//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Sharing the Nation // by Cast-Iron Caryatid //------------------------------// — ⭗ ✹ — “Ignia?” “No. Fluoresca?” “No. Candesca?” The Celestia with the fiery mane stopped flipping through the book in front of her to consider that one. “Perhaps,” she hedged. “It’s not a bad name, nor does it lack the necessary regal touch, but I would have to put up with being called Candy by Lulu.” “She would get over it eventually,” the other Celestia suggested. “And it would still be better than when she used to tease us by calling out ‘Celly Celly Celery Stalk.’” The Celestia who might be taking the name Candesca took in a sharp breath as she recalled memories of her childhood. “I had forgotten that,” she mused. “Did we really take up drinking tea in order to convince her to call us ‘Tia’ instead?” The Celestia with the brilliant rainbow mane looked down at the teacup floating in her shimmering magic and frowned. “I… think so? It’s been so long, I can hardly remember.” They sat in silence, just reminiscing until the prospective Candesca broke it with a suggestion. “I shall call myself Candesca if you go back to Corona so we can be done with all of this. Corona and Candesca do match fairly well, after all.” The Celestia who didn’t want to be called Corona grimaced. “But it’s beer,” she almost whined. Only almost, though, because Celestia’s do not whine. “It’s not even good beer, from what I’ve heard.” “It can’t be that bad if it’s so popular; we’re both well aware that Fluted Glass is a bit of a snob when it comes to alcohol,” she countered. Their own opinions, of course, were skewed by how rare it was for them to partake. “Besides, it seems that ‘Corona’ is also a foreign chocolate company, a cut of cigar and a type of snail, I’ve discovered. They are words; we are just going to have to accept that people have used them for things before.” The Celestia who was evidently going to be Corona after all eventually caved. “Very well, Candesca, although… perhaps there is a way to differentiate them.” “Please do not suggest we spend another week looking for second names to add to them,” the potential Candesca begged, weary of going through books looking for names. “I would rather petition Twilight Sparkle to drop hers so that we all match; she hardly uses it in any case.” “I actually had one in mind for the both of us,” maybe-Corona said, attempting to mollify her twin. “I think it would go over well, actually. Very traditional.” Almost-certainly-Candesca’s eyes widened in recognition. “Corona Celestia and Candesca Celestia? True, that could indeed work.” “Or Celestia Corona and Celestia Candesca,” inevitably-Corona suggested, turning them around. “I think that sounds better.” “Yes, quite,” the now so-named Celestia Candesca agreed. Giving a nod of acceptance, she shut her book with a snap and put it away. “So…” “So?” Corona prompted, glancing out the window to see that it was still several hours until dusk, and for a while, they sat quietly considering their next course of action. Candesca pursed her lips in consternation. “Was one of us not supposed to be attending the environmental committee meeting this afternoon?” Corona shook her head. “No, they politely requested that we not attend in the future,” she informed her counterpart, frowning. “Though now that you mention it, I do believe there is a dinner with the director of agriculture later tonight.” That, Candesca had to shoot down. “Not any longer; he moved to Ponyville last week.” “Candesca?” “Yes, Corona?” “Do we actually have any duties left?” “I… don’t know.” — ✒ — “☑ Schedule the quarriers to begin excavating the tower tomorrow morning?” “Check.” “☑ Schedule the stonemasons to collect the excavated stone in the afternoon and take it to the staging area for the new roads?” “Check.” “Alright, so next we need to: ☐ Arrange a meeting with Pinkie Pie to see if she can grow crystals on the needed scale since she grew up on a rock farm and they can technically be considered party favors for dragons.” Just when Applejack had been about to encase the ruins of the Ponyville Palace in wood, Twilight had had the brilliant idea to ask her to use crystal instead. The concept, as envisioned, had been for the farm demigoddess to produce useful material that could be utilized in the new tower; marble would have been okay, but what she was really hoping for was an entire crystal blank that could simply be sculpted into a new palace. That… wasn’t quite how it had turned out, as evidenced by the massive, misshapen gray-brown slab which Applejack had actually produced. It would still be useful, but it was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn’t all bad, though. Honestly, the rock would be heavier to cart off, but easier to actually excavate than a solid mass of green wood would have been; they just had to keep dragons from trying to make caves in the conspicuously prominent obelisk in the center of the city, though that wasn’t an entirely new problem. There had been an awkward moment when one of the dragons that Twilight had been giving a talking to had brought up Spike, who was clearly allowed on the demolition site, and neither he nor Twilight had been sure if he should defend himself or if it was okay for Twilight to do it. Ironically enough, it was the few days he’d