So there I was with a pink pony pinning me down and brandishing a butcher knife.
My life has gotten weird lately. Even weirder than normal, I mean.
I had no idea what was going on here, but I did vaguely recall a run-in with a similar sort of Pinkie Pie on our way to Equestria. The real Pinkie’s reaction was enough to tell me that the version of Pinkie that seemed just a bit too eager about making cupcakes was probably bad news. The fact that her idea of making cupcakes apparently involved holding me down and using a butcher knife was almost certainly a bad sign too.
I wasn’t exactly in the best of tactical positions right then. Pinkie had a lot more muscle than you’d expect from a girly cartoon pony, as well as an entirely too large and sharp knife in her mouth. I could try smacking her with some spells, but Pinkie was unpredictable on a good day and right now was a very bad one. If her Pinkie Sense let her dodge my first spell or she managed to pull one of her weird stunts to get away, I wouldn’t get a chance to try a second time.
When in doubt, get them talking. Seeing as she was normally a fairly nice cartoon pony, Pinkie Pie had probably never gotten around to reading the Evil Overlord List. Besides, if nothing else it would give me time to come up with a better plan, or maybe even for somepony else to find us and lend a hand–or a hoof, for that matter. I wasn’t in a position to be picky about who was saving my ass.
So, on to the buying time part of the plan. “So, when you say we’re making cupcakes, what exactly does that involve?”
“Well, first I’m gonna cut off that horn so you don’t use any of that annoying magic on me.” Pinkie chirped happily around the knife in her mouth. “Then I’ll take a couple souvenirs to add to my collection. Then I torture you for a while to soften everything up–and ‘cause it’s fun. And then we get to the best part of all, where I cut ya open and start gathering up the cupcake ingredients! Doesn’t that sound like tons of fun?” She sounded disturbingly upbeat about the entire process.
“Yeah. That sounds fantastic.” For once my knack for sarcasm might actually be keeping me alive instead of unnecessarily pissing people off. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could convince you to pass on the whole killing me thing?”
“Nopey dopey!” Pinkie beamed at me around the knife. “We’re gonna have so much fun together! You know, until you die. Try not to do that too quickly, okay?”
Playing along with the psycho was usually a good way to buy time. “I’ll do my best. I do have a fondness for staying alive.”
“Yeah! You don’t even stay dead when you’re killed!” Pinkie let out an excited gasp that sent the knife tumbling from her mouth, and I resisted the urge to let out a manly squeak of terror when the point landed about a hair’s breadth away from my head. “Ohmigosh!” Psycho Pinkie continued on obliviously. “Since almost everypony thinks you’re dead, you should sing a song about how you’re still alive! I’ll get ya started, but you’ll probably need to tweak the lyrics a bit to make it work!”
When she was a couple lines in and fully occupied with a strange little song about how she considered this a triumph and was making a note about how big a success it was, I hit her with a magical sucker punch. “Forzare!”
The psychotic pink party pony (dammit, I’m thinking in alliteration again) went flying and bounced off the corridor walls, but somehow still managed to land on her hooves. An instant later she was glaring at me with fire in her eyes. Literally: her iris and pupil had turned into blazing fires. It says something about how jaded I’m getting about dealing with crazy cartoon logic that this didn’t even surprise me. Steam shot out of her ears, accompanied by a furious shriek. “Nopony interrupts a Pinkie Song!”
“Technically not a pony, just a shape-shifted human.” That didn’t quite have the calming effect I was hoping it would; if anything, that just made her angrier. I really should learn to stop provoking dangerous psychopaths some day.
The pony who looked entirely too scary for a bright pink cartoon character charged in, and only a hasty shield kept her off me. I tried to follow up with an ice spell to lock her down and give me some time to figure out what was going on with her and how to fix it, but somehow the pony just wasn’t there anymore.
I desperately looked around the corridor, but there was a distinct absence of hyperactive and currently hyper-violent ponies. Considering how bright and pink she was I was going to assume she probably wasn’t being stealthy; pink just isn’t a good color for camouflage. I’ve dealt with enough super-fast baddies to know the drill, so I immediately turned around and made ready to blast the hell out of her. Or at least, that’s what I would’ve done if she’d been there.
Huh. Usually the super-speed baddies love using that speed to hit you from behind. Then again, expecting optimal combat tactics out of an insane cartoon pony might have been unrealistic.
“Hiya, Harry! How ya doin’?” I did not nearly piss myself when I heard Pinkie’s voice right behind me. “I figured you’d look behind you when I disappeared, so I decided to pop up right in front of you. Except that now that you turned around I’m really behind you!” Curses, foiled by my own genre savviness.
I turned around once more, and found myself facing a single eyeball popping out of a tiny little crack in the wall. The result looked ... kinda freaky. Eyes aren’t supposed to do that kind of thing. A second later her other eye emerged from the tiny little crack in the wall, and then with a loud cartoonish pop the rest of pony came tumbling out. I really miss the laws of physics sometimes.
Now that I had her standing still right in front of me, I wasn’t about to waste an opportunity to hit with a spell. “Arctis!” A second later, there was a near-perfect Pinkie Pie ice sculpture standing right in front of me. The only part of her that wasn’t covered in ice was the tip of her muzzle; I know she can casually violate most rules of sanity, but I didn’t want to risk suffocating the pony. I just had to hope she wouldn’t pull off another one of those insane squeezing stunts.
She didn’t. Instead, she just casually took a step back out of the ice prison. She didn’t break free of the ice or anything like that, she just stepped back out of it like it wasn’t even there.
“Oh come on!” I’ve dealt with bad guys who cheated the laws of physics before, but this was getting ridiculous. It was like I was in a Saturday morning cartoon or something.
Oh. Right.
