Through the Well of Pirene

by Ether Echoes

Chapter 19: The Princess

Green light shattered around me as Rainbow Dash reared and bucked. Try as she might, struggle all she would, there was no escaping this confinement. Delicate chains of soft gold held her as solidly as tempered steel, and the bit between her teeth turned her shouts to whinnies of fright. No matter what she did, how she fought, she could no more slip the Bridle than she could have resisted it being put on in the first place.

One sharp yank hauled her head eastward. We looked out over a smoking landscape of storm and sea, where a great airship burned in the sky above the broken spur of land that held the island ruins. It was by my hand, however indirectly, that the fires raged aboard that beast of a machine, but I no longer cared. Let the goblins cut one another’s throats; they couldn’t touch me any longer.

Rainbow Dash balked, her feet kicking as she tried to throw me from her back. Her powerful muscles surged and flexed between my legs. In response, I tightened my grip and growled at her to be still. To some surprise on my part, it was not the grip or the words she responded to—my touch she recoiled at, my words she scoffed. I could feel her resistance melt away as I focused my intent on her. The sensation, an electric current carried between her mind and mine, thrummed between my fingertips through the chain.

Wordlessly, I bid her go, and then the air shattered around me. Her wings surged and pony and rider cut through the night air like a bullet fired from a gun. Wind buffeted me, a continuous hammer, but I bent forward over her and pushed out into it.

Naomi often said, when Daphne and I came to visit and ride with her, that a truly good rider grew to know her steed so well that they formed one unit, one mind, that what one felt the other felt as surely as if it had happened to their own selves.

How small the horizon of her imagination was.

When Rainbow Dash beat her wings, I felt the muscles clench all across her body as she drew energy from every corner of her being. Each burst of power was precisely timed for maximal advantage in flight; she was a finely-tuned engine of motion, and I felt her every contraction as if it were my own. The wind blowing past her, the heart beating within her chest; they might as well have been against my skin instead of hers. It was as if her every thought passed through mine before she knew she’d thought it.

As we rocketed from the island towards the distant continent, I wore Rainbow Dash’s skin as another might a snug coat. A true union of rider and mount.

And what a mount she was! The clouds hurtled by underneath so fast their misty hills and valleys seemed all a blur. Rarely before had I been pushed to this level of performance, it was as thrilling as the first time I ever flew on my own power over the awed faces of my peers. The youngest flyer in a generation, and the first in a thousand years to pull off a sonic rainboom! Not that anypony believed it was really me at the time, but they all learned when—

Rainbow Dash nearly spun out of control as I jerked the reins hard. My head began to swim as breathing became more difficult, and the coast spiraled up to meet us. Just as spots crowded into my vision Rainbow Dash leveled out and began to glide, allowing me to catch my breath as we soared over the lights of little villages by the beach side.

I ran fingers through my tangled blond hair, smoothing it down my back. There was no mistaking it; I had been reliving Rainbow Dash’s memories. If I looked back, I could see them as clearly as my own, remember the pride my—her—father displayed when Rainbow Dash had landed back home on her own two wings. There were snatches and impressions of the years between that childhood triumph and the far sweeter victory of the Young Flyers’ competition.

There was no telling how long it had lasted. Long enough to get from the island to Equestria’s shoreline, certainly, however long that had been. In my head it felt like hours, or perhaps longer.

It didn’t matter, though. For the first time in weeks, I was free. Unlike the last time I’d escaped, I was mounted on the back of one of the fastest creatures known, with the liberty of an open sky on all sides. I only needed to ride Rainbow Dash long enough to get where I was going, release her, and then whatever weird crap the Golden Bridle had going for it wouldn’t matter anymore.

Except for the slight problem of not knowing where I could go.

Spying lights on the horizon—a cloud city of grids and lines, so Rainbow Dash’s memories informed me—I turned away towards low scrubby mountains and tried to work out my next move. The most obvious conclusion, the one I had been struggling towards ever since the goblin lies had been revealed, was that I had to get back home. In my mind I saw myself, dirty and smudged, mounting the steps back up to the front porch, knocking, and being welcomed back into the golden light of home where it was warm and safe. My parents would scold me and be quite cross with me, but they’d welcome me all the same.

So it was in a child’s imagination. Once you get home and safe in your own bed, the monsters couldn’t touch you anymore. By now, though, I knew better. Sheets were a poor barrier against goblin swords and your father may seem big and tough, but compared to a ten-foot centaur he may as well have been a reed. That I didn’t even know where exactly to find the Way home became a rather insignificant problem in comparison.

Even if I did get home, though, and even if they could protect me—by spiriting away on an airplane, by taking me into protective custody, by revealing themselves to be wizards, or whatever—there was really no guarantee they’d want to. My face was barely recognizable in a mirror, and in order to protect myself I’d have to tell them what was going on. If any hint of the things I’d done slipped through, I don’t know how they’d ever look at me as their daughter.

I’m not sure how I can even call myself their daughter if I’m lying to them that much.

Gritting my teeth in anger I pressed my knees against Rainbow Dash’s sides and silently commanded her to descend. The freezing high altitude air gave way to a warm autumn night as we descended to a granite shelf jutting out of the softer hills, beside a still pool that reflected the moon and stars above. When Rainbow Dash’s hooves clattered along the rock I didn’t even bother waiting for her to stop, instead bounding off her.

What should have been a wild and broken bone-filled fall instead turned into a neat little landing as I spun in the air. The heady feeling of power the Bridle had kindled within me hadn’t faded noticeably. It’s a twisted thing, feeling more alive than I ever have while at the same time feeling more frustrated than I had ever been.

Everything I’d fought for and the Bridle and power I’d earned had just bought me time, or, worse, a slow descent into exile somewhere far away from everything I knew and loved. If I can’t go home, where the hell can I go?

I threw back my head and screamed at the sky. The uncaring stars twinkled back, defiant. I couldn’t even find comfort in their familiar shapes and patterns now, not with the bleak fate they spelled out for me. I’d come so far only to find it was just the damned beginning.

