Whispering Stars

by Causal Quill


In Which Somepony Owns a Celestia Plushie

        As Nightmare’s voice faded from the air, Twilight was left feeling half-numbed on the floor in Luna’s room.  She stretched her wings and then folded them up again.  Gingerly she felt for the floor to make sure that when she stood up she wouldn’t slip on more of the scrolls into which she’d landed.

Her nose was jammed in against a copy of Hieronymus’ Praesentem Geleafa, which was funny, because the book was a very long way from still being present anything.  Less funny was how tender her nose was going to be from having run into a copy of Hieronymus’ Praesentem Geleafa.  Twilight looked away from it towards Luna.

        Princess Luna stood over her looking awfully frowny and not nearly as worried as, in Twilight’s admittedly biased opinion, she really ought to have.  Sensing that Luna’s hoof was going to meet Luna’s mouth if Luna was the next pony to speak, Twilight spoke first.  “I bet you a doughnut there’s at least one Princess still on the other side of those doors,” she said.

At which point Twilight Sparkle egressed the pile of scrolls with a purple flash and a swatch of staticy noise.  It wasn’t her most refined casting of a teleportation, but after being jerked around all night by Nightmare, it was a relief to cast a spell which was purely her own.

On the other side of the door was a blessed amount of lighting (albeit in the form of artificial magelights).  Twilight let the light from her horn fade off.

“Twily!” was all the warning that Twilight got before she was swept into a bearhug.  Apparently, on the other side of the door was also a Shining Armor.  Not that she protested.  If there was one pony who had unlimited hugging rights on her, it was definitely her BBBFF.

It did get a little more awkward when Twilight realized that there were three night guards in the hallway.  Two of them were posted at the door to Luna’s bedroom.  The third was at the end of the hall nearer to Luna’s ritual chambers.  None of them were doing anything so unprofessional as staring, but they were still right in view of three batponies.

“Uh, okay, I think that’s enough,” said Twilight, gently extricating herself from Shining Armor just as Luna’s bedroom doors opened up to let Luna back out into the hallway.  

Luna blinked in the light for a moment at transitioning from her own darkened room to the bright hallway.  She turned her vision to Shining Armor.  “Hmm.  We are not sure if we owe you a dough-nut, Twilight Sparkle.

“Luna!” said Twilight with a laugh.  “He’s my brother!”

Encouraged by the laugh, Luna kept right on going.  “Oh, forgive us, Twilight Sparkle, ‘tis most shameful that we tried to escape our obligations that way.  Of course we owe you a dough-nut!

Twilight burst into laughter and, after a moment, Luna joined in.  Shining Armor blinked and looked between the two.  “Did I miss something?”

“I think you’re happier not being in on the joke, big brother.”

Some secrets were not meant for ponies to know,” said Luna, all straight-laced seriousness again.

“Well, a pony, anyways,” said Twilight with a smile.

Shining Armor sighed and turned towards the exit of the hall.  “Well, I’m glad you two are getting along well,” he said, and then added sotto voce while looking at the ceiling, “and slightly alarmed at the future of Equestrian leadership.”  

That got more laughter out of Twilight and a smile from Luna.  Shining Armor finished with, “I take it a stop at Pony Joe’s is on the agenda?”

We must ask a question first.  What is a dough-nut?” asked Luna, at which point Twilight’s ear stood up.  Oh!  That’s why Luna had been pronouncing the word so oddly.

“Doughnuts!  They’re great!” said Twilight.  “Pony Joe sells them.  I didn’t used to let myself eat any, too unhealthy, but Princess Celestia said it was okay.  So they kind of became part of my study-snacking, and I’m a regular there.  Well.  Was a regular there.  It’s still the same old place.”

This is an odd hour for seeking a merchant.

“Speaking of which, what hour is it?  How long was I out for?” asked Twilight.  She looked around.  She didn’t see any clocks and Luna’s allergy to windows kept this place pretty clear of them, so the castle itself wasn’t providing anything to go by.  

Shining Armor said, “Not quite dawn.  Princess Celestia is about to raise the sun.  That’s why she couldn’t keep waiting here for you.  Cadence went with her.  She said something about being chased out like a misbehaving pet.”  He lofted an eyebrow at Luna as he said that.

Luna blushed, cleared her throat, stepped uncomfortably from hoof to hoof, and was spared from replying when Twilight said, “Midnight to dawn, then?  Huh.  That’s not too bad.”

“Midnight to midnight to dawn, I’m afraid.  You had us all very worried,” said Shining Armor.  He turned down the hall.  “Pony Joe’s is open all hours, though I think Joe himself sleeps during the morning shift.  We should talk about this over breakfast.”