Pinkie’s mouth opened up impossibly wide and she swallowed the entire ice sculpture in a single gulp. “Mmm! Chilly.” The pony let out another excited squeal. “After I kill you, I can use the leftover ice and meat to make a frozen chili dish. Chilly Chili! And then I can add chocolate and cherries and chives! Chilly Cherry Chocolate Chive Chili! Doesn’t that just sound delicious?”
“I’d be happy to try some if you used a recipe that didn’t involve killing me.” It sounded like a horrible mish-mash of conflicting flavors, but eating bad chili was preferable to death. Well, unless the chili was really, really bad.
“Nopey dopey, you’ve still gotta die!” Pinkie announced with childish enthusiasm. “But maybe I could just chop off a leg or something and stabilize you for long enough to make the chili. Does that work for ya?”
“Not so much. I’m rather attached to all my limbs.”
“Picky picky,” Pinkie crossed her forelegs over her chest and pouted. I was tempted to try smacking her with another spell, but so far she’d just bounced back from everything I’d hit her with. There’s a reason I’d taken on her demonic version by covering her best friend in chocolate instead of getting into a straight-up slugging match.
I needed another distraction. Something that could take her attention off me, or maybe even snap her out of whatever was happening to her completely. Unfortunately, I was fresh out of chocolate and didn’t have Rainbow Dash handy.
Maybe it was time to stop playing it cool and try to challenge her directly. She’d made some kind of effort to resist whatever was controlling her before she went all psycho-crazy on me, so maybe if I played my cards right she would rally enough willpower to break free. Or it would push her over the edge into full murder-mode. It was a toss-up which one would happen, and my luck is generally pretty crappy when it comes to fifty-fifty situations.
Then again, one of my guiding principles in life is that an insane plan that will almost certainly get me killed is better than doing nothing and dying for sure. It’s worked for me so far, which I guess proves that my luck isn’t shitty all the time. Or maybe the universe just wants to keep me around for a little longer because it enjoys watching me suffer.
“Pinkie Pie, listen to me.” The psycho pony tilted her head at me curiously. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever’s controlling you, you can fight it.”
Pinkie just shook her head. “Dunno what you’re talking about there, Harry. Nothing’s controlling me; I’m just being the same Pinkie pony I’ve always been.”
“I don’t remember you whipping out butcher knives and talking about carving people up to make ingredients before.” I was a private detective before signing on as the Winter Knight; I tend to notice little things like people not being insane killers. “Come on Pinkie, you have to fight this thing!”
“Harry, you’re talking too much and what you’re saying is silly. Not funny silly, annoying silly.” In the time it took me to blink Pinkie tackled me to the ground, pinned me, and pulled a giant meat cleaver out from behind her back. “What do ya say we get started? There’s so much to do if we wanna get it all handled just right! Do you have any idea how upset Twilight and Rarity get when everything isn’t just so? I’d hate to disappoint them by making a mess of this.”
Pinkie casually mentioning her friends gave me a little bit of inspiration on what angle to work from to try to get her back to normal. “Hey Pinkie, how long do you think the cupcake ingredients you get from me would last anyway?”
“Oh, a pretty good while.” Considering the rate at which Pinkie could eat, ‘a pretty good while’ could be anything from several weeks to five minutes. “Why?”
“What happens after you run out of material from me?” Judging by the way her eyes widened and her grip on me slackened just a bit that question caught her off guard. “Will you start killing your other friends to get more?”
“What?” Pinkie shook her head hard enough to make me a little nervous about how much the meat cleaver in her mouth was waving around. “Nonononono. I would never hurt my friends! Never ever ever ever ever!”
“But I’m your friend, right Pinkie?”
The pony’s rump plopped down onto my hind legs as she paused to consider that. “Well yeah, I guess you are. But it’s not like I could just stop making cupcakes! I’ve gotta get ingredients from somewhere, right? I still like ya Harry, but your number’s come up.”
“So then if it comes down to it, you would hurt your friends just to get more cupcake ingredients,” I concluded.
Pinkie froze as my little logic trap closed in around her. I pressed the advantage. “There are only two options: Either you’re a pony who would hurt her friends just to make more cupcakes, or you aren’t. Which is it?”
“But ... but you don’t understand!” Pinkie shrieked at me. The sudden shout sent the cleaver flying from her mouth. Fortunately for me it was the dull side that hit when it bounced off of my chest, so I didn’t get anything worse than a little bruise. “I have to do it!”
“Why, Pinkie? Why do you have to hurt your friends?”
Tears started pouring from the pony’s eyes. “The script says so! I don’t wanna do it, but it’s in the script!”
Huh? Why would the script for a kid’s cartoon suddenly turn Pinkie Pie into a serial killer? It made no sense. Not unless...
Oh shit.
Well that explained a few things. Now I knew how Discord and Nicky were messing around with the basic rules of Equestria: they were on Earth. Where the cartoon I was currently stuck in was made. Compared to the sort of things Nicky usually got up to, taking over an animation studio and kidnapping a couple voice actresses was small potatoes.
From what I understood about how the connection between fictionland and the real world worked, whatever got written into the show back on Earth happened here. If Nicky and Discord had taken over the production staff for the cartoon, they could literally rewrite reality around me. If they aired an episode about Pinkie Pie going crazy and killing me, it would happen and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
At the end of the day, Pinkie Pie was a fictional character. Like every fictional character, she did exactly what the story said. If the script said she felt happy then she’d be happy, and if it said she was sad she’d be sad. Much like a lot of things I’d run into over the years, she had no real control over her own destiny or free will.
The thing is, I’ve run into critters that don’t really have free will before. Most of the big magical critters out there don’t; free will is a pretty uniquely human thing normally. However, there have been one or two occasions where I’ve managed to mess up the status quo. Lash is a good example of that–the shadow of a Fallen isn’t supposed to be mutable, but I’d gone and changed her anyway. I’d given her free will, a soul, and a chance to reclaim her angelic mantle on top of that.
