It was still a lovely home, at least when regarded from the outside. The unicorn stallion, whose hat had been carefully tucked into his right saddlebag just before he'd begun his quest through interior shadows, was starting to wonder if that was because there hadn't been enough time for the owner to burn it down.
It had been easy to get in: the most difficult part had been waiting under Moon until he'd been sure nopony was present to witness it. Staying near Mrs. Panderaghast at strategic times had allowed him to get a good sense of her security and while he felt that the palace had at least tried to see if anypony was home, they hadn't investigated beyond that. There were no physical barriers around the house, much less any new spells which would alert them of intrusion. Everything he'd been able to pick up on with an unlit horn had been completely familiar and, due to that long-time familiarity, easily defeated. But once he was within...
The air within the house was oddly humid, and he put that down to a lack of properly-maintained wonders. Unlike some of the deepest fanatics, Mrs. Panderaghast was willing to purchase pegasus creations -- but she had some difficulty in finding anypony who would sell them to her. Drop addresses could only do so much, especially when payment vouchers had to be signed. And the scant self-loathing token pegasus members of CUNET tended to be rather low in magical strength, so whatever was acquired eventually lost its charge. (She had similar problems in getting outside pegasi to reenergize her purchases.) The only other option was choosing to pay for platinum: something which raised the price to the point where it could easily take out two parties. Possibly three. So the abandoned home was mostly heated by fireplaces, and to have the near-winter air inside displaying higher humidity than that without -- there was probably a wonder malfunctioning somewhere. She'd had those kinds of issues before. It made things uncomfortable, but not distressingly so.
Immediately activating lighting devices had been out of the question. He was carefully moving through the deep shadows inherent to a large house at night, and doing so by the light of a glowstick: something dangling from his neck on a loop of soft cord, and his mouth held up the edge of a drapecloth which could be dropped over it at any time. It was something he hadn't risked until he'd been well away from any window and even now, he wasn't going to ignite his corona unless he felt he was in immediate danger. All it would take was one stray gleam with an embedded sparkle, and somepony outside might wonder why a unicorn was within. And he'd tried to let his eyes adjust as much as they could, had hoped to go without the weak yellow-green illumination entirely -- but that hadn't worked. He was looking for something and in order to start on his own long-term goal, he would need to see. Outer senses assisting on the first part of the path towards fulfilling an inner vision.
Also, as it turned out, he really needed to be capable of spotting where all of the splinters were.
The stallion was roughly familiar with some small portion of Equestria's laws, and so knew that being found guilty of certain crimes could potentially see a number of possessions seized by the government. Sold off, with the proceeds used to offer reparations for the injured, or to pay for damages. And Mrs. Panderaghast, who had chosen to run...
When it came to the home's interior, possessions mostly existed in two forms: presumed worthless and therefore abandoned -- or destroyed.
Some of the destruction was less than complete. He could tell that a horn had been involved in a lot of the work, especially in the places where the wood had been gouged. (She hadn't been particularly artistic about it.) But the mare's field strength was fairly average. She was incapable of breaking or crushing things with a thought, and so had settled for damaging them to the point where any minimal resale value would have to be offered up by the scrap market. It was still a lovely home on the outside, because there hadn't been enough time -- but several of the expensive decorations had been dented, fractured, or kicked out of shape. And any horn was perfectly suitable for ripping a painting into pieces.
It all looked like the work of a single mare. Nothing seemed to have been touched, much less searched. From all appearances, he was the first pony to get past the entrance hall.
He had to be careful of leaving hoofprints in the debris, and kept back-nudging small displaced pieces towards where they had started.
Eventually, he found the first of the closets. And to be rather frank about it, Mrs. Panderaghast was fat. There were very few mares who could have used her dresses or rather, you wouldn't find all that many cases where you didn't need two of them to use one at the same time. But the rage had been decidedly more effective here, and the walk-in now served as raw material storage for Canterlot's largest quilting bee.
