“On that day in Southoofton, our blades were turned upon each other. If ever it happens again, it will be because I have failed as your ruler.”
- High Princess Celestia, upon her accession
The rain lasted for the whole morning in Southoofton, only clearing when the Sun reached its zenith, and revealing a brilliant rainbow stretching far across the horizon.
The sight of it redoubled the sudden good cheer that had swept through the town, as soldiers and farmers alike revelled in the countryside. Ponies that only hours ago would have fought each other to the bitter end now welcomed each other into their homes, and joined in ebullient song and harmonious dance. It wasn’t exactly a party, as everyone knew that the stores were still short, but it was probably the closest Equestria had gotten to one in months.
For Princess Luna, though, it was not a morning for celebration. The work of clearing the dead from Cotton’s estate, identifying them and giving them proper burials was going slowly. She’d been able to find the remains of her guardsponies relatively easily, as they were clustered along the wall.
In addition to Swift, six others had met their end last night, for a total of seven of the twenty-or-so who had followed her. All of them had families back in Canterlot, but there was neither the time nor the spare horsepower to transport them back to the city for a proper funeral. Today may be a day for celebration, but soon enough the column would still be moving on to the next town.
So Luna had got together the rest of the company which had fought with her last night, and together they had transported the remains of their comrades to a secluded spot in the countryside around the town, under the branches of a spreading oak tree, gnarled and parched for now but likely to survive now that rain had returned.
With some effort, she’d had the graves dug and bodies interred, and marked the spot on the maps so that someday, when there were less pressing items to take care of, she could return and build them a proper memorial.
After that, the soldiers had stayed on for a silent few minutes, before Luna had relieved them and sent them back to the town. She had stayed, though, letting the last droplets of the shower run down her mane as she stood in silence. Her sword was still strapped to her side, and though she’d kept it clean, Luna doubted now if that would remain true for long. There were still weeks of collection ahead, and it could easily have been bloodied here in Southoofton if things had gone only a little differently.
The soft tip-tap of hooves on the dirt approached her from behind, pausing for a brief moment before continuing. Luna didn’t look up until her sister’s mane blocked the sunlight, and then she saw Celestia standing there, head also bowed low in reverence.
Despite the reunion with her sister, this was no time for joy as Luna took a deep breath. “How many?” she asked simply.
“About thirty at the moment,” Celestia replied, looking equally grim. “Maybe a dozen still severely wounded, but I think they’ll pull through.” She fell silent again, and in the calm after the rain the whole countryside seemed to stand still. The wind was silent, not a puff of breeze to rustle the leaves of the oak tree, and only the mournful cawing of a crow somewhere in the distance to be heard.
“Thirty-seven after just one night,” Luna said, eyes still held downward, her expression utterly hollow. “Thirty-seven too many, and even still nowhere near the start.”
“It’s over now, Luna,” her sister said back. “They’ll be the last ones. We’ll make sure they’re remembered forever, but nopony else will die as they did while either of us still reign.”
Looking over, Luna saw that Celestia, despite her sorrowful expression, didn’t have any of the somberness about her that she had been expecting. “How can you be sure? While the rain is nice, winter will be upon us shortly, and we haven’t the stores to last through it. Tomorrow we will still be off to the next town, and who knows what the farmers there will think? This may be only the first of many such memorials.”
Her sister shook her head. “No. Not ever again I said, and you can hold me to that. Come, let’s talk about it.” She turned and indicated a path back to the town, about half a mile distant on the horizon. The Guard encampment could be seen beyond it, somewhat disorganized as the revelry had spread through it this morning.
It was true that there was a lot that needed to be talked about. Luna started on the trek back, and Celestia followed at her side, their two manes streaming out in parallel over the meadow. “How about you take it from the top then?” she asked.
Celestia nodded. “I had a discussion with our new Windcaster this morning over breakfast. How much do you remember about Cloudsdale?”
“Aqua and Atlas’s retreat.” The memories of their former Masters were more than a little hazy after so long. “We haven’t seen or heard of it in two hundred years. I had thought it just faded away.”