“No, bad idea,” said Twilight.  “Doughnut places are packed in the mornings.  Pony Joe sells coffee.  Coffee!  Joe never works the front in the morning because he panics in crowds.”

Shining Armor blinked at Twilight.  “Pony Joe... panics in crowds?  And yet he runs a doughnut shop frequented by royalty and for which he is actually rather famous?”

The quirks of ponies are nothing less than amazing.

“He’s more about the baking, okay?”  Twilight put her hoof her chest, and then held it out as she attempted a gruff voice.  “A job done right has no end of rewards.”  She put her hoof down.  “It’s just that one of those rewards is popularity.  We can’t talk about private stuff in public like that!”

“Relax, Twi.  I’ll bubble us the whole time.  Nopony will hear a word.  Shield spells are my special talent after all.”

“Why do you want us to go out there so badly?  Why can’t we just pick up something and leave again?” said Twilight.

Luna spoke up again in a quieter voice, “Thou hast slept for two days, Twilight Sparkle, and ourselves for most of that as well.  We will both have raging appetites soon as we have any appetite at all.  Your brother is right to push us toward somewhere that has ‘seconds’ on hoof immediately.  Though if we may offer a suggestion, it should be the royal kitchens to which we retire, and our repast one of variety.”

Twilight stared at Luna, mentally picking apart the inconsistent plurals.  Luna snorted and walked past.  “Royal kitchens!” she shouted, picking up both siblings in her magic and carting them along behind her.

“Whoa!”  Twilight scrabbled at the magical field with her hooves.  She heard the batponies posted in the hallway snickering.  Luna’s guards weren’t nearly as stoic as Celestia’s.

“Hey!  Sorry!  Let us walk, we’ll follow!”


Princess Luna and Princess Celestia had a private dining room with sturdy furniture and paintings on the walls.  It had a high table for meals and a low table with cushioning around it for entertaining.  The paintings were visually interesting, but not one of them was by a famous painter or itself famous.  The furniture was indeed more aptly described as sturdy than fancy.  The walls weren’t even painted.  Not that any of this was new to any of the ponies currently entering it; even Shining Armor had seen it as captain of the guard.

Twilight was mortified to see that an abstract painting of a fractal she’d made for Celestia years ago was still hanging in a corner of the room.  It was neither signed nor placed obviously, so she kept quiet lest Shiny notice as well.

“It still surprises me that you prefer this setting to eat in,” Shining Armor said to Princess Luna.

“Candidly, we do not, though neither do we object.  ‘Tis our sister who finds this decor comforting.  I will go inform the chefs of our needs,” said Luna, but when she opened the door leading to the kitchen she was surprised by a maidservant carrying a platter on which were placed two large doughnuts and two small ones.  The two larger ones were neatly bisected into two pieces each for sharing.

“Princess Celestia already informed us,” said the maid brightly, stepping in and placing the platter on the high table.  “It will be some time until the main course is ready, but as you are all surely very hungry, there is no need to wait for the entire meal to finish.  We will be bringing food out as fast as it is prepared.”

Twilight’s gaze was so locked on the doughnuts that she barely noticed anything about the maid who brought them in.  The larger bisected ones were a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles and a glazed doughnut.  The two small ones were just lozenge-shaped pastries with chocolate icing on top.  They were all completely fresh.  The smooth glazing on the glazed doughnut was visible only as a faint sheen.  No clumps, no dried out bits.  Twilight could practically see the heat lines on it.

Also, at some point, it had floated off the table and begun to hover in front of her.  It was almost like magic, really.  Luna and Shining Armor seemed amused.  Twilight smiled and pointed at the floating treat.  “This is half of a glazed doughnut,” she said, deciding to pass off her unconscious telekinetic grab as having been for demonstrative purposes as she started explaining the selection of donuts.

It was still too hot to eat, anyways.


What followed was a staggered feast of breakfast goods.  Aside from the donuts, Twilight suspected that they were getting the first pick of every distinct variety of dish the castle chefs were preparing to feed the staff.  Twilight suspected as well that the castle staff was getting an unusually varied breakfast this morning.

After the donuts, the portions that followed were teasingly small.  It felt like eating was making her hungrier as it woke her digestion and did nothing to sate it.  Attempting to complain of this netted Twilight a rebuke from Luna.  The staff were attempting to prevent the two from eating themselves sick, Luna explained.  “The alicorn appetite is a problem for us all.”

To which Shining Armor joked that he’d finally found the reason why high society can’t ever seem to fill a plate.  The joke went over poorly.  Luna didn’t get it, and Twilight was just too hungry to laugh.

