Celestia came awake with a start, she could have sworn she heard someone speaking to her. Yet as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she was as alone as she had been when she had lain down to ‘rest her eyes’. Glancing at the dimming light behind the window shades, she must have slept for some hours. It was hard to get used to such a long period of inactivity. Eat, read, sleep, rinse and repeat.
Slowly she got to her hooves, paying the rattle of her chain no mind as she made her way to her vanity with unexpectedly good cheer, looking into her mirror. Pink bed-head mane… oh dear. She gave a soft huff and resisted the urge to blow a raspberry at the mirror, instead setting to work. Focusing her levitation on a brush to sort the mess out somewhat.She needed to get that fixed as soon as possible, Rainbow Dash typically came to check up on her in- The knock was firm and steady, three repeated taps that shook the frame just lightly.
“O-One moment. Rainbow? Is that you?” Her voice was slightly slurred by sleep. “Oh my, I’ll be right with you… I’d not expected to fall asleep again…” She tugged at a stubborn tangle. ”Come in, come in! How is Twilight?” She didn’t bother to turn as she heard the door open.
“Twilight… is much, much better.” A soft, sultry voice replied from the doorway. Celestia felt her mind grind to a halt, the brush wobbling in her uncertain telekinesis as she managed to turn and face her ‘guest’. A few more slow steps, and the Archdevil gently closed the door behind herself, shutting out the world for the moment as well. “She has been healing, and growing increasingly bored with being cooped up. And she is here to see you, Celestia. Will you give her an audience?”
Celestia managed only through main strength to not drop the brush. Even so, her immobility persisted as she beheld the Archdevil she had hoped to see soon enough...
Soon enough, not now. Not still logy from slumber and feeling decidedly unkempt. Her plans for subtlety and persuasion were much less impressive with bed head. Though from the flicker of confusion in Twilight’s expression, she rather thought this wasn’t a planned visit on part of the Archdevil either. And that, however slight, was a minor victory she could get her bearings with.
Closing her eyes for a moment, she summoned her usual serenity like a cloak to wrap herself in. A gentle smile, a relaxed posture. All the trappings of her station and purpose. Threadbare without her power to back it up, but useful in finding her hoofing nonetheless.
“I would be most happy to see her.” She responded, “Though please forgive my state… I’ve been rather off my-” Her voice petered off at the piercing, almost sour look on Twilight’s face before with a twinge she watched all emotion flee from her eyes and expression. And Celestia felt her stomach tighten at the familiar signs of a mask slipping into place, though now seen from outside. “Ah well, I’m sure you’ve come for more than to discuss my appalling sleep schedule.”
Setting the brush back to her vanity, she gestured towards her sitting area, the clink of her chain with the motion throwing off the poise of the gesture. “Would you care to sit?”
“Yes, thank you.” Oh the woodenness of that reply, even her tone betrayed nothing now. What had just happened?
Silently they adjourned to lounges near the window, Twilight taking the one furthest from the bed in deference to Celestia’s fetter it seemed. Courtesy of a sort at least. “What is it that brings you here?”
Twilight smiled, but it was a fake politeness that in no way reached her eyes. and seeing such a refined affectation on a face she remembered as so open and honest was a bitter touch to her heart. “I believe you have a policy for demonic visitors. Shall we handle the formalities before we continue? I’d not have Cadance think herself less trustworthy in comparison.”
Yes… honesty. That would be very good right now.
“A-as you wish. Speak with me, Demon. Speak without ruse or guile… For our time together let us be honest with each other. I bear you no ill will and shall offer you no harm this night, in return I expect no harm be given, nor beguilement attempted. I offer conversation and a… c-conversation as terms.”
As she expected, Twilight’s eyes glowed brilliantly in the dim light from the covered windows. A flare of purple fire that leapt free from her slitted gaze. Her lips parted, and the voice which emerged was… n-not Twilight. Where Cadance’s voice was caressing and soft, cool and seducing, Twilight’s expressed different and infinitely more terrible influences.
“I reject your terms.” It hissed and crackled, there was a rush like an inferno backing the words spoken, which faded to the crackling of a bonfire behind them.
Celestia was stunned by the denial, unsure what to say…
“I offer a counter proposal.” Baleful flaming eyes skewered her where she sat, sending a sudden tremor down her spine. “I propose Truth. A question asked for a question answered. Questions are to be answered with the absolute truth as written in our hearts. I shall swear my honesty by the Pits in which I was reborn. And require a similar oath by the Sun on your part.”
Lips drew back in a fanged smile, those cruel eyes growing amusedly challenging. “Refusing to answer will of course nullify the geas on both. Oh, and that uttered rhetorically does not count.”
This was a much more specific and… treacherous contract. Yet the challenge in those eyes was not something Celestia found herself able to reject. And there was also the rather backhanded insinuation that She was the one being untruthful somehow. She didn’t even bother to hide her offense at the very idea.
“I accept,” She grated out, returning the glare with one of her own. “And I swear by the Sun to answer with truth absolute, as written upon my heart.”
“Done!”