“Apparently not. The way that Mr. Wind tells it, they figured out how to grow their own food and kept on.” Her sister must have seen the realization dawning on her face, as Celestia allowed herself a small smile. “Yes, and they do have stores. Not a lot, but paired with what harvest we do have here on the ground, it just might be enough.”
Luna ran through the sums quickly in her head. From what memories she did have, Cloudsdale had been a modest settlement. While the extra reserves would be something, it still didn’t quite add up. “Surely not enough to last the whole winter and the next growing season though?”
“Ah, that’s just the thing!” Celestia crooned, breaking out in a triumphant grin at last. “We have a Windcaster now, and a whole lot more pegasi at our disposal up in Cloudsdale. We don’t need to have a winter, we can start a new growing season right now! I’ve gone through the numbers, and while it might not be comfortable, it will work out.”
She held her smile for a second, waiting expectantly, but when Luna didn’t join in her mirth she went right on. “Come now, Luna, don’t you see? We’ve done it! The crisis is over, the country is safe again! And now that we’ve got control over the weather, we won’t have to worry about this happening ever again! There won’t be any more fights, or any more division. Equestria is safe and back on the road to prosperity.” She leaned over conspiratorially before adding, “It means you and I might finally be able to take our holiday.”
Her sister’s ebullience was finding no purchase in Luna’s heart. Sure, in some sense she was right about all of that, but Luna wasn’t satisfied yet. Not at all, in fact.
The buildings of the town were rising before them now, and in the square between them she could see the remains of a party that had gone on the whole morning. The refreshments had been sparse, but the song and dance had been lively, with only a trace of remorse for the lives lost. Everyone around her was celebrating, and Luna knew that on some level she should be too, but it still didn’t feel right.
“Is there a place where we can speak privately?” she asked. The questions that she needed to ask really shouldn’t be aired in public.
Celestia’s grin slipped, her eyebrows rising in slight confusion. “Er, sure. Right this way.” She led Luna toward the building that should have been the local tavern, its tables and benches all spread out in the square right now. Standing by the entrance was a pony that Luna recognized instantly, even without the crossbow he had been holding the last time that they had met.
Today, Linseed had on a brightly coloured shirt and flat-brimmed hat, and nodded politely to each of them as they approached. “Morning, Your Highnesses,” he said with considerably more grace than during their initial encounter. “Wanting privacy, I assume?”
Celestia just nodded, and the earth pony reached over and unlocked the door, letting them both in and clicking it shut behind them. The interior of the building was empty, looking strange with all of the table space bare now that everything had been moved outside. In a back corner, though, somepony had dragged in a low table and a small stool, and it appeared that Celestia had made it her office, with stacks of parchment covered in ink already arranged neatly over the space.
The tall alicorn sat down onto the stool as easily as her throne back in Canterlot, then indicated a couple of nearby crates with a small apology. Luna, though, preferred to stand.
“When you left, you weren’t going to Cloudsdale to negotiate for rain, were you?” When Celestia shook her head, Luna continued on, breathless with questions she’d wanted to ask for days now. “Then where did you go? And why not tell me? Why leave me to manage a crisis that I had no business being in charge of? Do you have any idea how bad things were before you came back? Pensive manoeuvred me into signing his law! I had to call up the Guard to fight a war that should never have started! Thirty-seven ponies are now dead that shouldn’t have been, and they’re all my fault!”
The words brought the memories of last night back, and Luna could hold her voice steady no longer. She looked up at her sister, pleading, hoping for some clarity, for an understanding of how it all could possibly have been necessary.
Celestia came around the desk in an instant, and took Luna by the shoulders, holding her tightly. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “I wish that I could have told you, but I didn’t want the Senate to know where I had gone. I didn’t expect Pensive to declare an emergency like he did. I had hoped that you would only have to keep stonewalling his law until I was done with my plans. I never expected that it would come out this way.”