The only reason that worked was because she was hanging around in my brainspace. Humans are good at changing. Well, at least compared to the rest of the universe we are. Mab is pretty much exactly the same now as she was a thousand years ago, but humanity has changed one hell of a lot in that time.
Pinkie Pie was no Mab though. She was a fictional character. And at the end of the day, fictional characters exist as part of the human mind.
Uriel told me once that watching me in action was like watching a child playing with hand grenades. In this case, he probably had a point. However, right now my options were down to playing with fire or letting Pinkie slice me to bits and leaving Earth to deal with whatever Discord and Nicky had in store.
Welp, time to see if this utterly insane plan would actually work. “Pinkie Pie. Who are you?”
The pony frowned at me. “That’s a silly question, Harry. You know me. I’m Pinkie Pie!”
“Pinkie Pie. Yes, you are Pinkie Pie.” Pinkie Pie was staring at me like I’d gone completely nuts, which was nicely ironic considering the circumstances. “Would Pinkie want to hurt her friends?”
“Of course not!” Pinkie immediately answered.
“But you’re going to hurt a friend if you keep doing this,” I pointed out. “If Pinkie Pie doesn’t want to hurt her friends, then why is she about to kill one of them?”
“Y–You don’t understand!’ the pony screamed at me. “I have to do it! The script says so! I don’t have any choice!”
Alright, here we go ... this was either gonna save my ass, fail spectacularly, or backfire horribly. I’ve faced worse odds. “You do have a choice, Pinkie Pie. You can choose to hurt your friends or you can choose not to, but whatever you do is your choice. So choose.”
“I–I...” Sweat poured down Pinkie Pie’s face and seeped into her eyes as they twitched. Even if she hadn’t been shaking from fighting...whatever it was for control, the cleaver in her hoof moved far more too much for comfort in sync with her heavy, gasping breath. Finally, she made her choice. “I’m not gonna do it! I don’t care what some stupid script says, I won’t hurt my friends!”
I braced myself for whatever was coming next. After several long seconds of nothing, I figured it was safe to conclude that the universe probably wasn’t going to explode from what I’d just pulled. Somehow, insanely, it had worked.
I’d just give a cartoon character free will. Hell’s bells, I’d probably given her a soul on top of that. Well, technically she’d just gotten a bit of my soul, but with enough time it would grow into a proper unique individual Pinkie Pie soul. Just like happened with Lash.
Souls are complicated things. Contrary to what a lot of people think, losing a chunk of your soul like the piece I’d just given Pinkie wasn’t a big deal. Stars and stones, I used Soulfire to boost up a lot my spells, and that’s basically tearing off chunks of your soul and using it as magical rebar to keep your spells going.
It’s not a big deal though; your soul grows back. As long as you don’t use up the whole thing or sell it to a demon, all it takes is a bit of decent living and good times to get your soul back up to normal. Happiness, joy, and all the other warm fuzzy emotions were great soul food. Considering that, Pinkie Pie’s soul would probably be up to full strength in a matter of minutes.
So the good news was, I’d broken Discord’s ability to control Pinkie Pie. Even better, I hadn’t torn Equestria to pieces in the process. Giving a cartoon character free will and a soul had to have some very interesting implications for the rest of their cartoon world. Too bad I had no idea what those implications were going to be. I did have a sneaking suspicion this was going to be another one of those decisions where years from now people would still be yelling at me and asking what the hell I was thinking.
The answer was simple. I’d done what I had to do. What I always did. I took a situation that should have killed me and found a way to turn it on its head and pull off a win anyway.
There was one last thing I need to hammer out. I was pretty sure I’d succeeded in snapping Pinkie free of fictionland’s limitations, but when you’ve got an upcoming throw-down with an evil god of chaos and a fallen angel being pretty sure just isn’t enough. Lucky for me, there is an absolutely 100% foolproof way of confirming whether or not Pinkie Pie had a soul.
There’s an old saying about how the eyes are the window to the soul. For a wizard, that statement is a bit more literal. If a wizard looks someone in the eyes for several seconds, it starts something called a soul gaze. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: You get a look at the other person’s soul. Since soul gazes are tied into the Sight, it’s all about giving insight into who the person really is at a fundamental level. Just like with the Sight, once you see something it stays with you forever. I couldn’t forget any soul gaze I’d ever had, even if I wanted to (being able to forget the time I soul-gazed a Denarian would be nice).
Compared to most of the souls I’ve seen over the years, I don’t think I minded knowing that my glimpse of Pinkie Pie’s soul would be stuck in my brain forever. Pinkie soul was a nice happy little place. Slightly–well very insane, but in a good way. The kind of crazy that makes you want to forget about all your troubles and enjoy life. That’s really the core of who Pinkie Pie was; a happy pony who wanted to make all the other ponies around her just as happy as she was. It’s rare to find something with that much pure niceness, especially in my line of work. It’s been way too long since I got to use my Sight on something nice instead of something pants-crappingly evil.
I came out of the soulgaze with a smile on my face, while Pinkie stared at me in open-mouthed shock. One of the downsides of a soul-gaze is that it goes both ways. While I’d been getting a tour of the sunshine and gumdrops of Pinkie’s soul, she’d been getting a look at mine as well. I’ve never had the chance to look at my own soul, but from what I can tell it’s not a very pleasant thing to look at. I guess that figures with all the hell I’ve been through. It was probably even worse now, after all the things I’d done to save my daughter. There are lines a person shouldn’t cross, but with my little girl’s life on the line I’d taken a flying leap over them. I could tell myself my actions had been necessary or that I had done it all for the greater good until I was blue in the face. Maybe it was even the truth. But doing evil things because they’re necessary for the greater good doesn’t change the fact that you’re doing evil.
