I groaned pathetically, emptying my stomach out for what felt like the third time within the hour. Probably because it was already the third time I threw my breakfast up. Liz stroked my mane comfortingly as I whined, feeling another barely digested piece come back up.
For whatever reason, for the first time in a thousand years (give or take), I was sick. Not only physically sick but also sick of being sick. I really don’t like feeling so miserable that I wanted to stab myself with Remorse. Is this what mortals have to endure? I can barely remember the times I had been sick in my past life, and if this was any indication, I don’t ever want to remember. Heck, that time with the timberwolves was more pleasant!
The past month and a half have been Tartarus on my nerves... and now I have to deal with this, too? Throwing up as soon as I eat something was really unpleasant and sometimes I even woke up in the night, barely making it to the toilet in time before ridding my stomach of all contents.
I've practically been living on crackers, fruit, and porridge since this started happening to me and my stomach didn’t appreciate it one bit. If I had to choose between the hangover of Luna’s and my drunken escapade a while back and this? I would take the hangover a hundred times over and over. I would so take the hangover, I thought blearily as my stomach churned again, protesting vehemently against the contents within it. I really shouldn’t have forced my breakfast down my throat, going mad in hunger.
To be honest, I also don’t remember a time when I had ever been this hungry. Sometimes I had gone without food for weeks and it didn’t feel like this. Granted, I kinda substituted everything with magic at the time just to see what would happen, but it never felt as bad as I was feeling right now and I had no intention to try substituting food with magic again. Not only because it wouldn’t change anything about my current situation as it would basically keep my body in this miserable state, but also because doing that had... side effects. The addicting kind.
The body wasn’t meant to live on mana alone, and at some point, you would start feeling withdrawal from not feeding your body more (providing the parts of your body arcane energy where it had no right to be, that is). It wasn’t a proud moment in my life (or Luna’s, for that matter). I blame it on curiosity, boredom, and a particularly bad time when we had almost been lost in our grief of losing Tia.
Haah... nopony said we couldn't be incredibly stupid from time to time. If anything, we had all the time in the world to commit the stupidest acts ponykind could be capable of. While those times were practically a ‘once in a lifetime’ occurrence for regular mortals, there was at least one such idiotic event every century or so where we got it into our heads that it would be a great idea to try out something that would prove itself to be amazingly brainless in hindsight.
Like... drinking so much alcohol one would have expected us to be in a comatose state for a few decades at least. Maybe this nausea was just a side-effect of burning through all of that poison and I was now paying the price for my mistakes quite heavily with the inability to keep anything down.
It was quite the predicament, wasn’t it? Feeling extremely hungry but not being able to stomach it. And to make it even more confusing, I wasn’t having any other symptoms other than nausea and tiredness while Luna was entirely unaffected. One would think I’m pregnant with these... symptoms...
That’s... no. No, that's just ridiculous, Summer. You can't be pregnant. It’s impossible. I know for sure I would never cast the spell so callously, and aside from that, I wasn’t even in heat this year. How could I have been, after all? Not after I was trapped for so long on Remnant. And my period was long over before I returned to Equestria, there's no way a human egg cell stuck around for that long (not that I know how long one of those sticks around for).
It's utterly impossible. I couldn’t be pregnant, there's no way. Nuh-uh. No. I'm not pregnant, even though I kinda want to pretend for a while longer and feel all giddy and happy... think up some cute names for a filly or a colt... decorate a room all nice and cozy for them (while avoiding the color pink and baby blue at all costs)... but no, that would be irresponsible of me. I am not pregnant, end of story.
Especially now of all times, damnit. I couldn’t be pregnant and bring a foal into the world when Platinum was just about to be released in a few short years. Not to mention that Luna and I are siblings, I can’t possibly be pregnant with her foal. We would never risk that. Never. Definitely not me. Absolutely, under no circumstances, ever.
I was the one that had vehemently argued against making incest legal in fear of exactly this situation. I couldn’t be pregnant with Luna’s foal, what kind of role model would I be, then?! I would be one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of Equestria for creating the modern version of an ancient law and then immediately breaking it afterward!
So... why did it feel like I was looking for excuses right now? I should just go to a doctor and have them check me to make sure. I’ll know for certain then. Besides, I’m sure it’s just some stupid flu, so what was there to worry about? Everything is going to be fine. Stop being such a worry-wart, you stupid old hag.
Chrysalis helped me move back to the bed once I felt like there was nothing left in my stomach to expel and I asked her if she would be so kind to send for the royal physician, feeling far too tired to make the short journey to the infirmary right now.
Let’s hope they won’t panic like headless chickens because one of their princesses was feeling a little bit ill. After all, there was no reason to panic. Definitely not.
Yep. There's totally nothing wrong with me. I'm just feeling a bit under the weather, no cause for concern. Probably.
...maybe?
I mean, I was feeling a bit fearful of what they would say to me, but that doesn’t mean I should begin to lose it myself. I have dealt with worse than some nausea, so there really was no reason to go into hysterics over conjectures. And even if I was pregnant (which is totally ridiculous, ah ha ha hah haah...), I could figure something out, right? Right..? Right.
Besides... the thought of having a little filly or colt with Luna... we've wondered about the possibility for a couple of centuries and I certainly liked the thought of it. So much so that I had to remind myself one too many times that we couldn’t ever do that. I didn’t want my offspring to suffer for giving in to this little weakness of mine, I couldn’t hurt them like that before they were even born.
Being pregnant due to incest... the chances of the foal even surviving until birth didn’t bode well for them. My magic is incredibly powerful, even if I did 'that' with a mortal, chances would be that my foal would surge during pregnancy. With Luna as the... well, 'sire', I guess... there was a high chance I would lose my foal before it could even see the light of my sun. I... I just cannot be pregnant. I don’t want that to happen. To be at fault for the death of an innocent little filly or colt.
But... what do I do if I am actually pregnant? What could I even do? Would it be kinder to... end it before it got to a point of no return? I... no. That feels so incredibly wrong. I'm already a month or so into the pregnancy (if I am indeed pregnant... which I'm not, but still, for the sake of the argument, let's pretend I am), I would have at most four more months to decide. But... getting an abortion because I feared the pregnancy wouldn't be safe... how much does that differ from letting the pregnancy take its course? I would be taking away their chance to live solely because I was already giving up on them, my own child, instead of giving them a chance, however slim it might seem. Taking the easy route... it would go against everything I believed in and that I couldn’t do.
So then, what should I do? Doing nothing was also not an option, feeling just as wrong. I was pretty sure the chances of them surging were a guarantee considering who their parents are.
Since it was rather unlikely that an unborn foal would figure out how to keep themselves from surging, I would have to find a way to do it for them. I would have to figure out a way to safely relieve them of the constant pressure of their magic building up, and I would have precious little time to do so. As in, a couple of months at best since the growth of their magical core would rapidly speed up after the fourth month.
Those were far too high odds to hope for the chance they would make it through that and nothing would happen to change that. I would be gambling on their health and that was something I couldn’t possibly do to them. I didn’t even want to entertain the thought of what would happen if I had twins instead of just one foal.
As much as I've fantasized about becoming a mother myself by giving birth, this wasn’t how I thought it would go. I could have done anything else but have sex with my sister to see my dream come true. Adopting (while not truly what I envisioned of ‘becoming a parent’, to be honest) was at least a feasible option to choose from. Cadance technically counted under ‘my child, but she is adopted after being reborn’. I didn’t have to do much to ‘re-raise’ her. Not like I would have to if I actually adopted, raising them from a little infant into the strong adult I hoped they would grow up into.
Another option would have been a donor, as much as I despised the thought (not only because it would have also posed a risk, albeit to a much lesser degree). It felt... too impersonal. My little foal would have never learned of the gracious contributor that gave them their life. At least, not if I went through the proper channels for that. Finding some random stallion off the street felt even worse to me. And asking one of my ‘non-existent’ friends would feel... weird, to say the least. I certainly wasn’t going to ask Ozpin if he wanted to help me out with my dream and he was kinda the only one I considered to be a genuine friend. Aside from Tai, that is.
Speaking of Tai, he was definitely out of the picture for consideration of donating his sperm. It would feel like a betrayal to Celestia, and that I couldn’t do. Tai wouldn’t, either, for that matter. He wouldn’t replace his Summer with me and I wouldn’t let him go down that rabbit hole, even if he wanted to. Not without good reason, i.e. his Summer giving him the blessing to do so from the grave.
So, that still left me with the question of what I should do. I have absolutely no idea. Abortion was out of the picture and getting the foal with those nigh zero odds of survival was as well. Medical and magical research would take far too long to find a solution to this predicament, so... all I had left was praying for a miracle to happen and hoping the doctor would tell me I only have the flu or something.
...yeah, that's not gonna happen, is it? I'm not that lucky. The universe loves to throw a wrench into my plans every chance that it gets. If I want my foal to survive, I would have to get creative, for better or worse.
Ugh. Why couldn't this have happened a thousand years ago, instead? Preferably before we started raising and lowering the celestial bodies and got our power boost from them. I would have been a lot more optimistic about the foal's chance to survive back then. Not that I would have been more enthusiastic about it than I was right now. If anything, I was remarkably calm, all things considered.
If one could call downright terrified 'calm', that is. Because I am the picture of serenity itself. Totally.
Once the doctor arrived in our chambers, I did everything they asked me to do, giving them every sample they could possibly need to find out what was wrong with me. Even the embarrassing kind of samples. If it helped to find out whether or not I was going to bloat up like a balloon, I was happy to fill up every type of container so they could do their research asap.
In the meanwhile, I continued with my paperwork, doing it in bed for once. Kibitz was kind enough to help me with anything that I forgot and it continued on like this for the next few days. All while I did my best to vomit out my soul, crying every time with my head above the toilet while either Luna or Liz comforted me.
Our ponies quickly found out that I was ‘ill’ and the first rumors were starting to spread. Magazines and tabloids were speculating and the nutcases of the rumor mill were already spouting off conspiracy theories about all kinds of crazy things. Some made the connection between the incest law and me, suggesting I already broke it before it officially came into effect.
I almost forgot what it felt like to have my little ponies criticize me so much (Luna, too, for that matter). It was as if Platinum was leading her little rebellion against my sister and me again. While our ponies didn’t really lose their faith in us, they were disillusioned with their idea that we were perfect. Under any other type of circumstance, I would have celebrated that.
But as I got the news from the doctor, I felt like anything but celebrating. I wanted to cry, throw insults at Luna for doing this to me, to our... I didn't even want to think about it, but here I was. I wanted to drown myself in alcohol again (something I swore to myself to never ever repeat) and simply shut out the world and suffocate in my despair. I was at a loss for words, the confirmation weighed heavier on my mind than the suspicion had.
I was pregnant and there was only one pony that could have been responsible for the foal... and that pony was my sister. I couldn’t be pregnant with Chrysalis’ offspring due to the simple fact that changelings couldn’t impregnate ponies (not for a lack of trying, mind you).
Luna was at fault for knocking me up and I didn’t talk with her for about five weeks after the doctor gave us the news. I know it was both of our fault, but I was being emotional and irrational. Far more than I usually was.
