If any had been present within Summit Tower, had witnessed the tiny intangible speck of near-light as it drifted up through the floor... they might have perceived a certain amount of petulance in the movements which followed. There was a degree of irritation associated with having to deal with an environment that had been forcibly prevented from changing, and the barest hint of ripple created by the speck's passage through still air could easily be interpreted as an act of defiance.
It moved over the salt-stained fainting couch, reached the battered storm and hesitated near that section which could be said to resemble a bit of antler. And then it sank in.
The storm collapsed.
It collapsed in on itself. It collapsed into a twisted torso and mismatched limbs, all of which were a little wavery around the edges. It collapsed into antler and horn, paw and talon, hoof and claws and ears and eyes. And at the moment when the couch's cushions finally indented under the light pressure of too-minimal weight, the eyes opened.
They blinked a few times.
"Ah," Discord softly said. "We won, then."
He tried to sit up, and found portions of his form willing to cooperate. The legs seemed to be reporting in on something of a delay, but it was just sitting and he didn't really need them for anything yet. Looking around, however... well, that was just disappointing. Utterly boring decor -- outside of the couch, of course: he immediately recognized it, understood the only possible way it could have been present, and took a moment to appreciate the gift. But when it came to the room itself? Well, the only way for an environment to be this stuffy (and literally!) was to place it in the palace. The home of the boring and staid and grim, where hardly anything interesting ever --
-- a certain basic sense, which had needed a little extra time to awaken, coalesced at last --
-- there... seemed to have been a lot of rather recent chaos in the area. He could hear pegasi flapping just outside the tower, and they sounded exhausted. It appeared as if he might have missed something important...
...how long had he been -- unaware? Unconscious? What had happened to him? His memory was normally sharp: arguably too much so, as to fully dive into the insult of a fully-frozen past would have him internally recreating the experience at a level just below living through it all again. But he remembered Tirek, and... after that, there was just a haze --
-- hurtling endlessly through a maze with no true room to move and no way out, moving constantly because there has to be something and with every attempt, the narrowing walls close in to scrape away that much more of self --
-- there... there would be time to think about that later.
(How much time...)
The past was frozen, locked beyond change: a near-ultimate insult. The future was where anything might happen, and that was why he loved it most. But he had to deal with the present and in this particular slice of time, there had recently been a lot of chaos in the area. There seemed to be some small chance that it might have helped.
There were still some traces in the motionless air. Indications of something big. A change...
The recent surge of chaos might have helped. But there was a rather distinct possibility that it had only helped him. He had to get outside, learn exactly what was going on. And after that, presuming the situation didn't directly involve her (because she had a lovely tendency for being somewhere near the heart of the storm), the next jaunt would be to the cottage: she must have been worrying herself sick, and he had to put an end to it. And after that, there was another stop which he absolutely had to make...
He brought up an arm. Noticed that the outlines of the scutes around the wrist were blurring into each other, and rather irritably told them to stop doing that. (He didn't bother waiting for them to respond, which was nicely matched by their not listening.) Moved his talons, touched them together with a click and a snap --
-- he was something unique in the world. Singular. An entity not quite like any other and if any sapient had seemed to be getting close, he might have just changed himself out of sheer spite. But there were still things he had in common with the other inhabitants of the planet, and one of them decided to apply.
Discord, as someone who had been critically close to death, woke up on the first true day of his recovery -- and promptly overdid it.
It felt as if most of a city was staring up at the giant illusion of the centaur. Given the sheer size added to Luna's placement, the majority of Canterlot had a pretty good viewing angle.
But it wasn't everyone. The girl was now staring at the sword in her hand. Yapper had glanced up, shrugged a little, and then looked down again: for a Diamond Dog, comfort was found much closer to ground. And Celestia, who often wished to have just a little more advance warning for some of her sister's plans (and, on too many occasions, any warning at all), had looked up about half a second later than everyone else.
The elder stared. Yanked her gaze back down, looked directly at the girl's right hip, and found a hospital gown blocking the view.
Sunlight flickered around her horn. The fabric lifted slightly. Cerea, whose breaths were coming at the rather low speed of catastrophic stun, didn't seem to notice.
And there was also a test which could be done: a very basic spell, something which determined whether an icon was true, the product of cutie pox or, when it came to the young and desperate, the result of what was generally some rather poorly-applied paint. It was a working which the old mare knew, it took less than a second to cast, and --
-- most of the crowd missed seeing the results. The majority were looking up, others didn't have the right angle, very few would have recognized what the spell did and for any who might have understood, there was a very large alicorn in the way.