With a flash and a final crackle, the flames in the Archdevil’s eyes went out.
“Ahem, par-don the theatrics,” Twilight gave a rough cough, a sparkling ember escaping her throat to flare into ash. “Power is a slave to drama at times.”
Celestia felt her lips twitch at such by-play. “I can’t help but wonder if Power might enjoy the occasional villainous monologue.”
“Oh you’ve no idea. So very cathartic. Especially the madcap cackling. The cackle is very important to properly loosen up after a prolonged monologue.” Twilight drew herself upright with a short breath, producing a soft, but recognizable rendition of an evil cackle. “Totally worth the increased risk of the hero escaping while you gloat.”
Celestia couldn’t help the short bark of laughter that escaped her. “Playing to type doesn’t help your case very much, Twilight.”
“Everyone is the hero of their own story, Celestia. It’s as true for Archdevils and Goddesses as it is for our little ponies. Only the truly insane do bad things solely for the sake of such.”
“Are you? Insane?” The questions left her lips before she could stop it, her eyes never leaving Twilight’s as they widened slightly at the tone of Celestia’s first true query.
“I am quite lucid. Considering what I’ve been through over the past three centuries, I have my quirks and my coping methods, as all of us do. But, no, nothing I do is done for the simple satisfaction of sadism or narcissistic gratification.”
“And yet, here I am, chained to my bed while you are moving to conquer my nation.” Celestia retorted tightly, lifting a loop of her leash for emphasis.
“Former nation if we’re going to be quite accurate about it. And I’m taking it back from the arrogant assholes that took it away from you in the first place.” Twilight’s response was delivered with a soft snarl behind her words. “Go on. I’ll give you another one.”
“When I was released, there was a wounded High Mage who had, I thought, broken my banishment. What do you know of his story?”
Twilight’s horns gleamed softly, a rippling illusion showing the unicorn Celestia had met, though not in the injured state she had seen him.
“Radiant Bolt, one of the self-styled ‘High Mages’ who lead the guild after the loss of the Archmage. He was attending the public execution of a well liked minor noble when the invasion began. He was in the group of Nobles which fled, but broke away with a retinue of guards and made his way into an abandoned sector of the industrial district.”
“He was wounded though, when I landed…”
The illusion shimmered, shifting to show the High Mage scattering his retinue and turning to a rather burly guard. They spoke for a moment before the guard lashed out at him with a forehoof, knocking him to the ground and advancing on him with violent intent, yet the mage did not retaliate.
“He had a guard do that. Your preference for mercy is well known. His behaviour, the answers to your questions, all carefully crafted to ensure your actions were consistent with his wishes.”
“I was checking him for falsehood!”
The illusion twisted suddenly and shivered out of existence, a curl of faint smoke coming from the tips of Twilight’s horns, which she irritably dispelled with a shake of her head.
“Of course you were, and that you would was easily predictable! He kept his answers very factual, didn’t he. Letting you tie the facts he provided together in only the way he wished to get you to the conclusion he wanted. Misleading without resorting to falsehood is an art, Celestia. As you are well aware of.”
“And with him doing a major ritual, you chose not to intervene…” Celestia observed with disbelief “there was no guarantee that he was releasing us!”
“I was actually expecting something like this would happen. And if anypony could intuit a ritual spell it would be me! As soon as I had a reasonable surety of his intent we backed off until he could finish. I had anticipated that he was actually breaking the banishment. It’s concerning that he could manipulate so complex a spell array as he did.” Twilight murmured, as if to herself as she pondered the significance of that surprising outcome before shaking herself free of it.
“Regardless, releasing you was always a potential reaction once our initial forces proved overwhelming to their available mercenaries. They haven’t really been innovating once they were on top, so they had no other ready answers to a wave of demons. The troops we expended to make the initial invasion overwhelming was in part geared at forcing their hoof in that direction.”
Celestia pondered these revelations, both the subtle manipulations and the not so subtle desperation which forced the gambit upon her enemies. “What became of him?”
Twilight’s grin held a certain smugness but also a shadow of remembered pain. And to Celestia’s mind rose the image of the Archdevil writhing torturously, wreathed in arcane discharges. “He was the one channeling the array to reactivate the banishment. I burned him to ash so fine he’s probably still floating on the winds.”
“So I’ve seen you, Cadance and Rainbow Dash, where are the other elements?”
“Fluttershy is currently scouting the forests around Canterlot, trying to determine why game is so scarce. There is something very wrong in Equestria. Applejack is growing a Fel-grove on the slopes north of the city, trying to adapt various demonic plants to Equestrian soil to build up some food reserves before winter. Everything we’ve seen so far indicates Equestria is having drought troubles and food may be a real issue. Pinkie is taking care of the school for gifted ponies.”
“Wh-what?!”
“Don’t sound so surprised, she’ll be fantastic with the younger students, and keep the faculty off balance. That will help them adjust to teaching more than just little unicorns. Rarity has been helping Cadance organize the restructuring of Canterlot while I’ve been healing.”
“Alright… what are your true goals for the conquest then?”
