The Seven Trials of Mi Amore Cadenza

by TheDriderPony


The Trials of Princesshood

It is the firm belief of many modern philosophers and political analysts that Equestria's modern age of international peace is largely due to the influence of tea.

It is the balm that soothes flared tempers and the ink with which policy is drafted. No fewer than twelve books have been written on the historical impact of tea, five of them by one unusually devoted historian in particular. The etiquette surrounding tea in Equestrian politics is as intricate as any other field of political maneuvering, where missteps can spell disaster. According to long-standing staff members in Canterlot Castle, with practice one can determine exactly how a diplomatic meeting with the Princess will turn out based solely on the opening tea service. Above all other drinks in Equestria, tea is held in highest regard.

And it was the firm opinion of Princess Cadance —recently-established ruler of the Crystal Empire— that the world would be a better place if the very notion of tea would just go die in a ditch.

In fact, she wouldn't terribly mind if the whole metaphysical concept of the drink were to vanish from existence entirely.

She demurely took another sip from her cup as the acrid poison pushed her both her natural alicorn resistance and her mental fortitude to their limits. "Hm. Lovely." She set the cup down as she wondered if the benefits of having a tongue outweighed the relief it would be to magic away the limb this very instant.

This particular brew was from a small mountainous nation which she had never heard of until being introduced to it's singular export. It was, by all accounts, a vile fluid which she would deem too cruel to force on even the denizens of Tartarus.

It was also hideously expensive, and therefore beloved by nobles and anypony who wanted to be perceived as such.

Chancellor Black Forest smiled through tea-stained teeth as his host. "I'm honored that you enjoy it. Such a rare blend; merely buying the rights to import it cost me a small fortune!"

Cadance smiled as she tried to think of a desensitization spell that wouldn't make her slur her words. Sadly, no such spell existed.

"You wished to discuss trade relations between your nation and the Crystal Empire?"

"Indeed. If you don't mind, I've brought some literature on the subject."

Reaching into his briefcase, the portly stallion produced a stack of documents hefty enough to make the whole tea set shake as they impacted the crystal table.

Cadance cast a quick glance to the timepiece on the mantle. It wasn't even midmorning yet. She inspected her teacup and wondered if drinking the whole pot would be enough to kill her.


Shining Armor waited in a crystal sitting room alone. Strictly speaking, there was a butler there as well, but the stallion stood so stock-still it was easy to mistake him for a piece of furniture. The tea had long since cooled and the cookies were going mushy. Twice a maid had come by and offered to refresh the platter, and twice she had been refused.

A soft knock on the door heralded her arrival for a third time. She stuck her head in, pale blue mane slightly muted in apprehension. "Your highness, the tea...?"

"It's fine," Shining grunted, perhaps more harshly than intended. He sighed and slumped in his seat. "Sorry, Kettle. I didn't mean to snap at you. The tea really is fine. I don't want you to have to remake it if it's just going to go cold again."

She slipped quietly into the room. "It's really no trouble your highness. After what you and Princess Cadance did to save us, we're more than happy to help serve you in any way we can."

Shining Armor merely grunted as her comments brought back to mind the current focus of his frustration. Cadance; his wife and recent habitual non-attendee to the very same afternoon tea breaks that she herself had scheduled. Missing once or twice was reasonable and was easily explained by unexpected work, but this was her seventh attempt to reschedule and likewise seventh unannounced cancellation. If it weren't for the fact that they still shared a bedroom, he'd have thought she was avoiding him.

He stood, popping his back as he flexed his stiff muscles. Like clockwork, the butler sprang to life. "Sir? Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Relax, Malachite." Shining waved him away. "I'm going to head down to Cadance's study. If whatever she's doing is that important, then I'm sure she wouldn't mind some help."

He left the sitting room with little fanfare. If he'd tarried too long, they probably would have tried to send him off with some. Even then as he walked through the corridors, crystal ponies stopped whatever they were doing and genuflected themselves before him. This tended to backfire often for crystal pegasi, especially those who didn't stop to check if the ground beneath them was free and clear of obstacles.

While Shining Armor was glad that the crystal ponies were recovering from their lives under Sombra, he sometimes thought they still went overboard in trying to please him. The bowing and scraping, for one thing. What few guards he had to work with he'd been able to convince that a salute was sufficient, but even after nearly two years of reminders the general staff still seemed intent on sticking with how they'd been indoctrinated to treat royalty. And then there was the level of... detail with which they attended to him. Having a personal maid, butler, and chef were one thing, but a personal toilet paper attendant was just going too far.

The title of Emperor as well, though rarely used outside of the most officacious of proceedings, also itched away at his conscience. It was a perfectly reasonable title for one who ruled an empire (as much as one could call their one surviving city an empire) yet it still tasted too... Sombresque in his mouth. Even Prince Consort —for all its scandalous historical connotations— was an easier title to swallow.

