//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Yesterday Is Today // by Fon Shaolin //------------------------------// Canterlot Castle, a glittering reminder of pony ingenuity, sprawled out before Twilight Sparkle like a shattered teacup. She had somehow imagined that the damage wasn’t, couldn’t, be as bad as it had seemed from the outside. Even when she and Rarity had breached the outskirts of the ruins, it hadn’t fully dawned on the unicorn that her childhood home could have been broken so badly so quickly. Naïve notions that the worst of the damage was saved for the outer bits, that somehow the core of the castle had remained intact, had persisted until she had seen the damage for herself. Now, physically walking though the very bones of the once-mighty leviathan, Twilight realized how absurd her hopes had been. Every direction she turned presented a new panorama of carnage to digest. Her vile, traitorous mind was abusing its eidetic memory to recall where the walls, towers, doors, and archways fitted into the empty silhouettes that still stood tall in Twilight’s mind. Now they were nothing more than shattered stone and painful recollections. Twilight had been immersed in the destruction for the last hour. She had memorized every square inch of the castle during her childhood. She knew every stone practically by heart, and every few steps her eyes would catch on some odd piece of fabric that once belonged to a tapestry she recognized, or maybe a distinctive column that she could instantly place. Each memory was a painful reminder of how she had failed to stop Discord’s spell. In the end it had been Celestia herself that had done the impossible and saved Canterlot – now it was up to Twilight to save her teacher, wherever she was. The unicorn had not come unarmed, though. The comforting hum of Sol Shard’s spell buzzed just over the hair of her coat, pushing away the horrible heat that Twilight knew was clinging to the air around her. A great blanket of dust and steam covered the night sky. Infused with errant magic as it was, any kind of aerial journey was impossible. It was extremely dangerous to move through a dense pocket of magic – and infinitely more dangerous when that magic was Celestia’s. It permeated everything in the ruins, but it was readily mixing with the dense clouds to produce deadly results. Every few moments a fresh roll of thunder made the rock underhoof tremble. They were so frequent in the ruins that Twilight had already grown used to them, and she no longer jumped whenever a lightning bolt lit up the sky near her. In fact, the lightning had its uses. Spike’s pink cloud of magic was still floating overhead, showing Twilight the way to her goal. The random strobes of light helped her pick it out against the dark clouds above. It hadn’t gotten out of sight yet, but Twilight knew the second it did she would be dead in the water. Her path through the ruins was a loopy, winding one that had the unicorn scrambling over sheer walls of broken marble and leaping gaps between fallen balconies. More than once she had crawled through narrow gaps that blocked her view of the sky entirely, only to see the tiny splash of pink in the distance thanks to a bright splash of lightning. Twilight knew, though, that without her magical protection the lightning would not be nearly so tame. It could strike her just as easily as it could a random bit of metal sticking up out of the ruins. For Twilight, the real fear was the cut on her haunch. Although it wasn’t steep, there was a noticeable slope to her path down into the crater center, and if she stepped on a wrong bit of stone that slipped her bad leg might not be strong enough to stop a fall. It would be a long, horrible tumble until she crashed into something solid enough to stop her momentum. With all the gnarled shards of marble and glass in the clutter, a fall would be a quick end to her rescue attempt. So long as she kept Spike’s letter in sight, her speed would have to be tempered with cautiousness despite her near-overwhelming desire to sprint. Twilight adjusted her magical repellant spell as she swerved around a large piece of broken wall. Celestia’s unbound magic was getting thicker the closer to the bottom of the bowl Twilight traveled. Visibility, though, was low. Twilight could barely see though all the dust hanging in the air. It was a constant battle to keep from tripping on some unseen rock or crack. The humidity, which Sol Shard’s spell certainly did not repel, stung her eyes and made them weep. Sweat was rolling off her back and burning all the little nicks and scrapes she’d gotten already. A trickle of fear bubbled up from Twilight’s chest as she skirted the edge of a deep chasm that appeared in her path. They had started appearing more and more frequently as she descended. When a bolt of lightning rang overhead, Twilight caught a glimpse of the nasty-looking crystals lining the throat of the pit as far as she could see. No spell could protect her from those if she blithely stumbled into a sinkhole like that. After traversing the crystal pit, a new bit of ruin came into view. Twilight let out a relieved breath; she recognized the architecture. This was old stone. She could tell it was from how well each brick had weathered the catastrophe; its toughness came from the cutting and quarrying techniques used. Times had been different back then, and the need