It is the morning of day two, and I am not fine.
On day one, I was fine. Fantastic, even. As fantastic as one can be when one knows full well that an evil, devouring force lurks right on one's doorstep, at least. I admittedly felt a little groggy from my interrupted night of sleep, but the situation felt well in hoof. Besides, it was nothing in comparison to the wonder of seeing the castle come to life around me. The walls all around me gained color, changing from their pallid gray to a calming icy blue. Every minute I wasn't looking at it, the ceiling of the throne room seemed to gain an inch or two, until I found myself seated in a grand audience hall to rival anything I had known in Canterlot. Intricate and delicate crystal fretwork seemed not so much to grow out of the walls as to emerge as the walls themselves receded, as though the carvings had been trapped in ice that was slowly melting away. By midmorning, a runner of carpet leading up to the throne appeared, literally in the blink of an eye.
I was not confined to the throne, either, thank the stars. Once I began to more consistently perform the mental gymnastics involved in seeing myself as one with the Empire, I found that I did not have to sit at the center of power to maintain resonance with it. I began to take short promenades down a shining new colonnaded hall, out to a small, open balcony which had presumably also been called into being for my benefit. Outside, the air was warm and sweet, with wisps of white cloud punctuating the clear Northern sky. The sun sparkled across the neat geometric streets and precise little crystalline shops and homes that spread out from the base of the castle, and it all looked like a tiny little piece of paradise.
Shining Armor was less impressed, his mind always on the darkness that lurked outside our bubble of security. In between providing for my needs, he began attempting to recruit some of the townsponies into a sort of posse to help him search the frozen wastes outside the city for any evidence of the fallen unicorn king. When the response he received was predictably dismal, he began searching alone.
"Maybe he's not just a shadow," Shiny said that afternoon, still shivering from his last excursion outside our little sanctum. "Maybe something's anchoring him to the physical realm. If we could find it, maybe we could ... I don't know, dispel whatever's keeping him here?" He shook his head. "This is Twily's bailiwick, not mine. We'll know more when she and her friends get here."
My heart leapt a bit. "Your sister's coming?"
"Princess Celestia sent a summons to Ponyville shortly before we departed. It's a little harder getting all six of the Element Bearers organized, but they'll be here soon." He gave a wry little smile. "I don't think that there's a force in Equestria that the two of you working together can't overcome."
"Along with my brave, heroic husband," I added. "Don't sell yourself short. Be careful, but keep on looking; I'm sure you'll turn up something."
What Shiny did turn up was, unfortunately, less than encouraging: a few jagged little shards of dark crystal emerging from the soil at the very edge of my barrier, right at the point where the warmth returned to arctic chill. He brought one into the castle for future study, immediately chaining it shut inside a crystal coffer without even stopping to shake the snow from his ear-fur. While I agreed it was valuable to know a bit more about what we were dealing with, having a piece of the outer darkness right there with us was unsettling. Sometimes, I thought I could hear it vibrating.
At the same time, the castle—once so accommodating—seemed to grow more intransigent as the day wore on. The morning had been an endless stream of happy discoveries, carefree new chambers springing forth in ways that defied architectural sense. The unfriendly staircase leading up to the throne room vanished as the reinforced base of the tower metamorphosed into a broad, airy plaza, a change that I was delighted to see; it was the surest sign yet that the Empire's lockdown was ending.
Soon, however, something about the castle began to push back, as though it were struggling against the feel of a newcomer on the throne. A bright mirrored hall, one that I had been quite fond of when it first appeared, vanished suddenly by early evening, replaced with a dark, claustrophobic portrait gallery. The single subject on display was the diabolic charcoal unicorn I glimpsed briefly back in Canterlot, shown in his armored prime. I shuddered at his blood-red cloak, trimmed with spotted ermine skin; a positively unnatural garment that was more suited to a griffon conqueror than a pony. Most chilling of all, however, was the image of him perched on a balcony much like the one I had been enjoying; Sombra, however, was pictured surveying a land of miserable ochre skies, not charming pastoral blue. The castle behind him was a twisted nightmare of black onyx.
