I start as my brain starts buzzing with a loud “vrrrrr.”
Of course, my brain isn’t actually buzzing—rather, it’s telling me that one of my friends is trying to get ahold of me via telemagical journal. As for which—
“Your Highness?1 Are you well?”
“Ah . . .” I return my mind to the ponies before me. I’m in a conference room with about a dozen other unicorns, one of whom is looking at me with only half-feigned concern, and the remainder are unimpressed or impatient. This is the Ministry of Education, Equestria’s authority on regulating its places of learning and what goes on inside them.
“I’m alright, thank you,” I respond. “One of my friends just called me, so if we could round up this meeting quickly, that would be spectacular.”
“If you would kindly keep your attention on the budget, Your Highness, perhaps we would already be done by now,” says a gruff and unamused voice from the head of the table. “Consider the great strides made in fabric polymerization and dyeing. Do you have any idea what that could do to enhance the fashion industry? Not to mention improve Equestria’s trade competitiveness? I do not see why you feel it’s so important to cut funding from this important branch of research.”
He’s Chancellor Neighsay, dean of the Equestrian Education Association, head of the Ministry of Education, steward of academic research funding, shrewd politician, and apparently newly-turned fashion and trade mogul. He genuinely is a brilliant pony of many talents, but it doesn’t take much to see that it’s gone to his head.
“I’m not taking funding away from fabric technologies,” I say, trying to maintain an even tone, “I’d like to reallocate it to other fields that have been underfunded for decades, just as I did with friendship magic. Just because we don’t know exactly how earth ponies create life from the land doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve study. If anything, we should be researching those untapped areas more.”
“What worth is there to dig in the dirt for—”
“And I suppose when we do, we’ll no longer know how unicorns lift things—”
“Fine, we figure that out, then what? What else is there to know about—”
The room erupts into a cacophony of overlapping voices, commenting, criticizing, or protesting my idea. I strive to keep my expression neutral as a Princess ought, but I have to question whether anypony in this room ever befriended a single earth pony before. If they had, maybe they’d see the incredible things an Applejack does or the defiance of physics a Pinkie is. Maybe then they’d be a little more empathetic and accepting of the idea.
I don’t think it’s a misguided idea—I’m sure it isn’t. If I were among a different set of friends, this discussion could have ended weeks ago. Equestria was brought together when our three races agreed to work with each other and treat each other equally, after all; why are we having so much trouble doing the same now?
As Princess, I could just Decree it and write the budget myself. It’s what I did to establish the Council of Friendship. But even if I wouldn’t need to deal with the politicians of Canterlot, then I would the ponies of Equestria. It doesn’t matter what the Princess Decree is: every exercise of my sole power to overawe my little ponies is unpopular. I would think that being the Princess of Friendship and establishing a council of national heroes dedicated to friendship wouldn’t be terribly controversial, but I can still remember the first headline I read after I made that Decree: The Council of Friendship: Nepotism at Its Finest.
I’ve just started this job, and I already have my hooves full trying to convince Equestria that I can lead. I’m not about to rock the boat by using another Decree on a relatively minor issue.
“And what of our agriculture sector needs more research? Their margins are—”
“Nonsense. If you’ll go with my proposal, Sunshower, I’ll see what I can do about the weather around—”
They’re still arguing. And Neighsay wonders why my mind wanders at these meetings.
A tiny voice clears her throat beside me. I lean over to place an ear closer to her.
“Your Highness, your meeting with the Dragon Lord is approaching," Horolog whispers. "You asked to keep this meeting short.”
I sigh in relief, grateful to myself for my forethought, and grateful to my secretary for keeping me on schedule, organized, and saving me from the odd meeting like this one. I offer a nod and a smile in thanks and gesture for her to continue.
Horolog claps her hooves loudly, twice, and the sound echoes around the room. Suddenly, the small gray mare sitting next to the Princess isn’t so small anymore. “I’m afraid the Princess’ time is up,” she says, voice surprisingly authoritative, especially from one as small as her. “She has other matters to attend to.”