The fabric dropped back down.
It could be hard to work out some of the girl's expressions: as learning experiences went, recognizing all the signifiers which a singular configuration of features could produce was an ongoing one. But to Celestia, the breathing alone suggested deep bewilderment. The utter confusion of someone who'd not only just found themselves with new limbs, but now had to figure out how they actually worked.
Celestia --
-- it's real
it can't be
how is it --
-- had a certain amount of empathy there...
The arsonist, still being lightly touched by the swordpoint, shivered with revulsion. Tried to wriggle away, and the girl automatically moved the blade to track.
They were among the public. Within the direct view and potential attention of what felt like a sixth of the city and just about all of the embassy personnel -- barring a few who were still wrapping up the last fights, which hearing told her was mostly taking place around the edges. Everything the sisters did would be witnessed.
But you didn't stay in power for well over a millennium without learning a few short-range tricks for pitching your voice.
She kept her horn dark throughout the casting, knowing the distortions produced by hiding the magic would bring the working's duration to something under a minute, and then just barely moved her lips.
"I thought she just found a sword somewhere."
A rather dry, slightly unsteady "...somewhere," arose from the dark mare on the girl's left.
Defensively, "There are two swords in the armory. Somewhere."
"Not used by ponies, of course."
"No. Confiscated. So when I saw her holding one while we were flying down..."
"Understood," Luna replied. "For my part, I felt Barding had made her a replacement. In case it became necessary to attempt a bluff. And now that we have completed this topic, would you like to face the real question --"
-- which was when the light manifested behind them.
It was, as bursts of illumination went, something two very young mares had learned to recognize in an instant. React to, because the appearance of that light meant dread and destruction and a chance of death. Centuries-old instincts had them turning before their conscious minds realized what was taking place, getting ready to defend --
-- the white light, when used for transportation, was readily distinguishable from that of a unicorn's teleport: more of a bloom than a flash. It drew the attention of the entire crowd (but for the girl, who was still staring down), and made the very last of the fighting stop. It was something which the sisters had believed they might never see again.
It was also much more shaky than usual, and casually violated multiple laws of physics through taking several seconds to fully fill the required space.
"Now, really," declared what, but for a lack of full strength, would have been the world's most expert put-upon tones. "A fuss is being kicked up on this scale, and none of you thought to inform me? One could begin to feel somewhat neglected. I really could --"
-- his body dipped to the left.
The sisters stared. So did most of the crowd. The draconequus, abruptly finding himself both physically and mentally off-center, simply looked down.
"...oh," he softly stated, and watched a half-tangible hoof sink a little deeper into cobblestone. "So there would appear to be a few... limits. This may have been a mistake..."
Nopony moved.
His eyebrows knit together. The clawed foot seemed to take on extra solidity. A portion of his antler blurred. The sunken hoof failed to go anywhere.
Red eyes glared at the alicorns and, most unusually, did so while fully within their sockets.
"Try not to enjoy this too much," their old enemy wearily requested, and the mismatched shoulders slumped. "I don't suppose --"
Which was when he finally saw Cerea.
The talons fell open, and did so in precise concert with his jaw. The paw, however, simply came up.
The crowd had fallen silent. (Sapients often went quiet in the presence of the draconequus, generally in the hopes that it would somehow prevent them from gaining his attention.) It meant the sound produced by the facepalm traveled for quite a distance, and the noise made the girl begin to turn. Her lower body remained almost flush against the stone, with the right arm keeping the sword exactly where it was -- but the complicated jointing of neck and upper waist allowed her to rotate just enough to see where everyone else was staring.
She blinked a few times. The sisters decided the reaction was suitable.
"Oh, for..." Discord muttered as his paw dropped, and followed that up with a petulant declaration of "I just did this! Look, I know it's almost traditional that there be no rest for the hero, but I got the last one! Would somepony else --"
He stopped, and red eyes stared deep into blue.
"-- I know you," he whispered. "How do I...?"
The claw planted, pushed. It let him take a single staggering step, as the sunken hoof was dragged through the ground.
"I know you," Discord just barely repeated, and tried to move again. "You... carried me home..."
Both knees gave out.
The sisters moved. They did the only thing they could and when they stopped, the frozen world could do nothing more than watch.
Discord blinked again. Looked to the left, and then the right. Saw where his windmilling arms had come to be propped up across a pair of alicorn backs.