After several minutes of navigating corridors (with a brief diversion to help an unfortunate maid who'd supplicated twenty feet straight down into a tasteful ficus) he arrived at Cadance's study. Rather, it was a parlor room that had been converted into a study. Sombra hadn't cared much for paperwork and the ruling aristocracy before him had much preferred hobnobbing with fellow nobility than civil engineers and accountants.

In the back of his mind he began to draft his plan of attack. First, open with a comment about the time. Then slide into a quip about her standing him up. Prepare a counter argument for her inevitably bringing up that one time he missed a date due to an O&O game. Counter-strike with a reminder of how little time they'd had together these past few months.

Yes, it was a perfect plan. Impenetrable from any angle.

Squaring up his shoulders and donning his best put out expression, he opened her door and stepped inside. 

His target was not hard to spot. Cadance, Empress and co-savior of the Crystal Empire, was asleep at her desk, surrounded by a veritable fortress of papers, and blowing bubbles in a pool of spilled ink.

Whatever anger he may have had at being left out to dry quickly melted away into loving bemusement. How could he possibly stay mad at a sight like that?

Moving softly as to not wake her prematurely, Shining maneuvered across the room and around the desk to stand beside her. Even laying in a pool of drool and ink with mane tucked messily under her crown, she still had an undeniable charm about her.

A chainsaw-like snore ripped through the room, shredding the picturesque scene to confetti.

Shining smiled. Beautiful and kind as she was, it was the quirks and flaws that kept her equine.

Feeling mischievous, he leaned in and whispered to her. "Cady. Honeybun." She acknowledged him with a half-snort. He gave her horn the slightest of taps. "Hey, sleepyhead. You okay in there?"

She moaned and performed a half roll, freeing her lips from the ink but submerging some of her mane. "Shiny?" she muttered blearily before groaning. "Ugh… stick a fork in me, I'm done."

He chuckled and seized the opportunity presented. "I'd love to." He leaned in so closely his lips brushed the fuzz on her ear. "But maybe we should save that for the bedroom and not the middle of your study."

"Middle of... study? Study!" Cadance jolted to full wakefulness and promptly fell out of her chair. A quick flap of her wings brought her back to a standing position as her panicked brain struggled to connect where she was and what was going on. Her frantic gaze caught the clock on the wall.

"Aghh! Two-thirty already? I'm going to miss tea with Shiny!" 

Before the aforementioned Shiny could say anything, Cadance lit her horn and vanished in a crack of sound and light. He waited one second for her to arrive. Three for her to catch her bearings, two to notice the staff, ten or so for them to explain where he'd gone, and on-

Cadance returned in another flash of light, looking thoroughly sheepish and apologetic.

"Good morning," Shining said, doing his level best to not giggle. "Have a nice nap?"
 
Cadance smiled weakly. Her lips were stained black with ink as was a long strip of her mane, giving her a look that would have earned her a lot of street cred with the Scene crowd if the Crystal Empire had one.

"I missed our Together Tea, didn't I? Again." She lowered her head, allowing the black streak to drape in front of her face. "Shiny, I'm so sorry. The meeting with the Chancellor this morning ran long and then there was a disagreement between the Head maids and then-"

Shining Armor quickly closed the gap between them, cutting off her waterfall of woe and embracing her with a comforting nuzzle. "It's fine, these things happen." A quick burst of magic from his horn easily removed the ink from her face and mane (much to the chagrin of Scene ponies everywhere who had just begun getting used to the idea of a Princess they could identify with). "But don't think that I'm not going to use this as part of my argument that you really need to learn how to delegate. That's one of the first things they taught us in command school; find the right pony for the right job."

"I know, I know. And I am trying, but there's still just so much that only I can do."

She collapsed back into her chair and grabbed a random stack of documents from the pile. "Take these for instance. Trade negotiations with Baron Cornbread." 

"Cornbread?" Shining Armor repeated, "Out of Hayseed Swamp? Why would we trade with him? The Corn's are the very definition of a ruined noble family."

"Now, yes. But a thousand years ago, they were The Hayseeds and had a royal charter making them the Empire's sole supplier of Southern grain." She groaned and massaged her temples. "And despite a thousand years of inactivity, he still insists that the charter is valid and that we have to honor it. My argument that his family hasn't grown so much as a stalk of wheat in the three centuries since their land turned to swamp hasn't done much to deter him."

She set down the trade packet and picked up a stack of pages as thick as several reference books. "Then there's the proposals to modernize the Empire's education system. Most from the Equestrian Board of Education and a few others from notable scholars and experts, all of which I'll need to read through and cherry-pick what best fits the crystal ponies' needs."

