“… despite Luna’s continued claims that Nightmare Moon was a separate entity. According to an expert within the Ministry of Culture speaking on condition of anonymity, these sorts of delusions are common in schizophrenic psychosis. ‘It also demonstrates a certain level of contempt for Equestria’s history and the basic principles of intellectual discourse. History is now what Princess Luna says it is, and everypony who’s worked to chronicle the development of the government and its processes is subordinate to her revolutionary whims.’…”
Rarity frowned at her copy of the Times of Canterlot, her will to finish the rest of the article rapidly fading. She flipped through the rest of the domestic news: pro- and anti-Lunar factions each accused each other of starting the violent confrontation in Fillydelphia that the Army had moved in to quell. Then she skimmed over the international news: the zebras and the dragons were accusing each other of starting a wildfire somewhere unpronounceable, and ‘Equestrian Intervention’ was once again ‘Considered Likely’. Finally, she glanced over the society pages -‘HOITY TOITY DENIES TRIBALISM ALLEGATIONS’- before settling on Arts And Style. Immediately, her vision was assaulted by a full-page spread of pale-coated ponies with too many piercings, tons of black eyeliner, and horribly clashing mane colors she was used to seeing among the highlighters in her stationary cupboard. Leather and chain were shaping up to be the go-to materials for 1098, or at least that was all Rarity could glean from the new fashion columnist’s calls for ‘transgressive, cognizant, socially positive assumptive deconstruction of lightness focused standards of propriety’. The next page was filled with advertisements for the accessories from the front page, as well a spate of other garments- mostly casual wear and replica weapons and armor. The replicas were wildly impractical and utterly ahistorical- double-headed axes, serrated swords, and thin, form-fitting, appallingly frilly leather outfits utterly unsuited to the task of deflecting blows. Shirts and jackets were emblazoned with cartoon Lunars and the word ‘REBEL’ in various difficult-to-read fonts. Horrid. Gritting her teeth against the ongoing attack on both her taste and basic equine decency, Rarity peered more closely at the mail-order addresses each advertisement offered. All were different post office boxes in Baltimare, and although they weren’t in order, all of them collectively were more or less consecutive: 121, 123, 124, 125. She remembered that the Society for Lunar-Equestrian Studies also had a Baltimare post office box address with a number somewhere in the 110s. Curious…
The unicorn was jarred out of her reading by the sound of the bell over her shop door. “Do come in!” she called, and slipped her reading material underneath the counter. Even though this was technically her lunch hour, she wasn’t about to turn away a potential customer. Now that she’d finally gotten ahead of that big Canterlot order -and had been out of the papers for a few months, although clearly that hadn’t done the papers any favors- business was starting to slow down again.
Surprisingly, it was the magician from last night’s show who stepped inside, carrying her star-speckled cloak beside her in her telekinesis, neatly folded. Out of the stage lights, she looked decidedly less glamorous and more like any other traveler, a bit worn and tired even.
“Hello there!” Rarity smiled her best showroom smile. “It’s the… Great and Wonderful Trixie, right?
The showmare gave her a brief little head-bob, and then chuckled. “Great and Powerful, actually, but… close enough!”
There was a slight pause. Up close, even folded, Rarity could tell that her cloak had in fact seen better days. Nonetheless, she kept her tone neutral and asked “So, what can I help you with?” She didn’t want to be presumptuous, after all. She’d gotten a small but increasing amount of mail orders ever since the Summer Sun Celebration, but by and large business was still accomplished by ponies walking physically into her store and telling her what they wanted.
The showmare sidled up a little closer to her counter, almost leaning on it. “Trixie wonders if you might be willing to do some… unusual work. Discreetly, if possible?”
Rarity nodded, slowly. Given Trixie’s profession, she’d been expecting something like this- even hoping, perhaps. It wasn’t every day she got a chance to design for the stage, especially after such a long period of orders relating to polishing armor, repairing armor, fitting armor, and adjusting fine outerwear to be worn comfortably underneath armor where nopony could see it. “Why, yes, as a bespoke clothier, I’ve certainly put together some -ahem- unusual designs in the past,” she said, mirroring Trixie’s hushed tone. Most of those designs had in fact been highly specialized gear for Twilight and her Government friends, although the less that was said about Blossomforth’s leather fixation the better. “What do you need?”
“Welllll…” Carefully, Trixie unfolded the cloak. Along the hem, Rarity noticed that the roll of fabric attaching the -apparently waterproofed- outer layer to the soft inner lining was almost completely worn away. There also seemed to be pockets along the outer edge- while they didn’t stand up to much scrutiny when the garment was laid out on a table, when it was actually being worn the natural folds would be quite effective at concealing them.
Quietly impressed, Rarity wondered exactly who had made the thing to begin with, as considering the conditions it had likely been subjected to it was likely over a decade old. “Don’t ever you mind, I’ll be the soul of discretion,” was all she said aloud. “I can have a new one with all the… errm, features ready in… maybe a day or so?”
“Actually, if it’s at all possible, Trixie would like to have this one restored. It’s Trixie’s cloak, after all.”
“Oh, yes, of course. In that case, I’d also be willing to spruce up the dye a little, and, if you’re interested, I could also see about working in a little enchantment to help resist any future tearing? You do travel a fair bit, after all, I imagine.”
She hid it well, but Rarity could see Trixie’s eyes widen a little bit. “You can do that?” the showmare asked.
