I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to meditate on my Goddess. I wondered what the High Priestess would say if she knew where I was, assuming she didn’t already somehow know. Was she planning to get me out, somehow, or would she let me sit in here? I supposed it depended on whether or not she was more worried that I’d tell a guard, or more relieved that I didn’t have any other temptation to be disloyal to her.
Loyalty… oh mercy of the Goddess, what had I done? A part of me felt betrayed by my own actions, lying to the head Peacekeeper. I had a choice between my Element and my gut and I picked my Element. Any other time, I was sure that I’d be proud of my actions, so why did I feel like I’d made a terrible mistake?
It wasn’t something I couldn’t technically take back. I could always choose Honesty, and admit that I was just nervous earlier, or that I’d remembered something, and explain… what? Tell a complete stranger, not even an Acolyte, that we were on the moon for a thousand years? Whoops, sorry pony-who-tased-and-imprisoned-me, I completely forgot that we’re not actually on Equestria! Must’ve slipped my mind! Ah well, the Goddess hasn’t graced me with good memory, but what can we do?
No, that wouldn’t work. She’d know I lied, and I’d already been shocked by her once. I rubbed the left side of my ribcage gently. The pain had mostly faded, leaving a sore ache. I was grateful that it wasn’t permanent, but she’d still hurt me. She didn’t seem all that angry at the time, either, and if she’d done that when she was calm, I was certain I didn’t want to see her truly angry.
She carried with her a strange sort of natural confidence, like she was always in control of the situation. It reminded me a bit of what I tried to project, the serene peacefulness. And yet, nopony seemed nervous or wary to approach her. Judging by the ponies that waved on our way up here, she had at least some acquaintances who thought kindly of her.
It wasn’t as though there weren’t ponies who liked me, of course. The Goddess had simply seen it fit to place me in a position of power and awareness within the Church of Daylight. It wasn’t my place to question why, and it wasn’t my place to wonder what it was like for the Peacekeeper, having ponies genuinely happy to see her without her having to put on a show for them.
I lied down on the edge of my robe, watching the halos of light around the electric bars waver hypnotically. My belly growled again, and I sighed in response. Must the Goddess put me through such trials? I’d been blinded, fallen down the stairs of the Solarium, thrown up, found out the High Priestess was… less-than-friendly when she was angry, threatened, mobbed, tased, and imprisoned, all within the last 24 hours.
And as though that wasn’t enough, I didn’t even get to figure out what the cafeteria was serving before I was dragged away! Carrots and herbs… I closed my eyes, trying to visualize what it could have been, much to the dismay of my empty stomach. Maybe they’d cut them into paper-thin wafers and baked them, garnished with fresh herbs. Or maybe they’d made thick chunks of carrots and roasted them over a fire, and tossed them in the spices first? Oh, imagining it made me feel like I could smell it all over again!
I took a deep breath in and paused, squinting at the room outside my little cell. It was exactly like I could smell it again. Sniffing in again, I stood up and got as close as I comfortably could to the bars, and tried to get a better look out. I couldn’t see anypony, but when I concentrated… yes! There were hoofsteps! Somepony was coming.
A part of me hoped it was Pinkie, but the rest of me really didn’t want to face her again. What if she thought I’d told ponies? I had planned to, but I didn’t want to see her angry again, and that creepy emotionless pony that brought me there and back didn’t seem like a pony I’d want to get acquainted with any more than I already had.
Luckily, it wasn’t the High Priestess or the Maud-mare. Rainbow Dash waved a few feathers at me as she passed in front of my cell from one of the tunnels that bordered it. Balanced on her back was a bowl that smelled heavenly.
I groaned and sat back down. Was she going to torture me with the scent of it? Would she withhold it until I told her the answers she wanted to hear? I tried to remember the stories I’d overheard other ponies tell when they thought nopony else was listening in the spiralling corridors. Was this an interrogation?