She returned the stack to its place and in doing so, knocked over a pile of scrolls and letters. Shining Armor picked one up curiously. "What are all these?"

Cadance grimaced. "Would you believe that they're all marriage proposals from every two-bit lord and kingdom in a five nation radius who just knows that their son is the perfect and destined soulmate for Flurry Heart?" She glared at the stack like it was a rotting pile of particularly distasteful fish. "And while I'd just love to post them all to Twilight for her 'Parchments of the World' collection and forget about them, I'm still going to have to write a formal and tactful refusal to each."

Shining found himself both stumped and shocked. He knew that running the empire was a big task, but surely she could have hoofed some of the work over to him. A wave of shame flooded his system. To think that he'd been getting angry over a missed tea party like some spoiled filly when Cadance was across the castle trying to carry the whole nation on her withers. Desperately, he tried to remember some project or idea that might still hold some glamour for her. Something that could respark the passion for princesshood she'd felt back when she'd first accepted the authority to rule.

At last, it came to him. "How about the cultural projects?" he asked, perhaps too eagerly, "How have they been doing?"

To his dismay, this only caused her to sink further into her seat.

"Terrible," she moaned, "The worst of the lot. I thought that helping them restore what they had before Sombra would help give them all something familiar to cling to in these strange new times. And yet, they all seem so eager to throw away any trace of old empire's customs and traditions. At the same time, they're adapting to modern Equestrian values far faster than either I or Aunt Celestia thought they would. It's like they’re purposefully trying to forget their past as quickly as possible."

With a deep sigh, she sat up. "I know that the crystal ponies need to change to fit in with the modern world and they know it too, but I don't want their own culture to disappear. It's like they're refusing to acknowledge that the dark years under Sombra —and even the good years before those— ever happened. They're trying to use modernity as an excuse to snuff out their own history. And I just don't know what to do about it."

Shining was silent for a moment. What could he say in response to that? Only one thing came to mind.

"You need a vacation."

She snorted in amusement. "Princesses don't get a vacation."

"Technically, you're an Empress," he corrected with a grin, "And since I don't see any others around, I think it's up to you to set the precedent for what you can and can't do."

Cadance had to admit, he made a very sound argument. Perhaps it was the endless hours of paperwork or the pressure of having to play mother to both her actual daughter and several thousand other ponies, but she was tired. Sick and tired. Being a princess on its own was a challenge, but being a princess with almost no bureaucracy or infrastructure was a nightmare. Oh what she'd give for an excuse to take some time off. She didn't even need much; just a few days to get away from all the endless chambers of blue crystal and do something that didn't involve either signing parchment or changing nappies.

As though some cosmic force had decided to answer her prayer, at that exact moment Sunburst burst into the room, cape akimbo and lungs heaving.

"Your highnesses! I've found something extraordinary! You've got to come to the library right away!"

With a feat of agility quick remarkable for a bookworm, he made a hairpin turn on one hoof and dashed back out.

Silently, Cadance thanked her lucky stars for the intervention and yet, at the same time, she also worried that her errant wish may have just opened Pandormare's Box.

The only way to find out would be to follow her Court Wizard back to his library.

And so, for good or ill, follow she did.


“Tell me Princess, have you ever heard the tale of Darkened Peridot?”

“I can’t say I have.” In all honesty, when it came to the Crystal Empire’s history before Sombra, her knowledge consisted mainly of broad strokes. Periods of peace, periods of war. A hooful of particularly notable rulers. Learning more had been on her to-do list since becoming Empress; which was partially why she’d given Sunburst the task of combing through the royal archives.

“I’m not surprised. It’s not a tale most ponies know.”

Sunburst magically turned the pages of an ancient book with meticulous care. While the archives were filled with hundreds if not thousands of equally ancient tomes, this one in particular looked at though it might fall apart if someone breathed on it too hard. Cadance could scarcely imagine how many preservation charms were holding it together.

"Darkened Peridot was a great sorceress who lived several hundred years ago." He paused and shook his head. "Sorry, a thousand and several hundred years ago. It's easy to forget how old these books are. Anyway, Peridot was the Court Wizard of her era, back when the title had meaning and wasn't just ceremonial. Unfortunately, there's very little information about either her or the decades before and after she lived due to a terrible fire that ravaged the archives some years before Sombra's takeover." His gaze hardened. "Since I learned of the fire when you gave me this job, I've always suspected that he may have had something to do with it, but I could never find a reason why."

Cadence nodded, easily reading the flow of his clearly rehearsed speech. He was very much like a book himself. Or maybe she was just better at understanding ponies than she realized. "But now you have?"

He lit up like a Hearth's Warming tree, glowing with recognition of his efforts. "Yes! Yes I have! This book," he gestured to it, careful not to touch the pages with his hooves, "is the journal of Gleaming Spinel, the court jester at the time. But not only that, she was also Darkened Peridot's sister."

