Night had finally fallen over the city of Canterlot, where celebrations in honor of Equestria’s newest Princess, Twilight Sparkle, were still in full swing. Fireworks lit up the night sky in fits and bursts, while cider flowed freely and amply through the streets. It wasn’t every millennium that a new Alicorn joined the ranks of the Princesses, and everypony alive wanted to properly welcome her to the fold, as it were.
But the newly crowned Princess of Friendship eventually needed her rest, and so retired, alongside her friends, by this point in the festivities, leaving much of the city to celebrate without them.
Or, in Princess Celestia’s case, to giddily skip through the palace halls without them. The sun had been set many hours ago, but even with her sister Luna managing the nation by night, the Solar Princess found she couldn’t sleep.
How could she sleep when all her hopes and dreams had finally come true? Her brightest and most faithful student had redeemed and rescued her sister from darkness, and had now ascended to the highest position of respect and responsibility imaginable. Despite the occasional setback, the off-hoof Changeling invasion, and the constant worry, Twilight Sparkle had proven truly, truly worthy of Celestia’s trust and love.
Plus, she’d had enough cake to kill any mortal pony that wasn’t Pinkie Pie, so she decided to ride this nice buzz out by walking the halls and enjoying the night air.
Or… she would. She very much planned to enjoy her night. But as Celestia turned a corner in the Eastern Wing, her sensitive Alicorn ears picked up the faintest of sounds. Somepony or someponies were walking about and dragging something heavy along the carpeted floor.
She did a quick mental inventory. The Eastern Wing was, oddly considering the direction of travel their heavenly bodies took through the sky, officially Princess Luna’s side of the palace. It wasn’t entirely a formal split, but a traditional one. And if Celestia was thinking clearly, there shouldn’t have been anypony around this night save for the guards, and being batponies, none of them were quite clumsy enough to be heard under Luna’s service.
So, with a quick silencing spell to mask her hoofsteps, Celestia hoped to catch some mischief makers, and perhaps have a little fun herself this night before her sugar rush ended and she returned to bed.
Tip-hoofing quietly, she followed the sounds. Celestia could hear a little bit of an argument, and opened her ears wide to catch as much as she could before she acted.
“Look,” one voice said, his masculine timbre revealing his identity as one of the kitchen staff, “we can’t saw it in half first. Don’t be stupid.”
The second voice whined in a way that the Princess recalled sounding an awful lot like one of her scribemares, “But he’s so fat! We’ll never fit him in the incinerator!”
“Just pick up the head,” the kitchen stallion sighed, “I’ll get the hindlegs.”
Celestia’s eyes widened as she listened right around the corner… but then just as quickly she assumed a wide jester grin. For just a moment, she’d really thought her little ponies capable of… of dismembering another pony and destroying the body! It was too ridiculous!
Whatever they were actually talking about, Celestia was certain would make for an amusing story later. She checked her feathers, her mane, and made sure her coat was smooth and shiny. And then, she stepped around the corner to confront the ‘murderers’ in the act.
It would indeed have been an amusing story… had Celestia not walked directly into two of her staff hauling a recently very-murdered corpse through the halls.
The Princess of the Night shuffled her paperwork before her in her magical grip. She sat in the central seat of a high, wooden judge’s bench. The wood was dark and as solid as her conviction. The walls, ceiling, heavy drapes, and even carpeting shared this austerity, being of hauntingly dark blacks and blues dotted with the silver stars of night. The middle of the room was illuminated by not only blue, magical fires which burned in braziers lining the room, but also by a tall, stain glass window.
The window depicted a grave Starswirl the Bearded, the moonlight shining through to cast a pale pall upon the red star-symbol carved into the floor of the chamber in the one spot where no carpeting touched.
This was ideal. Blood was quite a chore to get out of carpeting. The four batpony guards in the room gave it a wide berth, standing attention at the only doorways into this chamber, one on each of the two remaining walls.
“Please, lead the condemned in at this time.”
One guard, hearing the order, opened the door on the right-hoof side and disappeared for a few minutes. Just enough time to…
Luna’s ear fidgeted. She’d heard something.
