The week before Hearth's Warming Eve found me sitting in my office working on the monumental, ever present mountain of paperwork that was a huge part of my job. Legal-ese was essentially a second language, one that I had to learn really quickly in the job. The dense paragraphs and tiny font never really got easier, though. Celestia and Luna backed me up on this. In fact, rumors said that part of the reason they wanted to ascend a new alicorn was that now the paperwork was split into thirds, not half. I don't even want to imagine what it was like for Celestia before Luna came back.
The paperwork did have one benefit, however: it distracted me from a stack of cards that was currently sitting on the left edge of my desk. I hadn't had the heart to read them yet. I always put them off as long as I could, but couldn't forever.
A knock on my door took me out of my thoughts, and I pushed the tax document that I'd been slogging through aside.
"Yes?"
"It's me," Tulip said from the other side of the door. "The chefs said you haven't eaten yet, so they sent me up to see what you'd like for dinner, and also that it's not healthy to skip meals."
I rolled my eyes and glanced at the clock. It was only... eleven at night. I'd had breakfast and lunch. Though my lunch was eleven hours ago now. I'm an alicorn, though! I can last months without food! Still, eating would probably be a good idea. I stood up and opened my office door. Tulip was on the other side holding a clipboard in her magic. Ugh. Every time I saw her I tossed the idea of promoting her back to her old job. I know it hurt her to be demoted to a low-level secretary after her little outburst when I told her that her husband had been killed, but she got off lucky.
Anyway... food.
"Uh." I sighed and rubbed my eyes. "Yeah, uh bacon cheeseburger. The usual toppings. And a grilled cheese with tomato soup."
Tulip jotted that down on her clipboard and bowed to me before heading off. I grunted and shook my head before turning and walking back into my office. Back to the grind. Yes I understand that you want more tax breaks for your flower business, but you only have one employee and... ugh,
I kept working on the mountain, which didn't seem to be getting any smaller, even though my "finished" pile did. I glanced down at a certain point to see an empty plate, so I must have eaten the burger that Tulip had brought me for dinner. at some point.
My night was interrupted by Kristen walking past my office, humming some random tune. She was wearing a belt with her lightsaber attached. Sheesh. Ever since she'd perfected that, she took to carrying it everywhere. Not that I can blame her, but at least she was more successful with that than the Ring.
Though that was still a bit of a sore subject for her. She tended to get quiet whenever it was brought up, which was why I tended to not do it.
She spotted me sitting at my desk and stopped, frowning at me and tilting her head.
"What are you still doing up? It's two in the morning."
I grunted and motioned to the piles of paperwork. "I'm kind of on a roll. Might pull an all-nighter with this. The more I get done now the less I have to do later, right?"
"And you're sure that you'll be in the right mental state to do all of this and not making bad decisions because you're so tired?"
I motioned to myself. "Alicorn here. Immortal. Sleep is for the weak or when you've been hit by magical weapons pulsing with dark energy."
"As the chaos god I can't throw stones there," she admitted. "Though this has to get boring."
I didn't fail to notice that the music of Sorcerer's Apprentice had started playing in the background, nor that several pieces of paperwork were starting to bounce off of my desk. I grimaced and grabbed them in my magic. "Well, I'm ruling a nation here. Yes, it can be a bit tedious sometimes, but at the end of the day, it's good for the country."
"You know what else is good for the country? If they have a ruler that takes a little time for himself," Kristen pointed out. "Or at the very least is energized." She waved her hoof, and three Monster energy drinks appeared on my desk. A nice thought, but they had a teeny, tiny fraction of the power of Luna's coffee, which is about the only thing that can get us alicorns energized in a hurry. Still, I picked one of the cans up in my magic and looked at the ingredients. Heh, I could probably start mass producing this stuff under a different name and get rich.
"Yeah, just a little bit more."
Kristen frowned and raised her hoof. "I could burn it."
I glared at her and pushed her back with my magic. "I cannot stress how many problems that can cause."
"Fine, fine," she said with a roll of her eyes. "You know, I remember you in school and how you'd always put the homework off until the last minute. Things have changed, huh?"
I chuckled and nodded. "I stopped doing that about two weeks into my reign. That's a mistake you don't make more than once."
"I'll bet." She looked onto my desk and saw the stack of cards sitting there. She frowned and reached for them. "Hey, what are these?"
"Nothing, nothing at all," I said quickly, grabbing them in my magic and stuffing them into a drawer. State secrets. Alicorn stuff. Very serious. Top secret. Should be in my weapons room."
Kristen gave me a flat look and rolled her eyes. "Yeah? They looked like they were made out of construction paper, and I think I saw crayon on one of them. They looked like the cards you get from the foals in Equestria on your birthday."
"I mean, they kind of are," I admitted. "They..." I sighed and took the stack out of my desk. Might as well have somepony else to talk to about it. "So you know Hearth's Warming is next week, right?"