Her pace didn’t falter as she crossed in front of my cell and set down the bowl on one of the awaiting chairs, though one corner of her mouth lifted into a smirk. “No need to look so glum, Twilight. I could hear your stomach rumbling from a few levels down!”
With a deft wing, Rainbow Dash swept aside a few threads of lightning as though they were curtains, and gestured with a hoof for me to walk through. When I hesitated, she rolled her eyes, snorting at my tentativeness. “Yeah, you can come out. We both know I can take you down no problem if you cause a fuss, and you’re not exactly a dangerous troublemaker. C’mon, take the bowl and take a seat, inside or outside the cell, I don’t care.”
I walked towards the bowl, skirting around the strands of electricity, and peered inside. It looked like some kind of thick soup, sans spoon, and I lifted it in a wary burst of magic before sitting down on the chair. Up close, it smelled even better.
“Sorry,” the pegasus said, grabbing another chair and dragging it towards mine. “The spoon fell in. At least you’ve got a horn, right? I figured it’d be easier for you to fish it out than if I tried to.”
“Is this the usual Peacekeeper routine for interrogating prisoners, or am I getting special treatment?” Maybe the High Priestess had put in a good word for me, or somepony else from the Church had. Who knew?
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I wouldn’t say there’s a standard routine, not for this situation. For riots, we usually clear them out and have a little talk with the perpetrators, but it’s your first offense, a lot of the mob was just feeding off of the whole herd mentality thing, getting each other worked up into a frenzy, and you’re not really putting up a fight, so I’m not really worried.”
I fished the spoon out of the soup and licked the handle off. Ginger carrot soup. It wasn’t as fancy as some of the meals I’d eaten from my cafeteria, but the carrots tasted fresher, somehow. It was hearty and thick, warming me on the inside from both temperature and spice.
Taking a sip, I sat down on the floor, resting my front hooves against the chair seat for lack of a table. It tasted like home, but a different pony’s home - one who’d spent their lives beneath the interlocking mosaic of pipes and gears, forsaking dreams of the Goddess for a fortress made of vents leading off into darkness and wiring carefully tied together with bits of string and ribbon. For a second, I felt nostalgia for a life I’d never gotten the choice to experience.
I took another quiet slurp and the moment faded. My stomach rumbled, begging me to toss the spoon aside and start gulping it straight from the bowl, but I held myself back. I didn’t want to overdo it, not when I wasn’t sure when I’d be given another bowl. Besides, eating it slowly gave me a chance to take my mind off of everything and concentrate on the simple flavors of the meal.
My captor seemed content to watch me eat in silence for a few minutes, but after I’d gotten through about half of the soup she cleared her throat.
“So, you’re a Prophet, huh?” Rainbow settled back in her chair, staring at the ceiling and idly fiddling with her taser. “Do you do fortunes or something? Look into a glass ball, hear dead ponies talking to ya, or do you just kind of go into a trance and chant all day? Help me out here, I’ve got no clue, but they’ve gotta be paying you for some mystic crap.”
I choked back the spoonful I’d been savoring and gave her what I only hoped was an unimpressed stare. “Not quite. I hear the Goddess’s voice in my head, sometimes, and other times I see a vision. It’s never a lot, but every little whisper reminds me that we’re not alone, and she’s waiting for us.” I neglected to add that we might as well be alone, with the sheer distance we’d have to cross somehow to ever meet.
“Sure, sure. What’s she sound like? Is it like… your own thoughts? You know when you’re thinking, and then you think to yourself in a different voice, but it’s still your voice?” She grinned, casually flicking the safety on and off of her hoofband.
“It’s an entirely different voice,” I said, setting my mostly-finished soup aside. “Her voice is regal and commanding, echoing in my head with an undeniable royalty to it, for lack of a better phrase.”
Rainbow Dash smirked, but it didn’t have any real anger behind it. “And your voice, in comparison, sounds like you’re trying to negotiate with a caved-in cavern to let you out. Honestly, you’ve heard your Goddess, like, actually heard her voice in your head like a crazy mare, and yet you act like your cutie mark’s a ‘kick me’ sign.”
