"Omigosh omigosh omigosh."
The many doors of Castle Harmony - as the girls had taken to calling Ponyville's elaborate, labyrinthine crystal palace - opened and closed rapidly as Twilight Sparkle pranced in one and out another, all along the inner wall of a balcony hallway, with no apparent regard to Euclidean geometry, as Pinkie Pie bounced giddily behind after her.
In older times, Twilight had run in circles around a table in her library, until she had worn a pit in the floor. That library had been blown to smithereens, so, instead, she did her fretting and pacing on the hardest stone and glass so hard that Big Macintosh broke his leg kicking it, and teleported to the doctor, still fretting and ranting, whenever her hooves started bleeding. Fortunately, she had magic, wings, and hollow bones now, so the wearing of her hooves was a bit slower than previously.
Twilight and Pinkie entered one door and came out of two different ones. Pinkie stopped bouncing and furrowed her brows, looking around like she was lost and confused.
"Omigosh omigosh omigosh."
As Twilight continued her mantra, Pinkie walked scowling back to the other girls, sat down, and crossed her forehooves as though offended.
"C'mon Twilight, it's no big deal," Rainbow Dash said for the tenth time that day, cool-girl-leaning against the outer wall, eyes half-lidded in exasperation. She tossed an orange up in the air and caught it over and over, her head turning and eyes rolling half-interested to follow its path. She wasn't juggling or doing anything special; the "Twilighting" going on was sucking all her energy.
"Rainbow Dash!" Rarity scoffed without looking up from her knitting. "You know better than to dismiss Twilight when she's worried about something." She clicked her tongue and undid a row or two, having dropped a stitch somewhere or another. Next to her, Fluttershy immediately undid several of her own rows so that she would not be further ahead.
"Yeah yeah, whatever," Rainbow Dash yawned, closing her eyes and throwing the orange up again. When she opened them, she saw Twilight's nose inches from hers, yelped, and collapsed, the just-tossed orange falling down and bouncing off of her head.
"No big deal?!" Twilight echoed. "We've just been abruptly invited to a very intimate occasion with a very delicate Princess!" She turned away from Rainbow Dash and pixie-trotted in place, eyes bugging out, face sweating, and wings flapping like an angry hen. She paused to check if her hooves were bleeding.
"Ain't you known Princess Celestia since you were in diapers?" Applejack asked, casually seizing the orange and tossing it out of the window. "She taught you magic, taught you etiquette, 'n' heck, probably taught ya how to use th' toilet. How's this any different?"
Twilight blushed and stamped her hoof, wincing - they were worn rather thin by now. "What in the world does that have to do with this!" She took deep breaths and tried to talk calmly. "She heard about a game that's supposed to be great for friends to play and she wants to play it with us."
"That sounds lovely," Fluttershy said, glancing between her work and Rarity's to keep equal pacing.
"The game she asked us to bring, which she chose specifically because she knows nothing about it, could go very very wrong within an instant."
"It's not Cards Against Equinity is it?" Dash quipped, getting up off the ground. Fluttershy's face turned to a pout and she set down her knitting.
"It's not what, dear?" Rarity asked absent-mindedly, still focused on her knitting. Fluttershy rapidly made X motions with her wings towards the other girls.
Twilight's eyes bugged out and she forgot to breathe for a second. "Oh heck no! It's Truth or Dare, Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy let out a breath and relaxed, picking her knitting back up. She caught up to Rarity within a few seconds.
The pastel pegasus shrugged. "I'm not seeing the big deal. Hey, where'd my orange go?" Applejack looked in the opposite direction of the window, scrunching her mouth up as Dash began to look in the potted plants.
Pinkie stuck her head out of Twilight's mane. "If we're super duper unlucky we'll end up asking the Princess how many times a day she passes gas or daring her to go out in public without her jewelry on!"
Twilight clenched her jaw and shoved Pinkie back into her hair. "Pinkie Pie is correct, as she disturbingly often is. This game could be a disaster and we can't just refuse."
