Whatever Cadence had expected when Shining Armor had gathered her and their six visitors into a private room, it hadn’t been this. She lowered the newspaper. “You’re kidding me.”
Shining shook his head uncomfortably. “I had them check it. It’s still on the books,” he confirmed.
Cadence raised the newspaper again. Splashed across the front were multiple pictures of Yona and Sandbar, with one of them touching noses together. The problem the writer had was not that they were together, but that the Crystal Empire had a law that their relationship was violating. “I just… a single-species relationship law?” she repeated as she read through the article again. As the Princess of Love, this restriction felt unnecessarily arbitrary.
“How do you even enforce that?” Smolder asked.
“A thousand years dungeon,” Shining answered.
Sandbar barked a laugh, but it quickly faded, his mirth replaced with horror. “Wait. You’re serious?”
“Yak hate dungeon!” Yona shouted, stomping on the ground. “Yaks need to be free! Smash things! Feel wind in hair! Smash things! Eat snow! Kiss Sandbar!”
Sandbar choked, but he did not disagree.
“You’re not really…?” Gallus started.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Shining said regretfully. “We said we’d obey the rule of law, in direct contrast with Sombra. We don’t enforce this law, we’ll get accused of selectively enforcing laws for our friends. We do enforce it, it’ll start a feud with the yaks.”
“Not just the yaks, it’ll make a lot of crystal ponies unhappy, too,” Cadence pointed out. “I’m not happy. This kind of thing isn’t what the Crystal Empire stands for.”
“Can’t you just repeal the law?” Ocellus asked hopefully.
“That’ll take time,” Cadence said tiredly. “Again, to try and distance ourselves from Sombra, we can veto laws before they become laws, but once they do become laws, only another law can reverse it.”
“And if the Crystal Parliament isn’t in session, no law can be made.”
“Bummer,” Smolder grumbled. “That’s one nice thing about the Dragonlands. The Dragon Lord can just be like,” she raised her arm like she was gesturing with the Bloodstone Scepter, “‘that law is stupid, nodragon do that anymore’, and that’s it.”
Gallus grunted, unsure if that was actually a nice thing or not.
“So… now what?” Ocellus asked.
“We’ll bust you out! We’ll bring you a cake with a file baked inside,” Silverstream suggested.
“You don’t know how to bake,” Gallus pointed out.
“And you should save your ‘brilliant plans’ for a more private location,” Smolder snarked, pointing a thumb at Cadence.
“Nocreature is going anywhere. We’ll figure this out,” Cadence said firmly. “But I am open to any ideas,” she added in a less-confident voice.
As if on cue, the door opened, and Cozy Glow came in, hovering in the air, a scarf wrapped around her neck, with Flurry following closely behind. “Well, here’s everypony!” she said brightly. Her brow furrowed as she took in the sight. “Golly. Why does everypony look so glum?”
“Do you have to be here right now?” Gallus grumbled.
“We actually have a situation here,” Shining agreed.
“I don’t see why she has to be excluded,” Flurry said pointedly.
So, with the scattered eyeroll and grumbling, the two fillies were brought up to speed.
“Wait,” Cozy said, looking down. “I remember reading something about this. King Sombra was not actually a unicorn, but a shadow pony.”
“I’m sure that’s helpful somehow,” Gallus said.
“Be nice,” Ocellus hissed.
“So of course he’d want a law passed to make sure that any relationship he had would never make an heir. Since it wouldn’t be legal, it wouldn’t be legitimate, and any foal would have no claim to the throne.”
“Thank you, for that… inspiring history lesson,” Gallus said, doing his best to suppress the sarcasm in his voice, “but we’re still figuring out how to fix this.”
“I can help with that, too,” Cozy said, a hint of smugness in her voice. She turned to the royals. “One of the changes you made lets a pony-generated referendum be brought before you for consideration. There’s technically no cooling-off period; once it hits the threshold, you only need to formally respond within two weeks.”
Flurry nodded hopefully, liking where this was going.
“As long as we get enough signatures from the crystal ponies saying they don’t agree with this law, you can just say, ‘the ponies have spoken’ and strike it from the books without actually doing anything. That way, we can technically revoke the law before it needs to be enforced, and you haven’t ‘enforced your will’ or played the tyrant. All you’ve done is listen to your ponies.”
“That’s… really clever, actually,” Shining conceded.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Smolder asked, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s get going!”
Flurry smiled as the pony signed, and as he turned away, she let out a sigh and wiped her brow. This was a lot harder than she’d thought it would be. While nopony had shot her down and most had readily signed, there were many crystal ponies, and honestly, she was getting exhausted having to explain the same thing over and over.
She glanced over and saw Cozy Glow, holding a clipboard and talking to another pony. She was working just as hard as the rest of them. Flurry allowed herself a small smile.
Princess Cadence stood up in the tower, looking down at the crystal ponies congregated below. On one side of her stood Shining Armor and Flurry Heart, with Cozy hovering next to her and the six behind them, and on the other side, two guards standing in front of a wagon, loaded with stacks of paper. With a little smile, she started. “My little ponies, thank you for gathering on such short notice. The petition brought before us today needs no introduction, and our response needs no explanation. The love and kindness of the Crystal Empire shone through, and as we’ve seen before, love wins in the end. This law will be removed from the records, never to be enforced again.”
As the ponies stomped, Yona cheered and jumped onto Sandbar, sending them both tumbling to the floor with a crash.
“Medic!” Gallus called.