Princess Celestia’s head twists suddenly. “What in the world…?”
Princess Luna looks briefly in the same direction, at the wall. “What is it, Sister? Did my Moon catch fire again?”
Celestia shakes her head; she and her sister had just gone through the motions of lowering the sun and raising the moon. “No; this feels much more like my Sun than your Moon… and it’s tiny, in the city.”
Luna blinks. “What…? That’s… strange. Do you think it’s worth investigation?”
Celestia nods. “Definitely.”
“Lead the way.”
Celestia nods, turns, and leaps off the balcony, spreading her wings to catch herself in a glide around the castle. Luna follows behind her almost instantly, silent as a ghost.
Celestia wings her way out over the small town surrounding their castle. It’s a comfortable little town, with a population of only two thousand or so- but at the moment, it’s the largest single town in all of Equestria, and the capital of the nation. She banks slightly to both sides for a second, drifting forwards, before banking in a circle and searching the streets below. Thanks to her connection to her Sun, she can sense any fire from a very long way away, but the feeling is always vague, and never very useful for finding the fire. This feeling is stronger, far more like her Sun, yet still small like a campfire. Unfortunately, it’s not strong enough for her to zero in on it any further than this.
Then she spots it. A tiny glow, in that alleyway between two buildings. She swoops down closer, peering between the buildings, trying to identify the glow.
It seems to be coming from the corner in the wall, right next to that small dumpster.
She scans the alleyway, glances back at her sister, and descends. In this day and age, one can never be too careful; she has yet to get her Royal Guards strong enough – or in significant enough numbers – to really control the crime running rampant in her city.
She lands softly in the alleyway, just shy of the dumpster at the end, and slowly, carefully, steps closer. She glances upwards, where her sister circles watchfully overhead, and takes a peek around the dumpster.
She immediately flinches backwards, back out of sight, and draws a series of deep breaths, heart hammering while an iron spear flashes across the alleyway in front of her, impaling itself on the opposite wall.
Princess Luna lands just behind her, stepping forwards. “Perhaps we can-!”
Both Princesses then let out a gasp as a tiny spark of brilliant light floats around the corner, before glowing suddenly brighter and forcing them both to shield their eyes.
Then-
“Oh. Sorry, Princess.” The light dies back down to tolerable levels, and Celestia uncovers her eyes first, her solar connection allowing her eyes to adjust to bright light faster than her sister’s.
A… filly is bowing to her, horn glowing the same gold as is surrounding the point of brilliance floating over her head.
And the half-dozen or so iron spears lined up behind her, all point-up.
She glances sideways at the wall the first one had impacted, to find nothing of the sort. No spear, no mark from the impact, just an undamaged brick wall.
“R-Rise,” she mutters, forcing herself to calm down.
The little green filly rises to her hooves, and Celestia only barely catches her gasp in time; her ribs are showing. “I’m sorry about that,” the filly repeats. “That was my warning spell- an illusion meant to scare off attackers.”
“... And those spears?” she asks, gesturing at the ones floating behind her.
“They’re real,” the filly answers simply.
Princess Luna steps forwards, squinting at the sharpened spears. “That’s… That’s not iron,” she states.
The filly nods. “They’re steel… stronger than iron, and with a magic pattern that shatters the thaumic hold of anypony that doesn’t know what to expect.”
Celestia blinks. “Steel…? That’s stronger than iron… but magically, it’s no different.”
The filly smiles slightly. “Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, may contain other elements. This steel is pretty pure, made with chromium, cobalt, nickel, tungsten, and a touch of orichalcum.”
“... Oh. That would do it.”
“Where did you get them?” Luna asks.
“I made them.”
“Ahh,” Celestia mumbles. “So, what’s… that?” She indicates the point of brilliance.
The filly winces. “It’s… a lesser version of the spell I used to make the steel. It’s going to be…” The filly trails off, looking at something behind them, and her horn flares.
Celestia and Luna both turn their heads to look – but all they manage to do is visually track one of her spears, whistling through the space between them, until it makes its mark, puncturing straight through the thick metal armor of a surprised earth pony with a battleaxe poised to strike Princess Luna. The spear comes out the other side, cleans itself with a little spin, and flies more sedately back to rejoin its fellows.