Pinkie Pie stared at me for several long seconds before she finally spoke. “Wowie wow wow, Harry.” Despite her energetic choice of words, the pony sounded oddly subdued. “That was–ya know what you need, Harry?”
“Lemme guess, a party?”
The pony nodded. “Yeah. But not just any party. Like, a super-duper stop beating yourself up so much party.” The party pony put a comforting hoof on my shoulder. “Ya really need to stop blaming yourself every single time something goes wrong, or you’re gonna spend your whole life being frowny-faced. Everypony makes mistakes, Harry. I make little goof-ups all the time! But getting all saddy-waddy about it doesn’t do anypony any good.” The party pony looked at me with a surprising amount of determination. “From now on, whenever you start feeling all sad you gotta tell me right away so I can fix it all up and put a big ol’ smile on your face!”
I couldn’t help smiling a bit at her reaction. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised, considering the look I’d just gotten at her soul. Pinkie Pie wanted her friends to be happy, and I was one of her friends so of course she’d want to cheer me up after she’d gotten a look at how messed up I was. “Thanks, Pinkie. You’re a great friend.”
From the huge smile that appeared on her face, I was a bit worried she might actually explode from sheer joy; considering the general bizarreness of the pony, I certainly wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
There was no time for celebrating or joysplosions though. If Nicky and Discord could take over Pinkie, they could go after any of the other ponies as well. At the very least, there were five more ponies who needed souls and free will.
“A wizard’s work is never done...”
Things with the rest of the ponies went pretty smoothly. It probably helped that Nicky and Discord hadn’t written any of them into being psychotic murderers out for my blood with the ability to casually ignore the rules of physics and sanity. Plus we already had a strong bond of friendship after everything we’d been through together in the Outside and dealing with the warped version of Equestria Discord had left behind. All it took was a little push to turn them from cartoon characters into something more.
That just left the toughest pony of all to deal with. Well, it wasn’t anything about Twilight Sparkle herself that made this particularly difficult. Hell’s bells, under most circumstances she probably would have been my first choice. She did seem to be the leader of the little circle of friends, to the extent that they had a leader at all. That’s not to mention she was most magically adept of the lot; once I explained it all, she would probably understand what I was trying to do better than I did.
However, Twilight was damaged goods right now. Reading through her diary had made that fairly clear, and things had probably only gotten worse after whatever happened during her final confrontation with Celestia that resulted in a lunar vacation.
Plus, Twilight just hadn’t gone through the same sorts of experiences as the other ponies. While they’d all been running around outside of Equestria and seeing things they’d never seen before, she’d been stuck in her little corner of fictionland. That’s not to mention that all the time I’d had with the other ponies had given us a chance to really bond. A chance I’d never had with Twilight. That was gonna make this whole thing a lot harder to pull off.
I hesitantly stepped into Twilight’s room. The unicorn was lying on her back in bed, blankly staring up at the ceiling. “Hey, Twilight? Can we talk for a bit?”
She gave a startled little jump when I said her name. “Harry Dresden? What are you doing in my room?” A second later, her eyes narrowed in anger. “And why did you read my diary? That was private!”
How did she–oh yeah, I did still have that bright pink writing on my forehead that everyone had been poking fun at me for earlier. With everything else that had been going on, that little detail had kinda slipped my mind. “Look, I’m sorry about going into your personal belongings, but we needed to know what happened to you.” That softened her glare a little bit, but it didn’t look like I was completely off the hook yet. I guess I could understand; I had performed a pretty sensitive bit of personal snooping about some very unpleasant experiences she’d gone through.
It would’ve been nice if we’d had the luxury of time and been able to let her work through her trauma at her own pace. Unfortunately, time was something we were very short on. Twilight needed to recover and be equipped with a soul fast, or else Discord would just crank out a new cartoon episode where Twilight was the one trying to kill me instead of Pinkie. Or something else that would leave us in dire peril of perilous dire. Whatever dire is.
With the proverbial cat out of the bag about me violating her privacy, I figured that was as good a place as any to get started. “Twilight? I read about what happened to you. Do you want to talk about it?”
The unicorn rolled over on her bed, deliberately turning her back on me. “No.”
Well, that was about the reaction I expected. I do have a bit experience with getting people to talk about things they’re reluctant to discuss though. I hesitantly took a seat next to the unicorn. “Maybe it would help if you talked about it?” Twilight didn’t say anything, but she didn’t just shove me off the bed or some other negative reaction either. I guess that was progress. “Can you at least tell me what happened to you? After the part I read in your diary, I mean.”
The unicorn rolled over to face me and very slowly shook her head. “No.” After several long seconds, she nervously licked her lips and added. “But I can show you.”
As the light began flowing from Twilight’s horn, I struggled against the urge to roll my eyes. A flashback spell? Really? Of all the cheap narrative devices for a cartoon to use...
A second later, I was Twilight Sparkle. That was pretty damned weird. I’m still not quite used to being a pony in the first place, so suddenly being a female pony added a couple new levels of strange to the experience. It kind of reminded me of my experiences as a semi-ghost in Chicago, where I’d done a few quick possessions. It never stops feeling strange to feel all of your sense through another person’s body.
Twilight was walking through one of the palace’s many corridors toward a set of double doors I recognized all too well. She shot a tentative little smile toward her big brother at the head of the Princess’ personal bodyguard, and a second later she was walking up to the throne and the white pegacorn sitting up on it.
“Princess Celestia.” I could feel the twinge of nervousness pass through Twilight’s body. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
A warm, indulgent smile appeared on Celestia’s face. “Of course; I always have time for my faithful student.” She turned to Shining Armor and his guards. “Leave us.” The guards dutifully filed out of the room. If I had a stomach of my own, I’m pretty sure a sick feeling of dread would be building up in it as I put together where this was going.