"...what," the suspended (and now rather tilted) draconequus eventually got out, "are you two trying to --"
"We're getting you inside," Celestia firmly said. "Now."
"You require examination," Luna added. "Do not exert yourself any further."
His expression suggested he was treating 'examination' on the same level as 'studied', if only because both were equally grievous insults. "I'd rather not be poked and prodded, if it's all the same to you two. One would think that mares who've spent so much of their lives in dodging medical charts would have a certain degree of sympathy --"
"-- and what are you going to do," Celestia softly asked, "if we decide to press the issue?"
His head turned just enough to let him reluctantly note the section of leg which was still partially inside the street.
"...apparently very little."
He braced himself against their backs. Pushed, and the hoof came free. It still took several careful wing nudges to help him turn around.
"Cerea," the elder called out, "we have restraints inside. But I don't want to leave you here with her until somepony can bring one out. Can you carry her in?"
"...yes," eventually drifted back to her on a slow current of something approaching inner concussion.
"While keeping the sword in contact," Luna added. "And hold her in such a way that she cannot try to kick."
The affirmation echo eventually turned up.
"Good," Celestia firmly declared. "You're with us." She looked around. "Bulkhead, you too: I know it's your day off, but you've clearly decided to put in some overtime and you look like you're the freshest. And --" so this is where he wound up "-- you too, Sunspot. And Glimmerglow." Because the returned pegasus had froth dripping off the edges of her feathers, and really needed to get inside.
"Every other Guard currently on the grounds," Luna ordered, "is to coordinate with the police. Begin making arrests. Sort out the ponies who need medical attention and see that they get it."
A number of helmeted heads fiercely nodded.
And we have to order a search of the interior. Find everypony who's hurt there, see if there's any intruders who are trying to hide...
...find out just how bad it really is...
The centaur picked up the prisoner, holding the limp unicorn out in front of her with the legs presented to the air --
-- mostly out in front of her. Even with the girl's strength, a straight-arm carry would be a wearying position to hold for long, and so a portion of the unicorn's back was braced against the girl's breasts.
The prisoner shuddered again. Shook within Cerea's grasp, and the girl did not let go.
She hates that.
Good.
"All other members of staff," Luna called out, "if you remain capable -- render what help you can. Return to the palace, or wait on the grounds until we can send further orders. But we need everypony." The younger's head turned, and a dark gaze moved across several griffons, sole canid, a rather proud yak, the lone donkey, and an extremely shaken centaur. "And everyone."
The sisters oriented on the Syzygy, and slowly began to walk forward. The braced arms almost immediately began to slip.
"You set the pace," Celestia told the draconequus. "We move when you do."
"You could teleport," he petulantly pointed out.
"We are not taking you into the between in your current state," Luna immediately established.
He grumbled. Tried a step. Then, after a few seconds, he tried another.
"...the height discrepancy between you," Discord noted, "is not helping." Another step. "You could level it out. All Our Lady Of Perpetual Brooding has to do is take off a little."
"Regularly striking you with an active wing would normally have some degree of appeal," Luna agreed.
They all went forward.
The staff was beginning to sort itself out. A number of ponies were attending to the wounded. Some were securing prisoners. Others headed inside, Yapper stayed close, and one stallion fell into step next to Cerea.
"I never got --" The siblings heard the abrupt cutoff in the middle-aged voice, and each assumed it represented the moment when he'd gotten a very close look at the girl's exposed hip. "...I... I never got an answer from you."
"Mr. Guard?" asked an utterly confused centaur, who probably didn't need anything else to deal with just then.
"The invitations," Crossing said. "I host a Homecoming gathering at my home every year. For the new immigrants who... don't have any family they can reach. I sent you an invitation to it. The palace was going to bring you over. If you said yes. And after you missed Homecoming, because of... everything... I sent you one for the make-up session."
"...oh," the girl said. (Celestia considered her to be doing rather well.)
"I went to a lot of trouble to spell your name right."
"...oh." She took a rather audible breath: the prisoner's weight shifted. "I'm... a little behind on my mail."
"There's a few days left," the head of Immigration gruffly said. "Just let me know."
The entrance was getting closer. Celestia tried not to look too closely at the fallen doors.
Discord inhaled. Neither sibling knew whether to treat the accompanying expansion of his rib cage as a good sign.
"You could also," he stated, "simply pick me up. Carry me along in a field bubble."
"But you hate being confined," Celestia reminded him.
Thoughtfully, "...true..." And then, as a weakened body leaned against warmth and coolness for support, "My dear Grimcess -- are you starting to like me?"