At length the meal did start to make an impact, and Twilight stopped fixating so much on every plate as it was carried through.  She looked at the maid serving them again.  It struck her as odd that all the tasks around the table were being performed by one pony, and possibly more odd that it had taken her so long to realize this.  The young grey mare who had been bringing them food and carrying off finished dishes was certainly fast and efficient at her task.  She was also quite unnoticeable.  She hadn’t once asked any of them what they wanted, but rather had ensured everything was right at hoof when it was desired.  Twilight wasn’t here often; was that simply the mannerisms of the Royal Pony Sisters’ Official Table Maid?

No, that couldn’t possibly be the right title.  It sounded silly in her head.  ‘Table maid’?  Twilight wasn’t willing to open her mouth and ask about that.  By the time she’d sorted out what she wanted to say, the maid was away again and the three were once more alone.

“I don’t recognize the pony who has been serving us,” Twilight said.

Luna startled and looked intensely at the door.  “We also do not,” she said with a frown.

Shiny mimicked Luna's response.  Three seconds ticked by.  Twilight let out a breath.  “Uh, is it really such a big deal?  I mean, the castle is kind of big, do you remember everypony on the staff?”

Shining Armor started to speak, “No, I—”  Then he trailed off and relaxed again.  “Wait, I don’t work here anymore, do I?  It no longer makes sense to alarm when I don’t recognize the serving staff.”

Luna had her ears trained forward on the door.  “Well, I still work here.  Hmm...  None of us has had to call for service at any point.  Even when we first arrived...”  Luna looked at a glass of water on the table.  She had never requested it.  The maid serving the table had made a round with a water pitcher as if summoned by thirsty thought alone.

Luna delicately tipped the water glass over onto its side, causing it to spill across the table.

The door towards the kitchens popped open and out came a grey earth pony with straight dark hair.  She was promptly swept up in Shining Armor’s rosy magic aura.  “Huh?  Oh, hello,” she said, the earth pony surprised but not apparently bothered to be levitating in a field of somepony else’s magic.  “Have I been getting in the way?”

“Please, forgive me if I’m wrong.  Perhaps it’s just old guard instinct acting up, but you aren’t actually a member of the castle staff, are you?”

“No, I’m not, but I’m impressed you even saw me!  I must be out of practice,” said the maid, at which point she elongated with a snap and encircled the room.

“A draconequus!”  That was Twilight and Shining Armor.

Sloth!”  That was Luna.

With another snap, the grey earth pony was once more afloat where Shining Armor had been holding her.  So briefly had she been in another form that Twilight stretched to even come up with details.  There’d been a ram’s curving horn, grey fur, and a flash of golden scales.  She wasn’t sure of the rest.

Shining’s magic was no longer holding her up, but Sloth floated in place nonetheless.  “That is me, one of three!  Sloth, Despair, an’ Vict-or-ee,” sing-songed Sloth.  Twilight and Shining Armor shared a glance.  Luna was surprised but not alarmed, so they stayed quiet.

Luna said, “We would never have expected thou to be performing service work.  Thy nature must be greatly changed from last we looked upon thy works!”  She looked at the spilled water on the table.  “Thy efforts were service, were they not?  Or art we now poisoned?”

Sloth frowned and hopped down out of the air.  She walked over to the side of Luna.  “Of course you’re not poisoned. I spend most of my time serving ponies, have for a great many years.  You just never tried to track me down after I dropped off the radar.  Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Thou art welcome?”

“Hm?  Oh, I meant that!  Really, being the Queen Sloth was just oxymoronic,” said Sloth, quietly picking up Luna’s dropped glass and mopping up the spill with a rag she pulled from nowhere.  Twilight was abruptly reminded of Pinkie Pie, especially when the used rag promptly vanished back into nowhere.  Then again, the next thing that happened was Sloth circling the top of the glass with a hoof and causing it to refill itself with fresh water, and Twilight recognized that as perfectly normal Zebrican magic.  “I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea.  My defeat at your hooves was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Surely being the Servant Sloth is oxymoronic too?”

“S’all relative!  It’s not helping others that I hate, just exerting myself.  Being all slavemaster-rawr took everything I had.  Serving ponies takes so little, I’ve trilocated myself right now just to keep things interesting.”

Twilight raised a hoof.  “Pardon, does ‘trilocated’ mean you’re in three places at once?  I only see one of you.”

“The other two are in Ponyville and the Crystal Empire respectively,” said Sloth with a smile.  “The Crystal Empire!  It’s beautiful.  I thought I’d never see it again.”

Twilight fell back to her chair in shock.  What kind of magic could put Sloth in three such disparate locations at once?

Shining Armor said, “Why are you here offering us food?”

