Chapter Fifteen: Trials, Troubles, Tentacles
Part Two: Theory of Singularity
Chapter Fifteen: Trials, Troubles, Tentacles
"Dig faster, my slaves! The Well must be unearthed."
—King Sombra the Cruel, 313 before Nightmare Moon
Twilight and her friends barely spoke on the train; given a moment to rest, their minds swiftly wandered, mulling over certain thoughts imparted by the recent events, certain things that were slowly sinking in.
There was a lot to come to terms with – the fact they had banished Princess Celestia, the machinations of the Order of the Watcher, the strange exchange between Luna and Theory, and, perhaps most disturbingly, the otherworldly abyss that had opened up before them and extinguished the flames of their consciousnesses in its preternatural darkness.
Rainbow was fidgeting in her seat, Rarity stared out of the window and Pinkie Pie raided the on-board snack cart.
Twilight tried to keep herself busy, pacing the compartment and pestering the conductor.
Applejack and Fluttershy sat quietly side by side, watching Twilight fuss and Pinkie eat, occasionally exchanging glances with Rainbow Dash, Rarity, or each other.
Eventually, they all followed Pinkie’s lead and had something or other in the way of food. It was almost dinner-time, after all, and the sun stood low.
Yet despite the almost glum atmosphere of their journey, it passed relatively fast, and soon enough, the train arrived in the Crystal Empire and the six ponies alit.
The evening sun reflected in the shimmering surfaces of buildings and streets, bathing the shining city in a beautiful sheen of glittering orange lights as they trotted briskly towards the Crystal Castle. From the main street, they could already see some sort of commotion at the foot of the mighty spire that loomed from the city centre.
As they got closer, they recognized a ring of Crystal Guards surrounding the base of the castle, facing outward, with a few smaller crowds of civilians flocking loosely to the perimeter the guard had set up, talking amidst each other, occasionally sending worried glances at either the guards or up at the shining castle itself.
Scanning the scene as she closed in on the castle, Twilight found a few guards standing out from the rest – not being crystal ponies, as well as wearing the armour of Equestria’s Royal Guard. In particular, there was one pegasus standing alone inside their circle, a clipboard in hoof, apparently giving orders to a few other guards who had broken out of formation. There was no sign of her brother, though. The fact that he wasn’t here, commanding the guards, probably meant that he was still stuck in his room as he had mentioned in his letter.
They reached the line of guardsponies blocking the entrance to the castle. As Twilight still assessed the situation, Rarity approached one of the Crystal Guards.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, “would you be so kind to tell us what is going on here?”
The stallion gave her the stoic stare guards everywhere in Equestria were trained in. “There’s a dangerous monster in the castle, so we’re placing it under lockdown,” he explained. “For their own safety, nopony can go in till the princess gives the all-clear.”
“Oh, goodness,” Rarity responded, a worried look on her face.
“A m-monster?” Fluttershy squeaked, semi-successfully trying to hide her entire body behind the locks of her mane.
“Under lockdown?” Rainbow Dash repeated. “But we need to go in there!”
Applejack tapped her chin with a hoof and frowned, “Say, Twilight,” she said, “didn’t your brother write that he and Cadance were trapped somehow? If that’s so, how come all these here ponies are waiting for them to sort things out?”
Applejack was right, Twilight thought. Why would the guards be waiting for Cadance to lift lockdown when she was locked in a room inside the castle?
“Do you know who placed the castle under lockdown, sir?” Twilight asked the guard.
“That would be Captain Flash Sentry, Your Highness. He’s right over there.” The stallion pointed towards the pegasus, who was now scribbling something on the clipboard while the guards he had been talking to seemed to be leaving. “Should I call him over for you?”
“Yes, please.” Twilight nodded.
“Captain!” the Crystal Guard shouted over his shoulder. “Princess Twilight is here. She wants a word with you.”