Wailing about it wouldn’t accomplish anything, though. That, too, I’d known since the escape from the Wand Castle. The only way I was getting anywhere was by using my brain and figuring out a plan, and that required taking stock.

Behind me, Rainbow Dash watched me with mute uncertainty. I could almost see how faded the light in her eyes was. Her very manner was docile in a way that seemed so wrong, with her golden-muzzled mouth turned down. As I’d half-suspected, even without me there to hold her reins she was powerless to free herself, either from the Bridle or my presence.

It really should have disturbed me more than it did, but it didn’t.

I looked out from my hilltop perch, out over the land. As I focused my attention on the distant lights of the floating city, I found details popping out at me with incredible clarity. I read the words on neon-lit signs over a mile distant and saw pegasi winging to and fro across the clouds. That alone almost lifted my spirits. This had to be what Twig had told me about, some part of the “grace” of the ancient peoples who had once walked the land. Evidently, I had, on taking charge of something from out of this world, regained some measure of their nature.

“Perhaps I can use that?” I muttered to myself, for lack of anyone else to talk to with Rainbow Dash in her current state. “But how? I’m not strong enough to beat Nessus, even so.” I had no delusions about the little rebellion I’d fomented amounting to anything against a creature like that, either.

There was one tool I could draw on, though; a tool that knew a great deal more than it had let on, from the very beginning. I rose and smoothly mounted Rainbow’s bare back again, then called to the night in a firm voice, “Morgwyn. Come here, if you’re still alive.” To seek the Morgwyn is to find it, to call its name is to draw it.

“The Morgwyn is not so readily disposed of, bairn,” came the sibilant whisper, like a rustling of scales over dry sand. This time, I felt more than saw it; an oven’s breath of heat and a presence that seemed both there and not there at once. It paused meaningfully, and then its blue gaze cut through the night. “My, almost not a bairn at all, is she? Oh, no indeed. So little innocence remains.”

“You’re immune to poison, aren’t you?” I asked, ignoring its comment. “You found my threat about as credible as a mouse roaring at a lion.”

The Morgwyn lifted a paw to its face and licked it clean with a tongue of curling smoke. “And the bairn is much better spoken than when we first met beneath the high moon of Mag Mell. We all are more than we appear.”

“And just what are you, then?”

“This one has said before that the Morgwyn is the Morgwyn. It is the only one of its kind that has ever been or shall be.” The barbed tail flicked in the moonlight as the creature circled around my place. It didn’t really seem to move so much as it flowed, sliding from place to place in the dark of night. “What substance is the Morgwyn made of, what manner of thing is it? Does it matter? This one was born when there was only one world, one world with uncountable faces. A better world, one not frozen and dull like these nine.”

Rainbow Dash reared back as the Morgwyn snapped across empty space to sit in front of us, but I stilled her with a stern thought and firm grip. “Why should I continue trusting you, Morg? What do you want? You don’t work with the Wand King, you don’t work with the ponies, and I certainly don’t think you work for me.” I narrowed my gaze at the creature; it was a struggle, unfamiliar as I was with my new powers, but it seemed as though I could penetrate its obfuscation more certainly by clearing my mind, much as I had when I viewed the far off pegasus city. What good it would do me, I had no idea. The shadows fell away as my eyes drank in the moonlight, revealing details and even faint colors in the landscape.

“Yet the Morgwyn has been your steadfast companion since the very first, has it not? The only one to remain by your side when all others fell short.” The creature lifted a paw, turned upwards as if in supplication. “Never did this one permit you to fall to ruin.”

“Neither did it truly help me. I could have been home, or somewhere far away. Real friends don’t let a child go traipsing through danger.”

“Indeed,” it agreed, “and did the bairn not rise to the occasion splendidly each time?”

I frowned. “Beg pardon?”

“This one was clear, but it shall elaborate regardless.” The creature’s blue eyes flared in amusement. “The Morgwyn did not spare the bairn from challenges that she could master of her own accord. It destroyed that which would have ended her outright but did not steal the choice meat from her jaws.” The Morgwyn laughed coldly. “After all, the Morgwyn will not be able to protect her always. The bairn must grow, and be prepared to face her foes on her own terms.”

“After everything I went through, you’re telling me that I had to suffer through all of that because it was an appropriate challenge?” I said, but my anger was cut off before it could really get started. The Morgwyn was right—assuming it wasn’t going to protect me indefinitely, which seemed unlikely with its attitude, then there was no way Nessus would leave me alone. Except there were some niggling little problems with that. “I’m not the Chosen One,” I told it bitterly, “my dear sister is. You picked the wrong girl.”

“Oh, was she?” the Morgwyn’s grin split into a half moon of glittering teeth. “This one was under the impression that the Morgwyn had picked the right girl, and not the forgotten leavings of some watery horse.”

“How do you mean?”

“There is little point to interfering with a prophecy if you only mean to bring it to its proper end,” the Morgwyn explained. “The bairn is correct—her sister was the one named, the one meant to be. When the named one’s sister was born, who took notice? No sign heralded her coming. No hoary sage in their crypts of carven stone uttered her name. She was unimportant, irrelevant, an accident who was destined to live and die and be forgotten.”

Forgotten, unimportant. An accident. Just a footnote in Daphne’s personal history. “You took notice, though,” I whispered.

“This one did. The Morgwyn saw, and the Morgwyn moved. One touch was all it took. This one did not even have to kill anything; all it needed to do was keep the child apart from her destiny long enough for the engine of human indifference to take hold.” Its voice dropped to a fell whisper. “Then, it merely had to wait for its own chosen to grow.”

While I sat my horse in stunned silence, the Morgwyn chuckled and slid up to my side. “So, the child sees; this one has been her steadfast companion since the very day she was born. No one else, not her parents, not her friends, not her sister, not the goblins, not the stars, and certainly not the thrice-damned gods paid her any heed. The Morgwyn was the one who delivered the god-forged bridle of dominion into her eminently better-suited hands.”

