The best word to describe the middle-aged steel-grey earth pony stallion operating the train's engine was 'grizzled', primarily because he gave off an aura which roughly approximated that of an easily-upset bear. He was known to be irritated by stupidity and to him, stupidity largely meant not agreeing with him in his topic of expertise -- something which had, for the later part of his youth and the early section of his adulthood, exposed him to so much stupidity as to drive his irritability threshold into the sub-basement, where it then began excavations while yelling at several startled Diamond Dogs to get out of the way already! He had been mocked, laughed at, dismissed, and generally mistreated to the point where it was all he could do not to retaliate -- too much. And even after finding acceptance and, in the end, open celebration of everything he'd originally been made the subject of cruel jests for, that irritability remained. He trusted few to intrude on his domain, for doing so got on his nerves. It was, after all, his domain. He'd worked too hard to make it so.
But he allowed Celestia to share the engine compartment with him, for she was one of the few ponies he truly trusted, not to mention just about the only one he didn't see as stupid in some way. They were, after all, friends.
"We're looking okay for time, Celestia," he told her. (It wasn't a case of his shedding the title so much as never having used it in the first place: by the time he'd reached her, his default position on nobility had reached 'Why?') "No ice on the rails, boiler's holding steady, and it's just about a straight run from here all the way to the Empire. Call it two more hours."
She nodded. "I trust your estimates, Track."
"You'd better," Travel Track grumbled. "Let's just hope the caribou stay out of it this time. Now that we've switched out the whistle..."
A thought which normally would have made Celestia smile -- but the overall topic was a little too close to home right now. Still, she knew he was expecting a response. "So it no longer sounds quite so much like a mating call?"
"According to the mare who reworked it, yeah," he half-muttered. "Not that we can ask the 'boo for their opinion when they don't talk..." He looked out the forward windows, surveyed the swirling snow with annoyance: the pegasi had yet to establish control this far north and the workings which kept the Empire warm were also about two hours out. "She's along on this one, incidentally. I know you told me to keep the pony load low, but we're still running understaffed even with her along and if we need to make any more adjustments to the tone, she's got to be on this ride. Your staff checked her out along with the rest: she's safe." A little lower, "Even checked me..."
Celestia sighed. "Track, it's nothing personal. It's just -- part of trying to contain the problem. They're doing it with everypony." Her field moved the quill, made a few more notes on the scroll, and a quick flare of her corona sent the seventh really-the-final-last-minute-instruction-this-time into the aether. "And I'm not worried about being understaffed. On this train, one of you is worth three of anypony else."
Firmly, "Seven."
Celestia considered. With a small grin, "One and a half."
"...four?"
Teasing, "Three." It was closer to five.
"Fine..."
The door behind them opened, and a very young earth pony mare shied her way past the emergency fuel supply -- then stopped at an invisible border and refused to move a single hoofstep further. She had to be out of school -- and all the way through it, with a diploma ribbon proudly clenched between her teeth: Track hardly ever hired anypony who'd dropped out unless they were willing to complete their education in the very little spare time he was going to give them. But this mare might have skipped a few grades before vaulting a few others, with her small body just barely clearing the bar.
"Founder?" she timidly said, letting her voice approach Track when she couldn't.
The stallion groaned. "Track, 'Monica, it's Track... Let me guess: you want to test the thing, don't you?"
"...we've got caribou tracks, Founder -- we saw them at speed going by -- they looked old, but they got fresher as we went along..."
"I said to call me -- okay, fine, just keep judging on the age and set it off when you can't stand it any longer."
The pearl-and-coal mare nodded and fled, with the fire-red tail whipping out last.
Another groan. "'Founder'... where that horse apple fell from, I don't know..."
"It's an old word, Track," Celestia told him. "I hardly ever hear it -- and there's a reason for that. It's a title of honor, exclusively reserved for the first bearer in a line of new marks. And whether you like it or not -- you do qualify."
"Huh."
He watched the rails. Kept an eye on the snow. Watched for amorous imposers.
"Four."
"Two and a quarter."
It had taken two days to find the Doctors Bear -- two days which the sisters had also used for doing other things. Preparing the trip had been one of them.
Direct teleportation to the Empire was -- inadvisable. It had been centuries since they'd trotted down its streets (and at the end, trotting had been no part of it). Celestia trusted her memory of the capital city's layout to have remained clear: she didn't trust that layout to have remained the same. Teleporting that far, while escorting another, and encountering recoil at the end -- it was begging for a familiar kind of disaster. And so she'd sent a small train to the most distant northern settled zone she'd had an arrival point for. Two days had been enough for it to both arrive and undergo some degree of refit.
They'd needed extra quarters for Guards. Sealing of the windows. Reinforcing of the windows. There had been a point when Luna had simply proposed removing them entirely before Celestia had asked her (with a little too much tension) how she proposed the crew find out about rail conditions without having somepony strapped to the front. Magical defenses had been added to mundane locks, along with the securing of several key points to prevent unauthorized fields from working on the objects within -- something which had cost them three hours once everypony had arrived at the station, as those workings had to be keyed to the Princesses and every unicorn on both the Solar and Lunar staffs. There was more security and spells on the train than Celestia used when she was taking the thing by herself -- and that combined number had always been high to begin with because her Guards, some of whom could teleport themselves, were familiar with the special dangers of doing so along the railways. Celestia could go between from the train and travel to any destination within her range: there was no problem there. But she couldn't go back. Targeting a moving object, one which was out of sight and running at that kind of speed -- no. Even transiting within the thing was tricky. Teleportation took time -- a tiny fraction of what hoof travel required, but measurable time. Moments during which the train moved. To leave the train represented an abandonment which couldn't readily be taken back: to teleport within it risked ramming her body into the walls -- or worse. A normal train trip had to be well-defended because it took out one of the primary maneuvers in Celestia's arsenal --
-- and this one had to account for Joyous.
