//------------------------------//
// Chapter Fifty Five : Not to the Strongest 
// Story: This Platinum Crown 
// by Capn_Chryssalid 
//------------------------------//

- - -

(55)

Not to the Strongest

- - -
 
“Enough! I can’t believe I’m hearing this… from you two, of all ponies.”
 
Prince Sombra stood before them, burgundy cloak and ermine trim rippling in the wind kicked up by his magic. His onyx mane flowed backwards like a series of dark waves, save for the sideburns he insisted on keeping wild. The steel gorget around his throat was open and unclasped; he was literally half dressed, roused to find them in the middle of the night. Carmine tinted  magic stained his black horn a shade of ruddy-red, a condition that had been exacerbated by his activities of the last couple years.
 
“Luna!” He turned to her and shook his head in dismay. “Celestia?” He found the older sister and scowled at the burden she bore. “Have you both taken leave of your senses?!”
 
Slung across Celestia’s back, Princess Platinum gave a pained whimper. The alabaster unicorn was still hurting from her spell earlier; she reached a hoof up to her horn and winced as a crackle of black lightning stung her.
 
“Sombra--” Luna pleaded, holding her own precious burden under her right wing.
 
“This is treason!” Sombra interrupted her, and his green eyes shot to the pair of crystal pony guards he had with him. They were muscular earth ponies, but their crystal enchantment added a potential layer of complexity when it came to neutralizing them if it came to a fight. Celestia and Luna also knew that with Sombra himself present, any crystal pony suddenly became a much bigger obstacle. The alicorn sisters tensed, waiting for the dark Prince to give the order that would turn this meeting into a battle… and awaken the entire palace.
 
But Sombra did not give the order.
 
He hung his head. “Even if it is you two… he won’t forgive this. You’re throwing away your lives.” Sombra’s scowl deepened and he pointed at Celestia, and through her, Princess Platinum. “You’re throwing away everything we’ve worked for! And for what? For what, Celestia?”
 
“For harmony,” she told him, but couldn’t find it in her to rise to his anger and outrage.
 
He was right: she was throwing it all away, and for little more than a crazy dream.
 
“Harmony?!” Sombra spat. “Harmony!” He turned to Luna, and to the bundle under her wings. “Look at you! Look at what you’re doing! You even broke into the Royal Feretory and desecrated Yggdrasil itself…” Luna averted her eyes at the accusation. “You’re freeing an enemy of the state… for harmony? Have you even heard yourself? Harmony? Peace? The only peace in this world comes from power! It comes from order and obedience!”
 
“You!” he pointed directly at Princess Platinum, lips curling back in a savage snarl that did little to hide his canine dentition. “You did this to them! Damn you! You bewitched them somehow! I should crystalize you, piece by screaming piece, shattering each limb as it freezes!”
 
“Sombra,” Celestia tried to say.
 
“Please listen!” Luna picked up for her sister when he only snarled in response. As yet, he hadn’t launched an attack. He hadn’t alerted the entire sky palace to their escape. “Sombra, please. It isn’t witchcraft. Sister believes there can be harmony between the tribes…”
 
“Sister believes?” Sombra repeated, staring at Luna with wide eyes. “By the Night’s Stars, she’s dragged you into this, hasn’t she? You don’t have to do what she says, Luna. You’re your own mare! This can’t be what you want!”
 
Luna clutched the cloth bundle to her side with her wing and shook her head. “I have to do this, too.”
 
“We’ve both made up our minds,” Celestia spoke up, regaining Sombra’s attention. Propped up on her back, Platinum was clearly awake, but kept silent while the two sisters talked down their old friend. “Sombra… peace won’t come – can’t come – from violence and slavery. Any kind of slavery. Peace and harmony come from understanding and friendship. What Father is doing is wrong. We killed the windigos and turned ourselves into something even worse!”
 
Sombra’s hackles, already raised, were further pricked by her comment.
 
“Don’t you dare--” he warned, seething anger in his growl.
 
“I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean it like that,” Celestia quickly apologized, and he calmed, if only somewhat. “But you have to see this isn’t how things should be? We’ve lost our way! You have to see this is why Starswirl abandoned us? Why he defected to Equestria?”
 
“Defected? To Equestria? That’s where he went?” Sombra realized, aghast. A moment later, and his scowl returned, but chastened. “That old fool. That blind fool. I always knew he was weak in the head.” He fixed Celestia with his stare, but it was softer than before. “Celestia… what about your mother? Have you really given up on her?”
 
Celestia and Luna both cringed at the reminder. Their mother…
 
“She’s gone, Sombra,” Celestia answered for them, and shifted a wing to better keep Princess Platinum on her back. “She’s been gone all our lives. Father can’t accept that; her leaving drove him mad, but it is the simple, ugly truth. Getting her back… if she even wants to come back… it isn’t worth all the horror we’ve unleashed on the world.”
 
Sombra stared at the two alicorn sisters, still trying to understand them. To understand their motivations. He hadn’t heard Platinum’s words. He hadn’t seen the lengths she was willing to go through for friendship and for this insane new idea that was Equestria. His life hadn’t been changed by watching the stubborn nobility and fierce devotion she had towards ponies of another tribe, ponies she had been raised to hate or look down on all her life. His life hadn’t been turned upside down by realizing that maybe, just maybe, there was a better way and a better future… waiting just over the horizon.
 
“Are you going to fight us?” With her usual lack of subtlety, Luna finally asked what was on both of their minds. She looked him in the eye, and a hint of the dark magic they both shared crackled along their horns.  “Sombra, are you going to be our ally tonight… or our enemy? It is one or the other.”
 
Prince Sombra, Lord of the Crystal Empire, raised his hoof--
 
And lowered it, gently, to the floor.
 
“You’re both too naive,” he stated, turning on his hooves. “You’ll never make it out through the galleries and Sagittarius himself is watching the sky for flyers. Luckily for you, I happen to have arranged an emergency escape for myself, just in case. You can use one of my mirrors.”
 
Luna smiled cautiously, and Celestia breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you--”
 
“But…!” Sombra warned, glancing back at them and revealing a hint of fang. Black smoke trickled out from between his teeth. Celestia had the impression then, looking at him, that he was speaking not just to her, not just to Luna, but to the silent Princess Platinum as well.
 
“Even if you survive this, you have to know that they won’t trust you; that they’ll never love you.” The Black Prince of the Crystal Empire turned his back on them and led the trio onward, abetting their escape. His heavy hooves clopped rhythmically along the stone floor. “The harmony you’re looking for…? It doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. You’re fools, the both of you, and one day it will get you killed. Mark my words.”
 
Fools they may have been, but he still helped them.
 
That night, Princess Platinum escaped from captivity. That night, the dream that was Equestria was given a chance to survive, and in time, to thrive. Only twenty years later, corrupted by dark magic, the Mad King Sombra was banished to the Realm of Shadow. His sentence was carried out by the newly crowned Princesses Celestia and Luna, using the Elements of Harmony.
 
- - -
 
“If only you’d come with us, you’d have seen… it can exist.”
 
“Oh ho?” A stallion’s voice rumbled beneath her. “Auntie, you’re awake?”
 
Blueblood, despite his occasional protestations, was more than capable of carrying her on his back. Resting on top of him, the Princess could feel the difference a little time made in her body. Despite what had to be the breaking of the Crown, her restorative magic had been cast before the event, and it was potent.
 
Her worst wounds had sealed up, filling not with flesh but with magical biomatter. The bleeding and hemorrhaging had abated, and the healing had begun, but it would be weeks before she was as she had been… and that was assuming a way was found to repair the Crown as well. Twilight. It would be up to Twilight. Once again, her life and the future of Equestria itself would be in the hooves of Twilight Sparkle. If the crown went unrestored for more than a few days, it would be chaos the likes of which would make Discord proud.
 
“You were dreaming,” Blueblood went on to tell her, as a dark colored mare opened a door up ahead of them, deep within the warren of infrastructure tunnels under Canterlot. “Drooling as well, but mostly dreaming.”
 
“A little royal drool won’t hurt you, nephew.” Celestia wrapped her front legs around his neck a bit more tightly and, despite the awkward angle, favored her distant relation with a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “It isn’t every day I get to be rescued by a handsome Prince.”
 
“And it isn’t every day a fair Princess compliments me on how handsome I am,” Blueblood joked and the two royals broke into a fit of giggles.
 
The unicorn mare accompanying the Prince stared at the pair, one eyebrow up almost to the base of her horn. She stepped aside as Blueblood squirmed through the maintenance door. They left the mess of ancient underground aqueducts and plumbing to enter a more modern structure. It was a large, perfectly straight tunnel, unlit except for the faint glow of the unicorn mare’s horn. Parallel railroad tracks ran across the ground on a bed of rubble.
 
“Blueblood,” Celestia said, honestly, giving him one last squeeze. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
 
“As if I could leave you in that place,” he answered with remarkable candor.
 
“It was a foalish risk,” she felt the need to remind him in the next breath, gently clopping a hoof against his forehead. “Don’t risk your life again like that. Not even for me.”
 
“If only I could make a promise like that.” Canterlot’s Prince sighed theatrically and followed it up with a smirking glance back at her. “But there are some things I couldn’t bear to live without. Fine wine for example. Beautiful mares, oh yes, definitely that. My Auntie and my Equestria are another. I love my life rather dearly, Auntie, but some things are worth the risk.”
 
Celestia groaned in exasperation, but, rather than try to correct her nephew, rested her cheek against his shoulder and let him carry her. She didn’t let him see, but a smile had found her lips. The Princess didn’t feel the need to tell him that she felt the same way. Some things were worth risking one’s life to protect. A life where a pony valued nothing over their own survival was not much of a life at all. It wasn’t just a noble sentiment, either. It was intrinsic to ponykind. That was something Sombra and her father had never understood.
 
“Which way next?” the mare – Night Shade, Celestia later learned – asked, looking back and forth down the metro tunnel.
 
“Down that way,” Blueblood told her, and Celestia felt him begin to move again. “Here, follow me.”
 
Resting, but no longer needing to sleep, Princess Celestia let her body go limp. She kept an eye on the pony present whom she didn’t know – the dark-coated mare. Blueblood seemed to notice her interest, and he made polite introductions. Her name was Night Shade, and she was an oneiromancer, a draumr, in the parlance of the old world. Like Luna. She had been ensnared by the changelings, Blueblood had explained. They had controlled her and forced to be his jailor. She had entered his dreams to steal his family secrets for Chrysalis. He didn’t use the word ‘nightmare,’ loaded as it was in their family, but it was implied. Just like…
 
The Princess of the Sun had to stifle an inappropriate laugh.
 
‘The three of us… myself, Luna, and Auntie, and now Blueblood, Night Shade, and me,’ Celestia thought, cheek to her nephew’s shoulder. ‘Is this ironic or just surreal? Auntie Platinum, what would you say if you saw me now… if you saw us now?’
 
Blueblood led them down the railroad tunnel for only a couple hundred hooves. Soon they ducked into another maintenance alcove. There were stairs there, leading up to another level. Despite living in Canterlot all her life – and a long, long life it was – Celestia had to admit to herself that she had no idea where they currently were. Canterlot was an old city, among the oldest in Equestria proper, and because of the limited space on the side of the mountain, it was built in layers and tiers like a giant cake. Below the marble streets and plazas, it was a maze of ancient stonework, modern metro tunnels, thousand-year-old aqueducts, and hidden passages.
 
