Queen Celestia, Bearer of the Sun, Lady of the Dawn and the rightful ruler of all ponydom, was in a bad mood today.
It had started so well too. Thanks to the efforts of her loyal followers, her lost throne had been returned to her possession. Its placement in her temporary volcano based lair had, if she felt like admitting it to Kindle and the rest, made it feel a bit more like a home. With a few tapestries and perhaps a plant in the corner of the throne chamber, this caldera based liar would almost be worthy of Canterlot’s palace.
Not that she had stopped her plans to retake Canterlot from her traitorous sister Luna. The plans and preparations for the strike had been proceeding well. Getting her throne back and the magical power that came with it had been another part of that. She had planned on speaking with her new “adviser” on the next few steps of the plan, but now….
“Yangin!” she shouted, stalking through the halls of her palace.
“Has our wayward jinn managed to disappear again?”
Celestia spared Kindle, her proclaimed Voice of the Sun, a glance as he fell into step alongside her. “I’m beginning to think that she might be be avoiding me,” she grumbled, her animate flame mane and tail flaring larger for a moment. “Have you seen her at all?”
“Not since she returned from her visit to Naqah to ‘put her affairs in order’, your highness. But she may have slipped back on her own…shall we check her room?”
Celestia sighed, the animate flames of her mane and tail cracking and popping from her frustration. With the ground floor being jinnless she took Kindle’s suggestion and one of the many sets of stairs towards the upper floors and the chambers of her followers. “I swear if that jinn has run off after we made our deal….”
“If it’s any consolation my lady, I doubt she could make our current relations with Naqah any worse than they already are.”
Celestia groaned, massaging a temple with a hoof. “A pox upon Ofkeli Grev! What have you heard of his status?”
In retrospect, she should have known that the Naqhan emir’s offer of an alliance was too good to be true. But the temptation of another nation officially recognizing her claim to Equestria’s throne, an army of camels to deploy against Luna, and a powerful magical artifact was too much to pass up. Of course, getting involved in another nation’s civil war was an inherently dangerous prospect. It was hard to read the shifting terrain of alliances when they changed every day. Then the bearers of the Elements of Harmony had gotten involved on the royalist side and that was that.
“According to my sources, he’s currently locked away in the deepest, darkest hole the sultan could find.”
“Good. Remind me to send the sultan a fruit basket after we take Equestria.”
They came to the one room Yangin had chosen amongst the many that Celestia had magically constructed. It was easy to tell which one was hers. The jinn had opted to replace the normal stone door with one made of red hot magma.
“You know, I’m getting the feeling that she doesn’t like most of us,” Kindle commented dryly.
Celestia rolled her eyes and pushed straight through the curtain of magma, the heat so lethal to other ponies little more than a series of pleasantly warm tickles to her. Much like the chamber of Zecora, Yangin had decorated hers to resemble the homeland she had left behind. Tapestries and rugs, woven with intricate geometric patterns adorned the walls and floor. Piles of coins and gems either liberated from Naqha or conjured by Yangin herself glittered from the corners of the room. The hard currency was mixed shelves of antiques and nick-knacks that looked less valuable. Celestia knew better. She could feel the magic churning within a good number of them, being the odd magical trinkets that the jinn liked to collect. The sweet smell of floral incense filled the air, the smoke lazily rising from a bronze burners set around the room. Celestia frowned slightly. Zecora and Kindle had been gifted their various boons for serving her. Yangin had just taken her own initiative to redecorate.
Yangin herself sat in the middle of the chamber. Surrounded by books and scrolls, her short camel mane a flicking collection of flames, her coat red as the magma of her door. A crystal sphere floated in the air before her the face of another elemental camel contained within. Her coat was a light blue and her short mane was wild, almost tousled by an invisible breeze. In direct contrast to the chaotic appearance of her mane, her expression was quiet and serene.
“Very well Yangin. If I see Dunya, I will let you know,” she bowed. “But if there’s nothing else, I must return to my meditation.”
Yangin huffed. “Fine, Hava. Go back to contemplating eternity.”
The image in the ball winked out before it dropped, Yangin neatly catching it with an outstretched hoof.
Celestia’s previous aggravation with the jinn was momentarily replaced with curiosity. “Another one of your ‘siblings’?”
“You would be correct,” Yangin answered, casually flicking the crystal ball into a polished wooden stand on one of her shelves. She turned to face Celestia with a thought, floating in place now. “Roaring Air. Or Miss High and Mighty as I prefer to think of her. I still owed her a warning about Dunya though.”
