//------------------------------//
// 188. Dinner(Dark Warning) by Knight of Cerebus 
// Story: The Sun and the Stars: A Twilestia Prompt Collab 
// by Fuzzyfurvert 
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by Knight of Cerebus


***


Twilight lifted a skittish hoof to the castle door. It was rare that she was invited to Canterlot under the cover of darkness, but on this night invited under the cover of darkness she absolutely was. She looked about to either side of the main door, noticing that the guards had changed from the standard, friendly gold-white retinue to the black and blue thestrals of Luna's Night Guard. She fought down the involuntary urge to shudder.

At last, the door opened with a creak not unlike the awakening of some slumbering metal juggernaut. Twilight walked into the column of escaping light that burst forward from the door, her searching eyes wandering the halls for the only familiar faces in this suddenly alien citadel. It was as if the castle had undergone a horrible transformation, like some creature from a pulpy penny dreadful. In the day, Dr. Castle was a respectable old gentleman who greeted his guests with warm windows and wide, open halls. In the dark of the night, Mr. Spire was a sinister thing of empty ghost-white corridors and long, spidery shadows cast from hollow windows.

"Of course I'm scared." Twilight said, her thoughts pushing out of her mouth to keep her some company. "I've never gone on a dinner date in the middle of the night before, and it's not like I'm exactly the master of dates to begin with. It's natural to be a little put off when your only-two-months-new marefriend summons you to her castle in the middle of the night with no explanation except that she "requires your company"." She opened another set of double doors, which of course did not open with a squeak, instead moaning as if the shadow of death had fallen over them.

Twilight noticed that she was, in fact, completely alone within the confines of this part of the castle. "Maybe Luna's still feeling shy." She said, a nervous laugh accompanying her self-reassurance. She frowned. "It's just Celestia. Come on, Twilight. You love her. And she loves you. You've been in her chambers a dozen times over in the day, and you have freaked out without reason about everything she has ever done the first time she has done it without fail. This isn't going to be any different. It's not like she's a vampire, or something."

With that, Twilight opened the doors to the main chamber, only to find that a large table had been placed along the extraordinarily long red carpet leading to the throne of the two sisters. Torches set on the right side of the table were the only lighting, leaving the figures sitting around the furniture in question half-obscured by shadows. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Celestia at the head of the table, and then gave a blush when she at last noticed Luna sitting at the other end. "Princesses!" She said, giggling in relief.

"Hello Twilight." Celestia said with a quiet smile. It was a halfhearted thing, as if it were that little column of light forcing its way through the darkness from before. She maintained this quiet little smile as she gave Twilight an explanation. "I am sure you are wondering why I called you here, as you well should. The matter I am about to divulge is something that I am afraid is only fit for your ears. As such, I had to be certain we would be in absolute privacy when I gave it."

"What is it, Princess? You know you can tell me anything."

For some reason, that seemed to make Celestia's smile turn sad. It stopped reaching her eyes, as if she was afraid this was the last time she would ever hear those words. "I know, dear. And that's why I am going to tell you the truth behind our immortality."

Twilight reacted to this in much the way that a fish reacts to its tank being tapped. She opened her mouth and retreated a step, returning to her footing with no small amount of uncertainty. "O-okay. That's, uh, wow. Kinda sudden. But, uh, if you feel comfortable, I m-mean... I really would like to know." She made to walk up to Celestia's right hoof, but Celestia shook her head. "Other side, dear."

Twilight walked around the left side of the table, and Celestia stopped her halfway along her walk. "It was in the days of Discord that my sister and I were born. We were a unicorn and an earth pony, at that time. Not special in any way, save that we were the most powerful of our tribe, and that we had an instinctual connection to those two orbs Discord so easily controlled. Our tribe had long suffered under Discord. Those are my cousins he is dangling over a lake of fire in the front hall's windows. The misery he caused bred years--generations--of contempt for him. Our tribe gathered the others together. Rallied them. Us two, we were the strongest, the bravest and the best at leading. So we were chosen. We had heard of a mythical set of artifacts embedded in a tree that not even Discord could touch. Of course, what he could not destroy Discord removed from our power. He set it afloat over a boiling lake and guarded it with powerful wards and horrible monsters. No unicorn, earth pony or pegasus was enough to survive its trials. So we made creatures to equal his magic. Half-breeds that could fight back against him and find the artifacts to end his reign. We made us. And we did this what few desperate tools Discord left us.

"I tell you all this, Twilight, so that you might forgive us of what we did.--"

"Sister, just tell h--"

"As I was saying, we did what we did because there are evils and sufferings in the world greater than the one we committed that day. The one we have continued to commit, to this very day, in fact."

The room, which had been silent before, was now oppressively so. Twilight stared directly into her marefriend's eyes, a pit growing in her stomach. "Evil? Wh-what do you mean, Princess? I-I've never seen you do anything evil." The long shadows at the corners of the table suddenly seemed to grow longer.

"You have, in fact." Luna chimed in from her left, her face half in shadow. "You have seen us live, when we should be four thousand years since dead."  

Celestia swallowed, bringing Twilight to face her strained and haunted eyes. "Do you know what the word "alicorn", at its root, actually means, Twilight?"

"Of course! It's the material found in unicorn horns! Variants are also found in earth pony hooves and pegasus wing bones, though of course less powerful concentrations are found across a pony's bones and are an integral part of all magic ponies can produce." Twilight said, the simple recital of information allowing her to release the odd tension she could feel building inside of her.