The sound of rushing water found her ears, and the Princess realized they had to be near one of the two tributaries for the Serene Falls. Blueblood led them through a windowless circular tunnel into another mason’s venue: this one overlooking a splashing torrent of crystal clear water. An arched bridge crossed the deep aqueduct, leading to a network of yet more underground bridges over still water. There were pipes here, thick ones, not meant for houses. They had to be under Canterlot’s iconic Three Sisters – a minor landmark for the city, the Sisters were the tallest water-towers in the country, built by the three daughters of Blue Belle the Twenty Ninth. According to popular history, the one to inherit the crown was the daughter to build the tallest tower.
 
“Watch your head, Auntie,” Blueblood warned, and she soon realized why. All the pipes and low-hanging structures made for a bit of a horn-hazard. Celestia had to angle her head, and her horn, off to the side to make sure it didn’t get caught on anything.
 
They descended a spiral stairway, and then knocked on a thick iron door.
 
“Do you think they even made it here?” Night Shade asked, as they waited. “What if they were followed?”
 
“Then we’ll be in for an interesting couple minutes when that door opens,” Blueblood replied. A slide in the door opened with a squeak, revealing a pair of jonquil-orange eyes.
 
“Who goes there?” a mare’s voice challenged them from behind the door.
 
“You know who,” Night Shade answered, frowning.
 
“Okay! Then pass the test!” The mare held up a… glowing yellow hand? Celestia blinked a few times just to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. Three of the fingers were extended. “If this is five, then what is this?” The hand closed, and then held up just one finger.
 
“Three,” Blueblood answered.
 
“If this is two--” The hand held up four fingers. “--then what is this?” The four became two.
 
Again, Blueblood answered for them. “Four.”
 
“And if this is one--” The hand went from five fingers to three. “--then what is this?”
 
“Five.”
 
The mare narrowed her eyes at them… and then, a second later, her smile took up the slot in the door instead. “Okay! You pass!”
 
The bolted door unlocked and opened wide, revealing the mare in her entirety. She had a spring-green coat color, with a white and cornflower-blue mane, cut short. Not only was she a unicorn, the same unicorn Celestia remembered Chrysalis assuming the guise of and using it for a sneak attack, but her magic was infused with Living Aether. It was obvious just by the black tint and starry sparkles in her golden magic, including the strange hand she had conjured up.
 
In fact, the hand was still floating protectively around the mare, attached to what had to be most of an arm almost up to the shoulder. It was joined by a free-floating golden four-string lyre. Though Chrysalis had never tried to use any aethereal magic herself – most likely she couldn’t, as she lacked a contract – this mare was definitely a bridesmaid, just like the ponies Triangulum and Equuleus Pictoris had possessed. Had they trotted right into a trap?
 
“Nephew,” Celestia whispered, and some of her anxiety must’ve been clear in her tone of voice.
 
“This is the lovely Miss Lyra Heartstrings, Auntie,” Blueblood said, introducing the mare. Lyra’s goofy grin was quickly joined by her salute… using the wrong hoof.
 
“Don’t worry! I’m on your side!” Lyra’s golden hand made a point of waving amiably in hello.
 
“This hoof,” Blueblood said, lifting his right foreleg slightly.
 
“Oh! OH!” Lyra quickly swapped left for right, smile still firmly in place. “Super honored to meet you, Princess Celestia!”
 
“That magic,” Celestia said, lifting slightly off her nephew’s back. “Where did you get it?”
 
“What? You mean this little guy?” Lyra gestured to the five-fingered hand hovering over her head. It wasn’t manifesting out of her horn. The shoulder joint of the arm was just attached to null-space.
 
“Do you know what you have there?” Celestia asked, softly, mindful that this mare probably wasn’t the threat she had initially seemed. If Blueblood was willing to vouch for her, Celestia decided to trust his judgment. That whole business with the passcode had to mean they had arranged this meeting beforehoof.
 
“Uh, well,” Lyra muttered, chuckling nervously. “He’s the Celestial Lyre, right? I didn’t know it would come with a hand, but when I was in trouble, he just kind of appeared to help me!”
 
“The constellation of the lyre,” Celestia confirmed Lyra’s suspicions. “It hasn’t manifested on the lower plane for a thousand years.”
 
“It isn’t… dangerous, is it?” Lyra’s eyes rolled as she followed the floating hand. “I mean, he likes to poke things and play the lyre, but he won’t try and… like, slap me to death or anything, will he?” The golden hand recoiled and gently patted the pony on her head, mussing up her mane. “See? He’s a good hand!”
 
“The last mare to command The Lyre used it to enthrall an army,” Celestia answered with a sigh. “When she lost control of it, it choked her to death.”
 
“Eeeh!” Lyra quickly ducked her head under her hooves. “Really?”
 
“Auntie, no need to scare the poor mare...” Blueblood held out a hoof to the bridesmaid. “Miss Heartstrings? Can you take us to Cadance?”
 
“Oh, um, sure! Yeah!” Lyra bounced back up, just like that, and started trotting happily away. “This way!”
 
“Princess, was all that true?” Night Shade asked, as Blueblood followed the minty mare.
 
Celestia nodded weakly. Actually, ‘choked to death’ was the sanitized version of events.
 
“It was… but…”
 
She hesitated, not entirely sure how to explain it. It had been a thousand years. Things like this, most ponies simply had no conception of. How could anypony explain the madness that had possessed a generation of a kingdom’s best and brightest? How could anypony understand the horrors they had unleashed in their mad effort to exterminate the Windigos? So much of ancient history had been left buried for good reason.
 
“Celestial Beings are not magic or tools, waiting to be used,” Celestia finally told her. “They are thinking things. Most are already amoral, many actively malevolent. If one is abused, locked into servitude, it isn’t a surprise when it responds to cruelty with cruelty.”
 
“I almost forgot!” Lyra spoke up, leading them down a short hall towards a well-lit area. “Princess, you wanted to know where I got the lyre, right? I’m not really sure how, myself, but I think it was Lord Brass. He gave me the magic and Chrysalis made me one of her bridesmaids. Then, when Princess Cadance said some sort of password, I remembered who I was and helped her escape!”
 
Brass?
 
Alpha Brass? And Cadance. But… that made no sense. That implied Brass had given powers to the other two bridesmaids as well, didn’t it? Surely, if Chrysalis herself could do it, she would have used more than just the two from before. Had Chrysalis gotten her Aether-empowered bridesmaids from Alpha Brass? Using one to free Cadance, who must have been captive for some time, made some sense… but what about the other two? Celestia remembered seeing Eunomie Mosaic at the wedding. If anypony could have yelled out a passphrase to free the two other bridesmaids from changeling control, it would be her.
 
Had something gone wrong? Maybe Eunomie or anypony else working for Brass simply didn’t have the chance to intervene? Or maybe, Celestia had to admit to herself, she was just trying to give one of her ponies the benefit of the doubt. But why would anypony help Chrysalis with one hoof and free Cadance with another? Then there was the troubling fact that, on top of everything else, he was still engaged to Twilight…
 
Celestia quietly resolved to have a little chat with Lord Brass the next time she had the chance.
 
“You’re back!” a familiar voice cried, snapping Celestia out of her thoughts. “Aunt Celestia!”
 
“Huh? No warm greeting for me?” Blueblood complained. “I’m hurt.”
 
“Oh, hush, you.” Princess Cadance looked like she had seen better days, but she raced over to her stepbrother and fellow alicorn to wrap Celestia in an affectionate hug. Taking the opportunity, Celestia slowly and carefully eased herself off her nephew’s back. She returned the hug with one foreleg, even as she glanced around.
 
They were in some sort of hidden study. It was a single room, circular in design, three stories high, with a domed ceiling. The walls were made of solid limestone and granite. It might have been a library once, but most of the shelves now were barren and empty, the books and scrolls replaced by spider webs and the accompanying dead spider husks that came with them. Old wooden crates were stacked up in a few places on the second and first floors, and by the layer of dust on some of them, they long predated anypony currently present. The walls still sported a few colorful murals, however, and three musty old banners hung from a wall on the third floor. Celestia recognized the sigil. It was the personal banner of Princess Cadmium the Fourth, the one-time Blue Belle, Thirtieth of Her Name.
 
Scattered around the secret study now were an assortment of stallions and mares, most looking haggard and exhausted. Celestia recognized one from among the crowd: Twilight Velvet. The arch-mage was of the lowest circle, and thus not that frequently at court, but her family was of high standing and she was the mother of Celestia’s own dear pupil. What was she doing here? Then Celestia admonished herself: at least Twilight Velvet was safe. But… hadn’t she been at the wedding with her husband?
 
“Celestia,” ponies started to whisper amongst themselves. “She’s alive…” “I knew it.” “Princess.”  “She’s alive.” “Praise Celestia.” “Princess!”
 
Knowing she had to nip things in the bud, Celestia summoned up her strength and raised her voice.
 
“I am alive, my little ponies, but please, be at ease,” she implored them, sensing a few were already about to start bowing and scraping. “Now is not the time for supplication. Honor me by seeing to yourselves and to your fellow Equestrians.”
 
“Ahh, typical Auntie,” Blueblood groaned, tossing his blond mane. “When word got around that you’d been killed, a bunch of ponies were on the verge of flagellating themselves to bring you back.”
 
“Don’t even joke about that, nephew,” Celestia said, her expression stern.
 
“He’s just being an idiot,” Cadance explained, also leveling a glare at her step-brother.
 
“H-h-hey,” Blueblood whinnied, holding up his hooves. “A slight exaggeration, I admit--”
 
“Where did these ponies come from?” Celestia asked, and noticed a phalanx of Royal Guards step forward and salute her. One stallion was even one of Luna’s Night Guard. They looked like they’d been through Tartarus and back. Most were injured or patched up in a rough way, some still stained by green changeling blood. All had hope and gratitude in their eyes at seeing their Princess safe and sound.
 
“The changelings cocoon the ponies they capture,” Cadance explained, though Celestia already knew that much. “When I escaped with Lyra and Blueblood, we came across one of the caverns where they were storing ponies. So we freed them and we all made our escape together. Even the royal guards here were all once captive, so… any of them you saw before today were changelings.”
 
Celestia had suspected the guard to be infiltrated, but…
 
“Chrysalis must have stolen your identity months ago,” Celestia realized and privately kicked herself for not noticing it sooner, or even at all, before the wedding. “She took advantage of us sharing a pool of guards… she replaced them when they guarded you, and the disease spread with every duty rotation.”
 
“And she had Shining,” Cadance reminded her fellow royals. “Speaking of--” She turned to her stepbrother. “--how was he? Did you see him?”
 
“I did,” Blueblood replied, floating over a brown linen rag, snapping the dust off it, and then folding it into a neat square so he could sit down. “He didn’t look good, I’m afraid. By the looks of it, Chrysalis has been amplifying his stamina with magic and… perhaps even other things… but even that won’t last forever. Every time the shield over the city takes a beating, it saps him of magic.”
 
“Is that really so bad, though?” Lyra asked, the only pony willing to interrupt in the royal conversation. She tilted her head. “So, any minute now, if it hasn’t already, the city’s shield will collapse. That’s a good thing, right? A little feedback from a broken spell never hurt anypony.”
 
“The more complex the spell, the greater the feedback if it breaks or fails,” Celestia reminded the unicorn. “Shining Armor must already be exhausted from keeping it up this long.”
 
Blueblood nodded in agreement. “A magical backlash on the order of a four-alliteration spell could be life threatening.”
 
