Cozy Glow awoke, or thought she did. Chains enwrapped her from shoulder to flank within a sepulchral darkness, and that was the sort of thing that happened to her only in dreams, or in a past life long ago in Equestria. From the shackles that bound her hooves and the stillness of the space surrounding her, she gathered she was in a prison, but of a different kind than that to which she had grown accustomed. Here she could feel the humidity of stagnant air against her clammy coat, and could hear the tinkling of metal links as she labored to breathe within their constricting grasp.
She tried to brush a damp curl out of her face, but the chains were too heavy for her to lift. From the way they echoed, she could tell that she lay on a raised surface in the center of a small room or cell. She relaxed, letting them weigh her down, and cast about wide-eyed into the sightless murk. A hint of gray began to take shape, resolving after long minutes of painful adjustment into the vague outline of an iron door. Something coughed behind walls of what she could only imagine was solid rock.
She had guessed right. The idea that she was free began to take root in her mind. Free, at least, from the timeless void she had endured during her petrification. That she was no longer a statue implied that some agent had released her; although whether it had been the work of an unknown benefactor or simply the natural decay of the spell’s power remained to be seen.
The crackle and the flare of energy that had locked her in stone, and the triumphant faces of all the creatures of Equestria uplifted in joy flashed through her mind. The Princesses had not tried to conceal their smiles as they’d blasted her. And Twilight had hovered above it all, watching.
Her mouth and throat burned, and the slightest wrong move brought an aperiodic thump of pain to the inside of her skull. She had misplaced the memory of the taste of food long ago, but the basic need for water had lingered through all the lost years. The ceiling dripped into a puddle far out of reach.
The notion that she was being tortured nudged her train of thought.
“Hell … hello?” she asked the gloom. It did not respond.
“Water … please, can I have some?”
Her dry, cracked voice sounded pathetic to her, and she hated it. She noted the smooth, rust-free metalwork of the chains. They were exactly the kind she would use on her classmates for their part in overthrowing her, she mused. As for the princesses, she had a more short-term plan.
Her request for water had gone unheard or had been ignored, she deduced from the enduring silence, though she was sure it was only a matter of time before someone came. She reasoned that whoever had freed her hadn’t done so to dehydrate her in a dungeon cell. No pony was that crazy.
The minutes stretched like sunset shadows, marked only by the subdued cough, hidden from sight. One of the phlegmy interruptions blossomed into a squeal of dry hinges. Hoofsteps followed, heavy on an unyielding floor, underscored by a curious rumbling as of wheels. A perfect rectangle of white light appeared to frame the door, which began to grind inward.
Cozy turned, blinking long sleepy lashes toward the harsh illumination that had flooded inward and driven the darkness to the opposite side of the cell. Two faces glared back at her like grim capitals atop columns guarded by metal plating. The fierce reflections from their helmets forced her to shut her eyes.
There was a series of clicks as the locks that secured her chains to the platform released. She felt a quick acceleration as a tingling pressure enveloped her and lifted her into the air.
“Water … please?” she peeped as she floated in the direction of the guards, keeping her eyes squeezed shut to accentuate her tone of need and helplessness. It had been smart of them, she thought, to deprive her of the basics; to weaken her physically and reduce her mental capacity to render any escape attempt far less likely to succeed. Whomever she was dealing with, they had proven they were adept at assessing risk. Her usual charms would have to be amped to the max if she wanted to get out of her predicament.
Again, her plea went unanswered. Something slammed above her after she landed, jolting her eyes open.
She was in a cage; a shiny cart that had been fitted with vertical bars and topped with a thick metal slab. One by one, the locks at the ends of her chains began to glow and snake like the tips of octopus legs to find the bars and latch to them. When the last one had snapped into place, the cart began to roll.
