The dragon looked at me funny and threw up her claws. "This frail meat sack? Whatever, I'm bored now. Seriously, there are too many meetings in this war. You ponies do what you have to do. I'll be over here doing a power nap if you need me, but I know you will just need my troops to do the heavy lifting like they always do."
With this, she went over to a corner with a pile of coins dumped out on the floor, pulled a dark crystalline staff with a red stone at the top under her protectively and laid down for a nap with a small yawn. "Not that we mind doing the heavy lifting."
The gruff griffin eyeballed me from across the table. "So, this is the sorry excuse of a traitor my team is being hired to protect? Pretty scrawny for one of their kind, if you ask me."
I was mildly insulted, on multiple levels, but before I could respond, Discord beat me to the punch.
"Oh come now. Traitor would imply he had loyalty to them in the first place. You know that's not true from what was discussed just a few minutes ago."
Discord was unusually calm for the meeting. No showboating or other shenanigans came from him. That, combined with the calm tone of his, seemed to unnerve me in a way that was only slight, but I couldn't shake it.
"Traitor to his kind at least." The griffin slumped back in his seat while resting his beak on his talon.
"I'm sure you would know all about that. Griffons seem to have no particular loyalty for each other, either."
The griffon bolted upright in his seat, reaching for his weapon in reflex, though not drawing it. "That may be, but my company knows loyalty!"
Discord gave a simple, cocky smirk. "To your pocket books."
I could visually see the griffon's talons grip his weapon more tightly as he glared across to Discord. "To our contracts! We understand seeing a mission through to the end even when there is more profit in turning our backs than in the reward will promote returning customers and more money in the long run. A good reputation is vital to good business in our trade."
"Enough!" princess Celestia firmly stated in a calm, yet demanding voice.
"And to answer your question, lieutenant Gizzard, yes. This is Moss, the one that we need to escort to our destination safely if the mission is to be a success. But I must ask that you let him be filled in on the situation before we continue."
The room went quiet for a moment, then princess Celestia nodded to princess Twilight.
The young princess lit up her horn, creating an image to be viewed in the middle of the table.
"As you were already briefed on before, our world has had invaders like this in the past and we managed to drive them out and seal them out of our world."
A display of generalized figures portrayed the scene fighting off humanoids and closing portals once the forces were driven back. The image then focused on a partially transparent portal shaped seal.
"What we didn't tell you about was how hard it was to seal the rifts. Seals made with conventional magic are fine for sealing off normal portals until they close entirely. This can work even with lesser rifts connecting nearby worlds on a multi-dimensional scale."
Her demonstration showed a line acting as a barrier between two flat images of two separate worlds, with a blockage covering a hole in the barrier. As a few seconds pass, the hole in the barrier closed on its own.
"But if hostiles are on the other side, a conventional seal can be blasted through pretty easily. And with rifts too large or connecting worlds that have a great distance of multi dimensional void between them, the rifts close up extremely slowly."
A new scene showed with a much larger break in a thicker barrier with a seal in one side of it. The time in the demonstration was sped up and showed many generations of ponies pass with the hole in the barrier barely shrinking at all. Soon a force breaks through the barrier and crosses over.
The image shut off and princess Twilight turned to princess Celestia.
"There is however, a specific type of seal that, once established, cannot be broken from the other side and is extremely difficult to corrode. Even so, this seal can be bolstered by the use of the Animus Mundi to slow corrosion and general aging further down still, and Æther can be used to repair the seal from the side the seal was made on indefinitely..."
The room was silent for a moment as I waited for her to finish, but she simply kept eyeing the princess that had been quiet and looking away from me the whole time. The governing princess of the crystal ponies.
Finally, I broke the silence. "But? I can see a catch coming."
Princess Celestia glared at the crystal princess and spoke oddly, almost as if in code. "There is, but I think my niece needs to explain the rest, in her own words."
The crystal princess spoke in a sour voice, "This kind of seal is what currently protects all other rifts that we are guarding. They can be maintained indefinitely once established, but getting them up and going is near impossible. We already have every..."
She stopped, closed her eyes and scrunched her nose in an angry huff then looked straight at me with a glare.
"I'm sorry I did what I did to you. I shouldn't have been so eager to sign off on your Astral Judgement. My husband was out there on the front lines and I saw a way to end the war quick and get him home when I saw Tempest give me that paper to sign. In my worry, I had sought out every measure I could to ensure his safety out there. In my paranoia, I thought you had enemy secrets that would help us end the war. You're still scared of Aunt Luna because of it, but I'm the one that forced her to do it for the wrong reasons."
She sat there, looking at me and waiting for me to respond.
