//------------------------------// // Ninth Century // Story: Calling You // by AugieDog //------------------------------// "More tea, Cadance?" "Yes, thank you." Scrawling notes onto the last pages of her most recent ledger, Cadance hadn't even noticed that her cup had run dry; she smiled at her aunt, dabbed the period at the end of the final sentence with a bit of a flourish, and let her magic flip the notebook closed. "I can't believe it's all really coming together!" "I can." Aunt Celestia sipped from her own cup, the teapot drifting over in the golden flex of her power. "You've done a remarkable job on this." Muscles twitching, Cadance let her wings unfurl, let them flap her slowly a few inches up from Auntie's plush white carpet, stretched her legs out in front and behind: an evening meeting to bring her aunt up-to-date on the project had turned into another all-nighter, Cadance eagerly brainstorming with Aunt Celestia and jotting down all her suggestions till dawn was less than an hour away. "The one thing I really wish I could figure out—" She stopped, shook her head, settled back into place. "But no. It can't be done." "Oh?" Aunt Celestia arched an eyebrow. With a laugh, Cadance wrapped her magic around several of the books and set them on the table. "OK, you tell me how we can get these particular families to intermarry over the next generation or two without completely taking away their freedom of choice." Aunt Celestia's horn glowed, her eyes half-closed as she turned a few pages. "Is it necessary for the project's success?" Cadance shrugged. "Not really. I mean, whomever they marry at this point, their foals and their foals' foals are going to be incredible. And that generation or the one after that..." Cadance took a breath and blew it out. "Those ponies will be our Element Bearers." "But—" Aunt Celestia tapped a hoof against the books in front of her. "If these families merged?" Just the thought of it made Cadance shiver. "Combining their qualities and concentrating them would be...oh, it would be a dream come true." "Goodness." Smiling over the rim of her teacup, Aunt Celestia looked even more inscrutable than usual. "Well, dreams fall more under your aunt Luna's purview than mine, but still—" She slid the open ledgers around to Cadance's side of the table. "In your notes, you describe these families as sharing a trait you call 'a spirit of adventure,' and I've recently been thinking about letting homesteaders settle in a part of Equestria that I've been reluctant to open." A map popped into the air behind Aunt Celestia, an area not far from Canterlot beginning to glow. "Travelers call it the Everfree Forest, I hear, since the land, the sky, and the animals there respond to nopony's will." "That's—" Cadance swallowed. "That's where you and Aunt Luna had your castle, isn't it?" "Long ago," her aunt murmured. She cleared her throat. "The place has become quite wild in our absence and will need ponies of character, heart, and determination to coax it back to any semblance of civilization." The map rolled up and floated down to rest on Cadance's open ledgers. "Might that be a challenge to which these families you've been working with would respond?" Cadance couldn't keep from leaping to her hoofs. "Oh, Auntie, it'd be perfect! A new frontier right in the center of Equestria! They wouldn't be able to resist!" She reopened the map, anticipation quivering up and down her spine. "If the families choose to move there in order to found a new town, they'll all end up living together and bonding while working toward a common goal! They'll become friends and their colts and fillies will grow up and get closer as they get older and will fall in love and—" She sprang across the table and threw her front legs around her aunt's neck. "Thank you, Auntie! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Aunt Celestia's chuckle stroked Cadance's ears. "It hasn't happened yet, niece." "But it will." Cadance stepped back, her mind spinning. "That'll take care of our two earth pony candidates and probably one of our unicorns." She spun back to the table, flipped several ledgers open. "All the pegasus families are already in Cloudsdale, so we'll just have to make sure they have reasons to stay! Most of them work in the Weather Bureau now, and if their foals follow in their hoofsteps, I'll just need to do my usual nudging and hoping." Shivering again, Cadance looked up. "And that'll be five of the six right there. Just like that..." The whole weird reality of the situation flooded Cadance, the end of the project practically in view, and she almost didn't notice Aunt Celestia asking, "Something wrong, niece?" Not anything she could explain, of course, not without talking about Chrysalis and her little needling jabs. "The sixth candidate will likely be born here in Canterlot, and I—" She'd been thinking about this on and off for nearly