawn, do you like flowers?”
Lightning blinked. “Flowers?”
Sunset nodded. “Yes, flowers.”
“I…I suppose,” Lightning muttered. “I mean, I appreciate the work that Buddy puts in to growing some of his exotic blooms, and…I’ve given bouquets of them to Starla a few times…yeah, I’d say I like flowers. I don’t mind them, for sure.”
“Uh-huh,” Sunset said. “And what do you do with these flowers that you like and give to your fiancée? How do you treat them?”
Lightning shrugged. “I put them in a vase and leave them until…” his mouth dried up as he realised where Sunset was going with this.
“Go on,” Sunset insisted.
“I…I put them in a vase and leave them until they die,” Lightning said. “And then I throw them away.”
“Without a second thought,” Sunset said, her voice like ice. “Prin- Queen Celestia will not see you.”
“I see,” Lightning murmured. Put like that he could hardly blame her. I cared about Twilight. I cared so much that I threw her into the fire time and again until there was nothing left. “I understand, Miss Shimmer. I’m sorry for wasting your time. Please convey my condolences. I hope that she feels better soon.”
Celestia knelt on the floor of her chamber and wept.
She wept for her dear sister Luna, who had left her behind.
She wept for Twilight, as a daughter to her, slain and taken far too soon.
She wept…most of all she wept for herself.
She wept for all her losses, for all that she had endured…and for all that had been taken from her.
Once she had been content, not without melancholy but, at the same time, not without hope either. She had hoped for the salvation of her sister and, in the mean time, she had been content. Content to rule, to teach, to see her land prosper in peace and harmony, content to search for promising students and guide them to the fulfilment of their potential.
Content to love those students, the children she had believed that she would never have.
They had not been days of unalloyed bliss; Sunset Shimmer, her Little Sun, had turned away from her, or rather she had been driven away in exactly the same way that Luna had, if with less fearful consequence. Yet Celestia found that, when she thought back to those days, in spite of all troubles that might have been they yet gleamed silver in her imaginings. Equestria had been peaceful; Equestria had, if she said so herself and with all due immodesty, thrived under her rule. And if Sunset had departed, well…there had been Twilight, not as a replacement but as a second chance; a chance that Celestia had seized with eagerness.
A chance to tutor a bright and eager young mare, a chance to watch her grow, a chance to love her.
And then Luna had returned and everything…everything was golden then. For a few short years, with Luna once more by her side and Twilight thriving out in the world and even Sunset grown into a hero and a fine young mare then, in those days, Celestia could call herself truly happy.
She had been blessed with more than she needed to be happy.
Those golden days had ended far too soon. First Titan had brought war to them, and afterwards Celesto had brought a kind of rescue and security that owed as much, to Celestia’s mind, to a protection racket as it did to an alliance.
And he had brought his story of a secret history between them, a star-crossed romance, a prominent place in the history of Equestria for himself. All lies, of course. Celestia had not believed it for an instant. She remembered the names of everypony who had ever served her, and she did not remember a Captain Celesto of the Royal Guard. Certainly she did not remember falling in love with such a pony, and she surely would not have forgotten that.
There had been suitors, of course, when she was younger: ponies of good and noble family, rulers from distant lands; they had brought gold and jewels to lay before her but, in truth, the suit that she had favoured most out of all (which was not to say too much, being only relative) had come from a zebra bandit chief, a brigand leading a mere score of followers, who had sworn to her that one day all zebras would bow before her. She had enjoyed his company, for he was a merry sort of rogue so different from the stuffiness that even then had clung about the court, but in the end she had sent him on his way like all the rest.
Within twenty years he had made himself the first King of Zebrica, in which guise he had suited after her again.
She had refused all offers, never seriously entertaining any of them; she had never felt the need to wed, to give her heart to another so completely. Bad enough to watch her students grow old and die while she remained unchanging, but to watch a husband suffer the same fate…too cruel, for both of them.
So the idea that she had at one time been engaged to this three-horned unicorn rang so false with her as to be unbelievable. The notion that Luna had been motivated in her fall by envy of Celestia’s grand love affair was practically insulting. The idea that Celesto was an Equestrian, that he had played a conspicuous part in the struggles with Sombra and with Nightmare Moon…all lies, she had seen that from the instant that she was told of them.
And yet she had indulged them nonetheless.
