//------------------------------// // XI. Instead of an Absolute Beginning, a Leap // Story: Ageless, or Celestia Plays Dice With the Universe // by Cynewulf //------------------------------// Celestia greeted her niece warmly. She also did it with a sheepish smile. “Thank you,” she said softly when a tired Cadance nuzzled her. “Mrghgh,” responded Cadance with the totality of her royal eloquence. It was a little after four in the afternoon. Twilight and Celestia had spent the day in the gardens and in the hallways and in the solarium, enjoying a rare chance to relax in each other’s company. Cadance had finished her ad-hoc duties by one, but then retired for a nap. Celestia wasn’t surprised, honestly. They all wanted to be rested for tonight. Luna would be up shortly. Her sleeping schedule was strange. Most ponies slept and lived in long continuous blocks, but the Princess of the Night had taken to sleeping in small pockets of time. Celestia found it baffling, honestly, and Luna had only taken it up since her return. It was a silly experiment. She was sure her sister would return to normal eventually. Yet, at the same time, it was nice to see Luna trying new things. It made her feel a little warmer, a little happier. Twilight stepped forward, her wings fluttering slightly. “Cadance!” Cadance, stepping back from Celestia, seemed to regain all of her expended energy in a heartbeat. With a huge smile, she giggled and hop-skipped forward. “Twilight!” And then, of course, they did that ridiculous little ritual that Celestia found to be both endearing and faintly horrifying. She had no idea where or when that had come to be. Obviously, it had been a massive failure on her part to prevent the second youngest princess from infecting the seriousness of the youngest. She could see it now. In hundreds of years, when Celestia was senile and unable to rule, the ponies of Equestria would revolt under the utterly ludicrous regime of the Sunshine Ladybug Diarchs. The saddest thing was that it would be only the third stupidest reason for the fall of a civilization she had witnessed. Twilight and Cadance seemed happy enough, though. “Now that I’m here, are we meeting Aunt Luna there or are we waking her up?” Cadance asked. “Because, if we’re waking her up, I’d like to be prepared in advance. She yells.” “She yells?” Twilight asked. “She yells.” “She does tend to, ah, vocalize her displeasure at being awoken rather forcefully,” Celestia admitted. “She also throws things.” Twilight shook her head. “Now I know you’re lying. Lu-- Princess Luna wouldn’t throw things at you. I mean, that would be…” “Barbaric? Violent?” Cadance supplied. “Effective,” Celestia said. They both looked at her. She smiled. “She’s accurate, as well. Extremely so. Luna used to favor javelins, as I recall.” Celestia hummed, chasing the rabbit of memory down its winding burrow. “You know… I should really ask her if one of her old spear-throwers survived in the Sanctum. I forgot all about those--she might enjoy reviving the sport as a challenge.” It took a few seconds for Twilight to finally respond. Celestia looked down to see those violet eyes boring into her own. “Sanctum? As in… preserved historical artifacts. From the past. As in, physical history.” “Er… yes,” Celestia said, confused. Twilight stopped walking. Her eyes were wide. Celestia knew this look. It was the worst possible look to see on the face of Twilight Sparkle. She had first seen that face when Twilight had been eight, the fateful day she had discovered that she could finally understand the thaumic phenomenology of a basic teleportation spell. Celestia hadn’t known the Look then. She had just accepted it as normal, mortal excitement--any studious foal eager to learn magic might have that look. But no, not Twilight Sparkle. This was The Look, the one categorized in with all of her other looks but distinct from them all, just like Celestia had organized her own plaster-like smiles in ranks of repressed fury or amusement. “Twilight, I am not letting you rifle through my sister’s private possessions,” she said flatly. “No, not even for science and/or historical purposes.” Twilight whimpered. “Can I ask her? Come on, all of that delicious knowledge…” Cadance glanced between them. “She’s going to start drooling.” Celestia rolled her eyes and they continued on with a mildly put-out Twilight Sparkle. “It’s not really that important, Twilight. Honest. I’m sure anything in there of worth to scholars, Luna would be happy to share with you. She is your friend after all. Most of the things in her Sanctum are private and personal.” “I guess,” Twilight said. She sighed. “I mean, as exciting as the idea of uncovering a trove of ancient artifacts is… I guess I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of what it actually was. Just what it would mean to me, and not what it probably means to her. I mean, now it kind of feels like digging through the content’s of the dead mare’s pockets. Invasive.” Celestia thought about the long gallery of pictures beneath the mountain, each painted by herself, as she learned over centuries to capture the likenesses, as she failed over and over. She thought about how she’d given up and had photos taken, how she would try over and over again to capture the thousand likenesses, knowing each copy was a diversion farther from the shore of the original. “It could be,” she said stiffly. They walked in silence