Dental impressions in the kitchen leftovers told him that the preferred method for getting rid of the exotic foodstuffs had been through eating most of them. But even the mare had a maximum capacity, and she'd eventually reached the point where she had to simply kick things into the overflowing trash. The rest had been left out to spoil.
She hadn't been able to carry much: the stallion suspected letters of credit made out to the bearer had been most of it. Everything else had either been abandoned as worthless, or been made so. But he felt that one thing was worth more now, and that was what he had come to acquire.
When the assault had been announced, he'd smiled, nodded, listened to the happy chatter from those who'd believed that victory had been guaranteed through the simple act of planning to show up, and known it was all going to fail. So when it came to actually showing up... he hadn't.
(Of course, having so many ponies in heavy clothing and robes would make it easy to claim he'd been there and just managed to get out ahead of the capture. If such happened to become important.)
Then he'd realized that failure was the best possible result.
Because the stallion believed in the Cause.
Mrs. Panderaghast had mostly worshiped at the altar of Profit.
He'd figured it out fairly early in his membership: that the leader was dedicated to maintaining the sort of eternal holding action which allowed her to send out letters announcing Emergency Fundraisers at any time, mostly because never accomplishing much of anything meant there was always going to be an Emergency somewhere. And he hadn't been happy about it, but... what could he have done? When it came to Canterlot and a good part of what lay beyond, CUNET was the unicorn organization, and the mare was the one designated to lead them. Trying to start his own group would have left him with very few ponies to recruit, and trying to split the herd... that had its own consequences.
So he'd smiled. He'd nodded. Special pains had been taken to stay close to that leadership. And he'd always been careful about what he'd paid in -- but still, when he'd initially planned on breaking into the abandoned residence, he had done so with a vague determination to examine all of the rich furnishings along the way. He was somewhat curious as to which piece was technically his.
(Even now, the half-broken house was an inspiration to him. It told him something about what could be achieved -- as long as your only long-term goal was to never truly achieve anything at all.)
He'd smiled. He'd nodded. But he hadn't said anything, because he hadn't been sure if there was anypony who would have listened to all of it. And now...
The assault had been announced, and he'd heard a few members talking about how the alicorns would just surrender. That they would see what real ponies truly thought of them, and simply -- leave. And it didn't work that way, because CUNET didn't have the numbers. The Diarchy wouldn't step down because a faction didn't want them any more. It would take a nation.
Or at least, those who controlled it.
Mrs. Panderaghast was gone, and a lack of further need meant she'd abandoned the best thing he ever could have asked for. Somewhere within the once-lovely home was the list of CUNET's full membership. And it wouldn't be in a filing cabinet: he just felt that. The security required for such a precious document had to place it within a safe.
Mrs. Panderaghast was gone. The herd needed a new leader.
Kitchen. Bedroom. A very small library: one where dust tended to slip down between unread books because that was what happened when texts were meant solely for display. He'd been through all of that, and hadn't found anything yet. But he'd never entered every room during the owner's previous parties, because it was a very large home for a lone divorced mare -- he'd never been sure as to why she'd kept the 'Mrs', as it didn't seem to add any gravitas -- and certain sections had been off-limits. There had to be an office somewhere...
He had to find the office. Find the list. If necessary, he could just take any safe home with him: that was what the larger drapecloth in his saddlebags was for. And he preferred to find it quickly, because that unseen wonder really wasn't doing well.
And after that...
The first thing to do would be identifying exactly which members had been lost to trials and potential prison time. (This was why he felt the value of the list had increased: the majority of the idiots had effectively taken themselves off it for several years.) After that, he'd have to consolidate what remained of the group. Demonstrate why he had to be the leader, and part of that would be distancing the survivors from what had happened at the palace. He'd written out the first draft of a speech concerning how certain members had never really understood what the organization was for. It was Canterlot Unicorns Need Equal Treatment, yes? It was in the name. So how could any part of that be concerned with superiority?
If he successfully distanced CUNET from the assault, then the herd would have to recognize him as the lead stallion.