“Twilight?” she turned to her right and noted that the youngest Alicorn Princess and fellow judge was snoring softly, her head propped up only by her hoof that leaned on her desk-space.
Luna rapped the bench with a hoof. “Princess Twilight!”
“Gaah!” Twilight started awake, her own pile of paperwork flitting about her in a mad, magical aura. “I wasn’t sleeping! I was resting!”
“You were absolutely sleeping,” Prince Blueblood chuckled from the other side of Twilight at his own judge’s seat, “I suppose the grace and bearing of royalty is no so easily conferred as wings…”
The purple Alicorn turned a venomous snarl on the annoying alabaster blowhard.
“I could send you to the moon, you know?” Twilight’s voice turned downright icy, “So perhaps you should keep whatever you were about to say to yourself?”
“Your Highnesses!” Pale Mist, the batpony Commander of the Nightwatch and judge to Luna’s immediate left tried to get their attention, “I beg you both, show the decorum of your station!”
“Ya ain’t gonna get them ta agree to nothin’, Misty,” the judge sitting on the furthest left said, “Blueblood still hasn’t made up with Rarity, so nopony should be surprised her friends hold a mighty grudge.”
This last judge was quite mysterious. They wore a black hood which covered their face and hid their appearance from any who would try to identify them.
Shame then that it was also pulled over an immediately identifiable stetson.
“When she pays for my dry-cleaning, then I might consider apologizing to your friend,” Blueblood scoffed, “But for what? I don’t know. She should have been honored to be in my royal presence!”
Luna sighed, wearily.
Every night with these two.
Blessedly, the condemned entered at that time. He was a stallion of the most distinguished Canterlot breed, with a pearly white coat and neatly combed black mane, only marred by the general scruffiness one might pick up sitting in a dungeon for a week, and by the more noticeable bloodstains smeared across his chest, legs, and forelocks.
None of it was his.
Two magic-restraining rings had been placed on his horn, and two guards walked besides him, the unicorn of the pair conjuring magical lassos to keep the stallion appropriately hobbled as he jerkily made his way into the room.
“I must protest zis intolerable treatment!” he snarled lowly in a Prench accent as he was led in. “I demand to know by what right I am held here! If Celestia knew about zis…”
His voice caught in his throat as he noticed the five judges sitting above him. He was suitably shocked by the sight that the guard was able to magically change the restraints into normal chains, and then latch them to the locks set in the floor. A final burst of magic from their horn caused the chains to shorten, forcing the stallion to enter the center of the star-symbol on the ground until he was clearly unable to move more than a few inches in any direction.
Luna banged her gavel twice, more for procedure than a real call to order, and then cleared her throat.
“Duke Mustang, Duke of Belle-Gem and Reins, you are…”
“Hold up!” the mysterious judge wearing a stetson under her black executioner’s hood held up one hoof, “Duke? As in, Duke Duke Mustang?”
“Appleja… um, Lord High Executioner,” Princess Twilight winced at the screwup, “Please do not interrupt.”
Luna merely blinked, and continued.
“You are accused of and found to have committed many,” her eyes flicked down to the mountain of paperwork before her, “… many heinous crimes against Equestria and her citizens. How do you plead?”
“I don’t understand!” Duke vainly tried to pull on his chains, “What iz zis!? I have done no-zing wrong…!”
“Good grief sir,” Blueblood sighed, “As much as I’d like to defend a fellow noblestallion’s honor, you are literally covered in the blood of your victims!”
Duke looked down at himself. “I’ll have you know that zis isn’t blood. It’s… jam?” he looked back up with a pitiful smile.
“I’ll take that as a Guilty plea,” Twilight suppressed a yawn and let her wings hang a bit looser at her side. “Acceptable Responses section of the charter of the Star Court, subsection seventeen, paragraph six. The Snide Remarks and Bad Excuses Clause, if I don’t misremember it.”
Princess Luna nodded once, “Then, we shall move immediately on to sentencing. In light of the scale of the crimes, as well as the ages of the victims, I vote for Death.”
The High Executioner flipped through her own stack of paperwork with notable grace for an earth pony using only her hooves. “Eeyup. Same here. Ain’t none of the ones they dug outta his basement were even as old as Applebloom…”
“Wait,” Duke frowned, then with far less hesitation than was warranted, said, “Which basement?”