had living with Ember that had convinced him that he didn’t have to stand up for himself; her continuous insults and barbs had ensured that he had a tougher hide and no longer cared one bit about the opinions of other dragons. He was just glad to get out of the house. Living with a hot dragon princess wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. It was incredibly trying, but actually also kind of vindicating. He felt no small amount of pride in discovering that his feelings weren’t so shallow or fickle that he would chase the first scaly tail of his own species that passed in front of him, and he would have been satisfied to come out of the situation all the wiser for it… except he wasn’t out of the situation at all. She was still monopolizing his couch and being a generally disagreeable lump, and, well, he didn’t actually like her much. At all, really. There. He said it. He said it to himself, in his own head, granted, but he’d acknowledged it, which was the important part. It was a bit of a relief, because it meant that he could maybe, sorta… try and get her to leave—somehow—and not feel like he was the stupid protagonist of a story who kept denying any attraction for the pushy love interest until the last chapter. He had Rarity anyway. Well, he didn’t have her have her, and things were hardly going well with her either, actually, but it was just… Rarity. Rarity, who he’d previously given up on but was now immortal, the price for which had been becoming an ever-shifting dress with a vestigial pony body sewn out of plush fabric, silk and other accoutrements. It was a very good plush body virtually indistinguishable from her old one in any practical manner, but still… He’d been avoiding thinking too much about Rarity. “…Spike? Spike! Are you even listening?” Spike shook his head to clear it and looked down at the list he had been transcribing without thinking. He scratched out a few things that hadn’t been intended for dictation, but everything else looked right. “Uh, yeah, sorry. I was just wondering…” He scrambled in his mind for something to distract her with and came up with something rather quickly. “Where are you and Luna going to sleep tonight?” Twilight blinked, looked up at the giant finger of stone towering above the city and facehooved. “Right. We lived there.” — ✶ — “I take it that your talk with the stubborn one did not go well?” Luna asked as she swooped down out of the night to land next to Twilight, who had by now created several small dioramas out of the rock on top of the small mountain that had grown to encase the palace. It had been nice to have a chance to do some small detail work with her unicorn magic after levitating giant rocks all day. “What?” Twilight’s head snapped up, then relaxed when she saw who it was. “Oh, no, it went fine. Well, fine-ish anyway, aside from us agreeing to disagree on her mild suicidal tendencies and a very disturbing promise to kill her one day. No, our palace is a rock because of an idea that didn’t pan out. I was hoping for crystal or at least marble, but this is the best she could do. With any luck, Pinkie Pie will be a bit more open minded, though she’s been hard to actually track down. With the amount of power I’ve given them, they should both have the leeway to do almost anything an earth pony can, I think.” “By that logic, should you not be able to do it?” Luna asked, walking over to sit and examine one of Twilight’s dioramas—a possible design for the new palace. “You do, after all, possess the gifts of all three tribes—or rather, the gifts all come from you in the first place, do they not?” Twilight… hadn’t thought of that, so didn’t have a response. “…You have a point. I’ve really gotten distracted from my magical studies; I’ve still never even stretched my metaphorical wings to see what my unicorn magic can do with the amount of power I have now—aside from levitating rocks all day—let alone the amount I had when I was manifesting incorrectly and bringing my stars down to the surface.” Luna looked up from her examination of the diorama and saw Twilight fiddling with her sparkling peytral. “Do you miss it?” Twilight balked, jerking back as if struck. “Stars, no. It’s new, being manifest just from starlight, but even like this, it’s not like I’m ever actually separated from them like you and Celestia. Actually…” Twilight chewed her lip with some concern. “That reminds me of something that Applejack brought up.” Luna’s horn lit as she made a few embellishments to Twilight’s diorama. “Oh? She had some insight into the matter?” “Actually, yes,” Twilight admitted. “When I first explained the situation to her, she was concerned that the Celestias might have Discord’s powers as well as his draconic heritage.” “Ah, when in truth that would be you?” she extrapolated, thoughtful of the possible ramifications. “And wasn’t that a revelation,” Twilight agreed. “In spite of knowing what he was, we still don’t actually know how dreaming works—or his unique brand of magic, for that matter. We don’t know if he was just somepony with a lot of power and imagination who made up his own understanding of magic from scratch, or if his magic actually had a mind of its own running on the dreams of all the creatures of the world… or something entirely different.” “Don’t tell me you miss him,” Luna said with a