A little more exploration revealed a tiny, low closet along one of the walls. Opening it, I discovered a crammed-together heap of paintings, as though they'd been removed from these very walls and disposed of without interest for their preservation. Without exception, the paintings pictured a pale-pink unicorn in ancient dress, watching lovingly over a community of knights and farmers and shepherds. Her flank was marked with the image of an impressive crystal snowflake.
"Is this the 'she' we've heard about?" asked Shiny, suddenly at my shoulder. "The one who cared?"
I nodded. "I'd bet this is Princess Amore, the ruler Sombra deposed when he rose to power. I'd also bet that, yes, she's the one who gave the crystal ponies instructions to protect themselves." I reach out with one hoof, not quite touching an image on the canvas in front of me: a pony tending a flock of tiny pastel ewes, sparing a moment out of his busy day to gaze up at his wise and loving ruler.
"The one they can't even remember," I said.
"Sounds like you're having a moment here, hon."
I smiled a little, my brief trance broken. "Shiny, do you think ponies will ever look up at me like this?"
Shiny gave me a quick kiss. "They already do, Cadance. Equestria loves you."
I struggled with the words a little. "But do they have faith in me like this?"
"Don't worry," he replied. "If Celestia gives you a principality of your own someday, you'll be ten times the princess Amore was."
The warm feeling that Shiny's vote of confidence gave me did not last. The more the castle fought against me, the more difficult it became to see myself as one with the Empire, and the more difficult it became to maintain my magic's focus on the light and love that kept us safe. By nightfall of that first day, both of us were well and truly frustrated, and the fading light meant that all further searches outside our border had to be called off. Shiny and I sat together in the throne room, playing Pachisi, which was an awkward experience. For one brief, crazy moment I considered diverting a sliver of my attention away from the bond I had made with the amulet to engage in some trivial telekinesis, but the consequences of failure scared me away from the idea quickly. I was reduced to batting the pawns awkwardly about with my hooves and wings; when that didn't work, I was forced to grip them delicately with my teeth. Shiny cracked a joke that my earth-tribe powers were on full display.
What was not on full display from me was any semblance of skill at Pachisi. Every match that did not end with me clumsily knocking the pieces everywhere finished in a resounding loss for me. My head simply was not in the game. I could sense the shadow out there, lurking, biding its time, waiting for the smallest sign of vulnerability in our fragile defenses. I swore I could hear that little shard of black crystal rattling away in its casket, in some kind of horrid synchrony with the darkness outside. Afterward, Shiny vowed to stay by my side until bedtime, at which point I revealed to him that bedtime was not an option for me.
"You're not sleeping? At all?"
I shook my head. "I can't focus my magic when I'm asleep, Shiny. You know this. Nopony can."
"Well, yeah, but, I thought ... well, I don't know what I was thinking." He squared his jaw. "That settles it. I'm staying up with you."
"Shiny, no. You've been trudging through the snow half the day. You need to rest."
"If you're not resting, I'm not resting," he said.
And he tried, bless him, he really did. But by about four in the morning, his eyes were drooping, and I had to nudge him with my nose all the way to a tiny bedroom that absolutely had not been present earlier. The accommodations were spartan, in keeping with the castle’s inexplicably growing stinginess, but I was grateful for them all the same. When my knight in shining armor was safely ensconced, I returned to my throne, keeping a quiet, lonely vigil, which brings us to, well, now.
Outside, I can see the dawn of the second day begin to break. I think of Aunty Celestia, many miles away, rising from a plush featherbed and nudging the sun gently over the horizon. In a few minutes, she will retire to the Great Hall for a nourishing breakfast of fruit pancakes which will give her the strength to start the day. Aunty Celestia is, in all likelihood, fine.
I look questioningly at a single dry-roasted almond, and the thought of trying to cram it down my throat feels like murder.
I am not fine.
I am not fine.
It is the morning of my fourth day on the throne of the Empire, the end of my third night without sleep, without rest, without so much as a moment's gap in my focus. The shadow has returned on three separate occasions, and on each occasion, I have rebuffed it. I think it senses that I am weakening. It knows that it is only a matter of time.