Celestia looks back at the earth pony for a second, before turning back to the filly. That had been a known member of the anti-Princess splinter group responsible for a majority of the crime going around the city.
The filly continues as if nothing had happened. “It’s going to be a cold night tonight, and I wanted to stay warm.”
“What happened to your parents?” Luna asks.
The filly shakes her head. “I don’t know. They disappeared two years ago.”
“You know what,” Celestia decides. “How would you like to join us in the castle tonight?”
The filly blinks. “You don’t know my name.” It’s not a question.
“Ahh…”
She grins. “It’s Lyra. Lyra Heartstrings. And, yes, I would like that, very much.”
“Three days,” Princess Luna states.
Princess Celestia looks innocently at her. “What?”
They’re in the private chambers of the Castle, in one of the numerous labs Starswirl had designed into the place for some reason, and both sitting in front of the little filly, Lyra Heartstrings.
“You’ve known her for three days,” Luna continues, “and you’ve already made her your personal student.”
“Ahh…” Celestia mutters, averting her gaze.
“One,” Lyra calmly corrects. “She made me her personal student day before yesterday.”
Luna facehooves, shaking her head. “One of these days, Sister, you’re going to regret picking your students so quickly.”
“Hey, it’s worked so far,” Celestia returns.
Luna rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and we’re only five hundred years old out of immortality!”
“So?” Celestia asks.
“Infinite Monkey Theorem,” Lyra states.
Both Alicorns turn to look at her. “What?”
Lyra smiles. “If you sat a monkey in front of a typewriter and had it punch randomly at the keys for an infinite amount of time, it would inevitably produce the complete written works of… oh, I don’t know any famous authors, but…”
Luna blinks. “It’d be random,” she states.
Lyra shrugs. “Sure, the chances of the randomness being an accurate copy of something famous are slim to none, but with absurdly large numbers, it becomes certain.” She turns to Celestia. “The odds of making a bad decision as far as a new student is concerned are a lot higher than the odds of a monkey randomly typing just my last name, so it doesn’t take an absurdly large number to make it certain. And as immortals, you have absurdly large numbers.” She turns to Luna. “Thus, it’s less a question of if, and more a question of when.”
“Why?” Celestia asks.
“Princess, when you’re working with infinity, if it can happen, it will happen, eventually. Guaranteed.” She closes her eyes. “We can only guard against it… and try to control when and how often.”
Luna looks at Celestia. “She’s like a miniature Starswirl.”
Celestia smiles. “Except that she knows next to nothing in terms of magic.”
She blinks. “What?”
Celestia nods. “She’s got levitation, and whatever that fire spell is. I haven’t been able to figure out how it works, and when she explains, I don’t understand any of it.”
“Uhh…”
“We’ve been working on basic magic theory.”
“Which makes absolutely no sense,” Lyra interjects. “Magic is like computers: Obedient to a fault.”
“Good luck,” Luna nods gravely. Magic is perhaps the most unruly thing she’s ever tried to work with- and if she goes outside her fairly small repertoire, which includes such things as combat magics and moving the moon, she can lose control and easily end in some spectacular disaster.
As Luna leaves the room, Celestia turns back to Lyra. “What is ‘computers’?”
Lyra shakes her head. “Nothing.”
Boom. Fshwing! Boom. Fshwing! Boom. Fshwing!
Princess Celestia follows the strange noise to one of the lab rooms. As soon as she opens the door, she’s met by a crowd of some half of the Royal Guards in the Everfree, and the rest of the room is filled by glowing golden energy.
She blinks. A couple of months ago, Lyra had designed… something that neither she nor Luna had understood and, in the lab next door to this one, had spent the last couple months producing nigh invincible armor for all the Guards in the city.
… She’d finished the armor for all the guards after just one week but, when the Guard fatality rate plummeted as a result, hundreds of ponies volunteered, rapidly inflating the ranks. And just last week, Guards – and new recruits – from other towns started showing up to get some of their own. For some reason, the unicorn had been slow to produce their armor. Even now, the ‘armor press’ in the other room is silent.
