//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: Cupcakes and Culpability // Story: Post-Traumatic // by Jordan179 //------------------------------// Finally, Twilight had completed her researches, or as much of them as she could without access to the Restricted Section of the Library at the Palace of Canterlot. She expected that, eventually, she would have to go there as well -- it would be nice to see Adamant and Westwood again. She would not be at all surprised to discover that one or more of Starlight Glimmer's early projects, perhaps undertaken when Starlight was still Celestia's student, had been stamped with a WCP code number and placed in containment. Twilight never noticed any such before, when she had interned with the Night Watch, but then not even she was influential, curious or reckless enough to actually examine every single Restricted Object. Some of them, after all, activated upon perusal, or contained serious memetic toxins. By the nature of things, dark magic was inherently dangerous. It was best to deal with most of the Restricted Objects at second hand, by report from Night Watch officers and researchers who carefully restricted their individual exposures to these banes. So, Twilight Sparkle used as her sources primarily the school yearbooks, the Junior Achievers' Biographical Dictionary, and the back issues of the Canterlot newspapers (which those journals had kindly supplied her castle library) to construct her profile of Starlight Glimmer, which she appended to the portions of the report she had written on the train. She might have done this quite rapidly, were not Twilight -- as always -- a perfectionist: she insisted on cross-checking and cross-referencing as much as possible. Neverthless, in a few hours the report was almost completed, and Twilight had assembled a fairly complete outline of the life of Starlight Glimmer; or at least of those portions of it which had come to attention in the public record. Which -- given that she had taken the dark and dangerous road of warlockry -- was obviously far from the whole story. Twilight Sparkle herself had chosen a far brighter course, and yet any biography of her drawn from such superficial sources would have missed so many important details of her life as to enable the writing of a whole series, with the occasional adventure books expanding considerably upon the public record, and the remainder composed of amusing comedic tales. Twilight herself was well aware of the dangers of presuming too much on the basis of incomplete information; she said so explicitly more than once in her report. Nevertheless, her researches suggested some obvious starting points from which the Night Watch might begin their investigations. Starlight Glimmer had been born to a in an affluent quarter of Fillydelphia to a minor branch of the vast Light Clan, a very distant cousin of Twilight Sparkle's mother Twilight Velvet, on October 21st, the Year of Harmony 1462; she was thus now forty-two years of age -- almost exactly as old as Twilight Sparkle had estimated. She had excelled in primary school, and her combination of high intelligence and great magical potential had earned her a scholarship to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. At her entrance examinations, she had not merely cast a perfect dermosigmatic divination upon Inkwell, who had made herself available for this purpose, but also gained her own Cutie Mark and revealed the Marks of two other foals, indicating an extraordinary aptitude for dermosignomancy: the magic of understanding and aiding the expression of Cutie Marks. Twilight Sparkle had been shaken by reading this, though she had half-expected something of the sort. The parallels with Twilight's own case were obvious, and she could see how if Celestia had been searching for some specific signs from prophecy, she might have hoped that Starlight would be the one to free Luna from the Nightmare. Twilight could even see how dermosignomancy might theoretically accomplish such a feat, by enhancing the true identity of the Shadow-ridden host and enabling it to drive out the extradimensional invader. A different approach to Luna's liberation, but it might have worked -- had Starlight Glimmer been the heroine for whom Celestia had hoped. Twilight Sparkle mused upon her discovery. It did not surprise her at all that Starlight Glimmer had such vast talent. What Starlight had done in the end had been foul, of course, but it was the sort of foulness requiring great magical ability. No ordinary warlock -- to the extent that "ordinary" had any meaning applied to warlocks, since each warlock perverted her own special gift of magic, in her own specially-horrible way -- could have either devised or cast the Spell of Sameness. It was not quite Alicorn magic, because Starlight Glimmer was not quite an Alicorn, but it was of the same magnitude. It was magic of a complexity which could have been cast perhaps only by four Alicorns, and perhaps by a dozen or so non-Alicorn