She had pretended to remember him, pretended in public to resume their star-crossed love affair; she had taken him to wed and suffered for so much of her power and authority to be stripped away from her, her public image degraded from that of ruler to that of the ruler’s wife; she had even given up her body to him in the marriage bed, and born him the children she had never thought to bear out of her own body.
She had done all of that for the sake of her people, for fear that if Starfleet and the space ponies were not given land then they would take it for themselves.
For the sake of her people she had endured the attentions of a stallion whom she did not love, and who treated her body as though she were a doll in his possession to be used according to his will.
For the sake of her people she had suffered first one daughter to be wrenched away from her and then the second to be killed and she had not protested either injustice as she should have done or would have liked to do.
For the sake of her people she had allowed herself to be made a prisoner in her own palace.
For the sake of her people she had submitted to Celesto and his Starfleet and allowed both to run riot across United Equestria.
Now, perhaps, it was finally time to admit that she had made the wrong choice.
For how could the right choice have cost her so much. Pride, power, authority, self-respecting, daughter, daughter…sister.
All gone. All taken from her.
Her jewels had all been stolen away.
These are my jewels, she had said to Celesto once, in the early days of their marriage when he had sought to buy her affection with an extravagant necklace that she had decline. She had gestured to Twilight and her friends, These are my jewels, the mares who never failed to make her proud of them; them, Luna, Cadance, all her little ponies working hard and doing their best…she took more pride in them, and more pleasure in their accomplishments, than any baubles could have given her.
These were my jewels, and one by one they were taken away from me.
Celestia stopped crying. She had run dry of tears. Tears for Twilight, tears for Luna, tears for all the dead in all the wars, tears for all the small towns and tiny hamlets that were half empty now because the young ponies had gone to war and never returned, tears for all the streets where ponies broken in body and mind struggled to recover from the horrors they had seen and the even greater horrors they had committed, tears for every pony whose destiny had been cut short, who had dreamed of being more than a soldier but had found all other doors slammed shut on them. Tears that she had shed openly, tears that she had been forced to hide for decorum’s sake. Tears, tears, tears, so many tears. So much loss, so much pain. So many tears that there were no more left. Her reservoir of sorrow had been run dry.
All that was left now was anger.
Anger might even be too mild a word for how she felt right now. She had been stripped of everything, dethroned in all but name, powerless to watch the transformation of her country into a mockery of itself, robbed of her daughters…and now even Luna, even her beloved sister, who had been beside her from the very beginning, had been taken from her?
If these were the fruits of endurance then she would endure no more.
Instead, she would show them just the world and her husband and all his proud and puffed-out warriors just how badly they had hurt her.
For all that they had taken from her she would give them her wrath, and it would pay for all.
Celestia rose to her feet, and as she rose she let out a great howl of pain and anguished fury, a howl that contained within it all of her pain, all of her loss, all of her frustration, all of the wrath that she had ruthlessly concealed behind a mask of calm serenity, all of the grief and the shame and the hate. The hate most of all. Hate for Starfleet, hate for her husband, hate for the arrogance of the space ponies, hate for the cruelty and injustice of a world that would take her sister and her daughter while leaving the likes of Celesto and Lightning Dawn alive…hate for herself most of all, for allowing things to reach this pass.
She howled in anger, and as she howled Celestia burned. Flames rose form her coat, they engulfed her mane, they spread out from her every orifice as they incinerated her clothes and ignited the carpet and the furnishings and spread out across the room until the whole chamber burned. The wise and patient queen, so full of calm and good humour, was gone.
In her place stood a demon sprung from the abyss, a creature of fire with wings of shadow, with a blazing mane of cold blue fire that danced around the crimson flames that rose upon her skin.
Celestia howled in anger, and on her mind was but a single thought.
Burn them all.
As Celestia…no, no this wasn’t Celestia. This was not Sunset’s teacher, so endlessly calm and patient, so willing to lend a sympathetic ear, her shoulder always there to lean upon. This was not the princess that Sunset remembered. She had never seen anything like this. She had never seen Celestia this angry, not ever, not even when Sunset had really crossed the line had Celestia ever become…this.
This was not Celestia. This was a nightmare born of abuse, a creature born out of pain and suffering that could not be held in any more. This was the consequence of a good mare pushed too far, her face ground into the dirt for just too long. This was what happened when the underdog bit back.
And it was terrifying. As the nightmare strode out of Celestia’s chamber, with flames broiling around her like the waves of a stormy sea, consumed with fire in a myriad colours, Sunset’s heart quailed. She shivered in fear and could not stop herself. She found herself retreating.
