//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: The Two Royal Alicorn Sisters // Story: Royal Business // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Spike The Daylight Chariot was swift, and soon the white fairy spires of Canterlot, all alabaster and marble and gold, sprang from the mountainside before them. Spike took the capital city for granted: he'd been hatched and raised there. The most beautiful part of the city, the great Royal Palace at Canterlot, was the scene of many memories for him. He had come here many times with Twilight Sparkle, run through its great corridors as a hatchling (sometimes with Twilight and the Royal Guards in pursuit), explored its nooks and crannies as a child. The great structure was well over a thousand years old, and Spike knew many of its secrets. The public Palace, the one that the tourists got to see, he of course knew intimately, wide white halls arranged in a rational grid pattern, at once upheld and decorated by their pointed arches and ribbing, with light often provided through elaborate stained-glass windows which illustrated episodes in the history of Equestria and its predecssors. There were vast audience and dining halls which could have held the populations of whole small towns -- and sometimes did, when Celestia arranged a sufficiently-major event. There were private conference chambers, from which Celestia and her ministers ruled a Realm which stretched over most of the North Amareican continent. There were halls and halls of suites, bedrooms, rooms, dormitories and barracks for royals, nobles, visitors, staff and garrison. The Palace permanently housed many hundreds of Ponies and could guest thousands in comfort, a hundred or more thousand in an emegency. It was itself a small town. Spike was familiar with the private palace. Small and spunky, obviously a child and known to be the boon companion of Twilight Sparkle, the favorite of the Ruling Princess, he had been treated fairly well in every quarter to which he had penetrated. Even when he attempted to go into places to which access was very restricted, the Guards had been gentle in their denials of his passage. He had friends and acquaintances among all the denizens of the immense mansion, from the highest royalty to the lowliest scullery maids. Spike always had a talent for making himself liked -- despite his odd appearance, he was much better at making friends than was his adoptive sister. He was even familiar with the secret palace. Some of the secrets seemed to be secret due to simple neglect. For instance, Celestia had a huge, beautiful bath house (at least that's what Spike assumed its function to be) behind one of the back gardens., complete with an Equestria-Games sized swimming pool and numerous retiring rooms, which was filled with statuary, mosaics and other decorations, a very high proportion of them of a distinctly erotic nature. The building had been unused for the whole period Spike had explored the Palace. It had also been locked, but a small creature with strong sharp claws can scale walls nothing with hooves could be expected to climb, and slip through half-open chained doors designed to bar the admission of full-grown Pegasi, which is why Spike was well-appraised of its contents. The interior was under a preservation spell, occasionally cleaned and maintained, but apparently never used for any purpose. Spike appropriated it as his own private relaxation chambers, and would have been rather shocked had he known that it was officially the Royal Seraglio -- though he would have required an explanation of the function of such a building, before he would have known enough to realize why he should have been shocked. Spike got into a lot of strange places in his explorations, and saw some strange sights -- in some ways, he was considerably less innocent than Twilight Sparkle imagined -- in other ways, considerably more so. He never told Celestia he was using the secret bath-house, which was just as well -- the admission would have embarrassed both of them. Even immortals sometimes play with some very bad ideas, and though the structure had never been put to its designed purpose, Celestia did not care to remember the mood of lonely black despair she had been in when she had built it -- nor admit to herself why she'd kept the building intact and well-maintained -- just in case she decided that she needed it after all. The walls of the Royal Palace looked light and airy, but were actually quite thick in many places, designed to shed the projectiles from non-explosive siege artillery, and provide considerable resistance to even cannon shells. They reached or exceeded their specified strength everywhere, but in some places had been built of stronger materials than in the public plans. Thus they could be and were honeycombed with mazes of secret passages, some of whose entrances and exits looked as