teasing smirk. Twilight made a face. “Ugh, please. Same answer as for the stars. It’s just that he represented so much knowledge that’s now lost—not that we could have ever have trusted a single word if it were him speaking it. I just wish there was some way he could have passed on what he knew without resorting to his games—just the unvarnished truth, preferably in book form with an index and an extensive appendix.” “Is there not?” Luna asked, appropriately playing Discord’s advocate. “He did have a star as any other pony, yes? A great number of them, if I understand it correctly.” Twilight pressed her lips into a tight-lipped frown. “That’s just the thing. I’m not actually sure if he did have a star or stars like any other pony. He was born without one, certainly, but I don’t know if he took one into himself in order to gain magic or if he gained control of it remotely some other way, since whichever it was, he was able to create—and probably make use of every star in—the desert of dreams.” Twilight’s train of thought suddenly ground to a halt. “Note to self: check to make sure everypony and otherwise are all actually still dreaming since I took that over. That’s not a mistake I want to repeat.” Luna winced at the reminder of how the age of the previous alicorns had come to an end. “Quite.” “Anyway, even if there are stars that remember his life, first I’d have to find them, which is no small matter… though I do have some ideas about that.” Twilight gestured over to the diorama directly in front of herself. Luna raised an eyebrow and got up to come settle down beside Twilight. “A large crystal tree?” “It’s based off one of Rarity’s discarded ideas for our palace, though hers had a gaudy castle in the boughs like a treehouse,” Twilight explained, remembering just how awful the original had looked. “I’m not thrilled with it, but it would work better for this.” “And ‘this’ is…?” Luna asked, leaning in to peer inside, which surprisingly had actually been furnished with tiny models of… books. “…A third library? You are already going to have one in the palace and another one for the public, let alone the countless others I gifted you with that you still haven’t been able to get rid of. Far be it for me to deny you as many libraries as you wish to have, Twilight, but I do wonder how many more you could possibly have a use for?” “I’ll have you know they’re very countable,” Twilight insisted. “But you’re right, this isn’t a library for books. It’s a library for stars.” Luna stilled. “You wish to… archive the dead?” she asked, sounding a little wary. Twilight hesitated, only now considering what Luna would think. “Well… yes,” she said, looking away from Luna for fear of seeing something she didn’t want to in her expression. “Not publically available, necessarily, but for family and historic figures…? I’d at least like some ponies to help me organize them… and maybe they could transcribe the relevant parts? We could have an objective view of history for the first time ever.” Luna nudged Twilight in the side, but she resisted the urge to look up, as she did with the following two nudges until she felt herself being lifted up and placed in front of Luna. A moment later, she was suddenly bowled over without warning, ending up on her back with Luna on top of her looking down into her eyes. “Okay.” “…Okay?” Twilight squeaked, occupied by the open look of acceptance in those eyes. Luna bent down to bury her face in Twilight neck and nuzzle her. “Yes, Twilight. Okay,” she reassured her, holding her tight for a moment until she sighed and lifted herself up to look into Twilight’s eyes again. “Anything you want to do, we can find a solution for. Please don’t ever be afraid to talk to me; I will always take your side, because that is where I belong.” Twilight felt herself blush and tried to hide it by pulling Luna down and seeking refuge against her chest. “Okay.” They continued to hold each other until the wind began to pick up, bringing a noticeable chill with it. The two of them had slept in worse conditions, but those conditions had not been a dull and dreary rocky plateau, so Luna slowly lifted herself up and helped Twilight up with her as she looked around. “Perhaps we should retire. I should like to see what manner of accommodations have been made of this chilly rock. No doubt, even an hours work should have produced something greater than that which the squabbling dragons would make of it.” Twilight’s, flush, rosy cheeks suddenly drained of all color. “I… I was going to do that when I got caught up with …” She gestured to the dioramas that littered the plateau. She was mortified, but Luna took it in stride. “Perhaps this is for the best; you have been known to overdo things when left unsupervised,” Luna teased. That did it. Twilight immediate puffed up her cheeks in a pout and gave Luna a solid whap with her wing. “Fine; I’ll go round up some clouds while you make us a cave for the ages.” — ✦ — Somewhere in Ponyville, a peculiar wish was granted in a flash of light. Now, most ponies would judge the act to be peculiar for the simple fact that a wish being granted at all was not at all the usual thing. Stars, as a whole, were not known to be the wish-granting type regardless of what legends had been passed down through the ages; such things were the purview of myths and