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// 2.1 - A bad day to assemble 
// Story: Royal Rewrite - The winner wrote the history 
// by Zalmax 
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The Everfree forest was considered the centre of Equestria. Inside the Everfree forest was a Castle. Inside the castle was a throne room. Inside the throne room was a Queen. Together with the Queen were several ponies. Those ponies dearly wished they were someplace else. Anywhere except in the throne room, or the castle, or even the forest. You didn’t need to ask them what they wished. The anger of the Queen made it obvious they all shared the same wish.

The huge white mare had big wings on her side and a long slender horn on her head, but it wasn’t really her size, her horn or her wings that made her entirely different from anyone else in the throne room. It was the tail and mane, magically flowing with a fierce halo of astral flames that made her unique to this world.

She looked at the assembled royal guards in front of her with burning eyes. Treason was ahoof and must be punished. Her reptilian looking eyes glanced at the captains, lieutenants, sergeants and soldiers assembled. It wasn’t the entire royal guard, but everyone that in some way or another could have been involved in the prisoner’s escape.

The prisoner had been convicted and was scheduled to be executed at the scene of the crime. This punishment ensured that a violent criminal would never, ever repeat the crime. It was also a good way to make sure the criminal were really truly sorry. It also made an excellent reminder to everyone else that unacceptable actions are unacceptable just as the word implies, and can never be reasoned with, or accepted, in any form.

The prisoner however, had managed to escape. The convict was fleeing through the Everfree forest when they found him but the desperate prisoner was killed during the capture. It all happened so fast - was the poor excuse from the guards.

Celestia was happy that her sister wasn’t there. To figure out how the pony managed to escape was difficult, and Celestia could do well without her irresponsible sister arguing that with the prisoner dead, the final result was achieved, and royalty had better things to do than waste energy on concluded matters.

Her little sister was so clueless. She had no idea how difficult it is to maintain order and make sure that everypony in Equestria heeded the Royal wisdom. Ponies needed to follow the rules laid out, not just when she or her sister were there to watch them, but also when neither of them had been seen in that area for many years.

Total respect could only be accomplished by a massive reputation rooted deep into everyponys’ memory. A memory delivered as a matter of fact on a boring scroll is quickly forgotten. A memory delivered together with massive emotions would be remembered forever. If she had to be harsh to a violent criminal in order to accomplish the perfect reminder for society, it was the price that must be paid.

Draconian measures versus a single criminal would entail that ten ponies feared repercussions and never became criminals, and along that path followed that a hundred ponies would never have to become victims of criminals. Such wisdom wasn’t for a flower-sniffing garden pony to understand. Doing what must be done, was a burden that only the ruler could bear.

It was different in the early days. When ponies were about to go extinct, she and Luna had showed themselves for the first time, to aid the ponies and to guide them. During the early centuries they could be patient and repetitive since they had more time per pony.

In the early days old ponies were constantly replaced with young ones, who repeated the mistakes of the previous generation. Young ponies always failed to heed the warnings from the elder, believing the current situation were different, and refused to see how previous experience applied to them.

Every pony was excited to learn something new. No pony was thrilled to confirm something old. It was thus in the nature of everypony to disregard old wisdom and to make ‘new’ discoveries while they explored a fresh experience.

Ponies in general seemed oblivious to these shortcomings. Older ponies tended to shrug it off. It was all part of growing up they said. But mortal ponies never had to see the mistakes repeated over and over again. They didn’t have to see ten mistakes per year, turn into a hundred mistakes per year and thousand mistakes per year, as the ponies of Equestria grow more numerous by the century. Inflating a simple saddle-sore to a painful harrowing experience.

They didn’t have to worry about the ripples of mistakes going back and forth across the kingdom amplifying each other; turning calm water into a treacherous sea. Turning small-scale feuds into full-fledged wars. Queen Celestia on the other hand, had to worry about all of that. And she did.

Every day she exerted her influence to push them away from the mistakes already repeated by earlier generations. Many years ago she had decided to rescue them because she didn’t bear to see the few remaining ponies suffer an agonizing death. She didn’t save them so they could multiply by the thousands and have her watch a multitude of agonizing deaths.

During those early days they had ruled with patience, constantly repeating the do’s and don’t for every new pony born into this world. She had lots of patience and it was easy. Nowadays ponies are spread out all over Equestria and she can’t be everywhere. Some ponies go their entire life without ever seeing the queen or the princess. It’s very difficult to influence someone who’s never met you. It requires a different approach than someone you face.

