//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 // Story: To Be a Princess // by SpiffyPony //------------------------------// "Well, at least you were right on that one. Sombra is shady! You were completely justified in your anger, I think," Twilight said, nodding her head. "Maybe I was in hindsight, but at the time, I hated to disagree with my sister. And while I didn't like the idea of her sneaking out on her own, that wasn't the whole reason why I was upset with her. I guess...it just made me angry that she was practicing a kind of magic that I was not capable of with someone that wasn't me," Celestia said with a sigh. "But of course I handled the situation with the maturity and grace of a future princess..." ~  ~ "If Luna can sneak out with strangers to practice magic, then so can I!" I said to myself that morning with a grumble as I rose out of bed. Naturally, Luna was still asleep since she wouldn't dare be awake that early in the morning, so it was the perfect time for me to leave without her knowing, just as she had the day before. I defiantly walked out of the room, not bothering to sneak because there was no way I could wake up my sleeping sister even if I tried. I stomped over to the door next to ours and loudly knocked, just in case its inhabitants were still sleeping. "Gah, could you knock any louder, Celestia?!" Discord complained as he slowly opened the door. "Actually, don't answer that. Seriously, this is why I need to learn how to control the sun and the moon like you and Luna...then I will make my own schedule, or lack thereof... What do you want?" "I just wanted to see if you wanted to go practice our teleportation techniques. And it's not that early...the sun is up!" I said with an innocent smile. Discord raised an eyebrow. "So is Luna coming to practice?" I glanced down at my hooves. "No..not exactly... She's, you know, sleeping...and she's even less of a morning person than you are so..." Discord kept his eyebrow raised, but shrugged. "Alright. I guess I could use some more practice if I am to become the most powerful stallion before Ol' Sombrero passes me. Just allow me a moment to get ready." I nodded and watched as he trotted over to a bowl of peppermint candies on his bedside table and stuck his head face-first into the bowl. He took a mouthful of candies and then returned to where I was standing. "Phready," he announced with a pepperminty smile. I shook my head with a smile as well and then led the two of us down to a large open field near the palace gardens. Right as I was about to begin concentrating for my first attempt at teleporting that day, I was interrupted by a loud, "Celestia! You're alive!" Tully, the earth pony gardener, waved a hoof in the air as she quickly galloped towards where Discord and I were standing. "Most people don't die from smelling that flower, but there have been a few isolated cases where people haven't been so lucky. Granted, one of them passed out on the side of a mountain during an avalanche, so it probably wasn't entirely the flower's doing...but it's good to see you in the world of the living anyway!" I chuckled hesitantly. "Yes, I suppose that is a good thing... Are many of the flowers in the garden deadly?" "Oh no, they definitely aren't!" she replied with a laugh. "And I should know! I've checked nearly all of them myself." My eyes widened. "You sniffed the flowers without knowing whether you would live or die...?" "I had a bit of an idea, mostly inherited instincts about what makes a flower truly deadly, but now the Princess allows me to use the royal archives as a reference. She doesn't want her one and only gardener to die during a tragic flower accident! I have my own key and everything now!" Tully explained with a proud smile. "Wow, I would love to take a look at that someday! Hopefully the Princess gives us access eventually," I said, imagining how extensive the rows and columns of books must be. "Yeah, an entire room filled with orderly old books...must be such a thrilling sight," Discord said, face devoid of emotion. "Not just orderly old books! Orderly old books about magic!" I pointed out, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer enormous amount of knowledge that this one place likely held. "And magic flowers, apparently." "Eh, I guess. But don't you think it's more fun to learn the magic by actually doing it instead of reading about it? Most of the tricks I can do I never learned about from any book. I just...do it," Discord argued, making a wad of cotton candy appear for him to snack on. I just let this one go, figuring this was a topic on which we weren't going to see eye to eye. "Anyway, I gotta get back to the plants. Duty calls and all that!" Tully said, galloping back over to the gardens. "Glad that you survived, though! Ask me next time!" I waved a hoof in her direction and promised I would. After she vanished in the distance, I readied myself once again to practice my new technique. For just a moment, I wondered