“The complete and comprehensive reshuffling of the power structure of Equestria. The recovery of damaged minorities and the overthrow of the classist political process which has stripped the heart and soul from our home.”
“A balanced structure that I built, though I agree it has been misused.”
“A structure that has reached its logical conclusion.”
“I don’t accept that. This is an aberration. I still believe in the good hearts of my ponies.”
“Ponies with good hearts never went into your politics, Celestia. You were always looking out passed your obstructionist nobility to other civic centers and outside sources for help! You sat in courts full of nauseating unicorns who were by and large interested only in enlarging their own estates and dictating how the common ponies should defer to their whims. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. I lived here, and I saw it first hoof.”
“No system works perfectly, there will always be the unintended outcomes in service to the greater good. You yourself are the product of a noble house Twilight. Do not besmirch that birthright casually.”
“I haven’t found them yet, you know. Mom and Dad… Spike… no trace. The family estate was listed as abandoned, and bulldozed. No record of a forwarding address of any kind. So either they made it out of this den of jackals you call a capitol during the coup, or your oh so misguided nobility ensured they disappeared. If it’s the latter, I may just melt this entire city into a puddle of glass for it.”
“Genocidal threats do not make me inclined to trust you.”
“At least they’re honest!”
“You keep harping on honesty! I fail to see where I have ever lied to you!”
“... honesty isn’t simply never telling an untruth, and you know that.”
“Then stop beating about the bush and speak clearly!”
“Very well, you’ve had six questions total, one being a freebie, a question asked for a question answered. At your most efficient, how many entire cakes have you ever consumed in a single day?”
Two.
“T-...”
Three.
“Thr…” Celestia’s eyes widened as the geas clamped down, leaving her unable to speak until the proper number was on her tongue. She took a bitter breath to acquiesce to the inevitable.
“I withdraw the question.” Twilight looked amused and slightly smug as she released the screw. The pressure of the geas slacking.
“Nnnngh, th-that was very petty Twilight...” Celestia felt her cheeks burning, as much from the acute realization of what their little game denied her as from the potential for a shamefully honest answer to that question being unwillingly dragged from her lips. She schooled herself to calm, this was a more perilous ‘game’ than she had surmised.
Twilight chuckled softly, nodding and slumping against the back of the sofa, “I agree, it was an unworthy query. It does introduce you to how this particular geas operates though. So, let’s get to the real questions.”
“Assuming that you had defeated Cadance and myself, and that the Nobles didn’t have their clever little way to button you back up. What would you have done?”
“Recovered the Elements of Harmony to attempt to cleanse you all.” Celestia’s answer was direct and to the point, bitten out almost in defiance of the geas. Yet there was no interference from the contract, and she felt herself relaxing just a bit with that knowledge.
Twilight considered her response carefully, weighing it against her own incomplete knowledge of the relics in question. “Hmmmm, assuming of course that the Tree of Harmony would let them be removed again, and that you could use them against their bearers.”
“Former bearers, and it would at least be a chance.” At the widening of Twilight’s eyes, she realized how that must have sounded and resisted the urge to wince at the unpolitic manner of her reply.
“So you don’t allow for the possibility that we might retain our link with the elements?”
Caught off guard by the direct nature of the question, Celestia balked at answering it. “I…” ...refuse to believe that demons could ever be in command of the Elements of Harmony! No! She would NOT say it like that. The geas pricked her immediately. Nnnngh… “ I f-find.. It… unlikely.” She managed, feeling a drop of sweat trickling down her neck at… the effort it had taken to make that answer truthful but not… damagingly inflammatory.
Twilight regarded her with such an expressionless face that Celestia knew she was quite able to read between the lines, still, that was better than outright saying such to her face!
“You think that all demonkind are inharmonious. That we have no place in the natural order.” It wasn’t a question. Celestia realized that. The geas would not force her to answer. And yet something much more vital bid she speak, something in the depths of those cold slitted eyes, something held apart from the heat and brimstone of the devil she saw before her.
“Demons belong in Tartarus, where they punish those souls which require correction.” Her lips twisted at the sour taste of the words, yet she managed to not drop her gaze, though the frost from Twilight’s eyes threatened to ice over her very heart. “In any other setting, demons are aberrant, and therefore a force of disharmony in the natural order.”
“Well, thank you for that at least.” The wintry smile that crept over Twilight’s lips was hardly comforting yet at least it was a response, not that expressionless deadpan. “For what it’s worth, I do appreciate a straight answer. I would observe that you’re keeping it all rather starkly black and white when the reality is rather more complicated than that. ‘Correction’ has nothing to do with what goes on in Tartarus, having experienced it first hoof. And I am a specific example that not all souls who end up there deserve ‘punishment’ as you define it.”
“There are always exceptions to the norms. You cannot use your special case as a means to define the purpose of it all!”
“Then let’s compare your centuries of suppositional knowledge with my first hand account as both the tormented and the tormenter. I’ve seen the realm from both sides of the coin. I doubt you seriously expect to sit there and tell me to my face that you’ve a better handle on the nature of Infernus Diaboli than I do.”