I might have thrown things at her, scorched a few training dummies, and cried at the unfairness of it all (when I felt well enough to not hang over the toilet and puke my guts out twenty-four-seven, that is). The universe was obviously punishing me for one little lapse in judgment, throwing my deepest desires right into my face and stomping all over my dreams. It was taunting me over the fact that I always wanted to carry a foal myself instead of merely cumming at the right point in time to make a baby.
Cadance spent a lot of her time over on Remnant because I was a bit... uh... unbearable to be around. I was starting to become increasingly snippy with everypony around me, even if they hadn’t done anything to warrant my wrath. I felt sorta-ish bad about that, but I was unable to bring myself to care. I was in my ‘I hate the universe’ mood and nopony would be able to bring me out of it.
The nausea also kept getting worse on some days. So much so that even the sight of food left me dry heaving. It was during that time that I begged Luna to do something, anything to make me feel better. I didn’t care that I was feeling like this because of her, I wanted my damn wife back after I almost alienated her with my behavior.
Suffice to say, I was a wreck halfway through the third month of my pregnancy. We used every imaginable spell and ‘remedy’ to help my pregnancy turn out as well as it could possibly go. Anything to prevent the magic from building up too fast for the growing life in my womb. We even asked Ozpin for help, hoping they would have something on Remnant that would make sure my foal would survive this, but everything they had available were experimental drugs meant to prevent birth defects.
I took them, anyway. If they helped at least marginally, I would take the risk. It couldn’t get riskier than incest-induced magic hypersensitivity already was, so it was either that or hope for a miracle.
To be honest, I had little hope of seeing my foal breathe once the time for birth came. A feeling of dread constantly followed me around and it left me even more depressed. I was so depressed that all I wanted was to hear Tia say everything would be fine. I wanted to be comforted by Luna and Celestia but with Platinum still in control... I just...
It was utterly hopeless to wish my beloved would return early. Luna stayed with me, thankfully. She decided it was far more important to try and lift my mood than to attend to her own duties. Liz wanted to do the same, but that would have meant leaving the nobles in charge of our nation and none of us wanted to trust them during these trying times.
There was one glimmer of hope, though. The portal to the alternate Equestria decided to not be a dick and stay open for once. And with it, I might have just gotten the salvation we needed in the form of an angel.
“I suppose it was only a matter of time until something like this would have happened,” Celestia sighed, running her heavenly fingers through my mane. Stupid human noodle limbs, why do they have to feel so good? “I would have expected you to be more cautious with alcohol, sister.”
“It was one time,” I moaned, just barely preventing my stomach from sending my latest try of keeping my meal where it belonged back up.
My best friend giggled at my misfortune. “Apparently it was also quite the sight from what Chrysalis told me,” she teased me and I sent her a glare, blushing furiously. “Having sex in the home of one of your subjects. You naughty girl, you.”
“Shut it, Tia,” I muttered. While she only resembled my Tia in appearance... damnit. She perhaps could be just as bad as her, only for other reasons. Celestia definitely had that ‘I am a holy being, worship me’ air around her.
Her ‘divine spark’ (or whatever one wants to call it) that made her a higher being felt a lot purer to my senses. Perhaps because she was actually created by a capital-G Goddess instead of being bestowed her power after ascension like what had happened to my sisters and me (or Cadance and Ruby, I suppose). She never had to find out her purpose and earn her Cutie Mark (I’m not going to call it a Talent Mark just because she thinks it should be called that... it’s not cute enough), she was quite literally ‘born’ with it.
In a sense it was kinda sad, knowing you only ever had one choice and you had to accept it no matter what. It's no wonder her relationship with her 'creator' was kinda complicated even before her adoptive parents died.
Celestia smiled at my grouchy attitude before offering me a glass of water to rinse out my mouth after I lost the battle with my stomach. “Don’t be so pouty, dear,” she told me. “It seems to me your foal doesn’t appreciate fruits.”
“They will eat what they get,” I growled, stuffing a strawberry defiantly into my mouth, only to spit it back out into the defiled trash can. “I hate my life...”
“We’ve all been there at some point,” Tia said consolingly. “Don’t worry, you will learn to appreciate it again. Some things only seem bleak on the surface.”
“I doubt it,” I whined, retching again. I took comfort in those heavenly fingers of hers as they lightly scratched me behind the ear. If she wanted to make me jealous, she certainly achieved that. Damn those things, they feel so good~. If I had been in the form of Fallen Star, I might have started to purr from pleasure.
Tia hummed. “You’re like a big cat, you know that?” she said while smiling brightly. I glowered back at her, all the while debating whether or not I should humor her and hiss back at her like an annoyed mother cat.
“Scratch my damn ears,” I muttered instead and she shrugged, doing just that. I guess being treated like a pet cat wasn't so bad, after all. It was like she could just scratch the tension out of my body and I never wanted to go without it anymore. I really need to figure out how to make that transformation spell work based on memory instead of copying something directly. I could promote Liz to be my royal ear-scratcher, but for some reason, she doesn’t feel comfortable in human form. Or anything that isn’t quadruped, for that matter.
I could understand that somewhat, I suppose. It does feel weird standing upright on two legs. I could only guess what it must feel like for somepony that had been born as a quadruped first. The only thing that really bothered me about being a human was the lack of wings and that I never knew what to do with my arms most of the time. The memory of my male human body was all but forgotten by now, so I don’t think my discomfort with that had anything to do with why I didn't like being human anymore.
Even though I rarely used my wings, they were a comforting presence and made for very fluffy hugs. You could never go wrong with fluffy hugs, in my opinion. It was a shame that Celestia’s wings were more ghostly in nature, not being ‘corporeal’ in the strictest sense.
“Have you two been using Innocent Flower’s ‘I’m not so innocent’ spell?” Celestia asked me and I raised my eyebrow at her in confusion. That was a strange thing to say out of the blue, I had to admit. And the implications of that name sounded downright lewd to boot. “To make sure your foal survives without any major complications? I imagine the magic pressure must be hard to deal with for the little one.”
“You mean to tell me there is a spell for... ugh,” I started but was interrupted by a particularly vicious bout of nausea. If I had to pray to God for this torture to end, I would. I just want to eat something, damnit. “...that there is a spell for that?”
“Well,” Celestia began, giving me a hesitant ‘so so’ gesture with her divine, fingered appendage that should definitely be scratching my ears some more. “It’s more of an assisting spell if anything, meant to help conception. It also actually helps keep the child healthy afterward, nudging things in the right direction as they say. It’s not like it is the cure to everything, but it does help. Especially if the expecting mother accidentally drinks alcohol or similar things along those lines. It might help with your particular case, considering offspring from incest are more prone to magic surges. I can’t promise anything, though. And... this is just a warning, but you shouldn’t have sex if you do use that spell while you're pregnant.”
“Why is that..?”
“Let’s just say things happen and leave it at that,” Celestia said with a shudder and shrugged. “We are going to need a few mildly expensive ingredients, but I don’t think that is going to be too much of a problem.”
“Let me guess, that spell is popular with the nobility,” I deadpanned. Celestia smiled thinly back at me and I felt like there was only one possibility why that would be the case. “Impotence?”
“Impotence,” she muttered, rolling her eyes as she went back to scratching my ears oh-so-beautifully with those holy nails. Why does it have to feel so good~? Damn this, I’ll have to hire myself a royal ear-scratcher if she keeps doing this. “I can write you a list of everything I need to cast the spell on you if you want.”
“Anything in particular that will give us trouble?” I asked her, eyeing another strawberry warily. This time for sure. I want that strawberry, nothing is going to stop me. Not even my own child. That strawberry will stay in my stomach, damnit.
My friend frowned at me for a moment. “Nothing that is too hard to come by,” Celestia admitted before she resumed the royal petting. “Nothing truly difficult like an innocent demon’s tears, at least. You have no idea how hard those are to get.”
Huh, that... “Sounds interesting,” I hummed, chewing deliberately on the strawberry to spite my stomach. “And like an antithesis. Is there such a thing as an innocent demon?”
“Believe it or not,” Celestia said with a shrug. “Anyway, most of the ingredients can be found locally. There are some that only grow in the Everfree Forest and then there are some ingredients you better don’t know about.”
“Tia, what are you going to do to me?” I asked, slowly turning my head around to stare at her. She smiled cryptically back. “Tia...”
“Nothing you wouldn’t approve of, dear,” she told me. “Just some stonewart, poison joke pollen, mucus of a glowsnail, lust thistle oil, the petals of a fire lotus, and the blood of a virgin.”
“Really?” I sighed. “The blood of a virgin?”
“We could use the other ingredient, but I don’t think you would like the idea of that one,” Celestia said, and considering the numerous other ingredients that already sounded quite disgusting, I really don’t want to know what else there could be that would surpass all of them in their repulsiveness. How this Innocent Flower ever came up with this ritual spell, I have no idea (nor do I intend to find out). “Now, how about we talk of something a bit more pleasant? I can see you are in dire need of a change of subject.”
“Very well,” I sighed, pouting at the tray of fruits on the table in front of us. Here I had the best of the best Equestria could offer in fruits and I couldn’t keep them down... what a cruel world. Changing the topic might just be the thing to take my mind off of this injustice. “How about you tell me why you never adopted Cadance as your own?”
“Summer...” Tia sighed, giving me a miffed look that this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she proposed we talk about something different than my current predicament.
“I’m just curious,” I told her with a roll of my eyes. “If there is one person that deserves that privilege, it is definitely you. Why do you torture yourself so much?”
“Says the right one,” she muttered as she crossed her arms defensively.
“I... I won’t deny that,” I winced, shuffling awkwardly around on my cushion. “But you deserve happiness, Tia. Out of anypony I know, you are the one that has suffered the most. You’re completely alone and it pains me to see you like that.”
“Summer, I...” Celestia grumbled, frustration twisting her face as she struggled for words. She clearly agonized over this topic on a frequent basis. “I can’t. She was created by Mother, just like I was. I know it. If I’m not calling her my niece, I would have to call her my sister and you know how strange that would be? She is... I’m a few thousand years older than her! I can't just call her my child when we don’t share that bond.”
“I don’t share that bond with my daughter anymore, either,” I admitted, grimacing darkly at the thought. “That doesn’t mean we can’t still be mother and daughter to each other. Rebirth might have taken the blood bond away, but never the spiritual bond.”
Celestia let out a sigh, deflating at the same time. “That was almost poetic,” she told me with a teasing glint in her eye.
I rolled my eyes, moving tiredly back to my bed. “Tia, at least tell me you don’t keep her at an arm’s length away from you...”
Judging by how she subtly bit her lip at my remark, she did just that. I felt too tired to berate her, it was a lost cause with her anyway. Sometimes you would expect her to be a bit more mature than my sister and me, but then she does something like this. Not to mention, she was way older than me, she should know better by now.
Tia sat down beside me, looking like she just got told she couldn’t have the last cookie from the cookie jar (and I know how she looks when she begs me to make her some). “How can I allow myself to get close to her when the future looks so uncertain?”
“Don’t you think that is true for us both?” I shot back, nudging her with a tired smile on my muzzle. “Both of us know that there might exist a possibility we won’t make it through the return of our sisters, that doesn’t mean we need to shun everypony, though. You have to be there for her, Tia. Cadance has a special destiny, it wouldn’t do to let her reach it all on her own. Be her friend, if anything."
“I..." she said while chewing on her cheek as she struggled with herself. "You are right. I can't just shun her like I did with my sister. I haven't really changed all that much, have I?"