for hardy stone was great. Most of the original castle was built from it, including the main keep that housed the throne room, royal apartments, and kitchens. That meant that the Element Chamber was nearby. The long hall where she had last seen Celestia was on the far side of the throne room. Glass shattered nearby, pulling Twilight from her calculations. It wasn’t too odd of a sound given how the ruins were still settling, but there was something else as well – the meaty slaps of something against stone. It almost sounded like flapping. That was impossible, though. Shining Armor had declared the ruins off-limits to civilians and his guards. This deep in, Celestia’s magic would be stifling to anything unable to resist it, not to mention the chance of magical lightning. Nevertheless, Twilight heard another loud crash come from further in the ruins, followed by more flapping. There was no mistaking the sound of beating wings now that she was listening for it. She quickly looked skyward, but Spike’s letter was still lazily floating onward. It wasn’t stopping or descending. Twilight fought down an irrational sense of panic as she started walking again. There had to be some trick to the noises; it was some kind of magical reaction or an odd bit of rubble settling in an unusual way. No one, not even the castle magisters, could have made it this far out. For something to be alive in these ruins would mean that they had more power than four of Canterlot’s greatest unicorns. Still, Twilight saw no harm in making certain she made as little noise as possible as she walked. She drew closer to the strange sounds until a hazy structure appeared out of the steam – an archway, tall and proud, amidst the absolute destruction around it. Each voussoir was as large as Twilight’s head, and the keystone was bigger than a small pony; the rise was easily high enough to accommodate anything that would want to pass underneath. Through the archway, Twilight could only see a dark pit of blackness. No sky, no steam, and no end in sight. Nothing in the rest of the ruins could compare to how normal this looked. However large the structure could be was hidden by a truly massive pile of rubble collapsed on top of it, but the archway was remarkably intact and unscathed. Twilight couldn’t place the unique stonework in her memory, but it looked like a very, very early addition to the castle. The cuts on the stone were rougher than anything Twilight had seen anywhere elsewhere. She didn’t have time to study the stonework, though. Spike’s letter was already out of sight. The only way to go was forward. Twilight tentatively stepped under the archway. She was scared – skittish, even – because she could not immediately recall where she had seen this kind of architecture before. It looked so out of place with dark stone and naked walls. Not at all what Canterlot Castle should have looked like. Another mighty crash sounded from deeper within the ruin, and Twilight pressed desperately against the side of the hallway. There was no light save the very faint glow from her horn. The flapping she had heard from outside started again, followed by the sharp clap of glass shattering. She was still for a moment, wondering if something was going to rush her from the darkness, but the sounds didn’t grow nearer. Hesitantly, she started forward again. It was a long hallway, and Twilight had to step slowly and softly to keep her hooves from clicking against the stone underfoot. No part of the castle had ever given Twilight the same unsettling feeling she was getting here. Deep down she knew that this was something no pony was meant to see; this place had survived the destruction not because of some happy accident, but because of some deliberate action from the builders, whoever they were. A loud snarl ripped the air. It was a low, guttural sound that made Twilight’s stomach flip. She was so addled that she nearly crashed into a bend in the hallway. When she turned, she could see the end of her journey: an old, broken wooden door that had been ripped off its hinges. Something had scooped out the very stone it had been anchored in – something with claws massive and tough enough to physically dig into the wall.   Beyond the door was a massive circular room lined with dozens upon dozens of shelves and glass cases. Twilight didn’t dare add to the faint light that a few candelabra provided. They were sitting on dusty tables that partially filled the large, open middle of the room. Something moved past the candles. Twilight tracked the dark form as it stalked around the room. It was so large that the air it displaced made the candle flames dance and flicker as it went from one shelf to the next. Every few moments two enormous bat-like wings flapped, disturbing years of cobwebs and dust as the creature reared up to reach the tops of the tall shelves. Twilight recognized what she was looking with a sudden, terrible clarity. She and her friends had faced a creature like this a year before, deep within the Everfree Forest. Truly, though, the manticore that Fluttershy had calmed was the runt of the litter compared to the specimen Twilight was confronted with here. This manticore easily stood over eight feet tall at the withers, easily dwarfing anything the unicorn had ever seen besides an ursa minor or a dragon. Even Celestia would have to look upwards to meet its eyes. Swinging behind the beast was its wicked scorpion tail. It was swishing back and forth in agitation. As it searched the shelves, the manticore continuously growled and snarled. Some instinctual trigger inside Twilight kept her crouched on the floor like a fawn as the predator shifted around the room, watching and waiting to run if the beast caught wind of its audience. Luckily for Twilight, it seemed much more interested on its roughshod frisking of what she could now identify as bookshelves. Each one was filled to the brim with books, scrolls, and loose papers. More than a few had simply been dumped on the floor, seemingly not containing what the manticore was hunting for.   