The pegasus officer cantered over to the group with the stressed look of somepony faced with a challenge they think way above their ability to master. One wing held clipboard and quill close to his side, the other was folded, but shifted nervously in place as the stallion approached.
“How can I help you, Princess…?” he asked, directed his nervous gaze at the purple alicorn.
“Princess Twilight Sparkle, Captain,” the Crystal Guardspony explained. “She was the one who found out where Sombra had hidden the Crystal Heart and helped Spike the Saviour save us all.”
“Er, yes.” Captain Sentry sent Twilight an embarrassed grin. “Your Highness?”
“I’d like to know what the trouble with the castle is.” Twilight motioned in the direction of the lower-ranking guard. “From what the good sir here told us, there’s some sort of monster?”
“Yes.” The pegasus nodded. “Three monsters, Your Highness, to be precise,” he added. His wing extended, bringing up the clipboard to his eyes, and he flipped through his notes. “There’s a, and I quote the official classification according to the, uh, Third Lunar Amendment, trans-material entity of cosmic power, an amorphous, abhorrent beast from the Outer Spheres and a pony mutant with emotion-based magic.”
The Third Lunar Amendment, Twilight remembered from her studies, contained extensive emergency protocols for just about any implausible and impossible threat imaginable, from virulent zompony outbreaks to lizard alicorns wearing party hats, to the point where some contemporaries had described it as the ‘Paranoid Luna Act’. Ironically, one of the few times it had been invoked had been when one of its protocols had helped Celestia maintain public order after banishing Nightmare Moon. It being applied in three different paragraphs at once seemed downright ridiculous.
“I don’t suppose you could describe these monsters in any more detail?” she asked, and at the Captain’s reaction added, “You haven’t actually seen them, have you?”
“Well, no.” He scratched the back of his neck, accidentally dropping his quill. “You see, Your Highness, certain threats are simply above the abilities of ordinary guardsponies, which is why the princesses and whatever specialists they choose to bring in deal with those.”
Twilight’s suspicions were deepening. Something about this monster business was fishy.
“Could you point me to anypony who has seen them or might otherwise know more?”
“The pony who alerted me might know more,” Captain Sentry mumbled through the quill he had just picked up again. He hastily stuck it to the clipboard. “I didn’t catch her name, though, and I haven’t seen her since she went to inform the princess. Then there are a few guards who heard some strange noises on one of the upper floors, but they didn’t really see anything. I haven’t yet had time to talk to the staff, so I don’t know whether one of them has seen anything.”
It clicked in Twilight’s head as the next piece of the puzzle snapped into place. With only a few pieces still missing, she could now almost guess their shape. “This mare who told you about the monsters,” she asked slowly, “did she also have you cordon off the palace?”
“Yeah,” the Captain confirmed, “she even helped me with the quarantine forms and everything.”
A glance aside to her friends told Twilight that yes, they were all thinking what she was thinking. So this was Theory’s doing after all. “That mare – she wasn’t a unicorn, perchance?”
“About this tall?” Rainbow Dash added, her hoof hovering just a bit above the tip of Twilight’s horn.
“Was her coat a shade of light grey with just a hint of phthalo blue that would look positively delightful in a nice purple, or a light fuchsia – or maybe cerise?” Rarity mused.
“And she didn’t have a belly button!” Pinkie exclaimed.
Flash, whose affirmative nods had been getting less enthusiastic with every interjection, let out an uncertain “Uh...” at Pinkie’s suggestion, stopped nodding and settled for just looking confused and helpless once again.
Twilight rolled her eyes. Unlike him, she was used to Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie. “Never mind that,” she told the Captain. “We need to get into the castle, now.”
Flash Sentry shifted uncomfortably in place, ears pressed flat against his helmet. “You know I can’t let you do that. For your own safety.”
Rainbow Dash let out a groan, and Twilight couldn't suppress a sigh – internally, she just wanted to scream in frustration. This conversation was going in circles, and her brother and sister-in-law were still trapped in the castle.