“... No, I don’t suppose I fairly can..”
“Well, let’s table that discussion for another time.”
“Yes, let’s.”
“What is your heart's dearest desire?”
Shock rooted Celestia in place for a moment, until the geas prodded her gently. Eyes wide, thoughts rose in her consciousness, potential answers to so deep a query.
Freedom and happiness for my little ponies.
Equestria back under my rule.
My sister, with me now, and unscarred by the Nightmare.
Not being the Solar Goddess with the weight of Equus on my shoulders.
And yet none of them would leave her lips, her brow furrowing in concentration, and mounting confusion. Maybe there were too many? Maybe she didn’t know which was most important to her?
I don’t know. I don’t know what my deepest desire would be.
And yet that would not pass the geas either. And she felt a surge of panic, never had she felt such a terrifying sense of interrogation from a question before in her long life.
Well, I don’t know what you want me to say. And I haven’t a clue what the acceptable answer would be… so I guess we’re stuck, I’d answer if I knew what it wa-
“Foals.”
She was struck numb by the word that her lips had just uttered. That she had been forced to voice. The pulse of the geas just strong enough to compel the utterance and then relaxing. The silence of her chambers throbbing in her ears as her horror grew.
She hadn’t thought of that in centuries, not directly. The centuries of effort to fulfill nature’s imperatives, then centuries more of research into what the problem might be, culminating in the cruel impotence of sterility… She braced herself for Twilight’s response, certain it would be a barb of some sort. She had underestimated the importance of this contract and the things it would dredge up.
“That’s what Cadance and I were to you, wasn’t it? Surrogate daughters.” Twilight’s voice was exceedingly gentle, and as Celestia managed to flick her gaze up to take in her face, she saw both sympathy and concern in her slitted eyes, she wasn’t expecting either from the younger mare.
“Y-yes.” Her response left still numbed lips, the tingling in her skull driving out all other concerns for the moment as she realized the ramifications of this line of questioning.
“You had a hoof in our ascendances. You arranged events for that outcome..”
A soft sigh of defeat escaped her. “Not specifically… I spent the last millennia figuring out precisely how to make ascendance occur, but I can’t control or predict the event itself, or the form it would take.” Well, there was another secret out of the bag.
“Fascinating… I would dearly love to explore your research together… when you’d trust me with it.”
The scholar speaks… Celestia couldn’t help but feel a certain thrill to hear that eager tone again. Her next thought, however, frosted over that initial warmth even as it turned into a bitter question from one breath to the next. “ Why not just ask me for a synopsis, while you’ve this advantage and I’m apparently incapable of hiding anything from you?”
“That makes seven questions total, and raises my unused bank to two by the way. I meant entirely what I said. Such a project would be incredibly important to you… and earning your honest trust is likewise important to me. As much as I’m dying to know, I’ll wait for you to feel like sharing it, when we can both enjoy it.”
My, what a carrot to win my cooperation. Oh, I wish that I could trust you, Twilight!
“So… two to go?” Celestia prompted tightly, anything to get off the current topic, any topic would be better than the current one.
“Were the heads of the Noble houses at your mercy right now, what would you wish to see done with them?”
Justice for the crimes they’ve committed.
“Justi-... J..” Her eyes narrowed as she found herself incapable of forming even a word… the pressure of the geas forestalling the answer she wished to give… not honest enough?
“I’m waiting Celestia… what would you wish to see happen to those who have worked so hard to tear apart all you’ve built for their own ascendancy?”
To see them tried for their crimes before Equestrian Law.
Kept from hurting anyone else!
Imprisoned!
Punished!
“...” Her teeth grated against each other as her jaw clenched hard. All the easy, reasonable, ‘right’ answers to that question stuck in her throat as the geas exerted its influence.
“Will you forfeit the contract then? Because you won’t face what’s in your heart? This is why I ‘harp on honesty’. You deny your own desires and then judge me for honestly speaking my mind. So what will it be?”
“I want them dead. No… not just dead… I want them to suffer… s-suffer e-everything they’ve c-caused in o-thers, and th-then d-die. A-and I w-want to do it m-myself.” She bit out each word, a hot, angry tear tracing down her cheek as she was forced to give vent to thoughts and feelings better left buried. And in that bitter moment, finding herself hating Twilight for having trapped her so, finding herself on her hooves, as if in rising she could somehow match the menace of the Archdevil in that moment.
“And you’ve every right to feel that. It’s healthy! So stop acting like it’s some unspeakable sin to express such anger!” Twilight responded to her glare with one of her own, wings flaring, looking more than ready to deliver a more physical challenge if required without even shifting her seat.
“But it is! What is fine for my little ponies c-can’t be the standard I hold myself to!” Her anger broke in the face of a familiar and terrible fear. “I have the p-power to act on such urges! Can’t you see?” She struggled to find a way to properly express the cold panic that rushed in to turn her blood to ice. “I’d be m-monstrous if I let s-such thoughts prey on me!”