Suddenly the lion-like creature roared loud and deep. Twilight’s heart stopped as the its two massive paws gripped either side of a bookshelf it had been ransacking and pulled it apart at the middle like a sheet of cheap paper. Its tail whipped out and encircled one of the falling books. Twilight couldn’t see anything about the tome from so far away, but it seemed to please the manticore. It plodded over to one of the tables and, with a gentleness that belied the power it possessed, set the book down under near a candelabrum. Due to the close light, Twilight could see more of the manticore’s features: its lion face was wide and chiseled; there was a clear jaw that hung low under the enormous eyes of the monster; two giant fangs, each nearly as long as one of Twilight’s front legs, jutted up until they lingered just under his cat-like snout; a white mane peppered with grey framed his feral face and nearly hid the two swiveling ears that stood straight atop his head. It was almost funny how such a fearsome face scrunched up as the manticore leafed through a simple book, but he was the model of perfect concentration. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Twilight could see another door on the far side of the room. She knew that time was running short if she wanted to catch Spike’s letter again, but if she stepped into the room the manticore would notice her immediately since the table he had picked was directly facing the library entrance. Just as Twilight was about to give up and slink back the way she had come, the manticore pulled away from the book and lumbered over to one of the glass cases that stood between the bookshelves. The one he had picked looked fairly large, but she couldn’t make out what was in it from where she sat. It meant that the beast’s back was turned on her now, though.   This was her chance – her one chance – to catch back up to Spike’s magical lifeline. She knew that the manticore wouldn’t be distracted forever. She had to go now.   Twilight warily kept her eyes on the hulking form of the manticore as she skirted the far edge of the room. The library was larger than Ponyville’s center pavilion, and the tables and darkness provided enough camouflage for the dark purple unicorn that she felt safe enough so long as the monster was focused somewhere else. That book, though, needled Twilight relentlessly. What book could be important enough to intrigue a manticore? For that matter, why was a manticore in Canterlot in the first place? Clearly it had been searching, was still searching, for something in this strange underground library that Twilight had never before seen or even heard about. How had it known it was here? What was it looking for now? Without realizing it, Twilight had moved away from the wall midway from her goal. She was only a few dozen feet away from the table where the manticore’s prize was resting. Her eyes went back to the manticore. He had smashed through the glass case and was sifting through whatever was inside. It was now or never. Twilight crept closer without provoking a reaction. When she was close enough, she reached out with her magic and seized the dark leather-bound book. It zipped into her saddlebag, and the unicorn was back to moving across the room. On the other side, the manticore was still rummaging. Twilight thought she saw the glint of polished steel, but it was too dark to see exactly what the beast was recovering. Twilight knew she wanted to be gone before he was done, though. The far door was shut, but it pushed open without much noise and Twilight slipped out. Once directly out of sight, she broke out into a gallop and thundered down the new hallway. A harsh trumpet of a roar sounded behind her and Twilight knew the game was up. She passed under the opposite archway just as the thick wooden door to the library exploded in a cloud of splinters. Twilight was already in the gnarled ruins when the manticore charged out of the entryway. His wings unfurled and the enormous beast took wing. Even in the darkness under the lingering steam cloud Twilight didn’t feel safe. She was not. The manticore bellowed, and the sound drowned anything else in the ruins. Twilight kicked her back legs and leapt just as the stone she had been galloping on felt the crack of the manticore’s scorpion tail. The lump on the end was wide as wagon wheel, but the foot-long stinger crowning it was what had Twilight running scared. It was terrifying how agile the manticore was proving in the air. It twirled and twisted through the ruined spires of stone that dotted the landscape like something half as large and twice as nimble. Nowhere Twilight ran seemed too narrow or difficult for either the wicked tail or massive paws of the monster. On