A New Sun

by Ragnar


Conversation Twenty-Two

Mag woke up grinning.

It was horribly hot. Her jaw, shoulders and back all ached. She sat in a white lawn chair, hands cuffed with her arms encircling a pitted iron pole. The pole extended from the broken concrete floor to a distant ceiling of interlocking corrugated tin sheets, suspended by girders and steel pipes. It was also embedded in the cement. The building itself appeared to be some kind of abandoned warehouse. She couldn’t judge the size of the building; in every direction there were pallets of various home improvement goods stacked neatly and left to rot. There were no visible walls and there was no natural light. The air smelled of grease and rust. Mag was still in her boyshorts and undershirt, but someone had put socks on her feet while she slept.

“The first step of our plan is to determine whether our captors know something we don’t, or are just unutterably stupid,” said Luna.

Mag nodded. She remembered the plan perfectly well and didn’t need it repeated to her, but she wanted Luna to keep talking. So long as Luna was there, they were spies for Equestria; but the longer Luna kept quiet, the more Mag would feel like a hostage.

Someone shuffled a deck of cards. Mag looked past the pole to see three familiar soldiers who had slid several crates to the side to make a clearing, where they’d set up a card table and more lawn chairs for a game of stud poker, no betting. They’d stripped to their t-shirts but left their blue slacks on. They all looked miserable with boredom.

“Pair,” muttered Bunny, laying her hand face-up on the table and sliding it to the dealer with a brush of her hand.

“Same,” said Brown Eyes, and tossed her cards on top of Bunny’s.

Admittedly Pretty grunted, threw her own hand on the pile, set the rest of the deck on top of it, and shuffled it all together. Mag couldn’t tell who’d won. Admittedly Pretty dealt out another round.

Mag examined her handcuffs. Whoever had brought them didn’t believe in half measures. The cuffs were hinged Smith & Wessons, the kind of handcuffs most typically kept for inmates who could break more normal wrist restraints. Mag had heard of someone breaking cuffs like these, but the woman had been on PCP and she’d broken both of her wrists.

Mag knocked on the pole they’d cuffed her to in order to get their attention. “Hey, girls. How are we doing this morning?”

Admittedly Pretty—for expedience, it might be easier to think of her as A.M., or possibly just “Pretty”—glanced at Mag. She got out of her chair and raised her voice. “She’s awake.” The other soldiers stood as well.

“You girls are so fucked when Celestia finds us,” Mag said with a friendly smile.

“Be civil,” said a strident female voice. Its owner entered the clearing.

The stranger reminded Mag of a Renaissance Fair she’d once bummed around in. She wore a black cape with a black hood, black lace gloves that went up to the middle of her slender biceps, a black top with some kind of embroidery pattern Mag couldn’t make out, a layered black skirt, and black leather boots. The only pieces of color were the little silver chain that held her cape in place, and the jeweled dagger tucked into the black sash around her waist. The woman walked as if she had a book balanced on her head, with her hands folded behind her at the small of her back. Mag recognized her—it was the soldier she’d named “Smug” yesterday, now divested of her disguise as a marine.

“The balance of evidence currently leans toward ‘stupid,’” said Luna.

“I am Lady Castan,” said the woman in black, in a snooty accent of North American origin, though she barely sounded old enough to smoke. “The Circle has been watching you, and we are not pleased with your demeanor, your overfamiliarity with her highness Princess Celestia, the problems you pose to those who matter, your grotesque displays of ignorance on the subject of human magic in front of her highness, the degenerate physicality of what little magic you’re capable of, your presumptuousness, and your horrible swinish face. You’re a travesty. You’re a disaster. I’m here to replace you as the princess’s companion.” There wasn’t much of her. She was short and thin, and probably weighed less than 100 pounds, but she had a disproportionately loud voice. It reminded Mag of the time a lark had gotten into her house and couldn’t be convinced to leave or shut up.

Mag gave her a thumbs up. “Thanks for spelling all that out. You know I have a princess in my head, right?”

“Spare me your grandiose delusions,” said Lady Castan.

“That’s 2-0 in favor of stupid,” said Luna.

“Do you want to call it yet?” Mag said to Luna.

Lady Castan’s brow furrowed. “I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, she’s a fool. Now we shall see if we can learn more about this circle.”

“I asked you a question, cow.”

“Sorry, kid, just talking to the princess.”

“You will not address me as 'kid,'” said Lady Castan.