for a moment, and then Celestia spoke again. “To answer the earlier question… we are meeting Luna.” “Oh,” Cadance said. Her tone was light. Celestia had taught her well. Twilight’s cheer had returned. Celestia wasn’t sure how that made her feel. She had envied that oblivious, forward-looking part of Twilight since she’d first gotten to know her. Little Twilight had made her ignorance into a kind of strength, focusing her attention into white-hot pursuit of the narrow band of that which she did know. While her cohort had slowed down as they saw the world unfolding around them, adrift on the ocean of relationship and identity, Twilight had gone by like a pegasus on the hunt. Not that her focus hadn’t been without its… problems. There was a part of Celestia that almost missed Twilight’s question because it felt a bit resentful. It was Noonday, Celestia thought, but in fact it was not entirely Noonday. She had learned her lesson about blaming the Aspects for her own feelings a long, long time ago. Noonday did not move her emotions so much as reflect and second them. “So… I forgot to ask earlier. Where are we going?” Celestia looked down at Twilight again, and assumed Smile Nine--neither rage nor amusement but repressed thought. “An older chamber. You’ve not seen it. Nor heard of it, I suspect, unless somepony has learned how to circumvent wards that should be far beyond the skill of anypony I’ve heard of in, oh, a few centuries.” Her smile became more genuine. “Well, not counting yourself, Twilight. I think if you’d tried your hoof at it, the wards would have been your favorite challenge.” “I doubt I could have broken them,” Twilight said, still smiling, still cheerful. “I mean, you were the one making them.” “I think you certainly could have, given time,” Celestia replied softly. “Still may,” she said, only to herself. It was odd where the mind wondered. Celestia found that she daydreamed often. Even before Luna’s exile left her bereft of that higher, more knowing companionship, she had daydreamed all the time. So it was no surprise when she could almost picture Twilight sitting at Celestia’s writing desk, hunched over a mountain of scrolls, filled with that mixture of frustration and joy which marked her every endeavour. Celestia herself on the other side, reading and sipping from a suspended cup of tea. Hours spent this way as Luna shepherded the warm night, in the sacred silence of their shared esteem. She felt suddenly that talking would be better than thinking. “It’s a very old chamber. In fact, it’s only one part of an entire complex of rooms deep within the mountain’s heart. It has been a very long time since anypony but the three of us have entered. Well, Cadance, Luna, and myself. And with you, it shall be four. The last pony to enter any of that place and not be an alicorn was my husband, Prism.” “How long ago was that?” Twilight asked. “I’m surprised you don’t know of the top of your head.” She said it smiling, but Celestia caught what both no doubt assumed Twilight did not--she was just as nervous as Celestia. The halls led them at last to a solitary door, unassuming and unguarded. Unassuming mostly in that it was absolutely unadorned, and if one were not paying attention, it could be missed entirely. The door itself was massive. Yet, it was almost seamless there as if the walls continued. Celestia strode before it and placed her hoof upon the door. “It was over a century, Twilight. One hundred and fourteen years.” She let her hoof fall, and then touched the wards with her magic as gently as she could manage. The door trembled and then vanished. While Twilight sat back, shocked, and Cadance hesitated, Celestia walked forward into the darkness beyond the false front. “The day I first met you, I thought you might be like him,” she said, softly. Celestia liked the sanctum, actually. Those few who knew of its existence generally assumed that she found the ancient chambers sad, or that they brought forth unpleasant memories. They misunderstood her solemnity for sorrow. It was, to be fair, an easy mistake to make. Most ponies read what was on the outside and thought they understood what bubbled beneath. It was a mistake that Celestia was more than willing to forgive them for, and to be honest she found it refreshing. Ponies tended towards honesty, in her long experience. An open and straightforward race, willing to wear their hearts on their proverbial sleeves. Throughout the long ages, ponies had changed only a little in all of the ways that truly mattered. But Celestia liked the sanctum. It wasn’t showy or adorned in the way that the chambers above were. No art hung from the walls and no music echoed here. It was an austere place, and she simply adjusted her own behavior accordingly. As they walked deeper into the heart of the mountain, Celestia gently prodded the runic marks she knew by memory in the walls, and the darkness retreated bit by bit. “Luna likes it a bit darker than I do,” she said quietly for Twilight’s benefit. “This passage and the rooms at the other end are older than most all of Canterlot. We dug them with magic when the city was just a castle.” “What was that like, auntie?” Cadance whispered. “Canterlot, you mean?” Celestia kept her voice level. Some memories were useful. They centered the self in something unimportant to the moment. “It was the fort proper, a few artisans near the walls… some terraced farms. There was a