I smoothed Rainbow Dash’s mane to quiet her quickened breath, but it was I who was in more desperate need of comfort. My life had been turned upside down so often that I didn’t know where I stood in relation to anything else. Part of me wanted to shout down the Morgwyn and tell it that my parents loved me, and that even if Daphne knew she was a Chosen One, the worst she’d do is gloat about it. Hell, the fact that I wasn’t really the one the Wand King was looking for meant that I could just tell Nessus who he was looking for and have done with it. It’s not like Daphne cared enough to come find me herself—let the ponies defend her if they loved each other so much.

Except…

If I left now and abandoned Daphne, that would be the end. Even if I saw fit to forgive my sister—and I clenched my jaw hard just considering that possibility—and deliver the Golden Bridle to her, it would mark the end of my involvement, my time in the spotlight. I’d live in her shadow for the rest of my life, and I had become pretty certain the Bridle had ensured that life would be very long indeed. I stared down at the reins and remembered how I’d told myself I deserved it when I’d taken it.

“Why me?” I asked, no longer angry at the Morgwyn. “What makes me so different from her, aside from how special and amazing she is and I’m not?”

“It is you who holds the Golden Bridle and not she, is that not so? All the force of history bent to make way for her, yet it was the unremarked and unremembered sister that seized the day with her wits and cunning.” The creature’s tail waved behind it as it regarded me. “You are as clever as her without any supernatural aid. You have the gift of drawing to you those who would otherwise pay you no heed. Perhaps your sister only failed because of this one, but if you did not have the talent to become her replacement you would have perished regardless of the Morgwyn’s efforts.

“Most keenly of all,” it went on, “you have a will that your sister never possessed, a will to power that drives you to success even when the odds are impossible. Who of the two of you is more worthy to bear it, then? The child chosen by fate or the child chosen by mettle?”

Who indeed. I was the one out here on an alien world all on my own. My parents couldn’t save me, they wouldn’t have understood the first thing about where my life had gone. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle had been foolish enough to eat from the forbidden fruit—fruit I’d only narrowly avoided. Wire had abandoned me for them, and then I’d turned Maille and Twig and Rose against their friends and allies. None of them would have understood what I’d had to do to survive. They’d never be able to look at me again the same way as they had.

The only friend I had left was a demonic smoke monster. The only creature in all the worlds to care about what happened to me or to sympathize with the choices I’d made. What does that make me?

It made me a bit of a monster, too, when you got right down to it. Monsters don’t get to go home when the day is done in the good stories. They don’t get to curl up in bed with their snake plush and tell themselves it was all a dream and now the nightmare was over and their life can begin again with lessons learned.

It all boiled down to the golden chain in my hands. There was no place in the world for me, not anymore, not unless I made one. Maybe the Bridle was a terrible thing and I was doing terrible things, no matter how badly the world deserved its lot, but if I stopped now everything would come crashing down on my head and that would be that. I’d been running one step ahead of danger and if I stumbled now I’d be caught.

“What must I do?” I asked the monster.

Its eyes burned in cold triumph. “Seize fate in your own hands, and break the chains that hold you.” It shifted its gaze to Rainbow Dash. “But, first, you will need a weapon.”

The moon rested fat and lazy over the horizon. That we’d beaten it to the horizon was incredible. Rainbow Dash, freed of doubt or choice, had outdone herself and the two of us streaked across the skies like a many-hued comet. Now only the verdant green carpet of the Everfree lay before us. From this high up, it looked like little more than a collection of mossy boulders cut through with rivers and the vast scar of a canyon on its southern face.

Ponyville spread to the northwest, the real Ponyville, and the sight of it sent a longing shiver through me. Fake or not, I’d had happy times there. A few lit windows and street lamps glowed against the predawn morning with a welcome invitation.

Rainbow Dash’s memories made it even harder to pull away. They swarmed about me, relics from the long trip here from the coast. The more I sank myself into Rainbow Dash to quell her protests, the more her life enveloped me. It stretched back behind me, years and years of lounging in trees and clouds while Ponyville passed me by underneath. I looked back at my hair streaming golden in the wind where I might have expected a rainbow banner.

“Damn you,” I growled at the pony between my legs, “it’s only for a little bit longer! Stop it!”

She didn’t answer, of course. She never did.

The Morgwyn’s mellifluent voice rang through my memory, and I turned Rainbow Dash down towards the forest. It had little enough reason to lie to me—whatever else it was, the Morgwyn wanted me for a purpose, and its needs coincided with mine. I scanned the forest, details leaping out at me with startling clarity as I focused from my elevated position. As it turned out, I hardly needed it, for the castle I sought rose from a clearing near the southwest.

Stallions in golden armor looked up at the two of us streaking in. I could see recognition on their faces, even as far up as we were—Rainbow Dash’s proud contrail would announce her presence more clearly than any banner. According to the Morgwyn, they would be busy investigating some sort of battle that had taken place in front of the castle yesterday. My quarry would be somewhere high at this time.

Golden sunlight poured forth and I banked at once, urging Rainbow Dash on silently. The window was narrow, but my window of time was a great deal more precious, so we tucked in tight and threaded the needle.

“Halt!” a man’s voice shouted, and a pair of thickset stallions turned to face us with a low, aggressive posture and snapped a glimmering field of force across the hall to bar our path. The one on the left, a pale unicorn, jerked his head up in surprise as we hovered there. “Miss Rainbow Dash?”

Behind them, the hallway burned bright as day. I could see the glint of the Bridle reflected in their eyes, but my hopes of simply being able to bull through on its influence were dashed. I could see its effects on them just as I had with Rainbow—their ears turned alert, their eyes widened slightly, their tails slackened, among a hundred other little signs—but it wouldn’t be immediate enough.

The other, a dark pegasus with an enormous wingspan, relaxed noticeably and lowered the tip of a spear held crooked in his forelegs. “Are we glad to see you. Did you get the message the Princess sent… to…?” He trailed off as he took her in and found me on her back. “Uhm. What are you wearing and what is that thing on your back?”

Rainbow, of course, did not answer. I couldn’t have made her speak if I wanted to. The unicorn had let the shield flicker, and the two of us leapt forward.