Sloth popped up right next to the shocked Twilight and set a black book on the table.  “I brought this from the Ponyville library for you!  You’ll need it again.”  Then she turned to face Shining Armor and said, “I wanted to greet Equestria’s newest alicorn.  Well, sort of greet.  I wasn’t going to say anything, just make sure you were all healthy and had a good meal, then leave that book lying somewhere conspicuous.  I didn’t think anypony would notice me.  Guess I shouldn’t be surprised!  I could never put one over on Celestia, so why should I be able to trick her sister, her guard captain, or her student?”

Twilight picked up the book that Sloth had set down.  This was Star Swirl the Bearded’s private journal again.  The starry swirl symbol on its cover was immediately recognizable.  “How did you get this?  I keep it in the lockbox under my bed!”

“Draconequus here, I only LOOK like a pony,” said Sloth, her legs abruptly elongating to let her look Twilight in the eye even though she was on the floor and Twilight was in a chair.  “I’m practically a walking hole in reality!”  At that, Sloth’s legs snapped back into position and she landed on the floor.

Shining Armor started to speak again, but Sloth interrupted by saying, “Oh, my quiche is ready!  You’re going to like it.”  She cantered off to the kitchen.

If anypony had still been inclined to question Sloth, they forgot all about that when they saw her bring back a whole spinach quiche, with no fancy plating or garnishes.  After a morning on the half-bite, sharing a quiche by the slice was heavenly.


Sloth vanished as soon as she bit into her second slice of quiche.  With no service, Twilight asked Shining Armor to go ask the kitchen if they knew anything about what was going on, and he headed out.  Once she was alone with Luna...

“I wanted to ask something about Nightmare,” said Twilight.  “Quick, before Shiny gets back.  You know those chains she showed me in Ponyville?  Were those real?”

“They are... somewhat real. Nightmare is obsessive about the stars. She overstates their power.”

“Well, the way she got me to start breaking them was by showing me one that was going to cause somepony to set my library on fire.  Was that actually going to happen?”

Luna considered Twilight carefully, glancing at the door towards the kitchens.  “I once thought Nightmare my friend.  Be on guard, Twilight Sparkle.  Nightmare speaks nothing but truth and nothing but lies.  I have never seen her use chains as she did when she had you bound.  I worry she may be—”

At that point, the door opened to let Shining Armor back in, and Luna clammed up.  “The kitchen didn’t even know we were getting food,” he said.

“Oh well,” said Twilight.  “I guess that quiche will hold for now anyways.  I’d really like to see why a draconequus would think it so important that I had this book again.”

Luna said, “And I am two nights past when duty should have sent me to the crawling wall in the north.”

“So you’re going right back to sleep?”

Luna gave Twilight a pained look.  “Please, dear Twilight.  It is sleep in only the most technical of senses.  I am the one pony in Equestria who can suffer insomnia and vivid dreams simultaneously.”

With that, Luna bowed out to return to her chambers, and Twilight was left with Shining Armor.  “You okay, sis?  Things have been weird all week,” he said, walking over to her.

Twilight hugged him as soon as he was in reach for hugs.  “I’ll be fine, BBBFF, but something’s going on.  I’m worried about what it means for everypony else.”

“Well, worry about yourself too, okay?  Don't just open that book and start reading. Take it to Celestia.”


“And as you can see, the text is still glowing.  I can close it, but it only opens back up to this page.  It’s like all the pages have been glued shut but this one,” said Twilight, gesturing at the book where it lay open on Celestia’s desk.

Celestia looked between the book and her student.  “Have you tried reading it?”

Twilight shook out her wings and pawed at the floor.  “Well, no.  It doesn’t seem safe.”

“Let me try.”  Celestia walked over to her desk and started to read the glowing text.  There was a peculiar sound like a roar mixed with ripping paper and a flare of black light that clung to Celestia’s eyes and horn, pulling her in nearer to it.  With a grunt of effort, the Princess pulled her head away from the book.  “Ugh, that is unpleasant magic.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Celestia didn’t answer.  She just closed the book with a hoof, opened it up again, and then leaned in and examined the binding closely while avoiding the glowing text.  “Oh, goodness.  This is the original.  Luna actually did take a knife to it.”

Twilight tilted her head.  “Of course it’s the original..?” she said.

“Mm.  Twilight Sparkle, I have a confession to make.  I tried to pass off a counterfeit book to you.”

“But you failed, because it was the original.  Only Luna took a knife to it to make it look like the counterfeit you wanted to use.  So the original-original, as it originally was, had more text than this?” asked Twilight.  Being not quite capable of thinking ill of Celestia, and not easily capable of it with Luna, it hadn’t yet occurred to her to be horrified by the desecration of books this sequence of events implied.

“It had more...  I am not sure ‘text’ is the right word.  This is not exactly a book.  It is a semi-extant metaphor that is pretending to be a book.  Pretending rather poorly, at the moment.”