The strain of continuing to invoke, exacerbated by the castle's continued pushback, has rubbed my spirit utterly raw. When I first became an alicorn and learned how to focus unicorn magic, I was delighted with the feel of it, a pleasant light tickle that ran up and down my body and then centered on my wonderful new horn. I am not delighted now, because that tickle has persisted for three straight days and nights and I no longer know what to do with myself. The combination of effort and exhaustion is maddening, nudging over into actual madness. Sometimes, I think I see Aunty Celestia sitting beside me. Sometimes, I see Twilight. I have begun to hallucinate vividly. Shiny's mood is blackening. Each sortie outside our barrier ends up more fruitless than the last. When he is home, he wipes my brow with a cloth and gives me food from our travel rations. As part of its growing obstinance, the castle has ceased providing food. It wouldn't matter anyway; I attempt to choke down the food Shiny gives me more for his sake than mine.
Speaking of my husband. Shiny rose early today, well before the dawn. A heavy winter storm is brewing outside my fragile soap bubble, and Shiny was determined to escort his sister and her friends from the Crystal Mountain rail stop. Their train is scheduled to arrive shortly before sunup. Assuming snow has not blocked the tracks. Assuming the wind is not too powerful to proceed. Assuming some enormous freak avalanche has not buried them all whole. Assuming, assuming, assuming.
It is dark out there. Cold and dark. Shiny set my new gramophone going before he left, but the record has long since played out, the mainspring completely unwound, and I feel too weak to rise up and start it again. I sit in silence, with nothing to do but to tend this single glimmering candle of magical power.
With a harsh noise like sand on glass, a snake of crystals enters my throne room.
I do not react at first. This castle is a place of magic, but more importantly, I have long since lost the ability to differentiate reality and fantasy. For one of these two reasons, I am convinced that the snake will be gone next time I look at it, but I am wrong. The snake persists.
But, at the same time, it is also not a snake. It has no mouth, eyes or face. It does not even move in a strictly serpentine manner. It does hiss, but it is merely the hiss of a thousand jagged shards rubbing against one another. A line, then. A line of black, shattered crystals, winding its way across the polished floor of my audience hall.
I start to speak, but it is lost to coughing. I lost my taste for water late last evening, and my throat is as dry as the tundra outside. I smack my lips and miraculously summon a bead of saliva, a greater miracle than conjuring entire rooms seventy-two hours earlier ever was. "How did you get in here?" I shout, trying for Aunty Celestia's regal poise and Princess Luna's dreadful force. I achieve neither. I sound like a petulant filly whining at a younger brother to leave her bedroom. "My spell holds! I would know if it failed!"
The line of crystals continues to curl across the room. It hisses still, but the hiss begins to form into words. "Your spell does indeed hold, little one."
"Then how are you here?" I demand. "I know your name, Sombra. Princesses Celestia and Luna eradicated you from this land for the turning of an entire age, and I am more than capable of banishing you for half of one!"
"Assumptions, assumptions," chuckles the voice.
"Who are you? How dare you invade my throne room?"
"Mi Amore Cadenza," says the mass of crystals, whirling and rising up into a four-legged shape that looms over me. "I dare because it is not your throne room."
The shape steps forward. The noise of its hoof-fall is like the shattering of glass.
It is a statuesque figure, not in the least because it is made entirely of mineral. It is not carved from a block, but like its previous serpentine form, it is composed of thousands and thousands of broken black crystals. It has the shape of a unicorn, but enormous, easily as tall as Aunty Celestia. A simulation of ancient beaded horn-ornaments drapes across its glinting forehead and down along its elegant neck. I can just make out the raised pattern of crystals on its flank, forming the image of a now-familiar crystalline snowflake. Its eyes glitter at me like diamonds, and there is a very good reason for that.
"Well met," says the figure, in a voice like a sandstorm. "Usurper."
I fall back on my dock, shaking my head. "You're—"
"The rightful ruler of this place? Why yes, yes I am. I am Princess Amore, of the royal line of Unicornia, once and future queen of the Crystal Empire." Her gimlet eyes glance down at her ever-shifting form for a moment. "Pieces of her, at least. And you must be the pretender to my throne."
"No," I say. "He's gone. He's trying to get back in, but I'm—"
"Foal!" Amore roars. "I know Sombra! That blackguard will feel my wrath in due time, but he is not you. The culmination of a thousand-year plot by the alicorns to seize my home away from me!"
"Is this ... real? Am I imagining this?"