“Princess, I...” Twilight hesitated for several seconds before she finally built up enough courage to speak her mind. “It’s–it seems like what we’re doing ... it isn’t right.”
Celestia went stock-still, the smile slowly fading from her face. “I must have misheard you, Twilight Sparkle. Could you repeat what you just said?”
Twilight took a deep breath, and when she spoke again there was a bit more conviction in her voice. “What you’re doing is wrong, Princess Celestia. You’re hurting innocent ponies, and I’m not going to be a part of it anymore.” Twilight was still scared, but she stood her ground. She knew that she’d already crossed the Rubicon. There wasn’t any more room for doubt or hesitation; she had said enough to commit herself to this course of action.
Celestia said nothing for a long stretch of time. She just stood on her dais and glared down at Twilight. Twilight flinched at the force of her mentor’s displeasure, and for a second I wondered if she would break and start babbling apologies or begging for forgiveness. However, after several seconds Twilight found some well of inner strength and stood tall, resolutely meeting Celestia’s gaze.
Finally, the Princess spoke. “I expected better of my faithful student. You are my faithful student, are you not?”
“Yes, of course I am,” Twilight answered. “I’m not–I don’t mean to be disloyal, but it just seems like we’re going too far here. Sending ponies, sending entire families to the moon just because they don’t agree with what we’re doing or say something foalish about what’s going on. Couldn’t we just explain to them that–”
“This is not some trivial affair like one of your friendship reports, Twilight.” I felt the unicorn flinch a bit when Celestia said that. “The actions I take here and now are for the good of entire realm. Now that my sister has gone mad once more, I need be certain that everypony is loyal to the throne. I had hoped that in my time of need I could turn to you for aid. It would seem that I expected too much of you.”
I could feel the tears building up in Twilight’s eyes. “Princess, I–”
Celestia cut her off. “I am extremely disappointed in you.” The Princess turned her back on Twilight. “Go back to your room, and don’t leave until you’ve realized just how unacceptable your behavior has been.” Those tears that had been building up in Twilight’s eyes were pouring down her cheeks now. “Once you’ve had some time to reflect on this and apologized for your shameful behavior, I will expect you to return to your duties. Until then, you have a lot to think about.”
Twilight’s hind legs collapsed underneath her, and her body was shaking with suppressed sobs. This had to be the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. I knew the unicorn well enough to know how much she idolized the Princess who had just verbally torn her to shreds. The worst part was, since the memory wasn’t over yet things might not have even hit their lowest point.
When Twilight didn’t move after several seconds, Celestia stomped up to her. “Twilight Sparkle. I gave you an order. Go. To. Your. Room.”
Twilight raised her head to meet Celestia’s cold, uncompromising eyes. I could still feel Twilight’s body trembling in pain, but there was something else about her now. A sense of strength in her spine, or the way her hooves were setting themselves onto the floor. Twilight was hurting, but she wasn’t broken. “No.”
Celestia glared down at her at her student. “What did you say to me?”
“I said no.” I could feel Twilight rallying again. As badly as Celestia’s words had hurt, she wasn’t going to give in. Twilight had made her choice, and she was taking a stand. “What you’re doing is wrong, and I’m not going to let you–”
Celestia took a couple quick steps forward, and I got a brief impression of something white and gold moving at a distinctly unhealthy velocity before it slammed into the side of Twilight’s face. The force of the blow sent the unicorn to the floor. It took her a couple seconds to actually process what had happened. The unicorn raised a forehoof to her cheek, fresh tears springing to her eyes. “You–you hit me!”
Celestia glared down at her imperiously. “I cannot accept defiance from anypony on this matter, Twilight Sparkle. Now is the time for unity. We can overcome Nightmare Moon, but not without sacrifice. Help me. All that you have done can be forgiven. Just help me, my faithful student.”
“No.” Celestia moved to slap her again, but this time Twilight was ready for it. When Celestia’s hoof was inches away for her cheek a purple aura snagged it and held it in place.
Celestia’s eyes widened in shock. “You would dare to use magic against your Princess?” A second later, there was a blinding flash of light and I felt Twilight’s hold on the Princess shatter.
Celestia didn’t give her a chance to recover. Twilight’s vision cleared just in time to see another hoof heading for her face that connected in a hit that made the last one feel like a gentle love tap. Celestia stomped down on Twilight’s horn, sending waves of agony shooting through her head as the alicorn cracked (the stuff unicorn horns are made of, not the misused term for a pegacorn). That probably killed Twilight’s hope of casting any magic until the horn healed.
Twilight screamed in pain, only to be cut off by a hoof to the gut. After a couple more hits, the battered unicorn managed to roll out from underneath Celestia’s hooves, desperately looking for some source of salvation.
Hooffalls echoed from near the throne, and Twilight’s eyes fell onto Shining Armor. I felt hope spring up within her. That was possibly even worse than the physical pain I could feel through her, knowing how desperately she was hoping her big brother would save her. Knowing that he was under Discord’s control, so he wasn’t going to do a thing to help her. Knowing that even more pain was coming for her and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I couldn’t even have the comfort of hating them for what they were doing. It wasn’t their fault; it was all Discord’s mind control. Stars and stones, the memories of this would probably torture them for the rest of their lives.
Twilight stumbled and crawled toward her big brother, holding out a single hoof imploringly. “Shiny ... please. Help me.”
Shining Armor took a step forwards, and I felt the beginnings of a hopeful smile on Twilight’s face. It was one of those basic rules of the universe: A big brother would always protect his little sister. That was their job.
Then the barrier sprang up around the throne room, locking Twilight in with the Princess. As Twilight was dragged back toward Celestia, I saw through her eyes the utterly impassive look on his face. There was nothing there, no love, no concern, no brotherly affection. He sat back and watched the scene unfold as casually as if Celestia were speaking to a recruit on the parade ground.