“Look,” Applejack said, stepping forward and looking the guard captain square in the eye. “You do remember she’s a princess, right?”
She was rewarded with an expression of pure incomprehension and persistent bewilderment from Flash, his eyes widened and his mouth hanging open. “Right,” he repeated slowly.
Applejack reached up to readjust her hat and gave him an encouraging smile. “I’m sure you’ll want to resolve this here situation as quick as can do. If you’re waiting on one princess handling them critters, I reckon two will get the job done twice as fast.”
The captain’s tail swished from left to right, his eyes flicked from Twilight to Applejack, then back, and forth again.
Twilight had enough. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, opened up her wings, and held her head as high as she could. Then, in her best impression of Celestia’s ‘stern’ voice, she said “Captain, I order you to step aside. If ponies’ lives are at risk here, I don’t have time for arguments.”
Apparently, her impression had been good enough, as it only took Flash a second to comply. Stepping out of the way and saluting her, the pegasus seemed more relieved than anything else. Keeping her head up, Twilight walked past him, her friends in tow.
She managed to keep the regal poise until they had passed the castle doors, then her shoulders dropped and she released her breath with a deep sigh.
“That was awesome!” Rainbow cheered, grinning from ear to ear. “The way you went all princess-like on him back there – that was pretty cool, Twilight.”
“It’s just so strange, bossing ponies around like that.” Twilight stared down at her hooves and sighed again.
“You are a princess now, darling, there’s no way around it,” Rarity told her with a comforting smile. “Heavens know it can’t be easy for you, but I think I speak for all of us when I say you’re doing a fantastic job of it.”
“And if you ever think it’s too much for you,” Fluttershy added softly, “we’ll be there for you and support you.”
“Ahem,” Applejack cleared her throat, interrupting the heartfelt moment. “Now I don’t want to be insensitive, Twilight, but it might be best to sort that out later, and just get going. This whole lockdown business don’t sit right with me, and we really ought to make sure Cadence and your brother are okay.”
The dirty look Rarity sent Applejack told her in no unclear terms just how insensitive she was being right now, and she would have added some sharp words had Twilight not interjected ere she had a chance.
“You’re right, Applejack.” Twilight sighed again. “I’ll have plenty of time getting used to being a princess when we’ve sorted out this monster problem.”
She started moving up a flight of stairs, and her friends followed.
Rainbow Dash felt uneasy. The group was moving too slow for her tastes, but flying ahead was right out of the question. “So are we all on the same page that Theory’s the one who got the guards all worked up?” she asked instead.
“Most definitely.” Rarity snorted and gave her curled mane a flick. “Honestly, I’d be surprised if those laws that poor confused captain cited were real. Half of those words sounded either completely made-up or straight from a cheap novel.”
“They are real,” Twilight commented, absent-minded. “Luna introduced them more than a thousand years ago, but they’ve never seen much use. Apart from stuff like Discord or Nightmare Moon, there aren’t actually many things they apply to. Well,” she added as an afterthought, “not many real things, anyway.”
“Do you think there are actually any monsters in here? Or did Theory just make those up to get the guards out of the way?” Rainbow asked as they left the stairs behind and took the corner into one of the Crystal Castle’s many corridors. “’Cause that’s what I would do if I was a villain.”
“I think it’s pretty unlikely that there just happen to be monsters in the Crystal Empire,” Twilight said. “So unless she somehow brought some monsters with her, it seems safe to say that there aren’t any.”
Pinkie gave Twilight a thoughtful look. “More or less unlikely than the other things that happened to us today?” she asked slowly.
Twilight didn’t have an answer to that. It had been a very unlikely day so far.
As they briefly paused at an intersection to orient themself, Applejack once again broke the silence. “What I don’t get is why Theory’d do all this after she went through all that trouble convincing Luna. There’s gotta be something we’re missing.”
Twilight looked at her curiously, but Applejack didn’t continue, instead simply looking thoughtful as she kept walking forward.