mages in known history, among whose number Twilight reckoned Starswirl the Bearded. It was magic that bespoke incredible potential, possibly the potential to become an Alicorn -- and it had been unspeakably befouled and perverted by its wielder. As far as Twilight Sparkle knew, there were only two Ponies on Earth right now who knew how to cast the Spell of Sameness. These were Starlight Glimmer -- and Twilight Sparkle herself. For Twilight was Magic; she could cast any spell she had ever witnessed, and she had more than witnessed the Sameness -- she had been its victim. So it was that Twilight knew how the Spell of Sameness worked; she understood its every dreadful convolution. She had deduced a complete knowledge of its underlying principles. And the knowledge weighed leaden upon her soul. *** When Twilight Sparkle had been a filly, she had rebelled against the whole concept of "forbidden knowledge." One memorable afternoon some nine years ago when she was fired with the certainity that came from being thirteen and knowing that she was a big filly now, she had a truly epic discussion with Celestia upon that very topic. All knowledge, Twilight argued, is good and valuable. All knowledge contains clues as to the nature of the Universe and hence can be restricted only at the price of hobbling equine progress; moreso, since knowledge can be easily replicated, in a cultural-evolutionary sense, information wants to be free. Twilight remembered how Celestia had smiled upon her as she made her passionate argument for intellectual freedom; a smile not of mockery but of approval for her student's youthful idealism and spirit. Celestia had never been one to crush dissent; she had always encouraged Twilight to explore and question what she had been taught. "The unexamined idea," Celestia had told her more than once, "becomes dogma. And dogma bars the gates to Enlightenment. Heed what you are taught, but do not believe it blindly; for even the wisest may have erred. Always ask how each new piece of knowledge fits in with what you already know, and be alert for contradiction -- for the accepted Paradox is the death of Reason." At this time, Twilight had simply thought that it had been an awesome argument for intellectual freedom. Now, after having learned something of the deeper nature of the Multiverse, and having spent m any happy hours in the company of Pinkie Pie, Twilight knew that Celestia had been telling her a truth with many deeper levels of meaning. So, when Twilight had advocated the complete freedom of information, she had constructed her own case upon the intellectual foundations Celestia had laid. Thus -- she now realized -- it had probably not come as a complete surprise to her mentor that she should have reached such conclusions. Indeed, Celestia had probably been smiling at her in pride that Twilight had worked through to the logical implications of Celestia's earlier statement. Celestia was like that: she taught less by rote than by guiding one's own mind to the discovery of new ideas. Now that Twilight was grown and had essayed her own mentorships, she understood how difficult a teaching technique that was in truth, and it made her appreciate even more the skill and patience of her Most Beloved Teacher. One concomitant of this method, of course, was that Celestia could not merely decree error, especially if the error is subtle. Instead, Celestia must demosntrate it -- preferably, in such a manner as to make her student see the error herself. This, of course, could be far more embarrassing for the erring student than a mere contradiction -- especially an erring student as conscientious as was the young Twilight Sparkle. It did, however, have the virtue of fixing the lesson firmly into her mind -- every such mistake burned itself into her memory in fiery letters of shame, a reaction which Twilight had only in the last few years begun to realize was excessive on her part. In this case, Celestia's lesson had taken the form of a story. "Suppose," she had said, "that there was a way to make a Pony immortal? Any Pony, not just an Alicorn, nor even a powerful mage. The Pony would be maintained for the rest of his life ..." (Celestia had actually used the male pronoun here, which Twilight found strange at the time; but not until much later did Twilight grasp her Teacher's likely reason) "... in unending youth and health and vigor. Would this not be a wonderful spell?" Celestia asked. "One which only the most jealous of tyrants would supress?" Twilight nodded in enthusiastic agreement. "Now," Celestia added, "suppose that things were precisely as I have proposed, but with some additional conditions. This immortality might be obtained and maintained only through the consumption of an alchemically-prepared food, of which the beneficiary must partake every year to retain his immortality. And ..." she paused, perhaps for deliberate effect, "... the preparation of each such meal for one Pony requires the equine sacrifice, by terrible tortures, of