Wordlessly, Rarity gestured to her certification, framed on the wall over her counter next to her Ponyville Small Business Association membership, a few minor design awards, and her new Equestrian Textile-Workers’ Guild papers.
“Well! I hear you’ve done some traveling of your own recently, so what would you recommend?” Trixie asked.
“Well…” Rarity reached under her counter and produced a list she’d had printed on her new Carousel Boutique letterhead. “There’s a self-cleaning option, the rip protection, improved waterproofing… ooh, and color-holding to resist any more weathering. Sunlight can take a real toll on those metallic purples.” All of the enchantments she’d suggested were among the cheapest, fifty-bit options- she didn’t want to put the showmare on the spot with too heavy of a price tag.
Trixie chewed on her lower lip. “Actually, do you think it might be possible to add a camouflage enchantment? You know, a rune or a gem I could press to make the cloak’s pattern change to match what’s behind me?”
“I… suppose so,” Rarity muttered, then sketched out a few figures on her notepad, trying to calculate the cost of raw materials based on a rough estimate of the cloak’s area. It would certainly be her most expensive single order in a long time- possibly ever. “But- do be aware that’s going to cost more than the rest of this work combined…”
“How much, exactly?”
“About eighty-five hundred bits.”
Trixie physically staggered backwards a step or two. “Oh. Um.”
“Normally it would be ten thousand in Canterlot or Manehattan,” Rarity explained, as sympathetically as she could, “but we’re coming up against the cost of my materials here. The whole thing will have to be woven through with starspider silk and soaked with several very specific enchanted dyes to change color properly, and… well, in design, we always say that one’s options are fast, cheap, or good- and it’s up to the customer to pick two.”
The showmare seemed about to say something, before her muzzle wrinkled up in silent concentration for a few seconds. Then she asked: “Well, what other tricks can you install? More hidden pockets are always nice, or maybe a reversible lining? Oh, a magic reversible lining, that wouldn't be visible when it's not in use!”
Rarity arched an eyebrow, “Excuse me?”
“You know, something Shadow Spade might use.”
“Erm, yes, I... supposed I could make something like that.” Rarity paused, surprised that her portfolio would have a chance to benefit from all that nonsense with Lord Goldstone after all.
“Thank you kindly! The Great and Powerful Trixie is forever in your debt.” Rarity gave the showmare another quick once-over, although she still made sure to keep her best customer-service smile in place. She'd dealt with show-business types before, and flamboyant personalities were nothing unusual there. Nonetheless, beneath her casual arrogance and sculpted indifference, Rarity detected something almost desperate.
Trixie stepped back from the counter for a moment, then seemed to reconsider and approached again. “And, umm, how long do you think this’ll take?”
“I’m light on other orders, so I can probably get it done… a day or so from now? Around noon?” Rarity suggested. “I can try to rush it if you have another show or something like that, but this is really something that it’d be best to take the time to do right.”
"A day..." Trixie looked down at herself, pensively, “Hm. No, this won't do.”
Rarity cocked her head, then realized the problem. This was the first time she'd seen Trixie without her cloak; for a performer like her, that was probably a serious matter. That, or she was one of those rare ponies out there who felt uncomfortable without clothing. Gymnophobia, Rarity thought the term was called. Hoping to break the tension, the tailor spoke up, "I... have a fine selection of cloaks, sweaters, I think I have a summer dress in your shade of purple-"
"Oh! Thank you, but the Great and Power Trixie has this," the showmare interrupted. She rocked back on her haunches and held up her forehooves; she tapped her right toe against her left fetlock, then mirrored the motion; then she flicked her forehooves forward, and with them, an entire second cloak unfurled between her and Rarity. With a practiced flourish, she swung it over her withers, clasped it around her neck, and was good to go. "Trixie wouldn't be caught dead without her plain and serviceable backup cloak!" she exclaimed.
Rarity could only stand there agape, genuinely impressed. She never once saw the showmare's horn light up, she just conjured a full-length cloak. Even Pinkie Pie usually had to dig around in her mane to pull something like that off.
Looking much more confident, Trixie asked, "So, what's the final estimate?”
Rarity quickly collected herself and added up the basic enchantments, plus the concealed lining, at her standard non-rush pricing: “Five hundred bits, even.”
Trixie nodded, and trotted back out the door without another word. She'd left her cloak folded up on the counter, and the tailor thoroughly perplexed.
With no sign of other customers on their way and the day’s newspaper holding little of interest, Rarity elected to spend the rest of her lunch break at Sugarcube Corner. Finding Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy already inside and gathered at a table, she cantered over to join them.
“Wow. I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve all been able to sit down together since all that chaos with the cockatrice!” Pinkie Pie remarked from behind the counter. She made a few quick dashes over to their table with various plates -including the cucumber sandwich and bowl of sweet oats Rarity had just been intending to order- then clocked out. As the Cake family didn’t employ a timeclock, this involved scribbling the words “TIME CARD” on a sticky-note with inequine speed, and then stuffing it under the ordinary wall clock behind the counter. Rarity supposed it came down to the spirit of the thing.
“Ponies watching us might even get the impression that good friends don’t spend every waking moment together doing the exact same things- and what’ll they think then?” Pinkie fiddled around with the cash register, apparently ringing up her own lunch in the form of an entire strawberry layer cake, then pulled out the last remaining chair and sat down at their shared table. “So, how was your stay in wildest Griffonia?”
Rarity took a bite of her sandwich and chewed pensively, before finally settling on “It was… informative.”
