//------------------------------// // 1: The Blue Heaven // Story: The Country of Roses // by Dutch Tilt //------------------------------// THE COUNTRY OF ROSES A story by Dutch Tilt Special thanks to Bed Head PART ONE 1 THE BLUE HEAVEN The black alicorn fled across the desert, and the gun-pony followed. The ancient princess had seen so in her dreams. The desert was huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless, therefore it was the apotheosis of all deserts, she supposed. During the fleeting moments between waking and wakefulness, she swore that it was the same great desert which stood at the fringes of her domain. It was a place where the all-consuming sand was broken up only by decayed bones and signs like tombstones that had been eroded away by time and the harsh, unforgiving elements. She thought it must be madness – no, it must be suicide to traverse it. The black alicorn and the gun-pony travelled light. They might have been carrying two, if not four water skins between the pair of them, and meagre protection from the brutal heat of the sand and the sun. Stranger still, where had they been coming from? Beyond that desert there was only the faint, cloudy haze of impassable mountains. Ponies had indeed lived there once, but not since before the founding of the kingdom. It was like a phantom, forsaken by their ancestors. The gun-pony too, was a phantom, the ghost of a history that chilled the princess to remember. Chilled and saddened her. The princess, Celestia was her name, arose from her bed. She opened the big, ornate double-doors with the barest glimmer of magickal will, and stepped out onto the balcony. Celestia was kin to the Equestrian sun, and it was at her divine beckoning that it rose with her above one horizon and set with her below the other. She watched, her eyes unaffected by its fiery glare, and felt the warming light pour through her like a prism, bathing the fertile countryside which was so many worlds away from the barren landscape of her slumber. It calmed her spirits for the moment, heated the steel which gave her the power needed to decide the course of a civilisation, but even as the rest of her dream slipped away from her into nothingness, Celestia remembered the black alicorn, and as a trembling pit formed in her stomach, she knew. The world was about to move on. XXX The gun-pony had started to suspect he had seen his last hut. It was five days on, perhaps a week. Time seemed funny to him, without solidarity, as was direction since his prey had evaded him. The desert was long behind him, as forgotten as his hat and the torn water skins. All that remained for him was to keep moving along. He crested the last of the rocky foothills, and found himself staring at a path up the side of what he had come to think of as ‘the Blue Heaven.’ There was a hut, and if he was right, smoke from a cooking pot. The gun-pony’s stomach clenched painfully, reminding him that his last meal of any substance had been as unfulfilling as it had been tasteless. He knew what it took to survive on his own, but that was no substitute for being able to actually cook. The hut looked temporary to his eyes. It was for camping, not for living. The dweller, a striped equine of a species he had only seen once before in his life, was zealously stirring her brew with a long stick. The gun-pony came up the mountainside path slowly. He could see no weapons on the dweller. She looked up, eyes target-centre on him, and she took one forehoof off her stick in a gesture of welcome, an invitation to sit and share with her. “Long days and pleasant nights, stranger,” she said. The gun-pony paused. “And may you have twice the number,” he said at last, voice cracking from lack of use. The dweller did not comment on his silence, although he was certain she must have noticed. What surprised him more was that she knew such a phrase. It was one he knew very well, he and his teacher, and by that extension he thought that no other living being should. After all, it was of a dialect which was dead and buried. “May a poor pilgrim ask where you might be going?” asked the dweller in a tone that was both calm and somehow sing-song. “I hope by extending the hoof of friendship, your quest I am not slowing.” “It’s fine,” said the gun-pony. He was staring at the pot. “I’m looking for somepony.” “The other stranger,” said the dweller without hesitation. “From her, I sense great danger. Catch this sorceress, I fear you cannot, for she covers great leagues in each single trot.” “I’ll catch her,” said the gun-pony. The dweller reached under the blue robe she wore. He could see that she adorned herself with