“Why not? You’re a kid. You’re wearing a Halloween costume in January, you’ve got no self-awareness, you’re teenage-skinny, you talk like a—”

Lady Castan snapped her fingers. “Jody?”

Brown Eyes stepped forward.

Lady Castan gave Mag a cool smile. “Slap her.”

Brown Eyes slapped Mag. She put her whole arm into it, but met Mag’s cheek with the tips of her fingers. It was meant to humiliate rather than cause any real pain, but it stung all the same.

Mag narrowed her eyes. “What the hell was that?”

“You will—”

“Not you,” said Mag. “Soldier, the kid told you to slap me, not caress my fucking cheek. Try again. Put your back into it.”

“Do so,” Lady Castan snapped. Brown Eyes used her palm this time, and Mag’s head jerked with the blow.

Mag blinked hard a couple of times. “Better.” She discreetly used the pole to fold her hand forward until she could get the tips of her fingers to touch the handcuff hinge. No one noticed.

“One more time, I think.”

Brown Eyes hesitated.

“Well?” Lady Castan said.

Mag tilted her chin toward Brown Eyes. “Gotta do what your little boss says, private.”

Brown Eyes, now unable to meet Mag’s eyes, slapped her again.

Mag was running out of spirit for this, but she couldn’t back down to someone like Castan. “That’s a C- effort, private. Is that the kind of marine you want to be?”

“Enough,” said Lady Castan. “You are clearly stalling. Apologize so I can stop wasting my time on you.”

“Stalling? I’m really not. I’m just trying to get into the right place emotionally, you know?”

Lady Castan got it. Her eyes widened in alarm.

Mag closed her eyes and let her aching jaw and sinking sense of the fundamental absurdity of the situation fuel her new spell.

Every spell Mag knew began with that same bitter joy at being right about something terrible, and her new spell was no different. That was the universal step one.

After the first step, the emotional ingredients varied according to the spell. In the case of her decay spell, the necessary component was the memory of a difficult night she’d had a couple of years ago (it hadn’t been a bad day, but it had ended with a bout of insomnia caused by the heat of summer, combined with a rancid dread at the thought of her whole life ahead of her).

Step three, the easiest step, was to contemplate futility. Recalling any Thomas Ligotti quote would do. If she couldn’t remember something from Ligotti then Lovecraft would work, or Kafka, or she could simply remember that glimpse of the Maker. All things considered, it was the easiest spell in her repertoire.

Simply put, the spell made things break down, but the exact mechanism troubled Mag on a philosophical level. When asked what exactly the spell did, Luna asserted that everything had its own, for lack of a better word, destiny. Every single thing had its own fate, purpose, nature, and proper place in the omniverse. According to Luna, anyway. To Mag it all sounded like pseudo-religious bullshit, and she’d almost said as much when Luna began to wax poetic about cutie marks and her own pride in belonging to a species so in harmony with destiny. Mag held her tongue and restricted herself to saying that Luna’s idea of destiny reminded Mag of the human ideas of telos and dharma. Luna responded enthusiastically once Mag had defined the two words, and after some discussion the two of them had taken to using the word dharma rather than destiny in the context of the decay spell.

In short, the spell let Mag temporarily separate an object’s connection to its own “dharma”. It worked wonderfully in spite of the complete nonexistence of telos, dharma, destiny, and all related concepts. Once again, the princesses had introduced Mag to something that violated her grasp of how reality worked, and there was nothing she could do about it except walk it off.

Mag smiled at Lady Castan and cast her decay spell on the handcuffs.

Lady Castan’s gloved hand covered Mag’s face again. Mag passed out.

***

“No.” Luna’s horn shone.

***

Mag’s head snapped up. The cuffs were now as soft as clay and lighter than paper. She pulled them apart and threw herself into the stacked pallets of lumber. Lady Castan shouted something, but Mag didn’t hear it.

She was wearing nothing but socks and underwear, she didn’t know where she was, and her enemies outnumbered her. This would take some finesse.

“She must not escape!” shouted Lady Castan. “Watch the exits. I’ll deal with her myself.”

“I wish you had asked about The Circle, but good enough. Now, I imagine this building is in a town of some kind, so we should be able to find a public place where this Lady Castan can’t do anything overt. Then we can wait for Celestia.”

Mag stopped to crouch behind a crate against the wall. “Clothes first,” she whispered. “When we made that plan, I thought I’d have clothes on.”