Releasing her grasp, Celestia pulled back to look her sister now in the eyes. Her gaze was clear and resolute, deep with surety and determination. “But none of this was your fault. You did well to keep as much of a lid on things as you did. They could have been much, much worse. And remember, the battle is over now, and there won’t be another one.”
The steadiness in her words did help bring Luna a little back to herself. “Then what was your plan? Why did you have to leave Canterlot? Where did you go?”
Celestia stood up and stepped back behind her desk, moving a few parchments around for a moment, perhaps to gather her thoughts. “I went south,” she then said. “Into the heart of the Everfree Forest, to the Hill of Shadows, looking for the magic there. You probably won’t believe this, but well, I actually found Star Swirl.”
For a moment the name was unfamiliar to the younger princess, a memory as it was from a simpler time, when either of them could bother with questions that weren’t vital to the survival of the nation. “He made it all of the way down there?”
Celestia nodded. “Indeed, though it wasn’t his magic that animated that section of the forest. That belonged to an old Unicorn King, Solaris VII.”
As she spoke Celestia summoned a couple of sparks from her horn, a few her usual yellow-gold, then some of an unfamiliar soft azure, and another of a dark ebony. “I needed that magic to cast a spell that I had devised, and it was in casting that spell that I spent most of my time down there, only finishing last night.”
She gestured past Luna’s shoulder, down to her rear flank, now adorned by a splotch of darkness and a white crescent Moon. Celestia’s own now bore a brilliant golden Sun. “Everypony in Equestria has one now, and they all will, until the end of time.”
Luna took a moment to study the mark, which appeared to have grown from discoloured hairs of her own coat. It was an impressive thing to look at certainly, but she hoped that there would be more to the story than just that. “Okay. So what does your spell do, exactly?”
“Well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but you can think of it almost like a social organization system. Every pony gets one when they come of age, and it provides a gentle nudge into a particular choice of life path. A destiny for the future that will lead to a happy and fulfilling life. And, when taken as a whole, will lead to a well-balanced and functioning society. No more petty squabbling over what each pony does and doesn’t deserve. No more of the barely-concealed animosity that always leads earth ponies to take up arms against unicorns. Now, everypony will have their proper place, and they’ll fit within it.”
The words were difficult for Luna to process, not that they were particularly technical, it simply wasn’t at all what she had been expecting to hear. A system for meting out destinies to keep society functioning? It all sounded too ridiculous to be true.
“Sorry, so what you’re saying is that everypony now has a place picked out for them in life, and your spell lets them know what that place is, what life they ought to be leading if they want to be happy?”
Celestia’s eyebrows rose up a little as she shook her head noncommittally. “Well er, kind of? The details are difficult to grasp; I could probably spend a whole year going through all of them, but that sounds close enough to the truth of it. But just think of the implications! Of how things could have been different if this had always been in place! You’d have had no issues finding weatherponies from out in the population, and could tailor their education as necessary. Our new Windcaster would have known much sooner about his special talent, maybe even averting the drought entirely. There’d have been no issue with short staff on the Guard, as we’d necessarily have enough ponies marked to fill out our regiments. There would have been no class war, no strife of an urban elite resenting a rural class that in turn resented them. Everything would have been-”
“Hold it.” Luna said, stopping her sister in mid-sentence. She had hardly listened to the latter half of Celestia’s ramblings anyway. “Do you not see the problem with all of this?”
There was silence between them for a second, Celestia’s excited smile knocked down a notch in confusion. “Problem? No. As I was saying, I believe that it’s a win-win for pretty much everyone.”
Luna could hardly believe that the words had been spoken. How could her sister not see the grave mistake that she was making? “And what gives you the right to say what kinds of lives our subjects ought to be living?”
“If the system is followed, the system will work,” her sister answered. “Everypony will be happy, society will function, and the nation will be safe. What’s the matter with that?”
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?! The matter is that with your spell ponies aren’t given a choice! Their lives are picked out for them by a system that they don’t know about and cannot control. You’ve reduced them to mere… mere numbers in an equation! But they are ponies just like you and I, perfectly capable of choosing their own paths.”