“That’s underselling it,” Rainbow Dash swept out a wing. “We pulled a whole Winds-damned heist on that Goldstone creep! There were armed guards, and crossbow bolts whizzing by, and we bought infiltration gear on the black market and… um, yeah.”
Applejack stared at the weathermare, looking staggeringly unconvinced. “Really now.”
For the first time since Rarity had entered, Twilight Sparkle looked up from the map of ancient Everfree she’d been studying. “Pretty much, although, technically, we never actually robbed Goldstone of anything. Gordon paid him fair market value to buy that stupid skull we were after.”
The farmer’s expression didn’t become any less skeptical. “… Huh.”
“So, Twilight, how did you like working with one of Rainbow’s old flight school buddies?” Pinkie asked, already mostly through the top third of her cake. She seemed intent on eating the entire thing vertically, one layer at a time; it hadn’t even been sliced.
“No.” Twilight turned right back to her map.
“Hm?” Fluttershy prompted.
“Just… no,” the unicorn replied without looking up. Rarity could see Rainbow Dash squirming visibly in her seat.
“Aww, what happened?” Applejack asked.
“Oh, nothing really,” Rarity continued, aware of the weathermare’s continued silence. “Gilda -Rainbow’s friend- just knocked Twilight unconscious during the heist.”
“Oh, no, was it an accident?” Fluttershy reached over and tapped a hoof gently on the scholar’s shoulder.
“Accident? She cracked me over the head with a rolling pin. Twice.”
“Ouch.” Applejack winced, and carefully re-positioned her hat. “That’s solid wood, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, and the rolling pin was probably pretty hard, too.” Pinkie added. That, finally, earned a quiet little chuckle from Twilight.
“Aww, that’s nothing, I think I cracked a hoof when I kicked that Grunt griffon,” Rainbow Dash finally spoke up, waving the presumably damaged limb.
“I’m sure the day spa can get that patched up,” Rarity suggested, “Although the gods know it’ll take another week of deep conditioning to get the last of that infernal smog out of my mane…”
The pegasus nodded. “Yeah, that’s probably what Aloe was bitchin’ about when I was there.”
Pinkie’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, whaddaya mean ‘when you were there’?”
“Huh? What, uhh… well… I was… visiting for the… high-impact therapy they do! Where they beat the knots right outta your muscles! With sticks! It’s a Wonderbolt technique!”
Applejack just nodded. “Pure torture, Ah’m sure.” Then she idly shuffled a few pages of the Ponyville Gazette spread out in front of her- which was to say, all of it, as the Ponyville Gazette rarely exceeded a few pages in length. “Little surprised none’a this made the big-city papers, though.”
“Well, nopony died… and nogriff died, either, I think…” Twilight mused. “And technically nothing got stolen, just purchased at a discount… not that Goldstone could complain to the Equestrian Embassy anyway after everything else he himself was doing… and what I was really after wouldn’t be showing up in a newspaper, ever.”
“Oh, of course not!” Pinkie Pie chided. “What’s a government conspiracy to cover up extraplanar contact and mysterious substances that are inside everypony right now, compared to Sapphire Shores delaying her collab album with Countess Coloratura until next year?”
“Did you at least to meet any new clients?” Fluttershy asked Rarity. “A formal ball, with diplomats from all over the Known World… that sounds like something you’d like, at least…”
The tailor suppressed an involuntary shudder. “Not the sort of creatures in Goldstone’s set! I’m actually very happy nocreature paid me much attention. There might be some ponies who still subscribe to the ‘all press is good press’ theory, but those ponies aren’t trying to run a respectable business!”
“Yeah, it was a mess.” Twilight began folding up her map in her telekinesis. “Listen, girls, I’m really sorry I need to cut this short, but… I kind of told the rest of the Science Team I’d meet them on Castle Rock in half an hour, and…”
“Of course, darling. Lunch won’t be the same without you, but I guess we’ll just have to muddle through,” Rarity told her, then paused, confused. This was the first time she’d spoken about her misadventures in Innsbeak, and she hadn’t exactly announced the trip before she’d left. How had Trixie known she'd been traveling at all?
Twilight stood in front of an unfolded field desk, atop a pile of shattered imbrex-and-tegula roofing tiles on Castle Rock, accompanied by Dr. Daycaller, Dr. Proper Verse, Mage-Ensign Foxglove, and an array of ground-penetrating dowsing equipment.
The rubble had originally been an ‘armory’ -actually, a collection of palatial officers’ quarters- directly overlooking the old Day Court. Records indicated it had been owned by a certain General Lockjaw, and Princess Celestia herself claimed never to have been invited inside. Even all but collapsed, the building's foundation gave it a commanding view over the podium on the far side of the square where Celestia had delivered pronouncements in her role as Speaker of the Council. And, of course, the Lunar Rebellion had established a safehouse directly underneath it. If Capt Vortex’s long-dead friend of a long-dead friend’s word could be trusted, they’d even taken to helping themselves to Lockjaw’s extensive wine collection in one of the upper cellars.
Twilight supposed the metaphor for the overall state of Equestria at the end of the First Century was more than obvious.