She couldn’t see much from her vantage point, but what little that passed beyond the bars revealed more about her captors. The floor was neither crystal nor stone, but of a substance that seemed to have qualities of both. It was gray like a single giant boulder, and smooth like the facets of the Castle of Friendship. It spoke of dissatisfaction with the status quo. It spoke of a drive to order and cleanliness.
The guards stopped. One of them held his muzzle in front of a blackened mirror that had been set in the otherwise featureless wall of the corridor. A plane of red light scanned down his face and disappeared with a chirp.
“Silent Steel, Corrections Warden, Rank 4, Canterlot Maximum Security Corrections Facility,” a mare’s voice spoke.
The guard’s expression was unreadable as he barked instructions at the mirror. “Open door to Block 89. Prisoner 7121523 in transit. Decrement prisoner count in Block 89 by one.”
“Opening door to Block 89. Prisoner 7121523 deleted. Please exit. Door will close and lock in fifteen seconds.”
Cozy mulled over the Warden's name as the cage jerked and rolled forward. Silent Steel. A jailer, he would be humble and obedient to authority, but opinionated and stubborn as a brick off-duty if he was anything like Celestia’s old palace guards. A hard sell unless she could work more information out of him.
The pair led her down another hallway into a dim chamber and made an about face. An armored hoof lifted to tap one button of a numbered, rectangular array that was the chamber’s only distinguishing feature. Cozy heard a panel slide shut behind her, then the whirring of unseen machinery as the floor jolted.
Everything became heavier for a moment, and she felt dizzy. It all made sense to her; they knew her history and the danger she posed, so in addition to the cage and the chains, they were using magic to confuse her. That way, she couldn't make any kind of play even if she charmed them into letting her out.
The droning of the machinery faded. There was another hiccup of gravity, this time lifting everything by the slightest amount. The pain in Cozy’s head leapt to intolerable life at the brief touch of vertigo. She curled up as much as she could, anticipating the next assault.
The cycle did not repeat. Instead, the entrance panel opened, admitting the clamor of many soldiers chatting while they snapped their armor together. There was an undercurrent of energy in their voices, as if they were gearing up for a decisive battle that they expected to win. Their rumbling banter receded when they saw her emerge from the chamber, flanked by Silent Steel and his partner.
“Make way!” the Warden shouted. “Prisoner in tow. Make way!”
“Honor guard, form ranks!” shouted a stallion whom Cozy assumed was a senior officer. “Two columns left and right. Ten long, two deep like we drilled.”
A lane carved itself from the room’s chaos as the columns aligned. Silent Steel guided her cage to one end, opposite a set of broad double doors, and took the lead position while his partner moved behind her. The message was clear: there would be no escape for her without an entire army’s intervention.
“Open doors!” the officer shouted. “Forward on command of Warden Steel!”
The scarred, steel-reinforced wooden slabs swung open at once. A wind entered the barracks, cool and carrying birdsong, and a noise that Cozy could only identify as a city’s frenetic unrest. Light poured inward too, bright and strong like a unicorn’s magic searching the night. Its clear white glare hinted that they were someplace close to the sea, or high among snowy mountain peaks.
“Detail, forward march!” Silent Steel bellowed. The rows of soldiers obeyed. Each carried a spear in one foreleg, their limber shafts pointed toward the heavens. The soldiers’ timed, steel-shod steps sounded like an earthquake. Cozy bounced under her chains with each collective clash of hoof on stone.
Once they had passed outside, all mystery as to their whereabouts was removed. Cozy squinted at the misty horizon beyond the marble-laden mountainside. Canterlot had changed. The sun and moon motifs at the pinnacles of the minarets were gone, as were the hanging gardens that had draped over the parapets. Giant versions of the glowing mirror she’d seen in the prison hallway had been hung from the tower walls in place of the flowing banners that had once cast rippling shadows on the white stone streets below.
The company was marching toward the city center, deeper into a warren of flashing colored lights and excited voices talking to everyone and no one in particular from behind shop windows. Rows of legs lined either side of the street amid discarded food and drink. The faces of the ponies to whom they belonged were blocked by the cage top, but Cozy could tell that they were watching the procession with keen interest.
