Thirty years in office and yet Twilight still marveled at the well-oiled machine of state Celestia and Luna had left behind. Most things worked without her direct intervention, leaving her free to deal with whatever fell outside the norm personally.
Truly a superbly engineered bureaucratic construct.
Which added to the mystery of why the laws contained in the pile of dusty books heaped on her desk were still part of it. The rules detailed in these books were abstruse, the language was archaic, and the formulation appeared to be willfully obtuse. Decrees referred to decrees that referred back to the first ones, and many invoked traditions she had never heard of and which had probably been forgotten by anyone younger than a millennium anyway.
Plus, he words for 'dashing', 'awesome', and 'death-defying' had been used far too much for anything not written by Rainbow Dash or Scootaloo.
Twilight smiled. She had a riddle on her hooves, one that could require time-travel and certainly would require tons of research through ancient tomes and obscure scholarly publications.
It sounded like a lovely evening reminiscent of her younger days.
The pop of teleportation and subsequent knocking at her door destroyed that plan. As well-designed as the system was, it still needed her attention now and then, and teleportation at that time in the evening meant something pressing had come up. "Come in, Fine Grain."
She closed the book and looked up.
It wasn't her secretary standing in the door.
Celestia had put on some muscle in the last few decades. It looked like life on the coast suited her. "Princess Twilight, still studying well into the night? I thought you would have learned to pace yourself better at this point."
"Why would you think that? She's your student. It's a miracle and a testimony to her character that she's as well adjusted as she is." Luna followed along, trailing the smell of fish. Aside from that, she hadn't changed at all.
"Luna! Celestia! What a pleasant surprise!" Twilight stood up and moved to hug the alicorns. "I didn't expect a visit. What brings you here? I hope nothing bad."
"No, nothing bad." Celestia nuzzled her. "My, have you grown some more? I swear, you’re going to be able to pat me on the head pretty soon."
"I'm waiting for that day,” Luna interjected. “It shall be wondrous, a tale the bards shall declaim for ages. Twilight, promise me you will invite me to it."
Twilight snickered. "I promise I will have a proper ceremony for it. Can I offer you something? Should I call for some tea? How's the ship coming along?"
"No, thank you. We had tea at home before coming here. As for the ship, it's going great. You only properly get a feeling for how much naval technology has changed once you try it out for yourself. So much to learn, it's wonderful." Celestia stepped back. There was some kind of nervous energy in her. "Oh, and we're rather in a hurry."
Luna nodded. "Yes, we came as soon as we knew what we had to do. We just thought to pop in as a professional courtesy."
The park was empty. Any families that had gone out for a walk in the warm summer night had just been ushered out by a group of guards with the promise that the Princess would personally explain what was going on later.
Twilight thought that would be nice, mostly because by then she would have an idea of what that was.
Now it was just her, Celestia, Luna, a smattering of guards, a grumbling Captain Gallus, King Thorax along with a massive amount of changelings, and the petrified forms of Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow.
On second consideration, empty maybe wasn't the right word to describe the park.
"So, is there any hope of getting a few more details from you, Celestia?"
Celestia smiled in that sweet and slightly enigmatic way Twilight had come to know.
"I take that as a no." Twilight sighed. "Old habits, or do you have a good reason for not telling?"
Pegasi in armor flew in high circles above the park. Luna glanced up. "We have good reasons. There's also no need for, well—" She gestured to a pair of yaks covered in a hardware store’s worth of metal. "—all this."
"Lil' Cheese is graduating, and I have no intention of having Pinkie miss it. So if this can't wait and if I can't have my dearest friends used to this kind of thing here with me, then at least I can get a little peace of mind." The third unicorn shield-squad erected a wall of energy around the park.
"Don't worry, Princess. We understand. You have responsibilities and you take them seriously." Celestia looked sideways to King Thorax. "I think that should be enough, though. Can we proceed?"
Twilight took a deep breath and nodded.
Light shone from Celestia's and Luna's horns as they closed their eyes. Magic pulsed in the air, giving it almost a viscous quality. And then an instant later, it expanded in a wave, washing over guards, grass, and the statue
For a moment the world stood still.
And then it filled with angry screeching and furious shouting as Chrysalis, Cozy Glow, and Tirek broke free.
The ex-queen of the changelings hissed, "Hah! You couldn't contain us. We will..."
The ex-queen of the changelings paused.
Cozy Glow flitted behind Tirek and poked her head out. "What are you waiting for?"