I nod and stand up, hiding my relief. “I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement, but we’ll try again next week. I know some of you may be against the idea, but please at least think about offering some funding to research earth pony magic.” I hear various mumblings of assent and protest at that, but I can only offer a Princess-ly smile in parting as I leave the room. Neighsay is clearly unconvinced, and his eyes follow me the entire way out.
As soon as the door closes behind me, I sigh and slump a little. A pair of guards salute in greeting. I wave them off.
“Please tell me I have a couple minutes before meeting with Dragon Lord Ember,” I say, half-groaning.
“A few,” Horolog says. “I can go on ahead to introduce you if you’ll be late.”
“Not yet. I just need a moment to talk with my friends. I’d much rather talk with them than any of these politicians.” I pause. “Thank you for getting me out of there, Horolog,” I say, offering her another small smile. Since coming to Canterlot, there have been so few I feel I can drop the “Princess” demeanor around—it’s always a relief when I can.
“Just doing my job, Your Highness,” she says.
We arrive at my personal chambers in short order. Horolog stops at the threshold and offers a bow as I step inside.
Along one wall is my personal library of books, and one book among those is vibrating. With a quick check of the spine, I can see that it’s Tempest’s.
I gave each of my friends a telemagical journal so they would always have a direct communication line with me. Some of them write almost every day (Pinkie), some when they need something from me (Rainbow Dash), and some barely at all (Fluttershy). Tempest is in the last category. She was one of the last friends I gave a journal to, and it took her quite a few moons for her to write even a single word to me. That makes the instances when she does that much more significant.
I light my horn and bring the journal to me. It opens itself to the latest page, revealing Tempest’s remarkably neat writing:
Princess,
I suspect you are aware I have finished my contract.
She must be referring to revamping Equestria’s border control. It was Tempest’s latest project, the one I suggested to her.
I appreciate your assistance in this endeavor. I am surprised one can find friends even in business ventures. Captain Shining Armor proposed an additional assignment for me, but for personal reasons, I declined.
CDR Tempest Shadow
“Wh . . . huh?”
I stare at the signature. The brevity is not what has me worried—Tempest has always been efficient in her writing. It’s how it ends. For as much as it appears one, this isn’t just a status update—if there’s one thing I know about Tempest, she’s a mare of action and impatient with dawdlers. If there’s something she could do, she’d already be doing it. Writing to me just to tell me she’s doing nothing seems unlike her.
She’s normally so straightforward, so I have to believe that she still is. If I want to piece together her puzzle, I need to understand why she included the few words she did.
Business . . . additional assignment? Personal reasons . . . declined.
“Horolog!”
I hear a squeak of surprise, and the door to my chambers opens. “Your Highness?”
“Go on ahead to the Dragon Lord. Tell her I’ll be late.”
“A-at once, Your Highness!” She offers me another quick and courteous bow and trots away.
I return my attention to the journal, frowning. I pick up a quill and respond.
Tempest,
Meet me in the Castle at sunrise tomorrow. Tell the guards at the gate your name, and they should let you in. I’ll be in my personal chambers.
Twilight
I close the journal and return it to the bookshelf. I glance at the door again, frowning.
Canterlot Castle is where the head of Equestria leads its nation. Scores of ponies work in the castle at all hours of the day, making governing decisions, meeting dignitaries, or just keeping the place clean. It’s also a public place that anyone can enter and explore, so it’s nearly always busy. The castle belongs to Equestria, after all.
The Princess lives where she leads, and living in such a public and well-trafficked place can be difficult. My personal chambers are the one exception as the one part of the castle that’s mine and mine alone. Only a very few are allowed in without my express permission, not even Horolog or my guard detail. It’s where I can leave behind the mask of regality and just be Twilight again.
To that end, I’ve tried to make this place like home, bringing a small part of Ponyville to Canterlot. Gone is the staid marble flooring and stone pillars that make up the rest of the castle; in is plush carpet that’s great for sitting and reading, if the chairs and chaise lounge aren’t enough, that is. In the corner is a fireplace, and atop that is the mantle, proudly showing pictures of my friends in both their old and new lives. Owlowiscious perches next to the mantle, puffed up lusciously and enjoying the warmth coming from the embers of the fire.