And once that was done... once he was the draft pony, and everypony else had been harnessed up so that they could only follow in his wake...
He'd already been making plans. And he'd realized what he had to do.
He needed to think like an alicorn.
The stallion had come up with that one in the privacy of his own home, and had nearly wound up half-curled on the floor from the force of compulsive laughter. Because he'd realized it was the key to everything, the way to win -- and two seconds later, he'd also realized that it sounded like the title for the world's worst self-help book. But it was what had be done. Because thinking like an alicorn didn't mean willful blindness, or buying into the simultaneous lie and delusion of equality. It certainly didn't indicate that he was now required to force his thoughts into the patterns enjoyed by freaks.
It meant taking the long view.
How many opponents had the Solar Princess defeated? It was a significant number, and the stallion wasn't stupid enough to believe that every victory had come from the opponent somehow being even weaker. But a notable percentage had been taken down through the most simple route available: she'd outlived them.
She obviously thought about matters in generational terms. This occasionally stretched out to centuries. When it came to the recovery of the lesser sibling from Whatever Had Happened, a full millennium. And that was taking the long view. Slow, subtle changes, made over an interval so vast that just about nopony noticed that change was taking place at all. You only recognized the distance crossed when you glanced back at the very end of the journey, and that meant CUNET needed new leadership. In fact, it was going to need new leadership again and again, because the stallion intended to exercise regularly, maintain his health, and still didn't believe he would live anywhere near long enough to see the work complete. He'd already started to consider the requirements for identifying and properly training his successor --
-- the long view. And part of that meant stepping back from even limited activism for a time. CUNET had to let things go quiet. They had to wait it out, until ponies inevitably began to forget. And after that -- well, they were going to need a new business model.
For starters, he'd been thinking about going into publishing.
Bulk-printed form letters with blank spaces for signatures hadn't gotten the job done. Newsletters needed to be circulated privately, and recruitment pamphlets probably had to be put aside for at least a year. The stallion's dreams were bigger than that.
He was going to print textbooks.
...still not the office. He'd found another closet, and distantly wondered whether Mrs. Panderaghast's departure would actually have an effect on the local price of cotton. (The glowstick's radiance was doing strange things to the fabric colors.) The stallion nosed around for a while just in case there was a hidden safe anywhere, found nothing, and then had to snort hard twice to clear the moisture from his snout.
Textbooks. The Spinner mare had said something once, hadn't she? (He didn't know if the assault had reached her, and wasn't entirely certain how he would have felt if she had been killed. It would certainly be a regrettable loss -- but he had very little time to spare for those whose will could be broken so easily.) That history was mostly read about by those who hadn't been there. And that held true for everypony. Even the Solar Princess was only omnipresent across time: she couldn't be everywhere at once, and had directed the majority of her limited awareness at marble walls.
There were educational standards: he was aware of that, and found them fully lacking. A government agency reviewed printed material for approval, and a few school boards echoed that on the local level. The stallion was certain that it would be easy to get CUNET members into positions of control there. It was certainly going to be more simple than putting them into the palace itself, at least on that level which collected a pay voucher.
If you printed textbooks, then you were the one who was telling children what history had been.
Slow, subtle changes. He felt that the first thing they could try was to stop mentioning the species of any relevant pony. And if challenged? Claim that it had been done in an attempt to avoid discrimination, because the species of a historical figure should never be important. They were all ponies in the end, yes? So the writers wouldn't bring it up. They would just be careful to only mention horns and spells and castings.
Textbooks were a good start. But what came with textbooks? Education. And for true education, you needed educators.
So he was going to look into what was required for starting a college.
...it felt as if moisture was starting to bead within his fur, and that was immediately followed by the sensation of having the strands absorb it. He didn't want to reach the point where he started to drip.
Keep going into the house. Deeper and deeper, through debris and wounded wealth and splinters which felt as if they were trying to aim for his frogs...