“I’m afraid we don’t quite follow, Applejack,” Rarity put her friends’ desire for elaboration into words.
Applejack pushed her hat back and drew a circle in the air with a forehoof.
“We’ve been doing all this talking about the past and why things went the way they did, but we never thought to ask what Theory wants here with us. If she’s fine with being reformed, what’s she doing in the Crystal Empire? I guess what I wanna say is without knowing why she’s doing it, it’s hard to judge what she’s doing here.”
“Either way,” Twilight said firmly, “she has a few things to answer for.”
The question of Theory’s motives made her think back to the letter she had gotten this afternoon via the Marked Box – but that hadn’t really been from Theory, or had it? Still, that was a question for later. “We’re here.” She stopped in front of the richly decorated, two-leafed door to the Royal Suite.
At a wave of her horn, the door opened into a fancy parlour full of comfy-looking couches and antique coffee tables, where the Royal Family might normally receive visitors in a less highly-formal manner than in the throne room.
As the six ponies entered the room, they felt a certain air of mayhap portent hanging about the chambers, the kind of booming silence that also resides in certain tombs and cathedrals, where the din of the dead reminds the living that they are the minority, the exception and not the rule.
Needless to say, they moved on silently through the parlour, passed polished hardwood, lace doilies, and fresh floral sprays, and pressed on into the corridor leading to the rooms beyond.
Here, Twilight paused. She knew where in the palace Cadance and her brother had their Royal Suite from her last visit to the Crystal Empire, but she hadn’t exactly visited their bedroom. Now, she saw herself confronted with an odd dozen doors leading to different rooms of the expansive quarters reserved for the Crystal Princess and her family, and she didn’t know where to find the Royal Couple’s bedroom.
Pushing through brief indecision, she addressed her friends. “Let’s try all the doors. We know the bedroom door’s locked, so it must be one of those that don’t open.”
The small group quickly spread out along the corridor.
Rainbow instantly zoomed to the other end of the corridor to start with the doors there, quickly peering into an unused, unfurnished room before any of the other ponies had even reached a door.
Rarity and Fluttershy stood hesitantly while Pinkie bounced to the next door to the right; Applejack followed close after her in a less exuberant manner.
Twilight picked a door to the left at random, magically reaching for the door handle. To her surprise, a spark leapt from the handle as her purple aura encased it, sending a brief tingle down her horn. She didn’t have time to do more than let go of her telekinetic spell with a small “Oh!” before a brilliant beam of deep red light erupted from the keyhole and the entire door began to glow ominously from within.
Several pony heads turned at the sudden light and Twilight’s shout of surprise, just in time to see the door shine, for the briefest of moments, with light so bright that it almost seemed translucent and then transition from its former closed state to being wide open without going through any of the usual intermediary stages of handle turning, lock clicking and door swinging open.
For a few moments, all was quiet as the six friends took their time to process what had just happened. Then, just as Twilight made her first tentative step towards the open doorway, a wall of pink energy materialized in her way, followed by Shining Armor’s grim face appearing in the opening.
As soon as he recognized his sister, however, his grimace of worry and determination melted away into relief. “Twily! Thank Celestia it’s you,” he exclaimed as he dispelled his barrier. “You gave me a little scare there; I thought that unicorn had come back. I didn’t expect you to arrive so fast.” He reached out to pull her into a big hug.
“We were already in Canterlot when we got your letter.” Twilight returned his embrace. “We got on the first train to the Empire.” After a final squeeze of sibling love, the two separated. “How’s Cadance? You wrote Theory did something to her?”
“She has calmed down somewhat, but she’s still not quite her normal cheerful self,” Shining replied. “I haven’t gotten out of her what exactly happened other than that” – he stumbled briefly over the yet untasted name – “Theory said things to her. She just keeps telling me not to worry and just sits there, all quiet and downtrodden.” He let out a heavy sigh. “But enough about that. Tell me, what has been happening around the castle? What about the guards posted at the door? Did anypony get hurt? Has Theory been apprehended yet?”