“Then why didn’t you save him, too?” Cadance asked, making little effort to hide her anger. “Blueblood, you said--”
 
“I said I would try,” he cut her off, features settling into a frown. “There was no way--”
 
“You saved Aunt Celestia--”
 
“Just barely,” he argued.
 
“Cadance. Blueblood.” Celestia tapped them both on the head with her hoof. “Voices.”
 
“Yes, Auntie.” “Sorry.”
 
“Chrysalis was keeping Shining Armor on a very short leash,” Celestia continued, and she meant it. Literally. Chrysalis kept a leash for her favorite stallion close by. It probably wouldn’t help to mention that at this moment, however. “I also don’t think she will let him die just to keep the shield up a few hours longer.”
 
“I don’t like risking his life on a big ‘if’ like that,” Cadance said, shaking her head in dismay. “I should’ve snuck in, too… tried to rescue him myself…”
 
“There was an entire legion of changelings covering the palace, top to bottom,” Blueblood grumbled. “Like ants on a splattered pie. It might be possible to find a secret way in, but…”
 
“Do you believe Chrysalis will take up residence in the royal apartments?” Celestia asked, struck by an idea.
 
“I don’t--” Blueblood began to say.
 
“She fancies herself as your replacement,” Cadance answered, forcefully, her brows drawn down in a frown as she thought of the current bane of her existence. “Everything that was yours, she will believe is now hers. Not just because she wants it for herself, but because she thinks that’s the best way to hurt and humiliate you. She’ll definitely be in the royal apartments tonight... probably in your own bed, Aunt Celestia.”
 
Celestia’s smirk presaged a ripple of color passing through her aurora mane.
 
“Good,” the Princess of the Sun declared. “Then I know just the way to get Shining Armor out of the Palace.”
 
- - -
 
“We’re lost, aren’t we?”
 
Pinkie peeked out from around a corner. “We’re not lost, you silly billy!”
 
A lavish hall stretched out before her, with two gently cascading waterfalls to either side. Amid the clear blue water, crystalline statues were frozen in mid-frolic. Little fillies and colts were holding hooves and dancing, sea-ponies were breaching alongside dolphins, and carved seaweed coiled around corals and shells. It was beautiful.
 
It was also suspiciously empty and unguarded.
 
“Well, this is new at least,” Vinyl Scratch said, also peeking out from around the corner. She had the crook of one foreleg on top of Pinkie’s curly mane.
 
“So we aren’t lost?” Fluttershy joined them a moment later, partly sheltered behind Vinyl and Pinkie.
 
Pinkie bounced down the waterfall-flanked hallway. “You girls really need to have more faith in my--”
 
THUD
 
“Your… what, now?” Vinyl asked, trotting up to the flattened Pinkie Pie. Her face had ended up planted into some sort of invisible barrier.
 
“Myrnbrgggntn smmilz.”
 
“Pinkie, are you okay?” Fluttershy sucked on her lower lip. “Do you need help?”
 
Pinkie planted her front hooves against the barrier and pushed, removing her flattened face with an audible ‘pop.’ The party pony fell back onto her rump. She quickly squeezed the sides of her head, prompting her nose and eyes to pop back out and return to normal.
 
“Owie,” she said, and experimentally poked the barrier. Pressing against it with her hoof did little to nothing. “Who put a wall here? It’s totally in the way! How are we supposed to sneak around when there are all these walls and locked doors?”
 
“You do know that’s pretty much exactly why,” Vinyl Scratch stated, but reason did nothing to penetrate Pinkie’s thick skull. The DJ suspected Pinkie’s head had been specifically hardened with military grade shielding to resist things like ‘rationality’ and ‘arguments.’
 
“Oh dear, I guess we’ll have to go back to our rooms now!” Fluttershy declared, making an about-face and jerkily heading back the way they came.
 
“Like we could even backtrack through this maze,” Vinyl grumbled. She sat down and winced as something jabbed into her rear. “Hey!”
 
“What we need is some sort of passcode!” Pinkie said, speaking mostly to herself. “Maybe if we pick-pocket a guard? There should be something hidden close by.”
 
Vinyl stood back up and stretched her neck to try and get a look at what had stuck to her butt. “What the heck?”
 
It was a piece of folded paper with a paperclip. Plucking it free with her magic, Vinyl unfolded it and brought it close enough to read.
 
“Greenhorn,” she recited the letter aloud. “I’m getting pretty tired of having to remind you of the daily security code. This isn’t rocket science. If you can’t commit it to memory, write it on your hoof or something, you idiot. This is the last time I cover for you. Signed Spot Light. Zero-one-eight-two-five-six-one-three-one-two.”
 
In the middle of the hall, the barrier shield shimmered and then vanished.
 
“And there we go!” Pinkie Pie said with a triumphant hoof-pump.
 
“I can’t believe this,” Vinyl muttered, staring at the unusually convenient piece of paper she just happened to sit on.
 
“I’ll just add that to my exploration journal!” Pinkie plucked the paper out of Vinyl’s magic and tucked it into the folds of a little pink book. Vinyl got a quick look at what looked like crude drawings of dragons, or maybe dinosaurs, and a bunch of other indecipherable scribbles.
 
There was also a map that was basically three rooms, one with an arrow labeling it as “my room” another labeled as “?” and a third marked with “fancy stuff.” There was also a single landmark present… in the form of Fluttershy. Fluttershy. Who was following them.
 
It was literally the worst map ever.
 
“Why did I follow you again?” Vinyl wondered.
 
“Because I have a nose for fun!” Pinkie explained, bouncing ahead. “And trouble! And you like both!”
 
“Oh yeah.”
 
“So we aren’t going back?” Fluttershy asked and resignedly followed her earth pony partner.
 
- - -
 
“Cadance,” Shining Armor moaned, his head hanging limply and horn sputtering. “How much… longer…”
 
Sitting on the Solar Throne of Equestria, Chrysalis didn’t even hear him at first. The name ‘Cadance’ barely registered. Gradually raising her head at the sounds of pained mumbling, she turned her blind eyes towards her equine husband’s voice.
 
“What was that?” she demanded. “What did you say?”
 
“I can’t… keep the shield up…” Shining said with some difficulty. “So tired. Can I please… stop?”
 
“You can stop when I tell you to stop, fool!” A swing of her hoof, errant and wild, managed to hit him even without her being able to see. “Or can’t you see that I have problems of my own?!”
 
The guard captain at the receiving end of her blow grunted and tumbled down the steps in front of the throne without a word of complaint. Chrysalis continued to breathe heavily, her foreleg still extended from where it had connected with him.
 
“S-shit,” the Queen of Queens cursed and fumbled to clamber down the steps after him. There were already chattering, buzzing changelings all around her. More than a dozen of them formed a circle down below the throne, not sure what to do with the fallen consort of their Queen.
 
“Shining?” Chrysalis called out to him, feeling around with her hooves. “Shining, honey? Where are you? Shining? Say something. Say something so I can find you.”
 
Feeling around with her hooves, her patience quickly ran dry.
 
“One of you bring him to me!” she roared, holding out her forelegs. “Bring him! Now!”
 
A pair of changelings moved forward, propping up the hurting unicorn stallion and carrying him over. Chrysalis felt him with her hoof, and ran her touch up to his cheek, gently cupping it. Her eyes strained, but still couldn’t see what sort of damage she had inflicted. Blind. That damned unicorn had left her blind.
 
“Is he alright?” she asked her servants and children. “I didn’t break anything, did I?”
 
The chattering of the drones told her it looked superficial.
 
“I need you, Shining,” Chrysalis pleaded, still stroking him lovingly. “You love me, don’t you?”
 
“I love you Cadance,” Shining Armor muttered, tears in the corners of his eyes. “I love you so much…”
 
“I know. And I should not have hit you,” Chrysalis told him, though how much he actually understood was questionable. “I am sorry I did it… I am.”
 
He slurred his response, and Chrysalis had to strain to try and understand him. Her black ears folded back and she leaned in close to rest her chin on his cheek. Shining. The pony whose love had given her so much; the pony whose love was the foundation of her power; if he kept this up much longer…
 
“Subjects,” she said, softly, and then raised her voice to a proper queenly bellow, “Children! Prepare more rejuvenation wax! Send out the warning to all swarm commanders! The shield will be dropping within the hour and we must be prepared!”
 
She patted Shining Armor on the shoulder, blindly.
 
“You’ve done well,” she said to him with affection that surprised even herself. “Just a little more and you can stop. We’ll take care of the enemy. You just rest.”
 
“T-thank… you…” His words brought a smile to her face, a smile that faded when he uttered one last name. “Cadance.”
 
Always Cadance.
 
“Keep him close, but… out of my reach,” Chrysalis ordered, slowly making her way back up to her stolen throne.
 
“Oh Queen of Queens,” a changeling not of her brood spoke up. She could tell just by how they addressed her that it was one of the other hives. To her brood, she was just their Queen. The others had needed to acclimate to there being a Queen who ruled even over their own mothers. But without her eyes, it was hard to tell what hive the speaker was from. The voice came from the throng that filled the throne room.
 
“Speak,” Chrysalis commanded.
 
“Oh great one,” she speaker continued. “We have many thousands of captives already, do we not? Enough to create our own country somewhere far away. Enough to breed ponies to feed us… was that not the plan? If the shield falls then the fighting will only intensify tomorrow. Why not make good our escape in the cover of darkness?”
 
“Flee,” Chrysalis said. “You would have us flee.”
 
“This one only suggests, most humbly…” the changeling chittered anxiously, noticing how the others were shying away from it. “Queens have fallen. Mothers have died. Is… are you not worried?”
 
“Queens can be replaced. Sarai can be replaced. Freyja can be replaced. Tlanextli can be replaced!”
 
Ensconced on the throne, Chrysalis ran a hoof over her eyelids.
 
“Even… I… can be replaced. But if we run after all this, we will be running for generations. We will return to scraping out a meager living in the shadows of other races. We will have shown ourselves to the world, and proven to all that we are lacking. The dream… my dream… of a better future for our race… that cannot be replaced! That cannot be compromised! That cannot be defeated!!”
 
The throne room fell silent.
 
“Are we clear on this?” Chrysalis asked, finally.
 
“Yes, oh Queen of Queens!” the changeling cried out.
 
“Good.” Queen Chrysalis sat back on her new throne. The cold air caused a chill to run down her spine. “Good.”
 
It was a future she still believed in… even if she wouldn’t be able to see it.
 
- - -
 
“Oh, look! Puppies!”
 
“And there she goes,” Vinyl stated, unable to act fast enough to keep up with the flying pegasus.
 
“Lemme see!” Pinkie hopped up to look over the edge of the terrace’s safety railing. “Hey, she’s right!”
 
On a terrace directly below was what Vinyl wagered to be a kennel of sorts. It was walled off with a chainlink metal fence – the only one of the sort the DJ recalled seeing so far – and a rather copious number of yellow and black warning signs. From overhead, she could see that the kennel itself was further subdivided into three main sections. There was a large substructure that was probably where the dogs slept, a large open area with posts and a running track and some other training aides, and then a third separate run that was probably used by individual dogs away from their peers. Maybe grooming, too. The only pet Vinyl had ever owned was a snake. Octavia was the dog lover.
 
“Wheee!” Pinkie Pie jumped over the railing. “Wait for me, Fluttershy!”
 
“Gaah! Don’t jump!” Vinyl’s hooves flailed in midair as she missed Pinkie’s tail. Like some sort of bouncy feline, Pinkie landed without apparent harm, and started pronking over to where Fluttershy was investigating the chainlink fence.
 