one of the beast’s closer swoops, Twilight realized just what it had been distracted with in the library: where there had been copper-colored fur was now gleaming with steel plate and ring. Somehow the manticore had found an entire suit of armor that seemed to be tailor-made for its body. Even its weaker hind legs were armored. There was no point in holding back now. It was either risk being overwhelmed by Celestia’s magic or eaten by the manticore. The book, the precious book that had started all this, was obviously too important to risk. That the strangely-intelligent manticore wanted it was enough of an incentive for Twilight to dig her hooves in. Magic pulsed through her body as she released her hold over Sol Shard’s repulsion spell. She gathered the threads of that spell and appropriating them to her own use, focusing and sharpening the weave of power until it focused at the tip of her horn. When the manticore swooped in again, Twilight aimed at the center of the beast’s chest and fired the strengthened bolt of magic. The aim was true and her tormenter let out a pained bellow that shook the air. The simple self-defense spell was never designed for combat, but buffed as it was it should have swatted the hulking creature from the sky. The manticore did stop, but to Twilight’s horror it did little more than that. White runes blazed on the thick breastplate of the beast, and the ray of reddish magic parted like water around a rock. It had been the most potent spell Twilight could cast, and all it had managed to do was slow the beast as its armor turned aside the spell’s effect. Sensing weakness, the manticore gave one tremendous flap and dived again. This time he was too close for Twilight to dodge and the tip of the monster’s wing caught her on the side. She was sent flying, tumbling head over haunch in the air until she crashed to the ground half a dozen feet away. Her entire body felt numb from the impact, but a searing pain immediately blossomed in her ribs where the wing had hit. There was another trumpet from the manticore as it rounded on Twilight again. The pony struggled to her feet; she knew she couldn’t try to run again. The air around her seemed to shimmer as she pulled every ounce of magic into one enormous thread, crudely threading it again into the self-defense spell the princess had taught her. If she could just stop the creature again she could get her wind back and run. She had to stop it. She would stop it. She had to keep going. It only took the span of a single breath, but to Twilight it seemed like an eternity for the spell to form. When it fired the manticore was close enough that she could count how many whiskers adorned its face. It hit the beast full in the face, but again the runic armor it wore cut through the spell. Twilight was holding a steady stream of magic, but the beast was powering forward through the current. It was so close she could smell the beast’s rancid breath. The air cracked as a bolt of magical lightning split the two apart. Twilight rolled on the ground like a rag doll; she couldn’t hear anything but a high-pitched whine in her ears. She was coherent enough to seek out the manticore, though. It didn’t look nearly as dazed as Twilight felt. Its armor was smoking, though. The runes on the surface of the metal were glowing red-hot. Twilight wondered if it had taken the brunt of the lightning. Ironically, it looked like the manticore’s own armor had saved her by absorbing the rampaging solar magic. Twilight wanted to laugh, but the pain in her side was preventing her from even doing that. What were the odds? And then something changed in the air. The horrid humidity that had been clinging to Twilight vanished, taking all the heat with it. Instead of steam and water, the air was now saturated with magic. Controlled magic. The manticore noticed as well. Its slow stalk forward transformed into a leap, claws outstretched for the quick kill. Twilight could see a feral desperation in the beast’s slitted yellow eyes as it arched toward her. “Thou hast never understood thine own limits, Constantis.” Twilight watched as a transparent skin of yellow energy condensed at the tip of her nose and rose from the ground to the sky above. He roared as his claws were stopped by the magical barrier, challenging the strange magic with tooth, claw, and stinger. Great sparks of hot nail and chitin rained down on the shattered ground as his claws and skin whittled off as they pounded at the wall to get to Twilight. A bolt of pure lightning took the manticore in the side. His powerful armor, which had absorbed all of Twilight’s efforts, provided the beast with little defense against the sudden attack. He hit a nearby wall with such force that the rock split apart and rained down in a shower of loose rock. Another swift bolt of white-hot magic lanced into the rubble and turned it into a smoldering inferno of fire and smoke. Twilight saw the manticore in the middle of the flames flailing in pain, and its roars reached even her still-ringing ears. Something sailed to the ground in front of the firestorm on wide wings. It looked to Twilight like a mare, though taller and leaner than most. They had a pearl-colored coat that shimmered in the firelight and a mane of dancing flames. The wild hair whipped and flickered in a massive column of fire that out-shown even the pyre they had lit. A ball of fire launched itself