fairy tales. Those ponies could not be more wrong. Stars were actually very much in the practice of granting wishes; they did it every single day, as a matter of fact, in clear, broad daylight, through none recognized it for what it was. For most, it was a cause for celebration; a defining day in the life of a pony. That was, of course, the day a pony gets their cutie mark. And every day after. Clearly, these wishes existed and just as clearly, they were not all-powerful—but neither did they need to be. In fact, it was best that they were not, else they engender chaos rather than harmony. So too it was with this wish; though the wish was for the granter of wishes herself, it was neither all-powerful, nor did it need to be. In fact, all it needed was to be a book, which came very easily to the wish, as the granter of wishes loved books. Unfortunately, though she had plans for three of them, the granter of wishes did not actually have a place to keep books at the time when she made her wish, and so, it went instead to the closest thing there was, and—perhaps—also precisely where it was needed. — ✒ — Spike was not having the best of mornings, most of which could be traced back to his having not had the best of nights. Several hours of laying in bed had not brought him any closer to figuring out how to get the freeloading dragon princess out of his spines, and from there his mind had gone off on a tangent, asking what he was actually supposed to be doing in general. It was great and all that he had his own space and a job, but going from the mayor’s office drudgery back to being Twilight’s assistant had reminded him what it was like to be around someone who actually had plans and things she wanted to do, and he… kinda didn’t. Right now, though, he just wanted a nice cup of coffee with cream and two jaspers. Ember, of course, didn’t eat ‘pony food,’ which was a shame since she didn’t know what she was missing. He was just pouring her a bowl of hammerscale he’d gotten from one of the blacksmiths that had come into town with the construction boom when he realized that she wasn’t hovering over his shoulder and demanding he hurry up. Spike stopped what he was doing and listened to see if he could tell where she was, but heard nothing. Huh. She was hardly stealthy, so he could probably take that at face value. Filing it in his head as nothing more than a lucky circumstance, he picked up his coffee and the bowl of bitter brown flakes—which were almost as bad as plain bran flakes if you asked him—and went looking for her in her usual spots; the couch, the other couch and the pile of rubble she’d made in the basement that had used to be a perfectly good wall. Tartarus, she really was annoying. She was rude, overbearing, didn’t listen to logic and… reading a book? Spike wasn’t so discombobulated as to drop the food he was carrying, but he did stand there for a while staring at her, take a sip of his coffee and wonder if she’d been replaced by an evil twin, and if so, how he could get her to stay. Evil, he could deal with, if it reads books and behaves like a reasonably well-adjusted member of society. “Well?” she snarled, glaring over the top of the book at him. “Are you just gonna stand there and make me come get it?” Ah, damn. Well, it was a nice fantasy anyway, he thought to himself as he walked over to where she was curled up in her second-favorite couch—built into one of the library’s bay windows—and dropped the bowl of hammerscale on the table next to her. “So, I didn’t know you…” He gestured vaguely at the book, not quite trusting himself not to finish the sentence with ‘could read,’ or something that she could interpret that way. “Actually,” he added with a frown, looking around at the scores upon scores of empty shelves. “I didn’t know there were any proper books left in this place other than my stash upstairs, and that’s mostly comics. You didn’t find that in a hidden compartment behind the shelves or something, did you?” Ember clutched the book to herself and scowled. “No, of course not. Obviously you don’t recognize it because it’s mine.” Spike scratched his neck and shrugged. “Makes sense,” he said and gave it a closer look. It reminded Spike of the types of books that Twilight always drooled over when she could get her hooves on them—thick, brass-clad with heavy cork-leather binding and a jewel-encrusted dragon’s head on the cover. It also seemed awfully flammable for a dragon book, but he supposed she couldn’t very well be carrying around stone tablets. Okay, so maybe he’d been a little unkind to her in his head. Now he felt kind of bad. What piqued his interest, though, was just how new the book actually looked. Twilight took care of her books, but even they would gather a patina of shine, grit and the occasional scuff mark just from normal everyday handling, and books as serious as this one looked had rarely come to her new in the first place. So, yeah, he was curious. He considered asking Ember more about it, but that would involve voluntarily interacting with her. As it was, she hadn’t gone back to reading, but was still holding the book to her chest and silently glaring at him. That was probably a sign that she was waiting for him to leave. Well, what the hay? He’d learned by now how to ignore those signs—mostly learned it from her, actually—so instead