“You do have clothes on.”

“Clothes, not underwear. I’ll walk around a little more and hope someone left their jacket behind.”

“Your culture’s nudity taboo is as arbitrary as it is inconvenient.”

Mag had put ample distance between her captor and herself, but it was only a matter of time before Lady Castan found her. The lady didn’t bother to hide her own position, and shouted taunts every few seconds.

“You can run, but you can’t hide!”

Mag wondered what Lady Castan would do when she ran out of clichés.

“You are wearing clothes, Mag, and why should there be an unworn jacket anywhere here? Seek the obvious solution. You must cut through the wall, ideally without having to goad someone into slapping you, and then we can at least see what is outside.”

“No, and for the record, it’s not my fault I can’t wallow in existential dread when a LARPer is yelling at me.”

“There!” Castan pounced from around the corner of the crate Mag was hiding behind and slapped her hand across Mag’s eyes.

***

“Did you see that?” said Mag.

“Hm?” said Luna. They floated in the absolute dark where Mag had first met Luna.

“She was pulling her hand out of her pocket before she covered my eyes.”

“Astute. She may be using some kind of tool or substance. Can you get behind her?”

“Maybe, but I’ll have to either sneak up on her or pin her, and I can’t wrestle.”

“Do what you can.”

***

Mag lay on the ground face up. Lady Castan was squatting next to Mag, fumbling with a length of slim rope. Mag rolled to the side and the lady gave a startled shriek, falling against a tower of stone flower pots. Mag trundled after her on her hands and knees, realized before reaching her that she couldn’t bring herself to actually punch the little dweeb, and changed directions. Mag got to her feet and scurried away, and felt the bundle of rope bounce off her shoulders as she ran.

Several hundred feet of jogging and five tactical switchback turns later, Mag halted to catch her breath. She’d found her way back to the lawn chairs, card table and pole. Luckily none of the soldiers were there. On the other hand, maybe this was a good time for diplomacy.

“You know you’ve got nothing,” Mag called through her hands in between breaths. “You can’t put me to sleep, all your goons are busy guarding the exits, and I’m sure they’re liking you less and less every minute anyway.”

Castan didn’t answer, so she was probably trying to sneak up on her again. How did Lady Castan sneak around in boots?

Mag didn’t see any reason to stop talking. “Your plan is stupid anyway. How were you planning to make Celestia drop me in exchange for you?”

“HA HA!” A knee connected with the base of Mag’s spine. Mag tumbled to the ground with her back arched, landing on her side.

Lady Castan stood over her, wrestling with something behind her back.

“Gonna try the—urgh—sleep thing again?” groaned Mag. That knee had hurt more than it had any right to.

A sash around Castan’s waist slipped loose. She uncoiled it and flourished it open.

“Is that a yes?” said Mag.

“Your thug magic,” pronounced Lady Castan, “is no match for the artifice and subtle work of Le Cercle. I have countless tools and spells to subdue you.”

“And sharp little knees.”

The sash glowed, and snaked at Mag’s wrists. It coiled tight around them and dragged Mag’s arms behind her back, and fighting it made Mag feel like a child trying to escape an adult’s grip.

“Break that, if you can,” said Castan. She folded her arms and watched. “Do it, thug. Try. Cast your little spell.”

“Or you could simply use the password, which is ‘trois tasses.’ But if you cannot manage the accent, its magic wouldn’t be difficult for you to break; use your decay spell as before, but combine it with the image of a skeletal snake eating a moth.”

Mag pretended to struggle with her bindings for a minute. She stopped and rolled onto her back, hiding her hands from view as she had before. “Yep, you got me. Before we get to my comprehensive 10-page handwritten apology that I’m now offering to write, would you mind answering my question from before? How did you plan to convince the princess?”

“Her majesty never searched for other applicants,” said the lady, tapping her foot rapidly in an irritated staccato. “If she had, she would have discovered The Circle and its cadre of trained companions, each of us educated from birth to act as aides-de-camp, court magicians, servants, diplomats, bodyguards, and even maids. We’ve known for generations that her majesty would be coming and that she’d find someone like me to stay beside her. Do you understand? She needs someone like me. Not you. Me. My great-great-grandfather is the one who foresaw Princess Celestia’s coming in the first place. My mother is one of the leaders of the central council. I have been ready to take my proper place since I was 16. There is no better choice in all the world, and all I must do is free her from your thick-fingered clutches.”