symbols, talismans and totems the way soldiers might adorn themselves with armour. She drew out two wooden bowls, and filled these with the rich-smelling stew from the pot. The gun-pony accepted one, and sniffed it. The smell was new and exotic to him. It soothed his agonised stomach and filled him more than anything he had eaten in a long time. He swallowed it down without hesitation, and when he was finished, his hostess obliged him with a second helping. “Thankee, sai,” the gun-pony said, once his hunger had abated enough to allow proper speech. He then asked her, “Are you a sorceress?” “Mayhap,” she said wryly. The gun-pony paused again, then amended his previous question, “One of the Mannifolk?” “Mannifolk,” chuckled the dweller, “a word unheard for a long time, friend. I was with them awhile, but that came to its end.” She spoke the truth. That particular caste of spiritualist nomads had not been seen since their last great pilgrimage to a far-off corner of the world. “Why?” The dweller shrugged. “Our paths were no longer bound,” she said, “so a new path had to be found. Many are the ways I’ve learned, and many are the magicks I’ve earned. The Mannifolk, they like to see holes in the world, doors through which universes, like wings, come unfurled.” The gun-pony simply grunted his acknowledgement. He stared at her silently for several minutes, taking his second course more slowly so as to savour the aromatic taste. Finally, he asked her, “You said you’re a pilgrim? Where are you going?” “Anywhere, nowhere, somewhere, everywhere,” said the dweller. The gun-pony snorted at the answer, not because it was intentionally vague, rather because she had just described his own path with surprising accuracy. He had simply gone wherever the black alicorn’s hoof-prints led him, regardless of where that might be. Lacking a clear indicator of where she had gone, he had wandered aimlessly. That was the last either of them said for the next few hours. The warmth of the food not only served to fill the gun-pony, but to lull him into sleep. He dreamt he was at the edge of a field of roses, greater in size than he could imagine, for the gun-pony was not adept in imagining. His teacher had always told him he was not very bright, and only bright ones had the gift to imagine new futures, therefore he would always live in the time that was, on the wheel that turned. He also dreamt of a white alicorn, one that he recognised, and she was looking at the roses. No, that had been wrong. She was looking through them at a black shape he could not rightly discern. The yellow cores of the roses burned like countless miniature eyes, each holding in them the light of an alien sun. He awoke the next morning beside the dweller, surprised to find he was feeling much better. He had not slept so soundly in all his life, always with one eye and ear open for danger as his teacher had instructed him, but he had been out completely, and for a brief moment thought he had been locked in a comfortable lifetime of hibernation. He gained his hooves, fast as lickety-split, every nerve going from dormancy to full alert status. His hostess’s sapphire eyes peered into his own, through them, and settled over him like a soft caress. “You need not spurn what was needed, dear,” she told him. “Whilst you slept, I kept you safe out here.” “I say thankee twice, sai,” said the gun-pony. “Don’t happen often, but I do.” “Come. Breakfast is ready,” said the dweller, and smiled. “Hear my advice, if you would not mind,” she said while they ate, “repayment for the food and safety, as is right to your kind.” “I’ll always repay an act of good will,” he admitted. “That much, gun-pony, I already know,” the dweller smiled at him again, and she turned her attention up towards the mountain path, “yon road ahead, to Canterlot you’ll go.” “Canterlot, by all the divines!” he uttered, hit by sharp surprise. “Then this whole time I’ve been in Equestria.” He set his empty bowl to one side and stood up. “I say it thrice, and that I have never done before. Long days and pleasant nights to you.” “Walk easy. And may you have twice the number,” said the dweller. “If for succour or shelter your need becomes dire, friends will always find room by Zecora’s fire.” The gun-pony left her. XXX It was before dawn when the young acolyte returned to the dormitory common room at Canterlot’s Academy of the White. The school had stood since the city’s founding, according to the official history texts, but there were those who subscribed to the idea that their ancestors had discovered it already hewn from a monolithic tooth of stone, and built up their capital around