another Pony." For the moment, the exact meaning of what Celestia had said, in her calm angelic voice, did not register on the thirteen-year-old filly. When it did, the horror hit her like a kick to the head. Her eyes widened and she gasped in disbelief. "But surely," Twilight finally said, "No Pony would do such a thing!" She had been so naive then, the adult Twilight realized, looking back on it. She had been far from perfect, of course, even if her filly self had not clearly seen her own flaws. But she had been basically good, basically moral -- as she still was now -- and she had not yet emotionally grasped that some Ponies might be more willing to yield to evil temptation. "You think not?" Celestia's tone had been tinged by bitterness, something which surprised Twilight, as this was an emotion she rarely heard in the voice of her Teacher. "The alchemist in question was looking for a means to extend equine life -- a worthy enough goal. She experimented with hormonal therapies, and rediscovered telomerase -- a natural component of living cells, which strongly affects the aging process, as was known to the Ancients. She found that through the Law of Similarity, the telomerase of a living creature could be rejuvenated by the ritual preparation and consumption of the flesh of another living creature. All true -- and thus far, she had not sinned. "The problem, of course, was that her technique required the flesh of a creature of the same species as the beneficiary. The flesh of creatures of other species was, you see, insufficiently Similar. And, although she had begun her eperiments with mice, she was not at all interested in maintaining immortal mice, but rather Ponies." Celestia's face was sad. "What was worse, she could find no means of powering the transfer save by life force, and could obtain life force of sufficient affinity to the flesh to be consumed only by using that of the Pony from which the flesh had been taken. She had to kill that Pony, and slowly, with sufficient torture to press its soul into relinquishing its connection to the form." "That's terrible!" Twilight remembered having said at that point. She wondered if this she had sounded as inane saying this at thirteen as it seemed in her memory. "She tried to make it as pleasant as possible, at least for the beneficiary," Celestia said. "You must not imagine her engaging in bloody cannibal feasts, with great gobbets of steaming meat. She took the flesh, granulated it, and baked it with milk and flour and sugar. She baked it, in fact, into cupcakes." At that point Twilight had realized where she'd heard part of this story before. "The Cannibal Cupcakes of Horror-Pie?" she asked. "But that's just a Nightmare Night tale -- isn't it?" "Horror-Pie is indeed just a Nightmare Night tale," Celestia said, nodding. "Harmonia Pie, on the other hand, was quite real. She was a brilliant Pony, a true polymath -- in addition to being an alchemist and baker, she was also a metallurgist, a glasswright, and a gifted musician and singer. Her mind was truly amazing; she conversed with erudition and spoke with passion and considerable rhetorical force -- rather as do you, my Faithful Student. I like Ponies like that; when first I met her, I liked her very much. "She played at my Court more than once," Celestia said, "some three centuries ago," closing her eyes at the memory. "She had tremendous skill on the violin, and the voice of an angel." She opened her eyes, smiled at Twilight's expression. "I did not, of course, then know she would become a murderous cannibal. She may have even started her experiments by then -- she already looked uncommonly young for a mare of almost sixty. But I just assumed that it was the natural vigor one sees in some Earth Ponies." Twilight's mind was reeling at this confirmation of the truth behind the terrifying old tale, and she felt revolted by the revelation of implied similarities between its villain and Twilight herself. "But how could she actually do things like that?" Twilight had asked Celestia. "How could she justify such monstrous murders to herself?" "It's interesting that you worded your question that way," replied Celestia. "For, of course, the point of this story is that she did commit such murders. And she could not have done this without first justifying it to herself. For -- mark this well, Twilight -- she was not evil at the start. Few ever are. She wanted to benefit all Ponykind. And that was her justification." "Because if she died she couldn't perfect her process?" asked Twilight. "Very good!" Celestia beamed broadly at Twilight. Then the smile faded. "She wanted to find a way to enable flesh other than that of a Pony to be used as the key ingredient in her Cupcakes. Or, failing that, to distill the crucial element so that the death of one Pony might support many Pony-years of life. And she might have succeeded, had she the medical science of the Ancients at her disposal. But, of course, she did not. So she felt herself forced to go on