“I can’t believe these two!” the DJ groaned, quickly finding some stairs and hurrying to catch up.
 
By the time she made her way down and around, a new face had joined Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. She was a griffin with a gray coat and light blue mane tied behind her head in an ironically-named ponytail. She was normal looking, as far as griffins went, aside from the fact that she also wore a black padded outfit that looked like it belonged on a hoofball field... or on an episode of Equestrian Gladiators.
 
“Hey,” Vinyl said, approaching them. “Everything okay?”
 
“Oh yes, just fine!” Fluttershy replied, sweeping a hoof towards the new face. “Miss Vinyl Scratch, this is Miss Genevieve.”
 
“Genevieve Griffin,” the padded kennel master said, holding out a talon. “Nice’ta meetcha.”
 
“Hey, what’s up? Equestrian griffin, right?” Vinyl asked, shaking the rough black talon with her hoof in greeting.
 
“Equestria born n’ bred,” Genevieve confirmed, giving the unicorn a firm shake before turning back to Fluttershy. “As I was sayin’ these aren’t family dogs. They’re guard dogs and hunting dogs. That’s why we got all those signs up. They’re friendly to ponies but it doesn’t hurt to play it safe.”
 
“Guard dogs?” Fluttershy turned her head to watch a pair of the animals playing in the yard next to an A-frame. “But they’re so cute!”
 
Cute? Maybe. Big? Definitely.
 
That was the very first thing Vinyl noticed. She hadn’t really been able to get much of a scale of them before, but this close it was easy to see they probably massed a little under what the average pony did. They were all short-coated, with strongly built bodies. The dogs’ noses were long and straight but well-muscled for what had to be a powerful bite. Their ears were erect, and the two in the yard were a mix of brown and white with bits of black around the face. A third, almost entirely white dog was lying down close by and watching the three ponies (and one griffin) with bright blue eyes.
 
“…yeah,” Genevieve answered in response to a question Vinyl missed. “That’s about right. Lord Brass has had us working on a new breed for about a decade now. We started with some hunting dogs from Whinnychester. Molossers, mostly. Then we imported in some Broholmer from Scandaneighvia, then some Germane Shepard, and lastly some Tibitan sheepdog. This bunch you see here is big, strong, smart and tough. Good eyes and good noses, work together well. Superb bite. Not too fast, but fast enough in the chase. Very eager to please.”
 
“So you’re what, a dog breeder?” Vinyl asked.
 
“Uhhhh, yeeaah, yeah I am, but I’m mostly the trainer.” Genevieve shrugged but fluffed her wings proudly. “Especially with how busy his Lordship gets, looking after his dogs is a real honor. He loves these dogs, you know? We’re the best part of the Gardens!” Genevieve smirked and winked at the three mares. “Don’t let any of the other stuffy ponies in this place let you think otherwise!”
 
The big white dog, meanwhile had padded over to sniff as Fluttershy’s hoof just out of reach behind the fence. She boldly held it a bit closer and the canine brushed her butter yellow coat with his nose. Fluttershy beamed and cooed at the dog, clearly happy to have run into some animal life in their little excursion.
 
“You said they were guard dogs, right? And hunting dogs?” Pinkie Pie asked, and Genevieve nodded.
 
“Hunting what?” Vinyl asked, picking up on Pinkie’s line of questioning. “And guarding where? This place is big, but I don’t think there’s that much room to run around. And, now that I think about it, who are you guarding it from? I heard Twilight say you could only get here by teleporting in?”
 
Genevieve stiffened slightly at the question.
 
“Obviously, we don’t use them here in the Gardens,” she explained, coughing into her talon. “Once they’re trained, they go to other castles.”
 
“Ohhhhhh!” Pinkie also nodded, her forelegs crossed over her chest. “That makes sense! Other castles! Yup!”
 
“They seem friendly,” Fluttershy said, comfortable and in her element for once. “Are you sure we can’t go inside? Just for a little bit?”
 
“Umm,” Genevieve wavered for a few seconds. “I… guess… it wouldn’t hurt. None of you are--”
 
“Are?” Pinkie asked.
 
“Nevermind,” the griffiness insisted, and motioned with her wing for them to follow. “This way. I can let you in, but only for a few minutes. I don’t know how you even got here… this part of the gardens is usually off limits to visitors. But I guess you three must be special or something.”
 
“Oh, we’re Super Special!” Pinkie chirped.
 
“Yeah,” Vinyl snickered. “Quotation marks ‘special’ in that one’s case.”
 
“...Heeey!”
 
- - -
 
Princess Luna called to the moon… and heard only silence.
 
This night, over Canterlot, the sun set of its own accord and the moon crossed the sky as it had done in the days long before ponykind. For a time, both sun and moon had shared the heavens, an occurrence no living pony had ever seen before, prompting whispers of fear at the strange and unsettling phenomenon. They did not understand that the regular cycle that had been put in place by ponykind was the one that diverged from the norm. It was not the world’s natural, flawed state.
 
In her youth, back amidst the frigid chaos of the old country when the last unicorn king died, Luna had often seen the moon and sun share the sky, though on opposite ends of the horizon. At the time, she had even secretly found the sight… poignant. For did not her sister share dinner and breakfast with her? Were they not partners rather than enemies or rivals? Why had the Ancient Ones decreed that there was to only be sun or moon, and never both?
 
To make matters worse for more superstitious folk, tonight the heavenly vault had chosen to birth a harvest moon, baleful and red as it became visible on the horizon. Those already frightened to see sun and moon in the sky had been terrified to see an unscheduled harvest moon. Hunter’s Moon, many had taken to calling it, having dredged the term up from a musty tome, for the color was more blood than autumn leaf.
 
Then again, perhaps it was a Hunter’s Moon and an ill omen of things to come.
 
Though no wind penetrated Canterlot’s sputtering city shield, the night already promised to be freezing cold. Luna drank her cup of barley and rice soup – allegedly the best that could be made given the circumstances – and watched the night sky emerge without her prompting. It was a surreal experience, watching the heavens move and take form entirely of their own accord. Luna closed her eyes, quietly wondering about the pony who would normally have kept her company during the rise or fall of the night and day.
 
“Is this terrible cold normal? Is this like how Equestria was… before?” Rarity asked, and Luna felt a warm blanket fall over her back. It was patched and stitched with fine lining that felt like false fur. “I just finished touching it up! Do you like it?”
 
“Thank you,” Luna said, pulling the cloth close over her body.
 
“You’ll never guess where it came from!” The fashionista-turned-Baroness smiled at the Princess and sat down nearby on the cleanest spot she could find, bringing a little scrap of cloth along to provide a clean surface for her derriere. “But seriously,” she added with a soft sigh, “…don’t … ask where it came from.”
 
Luna snagged a piece of the blanket with her hoof and held it up for a closer inspection. “To answer your question, Lady Rarity, our sister kept Equestria warmer than it normally would be.”
 
The Lunar Princess, befitting her station, normally slept during the day and worked at night. Circumstances had forced her to remain up the entire day. She was trying to fix things with power naps of a few hours each. Most ponies were hunkering down across the city as night fell. Light was sparse. The feeling was… nostalgic.
 
“The night will be bitterly cold at this altitude, just as it was in the old days,” she warned.
 
“Dreadful!” Rarity shivered. “Then again… if everypony has to wear coats just to live in the city, imagine the boon it would be to fashion industry! Overcoat sales alone would skyrocket! Oh, and just imagine the possibilities for cute winter outfits! A niche market would simply explode overnight!”
 
Rarity said little more, sitting in silence and watching the night sky, her thoughts and concerns kept to herself. Luna respected as much, and didn’t pry. The Element of Generosity had done much already, by her estimate. If there was any way to repay her for all the time and effort she had made, it would not be in words or in the waking world.
 
“Do you know what would be wonderful right about now?” Rarity asked with a dramatic show of blowing on her hooves. “Some nice, hot tea! I saw some nice stallions brewing a pot on the way over here…”
 
There was a way, though, and there was something the Princess knew she could do.
 
“Lady Rarity.” Luna’s breath was visible in the cold air. “We need to speak of some matters, you and I.”
 
But first…
 
“Oh?” Rarity inquired, one of her indigo shield-fabrics wrapped around her shoulders. “Whatever is on your mind, Princess?”
 
“Many things.” Luna turned her eyes up to the full moon. “There is a chill in the air that has little to do with the cold.”
 
- - -
 
“The Platinum Crown?” Twilight looked down on the twisted, broken pieces that lay before her. “What…? Are you sure? Are you one-hundred percent sure this is The Platinum Crown?”
 
“I believe so,” Alpha Brass replied, sitting on the end of the low wooden table.
 
On the mahogany table, swathed like a babe in a nest of folded silks, rested two large pieces of metal. Twilight recognized it as Night Iron from having worked with and researched the material due to Lyra’s torc. The pieces looked partly warped, as if wrenched apart under pressure, the single band shorn roughly into two halves. It wasn’t hard to assess the damage now that she knew what she was looking at…
 
But this did not look like Platinum’s Crown.
 
Platinum’s Crown was wrought in palladium-gold and indigo blue. Twilight remembered seeing it on display in the Palace, and an identical copy in a museum. She also vaguely recalled seeing Blueblood’s mother, the Duchess of Canterlot and Crowned Princess of Unicorns, Vernal Equinox, wearing it once or twice for important public events.
 
The crown was supposed to be made with five broad-leaf arches, closed-style, with a velvet cap. It was famous for the five cut amethysts on each leaf-like arch, said to be the most brilliant and magically conductive amethysts uncovered in Equestria at the time. Each one had a name of its own: they were the Stones of Life, Justice, Fortitude, Wisdom and Courage. When it caught the light, the crown could reflect and refract the light into a rainbow of glitter-like sparkles. Half the fillies in Canterlot dreamt of wearing it, at least in the occasional flight of fancy.
 
What Brass had here… was just a simple band. Twilight could imagine it re-assembled without much difficulty. It wasn’t like it was melted or anything. Instead of priceless palladium-gold, this simple circlet was made of iron. It was probably meteoric iron, but that didn’t matter quite so much. The iron had been turned into Night Iron in an Aether Forge, like the books said, but it wasn’t a pretty looking metal. It wasn’t fit for regalia. It looked… ugly, frankly. There was what looked to be a small band of platinum along the top and bottom edges. It might have been the one cosmetic concession in the design.
 
“This doesn’t look anything like the crown,” Twilight said, still skeptical. “Not even a little.”
 
“I believe this--” Brass pointed down at the broken crown. “--fits inside the crown you and I know. Though I’m sure either one can be worn on its own.”
 
“That could be it,” Twilight admitted, craning her neck to look over the twisted metal. “But still, how do you know…?”
 
“Chalice has been bound to one of my Star Keys and thus to the Empyrean Vault itself,” Brass explained, and Twilight nodded. She knew that part. At least, partly. “She felt a disturbance when the crown was broken and sought it out. We Terre Rare know from Arsenic’s private journals that the Crown is a Star Key. It was no leap to realize that this is, in fact, the true Platinum Crown. The part of it that matters.”
 
Twilight digested that news and also sat down by the table.
 
“Okay,” she finally said, nodding. “All that makes sense. I’m still not clear on why you brought it here, though, or what you want me to do?”
 
Alpha Brass chuckled softly. “We need to fix it, of course.”
 
“Fix it?” Twilight asked, a little incredulous. If he was right, this was an ancient artifact. It usually wasn’t wise to carelessly mess around with them. It was one of Celestia’s Rules.
 