"Yeah. So are those cards wishing you merry Hearth's Warming, or something like that?"
I shook my head. "No, I get a lot of those too, we all do, but these are... wishes."
Kristen frowned and stared at the stack. "Wishes? What do you mean wishes?"
I grimaced and put the stack down on the desk. "A few years back, the rumor somehow got started that I, with my phenomenal cosmic alicorn powers, had the ability to grant good fillies and colts around Equestria wishes for Hearth's Warming. By the time I found out about it, it had gained a lot of traction, and I'd started receiving a lot of cards like that. What you see before you is just a small sampling size. At first it was 'he'll grant any wish for anypony' but then it scaled down a bit to 'he only grants a certain number of wishes.'
"Well, that probably takes a bit of a load off for you, at least in terms of how much you have to do, Santa TD." Kristen said, taking the stack of cards in her hoof. "I think it's cute. I've been in Equestria for three years now, how have I never heard about this?"
"Well you do spend most of your time here, and my staff knows not to do it," I replied.
"Well come on, it can't be that bad." She took the top card off of the pile and opened it up. "Like this one. 'Dear Princess Antares, my wish is that you could get my school some new playground equipment, since our swings are starting to fall apart and I like swinging.'" She chuckled and looked up at me. "How can you not like this? That kind of thing isn't hard, especially if they don't expect you to grant every single one. I mean, look at this next one. It's just a filly asking for a doll."
I grumbled and poked at one of the Monster cans. Kristen gave me an incredulous look as she looked at the next card.
"Seriously, this is adorable," she said, opening up the next card. "I wish that I could..." She began reading the card, and her amusement faded away. She cleared her throat and rubbed the back of her neck. "Uh... 'dear Prince Antares. My Mommy and Daddy said that they're not gonna be married anymore, and that Daddy is going to move to Las Pegasus to live with a mare he met there. My wish is that they stay married, and that they know that I'm sorry for whatever I did that made them so upset that they don't want to be married anymore.'" Kristen cleared her throat and put that one down on my desk. "Oh."
"Yeah, not so cute when I get those, and I get a lot of stuff like that. How about this one?" I lit my horn and pulled a card from the middle of the stack. "'Dear Prince Antares, my dog Snuffles is really old, so my wish is that he could be young again so that Mommy doesn't have to take her to the vet all of the time. She said that soon Snuffles won't come back from the vet, but that Snuffles loves me very much and I'll always remember her.'"
"That's..."
"Or here. How about this one?" I pulled another card out. "'Dear Prince Antares. My friend Pearl Shine got in a really bad accident, and her leg was hurt so bad that they took her leg. I know she has the fake one, but it's not the same for her. My wish is that she can have her real leg back so that we can run and play like we used to."
Kristen flinched. "I don't..."
"Or fucking how about this one?!" I grabbed another card. "'Dear Prince Antares, I'm in the hospital and it's very scary. I've been sick for a long time, and the doctors said that I probably won't get better. I hurt all of the time, and I want to go home to play with my friends. I wish that I could get all better and that Mommy and Daddy wouldn't look so sad all of the time.'"
Kristen took a deep, quiet breath and put the cards back on the table, staring down at the floor. I grimaced and pushed them away.
"I looked into that one. She's six. Stomach cancer. There's nothing anyone can do. She wasn't supposed to last this long." I flopped down into my chair and began rubbing my temple. "I threw millions of bits at every single cancer research group that I could find. I got the best doctors from all over Equestria to take a look in case one of them found something that the others missed that would save her live, but... nothing."
"Yeah," Kristen muttered, poking at the floor. "That must be hard."
"Hard doesn't begin to describe it," I said bitterly. "I'm a lot of things to a lot of ponies. I get stuff like this because foal services and education is my purview. I tried spreading it around that no, as powerful as I am, I can't make a terminally foal better again, but it's not exactly like I can make an official proclamation that I can't do what they're asking. It's tough because a lot of foals ask for stuff that I can do. New playground equipment? I can contract ponies who will have it done in hours. New doll? The finest toymaker in Equestria will have one shipped out in time for Hearth's Warming.
"Sometimes foals will ask for stuff that needs attention. Last year a colt wrote me asking if I could get him a better schoolhouse, because his was falling apart. Well, I'm not going to let foals go to school in a potentially unsafe building, right? So I fix it. And they're all so happy because they were good fillies and colts, and so Prince Antares granted their wish. Then other foals wonder why their wishes weren't granted." I motioned to the card I'd just read. "I guarantee you that right at the end she's going to wonder why I didn't grant her wish. How was she not good enough? What did she do that was so bad? It doesn't fucking matter that I turned over every single stone in Equestria and looked into every pony that had done any kind of work on stomach cancer. None of it mattered.