Displaying admirable alacrity, the pegasus leapt to intercept us with terrible speed, swinging his spear to sweep me off the mare’s back. Unfortunately for him, as fast as he moved, he may as well have been swimming through molasses as far as I was concerned. My heart pounded in my ears as I leaned back and ducked the swing. As I guided Rainbow Dash in, he unexpectedly shortened the spear and jabbed it. My dodge wasn’t quite quick enough, and the blade’s broad head sliced under my right arm. Spark flew, and the blade glanced off Maille’s hidden shirt; I barely even felt the impact.

Faster than the poor guardstallion could have imagined, we turned his momentum against him and flung him straight into the ceiling, where he cracked the ancient stones and remained. Pulling the spear from his limp form, I swung it around to strike the unicorn with the butt.

Though not as fast as his comrade, the unicorn guard was quick enough to catch me in a powerful telekinetic grip. So rapidly did it arrest our motion that the air boomed like a drum, and all the air was driven out of Rainbow Dash’s lungs at once.

I growled and struggled against the field that tensed all around me. It was difficult to breathe, let alone move. The unicorn was saying something through gritted teeth as he struggled to hold us steady, but I wasn’t listening. There was a destiny that needed stealing and opportunity was fast disappearing. I began to push against the spell, pouring all of my effort into it, thrusting and clawing.

“Get…” A pressure built up, just under my skin. “…out of…” Fire filled my veins, blood turning to fire. “…my…” I gathered the fire into my lungs and my arms. “…way!”

The shout echoed up and down the corridor as the spell burst into splinters. Despite weighing in at what must have been well over three hundred pounds, when the spear butt struck the stallion it snapped clean in two and sent him crashing into the opposite wall.

My breath came hard. I felt nearly spent even though I had hardly worked up a sweat. “Wow, this whole ‘being filled with the supernatural power my ancestors had thing is pretty awesome,’” I asided to the uncomprehending Rainbow Dash, “it’s almost enough to make me rethink this whole course. I could be a superhero or something.”

It wasn’t enough, though. Nessus was stronger by far, and I somehow suspected that a lone unicorn’s telekinesis didn’t really compare to the full power of the Wand. “Come on,” I directed Rainbow Dash, yanking her around and galloping away from the scene of the fight. Faintly, I hoped the stallions would be all right—they were just trying to do their jobs, after all. If I started looking back now, though, I’d never be able to move forward.

Once before I’d opined that Rainbow Dash was the most magnificent horse I’d ever laid eyes upon. Perhaps her coloring is still the most fantastic, but it was like comparing a brightly painted mound to a mountain after I laid eyes on Princess Celestia. When I came upon her she was crowned in her full glory, wreathed in sunlight almost too bright to look upon as she set about moving the heavens. I’d been expecting something more like Twig’s Princess Twilight impersonation, but Celestia had everything Twilight did and more.

Long, supple limbs displayed corded muscle whenever they tensed beneath an alabaster coat. Her outspread wings could have darkened the family living room, while she herself must have stood tall enough to look down at my father, himself not a short man. A mane and tail painted in the softest part of the sunrise flowed long and waved in an unseen breeze. Even preoccupied with her magic, she radiated a palpable sense of majesty that Nessus would have wept with jealousy to behold. Her face held that ancient gravity with a tender gentleness.

And here I had come, a thief in the last fleeting moments of the night.

Dismounting from Rainbow Dash, I pulled the Bridle from her head and slipped the bit from between her teeth. Rather than immediately fighting me as I might have feared, she simply gazed at me uncertainly. There was a blankness in her eyes that really should have bothered me more; I told myself that it was just excitement, my hands were trembling after all, and I stood before the most superlative member of pony kind so distraction was expected.

Just as the Morgwyn had said, the Princess’s need to devote herself to her task left her unable to respond as I prepared myself, and it was only as I was approaching her that the daylight dimmed and left her eyes. Such eyes, too; for all her apparent youth, I could see her age in them. They were old, even if the rest of her was young and hale.

The deep-set sorrow I witnessed in them was nearly the final straw that doomed my endeavor. She sank to the chamber floor, her gold-clad boots resting on the tile. Like Rainbow Dash, she seemed powerless to turn away as I held the Bridle up to her. In her eyes, though, I saw more than blank awe and uncomprehending fear.

Do not do this thing, her eyes pleaded with me where her tongue could not. It may as well have been my mother, so deeply did it sink. It wasn’t a frightened supplication for mercy from a terrified captive, nor was it a judgemental condemnation from a righteous ruler. No, it was a more insidious thing than either of those—it was a gentle remonstrance that reminded you that what you were doing was wrong, and you knew very well that it was, and no amount of fooling or excuses will ever make it right.

That’s exactly what it was, too. This wasn’t like with Rainbow Dash, where I’d been fueled by anger and a heady rush of power to punish someone who had piqued me. This was a callous and deliberate act of selfishness. It came at the behest of a deceptive, manipulative little cat-monster whose own true aims were still as-yet unknown to me. If I’d had any illusions about what I was doing, they were gone then.

I wish I could say it was hard, doing what came next. It wasn’t.

Hate flared, hot and fast. Not for her, not then at least. My limbs trembled with such incredible anger that I had trouble stepping up to the great mare, but who I was angry at I couldn’t say. Perhaps I was angry with myself for not being a better person, or maybe I was angry at Nessus. Maybe I was angry at Daphne for not being able to fulfill her own destiny, Morgwyn or no, or maybe I was angry with the sages for giving it to her in the first place and putting me in the position I was in.

Maybe I just hated everything, then.

Celestia did tremble. Her neck lowered, however, in spite of her struggles against it. All of her magic, all of her strength, all of her many subjects—they wouldn’t avail her now. She bowed her proud neck before a power greater than either of us; a crueler, more ancient power whose will it was that deemed her kind should serve mine. Proof that terrible things can come in beautiful packages.