"Perhaps I'm not. Perhaps I'm merely a little voice in your head. Your self-doubt. Your stunted ambition. The violent darkness in you that you disguise with jewels and pretty pink ribbons. You've seen plenty of unreal things, haven't you? You're dreaming while you're still awake. Would me not being real make you feel better?"
"Maybe," I say. "Though it might mean that I'm farther gone than I care to admit."
"Would that I could prove it to you conclusively," Amore sniffs. "But I am fragile, barely here, a shadow of myself. I cannot unseat you yet."
"Even if you could, you wouldn't," I say. "I might be the only thing keeping Sombra from taking the Empire back."
"Merely exchanging one thief for another. It matters not."
"Not the same. I'm merely a junior alicorn, as you say, and probably easier to dethrone. Sombra is a known quantity, one who must have defeated you in the past."
Amore scoffs. "Only because I underestimated him. Underestimated the depths of his treachery. He turned me to crystal, shattered my physical form, cast my pieces to the four winds. When I return, I will not be so easily bested."
"Even so, a formidable opponent. And even more so once he's fortified himself here."
The crystalline figure pauses for a moment, appearing to consider this.
"Very well," she says. "A truce, for now."
"Good! Now we're getting somewhere."
"No! 'Getting somewhere' would be restoring me to my rightful place of power! But then again, that is never what you Equestrian ponies wanted, was it?"
"I am not trying to steal your empire away from you!"
"No?"
"No!"
"And yet, not five minutes ago, this was 'your' throne room."
I breathe in, to speak. My mouth opens. I shut it again.
"Touch," I say. "Palpable touch."
"Not blind, nor deluded," says the specter of Amore, regarding me from many angles as she strides across the throne room. "Nor cleaving to pleasant rhetoric beyond all semblance of truth. What sort of alicorn are you?"
"A not very good one, maybe. I haven't been this way for long."
"A poor alicorn is a better pony, I think," Amore says, something like warmth entering her voice; as quickly as it appears, it's snuffed. "Which doesn't make us friends, little alicorn. Like all thieves, you have taken something from me to satisfy your own needs. What is it? Why so quick to call this throne yours?"
There are many ways that I can take this, but I go for brutal honesty. It seems like the best choice.
"I don't know why I leapt straight to saying that. Maybe I want a place for me to be myself. Maybe I was hoping this place was it. When Princess Celestia first took me to the alicorn realm and I became, well, the pony you're looking at, I thought that I was destined for great things. But instead, after my ascension I just clung to her side, mediating petty, silly disputes between the bickering noble families of Canterlot. When I asked, politely, for more independence and excitement, she assigned me work as a foalsitter. To teach me responsibility, she said."
I glance down, shuffling my booted hoof against the smooth crystal of the throne. "It wasn't enough. I got mad, got frustrated, left Equestria entirely and traveled the world for a while. I only ever came back because my sweetheart from Academy, now an officer in the Royal Guard, started writing me letters wherever I went. We struck up a correspondence, and eventually he started visiting me whenever he was on leave, joining up with me wherever I was traveling that year. We had some wonderful adventures together, but I knew when he finally proposed to me that I couldn't stay away from Equestria forever. I accepted, we got married, and aside from an attempted overthrow of the government on our wedding day, we've lived happily in Canterlot ever since."
"How sentimental."
"I suppose it is? Except for the ‘overthrow of the government’ part?”
"So, the rebellious princess, lusting for power and autonomy, returns to the fold just in time to preserve Celestia’s reign and then effect her will for my Empire."
"No! You're twisting things all around! Something's wrong here. This isn't ... you aren't how Princess Celestia described you. Of the remaining royals of old Unicornia, only Princess Platinum didn't take well to the alicorns' oversight. Aunty Celestia described you as..."
"Yes?"
"Pretty, um, 'cool' about it. I think she was in one of her moods at the time."
"If 'cool' means 'accepting,' or 'compliant,' then yes, I suppose I was. I was young. Trusting, naive. And greatly in need of assistance."
"Tell me," I say. "Aunty Celestia never tells me anything. Or rather, she does, but only whatever part of the story she thinks I need."