killing and killing. "And it gets worse. For Harmonia Pie had a husband -- Adventurine. He was also her assistant, and her best friend, and they felt for each other the sort of passion which love songs celebrate. Oh yes, my dear student, love is possible even between those who commit monstrous evils. Mark this well, Twilight -- villains need not be the two-dimensional figures that they are portrayed in popular tales. Even the worst tyrant was once a playful little colt, and possibly a hopeful swain, eyes starry with love Each is to himself the Hero, rather than the Monster, in his own tale." At that her eyes had automatically darted in the direction of her garden, something whose significance Twilight Sparkle had not understood at the time. "And her husband had a sister, who was named Honesty, though she was not at all honest, save in her loyalty to her brother and sister-in-law. Honesty was the best friend and confidante of Harmonia, and was Harmonia's other hench-pony. Harmonia could not let her beloved husband and her dear best friend perish either; besides, she argued to herself, she needed their help to complete her great work. "So there were three of them, and they must needs kill three Ponies per year added to their own lives. You may see from this that the roster of their victims soon became rather a long one, especially since their crimes continued for about a century. And their horrid murders went unsuspected!" "How did they get away with it?" Twilight had asked. "They'd killed some three hundred Ponies!" "And more," said Celestia. "Remember, they needed to kill three Ponies a year in a protracted ritual of slow torture. To get these three, they sometimes had to kill twice or more as many whom they could not capture and slowly kill. By my guess, before the end of their career, Harmonia Pie and her associates had murdered at least a thousand Ponies." "And nopony noticed this?" Twilight's tone had been skeptical. She had wondered if this was all some macabre joke on the part of her sometimes tricky mentor. "The times were unsettled," Celestia explained, "and the roads unsafe. Banditry was all-too common in some provinces. They adopted disguises, went to those provinces, and lured these robbers to attack them. The alchemist and her friends were smart, strong, skilled and had access to unusual pyrotechnics, poisons and other preparations. They would slay some of a gang, and make captive the survivors, then bear them back to their own lair to suffer a far worse fate than any of my laws would have dealt them. For not even in capital cases would I deem death by torture. And they more than once seized the treasures of successful bandits, and used them to support their own researches." "They were playing live-action Ogres and Oubliettes," commented Twilight. "For keeps." "An apt analogy!" Celestia complimented her. "Indeed, and that is rather how they viewed their actions, as one can tell from their journals." At Twilight's look of surprise, Celestia nodded. "Oh yes. They kept journals. Remember, they were scientists, and they thought of themselves as heroes, ridding the land of brutal criminals in pursuit of their greater goal of defeating death. The Night Watch has some of them in their archives. No, I will not show them to you, not until you are older -- they would make upsetting reading for one of your tender years." At the time this statement had upset Twilight -- she thought that at thirteen she was certainly old enough to read some musty old tale of historical murders -- but she wisely remained silent on the topic. "You may wonder that none of them died in such dangerous pursuits. The fact is that I simplify the story -- the three who I named sometimes recruited additional assistants, though they did try to keep their numbers small -- the more who knew their secret, the greater the danger of discovery, and in any case there were few they could trust to both be honorable enough to keep the secret and ruthless enough to join them in their dark crusade. Most of their assistants were chosen from among their own offspring -- over their protracted lives, Harmonia Pie and Honesty Miter gave birth to numerous foals. "These additional assistants were less experienced and capable than were the original trio, who were by then quite hardened and skilled in the foul arts of murder. Some fell in battle with the bandits; some to other hazards of the roads; some lost faith in the quest and retired to more normal lives; and some tried to betray their parents and were slain for their treachery -- mostly by Honesty, who was considerably more ruthless than were her brother and sister-in-law. Honesty never really formed strong bonds with any Ponies other than Harmonia and Aventurine, and even her own children rather feared her. "Harmonia and Aventurine had numerous sons, many of whom left lines whose descendants live today, and most of whom are unaware of their infamous foremother. But above all they had three daughters, who from eldest to youngest were