“Pathetic as that is,” muttered Luna, “in all fairness, you really are being wonderfully helpful right now.”

The lady didn’t catch the way Mag’s voice changed. “Of course I am. I was bred for it.”

How many questions could Mag ask before Lady Castan got sick of monologuing? Best to keep her talking, and hope she couldn’t rant and think at the same time.

A horrible thought occurred to Mag. Who did the Nightmare go after? The lost souls, the failures, the powerless and desperate. People with nothing to lose. It’d have to be her first question.

“Yo, there’s a demon thing wandering around Earth right now. It’s called Nightmare. It isn’t, like, in your head right now, is it?”

Lady Castan’s blinked twice, slowly, in horror. “Do I look like a madwoman to you? Don’t joke about that. And the Nightmare has made it clear to every magical family in the world that she will never allow one of us to be her host, nor our allies, nor even our exiles, criminals, or business partners.” Her lip curled. “I see you didn’t receive the same promise.”

“She is clean of any influence,” Luna confirmed.

“No, but Celestia wouldn’t put up with it, so don’t worry about it. Next question, did your ancestor see why Celestia would come?”

“No. No one has perfect sight, not even the Castan family,” said the lady, straightening her cape and picking particles of sawdust from her hood.

“Really? Ever heard of the eldest?”

Lady Castan sniffed. “That old wanderer? An able seer, but ultimately a charlatan and pretender, as you would know if you’d been properly trained. Enough talk. Guards, come, and one of you must also find a writing utensil and 10 pages of paper.”

Boots approached. It was now or never. “Tw—No, it was tr—shit, that French ‘r’ is hard. Can’t you do it?”

“Trois tasses,” said Luna. The sash went limp. Mag tossed it aside and sprinted away to the sound of Lady Castan kicking over the card table in frustration.

“This is fun,” commented Luna.

This time Mag didn’t bother to duck and hide. She picked a direction and ran straight until she found one of the walls, an unadorned cinderblock expanse. Never mind the underwear; it was time to go. Considering how easily the lady and her guards could find Mag, cutting through the wall would take too long. She’d have to look for a proper exit.

She found one but didn’t reach it in time. Brown Eyes performed a baseball slide to block the way to a heavy emergency door that, according to a faded red and white plastic sign, would trigger a silent alarm and alert the fire department if opened. Mag stopped as well as she could in socks on a concrete floor, tripping slightly over a crack but not falling into Brown Eyes’s reach.

“Hold, Mag,” ordered Luna. “Guard, no matter where your allegiance truly lies, you have everything to lose. Whomever you serve, you are earning your master the enmity of two beings of nigh limitless power, patience, and a recently acquired overabundance of free time. Step aside and show us some small flicker of sanity.”

Brown Eyes shook her head. “The lady was raised to serve the princess, and I was raised to serve the lady. We’re all just doing what we’re made for.” Her voice was high but steady, the voice of someone about to be idiotically brave. She lunged.

“Worth a shot,” said Mag. She reached behind her back to lay her hand on a 50-pound bag of concrete, cast her new spell, sunk her fingers into the bag, and swung it in Brown Eyes’s direction. She hoped to throw it and let its mass reassert itself just as it left her hand, but she misjudged the timing and ended up dropping the bag at Brown Eyes’s feet.

Brown Eyes tripped over it and sprawled into Mag, the private’s shoulder making solid contact with Mag’s solar plexus. They went down together into a loose stack of 2x2 lumber that clattered and tumbled apart.

The blow to Mag’s chest left her breathing in tiny gasps. Brown Eyes, blood dripping from her nose but looking otherwise fine, flipped Mag over with her knee and saw that her opponent could hardly breathe, let alone fight.

“Got her!” shouted Brown Eyes. She crouched and said. “You need to relax your abdominal muscles. I’m going to help you up, okay? Fight over. I’m just gonna help you up.”

Luna spoke quickly. “We can surprise her if you still feel able to fight. I’ll relax your abdomen myself and let you breathe and run, if you can work through a few minutes of considerable pain, and then we shall look for another way. Or we can be captured, rest, and try again later. Nod to your left if you like the first plan, or to the right if you prefer the second.”

Mag nodded to her left. Brown Eyes took it for assent and helped Mag to her feet.

“As I said, this will hurt. Three, two, one…” Luna took over Mag’s abdomen. The bottom dropped out of Mag’s lungs and Luna forced her to gulp air. It felt like getting hit all over again.