"At least you are willing to try and improve," I told her and she gave me a grateful look.
"Thank you, Summer," she said while hugging me. "If it weren't for you, I would still keep my distance from every person around me. Perhaps things would have turned out better had we known each other even earlier."
"You don't have to praise me so highly," I argued, feeling like I didn't deserve it. "I just want to see you happy. Just... don't make me talk sense into you again, okay?"
She nodded and I smiled a bit brighter as I managed to convince her of at least that much. Both of them needed each other, of that I was certain. It's a shame, though, that they won’t be what Cadance and I are to each other. I know that they never shared a bond like that in a previous life, but that does not mean they can’t still share it with each other. I’m going to take what I can get, though. Being friends with each other was a step in the right direction, everything else I could come at a later time.
“I still have an hour or so left before I have to go back to my Equestria,” Celestia began and I hummed sleepily back at her, curious what she wanted to say. “You wouldn’t be totally opposed to a massage, would you?”
“Are you... Tia, are you coming onto me?” I asked while giving her a weird look. That would be just... no. I always thought she viewed me like a sister she never had after we wormed ourselves into her closed-off heart. To think that she would start developing feelings for me that she would want to grope me...
“What..?” Celestia asked, equally as confused. “Summer, it’s a friendly massage to help you relax, you dumb horse. And by the look of it, you could use a bit of preening, too. When was the last time you properly took care of yourself?”
“Oh...” I blushed in embarrassment. Ugh. I'm quick to jump to conclusions, aren't I? I'm such a stupid old hag. Just because my Tia is a perverted idiot doesn’t mean Celestia is one, too. “I’m sorry, Tia. It's just... everything has been a bit weird lately.”
“I understand,” she smiled, nudging my wing as if to ask for permission. “Now, am I allowed to pet my little pony some more?”
“I’m not little,” I pouted. “And if you really want to annoy Liz that much, knock yourself out. Just... try to be careful with the healthy feathers.”
“I will be,” Celestia assured me before she went through the feathers of my left wing with a critical eye. “And what do you mean by 'annoy'?”
I snorted, amused. “Liz is obsessed with preening my wings,” I answered, closing my eyes with a content hum. “She can’t get enough of it, to be honest. One would think she would purposely shift into her alicorn form and back so that she can preen her wings all day long...”
“Well, I can’t fault her,” Celestia shrugged, plucking out one feather carefully. “You have such beautiful wings, I’m jealous.”
“We can always add the transformation spell to the mirror if that is what you want,” I giggled. “You can have beautiful wings like us, Tia. Join the ponies, we have cookies~.”
“Ha ha, sister,” she shot back with a deadpan voice. “I’d rather stay as I am, thank you very much. Has anyone ever told you that you have a pony obsession?”
My eyelid gave a twitch at that remark. She's the one currently treating me like her pet pony, not the other way around. Stupid Tia logic. I do not have a pony obsession because I think it's nicer being a pony.
“Learn to take a joke,” I muttered back, yawning right afterward. A nap sounds heavenly right about now. But... sleeping through a massage involving superior wriggly grabbing appendages felt like such a waste, though. Especially a massage that involves preening.
“Learn to be funny,” she teased and I felt my eyelid twitch again. I just had the strangest sense of déjà-vu and could swear I had this type of conversation with my Celestia at some point. “We both know that we are abysmally bad at humor. That’s more Lulu’s thing.”
As if summoned by the mere mention of her name, my sister entered our bed chambers. “Are you talking about me?” Luna asked and I lazily blinked my eyes, noticing that our royal physician was next to her. He was giving me one of those ‘I’m trying to figure you out, but I’m too polite to say anything’ looks and I had no doubt he would be dying of curiosity by the end of the day. Even more so with Celestia here, I could say. It doesn’t happen too often that we could visit each other so freely, the gateway between our worlds was rarely in the mood to stay open for extended periods.
“Tia thinks you’re funny,” I smiled mischievously, wincing as Celestia took out one feather with a bit too much force. “Ouch! Do I not get some leniency for being pregnant?!”
“Behave yourself, dear,” my best friend chided me as our doctor entered the room together with Lulu after a brief bit of hesitation, setting down a few tools and reagents on the nightstand afterward. Some of those were from Remnant, I could tell.
“I just need some blood and then we can do a quick check on the foal’s health,” the doctor said, moving almost methodically around as he placed a tourniquet around my arm and prepared a needle to draw some of my blood into the waiting vials. “Although, if there is something I should know, I would like to know it before I get the blood test results back.”
“Whatever do you mean, doctor?” I asked innocently, narrowing my eyes just the slightest bit at him.
“Head of research, actually,” he commented, putting another vial filled with gold-glowing blood to the side as he prepared the next one. “I’m a professor at your school, as you are no doubt well aware of.”
“You’re my doctor as long as you continue to prod me,” I argued back, feeling my mood start to become a bit more snippy. I don’t care what his occupation in my castle or school is, he is the most knowledgeable pony in this field (and a few other, less important ones, I suppose), he will have to content himself with his role as my physician for as long as I need him in that position.
He gave me a blank look at the implied threat, unimpressed. “As you wish, Your Highness,” he grunted gruffly as he finished up with the last vial of blood. “Then I’m sure you would like me to do my job to the best of my ability, am I correct?”
“What do you mean, doctor?” I asked, feigning ignorance. I swear, if he does his job sloppily out of spite, he will regret that decision. "For your sake, think very carefully about what you are going to do next..."
He raised a brow at that, seemingly unconcerned that he was dealing with an irate alicorn at the moment. He really must have guts... or no sense of self-preservation, I wasn't entirely sure with him.
“I don’t think I need to mention a certain rumor for you to start being honest with me, or do I actually need to remind you?” he asked and I fidgeted next to Tia, subtly glancing at Luna with nervousness.
“Professor Cold Hooves, you aren’t actually believing the conspiracy theories, are you?” Luna asked, taking my hint with a roll of her eyes. I could tell she was this close to just telling him and being honest with what we had done, but I’d rather keep this matter to family only. As well as Celestia and Ozpin, I suppose.
The stallion with the stone-cold poker face scoffed. “Is it a conspiracy if it is true?” he asked despite sounding like he was more than certain that his suspicion was the case. “You know, having sex in my cousin’s bedroom... one does have to wonder if he is lying to me or if you are keeping secrets from me.”
“You would take the word of your cousin over that of your princesses?” I asked, sighing as Tia continued with her ministrations while Professor Cold Hooves gave me a deadpan stare, mixing some of those reagents he brought with him together in a bowl.
“Princess Luna, Princess Summer..." he began before giving Tia a chilly look next. "And whoever you are that so brazenly touches Her Highness... I assure you that I can keep a secret,” Doctor Cold Hooves told us. He put the bowl to the side as he began to fiddle with the device Ozpin must have lent Luna at her request. “What I can’t do, though, is to do my work correctly without all of the facts available to me. So start being honest with me, please. I’m doing this for the future heir to the throne, I’m sure you would want them to be as healthy as they could be. Incest or not.”
I sighed as I fidgeted while my heart started to beat a bit more erratically in my chest. He wasn’t wrong, per se, and I suppose I was being a bit too stubborn with him right now. It’s just... my overly worrying tendency couldn’t help but make me more suspicious of everypony around me at the moment. Maybe some of that was due to me being pregnant, although I couldn’t blame everything on that, sadly.
“Fine, you win, Doctor,” I reluctantly began. “You already have your answer and I can assure you we are doing our best to minimize complications already. It would do you well to keep that promise, 'Professor' Cold Hooves. You won’t have to keep the secret for long, anyway. Sooner rather than later, Luna and I will have to confirm the suspicions of our little ponies. I’d rather prepare for that first, though.”
I could already see the backlash of that announcement coming from a mile away. Ugh. We will simply have to endure that, I suppose. What other choice do we really have? Hide the fact that our foal is the product of incest between Luna and me? The chances of that working weren’t looking good. Not to mention, that is something I couldn’t keep a secret from our daughter or son once they would be old enough. I’m sure the resemblance to both Luna and me would make any attempt to do so a futile endeavor, too.
This really wasn’t how I thought becoming a mother would be like. My own child is going to become the target of ridicule if I don’t do something now to prevent that. If I could prevent it from happening, to be honest. Worst case scenario, I would have to start acting more like a dictator. The bad kind. And that's something I don't want to do as long as there is even a slight chance to avoid it.
I could live with the backlash and the hurtful words of a few of my ponies. Heck, I could live with everypony in Equestria hating me, and if they demanded it of me, I would step down as their princess... but then I would also tell them to have fun trying to keep Equestria in one piece because I wouldn't come back even if they asked me nicely. No, I would rather live on a farm, enjoying my retirement, instead of going back to foalsitting a bunch of ponies that would rather get rid of me after one scandal.
But that's an acceptable outcome, all things considered. What I could not live with, though? I couldn't live with the thought of my own foal resenting me. Resenting me because of the ridicule they would have to face for being the product of Luna’s and my love for each other.
For the first time since my rebirth, I wish I could turn back time and prepare for this exact moment. If only I could make little changes here and there, maybe try and tell my ponies Luna and I aren’t actually sisters, and completely lie my flanks off so much that I would be able to give my foal the life they deserved.
Alas, that was wishful thinking, at best. Even if it 'somehow' worked, it would only take one slip-up to bring that house of cards toppling down on us. Not to mention, 'Luna' and 'lying' was an oxymoron if I have ever seen one. Lying to the degree of pretending that we aren’t actually sisters? Hah! It wouldn't even take a decade and she would give it all away, whether by accident or due to feeling guilty (and that was disregarding the fact she couldn't tell a lie if her life depended on it).
It wasn’t like she couldn’t keep secrets, at all. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have kept our relationship secret for so long... even though I suspect we weren’t doing that good of a job at it, seeing that our ponies took the news of us confessing our love for each other far too well. Luna just... couldn’t keep a secret hidden behind a lie all that well.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” Professor Cold Hooves said, his gray eyes almost seeming to appear a bit brighter as he put his hoof proudly on his chest. “As the head of research at your school, and now as your personal doctor, I swear not one word will leave my muzzle about this. I will see to it that my cousin and his wife won’t speak of this, either.”
“Thank you,” I sighed as the tension in my muscles practically melted away. Tia worked her magic fingers with practiced ease, and... I have to wonder why she was so good at it, even with somepony not of her own species (or physique, to be more accurate). Then again, Lulu, Liz, and I picked up all kinds of hobbies over the past thousand years, so it didn’t surprise me that Tia might have done so herself, perhaps with even more things than we've done. I know for a fact that she was at least two millennia old, she was bound to get bored enough to try and massage anything and everything at some point.
“I think we can start with the next test, if you are up to it, Your Highness,” Doctor Cold Hooves said, turning back to me after he finally found the correct settings on the device in his hooves. “This technology is simply astounding. Where did you say you got it from?”
“A friend lent it to us,” Luna answered, giving him a narrow-eyed gaze. “That is all that you should concern yourself with. Simply follow the instructions, Professor.”
“I suppose the origin of this device doesn’t concern my work,” he sighed, grumbling under his breath. To say that he was displeased was an understatement. “I would like to learn more about it other than what the manual tells me, though. Are you sure I can’t study it back in my lab?”
