//------------------------------//
// Into the Breach 
// Story: Princess and Pariah 
// by Taialin 
//------------------------------//

I'm sure Horolog is rather annoyed with me now. I've had her rearrange my schedule on short notice several times, every time to push things back. Ember is probably getting rather annoyed with me, too; I haven't been able to make any progress on that dragon-student exchange program. And it may very well be that I won't be meeting with the Abyssinians at all next week.

I can't say I can bring myself to be that concerned, though.

My mind has been a hurricane of ideas on how to help Tempest. Canterlot's hospitals are always practicing the latest and most innovative treatments. My royal doctors are the best in Equestria. It would be no burden to me to have her admitted and see she received the best care anypony could receive.

She declined. She swore, thirteen years ago, ever since the paper was published, that she'd never set hoof inside a hospital again. I didn't push the subject.

I asked if she needed a personal aide, a place to stay in the castle, or funds so she wouldn't have to worry so much about money. She had no need for any of those.

The least I could do—and the only thing Tempest would tolerate me doing—was give her Priority Audience permission. Regardless of where I was or what I was doing at the time, I would make time to speak with her. My Ponyville friends have the same privilege, but nopony else does. Horolog didn't complain when I asked her to create one, but I'm sure she was none too happy about me willfully injecting a literal wildcard into my own schedule. Still . . . I had to do something.

As, unquestionably, the most powerful pony in Equestria . . . I feel so powerless.

It's why I'm supposed to be at a social function with House Sunshower right now but asked them to reschedule. It's why I could be preparing for a speech I'm due to give to Canterlot's gem merchants tonight, but I'm pleading unwell. It's not really a lie. I don't think I'm useful to anyone right now. I can't see myself focusing on anything except the papers in front of me.

It's in these moments that I wish I took an interest to magimedicine in my youth instead of the physics of natural magic. Maybe I'd have made more progress. Maybe, if I'd spent more time researching when Tempest first told me of her condition back in Ponyville, I would have already found a lead at this point.

There's precious little literature that focuses on this condition in the first place, and almost nothing from the last few years. Research advances most quickly where the community perceives there are gains to be made. Not where existing treatment is already mostly curative.

And not where the community thinks no curative treatment could exist.



Engage social work and supportive care departments. Reduce nurse engagement—deterioration is slow, and most patient-reported symptoms cannot be acted upon. If triage is required, these patients may be discharged or transferred to observation.



I toss the paper away. "Discharge" this, "hospice care" that, "no useful options" here, "lost cause" there. Everything I read is varying degrees of useless. And nothing, nothing, nothing helps!

"Princess?"

I snap my head up. No one should be bothering me right now, not even the guards! Unless—

It's Tempest, four pony-lengths away. I rush up to her. "I'm sorry, I'm trying, I'm trying to find a cure! Everything I've read so far says there aren't any options, but I don't believe them, of course. The-the doctor, my personal physician, I asked her too, she said she didn't deal with your kind of cases, but the Neurology division—"

"Princess—"

"—at the hospital. So I went to them too, but they said AS diseases were sort of interdisciplinary, and that the Critical Care unit might know more about this case, so I went to them and they said if they get any cases like that, they're already too advanced for them to help at all. I-I went to see if the diagnosticians—"

"Princess!"

"—and they said they did, but they didn't do anything to suggest therapy, they just pass the patient off to hospice care, which is completely silly! So maybe hospice does some other kind of care I need to know about, but then they said the hospital doesn't have a hospice division and to—"

"Princess!" she roars.

I stop talking for long enough to actually see the pony in front of me. It's Tempest again. But she's fully donned the robes of authority and the military attitude that made her a Commander. She looks nothing like the pony who came to me with a silent cry for help—she's more the one who stepped off her airship and demanded Equestria's unconditional surrender.

She cracks a hoof on the floor. It's a reflexive motion for me to snap up, chest out, eyes front, hooves together. "Get a hold of yourself, Princess," she says sharply. It's not a request; it's an order.

I rub my eyes and take in the room for what feels like the first time in hours. That's when I realize that it's a mess. I used to have a stack for signed and returned bills, but now everything's all over the place. The journal I was just reading (Degenerative Diseases in Healthcare) is crumpled up like someone stomped on it and worryingly close to the fireplace. Under any normal circumstance, I'd be mortified at someone being so disrespectful to good academic literature.

I take a half-step towards the poor journal before I freeze and look back to Tempest, as if asking for permission to move. She rolls her eyes, her expression equal parts expecting and unimpressed. "I'd have you reprimanded if I saw your bunk looking like this."