...the college. It would probably take at least a decade to get that going. Build the school, make sure it was entirely private because government supervision there was the last thing he wanted, line up the instructors, and start producing teachers. (He didn't even have to worry about getting the proper talents to enroll: a marked teacher was a precious thing, but there were more educational positions in the nation than there were marks to fill them.) When his CUNET began recruitment anew, it would be to find those who were willing to spend their lives among the young. To look out from behind a desk every day, gazing at open, smiling, eager, naive faces. Those who were willing to believe anything they heard, because it had come from somepony they'd been told to trust.
The long view. Expand the college, to the point where it would be a dominant force. Tilt the curriculum for fillies and colts a little more with every generation. And after a while, it would seem as if everything important had been accomplished by unicorns. It was all you read unless you engaged in independent study, and how many children bothered with that? It was certainly all you were taught.
The world would start to believe that no pegasus or earth pony had ever done anything at all. Phrase the text carefully, and two-thirds of the young readers might start to feel that they couldn't do anything.
At some point, they would stop trying.
He wondered if there was a mark for having given up. What it would look like, especially in bulk. The other option might have been blank-flanks...
...somepony else would get to see that. He was just the first to have the honor of trying to imagine the results.
...he was currently imagining backtracking to a restroom on the way out. Drying devices were wonders, but he was sure he could find multiple scraps of towel. Going outside in the chill when his fur was this damp didn't feel like the best idea...
...education might be the single most crucial facet. But he couldn't ignore politics. Of course, he had the same problem: CUNET had to back off for a while, and Tattler districts would be better off running candidates who both understood the meaning of 'subtle' and could spell it two times out of three. But once there were a few of his own ponies in place, you could start to propose... reasonable bills.
For starters, it was perfectly reasonable to legislate pegasi into separate restrooms. Why? Molting. Really, did any reasonable unicorn (or earth pony, because they had to be included for a majority) want to use a trench which was half-clogged with shed feathers? And you ignored the fact that there was only so much molting during a single year, that most of it happened away from restrooms and everypony shed fur and hairs occasionally, you concentrated on a single issue and you sounded perfectly reasonable the whole time. You'd been so reasonable as to practically force a Princess into signing the results. And then you'd shoved the pegasi into a private corner, which was the first step to shoving them back into the clouds.
...moving through the depths of the empty home was -- strange. He was beginning to feel as if every little sound was being made by something which was personally tracking him, and had to tell himself that there was no such thing taking place. He also felt as if the bases of his ears were hosting tiny puddles, and shook his head frequently to clear them out.
Maybe if he went down...
And earth ponies... well, they were the nation's source of food supply. Everypony knew that. But how many actually worked as farmers? The minority. Most earth ponies just let the background magic of their Cornucopia Effect contribute to the overall fertility of energized soil, and called it solved. Well... Equestria's population was expanding, wasn't it? You had desert settlements now. Perhaps more new settled zones would open up over the decades, and they would all need to eat.
Would it do any harm, to write a bill asking earth pony youths to spend some time on a farm? To make a direct contribution, so a growing nation wouldn't go hungry?
You could call it a summer camp program. The government would pay for it. Get all of the colts and fillies together among freshly-budding crops. There would be songs and sports and moons spent together. They certainly wouldn't be near anypony else. And those young and markless enough to be still thinking about their future would be standing among furrows, summer after summer. A path which only led one way.
The long view. And it would be hard to sell that to the membership -- or rather, it would have been before, because the survivors were clearly the ones who had recognized what blinder-blocked thinking would get them and had thus stayed out of it entirely. But even with those who remained, he knew it would take some convincing. To tell them that they would never see the true victory. Their grandchildren wouldn't be the ones to witness it. They had to be willing to make the sacrifice of living in an unfair world, so that those they would never know could have a perfect one.
It would take generations, and the alicorns would have to be factored in across the whole of that duration. But the Diarchy couldn't be everywhere. They couldn't stop everything. And when all of the changes in his growing plan came to full fruition, when the alicorns finally looked outside the palace and found a world which no longer wanted them -- they would step down.
They would depose themselves.
