Even if my cell had been annexed by a superpowered lunatic, I still had my duties, both sacred and mundane. Refusing to speak to Nightmare Moon further about the dream, I went through my 'morning' routine of using the waste reclaimer (she had the decency to avert her eyes, but the groans of disgust and gagging noises were completely uncalled for), washing, and checking the habitat's systems. The batteries were at the predicted charge and internal temperature and pressure were within acceptable limits. I had expected the oxygen levels to have dipped from the large creature sharing my atmosphere and helping herself to my garden, but the mixer was still only working for one.
I glanced back at my guest. She gave me a perturbed look in return. "What?"
She wasn't breathing, I informed her.
"Oh, don't you wish. Of course I'm breathing, fool," she said, exhaling sharply to emphasize her point.
I clarified. I meant she wasn't actually drawing oxygen from the air. The report had said the planet had a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere like my homeworld, so I simply assumed—
"I'm fine. I don't need to pluck wisps of gas out of the air any more than I need to eat or drink." She paused to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Just having some air in there is enough. You can't imagine what it's like, going around for centuries with your lungs and your gut totally empty. Not hungry, not choking, just... nothing. Eventually, I thought maybe... all I had was this accursed dust so..."
Nightmare Moon shivered and began rocking back and forth, staring off into space. "She did it to me... all her fault... nopony lifted a hoof to help... never really cared," she said in a small voice. Suddenly, her face twisted into a mask of rage. "I'll make them pay... I'll make them pay!"
It seemed like a good idea to distract her from dwelling on these grudges. Remembering the way she'd reacted to the gift of the statue's pillow and how eager she'd been to eat, I told her it would be no trouble if she wanted to breathe normally. The atmospheric mixer was more than capable of making up the difference. I had no idea whether this was true or not.
At the sound of my voice, the pony snapped out of her vengeful reverie and re-composed her normal haughty countenance. She looked down her nose at me and laughed mirthlessly. "How sweet of you to offer. You think I'm going to trust you just because you did one halfway-decent thing for me? I bet the air's full of some kind of deadly gas that monsters are immune to."
Feeling as if I'd escaped yet another disaster, I shrugged and said she could suit herself.
She seemed to have nothing further to say to me, so I hastily finished my checks and began my morning office. Perhaps it seems odd that I'd stick to my schedule with Nightmare Moon's attack on her homeworld looming and myself no longer, by definition, a hermit. To tell the truth, I think I needed this at least as much as I did air and food. A small assertion of my independence, proving to myself I was still on my chosen path in spite of all that had happened.
The reading was one with which I was already familiar. It was the chapter of deeds where a world-ruling emperor of old is warned by a prophet that a servant of the Increate would visit him in disguise that very night and extract justice for his stamping on the faces of the poor and bringing war and terror to his neighbors. The emperor threatened the prophet with torture until she revealed he could turn the servant's wrath aside with mere hospitality and goodwill.
The emperor then laughed, thinking he had thwarted the Increate, and instructed his guards and slaves to throw wide the palace gates, welcoming all, even the most diseased beggar, for that one night.
The rest of the story is well-enough known that I need not go into detail; how every enemy and rival the emperor knew, and many he didn't, descended upon his home that night, forcing him to honor and grant boons and pardons from the greatest to the least, lest he offend the divine servant in disguise. The servant was the last to appear, saying it was so impressed with the emperor's manners it would take a new disguise and return the next day. And so it continued every day thereafter, until both subjects and foreigners praised the emperor as a model of mercy and generosity.
It had always bothered me that the account ended before revealing whether the emperor learned to accept this oversight or withered away in paranoia and powerlessness. His empire must have eventually crumbled, too, with no word on whether this divine intervention slowed or hastened its fall.
In the story I found myself living, the ruler, Nightmare Moon's sister, was an unknown quantity. Did she live as though the prophesied return of her imprisoned sibling was drawing near? Did she actually deserve the wrath that Nightmare Moon vowed to bring down upon her? Did she have the power to simply lock the prisoner back up? Clearly the pony lounging behind me thought her victory as inevitable as her return.
