There was a door, and nothing about her wanted to pass through it.
Cerea knew there was a certain amount of judgment awaiting her on the other side, which meant her memories were currently flooded with déjà vu. It didn't seem to be serving as an adequate counterbalance, let alone any form of shield.
The girl supposed that if you lived long enough, you could reach the point where anything you might experience would just remind you of something else. But she was still young, and the majority of her life had been spent in confinement. A place where every tree she passed mostly made her think about the number of times she'd passed that tree before, followed by an estimate for the potential number of tree passings to come before she died.
There were ways in which Menajeria was a place like no other. Aspects which should have made every experience new. But after centuries of liminal confinement within the gaps, it had been Cerea's lifetime which had seen things change
it's my fault
and that had allowed new experiences their chance to echo against the past. Bouncing off the jagged walls of solidified time, until every returning reverberation brought back a doubled chance to cut.
Pass through a door, and --
there are police officers
they're supposed to protect us
they're supposed to
-- the door in France, the one in memory which was trying to overlap the one in her vision -- in so many ways, it had simply been meant as the last step before a meeting. A chance for all parties involved to truly learn about each other for the first time.
There was a door. An entrance and an exit. The final departure from the gap, through a gateway which opened onto the world.
But the ones she was going to see had already formed their opinions about her. No action she could take had the potential to alter any of that. Words were ignored, and --
-- you passed through the door, and you found judgment. A verdict which had been set before the trial ever began, because the charge had been 'existence' and the girl's mere presence indicated guilt. Something where the sentence was apparently long overdue.
The pegasus wasn't hued in the exact same yellow as the vests: those had been more pale, with traces of fluorescence. But there were ways in which the fur was close enough.
Yapper said something about a rabbit.
The palace staff was freely allowed to take a swat at the rabbit. Cerea wondered where it was, and if it could possibly be any worse than its mistress. Somepony whose olfactory signature possessed what seemed to be a permanent aspect of fear, but -- what had been in that one movie, just before the key sequence of what was supposed to be a years-in-the-making fight scene had begun?
(She'd lacked the context for just about all of it, hadn't seen most of the prequels or sequels, and still didn't know why the stones were so important. And the one human with the facial hair was frankly a boor -- but certain aspects of his armor had style.)
Perhaps this particular member of the elite military unit had decided that if she was afraid all of the time, it would be that much easier to overcome fear at need. As with perpetually-masked radiation-channeled rage, Cerea was certain that the constant strain couldn't be good for the heart --
-- the pegasus got her teeth onto the door's lever, pushed down and started to move through the opening. Cerea automatically stepped back, averted her gaze from the increasing gap while making sure she stayed out of sight. She had every intention of going in. But following the pegasus too closely felt like a bad idea, and when it came to facing predetermined judgment... she wasn't expecting that to end any better than it had the first time. Especially when she knew that every mind had been made up, and the escort to the border wouldn't take place until after the assignment was complete.
So she hung back, until the door had fully closed. Took a last breath, felt the mare's lingering rage soak her lungs. And only then did she engage in the awkward foreknee bend which let her right hand grip the lever, just before marshaling so much of what remained for her battered soul. The massive, subtle effort required for simply sending herself into the room.
Her crime -- the offense committed by her entire species -- had been existence.
The vests had known a way to fix that.
The Bearers...
The table wasn't round. The ones around it remained knights.
There were too many auras in the room. It was a condition which could hold sway when the Princesses occupied a space alone, but -- Cerea had become used to that. Royalty had its place at the table, and those emanations of personality and power had the dubious benefit of familiarity. But they had been joined by others, she didn't know them, the group's collective focus had snapped onto her at the moment when that initial portion of centaur anatomy became visible and the girl tended to enter a space bustline-first...
She had been cantering along the edge of an emotional cliff for hours. There was no way to take in every last detail at once, and the need to start somewhere placed Cerea's attention on the table.