Because you didn't do it all at once. You drove little wedges, made tiny cracks. Watched the network spread. And when all of the fractures met, the old society would crumble. The earth ponies would be trapped with their soil, with the pegasi returned to the sky. And the unicorns, all of whom had been taught to think the right way, would be in charge.
The new CUNET.
Smile.
Nod.
Bide your time --
-- he'd had to work his way to the lowest level, and had not been particularly surprised to find one more closet. It was, however, something of a minor shock to see that it was both open and completely empty. No debris, no scraps, not even a single stray hanger. It was likely where the best dresses had been, and so that was what she'd taken with her.
But there was one more door on the exact opposite side of that corridor and when he opened it, he saw what had once been a fine desk. Recently kicked and gouged, but it was still possible to spot where the money had gone. The same was true for the bench, and the twisted abacus, and the one untouched painting. Something which automatically called attention to itself when the previous owner had probably been trying for the opposite, because ripping the canvas had to mean exposing the safe...
The humidity had reached the levels of horror. He felt as if every step was being taken across the bottom of a lake. His fur had dripped all the way down the last ramp, and none of that mattered.
The stallion, moving with purpose, crossed the threshold.
Most of the water tried to enter his lungs.
It all happened at once. He tasted liquid, he swallowed it, then he was breathing it and he could barely breathe at all, the drapecloth fell away and he didn't notice, he was choking on air which had been trapped between states of matter and he had to get out, he had to get out of the office and find a place where he could get one clean breath which he could hold long enough to go back in, find the wonder which had to be within the office and smash it, he just needed to --
-- his legs, working of their own accord, scrambled into reverse. But he wasn't facing in that direction, and so the bulk of the bright flash struck him from behind.
The stallion heard the heavy hooffalls stepping forward, too heavy, he spun around as best he could without twisting himself into a puddle-covered floor, coughing water as he did so while his horn ignited on instinct alone and a small burst of red light emerged from the device which was floating next to the giant mare's left wing --
-- the light reached his horn, and did so almost too quickly to be seen. He'd been expecting the artificial corona to attack, while not understanding why the mare would need to carry anything for that purpose. But he couldn't really see his own horn, and it meant he missed what the artificial casting truly did. The red glow surrounded a tiny portion of his corona, enclosed it, and the tiny bubble was pulled back towards the spiraled electrum housing. The collected sample went inside. And then the device did nothing more than rest within the bobbing field bubble.
There was something else floating next to her right wing. The stallion didn't want to look at it.
He was facing her now, still coughing because he couldn't seem to get rid of the last dredges from the lake. She watched, with her own horn surrounded by a partial corona. Something which had her ready to strike at any moment, even as it placed him within Sun's light.
"Hello, Covert," the Solar alicorn softly said.
It took a few more coughs before he could try to speak. (She did nothing to help.) And then he smiled.
"I'm glad you're here," he told her. "I was looking for a friend -- well, no need to tell you who, not when we're both in her home. I was worried about her. Nopony's seen --"
"-- and not for lack of searching," she interrupted. "But if you were looking for clues to her location, then I'm sorry to tell you that there weren't any. I already sent a team through."
He made something of a show of not staring at her.
"It didn't look like anypony had been in here," he said.
"No," she quietly replied. "It wouldn't. Because they're professionals."
"She gave me access a few years ago," he lied. "And I didn't find any magic which indicated that the palace had wanted this home closed off --"
"-- no," the alicorn softly broke in. "You wouldn't. Because it's not what you're willing to see as true magic."
He blinked. Water ran across his eyes.
"It's actually an old pegasus war technique," she told him. (He immediately decided to leave it out of the textbooks.) "When they lace magic into the air... they call that a weave. Threads of power. And if you can make threads, you can create tripwires. Things which don't just potentially tell the creator when they've been crossed. They also serve as a sort of -- standing instruction. If this thread is touched, then something else happens. Like concentrating all of the extra humidity into a very specific spot. A talented pegasus would have spotted the danger, but -- why would that pegasus ever come in here? You're in no shape to fight anypony right now and as it turned out, I was the one who responded. Striking would be particularly ill-advised, Covert." And her lips shifted into the thinnest of smiles. "I'm willing to take you in quietly. But I can't say I'm in a particularly good mood. And there's enough charges against you already."