named Proserpina, Crucible and Cupcake. Proserpina participated in the murders out of the desire to survive and a sense of duty to her mother; Crucible enjoyed them entirely too much; and Cupcake, alone, was innocent of any killings, and I am not sure that she even suspected her family's avocation, for she was in some ways very much like a foal, even though she lived well beyond the natural span of years of even an Earth Pony. "Nevertheless, she too must be supplied with the Cupcakes of Life, and so it was that this cannibal clan was now slaughtering at least half a dozen Ponies per year, and some years a dozen or more, in order to maintain their existence," continued Celestia. "I cannot pretend to know their inwardness: I have lived longer than them, and as monarch I have made decisions which have had the effect of killing more than they ever slew ..." "Surely not!" gasped Twilight. "You are a good and merciful Princess!" Celestia smiled fondly. "I am happy that you think so, my Most Faithful Student, and of course I try to be, but as the autocrat of the Realm, I must from time to time make decisions in which I know that no matter what I decide, it will statistically result in the deaths of some Ponies. Suppose, to take a common example, that I wish a railroad to be pushed through some trackless wilderness, to serve a town a the end of this route. If I order this railroad built, I know that it is likely that there will be accidents in its construction; some Ponies will die when their tools slip, or they stumble off cliffs, or by the premature detonation of their blasting powder. Yet if I decide not to build the railroad, then the continued impoverishment of the town it would have served will mean less food, less medicine, and less opportunity for the citizens of that growing town, and thus they will live poorer lives and die younger than if I had built the railroad. And if I choose to make no decision, then it is as if I had decided not to build the road, with the added problem that both town and railroad company await my decision, and until then can make no certain plans. "Life is often a choice of evils, Twilight, in which all paths involve sacrifice, and perhaps some injustice. And as Ruling Princess, I must discern which path involves the least sacrifice, the least injustice. I choose as best I can, knowing that some shall suffer and die, some fail to receive their proper recompense, whatever course I choose. This is part of the responsibility of power, the burden I put upon my back when I yoked myself to the Cart of State. It is a burden I must bear to some degree alone, for however many Ponies may help me, in the end I must make the crucial decisions. "And it is a burden that to some degree is shared, because of my officials who advise me and carry out my orders, the best of them know full well what they are doing, and they know that in proposing one or another course of advice, they are increasing the likelihood that some shall suffer or die, and others live longer and better lives. If you continue to be an attentive student, it is possible that you shall someday be one of those officials, or ...." Celestia seemed about to say something, then reconsidered. "In any case, you may someday bear some share of the burden, and though you may be eager to be of use to me now ..." Twilight remembered that she had been excited at the time, her eyes no doubt shining and ears perked up. "... I warn you that it may be a heavy load, even for a Student as Faithful as you, and with a mind as agile as yours." Celestia sighed. "In any case, I am undying like those alchemists, and I have slain more than them in my time, whether by mistaken decisions, or directly in defense of the Realm. But I may truly say that I never had to bake any Ponies into cupcakes to achieve my ageless life. I was born that way ... I attained immortality without having to work for it." She smiled sardonically, and laughed. "Though from time to time there have been those who wished to relieve me of that condition, and had I not worked hard to stay alive, I would not be here to teach you now!" And for a moment, Twilight had seen beneath Celestia's usual good cheer, and shivered as she sensed Celestia's true age. Even though, then, she had not yet known that the Celestia she saw was but the fleshly avatar of something far, far older. "So passed a century. Harmonia and Aventurine had settled in North-Dunnich on the the Miskatrottic River in Morgan Province, but folk had come to mark their age, began to wonder why it was that they did not wither and die like other Ponies. Harmonia had chosen the place partly because it was within a day's journey from Arkhoof, and the treasure-trove of lore that was contained in Miskatrottic University there, but those very same scholars might guess her secret. It was getting on time to move, a move which they accomplished in 1277. "And here, ironically in her very sentimentality, Harmonia made a mistake. For she had been born in South-Dunnich, on