Now, though, the crumbling expanse of the Court was occupied by a much more jovial group. Applejack and her hired digging crews from Ponyville, and most of the Royal Guard security detail, had gathered in front of Trixie Lulamoon and her portable stage. Pinkie Pie jumped from one group to the next, offering popcorn, baked goods, and bright red soda cups from no discernible source. It was still mid-afternoon, a little after two o’clock in the outside world. Starswirl only knew how that transferred into the Everfree. Despite the continued, leaden presence of heavy cloud cover, the rain was holding off for the time being, and there were probably more living ponies gathered together here than Castle Rock had seen in the last millennium.
“Listen, I’m really sorry I had to bring you out here at this hour,” she told Foxglove, “This was literally the only slot left in my schedule for a week.” The Lunars, being nocturnal, usually slept between the hours of eight in the morning and three in the afternoon.
“’Tis no trouble,” the Lunar mage waved a dismissive hoof, then chuckled. “I have always kept odd hours. Indeed, it took the Oath to finally set me to waking in the morning and sleeping at night!”
Down below, Trixie had set what looked like a big gas torch underneath a grate in the middle of her stage. When she struck her hooves together, it burst into blue-white flames easily twice her height. Then she leaped right into the center of the fire and stood, grinning, completely unharmed. Several ponies applauded.
“Come on now, don’t by shy, throw in anything you want! Just don’t expect to get it back!” the showmare cackled.
Applejack hurled a tree branch into the conflagration, which turned it to ash in a matter of seconds. Big Macintosh lobbed in a small boulder- it glowed bright red and cracked into several pieces. Then, Pvt Parhelion stepped forward and tossed her helmet onto the grate. The golden metal popped, warped, and finally began to crumple over the course of about ten seconds. Most of the crowd cheered, but Twilight saw a Guardstallion in sergeants' stripes swat Parhelion in the back of the head, yelling, "That helmet wasn't yours to lose!"
“Right.” Twilight turned back to her colleagues, Dr. Verse in particular. “So, how long do you think it would take to clear all of this rubble away, at least well enough for us to get a real look at any structures underneath?”
“Well, I’m af-fraid we’d be looking at something on the order of a few w-w-weeks,” the pegasus explained, “Much like the Castle proper, it’s structurally unsound after the beating it t-took, and the plans were n-never well-documented. Add onto that a thousand years of d-dry rot, and the spectral act-tctivity we’ve been seeing, and this is looking like an extremely inv-volved p-part of the project.” They’d only identified and exorcised three actual ghosts so far -two civilians and a Councilmare, all gibbering mad and mindlessly aggressive- but the evidence of many more, especially near the Castle proper, continued to present itself. Tools were found moved from where the digging crews left them. Pony-sized areas dropped near freezing temperatures- a climatic anomaly observed nowhere else in the Everfree Forest. Crates of supplies were broken into and their contents scattered. Patrols at night occasionally caught glimpses of hazy equine forms, and the Guards on watch picked up stray sounds, usually just a word or two that nopony had spoken- although, after Piker’s recent mishap, they no longer left their posts to investigate. Wild animals, the Everfree’s strange environment, outside sabotage, and simple stress could’ve explained some of it, but not everything at once.
Nonetheless, their work continued. Indeed, while Twilight’s sample size was admittedly tiny, over the last day or so it seemed to finally be picking up again.
Down below, Trixie hopped off the grate, ducked down, and deftly grabbed the core of the white-hot flames with her teeth, somehow causing it to extinguish. Then she threw back her head and spat a nimbus of bright blue fire high into the air, accompanied by another barrage of sparkling fireworks that seemed to brighten the whole cloud layer above.Once again, the glowing stars elongated and twisted into bands of light. Several insectoid figures were wreathed in bluish flame, while several others still pursued the animated version of Trixie.
“Even though that took care of most of the more persistent ones, I wasn’t out of the woods just yet,” the real unicorn below explained. “But the Great and Powerful Trixie always travels prepared!” She doffed her hat once again, and this time extracted from it a few meters’ length of rope. “There wouldn’t happen to be a longshoremare in the crowd today, or a sailor, perhaps? Somepony who knows a thing or two about knots?”
Twilight turned to look at Dr. Daycaller. “Well, if we can’t move it, what do you think about scanning through it?”
“Possible, but I wouldn’t trust the results,” the stallion scuffed a hoof on what appeared to be a section of inlaid molding, although whatever metals or gems it had contained were long gone. “Currently, the only way to know if we’re picking up Nightmare Moon’s illusions, or picking up nothing due to Nightmare Moon’s cloaking, is by identifying signatures of radion-”
“Don’t you mean ‘selenite’?” Dr. Verse interrupted.
“No, that would be ‘selenitic matter’- remember, it’s a family of para-elemental substances and compounds,” Twilight corrected.
“Of materials from the moon,” Daycaller amended, rolling his eyes behind his thick, black-framed glasses. “But all of Castle Rock is positively saturated with the stuff, so that won’t be very much help at a distance. From the presence of some of the more exotic varieties of ra- extraplanar materials, I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that this area was inhabited by Lunar battlemages shortly before it was abandoned completely, but other than that… I couldn’t tell you where exactly they were or what exactly they might’ve been doing without digging down into the pile and sampling from the inside.”
“Grand.” Twilight peered around suspiciously. The acoustics of this place were carefully constructed and hadn’t changed much in the intervening thousand years: She could hear Trixie and her audience fairly well, but was fairly certain the performer couldn’t hear them. That didn't stop the showmare from occasionally glancing up at Twilight, however.
Down among the crowd, Trixie was passing over several raised hooves among the work crews, to point squarely at Applejack.
“You found a battlemage? Alive?” Foxglove asked, tufted ears folding back incredulously.