whether Luna was awake yet, then decided that it didn't matter. I was the older sister and was practicing with a friend, so she had no reason to be angry with me. Besides, this would make us even on the whole 'not telling you about my secret practice sessions' deal. I took a deep breath, focused intently on my desired destination on the other side of the field, and... "Hey, Celestia?" Discord asked. There was no way I was ever getting a chance to practice, was I? "Yes?" "I know that practice is important and all but...there is something else important that we could do instead. Something that might be easier to accomplish with a smaller group and with Sombra busy sleeping." I had absolutely no clue what he was going to suggest. "What's that?" "That tower - you know, the one across from our tower where we saw the Princess pacing - we could go do some snooping of our own and maybe see if there is any truth to the weird events that have been going on around here! I can be pretty stealthy when I need to be, and once we have seen what the place looks like, we should be able to teleport there later on if necessary, right?" I responded with a sigh. "Discord, you know that I don't think anything overly suspicious is going on. The Princess is allowed to have some secrets of her own and we should respect that right. Besides, I doubt we would find anything anyway." At that last statement, Discord smiled mischievously. "Are you willing to bet on that? Because if she really isn't hiding anything evil, then what's the problem with a bit of snooping around?" He had me there. I still didn't want to go looking through the Princess' private things, but maybe this would be an opportunity to finally stop Discord from worrying about any of his crazy "conspiracies." If I could prove definitively that there was nothing wrong with that tower, then maybe he would just let the whole thing go. "Fine. We will take a quick look around. But first we should make sure the Princess is busy elsewhere; I don't want her dropping in on us while we are poking around the place where her diary is hidden or something." Discord raised his head triumphantly. He took the lead in front and began his "stealthy" approach to the castle which mostly consisted of him making giant leaps to hide in nearby bushes or crouching down low to the ground. I followed behind him normally, taking in a bit of the sun's warmth before entering the castle. "Let's go see what Her Highness is up to now..." ~  ~ It didn't take long to locate the Princess. The throne room was closed and two of her guards were standing outside. They stopped us when we tried to get any closer. "Sorry, kids," one guard said with the same gruff voice that all of the guards seemed to have. "The Princess is busy in a diplomatic meeting." "With whom?" Discord asked in his attempt at an innocent voice. The guard glared at him. "It is no business of yours who the Princess meets with. Move along." Discord mock-saluted him and then marched away. I tried to give the guards an apologetic look, but as soon as he marched away, the guards resumed staring at the wall, not paying us any mind. I shrugged and followed after Discord. "This is perfect! I've never been in a 'diplomatic meeting', obviously, but I can assume that they must take a long time. And must be ridiculously boring unless they are discussing plans to paint the city with polka dots. But now's our chance!" he said, resuming his stealthy stance. "I sure hope you're right," I said, then realized one crucial part of this whole mission. "Wait - do you even know how to get to this tower?" Discord laughed. "Psh, of course I do! I have an excellent sense of direction." An hour of twists and turns later, we finally made it to the tower in question. "See?" he said. "I told you I knew how to get here." I nearly fell down from exhaustion. We hadn't just walked through corridors, oh no. We walked up and down various flights of stairs, some completely straight, others twisty and spiraled. Some ended in random dead ends while others were almost at a completely vertical incline. "You didn't know how to get here! You just got lucky." "No, I just took us on the scenic route! It wouldn't have been as fun if we had just walked straight here, right? And that wouldn't have been stealthy in the slightest..." I took a deep breath. "Fun. Right. Well, I've had about enough fun, so let's just go check out this tower." Discord nodded, then somehow managed to run up the entire flight of stairs without stopping. I stumbled behind him, regretting my decision to follow him on this crazy mission. Soon, however, we reached the door. I really hoped it was unlocked because Discord, on the way while walking here, had threatened to turn the door into swiss cheese and eat his way through if he couldn't get it open. While that was something effective to remember if we ever got trapped someday, I didn't want to have to explain to the Princess why we were going around turning her doors into cheese. I