out of the inferno. The newcomer danced away as the burning manticore sent swipe after furious swipe at them. Each time the massive paw would descend, the pale pony would dodge by the thinnest of margins and the most deliberate of actions. It looked to Twilight’s eye like a carefully planned dance, only the great beast was not party to the mare’s steps. He trumpeted each time his claws met anything other than tender flesh, and bellowed whenever a polished cream-colored back hoof would catch him in the head, paw, or foot where his armor did not reach. Twilight yelled out a warning when the manticore whipped its wing out. The same wing that had laid her low, though, was nothing but another clunky appendage to the limber mare. She bent at the knees, impossibly quick, and chambered a kick that missed the precious appendage by a hair’s breath. Even though it was a miss, the mare was already twisting her body back around. As all four of hooves hit the ground, she launched herself upwards and into the manticore’s guard with a mighty flap of her own wings. Something on her head glowed with a blinding light that forced Twilight to clench her eyes shut, but the manticore roared. It was a terrible sound, though not for its ferocity. The trumpet was agonizing, and Twilight could see why when she opened her eyes again – the monster was clutching at a weeping hole in its armor close to the shoulder. Its close brush with death seemed to take all the fight out of the beast. The manticore lashed out again with its claws, but not trying to land hits. The sweeping arcs were forcing its opponent back while it gained the distance needed to take flight. Twilight heard the whine of a large electrical charge come from the mare. Atop the pearl pony’s head sat a horn, slender and red with manticore blood. Light gathered at the tip until a small ball hovered like a star above it. The manticore was already a speck in the darkness; surely she couldn’t hit him from— The spell wailed in the darkness like a kettle left to boil too long. Twilight could actually see the magic reshaping itself, stretching into a thin lance of a bolt that sailed after the flying monster. After a long arching flight, the night sky flashed bright crimson and thunder rolled through the air. Twilight’s eyes actually burned from the flicker. “Is he still…alive?” she whispered.   The winged unicorn was still staring into the sky. “Constantis was always supremely nimble. We would be surprised if he was not.” With a snort, the tall mare turned to the unicorn. Her horn flashed and the barrier which had saved Twilight’s disappeared. Light from the fire still bathed the area and Twilight gasped when her savior came into view. Flourishes she had initially thought were tricks of the light in the heat of battle were now evident. The pony was tall for a mare. Twilight guessed she would only just beat Applejack’s brother in height, but most of her side girth came from the two wings neatly folded there. Taught muscles in her shoulders weaved into a barreled chest which would leave most stallions envious, and it would have certainly looked out of place on any normal pony. The way this alicorn held herself, though, made it fit perfectly. Twilight was reminded of the mares she had seen in the popular Canterlot fashion magazines her mother used to read. Slender legs, tall, trim, and possessing a certain physical aesthetic that was instantly recognizable as being different from the usual stock that made them stand out. Her long mane – a pure, unsullied shade of bright turquoise – only added to the otherworldly aura the pony projected. The way it licked at the air like a fire running down the back of her neck was mesmerizing. “Thou surprisest Us,” she said, breaking Twilight’s examination. Her voice was strong and refined. “We did not expect to feel such magical power. Few are equipped to face General Constantis, but thou appliedst thyself admirably.” Twilight was too distracted to blush. “I was just trying to get away with my head still on my shoulders.” The alicorn considered that. “Thou wert successful then, though We believe thy flank and chest suffered for it.” “The flank was already hurt,” Twilight said. She could breathe, which was all she needed at the moment. The worrisome scratch in her chest would have to wait. She rose on shaky-but-workable legs. It hurt more than it had coming into the ruins, but she would make do. “I can’t thank you enough for that.” “The beast’s own ignorance deserves thy gratitude. If not for his foolish display of power so close to Us, We should not have seen thy struggle.” Her smile turned patronizing. “‘Twas pure madness to challenge thee so near the battlefield where We finally broke his master.” What could possibly be that monster’s master? The thought of something even worse lurking around than that manticore left Twilight with a strong sense of unease. What could be sufficiently horrible to command that creature? She thought of the book resting in her saddlebag; what if the beast wasn’t searching just for himself? Twilight was suddenly relieved she had taken a chance and snatched it from him. There was a more immediate problem than worrying about other things lurking out in the ruins, though. “Are we safe from the lightning?” Twilight asked, looking fearfully at the low-hanging clouds. “I had a spell that repelled the magic in the air, but I had to let it go