She almost laughed. There she lay, paraded around like a miserable parody of an art sculpture. That was what she had always considered herself: a work of art. And it had been work, in the strictest sense. Manes and tails didn’t curl themselves. Bows didn’t stop smelling like too much hair without a thorough washing, drying and pressing. One didn’t remain the cutest and most adorable pony without unwavering effort. She was perfect, because she had made herself so.
She rolled her head and smiled at her own face, reflected in the scratched surface of the cage top. The world couldn’t rule itself. No pony had ever understood, as hard as she had tried to win them over: there was only one way to be perfect. In the end, only one pony could matter.
They reached a wide, open space, out of the blinking light show of the multi-story businesses. The vibrant buzz of a vast crowd enveloped them. Some voices diverged from the general noise to shout curses at her, in thick accents and in an unfamiliar dialect. The forest of forelegs rippled, lifting in places to point or throw garbage at her. Ahead, Cozy could make out a raised platform like a stage, and a giant figure sitting alone in the center.
She sighed. Years in stone hadn’t diminished her ability to predict what kind of a game it was going to be. It was time to have a chat with the boss.
They proceeded without slowing through the mass of onlookers, who had been barred from their path by heavy rope fences and additional files of spear-wielding guards. A ramp had been built between the ground and the stage. When they had ascended it, Silent Steel slowed and raised his hoof.
“Company … halt!” he called. The twin lines of guards fanned out in a semicircle around their prisoner. When they had taken their positions, they gave a final stomp and planted the butts of their spears on the platform’s planks. The Warden himself knelt and gestured toward the cage. “Your prisoner is delivered to you, Your Highness, in the sight of your innumerable subjects.”
A mare’s voice rang out. “Release her.”
The aimless conversation of the crowd dulled to a murmur. Silent Steel faltered, his averted gaze slipping upward. “Princess?”
“Do it. Where is she going to go?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied. He pointed his horn at Cozy. The locks of her chains snapped open, and the top of the cage rose into the air. Cozy followed it a moment later, floating up and over the bars. She landed belly up in front of a pair of enormous hooves. Up they stretched to the blurry heights of a massive, solid gold chest plate, a long, graceful neck, and an out-of-focus face haloed by the fog-veiled sun.
“Twilight … Sparkle,” she whispered. The name caught in her dehydrated throat.
A glass of water popped into being on the platform next to her. “Drink, please,” said Twilight. “I can help if you’re not strong enough.”
Cozy nodded and opened her mouth. The glass tipped at just the right angle to let its contents fall without splashing. It tilted back again when she needed to swallow. When Cozy had had her fill, Twilight sent it away with another flash of purple light.
“How are you feeling?” she asked. “Can you stand?”
In reply, Cozy rolled onto her stomach and pushed. Standing under her own power felt unnatural after the long dream, suspended in the darkness. Her legs trembled, but she remained upright. When she was sure she wouldn’t topple over, she backed up enough to look Twilight in the eye without craning her neck.
“Why?” she demanded.
Twilight regarded her for a long moment, searching out her meaning. “Why what?” she asked when she realized it had eluded her.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cozy sneered. “Why give me a chance at life?”
“So you know that you were loved.”
Cozy grimaced. “Love? Blech. Is that what all of them are feeling, Princess?” She swept a hoof toward the now-silent crowd. “The love?”
“No, not them. Quite the opposite, I’m afraid. There’s one here, though.”
Cozy put a hoof to her brow and turned to the audience, casting this way and that as if to pick out a single smiling face among the multitude of angry expressions. She turned back to Twilight with a smile of her own. “You?” she giggled. “You, of all ponies, love me. That’s rich, Your Highness. So funny I forgot to laugh. Tell me another one.”