tried the lock with my magic and, thankfully, it opened. The two of us stepped inside to see...a nearly empty room. "What...?" Discord said, seeming disappointed. Two bookshelves with hardly any books remaining and a single empty desk were all that remained in the room. I glanced at the titles of the books and they weren't even anything very interesting. "Magical Mane Care," I read. "How to Hatch Your Phoenix: A Beginner's Guide." "Hey, one of the books over here is about something called 'Chaos Theory'! I like the sound of that... Find anything?" Discord asked, flipping through the Chaos book. "Aw, it's just lots of math...I think." "I didn't find anything useful. Convinced, yet?" I said, raising an eyebrow. "I think the fact that there isn't anything is almost more convincing than if there had been something! This must mean she's hiding something! What else would she have been doing here a few nights ago?" "Maybe brushing her mane?" I said, holding up the book. "Maybe she doesn't want people to know that her mane isn't naturally golden or something." "It has to be more than that! It just... What about the guard disappearing? And the unicorn-only rule? There has to be something going on behind the scenes," Discord insisted. I put the book down and approached him with an idea he probably didn't want to hear. "What if...well, you know how you are the chaos-pony? How you like to find the chaotic nature of things? What if...you are just seeing what you want to see? Maybe everything is just completely normal, but you want to make things more interesting by injecting some chaos into the story?" "That can't be it! I mean, it is true that I prefer things to be chaotic, but that also means I am better at sensing when something chaotic is occurring. I just know this isn't the whole story," he said. "I - " "What are you two doing in here?" an angry, gruff voice said from behind us. Judging from the gruff nature of his voice, it had to be one of the guards. We turned around cautiously and, sure enough, a guard was standing at the door with an angry frown on his face. "We...um..." I began, but Discord interrupted. "We were just looking for a book to read!" He grabbed a random book from the shelves with magic and held it up to the guard. "I heard that this one was one you simply have to read." The guard squinted at the title. "The Attack of the Everfree Forest? Huh, I actually have heard of that one. I think I read it a while ago...it is a good one!" Discord reclaimed his usual charismatic smile. "I've heard nothing but good things about it, so I dragged Celestia up here to find it. That's all!" The guard nodded. "Alright then. Now that you have the book, I must ask you to be on your way. The Princess does not take kindly to ponies wandering around her towers without her approval." "Of course. We wouldn't dare do anything to the upset the Princess, would we, Celestia?" "Uh, nope. Definitely not," I responded, amazed that he managed to worm his way out of this. "Good. Move along then, you two." We began to exit the room, but Discord suddenly turned around with a gasp. "You! I didn't recognize you at first since all of you guard ponies look the same - no offense - but you are our guard that disappeared! I know it!" I gasped as well. I didn't notice it at first either - the guard ponies really did look exactly the same - but there was no denying that this was our original guard. The guard stared at us skeptically. "Disappeared? Well, I did go on vacation for a few days, so I guess that is a disappearance, but - " "Where did you go on vacation? With whom? When did you leave?" Discord interrogated. The guard pony was taken aback. "I - well - that is none of your business! Just move along." "But that means - " he began, but I dragged him away, apologizing to the guard. As soon as we were out of his sight at the bottom of the tower, I stopped Discord. "What were you thinking? Asking him all of those questions like that... We were nearly away from that situation without rousing suspicion!" "But his arrival in of itself is suspicious! Who just leaves without any notice, then returns all of a sudden, claiming to have been on 'vacation'? Wouldn't he at least have told us something about his trip? I thought ponies delighted in telling people about their vacations." "So, what, do you think he was kidnapped and brainwashed or something?" I said with a sarcastic laugh. Discord's eyes widened. "Yes! That is exactly what must have happened! The Princess must have done something to him to...I don't know, maybe change his behavior? That would do it...I'll have to watch him carefully over the next few days to observe how he acts..." Discord began to walk forward, returning to the direction of our tower. "There is nothing going on!" I called after him, but he didn't seem to be listening. So much for making him forget his conspiracies... I sighed, then stopped when I realized how much I had been sighing that day, and followed after him back to our tower.