if they were designed by a super-intelligent Pony with a really bizarre sense of humor. Spike would have been suprised to discover that the Pony in question was the very same cool and regal being who had tutored his sister daily in advanced magics. Spike had explored the secret passages, but given their convoluted nature he could not claim that he had explored them fully. Some led to chambers in use, which was how he had seen some unusual sights. Some to disused store-rooms, where supplies laid down centuries ago rotted or gathered dust. And some led to old mines beneath the palace, which looked as if they had once held gems. The tastier crystals had long since played out, but the ancient miners had missed a few here and there. Spike sometimes went down there to gather snacks -- in the process ruining his sister's careful monitoring and study of his metabolic processes. Many Equestrians were intimidated by the immortal Sun Princess and her vast Palace, despite all that Celestia did to make herself an accessible and friendly monarch. Spike was not: the Palace had been the background to most of his life; and the sovereign of most of a good-sized continent was to him a familiar and reassuring presence. He admired and respected her greatly; he even had a better idea than most of what she was capable; but he knew that she was kind and good, and he felt entirely safe in her presence. So it was with a cheerful smile that Spike sauntered through the main doors, nodding at the guards in front. He stepped right up to the Royal Usher, who conveyed him, via the grand public corridors and a door that looked as if it led to a storage chamber, to a large and well-appointed but cozy chamber, whose floor was covered in thick rugs and where blazed a cheerful hearth-fire, where there were a set of large backless setees around an equally-large low table. Upon the table was coffee, tea and cakes both large and small. Upon one setee was the great figure of the Ruling Princess of the Day, Celestia Solaria Invicta, who raised her lovely head and smiled benignly at the small Dragon. "Welcome, Spike," she said in a mellifluous voice. "I trust you had a pleasant flight?" Spike performed a quick but complete proskynesis, which was not at all uncomfortable upon the well-carpeted floor. "You may rise, dear Spike," said the Princess of the Sun. She said this almost automatically, which was unsurprising, because it was a necessary first command, unless she wished to merely watch him lie stretched face-down upon the rug, which would have been a rather strange purpose for which to summon him to her presence. The "dear" made it personal, and reminded Spike of why he was not merely loyal to, but also loved, his sovereign. In his earliest years she had helped raise him, almost like a mother, but extreme formality was almost second nature to Spike in certain circumstances, and he saw nothing odd about performing a full formal bow to an entity for whom he also felt filial devotion. Spike rose to his hind legs, and looked fearlessly upon the face of his liege lady, the mare whose personal magics were mighty enough to annihilate armies, who was the sovereign of the most powerful nation on Earth. Her great purple eyes looked benignly back at him, beautiful face under its golden tiara, framed in her long rainbow mane. As she moved her head, Spike could see the hair of her mane ripple, slightly out of synchronization with her movements, as if it obeyed laws of motion not entirely of this simple tri-dimensioned world, and lights like little suns flickered from its depths. Celestia smiled warmly at him. "We need not stand upon ceremony; we are all friends here." She nodded her head at the third occupant of the room, then back at Spike. "Or shall soon be." Spike had of course noted the existence of this third occupant. It was difficult to miss any Alicorn, even a smaller one. It was just that, when in the presence of Celestia, even if one knew her very well, all other lights were dimmed by the comparison. This was a situation with which that third occupant was, perhaps, all too sadly familiar. "You have of course previously met my sister, Luna Selena Nyx, Ruling Princess of Equestria, Sovereign of the Moon and of the Night, my High Lady of War, in whom I place the uttermost trust, upon two prior occasions," explained Celestia, running off her sister's titles quite smoothly. "But upon the first meeting she was not quite herself, and on the second she was perhaps a trifle exhausted from her journey. She remembers you from that second meeting." Spike nodded, and looked at Princess Luna, with respect but also some curiosity. She was larger than she had been since he saw her last. Nowhere near as large as Nightmare Moon -- the possessed Luna had been almost the size of her Sister -- but about as big as a normal stallion. Her features had firmed as well; she now looked like