Around her head went the bridle, fitting itself to her slender frame. Into her mouth went the bit, silencing her more thoroughly still. Across her magnificent mane draped the golden chain, and when I vaulted onto her back she danced skittishly. I’d sat strong horses before, horses I couldn’t handle, but never one like this. If Celestia meant to buck me, it would be a short trip from her back to the hard floor.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Now that she had been bridled, I could see her thoughts as clearly as my own. Such fear, and she kept it so masterfully underwraps. Hundreds of spells and counter curses whirled through her mind, but she could summon no magic now. Still she fought, and her will, too, made Rainbow Dash’s seem a pale candle.

In spite of myself, a current of electrical thrill ran up my spine. The more I drew on the reins, the more I sank my awareness into her mind to suppress her own, the more I brought her under control, the more intense it became. Power the likes of which few before me had experienced twisted and writhed helplessly in my grasp, and I liked it.

Where this sensation had come from I paid no heed. It was mine, now. I possessed it.

Just like I did the Princess.

Rainbow Dash, despite being freed of the bridle, stood watching with dull incomprehension. Her eyes were as flat as a pair of rose-rimmed coins. I regarded her briefly. “Well, I said I’d free you eventually. It’s not my fault the damned thing is permanent,” I told her bitterly. Then, striking Celestia’s sides with my heels, I launched her towards the ceiling. Grabbing hold of her magic, I aimed a blast at the ceiling and rocketed up and away.

The sliver of sunlight in the east sank back into the horizon as if in counterweight to my meteoric ascent. Power the likes of which I had never dreamed—of which no human in ages had known—coursed through me and lit off in sparks and bursts from Celestia’s horn, artifacts of her ongoing struggle to hold on to herself. I made no particular effort to quiet her—I feared no retaliation from her subjects, not now. Anypony coming to rescue their ruler would have to battle through her first. There’s a dark sort of irony in making a captive fight her own freedom.

Freedom. Speaking of, I had it at last. Perhaps Nessus could have captured me as I was, but even he feared Princess Celestia. With her power, I could return to my earth and do whatever I pleased.

Banking her sharply, I turned back over the mass of the forest and began to scan for familiar landmarks, hoping to follow one back to the Ways whence I came.

With Celestia in hand, there was very little back on earth that lay outside my grasp. I could only brush her vast knowledge of magic, but just the lightest touches opened up an incredible new world. It would be trivial to hide her away in some mountain and strike out when the whim suited me. That didn’t even account for my own new personal powers. I could become a real-life superhero. Well, not many superheroes used a captive as their source of power, but the idea was there.

For a few moments, I felt like a kid again, soaring through the sky with dreams of adventure and glory racing alongside me like bright-winged birds.

One by one, though, those beautiful birds fell from the sky as their gossamer plumage melted in the harsh light of truth. The whole notion, too, soured. Even if I were inclined to save others from the myriad ills of the world, Rainbow Dash’s memories showed the fleeting value of fame and glory, and I knew that the world would never accept such a thing so innocently. Every government on the planet would want what I would put on display, and new religions would crop up like mushrooms after a hard rain. There were no supervillains back home, petty crime was hard enough for even legitimately skilled policemen to solve, and the notion of wading into international politics to fight the real monsters was fit to give me nightmares. No matter what I did, I’d be exchanging one enemy for a hundred.

Really, the most fit thing to do was to hide my powers and Celestia and only use them as needed or in covert fashion. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a life of some sort.

Dreams gave way to stark realism. My childhood had well and truly died.

A bend in a river looked familiar, and I had Celestia swoop over it again for a better look. Indeed, it was the place where I’d washed ashore with Wire. “There’s a place where my childhood took a stumble all right,” I muttered, “It couldn’t have been two or three days ago, but it already feels like years.” My eyes tracked upwards as I pieced together the meandering course of two scared fillies through the forest on hoof; there, the place where the Morgwyn ripped out Rose’s basilisk’s eye; way over there the ambush by Pinion and her gang. Further on by another stream where the racoon’s wagon had camped. It may as well have been a story belonging to another person, the beginnings of a faerie tale with a happy ending that I’d never get to see because someone went and burned the pages. “They ought to put a grave marker on top of the Cup Palace. ‘Here Lies Amelia Ocean’s Innocence.’”

My grip on the reins tightened as memory carried me back to the dining hall. The thick smell of caramelized sugar and savory meat and burned grease came back so sharply I felt a painful twisting in my stomach. If one thing was terrifically unfair about my new state of being, it’s how painfully sharp memories had become—no more dim recollection on distant events, but stark and uncompromising remembrance even of things I’d rather forget. For as long as I’d live, the faces of Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle changing and twisted into something unrecognized, the way the light of familiarity left their eyes, would be there waiting.

Furious, I turned Celestia and skimmed along above the river, following it back to its source. Her astonishment at seeing a bank of concealing fog melt away to reveal a hitherto hidden castle was more than worth the pang of seeing the Wand Keep once more. It stood as I remembered it, if revealed in greater detail. Cut from the living rock, it had almost the look of a natural object, a quality enhanced by its general lack of windows or turrets. The lie was given by the great windmills turning from its many faces, a veritable forest of them, and the massive gates across the canyon bridge, surrounded by gargoyles and defensive crenellations.

A town spread along the other canyon, a nest of winding streets with rickety houses, more turning windmills, and squat brick factories, but it held only academic interest for me at this point. Somewhere leading away from this grimy Shangri-la lay the Way down to a state park and a lit porch that was a world away and yet so near at hand I could taste it.

Still, as I began to wing around the town, my attention kept wandering back towards the Keep. For a week, that granite shell had been my prison. Within its hollow, a stage doubtless still hung, strung with lamps and treacherous sets. A world I’d been happy to live in, but that the goblins had perverted and stolen away from me.

Part of me wondered whether even now my gaolers were out there with their King, fighting and dying as their airship burned around them or how many lingered in the apparent safety of their fastness. Surely, some had been left behind to hold the fort in case of a surprise attack, or even just to ensure that the local taxes were collected to fund the war effort. I knew the frog goblin in the sewer certainly hadn’t gone anywhere. They could be down there right now, eating and drinking away the morning without a care in the world. Unpunished.