Along the far wall are several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves housing my personal library of books—significantly smaller than I’d like, but that’s what the Royal Library is for. Tempest’s journal remains on one of the bookshelves, so I’ll know if it alerts me. Even still, something tells me I won’t be receiving any further missives from her.
In a decision that pains me even now, I opted not to move the chandelier my friends made for me from Ponyville Castle to Canterlot. For as personal as the memories that live in it are, its roots—literally—are in the former Golden Oaks Library. And while I may have made my home and my friends in the library, the library’s home is Ponyville. There it will stay, in whatever form it chooses to take.
I push open the glass doors to my balcony overlooking the city. A mail-carrier pegasus flies past and offers me a salute, and I offer a nod in return. Below are a few other early-riser ponies, some starting their day, others waiting to witness me start it.
Just as the moon completes its lazy march and disappears below the horizon, I close my eyes and light my horn in a soft golden glow. Commanding the solar magic that Celestia bequeathed to me, I bid the sun a pleasant morning and beg it to light our world for another day.
Slowly, very slowly, I feel a kind and gentle warmth fall on my face, and a strong but courteous light prods at my eyelids. The sun must be in a good mood today. When I open my eyes and dismiss the magic, it’s a new day.
Not bad, Twilight.
I hear a quiet smattering of applause from below at the same time I hear hard metallic hooffalls approach from behind. I turn around.
Ever punctual, Tempest Shadow approaches imperiously, her ever unreadably severe expression on her face. Her hooffalls blunt as marble gives way to carpet. They stop as she bows, four pony-lengths away from me. “Your Highness,” she intones.
I try to put on an easy smile and approach her, prodding her with my hoof to rise. I still remember the days I would have been terrified of approaching her so closely. She’s a corded masterpiece of muscle, and she never turns her back to you. Without getting to know her better, you’d always get the sense that she’s angry or annoyed with you since she’s never quite shaken her militant countenance.
I try to disarm the tension she brings. “Tempest, you know you don’t need to call me that!” I say in the most easygoing voice I can manage. “We’re friends, and my friends just call me ‘Twilight.’”
“Then, Princess,” she says, “forgive me for respecting you and continuing to address you by your earned title.”
I give a weak chuckle. “I’m never going to be able to get that ‘Princess’ out of you, am I?”
She raises an eyebrow and cocks her head. She doesn’t smile—she never does. “Not until you are no longer one.” She pauses. “Is there a reason you summoned me?”
Ugh. Maybe I could have phrased my request a little more softly—now Tempest thinks she’s in trouble or that I need something from her. “I just wanted to talk. I’m allowed to just talk to a friend, right?”
“If we came across one another on the street and went to get a coffee, perhaps.”
Double ugh. Tempest isn’t dawdling today. It really is no different from the talks we had in Ponyville—she was terribly good at cutting through small talk back then when she wanted to, and it sounds like she’s in no mood to entertain it now. She’s refreshingly different from the politicians I normally deal with, though her brand of directness doesn’t make her any easier to talk to.
“Right,” I begin, feeling nervous all of a sudden. “It’s just about what you wrote last. In your journal. I felt like you would have told me where you were going next if you had a plan, but it doesn’t sound like you do.”
Tempest remains silent for several moments. She looks away to the bookshelves along the wall. “I shouldn’t have written that,” she says.
“No, no, you should have,” I rebut quickly, summoning a cushion to her. “Sit, please.”
She glances behind her and acquiesces.
“It’s no bother at all if you need to ask for help,” I say, trying to break down Tempest’s walls of severity and stoicness. I know there’s a deep and insightful pony underneath with feelings and wishes, and I want to draw it out. So many only see the ferocious shell she’s cast around herself. Maybe I could use Fluttershy’s help—she’s good at these sorts of things. “Friends help each other when they need it.”