Twilight simply gazed at her, wings slowly relaxing, her breathing slowly calming, yet her eyes never losing their hard edge. A few moments passed, as Celestia felt her own panic begin to recede, until Twilight once again spoke, her voice firm and controlled once more. “Did you know I found the Wonderbolts? Well… Spitfire, Soarin and Fleetfoot at least. I don’t know about the others yet. They were imprisoned. Would you like to know where?”
“I-I…”
Celestia sat back heavily on her haunches, eyes widening slowly. The Wonderbolts… Her trusted pegasi, the elite air forces of Equestria. She had met and spoken with each and every one of them. They were good, loyal ponies. Young, kind…
“They threw them into the mines, Celestia. They wrapped them in iron bands, cast them into the dark, and tried to work them to death underground. No light, no air, no freedom, not even able to move their wings! You know what that will do to a pegasus. It’s one of the most deranged, sadistic, utterly unconscionable acts I’ve encountered in a litany of horrors!”
“Snfff.”
“For seven years, Celestia. Seven years they pulled ore carts and dug in the rock with their bare hooves. And when we invaded, when the mining district was being assaulted, the foreponies left the laborers in the mines and fled, destroying the generators to force my troops into rescue efforts instead of pursuing them. And while they were trying to get the generators back online, get the fans and lights and lifts working again before everypony suffocated, the workers came to the surface on a manual emergency lift. They were hauled up the shafts on the backs and broken hooves of pegasi who were surrendering their only chance to see the sky again in order to save others!”
“S-stop… p-please I c-can’t….”
“Dash got there in time and pulled them out solo. They were emaciated, scarred, and wing-atrophied. It would have taken years of therapy for them to even approach normal condition, let alone ever be elite again. And I won’t have that. I will not let what they’ve done, and who they are come to such an end! So I have spent the past three days pouring demonic power into them, fogging over their minds and soothing their bodies. When their brains recover from it they’ll be demon eyed and a hoofs length from the line between mortal and fiend. And that is the best I can do for them!”
All at once, the floodgates broke open. Pain and sorrow overflowed even Celestia’s prodigious, if weakened, restraint, hot tears flowing slowly down her cheeks. Failure. This… this was an utter failure. Celestia had had such high hopes for the Wonderbolts; pegasi, working in close union, protecting and entertaining her ponies. Her and Luna’s nation. ...former nation, now. Where had everything gone so wrong?
Twilight took a moment, closing her eyes, and taking a calming breath of the sort Celestia herself often partook of. Eyes still closed, she continued in a softer voice. “They’re mine Celestia… I’ve taken them, and healed them. And they will serve their purpose again. They will inspire the best in pegasi.” Slowly her eyes opened, now softer and more sorrowful. “And I wanted you to understand why I have done this. Not leave you to make up your mind by filtering my motivations through this lens of demonic malevolence you’ve used for centuries.”
Celestia struggled to hold back her tears, especially as she found it… freeing. A release. It was a struggle to recall a time when she had truly let go of her emotions like this. Wiping fitfully at her misting eyes, the former Princess peered blearily up at her… former student? Current jailor?
“T-they are… still themselves?” She asked quietly, gazing at Twilight as firmly as she could manage, currently.
They were good ponies, all of them. If any part of them was still intact, they would not disappoint Celestia. ...she hoped.
Twilight gave a sharp bark of laughter. “They are as much themselves as any of us are.”
“That is not an answer..”
“You’ll have to content yourself with it though, Celestia.” Twilight replied with a soft sigh. “I remember everything about my life as a unicorn, and as an alicorn. But what percentage of my current impressions are blurred or tainted by demonic influence? Even I don’t know that for certain. What metric could I possibly use to define that? But whatever amount it is, I know it is something I can live with.”
Twilight gave her head a shake, pulling herself back from useless conjecture. “But tell me, if they were conscious, and whole, and not ‘poisoned’ with my influence… Do you think they’d prefer to see your anger for what happened to them, or would your honest sorrow and ineffectual serenity repay their loyalty properly?”
“Of course they’d be gratified to see fury. That’s not fair, and you know it, Twilight!” Forced to answer the question directly, no longer resisting the urge to honesty, the pressure of the geas relaxed. Eyes narrowed, Celestia’s mind raced to find a way off the defensive. “What do you offer them then? A show of rage for what has happened to them, a promise of vengeance perhaps? The shortsighted gratification of their baser desires instead of appealing to their higher natures?”
Twilight paused, taking another slow calming breath. Try as she might, Celestia saw no signs of geas induced discomfort, just a moment taken to gather her thoughts.
“Soarin woke up first.” Celestia almost started with the softness of the Archdevil’s voice. “The dear, he tried to keep us away from the mares. Broken and starved, unable to control his wings, half crazed from sensory deprivation… and his first impulse was to protect his flock.”
“The sight of Rainbow confused him, she managed to talk him out of his panic… explain things, even as she tried not to break down in tears at his condition. She’d brought them to our suite, where we could shutter the windows, black out the room, and have one dim candle to let us tend them. Soarin had to give in, he couldn’t maintain the energy to resist. Rainbow bathed him with her own hooves…” Celestia felt her eyes tearing up again at the pain the brave flyer must have been in. Twilight’s eyes were far away, remembering these moments she was conveying now, her expression so similar to one Celestia had seen before on Rainbow herself.