Taking her dirt-covered face back out of a plant, Dash rolled her eyes. "Uh, hello? Princess Celestia's a wild party mare. She'd have no problems with either of those things." she reasoned.
Twilight stared at her with wide eyes, silently mouthing "wild party mare". She looked like a baby pufferfish.
"Remember when she invited us ta th' Gala fer th' sole purpose of completely destroyin' it 'cause it were more borin' than hearin' a cow's life story in one sittin'?" Applejack reminded her.
"I still remember when she had seven tickets printed and only sent us two..." Fluttershy frowned in disapproval. "We'd just become friends and could have..." She paused, shut her eyes, and whispered scandalously. "... had harsh words with each other."
"We did have harsh words with each other, Shy," Rainbow Dash reminded her, using a wall tapestry to wipe off her face. Fluttershy shivered and nodded sadly. Rarity, fortunately for Dash, was too focused on her knitting to see her transgressions.
Blinking several times, Twilight suddenly gasped, put a hoof to her mouth, then began to shake her head and the same hoof rapidly. "Girls, I think you're mistaken --"
"She once pretended to take a sip so that Mr. and Mrs. Cake would overfill her cup!" Pinkie's shriek echoed from within Applejack's hat. The farmer quickly swiped it off of her head, held it at leg's length while leaning away, and shook it, producing no effect.
"Oh those were all so long ago, darlings. Have you seen the sultry things she's been wearing at public events this year? With that body? She's definitely embracing the 'fertility goddess' theme," Rarity surmised. "Oh bother!" She punctuated, and began to undo another row.
"Girls!!!" Twilight Sparkle yelled, loud enough for the room to shake.
Her companions froze, afraid they may have spoken too candidly and desecrated sacred ground. Rarity's aura continued to undo rows, with Fluttershy frantically trying to keep pace.
Twilight coughed delicately, standing just down the hallway so she could look at them all very sternly. "As much as I should be banishing every last one of you to the respective kindergartens, you are absolutely right about Princess Celestia. Except you, Rarity. How dare you?" she said, very mildly under the circumstances.
They blinked at her in confusion. Rarity grimaced as her and Fluttershy's knitting returned to square one.
"We've been invited by Princess Luna."
Pinkie fell down from the ceiling. Both knitters dropped their crafts. Five mares stared at her with pale faces.
Twilight stared at them with her regular, frustrated sock puppet face.
"Oh fuck." Rainbow Dash said.
"Yeah." Twilight sighed.
And so, a few minutes later, Twilight's hooves were bandaged up and the girls headed out the castle front door, failed to notice Spike unconscious on the grass covered in bits of orange, and headed into the market to put together a Princess Kit.
The girls walked up the marble stairs and stood in awe at the door to the Night Court.
The Princesses were under some pressure to indulge themselves in their architecture. While Celestia was quite modest and accepted her tall, ivory buildings with gratitude and some reluctance, and directed their shape as plush, soft, and welcoming - much like herself - Luna was all too eager to demand taller, more slender structures; her stone and metal often seemed to glow an ethereal blue against the night sky. She opted for gaunt, spiky stalks, rife with chains and gargoyle-ish faces, like a necromancer's tower, where some unfortunate prisoner might be kept to use her blood in dark magics.
The door itself was tall and thin, curved to a point like the blade of an elvish dagger. The wood was violet, the metal cross-bars black with unpleasant thorns. Woe betide the pony who was smashed against the wall by this vicious construct.
There was no line; the Shadow Princess had projected that her scheduled meetings would be finishing up at this time. Luna never took quite so much onto her plate as her sister, because she hated doing it and petitioners were terrified of her. Normally, she only addressed matters under her areas of expertise, such as engineering issues and internal security affairs. Celestia had been sick the last few days, though, and while some of her meetings had simply been rescheduled for a later date, Luna had been obliged to take some of the more pressing matters unto herself for immediate address.