Which had meant special measures above and beyond what was used for transporting the siblings, and some of those... well, in the end, Celestia had personally smuggled in the ice bath and ordered nopony to go into that car on pain of being sent to Ponyville for a castle-paid lunch at Mr. Flankington's. Half the Guards had looked confused. Another five had laughed. Three had gone pale and hurried the others off to tell them exactly what they were up against. Nopony who'd gotten on the train had even looked at the door.
Joyous herself had been teleported directly into a private train car which Celestia had last used for giving the President of the Griffon Republic his first-ever rail ride, and had thus only found herself dedicating a mere ninety minutes to making sure it was up to standards for Joyous' occupation, which didn't account for the three hours Luna had used in undoing most of Celestia's redesign while adding extra silver tones to the whole thing. The end result was like traveling in a very plush bank vault filled with the continent's most advanced catering capabilities.
Luna...
...where is Luna right now?
To ask the question was to make an immediate dismal guess at the answer. Celestia sighed and trotted down the center aisle, trying not to break into full gallop.
Eventually, after passing through several layers of Guards, she made it into the train car -- and sure enough, there was Luna, sitting at the other end, as far from Joyous as possible. There was a light coating of frost at the edge of her sister's feathers to go with the mild shame on her features. But Joyous either hadn't noticed or was choosing not to react: the mare was quietly gazing out the window, front hooves braced on the inner rim, and her expression was -- divided. Half of the reaction seemed to be typical for a ride into the North: awe and delight at seeing the new --
-- but the rest was something else.
"Are you enjoying the trip?" Celestia asked.
Joyous glanced back, and the mix of wonder and pain on the beautiful features was hard to look at. "It's -- nice."
"Nice," Celestia echoed, forcing herself to smile. "Very few ponies have come this far north since the Empire reopened, Joyous. There's nothing wrong with appreciating a journey virtually nopony alive has ever taken."
The wonder faded. The pain took over. Brilliant yellow eyes closed against invisible agony.
Luna got to all four hooves, took a tentative half-step forward. "Joyous...?"
It was nearly a whisper. "...I hate traveling."
Both sisters went silent. Joyous dropped down onto the plush red cushions, and the beautiful body curled up.
"I've never been this far north," Joyous softly said. "It's -- just about the only place I haven't been. Up here and -- Horaceland."
Celestia's ears perked at the mention of the amusement park, and the next words emerged without her brain's consent. "Once we -- fix your problem -- I'll be happy to take you."
"We both will," Luna quickly interrupted. "Their Princess tour is truly something to see. I myself only went four moons ago, and I am eager to return --"
"-- I had the chance, when I was a filly," Joyous half-whispered. "My parents offered to take me. And I didn't go."
The siblings blinked. Fillies didn't turn down trips to Horaceland. Adults generally jumped at the opportunity. Getting ponies into the facility typically wasn't the problem. Making sure they left on time was the tax-declared profession for an eighth of the park's staff.
"My parents..." Joyous slowly continued. "There was this one year... we moved three times. Four, really, but it was three while school was still going. That was back when --" She stopped, took three slow breaths. "-- they still sort of seemed to understand -- how much it hurt. That the only thing harder than saying hello all the time was saying goodbye... And they were worried about my grades. Changing teachers, some areas used different books or studied topics before I got there or even in completely different school years. So they promised me that if I kept my average up all the way through -- and they still tried to help, back then... we'd go to Horaceland right after school let out. No matter what kind of job came their way. No matter what it paid or where it went. Two weeks just for us. And I did it. I passed all my classes. And when they told me they were ready, I didn't want to go. Because I was so sick of travel. Because even going to Horaceland was going somewhere... and there was hardly anypony in the last settled zone who knew anything about me that wasn't my name, two extra weeks there and maybe -- somepony would have -- said hello, and... anypony I met at Horaceland would have been gone in two weeks and I never would have seen them again, the same as everywhere else..."
She sighed. It was long. It was slow. Her wings stretched slightly at the apex of the sound, and the lush obsidian tail drooped over the edge of the cushions.
"But when I didn't want to go," Joyous softly went on, "they decided it was two weeks -- where they could work. And maybe we could have a little fun together on the way to the next job. So we traveled again..."
The pegasus stopped. Looked down at the cushions, eyes half-closed.
Luna took a slow breath. "At least they realized it was hard for you," she said. "Two weeks at Horaceland -- it is a considerable sacrifice of bits. They only wished to make you happy."
"They knew it hurt," Joyous whispered. "Once."
Celestia took a half-step forward of her own, used nearly all her will to keep it from being more. From dropping down next to Joyous and pressing tightly against her, from comforting. Something she would have done for anypony -- and something she couldn't do for this one, because she didn't trust herself to make it stop there.
"Once?" was all Celestia could offer.
"They -- loved travel," Joyous said, and her ears dipped. "It was part of their job, and they loved their job so much... that's how they met. There was a paperwork mixup and two ponies were hired to survey the same wild zone. They ran into each other in the middle of it, they were fighting over who'd been hired first and was going to get paid at all, a neurocypher heard all the yelling and attacked... they only got out because they worked together, and they got married ten moons later. They loved guarding each other's flanks, getting out of scrapes together, taking the risks. But they knew it was hard for me... not keeping any friends... and they tried for long-term contracts, they really did, but -- just for a while..."