The scent told her it was black ironwood: the second time she'd encountered the dense, resilient substance. The upper surface had been worked to a high polish: something which gave the numerous yellowed papers scattered near the Princesses their own dark mirror. Minor imperfections and discolorations suggested places where damp mugs had rested a little too frequently.
A human table on this scale would have possessed multiple legs, or a giant center support. This one resembled nothing so much as a giant cross-section of stump, something where the sheer diameter was more appropriate to a redwood. (Cerea didn't know if the actual ironwood tree was that large, but... earth ponies.) And it was solid all the way down, because ponies had somewhat less need than humans to stretch out their limbs beneath a table.
The shape was a rough oval, with the Princesses dominating one of the longer sections. There weren't quite enough ponies to fully surround the wood. The alicorns -- the... first two alicorns -- took up more space than anypony else, and there was still room to spare. At a guess, it would take at least fifteen ponies of average size to create a full enclosure: adding Cerea didn't do much to warp those numbers.
There were multiple padded benches around the table. Several were unoccupied. The bench heights were variable, while the Princesses were resting upon floor cushions. The overall effect was to level out pony heights. Anypony --
-- anyone --
-- who was seated could make ready eye contact with any other -- including the occupant of the single boosted chair.
The room itself seemed to exist at a junction point between Solar and Lunar wings: Cerea's best guess was that they were currently behind (and possibly under) the Resplendent Ramp. Some of the marble was flecked with gold, other portions showed silver, and a few scarce stones had them at something very close to merger. It was easy to see that, with the walls almost completely bare. A number of hooks suggested where tapestries might have once been hung -- or, given the purpose of the space, maps. But there were no decorations. No artwork, and not a singular architectural flourish. It was a room which was meant to focus all of the attention on the table. On whoever was sitting around it.
She forced herself to look --
Some say first impressions last the longest. It's similar to the ways in which initial mistakes require the most corrections.
There are ways in which the girl has been told very little about the Bearers. This can partially be explained by the sheer amount of information she's been asked to acquire: cultural overwhelm, recent history needing to wait until she's mastered some of the basics, and -- her having spent nearly all of her time within the palace. Surrounded by Guards.
The Solar and Lunar staffs respect the Bearers, honor all which has been done for the realm and those who made it happen. The Lunar shift noses forward an extra portion of gratitude.
But there's still a certain base level of irritation present.
Part of that is because Guards operate within a rather narrow, extremely defined category of authority. The Bearers seem to be considerably more freeform. There are no ranks, very few regulations, and when it comes to 'Who do they answer to?' -- having that answer be 'The Princesses' should offer more comfort than it does. When it comes to Bearer-generated chaos, the Princesses mostly seem to watch. A few of the darker suspicions insert the occasional 'encourage', and most of those started after that one Gala.
Both palace staffs appreciate the Bearers, and do so while remaining rather annoyed. There's just been too many times when the Guards had to show up to take care of the aftermath. Your average Guard is a little bit tired of having to help clean up cake-covered pieces of shattered columns, not to mention galloping down to the precinct house afterwards because nopony on either staff truly believes it's an official Bearer visit until someone posts bail. And the accountants try to figure out how much of the budget needs to be shuffled before things can be fixed this time around, those told to deal with the public try to work out another excuse, and anypony charged with making the embassy rounds double-checks their pronunciation guides because when you're trying to apologize in that many languages, some syllables are going to slip. Trying to remind the various ambassadors that they were the ones who wanted the meeting in the first place is probably a bad idea.
The girl thinks they're an elite military unit. They aren't. The central commonality is the sheer amount of casual, generally-unintended destruction.
See them through her eyes. Start on the left, move in that direction and keep going no matter what...
The cyan pesasus is just barely seated. Her legs shift almost all the time, push against bench and table and air. It's nothing compared to what the wings are doing. There's a rest position for pegasus wings and one day, it's remotely possible that every last feather of the cyan's limbs will achieve it because just about anypony might potentially wind up in a coma. The raw amount of barely-repressed kinetic energy waiting to be launched -- that reminds the girl of Papi. There's also a similar, near-instant desperate hope that it may be possible to tell how much attention is being paid by whether the feathers are vibrating in the speaker's general vicinity: anything under two meters away indicates a tiny chance to have words actually going into ears without making their way out again. Unfortunately, the table is somewhat larger than that.