I reach a hoof out to touch Tempest on the shoulder. Slowly, so as not to appear aggressive or impose myself onto her if she didn’t want it. She doesn’t respond, neither shying away nor leaning in. I touch her, and it feels like trying to comfort a knotted log.
“So, what’s wrong? What did my brother say to you this time?” I say, sensing, hoping that she's at least amenable to breaching the topic.
“Nothing. He said he thought my draft of a new border control training protocol was excellent but that the Royal Guard didn’t have the officers to spare to put it into practice. So he asked me to first train some of the more experienced guardsponies with it. I might train them enough for them to go on and instruct the new recruits.”
Shoot. That was my suggestion. I wanted to keep Tempest in Equestria for a little while longer. I didn’t think it was that bad an idea. “And-and you declined?”
Tempest falls silent then. She remains silent for a long time. I see her move her eyes around to study the various things around my chambers: the bookshelves, the mantle, Spike’s somewhat oversized basket he still likes to sleep in. Then the window. It’s still dark enough outside that I can see her reflection in the glass. She’s looking at her horn.
“I accepted.”
I remain silent. She’s still looking there.
“I borrowed one of the Castle’s conference rooms to introduce the large-scale changes before the practical training. I wrote the outline of my protocol on the blackboard. The soldiers were refusing to stop talking amongst themselves and pay attention, so I flashed my horn. Not even a proper spell.” She pauses again for a long, long moment.
“It . . . hurt.”
The words drop a weight into my throat. One of the first things they teach you in Magic Kindergarten is that magic shouldn’t hurt when casting. Ever. Even if you’re doing something difficult, you should only feel strain, not pain. If it does, tell a grown-up. Magic is part of what a unicorn is, as much as an earth pony walks or a pegasus flies. Reaching for it should be effortless. So when it's not . . .
I sift through the academic literature I have in one of my bookshelves and pick out an article I’m all too familiar with, one I’ve studied only a bit less than Tempest herself: Effects of Catastrophic Fulminant Athaumaticism in a Unicorn Adolescent. The paper that describes Tempest’s condition. The only paper that does, and the only living case of it that we know of. I flip through it.
Fulminant athaumaticism has been characterized as a lethal condition when a patient’s natural thaum is suddenly removed with a median survival time of 34 hours [4]. Thaum is a fundamental source of energy for phenerase II and III. When all thaum is removed without replacement, these phenerases stop assisting in cell duplication and thaum transport and themselves become cytotoxic as their contained thaum becomes uncontained. Uncontained thaum attacks nearby cellular structures while causing cellular stress and various symptoms that differ by species. The typically violent nature in which thaum escapes from phenerase also means the cell cannot properly initiate apoptosis. Surrounding cells are also damaged by the resulting uncontained thaum. Death is caused by multiple organ failure [5, 6].
While synthetic thaum has been successfully created, its half-life has been observed to be not more than a few minutes [7], making it unsuitable for use in a medical context. In a study performed by R. Structures, synthetic thaum encapsulation extends its half life but makes it significantly less bioavailable [8]. Organic viral encapsulation techniques are still being studied. In vitro introduction of organically encapsulated thaum has been successful in restoring withdrawn cells [9], but in vivo attempts have resulted in viral reactivation followed by sepsis [10]. There does not currently exist a viable thaum replacement therapy.
The patient’s athaumatic event was a horn amputation. While such events were thought to be universally lethal due to the horn being a unicorn’s sole source of thaum [2], this patient survived for at least 30 days after the event. The patient retained a horn vestige, and it was found to retain its ability to create some thaum.
The patient’s produced thaum bore limited resemblance to biologically created thaum from other unicorn subjects. As observed by optical spectrometry, its emissivity indices at 950, 1000, and 1050 nm were significantly weaker (r < 0.001). In comparison, ambient thaum extracted from wild environments (see methods in G. Feels, 978 [2]) exhibited similarly weak emissivity (Figure 3). Both the subject’s thaum and wild thaum lacked the 1050 nm alpha-illum band thought to be essential for stability in ponies [18].