“Leilani, close your eyes and look away.”
“Why?”
“Do it,” Sunset commanded. I don’t want you to remember her this way. She wouldn’t want you to remember her this way…if she were herself.
Lightning Dust looked as if she was fighting the desire to run. “Is…is that?”
“Don’t say it,” Sunset said.
“Sweet sister,” Lightning Dust muttered.
“Not so sweet any more, looks like,” Bon Bon replied.
Princess…why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me things were going this badly? I…I never realised.
Sunset cursed her own naivety. She’d thought that she was so smart and so sly, sneaking around and making her plans without any reference to Celestia at all; she’d thought that she was protecting Celestia by leaving her out of it, but all that she was really doing was leaving her princess without any hope at all. If she’d only said something, if she’d only let Celestia know that there was cause to hope…would it have been enough? Would it have been sufficient to overcome all the grief and the pain and the blood and everything that she had suffered?
Maybe not, but Sunset should have made the attempt regardless. Instead…instead she had assumed that everything was, if not okay, then…she had assumed that Celestia could bear it because Celestia always bore it, she bore everything without complaint or hesitation, she didn’t even flinch. Sunset had thought that Celestia could take everything the world could throw at her because she always did. Sunset had forgotten that the endlessly calm and compassionate teacher was a mask that Celestia wore, she had forgotten that there was a mare beneath who was losing hope.
The mare who raised the sun had lost all those who had brought any sunlight into her own life, and the result now stood before them bellowing in rage.
You should have told me, princess. No doubt Celestia had wanted to keep up the mask as much as Sunset had believed in it. She hadn’t wanted to burden others with her problems.
So we were both as foolish as each other then.
“Everyone,” Sunset said. “Stay close to me.”
“Why?” Lightning Dust asked.
“Because shields are easier to maintain the tighter the circumference, now stay close.”
Celestia roared in pain and outrage as the flames leapt higher all around her. Starlight was gone, fled it seemed from the presence of an enemy who was beyond her power. Did that indicate that she was more than just a mindless puppet? If self-preservation instinct lingered, did anything else linger too?
Something to think about at a time when their troubles were less immediate, perhaps.
And then Celestia spotted Cerise Wonder, a space pony in a Starfleet uniform.
This isn’t good.
Celestia bellowed out all of her wrath as an inferno raced down the corridor, climbing the walls and sweeping along the floor and the ceiling like a pack of ravenous wolves bent on devouring all in their path.
Sunset threw up a shield around them all: herself, Leilani, Bon Bon, Lightning Dust, Trixie, the injured Scoop Story…and Cerise Wonder. Even if she was the target of Celestia’s rage Sunset couldn’t leave her out there.
Especially because she was the target of Celestia’s rage Sunset couldn’t leave her out there.
Celestia’s shout became louder and more furious as the flames lapped around Sunset’s shield like waves around a rock jutting out of the ocean. They rose up over the shield as if they meant to bury it. They beat upon the shield like hammers.
And all the while Celestia roared.
“Princess Celestia, please!” Sunset cried. “It’s me, it’s Sunset Shimmer. You don’t need to do this! This mare is not your enemy.”
Judging by the way that Celestia kept screaming, she wasn’t inclined to believe her. She would have, Sunset was sure, if she had been thinking clearly. The Celestia that Sunset knew would never judge anyone by their race. But this wasn’t the Celestia that Sunset knew. This was someone driven entirely by a rage they had been holding in for too long and wanted blood.
Or ashes, at least.
Sunset gritted her teeth as the flames pressed against her barrier. It was so hot, she was already starting to drip with sweat. The strain of maintaining the shield was already starting to tell on her.
“Princess Celestia,” she shouted. “Princess, please. We’re not your enemies. We’re here to help you!”
She didn’t listen. Sunset wasn’t even sure if she could.
And then, through the flames, Sunset caught sight of a flash of blue. Not blue fire, although there was some of that emerging from Celestia’s rage, this was a simple light, a gentler blue, which moved like mist of a whiff of cloud. It danced through Celestia’s fire without being affected by it, it passed through Sunset’s shield as though it wasn’t there, and then the blue light cloud touched the tip of Sunset’s horn.
Sunset didn’t have time to cry out or exclaim or do anything before she was engulfed in light.
She felt nothing, she saw nothing but the white light all around her.
Sunset Shimmer.
Sunset’s head darted this way and that, but of course she saw nothing, nothing but blinding light all around her. “Princess…Princess Luna.”