when the manticore came after me.” “Thou doubtest Our control? It is a simple thing to keep the magic of this battlefield placid if we wish it. Was not the demonstration with Constantis enough?” The alicorn’s confidence was infectious; she sounded so sure of herself that Twilight’s concern was ebbing. It was true that since the tall mare had showed up the oppressive heat of Celestia’s magic had stopped being quite so overwhelming. She decided to trust her savior on the matter of Celestia’s errant magic for the moment. Besides, right now there were much larger apples to buck. “Can you make it so I can keep going, then?” Twilight asked. She had hope, now, that perhaps there was still a way to salvage this situation. The tall mare considered her for a moment. Her eyes flicked past the wounds and dirt marring Twilight’s coat. “Thou soundest as if your journey is one of great import,” she dodged, settling on a neutral non-committal. “Tell us – what drives thee so? Many tidings have left Us wondering. Mayhap thou couldst provide illumination?” It took more than a moment for Twilight to digest the alicorn’s archaic grammar, but she realized the mare was asking for information. Did that mean she came didn’t know about any of this yet? Had some distant relative of Celestia or Luna really flown to Canterlot, only to find it reduced to this and both their relatives missing? How do you tell someone something like that? “I…I don’t want to be the one to break it to you, but there’s something you should know. Discord destroyed the castle. He almost destroyed everything. The princess is missing because of that, but I know she’s here somewhere. I came here to find her.” The alicorn seemed troubled. “We were not aware that Discord had ruined a castle.” Her gaze became speculative as it swept the broken landscape. “Luna’s extended absence is puzzling to Us as well. Has thy search reaped results?” Twilight was relieved that the alicorn was taking things in-stride. She could only imagine how Blueblood or another member of the extended royal family would have acted. Her information was off, though. “No, but I’m not looking for Luna. Shining Armor knows where she is.” Or, at least, Twilight hoped that was the case. Finding one princess was trouble enough. “Thou said it was a princess thy were searching for in this place,” the larger mare stated. “If not Luna, then which?” “Princess Celestia. She’s been missing since the disaster.” Something clicked in the alicorn’s mind; Twilight could see it on her face. “Then it was thee who sent these scrolls to Us,” she said. Her horn lit with a golden aura and several letters flew out of the nearby ruins. They piled in a neat stack at Twilight’s feet. “We have been bombarded with them for hours, though there was no information on the sender. Thou shouldst know that it is impossible to reply with this magic without a magical signature.” Twilight wasn’t listening. In fact, she had tuned out everything when her eyes caught on the letters. Each had been opened already and the topmost in the pile gently glided up so Twilight could read it. Dear Princess Celestia, Help is coming. “This is impossible,” Twilight muttered. Two lines scrawled by a hand only slightly-less familiar than that of her teacher. There was absolutely no mistaking Spike’s unique penmanship, just as there was no mistaking Princess Celestia. This alicorn was not the Sovereign of the Sun. “The tone was getting rather frantic near the end and We feared some calamity. Tell Us, has Luna yet taken command of the army?” The not-Celestia was prattling on about crazy, silly things. Army? What army? Why should Luna take control of anything? Luna wasn’t even in Canterlot! Twilight locked eyes with the imposter to say just that, but the eyes that stared back...she hadn’t seen them before, when they had been talking after the manticore had been driven off; now the two deep purple irises were staring right back and the unicorn felt something tug at her mind. This is Celestia, it said. Everything else about the alicorn had changed except her eyes. They were the same kind eyes she had seen at her entrance examination; the eyes that had watched with pride as she cast her first real spell; the eyes that had looked so wistful when she had said her goodbyes before moving to Ponyville a year ago. Now they looked at her without the faintest hint of recognition. It was too much for the unicorn to take at once. Her mouth flapped uselessly as the princess continued to pepper her with questions she couldn’t understand. Celestia wanted to know where the army was stationed; the casualty numbers; what Luna, Twilight’s apparent commander, thought they should do with the stone draconequus. Finally, the unicorn threw up her forelegs. “Please stop!” she shouted. “Just…stop. How is this possible? Why did you change so much? How could you not remember me?” Celestia gave her a flat look. “We do remember thee – We remember thee attempting to touch our mind.” She waved a hoof airily. “We wished to give thee the benefit of the doubt, to see if thou hadst any ill-intent. Thou mark thyself as a follower of Luna’s, but now it seems that thou art attempting to withhold information.” “I’m not!” Twilight insisted. “And I was trying to help you! You were in the middle of Discord’s spell; I couldn’t just leave you!” One of the mare’s hooves stomped the ground impatiently. “And what authority