She wants to move. Everything about her suggests the desire to do something, perhaps to build up more of the ozone and ions which are laced into her scent. And with most pegasi... the girl saw it with Nightwatch: the ways in which those forms tend to be a little more sleek. Streamlined. The yellow is an exception: wings a little too large for the body, tail as something of a drag weight. The cyan exists at the opposite end of the curve. There isn't a single gram of mass on her body which doesn't have a purpose. Air doesn't press down on her: it waits for the opportunity to serve as one more launch surface, or a medium of perfect passage. A prismatic mane and tail may be nothing more than a color signal for everypony else to get out of the way. It's a body which was born for flight, and considers too much time on the ground to be a form of death. And there's strength there, but it's tightly-coiled, compressed into a smaller space because too much mass is going to be a detriment in the air. It also begs the question of what happens if that overwound mainspring finally snaps.
(The girl vaguely remembers that she's supposed to stop the cyan from trying to catch anything across the narrow back. The only current candidate for the action would be an extremely intact ceiling, which would seem to indicate that the world is safe from the attempt -- for now.)
Look to the cyan for one form of strength. The orange features raw power.
It's the most muscular form in the set. Well-balanced, the sort of almost casual-looking natural development which comes along simply by having somepony put in a good day's work, every day across the course of a lifetime -- but there's a lot of it. A little extra bulk on the hind legs suggests a powerful back kick, and somepony's been putting in some professional supervision on the vastus. There's a thickness there, and it echoes out to the mane and tail: wide strands, hair with some extra body to it. The rope loops may simply be a means of keeping the whole thing confined, and the hat...
There's something odd about the hat. It's not the stability, the way it only moves when the earth pony wishes. The girl will spend some time in that mare's vicinity, and it doesn't take long before she realizes that everything comes from the ears. Pressure from the sides, microadjustments provided by subtle muscles, things which happen automatically. You can read the mare's mood more readily from the set of the hat than the shifts of her features, although both pale next to what happens in the olfactory world. But it's an old hat, one where the girl can scent both the years and all of the methods being used to constantly ward them off. And trapped somewhere under all of the protective treatments are the forever-lingering final traces of what was once a stallion's scent. Something set off by the aroma of solid earth and ripe fruit.
The orange mare is more still than the cyan: everypony is. And yet there remains the impression that she wants to move. To kick whatever this is into motion so she can get to work.
Keep going around the curve, drop the gaze very slightly down because variable benches used to level out heights needed to put in some overtime...
The girl has suspected -- a very rare bloodline? Recessives which only run in certain families? There would still be a question as to whether the little alicorn is related to the Princesses -- except that the Sergeant had told her there were no heirs. Additionally, this is clearly a full-grown adult (for the very little that means for size and mass, because this is the smallest adult the girl has seen: short, almost painfully slender, three missed meals away from having every rib displayed in sharp relief) and when it comes to the second automatic question, that makes her too old. The girl has steadfastly been avoiding any and all questions about pony lifespan -- but she's managed to learn something about their growth rate just from looking at the number of years required for education. This mare is an adult, and the Princesses -- if she had to guess, royalty is currently in the pony equivalent to a human's early twenties, with the sisters about two years apart. The lavender alicorn may be a distant relative or just represents a surge of genes rising to the surface of a far-removed river, but she isn't their offspring. Not trained as an operator for Sun or Moon.
She possesses a sort of fundamental awkwardness. The wings are carried in a way which suggests they're supposed to be in some other position and the little mare hasn't quite worked out what that is. Both mane and tail styling seem to exist at the lowest possible level of maintenance, and the way she sits states that she's just realized she has four legs and she's hoping somepony is going to tell her that was actually supposed to be the proper number. And she smells like rare metals, old paper, litmus test strips, and a constant background layer of stress.