nine decades, but hadn't decided to do it till that very moment. "I'd like to get more closely involved with that family's last generation somehow. I need to make sure that I...that I know them, make sure that I see them as ponies and not as...as..." She felt her face heating up. "As names in a ledger or pieces on a game board or anything like that, especially before we send them out to face Nightmare Moon." She forced her gaze up to meet her aunt's. "If that makes sense?" "It most certainly does." The smile on Aunt Celestia's face shone like the first sliver of a summer dawn, and the glow of her magic opened several of Cadance's notebooks. "I noticed earlier that most of the unicorn families you're following are palace staff in one way or another, and we have a regular roster of professionals to help our employees with foal care. When the time comes, I'll see to it that you're on the list of governesses we maintain and will personally recommend you to the family in question." "Thank you. I—" The base of her horn began that familiar tingling, and with her heart so full of love for...well, for everypony everywhere, really, Cadance stood. "May I leave these books here, Aunt Celestia? I'm getting a Call right now, but I'll try to be back for sun-up." "Of course, niece." Aunt Celestia wasn't shining any more than usual, but Cadance could feel her warmth. "I'll start drawing up the homesteading announcement for the region around the Everfree Forest." Clapping her hoofs, Cadance fired up her magic, sliced the air open, and sprang into the void, waves of joy radiating out from her to fill the usually neutral spaces between space. She couldn't keep from dancing, skating, whirling like a filly: they were so close to their goal, so close to reigniting the Elements of Harmony and assigning them to their perfect Bearers, so close to having the magic they would need to break Aunt Luna free from the grip of Nightmare Moon! Another hundred years, and— Cadance slid back into the Mortal Realm then, the force of the Call drawing her to a small house on a quiet, tree-lined street in one of Fillydelphia's suburbs: Pink Peony's house, Cadance knew as she always did, an earth pony who'd spent decades as a city park commissioner, doing her best to make sure the ponies here had open, green spaces among the steel and glass towers of the expanding metropolis. Surrounded now by her loving family, she was very close to— The house suddenly erupted like a volcano in front of Cadance, flames bursting from the walls and roof, an explosion of red and pink shooting into the pre-dawn sky higher than any of the neighborhood's trees. The force of the blast slammed over Cadance, singed her hide with the sheer energy of— Of the love being generated? Cadance blinked, realized she wasn't seeing the fiery bubble encasing the house with her eyes, the street around her just as dark as before. No, she was sensing it with her magic, a storm of love and grief, of devotion and sorrow so huge and violent, she'd never even dreamed such a thing might be possible. And it was punching through the delicate lacework that usually wove itself around all ponies both alive and in the Groves Beyond like multiple bricks hurtling through a stained glass window. In a flash, Cadance leaped through to Peony's bedroom—and froze at the sight of herself already there, six mortal ponies stretched out prostrate and weeping on the carpet beside the bed. Peony quivered under the covers, the love she felt for her family swirling around her and sucking in the love her family felt for her, the cyclone of it all ripping the fabric of space to shreds and showing glimpses of the Groves, ponies swaying there, the storm wrapping around them as well. But the ponies on that side all had doubles on this side, the dissonance of two sets of identical ponies adding to the awful majesty of the careening tornado, its widening gyre being directed by the other Cadance, her eyes half-closed and a smile twitching her muzzle. And for all the love that flowed into this other Cadance and the duplicate ponies around her, none of them gave back a single flicker of that feeling. "Chrysalis!" Cadance screamed, and the riotous churn of emotions jittered to a halt, the funnel cloud crackling into place like some horrible ice sculpture. The other Cadance's eyes went wide, her ears flattening, indignation spreading over her face. All she said, though, into the sudden silence, was: "Pink Peony? It's time." Peony gasped and popped from her body like a cork from a bottle, her spirit sailing across the room to one of the jagged gashes that showed the Groves Beyond and flopping through onto the ground beside her equally exhausted friends and relations. Chrysalis's horn flared green, and the storm vanished along with all the changelings; blinking, Cadance found only the six mortal ponies still in the room with her, their tears