The first beam of light raked across the cliff face, scything through several feet of stone in a ragged line that detached a whole section of sandy stone that turned the river into a grey froth. The next beam severed the great water wheel cleanly from its mount and sent it tumbling and crashing down the flow to splinter and break on the merciless rocks. Each ray only encouraged me, and I grinned as Celestia’s sizzling golden light blazed forth. Hovering over the damaged face, I had her gather her strength and fire it in a shimmering battering ram that plowed through the thick wall.

We swept through into the void in time to see rocks bounce and clamber off the scaffolds and structures within. Above I could see the bottom of the stage, and a few good flaps brought us over the wall to look down on the faux Ponyville itself.

My lips curled in a sneer as I looked down at it. I had to wonder what sort of idiotic child would fall for a collection of painted sets surrounding a paltry collection of cottages and a single tiny apple orchard. Even with goblin magic building the illusion up, it seemed patently ridiculous that she couldn’t have noticed how the artificial sun reflected the outer walls flatly.

The apple trees lit up like torches as we passed over them and a displaced boulder plowed through the barn. Long grass sizzled and blackened over the meadow where we’d had our picnics, and the pond boiled. Houses were blown to so many splinters and split planks of lumber embedded themselves in the ones still standing. Between my legs, Celestia’s stomach turned as we neared Sugarcube Corner. I saw Ponyville as it really was laid over my vision, the pastel citizens oblivious to the flames leaping around them.

If anything, the memory only served to enrage me further. If the lovingly decorated bakery could have seared and melted under the bolts of pure force Celestia threw at it, it would have. The hill where Pinkie Pie—Pinion—and I had played hide-and-seek on erupted into dirt and gravel. Finally, I had her blast Twig’s library with gales of frozen air. The leaves and branches turned crisp and white with frost, and, then, the flesh of the tree cracked and splintered until it burst in on itself. The books would probably survive. They didn’t deserve annihilation.

Finally, I turned my gaze up and charged Celestia’s horn with power. It hummed and crackled with magical energy as I pointed it up at the false sun that mocked her. That evil thing which hid the truth by blinding me to the reality that lay beyond.

As I did, though, I remembered something. Wire, an age ago, telling me how she’d worked on the stage’s false sun, and how proud she had looked at the memory of it. Her mustard-yellow face so rarely held anything but fear and apprehension.

Slowly, Celestia’s hum died, and I turned in a slow circle as she hovered there. Most of the fires were already going out, but the ones that remained showed a stark, broken landscape, covered in shattered wrecks and burnt out pits of charcoal. The walls were now stained with soot and would fool only the blind.

The smoke stung my eyes, making them run wetly. I scrubbed at them with a sleeve and pulled Celestia around, flying back through the hole we’d made. None of the airborne goblins intercepted us—I could feel them and their kin, cowering behind the stones and in their homes as if that would protect them. It seemed suddenly strange that they would have preserved the stage as it was with a war on.

“They took everything from me,” I told Celestia thickly. I coughed, clearing my lungs. I wasn’t honestly sure if I was informing her or trying to justify myself or making up my mind about some course of action. “They stole my whole life and I can’t get it back.”

Celestia tried to answer back, a gentle warmth leaking through the reins, but I shut her down hard with a sudden snap of anger. I didn’t need platitudes or pitying understanding; I needed my life back, I wanted my childhood back so hard my guts twisted themselves into hard little knots and stayed that way, but she could never give it to me. I knew that much already.

Before I even really knew it, I’d winged Celestia back across the trail the carriage had taken me. We flew over the secret goblin lake and past the ancient paved roads until we landed near the Veil with a clattering of hooves. Somehow, the sun was coming up again, and it seemed almost a shame. I’d last laid eyes upon the sparkling river of the Veil under the light of the moon and again before that, and its surface had shimmered so beautifully both times. Now, I’d come under my own auspices to cross back into my realm, and as I sat watching the river it lost its mystical luster and became, to my eye, little more than a white rapid, plodding along its way towards an ocean or a lake or a swamp somewhere distant, or perhaps no where at all—it was magic, after all, and even Celestia seemed uncertain of its nature.

Here, in a place no Equestrian could find, was as good a place as any to catch my breath. Perhaps the Wand goblins might be able to track me, but Nessus was far away and after my display of power they would be loathe to embark on a hunt, lest the tiger turn and show her claws.

Even dismounted, I was careful to wrap Celestia’s reins around one wrist. Naomi may have scolded me something fierce for putting myself in a position that apparently reckless, for if a normal horse bolted or reared I’d be trapped, but she didn’t have a mind-to-mind link with a very determined and powerful alicorn. I wondered idly if she’d have any problems mentally dominating an Equestrian, assuming she survived the heart attack of meeting one.

Even in spite of everything, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Naomi put on a good face, but anyone with eyes could see that she’d never abandoned her childhood dreams. I couldn’t imagine what she would think if she saw me now, though.

I didn’t want to think about it.

Rather than make a break for it, Celestia simply lay down as I bid with her hooves tucked up under her body, and I sat down for a meager meal of whatever-is-in-my-bag-this-instant. Fragments and crumbs of snacks from Sugar Cube Corner that were days old and badly bruised sandwiches from Mag Mell were all that remained, and I scarfed them down all the same. No meat, given my recent herbivorous existence, but it satisfied me all the same.

I stared at my prize as I ate. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it, not remotely—but, then, nothing else had. I’d come to Equestria on the promise of meeting a princess, and here she was, trussed up and unwilling. I found myself staring down at empty hands after a time, wondering where my food had gone, and then belatedly remembering that I’d devoured it all.

With all the excitement, I’d been able to ignore the fact that I’d been up since the dawn that had brought me to Mag Mell with the Crusaders, barring a brief, unsatisfying nap aboard the Wand airship. All of that time had been spent running, fighting, panicking, or flying.

In spite of it all, though, I felt no particular need to lay down; I drew from within, and, however inadequate my needs, it served to sharpen my senses again and brought strength to my limbs, even if they still protested. I considered pushing on home, calling on the Morgwyn for its tainted advice, or perhaps striking out on my own.