She looks a little closer at the thaumic construct Lyra built in this room. It’s…
It’s powered by that same ‘fusion’ construct she’d come up with… which is in turn powered by her active unicorn magic. She recognizes half of it, matching half of the ‘armor press’ – her ‘steel refinery’, producing orichalcum-infused, permanently enchanted steel. After that, it seems to split into two sides. With each Fshwing!, one side adds a spear to a growing pile, and the other adds a sword to its pile.
Lyra herself, though, is nowhere to be found.
“P-Princess!” a Guard announces, spotting her and twisting to bow. His dented iron armor flashes dimly in the light.
Celestia blinks. He must be one of the Dodge Guards – the ones Lyra hasn’t made armor for yet.
All the rest of the Guards turn and bow in response.
“Rise,” she orders. Then she looks out across the room. “So… Where’s Lyra?”
The Sergeant that had spotted her answers. “Miss Heartstrings said she had some work to do elsewhere and disappeared. She didn’t say where.”
Princess Celestia sighs. “I should have expected that.”
“Uh… She also said to tell you that this, uh, machine, is making spears and swords that only the Royal Guard and the Princesses can wield.”
She nods. “So, just like the armor.”
He nods. “Yeah. She did say there is a cutout to stop deserters or dissenting Guards in their tracks.” He shrugs. “I daresay she’s single-hoofedly revolutionized the Royal Guard.”
Very suddenly, Lyra appears out of nowhere in a flash of golden light. “Alright everypony, the armor press is back online and better than ever!” She glances up at Celestia. “Oh, hi Princess. I can’t help but think we might want to move the presses to somewhere more prominent in Equestria, somewhere anypony can get to easily. Maybe to Canterlot, that Unicorn village on Mount Canterhorn?”
Celestia blinks. Ever since they found her, Lyra has consistently put her expectations on their respective heads… and now that she’s a healthy young mare, that tendency has only increased. “Um… Isn’t Canterlot a bit high up?”
She nods. “Yeah, I would prefer if it were closer to the terrain level as well, but the armor is nearly weightless, and I think the prominence of the location might serve better than simple convenience.” She grins. “We could also make Canterlot the primary Guard recruiting and training hub, attracting a huge amount of trade to the place. With a place that prominent, everypony would know where to go to join the Guard, not just those lucky enough to know a Guard. When I scoured the nation last week to recruit some unicorns to operate the armor press without me, I found out that some ninety-five percent of interested citizens don’t have a clue where to find the nearest Guard, let alone recruiting center.”
“Wouldn’t it be hard for earth ponies and unicorns to reach it?”
Lyra shrugs. “A little, at the moment. But that’d be a nice source of jobs to boost the economy, as well – we can build a railway up the mountain, take them up with a train.” She puts a hoof to her chin. “Might even be worthwhile to move the capital to Canterlot, too. The Everfree is constantly trying to eat our city here, and it’s dangerous to travel to and from it. Move to Canterlot, though, and not only are we no longer fighting the Everfree day in and day out, but everypony knows where to go to seek audience- and isn’t afraid to do so. Could vastly improve the effectiveness of your rule.”
“This… This is true. I’ll have to talk to Luna.” She blinks. “Wait, did you say you recruited-?”
“Some unicorns to operate the armor press? Yep. Took about two days to train them up, the rest of the week has been spent modifying the armor press to be easier to use.” She shrugs. “So all they have to do is provide power… and it doesn’t have to be a constant, steady flow. Once I pump out a few thousand spears and swords here, I’m planning on shutting this one down to make the same modifications.”
Princess Luna trots down the stairs, towards Lyra’s basement laboratory. It’s a couple years after her revolutionization of the Royal Guard; crime has become a thing of the past across the nation. With the migration of the Throne to Canterlot, even though the Royal Canterlot Palace hasn’t been fully built yet, she and her sister’s difficulties in governing the nation are also a thing of the past. What’s more, the wealth of new jobs the construction of Lyra’s ‘railroad’ has created has effectively ended poverty across the nation!
… It probably didn’t hurt that she herself had suggested extending the tracks to connect every major city and town in Equestria. Lyra had agreed enthusiastically, and started planning out where the tracks would go, where they would meet, where trains would be stored… and even locations for a few new cities along the rails.