Twilight shook her head. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but… no. I’m afraid all of our information on them is still coming in second-hoof: from animal handlers and other support staff that we’re either interviewing now, or in most cases that Paper Clip interviewed back a thousand years ago.” Twilight tapped the collection of three-ring binders spread across her field desk.
“Ah.” The Lunar nodded. “In that case, you should consider yourselves fortunate to have ever found this place. As far as I know, none at the camp were ever told of it.” Then he cocked his head, ears pivoting sideways, “How didst thou find it after so long?”
“Oh! Well, Paper Clip and Escritoire managed to get the locations of a few battlemage sites out of surviving support staff after the War, and when we investigated those we were able to identify some unique material signatures. Capt Vortex suggested this as another possible site, and sure enough those signatures also appear here. It’s not definitive, but it’s a good guess as to what was going on…”
…
“Don’t be shy, tie them tightly!” Trixie instructed, as Applejack bound her forehooves together. “Double-knot them, even!”
“There’s a lot more to this kinda’ thing than just double knots,” the farmer chided. “Tartarus, Ah could tie a knot like this with three hooves tied behind mah back.”
“Oh, is that so?” Abruptly, the bindings unraveled and landed at Trixie’s hooves, which was interesting because Applejack hadn’t seen her horn light. With a flourish, the showmare produced a small silver knife and deftly sliced the rope in half; then she dropped one of the resulting coils at Applejack’s hooves and set the knife aside. She looked up at the significantly larger farmer and grinned an oddly predatory grin. “Challenge accepted, little hayseed. First one to snare the other wins bragging rights?”
The entire crowd fell silent. Applejack, for her part, just nodded and smiled a broad, menacing smile of her own. Then she picked up the rope in her mouth, and called out around it “Gimme jus' a secon'..." as she tied off a basic lasso. "On three, huh? One… two… three!”
The farmer’s head swung around, her lasso circling above her, before she let it loose to fly across the stage - and Trixie deftly stepped aside, her own rope already stretching to wrap around Applejack’s barrel.
The farmer looked down, her eyes wide, and then gasped faintly as the rope cinched just tightly enough to dig into her skin. “Shucks! Been ropin’ steers since Ah was a lil’ filly, but ain’t never had ta’ dodge,” she muttered, then continued more quietly, “And Ah was expectin’ her not to know how to tie a decent lariat to save her hide…”
There was a light smattering of applause. Trixie grinned, adjusted her hat, and pulled the rope just a tiny bit tighter. “Best two out of three?”
…
“I’m… s-sorry, but what, exactly, is so important about battlemages?” Dr. Verse asked, back up on the rubble pile.
“Ah.” Foxglove grinned. “They were only Luna’s Most Favored- the ponies who, it was said, created the Shadowbolts… and the illusion over our camp in Hardfrog Valley… and disappeared alongside the commanders to speak at length with Lu- to Nightmare Moon at the redoubt you now call Mount Hydra.”
“Paper Clip got hold of some of their notes,” Twilight added, motioning again to the binders on her desk, “Some of their theories, like the stealthing spells, were really centuries ahead of their time; but others were staggeringly wrong, like serious warnings that a large enough explosive detonation could ignite the atmosphere and render the entire Known World uninhabitable. And a lot of what Clip collected was just… surreal,” she flipped open one binder to a particular chart, “like, here’s detailed calculations on how many ponies would die ‘when the assassination of Princess Celestia brings about the Dimensional Merge between Worlds C-197 and 1218.’ The author was,” Twilight chuckled, “naturally, guaranteed to ‘transition successfully’, whatever that means, thanks to having ‘absorbed the spiral sea-’ oh, ‘seal’, oops-and gained some ‘powers’ to communicate with mythological creatures.” She closed the binder and massaged the bridge of her muzzle. “I think, for better or for worse, they were the closest mortal ponies to Nightmare Moon’s mental state, and that makes their writings immensely valuable to us. If we can ever make sense of them.”
“Aye,” continued Foxglove, “I saw them at work a few times… although I do not think even Luna herself knew all that they were doing. Tartarus, I do not think even they themselves did… they had a certain vacant look to them as they went about their work, which I’ll not soon forget!”
“That’s all well and good,” said Dr. Verse, “but, immensely v-valuable or n-not, it’s still going to take a while to get through all this deb-b-bris.”
…
Applejack was breathing hard, and starting to develop a rather nasty cramp in her jaw- not that she’d let something as inconsequential as pain stop her. For all of her superior technique, Trixie was simply far and away the more agile of the two- Applejack might even say she’d had practice evading snares for most of her life, to the point where the farmer wondered if she was being toyed with. The audience watched, enraptured, as they leaped and twisted, and Applejack grew more and more frustrated. After a few near-misses against Trixie, she planted her hooves solidly among the seemingly disorganized mess of forgotten rope the unicorn had abandoned on the stage- and slammed over on her side with all four legs bound together when Trixie pulled the hidden knot tight.
The showmare held up her end of the rope triumphantly as she circled the stage; after a few seconds of struggling, the farmer closed her eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and bucked hard enough to snap the knot cleanly in half. The crowd burst into wild applause, particularly from the digging crews, as she pulled herself back onto all-fours. Trixie doffed her hat and bowed theatrically towards Applejack, but farmer was almost certain she saw the showmare's eye twitch.