"And the only readily available source of extra magic accessible to a group of ponies alone and desperate in a world ruled by a mad god who tortured them for his amusement, yes." Celestia leaned forward, her eyes shining like a cat's under the light of the fire. Her face seemed longer in the shadows of the room, and it made the firm frown on set on her face even more hardened. "We took the name "alicorn" for ourselves to remind ourselves of what we are. What we are made of." At this moment, a pair of thestrals in servant garb made their way from the double doors at the front of the hall to each sister, carrying a set of silver platters along the right side of the table with stone dead expressions. They left the platters, covers and all, at the place of the sisters, leaving Twilight unserved and alone.

"Uh, Princess, a-aren't I supposed to have something, too?" The pit was back, and more pressing and fearsome than ever. Celestia's grimace returned, before it softened into a look of naked pity.

"Twilight, my love, I would never dream of burdening you with this for the world. I only share this part of me with you because you deserve to know. If you storm out of this castle and vow to never speak to me again, as your sister in law did, I will expect no less. For Luna and I deserve no less."

"I could never do that, Princess! You know that! How can you even think you deserve that?! Especially from me!"

Celestia pulled the cover off her platter, a sad, tired look on her face, and set it to one side. Twilight's eyes widened, and she had to fight back the urge to gag. Lying on the plate was a set of bones carved clean. They looked cracked and ancient, and smelled of dust and soil. One of them was the skull, which betrayed their true origin. "Luna and I are cannibals, Twilight."

Twilight's lips worked silently, mouthing the word "no" over and over again. Celestia simply sighed, looking away from her lover and bathing her face in the shadows of the long hall. "I know, Twilight. I know."

"Why?" The words came from Twilight's throat torn and ragged.

"We mentioned Discord. Once we had overturned him, we needed to unite the ponies of the world. Gather them, save them. We defended them from manticores, timberwolves, changelings and rallied them from floods, rogue tornadoes, and earthquakes. We saw them though civil wars and famines and economic collapses. We discovered that even after Discord there was still a need for us. We still had to live on. All the while, the ponies of our tribe offered themselves to us once they had passed on, so that we might continue to help them and lead them. It has been a tradition passed down for millennia. We were needed in the early days, and by the time we weren't, we were a cornerstone of Equestrian society, and we could not truly die off. Nopony else remembered how to move the sun and moon. There was nobody else, Twilight."

Celestia gave a hopeful smile. "But now there is. You and Cadance can learn from us in a way no weaker student could. You had the potential. We gave you some of our power--just enough to jolt you into a new state--and the two of you took to it. You can die mortal lives, pass on the knowledge. Spread the wisdom Luna and I learned from your crystal castles on high. And then, at last, the two of us can finally, finally die."

Twilight looked at Celestia, and saw her staring at the bones in front of her. She did not see a maniac. She did not see an archvillain. She saw a tired, ancient ruler who had sacrificed even her own equinity for the sake of her little ponies. She had never seen so much of Celestia in Celestia as she did in that moment where she was fixing the bones of an old friend with a sad little smile, hating herself for what she was going to do to them but doing it anyway.

And all at once Twilight knew that this pony could not be allowed to die if there was any way to convince her otherwise. "Princess..." She began, her expression solidifying into her familiar battle face. She saw a horror she had to overcome. No different from Discord or Tirek or the plunderseeds or King Sombra or Chrysalis. And at the end her Princess would still be waiting for her. "What was his name?" She had to know for sure she was right. She had to know that, even in this strange world of horror stories, her Celestia was still Celestia.

"He was called Soft Touch. He was a foalsitter in the castle. A friend, too. He liked to watch clouds, and he had a funny accent from the time he had spent in Manehatten. He was very, very good with foals. And I believe he was also known for having a bit of the old family mischief in him." Celestia's smile turned whistful. "You're still here."

"I'm not going anywhere. And neither should you." Twilight walked towards her, and towards the bones lying naked and cold on the table.

"Twilight?"

"The world needs you. Both of you." She turned to look back at Luna, who had discreetly been eating while Celestia had explained, and was now staring across at them from above an empty plate. "Not because you can move the sun or the moon, but because of you. And I need you, too. I can't stand the thought of a world without you. Not for something like this."

"Twilight, I am eating ponies."

"And the griffons see that as a sign of respect. The minotaurs do so to conquered enemies in order to regain their strength. Other ponies don't have to do it, so doing it is creepy and wrong to them. And it should be. But we alicorns, we do. You get your bones from people who know, yes? People who love you and trust you?"

"Twilight, don't defend me, I don--"

"I want to join you. I want to be there for our little ponies when they need defending. I won't be able to protect the country, or my friends, or my family forever unless I can."

"But you--"

"Are you going to stop me?" Twilight punctuated this with a fiery kiss, pushing Celestia head back against her chair with the force of her love. "Are you going to say there are places you went that I can't follow, even when I want to and I know the risks?"

"No, but Twilight...You have to understand, you will have to live with the knowledge that you are violating another's remains. That they deserve the respect of burial instead of--"

"Eat me too, then. If you won't let me live with you, then when I die, I want you to eat me and keep giving to your life. I love you. And nothing disgusting or wrong or anything like that is going to change that. So long as the pony I find is still you."

Celestia sighed, and then wrapped a wing around Twilight, a smile bigger than she would have liked cresting her face. She levitated a rib cage over onto Twilight's plate.

"I love you, too, my not so little pony. And if you really wish to choose to live this life with me--with us--then I will not stop you, and nothing about you will make me stop loving you."

Twilight took the first bite of her new life, a smile upon her face.