The betrayal hit Twilight like a physical blow. Being attacked by Celestia was bad enough, but having her big brother tossed in on top of that was too much. I was grateful that I was only experiencing the physical sensations of her memory; if I had to deal with all of her emotional and psychological pain as well ... I’d have probably ended up as damaged as Twilight was.
Twilight was trapped in a small confined space with Celestia, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Even if her magic was still working, fighting back wouldn’t have been a realistic option. There was nothing she could do except take the hits, curl up into a little ball, and wait for the pain to stop.
I wanted to close my eyes, do something to block out what was happening to her. I didn’t want to see this. But there was nothing I could do; all of my senses were tied to Twilight’s memories. I couldn’t do anything to protect her or shield her from what was happening. All I could do was sit there helplessly as Celestia beat the living hell out of her.
I’ve been through plenty of rough stuff myself. You spend enough time fighting the monsters of the world, and eventually they’re gonna get you. It never stops hurting, but I’ve taken enough of that kind of thing to be used to pain. You live with pain long enough, and you learn how to push through it, to keep moving even while your body is screaming in agony.
But this was something new. I was stuck here helplessly watching what happened to Twilight. Not only was I stuck observing, I could feel everything that happened: every bump, every cut, everything. When Celestia slammed her into a wall, I could feel one of her ribs break. When she hit a column, I felt her foreleg shatter. When a regal white hoof slammed into her head, I felt her the fracture in her horn grow.
I don’t know how long it went on. I think she might have blacked out at some point. Or maybe it was me; maybe I just couldn’t take seeing all everything that happened to her. She was barely out of her childhood, and she was going through this hell. I’ve always gotten extra-wrathful when it comes to women or children being hurt. I’ve said it before, but I don’t think I’ve ever meant it more than I did right now.
Discord and Nicodemus were going to burn for this.
Finally, mercifully, the beating came to an end. “Twilight Sparkle.” The possessed princess towered over her wounded student, gazing down at her dispassionately. That was the worst part of it all; that she could administer such a savage beat-down while being ice cold about the whole thing. Like it didn’t even matter to her that she was tearing a pony who idolized her to pieces. “I trust that this has been another valuable lesson for you. Tell me, my faithful student, what have you learned? Have you learned the price of defiance? Are you willing to follow my orders now? Or must the lesson continue?”
“You’re wrong!” Twilight gasped. I could feel the pain that just speaking those few words sent lancing through her broken body. “What you’re doing is wrong!”
“I am the Princess.” Celestia wasn’t even breathing hard as she spoke in an even tone. “I am protector of the realm, regent of Equestria and stewardess of the sun. A goddess can do no wrong.”
A door opened down the way, and Twilight limped for it. A wall of flame cut her off, and she screamed and cradled her already-broken foreleg against her chest. The smell of charred flesh brought back some unpleasant memories for me, and if I could have I would’ve winced in sympathetic pain.
“Auntie!”
The flames were snuffed by a bright blue glow. Fresh tears sprang into Twilight’s eyes at the sound of Cadence’s voice, and she pushed herself towards the pink pegacorn with her back legs. Cadence galloped forward, her horn continuing to glow as I felt some of the pain in Twilight’s injuries fade away.
“How could she?” Cadence whispered. The pegacorn leaned down and gave Twilight a comforting little nuzzle. “Oh my poor little Twilight. Don’t worry sweetie, I’ve got you.”
“Cadance.” Twilight clung to the pegacorn like a terrified little child. Cadence looked up over her shoulder and shot a look at the ponies behind Twilight, and I felt relief flood through Twilight’s mind when the approaching hooffalls fell silent. Cadence’s horn never stopped glowing as I felt pain fade from the collection of injuries. Twilight’s charred hoof merely tickled on Cadence’s fur as she hugged her, and when the pegacorn hugged her back I only just felt the twinge of rib against lung.
“I don’t understand,” Twilight whimpered. “I don’t understand, I do–I duh–I–”
Cadance silenced her with a maternal shush and hummed a wordless tune that rang familiar to Twilight–one that stretched back years into her memory. Without stopping, Cadance looked up and shook her head, and I heard Celestia and Shining Armor retreat further back into the throne room. Twilight’s hug grew even tighter as Cadance kept humming.
“You cannot protect her,” Celestia declared coldly. “Not by yourself.”
Twilight clung even more tightly to Cadance, and the pink pegacorn gave her a comforting little nuzzle. “Twilight, sweetie? She’s right. I need your help here.”
Twilight trembled against her protector. “I can’t. I–she hurt me...”
Cadance smiled gently down at her. “Twilight...I’m so sorry.” Cadance’s horn glowed again, and an all-too-familiar little silver coin appeared. “I brought this for you, just in case you needed it. All you have to do is take it, and all your injuries will heal. Just take the coin, and you’ll be strong enough to stop her from ever hurting you again.”
Twilight almost took the coin. I didn’t blame her; the three Discorded ponies had tossed together one hell of a nasty setup. It was a classic ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, except done with enough of an evil twist to it to catch anyone off guard. Leave Twilight scared, hurt, and on the verge of death, then offer her comfort and safety. All she had to do to secure it was pick up a single little coin. On some level Twilight had to know what the coin was. Even if Discord had erased her memory of the Denarii, the coins had an aura to them, something a magic adept like Twilight would notice. Even someone without a lick of magic in them could tell there was something not quite right about the coins.
But in the face of all that pain and fear, nobody could blame her if she took the coin anyway. It was the only thing that could save her from more suffering at Celestia’s hooves. That’s how the Denarians get you; they put you in a bad situation and try to convince you that the coin is your only way out. You know taking the coin is wrong, but you’re desperate enough to go for it anyway. It’s just a coin; what harm could it do? Even if it’s an evil coin, you could always toss it aside later, once you were safe. It wasn’t really a deal with the devil, just a temporary little indiscretion to get out of a bad spot.