“Easy! Easy,” said Brown Eyes, kneading Mag’s shoulder to calm her. Mag elbowed Brown Eyes in the cheek and shoved her back into the lumber with another clatter.

Luna had understated the pain. Mag could breathe, but it felt like drowning, or like a stitch in her side except centered under her ribs. Luna had retained control over Mag’s breathing, which was prudent. Mag would have held her breath if given the option.

Pretty rushed at her down a corridor of dead potted plants. Lady Castan followed behind with her sash wrapped around both fists and stretched between them like a garrote.

Mag couldn’t keep this up. Fighting three and a half people, it turned out, was hard.

Time to be pragmatic. Pretty was winding up for a football tackle. Mag waited until the last moment and stepped aside. Pretty caught her in one arm anyway and threw Mag to the ground in an undignified heap. Mag, winded, battered and dispirited, clapped her hand over Pretty’s ear and cast her decay spell again, offering a prayer to Satan and Saint Sartre that Luna was right about how it would affect living things.

Pretty’s jaw went slack, her grip loosened, and her eyes glassed over with a consuming numbness. She rolled off of Mag and into a fetal position, hands covering her face. Luna had been right.

Lady Castan swooped in to aim a kick at Mag’s face. Mag caught Castan’s foot, got up off the floor, and threw Castan’s leg to the side. Castan tried to turn it into a full spin, but Mag caught her cape while the lady’s back was turned, threw it over Lady Castan’s head, stepped on the back heel of her boot, and shoved her into the dead plants. Castan bounced back like an irate cat and swiped ineffectually at Mag’s face with her hands still wrapped up in the sash.

“Did you see? She has a bag of powder behind her back. Sleeping powder, no doubt. Take it and use it on—”

The edge of Brown Eyes’s boot buried itself in the back of Mag’s right knee, dropping Mag to the ground. Bunny chose that moment to step in and land a punch behind Mag’s ear.

***

“Mag, I shall wake you up one more time, but you need to understand this fight is over. You’ll not surprise them again.”

***

Someone, probably Brown Eyes, had thrown her jacket over Mag’s head and clenched it in place so that Mag couldn’t see, stand up, struggle effectively, or run away. She could hear someone unfolding a tarp.

“Tell me what you did to Sadie,” Lady Castan hissed in Mag’s ear.

“The soldier in a fetal position? Decayed her dharma for a bit,” said Mag, voice muffled.

“What did you say? One moment. Guards, the canvas.”

“Don’t struggle. Refusing to accept our failure will only damage our goals.”

Mag didn’t need telling. They’d thrown the tarp over her and were now weighing down the edges with what sounded like the giant stone flower pots. Someone used a K-Bar knife to saw a 6-inch breathing hole in the expanse of tarp next to Mag’s head, giving her a close-up view of Bunny’s narrowed eyes and clenched jaw. She shifted out of view and a disheveled Lady Castan loomed over her.

“Say it again. What did you do to Sadie?”

“Decayed her dharma. She’ll be fine.” She could breathe again, so long as she didn’t inhale too deeply, but running in circles and then taking a light beating had exhausted her.

Bunny glared down at Mag. “I’d be polite, if I were you. Tell us how to help Sadie.”

“Discipline, Dora,” said Lady Castan. “In the final analysis, she escaped because I lost my temper and didn’t pay attention. I lacked discipline.”

Castan stooped to meet Mag’s eyes. “Let’s take one another more seriously, yes? Guards, if this fat shrew keeps refusing to cooperate, we’ll tie the tarp around her, hook the bag of knockout dust over her mouth like a feedbag, and leave her here. It isn’t murder if she eventually escapes, as I’m sure she will. Do we understand each other, shrew?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Guardian Dora, find me that paper and pencil. Wilson, while she does that, tell me what you did to my guard.”

“Fucked up her sense of identity and purpose. Think soap opera amnesia plus midlife crisis, except it doesn’t last. Give her a while and she’ll be good to go, right, Luna?”

“Correct. She needs between five minutes and two days, subject to psychological variables such as how experienced she is at fighting depressive thoughts, and how much she relies on her principles to inform her decisions.”

Lady Castan walked out of Mag’s field of view. “Stop that.” Cloth shifted and boots creaked as Castan sat down on a nearby pile of wood. “In fact, stop speaking entirely.”

Mag closed her eyes and relaxed. She wouldn’t sleep, but she might as well rest before making one more attempt at teasing information out of the lady.