Before Luna could object, most likely telling him something along the lines of the sonograph having been lent to us and that we couldn't let it get damaged (I mean, that's definitely the case, but I think Ozpin could easily forgive us for that), I decided to stop her from crushing all his dreams. “We will have to open diplomatic relations with Remnant at some point, Lulu,” I told her breathily, almost moaning as Celestia worked a particularly stressed part out of my muscles. “At which point it might become too hard to keep it a secret.”
“Trust me, you would be surprised what your subjects could believe,” Tia giggled, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “There was that one time where I told someone that the moon was made of cheese and they took it as an absolute fact.”
I saw Luna give Tia an unimpressed look. She was clearly not amused by the way she besmirched her moon. Well, not her moon, but the sentiment was there. “Summer? Can I go over there and tell them the sun is made of molten cheese?”
“Luna...” I said, suppressing the angry retort that wanted to leave my muzzle with a heavy glare directed her way. Flipping flying penguins, they are not going to start a prank war while I was pregnant. Most certainly not while we were still unsure whether or not our foal would survive. “If you do that, I will tell our ponies the moon is made out of cheese as well and prove it to them by sending you there.”
My wife glared right back at me, miffed. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“What if I had the head of research back up my claim?” I retorted, trying not to grin. It was tempting to take Tia’s word and see if our ponies would believe a lie like that, too.
Luna pouted. “Fine, no cheese sun. Can’t have a little bit of fun every now and again, can I?”
“You can drag Tia through the mud all you want after we make sure our little one gets to see the light of day. Just leave 'my' sun out of it,” I shrugged before I winced as Celestia immediately got her revenge on me. Why did I even agree to this massage in the first place if that’s how she treats me?! No sense of humor, I swear.
“...can I start now?” Professor Doctor Ph.D. Med. Whatever Cold Hooves asked, interrupting our argument. Right... he’s still here, I thought with dismay. Might as well get this over with, whatever that thing will actually do. “I..."—he cleared his throat awkwardly (or what constitutes as 'awkward' with him, he's such a stick in the mud with his seriousness all the time)—"... I need you to..."—he motioned with his hooves as he grimaced ever so slightly—" on your back, please?”
I gave the stallion a confused glance, doing what he told me, and immediately slapped Tia’s hand away from my belly as she was about to rub it like I actually was her pet. She gave me a sad, pouty look, trying to convince me by appealing to my weakness for all things cute. It was just too bad that I was currently a pregnant and very moody mare, wasn't it?
...her pouty look intensified, including fake tears. I stood strong, though. I've never lost a staring contest, my stare was legendary!
Ahem! I, uh... okay, fine! She won the staring contest and I cursed myself for succumbing to my one true weakness. Damn her, why does she have to look so cute when she wants to be?! And damn those... h-heavenly... d-divine fingers of h-hers, too! I glared at her grumpily with a bright red muzzle and I could swear that my personal doctor had a bleeding nostril as he placed a sensor connected to the little machine close to where my foal was growing within me.
That thought alone made me happy beyond measure. I had a little foal growing within me! I... I could hardly believe there was a pony growing inside of me because of the love Luna and I shared. It was just... so unbelievable. Joy alone couldn’t describe what I was feeling right now.
With the ritual Celestia would cast, we could reduce the risks immensely, a massive relief to my worrying self. Especially at the stage right now where it was all the more important to make sure there would be absolutely no complications in the later development of my foal. We have been doing everything that we could think of, and now, with the added safety measure of a spell meant for (almost) this exact thing, I could actually start to allow myself to feel happy.
Happy that a dream of mine would finally come true. That I would share something with Luna on such a deep level that only Tia and I had previously shared with each other. I would have a foal with Luna and I couldn’t wait for the day to finally arrive.
“This... can’t be...” Professor Doctor Cold Hooves muttered to himself and I felt my heart stop fearfully in my chest. Was the magic pressure already too much even before my little one started developing their own magic core? Please, don't tell me..! “These readings... are you certain that this manual was the correct one that was sent with this device, Your Highness?”
“Yes...” Luna said slowly, biting her lip in worry. “Why? Is there something wrong? Is... is the foal okay?”
The good Doctor blinked. “Uh, yes, yes, the foal is okay,” he replied, still sounding as confused as ever. The question of whether or not the foal was okay hadn’t been on his mind as he asked his question, it seems. The news that there hadn’t been any complications already lifted a massive stone from my heart, although I knew we could never be a hundred percent certain that nothing will happen down the line. Still, hearing him say that, I felt like my own hope hadn’t disappointed me this time. “It’s just..."—he frowned, checking the manual one last time before rubbing the probe thingy against my belly a bit more strongly—" if I’m reading this correctly, there should be... two foals, Your Highnesses.”
“Two?!” Luna exclaimed and I felt like fainting. “Are you telling us we are expecting twins?! Summer, did you hear that? Twins! Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Twins, aha! Take that, universe! We’re going to get twins!”
Twins. Twins. By my sun, I'm going to have two foals to worry about instead of just one! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Just what were the odds of that? And on our first (admittedly accidental) try, at that. My heart was beating wildly in my chest, from fear, anxiety, hope, happiness, and so much more. I was pregnant with two little foals. Twins! Holy flying penguins, it was simply unbelievable. How rare was it that a twin gets twins on their first try?
I need to think about the implications of becoming a parent of twins, but for now, I was far too euphoric to not be over the moon by this. How couldn’t I be? Twins... It almost felt like this was meant to happen. Getting twins was just too much of a coincidence, even more so considering the circumstances behind my pregnancy.
“I would like to stay and celebrate,” Tia spoke up, rubbing my ear apologetically as she stood up from the bed. “But the day nears its end. I will be back tomorrow before you know it, Summer. If I get lucky, I might find all the ingredients for that spell I told you about. A little present for you, dear. I have no doubt you will need it.”
“Thank you, Celestia,” I smiled, feeling even more... fluffy on the inside. It was the best description I had for this sensation running through me.
“Don’t thank me, yet,” she said, smiling lightly herself. “You just make sure you eat enough, alright? Let Aunty Tia take care of you.”
“Aunty?” I asked, perplexed. I've gotta admit, it does have a nice ring to it, but... “You may call yourself that to my foals, but not to me.”
“Don’t ruin the mood now, Summer,” Celestia reprimanded me, wiggling a finger back and forth in front of her. The meaning behind it eluded me somewhat (I could guess, though, I wasn’t that stupid), and then she was already gone, on her way back to the mirror portal.
Doctor Cold Hooves gave Luna and me a curious but resigned look as he no doubt had a thousand thoughts running through his brain. “Should I even ask?”
“She is a close... friend, I suppose,” Luna answered, grimacing slightly as she understated the actual bond we shared with the alternate version of our own sister. She had become... not exactly a replacement, just... another addition to the family. A family that was about to become bigger and I couldn’t wait for that to actually happen. “While we trust you with the work you do, Professor, we would rather keep the specifics of how we met Celestia to ourselves.”
The Professor frowned in dissatisfaction. “I... understand, Your Highness,” he replied cordially. “I will keep my muzzle out of where it doesn’t belong, then. As much as I am tempted to learn more.”
“Seeking knowledge is an admirable trait,” Luna nodded. “But pursuing that knowledge could lead to far more trouble than it is worth it in the end.”
“If you say so,” he said with a subtle roll of his eyes, not at all sounding convinced of that. I could understand 'why' he would have difficulties with that. Luna’s example wasn’t the most forthcoming with information regarding why it would be a bad idea to seek out any and all knowledge. Some knowledge you simply weren’t ready for.
The awareness of other realities wasn’t exactly the type of knowledge we wanted to spread around. Not only because of how dangerous it could be if it became publicly known, but the pursuit of knowledge available by traveling the multiverse could also drive somepony like Professor Cold Hooves insane. It almost happened to Starswirl and he was already crazy enough to have entertained the idea of different worlds in the first place.
To be honest, I think Luna, Liz, and I were a bit crazy ourselves for continuing to use the portals that had so far only brought trouble for us. Well, not all of them, to be honest. The amusement park world was still a nice vacation spot every once in a while and Tia’s Equestria had also so far not screwed us over. Far from it even.
While I would like to say Remnant turned out to be one of those worlds that were like that, it was sadly one of those I could only look at with sadness. It wasn’t even only Remnant that was like that. There were alternate versions of Equestria, whether they were ruled over by actual alternate versions of ourselves or not, that could be just as bad. One of those was the Equestria where my counterpart was a dictator. The evil kind, I mean. While she wasn’t exactly the ‘most’ villain-y of ponies that came to my mind (Platinum always takes the cake for that one), it does leave me with a feeling of shame that there could be a version of me that was not... nice.
Aside from that, there were other examples of ‘be careful with what you wish for’ in regard to dangerous knowledge. One of the easiest examples I could think of was dark magic. You would need to be extremely careful with that kind of magic, and if you didn’t have an aptitude for it, you should keep your hooves far away from it. While I have my doubts that our doctor would pursue anything along those lines, the addictive and corrupting feeling of dark magic was a good comparison to what lusting for knowledge could do to somepony.
After the good doctor finished up with the last thing on the list for today, casting a ritual spell to help ease my stomach at least a little bit for the next few hours or so, I was too busy shoveling fruits down my throat to notice that I made quite a mess out of myself in the process. Doctor Cold Hooves excused himself politely as I started sobbing gratefully for finally being able to eat something. I have no doubt that I will start regretting the decision to stuff myself full of fruits once the spell’s duration expires, but right now, I felt like I was in heaven.
If this was how Liz felt after having been able to gorge herself on love for the first time, I don’t think I could fault her for razing entire cities to the ground in a mad attempt at feeling full. I’m pretty sure that, if this had gone on for a few years, I would have done much worse than invading nation after nation.
Thankfully, I didn’t throw up in the middle of the night. I did feel like rolling over and dying on the spot, though. Luna held me tightly in her hooves throughout the night, quietly singing a lullaby I could faintly remember Mom having sung such a long time ago now. It was as heartwarming and soothing as it was sad and sorrowful, hearing it again.
Mom had been a great singer, no doubt due to her noble upbringing, having the best tutors money could buy. Luna came quite close to how good our mother was and it helped distract me from the queasy feeling in my stomach. Sleep didn’t come easily, though (despite Luna trying to use her gift on me multiple times).
The next day I was... okay-ish. I went through a few of my tasks with a grumpy frown, a yawn escaping me about every ten minutes or so (when I wasn’t busy throwing up my breakfast into the bucket or toilet, that is). Maybe living off of fruits and crackers wasn’t going to work, as Tia had suggested with her remark. My foals were already very demanding of me even if that shouldn’t have been a thing at this point in my pregnancy. I just had no idea what else I could eat that wouldn’t leave me sobbing over my trusty friend Mr. Bucketington.
It was Luna’s idea, don’t ask. Liz and Lulu thought it would be funny to draw a noble face on the damn thing and I had to give it to them... they were right for once. Seeing the faces of the nobles as I threw up in my trusty companion definitely was the crippling nausea worth it. It was a little bit mean, though. Only a bit. Maybe.
Okay, yes, it was mean, but I couldn't give two flying penguins. I don't care. They are annoying me, anyway. Can't give a sick, pregnant mare some slack, can they?