An alicorn seems to exist as a sort of subset for the general rules. The sapient next to the small one forms his very own exception.
The girl thinks this is a male. She hasn't seen the species before, doesn't know what the identifiers for gender are. With mammals, they usually wind up being pretty obvious: size, coloration, some differences to overall configuration and in a world where trick valves aren't a thing, you could risk trying to get a peek at the genitals. When it comes to mammals, determining gender for the non-avians can become rather easy -- but this is the first reptile. A rather small lizard, something where seated posture (added to the presence of an actual chair) indicates a biped. Arms and legs, which end in handling and walking claws. The tips look sharp.
She isn't used to lizards. France has a mere seven species (although rather more in the way of snakes, too many of which are poisonous: Lala claims that the ones banished from Ireland didn't flee all that far). Over the course of her life, she might have spotted three, and none of them were crested. The eyes of this one are much larger in proportion to the body, and there's intelligence present: this has been added to a basic brightness. And she doesn't know if the width of those orbs is being produced by fear, because he's the first and now she has to work out a reptilian scent. It's going to take some time, especially when she has to sort through the other natural odors which surround him. She suspects that she's the only one in the room who can detect any of it, but -- there are traces of strange chemicals, laced within hints of sulfur.
(This is something which becomes a little worse when he speaks. The voice initially keeps her from noticing that. Initially.)
Perhaps it's being produced by body polish. The scales are bright, and have traces of silica embedded within. He doesn't reflect light, and nothing about him sparkles -- but quick movements tend to produce a bit of shimmer, along with a very soft scraping sound as the edges of hard scales rub against each other.
Almost everyone in the room has an aura, and it's everyone because the reptile has single-handedly disabled 'pony' as a verbal terminator. His is one of the weaker specimens, slightly flickering and a little uncertain -- but it's present. The mare on his other side, however...
If the girl was judging by body posture alone, then this would be the leader. The light blue unicorn doesn't rest on her bench: she's taken full, temporary ownership and it's going to be temporary because the mare has already decided that she's in dire need of an upgrade. The set of the shoulders and hips, added to slow, precise movements of the tail -- everything about that posture states that not only has the mare been here before, but she's been in multiple places which were far better than this and can tell you exactly how to improve everything: the budget for doing so then becomes your problem.
That's the posture: self-assured, in control, and there's also an Ego which would like to have a word. But seek the more authoritative definitions offered by the olfactory world, and find the room's strongest source of terror.
Very little of that seems to be directed at the girl. The unicorn looks at the centaur, and most of what arises is simple curiosity. But when she focuses on the table, the fear starts to rise. Any glance at the Princesses creates an outright surge --
-- no. Looking at the white horse creates a surge. The dark alicorn... twinges of concern, and very little more. But there's at least one horrible memory associated with the Solar Princess, something which comes back every time the light blue unicorn sees her. The posture is Ego, the eventual voice occasionally indicates some nerves and genuine concerns about the situation to come, but the aroma is fear over the remnants of detonated fireworks. And the girl knows the Princess is the trigger, but -- possibly not the target.
As with the others, this mare has an aura. But it's the weakest in the group. It's an aura which seems to be trying to figure out whether it's permitted to exist. And it keeps falling in on itself.
The yellow pegasus is next. The girl can mostly skip over that one, and would like to do so in a hurry. But she recently remembered about the rabbit, and that leaves her briefly searching for lapine traces -- something where the results come up mostly blank. One extra inhalation allows her to detect a trace of lingering scent there, along with... other animals? She's almost certain there, but -- there's another factor present. A carefully-assembled collection of natural chemicals working in measured conjunction. Some kind of soap, serving as a masking agent for a number of larger molecules. It doesn't do anything to block the stench of the mare's rage, but it places a cloak on top of just about everything else.
The soap has a pleasant scent (or, to what the girl suspects would be the typical pony level of detection, a pleasant lack of it). The girl distantly wonders where she could get some, and knows the yellow pegasus is exactly the wrong mare to ask.