I chided myself for letting my mind wander and began the next duty of my office; an hour of uninterrupted spoken prayer. I shut off the translator, removed it and placed it on the floor beside me. This was between myself and the Increate. I lit an hour-stick of incense before the icon, then knelt.
First, confession. There was no shortage of misdeeds to own up to this time. Hatred, presumption, despair, falsehood and, of course, murder, were among the heaviest chains on my anima. I too was like the emperor who had to be threatened into decency.
I asked for pardon and true repentance for myself and (though the insincerity set my teeth on edge) safety and swift travels for the captain and crew of the vessel that bore me here, as I had promised. Then, throwing myself prostrate before the icon, I begged for courage and wisdom and insight, not for my own sake, but so that I could bring this age-old conflict to a peaceful resolution, so none need die or be imprisoned. If I died, so be it, if only no other had to suffer for my mistakes!
My claws dug into the grip-enhancing surface of the floor. More than ever before, I felt as though my prayers dissipated into the cosmos, unheeded by any being.
It wasn't the case.
"Who are you talking to, Pangolin?" said a voice right behind me. I flinched and slowly turned. There stood Nightmare Moon, the translator, reactivated, floating beside her. Her expression was unreadable.
"Don't play dumb," she said when I made no response, "I saw you whispering into this."
My icon, wrapped in her blue glow, floated from the shelf to join the translator before her face. "How does it work? It's got some sort of voice-sending enchantment, hasn't it?" She turned it over in the air. "I know you can hear me!" she shouted to the metal figure. "Answer me! Who is this?"
Of course, there was no reply.
"I heard you plotting against me with whoever this lets you speak to," she accused, light from her horn washing back and forth over my icon as if inspecting it. "How are you hiding its power? Tell me how it works at once!"
Feeling much like I had on that awful day when I was roped into teaching a children's doctrinal class at my sanctuary, I explained that there was no inherent significance to the icon; it was merely an aid to focus one's attention on the divine.
"Pangolin, I thought you were through telling lies," she said, sighing theatrically. "If you won't tell me how your toys work then I'll just have to take them away." The icon floated down the ground, and she set an armored foot lightly atop it. "Last chance; fess up or I make this fellow short and wide."
I think Nightmare Moon was expecting me to cringe or plead, as she seemed surprised at the look of utter disdain I gave her instead. Had she really never seen an icon, a shrine... an idol, even? How barbaric! Yes, I was conspiring, I told her. I was conspiring with the very foundation of the universe! If that put her and me at odds, then perhaps she should reevaluate her goals.
My uninvited guest was slightly taken aback by my outburst. She glanced down at the icon, studying its molded features.
"The foundation of the universe could use a bit of polish. No, I think this is a conduit to some super-being the same way your little death-wand was a vehicle." She thrust her foot downward, collapsing the icon effortlessly. The shriek of the warping metal sounded almost like a living being. Despite my earlier words, I flinched at the casual desecration.
Nightmare Moon raised her hoof and kicked the remains of the icon to me. What once had depicted the Increate as one of my species was now an irregular disc of wrinkled metal impressed with her boot-print. As I traced its edge with a claw, the dark pony grinned down at me, no doubt expecting to amuse herself at my dismay.
I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. An icon is but a symbol, and this was an icon still. Before it had symbolized the Increate as source and end of all. Now it was far more pertinent to my present condition; the Increate who suffers with the downtrodden and afflicted. A timely reminder.
Without a word, I picked it up, turned and reverently placed the smashed icon in its original place on the shelf. I knelt once more and, since prayer attracted her ire, skipped to silent contemplation. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the sharp, fragrant scent of the incense.
She allowed me to sit in peace for about a minute before letting out an exasperated growl. "Are you doing this just to annoy me, Pangolin? We both know that thing didn't have a single spark of magic before, and I washed it with my best disenchanting spell just to make sure. Who do you think you're fooling?"
Not rising or turning this time, I crankily remarked that I was a hermit, not a sorcerer, and knew nothing of their arts. I had not know that she was an adept in the manipulation of the unseen world.
"You hadn't known? How did you think I dragged you through the air or brought the dust to life? Hidden strings and mirrors? What do you think this glorified icepick jutting from my skull is for, dolt?"
