Changeling Heart and the New Moon
chapter twenty four
Shining Armor collapsed onto the cool marble of the castle’s atrium. Spears were lowered on him instantly, then pulled away nearly as quickly. In the daze following such a costly teleport he could feel pride for his guards, somewhere amidst the dizziness.
The pegasus Wax was in all together worse a state. His savagery had startled the good captain, even frightened him, but Wax’s recklessness had spent itself on the magic and metal of the unicorn. A guard assisted Shining to his hooves, and a discrete spell to check for changeling illusions did not escape the captain’s notice. If anything, Shining was all the more proud of his guard; not even he would be above their vigilance.
“Get a doctor,” he croaked, his jaw aching wildly.
Wax twitched and writhed in place, oblivious to the spear tips still trained on him. His eyes were rolling freely, fixing on nothing; seeing nothing. He mumbled incoherently under his breath with spittle, blood, and tears oozing from his head. Shining wished to know what changeling secrets the hurt pegasus might be babbling loose, but that would come later.
“Get a doctor!” he roared, and this time his command was heeded. The mangled pegasus proved a shock and distraction to the guards - too many were looking to their captain with wide, questioning eyes. “Send for princess Cadence, and for Celestia.”
Shining forced himself upright and firm, banishing all semblance of a limp from his slow stride as he turned and marched away, under the great awnings and murals of the chamber. He would have but a moment to rest his spirit before matters erupted entirely.
“Something is rotten in the heart of Canterlot,” he muttered to nopony.
They found a doctor already within the castle, and the mare proved swifter than either princess in her arrival. Saddle bags bounced against her brown flanks as she ran. She was a feisty, slightly built earth pony, spitting damnations and cursing every guard that hindered her path.
“You stupid idiots!” she shouted when the atrium opened to her. Not two minutes had passed since the teleport, but there was plenty that could be done for a bleeding and broken pony in two minutes, and the guards had done nothing at all. “Stupid, stupid idiots!”
Anger leant her strength as she bullied her way past the guards, completely shoving away at the spears they held. The mare wiggled free of her bag, letting it fall with to the floor beside her.
“What did you -” she began in hateful accusation, but as her rushed hooves lifted Wax’s head from the floor she stilled and quieted, until only his raspy, shallow breathing filled the grand chamber. These weren’t the wounds she expected to see.
“What have you done to yourself?” she whispered, though in the emptiness it was as a roar. She traced a gentle hoof along the suppurations across Wax’s cheek.
She spoke with perfect calm. “Get those spears away from me and my patient or I will make sure it will take a better doctor than me to get you walking straight again.” The spears dipped and were removed. She shined a small light in Wax’s eyes, or meant to, but when she delicately peeled the eyelids back, Wax’s scleras were green as emeralds. She hesitated a breath, then shone the light. His eyes almost focused, they wanted to, but couldn’t quite and started to drift off again.
“Wane?” The pegasus moaned, his movements gaining some tiny measure of strength. “Wane?”
“I’m a doctor, I’m here to help you.” She needed to clean his welts, but Wax’s frantic struggles grew and grew, until the slight mare could not hope to restrain his thrashing.
“Hold him down!” she ordered and they did. Every field doctor carried tranquilizer, but in all her experience never for this.
Kicking and screeching, Wax struggled on. A third and fourth guard, then a fifth added their strength to restrain him, and only barely at that.
The glistening metal of the needle found its mark and bore deep. The mare pushed down on the plunger steady as she could until every pale drop had bled away into the pegasus. His eyes flared once, his limbs stiffened, then Wax fell, body and mind into peace.
There was a heavy, sedated edge to his breath as the drug took him, but anything was better than the gasping, choking little breaths of his mania.
“Wane...” he murmured once, and was gone.
After a moment’s contemplation a presence drew the mare’s eye from her patient.
“It seems some things need to be explained,” Celestia said. She did not raise her voice; one that rose the sun and ruled the day did not often need to.
“There is-” Shining began, but Celestia bid him to silence. He stepped aside, only for his wife to give him a look of understanding disappointment from the white alicorn’s side.
“You,” Celestia said, calling on the doctor, “what’s his condition?” The princess of the sun looked down on the stricken pegasus. The sunshine of her magic illuminated his chest, a pillar of pale light connecting her to Wax. She moved it this way and that, over and across his chest, closing her eyes to listen. The mare realized her princess was applying magic much as she herself would apply a stethoscope, and to the same effect.
The doctor nodded, recovered herself and spoke. “The damage seems entirely external.”
“Yes, his lungs are clear,” said Celestia, her eyes still closed. Listening. The pillar moved again; Celestia frowned. “His heartbeat is off. Heavy. Strained.”
Celestia slipped her hoof from its golden shoe, putting her bare touch, soft as snow upon Wax’s chest.
“Princess, please,” a guard began. “it’s not safe to-”
“I’m quite aware that, thank you.” Celestia opened her eyes, her magic became a delicate breeze that opened Wax’s wings and lay them out behind him. “Doctor,” she added as if an afternote she wished to politely recall, “thank you for your haste. You may go now. I will see to this myself.”
“By your leave, then.” It was but a moment for the mare to fetch her bag, giving as many nasty looks to the armored stallions as she could on her way out. She felt no small measure of guilt for leaving a patient, but he was in the good care of the princess herself now.
Besides, the tension in the air could have been cut with knives.
Wax tried to think, but he couldn’t. He tried to remember, remember anything, but he couldn’t. He tried to exist, and found he could just about manage that.
He was floating, he felt, but could not put thought to it.