…
Twilight leafed through a few more pages in her binder, then consulted the map of Everfree she’d spread out underneath. “I… don’t think we need to worry about clearing it just yet. According to Paper Clip… ahh, here we are. ‘… in retrospect, it was obvious the sightings were of battlemages specifically. I feel reasonably confident that they headed off somewhere into the lower city just before the raid on the Guildhalls, all as a group. Where they ended up, we may never know.
All Escritoire has been able to determine from interviewing their attendants was their previous assignment- somepony decided it would be a worthwhile commitment to the war effort to summon beasts from the firmament into Castle Rock. Supposedly, an Ursa was called down, although, as usual, none of our sources have any idea what eventually became of it. No such beast was ever seen on Castle Rock, even once the battle began to turn against the Lunars…’”
Twilight looked down at the rubble again. “I don’t think this safehouse could hold something like that, so we should be able to pick up the trail somewhere else… hopefully at a more conspicuous location.”
Verse and Daycaller both nodded, but Foxglove, surprisingly, stamped his hoof and spat over the edge of the pile. “An Ursa?! Those fools…”
Twilight peered at him, confused.
“Had they any idea how much carnage they would have brought about, releasing something like that in the middle of a city?” Foxglove snapped, “Bombing the Council Hall concerned me when the generals proposed it, but… at least that was a strategic target. Had we wanted to level the city, we could simply have brought more blasting crystals. The only point of something like this would be to… spread terror, I suppose. I joined the Rebellion to see a better future for my friends and colleagues, not to… to torment ordinary ponies who had the misfortune of working in the home of a corrupt noble….” He scuffed at a section of toppled pillar and shook his head, “Princess Luna would never have agreed to this plan...Where did we go wrong?”
Twilight temporarily abandoned her desk and turned to the Lunar mage. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Down below, Trixie had conjured up a sort of translucent blue cloud shot through with thousands of glittering silver specks, over the now Applejack-less stage. On reflex, Twilight muttered the cantrip to dispel her visualization of selenitic matter; then realized she’d never cast the spell to begin with.
“And, only the Great and Powerful Trixie had magic strong enough to vanquish the dreaded Ursa Major that had attacked Hoofington…” the showmare declared, and the mass of condensed starlight contorted itself into a towering, vaguely bear-like presence overtop the stage. “Of course, the papers said the creature was dispatched by the Navy, but the ponies who were there know better…” A round of fireworks shot upward and detonated amid the starry mass- it reared back in a silent roar and then disintegrated into sparkling clouds. Trixie vanished in an identical cloud moments later, only to reappear atop the roof of her wagon where the Ursa projection had been. There was tentative applause at first as ponies peered at one another, confused, before it surged and built up to the levels Twilight was starting to expect. In fact, she’d found the showmare’s sudden change of topic rather odd, and once again, the scholar wondered if discussing sensitive matters around her was wise.
Dr. Daycaller peered at Twilight over his glasses, confused. “So… what do we do?”
“Well…” Twilight set about policing up her binders. “I figure there isn’t any reason not to put a crew together to start clearing this out- we’re going to want to loot it at some point-”
“Well, we’ll w-want to catalog it,” Dr. Verse raised a wing, “Daring Do ‘loots’ sites like this.”
“Good point. But I still don’t think we’ll find many answers here. I think we’re better off continuing to search sites in the outer areas of the city. Based on the original maps, and some rough estimates Spike put together about how much the forest has since expanded, I figure there’s still about twenty-five percent of city and suburbs that we’ve yet to even make a cursory scan of. Then, of course, another few hundred square klicks of virgin forest…”
Dr. Proper Verse perched atop the fallen remains a colossal equine statue later that afternoon -Somnambula the Devout, supposedly. It was hard to tell, given the amount of damage the thing had taken. By eye, only the vaguest suggestion of wings remained to indicate it was even a pegasus, but the flared remnants of her traditional Southern Equestrian headdress confirmed it. There wasn't even a clear consensus on who had torn the statue down; Lunar troops, pegasus nationals, or loyalist troops under Council orders. Sometime tomorrow, the remains were scheduled to be crated up and shipped to the Equestrian Museum in Canterlot, although there was still debate over whether to try to reassemble it or display it in its ruined state.
Verse shook her head and looked down at her map again, using the statue as an obvious landmark. The map showed a straight avenue to either side, while her eyes registered a ninety-degree bend in the street about ten meters out. The buildings on the near side of it had been reduced to warped rubble; on the far side, huge gaps had been filled in by unhealthy-looking vegetation that the scientist was sure moved slightly whenever she looked away from it.
She pointed down to where her supposed ‘security escort’, Cpl Aqua Regia, sat at the base of the statue, idly fiddling with the halberd she carried. “Well, do you have any idea where to go from here?”
“Well, Doc, if I had to guess, I’d say we’re probably somewhere in the temple district,” the Guard chewed on her lower lip, “Isn’t that what’cha came out here to look at?”
“Well, yes, I c-can see that, but… ah. There. That v-v-vacant lot was probably the shrine to Gaia.” That meant all she needed to do was turn the stupid map around- “Oh. Wait. We’ve gone in a circle again. Drat.”
“Looks like an overgrown garden to me,” Aqua continued, entirely unhelpfully.