There's rather more scent coming off the neighboring pink mare, and all of it is familiar. Chocolate, yeast, grains of flour which may have a permanent home at the base of the fur. She smells like the interior of a well-maintained bakery, and it's something which seems to come with its own warmth.
This earth pony is a little overweight. Not by much: perhaps four kilograms, and it's distributed evenly across the body. The central effect is to give the cheeks some extra rounding, and put a little padding on top of what's actually some pretty significant muscles. Everything about the mare seems to be at least slightly amplified from the standard: she's taller than all but the orange mare, that extra bulk adds a little more to her physical presence, and some additional portion of that may come from the mane and tail. Up until now, the girl hadn't known it was possible for a pony to have curls -- at least, not natural ones. Admittedly, her sample size is rather small, and she has seen a few artificial specimens from those who put a little more work into their styling -- but this mare is carrying twin riots of twists attached to head and dock. The volume of a small cloud, the tangle of forest vines. They flounce with the smallest of movements, frequently serving as a visual amplifier to some of what's happening in the olfactory realm.
The girl is still trying to work out some aspects of pony expressions and still knows that you can tell just about everything about the way the mare wants you to believe she's feeling at a glance. The scents, however, run somewhat deeper.
Some of the pink mare's motions are extremely quick. Others are carefully controlled. She seems to exist as constructed spontaneity. And she spends so much of her time in surreptitious survey of the others. Near-constant, subtle checks of their expressions and postures. It puts the girl in mind of a shepherd trying to read the mood of the flock. Watching for those on the verge of breaking, while hoping to find some means of intercept. She has to watch, and it doesn't take very long for the girl to realize that this portion of the seating arrangement was deliberate. The pink mare has put herself next to the yellow because at the first sign of true movement, there's going to be somepony in the way.
There's something soft about the pink mare: a layer of padding which doesn't quite conceal the strength underneath. The final unicorn could be said to have a certain level of base similarity. One aspect on the surface, another beneath. But with this one...
There are pressure marks within her fur: little portions of disturbed grain which indicate that cloth had been pressing against the body. Elaborate mane and tail curls are present, and just as artificial as the eyelashes. The mare smells not only of binding glue, but the sort of chemically-overworked shampoo which is a mere two atomic bonds away from becoming gasoline. Add that to the perpetual background aroma of cotton and linen...
But there are factors other than scent. There's something soft about the white unicorn's form. She's in decent condition, but -- that's it. Her body puts the girl in mind of those humans who sculpt themselves with careful barely-exercises and the occasional touch of surgical vacuum cleaner, where true health takes a distant second to appearance: after all, health can create bulges in some rather unfashionable places. The surface level says that this mare cares about how she looks, and...
...it's the eyes. The yellow pegasus can stare like a snake. (The reptile has blinked more than the yellow mare.) The white unicorn is focused, but -- there are near-constant microadjustments. Not just looking at what is, but trying to see what's coming. And the body only appears to be at rest until the girl notices the way in which the fur reacts in concert with those eyes. The tiny ripples which are the only sign of what's happening with the muscles underneath. Because on the surface level, the mare is calm and composed. (In the olfactory world, there is fear -- but it's considerably less than what so many of the others are unknowingly showing. For white and orange, it's closer to nerves than anything else. Tension...) But underneath, she's just as ready to move as the cyan, and with somewhat more in the way of deliberate intent. It's possible to watch this mare think, adjusting any possible plan from moment to moment. Trying to decide if there needs to be a plan at all.
The white unicorn looks soft. Scabbards can be soft to the touch, and it never changes the nature of the sword.
Seven mares, and what the girl thinks is a male. (She still isn't sure. Determining gender on some lizards in her home requires either exacting inspection, a DNA test, or catching them at exactly the right moment during mating season. Birds can be worse.) And before the gaps opened, she never would have questioned that. If you were putting together something which was meant to be elite, then why would you ever include stallions? Everyone knows that stallions are stupid. In the best case, you might be able to send a few ahead. Tell them to fight something: they'd enjoy that. But you couldn't expect much in the way of tactics, they would stop following orders as soon as it wasn't entertaining any more, and the mares galloping in after the first wave would probably wind up swinging batons at their own forces just to make the stallions stop kicking.