Sitting back down, Celestia waved at her dismissively. “Sister, please. You talk like I have reached into their heads and now control their every thought! When all my spell does is nudge ponies along into a choice that benefits everyone. It’s very subtle, and as mentioned nopony is going to dislike it.”
“That’s not the point.” Luna shook her head, suddenly reminded of her interrogation of Pensive down in the castle dungeons. Not only because of how stubborn he had been, but also something he had said…
“Do you know what Pensive told me?” she said, sharpening her voice just a bit. “He said that you would have eventually signed his law, even if you weren’t forced into it like I was. He said that you could see the bigger picture, while I was too focused on my individual ideals.”
Celestia’s eyes were back in her parchments, her smile totally gone. “I really don’t see how this is relevant.”
“It’s relevant,” she continued, trying to avoid yelling further, “because even though I told him that he was wrong, I realize now that he was right. In fact, you’ve spent so long fixated on the big picture, that you’ve forgotten the individual entirely.”
One of the parchments stopped its journey across the desk halfway. In a shimmer of golden magic, its edge started to quiver, and then to crumple, folding inward as though it were being clenched in a dragon’s claws. Celestia brought her eyes up to meet Luna’s gaze, and when she spoke, her words came terse, growled around a tense jaw.
“For three hundred years, I have toiled with you in the service of the ponies of this kingdom. All of my effort has been toward securing their safety, their prosperity, and their happiness. That is the ideal I hold, and I will stand by it until my death. The system I have built is toward that ideal, and when it works, ponies will be happy.”
Celestia held her stare for a few seconds, a tiny sparkle of brilliant magic in her eyes. “Now, do you care to make any further objections?”
A part of Luna’s mind wanted to back down. This had clearly touched a nerve for her sister and it was always better to resolve such disputes with level heads. But at the same time, she was not about to let her own ideals get trampled without objection. So she said the only thing back that she could think of.
“Discord’s system worked.”
That was enough to get Celestia up off of her stool. “That is uncalled-for, Luna!” That steady calmness in her eyes was gone, replaced with a note of fire. “Discord’s only goals were chaos and power, he didn’t want his subjects to be happy and safe. What I’ve created is nothing like the society that he ruled over.”
Luna stepped forward, meeting her sister’s gaze. “Well, what a brilliant society you have built then! Shall I go outside and tell the young foals of Equestria what future lays in store for them now? That if they live good lives they might one day grow up to be obedient cogs in the grand clockwork of society? That they’ll be allowed to be happy to the extent that they follow along with the choices and paths that you’ve so diligently laid out for them? I’m sure they’ll be happy to learn that this is the bright future that was hard-won for them by their brilliant Princess!”
“And perhaps you would prefer the world that you encountered on the fields of Cotton’s estate last night?” her sister shot back, now fully livid. It was a wonder that the parchments on the desk weren’t smoldering from the heat in her glare.
“Lucky enough that it was only thirty-seven; easily hundreds or thousands more. And whatever peace we could build only a brief patch until the next crisis comes around and everypony is at each other’s throats again! When I found you out in the field standing over Swift’s grave it didn’t look like you wanted more of that!”
“There are better ways!”
“Ponies have tried and failed for centuries!” Celestia answered, standing her ground and looking down at Luna. “But I found the solution!” In time with her words, the magic of her horn pulsed, still holding on to the parchment in front of her. But it was no longer yellow. Indeed with each word the magic grew darker, through tan and brown until it was almost midnight black. “Our kingdom is the one that will last,” she continued, the look in her eyes hard as granite, “for I have made it so.”
Even in spite of her anger Luna drew back. What was this change that had overtaken her sister? Yet, even in a moment, she blinked and everything was back to normal. Celestia was still eying her hotly, but her magic was yellow again.