It is suspected that a thaum’s limited emissivity and expressivity in these bands is responsible for AT-class degenerations. While the subject exhibited no signs of AT-class degeneration within 30 days of the event, only AT3-class syndromes have a prodromal phase this short [19]. Further observation of greater AT subclasses was not possible when the subject was lost to follow-up.
This event stands to challenge the assumption that a horn amputation is universally lethal [2]. Because only one patient was identified who survived this event, we cannot yet characterize the circumstances under which this may occur.
Due to limited study length, we also could not characterize the condition the patient likely has. Based on thaum characteristics, we speculate it would be an AS0-like syndrome.
I pull out a copy of Perplexing Pony Plagues from another bookshelf, flip to the index, and identify a page to start reading from.
AS0
Presentation: (E) Electric shocks while walking; (U) pain at the base of horn while casting; (P) reduced air awareness while flying
Cure: None knownKnown AS0 syndromes include Witherspoon’s degeneration, Hardline syndrome, and Appleoosan ataxia. AS0 syndromes are characterized by replacing a pony’s biological thaum with imperfect thaum from an external source. This may come about through an anti-social lifestyle (when wild environmental thaum displaces a pony’s biologically created thaum) or organ transplant rejection (when a donor organ is not compatible and taints the pony’s own biological thaum). Other conditions with unknown etiology can result in the same effect (external thaum replacement): these are characterized as “AS0-like.”
A pony’s body is especially sensitive to the quality of thaum in it. A pony may only live a full life with their own body’s thaum source: their prognosis grows progressively worse as the quality of replacement thaum decreases. There is a latent period between when a pony’s thaum was replaced and when the pony starts experiencing symptoms. The period varies widely between a couple of days to up to three years depending on the quality of replacement thaum.
Clinical presentation differs by species:
- Earth ponies experience mild pain while walking (may be described as “electric shocks”) and unexplained allergies to various scents. As degeneration proceeds, pain increases and the allergies grow more generalized and more severe. This progresses to chronic inflammation.
- Pegasi do not experience pain but air amnesia, first observed when recovering from a dive or turning sharply. Particularly athletic or acrobatic fliers may get “the twisties” and lose control when performing aerobatics. This progresses to general flight impediment and wing ataxia.
- Unicorns experience sharp, stabbing pain at the base of the horn while casting that does not vary with the intensity of the spell. (This is distinct from full-body soreness and fatigue from high-effort casting.) This progresses to vision and hearing loss.In the late stage of degeneration, organs reject free thaum, and the patient experiences symptoms similar to transplanted organ rejection. The most sensitive organs (heart and spleen) exhibit signs of rejection first, but because all organs use thaum to some extent, all organs will be rejected. From the time first symptoms appear, it takes between three and six moons to advance to this stage.
There is no cure for this condition.
Palliative care is recommended starting from when symptoms first appear. Most ponies experience a high quality of life until late stage. Some treatments can slow disease progression (see addendum) but are not recommended except in exceptional circumstances due to their modest effect on length of life and significant side effects.2
I drop the book. It’s Tempest’s own paper. It’s Tempest’s own condition. I know she’s studied it so many times she knows far more about it than I do. She could recite everything I read word-for-word.
The pony in front of me is entirely different from the one who strode in minutes ago. This one’s looking down at the floor. Her hooves are crossed and rubbing each other. Tempest commands the room she walks into—this one disappears into the unmoving air. She looks up, and her eyes are sparkling.
The voice that speaks is not Tempest’s, either; it lacks the easy authority and immense presence she always has. “Princess,” she says, shakily.
“I am afraid.”
Her words paralyze me. A Princess should be confident in the face of overwhelming odds. A Princess should give strength to her subjects. A Princess should be able to provide direction even when she herself is not sure of where to go. You might call me one, but I don’t think I am. Not right now.
It’s all I can do to trod up slowly to her and wrap my hooves around her, not waiting to see whether she’ll tolerate it—it’s as much for me as it is for her. She doesn’t respond, but I feel her shaking against my breast.
“I am too.”