Epilogue (in the original published version.)
The soft patter of hooves and the slight rustle of enormous wings surprised me. The door of iron bars that sealed the ancient entrance to the Star Swirl the Bearded Wing in the Accademie building had not even squeaked!
The cinder block-sized grimoire of Barthemule's original bound manuscripts made a satisfying whump as I closed it. I stacked, straightened, and levitated my notes into my flower embroidered denim saddlebags. I'd "allowed"myself in before midnight. I kept my pink quill floating and a single notebook open... just in case I wanted to take notes, or quickly cast Teleport.
A sweet voice asked, "The Earl of Grin Having, I presume?" The sweet in Sweet Celestia was earned.
I glanced to the yellow skirt and hat on the floor. Images of hour-glasses were woven into the brown wool carpeting, and matched the pony-sized bronze specimen in the center of the room. I had masqueraded as a noble castle guest roaming the grounds late at night. I hadn't been presumptuous, as her use of my title announced. I wore the blouse and had my hair up in pigtails, like it had been at my parents' funeral. I had no use for titles bestowed upon my parents after their death.
"Yes, Your Royal Highness." I bowed my head as dictated by decorum, but didn't look back; I didn't stand up; I didn't respect her.
I did track her progress because I didn't trust her. She had been a curse upon my life.
Princess Celestia folded down before me. Even so, the great white alicorn looked down with hard purple eyes. Thin and lithe, my first guess had been she weighed under three pony weight, but then I did a calculation on the pony weights in a Celestial tonne. She wasn't a winged unicorn. The chimera included unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony blood. Fighting pony on pony, I'd have to forget adding momentum and concentrate on leveraging inertia—she out-massed me by a factor of five, confirmed by the delicate but definitive thump she'd made. Uncomfortably close to my pony weight Levitate lift limit, that.
She said, "You've passed the test none of my others passed."
"A... test?"
My eyes didn't meet hers. They gravitated to a solar cutie mark the size of my head, conforming to the muscular flesh of her haunch. Concentric yellow circles evoked a desert sun. They were ringed by gold prominences that reminded me of shark's teeth. Whispered implications of heat powering crystal and dexterous strength rose from the magical nexus to flit around in my head like glowing electric hummingbirds, buzzing.
Buzzing...
buzzing...
buzzing...
When she spoke, I flicked my eyes to hers. "I dangle forbidden knowledge before my special students, and wait for them to break into the library to get it. Sadly, neither Twilight nor Sunset took the bait my physician tailored for you. Starlight—interesting choice of name, by the way."
"A pony gave it to me to manipulate me. I accepted it later as the perfect gift. She's since passed away."
"Sad to hear that. Unlike Lady Aurora, Countess, some names have a synchronous ring like prophesy to them. Sunset, Twilight... Starlight..." She waited a breath. "Oh, never mind. No sense of humor, so I've been told."
She lay thinking, her fascinating ethereal mane suspended in the unseen winds of the magic pulse. Strands of blue, green, pink, and turquoise hair waved in ripples like a badly tattered flag, rustling and fluttering.
She spotted a scroll on the desk. She unrolled it before her, displaying a mug ring likely left by spilt cocoa. "Where did you find this old thing?"
She lowered it and blinked at me. "I mean, really, where did you find it? It was used from a future time and needs to be in a specific place to prevent a time paradox; I'd hate to have to break open a millennium-old diary to learn where to place it."
The "old thing" had smelled of time. Probably because of my work with Barthemule's mathematics, I sensed time-magic the way I saw numbers in a unicorn's aura, or an alicorn's—induction across the length of my horn, except this time on the t-axis, which manifested as a weird itch. The alicorn's numbers resolved to comet-like digits as I concentrated. They were magnitudes more beautiful than she was, fluid and three-dimensional, amazingly simplified yet complex, flushed with fiery color. I became lost in the kaleidoscopic show as she levitated the scroll, reading it.
She waved the scroll like a teacher getting the attention of a student; the red splats on the scroll actually caught my attention.
With my quill, I pointed at a bookcase behind me. Celestia huffed and unfolded herself.
My eyes followed the dried drops of blood used to activate the scroll. They looked fresh, though since we were talking about time here, it could have been the blood of Star Swirl himself (I knew who he was now)—or that of a pony not yet foaled.
I turned my neck to follow the scroll as she took it to a top shelf, saw the disturbed dust, and reared, clopping a hoof on the third shelf, trying to figure out exactly where it had lain. The tip of her tongue stuck out.