allows thee to approach thy monarch so?” Celestia demanded. “In the heat of battle, Our mind is focused. To disturb that is to tempt forces beyond thy comprehension.” Was the alicorn admitting an accident or simply explaining how severe Twilight’s mistake had been? “I’m your student,” Twilight tried, not honestly wanting to know that answer. “I had to try and help you.” The alicorn’s nose wrinkled. “We do not have a student.” It hurt to hear that. After all the things this unfamiliar Celestia had said, that single statement hurt the most. She crumpled – mentally and physically – sagging back to the ground with a hitched intake of breath. The old Celestia, Twilight’s Celestia, would have wrapped the unicorn in a soft wing, telling her that everything would work out in the end. Celestia would comfort her even if Twilight was just another faceless pony in her kingdom. She would mean it, too. The princess wouldn’t rest until whatever problem it was had vanished along with her subject’s worries. There was no such comfort from this alicorn. Her familiar eyes held no warmth or comfort in their gaze. “Stand,” she ordered. It wasn’t the motherly tone Twilight was used to. Celestia’s voice snapped at her like a growling, scratchy whip that demanded immediate action. “We did not say that something was not amiss. Many things are perplexing at the moment, and We still wish for thee to explain.” “I think I’ve got more questions than you do,” Twilight sighed, struggling to get to her feet. Celestia didn’t offer to help. “I’ll try to answer everything, but I have to ask – do you know what Discord is able to do to ponies? He can get into their minds and—” “—and change the way they act. Yes, We are aware of that magic. It is strange that thou art as well.” Celestia was quiet for a moment, then said, “Thou wilt inform us of thy dealings with Discord. Start at the beginning and recount everything up until this very moment.” Twilight did. As long as she talked, she wouldn’t have to hear Celestia say those horrible things anymore. The words spilled out of her in waves, flowing furiously at first as she tried to explain everything at once about how Discord had first shown himself, and then softly ebbing at her feelings of hopelessness and despair upon seeing her friends being emotionally mangled had to be voiced. She left out nothing now that Celestia was willing to listen. Between the two of them, Twilight was certain that they’d find the answer both were looking for. And fix you, she thought. Celestia said little while Twilight spoke, only interrupting to ask that a part be repeated or described in greater detail. Small things like what scenes the castle’s stained glass recounted or the exact feeling Twilight had when touching Discord’s spell. She was silent for a long moment after Twilight finished, sitting with her eyes closed and a look of mild disquiet on her face. She finally let out a deep sigh through her nose. “What hast thou done, Discord?” The name of the draconequus slipped past her lips like an oath. Twilight had never heard her teacher say something with such venom before. “Does that mean you believe me?” Twilight softly asked, daring to let hope creep back into her voice. “It means We are willing to consider certain things We normally attribute to fools and charlatans.”   “Then, you’ve got to me put this right! Canterlot needs you! It’s past time for the sun to come up and there are still ponies trapped in these ruins!” Celestia’s brow scrunched. “The sun should be up? Even Our internal time-keeping is off?” She had whispered the words to herself, but Twilight had heard them. The alicorn caught Twilight’s eyes again. This time they were searching for something. It was all the unicorn could do to keep from flinching away. The princess was far more obvious with her attention now. Twilight was unused to being studied. Finally, the alicorn’s horn began to glow a bright gold. “Stay close to Us,” she said, breaking their mutual gaze by letting her eyes slide closed. Twilight scampered over to Celestia’s side slowly at first, but then closed the distance in a few frightened skips when a bright beam lit the unnatural night sky. The thick blanket of steam that smothered the ruins gathered around the pillar of light emanating from Celestia’s horn, swirling around the column like water circling a bathtub drain. It was breathtaking spell work. If Twilight had any doubts as to the alicorn’s true identity, they were put to rest by the feeling of Celestia’s magic pouring from the mare. She hadn’t felt it at first because of all the ambient magic in the air, but right now, this close to her, all Twilight could comprehend was the warm sensation of the sun, rough as it felt being commanded by this unfamiliar princess. That wrongness wouldn’t keep Twilight from watching the alicorn with admiration. As Celestia tamed the magic, the humidity and heat in the air gradually receded. The air became cool as a normal Canterlot night. Twilight took in a deep, pleasant breath for the first time in a long time. Celestia was becoming a living magical focus. All of the latent magic that had been hanging in the air was being bound to the long string of magic the alicorn was sending into the sky. That was the principle behind the simplest unicorn spells, like levitation, but Celestia’s casting was an entire order of magnitude higher. It blew through the ruins like a