With a heavy sigh, I let go. Not of the reins, but of my urgency. If someone caught me here, so be it. Perhaps I didn’t have to be tired in body, but I couldn’t summon up the will to struggle through. The Morgwyn may want me to shatter the heavens or whatever, but all my fighting thus far had just led me in circles, or perhaps a spiral, right down a drain into nothingness. I laid myself down on the grass by Celestia and let the tension drain from my body. The glittering chain wrapped around my arm felt heavy on my chest, and it seemed to pull me down, lower, deeper into the soil until my eyes closed and I was lost to the world.

When my eyes opened, it was two thousand years early.

Mother was gone, now. She had followed Father into the place I could not go.

I had to tell myself that each and every morning, lest I forget. Before I’d started reminding myself I would stumble tiredly around, wondering where the warmth of her presence had gone, until cold realization sank its tendrils into my mind and stirred the memories I dare not look at, the ones hidden behind the locked doors that echoed with thunder and smoked with fire and bled thick red blood.

Aias would have been there to comfort me, a few days ago. No more would he bellow and laugh and muss my mane with a huge hoof or let me wear his great bronze helmet and pretend that I was a warrior. He lay buried where the fever had finally taken him, and his helmet and armor with him; their protection was worth little when I hadn’t the strength to bear them.

Our little party came down to three, then, where once it had been many, and so full of hope and promise. Andromache had tried to explain what it was all about before she left. Not much of what she said had made sense, but she had tried all the same, telling me that it all rested on me now, that my slender shoulders had to bear the weight of the new world.

“What new world, Andy?” I mumbled groggily, wanting to go back to sleep. I buried my head in my forelegs and willed the damp fen around me to dissolve back into the sun-filled columns of home. “I don’t have a horn. I don’t have wings like you. I’m just a filly.”

Andromache would have said that earth ponies have their own strengths, that all mares began as fillies, and that one day, if I proved as worthy as my parents, I would have horn and wings and more. I’d told her that Athena had just sprung out of her father fully grown, wings and horn and all, but she had simply laughed bitterly and said nothing more. She never would again, either, for she had left and never returned. She’d gone to find help, and day and night and day again had passed, long days and long nights and short days and short nights, until finally all the grass had gone and it was time to move on.

Now, we were only two. Aias had often said that duty was as heavy as a mountain, and a little foal could feel a mountain if you’d been carrying her for days and weeks and on and on, over hill and dale and ‘round lakes and across rivers swift or sluggish. Most often she slept, but sometimes she woke and nuzzled at my side in search of milk I couldn’t give her, only crushed berries and hard-won honey until her teeth were strong enough to stomach the disgusting grass off the ground.

Sometimes, she howled instead, especially when the callous moon she had been named after rose through the clouds. “Hush, Luna,” I would whisper to her, rocking her back and forth to no avail, “I’m here. I’m here.” I wondered if she might bring the monsters down on us, then, or if her sharp wailing terrified them.

Mother had said I mustn’t call them monsters, that every creature had a place under the aegis of harmony; if they seemed brutish and terrifying at first, you merely had to scratch beyond the surface and find the beautiful core underneath. Yet, though mother may have been right about some monsters and perhaps even about how skin-deep appearances were, I knew that there were monsters out there. I knew, even if I had never seen them with my own eyes. Andromache and Aias had painted them in my mind, treacherous and cunning, grasping and greedy. They said the monsters had come with swords and axes and spears atop slaves. They said my cousin had been the first to fall under their power, and that my Aunt Pirene had died to try and keep the peace.

I had hoped Father would be the last. He stalked through my nightmares, a giant among ponies as he had been in life, and wherever his shadow fell mountains ground to dust and valleys jutted up into fresh molten spurs of stone. His dead eyes followed me, weighing me with the judgement of kings, while the gaping hole mother burned in him bubbled and—

No. I would close that memory and lock it away. Luna needed me; I couldn’t give into despair. Not like mother. “Was it her wounds that did it, or her heart?” I asked Luna, who turned her sweet dark face up and stared without comprehension.

What a trial she proved to be, too. No sooner had she started on grass than she had discovered how to work her wings, and the sleepless nights brought on by a screaming baby took on a new terror when she could vanish at any moment where I couldn’t follow. That she grew tired swiftly was the only reason I didn’t lose her the first day, and thereafter she buzzed along when she could, but tethered with a vine about her middle held in my teeth. She chewed it off frequently, so at night I wrapped her in Aias’s cloak and held her as tightly as I dared. That seemed to work; most nights she was content simply to nuzzle my neck and snuffle and cry until I woke with a damp neck, but an intact sister.

Mother said that I must forgive them. Forgive those who stole everything from me, from the stones of my home to the bedrock of my family. They’d scattered the ponies and their allies to the winds. Even the world was strange to me—one day I would trudge across a burning desert to find a line of snow covering the earth ten feet deep and growing. Other times I would find sheer cliffs rising out of a plain, the loose dirt already crumbling and smoothing into rounded hills. Had the monsters stolen the sense out of the world, too? It seemed as if nothing was as I remembered it from my earliest childhood. Where were the cities and fields, the fortresses and ships? I learned to avoid the harsh places in time; it hardly mattered how long it took me to get somewhere, after all, if I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was going.

Weeks turned to months; I knew because the moon became full and full again, and then on and on. In time, we grew tired of roaming and built a little hut in the woods where it seemed stable and free of danger. I raised a garden, working out the process little by little. Luna grew, turning from a melon-headed infant to a stubby young filly, and at the same time as she sprouted she grew more and more distant and unwieldy—like any pegasus, staying in one place made her restless, and there were times I wouldn’t see her for days as she migrated here and there. She always returned, though, and told me of the strange things she had found.

I tried to tell her how our new home paled in comparison to the dimly remembered place she had been born in, but she had no memory of it. She could not recall the fragrance of the pomegranate trees that grew outside my little room, nor the sound of stately voices raised in prayer, nor the way the sun had glittered off the mosaic tiles and carved marble pillars. I hated to admit it, but as time went on so, too, did I begin to wonder if perhaps I remembered only a memory of a memory, and whether I had ever truly lived there at all.