He was staring at her. He hated that, along with just having to stare up. But he knew how to keep a smile going, even in the face of shock.
"Charges?" the stallion casually inquired. "Why would there be charges?" It certainly wasn't for the assault against the palace. He hadn't shown up (while making sure he could lie about the opposite to the right ponies) and he'd made sure to have two neutral witnesses for his actual location during the events. All he'd needed to do was hang out in the right store. "I do have access to the house. And even if I didn't, the sufficiency clause would let me break in to see if a friend was hurt or sick --"
The alicorn's right forehoof came up. Then it came down.
The echoes went on for a while and when they died, he found his words had briefly gone with them.
"We can start," the Princess stated, "with both harboring and transporting what I'm sure you'd like me to describe as a pony of interest. However, at this point, I'm going to upgrade into 'fugitive'."
You had to learn how to get along in the world, when you were surrounded by those who didn't understand how it should work. To smile, nod, and not show when his heart had just tried to retreat into his stomach.
"Based on recent events only," the stallion began, "along with the fact that I truly have no idea where my friend is, and I'm clearly not transporting her at the moment -- I'll assume you're talking about the alleged arsonist."
"You can remove 'alleged'."
"It's not exactly a minor accusation," he calmly noted. "What's your evidence?"
Every measured alicorn syllable hit the water-covered floor like a crashing boulder.
"She told us you were there."
no
He'd... figured out some part of what the attack was meant to do. (The necessity had been regretted.) But he'd never believed the unicorn mare would actually talk...
The stallion didn't let any of it reach his face. The Princess hadn't truly trapped him. You smiled, and you thought, and you chose your words carefully.
"Some of the rumors going around the capital," he shrugged, "along with a few of the articles, suggest she's... not well." And added a sigh. "Mentally, I mean. It's a pity. You have to feel sorry for somepony whose illness brings them to the point where a foal is hurt. Where they attack children. But at the same time -- how could you trust her testimony on anything?"
Spinner...
No. The mare wouldn't give up a source.
But the reporter had been in the palace --
...she wouldn't --
"You can't," the alicorn readily agreed. "Searching her words, hoping for places to start -- that's possible. But putting her in the witness stall? That would be harder." And then there was a soft sigh. "If she was willing to accept an attorney, then her defender would just about have to plead insanity. Maybe she wasn't fully gone when the fire was set, but... she's lost, Covert. Almost completely. And she's been sliding down that slope for a while. I looked at the -- let's call them 'sketches'. The ones she made in the palace cell, and the ones from the last house. They're degrading. It'll take a lot to make her accept help, and I don't know if she can ever come back."
He briefly closed his eyes, dipped his head. The alicorn didn't move. Giving him a moment for regret, when he could always pretend that his moment of mourning had been a little more generic.
She had such a lovely smile...
...had anypony cleaned up the damage to the walls at the Ponyville rental?
It didn't matter just yet. The Princess couldn't know where that was. There was plenty of time to sort it out.
"It's a loss," he said, and did so without looking at the Princess. "Any pony broken that way is a loss. But... you just agreed with me, Princess. She can't be trusted as a source."
"You're right," the Princess calmly admitted. "That's why I'm going with the carriage drivers."
Every muscle went tight. Insertion ligaments strained against his skeleton, trying to fracture it from within.
"Because we did track the carriage," the alicorn softly added, as that huge form took a single hoofstep forward. "White cedar wheels... well, that's a level of cheapness which doesn't come along very often. Added to how scarce ground carriages are these moons, along with knowing how certain parties tend to not spend -- it didn't take long to locate the rental company. And one of the wheels had been swapped out, but it hadn't been collected as trash. The investigators recovered it from the pickup group. Yes, the booking is under what I'm sure is a false name -- but you rode along, Covert. The carriage drivers could identify you, and they'll have to if they want to save their own coats."