“Fleetfoot woke next, she hadn’t the strength for even the show of resistance. You know the light bodied pegasi, the sprinters like Dash… they just don’t maintain reserves. I think her first words were ‘Why am I not dead?’. I tended to her while Dash explained again how they’d been rescued. Her only concern was the still unconscious Spitfire. She wouldn’t be distracted with scary devils and spooky dark bedrooms, nor with debilitation or starvation… she wanted to make sure her Captain was alright. Such a plucky little darling… confronted with an Archdevil, couldn’t be bothered to care.” Twilight chuckled fondly, her forelegs gathering a cushion into her grasp, clutching it against her barrel as if it was the pegasus under discussion.
Celestia didn’t know what to make of this, she had expected many things, but the tableau before her was not one of them. Yet it wasn’t over…
“Spitfire took a while to wake up, she was worn to nothing. They all were, but I think Spitfire always stood between her flock and the worst of it. Dash and I had the other two well in hoof by the time she stirred.” Twilight sighed softly. “Oh for want of the energy to move… she knew what I was, she tried to rally, but her body was passed fight, and flight as well for that matter.”
Celestia found herself pinned by Twilight’s sudden piercing gaze. “And I took her in my wings, and I acknowledged her strength, and her courage… and it brought her to… tears. And I promised I would make Equestria worthy of her again, and that I would give her back the sky. You know how heart-breaking it is when the strong ones break down.” She took a harsh breath, caught up in the moment of memory before recovering herself.
“And then I made her mine, and the other two as well. Baser desires come in the short term, while they’re more feral than thinking, ‘higher natures’ wait until they can put words together again. I own them Celestia, and I take care of what is mine. They will have the skies, they will have the Equestria they deserve… and if they need blood from those who did this to them, they will get that as well. And they will probably end up as demons, just as I am, and Cadance, and the others… and strong defenders of my new empire shall they be.”
“D-do you intend all your subjects to become demons then?” The question passed numbed, uncooperative lips, almost of its own accord. Celestia rather surprised at herself, even as Twilight’s serious demeanour cracked with a mirthful giggle.
“R-really? I’m g-going to turn the entire population o-of Equestria… into lust demons..” She bit her lower lip as a familiar giggle-snort escaped her, the sound making something lurch in Celestia’s chest at hearing it again. “I-I… hee… actually did that calculation you know… I’d have to conquer the rest of the planet just to support the lust needs of that many demons outside of Tartarus. Wow… I can see the headline in the paper. T-Twilight.. Archdevil of Power… conquers Equus to feed….. her ‘Nation of Fornication’.”
“Principality of Perversion?” Celestia indulged in a double take before clamping a fetlock over her traitorous muzzle. Blushing fiercely at the guilty pleasure wordsmithing always gave her.
Twilight’s doubletake was similarly comical, and seemed quite genuine, as was her chortles in response. “I dunno… Sovereignty of Sensuality seems less crass…”
Oh what the hell…
“If you let ponies vote, you could be the Republic of Reproduction.”
The snickerfit which Twilight indulged in warmed Celestia’s heart in a manner she hadn’t felt in well over a decade. For a moment, however brief, it was like sitting with the little filly she had so treasured her time with.
“Ahahahaaaa.. Ahem… amusing alliterations aside... It’s not feasible, either economically, or in terms of long term stability for me to attempt to wholesale convert the mortal realms into a lust paradise.” Twilight obviously enjoyed the residual giggles as she slowly recovered her composure. “Thank you by the way… I don’t get chances to laugh like that very often.”
Riding the lightened mood, another question passed her lips almost without her thinking of it first. “What is it that you want from me, Twilight?” Celestia asked in a soft huff, only to become aware of Twilight’s sudden immobility. What came next was something she had never heard Twilight say, ever, in her presence.
“Buck.”
“Twilight! Language!” The admonition was startled from her.
With a sigh Twilight lifted a hoof to rub her forehead. “I don’t suppose I can get you to withdraw that question, can I?”
Celestia blinked, canting her head to the side. “That is the question that trips you up?” She asked, incredulous. “Not your plans for Equestria, or the nobles, or the Wonderbolts, but your plans for me?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’m disturbed…”
“It’s really not as dire as you might be thinking.”
“Hah!”
“No really…” Twilight rested her hoof to her temple, appearing hard in thought. “Look… the problem isn’t that I won’t or can’t answer, it’s that I cannot answer entirely. I literally won’t be able to answer to complete honesty as written upon my heart. I know you’ve already seen some of Cadance’s demon-derived issues. Well she’s not the only one dealing with that. There are parts to this question I’m incapable of answering right now. And that means when I reach the end of what I can tell, the contract will be broken.”