an adolescent mare, instead of a small filly. Those features were fair to behold -- she had not the blazing beauty of her Sister, but rather a cool nocturnal loveliness entirely her own. The musculature which had seemed wasted, the motions wobbly in her immediately after her liberation from Nightmare, was now filled out, and she was gracefully rounded. Her mane, which had been a wan blue and no more than that of any mare, now shimmered with all the complex shades of a moonlit night sky, and rippled with a motion not imparted to it by any mere inertia; within it starlight sparkled. Great blue eyes -- innocent as evening's gentle fall, wise as the secrets of the stars, dangerous as the darkest deeds done under cloak of night -- gazed at the young Dragon. There was nothing unfriendly in that regard, only an equal curiosity, mingled with a certain shyness Spike found strange, given What she was, but nevertheless he shivered slightly. For in her eyes it was obvious a great Power had returned to the mortal world. "Greetings," Princess Luna said in a cool, even voice, and "well come thou art to Our Palace, Kenbroth Gilspotten Heathspike the Seventh, Squire to the Element Bearer, Lady Twilight Sparkle." Her blue eyes seemed to be looking into his soul, and Spike wondered why he found her so frightening. Princess Celestia had the same sort of depth to her gaze, yet Celestia's always seemed warming. Luna's appeared to him cold -- almost inequine -- and he had a brief terrifying memory of the slitted aquamarine pupils of Nightmare Moon. That shouldn't have scared him -- his own were similar slits -- but it had looked so wrong to see it on a Pony. He was used to the much softer and rounder pupils of the species which had raised him. And, there had been the whole "evil monster bringing Night Everlasting and destroying the world" thing going on back then, also. That had to count for something. But this wasn't Nightmare Moon. She was bigger and more intimidating than she had been at the party after Twilight and her new friends had saved the world, but she was still Princess Luna. Sister of the Pony he almost considered a mother. He could look at her as sort of an agathic figure. A big, scary, slightly crazy super-powerful aunt, granted, but still like an aunt. Yeah. That calms me down a bit. He straightened up, gazed back fearlessly. He saw a flicker of something in her eyes at that -- he devoutly hoped it was "approval" -- and that heartened him somewhat. "I am honored to meet you, Your Highness," he said, executing a brisk little bow. He had already performed the proskynesis, which was about the most formal reverence he could display short of utter toadying, and one thing Princess Celestia had taught both him and Twilight Sparkle was the difference between politeness and unctuousness. "I am glad to see the extent of your recovery." He took refuge in the routine formalities; they saved him from having to think too hard about the Power behind those eyes. "I am gladder," the Moon Princess said, and smiled at him. The moonlight seemed to break from behind a cloud, and for a moment Spike forgot his fears in that silver radiance. "And pleased to behold thee once more, foster-brother to Dame Twilight Sparkle." "She was knighted?" Spike asked in astonishment. The term Princess Luna had used meant a mare who either had been knighted or had married a knight, but neither was true of Twilight Sparkle. As a respectable gentlemare, she was entitled at most to be referred to as "The Honorable," a form of address which was increasingly seen as archaic, and thus avoided by most of Twilight's generation. "Yes, Spike," Princess Celestia explained: "When I officially chartered the Element Bearers as My official Champions, Twilight found herself the leader of a fighting order, though a new and small one. As such, she acquired knightly status." "And well she deserved the honor," Princess Luna added, nodding. "She and her Companions performed a valiant deed in the face of great peril." "Twilight is really good and brave," Spike agreed, stroking his chin. "I wonder why she never told me she'd been knighted, though?" "Because she is modest," replied Celestia. "Almost to a fault." "As always," commented Luna, sighing, her face assuming an expression somewhere between exasperation and ... admiration? Spike supposed that the Moon Princess was the sort of Pony who could admire somepony who defeated her, with no hard feelings. He liked that thought. Then another thought occurred to him. "Wait," he asked, "if she's a knight, what does that make me?" "Twilight still considers you her 'Number One Assistant,' is that not the case?" said Celestia. Spike nodded. "In that case then you, too, are a member of the Order of the Element Bearers, as an assistant," explained Princess Celestia, in a voice as if she were rendering a judgement. "Which would make you her squire. You