continuing to flow wild and unrestrained. *** Dawn had come and gone by the time Cadance got Peony's relatives settled enough to sleep, their links to the eternal mosaic of love not severed but severely frayed. Cadance whispered gentle words, coaxed them to remember the good times with Peony, and watched their dangling strands of love start to weave themselves back toward full strength. She then stepped quietly out onto the street and walked, waiting till she was half a block away before she allowed her rage to take her. Tearing through the air, she burst into her sitting room, her every thought, feeling and sense telling her that that was where she would find— "Chrysalis!" Cadance didn't bother keeping her voice down, didn't bother trying to keep her anger from crashing like a flash flood over the changeling leader, sitting up on the sofa with her front legs crossed. "Just what in the black bowels of Tartarus was all that??" As calm as always, Chrysalis didn't bat an eye. "I was on a Call," she said. "A Call?? No!" Flinging out a hoof to point behind her, Cadance could barely stop shivering. "That was a disaster! That was a travesty! That was a...a nightmare!" "Well?" Chrysalis gave the tiniest bit of a shrug. "You interrupted me before I could wrap things up, didn't you?" "Really??" Choking, Cadance had to fight to get the words out. "And what were you gonna do for an encore, huh?? Suck the blood out of 'em the way you were sucking out their love??" Chrysalis opened her mouth, but Cadance stomped a hoof with a thunderclap that shook the house. "You were purposefully pumping up their emotions, purposefully twisting their feelings into that...that obscene whatever-it-was just so you could feed off the excess! And not just Pink Peony and her family's emotions! You were draining love from the ponies in the Groves Beyond! You were deliberately weakening the web that binds all ponies together and...and eating it!" Chrysalis's black brow remained smooth. "I would instead characterize it as extending the moment of catharsis in order to allow the expression of every last drop of necessary emotion." Cadance could only stare open-mouthed, and Chrysalis finally blinked, her eyelids twitching several times. "All right," the changeling said. "I'll admit to running things a little close to the edge there, but—" "A little??" Cadance wanted to stomp again, but she suddenly became aware of the stillness in the air, a silence she hadn't heard in the Realm Between in close to a thousand years. However many hundreds of changelings now lived in the hive up the hill, every single one of them had stopped buzzing: Cadance could just imagine all their wings clamped as tightly to their sides as Chrysalis's were. And the dry, sour scent she'd been breathing in without noticing it till now? Fear, she realized, plain and simple. Pulling in a breath, she physically took a step back, closed her eyes, lowered her head. "All right," she said, a little surprised at how close to normal the words came out. "Then I'll admit that I panicked when I saw what was happening. I might've even freaked out a little." The silence went on another couple heartbeats, then with a slight rustle of wings, Chrysalis asked, "A little?" "Don't push it, Chrys." Cadance had never growled before in her life. Chrysalis's wings stuttered, then started up again. "So, we're both admitting that mistakes were made. Can we agree that we'll both try to do better in the future and move on to more pleasant subjects?" And as much as Cadance wanted to do just that, the questions filling her head wouldn't let her. "How did you know there was a Call at Pink Peony's, Chrys? I didn't send you a message about it." "Oh, well, I, uhh—" Chrysalis cleared her throat, her eyes dancing away when Cadance looked up to meet her gaze. "I figured out a century or two ago how to detect the upsurges in love energy that meant a pony was dying somewhere, so I've been dispatching the teams on my own." Chrysalis cocked her head, the pale green glow of those eyes darting back. "Odd you haven't noticed." That almost got another growl from Cadance, but she swallowed it down. "And what exactly was supposed to happen after the part that I saw?" "Ah. Yes." Chrysalis's ears fell, and for the first time, Cadance noticed that Chrysalis was wearing an odd little spiky hat. "As long as you understand that the process wasn't supposed to get as wild as that and that I take full responsibility for not quite keeping a damper on the energy generated by the six mourners there at the—" "Wait." Cadance couldn't look away from the object perched on Chrysalis's head. "Are you...are you wearing a crown?" "Ah. Yes." More clearing of throat, and Chrysalis cringed, almost seemed to shrink a little there on the sofa. "You did annoint me queen, after all, and, well, my subjects presented this to me a couple decades ago." Four thin, black stumps