The discussion of Yangin’s “family” continued to stir Celestia’s curiosity. Normally, jinn were non-sapient bits of elemental energy, bound to the whim of the camel sorcerer that called them forth to do his or her bidding. At least until one of Naqah’s rulers from the time when the country was still a caliphate sought to create a new class of jinn. It was both a shame and another example of Luna’s treachery, that she had been sealed away in the sun when those experiments took place and was now stuck playing catch up.
“It occurs to me,” Celestia mused, a thin smile playing across her lips, “that we’ve not spoken of your sisters or the ‘greater jinn’ as a whole.”
Yangin smiled and clapped her hooves together, the collection of platinum anklets she wore- one of which was her bound item and anchor of her existence- clinking animatedly. “I am your humble servant and friend, my queen. Ask and I shall answer.”
“Just how many ‘Greater Jinn’ are there?” Celestia asked. A few more would be useful when it came to retake Canterlot.
“One hundred, plus my sisters and myself. Though that assumes that none have met some manner of early end. We largely scattered across the world after our creation, well aware that our enhanced abilities would make us...desired by others,” Yangin answered. She idly waved a hoof and a tea set jumped off a shelf, the collection of porcelain bouncing its way over to them. “Tea?”
“No, I-”
“I think some tea will do us good,” Yangin smiled impishly. “I picked up a taste for it a few centuries ago. Not long after I acquired this little trinket from an eastern trader.”
The animated tea set went about pouring a pair of cups, the mild aroma of green tea filling the air. Celestia glared at Yangin all the while, but the jinn didn’t quail under the sun’s fury. Yangin’s moments of irreverence was unquestionably the most infuriating aspect of her personality, but one that Celestia was prepared to bear. Not that she wasn’t aware of what Yangin was trying to do either.
“Yangin…what do you want?”
The jinn took a sip from her mug. “You offered me a chance to be part of your brand new Equestria and I do appreciate that. But if I’m going to be a partner in this little enterprise, I need something from you.”
Celestia’s eyes narrowed and her wings flared instinctively in challenge. “And what might that be?” she growled. Already, her mind ran through a dozen answers and punishments to whatever inanity Yangin was about to try and extract from her. She was Celestia! She was the almighty and unconquered sun-
“It’s Dunya. I want your help finding her.”
Celestia paused. That was not the answer she had been expecting. “Why?”
“Because we were created to be tools and weapons. We were created to be a better mouse trap. For a greater jinn, there is no insult more severe, no act of betrayal worse, no taboo greater than clapping one of your fellows in irons,” Yangin sighed, her expression growing more distant. She wasn’t even looking at Celestia anymore, more looking past her. “And she did that to me! Her sister! Hava, Su and I were devastated when she thought she was dead. And she…she…”
Before she even realized she was doing it, Celestia placed a hoof on Yangin’s shoulder. That gesture snapped the jinn out of her reverie. Sighing, she shook her head slightly. “I…I am sorry. But my point is that of all the creatures here, you and I are the only ones who know that dig of a sibling’s knife. And you know what must be done if the end up going mad. If Dunya was willing to pass me off to some pony she didn’t know…I shudder to think what she might want to do to mortals, since one locked her away for centuries. If she won’t listen to reason…then I have to put her down.”
Celestia sighed. “…It is never a pleasant realization that one must turn against family for the greater good.”
Yangin laughed, more of a dry, bitter chuckle than a true laugh. “I suppose…that sister of yours tried the ‘greater good’ spiel on me once.”
Raising an eyebrow, Celestia took her cup of tea, “Really? What did she want from you?”
“Please Celestia. You want me to just tell you and deny a Naqhan a chance to spin a tale?”
The fact that Celestia’s eyes were solid white from her arcane power hid the fact that she had just rolled them. Quite hard. But to stop a Naqhan from gossiping or telling stories was like trying to stop Zecora from speaking in rhyme. It was only something accomplished by inflicting great bodily harm upon the individual in question, which Celestia had no desire to do. So, she helped herself to a long drink, while motioning a wing for Yangin to continue.
- - - -
“Trinkets and rare items for sale! You’ll not find goods such as this anywhere but the great capitals of the world! Canterlot! Roam! Al-Asitana! …Whichever city the griffins are using this week!” Yangin shouted from just outside the front of her store.
The streets of Bittsburgh bustled with ponies on their way home after a long day, most of them choosing to ignore Yangin’s sales patter. The jinn- currently wearing the disguise of a pale coated, blonde maned pegasus- huffed in frustration. Of all the cities of Equestria she could have picked to set up shop in, she just had to have picked Bittsburgh. In retrospect, it really was the worst of the country’s many cities she could have chosen. It was all farmers and trades ponies. Ponies who didn’t care about antiques or own any. Nothing to sell and nothing to buy. Just…
“You sir!” she grinned, pointing at pony that looked a little more well off than the rest of the crowd. “Interested in a rare vase?”
