The weather was fair. It always was, each and every Celestia-darned day. In a rare example of anomalous climate, the Crystal Empire was one of the few places where weather of any sort could be achieved without Pegasi constantly consuming state funds to hoof-make every single snowflake and operate whatever sorts of machines they used to make mundane things like clouds or delicious rainbows.
It was on this particularly fair day that Princess Cadence found herself, as per usual, walking through the halls of her nearly absurdly sparkly crystal palace. Her oddly pointy golden horseshoes clicked on the crystal as she walked, forming a rapid staccato achievable only by a pony with ridiculously long legs and a distinctly powerful gait.
“And next on the schedule?”
Her much smaller assistant, now quite out of breath, flipped through a pad of paper. “Hmm...let me see...”
“You ought to keep better notes.”
Sparkler looked up at her employer. “Oh, no. I can’t actually read.” She held up the pad. “It’s blank. I just have it to look professional.”
“Um...what?”
“I have it memorized. Up next at exactly seventeen past ten, you have a meeting with the Imperial Infrastructure Committee concerning what to do about the zeugl in the sewers. Then a meeting with the Crystal Empire archaeological expedition, at seven past eleven. Then a scheduled bathroom break. Then lunch with Sunburst and Flurry Heart before her nap time. Intelligence indicates that one Starlight Glimmer may be attending as well. Afterward, you have twelve minutes to sneak off and snog your husband behind that one tapestry that smells like grapes.”
Cadence blushed. “You actually scheduled that part?”
“I watch you VERY closely, princess. I have all your snogging times memorized.”
“And we talked about using my intelligence division.”
“Well, your husband was certainly not using them, that’s for sure. I also used them to poll the population.” Sparkler flipped through her notes. “Seventy-eight percent of the Empire thinks that during lunch you should probably intervene between Sunburst and Starlight.”
Cadence giggled awkwardly. “Well, that would be- -hey, wait a minute, you actually asked that in a poll?!”
“I had to. You’ve been getting mail. I read it. Or open it and pretend to read it, again, the illiteracy. It almost broke my mother’s pelvis flying it all in.” Cadence looked down at her and saw Sparkler eating one of the pages out of her notebook. Even with her mouth full, she looked up at her employer. “Additionally, we had three percent respond that you should take Sunburst for yourself.”
“I already have a husband.”
“I believe it is called a ‘reverse-harem’. At least back in Equestria. Everypony here for some reason calls it ‘the stallion pile’.”
Cadence considered for a moment. “I have had urges recently to construct a pile of stallions. And then lay on top of it. But if I take Sunburst, we will need to have him shaved.”
“I will mark it down.”
“And what about Flash Sentry? He’s always around but seems not to do anything important. His wings certainly look fluffy.”
Sparkler suddenly grabbed the princess's legs.
“NO! No you can’t! He’s already got your sister-in-law! We can’t lose you too!”
Cadence pushed Sparkler off. “Have you been drinking coffee again?”
“No. But I swallowed a crystal. Then another crystal.” Sparkler shrugged. “I had hoped the first one would get the second out. Later I’ll try a third. Then I’ll have my cutie mark on the inside and probably have to go to the hospital.”
Cadence just stared at her. “Why did we hire you again?”
“Shining Armor did. I think it’s because I look a lot like his sister and have no body hair. He’s weird like that.”
“Touch him and I’ll have you strung up by one leg and beat until the candy comes out of you.”
Sparkler shrugged. “Fair enough.”
Above them, something suddenly shook. Cadence and Sparkler looked up to see a pair of eyes looking out at them from a vent grate. “Bite me Penumbra! BITE ME HAAAAAARRRRRDDDD!”
“You’ll never take me alive!” squealed a pony inside it, who then cackled manically as he ran through the vent, making a racket the whole way.
“Also, try to track down somepony who can get that guy out of the vent.”
“I’ll try to see if there’s any vedmaki still alive. If that doesn’t work, we’ll just need to burn down the whole palace.”
Cadence sighed. Being a princess was hard work. She longed for the days when her job had been easy and simply a matter of endlessly persecuting changelings on the battlefield in the name of Celestia’s divine will.
“Commanding the military was so much easier than dealing with these domestic horse-plops.”
“Speaking of plops, we are having a problem on the fourth level near that one tapestry that does NOT smell AT ALL like grapes...”