That caused every ear in the room to perk up.
Commander Misty sighed, “Well… guess that makes this easier. Death.”
Blueblood and Twilight simply nodded along, each muttering the word ‘Death’ with the same sort of tone they might otherwise note a raincloud in the sky.
“Sentencing adopted,” Luna banged her gavel once more.
Duke finally seemed to realize this was actually happening. “Wait, hold on zere! Don’t I get a lawyer or some-zing?”
“No,” Luna said simply, then turned to Apple… the Executioner, and asked, “Is there a preference for method?”
The Executioner tilted her head to one side. “Well, last one was a bit sturdier than I thought. Took five ax-swings ta git the job done, so mah teeth hurt something fierce right now. I’d prefer to jes’ buck em ta death.”
“Excuse moi!?”
“Any objections?” Luna looked to each judge in turn.
Duke’s shrill voice went unmuffled by the stone floor, “I have one!!!”
When nopony said anything against the conviction, Princess Luna turned back to her executioner.
“Applejac… Sorry, I mean…”
“Yeah, yeah,” the Executioner sighed, and stretched her legs, “I got him. Don’t know why I wear this stupid mask anymore if’n none ya’ll try to keep up the anonymity thing though.”
“It was self-defense, I swear!” Duke Mustang protested loudly as the hooded mare seemed to be prepping herself for the grisly business, “Zose fillies came at me with murderous intent…!”
But just before anypony could say or do anything more… the left-most door into the room burst off its hinges with a roar of golden, magical light. Everypony flinched at the sound, then looked up at the being who entered.
Princess Celestia stood in the doorway, a deep scowl only punctuating her furious aura, her wide stance and flared wings. Her horn burned warningly with the golden might of the Solar Diarch, casting the whole room into a different light than it was accustomed.
The guards bowed low where they stood, which drew a curious glance from their ruler, but Celestia’s gaze immediately came to rest on the judges sitting at their bench.
Misty and the Executioner tried to avoid eye-contact, while Princess Luna simply met her sister’s incredulous stare with pure stoicism. Blueblood bit down on something, which caused a heavy froth to spill out of his muzzle before he collapsed onto the floor.
Twilight covered her face with her hooves. “Oh, shit.”
“Sister,” Celestia said warningly, “What the hell is all this?”
“… I don’t know to what you are referring to, Sister mine,” Luna said, simply. She leaned over, slightly, and whispered to Twilight, “Perhaps you should revive Prince Blueblood?”
The newly ascended Princess sighed bitterly as she prepared a lightning spell, “Under protest…”
Celestia stamped on the floor with one of her gilded hooves, “Luna! I have two servants under guard with a corpse they were trying to disappear, and you have a noble of the court chained to the floor!”
Her wings fidgeted with agitation.
Luna sighed, quietly, and said, “That… does sound to be an unusual set of circumstances…”
“Sugarcube…” the executioner started to say… and then seemed to think better of it. “I mean… Princess? I think we’re sussed.”
“Thoroughly,” said Celestia through clenched teeth.
“Oh, very well,” Luna deflated slightly, “Where shall I begin?”
Celestia sat down on her haunches mere feet away from a silent Duke Mustang. “The beginning, if you would.”
“Very well,” Luna waited a moment to allow Twilight a chance to revive the fallen Prince. After several shocks, including two during which Blueblood was shrieking in protest that he was already awake, she began.
“Welcome to the Star Court, dear sister. This institution is my personal project. It is an… alternative court system, for whenever the regular methods could not account for a criminal in a satisfactory manner.”
Celestia frowned, “How long has this been going on? And what do you mean by ‘not accounting for criminals’?”
Luna shrugged, “Well, since the beginning. Starswirl said you couldn’t handle some of the nastier aspects of ruling a nation like Equestria, so he had me…”
“Starswirl!?” Celestia balked, “He would never approve of something like this!”
“It’s in the Equestrian Constitution,” Twilight offered as she retook her seat, “He was concerned you were too… innocent to do what had to be done sometimes. So Luna…”
“Twilight,” Celestia said, casting a withering look of disapproval at her faithful student, “I will get to you in a moment.”