“It’s true. It’s the reason I finally agreed to all of this.”
“So that’s it? You got me down off that pedestal to give me another shot?”
“I am to give you The Hug.”
Cozy backed away until she bumped into the interlocked spears of the guards. It was then that she caught sight of a table situated at the far side of the platform. A ceremonial hourglass had been set at its center next to a small hammer. Behind it sat three ponies dressed in gray robes, all of whom were scrutinizing Twilight like it was she who was the prisoner.
“The Hug?” Cozy inquired, hopping away from her captors.
“Yes. It’s a custom that the alicorns of old used to follow when they wanted to … set things right. To make amends. Or at least that’s what the scholars tell me. I wish … I wish I could remember.”
Cozy cackled, clutching her sides and rolling over backwards. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” she managed to say between breaths. “I can fill you in on what hugs are, and let me tell you, the thought of pressing the flesh with a smelly horse like you is creeptacular!”
Twilight appeared not to have heard her. She was watching the three at the table, who were frowning back at her. The mare in the center nodded, and swiveled the hourglass on its brass axis. Beige sand began to fall.
The princess sighed. “Do you have anything to say to me?” she asked Cozy.
The filly rose once more and dusted herself off. “’Do I have anything to say’? Where do I start? How about with … I made you.”
Twilight pondered the idea for a moment. “I agree. You and I are the reason we’re all here.” She gestured to the crowd, and to the bristling balconies of the city. “Discord’s plan worked perfectly. I’m not sure all of the creatures of Equestria would have accepted me as a leader so easily if the friends I’d made among them hadn’t seen the outcome of our battle. Everything … everything worked out.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Cozy chuckled. “Without me you’d be nopony: a bumbling nerd who got her crown by being at the right place at the right time and by knowing the right ponies, the same ponies who trapped me in stone because they couldn’t deal with how badly they’d failed! How badly you failed! You were supposed to teach us!”
Any noise the onlookers had been making came to an abrupt silence. Twilight’s ears drooped as she slouched under the weight of Cozy’s words. If she had a response, she had stifled it.
Cozy saw the pain she was causing her foe and pressed the advantage. “And where are your friends?” she queried, advancing close enough to drink in the misery that filled Twilight’s downcast eyes. “You always did a lot of talking about tolerance and respecting other creatures’ voices, but I don’t see anyone else sitting here with you making the decisions. Where are the brilliant professors of friendship you shoehammered into your School to teach all the creatures of Equestria how to be nice and hold hooves and claws and flippers or whatever? I don’t see any of them, Princess. I only see you!”
Twilight regarded her as if from an impossible distance. “Oh Cozy. After all these millennia, you’re still missing the obvious. Still missing the point.”
“Mi … millennia?” Cozy stammered.
“That’s right. You haven’t noticed? Look around. What do you see?”
Cozy did as Twilight advised. The clothing was off. The fashion, the manestyles, the makeup; all was as if some pony had taken a photo of a typical Canterlot scene and tweaked the chemistry. It was in the faces too. They were still ponies, but ponies from another country, it seemed.
She was surprised she hadn’t caught on when she’d noticed how different the buildings were from when she’d last seen them. They hadn’t changed because they’d been rebuilt after she’d destroyed them. Generations of architects had come and gone. Entire schools of thought as to what style became a capital city had passed in and out of favor.
The eyes of the crowd devoured her. She knew a power play when she saw it. They were bored with prosperity. They wanted to see the fiend of their legends alive and kicking and give her a nice big hug to make everything better. To get her to admit how wrong she’d been, and how Twilight had always been right.
She snarled at them all, realizing at last that she was their train wreck. They had freed her to meet one of the greatest villains of all time for themselves; to be part of history. If that was the case, she thought, she was going to give them more than they’d bargained for.