The scroll purported to allow a pony to travel back in time for a few minutes. The scribbled margin notes displayed an obvious correctable error that made me doubt the cohesiveness and veracity of the otherwise simple spell mnemonics. As she set it in place just right, I admired how the whole room smelled of time from the age-yellowed magic-infused paper it contained.
I swiftly jotted down in shorthand math my revelations about the time scroll, thanks to Celestia's numbers as she read it, confident I had the time to do so. I filled a page and a half. This room was all about time.
She lay again and read my writing upside down. The ultimate teacher skill. I performed a series of Barthemule transforms on what I'd sensed from her cutie mark, then added three additional pages diagramming the sense of crystal thermo-mechanics I gleaned, and the implication of magical conduits that anchored to the earth a pony with a celestial name.
The sky had long ago become pale outside the window. Keeping the quill aloft, but not lifting my eyes, I asked, "Shouldn't you be raising the sun?"
She chuckled. "Clocks are not set by the rising of the sun. For good reason! Even I sleep in sometimes..." Her expression hardened. "I'm displeased at how you handled Sunset Shimmer, getting her involved with capturing Running Mead."
I glanced at her, at her frown, at the widened nostrils on her soft nose that telegraphed her ire. "Look no further than your own hooves, Your Royal Highness. Had you been paying attention—"
"—to her drinking habit? Students sometimes fail, my little pony. I only teach. Learning is up to them. Mistakes teach better than books. Experience more so. You, Starlight, more than most ponies, understand the importance of mistakes and experience. I had hoped that a certain friend might have grounded her."
I fought my inclination to thunk the quill down. "Should I have tattled to her father or to you?"
"Friendship is an intriguing magic, but the four of you show no inclination for it..." Her voice petered out. She looked to her right, frowning, considering her words. She nodded. "The fourth I taught is a former friend of yours—Sunburst."
I tensed. I caught the falling quill.
Her eyes narrowed. She studied me, until her gaze rested on my new cutie mark of auroras and stars. "When he got his cutie mark, at least six others got theirs, cued by a supersonic pegasism—something her friends in the weather team tell me she calls a rainboom—that spread across Equestria, triggering epiphanies that ended with the opening of a chasm from here to Tartarus by the one whose cutie mark binds them all. Frankly, from Sunburst's account of the day, I'm surprised it wasn't you who acted instead of him. I can't understand how he got his cutie mark and you didn't! He described your magic as much more versatile than your mother's. He proved a great talent in thaumaterigical semantics, but is ultimately male, narrowly focused on his special talent for elucidating and combining spells, with self-inhibited magical abilities, and, oddly, as put off by friendship as you seem to be. You—you are a generalist of the highest order, as hinted at by the iconography of that cutie mark you bear. Yes, the friendly thing for you to have done would have been to have found Sunset the help she needed, and to have waited for her to become well, and to have watched her become the friend you needed. What you did worked very well, expeditiously I might add—"
"I'd argue effectively—
"—and thankfully she survived. 'Scared sober' describes it. She's hit rock bottom and has asked me for help. As a bonus, she understands that if there's lesser evils in Equestria, then the greater ones can be both real andformidable. Those greater ones, Countess, are why I train a new generation of heroes for Equestria."
Not only did her last sentence stink of equivocation, both her use of my title and the substance of the statement were honed to tick me off. "You trained my parents!"
"I did. Mage Midnight and Firefly, separately. I later called them my friends."
My hackles rose—anger for them being thrown away—and for a tormenting old memory reborn. I remembered now that we'd visited Canterlot and Castle Canterlot before—as a family. I recalled rooms and views into the courtyards where I'd played. I'd been a foal; there's things you can't recall unless triggered by understanding. "Yet you sent them to die, to become 'Heroes of Equestria.'"
The princess sighed, looking at the floor, her ears folding down. "By the time I sent them they were already heroes. Sadly, yes, I sent them off against better judgement, bound and unable to help."
Bound? Unable...? Excuses!? "And all I got was this lousy title?"
Still looking away, she said, "Plus a grant of the environs within in a day's gallop of Grin Having, the right to the third coin of all taxes collected, and a governing role."
"I understand what an earl is."
She looked up, ears perked. "You 'protect ponies.' You told Flowing Waters, that. Do you truly understand? An earl can claim the right to captain one of my armies. I had great hope for your parents' foal considering their pedigree and achievements. As expected, she took to her training and has since demonstrated unique martial prowess."