The "No," was immediate.
"...oh," sunk to the street.
"But..." Celestia quietly told her old enemy, "I don't hate you as much as I used to."
He thought about that.
"It's still a change," Discord decided as he limped along. "I'll take it."
All around them, ponies were starting to talk again. One exchange drifted into alicorn ears.
"...that can't be a real mark."
In near-matching tones of inner concussion, because that was making the rounds, "It's right there..."
"A mark would be on both sides --"
Luna's field projected backwards. A tiny flare of stars briefly lifted the proper section of centaur skirt.
The resulting hard thud was assumed to represent acknowledgement. Or a faint. Possibly both.
"...oh, Sun..." somepony else said.
"What?" asked a mare.
"She's got legs all the way to Sun." There was a pause. "Pity about the... other torso..."
They passed a recently-retired demon of scorch and singe, who had finally found somepony capable of groaning out the Home and Away schedules and was now gradually resolving back into a pony. He looked up at the girl whom he'd tried so hard to find, began to fall into step with the group as Luna released the overhead illusion at last --
-- and a stallion who tended to concentrate on events at ground level (because you didn't get metal from air) finally saw his friend's exposed hip.
He didn't really consider the reasons why the icon might have appeared. (In some ways, he still couldn't. Not just yet.) No part of him fully acknowledged the strangeness of it. Instead, he simply blinked. And then he immediately, completely, joyously, and comprehensively got it wrong.
"YES!" Barding shouted, rearing up for a moment as his body was buoyed by the near-impossible joy of celebration.
"...what?" Cerea just barely managed to ask. "Barding, what...?"
"LUNAR SHIFT BLACKSMITH!"
A few more steps. Negotiating the ramps was going to be the tricky part.
Discord abruptly snickered.
"This must look so stupid," he considered. "The two of you, trying to carry me along. Total incongruity..."
He began to laugh. And they carried him home.
The girl would have understood. When it was a story, the main thing to do in the wake of a victory was turning the page. In reality, there was a lot of confusion, some general milling about, and ponies staring at her everywhere she went -- which turned out to be the path to the Royal Physician's offices, because there was more than one person who needed to be examined.
The number was also somewhat higher than two.
Time was required to locate and reunite the Doctors Bear and by that point, the crowding had reached a density which didn't allow them to get into their own offices. Most of the overflow wound up in the hallway.
The listed purpose of the Royal Physician posting was taking care of alicorn medical needs, which meant the stallions dearly hoped to operate with a perpetual maximum patient load of zero. But the staff understood that if anything happened to them on the palace grounds, or if they simply didn't have time to seek their own doctor -- they could turn to the Bears. And there had been staffers fighting, Guards in combat, a few ponies had tried to charge for the first time in their lives and discovered that when their opponent got out of the path in a hallway, there was inevitably going to be a wall somewhere...
Glimmerglow had alerted a hospital early on, and a number of personnel had followed the herd to the palace. Those ponies stayed. But the Doctors Bear were overwhelmed. They didn't have the space, the staff, or the ability to take care of several dozen injuries at once -- and that was before factoring in the wounded among the invaders.
And then somepony had to look for the ones who couldn't reach the offices on their own.
Too many ponies had to be carried in. A few wound up having doctors stay with them, waiting for enough help to allow those patients to be moved at all.
Messengers were sent out to hospitals and private offices: come if you can. Scrolls requested bed space and, for those who were under arrest, the hoofcuffs required to keep them there. That second category didn't get too much of a say in that part of the matter, although a few used the opportunity to accuse some of the doctors of trying to hurt the innocent. It didn't take too many of those before the cameras came out. Clockwork was wound, and film steadily recorded an official record of abuse. Using m'changa as a painkiller was abuse. It didn't work quickly enough.
Patients were distributed. Some just required bandages, while a few simply needed a hot drink and somepony to tell them it was over. But half of the palace offices were turning into medical bays. It took nearly an hour to locate everypony (and a little less than that to take out the invasion's final stragglers), and the worst of it came when they found the Guards who had been trying to evacuate the arsonist.
Those ponies went to the hospital. The Doctors Bear expected them to stay there for at least a week. And even after the bones healed, there would be extensive rehabilitation time. They wouldn't be returning to duty for a while, and the last words of each before being teleported out was to insist that they were coming back.