Amore smiles, but there is no mirth in it. "Then she has not much changed. An age ago, I sent out a call to Everfree. The Crystal Heart, the center of our Empire, the very reason it existed, had been stolen by a dragon, and its recovery was of the utmost importance. Everfree could have sent an army; instead, they sent your aunts. It was enough. I do not know what transpired up in that dragon's lair, only that their shouts shook the very mountains, and when they returned, they had the Heart in hoof. A rousing success. I believed in the charity and benevolence of the alicorns. The Empire endured for many, many moons."
"And then Sombra happened."
"Yes, well. Their second attempt to aid the Empire did not go quite so well. One is tempted to call it a disaster. In their greed to nudge their way onto my vacant throne, they failed to account for Sombra's dark magics, his many contingencies, and touched off a chain of events that ended with the utter obliviation of my beloved Empire."
"What about the Crystal Heart?"
"Gone, almost certainly destroyed. It is said that cosmic spectrum can only be shattered by the power of an alicorn, and I have no doubt that with two of them running roughshod over the ruins of the Empire, it became little more than a piece of collateral damage. It is something of a miracle that Celestia located another piece of cosmic spectrum just in time for the Empire's banishment to fade. Is that why she chose you, filly? Is that why she uplifted you? All for that priceless hunk of rock you wear around your neck?"
"It's because I demonstrated the purest of all love! Understood its greatest truth!"
"And won from a wicked enchantress an irreplaceable magic charm, one that turned out to be integral in claiming the Empire."
"No!" I protest, but I can feel the seed of doubt begin to put down roots in my heart. Would Aunty Celestia, ever the chessmaster, do that? Elevate me, adopt me, not because of my qualities, but merely as a means to an end?
For a brief second, I see Equestria as Amore sees it, foreign and alien, its vaunted Harmony a consuming force rather than a uniting one. In that second, I understand why the castle fights at what it sees as a pawn of that great corruption.
In that second, I am not sure that it is entirely mistaken.
I shake off my doubts and narrow my eyes. "How do you know all this about me?"
"Perhaps I'm merely a voice in your head, as I mentioned already," Amore says. "Perhaps I'm just a figment of your imagination. Again, filly, does it matter?"
"No. Real or not, we both have the same goal: neutralizing the threat of King Sombra. If you are real, you've known him longer than anypony. What are his weaknesses?"
Amore sighs, sand on a windswept beach. "None that I know," she says. "None except cosmic spectrum, and even then, only when it is powered by the love of ponies. The Crystal Heart kept us safe and warm because the Empire's citizens loved it, loved their lives, loved their princess. That's how Sombra first wormed his way in. He sapped the minds of my beloved crystal ponies, making them forget all the love they had, making them forget everything." She gestures with one sparkling hoof. "You've seen them out there. Mere husks of their former selves."
"Please. There must be something."
Amore rounds on me, her eyes blazing. "And if there were?" she shouts. "Why would I share all my secrets with the little filly who wants to play castle? The sniffling brat exercising her adolescent fantasies all over my palace? My home!"
It takes every last ounce of my flagging strength to not escalate along with her. I close my eyes, raise my hoof to my chest, breathe in, and let go. In that peace, insight comes to me.
"The dragon," I say, calmly.
"Yes?" Amore snaps. "What of him?"
"I just realized what's been bothering me. Aunty Celestia said that the Heart was 'found in a dragon's hoard.' Not 'recovered from.' 'Found in.'"
"I fail to see the difference."
"The difference is, in your story, Celestia and Luna brought the Crystal Heart back to you after it had been stolen by a dragon. You'd already built the Empire around it."
"Yes. Before the Heart, we were little more than a colony of miners, working ore veins of the Crystal Mountain. The Heart gave us warmth, security, an identity. Make your point!"
"My point is this," I say. "It seems to me that the dragon tried to steal the Heart from you because you stole it from him first."
Silence falls over the throne room.
"You do not understand," Amore says. "He was dormant. Slumbering. Possibly for centuries for all we knew. When he awoke, he informed us that he had long ago claimed the entire mountain, and all its treasures, as his own. More wealth than anypony, any creature, could ever need in a thousand lifetimes!"
"And yet," I say, "perhaps it was still his."
"He didn't even want it!" Amore protests. "He said, explicitly, that he was merely keeping it from us to make us suffer!"
"And yet," I repeat, "perhaps it was still his. No matter his reasons, it was still his."