I opened my mouth a bit cockeyed and chewed on her words for a moment. I then looked back up to her and calmly answered, "With what you said, I can get why you did it. What's next?"
"That's all you have to say!? 'What's next?' Are you trying to say it like you'd really do the same in my position?"
I shook my head. "No. I'd have done a whole lot worse if I were in your position. But that's why I'm not a leader."
The crystal princess wanted to comment more, but princess Celestia raised a hoof and interrupted her. "Like my niece said, the seals are almost impossible to get started. For the longest time it required a priest. This was something that could only be created by the followers of the very exalted beings that wanted to open the rifts. So these seals were often only squandered in ways that benefited these exalted beings. Embargoes, sealing off rival gods from worlds, shunning unfaithful colonies that would start on new worlds, leaving them to the wrath of natives without backup or retreat while the ones responsible for the suffering that caused the wrath remained out of reach, eventually opening the seal from their side later on to try colonizing again."
Celestia cracked a smug smile. "That is until our predecessors discovered the secret to these seals, thanks to the traitors of the other world that aided Equis in the original war. The secret was that the seal simply required to be seeded by a mortal who was a wielder of pure quintessence. The only known way for this to happen at the time was for a mortal to become a priest of an exalted being. But our ancestors managed to make an artificial bond like a priest's by striking a deal with an immortal being with quintessence and allowing some of his energy to become bonded to a mortal. Normally, this would simply make what you understand to be a warlock, but the process was extended, forming a lifelong link that could only be severed by the mortal's death and also permanently harming Discord in the process."
I looked at Discord with shock, who was simply turned away in a grouchy mood.
"Yes, indeed," Princess Celestia commented at my glance, "Every native of Equis alive today owes their lives partially to Discord's sacrifice."
Discord gave a harrumph. "It was a business venture, nothing more. I was compensated... adequately. But I'll never do it again. Not while you have nothing of sufficient value to me to offer for the service."
He looked at me. "And especially not while there is already another candidate primed and ready to go."
I nodded as I put the pieces together.
"So you need me and Archimedes to get the seal started for you."
Celestia nodded and Twilight spoke up. "All you really have to do on a technical level is get the first part started, but quintessence isn't just used to seed a seal. It is also an excellent catalyst to stabilizing a seal. It's several times faster than even our best Æther based methods."
She waved to her friends on her right, and Fluttershy on her left.
"If you can use as much of your quintessence spell power on the seal as you can, it will help get the seed stable. Then me and my friends can come in and take over getting it reinforced further for the-"
"Absolutely not!" Both Discord and I screamed at the same time.
We looked at each other, then I let Discord continue. "I will not see my dear Fluttershy on the battlefield. She nearly died once already."
"Discord," Fluttershy piped in coldly. "We are only going to have one shot at this. We can't afford to risk it."
Princess Twilight gave him a glare. "A new seal seed of any kind is very fragile until its reinforced, even a quintessence seal. Either we pour all the mortal quintessence we have at our disposal into it to get it stable enough to not be destroyed from the other side, or we run the risk of it breaking in the multiple days it would take our Æther teams to get the same result. You know from the efforts to help keep the seal closed before the war that the Pillars of Light alone aren't strong enough for this. They will need me and the other element bearers to get enough quintessence to protect the seed in its infancy."
Discord grumbled and started smoking, glaring at everypony in the room except me and Fluttershy.
"And besides," princess Celestia chimed in, "If we can't get the rift closed, just how much safer do you think it will be for Fluttershy, or indeed anypony, in the long run? The military will do everything in their power to keep her safe, as I am sure you will too."
I could swear I saw Discord's pupils turn to literal flames as I saw him coil around Fluttershy in a protective circle with a snarl and a look of bitter defeat.
With the explanations made, Archimedes summoned to get him onboard—which wasn't hard—and plans made to move out the next day, the meeting was adjourned.
Fluttershy finally managed to get Discord to let her go as I approached her with a bit of lingering shock.
"So you and your friends are the element bearer's I've heard about? You're able to wield mostly pure quintessence?"
She blushed and tried to hide her face behind her long mane. "In a short burst with my friends, yes. Like I told you before, it makes sense when you know our history."
I looked back at princess Celestia with a tidbit of lingering disbelief as the rest of the attendees left. "So this isn't some kind of elaborate joke? You guys are actually serious?"
Princess Celestia quietly held still to show that she was taking what I asked her into deep consideration. With a brief exhale, she pulled out a familiar piece of narrow metal from behind her seat.
She levitated my Wand of Lighting Bolts and placed it down at the edge of the table next to me.
"I believe the term my sister recommended I use is 'dead serious.'"