While the purple Alicorn sulked, Luna pressed on, “It is true, sister. It’s in the Friendship Accords as well…”
“Nonsense!” the Solar Princess shook her head, “I’ve had over one thousand years of experience running Equestria! I’d have noticed if the foundational documents authorized my sister to murder ponies!”
Blueblood, weakly, pulled out a glass picture frame from beneath his desk. “Old Starswirl tore the pages out that mentioned the Star Court, Auntie. Well, he tore out the pages from all the copies…”
“Indeed,” Luna grimaced, “He made me eat the originals…”
Celestia’s magic snapped up the picture frame and brought it over to her. Inside appeared to be a very, very old bit of parchment covered in very familiar scribbles. It certainly looked like Clover’s hoofwriting…
“So…” she said slowly, still looking over the document before her, “You just try and execute ponies you don’t like, or is there actual criteria you’re all following?”
Luna shook her own head at this, “Not at all! We only try the ponies and creatures whom you haven’t heard about yet, and even then, only those whose crimes are too awful or dangerous to contemplate.”
“Such as?” Celestia raised an eyebrow at this.
Twilight’s horn glowed for an instant, summoning a heavy tome straight to her, already opened to the pages she required. Quickly, she began listing dates and names.
“Year Four of the Equestrian Diarchy; Summer Breeze attempts to stage a coup against the Royal Sisters using Dark Magic. Year Seven…”
“Summer Breeze!?” Celestia’s eyes widened considerably, “I thought he liked me!”
“He liked your crown,” Luna said flatly, “But you can’t wear a crown if you lose your head…”
“Year Seven,” Twilight growled at the interruption, “Jet Scream attempted to sell magical secrets to the Griffons. Year Fifteen, Seventeen Nobles were caught in a pyramid scheme that cost the commoners millions in bits and led to the First Great Depression.”
“There did seem to be a lot of suicides that year,” Celestia mused.
“It would have been worse if the ponies knew the Treasury was in on the scheme,” Blueblood coughed, still getting over his own attempt, “So you can see how it was necessary for Aunt Luna to dispose of the instigators.”
Twilight smirked, “I’m surprised you knew about… well, anything outside of wine-tasting and hooficures.”
“I take my duties extremely seriously,” he smirked right back, “I’ll have you know, I wrote the official government guide for regulations, research, and analytics.”
“You wrote ‘Punctuality, Punctuation, and Politics’!?” Twilight gasped in something caught between a squee and a cry of anguish.
Blueblood’s smirk became something far more… sultry.
“We could discuss the second edition later. Over dinner? My place? Or would you prefer Chez Herbe? I have standing reservations.”
“Oh… uh, um…” the Princess hemmed and hawed with a growing blush on her face.
“Regardless,” Luna brought their attention back to the matter at hoof, “The Star Court’s purpose is to allow me to deal with crimes that are either too heinous for our little ponies to handle knowing about, or could damage the nation in general.”
“That is a depressingly cynical view of our ponies,” Celestia snorted.
“Beggin yer pardon,” the Executioner said in an appropriately cynical tone, “But last time there were a ‘horde’ of rabbits come through Ponyville, the mares running the flower stands fainted at the sight.”
Celestia watched the Executioner for a moment with a deadpan expression.
“Applejack?”
“… I’m s’posed ta be anonymous,” the mare sighed.
“Well, take off the stetson then.”
“Fuck you,” she said with a hoof pointed at the Sovereign of the Sun. Then… probably realizing what she just said, she removed the hood and gave a chagrined smile. “Sorry.”
Celestia, one eyebrow raised, looked back to Luna. “How long has this been going on?”
“Since my return?” Luna tilted her head in thought. “I recruited a new Star Court just after that Nightmare Night in Ponyville. So, about three years, give or take.”
“Recruited?”
“Well, by the time my… Abeyance ended, Princess Platinum, Clover the Clever, Smart Cookie, and Commander Hurricane were dead.”
Pale Mist’s ears twitched at the list. “Wait, not Pansy or Puddinghead?”