"As interesting as discovering old history is," said Shining, not cruelly but just firmly enough to keep the scatter-brained magician on track, "Why is it so important and what does it have to do with Sombra?"

"Ah, right, yes." Sunburst pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "You see, according to this, Darkened Peridot was the pony who actually created the Crystal Heart."

"What?!" Both Cadance and Shining cried at same time.

"Somepony made it?" Cadance continued.

"Well, yes. Not to be rude, but did you think it had just been around forever? Everything has to come from somewhere, your highness."

That was undeniably true. No matter how old something was, it had to come from somewhere. Long forgotten artisans had built Canterlot, but built it they had. The Elements of Harmony were made by ancient heroes. Even Princess Celestia must have been born at some point. It just wasn't something one tended to think about.

"And that's not even the most interesting part," Sunburst said eagerly, "Spinel wasn't involved in the process, so she only has secondhoof information, but she very distinctly states that the Crystal Heart is meant to be part of a set of seven."

"Seven Crystal Hearts?" Shining asked. Already possibilities were blossoming in his mind. Ancillary cities, likewise shielded from the Great Northern Storm. Expansion had never been something he'd considered since taking his royal position, but now...

"No," said Sunburst, shooting down Shining's expansionist dreams, "Seven different crystal artifacts. All designed to work together for some larger purpose that she didn't know." He lit his horn, and three illusory shapes began to form in the air. "She only knew what Peridot told her, so I've only found information about three of the other crystal relics." His projections were mere silhouettes, but their shapes were clear. A tiara, a staff, and a horn. "The Crystal Diadem, the Crystal Scepter, and the Crystal Flugelhorn. Together with the Crystal Heart, they made up slightly more than half of the full set."

He let the image vanish after a moment. “I’m not sure exactly what they were supposed to do, but if any one of them were as powerful as the Crystal Heart, it makes sense that Sombra would try to destroy any information about them. He wouldn’t want a power like that used against him.”

“I’d think he’d want to use them himself,” Shining countered, “That’s what I would do.”

“True, but you see, they’re not here.” He carefully closed Spinel’s journal and walked around the table to join them. “Parts of the journal are illegible, but it seems like the artifacts were scattered across Equestria for some reason. No one knows where they are.”

Like the seizing pressure just before cardiac arrest, Cadance was struck by a sudden force. Not a blow or an impact, but the sudden and arresting awareness of opportunity. She spun her husband around and to face her, a wide grin on her face. “Shiny, do you realize what this is?’

“Uh… yes?” he wheezed without confidence.

She ignored his wavering spirit. “Shiny, this is exactly what I need! What better way to get the Crystal ponies motivated in recovering their lost history than literally recovering pieces of their lost history? It’s perfect!”

Finally noticing Shining Armor’s gasping, she freed him from her crushing grip. Alicorn strength could easily run out of control when she got too excited. “It’s a quest, Shiny! Just like in your O&O games. Find the lost ancient relics and revitalize the citizens!” Her gaze fell to the wayside as she tried to sound nonchalant. “And if it needs me to take a bit of time away from the Empire to travel across the country to strange and exotic locations, facing down danger and excitement, then I suppose there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Shining Armor smiled at his wife’s enthusiasm. It was uplifting to see her out of the funk from earlier. Which made what he had to say next all the harder. “Cady… I see where you’re coming from, but we can’t just go gallivanting off on a cross country mission at the drop of a hat. Somepony has to be here and run day-to-day operations. And besides, we wouldn;t even know where to start.”

“Actually,” Sunburst cut in, once again pushing up his glasses, “I do think I know where one of them is.”

“See? We’re already off to a great start!”

Shining Armor looked at his wife. Really looked at her. When was the last time he’d seen her eyes so bright? Or her hooves dance in place like she just couldn’t stay still? Royal obligations and parental commitments aside, what kind of husband would he be to tarnish that?

“Alright,” he said at last, giving Cadance a determined smile, “Let’s do it.”

“Really?”

“Really. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everything here in the Empire, you go and find our lost relics.”

She smiled. Genuinely. Warmly. The smile he’d fallen in love with. “Have I told you I love you, Shining Armor?”

“Everyday,” he replied.

She landed a peck on his cheek and turned to face her Court Wizard —no, her mission handler. “So! Where am I off to? Where’s the first relic? In a mysterious dungeon in the depths of the Badlands? No, buried in a sunken ship in the East Lunar sea? How about locked in a criminal family’s safehouse in Las Pegasus?”

“Actually, the first one is a lot closer to home, and hopefully you’ll be able to find out more while you’re there.” He cast another illusion, this time of a castle she knew all too well. “According to the book, the Crystal Diadem was gifted to Princess Luna.”