“As far as I know, nopony got hurt. Theory has tricked the Captain of the Guard into evacuating the castle by invoking some old quarantine laws from the Third Lunar Amendment, so the guards are all outside waiting for you and Cadance to resolve an alleged crisis involving some made-up monsters.”
Shining groaned, massaging his face with a hoof. “And here I was hoping that getting that guy a desk job would keep him out of trouble. What about that unicorn, then?”
In her head, Twilight quickly put together what bits and pieces she had gathered. It wasn’t much.
“From what the guards outside told me, you were probably the last ones that saw her. I’d guess she’s still somewhere in the castle since she went and made sure she has it all to herself.”
“Makes sense. It’s probably best if I go and talk some sense into the guards outside. I’d suggest you say hello to Cadance, she’ll be happy to see you.” He gave Twilight a final nuzzle and a warm “Stay safe,” before turning and leaving the pony friends standing in the corridor next to the open bedroom door.
As Twilight turned her head back towards the doorway, her thoughts went back to the way it had opened.
Whatever spell Theory had used to seal Shining and Cadance inside the room, it had been primed to undo itself at a moment’s notice once disturbed from the outside. She wasn’t sure about the trigger mechanism – she hadn’t noticed the spell until after it had already begun unravelling – and was unsure whether it had been keyed to just magical or also physical contact to the door, but the way the spell had behaved as it was lifted told her quite a bit about it.
The fact that it hadn’t merely left the door unlocked but returned it to an open state in some way suggested the room had been closed off by some deeper, more metaphysical means than just bolts, locks, the wood of the door, or a simple barrier of force.
It worried her that she couldn’t tell whether she would’ve been able to undo the spell if it hadn’t done that on its own.
She pushed the questions of ‘if’ and ‘why’ in her head aside and made through the door.
Cadance was lying on a princess-sized double bed, the very image of a recently sobbing but now somewhat composed mess. Her mane was dishevelled, her ears were folded down, her eyes reddened and you could trace the paths of her tears down her face by the still wet lines. She had her head resting on her forelegs, staring glumly into the distance, deep in thought, and only reacted after more than half of the gang had made their collectively noisy entrance.
“Twilight!” Cadance’s mood visibly brightened at the sight of her sister-in-law. She smiled, got off the mattress, stood. “Girls! It’s good to see you, everypony.”
She stepped closer to greet Twilight. “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!” It was Cadance who initiated their little ritual, and Twilight indulged her; it brought back happy foalhood memories for both of them. Afterwards, Cadance pulled her into a brief, but warm embrace.
Still, despite the song and dance and hug and smile, or perhaps because of them, Twilight could not forget the forlorn look in Cadance’s eyes as she had entered, nor the traces of Cadance’s tears, nor the words of her brother and her own worries.
As they separated, Twilight voiced her concerns. “Are you alright?”
The question wiped away Cadance’s smile instantly, and for a moment, she hesitated, looking worried and tired. “I– I think so.” She forced the smile back on. “There’s just a lot I have to think about. It’s okay, really.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Fluttershy asked. “I mean” – she shuffled nervously on the spot and looked down at her hooves – “you don’t have to if you’d rather not. It’s just that talking about these things can often help you deal with them better.”
Cadance just exhaled deeply and shook her head. “I wish it were that simple. I am still trying to piece together what exactly did happen. Or didn’t, maybe.” She gave a short, joyless laugh and looked down at her hooves.
“Maybe we can help you figure all of that out if you tell us what exactly Theory did,” Twilight offered. “We’ve all had some rather unusual things happen today, so what we already know might help explain what you experienced.”
Cadance gave Twilight a long and thoughtful look. “So when the sun vanished earlier today, she was involved in that as well?”
“In a sense,” Twilight replied and gathered her thoughts. Then, with occasional interjections from her friends, she told Cadance how Theory had entered this world by means of a dimensional portal and how she was a Spirit of Knowledge and Insight, which, Cadance noted, explained quite a lot.