Around the afternoon, my savior in the form of a heavenly angel arrived with a basket full of foul-smelling ingredients. She did cause quite a stir in court with that, but Luna and I could care less about such a small inconvenience. We were happy that we could rest easy knowing we were doing all we could to ensure the health of our foals (plural, eee!) wouldn’t be impaired.
Liz took over court after our wait was finally over, giving each of us (even Tia) a quick nuzzle as we walked out of the throne room. We made our way towards our School for the Gifted, or more specifically, the ritual chamber there. It was rather large, the size of an auditorium really, that was usually used by professors to demonstrate part of the curriculum with a live experiment (harmless ones that were hard to mess up). When it wasn't used for demonstrative purposes, scholars and researchers could put in a reservation for the room and use it to their heart's content. Of course, since we were the headmistresses, we had the privilege of blocking the room for the rest of the day (though we made sure to announce it a few hours in advance before we did so).
Not every ritual spell actually needs a magic circle drawn on the ground (if anything, those were more of a rarity). Rituals that needed them, though, required some sort of stabilizing medium. Whether that was a separate ingredient or a magic circle depended on whether or not that ingredient used to stabilize the ritual was compatible with the other reagents. On top of that, everything also depended heavily on the strength of the spell, and based on that, the magic circle could become quite complex.
The spell Celestia was going to cast wasn’t actually that complex. It was quite similar to what I did to Ruby’s weapon, I suppose. While the circle wasn’t that different from a ring of candles, it was still fairly simple in design. Alicorn magic could basically brute force a ritual in a pinch, but so could blood magic... which in and of itself isn’t really considered 'dark magic', but... considering how most ponies usually got the required blood back in the day, it was still considered to be one of the ‘darker’ arts.
Ritual magic technically falls under the same category. It was based on sacrificial magic, after all. The majority of those rituals sacrifice simple things like minerals, plant fibers, or even a bundle of hair, scales, feathers, or similar things from various creatures. Of course, there are also rituals sacrificing the life force of other beings (or your own). Those are heavily restricted rituals (for good reason since even those that sacrifice your own life force could backfire horribly, causing untold damage to the surrounding area), and in the case of somepony practicing them illegally, they were punished accordingly to the severity of the crime that had been committed.
Not every ritual using the life force of something requires the use of 'every' last bit of it. Even only a small amount equal to that of one minute in somepony’s lifetime could be more than enough to power a ritual. Under most circumstances, sacrificing the entirety of somepony’s life essence was highly wasteful (and not to mention, extremely cruel).
Every type of magic has the potential to be used for darker purposes. As sad as it was to admit something like that, it was nothing but the honest truth. Healing spells, something you would normally think to be a completely benign use of magic, could cause as much (if not more) harm as hexes and curses, combat spells, or (as previously mentioned) sacrificial rituals. If you aren’t careful with what you are doing, you could cause a pony to develop cancer.
For that reason alone, only those with a medical license were allowed to practice healing magic. I never learned more than the basics myself, only because I literally had no use for the advanced medical spellcraft due to my nature as an alicorn. For everything else, I was more or less equipped well enough to deal with most things that came to my attention (I knew my priorities on a battlefield, and stopping to heal every wounded soldier was a risk to everypony else, I could do more with a shield and actively hindering the opponent from advancing). Basic healing spells could accomplish quite a lot on their own, the more advanced spells were far too narrow in how they could be utilized.
Usually, I had no use for healing spells beyond setting bones or reattaching limbs in a hurry. But my current predicament required more than what my alicorn healing factor could accomplish. If anything, I wanted to disable my magic from affecting my womb as much as possible. Thus, I sat fidgeting nervously with my wings within a big circle, several more connected to the center one, each containing a reagent Celestia brought with her.
The ritual itself took about ten minutes or so to activate (and an additional hour or two of sitting around, bored out of my mind until the effect fully seeped into me). Celestia was chanting the spell out of a tome, all the while walking around the circle and setting fire to some of the reagents in a specific order. How the creator of this spell found out the correct order for this ritual was beyond me. Or how they created it in the first place.
I wasn’t really an expert in magic. Knowledgeable, sure, but for everything that went past ‘throw in some emotions’, I found myself quite often puzzling over how exactly a spell worked. Most of the time I spent months studying a spell before even attempting it or I simply stumbled over the specifics by coincidence.
Rituals were far more complex than drawing mana to the horn and shaping it into the correct form, infusing the spell with emotions (or rhythms and pulses in specific patterns for rational magic) before releasing it. Working with ritualistic magic was sort of like rational magic, you had to plan it out and calculate every little step. In contrast to rational magic, though, ritualistic magic sacrifices more than the mana requirement of a spell.
Every ingredient in a ritual had a meaning, and to figure out what kind of meaning that might be, one has to conduct a lot of experiments. And by ‘a lot’, I mean a lot. It wasn’t as easy as simply categorizing a material based on what it would do in a ritual (it never was that easy). In a way, it's similar to coding. You have an input and the software. The software does things based on the input, and the input changes the outcome. On top of that, every input following each other changes the result, and more often than not, the way other 'inputs' behave (i.e. the ingredients in a ritual). While yes, there are certain things that have a... let’s say ‘constant value’ to keep in line with the programming analogy... that won’t change no matter what ritual you use them in, there are things that react differently in combination with other reagents.
It is no wonder why ritualistic magic has fallen out of favor due to the difficulty of discovering the interactions between different materials. The more complex rituals using more than a few items to achieve their effect take most mortals a lifetime of study and trial and error approaches in order to develop them correctly.
Which made it all the more impressive that this 'Innocent Flower' created more than a dozen rituals that had... not quite so innocent effects. I have no idea what must have gone through their head to create a ritual that made breeding of all things easier than it could already be sometimes.
I was also quite impressed with Professor Cold Hooves, as well. While the ritual for the anti-nausea spell wasn’t as complex as the ritual Celestia was performing, it was remarkable that he created it within such a short time span. I suppose he wasn’t the head of research at our school for nothing.
As far as I understood what Tia was doing with this ritual, it almost gave me the impression that this Innocent Flower was a genius. A perverted genius (perhaps even more perverted than Liz and my Tia), but a genius nonetheless.
Perhaps they were also a bit crazy, to be honest. Nopony sane would have ever had the idea to use the pollen of the poison joke flower in a ritual of all things. The effect of it was random beyond measure, reacting to everypony differently, but perhaps that made using it even more ingenious in a way.
You could take advantage of that random nature with rituals quite effectively. Especially with rituals that want to change the probability of something so that it becomes more likely to end up with favorable odds. This ritual, for example, had the very purpose of increasing the probability of conceiving a healthy child and keeping it that way as a side-effect after the... ahem, 'deed'... had been accomplished.
It’s better left unsaid what other rituals Innocent Flower created. I could already make a pretty accurate guess as to what would happen if one were to have sex while pregnant with this spell active. Celestia was wise to warn me of that if my little hunch was correct. It really was better left unsaid, I mused with a shudder. It definitely was.
The days after the ritual started to blend together as I was confined to bed rest most of the time because, for some reason, even Professor Doctor Cold Hooves couldn’t reliably help me with my nausea despite the spell he created to help specifically with that one thing. Sometimes it just felt like I was eating dirt and it left me weeping in despair, mourning the brave fruits that so willingly sacrificed themselves for my foals.
How could I enjoy the joy of being pregnant when this is how it makes me feel? I wasn’t starving anymore, thankfully, but was this how I was getting repaid for making sure they grew up without any complications?
Luna and Liz were as stumped about this as I was. I don’t think Mom had to deal with this as she was having Tia and me. I knew for certain she didn’t have to deal with crippling nausea as she was pregnant with Lulu, so why was I having this much difficulty with eating anything?
For that matter, she was lucky we were born alicorns, or things would have gotten messy during her pregnancy...
Ahem! Anyway, Liz wasn’t very helpful in figuring that out, despite having been ‘pregnant’ almost every year for the past thousand years (there were some exceptions and all of them were her own fault experimenting with her changeling flames). Changelings and ponies were just too different biologically and such a severe case of nausea had previously been unprecedented in other pregnant mares.
Was it because I was an alicorn? Was there something fundamentally different about how pregnancy worked for higher beings?
That was a disturbing thought, wasn’t it? I just... I just thought of the possibility that my own foals wouldn’t be alicorns themselves and that this could be the reason for that.
After all, alicorns aren’t made ‘the natural way’. They aren't typically born.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry so damn much and I did. I cried. I cried so hard that I started to suffocate from my heavy sobbing. My children, my little foals... I would lose them after barely getting to know them, wouldn’t I? I would watch them grow older and older and my only hope would be that I could find a way for them to ascend before they grew too old.
This was the curse of immortality. Of being a goddess of ponykind. I was doomed to lose everypony that I got close to, it was no wonder why I looked at everypony like they were merely foals (even if that might as well be true, compared to my age). Only my Moon and Liz (as well as Tia, once she got back) will truly stay with me. Cadance and Ruby were in their weird ‘We can’t decide on which world we wanna stay in once we marry’ phase, so... while I wouldn’t truly lose them, they wouldn’t stay with me in the castle forever.
Not that Cadance would have stayed in the nest for very long, anyway. Pretty soon, she would spread her wings and find her own way in the world. Even if she might stay here in the castle for the next twenty or so years (which I dearly hope, I wouldn’t want her to miss the chance of being the big and responsible sister I knew she could be to her siblings), she would leave once the Crystal Empire returned. And then, she would be too busy to spend time with her stupid old hag of a mother.
Damnit, I’m getting too depressed again. I would find a way to make my foals ascend, hopefully before Platinum breaks the chains of her prison.
As the first appointment for the ultrasound arrived (the one that makes pictures instead of the small, portable version Ozpin lent us last time), we did confirm that I was definitely having two foals. While we couldn’t see what tribe they would belong to yet, Luna and I felt like they would at least turn out to be unicorns. I have been getting surges over the past few days, which usually indicated that a pregnant mare would have a magically apt foal.
It was reassuring to know that Celestia's spell was working as intended since I was having the surges instead of my foals. The magic build-up was circulating through me while simultaneously depleting their magic to a healthy level (which in turn would strengthen their magic core so that they will be able to handle their own power once they are 'out and about', as they say).
To be perfectly honest, it doesn’t have to mean anything in regard to their pony tribe, but it was a sign. It was not only a sign that one of the foals was developing a horn, but also a sign that they were growing up without side effects from the ritual (like being devoid of all magic).
Then again... unicorn mothers usually don’t experience too powerful surges, so I was getting a little bit concerned that I was starting to accidentally burn things. It reminded me a lot of what happened to us back when we first began raising and lowering the celestial bodies.
The fact that I was also freezing things left me only mildly confused for a few minutes before I realized that it had something to do with Luna’s connection to the moon and our foals (or one of them, at least) inheriting a part of that. I could confidently say one of them would have an ice affinity with magic, possibly also darkness.
Darkness as in ‘lack of light’ and not dark magic. Shadow magic was also the highest affinity in thestrals, so that led me down another spiral of coming up with crazy theories. You know... totally normal stuff to worry about.
So... instead of leaving them as theories, I decided to test them. One might have wondered 'how' I intended to do that, but there was an easy way to find out whether or not your foal is a thestral. And that was by drinking blood.