“We’ll discuss that AFTER lunch. What time is it now?”
“Nine forty-nine and seventy-eight seconds. Seventy-six. Seventy-four.”
“Then I have time for a break.”
“You have eight minutes! BREAK LIKE THE WIND!”
Cadence quickly made her way to her room. Which was technically a misnomer; as princess, EVERY room was hers. Additionally, she had never really understood the point of having her own room apart from ceremonial purposes. She much preferred sleeping on the floor, and had recently taken to sleeping in one particular closet, a small complex of rooms that seemed to have at one point been used to house several maids. For some reason it seemed terribly familiar.
The bed, though, was not meant for sleeping. It had other uses.
The room also stored clothing, although as a princess Cadence was almost invariably mostly nude. Still, she had toyed with the idea of changing into a different and less formal necklace before lunch. Especially if she really was considering adding Sunburst to a hypothetical pile.
When she opened the door, though, she came face-to-face with her amazingly studly husband, the second-scion of House Twilight, a noble warrior and powerful mage in his own right. He was standing in front of an open wardrobe and a mirror, wearing a flowing silk dress and nearly his weight in his wife’s jewelry.
The two stared at each other for a long moment, and Cadence just sighed.
“Shining,” she said. “Are you wearing my clothes again?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Shining.”
“But I’m not, I swear.”
“I can see you wearing them right now! Lie to me again, and I’ll have you sent to the dungeon!”
Shining Armor’s face scrunched. “The regular dungeon...or the sexy one?”
“I’m still deciding!” Cadence put her hoof down. The force was great enough to fracture the crystal tiles that made up the floor.
Shining Armor sighed and lowered his head. “But it fits so well! Especially around the midsection...and these tights are AMAZING.” He lifted his head. “Maybe it’s because we’re the same height?”
“Are you calling me tall?”
Shining Armor scrunched again. “Um...no?”
“She’s actually six inches taller than you,” whispered Sparkler, who was lurking under the bed. Watching.
“Ow! Cadence, she’s hurting my masculinity!”
“Stop whining, Shining. It’s not your fault you’re an adorable little fuzzycolt.”
Shining lowered his head again. “It’s just that...I never got to wear pretty dresses. Twilight gets to wear pretty dresses, and YOU get to wear pretty dresses, and pretty soon Flurry is going to start getting to wear dresses...but not me. I just wanted to look pretty for you.”
“Oh, Shining!” Cadence embraced her adorable but slightly slow husband. “I like that you walk around naked all the time! You have a great body!”
“Well...I have been working out with Flash.”
“And it shows! But you can’t say you never got to wear pretty clothes. I mean, remember that suit of armor Celestia gave you? The purple one?”
“That one was enchanted amethyst,” muttered Shining Armor. “It’s meant to deflect spells. That doesn’t count as cute.” A thought occurred to him. “But...I still have it. Do you...still have yours?”
“The Annihilation armor? Of course.” That was somewhat of an omission; Cadence had kept all the suits of armor she had worn in nearly one thousand years of continuous military service. They were arranged in a hall so creepy that shining armor would only run through it, and even then only with his eyes closed. But she knew what he meant.
“You’re talking about role-playing.”
“Maybe…?”
“Sparkler, can you pencil in some time for me to squeeze Shining Armor in...to his armor?”
“Your schedule is clear at four-thirty until five.”
“I need until at least eight.”
“Sure. I can do that. And I’ll make the appointment for the doctor the next morning. He’s going to need it.”
“There,” said Cadence. She flipped up Shining Armor’s skirt and he squeaked loudly. “Now. Get naked. Because knowing that dress? By the time you get it off, we’ll be ready to put the armor back on.”
Shining Armor beamed. “Wow! Today is going WAY better than I expected!” He suddenly gasped. “Oh! I almost forgot! Look at this!”
He shuffled around a pile of unpleasant greenish dresses and revealed a small set of black, heavily tarnished armor. Cadence saw it and suddenly could not take her eyes off it. She did not know what she was feeling, or why.
“I found this while I was checking the walls for candy. Don’t you think Flurry Heart will look adorable in it!”
“NO.”
Shining Armor was taken aback by his wife’s sudden change of demeanor. “But- it’s little armor -”
“I said NO. Where did you even find this?”