it. Most today considered this to be mythology, knowing that before the city, there had only been the mountain, referred to in those bygone days as Castle Rock and presently as Mount Canterlot. The acolyte had slipped away the night before to avoid a classmate’s birthday festivities and returned when she suspected the common room was emptied of bodies. Her saddlebags were loaded with books from the library where she had claimed sanctuary. The short, lavender horn on her forehead glistened with power, and she willed open the common room door. The interior consisted of two tiers, the lower one housing seats, tables and amenities, the upper one a smaller reference library with a large, antique telescope as its centrepiece. Entering the first tier, she found the only sign of life to be a small bundle waiting for her on a cushion. The bundle was entirely purple save for flashes of brilliant green clustered along its curled body. She felt a brief lapse in her single-mindedness, just long enough to feel a pang of guilt for leaving the sleeping creature to the mercy of her classmates, before nudging it awake with the tip of one hoof. “Spike,” she said, “come on. I need you awake.” The scaly mass uncurled and looked up at her, blinking a few times before his emerald eyes were able to focus. The common room was dim, but the glow of those eyes lit it up like a hearth. “Twilight?” the baby dragon questioned, and rubbed one eye. “Where’ve you been all night?” “Working, while apparently everypony else was partying,” Twilight Sparkle replied. “I need you to take a letter for Princess Celestia for me.” “What time is it?” Spike half asked, half yawned. He looked around for a clock to no success. There had been one on the mantelpiece, but it had been removed during the birthday celebrations. Twilight ignored him, already making her way up the stairway. which corkscrewed between the tiers. The boundaries of the common room’s upper section did not reach the walls, and so it was more like a suspended platform than an actual floor. Spike sighed, shook the last of the cobwebs from his brain, and toddled after her as fast as he could. She had already set out the heavy volumes on the same table where the telescope held pride of place, and magickally opening them to pages she had marked with ribbons. Dust and grit flittered away from them, rolling over the table’s surface and trickling to the floor. Spike peered over the acolyte’s shoulder at the yellowing pages, and was drawn immediately to one of the illustrations. It was a golden, eight-pointed star. Perched at the tips of five of these points, one at the top and four at the sides, were vibrantly hued gems. Red, orange, violet, blue and green, orbiting a sixth gem, magenta, nestled in the star’s heart. Spike was sure that he saw pictures within the picture. He could see marks in those gems, and he was practised at discerning the details, because baby dragons looked at an image of six differently coloured gems the way a pony looked at the photographs on a menu in Canterlot’s finest restaurants. He saw these ghostly images not as distinct imperfections in the way they had been cut, but as evidence of where their real flavour was hidden, like the custard inside a donut. “Spike, you’re dribbling,” said Twilight Sparkle, and used one hoof to prop his lower jaw shut. He snapped to attention, hunger sharpening his wits. He found his parchment and quill, dipped the latter in an inkwell, and got ready to receive his mistress’s diction. Twilight Sparkle did not begin right away. Spike correctly guessed she was cross-referencing the open pages. The unicorn was Princess Celestia’s most dedicated pupil in the ways of the White, her most trusted disciple, and she held that trust dear to her heart. Were she to get her information wrong, she would consider it a betrayal. “The Mare in the Moon,” she mumbled, “Mare in the Moon…sealed by the Ritual of Ka-Tet…darn, what I wouldn’t give for a definite translation, it sounds way too hokey…anyway, compare that to the Nightmare Moon traditions…yes…yes, that should do.” Once she was satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt with her findings, she began to pace back and forth, as she always did when she was dictating. “To my dearest teacher, my continuing studies of the magicks of the White, and my examinations of the Red…” “Whoa! Whoa!” Spike stopped her. “You’ve been studying dark magick too? Didn’t the princess warn everypony on the first day about how dangerous that is?” “Spike, don’t be naïve. We can hardly hope to overcome the Red if we don’t understand how it works,” Twilight replied impatiently. “Besides, I’ve