"What happened?" Luna asked, and Celestia could see the tremble in her sister's limbs as the younger forced herself not to approach.
"I happened," Joyous whispered, and curled up more tightly.
Celestia blinked, and the momentary cutoff of outer vision was more than enough for a thousand inner horrors to show themselves. She breathed in as defense against them, and the mare's scent filled the world. "Your --"
"-- no," Joyous forced herself to break in. "Not my mark. It was -- before. They realized that I -- wasn't them..."
Luna lost a half-step's worth of personal war. "Joyous -- tell us, please..."
"Two weather surveyors," Joyous quietly said. "Talents -- aren't inherited. But some marks run in families, I know that. Your parents are farmers -- so they raise you as a farmer -- and most of the time, you turn out to be a farmer. They were sure that since they were my parents, I'd be just like them. So they tried to make me enjoy it, whenever they could. They'd show me the sights in all of Equestria for our settled zones. Sometimes after they'd surveyed a wild zone and found a beautiful spot inside it, someplace that would be safe during the day with adult company, they'd take me inside. We even went beyond Equestria sometimes, outside the borders, anywhere there was something to see. And they'd talk about how weather patterns were naturally created and broke down, interferences from different fronts and collisions... and how pegasi techniques could tame all of it. I knew more about techniques in my fourth year of school than most of the instructors... but I didn't want to do any of it. I didn't want to travel. I just wanted -- to stay in one place. To have friends... and I couldn't make them easily, or keep them ever. It got to the point where I hated it. I tried not to hate them... for what they did... it was their own marks, it was their job, and they loved it so much... I think they sort of believed that if I loved it like they did, the rest would just -- stop mattering, but... I wasn't them. I was never going to be them. And when they realized that..."
Celestia had been trying to find them for days. Reaching out. Attempting to make contact.
She knew Joyous had run away. Luna had believed the pegasus had fled from at least the suggestion of assault, and perhaps the first attempt at it. They had assumed that attack had been caused by Joyous' talent. But...
Celestia had been trying to contact -- what?
And then the rising anger overrode everything else. "Joyous, if they tried to do anything to you --"
"-- they didn't," Joyous said, and the next sentences were broken. "They -- stopped. Doing anything. With me. If it wasn't -- their job -- they didn't care. They just -- went into the wild zones together, came back, got some sleep, went out again. They were always working, or looking for the next place to work, or heading towards it. For them, I was -- barely there. I always cooked for myself a little, sometimes they wouldn't get back until late and they'd always be so sorry when they thought I might still join them someday, they knew I worried... but they'd come back later and later, sometimes I'd stay up for hours under Moon hoping they'd come home... that they were all right... and they'd just fly in and go to bed without even checking on me... They didn't ask about school, or teachers, or the friends I couldn't make... they didn't care about how I was feeling because they'd heard it all before, and everything I could say was old while the next weather system was new... I wasn't important any more, because I wasn't going to be them. I was just one more thing they had to pack before they could move again. And I didn't have friends, and my family wasn't one any more, and..."
The curl became tighter still, and her half-lidded gaze looked down her flank. At her mark.
Silence filled the train car, painted frost patterns on the windows.
"...I just wanted... somepony to notice me..."
They had no words which would make things not have happened. They could not trust themselves to touch her.
The two most powerful ponies in Equestria did the only thing they were capable of: stood as still as they could and watched Joyous cry.
And in the moment when their eyes met over the weeping form, they each knew the other hated herself for it.
"I did nothing before you arrived. I simply felt that I should --"
"-- I know," Celestia wearily told her sister, heavily leaning against the wall in the outer hallway. "I know." But the half-tangible tail lashed.
"Sister...?"
"It's not you," Celestia said, and it was a truth. "I'm starting to wonder what anypony could truly do to hurt her... anything which hasn't already been done..."
They could not teleport into the Crystal Palace. And so the procession trotted from the train station onto the streets of the capital city --
-- the empty streets.
Sun reflected from the buildings, diffracted and recombined, with the beams doing fascinating things as they bounced from Joyous' ever-richer coat. Spires separated the light before scattering it into rainbows which arced through the air wherever space could be found. But none of it touched a native pony. Every resident of the capital had been ordered by their own Princess to stay within their homes. They were not even to look outside. The visible population was composed of the trotting visitors from Equestria: two siblings, a pegasus with a problem, eight Guards -- and emptiness.
It was a beautiful city. It always had been and even Joyous, who longed for a place to call familiar, was caught staring about, perhaps wondering if this could somehow be the final stop on her journey. But for the group arriving from Canterlot, it was a ghost of a settled zone, quiet beyond whispers, filled with a silence which never would have existed in the shadowlands.
Rendered vacant by the threat of a weapon.
Celestia looked at those empty streets. As far as the buildings went, the Empire was almost exactly the way she and Luna had left it. There were a few changes, and those were ones which would have made any journey through the between hazardous: the train had been the right decision. But walking through the capital, after so much time...
...there had been a day when the streets had not been empty.
It had been exactly the opposite.
"Get them out of here, Sombra!"
"My loyal citizens? They've come out to support me, Celestia. They fill my city with their bodies to shield me -- with their love. How's your aim, false Sun? Are all your tricks things which work on a single target only? No radius? Surely you'd never want to hurt an innocent -- which begs the question of why you'd ever attack me at all..."
"Celestia, their eyes..."