It’s easy to rationalize your way into picking up a red lightsaber. Putting it back down again is a lot harder. I would know.
Twilight’s hoof stopped inches away from the coin. I could see her hoof wavering in hesitation.
“Take the coin,” Cadance urged her.
That was a mistake. If she’d just let Twilight keep thinking for herself, she might have given in. But instead Cadance made the same mistake the Emperor did back in the throne room on the Death Star. She pushed just a bit too hard. Enough to make Twilight stop and think for just a second about why Cadance was so eager for her to take this coin, and why Celestia and Shining Armor were just sitting back and giving her time to pick up this powerful magical artifact.
Twilight pulled her hoof away and looked up at Cadance. She didn’t say anything, but I could guess exactly what was going through her mind. Et tu, Cadance?
“Twilight, Twilight...” Cadance’s warm maternal expression melted into a mask of cold indifference, and the pain of Twilight’s injuries returned in full force as she was thrown backwards. “I always thought you would go places in life, but it seems you can’t see past something as shallow as petty doubts.”
Twilight scrambled backwards only to run into a familiar pink barrier; Shining Armor looked down on her, his face the sculpted image of impassiveness. She shoved back against him only for her broken limb to scream in protest. Celestia’s visage filled her gaze as she rolled away from her brother, and even from her gaze on the ground there was no mistaking the pegacorn’s frown.
“So be it. We will find another way.”
Celestia stepped forward, and the pegacorn’s horn flashed. I felt a sickening jerk of disorientation through Twilight’s body.
And then Twilight Sparkle was on the moon.
I returned to my body and staggered off the bed. Despite my best efforts, I didn’t manage to make it to the chamberpot before I emptied the contents of my stomach.
Once I was done, I turned around to face Twilight. The unicorn was in tears once more. “There! Now you know everything! Are you happy now?”
I wanted to say something to comfort her, but there are no words that can fix that kind of pain. So I didn’t bother with words. I just held her, and let her cry on my shoulder. Even if it felt like it wasn’t nearly enough, it was better than doing nothing.
After several minutes Twilight finally cried herself out. “What am I supposed to do now?” the unicorn moaned.
“I can’t make the pain go away. God, I wish I could, but I can’t.” She was still holding onto me, taking whatever shred of comfort I could offer. Twilight was damaged. Horribly so. It would take years for her to recover from what had happened to her. Maybe even her whole life.
We didn’t have years for her to heal. Discord and Nicky were already making their move. I couldn’t go around snapping every single pony free from the laws of fictionland. Even if I could, that would just be treating the symptom while the disease raged on. That’s not to mention that team evil was probably up to a lot worse than just messing around with cartoon-land.
Twilight didn’t have time to heal. If we were gonna stop Discord, I needed her functional right now. There was a way to do that. It was probably the kind of thing that would get any decent psychologist out for my blood, and it might even make Twilight worse in the long term, but it would get her up and running in the short term. Long term damage didn’t matter if we all ended up dead or worse in the short term.
“I know what you can do, Twilight Sparkle.” The unicorn looked up at me, her eyes full of desperate, innocent hope. Hope I was going to take advantage of, to remake Twilight into what I needed to save the day. “You can find the people responsible for what happened to you, and you can make them pay. Celestia, Cadance, Shining Armor, none of them were responsible for their actions. They were being controlled by Discord and Nicodemus.”
Revenge is a way of hiding from pain. As long as you’re focused on getting revenge, you don’t have to deal with the pain of what happened. I hate to say it, but that’s exactly what I needed from Twilight right now. For her to bury all her pain underneath a layer of furious determination to absolutely destroy the people responsible for what she’d gone through.
I buried my screaming conscience and pressed on. “That’s what you do. You find the people responsible for hurting you, and you hurt them back every bit as bad as they hurt you. After you do that, you make sure they can never hurt anyone again. People like Discord and Nicky won’t stop, not until someone makes them stop. Either we take them down, or they’ll put you and all your friends through hell just because they’ll get a giggle out of watching you suffer. You are Twilight Sparkle, and you aren’t going to let the bad guys get away with what they’ve done.”
Twilight considered what I’d told her and nodded very slowly. I didn’t meet her eyes; I didn’t want to risk a soul-gaze with her right now. I’d rather not know if what I told her had taken away some measure of the pony’s innocence. It wouldn’t be much compared to what Discord did to her, but I didn’t want to face the prospect that I’d taken away a little bit of her goodness and purity. Even if doing that was what it took to keep her alive.
Anger is something that’s helped me a lot over the years. It’s not a very pretty emotion, but it’s damn good when you need something to keep you going. Instead of thinking about how much you and everyone around you is hurting, you focus on going after the ones responsible for your pain. Probably not the healthiest response out there, but it keeps you alive and in the game.
The problem with anger is that–as a wise old muppet once said–if you’re not careful it can lead to hatred. Hate can do nasty things to a person. Even when it’s the ‘good’ kind of hate, like hating the bad guys for all the evil things they do. I knew an old Warden by the name of Morgan. He was a good guy, but in the century he’d spent as one the White Council’s cops and fighting against all the nasty out there in the world he had grown to hate the bad guys more and more. In the end, that hate had consumed him, and he’d started going after everyone he thought might be one of the bad guys. Then everyone he thought might turn into a bad guy one day. Then anyone who might one day have the potential to go evil at some unspecified point in the future.
He’d spent a big chunk of my life convinced I was pure evil and waiting for an excuse to lop off my head. He was one of the good guys at heart, but hate blinded him to basic reality. When I took down a warlock, he assumed I was killing off the competition. When I started a war with the Red Court to save the woman I loved, he assumed I must be working for the vamps. And ... well you get the idea.
