21:19 - 16/06/1008 - Lunar Castle, Everfree Forest
Trotting to her office after wrapping up a meeting, Selenite let her mind briefly wander in the moment of downtime. Earlier that night she saw Sol and Empress Nightmare Moon off as they left to catch their train and hadn’t heard anything about them since. Not that she was worried or anything, just curious as to what they were doing. Okay, maybe a little worried. But she trusted Sol had it all under control. Keeping the Empress’s less-than-productive instincts in check was a decent chunk of Selenite’s job, and there was no way he hadn’t picked up a thing or two from her.
A pair of doors banged open and ripped Selenite’s attention towards them. Nightmare Moon rushed through, naked and alone.
“Ah, Your Highness!” Selenite trotted towards her. “How did it go with-”
Nightmare stormed past Selenite without a word, not even looking at Selenite, hastily making her way to the stairs.
Surprised, Selenite followed. Nightmare outran her easily, but Selenite recognised Nightmare was on the path to her personal chambers, hearing doors crash open and slam shut ahead signifying her route. Before long, Selenite followed all the way up those chambers. She didn’t see the doors to her chambers slam shut, but halfway up the stairs she sure heard them. Half the castle probably heard them too. Determined to get an explanation, she continued on up to the lobby.
“Warmaster,” said one of the guards.
Selenite stopped. She turned to the guard.
“Her Highness wishes not to be disturbed for any reason.”
She almost raised a hoof in protest, but quickly she accepted what they had said. “Understood,” she said, turning away to leave.
Her schedule that night was packed anyways. A lot of ponies to meet with and a lot of plans to go over. No time to have a heart to heart with the Empress. Sol would get home eventually. It didn’t have to be soon, there was a thousand kilometers between the castle and Manehattan. She left to return to her office.
Yet at the desk right outside her office, her secretary, Timetable, was frantically scribbling notes down whilst yapping into a phone. “Yes, I’ll inform her as soon as possible, but I’ll have to put you on hold. Do excuse me.” She put the phone down. “Hey, um, Sel?”
“Yes, Time?”
“All the phones have been-” The phone on Timetable’s desk rang again. She picked it up. “Yes? Yes, I have the Warmaster with me now. Yes, I was about to tell her. Hold please.”
Selenite marched up to the desk. “What’s going on? Does this have something to do with the Empress?”
Timetable put her hooves on her forehead and blew out a breath. “Something happened in Manehattan involving the Empress and everypony’s trying to report it to you. Local police, Imperial Commission reps, your husband-”
“Patch Sol through to my office phone immediately,” she ordered without hesitation. Timetable nodded and buzzed Selenite into her office. Selenite dashed through to her office and picked up her phone. The call was promptly connected. “Sol, it’s me. Are you okay?”
The first thing she heard was a sigh. “Yeah, I’m fine,” came Sol’s haggard voice. “Been better, but, you know, been worse. This is up there though.”
Selenite let out a brief sigh of relief as she sat down. Then she got straight to the point. “What happened with the Empress?”
“Well that’s- Should I tell you now over the phone or wait?”
“It’s the most secure line in Equestria,” Selenite assured him. “And it sounds urgent. Last I saw of The Empress was a few minutes ago, storming into the castle and locking herself in her chambers without talking to anyone. There’s a dozen and a half other ponies calling, and I want to hear it from you first.”
“Hm, that tracks. Well in that case…” Sol loudly exhaled. “Nightmare got conned and lashed out when she found out.”
“What?” Selenite almost dropped the hoofset.
“Yeah, it was these two local scoundrels,” Sol explained. “Sly Boots and Grass Snake. Just about everyone in Hayston is onto their tricks-”
“Woah woah woah, conned how? Lashed out how?” She sat up. “Is anyone hurt? Did anything get leaked-”
“Calm down, calm down,” he interrupted. Selenite stopped. “They just tricked her into buying them some shots of expensive whiskey and beer, nothing serious. I mean she owes thirteen-hundred bits to the bar.” A pause and a deep breath. “It’s what happened when she found out that’s the problem. You might wanna write this down.”
Sol explained everything, making note to highlight what he’d gleamed about the Empress from their time together. Her resent for perceived ungratefulness, her sprawling god complex, and her social ignorance. All culminating in her encounter with the scammers at the bar, and her subsequent outburst. Selenite patiently listened and jotted down the most important details.