The sisters made sure that evacuation happened well out of the girl's possible hearing. Because Nightwatch's frantic post-exit search had made it up to the medical offices and... she'd had a story to tell. Something which she delivered to the siblings in private, in tones which generally indicated what was just about a near-universal concussion and an effectively record-breaking number of 'Um's. And then she tried to reach her partner. Again.
But Cerea was being isolated for a little while. And the alicorns knew that if the girl had seen or heard any part of that, when hers had been the idea which had placed centaur and pegasus in the basement -- she would have blamed herself. For not having thought of it sooner.
Something happened.
The alicorns didn't understand what had taken place.
Mark manifestation was an everyday miracle. Something which happened every day arguably didn't quite get the amount of study it strictly deserved -- and that was with ponies. There was a certain amount of interest in zebra marks and when it came to living pony scholars, that quantity topped out at three. To work out what had happened within the body of a centaur...
They isolated her for a few hours: something which took quite a bit of work, because there had been a giant illusion and now disbelieving ponies kept trying to see. Part of that time was used for routine medical examination, and the Doctors Bear reported a badly-bruised neck, one chipped hoof, some new bruises in other places, and a bad impact to the left foreleg which the girl apparently hadn't even noticed at the time -- added to everything from Tartarus which hadn't finished healing yet. The prescription was rest and steak. Possibly several steaks.
But the illness was gone.
The illness was gone and a mark was present. Something impossible. And so she was being isolated.
Nightwatch wasn't exactly happy about that. But she had her orders. And, after the doctors got a look at her neck, a private bed.
That was three offices down from Cerea. The one reached via adjoining door was for Discord, and the summoned thaumatologists didn't have any more idea of what to do than they'd possessed after the confrontation with Tirek. Cerea at least offered any doctor the benefit of familiar organs united into working systems. The draconequus treated his own biology as an optional extra, currently lacked the strength to opt in, and a number of frustrated pony screams suggested the direct questioning wasn't going well.
The entire Canterlot prosecution department was moved into the palace, and they had to call in Lunar reinforcements just to process the sheer number of charges. (A number were added to the arsonist's list. A public attack against children meant multiple griffons were already lining up to testify.) There was a pause in the proceedings because an entire city had just run out of arrest forms.
There wasn't enough paperwork. There weren't enough cells. The Canterlot police ran out of room in a hurry. The prison which lurked about a fifth of the way around the mountain, completely out of sight from the main city -- there was more space to work with there, right up until there wasn't. Ponyville, which shared its prosecutor's office with the capital, could offer up all of twelve cells. A palace team went into the basement and pressed every last one of those designated spaces into use, which mostly meant the rather vicious removal of several undeserved furnishings. And it still wasn't enough.
(At one point, Luna sarcastically proposed calling eminent domain on the homes of Tattler district representatives. Celestia came within three seconds of drafting the actual bill.)
When it came to those who wouldn't spend some of their pretrial time in a hospital bed, they used anything which could be barricaded. But quite a bit of that was in the palace itself, and it turned the basement into a repository of screaming, more claims of ill treatment, and the occasional portion of stunned silence in a dark corner as a few ponies finally began to reconcile what they'd just done to their lives.
(A few of those volunteered to turn Nation's Evidence. The alicorns offered to think it over.)
The ones in the basement had to be fed, and the most egotistical decided that imprisonment in the palace meant they were entitled to the palace menu. Celestia responded by contacting the kitchens, announcing that the daily special was going to be Griffon Cuisine (Modified), instructed everypony to begin soaking vegetables in meat juices immediately, and then unleashed Sizzler upon the basement with a full menu.
They still had to figure out why things had failed. Until everything was fixed --
-- so much was fallen, torn, broken --
-- the majority of their lives had been spent within marble, and every hoofstep they took moved through the fragments of memory --
-- there were going to be extra ponies on watch. The line between Solar and Lunar staffs was becoming blurred. Wakeup juice was made freely available and, for the desperate, espresso. Much to Celestia's coffee-loathing horror, the espresso seemed to be catching on.
And there was a traitor to deal with.
The investigation started immediately. The only personnel who would be allowed to access the arsonist (and Cerea, and quite a bit else) were going to be the trusted ones, and the sisters were the sole arbitrators of 'trusted' -- but Emery was put in charge of assembling the nominees. In part, this was because the old stallion's judgment was sound: the rest was to give him some ponies he could yell at.
But Cerea had been isolated, because they were waiting for somepony they trusted. And in time, devices were recovered from the armory. The chosen items were given to a unicorn mare, and Abjura went into the converted office with its pushed-together beds and every paper the Doctors Bear had written about the occupant's biology.