village halfway around the mountain in the pass that is still there. Canterlot was not much of a city until around the time Luna and… well, until such a time as Everfree was lost.” “I would have loved to see it,” Twilight said. Celestia smiled. “I doubt it. If you had been with us at that time, in our shoes, I believe you would have wished to keep moving until we could have found a proper library or academy.” “Even I like adventure from time to time.” Celestia kept smiling. “We shared these chambers, she and I, but in the beginning ‘twas mostly hers.” Celestia’s voice echoed in the hall, and she knew that Cadance felt what she felt--the looming. “A forge for her to work at her craft, in the safety of the mountain. We added room by room, some for her, some for myself, but most of them for the two of us to share. They became our sanctum. We were less used to rule, you see. We’d always been free to come and go as we pleased.” “Never tied down, but never quite at home,” Cadance said. “Yes. So to go from such a life of adventure and vagrancy to being rulers expected to rule was daunting. We would come here to get away from it for a time, here and there. I came less and less as I began to adjust to that life, as I began to enjoy it. Luna came more and more…” “As she felt more isolated,” Twilight said. “She’s back now.” Celestia wanted to smile, but found it harder to do so as they neared the antechamber. Butterflies in her stomach were the least of her problems. It was just like Twilight Sparkle to catch on only at the end, and then to make up for her slowness with feeling in her own singular way. “Yes, she is, isn’t she? And I have you to thank.” The antechamber had it’s own door, one smaller than that above. Celestia activated it in much the same way. The chamber inside was sparse, but Luna had somehow managed to move a cloud down to rest on as she read in the surprisingly bright space. She looked up and greeted the newcomers with a sigh as she shut her book with slightly too much force. “Thank you for arriving at long last, slugabeds,” she growled. Celestia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, we’re on time.” Luna blinked. “Bah. I’ve been waiting here for you, sister, and that is the only reckoning that counts. I did have time to catch up on yon Twilight’s suggested reading, at least.” There she broke eye contact with Celestia and smiled at Twilight. “I have certainly enjoyed Hoofstone’s book, Twilight.” Twilight seemed to practically vibrate beside Celestia. “You have? Oh, that’s great! I was a bit concerned you would need more context, but if you’ve enjoyed him I suppose I shouldn’t have worried at all. You really have to write me when you finish!” “Of course,” Luna said, walking towards them. “Art thou ready, sister mine?” “As ever,” Celestia breathed. * Three alicorns with a single motion looked down towards Twilight. The shortest. The youngest. The newest. The unknown quantity. She looked back and forth between them, suddenly a little nervous. “I have a feeling that there’s more here than I expected,” she said. “A bit more, yes,” Cadance said. “Well…” Twilight fidgeted. “I guess… I mean, I guess we should get started. I read up on the things you sent me, Pr--Celestia. Specifically the Ninth Permutation restructured as a ring. I’m kind of excited to see it, honestly. I worked it out, but…” The calm returned to her voice as she spoke, until even some of her eagerness returned. “I’d love to see how you do it. You used to tell me that all of the best spellcasters are a little idiosyncratic.” Celestia cracked a smile at her. “I remember saying that. Remember quite a lot of things actually.” “Well.” Cadance coughed. “Well. Twilight, would you please stand in the center of the room? I’ll stand before you and I’ll draw the basic outline in a moment. Luna, you’ll see where to go after a moment. Cadance, I’m sure Twilight could show you--” she spared Twilight a grin, “but I’ll include a mark outside the matrix so you know where to stand.” “I’m not that clueless,” Cadance grumbled. “You’ve done rather well, it’s true,” Luna said as she moved. Twilight removed herself to the center of the room and took a deep breath. She watched Luna go to her right, and Cadance meander towards her left. Celestia stood before her. Her face was set in a neutral mask, one that Twilight remembered well. She saw Celestia then, in flashes of sudden memory, on the other side of that table long ago. Advanced Alchemy. The air humid with water, with sweat that soaked her mane and ran down her face and left salt deposits around her goggles until a shower banished them. The heat in the air as magical flames boiled. The Four Transformations of Magnum Opus, laid out before them, requiring the attention of even one as powerful as Celestia. Notes written in light and sound on four walls all around them, for reference and for assurance. Her nose tickling with the unforgettable odor of limes for reasons beyond ken. And then she was back. Celestia was drawing the circle around her now, light glowing on the floor. Luna was already waiting, and Cadance shuffled into another position in the corner of her vision. It was harder to see their faces now, with the light from below. Twilight took a deep breath and relaxed as much as she could. Being nervous--because she was very, very nervous all of a sudden--would only make the work that much harder. “You seem a bit tense, Twilight,” Cadance