Wane, I... He tried, but trailed into nothingness. Wane, you... Each thought was massive, a mountain to move, a continent to raise, but with each tiny motion his momentum grew.
Wane. He was floating. Well and truly. Wax could feel the suspension, somewhere. Everywhere.
He tried to remember, and found that he could.
“Wane,” he murmured, barely hearing his own voice. His brother had gotten away. He could almost remember that, he had to believe that. Something beyond the burning, he could almost remember Wane getting away. His brother... but then, that was the secret.
“Where is Wane?”
“Safe,” Wax whispered. He couldn’t see. Or maybe he could, and the world was soft glowing light, all yellow and pinks. They felt so warm, so welcoming. The burning wasn’t here right now, it was somewhere else. Held back. Maybe sleeping. Wax wanted to sleep, but something buoyed him up.
“Wane,” he murmured again. Wistful. Happy. Sad. Content. “Secret’s safe.”
”What’s the secret?” Anger, purpose. Why did his thoughts turn to Shining Armor?
A sharp note, a sudden sting, it was these things and none, jarring Wax. He tried to move and found he could, but only slowly, as if in water.
He had to keep the secret safe. Had to keep his brother safe. Nobody else would, especially now. They wouldn’t understand. He loved Wane too much to do any less, any different.
The burning woke up.
“No,” Wax said, weeping like a small foal, unable to contain himself at all. He tried to move, but he was so heavy, so slow and so tired. But the burning didn’t let him be heavy, or slow, or tired. It gave so much, but took even more.
A voice called spoke, one of strength and sweetness. “Cadence, what are we looking at?” Was that...was that Celestia?
“He’s waking up,” said the lesser alicorn, worry heavy in her voice.
“Keep going. We need to know. What is this, Cadence?”
It was...him. Wax knew it before he knew how he knew it. He floated by magic, but what he floated inside was an image imposed upon the air. A thousand little stars, bright and faint and shimmering; the constellation of his heart and soul.
Something was wrong. Very wrong, and the realization filled Wax with panic, which in turn spurred on the burning. As the burning moved through him, more lights winked out; veins of ghostly green spilling poison across the stars.
“I don’t...who would...” Cadence could barely speak for shock and disbelief.
“There isn’t time, Cadence. Please, focus.” Even Celestia’s impeccable tones were strained.
“Pieces of him are missing!” The pink alicorn cried, her spell shuddering before she reinforced it. “Blocked off...buried.” Cadence began to cry, but her eyes did not waver from their duty. “It’s like the feathers are torn from his wings, he tries to keep flying but he can’t.”
The phantasmal image continued to twist and darken, with Wax helpless at it’s heart. His mind was very small now, very small and afraid. The burning was very large, and somewhere it was screaming and writhing with his limbs against the magical restraints. He could not comprehend, there was no room left for it, not enough to even think or remember.
Then there was daylight, bright and certain, then nothingness.
Celestia lay the sleeping body of Wax down, hoping his mind knew a similar peace.
“It’s changeling magic,” Cadence said. She sat for sorrow and exhaustion; her husband wiped the tears from her eyes and held her. There was no joy in him for being proven right: his fears had been well founded in truth, but he could not tolerate the suffering of his one true love because of it. Shining drew a deep breath, held it as he held Cadence, and it was a terrible struggle to let either go.
But a captain had his duty.
“Wax is a steward to princess Luna,” he said gravely, “and she is missing.”
There was silence, heavy and cold. Then the ruler of Equestria spoke.
“Cadence. Thank you. I know this was not easy for you. What is happening to Wax? Can you undo this?”
Cadence stood, free of Shining, and met Celestia’s eye. “I can’t. The magic is too tightly bound into his being. There’s not enough of him to fill the gaps. He’s falling apart. A broken heart that stays broken.”
“I understand. Cadence, go with him. Do what you can.” The lesser princess nodded, took the prone pegasus in her magic and left.
“Shining Armor. I had hoped...” Celestia sighed, then regained herself. “Alert the guard. Raise a shield and take the changelings. All of them.
“Shining Armor,” she began again, halting the unicorn in his tracks. “There are things that you must understand. Because you have an exceptional sister, I think it will be very easy for you to do so.
“If Twilight Sparkle were in peril, would you throw away your duty to save her, if that was what it took? If her power was consuming her? If you had already had to...” Celestia turned and did not look back.
“I do not need you to agree with my decisions, captain. Luna has always needed space, and I gave it to her despite myself. It was on her request that your own sister, my favoured student, indeed all the Element bearers have not come to Canterlot. Again, this was against my own misgivings. “
Celestia wheeled about; white hot flames licked out the edges of her eyes, her breath was a furnace heat that spilled over the good captain. “But I stand by my path, and would walk it again. I have had Equestria over a thousand years and of them all I have had my own sister for barely two. A millennia to weigh my failings. And now I must make war on what Luna wanted. I must instigate open conflict, and I am clinging to hope for my sister. And I am forced to do this, for you, and all Equestria.”
Sunlight grew to fill the chamber. Not the illumination of dawn or the warmth of summer, but the implacable, relentless purity that scorched deserts and desiccated worlds.
“The next time you subvert my will, Shining, I want you to understand what it truly means to be dutiful, so that the next time you feel my actions or inactions have threatened Equestria, you will have the barest glimmering of how I feel.” Celestia huffed a breath of flames that licked at Shining’s chin.
The fiery light grew; grew until it was hardly bearable before fading away to nothing and only the heat remained, cooling with tortured slowness.
“Now go. There are travesties to be answered for.”
Quite entirely alone, Celestia cried.