"I see, Luna. I --"
"-- they love me, Moonshadow. Me. And in their love, they will sacrifice themselves to save me if need be. So tell me -- how do the pretenders to the sky feel about sacrifice?"
Celestia closed her eyes, reopened them. Then vanished. Now returned. And the streets were empty again.
Luna moved closer, and her words were whispered. "A bad memory, I know... but it is long past. He is gone." And her own eyes closed for a moment, so she would not have to see all the other things which had departed.
Celestia silently nodded. Wondered how many years she would have to live before the buoyancy of the good memories finally outpulled the dragging weight of the horrors.
After she'd gotten over a certain degree of -- well, dread -- Celestia had been proud of Luna for having been the one to suggest adding Cadance to their forces. Her sister had seen past the talent-created emotions which screamed rival! and challenger! without ever moving on to It has to be me! (Celestia had been slightly worried about that last, as she had reached a point when her brain had briefly tried to conceive of what might happen should the sisters somehow decide the best resolution to the problem was to let it go on while keeping Joyous in the palace and -- sharing. And then, having come up with the touchstone for that idea, it had immediately followed by attempting to shut itself down.) Yes, there had been fear of what could happen through adding a third alicorn to the ever-expanding war -- task force which was battling the problem -- but Luna had been the one to think beyond that reaction and insist on proceeding with what would hopefully turn out to be their final move.
But in the middle of that pride, Celestia had overlooked a small detail. For to have Luna propose that she and Cadance work in the same room together...
The youngest and smallest of the alicorns stared down at the refractive crystal floor of her new throne room. Her left front hoof dragged across it, creating a soft bell tone. "I don't know..." she tentatively began, her voice almost timid. "My magic is more about -- reminding..."
"No," Luna forcefully interjected. "How you use your magic is about reminding."
Cadance's purple-grey eyes came up. The two mares glared at each other.
...was to have Cadance and Luna in the same room.
"You have to understand," Cadance carefully continued, "there's a certain level of -- secrecy about my magic..."
"Oh yes," Luna shot back. "A secrecy that I, as half of the Diarchy, am surely not allowed to know about, much less discuss when it is simply the three of us in this room with no others about to overhear, spy, or report. Yes, I have truly overstepped my bounds. If you would prefer for me to wait outside --"
Luna didn't like Cadance very much.
"-- I am trying not to create a disaster!" It was rare for Cadance to raise her voice. It was almost unheard of for the former pegasus to raise it that much, to the point where the very walls rang in with a chorus of chimes while adding levels of reverberation which finally collided with the privacy-enforcing shield and ended the impromptu concert with a cymbal crash. "I've spent decades trying to avoid --"
"-- yes, your restraint, your self-control, your caring about the populace and how they might feel about you, all very important, I am sure!" Luna shouted. "Because I certainly know nothing whatsoever about what it is like to have ponies treat one as a trotting threat!"
Or at all, really...
Celestia managed not to sigh. She hadn't told Luna about Cadance immediately after the Return, or even in the first few days: in fact, she'd gone to great lengths to not only keep the two separated, but block all news of the youngest Princess' existence from reaching Luna's twitching ears. She'd wanted her sister to have adjustment time for the little things before dropping some of the major ones on her. And so it had been two weeks before she'd taken her sibling aside and explained the events which had led to a very surprising ascension, the twists and turns which had put Equestria's alicorn population back at two while the third was -- away. Luna had listened to all of it, mostly in total silence, and nodded at what Celestia thought were the appropriate points. After that, it had been time to introduce them --
-- which had, in retrospect, been the first mistake.
Luna had gone up to Cadance -- and within seconds, Celestia had realized her sister's exact emotional position with regards to the youngest: this is what you replaced me with.
At first, they had kept it to the verbal, although the accompanying bursts of thunder had grown painful after the first twenty minutes and Celestia had wound up replacing several trees in the gardens after she found out just where all the lightning had hit, which had non-coincidentally been in Cadance's favorite sections. And Cadance had always had that slight core of shyness to her, a side effect from repressing aspects of herself ever since they'd found out just what her magic was, and it was something which made her slow to rouse into anger: it generally took a lot of provocation from a pony before Cadance would even remotely consider the mere possibility of just maybe thinking about the tiniest chance of fighting back. (In the current case, it was generally best to see the Luna-Cadance relationship, such as it was, as a single extended battle with occasional long interruptions.)
And upon fully realizing that, Luna had abandoned her species and spent the rest of the night acting like a Diamond Dog.
There had been barking at the intruder. There had been growls. Fierce prowling in circles while constantly hunting for weaknesses. Looking back, it was a wonder Luna hadn't tried to (re)mark her territory. There had been a slow burn from Cadance as the long-banked fire finally stuck an ember into the air for testing -- then followed it with a conflagration. And eventually, inevitably, there had been a fight.
It had been a very short fight and it had arguably ended in a draw, mostly because Celestia had gotten her sister out before anything could escalate. However, very little of the room had still been intact when it ended, mostly because Cadance had spent the majority of her time dodging and Luna's aim had been more than a little rusty.
With Celestia glaring down at both of them, they had -- made up. More or less. At least, they had sworn not to do that again, although teeth had been gritted when they'd said it and Luna had outright refused to nuzzle. But on the occasions when they met, internal dictionaries were inevitably opened to What Can I Say Which Will Really Be Offensive? (although Cadance still needed a few extra seconds to flip the cover) before they wound up trying to bash each other with the spine of a thousand-page binder.
And that was why it had felt like a triumph to have her sister freely propose, of her own will, that they all work together. It was a sign of Progress. It was a mark of Acceptance. It was the first stage of recognition as Family.