“I’m sorry,” Luna said, sad but resolute. “But some prices must be paid if we are to rule in a just manner. If last night was that price…” Luna hesitated for a moment, wondering before she said the words that were going to follow. Those deaths were still fresh in her memory, lives that would never come back, Swift especially. Only a brief moment ago, as she’d stood thinking about the mistakes that had brought about last night’s senseless battle, she’d thought that she would have given up anything to have them back. Now, though, she had realized that it wasn’t true. Some things were more important.
She saw an instant of triumph on Celestia’s face, as her sister assumed that she had finally come around. “If last night was that price,” she said again, the words heavy on her tongue but right in her heart. “Then it must be. I cannot abide by what you have done, Sister.”
She stood silent a moment longer, hoping in vain that whatever insanity had clearly taken Celestia would abate, but as her sister remained defiant and was about to reply, Luna turned and walked out, back into the bright sunlight of the afternoon. Celestia apparently didn’t try to follow, as Linseed let her out of the tavern and wished her a good day.
Out here, the celebrations were winding down, and the townsfolk were getting back to their lives, now gearing up for a very early planting season. Every one of them was marked, most in variations on agricultural themes: sheaves of wheat, flowers in bloom, sickles and scythes on a few. Apples, pears, and oranges. For most of them, the impact of the magic would surely be minimal, as they would return to the lives that they had already been living, more sure than ever that they were where they ought to be.
The young ones among them, though, their flanks for now empty, were the ones who would suffer. They had no way of knowing that their lives would be chosen for them by the balance of an equation on a scale that they had no say on.
Without a direction in mind, she began picking her way through the town, her thoughts a maelstrom with no sign of resolution. She couldn’t imagine that Celestia could be so thoughtless, so cruel in her acts even if she truly believed that what she was doing was right. There would be no undoing of the spell unless she could convince her sister that it had to be done.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true, she supposed. Such a thing could be done by force, if Celestia refused to see right. But how could she not? She was the thoughtful one, the one best at grasping the bigger picture, the one who could think through the hard problems and find the creative solutions. Why, even in the pursuit of the solution to an unrelated problem, she had accomplished her goal of locating Star Swirl, and if her apparent new power was anything to go by, had probably learned something from the experience too.
The thought gave her pause though. The Celestia that she knew would never have believed that a scheme like this could be the right thing to do. Surely she had set off on her journey with a better idea in mind, like rediscovering the Windcasting magic, or something similar.
Over a hill in the distance, Luna could see the beginning of the Everfree Forest forming on the horizon, and it brought with it a torrent of memories from an earlier life, some three hundred years ago. She well remembered the Hill of Shadows, and the awesome power of whatever force lived there. Star Swirl’s magic? That of King Solaris? Whatever it had been, Celestia had gone there, and the pony who had returned was now one that Luna didn’t recognize.
A newfound determination settled in her heart. To save Equestria, she was going to have to make Celestia see reason. But first, she would have to understand what had happened to her sister upon that hill.
Back in the tent, Celestia had to take several deep breaths to recover her composure after Luna had stepped out. Her sister had clearly been through a lot in her time as temporary queen, but Celestia had never expected to be met with such hostility. She expected that she would come to regret a lot of the things that she had said in the passion of her anger, but the determination in her heart was hard. She had done the right thing.
And then there was the matter of her magic. At the height of the argument, she had felt the shadow closing on her mind. Solaris had almost taken her.
What happened? she asked Star Swirl. You’re supposed to keep him contained.
This spell is a two-way street, the old wizard answered. We are not sealed off from your mind; that is how you can access our magic. But we can also take from you, especially if your focus is elsewhere. Your emotions: fear, anger, and doubt, they are like sustenance to him.
There was a momentary pause, filled with the subconscious chittering of Solaris’s magic swirling in the back of her mind. If she had pushed it any further, he might have gotten complete control. I’m sorry, she thought.
It’s not your fault, I should have said something. Just understand that in the future you will need to keep better control over your emotions.
Celestia nodded to herself. Yet another thing to think about. But so long as Luna came around, she didn’t see any more big arguments in her future. Coming back behind the desk, she paused for a moment.
Star Swirl, Luna’s wrong, right?
But he did not answer.