The Princess of Love then opened up a bit on how Theory had talked about and even showed her, in some kind of vision, several might-have-beens that had left her questioning her destiny and place in the world.
What it was exactly that Theory did she still had no answer to; Cadance could tell only that their conversation had been a surreal and dreamlike experience, and that she thought that Theory considered her, for whatever indiscernible reason, her enemy.
After laying down her observations and thoughts before the group of friends as well as herself back onto her bed, Cadance retreated back into her thoughts. “She didn’t have a cutie mark,” she finished quietly as if talking to herself. “What do you suppose that could mean?”
In the end, the group quickly resolved to leave Cadance to her now slightly less brooding thoughts and track down Theory to have her answer for tormenting the princess.
They left the princess’ bedroom with newfound determination, and it wasn’t until the broad, two-leafed doors of the Royal Suite had closed behind them that Applejack asked “So, how are we goin’ to find her?”
The group came to a halt – the problem Applejack had brought up was quite clear. Even though they could, as Twilight had deduced, be reasonably certain that Theory was still in the Crystal Castle, the building itself was by no means small. All of them had, to varying degrees, experienced its wealth of interconnecting floors, spiralling stairs and winding passages.
“Maybe we should split up,” Rainbow Dash suggested, indicating the parting of ways with her hooves as she hovered above the six ponies. “I’m usually a lot faster on my own, so we’ll find her in no time at all!” She added an enthusiastic somersault in mid-air to emphasize her awesomeness.
“Oooh,” Pinkie piped up, immediately sold on the idea. “It would be like in one of those spooky stories where the ponies split up to investigate better, and then the scary monster gets them all one by one. That sounds fun!” She grinned; Rainbow frowned and crossed her hooves, unsure whether Pinkie was being serious and whether she should defend her actually pretty radical idea.
Twilight stopped their shenanigans before they could pick up any more speed. “We should go about this logically,” she decided. “There’s no point in just running about checking each and every room. We have to think this through first.”
“So what’s the plan, then?” Rainbow mimed the sceptic to mask her half-hearted sulking.
“If we want to find Theory, we have to think like her.” As Rainbow intensified her scepticism by adding a raised eyebrow, Twilight gave context to her line of thought. “If you were Theory and you had the entire Crystal Castle to choose from, where would you go? What would you want here? What would you go after?” And, as an afterthought, she added “Aside from Cadance, obviously.”
After a moment of contemplation, Rarity gasped. “The Crystal Heart!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Rainbow nodded in agreement. “Or maybe she’s after those secret rooms Twilight found, the ones full of crazy traps where Sombra has hidden all of his evil stuff.” She passed everypony a serious glance, then solemnly added “Just like in Daring Do and the Enchanted Library.”
“Or maybe she’s raiding the kitchen for baking supplies!” A moment of perplexed silence and jumbled switching of mental gears followed, which Pinkie filled with an innocent smile “That’s what I would do.”
Applejack simply decided to move the conversation on. “Well, the Crystal Empire’s plenty mysterious, so I reckon there might well be something here that Theory’s after that we don’t even know about,” she hypothesized.
“That does sound plausible,” Twilight agreed. “Not even Princess Celestia knows all about the Empire, so who knows what secrets there may still be hidden away. Still, that doesn’t really help us with finding Theory.” With a final bit of consideration, she reached a decision. “We do have a few leads though, so I vote we check out those first and figure out how to go on from there.”
“You know, there is a problem with that approach.”
“Huh?” Twilight hadn’t really expected any disagreement with her proposal. As far as she had judged, the discussion had been fairly exhausted, at least for the moment. “What problem is that?”
“The problem with attempting to trace my steps is that if you do not progress at a significantly faster pace than I, you will continue to lag several hours behind me,” Theory explained. “This makes forcing an encounter with me exceedingly difficult. It might be more useful to try and anticipate my future actions in order to seek out my next rather than my last location and then confront me there.”