“Well, is it dangerous?”

Celestia looked at the book again and flinched when it grabbed her with another flare of black light.  She shook it off and sighed.  “The book is physically harmless,” Celestia said, and then looked off into the distance as she searched her memory for something.  Twilight waited until Celestia continued.  “I recommend reading it.  I am aware of the gift that Nightmare gave you.  These are the same species of object.  It is likely that the book is reacting to your coin, and you will need to know what it is trying to tell you.”

“It’s not going to corrupt me weirdly, is it?”

Celestia shook her head.  “Corruption is... not the word.  I will be right here for you.  If something bad happens, I will help.”

Twilight climbed up to the desk and regarded the book, setting a trembling hoof on it.  It just sat there.  It was silly to be afraid of a book, right?  Once she'd steadied herself, she moved in closer.  When the black light seized her, she reacted only by moving her eyes across the glowing text.


Celestia stepped through a grassy green plains, surrounded by a glowing blue-white mist.  The mists were full of shapes.  Most of them were structures or plants; a few of them appeared to be animals.  All were composed of mists.  Celestia ignored them all.  There was nothing real in this space.

“I won’t be turned away.  The light is real.  I won’t be turned away.  I am the light,” chanted Celestia.  She had been walking for half an hour and speaking under her breath for most of that.  The weight of unreality burdened her as if it were something literal.  A harness of mist gathered to her, strands of it trailing off as if attached to a massive invisible cart.  She was dragging reality behind her.

There was no sun in this space.  The mist was neither smoke nor water.  The grass itself faded away until there was only the mist.  The white of the mist condensed and brightened into lights.  The blue of the mist spread and deepened.  The shapes in the mist flattened into images, becoming at once clearer and more unreal as color seeped into them.

Celestia walked the only path of light in a starry void.  Still she pulled at an invisible weight, until the harness of mist solidified and then flattened away with a hollow booming.  At this, the Princess ran free, suddenly released of the weight of the world as she galloped beyond existence.

Her joy was soon cut short as she felt shadows coalesce around her.  She couldn’t see them.  There is nothing to see, they whispered, and her vision darkened to the starry void.  This is nothing.  You are nothing.  This doesn’t exist.  You don’t exist.

“I won’t be turned away,” Celestia said, her tone dropping low as her horn lit.  “The light is real; I am the light!”

The blue void turned white with the light.  The shadows became briefly solid before evaporating.  The void quaked for a moment as it was wrenched into something nearer to Equestrian reality.  The flat images floating through the void began to resemble scenes that might plausibly come from Equestria itself.  “Some years from now, I suspect I am either going to be very happy I did that, or else very annoyed,” Celestia said cheerfully, before looking down at the starry path she had just reified.

She took a deep breath (There is no air here whispered a shadow, ignored.) and leaped from it.  A great noise of incoherent babble arose around her as she fell.  It was the detritus of every half-completed thought in history, and Celestia closed her eyes against the overload.  “I have leaped from my breath to a book.  This isn’t real, but that will not stop me.  I have leaped from my breath to a book.  I can be real when nothing else is,” she said to herself.

Several repetitions passed before she stabilized it enough, but not nearly so many as it took to get here in the first place.  The babble fell away, and Celestia felt her hooves land on a carpeted floor.  Surprised at the carpet, she opened her eyes to look at it.  It was comprised of stars as well.

She prodded it with a hoof.  It felt surprisingly solid and even comfortably plush in spite of its ethereal composition.  Then she felt shadows around her again.  Celestia lifted her head and looked around her; she was in a twisted library.  Half the walls were missing, there was no ceiling, and the sky above looked like a twisting aurora.  There were no shadows to see.  We are not real, they whispered.  You belong here.  You are not real.  Stay with us.

Celestia knew she couldn’t afford to make this place any more real than it was.  She ran.  “Romantic fiction, it’ll be in romantic fiction,” said the Princess, unaware that she was talking as she hurriedly scanned the shelves.  She struggled to divine the categorization of an alien library even as she fled the shadows of nonexistence.  They didn’t seem to be chasing her.  (Make me more real whispered a shadow, ignored.)

The Princess’s horn crackled and fizzled as she attempted a seeking spell, and she groaned in frustration.  The spell is too real, she thought, and then she froze for an instant.  Was that her thought or one of the shadows?  “By my gilded sun,” cursed Celestia.  “Three was too much!  Just two.  I swear I’ll only take two, after all.  But I MUST have that NAME.”

She begged forgiveness from whatever power governed the spaces beyond reality and poured more power into the seeking spell.  A light pulsed from her horn and hung in the air before her, shimmering between black and pink.  It shivered there for a moment before taking off fast through the halls.  Celestia took off after it, galloping as fast as she could to avoid losing the spell.

