It had been two days since he had been unceremoniously dumped into the realm ruled by his granddaughters, and Loki was bored. Apart from the conversation they'd had the first day, neither one of the two mares had much time to spend with him. Which was, after all, to be expected. They were running a country. Loki had very clear memories from his childhood of the Allfather being busy with with matters of statecraft, leaving very little time for either one of his sons. Of course, even then, Thor, as the oldest, would get more of their father's rare moments of freedom.
It wasn't exactly that Loki really wanted to spend time with his granddaughters, exactly, but still, some contact would have been nice. To make matters more complicated, the younger of the mares slept in the daytime, as she was the sovereign of the night (apparently). The elder, it seemed, kept more traditional hours.
And, apparently, they hadn't come to an agreement about what they were going to do about him yet, so Loki was confined to the palace. When he tried to go outside the first day, a guard apologetically stopped him. “I am sorry, Your Highness, but Princess Celestia has instructed us to keep you inside the palace until a decision has been reached.”
“A decision about what?” Loki asked curiously. He wasn't aware of any decisions that needed to be made. The guard looked remarkably uncomfortable.
“About whether or not it is safe for you to go outside, Your Highness,” he finally answered. “Princess Celestia has told us that you are... not from around here and might not know what to watch out for. Equestria might seem peaceful, but it can be a very dangerous place for the unwary.”
Loki looked at him skeptically. The guardspony was a saffron-yellow pegasus stallion with a mane the color of seafoam, about the least threatening combination of colors as could possibly be combined. From what he had seen of the ponies scurrying about the palace in various capacities, this seemed to be true of the entire species. If one kicked you, it would probably hurt, but overall, the ponies seemed very harmless. Loki knew the folly of judging an adversary purely on looks alone, but ponies as a species just didn't seem like they posed any real threat. To anyone. “Really,” was all he said. The guard just looked even more uncomfortable, if that was even possible. Loki thought that if the pony had had magic, he would have tried to sink through the floor to get away from him.
“Ah,” he said smoothly, once it dawned on him. “It is not my safety my granddaughters are worried about. It is that of all of you.” He punctuated the remark with a predatory smirk aimed at the guard.
“I... I... I wouldn't know, Your Highness,” the guard stammered in response.
Grinning much like a manticore that had found its dinner, Loki leaned in very close to the hapless guard. “What is your name, soldier?”
“S-sure Shield, sir,” the pegasus replied. The alicorn's grin just widened that much more.
“New recruit, are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I suppose I can say one thing for them: my granddaughters are more perceptive than I give them credit for. They were right about one thing.”
“A-and what was that, Your Highness?” the guard looked like he was ready to pass out from sheer terror.
“Oh, don't worry about that, Sure Shield. If I wanted you dead., I would have killed you ten minutes ago. You never would have seen me coming.”
Chuckling to himself as he made his way back towards his room, Loki gave the near-catatonic pegasus a jaunty wave. Not that he actually had any ill intent towards the stallion... Loki wasn't that cruel. The poor bastard was just doing his job. Loki was just so damn bored...
“I heard he tried to EAT Sure Shield!”
“Don't be stupid, Dandelion, he's the grandfather of our Princesses, not a monster. Sure Shield's an idiot, anyway, he probably just misunderstood. I bet the Royal Grandfather was just hungry and said something to Sure Shield, and Shield took it as a threat.”
“Well, I heard he propositioned Strawberry Macaroon when she tried to bring him dinner! She said he suggested disgusting things he'd like to do to her!”
“Aw, hell, Mocha, you can't honestly believe that. Macaroon's just trying to cover her flank. She probably thought she'd get to fuck an alicorn and got offended when he turned her down. And you know she'll sleep with anypony who doesn't turn her down, and a few that do. Let's see, who has she admitted to bedding in the past month alone? Warrior Ethos, Ghost Strike, Fountain Pen, Croque Monsieur, and probably a whole bunch of others. And who could forget last year, when she caused an international incident when Rosegold walked in on her and the ambassador from the Penguin Nation? I didn't even know that was possible.”
“Get your mind outta the gutter, Exhibit, Strawberry Macaroon's got not standards, but you do you really think think she'd just hop into bed with a creepy alicorn stallion who's related to the Princesses?”
“Yes!”
“And wouldn't any alicorn stallion be related to the Princesses by necessity?”
“Shaddup, you're not half as funny as you think you are.”
Word about Loki was spreading like wildfire among the palace staff. A hoof-full of maids gossiped amongst themselves as they prepared that night's dinner. They might not be the most credible of mares, but at least Exhibit A, who was working as a maid to put herself through Canterlot University's law school, seemed to be immune from Loki-hysteria. She might have been more than willing to impugn the motives of her coworkers, but at least she seemed willing to give Loki the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, those mares had no idea that they were being overheard. Princess Luna's listening spells were subtle enough that she could place them all around the palace with nopony being the wiser. She was very curious about the stallion who had arrived claiming to be her grandfather, and if the palace servants could be relied on to do anything, it was gossip like a bunch of schoolfillies.
Luna would also be lying if she said she didn’t feel a kind of kinship with the not-really-an-alicorn. If his story was to be believed, loneliness and despair had driven him to desperation, just like it had with her. Maybe Loki hadn’t fallen into the trap of fiddling around with an arcane, ancient evil that possessed him, turning him into a destructive dark spirit like she had. If his story was to be believed, he had always been a monster of some sort, although he didn’t know it, and definitely didn’t consider himself monstrous. The revelation of his true identity, that he was what he hated, had been the grain of rice that tipped the scale, so to speak. And in the aftermath of that catastrophe, he had fallen into the hands of beings that sounded much, much worse than what a normal pony could even begin to comprehend. But Luna could.