The vampiric nature of about two-thirds or so of the thestral population in Equestria could give a clue as to whether or not my foals preferred a more predatory diet. Most thestrals don’t drink too much blood, and when they do, they usually get it from the prey they catch, and those that don’t prefer to drink blood get by on a vegetarian diet just fine (though they do have a penchant for fruit juice).
Seeing that Luna and I were at least partially thestral in nature due to us being alicorns, I went all vampony on my wife. Naturally, I cried. I cried happily and gratefully that, for once, I didn’t feel nauseous as soon as something entered my stomach and it pretty much confirmed that both of my foals inherited our thestral side from us.
That left me even more confused and hopeful. It couldn’t possibly be the case that only one of them was a thestral. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be feeling such ecstasy from drinking Luna’s blood as she patted my head comfortingly as I greedily guzzled down one or two liters from her neck. I could tell she loved the feeling just as much as I did, blushing heavily as she served me enough ‘food’ to make me feel full and content.
So, if both of them are thestrals, the only possibility that could explain the powerful surges could be that they were alicorns or a hybrid between thestral and unicorn. Chances are... they aren’t alicorns. A naturally born alicorn has to be reincarnated specifically for that purpose. Their soul has to be ‘compatible’ (as Magic would say) with ascension. Or in other terms, it has to have a dormant spark of divinity. I suspect my sisters and I had that spark for some reason as we found ourselves reincarnated and remembered our past life.
It’s a thought I had in the back of my mind for a while now. There had to be a reason why the spell of Magic sought us out beyond the ridiculous requirement of being ‘compatible’.
It stands to reason that my life as Rudolph Baker hadn’t been my first one. It defied everything I knew about the soul. Souls exist. You can’t create or destroy them, only change them with time. The Devourer of Life and Death must have simply converted the energy of the souls it, well... devoured... growing larger and stronger as time went on. That the Elements of Harmony couldn’t utterly destroy that monstrosity didn’t come as a surprise to me. They simply unraveled the mess that thing had created through its greed. And now it was merged together with Platinum. Or what was left of it, at least.
If my previous life hadn’t been my first one, how many had I forgotten? It felt a bit weird, not being able to remember. I already had only so few memories left of my previous life and I felt like a part of me was dying with it. Although, I suppose that is what dying actually means. You forget your previous life as you start your next one. A clean slate, so to speak.
Hope did tell me that the Machinery of Death was far more complex than I thought. I still barely understood anything about it, probably because I was exempt from it. My own ‘deaths’ didn’t last for long, and so far, I hadn’t come across another being that had tried to truly kill me aside from Platinum. Immortals kinda tend to ignore each other for the most part on Equis instead of risking a confrontation with somepony they don't like.
So... if one had to have something that made them compatible to be reborn as an alicorn, how did my sisters and I get that? Alas, I wouldn’t ever get an answer to that question, sadly. I only had my limited knowledge of souls and pure conjecture to make any sense out of it, and even then, I wouldn’t be able to tell what tribe my foals would end up as. In the end, I could only guess that it was most likely going to be a ‘variant of thestral’.
I was nearing the end of the fourth month of my pregnancy and already I could tell the next seven months would be even more difficult to go through (if I was ‘fortunate’ enough to give birth after the eleventh month, that is... it was possible I could be carrying my foals for the full twelve months, instead). I fear I might have difficulties with other things besides nausea and tiredness by then. At least I had a reliable way of keeping my ‘food’ down now.
Another thing I could add to the ‘I hate being a pony for those specific reasons’ list, I guess. Human females had it so much better with a nine-month pregnancy period. I was tempted to go over to Remnant and quietly suffer there, but I’d rather not risk the health of my foals by crossing over through a mirror that transforms me into a closer human representation of my former body. Which, now that I think about it, makes absolutely no sense.
Why does it transform us into our former selves? Does it have something to do with our souls? Or was it because Remnant was closer to our Earth and thus, we appeared as we did before reincarnating? Huh. It does feel like I was onto something with that train of thought there. Azeroth had transformed us into a representation of our current selves, after all, and I had no doubt that, if we were to add the enchantment to the mirror connecting our world to Celestia’s world, we would appear similarly there.
It might have something to do with the connection to magic. Earth and Remnant were far less rich in arcane energy (Earth even less so than Remnant), it could very well be that if they actually were suffused with mana like Equestria or Azeroth are, we would look like ourselves over there, as well. I mean, we could probably just wear an enchanted bracelet and the problem would be solved, but... it was still a curious thing to ponder.
I suppose I would just have to suck it up and content myself with a longer period where I would drag my pregnant self everywhere. Perhaps it was even a blessing, I mused thoughtfully to myself. I would have a bit more time to simply enjoy the joy of being pregnant. At least I wouldn’t start showing until I was approximately in the sixth month of my pregnancy. Eh, maybe a month earlier due to the fact that I was having twins, instead. Which leaves me with approximately one month of figuring out how to break the news to my little ponies...
They are going to flip their... penguins, I guess... aren't they? I do hope they will receive the news relatively well, though. My subjects are incredibly important to me. I'd rather see them celebrate and be happy to witness such a momentous occasion instead of... the alternative. The days of the wendigos were long over, but those spirits didn't come out of nowhere. Ponies were really prone to emotional reactions, good and bad. I dare not imagine what the latter would end up looking like.
I have faith in my little ponies, though. They can be just as kind-hearted when they want to be. It is like Starswirl always said, a pony's herd mentality is our greatest strength and weakness. It just takes one example to lead the opinion of them all.
For the sake of my nation... I might have to nudge things in the right direction and hope for the best. It's a good thing Equestria has a matriarchal point of view, more or less. Most mares will be too distracted with fawning over me while the few that would oppose this cannot rally their fellow ponies into an angry mob.
And let's be honest here; other mothers would be a pretty good line of defense to sway the public’s opinion in my favor. I wouldn't even have to manipulate anypony, it's just who we are as ponies. You make sure a mother is protected from all harm, controversy or not. We don't leave anypony hanging, and those that need aid get it, no questions asked.
All I have to do is tell my ponies the truth. The fact that I'm getting thestral twins will be more than enough to sway the aforementioned tribe onto my side. Not that I hope I'm going to need it, but... better cautious than sorry, right?
Hah! W-what could possibly go w-wrong, right?! It's not like I can hide them from the public eye forever. I can't just go on a vacation for a few months and pretend nothing ever happened! It's not like I have to worry about my subjects sleepwalking under the control of Platinum and doing 'something' to my precious bundles of joy.
No. That's not going to happen, stop thinking about it like that. Nopony is going to try and assassinate them while you're sleeping, completely unaware... helpless...
No! No. Everypony is going to love them, or else. Just wait and see. Besides, how could anypony even think about doing that to a pair of sweet, innocent foals? That's right, Summer. Nopony in their right mind would try to take away what's yours.
Everypony that tries will die a horrible... ahem! None of that, you stupid old hag. You're being paranoid again. And possessive. They are their own beings, nopony will fault them for existing. It was your choice to do it with Luna, drunken stupor or not. Own up to it and simply enjoy motherhood. That can't be too hard, right? After all, Cadance turned out alright... if a bit quirky... and kinda uncaring about incest...
Totally normal stuff, right? Haah, I'm such a failure of a mother. I must do better. I simply must! I'll make sure to raise them as best as I can. And this time, Tia can't corrupt them with socially unacceptable thoughts before they are old enough to understand (I'll just have to lock Liz away in the hive for a few years, eh heh heh)! Nothing will stop me!
To think that I would ever find myself in this situation. All this time, and now my family was growing larger than I imagined. Luna, Liz, Cadance, eventually Tabetha, and my own twin... and two new members in addition to that! I was truly blessed, my heart was soaring on cloud nine!
Eee! This is still such an unbelievable thing to me... I was having twins! Oh, I could just prance around everywhere... dance, even! I wanted to dance around with Luna so badly, uncaring of who saw us in the process (if I wasn’t feeling constantly sick, that is). Alas, being pregnant and dancing while running on fumes did not mix well with each other. But thankfully, it got progressively less bad with each day that I gave my body the proper sustenance it craved (my spontaneous visits to the bathroom in the morning didn’t disappear completely, but it was at least a start).
Ooh! This is so exciting! I’m sure I will still find it quite unbelievable even when I’m giving birth to them. Heck, I might still feel like I was dreaming after they start crawling around absolutely everywhere.
As in... everywhere. Oh, my flipping flying penguins... the castle is not foal safe! By the twin suns, I just know they will somehow make their way into the kitchen and bite the chef while they are cooking meat for a dignitary from the Griffon Empire and hot oil will splash on them! I have to make sure there are foal-secure locks on everything! A-and if one of them (or both) have the thestral typical wings, catching them will be impossible!
I, uh... would it be weird if I put them in a room full of pillows so that they couldn't hurt themselves? Mhh, I feel like that would be the foal-friendly equivalent of a padded cell, though. I 'think' that counts as strange...
Ahem, anyway! Speaking of decorating, we haven’t even started thinking about how we want to make the nursery look. We haven’t even begun thinking of anything regarding our foals aside from making sure they survive the magic pressure. There was still plenty of time for that, but I’d prefer to do it while I still could walk everywhere without any difficulty. We need a room for toys, cute bedtime stories, thestral-appropriate lighting (in case they have sensitive eyes), healthy food aside from blood... diapers, and... uh...
What about names..?! We haven't even started to think up cute names for them, yet! They are going to think we hate them if we wait until...
“Is she panicking again?” Liz asked and I heard Luna let out a groan.
"Of course, she is," Luna muttered, rolling her eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"
"Because she's Summer," Liz simply stated while Luna put away a quill and her reading glasses (they make her look sexy) before rolling up a piece of parchment and sealing it with wax afterward. "She's always panicking about something."
“I’m not!” I pouted, thankful that she... or rather he, as I noticed... brought me out of my rumination of what we still need to do. There's a lot I probably haven't even thought of yet. I don't want to forget to do something and be labeled a bad mother..!
“Sunflower, you have that ‘the sky is about to fall down on my head’ look in your eyes,” Liz snarked, rolling his beautiful emerald green eyes as he came over to give me a hug. I sighed contentedly, nuzzling his soft, fluffy fur with adoration. Even as a stallion, Liz was the best cuddle bug. “Now, what has got you into such a funk?”
A lot, but the immediate worries weighed probably a lot more heavily on my mind than making sure my adorable foals will have a cozy life full of love. Like... “What are we going to tell our subjects?” I asked, my breathing shaky. “We can’t just hide me for eight months or so. Rumors are already spreading like wildfire about my 'sickness'.”
“Just tell them the truth,” he shrugged and I gave him a glare. My special somepony, everypony. Truly, Liz is a genius. “What? You know Lulu will say something stupid at some point. And that's not even mentioning that you would probably feel just as guilty lying about where a pair of infants suddenly came from. Why even hide it in the first place?”
Well, gee... how did I not think of that? It's not like I've been panicking about that exact thing this whole time!
“Because of the incest, you stupid dick?” I grumbled, getting a pout back from him in return. “I don't want to worry about an assassin trying to get rid of my babies, Liz. What will our ponies think of us when we tell them we broke the law we worked so hard to create a modern version of?”
“That you’re too old to care?” Liz proposed and Luna snorted next to me.
“You know, our Cuddlebug has a point, Sunny,” Luna agreed as she nudged my shoulder with a hoof gently, rubbing my back comfortingly afterward. “Why should we care about what they think? We have foalsitted Equestria for how many years now..? They have no right to criticize us for wanting to have a bit of happiness ourselves.”