"R-right!" I pick up the journal, do my best to un-crumple it, and return it to my desk. At the same time, I lift all the journals and papers scattered on the floor, organize them by journal, volume, and issue, and return them to neat stacks. Maybe if I'd found some leads, I would have separated those papers from the rest, but . . .

When I look up again, Tempest is looking a little bit more the friend I know her to be and less the soldier I knew she was. A very little bit. But either pony is at odds with the one I thought she'd be, the one who'd just received devastating news. I jump. "Tempest! How are you feeling? Do you need anything from me?"

"I'm fine, Princess," she says in a tone that sounds almost bored.

"You . . . why are you visiting me, then? Do you need anything from me?"

"You said that already. And you asked me to visit you."

"I . . . did?"

"You asked me last week to come back to your chambers today so you could 'check up on me.'"

Oh. That's why Horolog was grumbling. "Right. Well, how are you feeling?"

"You said that already."

"Oh, for—" I very nearly curse before catching myself. I close my eyes and take a deep, calming breath to center myself. To put away my stresses to work on them later. To take on the Princess mantle I adopted. I take another. Three. Four. Five. Until you can feel the spirits in the air above and you can sense the blood in the earth below.

I open my eyes, and Tempest is still there, serious and still. She might be drill sergeant when she needs to be, but she's also patient enough to wait for me. Or else she just won't say to my face that I'm wasting her time. It's not a little bit ironic that I arranged today to check up on her, and now, she's the one calming me down.

"I . . ." I take one last deep breath. "I'm sorry. I'm just really stressed. I've been looking everywhere for a remedy to your condition, but everywhere I look, I'm coming back blank." I pause and screw my face to effuse determination. I haven't given up, and Tempest can't either. "I promise, I'll find something to help you; I'll find something to cure you. I just need . . . I just need a little bit more time."

. . .

Tempest hasn't moved since she entered the room. Chest proud, head up, the expression on her face nearly disaffected. It's still not the countenance of somepony who just received the worst news of her life.

"How are you so calm about this?" I ask. "I thought you'd be terrified. You were . . . not in good shape the last time you were here."

She's silent for a moment. Then she rubs one hoof against the other. "I am concerned, Princess." It doesn't wobble or carry the raw heart-breaking emotion I heard last week, but neither is it jest or sarcasm. I can't doubt that she isn't. She's just hiding under that easy facade of militancy and doing it a lot better than I am.

But then she stops fidgeting, and it feels like I only imagined her vulnerability. "But it's no good to me to sulk and be useless. If the remedy for my condition was to feel sorry for myself, then yes, I'd be miserable. But it's not, and all that does is make me less likely to be of help to myself. Pity is worthless, and self-pity is pathetic. I can choose to sulk or I can choose to live. It all ends the same way."

My heart drops—again—at hearing that. "Don't say that! I'm not going to roll over and let you die, Tempest!"

"Neither am I. But I've had over ten years to research, and . . . take action, in one way or another." She rubs a hoof again. "I can choose to do nothing with myself, or I can choose to act. Whether that action is vengeance or martyrdom."

And Tempest is a mare of action. I already forgave her for her invasion of Equestria, but I imagine so many more ponies would if they heard more of her story. She wanted power, yes, but she wanted the staff first, then she wanted the Storm King's promise. And until recently, she never quite explained why. It's easy enough to say you know good from evil when a good nation is at stake, but the lines are so much more unclear when you are at stake. "You just seem so . . . nonchalant about it, even flippant."

Tempest sighs. "I don't have a choice. It's been ten years. If I spent every day of that waiting and worrying, there wouldn't be enough pony for you to scrape off the ground."

Tempest speaks like a soldier who's seen too much darkness in the world. Mortality and death is just another subject to her. "I guess I'm just happy that you recovered so quickly."

Tempest merely shrugs. "Is there anything you need of me, Princess?"

Even now, she'll ask me what I need first. For all her foibles, Tempest Shadow is, and always has been, a mare of honor. ". . . You don't really need to be asking that question, but no. I just wish I had better news to give you today. It's exhausting crawling through all this research and having nothing to show for it." I nudge the stack of journals on my table. "It's making me frustrated."

"Have you talked to your friends about it?"

I catch myself, mouth open. No, I haven't. There's not really a good reason why I haven't either. A waste of time, I guess. If an answer exists, it's almost certainly in the literature, and I know I'm the most well-read of my friends; they probably wouldn't have much to contribute, or else they'd have trouble understanding it. And I have a deadl—a time limit. I can't waste time doing things that won't help.

I shake myself bodily. I'm not talking to my friends because I think it's a waste of time. Now I know I need a break. I look up and chuckle sheepishly.

Tempest shrugs again. "I am only telling you what you've told me so many times before."