“It was- -it was in one of the closets!”
“WHICH closet?!”
“I don’t know! We have a LOT of closets! Sometimes I get lost!”
“So that’s where you’ve been for the past two days,” noted Sparkler. She sighed. "I probably should have guessed you were in the closet. Along with Flash."
"That only happened ONCE! Well...maybe twice...but Sunburst was there the second time, and that makes it okay!"
"No. That makes it worse."
“Get rid of it,” said Cadence. “Flurry doesn’t need clothing like that. Besides...”
“What?”
“I don’t...I don’t know.” Cadence put her hoof to her head, as if she had a headache. But it was not quite pain. It was a strange sensation that she had been feeling from time to time as soon as she had been assigned to the Crystal Empire. As if everything seemed disturbingly familiar, but in a way that she had no way to place. “Sparkler. Get him out of the dress.”
Without warning, a bolt of magic shot out from beneath the bed. Shining Armor was instantly rendered nude.
“GAH!” he cried, trying to cover his pony bits. “Why do you even have a spell like that?!”
“I use it for peeling bananers.”
“Is it safe?”
“Not if you’re a bananer.”
Cadence reached behind Shining Armor and grabbed the necklace she had hoped to use at lunch. Then she quickly turned and headed out the door.
“I’ll be back later, Shining. I have to explain what a zeugl is. Again.”
“Wait, I know what it is! I can help!” He ran after her, tripping over Sparkler and landing on top of her. “Oh, wow, you’re really soft!”
“GAH! I’m going to have the candy beaten out of me!”
Cadence ignored them. She opened the door and nearly ran into a pony.
Cadence’s first instinct was to charge her horn and prepare for an atomization spell. Fortunately, domestic life had calmed her down somewhat, and rather than create a new pile of ash to be swept up she quickly realized that the pony standing before her was clearly not a threat.
“Oh! Princess Cadence!”
“Who are you and why are you in my house?”
“Did you leave the door open?” called Shining Armor, who was still lying on top of Sparkler. “Twily does that all the time! That’s how they got Starlight!”
The earth-mare cleared her throat. “My name is Professor Fossil, the scientific lead for the Crystal Empire archeological expedition. And these are my students.” She pointed to two young ponies at her side, a filly with a somewhat gruesome skeletal cutie mark and a young colt “Petunia Paleo and...well, I don’t actually know what his name is.”
“You’re early.”
“Well, yes, but we contacted your secretary in advance. I wrote her a note just yesterday.”
“My secretary can’t read.”
Fossil raised an eyebrow. “Your secretary...can’t read? Why did you hire her?”
Cadence looked over her shoulder. Shining Armor was still laying on Sparkler, who seemed about ready to pass out from being crushed. “Why did we hire her, Shining?”
Shining Armor burst into tears. “Because I miss Twiiiiillyyyy!!”
Cadence face-hooved. “Husbands. I love him so much, but it’s worse than having FIVE infant daughters.” She lifted her head, smiling as a princess ought to. “I can move the other meeting. I’d rather not talk about zeugl’s anyway.”
Fossil laughed. “Oh my, a discussion on mythology? Because of COURSE zeugls are only a myth!”
“You’d think.” Cadence pointed the way. “We can go to my conference room.” She looked over her shoulder. “Shining, get off her or I swear to my own butt I will NOT dye myself purple and comb my hair into bangs ANYMORE!”
“Yes ma’am!” squeaked Shining Armor, immediately standing at attention and picking up Sparkler in his magic.
Petunia leaned over to the nameless colt and made a motion with her hoof while making a sound like a whip.
“Hey! We only do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays! And Mondays...Wednesdays...Sundays...”
“SHINING!”
“YES I AM!” he cried, following his wife to the conference room.
“So,” said Cadence. “What do you have to report?”
“Only that the dig is going swimmingly. We’ve recovered so many critical artifacts essential to understanding the history and nature of this ancient Empire- -let me say, Princess, that it is an honor and a privilege to work in a place so well preserved, with so many artifacts still intact and barely buried- -”
“Because the Empire underwent recent temporal displacement. Meaning the artifacts are only a few months old.”
Fossil blinked. “Well, yes, but to us they’re well over one thousand years old...and...well, they belong in a museum!”
“Then you found something interesting?”