“Then she shot off into the sky. I went to give first aid, and the bartender called an ambulance,” said Sol. “Both of them are fine, as far as I know. I think I’m gonna stay in Manehattan for a few nights. A friend offered to let me crash at his place.”
Groaning, Selenite put her pen down. This kind of public outburst required immediate action. Selenite wondered if she should leave it to the Imperial Commission or send out orders of her own to the relevant ponies right away. Her approach had to be carefully considered. She thought of outright denial, blaming a changeling prankster, or just sticking to the truth. All had drawbacks. Honesty came with the truth being, well, what it was. Lying came with the risk of the truth coming out anyway and having to deal with that and the stain of being a known liar.
She brought the phone back up to her ear. “So, hold on. You laughed at her when you told her she was conned, and then as you saw her get mad and you went up and stood in her way?”
“I know, not the smartest play from a self preservation perspective, but, I was- I am like three or four mugs of cider deep,” Sol said. “I dunno, instinct plus liquid courage.”
“She once petrified me for beating her at chess. I don’t even want to imagine-” Selenite shook her head, realising she was drifting off focus. “These two, the scammers, the ones that the Empress engaged with. If they were to run to the press or, hell, anyone about this, would they be believed?”
There was a short silence before Sol answered. “There were like forty ponies in the bar, if not more. They saw everything.”
Selenite cursed under her breath. “Any chance of it having already gotten out?”
“A lot of them ran out when Nightmare left. I couldn’t exactly keep them.”
“Do you know the ones who left?”
“No. There were too many for me to keep track of.”
“Where is this bar, exactly?”
“Bar 32,” he said, before adding, “32 Bucklas Boulevard, Hayston.”
“Anything else I should know right away?”
“Nothing that I can think of.”
“Right. Got it.” Selenite wrote down all of Sol’s answers. Some ponies already knew. Ponies that Sol, possibly the only pony she knew and trusted who was on the scene, couldn’t identify. No chance of containing it then.
Sol was quiet for a few seconds. “Y’know, a good number of ponies would say those two had it coming. I overheard a few at the bar saying as much. Like, F-A-F-O, and this was them finally finding out after years of-”
“Maybe, but,” Selenite stopped for a moment. “Ponies wont like the idea of their Empress getting scammed and having big public outbursts.”
“Okay, I see.” Sol said. “Does she have these… episodes often?”
Selenite thought carefully of what to say next. “It’s not exactly a secret that she can be, how do I say this… vengeful. Anyone who’s worked under her knows that, and you have seen her-” She performatively coughed. “-public statue gallery. It’s just- ponies don’t expect any of that to happen right in front of them. It’s meant to be reserved for Equestria’s enemies. Like having a wall between the bad guys and monsters who get what they deserve, and regular ponies.”
A few seconds of silence passed. “Right,” Sol said.
“Well, thanks for calling, dear.” Selenite sighed. “I’m sorry, I feel like I got you dragged into all this.”
“No, it’s fine,” Sol said. He sounded sincere, if exhausted. “It was an eye opening experience, in the end.”
After every incident stemming from Nightmare Moon’s impulsiveness, sadism, arrogance, ignorance… Selenite could list those shortcomings all night, and feel headaches coming on from the stress they induced. Regardless, every time it cropped up she remembered the old adage: ‘Never meet your heroes’. In all fairness, they never said anything about working for your Gods.
Yet never for a moment did she wonder if her loyalty was misplaced. It wasn’t like Nightmare Moon’s sadism was a closely kept secret or a surprise to anypony. It was a trade off. “Yes, the Empress is far from a paragon of harmonic virtue, but in a world of monsters, wouldn’t you want the strongest of them all on your side?” No doubt you would. All the progress achieved over the last eight years would’ve been impossible without Nightmare Moon at the tip of the spear.
But she knew her feelings weren’t anything close to universal. It was hard enough getting the average pony to tolerate Nightmare Moon, let alone revere her. At a certain point, she had to wonder what it would take for all their work to come tumbling down. How much longer could the Empress keep her instincts in check? How long would it be until she did something unforgivable?
“I’ve got to get back to work and sort this out,” Selenite said into the phone. “I’ll let you know when the Empress calms down. Where are you staying?”