It took until this point for Twilight to fully register and accept what her eyes and ears were telling her. What she was seeing was mind-boggling because Theory hadn’t suddenly appeared, but had already been there. Judging by the only slowly subsiding expressions of supreme surprise on Applejack’s and Fluttershy’s faces – they were the ones who had been standing to either side of Theory and correspondingly were also most baffled by Theory’s presence right here and right now – Twilight wasn’t the only pony present currently questioning their sanity and general grasp on reality. Her discombobulated mind had barely moved from the question of what to those of how, where, when and why, all the while Theory continued to say words.
“Of course, there may be the complicating factor of a contactless battle of wits wherein to force an encounter it becomes necessary to attempt the anticipation of not only my trajectory but also my reaction to its planned interception. Needless to say, such an interaction of precognitive abilities would leave you at a severe disadvantage given both your lack of competencies in the field and the inferior scope of your predictive capabilities. Of course, at this point, all of this is not of immediate concern anymore, but it is something to keep in mind for the future.”
As questions and confusion slowly condensed into outrage, Twilight moved from slack-jawed paralysis towards righteous anger, until she could no longer contain herself.
“What did you do?” she asked, combining all her questions and accusations into a single, concise phrase.
Theory simply smiled. “I just went on a little tangent on game theory after covertly joining all of you while you were distracted by wondering where I might be,” she explained calmly. “While this might be considered ironic, I would like to rather emphasize a parallel to the old Equestrian proverb ‘speak of Discord and he shall appear,’ which bears reference to the fact the Spirit of Chaos is usually well aware of his name being uttered.”
Why did this keep happening? “No. Stop.” Twilight couldn’t. She just couldn't. She didn’t have the words. For a few seconds, she had to pause, take a few deep breaths, calm down enough to be able to form coherent sentences. With her thoughts gathered, her anger was no longer a tide that swept away the figurative ground from under her hooves, but a focused, boiling geyser directed squarely at Theory. “You are going to stop deflecting right now, and you are going to tell us what you did to Cadance.” And, with a stomp of her hoof, she added, for emphasis, “Now!”
“We just talked,” Theory answered. She didn’t seem impacted by Twilight’s outburst very much, keeping her expression and tone neutral, simply watching Twilight with reticent interest as she went on. “About her place in this world and its ramifications. To that end, I demonstrated some of the intricacies of destiny by granting her Insight into some interrelations and alternate potentialities. I will admit that I did not allow her to withdraw from the conversation until we were done, but even then describing it as me doing something to Mi Amore Cadenza is a strikingly evocative choice of terms.”
Rainbow Dash snorted. “Yeah, likely story,” she said, hovering towards Theory. “Then why was Cadance crying and locked in her room, huh?” She moved back, setting down amidst her friends, who had regrouped around Twilight and stood with her, everypony facing the markless unicorn.
“If you’ve talked to her,” Rarity remarked, “surely you must have noticed how upset you made Cadance.”
Theory frowned. “I must stress at this point,” she said fiercely, “that despite the colloquially implied causality, Mi Amore Cadenza’s emotions are an internal function of her self, and my conversation with her took place solely through the means of external functions such as her senses. Her emotional reaction to the conversation was her own and not my dictate, so you may not cite her feelings as an instance of me doing something to her.”
Her expression softened, and she continued in a less intense tone of voice.
“Nevertheless, I was aware of any of her emotions to the same degree of depth and intensity as she herself. You will have to take my word for this, as an exhaustive proof would be both time-consuming and mostly pointless. Your assessment of my interaction with her will not change significantly based on whether or not you believe I was aware of her thoughts and feelings.
Thus,” she concluded, “I will have to ask you why you take your friend’s distress as a cause for hostility against me; I was under the impression that the proper response to this kind of negative emotion would be to comfort the affected friend with Kindness and Laughter.”