“Sometimes the only way to learn is to fail,” Twilight continued. “I kept failing, you know. I tried. I tried to make it so that creatures without wings could experience what it’s like to fly, or those without magic to send messages without dragon fire. I gave authority to those who had no way to gain it for themselves, so they too could be heard. They’re teaching me now, it seems, and sometimes the lessons are hard … too hard. But I still try.”
“I don’t want to learn!” Cozy shouted loud enough for all to hear. “I want to win!”
“Don’t you remember where that attitude led you? Is that what you call winning?”
Cozy’s face contorted as she fought to hold her rage in check. She growled and ground her teeth, but did not reply.
Twilight looked again to the table. Almost all of the sand had fallen. The keeper of the timepiece lifted the hammer as if to strike the glass and break it.
Cozy shook her head, rearing and pounding the stage with her forelegs. “It doesn’t matter how much you’re ‘learning’. You’re the one missing the point! You and everypony else! All you ever did was fail and fail and fail some more, over and over. You don’t deserve to rule! You deserve to suffer like I did!”
Twilight took a long shuddering breath. “Yes. Yes I do.” She lifted the child and cradled her against her chest.
The timekeeper set the hammer back down on the table. “The cycle is complete, Princess,” she spoke, turning the glass to let the sand fall anew.
“Wait, what?” said Cozy, peering up from between Twilight’s giant hooves.
“This punishment is as much for me as it is for you.”
The golden shoes came together and forced Cozy’s face forward, into the filigreed surface of the royal chest plate.
Cozy shrieked, pushing with the last of her strength against the engraved star pattern. “Too tight! Oww!”
“Shh. Please, just … shhh,” groaned Twilight. She pulled harder, collapsing the little hooves that fought her to close the gap. The tiny pink snout crushed against the metal, muffling the filly’s screams and gasps for air. The delicate wings flailed like dusters, until Twilight gathered them in as well. Those close by heard a crackling sound. The onlookers could see that the longer feathers had broken like so many pencils.
Many began to cheer her on. Hooves rose up in triumph, a few lifting colts and fillies so they could see their beloved Princess defeating the hated enemy. Their voices filled the morning air:
“Squash the roach!”
“Break her bones!”
“Hail Princess Twilight!”
“Equestria lives!”
Twilight hugged tighter and began to rock on her hind legs. There was a dull pop, and the screams changed to a wet coughing, then to a convulsive rattle, then to a murmur.
She raised her head. The fog had lifted. A bird was flying somewhat below the sun, singing. Twilight fixed her gaze on the pure, blinding light. Owlowiscious would fly at sunset sometimes, she remembered, looking for mice. When he came home, he would flap to her waiting hooves, burrowing his warm body against her. He had liked to snuggle, like a foal.
Long minutes passed. The timekeeper turned the hourglass twice more. When the last grain had slipped through its neck, she stood and approached the edge of the stage.
“A mare creates; a mare unmakes,” she proclaimed.
The crowd erupted into applause and roars of approval. The guards who had been keeping the central path clear pushed back against the surge. Those who had watched the proceedings from the stage eyed them with suspicion.
The mare raised a foreleg for silence. “The convicted has by her own words condemned herself, and has therefore received the love of her Princess, and by proxy that of all the kingdom. Three turns of the glass; three cycles completed, the span of a life. The Hug has been administered in the manner of the ancient alicorns, in fulfillment of the requirements set forth in the Codex. All hail Princess Twilight. Justice is served.”
“A mare creates; a mare unmakes,” the others at the table intoned. “All hail Princess Twilight.”
Twilight dropped the soft, silent form between her hooves onto the stage, and covered her face. “Filthy Pegasus, down with the lot of them,” some pony nearby muttered to themselves.
The mare next to them ruffled her wings. “Excuse me, what did you say?”
Twilight heard them, but didn’t care to offer any word of rebuke or guidance. She sat alone, pouring out her sorrow with tears and cries of shame. Behind her, the guards worked to unlock the golden chains that had bound her to the spot.
Magic began to bleed from the world.