Exactly why Lyra is drawing a rail line to Horseshoe Bay and declaring that the area will become a major city in the years to come, she has no clue. It’s not the only point she’s declaring major cities will crop up for no apparent reason, either. There’s a couple more points along the coast, some along the opposite coast, and even a spot just outside the Everfree, where a few different rail lines meet.
Then, of course, Lyra is even going so far as to name those nonexistent towns and cities already.
Now, Lyra is reportedly working on making a self-casting spell. She hadn’t been impressed when Celestia had described it as that when Lyra had detailed her project to the Princesses, but she’d seemed to settle, saying it was a little more complicated than that, but essentially similar. In her own opinion, it’s a lot more complicated than that; it sounded more to her like a self-powering spell, though she hasn’t a clue where it’d get the power to do that from.
She pauses as she reaches the door, tilting her head. No, she does have a clue where it’d get the power from; both the armor press and the weapon press, both moved to Canterlot last week, use some kind of ‘fusion’ thingy to convert the small amount of power a team of unicorns can produce into the massive, well-beyond-an-alicorn power levels required to operate the rest of the construct. Thus, if she’s able to somehow siphon off some of that power back to power the ‘fusion’ thing, yet also stop it from going overboard…
The problem is, so far as she knows, there is no way to siphon off a certain amount of power. You get either the full might of the available power, flowing through all possible channels… or you get none. The reason why reiterative spells can very easily produce deadly amounts of feedback if given too much power.
She shrugs, and pushes the door open. She’s here to let Lyra know that everypony has finished moving out of the Everfree City – it’s just her, Lyra, and Celestia left.
Her jaw drops.
Lyra is floating off to the side, eyes closed and horn aglow.
The center of the room is dominated by a massive whirling construct of golden symbols, wrapped expertly around a miniature sun. Not the tiny points of light all her ‘fusion’ things have worked with so far, but a far larger, miniature sun. She can feel the preposterous power flowing through this thing- and holding steady. And it all seems to be sustaining itself. She doesn’t detect any more than a tiny trickle from Lyra, probably just monitoring it.
Then the door bangs gently against the wall, echoing across the chamber.
Lyra gasps, glancing up at her – before turning straight back to the now wobbling construct. “Nononononono-!”
The unicorn’s horn flares bright, pouring power into the construct, manipulating it – but it would seem something happened that she couldn’t catch.
She watches as the innermost layers of the construct, around that star, shatter outwards.
Then the next layer.
And the next.
And the outer layer shatters instantly, the star expanding rapidly from within.
A double ring of dark symbols on the ground suddenly boils with golden light.
A fraction of a moment later, before the uncontrollably expanding star reaches it, she feels it draining her massive power reserves right down to nothing, and pulling for more. The golden glow of those rings is now the deep blue of her aura, with a couple flickers of gold.
Then the star reaches them.
The barrier that formed above those rings holds for half a second, during which both the floor and the ceiling vanish to the star, before they, too, shatter.
Then everything goes dark, and she feels herself falling to her Moon to recover.
“Luna? Lyra?” Celestia calls one last time into the glowing crater that used to be one side of the Castle of the Two Sisters. “Please… Please tell me you escaped!”
When it comes time for night, Celestia raises her sister’s Moon half an hour after lowering her own Sun.
Ten years after the explosion, neither Luna nor Lyra have reappeared, and Luna has not resumed her control of her Moon. Celestia has been unable to squash the rumors among her ponies that Luna had turned evil, and forced her to send her to the moon with the Elements of Harmony. There have even been predictions going about that the evil Luna – which ponies are calling Nightmare Moon – will return in a thousand years to bring about eternal night.
Celestia has no idea where that came from, but she has made a national holiday out of the anniversary of the explosion, with the intent to mourn the loss of her sister and student.
Her ponies, however, had different ideas- and it quickly became known as the Summer Sun Celebration, despite her best efforts.
She eventually gave in, and let it become a celebration of her own survival and ability to continue guiding Equestria… though in private, every year, she mourns for the two lost souls.