Celestia chewed on her lower lip, her mind racing to catch up. It made a certain amount of sense. Cadance was rather sexualized in her behaviour by her position as Lust that much had become obvious enough during her last visit. If Power likewise had enforced behaviors… they would likely be about her own aspect. Celestia suspected power and control would be the issues most in the fore if that were the case. Any admission which would damage her control of a situation might be difficult or impossible for her to make. In fact, the reference to Cadance’s ‘issues’ was likely the closest the archdevil could get to referencing Twilight’s own. An oblique statement meant to lead her to just the line of inference she was currently following.
Oh Twilight, how many long years did it take you to learn how to walk such a tightrope?
Pushing that distressing thought aside she cleared her throat, seeing the first signs of geas enforced pressure on Twilight’s face as she delayed answering this particularly thorny query. Yet… “So how will I know when you aren’t bound by the geas anymore?”
“Well.. you won’t unless you’re actively contemplating falsehood, otherwise the geas just vanishes without ceremony. In which case I need to have a question ‘in the hopper’ so to speak for you to use. I’m currently… three behind, but I’ll content myself with this ending our little game if that is acceptable with you.”
“Ask away, Twilight. I’m fine with it.”
“Okay. Do you find me in any sense attractive? You can ponder that one while I answer yours.”
… Oh my. Celestia felt her cheeks flushing and was rather glad for her snow white pelt. Sure Twilight could probably read her like a book without needing such obvious signs, but it helped her keep some fragment of her poise as she considered the true answer to that question… and her refusal to utter it. Immediately the geas pricked at her, a palpable sensation, and the exact thing she needed to know when it failed.
Returning her attention to Twilight, she saw an odd vulnerability in her expression, a softness that threw her devilish mein of smooth capability into disarray. For the first time, Celestia felt as if something of the real Twilight was emerging from its hellish trappings, and she found herself quelling the desire to shush the Archdevil and just… hug her like she used to, when she was a filly, and the world hadn’t turned into the cruel mockery it had since become. She schooled herself to listen, whatever came after, she needed to hear this.
“What I want from you… there’s so much I want…” Her words were so soft, almost a whisper, and that vulnerability was growing stronger in her eyes.
“ I want your heart Celestia, and your body as well. I’ve been hot for teacher since I was old enough to feel attraction, even if I didn’t know what it meant. But not just your love and your lust, Celestia. I want your mind as well. Let’s face it, there’s so very few ponies who can keep up with me when I get going… yet, you stayed one step ahead of me for years… mostly, I think, beating me with experience. I want you on your stride again, I think I’m old enough now that we could sharpen each other’s intellects for a long, long time.”
“I want to take off your chains…” Twilight’s horns lit softly, lifting a length of the demonic fetter that held her, tugging lightly on the collar in a way that made Celestia’s blush heat even further. “Both the physical ones here, and the ones you never let anyone else see… I want to strip them off, and when you’re free of them, I want to annihilate any who would shackle you again. Unless you want to be of course… though I think that might be more Luna’s kink? Chains and straps… manacles? If I had to guess, I’d think you were more… satin cords and lace?” A hint of the devilish teasing came through at that, and Celestia knew her blush was getting out of hoof. “I… take care of what’s mine Celestia… and I… w-want you to be… mine.”
Celestia swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, eyes wide and unseeing. This… this wasn’t what she was expecting. Part of her wanted to reject this as falsehood, yet the persistent niggling prick of the geas at her subvocal mantra of untruth confirmed that their contract was still binding… Twilight wanted her? It was like a firework going off in her chest, yet she fought the lift of it… this situation was just too complicated to let her emotions get out of control, still as she managed to blink her eyes, she found them moister than they should be.
“I want to take you to a bar, Celestia. And I want to eat something mother wouldn’t approve of. And stack the table with tankards until even alicorns are feeling tipsy. Until wearing a lampshade and singing with the band don’t seem like bad ideas. I never got to do that at school you know… I always wondered what it’d be like… to let go like that. But who could I trust to loosen up like that with? Then as ‘Celestia’s Student’, now as the mighty ‘Archdevil of Power’. We… don’t get to have that very often I’ve learned. Those of us who get to be cogs for the universe.”
“I came in your room before you woke, you know. You are apparently an extremely heavy sleeper. Knocks didn’t rouse you. Yet when I saw you sleeping, I wanted to hop into the bed, bury my nose in your mane and join your exceedingly comfortable looking nap. Honestly Celestia… the pink is gorgeous on you… and so very approachable… but I figured you wouldn’t take an uninvited guest very well… one day though, I want to do that.”
Celestia remembered waking thinking she had heard a voice, a voice out of the past that had roused her, and now she remembered her sense of cheer upon awaking… ‘Dear Princess Celestia…’ a hushed whisper lifting her spirits as almost nothing else would. Knowing it had been real… constricted her chest almost painfully tight. She drew a half sobbing breath to respond, but Twilight continued before she could.
“Yes, I’m taking over Equestria. Yes, I’m going to tear down something you built… and I hope you’ll forgive me for it. But ask yourself… did you really want to sit on that throne? Wear that crown? In retrospect I can see what it did to you. Once I ascended myself and had a taste of how others treat you if you have both wings and a horn, I had an inkling. Now I see so much more clearly. It hurt you in ways none of the ponies who depended on you so much ever even considered didn’t it? Even after Luna came back, it didn’t get any better.”