The light led her up ramps and down; there were no stairs in this place.  Several times she nearly lost it when it flew through a gap in the wall and forced her to take a longer path rather than leap across open void.  Finally, it led her down a path that dead-ended where it looked like the hallway had boiled off into nothingness.  Far ahead, more hallway could be seen, and the light made straight for it.  There was no path to avoid this leap.  Celestia spread her wings wide as she leaped across the opening.

An icy wind caressed her feathers as it blew up from the void, carrying with it a noisome change in the air.  Where the library had smelled only of books, this gap where the library had boiled off to something else smelled like soil and cleaning chemicals.  Celestia landed with a shudder.  She could hear a swampy sound of motion behind her and a distant buzzing.  The heart of magic is what begs to be real, she thought, and with a flinch she took off running again.  That was not her thought.  Maybe two was too much as well, but she was unwilling to abandon another piece of her quest.

There was not much farther to travel.  The black-and-pink light of her spell turned one last corner and then struck a bookcase, which gleamed pink for a moment.  Celestia approached it and glanced around herself skittishly, expecting to be accosted by shadows the instant she stopped running.  Nothing came.  I want to exist, whispered a shadow, ignored.

Celestia raised a hoof hesitantly to the shelf, examining the titles closely for the first time since she arrived here.  They were all gibberish.  For a moment, anger marred her expression, then she took a deep breath and calmed herself.  “I can be real when nothing else is,” she said with closed eyes, plucking a book from the shelf at random.  She opened her eyes and looked at it.  Black, with a complex pattern of pink and green that felt like it should mean something.  Celestia knew she had the right book when she flipped through several pages and found that after the first few chapters, the pages started being interrupted by an increasing number of holes.  The pattern wanted to mean something, said a shadow, and it very nearly sounded real.

It was too real.  The shadows weren’t real.  Celestia’s ears twitched.  Had she heard something?  She pushed it off.  “I don’t need your life story,” she said to the book, flipping back to the first few pages to search for the attribution.

“In gratitude for Love, without whom nothing I care about would be real,” she read, and then she lifted one of her gold-shod hooves and scraped the word Love off of the sentence.  It came up in a pink dust that rapidly condensed into a glowing sphere.  Celestia pressed a hoof to the sphere and rubbed it against the book for a moment, before stashing it in the storage space concealed under her peytral.  It was warm at her chest.  For a moment, it was hard to believe there could ever be a shadow in all the world.

Unbeknownst to Celestia, her horn flashed white while she stood there stunned.

It took her a moment to recover and remember that she was in a strange space.  “Forgive me,” she said to the book as she gently put it back into its place.  “This will work out best for us all.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” spoke a new voice.

Celestia jumped and whirled to look at its source.  It was a black unicorn who didn't quite touch the starry carpet of the floor.  His mane rippled similarly to Celestia’s own, and she could swear she could see through him.  He barely looked real.  Was he real?

“This place is dangerous,” continued the unicorn.  His voice was rough like it’d never been used before.  Celestia was struck by the dissonantly amusing urge to give him a cough drop.  “Even for such as you.”

“How can you exist here?  This place is formed of stillborn belief and broken thought.”

“Perhaps I am a broken thought,” he said.  “You smell different.  Leave!”

“I can’t.  Destiny begs to be changed, and only here is that possible.  Help me!  If you help me, I will be away that much sooner,” Celestia said hopefully.  

The shadowy unicorn stared at her for an uncomfortable moment.  “A book...” he said faintly.  “You have loaned me something ineffable.  You will take it back, but I will be grateful until then.”

Celestia said, “I need the book of Star Swirl the Bearded.”

The dark unicorn nodded and walked over to another shelf.  “Barely outside of romance,” he said with the ghost of a smile, pointing to a single black book.  Celestia tried to ignore the fangs revealed by the expression as she walked over to pull the book from the shelf.

She looked at its cover, and the image on it brought a smile to her face.  What else would it be but two stars and a swirl?  “Oh, Star Swirl.  You never knew what you nearly had,” she said.  She flipped the book to the last page and took the pink sphere out from under her peytral.  She looked between the two.  “Old friend, someone is going to find what you missed someday, I just know it.  I can’t spare much for them...  Hopefully they’ll have talent enough to provide the rest.”

With that, she smacked the sphere against the wood of a nearby bookshelf with her hoof and pinned it there, collecting in her magic some of the dust which constituted it.  That dust was pressed into the spell written on the book’s last page, which shone brightly for a moment before becoming normal text again.  She stuffed the rest of the pink sphere back into her peytral again, followed by the book.

“I just hope you can forgive me for making whoever I give this book to think you were an obsessive journaler,” hummed Celestia, turning about... to face an angry black unicorn.