he hoisted himself up into the bay window seat and sat sideways so he could look at her. “So, what’s it about?” Ember clutched the book tighter and grit her teeth, no doubt about to say something nasty and require some cajoling to actually share anything, but that… didn’t happen. Instead, she backed off, looked down at the book with some uncertainty and then back at Spike as if searching for any sign of duplicity. Spike, meanwhile, tried very hard to look innocent and friendly, which was only made more difficult by the fact that that was actually his entire motivation. He was just trying to be nice. Eventually, Ember seemed to come to the same conclusion because she relaxed just a hint and finally let the book fall away from her chest and into her lap. “It’s… about the dragon empire,” she admitted, a little wistful; a little bitter. “From when there actually was a dragon empire.” “There was a dragon empire?” he asked, immediately feeling stupid for it. “A—actually,” he stammered, wracking his brain for something to add. There was something on the tip of his tongue. “I think I’ve heard of that. There was something… What was—oh, right! The princesses actually have an artifact from some old dragon emperor that can change a dragon’s age.” “The Primordial Ring of Ashmund?” Ember exclaimed, completely forgetting herself and gawping. Quickly, she flipped through the book to a specific page and turned it around to show him an etching of what Luna had called the Dragon Emperor’s Toe Ring. “The ponies have it?!” “Yeah, they were gonna have me use it to send Astri’s moon to Tartarus, but that stopped being necessary when Luna blasted it into stardust,” he explained. “Actually, Princess Celestia left without arranging to return it to Canterlot, so it’s still sitting in a crate somewhere. They’re talking about the new palace actually having a proper vault, unlike the last one, so it might end up there instead.” “What do you mean, ‘it’s sitting in a crate somewhere?’” Ember seethed, gripping the book in her claws. “Don’t they know what it is?!” “Hey, hey!” Spike made a calming gesture with his hands. “Settle down. I just said it’s somewhere because I don’t know where it is. I’m sure it’s being taken care of properly; probably locked away in one of the unfinished towers. Rarity’s was the most complete before the palace almost came down, which is why they’re using it for all the official stuff. Last I heard, all the others are kinda on hold, so it’s probably in one of those, and trust me… nopony is going to risk pissing off any of them after Celestia made a crater out of the Everfree and Luna did the thing with the ex-moon.” Once again, Ember looked like she was going to snap at Spike when she hesitated, looked down at the book, took a deep breath and calmed down. “…Fine,” she grumped. “It’s fine, really. It’s just that apparently there’s this powerful, ancient artifact, the use of which was a founding facet of all dragon civilization that prevented all the dumb brutes the size of mountains from throwing around their weight,” she yelled, raising in pitch and volume with every word. “And the ponies have it sitting in a crate in some pony’s unfinished house!” “If it helps, it’s a demigoddess’ house,” he offered. “More of a small palace wing if they go with the bridges that are supposed to connect them all; I kinda liked that one.” Ember continued glaring at Spike for a moment before taking another deep, long breath and turning away. “It does, a little,” she ceded, producing a frankly adorable pout. “I keep forgetting that even ignoring the burning rocks in the sky you still have all these ponies my size that can raise mountains, race sunlight and throw parties—and they’re apparently somehow all your friends? You’re… you! Even if you used Ashmund’s ring, I can’t see you dragging a moon all the way down to Tartarus.” Spike cocked his head and shrugged. “I mean, it was a pretty small moon, so I probably could if I were the size of a mountain, but when I said the plan was to send it to Tartarus, I meant with my fire.” “With your fire,” she repeated flatly. “Yeah? You know; green flames, breaks stuff up into magic so you can do things with it?” Spike waggled his fingers to indicate things dissolving. “In theory, I could send things to anybody, but I mostly use it to send mail to alicorns since that’s basically like throwing a message in a bottle down a really big river.” “Right,” she said in that same deadpan voice. “Your magic fire, which you use to send mail.” She pressed her lips into a line and then just… collapsed, slumping limply back into her seat. “I give up. Nothing here works like it’s supposed to, but it all seems to somehow turn out better, and…” With a sigh, Ember shut the book and ran one claw down the face of the dragon on the cover. “I guess I see why.” The next words out of her mouth took her a great effort, and it visibly pained her to say them. “Spike,” she said, saying his name for the first time that he could remember. “Would you… teach me magic?” “Uh, yeah, sure, I guess?” “And maybe help me conquer dragonkind a little?” “Err, wait—” “We’ve clearly been doing it wrong, and someone needs to do something about that.” “Um—” “We might have to steal the Primordial Ring of Ashmund, if it comes down to it.” “I didn’t say—” “T—thank you, Spike. It means a lot to me.”