And now I might be pushing Twilight Sparkle down that path. It was one hell of a risk and something I wasn’t proud of in the least, but I didn’t see any other way to get her back in fighting condition. No matter how bad she was hurting right now, anger and the desire for revenge would give her what she needed to get back up and take the fight to Nicodemus and Discord. I was giving the tools she needed to survive. I just had to hope they wouldn’t end up destroying her.
I passed the rest of the ponies on my way out of Twilight’s room. From how much effort all of them were putting into looking completely casual and disinterested, I suspect they’d been doing something else a couple seconds ago. “So, I take it you girls were listening in?”
“Of course not,” Rainbow Dash immediately reassured me with the most picture-perfect innocent look on her face.
“A lady does not eavesdrop,” Rarity answered primly.
“Nopey-dopey,” Pinkie agreed while tucking a ridiculously huge hearing horn behind her back.
Fluttershy opted for a high-pitched squeak proclaiming her innocence.
Sadly for the pony conspirators, there was a weak link in their group. I turned to the pony entrusted with the Element of Honesty. “Applejack?”
“Er...” The farmer didn’t even have to say anything. The guilt was written so plainly on her face that you’d have to be blind not to see it. The other four ponies sighed and applied hoof to face.
I tsked at them and lamented the fact that I had no finger to wave admonishingly. “And after all the talk you gave me about the importance of respecting Twilight’s privacy too. Shame.” The ponies all had the good grace to look just a little bit abashed at my chiding. After giving them a couple seconds to stew, I stepped aside and gestured toward Twilight’s door. “She could probably use some friends to talk to right now.”
Giving the girls a bit more friend-time bonding would help. I didn’t think tossing souls and free will their way would mess up their connection to the Elements of Harmony, but it didn’t hurt to make sure the bond was still going strong after the change-up. After everything we’d gone through to get the Elements and the ponies who used them back, the last thing we needed was for them to stop working.
Speaking of, we still needed to get the Elements themselves. While the ponies who were going to use them kept themselves busy with their girl-bonding, I headed for the throne room to have another word with the Princesses.
I didn’t waste any time getting straight to the point. “You don’t have a week; Discord’s found a way to hit Equestria from Earth. He tried getting Pinkie Pie, and I was barely able to stop him.” I made a point of leaving out the details; I didn’t want to embarrass Pinkie, especially after all the trouble that came from revealing what happened while Fluttershy was unwillingly working for Team Evil. Just knowing that Discord attacked Pinkie Pie should be enough.
“I can definitely protect the girls from what he’s doing, but anything beyond that is pretty iffy.” Well, there were probably some other ponies I might be able to equip with souls, but we were on something of a tight schedule here and I only had so much soul to spare. Especially since I needed my soul for any Soulfire I might need to sling at Nicky and company. Plus, you know, the usual things people do with their souls.
I trotted right up to the twin thrones and stood before the two ruling princesses. “The only way to keep Discord from coming after you is to go to Earth and take him down, so I need you to hand over the Elements and let me take the girls to stop him while there’s still an Equestria left to save.”
Celestia hesitated, and I saw something on her face I doubted many of her subjects had ever seen before. Uncertainty and fear. I guess it made sense, really: Through good times and bad, she’d kept her subjects safe for more than a thousand years. But Discord had beaten her. No, he’d done worse than that. He’d turned her against everything she stood for. That kind of defeat could shake anyone’s confidence.
Toss on an extra helping of guilt for all the things she’d done while under Discord’s control then season with a little nervousness over being stripped of her full power, and it was no wonder Celestia wanted to turtle up and play it safe. The idea of facing Discord again, facing the possibility of that he could break her once more...
Twilight’s damage might have been the most obvious, but she wasn’t the only one carrying scars from what Discord had done.
I wasn’t the only one to notice Celestia’s distress. I was suddenly grateful that the only ponies in the room were Celestia, Luna, Shining Armor, Cadance, and Derpy. I know a thing or two about how much trouble can come from exposing someone’s weaknesses in public. Celestia was going to have a hard enough time dealing with things as it was; the last thing she needed was for all her subjects to know how badly she was handling her situation.
I guess it was a good thing there were two royal sisters to run the show. Luna stepped up to the plate for her sister. She took a deep breath, and I put my hooves over my ears to be safe. “IN LIGHT OF THE DIRE NEWS BROUGHT BEFORE US BY OUR FAITHFUL ALLY HARRY DRESDEN, WE BELIEVE IT WOULD BE PRUDENT IF HE AND THE BEARERS OF HARMONY TRAVELLED TO HIS WORLD TO END THE THREAT OF DISCORD AND HIS ALLIES, THE ORDER OF THE BLACKENED DENARIUS. DOES ANYPONY HERE KNOW OF ANY REASON WE SHOULD NOT FOLLOW THIS COURSE OF ACTION?”
For a moment it looked like Celestia was going to say something, but she caught herself with her mouth halfway open and kept her peace. I had a feeling that for the next while the Princess of the Night would be the one running the show in Equestria, until Celestia had some time to deal with what had happened. That should make for some interesting changes.
To the relief of everyone present, The Princess of the Night opted to switch to speaking at a normal volume level. “Due to the ongoing need to restore order after the recent unpleasantness and organize a force for the venture to Earth, we must remain in Equestria for the moment. However, we have every intention of aiding you directly at the earliest possible opportunity.” Luna turned to her wall-eyed spymaster. “Valiant Derpy Hooves, thou shalt accompany Harry Dresden and the Bearers of Harmony upon this quest, and do all that is within thy power to aid them. Wouldst thou accept this quest?”
Derpy accepted her Princess’ orders, and a minute later the two of us were off to the vault to pick up the Elements. I guess if Derpy was going with us she needed a soul too to stop any nasty shenanigans on Discord’s part. I normally would’ve preferred to keep the group as small as possible, but Derpy was a pretty valuable pony to have along.
Besides, I owed her a muffin.