“You must NOT take objects from here!  They are not REAL!  You play with fire!” he said, then abruptly lunged forward.

Celestia shied back, barely avoiding being tackled.  “Luna!  Sister!  I need you now!” she called as she ran from a shadow for the second time, this one corporeal.

“Graaah!  Must NOT leav—Oof!”  The shadowed unicorn crashed into the dark-armored visage of the Princess of the Night.  He shied away from her.  She didn’t even seem to notice.

“‘Dear’ sister, what foolery is this?  Why do I find you walking the far realms?  This place is dangerous even for such as we,” said Luna, frowning angrily.

“So I have heard,” murmured Celestia, then picked up her voice to continue, “I can explain, but not here.  I have permitted this place too much reality as it is.

Luna growled and nodded, arching her head back as her aura flashed with thunder and surrounded them both.  With a flash, it restored them to normal reality.

When the wind of their passage had settled, Luna walked over to one of the windows.  “Really, sister,” said Luna, looking out at the forest beyond.  “How far did you go?  We’ll be lucky if this entire forest isn’t tainted by such an excursion.”

Celestia stretched and flapped her wings, then ran a circuit of the room like a giddy foal.  “Ah, blessed banality!  There is AIR here!  Real, non-metaphorical air!” she said.  She took several deep breaths, then she leaned down and sniffed at the carpet.  “And dusty carpets.  Did you fire our maidstaff again?”

“Nevermind that!  You must tell me at once what you were doing,” Luna said severely.

Celestia hmmed, then fetched the book and the sphere out of her peytral.  The book looked perfectly mundane.  The sphere did not, and exposed to reality, its glow was turning sickly.  Celestia wrapped it in a protective bubble of her own magic, conjured a tiara she’d prepared for the purpose, and pushed the sphere into the tiara.  Luna watched with some wonder as Celestia set the tiara down on a nearby shelf.

“You stole something,” said Luna, awed.

“Yes, I did.  Don’t worry...  Its owner had already buried it.  I saved it from destruction,” said Celestia.  She walked over to her sister, and gestured to the book she held floating in her magic.  “I need you to do something else for me, as well.”

Luna grabbed the book out of the air with a hoof and stared at it.  “This shouldn’t exist, not here, not as something real,” she said angrily.  “I am going to go put this back!”

“Sister, no!  Please don’t!  Look at the spell on the last page.  Just don’t read it out loud.”

Luna hesitated before opening the book and flipping to the last page.  She started to murmur as she read it, and Celestia hushed her.  Luna regarded the incantation darkly... then doubt slipped into her expression.  “This is... incomplete.  It doesn’t even rhyme.  Yet it has the feel of alicorn magic.  Was my Star Swirl trying to become an alicorn?”

“Yes, he was, for you.  I need you to...” Celestia hesitated.  She’d meant to say ‘cut this down into a plausible journal’, but Luna’s earlier negative reaction to the book even being brought out of the far realms made her think otherwise.  The book was a reified metaphor for Star Swirl’s life.  Requesting that Luna take a knife to it suddenly felt like a good way to get struck by lightning.  

Celestia said instead, “I need you to prepare a journal from this book, and place the page with the incomplete spell into that journal.  Then you may return the book.”

“This isn’t right...” Luna said, hoof hovering over the book.  She looked like she was resisting the temptation to keep reading.

Celestia stepped over and put a hoof on Luna’s shoulder.  “You’re the only pony I could ask to do this.  You were closer to Star Swirl than anypony.  But if you don’t want to do this, if you truly believe the book should just be taken back to where it came from, it’s up to you.”

“Why did you do this?” Luna asked, looking at her sister.  For the first time since she’d taken up Nightmare's dark armor, she looked small.

“He invented more magic in his life than any of us did in lifetimes, and he was on the cusp of immortality.  I couldn’t let history’s greatest conjurer fade away.  Maybe this wasn’t the way I should have done it.  It’s up to you,” Celestia said.  “The thing I needed more than anything, that could have been saved from oblivion in no other way, that I did retrieve.”  She picked up the tiara she’d set down earlier.

Celestia watched for some moments longer as Luna hesitantly turned the page back and started reading, then turned the book back to the first page and started reading linearly.  Satisfied that her sister would handle it well, she turned and walked away.


“She LIED to me.  HE lied to me!” hissed Luna as she read the part describing the creation of the spell.  “He was trying to become an alicorn, but it had nothing to do with me!”

The hocks-deep pile of notes from Luna’s “Star Swirl’s Journal” project suddenly rose in a whirlwind around the angered alicorn as lightning crashed in the sky beyond her window.

“If I am so unlovable that nopony will ever CHOOSE to love me, I will permit them the CHOICE no longer!”