“Yes, exactly. "In a superficial nod to multitribalism, Everfree had always maintained the temples dedicated to earth pony and pegasus gods, even as fewer and fewer of those ponies had actually found residence or employment there. Those temples -unlike the ones commonly associated with unicorns- had been spared the worst of the looting during the Fall of Everfree, which made them of immense archaeological value. Unfortunately, they’d also been subject to organized destruction by Council forces beforehand, to clear the way physically and politically for a planned Temple to the Equestrian Council. The intervening millennium had then ruined most of what the rioters hadn’t.
Verse fluttered from the statue to a crumbling portico, muttering one vision spell after another and trying to mentally reconstruct how sightlines would have functioned on this street when it was intact. All of her investigations added up to not terribly much.
She pressed a wing to her forehead and whinnied in frustration. This part of the forest was unseasonably warm and oppressively humid, and flying higher didn’t seem to be making it any more bearable. She glided off the portico, back to where she’d left her Guard-issue rucksack on the convenient stump of a pillar, and snatched her canteen.
It gave a pathetic little empty rattle. Verse contemplated the long, sweaty flight between her and her air-conditioned office back at the Station.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” She asked Cpl. Aqua.
“It’s just past eighteen-hundred, ma’am.”
That meant Verse had missed dinner back at base camp, as well. “… and how l-long has it been ‘just past eighteen-hundred’?”
The Guardsmare squinted at the sun, then at the watch she wore just underneath her left front sabaton- one of the fancy ‘tactical’ models that included a built-in stopwatch. “’bout four hours, sir.”
“Oh. Lovely.”
“So… does this mean Twilight’s gonna pay us overtime?” Aqua’s ears pricked up hopefully.
“I wouldn't bet on it; knowing her, she'd kill to squeeze an e-extra four hours into her day for free. In any c-c-case, the timeclock back at the Station is outside the range of the Everfree Anomaly.”
“Crap. Figures.”
“We should… p-probably get out of here pretty soon,” Verse suggested, “We’ve been in one place long e-nough that time is starting to b-break down pretty badly. ”She took flight again and darted back down the avenue; pausing to hover in front of a low, blocky structure that -owing no doubt to its incredibly solid port concrete walls- had endured the intervening millennium largely intact. “If that’s the shrine to C-Cel-Celestia, and Gaia’s over there, then this has to be the Vulcanal.”
“The… what?” asked Aqua Regia.
“The original shrine to Vulcan,” Verse explained, touching back down on what had once been an ornate mosaic forecourt; now it mostly depicted mud.
The Guardsmare’s expression remained utterly uncomprehending.
“An… old earth pony deity.” Verse trotted into the structure’s dim interior. Barely visible in the gloom, incredibly detailed stone carvings of Smart Cookie, Amaranthine, Golden Dream, and other earth pony heroes glowered down at her with bronze-rimmed eyes. “Along w-with Heimdall, the patron deity of the Mighty Helm, Vulcan had become very strongly assoc-sociated with militant earth pony nationalists by the end of the F-First Century- and the Vulcanal clerics were s-some of the earliest supporters of the Lunar Rebellion.” She trotted deeper into the complex, passing a number of sacrificial chambers still stained rusty-black with soot and dried blood. The practice of animal sacrifice was already well out of fashion in the year 98, to be supplanted by the modern concept of burnt offerings and donations, but these temples had been old even then.
Aqua waved a hoof at Golden Dream’s carving. “Wait, wait, wait, who’s that alicorn?”
Verse just grinned, suddenly finding herself on much more stable footing. “That’s Princess Golden Dream. She ruled a city-state called Bitezh, near a lake in what’s now the Yaket Mountains, but nopony’s ever been able to identify an exact location. She was described as a merchant, general, and diplomat who’d defended the city from outside attacks for nearly five centuries, but she fell under the influence of love poison and started to deteriorate mentally. Bitezh was completely leveled by an elder dragon about a century before the windigoes brought the Long Winter and forced the southern migration, and ponies’ve been trying to find the ruins ever since. That incident is actually the origin of what’s now celebrated as Hearts and Hooves Day, although that’s only been celebrated since the Sixth Century CE…”
“Huh. I’ve… never heard of that.” The soldier shrugged, contemplatively. “You’d think there’d be some kind of, I dunno, memorial or something, like the one for Prince Saturnine in Canterlot.”
Dr. Verse looked back up at the carving. “We're looking at it. Golden Dream was seen as a m-m-martyr throughout much of the Early Consular Period, hence her inclusion on the temple here, but it became increasingly impolitic to-”
“Hey! What’cha doin’?”
The pegasus researcher nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard another voice from behind her. Aqua Regia sprang past her with incredible speed. When Verse managed to get her hooves to obey her and spin around, she found the Guard with her halberd leveled, warding off a pale blue unicorn mare in a shimmering purple cloak. Verse thought that was a bit excessive- the unicorn was armed only with a half-folded map floating in her telekinesis. After a moment of terrified silence, the mystery mare backed up a few steps and Aqua raised her polearm back into the crook of her foreleg.
“Umm… y-you’re that… entertainer Tw-Twilight h-hired, huh?” Verse asked, mentally cursing her own jumpiness. “T-Trixie, right?” She stuck out a hoof. “I’m D-doctor Proper Vi-. Proper Vuh-. Proper V-Verse.”
The other mare closed the distance and shook her offered hoof. “The Great and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon is honored to make your acquaintance!”
“That’s all well and good, but… somepony’s gotta’ve told you you’re not supposed to be wandering around the Forest alone- we’ve got a buddy system for a reason, Sun-dammit,” Aqua admonished, waving her halberd, ears flattened against her helmeted skull, “Trust me, you really don’t wanna end up lost out here.”