...or it was just another sign of how far Luna was willing to go in order to help Joyous.
"I have to keep up the Lie! If ponies knew what my magic could really do, I'd be an outcast! Nopony would ever trust a relationship again! Every false start, every time something began on a strange note or ended on a bad one, I'd be blamed! You already had your slip! You should --"
-- Luna's corona went double in a single surge as her voice lost ninety percent of its volume. "My -- slip?"
Cadance's eyes widened as she realized they'd not only gone beyond the realm of dictionaries, but were about to leave language entirely. "I -- I didn't --"
"You believe," Luna said, her voice colder than Moon, "that I was any part of that? That it was purposeful, perhaps?"
Desperate now, with real apology in her voice, "Luna --"
"-- you may wish to get a head start --"
-- Celestia stepped between them.
Luna stared at her with a force of eighty percent Fluttershy. "Move."
"No," Celestia told them both.
Furious, "She said --"
"I heard it," Celestia softly replied. "I was here. I also heard how much she wants to apologize. So -- let her."
The silence was long enough for Celestia to run through a mental list of every defensive spell she knew and reject most of them.
"Very well," Luna forced through her teeth.
"I'm sorry," Cadance told her.
A hiss of "I -- accept it."
"Thank you."
Just barely audible, "And -- that."
And in a rush, "But you don't have any right to talk about my magic as if you don't understand the risk--"
Celestia draped a wing over each lunging body and teleported them both to the ice bath.
It was later. Drying had occurred. Celestia had initially considered refusing to allow Cadance any restyling of her mane before remembering Luna didn't have that problem and would thus win a decidedly more silent round.
Cadance's magic -- had been a national secret almost from the first day, and was now the most guarded truth of the restored Empire. Many unicorns had a personal spell -- a trick, to use the slang. It would typically be one of the first spells they mastered, and the first which didn't have to be taught: a manifestation of some part of their personality channeled through their field into a working. Tricks repeated, sometimes frequently -- but they all represented that little bit of inner self appearing as magic. And Cadance had been a pegasus, used to techniques, with no experience of unicorn magic at all, no idea what her trick might turn out to be, and Celestia had eagerly awaited its revelation --
-- only to find out exactly what the ascension had unleashed.
Resonance: the emotional intent behind a spell, the emotions which could go into a working, necessary for some spells to function at all and disruptive for others. There was a resonance for want, another for hatred, a familiar one linked to rage, yet another for desperation. Resonance existed for every emotion there was, and some ponies could work with those emotions and make them part of spells -- even if, as with Want It-Need It, those spells didn't work on everything. Every emotion had a purpose. Nearly every emotion could be used.
All but one.
With a single alicorn as the exception.
Cadance was the only pony known who could work with the resonance of love.
Oh, love could be the intent behind a spell, and any pony of the same race who was hit by that working would know exactly what had gone into it. And love could affect how certain spells came out. But that resonance couldn't be manipulated -- except by Cadance. She could strengthen love. She could make ponies fall in love, creating a bond where none had existed. She could destroy love. Such workings tended to be temporary, typically a few hours, sometimes minutes, a day or so at most, and Cadance usually had to be very close by: within a few body lengths -- but while they lasted, the effects were real.
Cadance had immediately realized what it meant. But Celestia had spoken with her and, after some thought, offered the solution. They had gone to every pony Cadance had affected during her Surge, and the new alicorn had silently undone nearly all of the workings. And then Celestia had publicly constructed The Lie.
The Lie claimed Cadance was the weakest of the alicorns.
The Lie insisted all Cadance did was remind ponies of love, stoke a faded fire back to its normal blaze.
The Lie had been created in a time before the press had been so hard to deal with, when there had been no questions truly asked, because the initial bad incidents had been totally reversed and nopony had been there to inquire about what had happened at all. And when The Lie had reached the modern era, it had been around for so long that everypony treated it as The Truth.
The Lie let Cadance have a life.
The Actual Truth was that Cadance, in her way, was as much a potential weapon as Joyous. One Celestia had twisted herself into spirals in attempts to never use. They didn't know if her magic could work on anypony at all -- strong countering emotions did seem to offer some resistance and shorten the duration -- much less those of the other races. They knew it could be recast as the thaums drained away. Determining any chance of permanency -- had been shot down before it could take off at all. Cadance refused to experiment: she didn't have Luna's inquiring mindset, never would have considered asking for volunteers, and Celestia herself had shuddered at the thought of pushing that talent to its limits. But if a crisis ever went that far...
...Celestia had told herself she would never do it. Would do anything to avoid it. But at the same time, she'd thought about Torque's diagnosis of an internal pragmatic core, and that thought had not been locked into day...
Cadance.
The weakest.
The least capable.
Equestria's Last Resort.
The three alicorns sat down together in the crystal throne room. And they talked. Went over the letters Celestia had sent, the last-minute additions from the journey (all twelve of them), and finally threw in what Joyous had said on the train just to make it complete.
In the end, Cadance asked them to leave her with Joyous so that she could speak with the pegasus without interruption. This had renewed the debate on a different level, but had not led to another kind of fight: Cadance had offered them the chance to watch through a secret crystal window, that part of the wall enchanted to allow one-way sight for the duration: one of Sombra's old measures. But she would block sound. If she did anything inappropriate, they would see it and could freely move to stop her. But the words had to be private.