Celestia heard ragged hitched breathing and realized it was coming from her. This was not at all her expectations for such a flippant question. To be disarmed, and… dismantled… by somepony who understood so much, yet… who shouldn’t understand. Luna never understood, she only saw the honors and took for granted the cost. Twilight had grown from a bright bookish filly into a budding young alicorn ever in the shadow of the monolithic and suitably ancient autocracy…
Slowly, Twilight rose from her seat, crossing the intervening distance to sit before the distraught Alicorn. Hesitantly she lifted a hoof to rest against her shuddering shoulder. “I have only one more thing to tell you now. And I’ve left it for last because… it’s the most likely to get a bad reaction from you.”
“I want your soul. And yes, I know that’s scary to hear from a fire and brimstone arch-devil. Muahahahaha… souls souls souls! I desire it greatly, and I tell you so in complete honesty. So yes, I want all of you Celestia. And I wish I could alleviate your fears of me… but I can’t. That is something you’ll have to make peace with on your own, belov-.. C-Celestia.”
W-what did she almost call me?
Twilight’s eyes closed and she took a sharp breath, brow furrowing in discomfort. “There’s nothing else I can say right now.” And with that admission, Celestia felt the contract shatter like so much glass. The pricking, persistent pressure of the geas vanishing in an instant.
“A-absolutely not!” She half-shouted in the sudden vacuum as the geas she was pressing against dispersed.
She very nearly cursed, until she realized with a start, how very richly purple Twilight’s cheeks were. From the burning of her own, their colors probably matched exceedingly well. Still, so much had passed between them, that there was no probing that issue further at this moment. And as Twilight lowered her hoof and leaned back with a soft smile, Celestia knew the Archdevil had reached the same conclusion.
Closing her eyes and clearing her throat, she tried to gather her scattered thoughts. “Y-yes… well… it has been… a very enlightening talk, Twilight.” She began, slipping into the musical voice she always used, only to find a hoof gently touched to her lips, making her pause as the rapidly formulated words formed a less than impressive ‘mmmph’ before she could stop it.
“No more of that if you please, Celestia.” Twilight responded with gentle censure. “You fall so easily into the courtly mask, and it frankly makes me bitter when you do. It’s scars from a thousand years on a throne you never liked or wanted, but felt you had to fill.”
Celestia found she had no ready response for that, her ears drooping as she found herself reassessing so much of the encounter tonight. So many of Twilight’s behaviours now becoming increasingly clear to her. “H-how do you know so much about… it? About me?”
Twilight gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Being Power is not just about the perks of strength, Celestia. I intuit so much more now about the authority you have wielded. And the prices of it. Power is something every sentient being seeks at one time or another in their own fashions. And whenever it is attained, it comes at the cost of innocence and youth. Power ages one, Celestia. And none knows that better than the Archdevil every two bit imp and devilkin dreams of becoming.” Twilight shrugged her wings a little, and Celestia realized that while Cadance gave a sense almost like a filly on the cusp of maturity, Twilight’s presence felt… immeasurably older.. aged, matured. And for a brief moment Celestia pondered if this was how she felt to her little ponies.
“Thank you.” The words had once again passed her lips before she had even been aware of her intent to speak them.
Yet Twilight simply smiled, her devilish confidence and aura of seeming invulnerability having near-fully reasserted itself after an utterly candid interlude that Celestia was canny enough to realize had not been in the Archdevil’s plans for the afternoon. Yet, something else in Twilight’s manner made her suspect that she did not regret it. A tension that she hadn’t adequately identified seemed to be missing in her manner now.
“Well, not to turn to more prosaic concerns too quickly, Twilight… but I know I need some time to meditate on all of this. Still.. Since you’re here, might I make a request?”
Twilight perked… she actually perked up a tiny bit at the question. It was almost adorable. “Certainly, what can I do for you?” The wording, the tone, it was a wash of nostalgia that almost stole her calm once again, yet emotionally she was too tired to do more than notice the effect it had.
“Well, for reasons I realize I can’t expound on… even to you… I find I need a copy of Onomastica Demonicus to continue my efforts. I was hoping the Palace Library, if it’s still intact of course, might have one?”
Twilight chuckled as she stood. “Aheheheheheh… you’ve no idea how both proud of and infuriated by that book I am. I’ve created a font of knowledge that I am forever doomed to be ignorant of. It’s maddening!” With a huff she speared it with a glare where it sat at Celestia’s desk as she moved briskly towards the door. “Very well, I can certainly see if it is still there. I’ll have it sent over as soon as I can.”
“Twilight…”
She paused, hoof raised to knock on the door, the Archdevil turning to inquire with eyes and voice. “Hmmm?”
“Come and see me again soon… alright?”
For all of it’s fanged, devilish appearance, seeing Twilight smile with such obvious joy lit up Celestia’s heart as nothing else had since her banishment.