only been reading about historical events it’s had a hand in, so it can be recognised. I couldn’t carry out a ritual of that calibre if I tried. None of the grimoires or spell books on it are available anywhere.” “But you’ve looked,” said Spike. “As I was saying,” Twilight harrumphed, and continued her dictation, “my examinations of the Red have led me to reassess the cycle of waxing and waning of magickal forces as was taught to us last term during the season of Wide-Earth. Based on the compilation and comparison of data from both your lessons and the calendar system proposed by Star Swirl the Bearded in his journals, page references for which are listed below, the night before the Summer Sun Celebration will see a cosmic alignment matching that of the same date precisely one-thousand years ago. Analysis of particular weather-related omens indicates that we may now stand at the end of what has come to be known by optimists as, ‘Equestria’s Golden Age’…” When she finally finished, the sun had risen, visible through the common room’s glass, domed ceiling. Spike flexed his aching paw. Typical Twilight, never saying in one word what she could in nine or ten. He rolled the message into a tight scroll, snapped the seal shut, and then breathed a light puff of emerald dragon’s fire over it. The scroll became a cloud of twinkling lights, spiralled up into the air above their heads, and vanished. Delivery via Dragon Breath Express was significantly faster than any castle courier. It would travel through the ether and arrive at the princess’s chambers in precisely three and a half seconds. “Let’s go, Spike,” said Twilight Sparkle, willing her books into her saddlebag and then moving that across her back. The baby dragon blinked. “Where are we going now, Twilight?” he asked. “First I need to drop these back at the library,” she told him, omitting the fact she had technically removed them without alerting the librarian, “and after that, we’re going to see Princess Celestia personally.” “Why? What about the letter?” Spike asked despairingly, jabbing a clawed digit upwards. “I’m more than certain she’ll have read it by then,” said Twilight, “but the Summer Sun Celebration is coming up, and she might not have the chance to write back. We’d be doing her a favour by giving her one less thing to worry about.” She lowered herself slightly. Spike resigned himself, shrugged his shoulders, and clambered onto her back. Twilight straightened up and was out of the dormitory like a shot. She carried out her first task of the day without a problem. It was a weekend, when the library would not be scheduled to open until the afternoon, and she being a sometimes-volunteer-assistant-librarian, had a spare key that allowed her to re-enter and replace the books before the elderly mare who was normally in charge could arrive and take stock. She spent an extra ten minutes trying to decide if two particular books were exactly as they had been before the librarian had locked up and she had let herself in, then threw a little extra dust over them just to be sure of her deception. She stopped by the Star Swirl the Bearded wing to do a cursory search for a grimoire she had been after for weeks, failed to find it, hopped up and down in frustration while making irritated sounds for several moments, then went to look for her teacher. “You’re going to have to fill me in a little, Twilight,” said Spike, holding onto the unicorn’s neck. “That stuff you were talking about in the letter. It’s all just folksy stories, right? Superstitions? Why’s it got you so worked up?” “I thought it was that too, Spike,” she informed him, “but I’ve found evidence that suggests otherwise. Didn’t you get any of that the whole time you were writing?” “I tend to just go on automatic when you really get into it.” Twilight let out an exasperated sigh. “All right, listen. It’s the one-thousandth year of the Summer Sun Celebration,” she explained, “a commemoration of when Princess Celestia imprisoned the witch Nightmare Moon. It was a significant turning point in the battle between the magick of the White and the Red.” “But that’s good!” “Yes, but the spell won’t last forever. I know Nightmare Moon will return, and she’ll be even stronger than before!” “Okay, that’s pretty bad, but how do you know that’s what’ll happen?” Twilight seemed unsure of how to answer him. She was not the type to say she simply had a gut feeling, or asked to be trusted without being able to give empirical proof, but truly that was what it came down to. Even the references she had made in her letter to her teacher had not been perfect. Much of her belief, much more than