curving up from a ring tangled in the moldy seaweed of her mane, little blue-green balls jammed onto the tips like bits of cheese gone bad: the laugh had burst from her throat before Cadance even knew it was there. Chrysalis narrowed her eyes. "Something funny?" The tug-of-war inside Cadance—tell Chrys how stupid her crown looked or let the whole thing go—went back and forth, but Cadance finally shook her head. "No, Chrys, it's not," she said. "Not after what I saw at Peony's." "It won't happen again, all right?" More than a little peevishness sulked behind Chrysalis's words. "This method I've developed for dispersing and distributing pent-up love works best on a one-to-one basis, but if I'd had time to run those mortals through a proper cool-down session, I would've easily regained control and—" "Regained?" Every part of Cadance that had been overheated a few moments ago now seemed cool and smooth, and she did her best to nurture the feeling. "So you were out-of-control?" "I wasn't, Cady." Chrysalis sat up straighter. "The situation was. I just need more practice with—" "No." Cadance fixed her gaze on Chrysalis's. "If your experiments with living ponies have led to this, then I can't let you do those experiments anymore." Another twitch of her eyelids, and Chrysalis's lips tightened. "You said it was all right as long as we didn't hurt any ponies." "Those ponies at Peony's—" "I said I was sorry, didn't I?? And if you would've let me finish there, I would've fixed everything just fine!" "Fixed?" A quick thought flashed through Cadance's mind, and she reached out with her magic, found a book she'd shown to Chrysalis nearly three-quarters of a millennium ago, popped it into the air between them with it open to the photograph of the Obsidian Shard standing beside her statue First Flight. "So if I took a hammer and smashed this sculpture to pieces, that would be all right as long as I promised to glue it back together again?" Ears flicking up and down, Chrysalis nodded. "If you were sufficiently skillful to repair it completely, I don't see why that would be a problem." A shiver iced down Cadance's back. "And if you weren't sufficiently skillful?" Chrysalis leaped to her hoofs. "You want us to stop, Cady?? Fine! Maybe you'd enjoy doing your actual job for once if we stopped taking your Calls!" A nasty little smile curled over Chrysalis's muzzle. "Or maybe my changelings and I should pay a visit to your beloved auntie. Introduce her to the horrible monsters her sweet and wonderful niece creates in her spare time." Struggling to keep hold of the cool, collected feeling inside her—she couldn't afford to take any more attention away from the Elements project, not when they were so close to fruition!—Cadance shrugged. "You do whatever you think's right, Chrys. But I won't call you monsters in front of Aunt Celestia or anypony else. Because you're not monsters. You and your changelings have kept Equestria safe, happy, and united for nine hundred years, working long and hard without ever getting the recognition you deserve." Her jaw dropping slightly, Chrysalis stared. "And maybe you're right," Cadance went on. "Maybe what I saw today at Pink Peony's house was an aberration. Maybe I was wrong in thinking that you were completely in control of that storm the whole time, the way you shut it down with barely a blink as soon as I entered the room. And maybe you can quit doing Calls. Maybe you can find a way to support however many hundreds of changelings you've got looking to you for leadership without drawing strength from the love I allow you to access." Again Chrysalis opened her mouth, but Cadance held up a hoof. "Either way, we're at an impasse here." Unable to keep up the pretense, she had to stop and clear her throat. "But you...you're my friend, Chrys. I love you like a sister, and—" She couldn't keep the pleading out of her voice, and she didn't really want to. "There's got to be a way we can work this out." Another twitch rattled across Chrysalis's face, and for the first time ever, Cadance felt the tiniest tremor of something that might almost have been love from the changeling queen. It was gone immediately, the merest taste on the tip of Cadance's tongue, but it made her heart surge, made her want to do a little dance. "All right," Chrysalis said slowly. "I'll think about it." Cadance forced her enthusiasm back down. "About what exactly?" "About how we can resolve this." Chrysalis brushed one front hoof back and forth along the carpet. "We'll go back to doing Calls the old-fashioned way for now, but you're right. This has to be worked out between us." Her eyes narrowed, and she gave a smile that Cadance didn't find at all reassuring. "Give me seven or eight decades, and I'll have a proposal for you. If your Aunt Luna doesn't return and destroy the world in the meantime, of course." Cadance forced a smile of her own. "Of course."