Multiple spells formed and interlocked in Twilight's mind in the silence that followed. Something strange was happening. Chrysalis was standing still, her head just tilting as if she was listening for something. Celestia and Luna simply stood there observing, neutral expressions on their faces.
Somewhere in the distance, crickets sang their song. Chrysalis lifted her head and said, "It's gone. It's... Is it really, truly gone?"
"What's going on?" Tirek took a step forward. "Chrys—"
A black tendril had shot out from Chrysalis and wrapped around Tirek's head, gagging him. "Shut up." Chrysalis looked around. "It's over. It’s over."
Twilight blinked. "Wha—"
Two moments had defined Twilight's relationship with speed. The first had been meeting Rainbow Dash, and the second had been when her ascension had kicked in completely and she had planted herself face-first against one of the marble walls of the palace. When Chrysalis moved it became Twilight’s third moment of enlightenment regarding the idea of speed.
Chrysalis hadn't moved fast. She had started melting sideways one instant, and the next she was in front of Luna and Celestia, forelegs reaching out, falling forwards.
There had been no in-between, Twilight was certain of that as the spells she had prepared finalized themselves into reality. The sisters weren't moving, they were not defending themselves. The Princess had to intervene.
Talent is, once the surface appearance of easy success is scraped away, a combination of hard work and opportunity. Twilight had been one of the most talented unicorns in generations. The decades since then had offered just more opportunities and time, and it showed in the ray of pure magic that shot from her horn towards Chrysalis. It was an essential expression of function over form. Simple, fast, not a tenth of a thaum wasted. It burned the air, raced forward, and then hit a golden shield, ricocheted off, shattered the shield the guards had erected, and vaporized a distant mountain peak.
Twilight blinked.
Under a shining, golden dome of Celestia's magic, Chrysalis hugged the sisters, who nuzzled her back.
There was a vein on Twilight's temple which, for an instant, bulged. It hadn't done that for a while. She would have to work on it. Later.
As Celestia, Luna, and Chrysalis huddled together, quietly chatted, hugged each other every now and then, and shared a whole palette of affectionate gestures, the rest of the plaza stood in a silent stupor. Tirek had stopped trying to remove the black substance from his mouth, Cozy Glow had frozen mid-step in her attempt to sneak away, and Captain Gallus, who had been ready to stop the escape by standing right in front of her, looked at the scene with his beak open.
No, not everyone had been bamboozled. The changelings were smiling and buzzing happily.
Right, time to be Princess-y. Head straight up, chest out, regal demeanor. Twilight walked over the trio and channeled Miss Harshwhinny's voice as best she could. "We will now have that cup of tea, and then I expect an explanation. A clear one. Without knowing smiles."
Traditions happen when ponies keep doing things after having forgotten the reason for them. In that sense, making tea wasn't a tradition at the palace. The reason why sat right across Twilight at the table and was animatedly chatting with a creature the Princess had thought of as a menace and the enemy for decades.
Turned out that enemy was a sleight of hoof. The jury was still out on the menace part.
The masterfully brewed tea stood cold in front of Twilight. "So, let me see if I understood everything. You—" She pointed her hoof at Chrysalis, cutting down the chattering, "—should eat the world but had too much fun in it and so you put up a... Let's call it a charade. You put up a millennium-and-a-half-long charade to keep your parent from finding out that you weren't eating well and growing up. And that meant behaving like a villain without ever truly winning."
Chrysalis shoved another scone into her mouth—number eighty-nine to be precise—and nodded.
"And to do this you had the help of your adoptive—" Twilight’s hoof moved to a radiantly smiling Celestia and a grinning Luna. "—sisters? The Old Ponish word you used doesn't quite translate."
Luna put her cup down. "‘Sisters’ is good. The old word doesn't make sense today and the subtleties are only important for formalities anyway."
"Right. So you've been this hidden power secretly in cahoots with Celestia and Luna. Care to explain a couple of things from back then?"
"If I can, I will. All those time-related shenanigans with Starlight have left a wonderful mess around this reality and at this point, Progenitor can't look through it. Won't be able to for at least a dozen millennia, and by then there should be enough immortals around as to not matter. I see no need for secrecy. So—" Chrysalis glanced over to Celestia and Luna, both smiling and waving for her to go on. "—ask away, I guess."
"Splendid. Let's start with Tirek."
"After the whole magic-eating plague, Tirek got better at it and learned to steal magic for himself. We befriended Scorpan. I'm the grey pony in the pictures. Starswirl was too cranky and spell-happy for that. The rest went down as told in the stories."