The black light of the book’s magic faded, and Twilight pulled her head back from the text.  The glowing faded from it.  It looked like ordinary writing once more.  “Ugh, that felt a lot like talking to Nightmare again,” she said, rubbing her horn.  “When did history get so hallucinogenic?  How long was I out?”  She didn’t have the neck ache she expected from the bad posture the book had pulled her into.

Celestia was right behind Twilight, and immediately put her wings around the smaller alicorn.  “Two minutes, twenty six seconds,” she said.  “What did the book show you?”

Twilight thought hard about what she’d seen.  She wanted to wonder at the gesture of Celestia’s wings around her, but what she’d seen was disturbing her.  That weird space she’d seen when she first ‘ascended’?  Celestia had created it.  That spell that Star Swirl hadn’t been able to make work?  Celestia had empowered it with stolen divinity.  The journal itself?  Star Swirl never WROTE a journal!

“Twilight?  Are you alright?”

“I have no destiny.”

“You have a glorious destiny, my student,” said Celestia.

Twilight snorted.  “Technically, yes.  I think I understand.  I DO have a destiny.  I have lots of destiny.  The cast-off dregs of YOUR destiny.  I’m a tool.”  She turned around to face Celestia, batting away the other alicorn’s wings with her own.  She didn’t want to be touched, but... she took a breath.  She wasn’t angry.  She didn’t know enough yet to let herself be angry.  More confrontational than she’d ever been towards Celestia in her life, yes, but not angry.  “You made me,” she said.

“Twilight, I don’t understand.  I did not make you.”

“You did.  You took the soul of a dead wizard, the name of a corrupted god, and the grief of your own sister, and out of those ingredients, you made yourself the perfect little filly.  Was it worth it?”

Celestia looked at Twilight, and the dust of ages was on them both.

Twilight heard a whisper in her ear, a voice of Nightmare that only she could hear.  Let me be your seer, and what you see will not endear.

In that moment, Twilight saw a wide halo twist into existence around Celestia’s head.  It was bone white and printed with harsh black symbols.  At first, the phrases around it came in every variety.  There were denials.  There were explanations in text too small and dense for Twilight to read in an instant.  There were excuses begging Twilight not to believe words born of dark magic.  There were countless different responses to Twilight’s words, but fully half the halo appeared to be etched with the phrase “No price paid could make me regret you”.  That sentiment...  For that, Twilight would have forgiven the Princess anything.

Then as Twilight watched, the symbols around the halo caught fire and were replaced with a new phrase.  “I know I’m right.”  Twilight knew that this vision was taking place in a heartbeat, and yet it seemed that she watched for three full seconds as fires swarmed over the halo replacing words with that single self-justifying phrase.

The half of the halo that said “No price paid could make me regret you” withstood all the fire until it was the last thing left, and the halo was entirely ringed by the two competing sentiments.  At first the fires could not shift those letters, lighting them but not consuming them, and then they too succumbed.

The fire faded.

The halo tore.  

Half of it fell to ash.

The ragged remnant floated about Celestia’s head like a banner.  In ashen script it proclaimed, “I know I’m right.”

“I know I’m right,” whispered the Spirit of Pride, and Twilight’s heart broke around her words.

A wisp of smoke flowed in and popped into a scroll at Celestia’s ear.  Twilight startled free of Nightmare’s perspective, the burnt banner vanishing from around Celestia.  She grabbed the scroll immediately with her magic before Celestia herself could react.  She unrolled it and read,

Dear Twilight,

The library’s been getting some really weird letters.  I think whoever’s writing them is really angry at you, but they don’t make any sense.  I wouldn’t bother you about it, but two things happened this morning.

First off, somepony threw a bottle of something splashy at the library and then ran off like he’d seen a ghost a moment later.  We found some matches too, so...  There’s a bunch of guards around the library now.  They’ll probably still be here when you get back.  Apparently attempting to burn down a Princess’ home is a big deal.  

Secondly, and in spite of the guards, Berry Punch seems to have gotten into your bedroom somehow.  I found her passed out by your bed, hugging a plush toy of Celestia.  It was creepy.  She smelled really bad and I couldn’t wake her up, so I got Big Macintosh and he managed to get her up and out of the library.

I hope it wasn’t a problem that I let Big Macintosh into your room.  Did you upset somepony weird in Canterlot?  And what was up with Berry?  Why was she in your room?

Please come back soon,

Spike.

Twilight dropped the letter and facehooved.  All of a sudden, she had a pretty good idea who was Ponyville’s edition of “Sloth”.  Celestia caught the letter as it fell and scanned it quickly.

“Oh my,” said Celestia.  “Do you have a stalker?”

“No, just another schemer yanking my chain.”