But the girl has spent time among the humans. (She has yet to admit that she tended to treat those males as if they were a little slow. The girl is perfectly aware that humans can think, and had very few expectations of ever finding the ones who were actually good at it.) And with the ponies...
The Guards are a mixed unit: species and gender. Like just about everything in Equestria, the ratio leans somewhat to the mare side. But the girl has watched those stallions at work. Her teacher -- the one who actually thought she was getting better, and she hopes to be well across the border before he ever learns that his faith was so misplaced -- was a stallion. She'd never spent so much time around a thinking stallion.
It was a lesson, one taught without intent. Something which took permanent root. There are stallions who are truly sapient, capable, in full possession of their own intellect and proud of it. Who feel that thought has more power than a fist -- or in this case, hooves.
So why are all of the ponies in this unit mares?
Is it something historical, which says the role must be taken by females? Is there a second unit somewhere, composed entirely of pony stallions added to a female lizard?
She doesn't know. Two Princesses. Seven mares: a pair for each of the major pony species, plus an alicorn. Perhaps that's the standard mix. The last slot might always be occupied by a non-pony: perhaps a minotaur has filled the role at some point, or a buffalo. Probably not an ibex.
Where does the lizard come from? Does his species hold its own nation? Nopony's mentioned a land of reptiles. And he's so small, even smaller than the little alicorn. Given some of what she knows is out there in the wild, what kind of magic would allow that species to prosper? There are so many questions, and...
...this assignment will be the only time she'll interact with them. There's unlikely to be much in the way of conversation. Any additional studies will take place thousands of miles away, assuming her next set of citizenship classes bothers to bring up that much in the way of foreign history.
Eight sapients. Seven mares, one lizard.
These are the Bearers. And every last one is looking at her.
The alicorn is the first to avert her gaze: tired-seeming eyes dip, the head turns, and then the little mare is mostly studying her imperfect reflection in polished wood. The yellow pegasus just keeps staring, while the white unicorn eventually nods to herself. Most of the cyan's attention wanders over to the scattered papers. The girl can't read anything about the lizard, but the orange earth pony seems oddly... relaxed? But that's balanced by the tension which rises in the pink, and that happens every time the yellow mare seems to be on the verge of making a move. And the light blue... there's a visible evaluation in progress. Raw curiosity briefly rises through the fear, submerges again, bobs to the surface...
They all have auras. Everyone in the room possesses one.
Everyone except --
-- technically, she can't know. It's like trying to smell the inside of her own nose. But she's sure. It's not as if anyone ever mentioned it. Any aura -- or rather, any which isn't born from madness -- has certain requirements for the possessor. The girl is...
...she doesn't have one.
She knows it.
Eight heroes. Two Princesses. And there are benches, one chair, the final set of floor cushions is clearly intended for the centaur, the pooling which has one side of the oval just about to itself because that way, most of the ponies would have to try and reach her through coming across the table and --
-- the ponies (and the lizard), in their resting postures, are at a near-level height. The girl's body doesn't fully share those configurations. She can descend to the cushions and no matter how much she tries to bend, she's still going to be looking down.
On the Mohs scale, a centaur's hooves are very slightly harder than marble. So in theory, if she just paces the floor in a circle for a very long time...
...there's no help for it.
The girl slowly walks up to the empty set of cushions. Carefully lowers her body. Hunches her upper back, which just puts too much emphasis on certain features and straightens her again from sheer embarrassment.
Some of them are still looking at her. The yellow mare stares.
The yellow mare.
The yellow vests.
The words.
There should have been no means of knowing her name --
"-- Miss Cerea?"
The centaur blinked.
They're supposedly going to let me keep the translator.
Maybe that means getting a look at the operations manual.