She’d lost.

She wasn’t supposed to lose this.

What had she done wrong?

A lot of things. If she’d tried to cut through the wall when Luna told her to, she might have escaped. The clothes hadn’t mattered to her that much, really, in hindsight; she simply hadn’t wanted the game to end. She wanted to be better than Castan, and she wanted as many people as possible to know it. That… hadn’t happened.

“I have no intention of watching or helping you write a 10-page apology to the little fool while Celestia is somewhere out there losing her mind. I believe we’ve done everything we can.”

“Yeah.” They’d gotten what they came for, and now it was time for scolding and guilt trips. Mag put two fingers in her mouth and, as she had done in the Valley of Mirrors, Mag whistled. She put her all into it, blowing as hard as she could and not stopping until she ran out of air.

Lady Castan leaped back into view with her hands over her ears. “What are you up to this time? Stop that at once! Thank you! Don’t ever do it again!”

“Fuck,” muttered Bunny. “That was a signal.”

“Then it is time to leave,” announced Lady Castan. “We wrap up the prisoner and put her into the back seat. She cannot be allowed to run free until my plan has come to fruition. Guards—”

Cracks shot through the concrete warehouse floor with a sound like a shotgun blast. Then the world turned to solid white. The sounds of shrieking metal and crumbling brick overwhelmed Mag’s senses, until a magical silence shut out all sound.

“KNEEL.”

Mag liked to think of herself as preternaturally resistant to demands from authority figures, but something in Celestia’s command overpowered Mag. Her legs automatically curled under her in what would have been a kneeling position if she’d been sitting or standing, and there could be no question that her captors had done the same.

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE VIOLENCE. NONE OF YOU WILL MOVE.”

Mag’s hearing and vision returned to see that Celestia flew 50 feet above her with a clear blue sky for a backdrop. The walls and ceiling were missing, exposing the inside of the warehouse to a pounding desert sun. Mag craned her neck and saw that Celestia had dismantled the entire building and set the pieces aside, broken walls and twisted roof stacked like pieces of a dollhouse. The tarp was gone.

Celestia descended. Mag saw her face, then wished she hadn’t. This wasn’t yesterday’s warrior angel; this was the unveiled goddess Mag had met when Celestia first came to Earth. Dimly Mag noticed that Bitterman rode on Celestia’s back.

“I AM EXTREMELY UPSET WITH EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU.”

“Could you not do that?” squeaked Mag.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW worried I was?!” said Celestia, face three inches from Mag’s and shining too brightly to look at. Bittermann dismounted with more grace than Mag had ever managed but still looked sore. Celestia spared her a glance, then continued. “I thought I made myself abundantly clear how unreasonable I intend to be when it comes to your safety. And you, Luna. Why did you let this happen? Don’t tell me it was your idea.”

“It wasn’t,” said Luna, “but I approved it. The idea was sound, I saw little risk, and we’ve collected some interesting information. Shall we discuss it?”

“No. Mag, is that a bruise?”

“Huh?”

Celestia pointed an effulgent hoof. “Your jaw.”

Mag felt along the line of her jaw and found a sore spot beneath her cheek. When had she been hit there? Right, Brown Eyes had slapped her.

“Luna, list her injuries.”

“There is a bruise on her jaw. She strained a muscle in her lower back, but it is not serious. One of the guards inadvertently struck her beneath the ribs. It still hurts, but I perceive no real harm done. A blister is forming on her left heel.”

Celestia turned to Lady Castan and her three guards. “And you? I see a bloody nose.”

Lady Castan, Brown Eyes and Bunny hadn’t kneeled so much as genuflected. Pretty stood on her knees next to Bunny’s arched back, staring at Celestia.

The lady lifted her head a quarter of an inch off the ground. With a trembling voice she said, “Great One, Guardian Jody got her bloody nose in a collision she insists was accidental. She tells me it isn’t broken.”

”Your species prepared a cult for Celestia’s arrival?”

“I’m more concerned about Guardian Sadie, Great One,” said Castan.

“Yes?” said Celestia.

“Please forgive her impropriety. Something has happened to her mind. It was some form of magic cast by your… by that… by her.” Lady Castan managed to fit a great deal of hate into the word “her.”

Celestia’s incandescence receded enough for others to look at her without losing their sight. She approached Pretty, whose eyes followed her. “What spell did Mag cast?”