Twilight dropped another sugar cube in her cold tea and stirred it with the spoon. "Why are all the stories about the past so vague?"
"Cults. Well, cults, secret societies, secret organizations of the 'will do what has to be done and the princess hasn't the stomach to do' persuasion. Leave a hint that there's some unknown force in the background and they'll come up like mushrooms after a rainy day." Chrysalis' voice oozed contempt.
It was impressive. Twilight hadn't heard that much disgust since Rarity had to deal with Flim Flam Flash Fashion. "Uhm, was that a common problem?"
Celestia snickered. "Oh Princess, you have no idea. We let out those ponies Chryssi had shaved and lo and behold, six months later they formed the 'Children of the Changeling Queen'. Chryssi had to throw worshipping ponies out of her home for centuries. We never understood how they managed to find her every time."
"After that, we had the 'Sentinels'". A cookie flew up to Luna. "Tried to assassinate Chryssi a couple of times. That was manageable. When they tried with Torch, on the other hoof, it became really messy trying to get them back unchewed."
The groan which escaped from Chryssi told of centuries of headaches. "Right, then there were the 'Loyalists', the 'Most Excellent Unicorns', 'The Unicorns Most Excellent', 'The Truly Excellent Ponies', and the 'Really Excellent Unicorns of Excellency' which, for some reasons, accepted just pegasi and yaks. Look, Tia keeps a list somewhere."
"I do!" With a pop, an old book, bookmarks and strings popping out by the dozens, materialized at Celestia's side. "We even have bets on which old society will be restored next. I have three barrels of candied hibiscus on 'Guardians of Shadows'." She leaned toward Twilight and whispered. "There's always a 'Guardians of Shadows’. Consider it a tip in case you want to bet on something."
Twilight massaged her temple. "I'll consider it. Look, you don't seem to take this seriously."
"It's not." Luna put her half-eaten cookie down. "It's something you can't stop and you'll have to manage. It just stops being serious after the twentieth time it happens."
"Right. We'll talk about it some more another time. So, Sombra?"
Chrysalis sighed. "Tried to stop it without a war. Lulu and Tia kept up pressure, I kept smuggling ponies out in the meanwhile. Sombra was nasty and ready to do the unthinkable. His disappearing with the Crystal Empire was a failure, but at least it wasn't the worst case. When Discord brought him back it took everything for me to not eat him."
"And Discord?"
"I couldn't get at him directly. He's one of the fundamental forces of the world embodied as a jerk."
Celestia put her book back wherever she had pulled it from. "If Chryssi got at him, the world would have started falling apart in some way or another. Lulu and I had to work hard to rein him in and stop him from learning the truth."
"And before you ask, when I fell to the Nightmare, Chryssi's parent was already here-ish. She couldn't be as close to us as before. It...It was hard for me. Doesn't justify what came later, that's all on me, but, yeah..."
Chryss—Chrysalis and Celestia shuffled to Luna and hugged her.
It looked so sincere, it gave Twilight a bit of hope. It also made the next question so much harder to ask. "Right, then—" Twilight took a deep breath. "—how much of what I and my friends did was real?"
Chrysalis shot forward, hooves on the table, earthenware trembling and almost tipping over. "Everything! What you did was amazing, and I never helped you even once. I couldn't, I was under close scrutiny. And—and when we fought? I held back a bit, but you were great! The first time, at your brother's wedding? Things went well for me, and that wasn't the plan. I was scared I would win, even more so when that drama-queen—" She pointed at a grinning Celestia sipping her tea. "—lost!"
"I was certain the Princess would come through." A little parade of muffins floated up to Celestia. "And she and Cadance deserved the chance to get some flank-kicking done. It was horrible, there had to be some form of closure."
"That's wonderful to hear." Twilight ground her teeth. "My brother was traumatized for years. I'm glad you take it in such a good spirit."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. Twilight brought up her cup and sipped. The tea was cold and bitter. Maybe some more sugar would salvage it.
"May I?" Celestia's voice was soft, caring, bringing Twilight back to a time of books read well into the night under her blanket. A golden glow surrounded her cup and an instant later a wisp of aromatic steam rose from it.
Chrysalis sounded somber as she said, "I'm truly sorry for how things developed with your brother. It all went out of control, and I was forced to keep up appearances. I'm not sure I could have done things differently, but it was too important that I at least faked some kind of ruthlessness and competence. I hope I'll be able to apologize personally, but—" She took a deep breath. "—if you decide to bring me to justice for that, I will not resist."