She would be the first to try and work out what had happened to the centaur. Because the sisters needed to know.
They needed to hear that it wasn't going to kill her.
"...and here you go," Celestia said as the sunlight-held quill finished signing the last of the forms, followed by floating them over to the police officer. "Official Royal Summons for Majorica Panderaghast, Geodene Fracture, and Aerial Supremacy. Because we didn't see any of the three at any time, and I'd really like to find out where they are. You can pick up the home entry warrants on your way out."
"What if their attorneys try to block the summons?" the officer asked.
"Bring them along as well," Luna offered.
The officer swallowed. "Bring --"
"-- tell them to consider it as a chance to present the arguments personally," the dark mare finished. "However, I do not expect it to be too much of an issue. Especially as all three may be on the gallop -- well, two on the gallop and the last flying, as that -- what is the modern term? -- ah, yes. That 'stone foal' refuses to touch ground any more than absolutely necessary. And attorneys who make too many excuses regarding sudden needs for vacations might also potentially be known as 'accessories'." A silver-clad left forehoof casually gestured towards the door. "Fair fortune to you, officer. Begin the hunt."
He left, closing the door of the makeshift office behind him.
It was going to be the office for a while. The Solar and Lunar throne rooms had been... disrupted, and the sisters had silently set up shop in the first available space which could host two desks, several rapidly-filling file cabinets, and a boiling need for getting to the bottom of it.
"They may be running," Celestia quietly said. "We both agreed on that. The real question may be how long they've been running for."
"We can find them," Luna firmly replied. "We will."
They sorted out more paperwork. A number of bulk-printed letters from the basement stash had been brought up, with sending addresses being compared to the names of those in the cells -- for the ones who would give their names at all. Both sibling suspected a few of them were going to bring the denials down to birth certificate level. And they had to make sure they were detaining the right ponies, because a number of independent protesters had been caught up in the initial crush against the gates.
Most of those were in the hospital. Some of the smarter prisoners were already claiming to have simply been pushed inside. Taking forty minutes to get back out again was blamed on disorientation.
"It's almost time to raise Moon --"
"-- I am aware."
The elder sighed.
"You've been up all day."
"It is nearly winter," the younger noted. "Which makes that into something less of a feat."
"Still --"
"-- I am aware of the potential for irritation," Luna said. "And when it comes to any such, I also believe there are sufficient channels."
They both wrote for a while.
"I saw the frescos," Celestia eventually said.
"As did I," Luna sighed. "Yapper may have work for a lifetime."
"It's too much just for her. She'll need a team."
"Working under her direction," the younger considered. "She might enjoy that --"
-- a forehoof knocked in a prearranged pattern, and the sisters glanced at each other.
"Enter, Abjura," Luna called out, and the door was carefully pushed open. The light green unicorn mare slowly entered, glanced from one desk-bound alicorn to the other as several field-carried devices had their wavering bubbles gently bounce against her flanks.
She's shaken, Celestia immediately realized. Her control's normally so much better than that, and she's barely keeping her horn lit...
Luna had already stood, and was starting to trot out from behind the desk.
"Transfer custody to me," the dark mare said, and several helpful projections offered themselves: the borders of the unsteady bubbles unevenly receded, allowing darker energies to take over. "And then sit."
Abjura shakily nodded. Watched as thaum compass, signature scanner, and analyzer were all given places on nearby shelves. Slowly folded her back legs, allowed her tail to splay, and went back to looking at the sisters again. Elder to younger, over and over.
"There's..." and she faltered. The splayed tail flicked, and her chin dipped. "There's..."
"We're ready," Celestia gently told her. "Whatever you have to say, even if it's the worst -- we're ready for it."
Luna silently nodded, took back her bench, and six mane constellations dimmed.
Abjura took a slow breath.
"There's one sword."
The sisters blinked.
"...I believe," Luna eventually said, "some additional details will be required."
"Her body is... stable," the palace's researcher told them. "But not in the same way it was before. When she was first brought in..." Another, deeper breath. "You usually can't pick up on active thaums in a pony body. Not unless magic is being used. But she always registered as null, until whatever Tirek did got into her. And all of that is gone. If she's not doing anything, then she shows as null again. But now..."
The tail (a very light yellow, midrange trim, frequently wrapped to prevent chemical mixes from staining the fall) slowly swished across the floor.
"...there's one sword. It... comes when she wants it. So does the scabbard, and she can put it inside normally. The scabbard is just a scabbard. But the sword..."