"Do you know what I wanted?" Standing, I could now look her straight in her big purple eyes. "Do you know what I needed? Do you?" I jabbed the quill at her.
She blinked, tilting her head.
"My Mom and Dad died for you!" I shouted, then stopped. Quieter, letting my hot face and trembling punctuate instead, I added, "You spoke kind words at the funeral, which I can't remember. You gave me their medals. You granted them lands and titles I instantly inherited." I stood huffing, breathless... crying. I was actually crying! Tears flooded my vision, turning her image blurry, making her look as twisted as her soul. "All I wanted was a hug and to be told I would be okay!"
She said, "I would have gotten a second Sunset Shimmer, had I done that."
Her words steamed away my tears, drying them instantly. My mouth gaped. My mouth moved, but... I. Was. Speechless.
She continued. "I need what you have become. You can hate me. I am okay with that for now. I can work with that. In that, you are no different than Sunset."
It all made twisted sense. "You hired Proper Step, didn't you?"
"He's the son of my Majordomo and came highly recommended—"
"He was a mistake!"
"Judging by the result I've gleaned of your career back east and in Canterlot, I disagree; he trained you well—"
"You haven't a clue—!" I spat "—as to how or why I got Sunset Shimmer involved in capturing Running Mead, do you?"
"The more I learn about you the more interesting you become. Ms Maple likes you, and, yes, I interviewed Detective Fellows and Agent Sprinter—"
"Celestia on roller skates!" My jaw clacked shut.
She giggled. "Oh! That's a good one!"
My Teleport felt as queued as it could be without being in my horn. Could I outwit the most arch of archmages? Did I have a choice? I targeted the courtyard beyond the window. The quill wobbled midair as bleed-away affected the targeting on Levitate.
She continued, "Thanks to what you let slip to Flowing Waters, I've pieced together where you disappeared to when you ran away. You saved 271 ponies in Hooflyn the day of the Old Equestrian Post Office explosion. Seventeen would have bled to death or lost limbs without your intervention."
"Then you know I got tricked into helping set the bomb. I'm responsible!"
Her eyes widened in astonishment, and yet her smile grew. "A confession?" She pointed a wing at my cutie mark. "The paths to enlightenment are diverse, my little pony. Your mother told me the best way to get you to do something was to say you weren't allowed. She thought it cute."
"You told—"
She grinned. "Forbidding something works better."
"You told Proper Step—?"
"That learning magic wasn't lady like? That was his idea, though he regretted it. I stocked your library with the most precious magic primers, like the Marlin's you keep in your saddlebags, and when that wasn't sufficient, you set out on your own to find your own tutors. The more I piece together your career, the more original your solutions seem—"
"I fought monsters—"
"Yes, and your demons—"
"I was savaged in a lightning storm. Though he taught me I could fight, he nearly killed me. Monsters nearly killed me! Three times!"
"Yet, here you sit, valiant and victorious."
Ugh! "Ponies died around me."
"Auror— Starlight, they probably would have anyway. Others did not because you intervened."
"I did horrible things."
"This is what it means to command, something as an earl you must understand and suffer. You've learned magic. You earned your cutie mark. Because you are who and what you are, in time you will also pay for everything you've done."
"So, you're going to imprison me?"
She huffed, shaking her head. "There are benefits to working for an absolute monarch." Her muzzle down, her eyes lifted; whites at the bottom, they speared mine. Two alpha mares in one room, one superior to the other. "Starlight, I make the laws you've broken."
In other words, laws meant nothing to her other than as tools to get what she wanted. Suddenly... I understood. How had Running Mead put it?
"This is an employment interview!" More blackmail, or just naked coercion?
She huffed. "Countess—"
"Don't style me as anything I haven't earned!"
"Starlight, then. How about this? You can pay for the horrible things you think you've done by letting me finish your education."
"As your third protégé?"
"Fourth—no, I should count Mage Midnight who I helped from afar—fifth in this century, but who's counting?"
"I won't take Sunset Shimmer's place."
"Now you give me hope. That's the first friendly thing you've said!" She laughed that delicate sweet laugh, misinterpreting me.
"I haven't earned any of this. I don't want it."
She sighed. "I didn't gift you your title or lands. Your parents earned them. This offer to train you directly—you've earned that."
"I'm a bad pony."
She rocked her head side to side, likely suppressing an eye roll. "I get that you feel guilt, that you worry that you are somehow evil. I understand that. I also understand how you judge yourself as I judge myself the exact same way. Experience will teach you that all actions can be seen as relative."
