//------------------------------// // 7: Daddy Issues // Story: But Wait...There's More! // by McPoodle //------------------------------// But Wait...There’s More! - 7: Daddy Issues - “Now that we’re all together,” said Spike as they were exiting the etheric recording studio, “where do you think we should go first?” “How about the Great Hall?” Vinyl Scratch suggested. “We could tour the stained glass windows.” Vinyl thought she was very clever for coming up with this suggestion, and was gratified when the others quickly agreed to it. This was her chance to find out once and for all if Princess Celestia recorded the truth about the return of Nightmare Moon, and if so, what that truth was. Secondarily, she needed more data points in her mental chart of ways the Princess treated “her little ponies”. The Great Hall of Canterlot Castle was designed as a place for petitioners to Princess Celestia (and later Princess Luna) to wait before being summoned into the audience chamber. It was very wide, with a resilient rose-bordered red carpet running down the middle under an arched ceiling supported by graceful pillars and hung with seasonally-appropriate banners. Tall clear windows provided adequate illumination during the day, and large chandeliers hung down for nighttime lighting. Between the windows were a variety of historically-significant objects, grouped by section. One end of the hall had a variety of suits of pony armor from a more violent past. Another section had tapestries depicting daily life from all over Equestria during the mid-Seventh Millennium. The hall branched off at seemingly-random points to lead off to the offices of important officials, ballrooms or in some cases nowhere at all. Some of the windows had been replaced with stained-glass representations of important events in Equestrian history. The first place the Twilight insisted that the group visit was the Visitor’s Center. Here an illusion spell recreated Princess Celestia giving the same speech to anypony who stopped to listen. Celestia considered this speech to be the most important one of her entire life. She had given a version of it to the ponies of Equestria at the start of every century of her reign, nearly 70 times so far. The first edition of The Equestrian Handbook began with the text of the 6000 speech, and the second edition of the same book began with the version given one thousand years later, so important did the author consider the speech for any who would wish to truly understand Equestria and its ways. Here is a brief excerpt: Seven thousand years ago, ponies set sight upon the land of Equestria for the first time. It was a land that had been laid waste by magic run amok, a world on the verge of complete and total collapse.... My sister Luna and I brought you to this place for the purpose of saving this land, of rehabilitating it, and of bringing it back to self-sustainability. Our goal is a world where the crops, the weather, and the heavens can mostly take care of themselves, where the bounties of earth, sea and sky reward the efforts of the ponies who work to sustain them. A world where, finally, my little ponies will be able to take care of themselves against all threats they may encounter.... I have never made a secret of the fact that my time on Equestria is limited. And when the day comes for me to leave, I want to be able to say that I left Equestria in the best possible hooves.... This is going to be a trying century for you, my little ponies, perhaps the most trying in your entire history. So make me proud, and justify the faith I have in all of you. After hearing the speech, the group set out on their tour. At Vinyl’s prodding, they covered most of the Great Hall in a couple of hours. Some of the main hall couldn’t be accessed because the petitioners were waiting there, and some side-hallways were occupied by negotiating senators. There was also at least one hallway that Vinyl could hear faint echoes from, but that must have been an acoustical trick of some kind, because the others insisted they couldn’t see an opening in the wall in that direction. Vinyl had last been in these halls during a school trip, back when she was a filly and still lived in Ponyville. Twilight was doing a much better job running the tour than her teacher had. For one thing, Twilight had only gotten them lost twice. And for another, she actually bothered to explain what everything looked like, instead of forgetting that not all of her students could see. ~ ~ ~ “...and that was the last that anypony has seen of him,” said the purple unicorn, standing before a stained glass window near the end of the hall. “There, that should be the entire collection—I hope I haven’t bored any of you.” “No, you’re a good storyteller, Twilight,” said Rarity. “Err...didn’t you miss one of the window displays?” asked Vinyl. “I distinctly remember one called The Fall of the Black King. I remember it because my teacher made us all pay it a ‘respectful silence’ while refusing to say anything else about it at all.” “Oh,” said Twilight Sparkle, wishing that Vinyl hasn’t brought that up. “It’s just down this side passage. Walk carefully, as the way is rather narrow, and it’s in the shade of newer parts of the castle most hours of the day. Now then, this is the so-called Fall of the Black King window. It is the oldest-surviving stained-glass window in the history of Equestria, and was transferred to Canterlot from the Castle of the Two Sisters. It is so old in fact that what it depicts is not