Fossil smiled and motioned toward one of her students. The student was overburdened with a substantial satchel of artifacts, and Fossil removed several large pieces of broken pottery as well as several plates etched with crystallic writing.
“As you can see, we have found these rare tablets. Once they’ve been translated, they could provide unparalleled insight into the Crystal Empire’s workings and history.”
Cadence picked one up. “This is a menu for a bar,” she said, moving to the next one. “This one is a set of regulations for crossing the street.” She picked up another. “This one is directions to a glue factory.”
Fossil gaped. “You- -you can READ them?”
“Of course I can read them.”
“But- -but- -but- -”
“Heh heh,” whispered Shining Armor. “She said ‘butt’.”
“Crystallic is a dead language! Not even the crystal ponies can read it- -”
“Because up until a few months ago, they were slaves under Sombra and forbidden to learn to read.”
“But then how do you know, Ms. Princess?” asked Petunia.
Cadence paused. “I...don’t know...”
“Regardless, our research is providing information would could not have even dreamed of! Why, once we analyze the core samples of the soil...” She shivered. “Oh, the things the dirt will tell us...”
“I hate to be blunt,” lied Cadence. “But have you found anything useful? As in, concerning who built the palace, or concerning the Dark Thirteen?”
Professor Fossil laughed. “Oh my, Princess, what a sense of humor you have!”
“I was not joking.”
“Of course you were! Simply put, archeology and palentology are immensely delicate, intricate processes. It’s not at ALL like Daring Do makes it seem! We don’t go after pointless legends in search of jewels and riches and other things of dubious provenance. Who would want to go to a museum to see some jewels or magic rings anyway? Ponies want to see pottery, and rusty ancient tools!”
“So you found nothing, then.”
“Because there is nothing to find. Princess, the Dark Thirteen are a myth. A propaganda story spread by Sombra to reinforce his own rule. There is no evidence that they ever existed. Why, think about it logically. Gxurab Al’Hrabnaz, for example. Supposedly he was one of the greatest mages to walk the earth. And yet he left no writings, in Crystalic or otherwise. Or, what?” She laughed. “it’s not as if somepony snuck into the Imperial library and destroyed them all, now is it?” She sat down on one of the chairs. “Or Twilight Luciferian, perhaps? Shining Armor, you surely ought to know, it is a known genealogical fact that the progenitor of House Twilight was Twilight Phoenix.”
“And Penumbra Heartbreak?”
Fossil smiled. “Is that what you’re worried about? Princess Cadence, I can one hundred percent guarantee that the so-called ‘Dark Alicorn’ is a complete and utter myth. She never existed. The only alicorns at the time were Celestia and Luna. As an equinpologist, I have hypothesized that the crystal ponies created her as a kind of imaginary counter to the world they saw around them, a kind of folk-hero to give them some modicum of hope and fear under the rule of Sombra.” She smiled. “I actually proposed the idea in a very prestigious journal.”
“And you spoke with the crystal ponies?”
Fossil looked confused. “Heavens, why would I do that?”
“Because they were there. If she existed, they would literally have seen her.”
“I am an archaeologist. With all due respect, Princess, archaeology simply does not involve interviews. It involves digging. And that is what I have done. I assure you, I speak the absolute truth.”
“I talked to them a little bit,” volunteered the little colt. “They say she was really scary, with gray skin and black wings and a black mane, but that she saved the kingdom in the end- -”
“Now, now, whoever you are, we do not give conclusions without clear evidence. The Princess is only interested in the facts.”
“Did you find any cool fossils?” asked Shining Armor. “Like dinosaurs, or dragons, or giant robots?”
“Only one of those things was ever real.”
“I found something!” shouted Petunia, waving her hoof over her head. “I found something REALLY cool!”
“Petunia.” Fossil put her hoof on her temple. “We talked about this!”
“No, no, it’s really cool! I promise!” She reached into her own bag and produced an object wrapped in cloth. She ran over to Cadence and set it on the table. “I usually know what most fossils are, but I don’t know what this one was! I have no idea! Isn’t that amazing?!”
Before Cadence could answer, Petunia Paleo unwrapped the item.
What stared back at Cadence was grotesque in the extreme. It was a head, or part of a head- -but not the head of a pony.