are thus entitled to refer to yourself as 'Esquire' -- which would already have been the case from your adoption into the Twilight gens upon the attainment of your 21st year -- and may also rightfully claim to be a Squire of the Element Bearers, that retroactive to June the 22nd, the 1500th Year of Harmony." "Wow," said Spike, puffing himself up a bit, his spines rising happily. "Rarity's going to -- I mean, I'm sure everypony who knows me will be proud of my elevation." "The same is of course true of the other Element Bearers," Celestia added. Though some might rightly claim higher titles." She smirked a little to herself, as if savoring a secret joke, and glanced aside to Luna, who smiled back at her. Spike was confused for a moment, but then remembered -- wasn't Fluttershy's family name Wind? Maybe she really was one of those Winds -- in which case she would be have been an Honorable already, at the very least. "But enough of this empty discussion of knighthoods," said Celestia. "Let refreshments be brought." Her horn flickered briefly, and somewhere a silver bell tinkled. A Pony came in wheeling a tea-tray, upon which was a great elaborately-worked samovar that looked to be quite old, and heaps of sweet baked goods of every description, from slices of frosted cake to cupcakes, from breads to cookies, from complex little pastries to thin dry biscuits. "Ah yes," said Luna, grinning cheerfully, "Tasty treats and tea fill thirsty throats!" She did not so much say this as declaim it in iambic pentameter. Celestia looked at her sister. "I'm not sure how well that scans," she commented mildly "And mine alliteration is not perfect, I know. Be it my fault that the North-Ponies had few kennings for tea-parties? Now, if we were quaffing ale ..." Luna took a big gulp of tea and instantly refilled her cup. Spike had discovered to his delight that some of the cupcakes and cookies were glazed with small crystals. He selected one cookie which sparked with purple glints, sniffed it, bit into it experimentally. Amethyst in honey, his nose and tongue told him, on a sugar oatmeal based cookie, flavored with orange peel. Spike was a skilled amateur cook, a skill he had necessarily acquired because Twilight sometimes forgot to eat, let alone cook, when in the grip of an intellectual obsession. He savored the sandy ferrous taste of the amethyst, which had a hint of something else -- chromium? -- in its composition. "This is delicious," Spike said aloud, and enthusiastically, as he munched on the cookie. "I shall have to let Sweet Cream know you said that," replied Celestia, with a smile. Spike remembered he'd have to return one of Sweet Cream's knives to her someday. He'd come back from one of his cookie raids a half-year ago with it sticking in one of his dorsal scales -- hadn't noticed it until it poked him when he tried to sit down. He figured she'd thrown it at him. Sweet Cream could be a bit ... excitable. Especially if you tried to steal cookies from her kitchen. He'd kept meaning to give it back, but one thing came after another, and then he moved to Ponyville. The knife was somewhere in his and Twilight's old quarters -- maybe he could get it later this night. Spike saw something glistening yellow on a lemon-frosted cupcake. Mm, zoisite. That was a slightly rare mineral, though not all that precious. Its taste was rather basic -- silicates with calcium and aluminum -- but Spike did not believe at scoffing at the fundamental foods. He liked the lemon cupcake, too -- it was made from sweet wheatcake with some lemon juice for tang. This was really thoughtful of Princess Celestia. She had all this baked for me. Theoretically, any Dragon would have enjoyed this, but there were very few Dragons who visited Canterlot, and he was the only one of those small enough to appreciate this repast. He dug into the proffered snacks happily. This was hardly rude, as Celestia and Luna were doing the same thing. Celestia's appetite for cakes was legendary. It did not surprise Spike that Luna shared her Sister's general tastes, with the difference that Celestia went more for vanilla and lemon and berry-flavored treats, while Luna clearly loved chocolate. As he already knew from previous tea-party audiences with Princess Celestia, the Sun Princess had a very healthy appetite; now he saw that her younger Sister matched her in this regard, though since she was smaller, Luna had to take about three bites to Celestia's two to match her pace. Spike, for his part, upheld the honor of Dragonkind as best he could, though he knew better than to match either Alicorn by volume. Instead, he ate all the gemmed pastries, reasonably assuming that they had meant them for his consumption. He was a bit disappointed that the amount of gems was not greater; but he was far too mannerly to complain, as he knew that the Palace kitchen had done their best. They probably did not