“You’ve examined and repaired the Star Key Miss Heartstrings purchased,” he reminded her, “the Key that was originally stolen from me by Sirocco. Is this one really so different? Take a closer look. I assure you it is completely inert at the moment.”
 
Twilight sighed but did as he asked.
 
Taking another, closer, look, she started to piece things together. “The crown is primarily composed of night-iron, while the other Star Keys were mostly gold with a small night-iron core. That probably means this crown… this key… must be made to establish a stronger or deeper connection than normal, or to channel more power than normal. I’m pretty sure the small bit of platinum on the edges here is ornamental, or just there so it is easier to wear. I don’t see any gemstones, but there are jewels of aqua pura on the parts that weren’t damaged. So… probably… those are the only in-set jewels it has.”
 
“But look at how a circuit of aqua pura runs through the metal!” Twilight very carefully nudged part of the broken crown with the edge of her hoof. “How did ponies do that without modern equipment?”
 
Leaning back and leaving the crown to rest, she gave him a look that seemed to imply she knew he was just waiting to reveal more. “So, what do you know about it, Alpha?”
 
He answered, but gravely. “I know this key was broken to weaken and kill Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.”
 
“What!” Twilight stood up in shock. “Kill the Princesses?! Are you sure?”
 
Alpha Brass nodded and crossed his forelegs before addressing her. “Yes. Chrysalis knew about the crown. She must have also learned of the connection it had with the Two Sisters…”
 
- - -
 
“One thousand years ago,” Luna explained, and the night light cast an eerie shadow over her, “superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness; it was a world of fear.”
 
“It sounds positively dreadful,” Rarity agreed, cradling a cup of tea between her hooves.
 
“It was a far cry from the present.” Luna slowly raised her own cup of tea to her lips, her frightful aura from before quickly evaporating in the gentle light of her horn. The tea was of a surprisingly fine grade, no doubt salvaged from some ruined manse nearby, and it went well with the soup she had finished. “We bring it up for two reasons. The first is because we have taken note of the effect you have on those nobleponies of Canterlot.”
 
“The effect I…?” Rarity blushed faintly at what she realized to be praise. “Princess, it was nothing, I just--”
 
Luna shook her head, disagreeing with her good subject. “Did you know we approached Lady Antimony before your duel with her?” The Princess paused only long enough to see the incomprehension on Rarity’s face. “We attempted to treat with her, to dissuade her. We did not believe you could possibly win against her.”
 
Rarity hardly seemed upset at hearing how the Princess expected her to lose.
 
“Yes, well,” she murmured into her cup. “I was a little surprised myself, truthfully.”
 
“Needless to say, we could not convince her,” Luna went on, smiling a little at the younger mare’s humility. “Yet, what was remarkable was not simply your victory over a far superior opponent – history teaches us of many underdogs claiming victory against the odds – it was that the duel changed both victor and defeated. It solidified your resolve, and we could see it clear as day, it gave your opponent much to dwell on as well. Now we hear that the two of you have found common cause?”
 
Luna’s breath was visible in the chill Canterlot air, a puff of it hanging over her cup of tea.
 
“We are aware of the feuds that divide Equestria’s Great Houses: the Terre Rare, the Quartz, the Garlands… we find you, Rarity of Ponyville, bridging them.” Luna looked up from her cup to her companion for the night. “This is a power no other rival for the crown can claim. It will not lift mountains or rain fire from the sky, but it is a great power in the right hooves, Lady Rarity. We… we even find ourselves caught in it. We--”
 
The Princess of the Night bore a wan smile, sad but also happy.
 
“--we believe there is no other mare more fit to wear the crown and restore harmony to our divided house than you,” she said. Her smile quickly became more mischievous. “We have also grown rather fond of our foolish nephew. You will take good care of him, we think.”
 
Rarity suddenly found her cup of cooling tea to be remarkably fascinating. “I, um, well--” The cup began to rotate in her hooves as she fidgeted. “Of course I will, yes.”
 
“Good,” Luna’s response was firm and authoritative, and it quickly snapped Rarity out of her momentary anxiety. “Because the second reason for our broaching this matter is because of the house you will one day head. If you are to join our extended family, we believe there are things you should know.”
 
“Things you couldn’t have said before?” Rarity asked, just a little bit perturbed.
 
“Yes.” The Princess was serious. “What we tell you now, we do not wish to be shared, not even with your friends. It pertains to matters of our past that we would prefer to keep in confidence. If you do not wish--”
 
“I can keep a secret, believe it or not,” Rarity interrupted, nodding somberly. She fanned herself with her hoof. “Despite what some mares say. Just don’t share any juicy gossip with me. Dark family secrets are one thing, but I’m afraid there are simply no guarantees when it comes to gossip.”
 
“Naturally,” Luna agreed, her stern expression warming with a faint smile. “As I said before, a thousand years ago – actually, more like eleven hundred years ago – there was no Equestria. The Old Kingdom was already freezing over due to the windigos. Winters lasted not a few months, but more than half the year. It was already a violent age compared to today, but the severity of the Long Winter made it much worse.”
 
“Worse?” Rarity asked. “I can’t imagine how…”
 
“A frightened pony, her belly empty, accustomed to loss, driven to desperation and despair… is capable of all the brutality and cruelty of the most terrible dragon,” Luna told the Element of Generosity, and it was a grim lesson indeed.
 
Rarity struggled to understand it, Luna saw. The loving dressmaker had never gone hungry for days. She had never seen families steal food or heard of parents starving to keep their children alive. She had never found a sibling frozen in the corner of a room. It was the horror of the past, long forgotten. All she could do was to imagine these things and ask herself how she would have coped with them. In the face of such tragedy, everypony believed they would hold to their morality and the highest standards of their upbringing.
 
Some could. Many could not.
 
Luna suspected that much hadn’t changed about pony-nature, even after a thousand years of social engineering. She tried to move on with her story rather than dwell on the darkness of that forgotten age or on the similar darkness that lurked in the deepest recesses of ponykind.
 
“Auric was already ancient when Platinum split the noble court and left. The Bluebloods were minor nobles, then, but staunch allies of the Princess. Much of what happened you know from your Equestrian history or from what I told you and your friends earlier. What I did not explain is that my sister and I were among those who stayed behind.”
 
“You were… unicorns?” Rarity ventured a guess. “I know Princesses… alicorns… can come from unicorns.”
 
“Ascension, it is called,” Luna responded, finishing off her cup of tea and setting it aside her. “Any race of pony can ascend, Lady Rarity, for our magic all comes from the same wellspring. It is said: an alicorn has the magic of a unicorn, a pegasus, and an earth pony. This is true, but misleading. Earth ponies, pegasus ponies, unicorns… all use derivatives of alicorn magic. Alicorns do not come from other ponies; other ponies came first from alicorns.”
 
Luna opened her mouth to continue, but then she noticed Rarity staring at her as if her world had been upended. Realization dawned on her rather slowly and the dressmaker turned Baroness was silent for a long while. Luna knew her dreams. The Night knew her fantasies and secret desires. Rarity was but one of many mares in Equestria who dreamed of being a Princess, and for most mares being an alicorn and being a Princess were virtually synonymous.
 
“So we are all alicorns of a fashion?” Rarity asked with a laugh.
 
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Luna replied, also laughing softly. She raised a hoof to her chest. “As for our origins, Celestia and I do not know our mother, but our father was Lord Star Caller, Platinum’s half-brother by way of Auric’s mistress.”
 
“So you were unicorns,” Rarity stated. It was the reasonable assumption.
 
Luna shook her head: no. “According to our father, we were born as alicorns. We never ascended. Moreover, he claimed our mother was the Goddess Pegasus.”
 
“Pegasus,” Rarity breathed, so quietly Luna almost didn’t hear it. “The constellation Pegasus. You spoke of her before, too.”
 
No doubt, to the Element of Generosity, it sounded like a fairy tale.
 
“In that Era, the boundary between the aethereal above and the material below was not so well defined,” Luna explained, and motioned up at the night sky. “This was thousands of years after Faust’s Bargain. The Stars were known to come down from the heavens and take physical form. According to my father, while training his magic in the mountains, he stumbled upon our mother bathing and saved her from a lurking basilisk. He thought her a normal  mare, though beautiful beyond compare. Only later did she reveal her true nature.”
 
Luna, her head still tilted up to the night sky, closed her eyes and sighed.
 
“He fell in love with her, and… she with him… or so he believed. She joined him on his quest and taught him secrets. The windigos, he always said, were a plague released specifically to destroy ponykind. Mother revealed this to him, he said. When he returned to Auric’s court he presented his findings to Starswirl the Bearded, the Court Wizard. He also returned with two alicorn foals. We… were those foals.”
 
Rarity listened quietly, and only when Luna paused to compose herself did she ask, “Your mother? Do you remember her?”
 
The Princess of the Night didn’t answer right off the bat. “No,” she finally said, after a few pregnant seconds. “No we do not. She abandoned us when we were small.”
 
“Oh.” Rarity covered her mouth with her hoof, condolences on her lips. “Oh, I’m s--”
 
“Our father spoke of her often. It was… an obsession for him; less so for me,” Luna continued, heedless of interruption. What came next was a stream of words, released in a rush. “You must understand that we were not welcomed at court - We survived only because our father had grown… powerful… and because of Starswirl’s kindness. For a thousand years before us, the kingdoms of the realm had been wracked by ascending alicorns upsetting the balance of power. We were not loved in this time. We were seen as another threat.”
 
Princess Luna turned her head slowly, a fierce glow in her eyes.
 
“Ponies feared us,” she rumbled, and Rarity could see a little of why. Luna exhaled, and the darkness around her receded once more. “We were tolerated, little more. Then, one night… our grandfather died, frozen on his throne. The nobles fought blood duels in his court, right in front of his corpse. It was as if a racial madness spread throughout the palace, and then, throughout all the lands. Militant pegasi invaded, looting and pillaging. The earth ponies revolted, hanging unicorns from branches until the trees themselves sagged from the weight. Mad unicorns attempted to appease the windigos through equine sacrifice. There was no darker hour.”
 
Luna’s speech slowed as she realized she had strayed into territory she did not wish to revisit.
 
Still, she forced herself to continue, “Starswirl, desperate, turned to our father for help. Together, through force of magic alone, they - they brought unity back to the Old Kingdom.” Luna turned away from her night sky and shuddered. “We subjugated the earth ponies, executed their rebellious leaders, and then we used dissension within the ranks of the pegasi to bring them to heel. But it was not enough. Nothing was ever enough. And so, Father, Celestia, myself, Sombra, and others - we invaded Equestria, intending to subjugate it as well. Harmony. Order. It was all to be imposed. By force if need be. It was the only way to be sure all the windigos died, even those we could not imprison

“That isn’t in the history books,” Rarity stated, bringing her cup of tea to her lips but finding the cup empty. She nibbled her lower lip instead. The tale had clearly unnerved her.
 
“Neither were we,” Luna replied with a snort. “In the end, Platinum was captured and lost her magic, but in the process she convinced… us… of her cause. We sided with Equestria, betrayed our blood, and our father was cast down. The survivors of his army fled and settled outside the borders as they were back then. Ultimately, the Platinum Crown itself was reforged and we were adopted by our Royal Aunt. We remained the stewards of the Sun and Moon, the last two Princesses of the Old World, and Platinum and her line were forever charged with wearing the crown that was meant to be our platinum chain. This, Lady Rarity, is where you finally come in.”
 