They'd agreed. Left the room. And for the next ninety minutes, they'd watched in silence, sometimes paying attention to the breathing of the other, occasionally dispelling wisps of fog as heat and chill met between them -- and they both kept their eyes on the youngest alicorn, who was spending more single-exposure time in a room with Joyous than anypony before her.
Watched her for signs of being affected.
And nothing happened.
The two sides of the coin had met -- and nothing was spinning.
Joyous had been sent back to her train car: the reserved room within the palace was still being invasion-proofed. The three rulers were alone again, resting prone on cushions which had been unceremoniously tossed onto the crystal floor.
"She's a lot like me," Cadance finally began. "Isn't she?"
Celestia managed a weak smile, but wasn't able to hold it for long. "The way you were after your first Surge, yes... knowing what she can do, terrified of it, looking for any means to make it go away... I remember, Cadance." A desperate flight into the Solar throne room, panicked and screaming and frightened of herself to a point... where she had mentally gone down the first section of the same air path Joyous had fled through. She'd realized how other ponies would react if they found out what she was truly capable of. She'd initially tried to deny that part of herself, refused to use it at all, desperately sought darker measures before coming to Celestia... Yes, there were ways in which that long-ago Cadance had been very much like Joyous, including portions of their posture, that desperate hope to be somehow overlooked --
-- but there had been three crucial differences.
Cadance sighed and named them. "Except that -- I have control. You know how to spot when I've done something to anypony and my workings can be countered. Anypony who truly knows about me can stop everything." (Which sounded to Celestia like the words of a long self-enforced delusion: for unicorn workings, Cadance had the least strength of the three -- but it was still alicorn strength, and blocking her would be a major effort for some and impossible for most, which included all of those without horns. Still, it could all be countered with time and effort -- from the right pony.) "Joyous..." and her expression went awkward.
"None of the three," Luna said.
Which just made Cadance's eyelashes briefly vibrate with uncertainly. "I -- have to say some things here." Looking from one sister to the other in turn. "They have to be said, and..." She trailed off, blinked a few times, took a slow breath.
"Cadance, we're in your realm," Celestia said, and the smile was stronger. "You not only have the floor, you own it."
Another breath, a deeper one. "You're -- not going to like this." Another side-to-side glance. "Either of you."
Luna's expression directly stated not liking what Cadance had to say was a position she was entirely used to. "I hardly see where that has stopped you before --"
"-- Luna..." Celestia gently interjected.
A sigh. "Very well." Luna's front left hoof gestured outwards in a false salute. "Proceed, Princess."
"Okay..." Cadance's wings fluttered, got back under control, pressed tightly against her sides. "Have either of you thought about how her talent works?"
It was Luna's turn to blink -- and then Celestia got to watch as her sister's expression tried not to go snide. "It is a talent. It is an expression of a pony's inherent magic, backed by the same power --"
"-- no," Cadance cut her off with a left hoof gesture. "I mean how it works. She's a pegasus, Luna. When she flies or uses a technique, there's feel, because she's using magic. And when she puts emotion behind it, there's resonance to go with that. But what she's doing isn't any kind of technique. What she's doing is really closer to a unicorn working -- and no pegasus field can operate like that. I would know."
Celestia frowned. "But talents break the rules to some degree. Earth ponies and pegasi can have small effects associated with their own marks. The Cakes -- they can tell the exact temperature of an oven just by feeling the heat for a moment: that's crucial for bakers..." She hadn't seen a single bakery in their walk through the Empire, and thus the very minor question of where dessert was coming from had just sent up the first signal flare from the back of her occupied mind as a brightly-lit example.
"I understand that," Cadance just barely protested, "but... please..." Another deep breath, and her wings quivered again. "You checked her for magic. Have either of you -- checked yourselves?"
Both sisters blinked this time, hard. Looked at each other.
"Cadance --"
"-- I am certain you recognize the difficulty in our going null --"
"-- it's hard to get down to a level where we can really be examined for every last thaum, you don't have the issue with your mane and tail, but you're carrying nearly as much magic as we are --"
"-- and Joyous has yet to so much as fly a single body length in my presence, much less used any technique, I have had no opportunity to gain the feel of her signature --"
"-- you haven't," Cadance finished, and there was a strange note of sadness to that. "Because -- if you found magic..." Ten seconds passed as the youngest alicorn summoned her strength. "Pri -- Celestia --" she still had occasional trouble with dropping the title "-- Luna -- have either of you tried to counter?"
Twelve seconds...
"For my part, I was not aware of what she was doing until after she had already affected me," Luna suddenly broke the silence, her voice aggravated. "Countering was not an option when I had no knowledge that anything was taking place."
"I was braced for her," Celestia declared, and was surprised at the force behind it. "I knew what she could do, I was ready, and -- it was a test, going in with knowledge --"
"-- you haven't," Cadance softly repeated. The sadness was beginning to verge into depression. "And the dreams... I don't even have to ask: you haven't tried to stop those either. Because --" and there was a gentle sigh. "-- this is where you hate me, both of you will hate me... you didn't want to."
Celestia expected Luna to stand. To lunge again. But her sister remained in her resting position, her body suddenly tensed, wings half-flared to the challenge position --
-- which Celestia had a very good view of, because she was standing, with no knowledge of having moved at all. "What do you mean. didn't want to?"
Cadance's wings vibrated again -- but stayed by her sides. "How long has it been -- since you've both let yourself -- feel attracted to another pony? Anything more than five seconds before you go into 'I wish I could -- but I can't'? And then pretending it never happened, trying to make yourself believe it's possible to forget? To never feel anything beyond those five seconds at all?"