Celestia let out a short bark, “Pansy couldn’t stand the sight of blood, and Puddinghead was batshit insane… no offence.”
Mist paled, and said nothing.
Celestia mulled over what she’d heard, then turned to the other judges. “Twilight? When did you…?”
“Luna asked me first,” Twilight said. “Apparently, the court has rules regarding who could be on it.”
“And…?” Celestia waved a wing in a clear ‘go on’ expression.
“Well, technically, Starswirl wrote the rules so that you have to have at least two Princesses on the court for it to be valid, just in case something happened to Luna… which I suppose is what ended up happening, so point goes to the Conjurer…”
“Twilight? Focus,” Luna spared a glance to her junior Princess.
“Right,” Twilight smiled, “So, without Princess Platinum, Luna had to get Cadance to fill in for that role…”
“You brought Cadance in on this!?” Celestia nearly jumped as she screamed.
“And Shining, since the Charter said we needed a Royal Guard Captain,” Twilight nodded, somewhat oblivious to her mentor’s agitation, “Truth be told, they were pretty good at it. Though I think Cadance was a liiiitle bloodthirsty…”
Celestia shook her head, “So why are you here?”
That brought Twilight’s attention back. “Oh. The Royal Protégé is an official position in your regular court. Did you know that? Apparently, I’m… well, I was supposed to represent the citizenry and nobility on the Star Court.”
“No, Twilight, I didn’t know that,” the Princess sighed. “So, then Blueblood is here since you took over Cadance’s place as Princess? And Pale Mist is Shining’s replacement?”
“Got it in one, yer Majesty!” Applejack grinned.
“Alright… then why the hell are you here?”
“Oh,” Applejack’s cheeks flushed red, “I’m, uh, the Lord High Executioner.”
“That’s not a position in the court,” Celestia frowned, “I specifically abolished it right after Luna’s banishment.”
The apple horse adjusted her hat and took a breath, “Welp, seems you accidentally reinstated it when you signed over all that land to my Grandpappy Pokey Oaks Apple. An’ it’s hereditary, apparently…”
“It’s true,” Twilight nodded to Celestia’s unvoiced question, “Technically, Applejack’s a Duchess.”
“I need to read those documents more closely,” the Princess sighed. “So, you’re telling me you’ve been executing prisoners for years at this point?”
“Techn’cally,” Applejack raised a hoof, “I took over from Granny only a year ago. She was a mite too… happy ta be on the court.”
“Well that stops now!” Celestia stood up, “I hereby disband the Star Court. I am disappointed in all of you for participating in something like this.”
“But Princess!” Twilight threw her hooves in the air, outstretched wings nearly taking Blueblood and Luna’s heads off, “It was an official appointment! O-ffi-cial! What was I supposed to do!?”
“Come tell me! For one!” the Princess shouted.
“I couldn’t! There’s a Level Zero Gag Order on all things relating to the Star Court!”
Celestia frowned, “Twilight, there’s no such thing as a level…” She turned back towards Luna. “Sister? You’re going to start explaining that next.”
Luna sighed. “I suppose this had to happen eventually.”
The energy drained from the room instantly. Now that the secret was out, all the mystery and magic of the proceedings felt flat.
A cough at Celestia’s hooves startled her.
“Um… does this mean I can go?” Duke Mustang asked. He’d been exceptionally quiet the entire time, hoping for everypony there to just… forget about him.
“What did he do?” Celestia asked.
A sheaf of paperwork drifted over to her, held in Luna’s magic. Princess Celestia looked over the documents, reading closely. She turned over one page, and then the next. She closed her eyes as she reached the photographs.
“Alright…” she took a deep breath through her nose.
She kept her eyes closed for another few seconds.
“Alright, I hereby reconvene the Star Court,” Celestia fixed her sister with a glare, “Kill the sick son-of-a-bitch. I’ll disband the court again in the morning.”
And with that, the Solar Diarch turned, and trotted out the door, muttering something about finding some cake and bourbon. As she made her way back towards her half of the castle, she tried her very best to ignore the sound of Applejack bucking over, and over, and over again set to the soundtrack of Duke’s pained cries.