I really want to know how it assigns things. What I sound like to everypony else, and whether it's giving me a Prance accent. Because this is the second time it's decided on --
"Or do y'prefer 'Cerea', t' make it a little less formal?" the orange mare almost casually inquired. A subtle shift of ears tilted the hat slightly forward. "Ah mean, not that we've been introduced an' all, but Ah've already heard a few things 'bout you. Makes it feel like the 'Miss' ain't gonna be needed."
Did every species blink? No, there were exceptions. Insects didn't have eyelids, and fish presumably didn't need to worry abut cleaning the surface when they were constantly being washed by the water around them. Miia had a snake's clear protective cap over each eye, but blinked anyway. (Any lamia who needed their vision corrected tended to go for glasses: laser surgery could be too complicated, and contacts were exceptionally awkward.)
"You heard a few things," Cerea risked. "From the papers..." Or would she have said 'read'? Because the accent...
The mare's lips moved.
"From mah sister," said the familiar tones.
...is she smiling?
Why is she --
And centaurs definitely blinked. The main problem seemed to be in stopping.
"Your sister --"
"-- from both of our sisters," a new, fully-unidentifiable accent casually broke in, and the white unicorn briefly inspected the bottom of her own right forehoof. "In my case, I am the elder sibling for Sweetie Belle." The lip movement duplicated itself on the second mare, only with somewhat more bemusement. "One of the rare times over the last few years when I have been able to say that without adding an apology..."
"An' Ah'm Apple Bloom's big sister," the tones of the American South took over. "So yeah, we've both heard a few things 'bout you, by really close proxy." The powerful shoulders tossed off a shrug. "For starters, that you're a pretty good singer." And the smile got a little wider. "Kind of a cultural thing for earth ponies, t' respect a singer. In mah experience, singin' ain't somethin' which can be managed without a decent soul."
They have some level of animation available for their films, was offered up by a few heavily-stunned neurons. I don't think it does much in the way of villain songs.
"...I..." eventually fell out of Cerea's half-open mouth, shortly followed by "Any centaur can sing, it's just our vocal --"
"Tirek couldn't," the pink one stated -- then frowned. "Or maybe he could? I mean, it's not like we ever had the chance to find out. I guess he could have done a work song? Assuming he thought what he was doing was work, because he was really treating it more like destiny. A destiny song is probably a different key." She thought it over. "And a lot slower. With more in the way of drums. Anyway, what would a Tirek work song have been? 'Hello, hello, to steal your magic I go'?" The frown twisted a little. "I kind of feel like that needs some whistling at the end. Do centaurs whistle?"
Both Princesses were smiling. Cerea had forgotten that the dark alicorn could smile. It wasn't something she currently wanted to see.
Stop blinking...
"You may," Princess Celestia rather gravely stated, "have the chance to ask Cerea a few questions during the trip into the wild zone. If she feels comfortable in answering them."
"But at this time," Princess Luna calmly added, "we find ourselves with other things to discuss. So while introductions would undoubtedly be appreciated, some portion of that process can take place across the scope of the briefing. We have a number of mission-related topics to discuss --"
Which was when the one visible blue-green eye changed focus.
"...I want an update on Discord's condition."
Two of the alicorns took a slow breath. The one who wasn't wearing regalia looked away.
"Fluttershy --" the white horse began.
As interruptions of royalty went, "...it's mission related," was far too calm. "Because if he was healthy -- well, if he was healthy, I'd know. Because he would have come to me." The wings partially flared out, slowly curled back in. "But maybe he's almost there, and it's just that nopony's told me because nopony's told me anything. So it's about the last resort, isn't it? If it all goes wrong, and he has to nearly die for us again --"
"-- there is a certain degree of blessing in hope," stated the coldest voice in the room, and dark eyes narrowed. "One which is frequently accompanied by its own level of torment. I am uncertain as to why you continue to express the desire for us to provide you with a means of increasing your pain."
"...he was -- he's my friend, you..." Forehooves planted themselves against the wood, started to push. "...you don't understand --"
"Especially," Princess Luna concluded, "when you have proven so adept at hurting yourself."
And just as the pink mare started to move, shifting to the side to form an equine blockade -- the white horse sighed.