Twilight knew that Luna, much like herself, would have dutifully researched the history behind all of her sister's former responsibilities to handle them as effectively as possible. Twilight, of course, was not privy to the exact circumstances of these petitions, but if they were important, they were probably stressful. Luna might be very cranky.
"Do we have everything?" Twilight asked her friends, again.
"Yeeesss," came the frustrated monotone chorus. "Especially the game."
"Let's go down the list," said Twilight, leading to a groan in perfect harmony.
Fluttershy checked her saddlebags yet again, nodding with a prim pout to indicate that the game box had not moved from her person in the last twenty seconds since she'd checked before.
"Allow me, girls," Rarity drawled in a long-suffering voice. For the so-dozenth time, her horn glowed, and everyone's saddlebags flashed with beeping trickling sounds for about three seconds.
Twilight Sparkle hated to toot her own horn, but she was one of the most talented and powerful formally-educated unicorns in Equestrian history - and she was still sometimes astounded at some of the (admittedly very non-standard) efficiencies the self-educated Ponyville genius incorporated into her work and daily life.
While Rarity's sheer power paled in comparison to her own - Twilight was once terrified she'd hurt her during a "tug-of-mind" session between them - her technique in her areas of expertise, enchantment and geomancy, were utterly mind-blowing even for a quick learner like Twilight. Non-pareil, Rarity might say.
Even Twilight had never gotten an Everything-Proof spell to "soak into" Abyssinian leather, one of the most luxurious and yet woefully enchantment-resistant textiles there was, but Rarity had pulled it off with all of their saddlebags in an impossible five minutes while Twilight may have been able to get it working for one saddlebag in about five hours. Rarity had also thrown in a Checksum Charm, and hers was recursive; she could check if any individual item in the bags was out of order, just as quickly as the entire bag. Twilight was quite capable of this latter feat, but her obsessive testing tended to make it a very lengthy process, and she often second-guessed herself.
Long ago, Rarity had nervously allowed Twilight to look over her work, perhaps expecting to be heavily criticized. Instead, Celestia's star student was so happy she could burst. She'd spent days babbling to everyone in Ponyville about how incredible Rarity was and how Twilight was still wrapping her head around some of the details. Of course, even the unicorns in Ponyville barely knew squat about magic on this level, and just listened and nodded with vacant smiles, happy that Twilight was praising a friend on... whatever in Equestria she was talking about.
Twilight frequently had to remind herself that Rarity didn't even know the standard terminology for half the spells she was using on a daily basis. Consequently, Rarity was confused when Twilight explained her own spells to her. Twilight couldn't comprehend doing such detailed thinking without using the proper words, but Rarity seemed to work her magic on sheer intuition. Maybe she didn't even "think about it" at all. And Spike could shut up with his nonsense story about Twilight mumbling in her sleep about taking Rarity's brain out for study.
By all means, Rarity occasionally screwed up a spell, but... well, so did Twilight. Compared to her, Rarity's mistakes tended to be more "inconvenient" and less "horrifically destructive". A faulty Twilight-powered spell could be used as a grenade in a pinch; one of Rarity's would be more like a smoke bomb.
"Forgive me for skipping the formalities, dear Twilight, but everything is here." the savant growled. Rarity had repeatedly been a shocking lesson to "Professor Plum", as Twilight's friends sometimes called her, that magic by the book was not always optimal, and reaffirmed the many lessons Princess Celestia had taught her never to look down on those who had not been fortunate to receive her level of education. In Rarity's case, the top three reasons all applied: because it's more important to be a friend than to be right, because they might still be just as smart as you, and because they might beat you up if you look at them funny. Rarity was a unicorn herself who'd been known to bowl Applejack over on at least one occasion -- her horn-noogies were lethal, putting every bully and big brother in Twilight's life to shame.
Slowing down her breathing, Twilight wiped the sweat off her brow. "I'm sorry, girls. I'm sure you've figured it out - it's not our saddlebags that are the issue. I'm just so nervous about approaching Princess Luna in this way. She never reaches out to ponies like this."