"I guess..." I sighed, still not entirely sure whether it is going to work so easily. We have to expect at least some resistance, right? “And what about our foals?” I asked, biting my lip worriedly. “They will have to live with the opinion of the masses. If that opinion is less than stellar...”
“Then we spin some sob story, gain the sympathy of everypony and their cats, and voilà, everything is fine and dandy,” Chrysalis commented and I felt like hitting him over his stupid head. It wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t be. Aside from that, lying so much would come back to bite us in our flanks and what do we do then?
What if instead of defending us, they'll take my babies away from me and declare me unfit to be a mother and their princess?
“Summer,” Luna whispered, nuzzling me softly as I still clung onto Liz like a fluffy pillow. He was chuckling with that wonderfully deep rumble of his at my reluctance to let go of him. I guess that’s one thing I could get used to, it felt nice. “We can work something out. And besides... would you truly want to lie about this? I know I can’t, not if it means I cannot admit to my own foals that I..."—my Moon blinked, fidgeting for a moment—" well, technically I am the father in this, aren’t I? This feels a bit strange..."—she shook her head before clearing her throat—" Either way, please think about this, Summer. We can’t make it look like we adopted our own offspring. It would devastate me, and it would no doubt devastate you.”
Right, I thought. I didn't even think about how all of this would make Luna feel. We have to be honest, if not for our foals' sake, then for hers. She deserves to be a parent to her own foals as much as I did with Tia. “I... I'm sorry about being so difficult, Lulu. I want this to be perfect for you. You always wanted...” I mumbled, trailing off. I sighed. “Lulu, what should we do, then? Being honest is too risky and not being honest is as well? Which one is the choice we should go with?”
Liz snorted. “Are you actually that dumb, Sunflower?” he smiled softly, lifting my head by the chin with a teasing glint in his eyes. “It’s obvious, isn't it? Changelings don’t care about incest, there is far too much inbreeding going on in the nobility, and the average pony? They think we’re goddesses, do they not? Let’s just tell them that even goddesses make mistakes every once in a while and that, while this was the result of a bit of carelessness, it makes you happy that it turned out this way. You are allowed to have a family, an ideal this very nation was founded upon.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea, though?” I asked, fidgeting nervously. Sometimes I really hate being this anxious over everything. I've tried, but I simply can't seem to change that about myself. It's a part of myself, whether I wanted it to be or not. It's a product of my own upbringing. Mom's paranoia rubbed off on me. “They will live with a target painted on their backs because of this. Anger and hate can make ponies do incredibly stupid things..."—I grimaced, thinking about what I did to him during our first meeting—" stupid things like what I’ve done to you in my own rage.”
“And I forgave you for that a long time ago,” he told me, capturing my lips with his. I hummed happily, feeling so incredibly safe in Liz’s arms, I never wanted to break this sweet embrace. Luna enveloped us in her wings and it only put me even more at ease. They were here for me and that was all that mattered. “You should start believing in the good of everypony like you used to, Summer. Have you not made a promise to yourself to do just that?”
“I...” I sighed, feeling ashamed. I did say I would try to be a better mare and reconnect to my heart. Here I was, doubting myself and everypony under my care, not trusting anypony aside from my wives and daughters. I was making strides, but evidently enough, I was still struggling with it. “I think you’re right. Our ponies didn’t throw a fuss as we told them of our relationship (at least... not too much), I should trust them to not hold this against us. I just hope they won’t throw all the kindness and patience we have shown them over the years back into our muzzles.”
My sister giggled. “I believe they won’t, Sunny,” Luna hummed. Her voice sounded so melodic to my ears, I could lose myself in it for a few centuries straight. If I could, I would do that. “And is there not a cause for celebration? I think they will be ecstatic to hear about not only one royal foal but two. It has never happened in the history of Equestria, I’m sure that they won’t even care all that much about how they were conceived.”
I couldn't help but smile at the reminder. That was my thought, too, wasn't it? If there's one thing we can always count on our subjects to do, it's throwing parties. “When should we make the announcement, then?” I asked, glancing at Luna out of the corner of my eye as I snuggled myself deeper into Liz’s soft fur. He truly was the perfect mix of adorable and sexy, no matter the form. If I would have been allowed to have sex right now, I would have already started grinding myself against Liz needily. I just wanted to make love with them right now, the desire clearly being mirrored by Luna and Chrysalis as they smiled knowingly at me.
“Whenever you feel like you are ready for it, Sunshine,” Luna told me, shoving me to the side with a smirk before she gave Liz a hungry kiss herself. “Now, you just enjoy the show, alright?”
Fuck. Why must she be so sexy with everything she does? “I feel like you are teasing me,” I pouted, rubbing my hindlegs together as I felt uncomfortably hot in my nethers. I wanted them to sate my need, something they clearly felt ecstatic about, but instead of getting what I so desperately wished for, I got this. A teasing show of my totally hot partners sucking on each other’s tongues as they ran their hooves over the other’s body sensually. "Stupid sexy sister..."
My sister stopped what she was doing with Liz to give me one of 'those' looks. “Oh?” Luna hummed with interest. “You think this is enough to qualify as teasing already?”
“Should we show her what us actually desiring to tease her would look like?” Liz asked, a wicked fanged smile on his muzzle. I let out a whimper as he was consumed in his green fire a moment later, re-emerging with a light orange coat, a dark red burning mane, and golden slit eyes. She let out an exaggerated moan, giving Luna a half-lidded gaze filled with nothing but lust. “Should I act like her, Lulu? Show her what she could never have for herself? Having her alternate side fuck her silly..."—Liz licked her lips and I felt my tummy do an excited flip—" mhhn, it’s one of those guilty pleasures that gets both of you going. Whether Summer would ever admit that, though, is another thing entirely.”
“Oh, fuck, yes~,” Luna nodded, shuddering while letting out a moan herself. My breath, I absentmindedly noticed, came out in short, yet very excited, gasps of air and my heart was doing its best to not jump out of my chest at the scene in front of me. Liz really was a damn succubus, wasn’t she? She acted like she was the most famous porn star of Equestria and it wasn’t only while in the bedroom. She did it everywhere she went, she was a massive flirt to anypony that crossed her path only because she felt like she could.
I mean... she definitely was ‘temptation in pony form’. Lulu and I knew she would never have sex with anypony else but us, but she does take her liberty to flirt with anything that had the capacity to understand what she meant with her innuendos. To be honest, it was funny to watch our ponies react to her behavior. She had a reputation for causing many of those ponies a broken heart because they couldn’t pursue her like that. All those that tried were gently shot down by Liz for obvious reasons. She belonged only to us.
And by the sexy devil that she was, I loved it with every fiber of my being. Even if she and Luna were teasing me to the worst degree right now. Every time I tried to reach out a hoof to my nethers or use my magic to achieve the same effect, one of them disrupted my efforts with their own magic. I was a helpless observer to their little roleplay and it felt like I was about to burst from sexual frustration.
I definitely would fill one of our ‘secret’ memory balls later once I had the chance. The lewd type of memory ball, able to play every little sound back that I could remember. And I made sure to remember every detail of this, no matter how insignificant it may seem at first.
Ahem. I, uh... I suppose I was technically recording porn right now, but who cares? It's porn of my totally hot wives making out right in front of me, one of them in the form of my wet dreams come true. Liz was right, I would never admit I had the hots for my other half to anypony else, but I'm sure nopony could argue against this simple truth: I was friggin’ hot as Fallen Star (in more ways than one, of course).
Naturally, Liz was taking advantage of the situation as much as she could. She showed me little teasing smiles as she and Luna locked their muzzles in a fierce tongue fight, giving me those stares that practically screamed ‘Hey, wanna fuck? I wanna fuck. Let’s fuck until one of us passes out’, and all the while, she used her altered voice to say the lewdest things to Luna, making me so very jealous that they weren’t directed at me.
Then, on top of their damn teasing, I was sure Liz was taunting me. She had Luna nibble on her ears and made it sound like she was orgasming from that alone. They nicked each other with their fangs, not enough to draw blood, but enough to get me whimpering that they were taking things far too slow. I wanted to see them bite each other and moan lovingly into the embrace of the other, offering everything of themselves in the purest show of trust there is.
I liked that the most about our vampire-esque roleplay. Showing my trust and love to them as they showed it to me. Of course, I also quite liked the sensation of them drinking blood from me, the pleasure from the pain only fueling my perverted fantasies more. And how could Liz not take advantage of that? She made me cry rivers of angry tears as they dragged this out for even longer than I had previously assumed their patience could last. It was pure agony having to watch them make a show out of it while I couldn’t even so much as satisfy myself. They always love denying me the simplest of pleasures, don't they?
“Sister~,” Liz moaned lightly, her muzzle directly at Luna’s ear as my sister caressed Chrysalis’ neck with her lips and I saw her hoof wander dangerously close to Liz’s marehood with slow, deliberate movements. I bit my lip, a soft shudder running through my body as Liz called Luna by the very thing that was normally reserved for Luna and myself. I could see Chrysalis edging her snatch eagerly closer to my sister’s hoof, but Luna held her back by her chest, biting her gently.
“Not so eager now, sister,” Luna told her, her voice starting to take on the seductive quality of Nightmare Moon. “Our broodmare hasn’t suffered enough yet, has she? Don’t make me punish you as well, do you understand me?”
“Ngh! Yes~,” Liz nodded softly, giving her a chaste kiss that looked entirely out of place in the current situation. Even something that seemed so innocent at first glance, Chrysalis could make it appear to be the most sensual and perverted thing in the whole world. “Although I don’t think it is I that should be punished. You are mine to toy with, sister~.”
“Is that so?” Luna asked, growling slightly as she pushed Liz onto her back. I had a full view of just how wet my beautiful wife was as her weeping pussy came directly into my field of vision. “Should I remind you of just who the pet is, sister?”
The submissive look on Liz's muzzle suddenly disappeared. “I don’t need a reminder, dear,” she smirked back wickedly, using her magic to switch places with Luna. She peered down at my sister with pure joy in her eyes, trailing a hoof over Luna’s stomach teasingly and I felt even more frustrated that she avoided Lulu’s own drenched entrance entirely. “I know my place quite well, after all. With my cock buried in your throat.”
“I see,” Luna muttered, squirming underneath Liz as both of us watched with anticipation as a green flash went over her form, revealing the proud length of Liz’s member in its full glory. “You would treat me so lowly, your own sister? What a naughty mare you are~.”
“Hah! Who is the naughty one here, though?” Liz asked, wonderingly tapping her chin with a hoof. “Me? Or the one begging me with her eyes to use her as nothing more than a mere object?”
“Fuck~... Liz, I can’t wait, to Tartarus with this charade!” Luna shot back, grabbing her around the neck insistently. “My depths demand to be filled with cock, I need it!”
“Ah, ah, ah!” Liz chided her, pushing Luna away from her with a smile that screamed delighted glee at driving even Luna mad with lust. “You want this piece of meat, don’t you? It’s just too bad you had to ruin all my fun with this little roleplay between us like that. Naughty fillies don’t get what they want.”