“The strongest unicorn mare,” Rarity remembered. The crown traditionally belonged to the strongest. Now it was clear why.
 
It also explained the flaw in the crown Luna had told them earlier.
 
“No, Lady Rarity, not the strongest.” Luna corrected her, “The most worthy. The crown is meant to be worn by the mare that is the most worthy to bear its burden and shoulder its responsibilities. While there are exceptions, in our experience, such traits are rarely found in ‘the strongest.’”
 
- - -
 
“…then we have to fix it!” Twilight clopped a hoof on the mahogany table. “We have to save the Princesses!”
 
“I don’t think anypony would disagree with that.” Alpha Brass trotted slowly over to a door and gently rapped on it twice with his hoof. “Luckily, this is matter I am prepared for. Twilight, I would like you to meet some ponies.”
 
Twilight remained seated as the doors opened, and a series of ponies entered. All were mares. That was what she noticed first. Tonight had been her very first visit to the Gardens, but from what little she had seen, almost everypony here was a mare. The guards were mares; the staff were mares; the cooks and the servants and the stablehooves, all mares. It was a place for artists and artisans, she knew, but why were there so few stallions around? She had seen all of one stallion around, aside from Alpha Brass. Ponyville’s gender ratio had always been painfully skewed, but it couldn’t hold a candle to this place.
 
The second thing she noticed were the two familiar faces in the small group of mares.
 
“Eunomie,” Twilight greeted her new friend and future daughter-in-law with a wave and a smile.
 
Eunomie inclined her head politely. “Twilight.”
 
Eunomie was a bit of an odd pony, but she was very nice in her own peculiar way. Twilight liked her; she was certain they would get along well in the future. Even Fluttershy and Pinkie had warmed up to her, the latter once saying she was ‘like a sister.’ Though knowing Pinkie, she might have meant Eunomie was literally like one of her sisters. It was hard to decipher Pinkiese sometimes.
 
The second mare through the doorway was Chalice. Twilight did not really know her by anything more than reputation; some from her dueling record and much more from Fluttershy. A part of her had expected a carbon copy of Antimony, or a unicorn version of Ritterkreuz, confident in flaunting the apparently titanic power at her disposal.
 
The Chalice that entered the meeting room was nothing like that. She had her head low, and her eyes met Twilight’s for only a fleeting moment before dropping back to the floor. She was on the small side, too. Her rust-red mane, inherited from her mother Twinkling Star Light, was neatly braided in two coils that ducked behind her ears. A silken hairnet beaded with pearls bundled up the rest of her mane between the braids. She looked pretty… but like a certain pegasus, terminally shy.
 
“This is my dear sister, Chalice,” Brass introduced her. “Chalice, this is Twilight Sparkle.”
 
“Hello,” Chalice said softly, her eyes darting up for only a moment. She curtsied. “A pleasure to meet you.”
 
“A pleasure to meet you as well,” Twilight said, standing up and returning the honor with a bow of her head.
 
“Now, for the mares you don’t yet know,” Brass continued with a grin. He gestured to the next mare to enter, and she took his hoof in her own. “This is Siren Song.”
 
Siren was a pegasus, tall, leggy, and confident as a supermodel on the stage or an actress on set. Her head was held high and proud, and she trotted less than she sauntered, a certain sway to her hips that Twilight had practiced in secret a few times but never come close to mastering. Her mane was a brighter purple than Twilight’s own take on the color, and it flowed behind her like a much smaller, less colorful version of Celestia’s own. Her coat was a perfect pearl white, just like her equally perfect teeth, and her eyes were a brilliant fandango-pink that would’ve done Pinkie Pie proud. She wore silver, droplet-shaped earrings and her stomach looked like you could bounce a bit off it. Her cutie mark was a pair of musical notes, inverted like yin-yang. All in all, she was annoyingly pretty, and Twilight frowned at the way she looked at the one stallion in the room.
 
“My Lord, it has been too long!” she cooed, kissing him on the cheek and lingering there for what had to be a second or two too long.
 
Twilight coughed into her hoof, one eye twitching. “A-hem.”
 
“Twilight Sparkle,” Siren Song smoothly continued, bowing her head only a fraction in greeting. “I’ve heard so much about you! How nice to finally meet you, face to face.”
 
“Nice to meet you, too,” Twilight replied through a forced smile. Her teeth weren’t gritted together, were they? Oh dear. They were. That certainly wasn’t polite.
 
“This is Cesian Beryl,” Brass said, introducing the fourth mare.
 
Fortunately, Cesian was nothing like Siren. She was a unicorn, but a little short and stout, sort of like that Bon-Bon mare back in Ponyville. Her coat was a peach-stained white, sometimes called wine-stain in Canterlot, but her mane was silver, a little like an old stallion’s beard. Twilight’s attention was quickly drawn to the mare’s eyes. They were blue, and while blue was hardly an uncommon color, there was an odd shimmer to them. Like crystal. Her cutie mark was a bed of trigonal crystal spars. Cesian seemed confident enough, like Siren, but professional rather than flirtatious. She took Brass’s hoof in her own, but little else.
 
A quick bow, and she said, “It is an honor, Lady Sparkle.”
 
Twilight grinned and waved her hooves. “Please, just call me Twilight!”
 
“As you wish,” Cesian agreed, and trotted off to stand among the other four mares, now liberally scattered around the room.
 
“Finally, may I present Genuine Grade,” Brass said, escorting the last of the mares inside.
 
Genuine Grade was an earth pony with another white coat. White coats of different sorts were common enough among unicorns and some pegasi groups, but very rare in earth ponies. Especially bleached white. She wore thick metal-rimmed glasses over brown eyes and her cutie mark was a baffling set of lines and lenses. She had to be a scientist, then. No other pony would have a mark like that! Grade smiled warmly at Brass, holding his hoof with a faint blush, but quickly let him go and bowed to Twilight.
 
“Genuine Grade, at your service,” she stated, dipping her head and bowing her front legs.
 
“Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight replied, and held out her hoof. Genuine Grade stood, the two shook hooves, and all six mares turned to see why Alpha Brass had brought them together.
 
“All of you have unique skills that I have hoped to cultivate,” he began, slowly returning to his seat at the table directly in front of the broken Platinum Crown. “Now is the time to use them. Repairing this crown, not just to save the Princesses but to better Equestria as a whole, will require all of your considerable talents.”
 
“Genuine Grade,” Brass said, after sitting down. “Is the foremost leader in Equestria in the field of optics and the focusing of magical energies. My gardens are honored to host an Effulgent Forge of her design, where light and magic are used instead of fire and force. It will serve as our Aethereal Forge. Siren Song is both a skilled entertainer and performer and a master of using her voice to affect magical properties in materials. She leads the Siren’s Chorus. Cesian Beryl, though a unicorn, is a descendant of crystal ponies and she is uniquely skilled in the ancient arts of their vanished Empire.”
 
Twilight took another look at Cesian, and in particular her eyes. She was a descendant of the Crystal Empire, just like Cadance? It was possible, certainly. Those surviving crystal ponies who escaped the fall of their city mingled in with the rest of Equestria. Most were supposedly indistinguishable from earth ponies, now, except for those that kept their old language and other traditions. With all the intermingling in Equestria over the last thousand years, it wasn’t that odd that some were born as unicorns, though crystal ponies had begun as a branch off of the earth pony family tree.
 
There was a theme here. A crystal pony descendant, ‘skilled in the ancient arts;’ a pegasus with a voice that could alter magical properties; an earth pony scientist, a leader in the field of optics. Only one, Genuine Grade, seemed necessary to repair the crown, and that was because she had a forge. How did the others factor into this?
 
“Let me explain what my overall plan for Canterlot was, plainly,” Brass said, and Twilight’s ears perked up.
 
“Your overall plan?” Twilight asked.
 
“You know I did all I could, cooperated with Chrysalis, to draw as many changelings as possible to Canterlot,” he replied, and she nodded. He had explained that much already. Alpha Brass lifted a hoof to scratch his chin and the bit of beard that had grown there since his duel and subsequent confinement. Hopefully, he would get rid of it sooner rather than later. Twilight found she much preferred him clean shaven.
 
 “It has always been my overall intention to destroy the changeling menace; to neutralize it, once and for all, as a threat to Equestria. I planned to see to it myself, I wanted to see it done myself, but I have no desire to let pride get in the way of victory. If Cadance or Celestia or Luna, or you, Twilight, or you, Eunomie, were to do the job for me, I would have no regrets. What matters most, the only thing that matters, is that the job--” He lightly ran a hoof along the edge of the table and abruptly clopped his hoof against the surface with a loud thud. “--gets done.”
 
The room filled with murmurs of agreement. Twilight found herself joining them. After all that had happened, after all that she had seen and been through, it was clear that Equestria was left with only one recourse. The changelings were monsters. They had to be stopped, and that meant putting them down. Or… at least… putting down their leaders: the Queens and Princesses.
 
Of the group of mares, only Chalice remained perfectly silent.
 
“No doubt, Twilight, you are wondering where Siren, Genuine Grade, and Cesian all fit into this,” Alpha remarked, and for an uncomfortable moment the lavender unicorn was the center of attention in the room.
 
“I was, sort of,” she admitted.
 
“Understandable,” Brass went on to say. “First, let me explain my own special talent, in case it was not entirely clear. I am like Princess Cadance… except where she amplifies feelings of love, which can in turn boost a pony’s power, I affect the power and the magic directly. Simply put, I exist to bring out the potential in others. I was created, trained and raised for this. My sisters all carry within them aspects of Arsenic: Antimony has her eyes, Jewel has her charisma, and Chalice has her power. As a colt, I was empowered with the responsibility of bringing out their potential, using my love for them as a catalyst.”
 
Twilight felt her ire rise as she listened. For all Twinkling Star Light’s brilliance as a mage and a scientist, for all that Twilight respected and even admired her for her accomplishments and her contributions to Equestrian knowledge, Alpha’s story was a stark reminder that her parenting skills left much to be desired. When the time came, Twilight vowed she would be a much better mother to her foals than Star Light ever had been. There were a great many Terre Rare traditions that she had no intention of putting her children through and, above all else, she would not treat her sons and daughters like objects, tools, or experiments. She would love them and let them find their own way in life, and respect their choices, even if she disagreed with them personally.
 
As long as they did their homework.
 
That was non-negotiable.
 
Also, they had to write home once a week.
 
“My talent was originally intended only to function with those I loved,” Brass continued, and Twilight gave him her attention once more, “my sisters, primarily, and one day my wife. This is one reason why we all agreed – both my parents and myself – to my arrangement with Olive Branch. It was determined to not only be a match that benefited the Terre Rare, but one where my skills would bring the greatest benefit to Equestria as a whole.”
 
“This function was… damaged… when Chrysalis and her mother had their way with me,” he explained, plainly and seemingly without outward emotion.
 
Twilight’s jaw clenched. ‘Had their way with me’ he called it?
 
“Father,” Eunomie objected. “You don’t have to--”
 
“It is not a problem, Eunomie. There is no need for concern.” He held up a hoof to his step-daughter to indicate his intention to continue, no matter the discomfort. Pausing only to look around the room at the assembled mares, he took a wary breath and continued.
 
“Devoid of love, I expected my talent to collapse in on itself. I had… a sort of mental breakdown.” A low growl rumbled in his throat at the memory. “How could I use my special talent without love? How could I go on, unable to be me? I fell into a deep and peculiar melancholy.”
 