"What are you saying?"
"That the Empire is stolen, Princess Amore. It was, indeed, stolen from you, but it has always been a stolen thing. From the very beginning."
"Fine!" Amore spits, and I can feel glitter strike my cheek. "Well debated! You've caught me in a hypocrisy! All land is stolen, Princess! Equestria itself was stolen from the bison, the moose, when the Three Tribes fled here from their doomed homeland. Do you hold me to a higher standard than your precious Celestia?"
"Maybe not," I reply. "But perhaps I hold me to a higher standard."
I rise from the throne, my legs shaking, and step down the gentle ramp. My hooves are silent on the carpet I apparently installed with my mind. "Princess Amore," I say. "I love this land. I think that I loved it from the moment I first saw the walls of this castle gleaming on the horizon, as my husband and I trudged here across the frozen plains outside. I have realized that I would like nothing more than to live out my days ministering to these sad, lonely little ponies with all my heart and my strength, helping them back to the light in whatever way I can. But I will not do it as a thief."
I smile up at her, my eyes weary. "You may be a figment of my imagination, but then again, you may be real. 'Changed to crystal and then shattered' feels quite mythical to me, and mythical deaths can often be circumvented. If you are here—if you are anywhere—this throne is yours."
Amore sits. Though it is difficult to discern features on the shifting mass of crystal that makes up her face, I believe there is a trace of awe there. "You would do that? Abdicate, outright?"
"The Crystal Ponies loved and trusted you, and you loved them in return. I would never deny them their rightful queen. Yes, in a heartbeat. I, or any of my heirs. In perpetuity. It sounds like a huge promise, and somepony will probably regret it somewhere down the line, but I believe with every scrap of my being that it is the right promise to make. Until the day of your return arrives, however, I humbly offer my services as steward of this throne. To watch it and keep it safe, so that there will be an Empire for you to return to."
Spreading my trembling wings, I bow my head to the floor.
"Great Princess Amore," I ask, "will you accept my fealty?"
"It's funny," says Amore, distantly. "Shortly before everything went wrong, I took the desperate step of consulting an oracle on how to keep Sombra from ultimate victory. She told me that Sombra will only meet his end when the Crystal Heart returns at last to the claws of dragonkind. Maybe you and that oracle are both correct, or at the least, two lodestars to the same conclusion. Maybe the only thing to do is to somehow right the wrong that's at our very foundation.” Her mien darkens again. “But the Heart is gone! Destroyed, probably! And even if by some miracle it isn't, returning it would doom the Empire!"
"If somepony I trusted told me that it'd be the secret to defeating that specter outside … I don’t know what I’d do right now. No matter what it meant for the throne.”
"The dragon of Crystal Mountain departed these lands long ago."
"Perhaps the Heart merely needs to be claimed by a dragon."
"But that would still end the Empire, would it not? Either we fall to Sombra, or we fall to the dragons! Doomed either way, yes?"
"It certainly sounds that way," I say. "But then again, it is prophecy. Prophecy is notoriously tricksy, and I'm not that good at it. Your Highness, I hate to needle this point, but—"
"Yes, little alicorn. Yes, Mi Amore Cadenza. I accept your stewardship over my throne. Keep it safe. Keep the Empire safe. Keep my ponies safe. Until I am able to return. Above all, remember me."
"You honor me with your trust," I say, struggling upright. "I promise you that I will always remember—"
I am about to say more but she is gone. Not even a fleck of crystal dust remains. With a noise like a sigh, the tension in the castle that I've been fighting against for days dissipates like morning mist, and my oneness with the place becomes complete again. I am still four days without rest, three nights without sleep, but in this moment of transcendent unity, I feel the strength to endure until a solution is found. Until an oracle's words come true. Until the Empire is safe once more.
I nod to myself, then work out the proper pattern of legs to turn myself about. Step by step, I make my way back up the short rise. It feels a bit like climbing a mountain, but I endure. The throne must not be vacant. The Empire must be watched. I have a promise to keep, now.
When I finally arrive, I am surprised to find that a cushion has been placed on its seat for me. It is decorated all over in a motif of crystal snowflakes.
"Thank you," I whisper.
I seat myself on a throne that is not mine, and await the coming of my husband, my sister, and the dawn.