The tea tasted as if it had just been brewed. There was a metaphor in there, probably. Twilight sighed and put her cup down. "I will have to think about it. What you told me paints a picture that is... It's not simple, I suppose. I thank you for having saved the world, I guess. The methods, though, need to be examined." There were still traces of the spell on Twilight's cup. It was simple and elegant. Twilight would have to meditate a bit on it, maybe there was room for improvement. "I suppose that when you worked with Tirek and Cozy Glow, things went out of control again."
"More or less. They're keen observers. I couldn't really sabotage the operation without them knowing, and then they would have made a scene which Progenitor would notice." Chrysalis leaned on Luna. "I just managed to get a quick chat with Lulu right after your friends fled. After that, things got worse. It was harrowing. Getting petrified and sitting out the last few years was a relief."
Twilight blinked. "Really? That's quite a surprise. You looked truly furious and nasty. But I suppose you've done this for quite some time."
"And I'm a much better actress than she is." Chrysalis' accusing hoof pointed at Celestia and was met with a harumph. "Still oversells it. One would think that after a couple of millennia she would learn, but no. If it isn't some over-the-top drama involving swords and boasting from the top of a mast then she can't sell it."
Flashbacks from a simple theater production in Ponyville and three lines of spoken dialog ran through Twilight's mind. Decades had passed, yet the pain to her artistic sensibilities was still real. "I see..."
Luna twirled a bitten cookie on the plate. "Oh, by the way, we do admire how you finally got all the other species into Equestria. The School of Friendship was a touch of genius."
"Actually, from what you told me, when you were foals there seemed to be a lot more non-ponies around than when I was young. What happened?"
Celestia rolled her eyes. "As with many other things, Discord happened. After we defeated him everybody wanted to live among the least possible amount of variety."
"That was something that held up for a lot of time,” said Luna. “When I went through their dreams, it was obvious that it was the same for everybody. We didn't want to force things, and then, well..."
A sad smile crept across Chrysalis' face. "Inertia is powerful, and change is scary. Things settled down that way, and stuff kept happening until it was clear that we couldn't do anything about it."
"You becoming Princess was what we needed." Celestia sat straight and looked Twilight right in the eyes. "You were what the world needed, and I can't even begin to tell you how proud I am."
The tea was lovely, the smell of the pastries delicious, and the night was shifting into the early morning. Twilight felt a whirlwind of different emotions. Curiosity, anger, pride, annoyance, and hope all battled for supremacy. She needed some time to put some order in her soul. "Thank you, Celestia. I'm still a bit miffed, mind you, but I think I understand why you have done what you have done. I... I'll have to think about it and it's getting late. You can stay in the palace if you want."
The three sisters exchanged glances, then Celestia stood up and lowered her head. "If you'll allow us, we would prefer to return to our home along with Chryssi. It has been a very, very long time since we could simply do that."
Chrysalis said, "If you want me to face some form of justice for what I did, I will return. But until you made that decision, I would ask you to let me go with Tia and Lulu."
Luna simply looked at Twilight with giant eyes and a soft, "Please."
Something was different. Twilight looked at the former Princesses and the apparently former menace. She wasn't sure what had changed, maybe something in the way they stood or presented themselves, but now she saw the three fillies from the story. It was weird, it was unexpected, and, most of all, it was heartwarming. She considered the possibilities, but in the end, she couldn't find it in herself to break that up, if only for the night. For the first time since the petrification was broken, Twilight smiled. "You may go."
There had been hugs and nuzzles with the alicorns and a nod to Chrysalis. As Twilight looked at them walking away, her mind was in overdrive. There were things to do, missives to write, declarations to prepare, and most importantly, a lot of stuff to talk over with her friends. Rarity would be here soonest, which meant she could look forward to an indecorous abuse of ice-cream, sparkly discussions, and some deep insights.
That didn't sound too bad.
Celestia sounded giddy as she said, "So, remember that plan we had? Well, I almost finished building us a ship."
Her other friends could be there the day after, probably. Twilight wouldn't retell the whole story, but they had to know it if they were to give her some advice. If she had to guess, in the end, it would come down to some form of reparations. Considering the issue, there was every chance they would be emotional ones.
Chrysalis did a little dance as they turned the corner. Her voice echoed down the corridor, barely audible at that point. "So we can finally start our life of piracy?"
The most surprising comment would come from Pinkie. It always did, and in the end—
Twilight blinked, then shouted, "Wait, what?!"