Luna always believed everything to be simple. Give a pony anarchy and it will eventually invent order. Teach a pony about justice, and it can tinker something that suits their community. Well, Celestia’s way of teaching justice may be a bit different from what Luna had in mind, but its duration was permanent and anypony who observed it would never forget the lesson. In the end Celestia did what had to be done, because she knew from experience that Luna’s philosophy didn’t work. Especially since every new generation wants to make their own mistakes. Her sister on her different tail was too naive to understand that.

Celestia wished she could teach ponies what she knew and send them out to teach more but it wasn’t possible. As Queen of Equestria and the most powerful ruler in the world, she had accumulated so many years of experience regarding conflicts, drama and domino effects that it was no longer possible to teach it. After explaining what she had learnt from all kinds of situations and sharing all of that experience, the pony would be a 100 years old and in no condition to trot out and educate more.

But today's assembly in the Royal throne room didn’t deal with a large-scale problem focusing on a long-term future. Today the failure had been in the very heart of kingdom. Someone had given the prisoner tools to help him escape. If the same problem had been in some goddess-forsaken cave dwelling outside the borders she wouldn’t care. If it had been in a regulated village the ponies would be ordered to take actions to prevent it from repeating.

Now it had happened at the royal castle, the role model of Equestrian society; the beacon of light the entire kingdom was supposed to follow, and that was high treason. Treason could only be cured in one way.

She looked over the assembled ponies as they stood lined up in front of her. None were excluded unless proven innocent. It was from experience. Mistakes could happen. So even the ones with great intentions could screw up. She looked at Captain Quicksmite. She was almost a favorite of Celestia. The Queen didn’t play favorites, but if she did, it would certainly be Captain Quicksmite. She started with addressing her.

"Do you have any explanation as to how the prisoner got the tools to escape?"

"Our Divine Queen Goddess, I have not, and I’m truly sorry for my failure." Captain Quicksmite quickly responded with a steady voice.

Queen Celestia looked at her most valued Captain. Quicksmite’s thoughts in the presence of the Queen always aligned with hers, but who knows what she had been thinking at the time the prisoner got his tools? Celestia’s influence waned when she wasn’t around. She knew that from experience.

The Queen turned to Captain Steady Pike, "Can you explain how the prisoner acquired the tools?"

"Our Divine Queen Goddess, I believe somepony must have helped him." the Captain replied but his voice were no way near as adamant as that of Captain Quicksmite.

Celestia's fiery mane caught additional flames as her already heated temper flared, "Of course he had help you stupid moron. The initial investigation already came to that conclusion."

Captain Steady Pike responded by throwing himself flat on the floor, in the traditional submissive pose of greeting or begging a royal queen or princess.

Celestia wasn’t really annoyed with Steady Pike. It was just so typical of a stallion to provide stupid answers to simple questions. In general, mares could use their words and vocabulary properly while stallions could not.

Mares were great to send out to lead a mission when creativity, imagination and improvisation were required. Stallions were amazing at following simple orders demanding a single focus. Tell a stallion to stare at a wall and make sure it doesn’t topple over, and the stallion would stare at the wall, no questions asked, hour after hour. A mare on the other hoof would soon find herself attaching bells to the wall and run away to do something else, convinced the bells would alert her if she were needed.

From experience Celestia suspected a mare to be the traitor. Somepony who had been thinking too much, and come up with some genius idea that ended up going horribly wrong. Perhaps believing she could reveal the prisoner to have tools in his cell, and get rewarded for her perception? Ideas similar to that one weren’t uncommon and faked heroic deeds happened a few times every century.

Whatever the original plan, the tools were used by the pony to perform a violent escape, and start a mad dash through the Evefree forest. But he did not follow the road to quickly get out and away, but actually went deeper. How did he came up with that idea?

If it wasn’t for Celestia helping to pinpoint his direction he may have gotten away. Usually it would fall on the princess to play chase, as her abilities were more suited to it, but Celestia had managed to awaken her divining abilities and make good use of them. Something she rarely managed these years. The aura of a regular pony was tiny. The last centuries she had found it increasingly difficult scrying for one. Perhaps the massive magic of the Everfree Forest helped obscure them?

She looked back at the assembled ponies. Finding out who to blame and for what, wouldn’t be easy. None of them gave any hint that they knew anything they didn’t say or had any more information to divulge. To shake up a gathering of possible suspects like this usually caused a few pieces of the puzzle to fall out or lies to unravel but so far she had none. That was highly unusual.



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