Bunsen Burner awoke slowly to find himself lying in his bed at the Yawning Sheep inn. As his eyes widened, he saw the beak of Mr. Black looming over him.
Before he could do anything, the Griffon spoke a key phrase, “Zebra-Foxtrot-Indigo-5-8.”
He instantly relaxed, “So it is you. What happened?”
“Our target was taken by the librarian and her group. Tango-Rodeo-Xray-8-0 is with them. Our situation has changed, and I’m not entirely sure on all of the particulars.”
“You crossed a line,” the voice of Nox declared from across the room, “We couldn’t allow you to kill the schoolteacher, even though she was a Changeling.”
Bunsen Burner lurched forward as he tried to get out of the bed, but Mr. Black shoved him back down with a growl, “Lie down, you stupid horse! You’re lucky that kick the earth pony gave you didn’t fracture your skull. She's to be quite dexterous to have only given you the head injury that you have.”
Warned though he was, Bunsen Burner sat up and glared at the two Antrozi guards on the other side of the room, “Do you have any idea what you have done? You have placed everyone in this town at risk by leaving her alive. This derails everything we have been trying to accomplish!”
“We trust the judgment of Ms. Sparkle first,” Umbra declared pointedly, “She will be able to handle the situation well enough if things go awry.”
Bunsen Burner scoffed, “She is still fresh with idealism. Sentimentality has no place in any conflict, let alone a war of shadows like the one we are engaged in. You know better than most the insidiousness of the Changeling menace. You both know how they can deceive and harm!”
“We will not be able to stay in town much longer with the failure of this sting,” Mr. Black said to Bunsen Burner, “We should leave before we are run out by the locals.”
“We’re not leaving,” Bunsen Burner growled, “not until the threat here is put at an end.”
There was a hesitant set of knocks on the door, and the room went quiet.
Mr. Black half pulled his knife from his foreleg mounted sheath. He obscured his weapon from the angle of the doorway, and he motioned one of the Antrozi guards to open the door.
Umbra sniffed the air; the scent was familiar, but there was some new element to it. He hesitantly opened the door, only to find that it was Princess Cadence standing outside.
“Your Majesty,” he said as he bowed, with Nox bowing in like kind behind him. He then turned to the two veterans and nodded, “She’s clean.”
Mr. Black sheathed his knife and turned in full to look at the Princess silently.
Bunsen Burner was legitimately surprised by the young alicorn’s presence.
“Hello,” she said quietly to the older stallion, unsure of how to approach him, “I’d like to..I need to speak with you. Privately.”
Bunsen Burner blinked once, then twice. Finally he motioned to the others with his hoof and then towards the door.
The griffon looked to the two Antrozi for a moment before he slowly stepped out into the hallway.
The two guards bowed to the Princess once again, “We will be just outside,” and then stepped out as well, closing the door behind them.
The room was silent as Princess Cadence telekinetically pulled a sitting pillow from across the room, and laid down on it. The seconds ticked by as the two simply looked into each other’s eyes.
Bunsen Burner laid back onto his propped up pillow, resting his head gently on it so he could still have a good view of the Princess.
“I have so many questions,” she finally was able to declare.
The stallion blinked and nodded gently.
His silence urged her on, “Are you the one who sent me my mother’s necklace?”
“Yes,” he replied slowly, “I am.”
“You knew my parents?” she whispered.
He nodded once again, “I did.”
The room was silent once again, the emptiness filled by the muffled ambient sounds coming from down in the street below the window to the older stallion's right.
“In all the years you and I were in the castle together,” Princess Cadence spoke unsteadily, “You never acknowledged any connection of ours: your knowing my parents, your godparentship to me.” The Princess looked up with confused and agitated eyes, “Why?”
Bunsen Burner said nothing for a time, before he replied flatly, “I had my reasons.”
“No,” Princess Cadence replied angrily, “No more secrets! You can’t just turn me away now, not after a lifetime of my not knowing. If I have to I will order you as your Princess to tell me everything you know!”
Bunsen Burner put up his left hoof and quietly, almost wearily, spoke, “I am willing to tell you, even without the order.” He glanced out the window, and appeared to stare out into the waning sunset, while in his mind he reconstructed the vivid memories he had once experienced so long ago, “I knew your father from my days at university. His name was Punnett Square. He had already been married to your mother, Bolera, for five years by the time I'd met him. They were young, starcrossed, and in love.”
Bunsen Burner smiled a little as he reminisced, “Your father was a brilliant scientist, and was a wonderful friend to me when I first left Celestia’s tutelage. Our fields crossed occasionally; his mastery of genetics and aptitude with magic meant I had his expertise in creating potions and practicing spells, and I’d occasionally be able to help him receive rare compounds for experimentation, as well as creating any machinery he needed.”