I gasped. Evil was relative? What did her heroes do for her?
They kept her in power! Obviously.
"Equestria needs independent thinkers. Equestria needs you."
"She certainly does. A thinker like me, independent enough to see through an unscrupulous royal who exploits the tyranny of cutie marks." My voice quavered. "And t-the stratification they impose that you use for personal power! It's... corrupt. It's... evil. You're... evil. I—I won't let you co-opt me—"
Celestia reared with a whinny of rage, towering the height of a horse, pedaling her legs. Her golden aura enveloped her; her mane blew as if in a gale. Had she next burst into flames, I could not have been more stunned. Her magical majesty struck me dumb; I sat hard, cowering in my chair.
My needle must have struck home!
Returned to four legs, her voice boomed. "I live only to preserve Equestria! She faces unimaginable enemies. The worst will strike in two years—"
Her voice cut off.
In terror, I stood. I knocked back my chair. Not from awe, but from what choked off her words—and that she didn't immediately realize it had happened!
The region around her mouth blurred, like you might see an illusory lake over a hot desert. I held a hoof over my eyes and squinted against oddly desaturated diffraction rainbows. Her voice became a croaking garble of muffled screeches.
When my stance, open mouth, and trembling filtered through her rage, her brow furled. She tried to shout through it.
After agonizing seconds, huffing, jaw working soundlessly, she quit trying. The apparition snapped and she got out, "—ruins. It was all my fault."
A stream of tears cascaded down her cheeks. Her aura dissipated like fog hit by hot morning sun.
I remembered Zecora's tale about the Everfree forest that implied there had once been two rulers in Equestria. Two! A thousand years ago. Worse, I remembered that Zecora's rhyme implied there had been a curse.
That—her mouth covered by unnatural rainbow magic she could not counter—that had to be because of what common ponies called a curse. A geas was a triggered compulsion. The princess fought the influence of a geas that prevented her from speaking about and likely fighting the curse. The geas would eventually make her do something bad. It made her every action suspect.
What could curse an alicorn for a thousand years?
Carne Asada's native folklore had fueled the mob leader's hate. The bomb had been a stepping stone in her planned retribution against Celestia for killing the last thestral princess. Carne Asada had insisted that thestrals had inhabited the Crystal Caves of Canterlot Mountain, the same caverns within which Sunset had held her fateful practicum. Carne Asada's Equidorian mountain-dwelling pegasus tribe held that Celestia had shown no mercy when she vanquished them from their ancestral lands.
I ticked off in my mind: A ruined castle in the Everfree; Evidence of "two reigning ponies" who destroyed harmony; Tales of a princess' murder so compelling that they lasted a millennium and inspired a fanatic to emigrate to Equestria for retribution.
It pointed to one mare, the one mare who had lived that long. Which meant...
Celestia was a regicide; she'd killed a princess and something had cursed her for her actions.
Celestia continued, desperate in her trembling to turn me, tears splattering on the carpeting, "I train..." She seemed to be picking out her words carefully, eyes moving back and forth. "Guardians... for Equestria... who may be able to... do what I cannot."
Deep in my heart, I knew that at the root of the murder would be found the interaction between cutie marks and the hardship they imposed on ponies. I wanted none of it.
The best solution lay in what I had done to Running Mead last evening, and in learning cutie mark magic—I had to pursue that, not let myself become ensnared in her plans or be corrupted.
Let Sunset Shimmer and the runt deal with Celestia, and her curse, as damaged as they might be! She'd trained them as "guardians" and "heroes", after all, as she wanted to train me. They'd fight for her. They'd fight for Equestria.
I thrust my notebook against my saddlebags with a hoof, touched my nose to to the fabric, and teleported to the royal gardens, three stories down outside the travertine stone walls of the Accademie building. Surprised that I had succeeded and not encountered a counter-spell, I dove under the denim saddlebags and chomped my notebook. The old greenskeeper watched with a straw in his mouth in the anomalously long pre-dawn twilight. I teleported again and again, choosing buildings by shape and material to funnel the sound of the pops to confuse the ear of anypony who might follow me.
I used Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear to escape the castle grounds through the east bailey gate. I didn't see any evidence of heightened security, yet. I purposely ran into a mare in a red business suit, just to break my hyperawareness and the verisimilitude of the spell—and make everyone wonder how they'd missed me, not to wonder where I'd appeared from.
I apologized and blended in with the clearly worried early morning crowd.