“Your… she claims—”

“I beg your pardon, I was speaking to Luna.”

Lady Castan shut up.

“We are calling it her decay spell,” said Luna. “It temporarily decays an object’s connection with its own destiny, or dharma as Mag calls it. The particularities of the spell’s effect can be difficult to predict, but it always changes the target to be more malleable, conceptually. Restraints do not restrain, heavy things forget their weight, walls can be persuaded to stop walling things away, and people lose their sense of identity and purpose. Mag excels at it.”

Celestia sat down in front of Pretty. “Guardian, what is your name?”

Pretty stared askance at Celestia. She swallowed and said, “Sadie.”

“When you woke up this morning, that name meant something to you. That was your world. Do you remember anything else about it?”

“We have a framed charcoal drawing of you in the hall of commencement,” whispered Pretty.

Celestia’s eyebrows ticked up. “Of me. That’s… interesting. But never mind. What does the hall of commencement mean to you?”

Pretty, with faraway eyes, said, “I met the Lady Valérie Castan there for the first time. I was wearing my—yes, my uniform, my real uniform. They’d given it to me that morning and I was so proud. I had a glass of champagne in my hand that I was forbidden to drink, because I was on duty. I don’t remember what that duty was, but I remember Lady Castan in a gray velvet gown, with her own champagne. She told me she wasn’t allowed to drink hers either. We snuck away and got drunk and played video games. Not many people know that.”

“And where is the Lady Valérie Castan right now?”

Pretty pointed at Lady Castan without looking away from Celestia’s eyes.

“What is she like?”

“Cautious—usually. Talented magical artificer. Reads a lot. She made me a little clay pot last year for my birthday. She’s been angry for months over some kind of confidential thing. She threw plates, blew up about little things, broke down in a hallway once but wouldn’t say why. Now that Princess Celestia has come and she chose that Margaret Wilson woman, I think I get it. I’m glad to know what upset her so much. We were so worried.”

Pretty’s eyes cleared. She realized who she spoke to and where she was, and dropped into her own genuflection. Four foreheads now touched the ground.

Celestia sighed. “Get up. You’ve all made a terrible mistake and now the seven of us must decide what to do about it.”

“Eight, with your permission.”

Celestia looked behind her. Mag followed her gaze and saw a woman in a simple blue skirt and black blouse 15 yards behind them. She walked barefoot through the rubble with her hands folded behind her back.

Lady Castan froze in the process of standing up, and moaned from under her hood. “Oh, no.

The woman set aside a grocery bag holding some kind of bundle and fell into her own genuflection. “Good morning, Great One. I greet you on behalf of Le Cercle de Lampes à Huile, known in the United States of America as The Circle of Lamps. I am the Countess Irénée Castan.”

“Stand,” said Celestia. The Countess Castan did so. “Congratulations. Your stealth teleportation spell must have been phenomenal, though I should tell you I’m in no mood to be snuck up on. When did you arrive? Are you the one who tried to scry me earlier?”

The countess walked forward, picking her way through shards of broken concrete without looking down. “I apologize, your glorious majesty. I arrived a few seconds ago, and yes, I tried to scry you earlier this morning. I apologize for that intrusion as well, but I was worried about my daughter.”

Celestia’s face was a judge’s dispassionate mask. “Did you tell your daughter to kidnap my friend and my sister?”

“No, nor did I know she would do it until she’d already insinuated herself into the American military base,” said the countess. “I did choose to stand back and watch after that, even when she kidnapped your friend.”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“To better understand my daughter. To get a sense for Ms. Wilson.” The countess stopped next to Mag and held out the bag. Mag took it from her.

“What’s this?” said Mag.

“Clothing,” said the countess, “and the proper term of address for a countess is ‘your ladyship.’”

Mag held the bag under her arm. “Thanks, but I’ll wait until we’re done here before I decide what to call you.”

The countess hadn’t waited for an answer. “Great one, I understand your anger. I also understand you intend to make certain decisions about my daughter’s future. I beg your leave to be a part of that discussion.”

“Luna?” said Celestia.

“Reasonable,” said Luna, “so long as Lady Valérie Castan speaks for herself today.”

“Fair,” nodded Celestia. “Ladies, I saw a diner on my way here. If no one minds, I’m going to teleport us there. We can go inside, and then we’ll discuss this.”

“And Wilson can put some clothes on,” Bittermann said under her breath, eyes fixed on a pebble, blushing.

“Prude,” said Mag.