often bake for Dragons. Anyway, he liked ordinary sweet baked grains well enough. Gradually, the pastry orgy ended. They fell into a discussion of other kinds and sources of baked goods they had enjoyed in the past. Spike's experience of the matter was limited by the fact that he had only hatched a decade or so ago; his memories were fairly mundane: Wax Paper's little deli-bakery around the corner from the Twilight residence; Joe's Donut Shop; Sugarcube Corner in Ponyville, where they had some nice specialty cupcakes. Celestia and Luna remembered more exotic treats. Celestia spoke wistfully of something called Crystal Snow Cakes, which had apparently been one of the baked delicacies of the vanished North-Realm. Luna allowed that Lith, though its Ponies had been dreary-boring, had made nice spice-cookies, and both sisters went into raptures over their memories of Lithian Sedimentary Sludge Pies. That led to a discussion of how they compared with the fruit pies of the Northlands and the really hot spice cookies of Olmecoatl. Hearing all this made Spike's mouth water, but he doubted he'd ever get to taste any of these. He had heard of the North-Realm, and according to a poem it had "fallen out of the air breathed by mortal mare" over a thousand years ago; in the epic, a mare called The Lady Of War, and who sounded very much like Princess Luna, had been fighting by Celestia's side against "its black Shadow King." Lith figured in an old moralistic tale about a city that had defied the Twister and whose people had somehow been turned to stone, and that had been set "before the Harmony," which meant over fifteen hundred years ago. He'd read both poems against his sister's wishes: she'd scorned them as "superstitious nonsense," but he'd thought that they were cool. Olmecoatl -- until just now he hadn't even been sure that place was real. It had figured prominently in a Daring Do novel, and in that tale was a long-ruined city, built by winged snake-demons (probably inspired by the real coatls) who had emerged from Xibalba after the Earth had been wrenched in the Cataclysm -- an event both considered mythical by modern Equestrians, and which if real would have taken place some four thousand years ago. It was said in the book to have existed for over fifteen hundred years, until it somehow aroused the ire of the Twister, who destroyed it and scattered its inhabitants. Spike somehow didn't think that the bakeries of any of these lost cities were still delivering. It might have been intimidating to take tea and cakes with two mares whose shared memories of pastries antedated the current Age of the World, did he not already count one as close a friend as possible, given her vastly-higher station, and did he not know the other to be her Sister. And he was always aware that he was Spike the Dragon, with a certain pride of Kindred to keep up, even if he still hadn't totally figured out what being a Dragon entailed. Besides, they were both being so nice to him. They made every effort to include him in the conversation, and they listened to his tales of Joe's or Sugar Cube Corner as if they were as fascinating as Olmecoatl or Lith. Finally, Princess Celestia summoned back the servant, who removed the empty plates and most of the tea-things, leaving only a single fresh pot and some teacups from which the Princesses and their honored guests might quaff their refreshments. When the servant had gone, she leaned forward and regarded him. "We have greatly enjoyed your company at tea," Celestia said, "but now we must to serious business. My Sister has resumed her duties as my Lady of War ..." Luna nodded with a small smile. "... and so it becomes important that Twilight Sparkle be able to communicate with both of us rapidly, at need. Someday, the fate of the Realm might depend upon this," Celestia continued. "You understand, I trust, what I request of you?" "My magefire?" Spike asked. "Yes," said Celestia, nodding. As always, the fall of her rainbow mane was beautiful. Until a few months ago, Spike would have sworn that he had never seen any lovelier -- and that other mane, for all its elegant indigo charms, was still made of mundane hair, unlike Celestia's magical efflorescence. "My magefire is at your disposal, Your Highness," Spike said, saluting her. He wasn't totally sure what sort of salute was proper of a Squire in a Fighting Order toward a Ruling Princess, especially one who he had known almost from the moment of hatching, but he thought it a credible attempt. Princess Celestia must have thought it credible as well, for she smiled warmly at him. "Very well, my little Dragon," she said. "Long ago, I attuned your magefire to myself, setting up a teleport linkage between you and I. Now, you shall be attuned to Princess Luna as well. Are you ready for this?" she asked him. "Ready, willing and able," Spike said. He hoped that this wouldn't hurt.