"She's doing it now," Fluttershy said with a smile. "We just have to pay attention, but please don't stare at her. If she seems nervous... We shooosh, and we let her decide what she wants to do."
"Unless what she wants to do is eat us in one bite." Dash mumbled quietly.
Twilight nodded to the guards. "Okay, we're ready."
They nodded back and turned to the doors - then everyone jumped back as they exploded open.
"-- AND DARE NOT TO BE SO INSOLENT AGAIN!" they suddenly heard at full force. Fancy Pants was power-walking out, tugging at his collar. He gave them a nod of recognition, sharing a very awkward grimace with Rarity, and hurriedly melted into the night of Canterlot.
The doorkeepers rolled their eyes before one led the girls in. Except for Fluttershy, they dragged their hooves, crawling low like puppies that thought they did something wrong.
The tiled floor was like black glass, a dark ocean reflecting a black-and-blue sky. They walked along a somber carpet, purple-crimson like drying blood, with gilded borders depicting dragons, manticores, and - allowing Twilight a distraction from her anxiety - trilequi. The common folk called the last of these "alicorns". She understood that the original meaning of this term, the ivory of a unicorn's horn, was not commonly known, and that the word had left the Ponish tongue, been happily appropriated by other languages, and then returned under this new definition to an unknowing public. She normally scowled when she thought about it, but her scowls tended to turn off when she dared to enter the same room as a Princess.
Another Princess, she corrected herself. She counted as one of those now, even if she was largely left to her own devices due to the ambiguous nature of her domain.
The carpet seamlessly zig-zagged up some stairs to a crescent moon dais bearing a black throne, on which sat the Moon Princess, who reclined sideways with her eyes closed and a hoof on her nose bridge like a barbarian queen.
Their escort saluted and bowed. "Your Majesty," he spoke to the dour Princess, "There is one final group visiting."
"WHO ELSE IS BOTHERING US TONIGHT?" came the reply, and then she opened her eyes.
She saw the lesser five mares huddled together, all staring across the hall and up at her on the dais, looking as small as possible. In front of them was Fluttershy, who gave her a friendly wave, seemingly unaffected by her outburst. The guards stayed stock still, but their eyes shifted to look anywhere but at the Princess or her guests.
Luna blushed bright red, her lips tight, and looked away, sitting up properly. "Oh!" she squeaked in a considerably quieter tone. "Forgive Us, Princess of Magic and other esteemed guests, you are not a bother at all. In fact, We speak quite honestly when We say we would welcome no other sight more at this particular juncture." She rose from her seat, her joints cracking as she stretched, and turned to the bat-winged guard on her left. "The Night Court retires! We wish it were forever, but alas, only for tonight. Tell all future petitioners tonight to buzz right off. Have twenty-one packets of goldenfern tea" - her guards tensed apprehensively - "sent to the..." She sighed and looked at the ceiling with a scowl. "You know what, I'm not calling it what she calls it. Send the tea to the Lunar Spire." She accented the last words dangerously.
Twilight happened to know that goldenfern tea was extremely expensive and was one of the most effective herbal remedies against migraines in Equestria. Well, one of the most effective that didn't carry a substantial risk of magically mutating the drinker into a tree. She paled and swayed, estimating the expenditure Luna had spent on them before their time together had even properly begun.
Luna walked past Fluttershy and the terrified Element-Bearers with her nose high. "Let us away from this sordid place," she said. "And quickly! We fear it shall begin raining shortly." The girls followed after her in a hush, the heavy blood-and-spike doors slamming shut behind them like the gates to Tartarus.
And so, the party was lead to a tower suite near Luna's private quarters, which the younger sister had supposedly used for stargazing long ago. It had been remodeled into quarters for Luna's invited guests, the way Celestia generally invited them to the Solar Terrace.
By any name it was a lovely place for six mares to stay, but tonight, anyone who knew what was good for them was calling it the Lunar Spire, not Woona Tower.