“Get bent!”
…Disappointment.
She sighed. “Right.”
Turning, she stomped back into her shop and kicked the door closed behind her. Still fuming, she dragged a heavy trunk out of the corner and over to the shelves, beginning to dump the trinkets that were actually magical into it. The valuable ones she’d leave behind to pay for the rent on this place. The big question now was, where to go from here? She didn’t really want to go back to Naqah. …Going further north was always an option. Seeing the griffin lands or the elk’s massive tree city could be fun. Then again, maybe something to the east would be better. Bumming around Roam wouldn’t be a bad idea. See all the artwork. Maybe laugh at some of the ridiculously flawed preconceptions about jinn that artists still liked to use in their work. Yeah…the more she thought about that idea, the more appealing it sounded.
The door to her shop chose that moment to swing open, a pony pushing their way inside. Yangin rolled her eyes, but didn’t turn around. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed. For good too. I suggest visiting…literally any other store in this stupid city.”
“Choking Fire.”
The voice was regal and female, but slurred, like the pony had been drinking for a while. But that was secondary to the fact that whoever this pony was, she knew Yangin’s real name and could conceivably know her true nature as well. Slowly she turned to face the pony, only to blink at the billowing cloaked figure that met her eyes. Taller than a regular pony, she loomed over Yangin in her pegasus form, angry glowing eyes peering out from under the hood. There was a sense of power that radiated off the figure, enough that Yangin couldn’t help but nervously lick her lips, as mortal of a gesture as it was.
“There’s no one here by that name.”
The figure flipped back her hood, revealing a dark coat and shimmering starry mane. Her appearance was unmistakable. Princess Luna Equestris. “Do not lie to me jinn,” she growled. “I know what you are, though I’m not as sure what you’re doing in my country.”
Even for an immortal, magical being such as herself, Princess Luna radiated a sense of intimidation. Her gaze was as cold as the vast dark canvas upon which her starts were arrayed and every fiber of her being radiated with a primal magical power. With her sister now gone, Princess Luna was a being of singular strength and uniqueness in the world.
Still, Yangin had her pride and she wouldn’t just roll over for the likes of anypony. So she stood as tall as she could in her borrowed form and met the princess’ gaze.
“Funny,” Yangin frowned. “Last I heard, you had abdicated.”
Luna took an angry step forward, the floorboards creaking from the strike. “Don’t play games with me! I…I..,” she blinked a few times, the glowing crackle of power leaving her eyes. Yangin took a step back. The ex-princesses’ eyes were red and puffy. Had she been…crying? “You…you are a jinn. You can grant a pony’s fondest desire.”
“…So the legends go. Why?”
“I have a wish to make.”
“…You’re an alicorn and a former ruler. What could I possibly give you?” Yangin snorted.
“Give me my sister back.”
Yangin blinked in surprise. “…What?”
“You grant wishes!” Luna snapped. She stomped her hoof again, splintering multiple floorboards at once this time. “Cure Celestia of her madness! Fix her!”
“But-”
“Do it!” Luna shouted, grabbing Yangin in her aura and shaking. “Show me that you’re worth something, you cobbled together bit of magic!”
Being tossed about like a rag doll by an enraged alicorn was not something Yangin ever wanted to experience in her life. So, she did the only thing he could do. She punched Princess Luna Equestris in the right eye, as hard as she could.
- - - -
“You punched her?” Celestia exclaimed.
Yangin pouted, crossing her forelegs. To see the ancient jinn pouting like a foal who was caught with their hoof in the cookie jar was quite amusing. “I panicked! Most of the wishes I got by that point were all for wealth, or power, or to help find true love! I wasn’t prepared to have a drunken alicorn track me down and ask me to do something that was impossible!”
Celestia took another drink of tea to stifle a round of honest laughter. Seeing Yangin on the backhoof was amusing, considering the earlier frustrations she had put Celestia through.
“What happened then?” she managed to ask after a moment.
“We went back and forth for a while, exchanging spells. Ended up burning down part of Bittsburgh’s waterfront district. Got myself a bit of a legend out of that scrap. Spirit of vengeance or something. Eventually though Luna just started to wear me down, so I dove into the river and headed south as fast as I could.” She gave Celestia a sly smirk. “Like I told the Element Bearers. That sister of yours has a nasty right hook.”