She swallowed. Forced herself to look up.
"We didn't really get to test for the limits of her range. Not when she had to stay in the same room, and I could only drag it so far. But she can put it down, somepony can take it away from her -- and as soon as she wants it back, it vanishes. Then it's back in her hand. And... I tried something which I never would have risked before, Princesses. I found a chisel and -- chipped a very small piece off the..." They both watched her delve for vocabulary. "...hilt. Then I moved the sword and the chip to different rooms. When she called for the sword, they both vanished. And the sword was whole. Like nothing had ever happened to it at all."
The siblings simultaneously became aware that neither of them had taken a breath for some time.
"The material?" Luna asked.
"As far as I can tell," Abjura uncertainly told them, "the same as before. There's... still some problems with analyzing it by the usual methods."
"So the remnants which were removed from Tirek --"
"-- are still there. I checked. Still melted, still inert." The unicorn worked her jaw a few times. "I don't know if she's summoning it from somewhere, and the call repairs any damage -- or if she's just creating it over and over. But there's one sword. And after she did -- it... a few times... she was hungry. The same way any sapient who's been using a lot of magic needs to eat. And I watched her through the signature scanner when she did it, I only had a tiny window because the sword disrupts everything at the moment it appears, but... she's generating thaums."
She paused.
"It... took a while before we noticed the hairpins." Much more quickly, "It's not as if her hair restyles itself! They just -- show up. In her hair. Scattered between head and tail. And I broke one in half, and then that was gone when she needed it again..."
Celestia tried to think.
...
She didn't feel as if she'd succeeded.
"How?" Abjura softly, desperately asked. "How does magic... create antimagic? How?"
Eventually, the stars in Luna's mane found some degree of rough alignment.
"Perhaps it is more towards -- countering," the younger tried. "The original font of the thaums which saturated her was Tirek, and he... had claimed a certain degree of -- variety. We may be looking at a subclause of the Last Question, Abjura. Occlugraph himself believed there could be a formula which would express that all magic was one. And if that was true, then -- perhaps all countermagic..."
It was rare, to hear Luna trail off that way. Slightly more scarce were the occasions when Celestia found her sister's gaze openly seeking some level of backup.
I know, Luna. 'Say something.'
...I am very open to ideas on what.
"Is she stable?" the elder asked, and did so while both alicorns knew the answer. A negative would have been the first thing Abjura told them.
"...yes. A..." Three gulps of air. "...normal mark. Normal thaum generation. I want to give her a few more hours to see if any late reaction appears, but... she can have visitors, and we can take her out of isolation by morning. Princesses, what this could mean --"
"-- sleep on it, Abjura," Celestia told her, maintaining an even level of false calm throughout every syllable. "You were in that fight too, and you're tired. Just... go sleep."
The unicorn got up on the third attempt, and left.
The sisters gave themselves a full minute for doing nothing more than sitting still. They had both been alive for a very long time and when something completely new came along, they needed to take a moment.
"A mark," was Luna's eventual contribution. "I knew it on first sight, and... I did not have time to disbelieve. Only to react -- and do not start, Tia: it was the only way. But a mark..."
"You realize," Celestia carefully asked, "that a good part of the city may feel as if you just directly threatened them. That they either accept her, or they'll have to deal with you."
"Yes," was far too calm. "As intended."
"It could create a setback for you," the elder quietly pointed out. "Make it that much harder to be truly welcomed again."
"Yes," the former Bearer of Generosity said. "There may be a price. I will freely pay it."
The white horse stood up. Trotted over to the silent dark mare, leaned in, and nuzzled her sister.
It took a minute before they returned to their starting positions. They'd both been alive for a very long time, and so mutually understood that moments had to be taken for nuzzling.
"Some of those thaums must have been taken from ponies," the elder softly noted. "Discord sent back magic to all of the survivors, but... what happened to anything which remained from the lost? And now it almost sounds like a piece of him was in there..."
"Ponies, Discord, so many others..." Luna tried to imagine. "Perhaps... the thaums were trying to resolve themselves in the only way they could? Taking on a stable configuration, in a moment of great need..."
"Manifest," Celestia quietly finished. "In a centaur. Creating antimagic with magic --"
-- stopped, and not for long enough.
"...oh no..." the elder just barely breathed.
"Sister?"
"We need to find out," the white mare distantly said, "if we have any Guards left unassigned. Or coming on shift. Or on vacation. We have to bring them all in, right now."