This is my last gift, Sunset Shimmer; my last and greatest gift to Equestria.
“I don’t understand.”
I bestow upon you all my power, to wield for the good of this world.
“But…that means that-“
It was always likely to end this way. I am not unprepared. For the young, taken before their time, death is a tragedy. For the old, for those of us who have been blessed with long lives and sufficient warning to put all of our affairs in order, death is another grand adventure.
Sunset bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
For what do you regret? I have stripped away the mask of the Grand Ruler and revealed Celesto for what he truly is, I have roused the little ponies of Equestria to defiance, I have…I have done my part. Now you must do yours, Sunset. Take my strength and use it well; protect Celestia, save Equestria.
“Princess…I don’t know if I’m worth of this gift.”
If what I hear of your adventures in the human world are true then you have more than proved yourself. You will do very well, I have no doubt. I have only one small request.
“Anything.”
Tell Celestia that I’m sorry, but I could not wait. This…this was the hardest path I could have chosen, but it was also the only path that led to salvation.
“I will tell her,” Sunset said solemnly.
Thank you. I am afraid that I must leave the rest to you now. Farewell, Princess Sunset Shimmer.
The light faded around Sunset, and she stood once more beneath the protection of her shield, engulfed by flames.
“Um, Sunset,” Bon Bon said. “Where did those wings just come from?”
Sunset glanced at her flank. A pair of amber wings sat folded against her sides.
Princess Sunset Shimmer.
It would have been enough to make her laugh. She had so wanted this once. She had craved it, and all the power and recognition that went with it. She had been willing to do anything to anyone to reach this point.
And now…now that she’d gotten there, now that her childhood dream had finally come true…all that she wanted to do was weep.
Princess Luna, I swear…I won’t let you down.
Sunset blinked back her tears and looked up at the looming, burning figure of Celestia before her.
She felt less frightened now. Whether it was Luna’s strength or Luna’s will that gave her courage, something was making her braver. Her voice, when she spoke, was surer and more decisive. “Princess Celestia, you have to stop this!”
“Why?” the voice that emerged from Celestia’s mouth did not belong to Celestia, it was something else, something raw and angry and almost demonic, spitting out a single word with so much effort as if talking were a struggle for her now. Every word that followed was the same, heavy and leaden and forced out with toil and struggle. “Why should I not burn them all?”
“Because they’re not all guilty,” Sunset said. “Because this isn’t you, because you know that this is wrong!”
“Not me? Not me? Look at what being me has cost me!”
“Look at what it gained you first!” Sunset cried. “Do you think this thing that you’ve become would have been loved as Celestia was loved? Is this…is this how you want your daughter to think of you? A raging monster?”
Celestia recoiled, and in those eyes of burning red Sunset thought that she could see a trace of the old Celestia that they all loved so well.
Sunset could feel Leilani’s fingers moving through her mane. “Mommy? Mom, is that you?”
“Leilani?” Celestia said, in a voice halfway returned to her old self. “Child?”
“Yes,” Leilani said. “Yes, Mom, it’s me. It’s Leilani.” She climbed off Sunset’s back and walked forwards, towards the edge of the barrier, heedless of the flames that danced all around.
The little princess confronting the fire demon. The thought came to Sunset in a flash, and brought a faint smile to her face as she remembered all the stories that she had told the girl.
Leilani was not afraid, because she believed Sunset when she told her that most demons were simply sad and lonely creatures in need of compassion.
Like Sunset had been.
Like her own mother was now.
“Please, Mommy, let me help you,” Leilani said, holding out both hands. “Let us all help you to make this better.”
Celestia stared down at her for a moment, and as she stared the fires all around her died, retreating charred walls and half-consumed floor tiles, withdrawing from the ceiling. The flames that danced upon her coat died down, the fire in her mane vanished, her wings of shadow became wings of radiant white once more.
The hatred in her eyes disappeared, replaced by the kindness that had been there before.
Sunset dropped her shield as Celestia fell to her knees before her daughter.
“Help me?” Celestia murmured. “Yes. Yes, I am in need of help now.”
Leilani ran to her mother, who took her in her arms and held her close.
“Oh, my child,” Celestia said. “I’ve wanted to see you for so long. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too, Mom,” Leilani replied. “But we’re together now, although…Sunset says that everything isn’t going to be alright just yet.”
Celestia nodded, looking at Sunset. She didn’t mention the wings.
“I’m afraid Sunset is quite correct,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”