“We're not in the forest, we're in the city! I heard somepony moving around down this way, so I figured I might as well look around. I was curious,” the showmare explained, ignoring Cpl. Aqua utterly.
“Yes, but the city is entirely con-contained within- you know what? Never m-m-mind.” Quietly, Verse wondered when Dr. Sparkle had started giving nonessential personnel the run of ancient Everfree with or without escort.
“So, ummm…” Trixie gave an odd little prance. “What’s up?”
Feeling on somewhat safer ground now that it was her work that was being discussed, Dr. Verse trotted back to the base of Somnambula’s statue. “This used to b-be the main temple d-district for Everfree City- and, in th-theory, the most p-prestigious one in all of Equestria.” She waved a wing in a sweeping ‘all around us’ gesture, then pointed at the ninety-degree bend at the end of the avenue. “Every period source indic-cates that a shrine to Celestia-as-Sol-Invictus is located here, and indeed when we f-flew over this area in the Lapwing we were able to pick up a large quantity of gold buried right around that curve.”
Trixie and Aqua both peered at her, somewhat confused. “It m-might surprise you to learn that there’s no law against an alicorn- or any other pony- declaring themselves gods or prophets or whatever today,” the scientist continued, “although if they used those claims to defraud or otherwise take advantage of followers they’d probably be in some hot water. In the First Century, though, p-ponies didn’t really have s-such a strong concept of division bet-ween religious and s-secular life. It w-wasn’t uncommon for alicorns, l-living or dead, or even heroic figures l-like the Founders and P-Pillars, to be the s-subjects of ritual devotion. There was a temple to Luna and the moon here, too, but but its destruction precipit-tated the open fighting at the outset of the Lunar Rebellions. Nowa-duh… nowadays, most ponies c-c-onsider ourselves above that kind of behavior, b-but you really can’t deny there’s a lot of similarities between the modern Ceres and the Princess Demeter of old. Isn’t history just f-fascinating?”
The Guardsmare rolled her eyes, but Trixie nodded and made a little ‘go on’ gesture with her hoof.
“Given the skilled artificers and ench-chanters employed by the Order of Vulcan, and the p-proximity to the Council Hall, we’re pretty certain this temple is where the Lunars stored the b-b-b-blasting crystals used at the start of the Battle of Everfree. We’ve even p-picked up traces of the residual mana charge. Though, of course, given that the temple was built around a fully-functional forge, and magical items were ritually crafted daily, it might've been giving us a false reading. But, we also detected a fairly large radion signature here, even larger than the Temple of the Moon's ruins, so- uh.” Verse clamped her mouth shut, hoping Cpl. Aqua wouldn’t report what she’d just said back to Twilight. “Anyway, I just can’t figure out how they m-moved those crystals all the way to the Hall without being detected. At this point in the Rebellions, the entire Temple District was f-filled with guards!”
Aqua appeared to be losing a staring contest with one of the wall carvings, as she leaned on her halberd. Trixie, however, trotted back out into the street, looked around, and trotted back inside. “Do you… mind if the Great and Powerful Trixie takes a look at your notes?”
“Go on ahead.” Verse waved back to her rucksack. “It’s not like they’ve been much help to m-me in all this…”
The showmare dug through Verse’s pack, plucked out her notebook, and leafed through it. Aqua and the pegasus stepped outside and followed her as she walked slowly from one end of the street to the other, peering at sections of collapsed masonry and muttering to herself.
Finally, Trixie came to a halt, the notebook floating telekinetically in front of her. “Am I reading this right? ‘The previous evening, Council forces detained an estimated twenty-three Lunar conspirators for questioning?”
Dr. Verse nodded.
Trixie fished a mostly-spherical lump of dark clay- a hoof-rolled smoke bomb, perhaps- out of her cloak and began idly floating it around in her telekinesis. “So that rebel guy said the guards had patrols here, here, and here…” In the light of the magician’s horn, cartoon stick-ponies in the squiggly outlines of armor materialized one-after-the-other down the street. “But, I bet these were the guys who got pulled away to deal with the prisoners. Their bosses probably figured they could still cover the whole street.” Then, two of the animated figures faded away. “Then… throw a rock or set a fire or something to sound an alarm here…” Trixie’s muzzle wrinkled in concentration. There was a flash of orange light near the decapitated statue of Somnambula, and a loud pop. The two nearest remaining guard-figures drifted over to it, and a wagon made of a glowing square and four circles drifted out of the Vulcanal. The magician’s voice dropped to a tense murmur. “It’s late. Times are hard. Ponies are tense. Some crazy Lunar rebels just blew the head off of this giant statue. Are you really going to pay any attention to one wagon heading out of the Temple just as the workday is ending?” Her horn flashed once again.
Dr. Verse leaped briefly back into the air, as something behind her went bang and produced a cloud of faintly sparkling purple smoke, directly in line with the ruins of the Council Hall.
Trixie chuckled, and gave a little mock-bow. “And that’s that!”
Unsure of what else to do, the pegasus scientist gave her a few stamps of applause, and after a moment Cpl. Aqua joined in. Then Verse recovered the notebook Trixie was offering in her telekinesis, and set about quickly sketching down the route the showmare had described. “Thanks, you’re a lifesaver.” When she looked up again, Trixie was idly juggling Verse’s own empty canteen. “Hey, you wouldn’t also happen to know anything about enchantments?”