As for me, I dug at my fields, day in and day out, trying to find some measure of peace in the flow of nature and life. I found parallels to the war of my youth in such obscure dramas as learning how to keep insects from devouring my harvest, and learning to coexist with the smaller animals and creatures enlightened me to the uncertain and delicate balance of nature. I’d like to say it was my earth pony qualities asserting themselves, but in truth it was a long, frustrating, and thankless struggle against a world as yet untamed. Every night I went to bed remembering how the earth had trembled before the hooves of Kreios, my father in his stony wrath, and my mother Theia in her power and sorrow, her seaweed green mane tangled and unkempt as she lay upon the shattered rocks, only to seal them up again for a new day.

If only Aias or Andromache could have seen me. I had to wonder what would they think of their little princess, then, grubbing in the dirt as she grew from a scared little filly to a gangly young mare.

It’s ironic, really, that it was I and not Luna who reconnected us to other ponies. It all started on the day I crawled out of my mud and reed hut to meet the sun and found a wounded unicorn stallion washed up in our little stream, with a pegasus lance still stuck in his thigh, and, absurdly, all I could think about was how tangled and unkempt my uncut, unwashed mane and tail were as I raced down to fish him from the water.

For a time, I forgot about Mother and Father and Aias and Andromache. I forgot about hatred, and learned what had happened to the harmony my family had died for.

Groaning, I forced myself away, pushing aside the thick woollen blankets of sleep that wrapped so tightly around me. My hooves flailed wildly, shaking the reins and flapping uselessly at the ground and bruising unexpectedly soft flesh. I stared for a time at them, unblinking, until I realized that the things at the ends of my forelegs were not hooves at all, but spidery hands which were alien and unfamiliar.
 
My panicked breathing cooled as I stared around the forest canopy and remembered. Not centuries, but merely minutes. Not Celestia, but Amelia. This flesh was my flesh, not hers, and I was a human now, a little girl and not a grown mare. So I kept telling myself, over and over again, until it became true.

I turned to look at Celestia, and found her looking back at me. There was no hint that she knew what I had just gone through—no flicker of subterfuge crossed her mind, and her eyes held only uncertainty. Even still my fist tightened around the reins as I approached her.

The anger would not hold. Not this time. “They took everything from you, too, didn’t they?” I asked her, not expecting an answer. My hand went to her mane, parting the flowing strands as I looked up at her; even standing her head overtowered mine. “You were only a kid, just like me.” My hands balled again, clutching her mane and the reins both. Trapped between two worlds. She was even a better sister than I was. Better than Daphne by far.

Even bound as she was, Celestia struggled to reach me, to communicate wordlessly through our bond. She resisted the Bridle’s dulling properties far better than Rainbow did, certainly. I brushed her pity aside, curious suddenly to know what was driving that resistance. To no real surprise, I found a core of light within her much like the one the Bridle had imbued upon me.

Ichor, the word came from her as our minds touched as one, and I understood immediately as well. The ethereal substance the gods had flowing in their veins in place of blood. Like the heroes of old. A dying breed, according to Twig, and yet we two have somehow regained it. Did Twilight Sparkle do so as well? Other alicorns jumped to mind, a pink one by the name of Cadance and ones long dead.

Well, we both had blood, certainly, but perhaps something more animated us than base matter. In another circumstance, a better place, I might have found that academically interesting, but for now it resonated almost painfully. It said louder than words that we were of a similar make, just one more link between us.

It was wrong to keep her. I knew that. I knew it hard, even without Celestia’s eyes trying to convince me. I could see the ghost of her father, a molten font of destruction, bound by the very same forces I was using to hold her.

And yet…

My eyes turned from the Veil towards the distant keep. I seemed to see through the miles, to where a river met the Veil again at a different place, to a different land. A great city stood there, and a ziggurat rose above it.

Ever since coming to this place I had been dragged around and beaten. My only companion was a probably faithless cat-monster the titans likely spat out eons ago, full of piss and anger. My childhood, my innocence, broke upon those stones.

Down that path lay a new destiny, a destiny only I could forge, and then only if I had the will to seize it.

“You’ll go free,” I promised Celestia. A cold fire leapt along my fingers and ran down the golden chains. She jerked with fear, but I held her fast; her heels dug into the earth, but the reins made me stronger by far. “Soon, you will go free.” The fire touched the bridle and the bit. A flicker of a memory touched me through her—Luna, fully grown wreathed in darkness, the moon behind her as she became something new, something powerful.

Yes, that will do.

“They hurt us. They hurt both of us, you and I,” I whispered to her as the fire caught in her mane, leaving it unharmed but transfiguring it. I stoked the divine fire within her, bringing it out, filling it with the rage she locked away as a child. I tore open the shadows that obscured the images of her dead parents, letting them lay stark and bloody before the helpless filly. I exposed the truth to her as Twig had taught it to me—I told her about how her family had sought to split the world from their oppressors, and how the enemy had come with the Bridle to capture and destroy them and turn them all into stupid animal slaves. Nessus might as well have been the same as those ancient humans; after all, he intended on taking the Bridle, and taught me to fear Celestia and obey his minions. Well, now I had Celestia, and I wasn’t going to be his puppet any longer, and I fed my hatred into her.

Tears ran down my face as I watched her change, as her raiment turned to molten gold and reshaped itself into something fierce and martial, as her eyes became tiny suns, as her mane and tail took flame and burned with unnatural fierceness. I would have given anything at that moment for a measure of my innocence back, to not know what it was I was doing.

But I didn’t have any left. It had all been stolen from me and smashed.

A blast of incredible heat dried the tears from my cheeks. Celestia stood before me, wreathed in unbound power that shone like the sun itself. Even that magnificent monster bent knee when I approached, allowing me to mount her. Her firey mane snapped and coursed at my heels, but they left me unmarred.

Black was the earth when we left it behind.

Bright was the blue sky when we cleaved it in twain with a sizzling trail.

Mag Mell stood shrouded in deep fog when we found it and the fierce, cold gales from Niefelheim drove it across the land, but they melted away at our approach. The creatures who had driven me to this extreme would soon pay.

They would all pay.