Maybe he had committed atrocities, but so had Luna, as Nightmare Moon. Father had said that Loki had killed over a thousand of whatever the dominant being on this “Midgard” was. But Nightmare Moon had mercilessly slaughtered far more than a thousand ponies, and that was without counting the members of the many other species that had incurred her wrath. If Nightmare Moon’s first plan had worked, as well, the death toll would have been near a billion- the entire population of the world at that time. If it had worked after she had been freed from the moon, she would have been responsible for the deaths of eight billion- the current world population. Maybe Loki was a murderer, but at least he hadn’t tried to annihilate every single living thing on the world he’d tried to conquer. Luna could not say the same for herself.
It wasn’t as though the sovereign of the Night could not understand her sister’s concern. But Celestia herself didn’t really have a leg to stand on, either, when it came right down to it. Equestria was at peace now, but it hadn’t always been. Before her corruption and subsequent banishment, Luna had lead troops alongside Celestia in wars against Griffindell, the Draco Archipelago, various Diamond Dog packs, Austroolia, Zebrica, and the Kingdom of Cows. As a result of that war, the Kingdom of Cows had been utterly destroyed, the refugees flooding neighboring countries, including Equestria. How many enemy combatants had Celestia slain herself? How many more had died as a result of Celestia’s orders? How many noncombatants became collateral damage?
After her return from the moon, Luna studied the history books. During her imprisonment, Celestia had gone to war against the Penguin Nation, Griffindell again, Minotauria, and one more war with the griffons. Granted, most of those wars were in self-defense, but not all of them were. Luna remembered very clearly that the war with Austroolia had begun because Celestia felt that the kangaroo king had disrespected her authority.
Even if you discounted the Nightmare Moon incidents, the two princesses had a body count of more than merely a thousand. Luna could not hold it against her grandfather- she had done worse, and not only as the corrupted alicorn she’d become after falling to Nightmare Moon.
So, she decided that she needed to talk to Celestia. It was their duty to rehabilitate the stallion. If not Celestia’s, then it was hers. Twilight Sparkle and her friends had saved her. It was time to pay it forward. If a complete monster like Luna had been could be reformed, surely a single, depressed stallion could be?
“Celestia, we need to let Grandfather go outside., and meet other ponies. It is not good for him to be kept inside all the time, and if we are even to begin reforming him, he will need interaction. Besides, he’s bored. He has taken to flustering the maids and guards, and other servants. Even if he hasn’t done anything they allege, he is proving to be enough of a distraction to them that something must be done.”
Surprised, the Day Sovereign turned to look at her sister. “Luna, it’s the middle of the day. What are you doing out of bed?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Luna replied. “I am telling you that we simply cannot leave our own grandfather cooped up in this castle all the time. I think it would be a good idea to allow him to explore Equestria.”
“I can’t,” Celestia stated flatly. “Not after what Father told us he had done. And I know he explained himself, but really, Luna, do you believe a single word of it? He felt overlooked and unappreciated, so he committed terrible atrocities, and that only because of the creatures he fell into the hooves of?”
“Yes, sister, I do believe it,” Luna said softly. She did not elaborate, nor did she need to.
“That was different, Luna. You were not in control of yourself at the time.”
“And neither was our grandfather!” the darker mare exclaimed. “Are you really so naïve that you believe I had nothing to do with Nightmare Moon? In my despair I began to play with forces I could not control, that I did not want to control. So what if it would likely have killed me if I had refused? I welcomed it, Celestia! I knew at the time the results would be cataclysmic, but I did not care! Do you think it impossible, sister, that perhaps our ancestor might share the same follies as us?”
Celestia stared openly at her younger sister. Luna never spoke of her time as Nightmare Moon, although the older mare had been trying to get her to open up about it since her return. Celestia knew that Luna’s loneliness had helped bring about Nightmare Moon, but it had never occurred to her that her sister had gone out of her way to cause it.
“But what of his attack on that other world? Where he killed thousands?”
“Celestia, neither you nor I have the right to speak of that. How many kangaroos did you kill in your attack on Austroolia? And you forget that if I had succeeded as Nightmare Moon I would have extinguished all life. But you are willing to make a fuss over beings in a completely different world.”
Celestia bristled at Luna’s accusation. “What gives you the right-“
“I have the right as somepony who has done far, far worse than whatever it was our grandfather did,” Luna shot back.
Celestia deflated at the cold tone in Luna’s voice. “I just… don’t know what do to, Luna.”
“Then let me handle matters tomorrow. You need do nothing. In fact, that would probably be best. I would quite like to get to know my grandfather. You may do as you wish, but I warn you against interfering.”
“It is not that I do not want to know him,” Celestia replied. “I just don’t know if I should.”
Luna glared at her for a few moments, then relented. It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand Celestia’s feelings, either. She had tried so hard to become a good ruler, and whatever follies she had in the past, she seemed to have made steps to rectify them. “Why don’t you think about it today? And tonight? You need not move quickly. I have gotten the impression from both Father, as well as what our grandfather has said, that he will be here for quite some time.”
To Be Continued