Twilight kept her expression guarded among the other mares in the room, but she could imagine the breakdown he described. Her friends had gone through similar crises last year, and she had faced a rather upsetting situation herself when it came to missing a Friendship Report deadline. That sort of stress could… do things to a pony that they would later regret.

While they had been able to find strength in the understanding and comfort of their friends, coming to new realization of their talents and purpose in life, what solace was there for a pony surrounded only by enemies? Twilight could guess that Brass was about to say how he overcame that period of his life, but it was also an educated guess on her part that he was still more troubled by it than he cared to admit. But maybe that meant it wasn’t too late to help him, either.
 
“When I finally returned to my senses,” Brass explained, retelling the affair with deceptive calmness, “I discovered that my talent had… mutated in order to survive. Incapable of love, I found I could enhance the power of almost anypony I wished, regardless of my feelings. I also noticed that those whose power I resonated with often came to feel friendship or love for me, in turn, which made our connection even stronger. Make no mistake--”
 
He lifted a hoof and pointed around the room.
 
“--every mare in this room is under the effect of this,” he told them, leaving no room for misinterpretation or error. Twilight already suspected as much as he had told her, and accepted it. The biggest surprise was that he could do this with ‘almost anypony.’ There had to be some concrete limitations on it, didn’t there? Just how many mares, or even stallions, were currently ‘resonating’ with Alpha Brass and benefitting from this power boost?
 
“I already knew, of course,” Eunomie stated, deadpan.
 
“Mother told us about your special talent a long time ago, Brother,” Chalice followed Eunomie’s lead, but her expression was sad where Eunomie’s was emotionless. “I saw what was going on with the others and guessed that something must have… happened.”
 
“It changes nothing, as far as I am concerned,” Genuine Grade said, reaching up to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I was homeless when you found me. I had no future. You changed that. What your magic does or doesn’t do to me hardly matters.”
 
“And I’ve never felt better or been more powerful since coming here!” Siren Song declared, smirking and pleased with the outcome. “If the changelings inadvertently created this situation by tormenting you, my Lord, then I for one am more than happy to ‘thank’ them for it!”
 
Cesian Beryl snorted dismissively. “I’ve accomplished far more here, working for you, than I ever did with your Lady Mother, Lord Brass. Who am I to complain? We are all yours, magic or no magic.”
 
One pony remained conspicuously quiet. She began to laugh under her breath.
 
“Twilight?” Brass prompted, watching her with turquoise eyes. He clearly hadn’t expected laughter as a reaction to the news.
 
“Sorry,” she replied, waving one hoof in the air before her. “I was just remembering… a while back, I was faced with a dilemma, and I’d planned to use a love potion to fix it.” Twilight giggled again, partly covering her mouth with her hoof. For once, she didn’t mind that everypony was staring at her.
 
“This is sort of ironic in light of that!” Twilight Sparkle slowly stifled her laugh and stood up straight to explain, “Friendship is magic, and love is magic, too. That Cadance could convert one into the other made sense. You’re doing something similar, just in reverse. Is that why I feel this way?”
 
“Most likely,” Brass freely admitted.
 
“And when did you start amplifying my magic?” she asked, and just as quickly answered for him. “It was just before the duel, wasn’t it? And then again during the duel. I could feel it. Looking back, I could feel the change.”
 
“Yes.” He nodded, eyes closed. “Strong feelings for me are a side-effect of--”
 
“I had those before then.”
 
His eyes snapped open. “What?”
 
“I kinda liked you before that, anyway.” Twilight could feel the blush on her cheeks, staining her lavender coat a silly, embarrassing plum-color. Hiding her face by hanging her head, she coughed and fidgeted with the tips of her hooves. “So, uhm, anyway, it doesn’t matter, like the others said! Don’t worry about it! Let’s get back to hearing your plan!”
 
“My plan…” Alpha Brass trailed off for a few seconds. His pause finally roused Twilight enough to look up at him again, despite her embarrassment. He was staring at her with a curious sort of expression.
 
“My… plan,” he repeated, and explained, “was to use a replica of the Crystal Heart, a globus empyreus, to channel power into every willing Equestrian. They would then be able to rise up, together, and with their own will and their own power, fight back…”
 
“Wait! You can do that?” Twilight gasped as it all came into focus. She looked around the room, but nopony else seemed to grasp just what this revelation meant. Or maybe they did, maybe they already knew, and she was the one out of the loop? She had to know. “How many ponies are you… currently…?”
 
“Two hundred and eighty six,” Alpha Brass answered without missing a breath. “Of those, two hundred and sixty one are female, twenty five are male. All but four are ponies.”
 
“You can even do this across species?” Twilight ran a hoof through her mane. A trickle of sweat beaded next to her horn. “Wow. Just… wow…”
 
“Yes, but the existence of this--” Brass’s hoof hovered over the broken crown. “--presents us with an even greater opportunity. One we would be wise to seize.”
 
“It does?” Twilight asked, wiping away the droplet of sweat. “What opportunity?”
 
Alpha Brass smiled, a warm, small little smile, and Twilight felt her heart flutter. “We can reassemble the crown, not just to restore Celestia and Luna, but to empower all of ponykind. We will not repeat the mistakes of the past, giving the power of the Sun and Moon to all, resulting in chaos. No. Those meager powers will be returned to their rightful Princesses.”
 
Celestia and Luna, he had to mean.
 
“But there is a greater power in the Empyrean Vault!” Brass stood up, leaning on the table with his front legs, tall, confident. He almost seemed radiant as he raised a clenched hoof to the air in front of him. “A power that can be the birthright of all ponies with the will to embrace it…!”
 
“You mean,” Twilight guessed, glancing over at Chalice. The shy mare had her eyes fixed on the floor. “Another constellation, like… Orion or Sagittarius?”
 
Alpha Brass stared at her for a moment, and though his smile faded away, there was something genuine in the solemn, excited look that replaced it. It was a look almost like wonder or hope. Twilight couldn’t remember seeing him that way before. It took a moment to realize that it scared her a little.
 
“No,” he finally answered her. “Not another constellation. The stars are too fickle. They have wills and whims of their own that we cannot account for.  We will sign a new contract, Twilight Sparkle, with another power.”
 
- - -
 
“You know, following you around is dangerous for my sanity.”
 
Why Vinyl Scratch was still at it, she couldn’t even say. Maybe it had turned from a desire for a little playful mischief to morbid curiosity as to where Pinkie would lead them next. Maybe they’d end up in the frozen north, somehow, and find a magical jungle oasis there… full of dinosaurs. Nah. There’s silly and then there’s ridiculous.
 
“Pfffh!” Pinkie stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry. “You know you like it! Why else do you always show up when I need somepony to play cool music for a party?”
 
Vinyl hemmed and hawed for a few seconds. “Because your checks never bounce?”
 
“Oh! That, too!” Pinkie Pie giggled and hopped down a wide flight of stairs. “I never miss a bill, because if I did then the bank ponies and insurance ponies would be super sad!”
 
Vinyl followed rather more slowly and carefully. “Oh yeah, that would be a real tragedy.”
 
“Pinkie,” Fluttershy spoke up from the rear of their little formation. “You said we were getting close. Close to what?”
 
“Wellllll,” Pinkie drew out the word for an annoyingly long second or two. “Oh!” And then promptly got distracted. “Do you hear that! We’re not just close, we’re super close!”
 
“Like we haven’t heard that before…” Vinyl trailed off as the sound hit her ears. “Actually, hey, I hear it too!”
 
It sounded like… music.
 
“That sounds like rock and roll,” Fluttershy said, trotting past where Vinyl had stopped, mid-step. Pinkie and DJ both turned to stare at her. Fluttershy did not seem the type. “Angel Bunny likes it,” the timid pegasus explained with a grin. “And, um, I don’t mind it either…”
 
“It must be… this way!” Pinkie pointed to a passageway on their left. Her ears folded flat against the side of her head and, for once, she didn’t bounce.
 
The music grew just a little louder, a lively guitar piping out a happy tune from what seemed to be ahead and below. The path Pinkie chose quickly transformed into an open-air veranda or mezzanine, overlooking what seemed to be a potager garden below. It was an old style ornamental vegetable garden, the plots arranged in interlocking geometric designs. Well-manicured woody scrubs grew among the vegetables, usually at the ends of longer plots or in the middle of square ones. An apiary was also visible not far from the garden.
 
The tranquil scene was shattered when the three mares circled around to the other side of the mezzanine. On a raised tier above the garden level was a dining or meeting area with tables, a small stage, decorative parasols, warm lights and a medium sized pool or bath.
 
It was the source of the music, but it was also an absolute mess.
 
Tables were upended and chairs tossed into messy heaps. Some were piled up in the pool like a makeshift island. Food was strewn liberally around the area: a half-intact cake was visible from the veranda, tipped over and partly splattered, and the smell from a mix of dozens of other sweets hit a moment later. A pizza had somehow ended up on a nearby roof. Stronger than the smell of food was the smell of alcohol and salt, a mix Vinyl knew all too well. After all, what was a good Night Club gig without a few overpriced vices?
 
But this put any club Vinyl remembered visiting to shame. There was a short lifetime’s worth of bottles not just stacked up on a bar nearby but also left haphazardly on the floor, spilling their contents into a dozen shallow, sticky pools. Glitter and tiny bits of silvery streamers covered the floor like a thin layer of freshly fallen snow. Crystal statues and some sort of mechanical equipment had been carted up to the scene of the party, only to be smashed with sledgehammers. Only the records and the gramophone had been left intact.
 
Strewn about the disaster area were twenty or more ponies, almost all mares, and almost all wearing lingerie or partly discarded costumes. The lingerie was doubly odd on the occasional stallion – most guys Vinyl knew were not exactly fans of pantyhose. A dozen ponies were entwined and sleeping together, drunk and exhausted. A few were just sprawled out on whatever they could find that was marginally comfortable. Sometimes that was another pony’s backside. Sometimes that was a huge slice of cake. In another pony’s case, that was literally a pile of golden bits she had mashed together into an expensive makeshift pillow. One pony was stereotypically passed out in a punch bowl, which was fine, since there was always one pony like that at a good party.
 
Vinyl’s nose twitched when she discovered a few ponies hadn’t been able to make it to a restroom or a suitably close bucket in time. That, on the other hoof, was gross.
 
The music screeched to a halt as Pinkie picked the needle off the record.
 
Fluttershy chose that moment to voice her opinion. “I, um, don’t think we’re supposed to be here…”
 
“I dunno,” Vinyl replied, stepping gingerly around a sleeping mare and floating a couple of golden bits off the floor. They looked real. Someponies had been literally having a money fight. “Looks like these ponies party even harder than you do, Pinkie!”
 
Vinyl had expected a joke in response, but Pinkie said nothing, picking her way through the bodies around the pool. She stepped around a bag of raw industrial-strength sugar that had been upended. It was slowly trickling its contents into the pool. A mare with a red coat had one leg wrapped around the bag, her nose and mouth stained white with encrusted sugar crystals.
 
“Pinkie Pie?” Fluttershy asked, a growing worry in her voice. “Are you okay?”
 
“No, I’m not,” Pinkie answered, making her way to the pile of chairs and other debris that had been set up in the pool. There was a floating chair amid the wreckage, Vinyl saw.
 
And there was a pony in the chair, set up like a throne among the debris.
 
