//------------------------------//
// The Perilous Princess 
// Story: Peace 
// by Masterweaver 
//------------------------------//

	The stars glimmered, as they always did. Glimmered and glistened and gleamed, tiny spokes of wonder in the great expanse. And of course, there was the crown gem, the multi-colored disk with an all too familiar silhouette painted in black splotches.

She let her eyes rove through the panorama, flexing her leathery wings in silent contemplation. Once, long ago, she would have jumped off the spinneret she perched on and glided about in sheer glee, a rare display of passion in the night. Once, long ago, she would have given anything to be where she was now.

Once, long ago... she would have been overjoyed to be able to fly freely under the stars.

Now...

Now, they were beautiful, but ignored. Now they were omnipresent, but pointless. Now the world was focused on finding dangers, shoring up the walls. She was expected to fight alongside their glorious ruler when called... or at the very least, fight for her in battles too unimportant for her to grace. Everywhere she stepped, other ponies shied away, silence overcoming their whispered conversations. Once her wings were a symbol of the night's freedom, but now they had become seen as the tools of the ruler's will.

She'd taken to cloaking herself, posing as a disgruntled earth pony in the small town next to the palace. It was the only way she could be around others without inducing abject terror. It had taken time for the town to accept the 'outsider', but she'd persisted, snarking her way into a small group of ponies and eventually earning their respect when she dunked five mugs in one night. She'd yet to take off the cloak, she didn not want them to back off, but sometimes she considered it.

A smile flitted across her face as she remembered the friends she found there. The old stallion who'd been cut off from the largest part of his fortune when the sun went down forever; the stubborn mare who'd turned to dusty books and managed to keep a small grove of apples alive. Oh and her brother, wow. There were a couple unicorns there too--a little worse for the wear, since many of them had fought and spent time locked away, but... well, those who remained had their ways. She even suspected that one of her 'earth pony' friends was actually a pegasus... featherflyers were rare these days, most being captured or willingly converting their wings.

It was part of the glorious ruler's mandate--only she and her favored were allowed to claim the sky.

A fruitbat flew up to her, chirping in its annoying little way, and she let out a groan, shooing it away. The chirping of bats was nothing compared to the song of birds, all harsh and high-pitched and designed to echo. The only thing she shared with these tiny creatures were her wings and her hearing; they were pests, mockeries of her kind. And yet the glorious ruler felt that, merely because she and her kind loved the night, anything that looked like them was to be elevated.

Her eyes followed the bat as it flew away, falling on the blue flaming gates that were Tartarus. That, at least, was one thing the glorious ruler had gotten mostly right, one good spot in all her madness. When Discord came, she overpowered him. When Sombra returned, she overwhelmed him. When Tirek broke free, she sought him out, their duel becoming legend for the great devastation it brought before the monster was downed. The glorious ruler did not so much reign from her throne as wait upon it, a ready defender for Equestria to launch at whatever threatened them--and since her sister's fall, there had been many threats. The day to day governing was left to other ponies.

...and only ponies. The glorious ruler had already driven the dragons out before her. The donkeys, already rare, were slowly slinking out of their own accord. Sheep and Cattle, dependent on formerly available grass, thinned their herds as many died of starvation. She even felt a pity for the griffons, whom she had despised before; their lost empire was eaten up by the new order, and any found were infected with the madness of the glorious ruler. Nationstates from across the world had launched assault after assault, and she had watched the glorious warrior dive into battle with her crazed laughter.

Now, Equestria was safe. Well, safe from marauders at the least. No foreigner would dare face them, for fear that their leader would rise into the air and decide them of import. The monsters within the border had learned to avoid cities and towns, running whenever spotted. Death came to the sick, the old, and the cruel, never the innocent.

And ponies were free, free to think and create. The glorious ruler was... strange, in that way. She minded not what the songs and arts portrayed, even if it was the sun. She would lavish over a child's scribble just as much as a master's magnum opus. She would fund the most exotic of sciences and devices, should they come to her attention. She spread wealth with all the care of a butterfly, freely and wildly. Always laughing, always.

That laughter... that was about the only thing about her personality that remained stable. Sometimes it was kind. Sometimes it was cruel. Sometimes cunning, sometimes pointless. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. Sometimes she cried, but even then, she laughed. It didn't take the eyes of a hawk to spot, and it didn't take the mind of a fox to know... something was deathly wrong with this mare. Deathly wrong.

Pointing it out would almost certainly result in death.

The stars glimmered above. Once, she had loved them, wanting to see them at all times, wanting to fly hooting and hollering beneath their glorious pinpricks. Once she would have given everything to be where she was now.

And she sat on the spinneret and stared into the great beyond.

"...it wasn't worth it."