Bringing ponies in.
I have to find Fancypants. Use the escort network to bring him home.
The police will check the network to see if Panderaghast hired somepony to teleport her out. Aerial would never do it and Geodene isn't going to deal with the disorientation --
"Your reasoning?" Luna carefully asked as she watched the elder's face.
"Because I'm going to temporarily repeal all freedom of the press laws and somepony has to go shut down the actual newspapers. Help me draft the emergency Decree. 'We, as the Diarchy --'"
The younger blinked.
"...what?"
The elder frantically reared up. Massive forehooves gestured in all directions. "Twilight has her own periodicals section! What do you think is going to happen when this reaches her? Antimagic from magic! She'll do whatever she has to in order to reach Cerea! This is the only way!"
"...Tia," the dark mare carefully began, "Moon is going to be raised soon. This also happens to mean that, with the current temporal proximity to winter, the bulk of Ponyville commuters will be taking the train home --"
"-- lock down the city," Celestia immediately said, in the split-second before she crashed down again and Luna's field had to frantically lance out in an effort to keep the analyzer on the shelf. "Got it!"
"-- and some of them would have done so before this. We cannot prevent her from learning --"
"She wasn't your student! You don't know what she's like! Anything she has to do, anything! She'll forge a marriage certificate and claim that we can't legally keep her from visiting a spouse!"
"Tia --"
Purple eyes were wide. Frantic. Fearful.
"-- I've been trying to keep my personal library safe for years and now she's going to move in!"
Luna snickered.
"Tia."
Celestia grinned.
"Took you long enough."
"Yes. Well, your supposed sense of humor still requires some time to access through layers of absurdity. So you are not using every uncommitted Guard to block her."
"No. I'll be lucky if I can manage two. But once she knows --"
The elder stopped. Her expression turned thoughtful and, after a moment, took on a tinge of shame.
"I do need a messenger." Which was followed by a heavy wince. "And this isn't related to that, but I just realized. We have to rework the entire one-sheet. Again --"
"-- I will call for dispatch," Luna quickly said as she stood up. "Where are they going?"
"The veterinary school, to start. We're hiring three senior students and one teacher, plus an air carriage. Make sure they know they'll be compensated, and they have to be prepared to stay overnight. And then the carriage will bring her back. Possibly 'them'. Although I'm guessing one is going to wind up waiting in the hall." With a small smile, "Because the articles and commuters are heading towards Ponyville, Luna." Her horn ignited, and sunlight went for a scroll. "And... I want her to hear this from me."
The girl, exhausted and confused and unsure of what might come, had been trying to fall asleep. Sleep meant the chance to not think for a while. About marks and magic and the sword which she'd tried to place on a table -- followed by realizing that she probably shouldn't be leaving it out for the night, and having it vanish accordingly.
She couldn't sleep. Because the pushed-together beds weren't comfortable, they were also too low, she didn't sleep on beds in the first place, she was under orders not to sleep sitting up because the doctors wanted her heart to do a little less work for a few hours -- they'd noticed a number of recent system stresses, which had led her to make the mistake of explaining the Second Breath -- and there were just too many thoughts in her head.
But it was also because there was an adjoining room. Discord's improvised medical suite was connected to hers by a door in the wall, and somepony had just gone in to see him.
It wasn't a medical test, because she'd been able to hear most of those. (He had a way of protesting any attempt to quantify him which suggested that the investigators had been trying to take samples through removing limbs.) But she couldn't sleep, it felt as if all of her senses were on high alert, and she could hear somepony going up to him.
Just barely hear. Whoever it was had a certain talent for moving very quietly.
She didn't want to eavesdrop. But there was nowhere to go, and so she listened to soft weeping. The draconequus whispered something back, and it sounded like he was saying that he would be all right in time, she didn't have to worry so much, and then there was more weeping and he was merely sorry, he was sorry and...
It went on for some time, because it had to. Then the hooves began to move again.
She closed her eyes. Tried to sleep --
-- the adjoining door opened.
The mare quietly closed it behind her, and the girl heard her trotting. (Still just barely, although the mild scent of that rather pleasant soap was now serving as advance notice.) Coming up to the too-low bed...
...soft fur gently pressed against her forehead, and the first tears fell onto the girl's skin.
She didn't move. The mare needed the release.
"...I don't know where to nuzzle you," Fluttershy whispered. "...I..."
"We're... still trying to work that out."
After a while, Cerea risked placing a hand against the base of a yellow ear. There was no objection.