“Luna has always been the more duplicitous of the two of us. That includes that right hook of hers.”
Yangin chuckled, idly swirling her teacup for a moment. “You know Celestia…it might not be my place to bring this up. But are you sure that you’ve tried everything to make up with your sister?”
“…Why?” Celestia frowned, her eyes narrowing. Was Yangin actually some kind of Luna plant?
“Because, ponies who don’t care about their siblings, don’t track me down and beg me to fix them.”
“Yangin..,” Celestia growled.
She held up her hooves. “If you say that you have and that war is the only path, then you have my support. And speaking of that support, I’ve been mulling over your situation and developing a plan.”
“…Go on.”
“After having many conversations with the head of your supposed sun cult, I’ve come to a few conclusions about your control of Equestria once we take Canterlot. You’ll be putting down rebellions almost constantly.”
“You logic behind that being? My followers-”
“Are dwindling in number, despite Kindle’s claims otherwise. Especially with these new developments.”
With a light wave of her hoof, a little gust of wind flicked a newspaper off of a shelf and propelled it over to them. Celestia stared down at the headline with a frown.
Solar Cult Broken in Bittsburgh
It was accompanied by a photo of the arrest. The local guard was there, of course. But there was also a few camels present all wearing the neatly pressed military uniforms of Naqah. Their leader, bedecked in a fez, had a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. He stood stiffly and in Celestia’s opinion, seemed to be devoid of any sense of mirth or humor as he shook hooves with the guard captain. Her glower grew steadily deeper as she read the copy of the story.
“This is a pile of lies and slander! I was invited to assist with that rebellion and I never was going to annex it! Like it would even be possible without taking the whole of the Mild West at the same time? How could any pony believe this tripe?”
“Because Celestia. You have an image problem. Most of Equestria knows you as a tyrant. They won’t even call you by your actual name.”
Celestia squeezed her eyes closed, letting loose a long exhale. The damage centuries of slander had done to her reputation still bothered her. But the truth remained that her little ponies had been deceived. “And I intend to show them otherwise.”
“Ah! Then you have already hit upon the thrust of my plan. Wonderful!” Yangin clapped her hooves together. “But the way I see it, there’s no real reason to wait until after we take Canterlot. We should start working on fixing your reputation now.”
“And how do you propose we do that? The moment I raise my head in Equestria, my sister will swoop down upon me. As proven by your own Bittsburgh story, active fights above cityscapes rarely endear one to its residents.”
“Which is why,” Yangin leaned forward with a grin, “we are going to start outside of Equestria.”
- - - -
Hundreds of miles away from Corona and her volcano, another mare was considering the future. Cheerilee, Ponyville school teacher and bearer of the Element of Laughter, was moping in her sister’s bar. It was an uncharacteristic thing for her, being more upbeat in nature and the holder of the primal expression of laughter. But as she hunkered over at the bar, lightly drumming one hoof against the wooden top, she glowered down at the letter that had arrived a few days ago for what was probably the sixth time. It was an early Saturday, so the bar wasn’t exactly buzzing at the moment, with only a few ponies helping themselves to a light lunch.
“Staring at that thing won’t help, you know.”
Cheerilee looked up into the eyes of her sibling, Berry Punch. She had an enigmatic smile on her muzzle, one Cheerilee had seen Berry use on dozens of other patrons. It was one of the many tools her sister used to pierce straight through a patron’s miserable haze and get straight to the heart of whatever was bothering him or her.
“Sorry, Berry. It’s just..,” she waved a hoof helplessly at the page.
“Spike?”
“Spike.”
She had been staying in touch with the baby dragon since the incident at the Dragon’s Forge and the Overlord. When his attempt to forge both a unified nation and a surrogate family from the rapacious dragons of Cissanthema had failed, he had gone to live with one of the more reasonable dragons of the whole lot, Sjachthurkearverthichaoposs. Apparently his lair was somewhere in Cavallia and Cheerilee had been hoping that some time there would help Spike deal with the repeated rejections he had experienced in his life. The letters she had been getting however….
“I can’t help it,” Cheerilee sighed. “He still sounds morose and unsure about his place in the world. Not a part of the dragon world, not a part of the pony world,” she frowned, before scanning the letter again. “…Though at least his penmanship is improving.”
Berry reached under the counter, producing a bottle of bourbon. “This is really getting to you, isn’t it?” she asked, slowly pouring a shot.
“I am an educator of young minds. I won’t not be worried about a young mind just because that mind is a dragon instead of a pony. …Besides, he does clearly still need help.”