she was comfortable with, stemmed entirely from a sensation of foreboding which had hung over her for days, if not weeks on end. Spike called her name, asking if she was feeling all right. Twilight said nothing and galloped onward. XXX The streets of Canterlot were filling with morning activity. Officers of the Royal Guard, whose duties encompassed the protection of the entire capital, were out on patrol in their exquisitely forged armour. Carts containing wares for the upcoming solstice were being led through the streets while ponies played, worked and talked all about her. She passed the town square, where a chattering crowd were gathering around the ornate fountain atop which stood the monument to the three leaders who united the fledgling tribes. The front gates of Canterlot Castle were before her, and up on the hill behind them was the royal residence itself, cast in ivory and shining like a beacon for all to see. The curtains on the balcony of the tallest spire, the monarch’s chambers, flapped in the breeze. Twilight assumed that her mentor had already spotted her approach from that vantage point, and might even now be breathing a sigh of relief to know her student was on the way to discuss the important matters she had spoken of in the letter. Celestia was not in her tower, nor did she look relieved. She was approaching down the path to the gates, accompanied by two of her personal guards. Her expression was stony. Twilight and Spike winced. Neither of them had seen the princess looking so ill at ease before. She was ordinarily so serene, at peace with the world. The unicorn realised that the guards standing positioned to either side of the outer gate were looking at her, waiting for her to make way. She shrank back, and the gates opened. “Princess?” she asked meekly. “We’ll speak in a moment, my student,” the princess told her as she trotted on by. Twilight watched her in confusion as she and her entourage stopped. Another guard came forward from the crowd. Although she had not set eyes on him for many months after his promotion, there was no mistaking the handsome features of her older brother. Shining Armour was Celestia’s Captain of the Guard, and the one with whom the princess had entrusted the responsibility of protecting Canterlot’s citizenry from threats both domestic and foreign. He wore an uncharacteristically grim expression. Twilight had seen him serious, but never once grim. Every muscle in him was tight and tense, like a bundle of wires. “Captain,” said Celestia, “what has happened?” “Truth be told, Your Grace,” said Shining Armour, “we aren’t entirely sure. A stranger arrived at the gates a few minutes ago, demanding an audience with you.” “That’s hardly unusual, Captain,” said Celestia. “Who is he?” “He refuses to tell anypony his name, save for you,” said Shining Armour. He glanced sidelong at Twilight, then returned to the princess. “I’m not sure this is the right place to speak of this.” Twilight felt like a criminal being judged in court as both Celestia and her own brother regarded her. She understood that for something to upset Shining Armour this much, it would have to be something big. Not just big, but huge. A matter of literally grave urgency. That knowledge did not make her feel any better. “She can hear this,” the princess said finally, “so please, Captain, tell me what the matter is.” “You can see for yourself, dinh of Canterlot,” said a new voice Twilight was not familiar with. It was young, but harsh like gravel. It was the voice of somepony who was far older than his years. She, Shining Armour, Celestia and the guards all turned to face it, and saw the crowd parting like tall grass faced with a gust of wind. The voice had silenced them all. Approaching them at a deliberate pace was a grey earth-pony with a black mane and tail. He wore a crimson bandanna around his neck, a hide vest, and a belt around his middle from which dangled two brown holsters, one at either side of him, close to the hinges of his hind-legs. Twilight could not see what was in the holsters, but she saw the mark on his flank. Two long, identical blue rods of strange shape, angled up so that the thinner ends crossed. His eyes were also blue, but not a deep or meaningful blue. They were cold like glaciers. Again, Twilight felt herself wince. “Hile, Celestia-sai,” said the grey earth-pony, and to the mutual surprise of the watchers, he got down on his forelegs in a gesture of respect, bending one beneath him and stretching the other out before him. “I am called Peacemaker.” It was an omen Twilight Sparkle had not foreseen. It was one Princess Celestia had been waiting for.