Celestia put down the cup and contemplated it for a while. It looked like tea. She was sure of that. Well, almost sure. "Luna? Did tea taste like that?"
Her sister looked up from her own bowl of swirling oar'tha and raised an eyebrow. "Probably? You insisted on having it."
A frown drifted across Celestia's face. "It's just... I liked tea a lot. I drank it all the time. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. It has been a while since I had it."
"About a billion four hundred sixty-three million seven-hundred twenty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-two years." Chrysalis melted out from the walls of the cozy room. "And that tea is as perfect as it's possible to have it. I remember it."
Celestia pushed the cup a bit, watching the liquid inside slosh and strike circles going back and forth. "Hmmm, then maybe I've changed."
Sparkling strings hung from Luna's chin as she slurped down the last of the oar'tha. She passed a hoof in front of her mouth and they dissolved in little clouds of magic. "Obviously you changed. I changed, Chryssi changed. Everyone and everything changes."
"Well, it's tiring. Fun, I concede that, but tiring." Celestia stood up and stretched. "Oh, well, no more of that. Is everything ready?"
Chrysalis nodded. "Yes, sorry if it took so long. You know, you could have gone along with the others."
"Don't be silly." Luna waved her hoof. "We wouldn't leave you alone right now. We're still sisters. So, have you had enough to eat?"
"Yeah, found another couple of dead universes. Sad little things, not very tasty, but they'll do."
The walls were covered in wooden panels with crystals emitting a soft light embedded between them. Celestia put a hoof on the wood. It was a lie. No, not a lie, not at this point, but it still was not what it seemed. It reminded her of something from a long time ago, but she couldn't say exactly what. "What comes now?"
"Something new. One of your students gave me an idea. Well, not directly. But meeting her meant I got the idea. Remember when I tried to get through the mirror and it felt like when you poke your liver through your spleen? Anyway, there'll be an end and then a new beginning, and this time it will be safe from my family ever after; they won't dare try and eat me." Chrysalis put a hoof on Celestia's shoulder. "Do you need more time? Can I do something for you?"
"This is the last room in existence, right? Everything else is just you, isn't it?"
Chrysalis leaned forward and hugged Celestia. "Yes."
"Then there's not much sense in waiting any longer. The world is tired. It’s been tired for a long time. And me? Memories carry a weight. I'm tired too. I'm really curious about what will come and I trust you'll do a good job. Just, this time, maybe try to keep it a bit simpler. I could do without all the apocalypses."
"I will do my best." Chrysalis nuzzled Celestia, then raised her head. "Luna, are you ready?"
"As ready as I will be. Will we meet again?"
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
The last giggle escaped Celestia. "We did good, didn't we? In the end, we beat the hunger."
Chryssi reached out to her sisters and hugged them. "See you later."
And then there was nothing.
Celestia liked fairy tales, the older and gruesomer the better. She considered herself far savvier than those girls in the stories, which was why she was exploring the woods with a good, solid stick in her hand. As far as she was concerned, that would solve most if not all the problems she could encounter, starting from sneaky wolves up to monsters lurking in the shadows. A whack of the stick and the sharpness of her wit were an unbeatable combo. And if that wasn't enough for whatever mysterious reason, she could trade in her little sister. She had just to convince the monsters to let her go home to get Luna, but that shouldn't be that hard.
Today she would finally finish exploring down the brook. And then—
Celestia froze. There was something, a sound, a... a girl crying?
Stick hold tight in her hands, Celestia crept forward. The trees opened up and there was the brook. And near the brook, sitting on a rock, was a small, crying girl.
A quick look around showed no signs of wolves, witches, or other monsters. Celestia stepped forward and called out, "Hello?"
The girl flinched and turned around. She had long, messy aqua-green hair and black skin. Tears marred her face and she raised her fists to wipe them away. "Hello."
Celestia walked up to the girl, all the while never losing track of her surroundings. "What happened? Why are you crying?"
"I--I'm lost, I think."
The girl didn't look like a mermaid or a spirit. Celestia, at this point, was pretty sure the girl was genuine. "Are there witches or fairies around?"
"I don't think so." The girl looked around. "Uhm, are there witches?"
"Maybe, one can't even be sure that there aren't witches. I'm Celestia, what's your name?"
The scrunch on the girl's face was adorable. "I...I think I'm Chrysalis."
Celestia relaxed her grip on the stick and held out her hand. "Nice to meet you. I think I can help you get not-lost. Wanna come with me?"
~Fin~