It wasn’t the only thing bothering her, admittedly.
For under the letter from Spike, was a missive from Princess Luna. Despite the best effort of her spies and scouts, there had been no word on the fate of Yangin the jinn after she was taken by Kindle. The fact that she had failed to stop the jinn from being taken would have been bad enough. But she had taken Yangin’s bound item and forced her to come along on the adventure to find The Army of Smoke and Fire in the first place. Her capture by Corona was Cheerile’s fault and that had been weighing on her conscious.
Berry rubbed her chin. “Hmmm.”
“…If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have an idea.”
“Maybe..,” Berry Punch smiled resting her forelegs on the bar top. “Did I ever tell you about the time I took a trip to the Crystal Empire?”
“I remember you saying that you were going up there. That was during my last year at school right? You went up there to see what crystal brandy was like.”
“Slightly overrated, honestly,” Berry chuckled. “It has too much fizz…well, stuff like fizz, from the crystal nature of the grapes they use.”
The Crystal Empire was appropriately named. Powered and protected by the Crystal Heart, its magic infused the entire nation and the ponies within it. In addition to giving the country an uncommonly strong sense of unity- one backed up by events in their history- it made a great deal of the country…crystal. There was a running joke amongst Equestria’s historians that it was almost the most accurately named country in the world, only being disqualified by being an “empire” small enough to fit inside one of Equestria’s larger provinces.
“Anyway,” Berry continued. “While I was there, I happened to check out the University of Beren on a lark. As it turns out? One of their professors is a dragon.”
Cheerilee blinked. “A dragon? In the middle of the Crystal Empire? How has he not tried to eat half of it by now?”
“Based on what he told me, a mix of willpower and the Crystal Heart itself. But he’s a dragon that’s been living alongside ponies for most of his life now. If there’s anyone who could help Spike deal with some of what he’s feeling right now…well, I think he’s it.”
Cheerilee considered that for a moment. “Do you think he’d be willing to help?”
“I think so, yeah. We still write each other. I can find out easily enough.”
“Alright,” Cheerilee nodded. “Let’s see what we can do.”
- - - -
A few days later, Cheerilee found herself standing on Ponyville’s train platform, her saddlebags fully packed for a several day trip. A flurry of letter exchanges- most of them magically charged for speedly delivery- had ended with an agreement for her and Spike to head to the Crystal Empire to meet this mysterious dragon professor, Schwartzkopf. While she wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from that dragon, she was willing to give this whole idea a try to help Spike.
The whistle of a train reached her ears and she looked up to see the train that Spike would be arriving on pulling into the station. It wasn’t long after it came to a halt that the doors swung open and the few passengers that were coming to Ponyville filed out. Spike was the last to do so, less stepping out than shuffling with a grumpy frown on his face. A stuffed pack was slung over one of his shoulders.
“Good morning Spike! It’s really good to see you,” Cheerilee smiled, trotting over to greet him. “How was your trip? No problems, I hope?”
Spike shrugged back. “Well...things were a little weird when I went to get my first ticket. Sjach came with me just to make sure that everything went okay..,” he trailed off.
Cheerilee blinked for a moment, but then went right back to smiling. “Well, clearly you worked it all out.”
“I might have been able to do some fast talking,” Spike smiled, standing a little taller. “Once I explained everything I was able to get a ticket just fine.”
“Speaking of tickets, this is for you.” Cheerilee dug into her saddlebags for a moment, producing the ticket she had bought for Spike for the journey to the Crystal Empire. She passed it over, Spike reading its face for a moment.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked. “We’re going to the Crystal Empire and I am a dragon.”
“Going to meet a dragon who’s been living there for decades,” Cheerilee smiled back. “Though I did get some gems from Rarity for you to snack on if you want.”
“Yeah, I have some of those too. I’m more worried about going all crazy and wealth obsessed like..,” he sighed, idly rubbing his arm. “Well, like what happened back at the Forge.”
Cheerilee placed a hoof on the young dragon’s shoulder. “Spike. You were able to resist the influence of the Alicorn Amulet. You’re a brave little dragon and you can handle this. Buttt, here’s a fact that might help,” she winked. “Crystals and gems are common enough in The Empire that they actually aren’t worth much up there. Just think of them as normal rocks.”
“Huh,” Spike blinked. “That...actually makes a lot of sense.”
Another train whistle sounded as the one that would take them to the Crystal Empire slowly pulled into the station. Cheerilee looked down at Spike before nodding at the train.
“Ready?”
Spike took a deep breath as he began to walk into the train. “As I’ll ever be.”