Celestia felt her wings surge out, arc, her right front hoof pawing at the floor --
-- slowly, so very slowly, she closed her eyes. Sank back down onto the cushion. Brought her wings back to the rest position.
"Will 'a long time' work for an answer?" she quietly asked, refusing to open her eyes again.
"In some ways," Luna softly answered, "a shorter one. But -- longer than I wish to think about."
The elder sister could feel Cadance's sad nod. "You haven't tried -- because even though it's artificial, even though you know it and you're trying to fight off the strongest parts of it -- she makes you feel young. Like it's possible to want again. As if -- there's a chance. You want to help her, I know -- especially you, Luna. You see her in exile and you think about -- yourself. Being trapped within yourself. You want to free her, and the prison -- isn't of her own making, I'm sorry for what I said earlier, I am. You even love Celestia enough to let her have that dream. And neither of you would ever discard or ignore anything which might save her. But while her talent is still out of control, she isn't just making you feel like you're attracted to her. She's making you feel normal... and neither of you want to lock that out again..."
Celestia forced her eyes open, and the first thing she saw was the misery on Cadance's face. "You're right," she heard herself say. "You're right -- about all of it." And the ice cut into her heart.
"I hate calling you out," Cadance just barely managed to say. "It feels like kicking my own mother..."
"Somepony -- has to," Luna slowly replied. "We watch each other, Cadance -- always. And there are times when we will all need kicking." More slowly, "Before we put my sister through the trauma of revealing her true mane for the second time within a week -- did you try to counter?"
"Yes," Cadance simply answered, although there was a confused side glance towards Celestia as the words 'true mane' passed behind her eyes. "It didn't work. I tried to counter. Then I tried to unweave. I even went for the last just to make it a complete set. Nothing happened on any of the three. And I know my own feel isn't the best, but I couldn't get a sense of anything taking place at any time. But for the -- reaction -- I still went through all of it."
"But -- you did not react," Luna said, and it was nearly a protest. "You held steady the whole time."
"I have a very special somepony," Cadance gently answered. "I just kept thinking about him."
They divided the silence between them.
"Mark magic can be extremely subtle," Celestia admitted. "But if nothing else is happening and we look as carefully as we can, we might pick it up -- and that means we should check. But Cadance -- you've had the most recent exposure, not to mention the longest in a single stretch -- and going null is a little easier for you. Go first -- please? And then we'll follow." A hard glance at Luna which came with a silent warning to leave any and all potential cameras exactly where they were. "For completion."
Cadance nodded, frowned, winced -- and there was no visible change, but the sisters felt the inner fire being dampened, and knew it had been done. Then the siblings concentrated, grimaced in unison -- and Celestia watched as Luna's star-streaming tail collapsed into long strands of light blue, even as Celestia's own mane fell in front of her eyes. She shook her head to clear her field of vision, not to mention preventing more than her own most momentary glimpse of her true hair.
Cadance blinked. Several times. Celestia gave her an equally hard look, one attached to Your Surrogate Mother Can And Will Consider Kicking Back. The blinking stopped.
"Oh," was all she said, and even that got her a glare.
"Very well," Luna said, and the near-smirk felt like the most normal thing to happen between the three of them all day. "Carefully..."
They inspected.
They came up empty.
No magic. Not a single trace of anything was on them, not so much as a single lingering thaum. The only bits of feel present came from the inspection itself. And yet the effect was still there, pressing at them, urging all the while...
They stared at each other.
"It's -- not magic?" Celestia finally got out. "How is that possible? The talent is an expression of a pony's inner magic, we all know that! How can magic work -- without magic?"
"I don't know," Cadance said. "I wish I knew -- for her sake, I wish I could have just glanced at her and known how to fix everything... but it leads to what I know Luna once said can be the most important thing: the next question. Maybe you've been asking the wrong ones so far -- but now we all have a new one. If we figure out the answer, then maybe we'll know what's wrong -- and how to stop it."
She slowly stood up.
"I need coffee," she said. "A lot of coffee." Turned towards the door. "I'll be back in a little while, all right?" And trotted out.
Luna glanced at Celestia as the elder let the magic suffuse her mane once again, and all her younger sister could think to say was "...coffee?"
"Yes."
"Not wake-up juice?"
"No. Coffee. Always coffee. She's a coffee fiend. I think she only studied earth pony magic so she could cultivate her own beans."
"I heard somepony say coffee stunts one's growth."
Celestia shrugged. "It's a myth."
"And you know that because...?"
"You think I didn't try? Two mugs a day, Luna. For ten years. Trust me, it does nothing. Except for the caffeine. And the taste. I only have a mug now if I'm meeting with someone from a nation big on hospitality and they offer it to me. I spent four moons trying to figure out how to teleport liquid out of my mouth before it hits my tongue and it never worked..."
They waited in silence for a while.
Then it became a longer while.
The while grew up, entered school, and began taking advanced courses in irritated boredom before unleashing its degree upon the world.
"How long has it been?"
"About ninety minutes, Luna."
"I have never prepared coffee on the few occasions when I chose to risk it. How long does it take?"
"Nowhere near this long."
"And we have waited here because...?"
"Cadance can drink a lot of coffee."
"...that much?"
Celestia abruptly stood up. "No."
Luna scrambled to her hooves. "Joyous! If Cadance has gone to the train -- even a moment out of our sight would have been enough for --!"
"-- she can't teleport, Luna, she never managed to get the feel for it..." But her own panic was rising. They'd left Love and Lust in the same room for the same amount of time that Cadance had been gone, a single extended Tartarus-freed exposure...