“Please,” Luna whimpered, and for once, I felt vindication. She was suffering just as much as I was, she underestimated the temptress that Chrysalis was. Her first mistake was trying to rope Liz into teasing me. Her second was believing she would be exempt from that.
“Begging me already?” Liz hummed, trailing kisses slowly up Luna's hind legs, stopping just at her flanks and avoiding her sanctum completely with a sadistic gleam in her eyes. “Here I thought you were the one with patience in abundance, Lulu. Has that changed?”
“Summer’s whining is driving me crazy and I feel like I’m dying from not having had any action with her since that ritual,” Luna mumbled, giving Liz a sad, pleading expression that did nothing to persuade our wife. “You’re worse than Tia was...”
“Is...” I muttered quietly. She wasn’t dead, and hopefully... never would be. It felt like a stab in my heart to talk about her in the past tense.
Chrysalis huffed. “A changeling can’t have any fun around here anymore, can they?” she asked as she wiped a fake tear away with a sniffle, not at all sad about what she was doing.
“You have plenty of fun torturing ponies with your sinful looks, Cuddlebug,” Luna rolled her eyes, not falling for her theatrics. “Now fuck me right this instant or I swear...”
“Oh? What if I don’t?” Liz grinned and she feigned to go and hop off the bed, only for silvery chains to spring into existence, binding her to the bed loosely. Liz gave them a curious look, tugging at them to test their strength. They did break for a moment before they repaired themselves and her eyes followed them back to the one that brought them into existence.
Nightmare stared back, not amused. “Then we shall show thee thy folly, slave of mine.”
“By the holy Sunbutt,” Liz moaned, receiving a glare from me which she completely ignored, biting her lip as she began squirming on the bed. “Fine. Fuck me, Your Majesty. I am yours to abuse...”
“As thou should be,” Nightmare commented with a deadpan look, licking her lips as she trapped Liz underneath her. “Thy transgressions are... forgiven for the time being.”
I watched with rapt attention as my sister started to grind herself against Liz, the changeling bucking her rear awkwardly to try and bring her member somehow into Nightmare’s marehood despite it being sandwiched between their stomachs. “Dost thou see now? Thy frustration... it mirrors our own or art we mistaken?”
“Come on, Moony,” Liz whined, trying to reach over with her hooves to position my sister so she could start in earnest, only to fail miserably at it. She tried to use her magic next, only to find it blocked by a ring around her horn, and as she looked at me, I stuck my tongue out at her, smiling with pure schadenfreude. She groaned. “For fuck's sake, what did I do to deserve this?”
“Oh, we don't know... thy teasing, perhaps?” Nightmare reminded her as she lightly slapped Liz's muzzle with a hoof, glaring down at her with those icy blue, slit eyes that could send shivers down anypony’s spine. “To have the nerve to displease us... nothing we could think of would serve enough of a punishment to rectify this slight thou hast committed against us. But we forgave thee for that, didst we not?”
Chrysalis nodded, a hopeful glimmer in her eyes. “Yes, now can we please fuck?”
Nightmare hummed thoughtfully, tapping her chin with a hoof. “We do desire thy services...” she agreed without actually making any moves to act on her own cravings. “But what wouldst thou promise us in return for us to comply with thy demands?”
Our wife gaped at her, completely aghast. “Fucking like horny rabbits isn’t enough?” she asked, incredulous. “Lady, what more could you want?!”
Nightmare shrugged, examining her own hoof nonchalantly as if she didn’t know herself. “We could just satisfy ourselves on our own, slave.”
“Oh, come on!” Liz sighed pitifully, trying to convince her by looking especially vulnerable. “I know Luna wanted to..." she pouted. "Why did you have to change?”
Nightmare Moon stopped what she was doing (even the slight grinding movements against Chrysalis) in order to raise a brow at her. “You know why I did this, Cuddlebug, don’t pretend otherwise. You see now what Summer and I mean when we say you are a frustrating pony sometimes?”
“Fine, I’ll try to reign in my urges,” Liz pouted grumpily. “Can we please fuck now?”
“Call us thy mistress and thou shall receive a reward from us, dear slave of mine,” Nightmare nodded and Liz eagerly did what she demanded of her. I felt my face heat up as Nightmare plopped down on Liz’s face, smothering her muzzle with her snatch, and on top of that, she started stroking Liz’s horn as if it was her dick, making it look like she was masturbating.
It was degenerate and I totally loved watching it. My wings were stiffly pressing themselves against the bed as I squirmed around, running my hooves all over myself with little moans leaving my throat. If I couldn’t masturbate because of my wives being jerks to me, then I would take any and all pleasures I could get, as small as they might be.
The wet sounds of Liz eating my sister’s pussy out coupled with their little grunts and moans made this scene almost unforgettable. I could already tell that the memory ball that would hold this particular memory would become one of my very favorites (if not the most favorite one). I just wish I could capture the arousing smell of their need with it as well, but perhaps that would make me a bit too much of a pervert.
Although... I don’t really care if it would be extremely pervy. It would basically be the equivalent of me sniffing their underwear... not that we wear anything like that. Maybe we should change that... Tia would certainly approve, that much I am certain of.
And I definitely know she will approve of our little secret memory ball collection. I can’t wait to show her what has become of Equestria in her absence. I’m sure she will love the Wonderbolts, the advancements in technology, the availability of coffee, the more modern lifestyle our ponies enjoy nowadays, and not to mention that we could finally live our relationship out in the open without fear. She would love everything, and most of all, I’m sure she will love the additions to our family.
Celestia and I weren’t that different in that regard. We both did everything for our family. She will love having another mare just as perverted as she is in our herd and I know she will be over herself with joy once she learns of Cadance. And maybe, in fifty years or so, we might find our little star also returned to us. She must be thirty right now, right? Bar any accidents, it could take a while until she would also reincarnate here.
The thought of having everypony back where they belong excited me immensely. Our family would be bigger than ever and it warmed my heart so very much.
Just as the sight of Nightmare coaxing out orgasm after orgasm out of Chrysalis did, still in the form of my other half. My sister has already caused her to shoot a few loads of cum out of her dick onto herself and Nightmare's backside. The sight alone made my heart beat wildly in arousal. If they kept this up, we would have to burn our bedsheets to hide the evidence afterward, once they were done with their lewd acts.
My sister was relentless as she made Liz cry out for the sixth time from overstimulating her horn. I saw her smirk over at me one last time before standing up from the almost glowing form of the still-disguised changeling, releasing her from her bonds as she did so.
Nightmare purred with delight as she saw the delirious mare breathe heavily, eyes struggling to focus on her magnificent self. “Now, then, my pretty slave...” she began, turning around with purpose. “Service us and if thou dare to perform inadequately at this task, we shall punish thee harshly.”
“As you wish, Mistress~,” Liz hummed, getting up herself. She was eager to comply, I could tell. I would be, too. In other ways than what Nightmare demanded of Chrysalis, but I would definitely jump to the task with an enthusiastic skip in my step. Oh, how I wish they would include me in their fun time.
It really was unfair. This was the first time in way too many centuries that I couldn’t join in with the fun, wasn’t it? Damn this ritual, I was so jealous of them both right now. So very, very jealous. And angry. Angrily jealous. And horny.
“Mmhh, yes~,” Nightmare moaned, leaning into the loving embrace of Chrysalis as she pressed her dick further into the overflowing wetness of her vagina. It was hard to tell just who of them was more satisfied with getting what they wanted since these teasing shenanigans started.
“Oh, damn~,” Liz grunted in a cute way, her muzzle aglow with pure happiness. “I fucking love the feeling of you around my cock so much, Moony.”
Nightmare bit her lip as she gave our wife a smoldering, icy look of desire. “Fuck us, Cuddlebug,” she demanded, breathing heavily as I suspected her own heart was hammering wildly in her own chest as well. “Fuck us hard and swift, now!”
“Yes, Mistress!” Chrysalis smiled, starting to withdraw slowly at first before she rapidly leaned back and started to drive her cock back in just as fast. Both of them moaned, and seeing that they were sufficiently distracted with each other now, I dared to try and reach out a hoof to my own nethers, finding no resistance from their meddling magic (thank the twin suns).
My aching nub thanked me gratefully as I started to rub my hoof over my entrance with zeal. I couldn’t have been happier at that moment, watching my wives go at it like cats in heat while pleasant tingles began to build up throughout my body as I stimulated my heavily aroused and weeping pussy.
I imagined myself in my sister’s place as I summoned a helpful toy over from where I left it, the vibrator doing its work wonderfully as I plunged it in and out of my quivering, wet snatch. I watched every little motion of my wives as they moved back and forth, fucking each other silly with heavy, lewd moans. Mhh, fuck~! I love them so much, I thought as my own mewls joined their lustful song and the overwhelming need to get off had me almost jerking the vibrator in and out erratically (all the while trying not to screw my eyes shut in pleasure in order to not mess up the 'recording' for the memory ball).
If I didn’t know better, Liz was almost moving faster than what was physically possible. It seemed like, once she was almost back out with her dick, she was back inside, fully hilted, seemingly instantaneously. Or perhaps it was just me, unable to concentrate completely on them as I began to shudder more and more the longer the moment kept dragging on. The only thing on my mind was masturbating to my beautiful wives and trying to reach my orgasm as fast as possible.
At least I could still masturbate with the ritual magic keeping my foals alive. It would have seriously sucked hard to go without any sexual relief for months. While I’m older than almost anything alive to this day (bar a few trees, I suppose), that doesn’t mean I would grow tired of sex. Heck, staying youthful for eternity literally made that impossible. Not only because of estrus but also because... well... sex is awesome. Sex was the best activity in the entire world and I don’t care if I sound like some nymphomaniac because of that. Sex is scientifically proven to be healthy.
...so what if I am a bit of a nymphomaniac? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I am not as bad as Liz is with it. Sex feels good, whether it was with a partner or with a damn vibrator that could never satisfy my damn need to feel loved. I would have been fine with sticking with oral... but no! Luna was a friggin’ pansy, not wanting to risk anything by becoming too frisky with me.
She was probably wise to be so cautious. I would do something stupid, knowing myself. You know, like getting pregnant while pregnant.
It took me more than ten minutes or so of recklessly abusing my little toy before I was finally rewarded with my highly desired orgasm, shaking from quivering muscles as I finally felt like I worked out a bit of frustration from the past months or so.
I continued lazily watching Liz and Nightmare go at it like they would die if they slowed down just a tiny bit, feeling warm and cozy all over. Sex really was great... even if one could suddenly and unexpectedly get pregnant while overly drunk. Eh heh heh...
But that turned out to be a good thing in the end. I was going to be a mother and nothing would take that away from me. Not the universe, not the risk of magic surges, and most certainly not Platinum.
I would have to keep my foals safe from that witch. Somehow. Just one more thing to worry about...
Hopefully keeping them from the battle far away would ensure nothing happened to them. They would barely be twenty by the time she returns, wouldn’t they? I could try to teach them like Cadance, but... if they are mortals...
What do I do then? They would never stand a chance, trying to defend themselves from a higher being that had full access to their (stolen) domain.
...then again, I knew who would stand a chance. Cadance would be their shield. She would keep them from harm while we deal with that monster.
If not... I would sacrifice myself for them, and I would not hesitate to do so. Not for one second. I couldn’t lose my foals because I was too weak to protect them.
I swear on my life, on my divinity... I will keep them safe. I have to.