“I do not! I’ve simply trained myself to think beyond the concerns of most ponies. I’ve studied the Goddess’s Elements all my life and strived to perfect them.” I squinted at Rainbow, trying to see if she was really laughing at me, or if it was just my imagination. “My Goddess chose me because I am exactly as strong as she desired. She wouldn’t have chosen wrong.”
“Alright, I guess that makes sense in your Church’s point of view. No need to take offense.” She tilted back in her chair slightly, teetering precariously. “Do they all listen to you, you being the Prophet and talking to the Goddess and all?”
I opened my mouth to say something that was most likely far too indignant to say to the head Peacekeeper who’d thrown me in jail, but something stopped me. Did they listen to me? I was the Prophet, right? Shouldn’t the High Priestess have listened more? Did… did she even trust me?
I mentally ran back through the conversations we’d had. She’d always seemed so friendly, so caring, no matter how many times I pushed her away. The pony who’d practically dragged me into a chamber somewhere behind one of the Churches wasn’t the pony I thought I knew. Did she not care? Did she ever care, or did she keep me around for some other reason?
“Bad topic?” Rainbow Dash softly said, and it was only when I looked over to see her sitting up straight that I realized my vision was blurring with tears. I couldn’t see her expression at all, but her voice sounded almost genuinely concerned. “Sorry about that. Did you want to talk about something else?”
I shook my head and after a moment of contemplative silence she stood, trotting to the desk to resume jotting things down on her notepad. If Pinkie herself didn’t trust me, then who would? The Church had always been so supportive, whether I’d had a prophecy or my connection was frustratingly silent. Was that a lie, too? The acolytes up in the first church I’d visited were friendly enough, but I couldn’t be sure they’d stay that way if the Head Priestess told them to be otherwise.
If I couldn’t trust the faithful, then who could I trust? I was alone, imprisoned in a cell that I wasn’t sure anypony cared to get me out of. Did Pinkie think I was less trouble if I was locked away? I certainly couldn’t talk to anypony about it, aside from Rainbow Dash, but nice as she’d been, I couldn’t be certain that she wouldn’t somehow leak the information to Pinkie.
I had to make a plan. Maybe if I got back to my room, I could ask one of the Acolytes to bring me food and whatever I’d need to stay in there a while. I could… try to reach out to my Goddess! I’d heard nothing yet, and hadn’t in a long while, but perhaps she’d have the answers I’d need, or some piece of information about this whole mess we’d been missing, or something.
Even if it was just some regular snippet of thought or memory, maybe the Head Priestess would see the truth, that we had to tell some others, if not everypony. She’d always found a way to interpret my prophecies in a helpful manner before! Maybe this would be what she needed to understand my point of view.
I just had to get to my room first. I wiped the dampness from my eyes and tried to smile in Rainbow’s general direction. “So,” I began as casually as I could manage. “How long am I staying in here for? I’ve never done anything like this before, just like you said, so am I free to go?”
“Huh?” Rainbow articulated, looking up from a half-scribbled note. “Oh, I dunno. I’m not officially imprisoning you or anything like that, but you probably don’t want to leave right now.”
“What? Why?” I took a hesitant step towards one of the hallways. She didn’t move to stop me, but she did set her pen down, and I remembered she’d probably be able to catch up with me before I made it out of the Peacekeeper office, even if she’d taken the time to finish her page of notes first.
The pegasus sighed and walked around the desk to face me. Up close, I could see every emotion flicker through her expression, but her eyes seemed to settle on… sympathy? “It’s like this,” she said, gently brushing a wingtip against my neck. “You remember how you’d started a bit of a riot up there? You said you didn’t start it, I know, but the ponies up there are still angry, Twilight. They’re looking for somepony to blame, so waltzing back up towards the Solarium is probably not your best bet.