"She has had far more than enough time to fly!" Luna shouted. "She could be doing anything! We should have followed her! We should not have trusted! Sister, we must go to Joyous! She needs our help!"
Celestia didn't even spare the time for a nod. They went between at the same moment --
-- and came out in the train car, which they had come to an independent decision to memorize. Just in case.
With both sisters having chosen the exact same space for their emergency arrival point.
Two solids arrived in that space. Momentum randomly picked a direction for each and threw them outwards until they found enough open area to safely emerge.
In other words, recoil happened.
Luna went left, impacting into a reinforced section of wood between two windows, her back hitting first and hardest. In partial defiance of gravity and with odd deference to friction, she slowly slid down the wall until she came to rest against the floor in what would have been a semi-normal sitting position for a minotaur and, for all but the most double-jointed of ponies, was begging to wreak havoc on the spine.
Celestia, in contrast, simply went into the ceiling -- which rebounded her into the floor with a thud that shook the entire car.
Joyous, who had been napping on the corner bed, woke up with the best speed a pony who'd spent years living in a wild zone's fringe could muster: a lot.
"Princess?" This to Luna, who was blinking away the last bits of daze. Then a more panicked "Princess?" to Celestia, who was trying to force herself back to her hooves. "What -- what happened? Are you both all right? Is something --"
"We were just checking on you," Celestia sped through. "Has anypony been in here since we brought you back?"
"No... I've been alone..." Joyous managed, visibly confused -- and with fear starting to overwhelm that. "Were you two --" open dread permeated every letter "-- fighting?"
"We were not," Luna rushed. "There was an accident -- one which happens sometimes in teleporting -- we will explain it later -- rest, we have to go, there is something which must be accounted for, nothing you need worry about, we are working on the problem..."
And they were back in the crystal throne room, with Joyous' renewed confusion as the last thing each saw.
"We -- didn't actually tell Cadance about the train car, did we?" Celestia asked as she tried to ignore the demanding pains echoing throughout her entire body.
"We -- did not," Luna abashedly replied. "Simply that we had a safe place for Joyous until her room here was ready. But she knew how we arrived, and it would not take so long to search the train... which means that either she was waiting for us to search for her so she could slip away --" she paused, visibly trying to figure out if that had made any sense "-- or she is elsewhere."
"But -- ninety minutes, Luna. Nopony can drink coffee for ninety straight minutes, not even Cadance. And if she'd thought of the answer and headed off to get it, she still can't teleport, so it would have to be in the Empire or just outside it: she could manipulate a path through the weather, but there's only so far she could have gone..."
"We still need to find her."
"Agreed. Check the palace first?"
"Yes." Luna frowned. "Do you recall any portion of the layout?"
"I never got to most of it."
"Nor did I. Out that door and left to start, it is as good a way to begin as anything else..."
They raced from the throne room --
-- and nearly trampled Shining Armor.
Both sisters stopped just in time. Their bodies had reacted before their minds had, recognizing the need to protect the stallion -- although what was left which could be still done to him was an increasingly loud question, as 'trampled' had apparently already worked into his personal reality before sending out for reinforcements. Overwhelming numbers of them.
His tail was pointing in five directions at once. Using the description 'in disarray' for his mane seemed too weak, as it completely forgot to account for the portions which had been unevenly bitten off. The left eye didn't seem to be focusing in the same direction as the right, which was spinning slightly in a slow counterclockwise rotation. The white coat lay against the grain of the fur, his body, and in some places, reality. His tongue was partway out, all four knees were bent, and he wasn't walking so much as falling vaguely forward without ever quite hitting the ground. It took him eight seconds to realize he'd nearly been hit, two more until he began looking up, and five extra before he began to remotely recognize the ponies who'd just pulled up short of destroying what little was left.
To look at Shining Armor was to mentally review the nation's disaster relief budget and consider whether sufficient funds remained for assignment to him -- and then realize there weren't enough bits in all the world.
"...Princesses?" The horribly weak tone stated he still wasn't quite sure.
"Captain," Luna blurted, "are you all right? Was there an attack?"
"...yes... no... sort of... I..."
He blinked. That took fifteen seconds.
"Shining Armor," Celestia carefully began, suddenly knowing what the answer was going to be, "have you seen Cadance?"
"...yes..."
"Where is she?"
"...I locked her in a shield..."
"Because?"
"...only way to escape..."
Luna looked at Celestia. The elder glanced at the younger in turn.
"Thinking of her very special somepony the whole time," Celestia said.
"No reaction at all," Luna sighed.
"None whatsoever."
They both turned back to the ravaged stallion.
"Shining Armor," Celestia continued, "did you -- consent?"
"...she said -- she wanted... she tackled me..."
"But -- you said yes?" Luna tried again.
"...was starting to before she knocked me over..."
His knees bent a little more. A half-severed tail hair gave up entirely and drifted to the floor.
"...begged for a break... she said five seconds for water and then..."
Two more hairs fell.
"...don't think the shield's going to hold for long..."
Another four.
"...help?"
The siblings sighed.
"Where is your bedroom?" Luna gently asked.
"...upstairs... three flights, right, two doors..."
They began heading in that direction.
"We can take her," Celestia said.
Luna's smile was exceptionally grim. "I am looking forward to it."
"Luna, we're going to be careful. And gentle."
"Oh, yes. I understand completely, sister. I fully intend to be both careful and gentle all over the palace..."
And from behind them, the last words the weak voice managed before the spent body hit the floor were "...she kept calling me Joyous... who's Joyous?"