storm, ripping the settled magic from every nook and cranny it was hiding in and sending it into the sky to diffuse harmlessly in the atmosphere. “Why didn’t you do this before?” Twilight asked, watching the spectacular lightshow created by Celestia’s magic. It was rippling high in the sky in glowing ribbons of magic. “We’ve been trying to get to you for hours.” The flow of magic from Celestia’s horn tapered off. She looked drained and was panting slightly. Her voice was firm, though. “That is precisely why We did not. Constantis was hassle enough for Us; if the bulk of Discord’s army had arrived, it is possibly they would have recaptured their master.” “But the letters said we were looking for you,” Twilight countered. “Letters that We could not answer, written in writing We did not recognize, and filled with names that meant nothing to Us.” Celestia flared her wings out to their fullest, stretching. They reminded Twilight of Gilda’s wings, slim, sleek, and lined with grand primaries. “However, thy words have weight. Something is wrong here, Twilight Sparkle. Something important is missing. Something We are certain We had during our battle with the draconequus.” Twilight understood at once. “The Elements,” she whispered. Celestia shook her head. “Their absence can be explained; the circumstances would be troubling, but not impossible. We speak of the Cycle. The sun is not moving. Nothing is moving.” The complete confusion in the monarch’s voice frightened Twilight more than any manticore could. “Our spell that governs the automatic movement of the sun is gone. Someone has wiped it away from Our sun. We were calling out to it when thy magic reached Our senses.” That simple admission was the most Twilight had ever heard from her teacher on the subject of her most important job. After watching Celestia raise the sun so many times at the castle, Twilight had stopped associating it with something as mundane as a spell – it was a part of who the princess was. She raised the sun every day just as surely as everyone else ate or breathed. “Can someone actually do that?” she asked, not really comprehending. “Just…turn everything up there off?” “It would be exceedingly difficult for one other than Us.” Celestia’s wings fluttered and Twilight shielded herself from the dust kicked up by the anxious action. She could tell that the alicorn was getting restless as she tried to unravel the question of the missing spell. “Luna, perhaps, could do so with the aid of the Elements. It would be difficult, but not impossible.” That seemed to trouble her for a moment. “This needs to be corrected.” The alicorn’s horn lit again. Twilight crouched, ready for another spectacular display of magic, but there was nothing of the sort. Celestia was stock-still save for her neck, which was craning up toward the sky. If Twilight had been any less-attuned to the princess, she would have missed the thin thread of magic stretching up into the sky. The thin wisp of magic was swishing across the sky in grand, unseen strokes. It was incredibly intensive spell threading. “Our sun is so different,” Celestia murmured. The thin thread of magic was stretched farther than Twilight could feel now. Was the princess directly touching the sun? Could anything, even an alicorn, possess that much power? There was a humorless snort from the alicorn. “Rejoice, Twilight Sparkle,” she said, breaking concentration to look down at the unicorn, “for thou art not a fool or a charlatan. An answer has been revealed to Us.” The wan smile on her lips was not one of accomplishment, though. “We wondered how it could be that two events played out to two different outcomes. The sun has provided its answer: both are correct.”   Both were correct? “Princess, my friends and I sealed Discord in stone. What you remember is, well, wrong.” “What We remember is fighting Discord with the help of the Elements and Luna. Tell Us – can thou not remember an instance when that twas true?” She could. Dear Celestia, she could. The princess herself had told her the story of how she and Luna defeated Discord, but that… “No,” Twilight whispered.   “Yes.” Celestia let out a deep breath as dawn broke over the distant horizon. It was a sun reborn, a young sun, large and bright that chased away the darkness in the sky. With its ascendance, Celestia bathed in its light and power, deaf to anything but the call of her seat of power embracing the world. Twilight knew the tales and epic poems written about the creature standing before her by heart. This was not a Princess Celestia twisted by Discord like she had feared – this was a Princess Celestia at the apex of her power; a story from legend come on four hooves. Together with the Elements of Harmony and the Lunar Princess, this Celestia had broken Discord’s reign of terror herself and sealed the God in living stone. This was Celestia, the Solar Princess of Equestria, who had ruled nearly three thousand years ago. Thunderstruck, Twilight could only think, And now she’s here. Words cannot describe how difficult this chapter was to write. It might only weigh-in at around 8k, but I deleted three different starts until I was satisfied with Celestia's character and some other things. I'd say I've pumped over 20k words into this chapter alone over the last month. Please, please, please give me feedback about the personalities and dialog for this. It honestly helps me get better.