Cadence leaned in closer, having no idea what she was looking at. It was not a skull, exactly, although it very closely resembled one. Instead of bone, though, it was made of strange metal, and dim glass had been placed in its eye-sockets. There was no lower jaw. What drew her attention the most, though, was the tarnished and corroded plate embedded in the pony-like skull’s forehead. It was a metal plate inscribed with strange letters from some unreadable, forgotten language. The first one had been struck out with a deep gouge.
“My apologies, Princess, she is a brilliant but very excitable young girl. We initially had assumed that what you are now seeing was the head of some sort of idol, but closer inspection revealed a level of technology far greater than any primitive society could hope to achieve. I mean, it is known that the crystal ponies had barely advanced beyond bronze spear-tips by the time the Crystal War began. Which means it is a modern forgery, not even worthy of being in a museum. I was going to throw it out, but she seemed insistent on keeping it.”
Fossil stood up and moved toward the head. “I can just take that- -”
“NO!” cried Cadence, suddenly grabbing the head away from her. “Don’t touch him!”
Professor Fossil jumped, clearly taken aback by Cadence’s reaction. Shining Armor, likewise, seemed confused and concerned. He moved to his wife’s side and put his hoof on her shoulder.
“Cadence, is something wrong? Why are you crying?”
Cadence reached up and touched her face. It was wet with tears, although she did not understand why.
“I don’t...I don’t know...”
That night, Cadence sat on the edge of an unused bed in an empty room. It, like many, was one of those that had been long-forgotten in the castle, except by her. For some reason, she seemed to know all the rooms, as if the whole of the castle was already familiar to her.
She had chosen this room because it had a window. She looked out it, staring at the light of the full moon. Her mother’s moon, now wielded by Luna in Nightmare Moon’s stead. Its quiet light usually calmed her- -and she needed to be calmed. The darkness made the noise inside her head worse, the sense that something was wrong but that she could not quite understand what.
The metal head sat on a chair beside her. The moonlight reflected off its eyes, and it almost seemed to be staring back at her, knowingly.
She did not know what it was, or how it was, or why. But she could not let it go, even if the archeologists said it had no value. For some reason that thought scared her. She knew what she was supposed to do- -that she should put the head away, and move on. Yet she also knew that there was no way that would happen.
Slowly, she climbed off the bed and took a seat on the chair, moving the skull into her lap. She stared at it, and at the text inscribed in its forehead. Then she lit her horn. She could not read the text, and did not know what it meant, but somehow, through some unfathomable means, she knew what it was supposed to look like.
She focused her magic into a thin beam and began to cut, burning through the metal of the deep gouge and reconstructing a flat surface from the resulting steel. Then she began to inscribe new text, restoring it from memory.
When she finished, the cut had been mostly ablated, and the word restored. The word “Emeth”.
Nothing happened- -at first. Then the glassy eyes in the skull suddenly moved, refocusing and calibrating after thousands of years of dormancy. They began to glow from within, producing a dim but lively light.
The eyes blinked. Then a voice spoke.
“System reactivated,” it said. “Auxiliary fusion core at eighteen percent capacity. Beginning reconstruction process...”
The eyes suddenly flicked upward toward Cadence, and she smiled. She did not know why.
“Hello, princess,” said the skull. “It is good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you too, Emeth.”
Emeth’s eyes moved again, focusing on something else. “Princess. I am detecting a technetium resonance signal.”
Cadence turned suddenly, and through the dark, she saw a pair of red eyes staring at her. In that brief moment, she saw Sombra, her mortal enemy. She had no choice. She fired a bolt of energy into the darkness.
Something clicked, and a shield of yellow light formed around a white pony, deflecting the beam. Ignoring the blast, she moved directly into the light.
She was not Sombra. Cadence had never seen her before. She was a pure white Pegasus, a true albino. Her eyes were red, but they were not focused on Cadence, or anything at all. She was staring past them all, her groundbreaking intense stare focused entirely on some unseen thing of ponderous and unspeakable horror.
One of her front legs had been removed entirely and replaced with a clockwork assembly driven by a ticking dial implanted in the shoulder of the machine.
Cadence took a defensive stance, but even as she did, she could see the ghostly image of white robes drifting behind the pony, and she understood that this Pegasus had not come to harm her.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
The Pegasus did not answer. She simply raised her metallic hoof. Perched upon it was a single young raven.
“Princess,” spoke the raven. “Welcome back.”