"And my attorney will say they're trying to save themselves through looking for somepony they can knacker," he quickly argued. "Ponies can lie --"
And she laughed.
He'd never heard her laugh before, not directly. It was a quick sound, faster-paced and higher in pitch than her normal speaking voice. For a second, it suggested a mare who was trying to get her mirth in all at once, before anypony spotted it --
"-- I've noticed!" the Princess declared. "Especially those who see Honesty as something less than a virtue. More of a weakness. So yes, it's within the realm of theory, having them lie. They might somehow even decide that a single night's ride formed a bond so long-lasting that they could never speak against you. Ponies lie --"
Two more hoofsteps, almost too quick to see. And then she was just about on top of him. Over him. Looming.
"-- but devices can't. Tirek drained that carriage. Ponies recharged it. You were one of them. Yes, with a normal casting, the signature would be faded by now, possibly beyond identification -- but you sent yours into wire, where it could rest safely until used. It didn't take the whole of your donated thaums to get the carriage back to its yard, and it hasn't been used since. And you can argue that a device distorts the signature, because it does -- but an expert knows how they change. The prosecution's thaumatologist can get an occlugraph of the device's charge, then readily separate your signature from those of the others who participated and explain the process to a jury."
"You'll never --" he started, and then stopped.
He had more words. But he'd just realized that the smile was gone.
"Chart the distortions," the alicorn said. "Then restore the original. Because there's a basis for comparison." The spiral-shaped device silently bobbed next to the folded wing. "You ignited your horn when you saw me. A possible attack. I can't charge you with that, because you didn't actually try for a casting. But I took the opportunity to get a sample of your signature." And casually shrugged. "You might be able to claim Rhynorn's as an excuse for why you couldn't cast later on, but you're clearly fine now. As opposed to suffering from the outright pandemic I have going on in the palace basement. The epicenter of a phantom outbreak, which has yet to infect any unicorn Guard -- but they've chosen their lie, as a herd. And as a herd, they mostly managed to collectively forget about the blood test."
The field bubble next to the left wing bobbed along. The one on the right moved towards his frozen form.
"Consider yourself to be under arrest," she told him, and the restraint began to assemble itself around his horn. "You'll have a chance to contact an attorney before you reach a cell. But if it helps, that may be in a familiar place."
"I," he heard himself half-spit, "have never been to prison --"
"-- it'll probably be here," the Princess smiled. "Because nopony's using this house right now. And once the investigation wraps up, it's just -- open space. Rooms which can be converted into cells." Her corona went around his legs, lifted. "I have a lot of ponies awaiting trial, Covert. They have to be kept somewhere. Maybe I'll even put you in the office. You can use the safe to store the drafts for your jury arguments. There's plenty of space available, because I already took the membership list out. Shall we go?"
She turned, and her field made sure his suspended body turned with her. Trotted back towards the makeshift gatehouse.
The alicorn's field was around his legs, and the restraint was on his horn. But she'd left his head free.
He could nod if he wanted to. He could even smile. But no part of that seemed to be working.
He could still speak.
"This isn't over," he told her. "It'll never be over --"
"-- I know," she cut him off, ducking somewhat to get her horn under the door frame: a casual effort kept him from bumping into the sides. "And one day, you might even win."
He couldn't fully control his neck or face. And for a single moment, the stallion lost all control of his eyes.
"...you believe that," the stallion half-whispered, helpless to stop staring at the ancient foe. "You know we'll beat you --"
-- her head turned, and the thinnest, grimmest, angriest smile ever to radiate soul-scorching heat lanced into what was left of Covert's soul.
"No," Celestia stated as the corona around her horn began to build, gathering power for the teleport. "I don't believe that. But when I'm about to send somepony into a decade or so of what's sure to be personal torment, as the first stage to my personally monitoring them for the rest of their lives... I like to give them a little hope."