described by any history book known to ponykind, which is why the title is just a guess.” “What about Princess Celestia?” asked Rainbow Dash. “She paid somepony to make the window, so she must know what it’s about.” “Princess Celestia has never publicly told the story behind the window, so all we have to go on is wild speculation by art historians over the millennia.” Vinyl Scratch took careful note of the word “publicly”. “Maybe you should just describe it, without interpretation,” she said. “Alright,” Twilight replied, steeling her voice. “The display is made up of two tall narrow windows side by side, each divided into three panels from top to bottom. At the top of the left-hand window is a small field of random bits of colored glass—scholars are uncertain if this counts as a panel or not, so they call it ‘Panel Zero’. “Panel One shows a field of dozens of alicorns. At least some of them appear to be arguing with each other.” Rarity stepped forward to get a closer look. “My word, you’re right—they are alicorns! I never noticed that before—thought they were unicorns all this time. The lighting in this corner is most inadequate. Oh, um...carry on, Twilight.” “That’s alright,” Twilight said. “It took me a long time to see that myself. Looking over the other alicorns are four more of their kind. On the right is a white alicorn filly with a pink mane, with the Sun over her head. On the left is a purple alicorn filly with a blue mane, with the Moon over her head. At the top is the figure identified as the ‘Black King’—a black alicorn stallion with a gray mane and a great glowing crown upon his head. Behind him are two enormous dragons, one green, one purple. Their heads would touch the sky if they held them up, but they are bowing to the black alicorn in respect. At the bottom is the ‘White Queen’, a white alicorn mare with a blue mane and a smaller glowing crown upon her head. She is either not shaped very well by the artist, or she is unsteady on her hooves.” “The...” Twilight’s voice caught for a moment, but then she took a deep breath and continued as emotionlessly as she could. “The second panel shows the White Queen in a bed, her eyes closed. The two filly alicorns are at either side of the bed, their heads bowed. The Black King has dramatically burst into the room. Through the sundered door are seen two alicorns fighting—one of them is trying to hold the Black King back with one hoof.” “This isn’t going to end well, is it?” Pinkie Pie asked in a small voice. “The third panel,” Twilight continued, her voice even colder than before, “is a similar scene to the first panel. The White Queen has made her last appearance. The alicorns on the field are all lying down. The Black King stands in their midst. Something’s...wrong with his eyes. Beside him is a black device too complicated for stained glass to do justice to. It is enormous, and pointed towards the ground, and magic from his horn is charging it. The ground is cracked open in several places, and gouts of lava shoot up into a blackened sky. The two fillies are...well perhaps this is a failure of the artist once again, but even though they are standing, they appear lifeless...” She said nothing more for several seconds, her breathing slightly erratic. Vinyl’s imagination completed the abandoned sentence: ...like they have seen something so horrible that their minds have shut down rather than acknowledge it as reality. “Twilight, you don’t have to finish,” Applejack said gently. “No, no, we’re halfway done, so we might as well finish,” said Twilight, obviously shaken. “Now, um, the fourth, fifth and sixth panels all have the same setting as the first and third panels. In the fourth one, most of the space is taken up by a group of giant glowing dragons. The machine from before is in pieces, and the ground is no longer cracked. The dragons are blocking our view of the Black King, but his crown is being crushed beneath a dragon foot. The alicorn fillies are still frozen. “In the fifth panel, the dragons have left the field and are departing. They appear to be the normal size you’d expect dragons to be now. There is a black horn lying on the ground.” “Oh my!” exclaimed Fluttershy. Vinyl noticed that all of these ponies, these supposedly battle-hardened saviors of Equestria, were similarly shocked, shifting their hooves uneasily. Twilight continued. “The two fillies, once more looking lifelike, are standing on either side of the horn, heads bowed in the same relative positions as in Panel Two. The field is a big...empty...space.” Twilight waited a few moments before concluding. “Panel Six shows the white filly on the right with the Sun, and the purple filly on the left with the Moon. In the field are earth ponies, unicorns and pegasi, laughing and playing. The end.” Nopony said anything for several minutes. Vinyl thought she had a good idea of what sort of events the windows described, and why Princess Celestia did not feel herself capable of telling that story to anypony who asked. Assuming that the black stallion alicorn in the window was in fact the original “Black King”, she also now knew why Celestia and Luna refused to take the title of Queen. A king driven mad by disobedient subjects, Vinyl reasoned. No wonder we were created to adore the Princesses. They may have said as they were creating us that they wanted ponies capable of handling any threat in their absence, and they have may even believed what they said. But deep down, they were never going to allow history to repeat itself.