“What about my mother?” the Princess asked with a pleading tone, “What was she like?”
“Bolera was a fiery and passionate pegasus from the province of Mustangia. When she met your father, she was studying historic literature in Canterlot. When they had you, they named my wife and myself as your godparents.”
“How long were my parents alive after my birth?”
“You were eight years old when they died.”
The Princess was visibly confused, and she shook her head, “Why don’t I remember this?”
Bunsen Burner leaned upright, “If you want me to answer that, you must first ask yourself how much you truly want to know. I can continue about your parent’s golden years instead, but you must understand that if you wish to know everything, what I reveal to you cannot be repeated except to your husband: not even Celestia knows what I am about to tell you.”
Princess Cadence’s heart filled with dread; what sort of secret could this possibly be, that not even the likes of her aunt knew of it? Could she bear whatever it was that Bunsen Burner was talking about? Eventually she shakily said, “Alright.”
“Are you sure?” the stallion pressed, “You must be absolutely certain. No one but Prince Shining Armor can know, not even your sister-in-law.”
“Tell me everything,” the Princess finally commanded.
Bunsen Burner exhaled slowly out his nostrils, “Very well. You were not an alicorn from birth; you were a pegasus just like your mother. When you reached the age of three, you were found to have a terminal bone cancer. You were not expected to live past the age of ten.”
This news struck the Princess like a cart full of bricks; she had been deathly sick as a child? Why couldn’t she remember any of it?
“Your father, the brilliant unicorn that he was, searched for a conventional means of curing you for two years without success. He then turned to the arcane sciences for an answer. We looked everywhere, ancient or modern, from Equestria and beyond, we searched for a cure together. I lost hope after many months of failure, but your father never gave up. Eventually he came into possession of an encrypted tome: the personal journal of Starswirl the Bearded. It took him a year to decode the secrets that that damned book held hostage, and another to make sense of it. All this time your mother was at your side, teaching you and giving you her strength, helping you to live the little life that you could out of your bed. She believed your father would find a cure, no matter what it took. After several months of additional preparation and construction of an apparatus to help cure you, he was ready to attempt just that. By that time, your condition had deteriorated beyond what even the doctors had expected. You had mere months to live. In his desperation, he threw everything aside on the gamble that he could save you. He broke all the cardinal rules of research: using experimental medicine on another equine without previous testing, having no reliable results or data beyond the conjectures he had discovered or made. In the end, he believed that the only way to save you was to make you as you are now.”
The Princess couldn’t even breathe as Bunsen Burner relentlessly revealing the truth, “I was stopping by your home on a whim when I found he had already begun. As part of the procedure, Punnett and Bolera had cast their lifeforce as part of the toll for the magical transfusion process. Their combined love for you, and the magic it stimulated, helped the operation to succeed.”
Bunsen Burner stopped when he realized that the Princess was quietly crying to herself, overwhelmed by the barrage of revelations he had just put her through.
“They gave up everything,” she whispered brokenly, “So I could live?”
Bunsen Burner’s stony disposition wavered, and his mouth moved in two directions at once, unsure of what emotion to try and convey, “Yes, and I know they would be proud of you, whether you were a Princess or not, for the mare you have come to be.”
His face hardened once again before he continued, “I have kept this secret for over twenty years. Now the burden is also passed to you. The process that made you this way, while imperfect, has granted you great longevity and slowed aging, as well as a great well of magical power. For the necessary cognition to access this power, your mind was transformed, with the stress costing you the memories from before the procedure. If others were to know your history, the public would relentlessly seek the means of your transformation for themselves. I imagine you can divine the repercussions of such a wish being granted them.”
“Yes, I can,” she said as she dried her tears, when she looked up and realized that the sun had been due to set five minutes ago. Absentmindedly, her horn lit up, and the glowing orange body began its descent beyond the windows reach.
Bunsen Burner was surprised when he looked to the sky’s darkening and then to his godchild, “I didn’t realize you had had time to become acquainted with the emergency protocols before you had left Canterlot, though I supposed I should have assumed so.”
Princess Cadence looked at the older stallion quizzically, “Emergency protocols? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
The old stallion’s eyes widened when he heard this. “How is this possible?” he murmured, “How do you know how to raise the sun and moon without having been trained by the Royal Sisters?”
The Princess shook her head lightly, “I don’t know. Before I left I was forced into a deep sleep, where a presence spoke to me and gave me knowledge. Perhaps we’re not as abandoned as we had all thought: maybe Equestria has a guardian spirit.”
After the Princess had healed his head trauma, she had said farewell to him for the night and left for Twilight’s library.
Bunsen Burner leaned back against the head of his bedframe, and pondered on what she had said. Could it be true? Is there someone watching out for all of us? While initially he doubted it, he couldn’t be sure enough to conclusively say one way or the other, and that was what troubled him the most.