said. Her ear flicked towards the sound. “A little,” Twilight allowed. “Just… unfamiliar place and unknown variables, I guess. It’s not about all of you.” “It’ll only take a few minutes. And we’ll have learned something new. I did this too, Twiley,” Cadance continued. “I remember Celestia mentioning that.” Twilight’s breathing was normal. Her head was clear. “What first?” “Ninth Permutation,” Celestia said with a clipped, focused tone. “Elaborate on it for me, Twilight.” That wall it took. All of her earlier feeling fell away and Twilight stood straight as she began to recite by rote her old lesson. “The Ninth Permutation of Starswirl is one of several arrangements of thaumic patterns, represented by Starswirl through numbers. Each of Star Swirl’s permutations was an arrangment of already recognized variables that had before him been catalogued and given runic designations. Most of the Permutations do nothing and are in fact generally fruitless. The Ninth is usually used to scan a pony’s innate thaumic signature to examine it with the naked eye.” “Correct, as always,” murmured her former teacher. The light intensified and Twilight could no longer see anything of her companions. All around her was white and she shut her eyes. She heard Celestia’s voice come in bits and pieces. She had never actually been underneath the Ninth herself--she’d only done it twice before, to other ponies. It wasn’t as if the process hurt or was dangerous in any way. Yet, suddenly, with her eyes screwed shut against the agonizing brightness, she felt sympathy for the looks of disorientation she’d seen on those two ponies back in school. Her body tingled all over. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but the sensation grew and grew until it took all of her willpower not to fall over trying to scratch the itch away. Yet Twilight stood firmly. She also stood alone in a white void. That had been one of the odd things about the Ninth, she remembered. Starswirl had discovered this combination of runic “building blocks” by random experimentation, going against the wisdom of the day. It was rough and confused and, to be honest, not the most efficient of spells. But so far nopony had ever improved upon it. There were ways to see the same things, but not in the same way. Not with the same clarity, or without piling up too much subjective interference. What would they find? She could guess. The Ninth was generally used as a diagnostic tool outside of showing students in advanced courses how the old runic system had worked. You saw it in two cases, mostly: the terminally ill and the terminally criminal. Those with severest horn rot or magical corruption or exposure to enough unrestrained wild magic to have contracted full on thaumic poisoning, despite a unicorn’s natural resistance. Or, you know, unicorns who murdered ponies. That was about it. As she was not a crazed murderer, that left really only one option. Twilight lost her calm very quickly. The white void still surrounded her. The waves of sound would crash on her ears with snatches of conversation. Why hadn’t they told her something was wrong? Why hadn’t they let her have time to put her affairs in order? How could Celestia do to this to her, to Twilight? To the one who trusted her so much? Her mind raced. The ascension must have gone wrong somehow. Somewhere along the way Twilight must have… have broken it. She’d failed her test, and Celestia had kept it secret until she could figure out how to undo the changes. All along, Twilight had been an imposter, half of what she appeared to be at best. It was a testament to her time in Ponyville that she did not immediately spiral into nonsense. Doubt clawed at her, but she stayed standing and she stayed still. No, the princess would tell her. Celestia was… her friend. What an odd thought. Why should it be odd? And yet Twilight already knew the answer. Celestia and herself had never been equal, never been on the same level in any way. When Celestia bent down to come closer, Twilight somehow managed to enjoy that closeness even as she put herself down even further. Celestia was never herself. She was something beyond herself, always and forever. An unattainable perfection that sat upon the mountain in solitude in highest loneliness. She was a world itself entire. Twilight was lucky simply to exist in her presence. Twilight, who had made her whole life a desperate and joyful pursuit of the very heart of knowledge… had been let as close as she would ever get in life by the gatekeeper of it. And yet, Twilight distinctly remembered being booped on the nose earlier in the day. She also remembered Celestia joking with the old captain of the guard. She remembered a time when she didn’t think of Celestia as anything but Teacher and Nice, when she had done her homework on the other end of Celestia’s desk in the evening. The sound of the Sun’s warm laughter at something or other in the pages of a novel. A playful suggestion that if she hurried she might have time to play in the statue garden before their lesson. Twilight’s breathing was still ragged, but she was winning. The light vanished, and Twilight felt a little dizzy as it went. Before her, she found a sight more bizarre than any other. Her nonsense and her anxiety and everything else fell away, because here in front of her was a sight that was unsettling enough. Celestia with a blank stare and nothing to say.