the White Tail River -- about a hundred miles southwest of this very spot on which we sit right now -- in 1140, about 137 years earlier. Her age was wearing upon her; she felt apart from the changing world. She wanted to go home, to recapture the memories of her fillyhood. She and her friends kept their birth names, correctly surmised that none, or very few, still lived who might connect the Harmonia and Aventurine and Honesty who returned with the trio who had left a century ago; her story being that they were descendants of those who had left South-Dunnich so long ago. "What she did not consider, after a hundred years of living by murder and trickery, in defiance of my laws, was that she would still arouse some suspicions. She would have done better to have chosen some new town, somewhere that her trio was unknown. And, certainly, she should have changed their names. Had she done that, perhaps she would be alive today. Or perhaps not." Celestia looked off at something known only to her mind's eys, and said sadly. "We are none of us infallible, not even those of us who manage to attain -- or happen to be born to -- immortality." "And then the Night Watch caught them?" Twilight had eagerly asked. "Not quite, said Celestia. "Life is not always as neat as a virtue-tale!" She smiled gently at Twilight, to take the sting off her comment, and then continued. "No, she and her followers returned to South-Dunnich, which was a town then dying, for the town's old industries, brought by immigrants from the North-Realm some eight centuries past, were dying, outcompeted by the new methods of wind and water and steam which were being born in the great cities of the Eastern Coast. South-Dunnich is still there, dreaming in the shadow of the White Tail Mountains, but it would not exist today were it not for Harmonia." "How come?" Twilight had asked in surprise. "Harmonia brought with her the treasure she had reaved from generations of bandits, much-increased by labor and investment over a century of effort," Celestia explained. "And, at least more importantly, she brought her own skills, and those of her followers, and these were far from negligible. To the dying town, such monies and talents were like the draft that feeds the roaring furnace of some great factory. "Harmonia first built a bakery, of course, both for mundane reasons and for the preparation of her terrible sustenance. But then she constructed a water-powered saw mill, a fulling mill and a glass-blowing shop, among other enterprises. The fires of industry had come to South-Dunnich, and the town began to ship its goods down the White Tail River and up the Avalon, to appear in the shops of Canterlot itself. Ponyville, of course, did not yet exist; but the place was on the trade route, and a tavern appeared north of the river, to serve the river-ponies and waggoners. The young Ponies of South-Dunnich found jobs in the new factories instead of leaving home for ever, and the old town revived. "So it was that new good sprang from old evil, and the wages of sin were prosperity," said Celestia, her voice tinged with sarcasm. "Harmonia and her friends had evaded all punishment for their crimes, and Harmonia herself became established as a respected leader of the town. Indeed, they formed a town militia, which was energetic against the river pirates who then preyed on the boats along the White Tail. And if some of the river pirates they caught -- perhaps as many as half a dozen to a dozen a year -- never made it to trial in my courts, who noticed? Who cared?" Her tone was now openly bitter. "But surely somepony must have noticed! Somepony should have cared!" Twilight had cried out in frustration. "What were you doing!" she had demanded -- then cringed, a moment later, aghast at her own temerity. "I ..." Celestia looked uncomfortable. "At that time, I had ... other preoccupations. And I truly had no idea what was going on. The Realm was then less well-organized, and governing far more difficult. There were no airships, no railroads, no steamboats, and neither telephones nor even telegraphs to speed messages. It was a different time, Twilight, and distances loomed larger than they do in your modern world. Who noticed the deaths of a dozen criminals a year? Who cared about them?" Her ears drooped slightly. "Yet I was their sovereign, the ruler of honest subject and criminal alike. Justice was my responsibility. I should have noticed. I should have cared. I ... did not. I ... failed them." Twilight had immediately hated herself for having provoked that reaction. "Forgive me, Beloved Teacher," she had said, bowing her head. Celestia smiled at her, and gently stroked her mane. "There is nothing to forgive," she said. "You are expressing my own ideals. And, if you are becoming less the mouse and more the manticore, it is from your own greatness of heart. Besides," she had added, "the Realm shall need a manticore, in what is coming." And Twilight had not, at that time, understood Celestia's last sentence.