"And I have several bags fit to burst full of all kinds of wishes, and I don't know how to make it stop. To the foals, I'm a powerful ruler who can grant wishes. To others, they rest content in their beds because they know that the god of war will crush any threat to Equestria before it ever hits them. Heck, battle, compared to this, is easy. I'm in control. There's a clear path to victory, and I'm powerful enough to get there. Untold thousands have fallen to my hammer and magic, and the pain of all of the death you caused never fully goes away, but it's mostly made better when you know that with every destroyed enemy, Equestria gets a little safer. This, though..."
I motioned to the cards and shook my head. "I don't know how to stop it."
Kristen stared at the cards not saying a word. After a few moments, she glanced up at me. "Sorry. I didn't mean to... in the beginning there..."
"It's fine, but you can see why I don't like talking about it." I lit my horn and put the cards back into my desk drawer. "I have to get back to it. I'll talk to you later."
"Yeah... later," she muttered.
* * * *
I walked through the halls of Vanhoover General Hospital, disguised as a unicorn with a brown coat and neat blonde hair. My fake credentials were good enough to get me into the ICU, so I didn't have to worry about getting kicked out. Once I got to the right floor, it didn't take me long to find the right room. I cleared my throat and knocked on the door. It wasn't a moment before a tired stallion opened it.
"Yes?"
"Uh..." I cleared my throat again. "I'm Doctor Fields. I'm here to look at Shining Dawn?"
The stallion grunted and shook his head. "Prince Antares send you? We've been seeing a lot of doctors since she sent off that stupid wish. I appreciate how hard he's trying more than he'll ever know, but..." He sighed and motioned for me to come in. "I don't know what you can do, but if there's any chance..."
"I can't promise anything, but I think I can help a little bit," I said.
I walked into the room and instantly flinched back. Shining Dawn laid on the hospital bed, curled up into a little ball and hooked up to several different I.V.s and tubes. I didn't need a medical degree to know that it wouldn't be long. Whether that was days or hours, I didn't know. A mare who I presumed was her mother sat next to the bed, holding a foal's storybook that I assumed she'd been reading to Shining Dawn before I came in. She gave me a tired smile as I walked up to the bed.
Ugh. Maybe this was a mistake.
"Hello. Did Prince Antares send you?" the mare asked, closing the book and setting it next to her.
"Uh, yeah," I said. "I've been briefed on the situation and I don't know if--"
"That's okay," the mare said with a weak smile. "It's just good to know that everything that can be done is being done. We don't blame Prince Antares for what is happening." The mare's eyes watered, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hoof. "But... it's nice to know that even small ponies like us are important to him."
"More than you can imagine," I said. I got closer to Shining Dawn and pulled up a chair so I could sit in front of her. Her eyes were barely cracked open, and each weak breath was slow and labored. I smiled and put my hoof on the bed.
"Hello, Shining Dawn. I'm Doctor Fields. I'm here to try to help." She just let out a pained noise and tilted her head in a nod. Okay, I can do this. I'm the chaos god. I'm a god. I can fix this. I put my hoof on her head and started scanning with my magic. I felt... black. It was only a vibration, but somehow it still felt like black. As one would expect, the source of it was her stomach, though it had spread to pretty much everywhere. I pushed my chaos magic through my horn to make it look like I was a normal unicorn casting spells. I wrapped the magic around the center and poured every scrap of energy I cold into it. If it started to fade, I could work from there and take out the rest of it.
But nothing was happening.
Why wouldn't anything happen?! I'm the chaos god! Doesn't reality not really apply to me?! Isn't that the whole point?! If I felt even just a twinge of the cancer fading, I could work with that and fix her. I'd remove it all entirely. It might come back, but they'd catch it early enough that it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
It wasn't working.
I don't know how long I tried, but eventually, I felt a hoof on my shoulder. I turned to see Shining's father looking down at me with an appreciative smile on his face.
"It's okay."
Ugh. No it's not!
But I had to face facts. I put one last burst of magic into Shining Dawn. The tension she'd been exhibiting slowly started to fade as the pain left her. I took a deep breath and turned to her father.
"I'm sorry I couldn't help. I couldn't take the cancer away. However, I did manage to take the pain away. For how long I don't know, but... she's not suffering right now."
The mare threw her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. "Thank you," she said between sniffles. "Thank you for at least that.
* * * *
The sound of happy playing foals filled the air as a group of schoolchildren ran around and played on their brand new playground equipment. Their parents stood around and chattered excitedly with each other, most of them holding plates of food. When it was announced that they'd be getting an upgraded playground, the adults decided to throw a barbecue to celebrate. I stood next to TD who was smiling at the sight of happy ponies. I just grimaced and stared at nothing in particular.
"What's up?" he said, putting his hoof on my back. "They're thrilled with it."
"Shining Dawn died last night," I muttered, rubbing my leg.
"I know. And I know you did all you could as well. We all did." I looked up at him and his smile never faltered. Guess he had gotten really good at that alicorn hiding your emotions thing.
A pair of fillies were on the new swing set next to each other, grinning from ear to ear. "You see that! We were good this year! I told you that Prince Antares grants Hearth's Warming wishes!"