"I've been reading your letters for moons, Fluttershy," the white horse softly said. "You're in mourning, and -- mourning for someone who may not be fully lost. And I wrote back. I'm pretty sure you didn't repeat anything I said to the others, and... I'm not sure you ever truly thought about what I told you. So I'm going to say it out loud: I understand."
"You understand," emerged with surprising speed, along with enough raw bitterness to make any Japanese melon connoisseur happy.
Purple eyes subtly narrowed.
"Mourning for someone who may not be fully lost," the white horse stated, "when you're not sure if there's any real chance of getting them back. When thoughts of both loss and hope are inextricably twinned, and every last one is a hoofblade in your own heart. If there's anypony in the world who understands that mix of emotion, Fluttershy, the way it feels like acid burning its way out -- then you are looking at her."
And from the dark mare, there arose a surge of new scents --
-- but the elder was still talking. "Hope can be torment. Hope has a chance to become torture. You're setting out for a place which drinks in both. Taking power from pain, and if hope is what could hurt you -- then hope is what might be used. You're not even going in, and you're already trying to give it strength."
She stood up.
It seemed to happen all at once. Long legs didn't unfold: they simply pushed. Huge wings partially unfolded, and the yellow mare stared up through sudden shadow.
"I also know," the elder Princess evenly said, "that you've been trying to put yourself near Cerea for moons. That you don't deal well with your anger. Still. And you have a history of going after the wrong targets. The palace is doing everything in its power to help Discord. The effort is ongoing and constant. And your mission-related update on his condition is that he is not available --"
Select portions of the huge form sagged. It mostly happened around the joints, added to a sudden stillness in the flow of the pastel light which made up mane and tail.
"-- and I wish he was here," Princess Celestia quietly finished. "I wish that." The white head slowly moved: left to right, and then back to center. "He wasn't my friend, Fluttershy. He would have laughed at the mere concept. I might have laughed, too. But it would have been in bitterness, at the absurdity of the thought."
A soft sigh had its way with the large body.
"He wasn't my friend," the Princess repeated. "We were -- something else to each other. Something darker. And right now..."
The laugh was just barely audible. It was just barely a laugh at all. A single syllable of graveyard-born mirth, and no more.
"...I miss him." The non-laugh repeated. "I miss him. Sun and Moon, if there was ever a statement to make my generation question somepony's sanity..."
A dark wing brushed against the white horse's forelegs. She looked down, met her sister's eyes, and slowly began to sink back into a resting position.
"I need you to help bring Cerea to the Aornum Gate," the oldest alicorn told the yellow mare. "Can you do that?"
Slowly, the pegasus nodded. The pink earth pony fully shifted back to her own bench.
"It's not going to be a fun trip," the flour-scented mare decided. "I don't see how it could be. Even with sing-alongs."
"We'll all try," came from the tiny alicorn -- after the sentence finished fighting its way past the gulp. "But -- I was only at the Gate, that one time. I stopped there. I've never been inside. And..." The glance at Cerea only came after multiple thin muscles had been to war against each other: the casualties were presumed to have been total. "...she doesn't know anything about it, does she? Not even what everyone tells themselves they know, when all they have are the stories..."
The dark mare nodded, just before her horn ignited. A near-absence of light rushed across the surface of the table, and something very close to a single-hue holographic contour relief image began to manifest upon the wood.
"And thus the briefing," she told them all.
The orange and white mares slowly nodded, while the light blue stared at the illusion with half-concealed terror. The little alicorn visibly forced herself to focus, the reptile braced handling claws on the wood as the cyan snorted, the pink checked on all of them before going back to watching the yellow, and royalty examined the still-forming image.
"Because before any might go in," Princess Luna stated, watching as thin winding trails between Bearers and centaur cut their way across the table, "we must maximize her chances of coming out."
And the girl looked at the map.
The final part of her ever-changing road.
The path which led to her death.
The dark alicorn looked at the centaur. Went back to the image. And a mare immune to cold fought against the urge to shiver.
"Let us discuss Tartarus."