It was a unicorn, like Vinyl herself, with the same sort of pale white coat color. She even had a similar blue mane, more pure blue than neon and longer than Vinyl’s own. This mare’s mane was a wet mess, looking like it had been combed and styled half-way before whoever was at it gave up in boredom or frustration. A single striped sock hugged her right hindleg and a blue bra hung from around her shoulders and neck like a lacy, frilly pendant.
 
“You turned off my music,” the mare stated, gradually opening her amber eyes as Pinkie Pie stood before her at the edge of the pool. Vinyl was well aware of her own somewhat exotic eye color, but there was something very disturbing about this new unicorn.
 
Scrap that. There was something terrifying about the look on this mare’s face.
 
“Pinkie Pie,” she snarled, her horn thrumming with untapped power. The ground started to tremble, spilled bits chiming as they shook.
 
Pinkie raised a hoof to wave, apparently oblivious to the danger she was in. “Hiya, Euporie! Howya doin?”
 
“Um, Pinkie--” Fluttershy crept towards her friend, as if to drag her away. “--I really don’t think we should be here.”
 
“I’m gonna agree with Fluttershy on that one,” Vinyl said, grabbing Pinkie by the tail with a loop of magic. She tugged, but the party pony refused to be moved from her spot. “Pinkie! Seriously!”
 
Euporie held out her hoof, a mostly-full glass of clear liquid sloshing around a nearly melted trio of ice cubes. The glare she shot their way through her wet, matted mane was positively chilling. Threateningly and ever so slowly, she raised her right hoof in what could almost be mistaken for a friendly wave.
 
“’I won’t make any guarantees about your safety. I might just kill you.’ Isn’t that what I said the last time?” Euporie asked, her hoof still raised up and pointing right at the pink earth pony.
 
“Yep! You did say that!” Pinkie spritely agreed, nodding vigorously.  “But! But-but-but,” she added. “That was if we bumped into one another again in Canterlot. We’re not in Canterlot, now are we?”
 
“No,” Euporie replied. “We’re not.”
 
An object buzzed the side of Pinkie’s face, just barely missing her as it tumbled through the air. The party pony’s mane bobbed in the breeze from the near impact from behind. Even planning to use her own magic to intervene, it all happened too fast. Vinyl Scratch could barely follow. But she did notice the bits that had been trembling on the floor were quiet. The rumbling was gone.
 
A bottle of banana schnapps was in Euporie’s formerly empty hoof.
 
“Maybe I should play with your two friends instead, then?” Euporie poured half of her former drink into the pool. She then undid the cap of the schnapps and mixed it into what was left in her glass. “It was the height of foalishness bringing them here, knowing what I’m capable of.”
 
Pinkie Pie was silent for a moment, her blue eyes very briefly checking to make sure her companions were… what? Unhurt? What was this Euporie pony talking about? What was she ‘capable of?’
 
“You shouldn’t hurt ponies like this,” Pinkie finally said.
 
“Awww. You don’t like my party?” Euporie asked, drinking her mix of schnapps and who knew what.
 
“This isn’t a good kind of party,” Pinkie replied. She returned Euporie’s glare with a look that was devoid of anger but one hundred percent serious. “These ponies didn’t really have fun… and neither did you.”
 
Euporie sloshed her drink around in her glass.
 
“You think you know what makes ponies happy,” she stated. “The Element of Laughter is lecturing me. I should listen. Daddy always says: wise ponies listen, first, and then talk. Well, I’ve listened to you.”
 
Pinkie shook her head sadly. “No you haven’t.”
 
“I’ve listened to you,” Euporie insisted, and Vinyl could tell from the way she moved she was drunk. But she wasn’t just drunk. She was the sort of drunk who thought she was in control, and maybe even a part of her was. “I listened and listened until I couldn’t take it anymore.”
 
Euporie finished her drink… held out her glass… and crushed it in the flat of her hoof.
 
“Nopony mocks me and gets away with it,” she stated, untroubled by the bits of broken glass that trickled away from her hoof. “Nopony mocks Euporie Mosaic.”
 
“Pinkie,” Vinyl hissed. “What the hell did you do to this pony? The mother-of-all-pranks?”
 
“I kind of ruined her party,” Pinkie admitted, keeping her eyes on the seated Euporie. “Long story! But I came here to tell her to not do what she’s gonna do tomorrow.”
 
“And what’s that?” Vinyl asked. Nearby, Fluttershy, sensing the menace in the air, had hidden her head under her hooves.
 
“Something really bad,” was Pinkie’s answer.
 
“You’re free to try and stop me,” Euporie said with a Cheshire grin.
 
“That’s exactly what I’ll do,” Pinkie promised, and for good measure, even poked herself in the eye. “That’s a Pinkie Promise. And I’ll show you how to smile, too, just like I said before!”
 
Euporie’s grin slowly faded away.
 
“Yeah, uh,” Vinyl interrupted, holding up a hoof-full of bits. “This is real money. Can I, like, take some?”
 
- - -
 
“Are you trying to get us killed, you neon pink maniac?!” Away from the scary party scene, Vinyl grabbed Pinkie by the shoulders and gave her a good shake. Hopefully one that rattled some brain cells together. “Who the hell was that?! Did you feel how much magic she was giving off!?”
 
Pinkie went uncharacteristically limp in her grip.
 
“Sorry,” she muttered, blue eyes sad. “I know she tries to be really scary.”
 
“Tries to be?” Vinyl yelled. “I. Almost. Peed. Myself. Pinkie Pie. That isn’t something I do often, but one hour with you and here we are! Ten seconds away from a bladder control meltdown!”
 
“She wouldn’t hurt you. Not here,” Pinkie explained. Her voice was soft, quiet, but utterly sure of what she claimed.
 
“How could you know that?” Vinyl remanded to know.
 
“Please,” Fluttershy whispered, getting between the two mares. “Don’t fight.” She gently pushed them apart.
 
“How could you possibly know that, Pinkie?” Vinyl asked again, but backed off.
 
“Euporie knows she doesn’t have to be a good pony, but she wants to be a good daughter.” Pinkie Pie reached up to tuck a strand of her curly mane behind her ear. “If she did something to us, something to make the one she cares about angry or upset, then she’d feel like a disappointment. ‘My sister wouldn’t make this big mess.’ That’s what she’d think deep in her heart.”
 
“Yeah?” Vinyl Scratch snorted, still not convinced. “And you know that, how? And don’t tell me ‘we’re the same’ or something like that. That mare back there is… I don’t know what she is, but it isn’t anything like you! Why do you even care about a psychopath like her?”
 
Pinkie stared at her for a second and smiled, but it wasn’t one of her normal goofy grins or broad beams. It was a small, almost flattered, smile.
 
“She’s a pony who hasn’t smiled in a long time,” Pinkie told the DJ. “That’s enough for me.”
 
- - -
 
A Prench voice sang from the gramophone for a party of one.
 
“I won’t let it be. I can’t.”
 
Holding up her leg, Euporie Mosaic plucked a sliver of glass out from the frog of her front hoof. A single droplet of blood closed up the wound before dribbling down and falling into the water around her ankles.
 
“Euporie.”
 
She turned towards the voice. A small glowing orb floated in the air over her right side. Galen. Her sister’s familiar.
 
“Eunomie,” she replied, not giving her sister’s messenger a second glance. “Giving that thing of yours pieces of your body again, huh?”
 
“The Gardens will soon be taking up position over Canterlot,” Eunomie warned via the ephemeral arcane orb. “Please be ready. The situation in the city is sub-optimal. We will be relying on you to remedy that.”
 
“I know what I have to do,” Euporie grumbled, pouring a shot of banana schnapps into the cap of the bottle.
 
“You’ve only cast this spell once--”
 
“Once is enough.” Euporie’s response became an angry growl. “Have you forgotten? I’m the talented one, remember? Unlike some ponies, I don’t need to practice for ten hours to master the difficult art of tying a bow in my mane.”
 
Eunomie’s familiar floated, silent, and shimmered as Euporie tossed the bottle of liquor through it.
 
“You’re aggravating me, Eunomie,” the blue-maned mare hissed. She cupped the thimble of drink in her hoof, right next to the little bloodstain. “You want anger? You want hate? You want violence, desperation and despair?” Euporie’s scowl deepened as she stared out over the exhausted partygoers before her throne. “I’ll deliver. I’ll have ponies chomping at the bit to sign whatever new contract you’re working on... and I’ll stain those cobblestone streets green with changeling blood.”
 
“Father is counting on us,” Eunomie reminded her, but cautiously. “Please be at your best.”
 
“I said leave me alone!” Euporie snarled. “Go back to babysitting and running errands!”
 
Eunomie’s familiar turned to smoke and dissipated. “As you wish, sister…”
 
Only when she was gone did Euporie drink that one, last shot. A disgusted snort later and the schnapps cap arced through the air and hit the water with a tiny splash.
 
- - -
 
“Everything is in place,” Eunomie stated, looking out over the gardens below from a balcony. Inside the room, Twilight, Cesian, Siren and Grade were all getting acquainted and discussing the future. Chalice had retreated to a pillow near a bookshelf to keep out of their way. With the glass door closed, the four mares were muted as they talked and gestured.
 
“Everything is in place,” Brass agreed, trotting up alongside her. He took in a long, drawn out view of the tiered gardens below. As if it was his last.
 
“You know what comes next,” he finally said. “See to it.”
 
“At once.” Eunomie inclined her head in acquiescence. She tensed to leave, but before she did, she asked, “What you said in there. Was it true?”
 
He raised an eyebrow at the question, as if finding it odd. “You know it was part truth, part lie. What are you referring to, specifically?”
 
Eunomie almost, almost seemed to frown. “Did you use your influence on Twilight long before the duel?”
 
“Did I?” the Equestrian Marquis seemed to wonder. He rested a hoof on the balcony railing and his look became pensive. “What do you think, Eunomie? Did I or didn’t I?”
 
“I… don’t know,” Eunomie replied, very softly. “I think… yes, yes, you must have.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced herself, but she repeated it a second time, growing a bit more confident in her conclusion. “Twilight is a valuable asset. The rational thing to do is to influence her from the start. That makes the most sense to me.”
 
“Then you have your answer,” her step-father told her, but never turned away from his tranquil gardens. “Now, get going.”
 
She soon left to see to her duty.
 
Only as she left, did Alpha Brass glance briefly at her retreating form.
 
Ponies were creatures that ascribed so much worth in what was ‘true’ and what was ‘false,’ as if one was gold and the other silver, one pure and the other tarnished, but Truth and Falsehood weren’t Fact and Fiction. Facts were facts, and would always be that way. They were immutable and unchangeable laws of nature.
 
‘Truth’ was much more malleable and open to interpretation and point of view, and a Lie, if widely accepted, became the New Truth. There was that little distinction between them. Like the difference between ‘noble’ and ‘common’ or ‘Princess’ and ‘Nightmare.’ They were labels without substance. It was all a matter of popularity and what everypony wanted to believe, and every lie and every truth ever told began with just one soul who wanted to believe in it. There was only one problem.
 
Sometimes, the hardest pony to sell a lie to was--
 
“Alpha,” Twilight asked, having opened the door a fraction. “We need you inside the room for a minute. And where’s Eunomie? Wasn’t she out here?”
 
“She’s seeing to our relocation,” he smiled brightly at the look of confusion on her face, however momentary it was.
 
“Oh! Relocation! Duh!” Twilight exclaimed, bopping herself on the head, only to become perplexed again. “We’re moving?”
 
“We will be,” he promised, and gestured for her to lead him back inside.
 
It was time to make a New Princess and a New Equestria.