She called that magic?
"You don't? What in the great starry beyond do you call magic, then?"
I sighed and gave up trying to meditate. When I faced her again, her disdain had been nearly eclipsed by bewilderment and curiosity.
She was the first I'd ever met, I told her, who thought of magic as some inborn trait or effect of biology like her horn. After all, could not my claws be considered magical by the same definition? I could use them to move things from place to place, or create art and mechanisms endowed with movement.
Nightmare Moon was unconvinced. "What tortured logic. So if casting spells with my mind through my horn to alter the world isn't magic, what do you imagine is?"
Magic, I explained, is not based in biology, physics or engineering, but instead is a disreputable branch of economics.
"Oh yes, what could be more magical than the dismal science?" she stated flatly.
I harrumphed. If she was going to disbelieve everything I said, she might as well quit wasting time talking to me at all, I snapped. Didn't she have a genocide to plan?
Unashamed, she lay down and rested her head languidly on one of her front feet. "Yes, but at the moment I'd rather see you twist yourself into knots making up nonsense. Do go on!"
I suppose she did need further education, at that. I adopted a lecturing tone. Beyond the comprehension of mortal beings like myself, or even her, vast powers moved through the cosmos, needing no vessel or world, and they sometimes dealt with us in pursuit of their own ends. These ends, though often inscrutable, were generally held to be wicked. She could think of it as how one might bribe a corrupt bureaucrat or make a deal with a gangster. An exchange of services and goods at its heart, but the things given and asked were not things that either party ought to have or do.
Her eyes widened slightly. Something I had said bothered her, though she tried to hide it in her voice. "This is worse than your magical claws. Supernatural bureaucrats for hire? Now I've heard everything. What, pray tell, do these mythical creatures want from your magicians?"
That, I admitted, was something into which an honest being should not inquire too deeply. All I knew was stories, but in those, the price was always something bad. Acts of violence toward the innocent and weak or spreading falsehood and distrust; great and terrible crimes to tiny, innocuous ones that had some horrible unseen ramification.
She actually started at the last bit, and then looked at me through narrowed eyes. Apparently she was familiar with this sort of magic, despite her previous claims.
"You... how did... no! You're just trying to trick me again, to pull her back out! There's no such thing as that kind of magic!" she insisted. Without warning, she rose, made a high-pitched noise of frustration and stamped both her front feet, adding another pair of dents to my floor. "Argh, it never fails! This prophecy is the one thing, the one thing in my life that's guaranteed to go right, and it gets fulfilled by—by the most nasty, false, vicious monster ever spawned from the stars! Why can't you just let me have this? What's wrong with you?"
What was wrong with me?
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME??
I told her what was wrong with me. My world, my species and my family were torn apart between vast interstellar powers, my hierarch kept rejecting my petitions to go into the cloistered life and when I finally struck out on my own to get away from it all and live in peace, a giant alien with a thousand-year-old grudge ambushed me, seized my home, nearly beat me to death with her 'magic' statues and only spared me because my destiny, my very reason for being, was to help her slaughter millions, nay, billions of strangers in some ludicrous vendetta!
I paused to catch my breath. This was only the second time I'd raised my voice to her, and the first time in anger.
She appeared genuinely surprised.
"Ludicrous? Grudge?" she spluttered. "The things I've suffered! The crimes they've committed against me! How can you possibly cast me as the villain?!"
I observed that heroines generally refrained from reveling in the extermination of their enemies' children.
"You're just ignorant," she said, looking at me with less anger than I had expected. "There's never been a cause more just than mine, but I guess I'm going to have to spell it out for you."
With folded arms, I told her I was listening.
"You'd better be. Once you hear what they've done, you'll be falling over yourself to be my vassal. It all started at the coronation. Officially, we were co-rulers, but her throne was a whole quarter-cubit taller than mine. A quarter cubit! Everypony could see it! Of course, I was naive then. I extended her the benefit of the doubt and assumed the designer had made a mistake, but she later let slip she'd inspected them beforehand and expressed her oh-so-tender concern that making my throne as large as hers would call attention to my 'diminutive stature,' really, she used those exact words and—"
...And so began the longest month of my life.