“Now, normally, if something happened with a member of the cult that they didn’t handle internally, there’d be a few Acolytes waiting outside the office to explain their point of view, and offer some sort of advice on how they’d handle the situation. We usually ignore them, of course, but there’s always at least a small group of culties waiting to explain away any actual consequences we’d put in place. But now? With you?”
She hesitated, and I put two and two together. “There’s nopony trying to speak on my behalf, is there?”
Rainbow’s shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, really. I mean, you’re their fancy-schmancy Prophet, right? You’re pretty darn important to them. I’d half expected every single pony who’d ever stepped hoof in one of their Churches to be rallying outside as soon as I’d stepped onto the ramp, but… there’s nothing, Twilight. It’s scary, how there’s nothing.”
I turned away, trying to hide whatever feelings would slip past the holy mask I’d struggled to keep up. After a few seconds of a million panicked emotions culminating in some sort of hopeless dread I couldn’t even begin to describe, a wing tenderly cupped underneath my muzzle, turning me back to face her.
“There’s three explanations I can think of, Twilight. The first one’s that you lied, plain and simple. That you’re not somepony special to them, you’re not a Prophet or that sort of nonsense, and you’ve made it up for some reason or another. Of course, if that were the case, there probably wouldn’t have been such a fuss to clean up after in the first place, and I doubt we’d be talking here at all.
“The second explanation is that you’re somepony special, or even just somepony average, but they’re unable to help you right now. I know they’re in some pretty hot water at the moment, thanks to closing off the Solarium and the surrounding top levels, but they’ve never failed to have two or three ponies dramatically praying when I’ve stepped outside, so that isn’t likely. They’ve always had somepony to spare.”
I let out a slow breath, trying to center my thoughts. It made sense so far. “And the third?”
Rainbow’s mouth settled into a hard line. “The third’s that you are who you say you are, but you’ve done something so bad, they don’t want anything to do with you. Maybe it’s temporary,” she added hastily as my expression fell. “And maybe they’ll come to get you out later, but I don’t think you can expect a warm welcome from your Church friends, if you catch my meaning.”
My mind stalled like a caught gear. I managed to give her a somewhat jerky nod as I waited for my thoughts to wrap around what she’d said. What if Pinkie locked me up in one of those rooms in the back of the church? I really, really didn’t want to know what she’d do if she somehow found out that I’d tried talking to another Acolyte about it.
“What are my options, then?” I whispered, meeting her gaze after a few seconds. “I- I don’t know what to do.”
“Your Prophet powers don’t extend to this, huh?” She teased, then winced at my expression. “Kidding, sorry. Look, as I see it, you’ve got two choices here. First one, you can stay in here for a while, until things cool down. I’ll bring you food and a book or something, and we can wait for your Church friends to make up their minds about how they feel about you. Could take a while, but hey, you’ll be safe in here with me.”
I considered it for a few moments. Sure, I could probably pray to my Goddess and try to reach her, to listen for her wisdom, but without a faithful pony to hear it, what would be the use? What if it was important, and nopony believed me?
No, I had to do something. Anything. “I don’t think I want to do that. What’s my second choice?”
Rainbow flashed me a grin so wide I almost regretted asking. “The second choice is that you’re coming with me to some of the lower levels, where I can keep an eye on you. There’s not a lot of culties down there, but whatever crap you’ve got with the Church, and whatever crap the Church has with you, it won’t spread all the way down. In fact, that’s kind of the cult’s biggest problem right now, and it’s what you’re going to get to help me deal with.”
“Help you- wait, what problem?” A gnawing sensation of dread began clawing at my stomach, and I got the distinct feeling I’d chosen the wrong option.
“You’ve heard of the growing unrest down in the Agricultural Sector, right?” Her grin somehow spread even wider. “Congratulations, Twilight Sparkle, you’ll get to represent your Church to the angry ponies who keep us alive!”