“Are you being serious?” Twilight asked. She was more annoyed than furious at this point after her initial outburst of helpless, confused rage had burnt itself out. “Princess Luna just gave you a second chance, asking me and my friends to help reform you, and instead of putting some effort in and trying to be on your best behaviour, the first thing you do is go out of your way to hurt our dear friend Cadance!” She placed a hoof on her chest as she repeated “Are you seriously asking us why we are angry?”
Theory blinked sedately, then simply answered “Yes. Our current differences are rooted in a lack of mutual understanding that I am seeking to remedy.”
She smiled and continued, speaking faster with every sentence that followed. “Nonetheless, you claim I hurt Mi Amore Cadenza. As it is obvious that no physical pain or harm was inflicted, you will deflect my thusly based refutation into an implication of harm to her emotional faculties. However, no such harm was done as you will agree when presented with sufficiently convincing arguments. We will spare ourselves this line of argument as it will do little more than dance around the question what hurting a pony emotionally actually means beyond causing them negatively connoted feelings; that such a meaning beyond the trivial exists would be your insistence were I to argue that hurt feelings lack meaningful impact on a pony’s life based on the volatile and transient nature of emotional states.”
Theory paused at this point, taking in the different faces the ponies opposite her were pulling, evidence that several of them had not been able to follow Theory’s increasingly rapid words. When she resumed her speech, she did so at a normal speed. “Let us assume you have already convinced me there is some deeper meaning to your claim of me hurting Mi Amore Cadenza and focus our discussion on a term more central to our incongruity: that of emotional pain.”
Twilight blinked owlishly, then briefly shook her head to clear the aching numbness that had set in trying to follow the leaps and twists of Theory’s logic and rhetoric. At this point, she wasn’t completely certain anymore whether this was still some sick kind of game Theory was playing, or whether she was actually serious about all this being a big misunderstanding.
“You want us to talk about emotional pain?” she confirmed slowly. Theory nodded.
Twilight let out a ragged sigh. “First you say that you understand how Cadance felt, and now you suddenly don’t know what pain is? I have a hard time believing that.”
Theory thinly smiled back at her, a smile just barely on politeness’ side of the border to condescension. “I understand what physical pain is, mind you, and it serves an important function as an alert mechanism, as an indicator of bodily stress and damage that would compromise the body’s function.
What you call emotional pain, however, does not necessarily serve as an indicator for similar danger to the processes that allow expression through emotion. Since emotions are just one way for the self to express its inside world to the outside world, them having a true pain analogue while other forms of more creative expression do not is something I do not understand.”
She shrugged in a half apologetic, half helpless way. “Mind you, I am not claiming that emotional pain is not analogous to physical pain as we cannot reach logically sound consensus on that, but I genuinely want to understand what it is that qualifies emotional pain as, well,” – her forehoof drew a circle in the air – “pain.” Theory set her hoof down and looked at Twilight expectantly.
“Um,” Fluttershy started, barely looking up from her hooves at Theory as she softly pawed the floor, “I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing you of anything, but I feel like you’re being awfully dismissive of ponies’ feelings.”
A few of her friends made supportive noises, and suddenly something clicked in Twilight’s head.
“It may seem like emotions aren’t important at all, but that’s just not true,” she said. “Even though we don’t think about it a lot, emotions are really a part of every aspect of our lives. They’re a part of every experience we make and every decision we make. The way we feel is more than just some random impulse our thoughts and desires express themselves as, but how and what we feel about things are a big part of who we are, and what we feel also shapes what we think and how we act.” Twilight’s forehooves produced animated gestures alongside her monologue. They included classics like the hoof-on-heart pose and the all-encompassing sweep as well some more rare examples such as tapping the floor at different points to emphasize juxtaposition. Also, somewhere along the line, her wings had unfolded on their own. Twilight wasn’t quite sure what to do about that, though they did make her look bigger and maybe added some extra expressiveness to her gesturing. Maybe.
“Emotions are like a common language between the conscious and the subconscious, and emotional pain upsets all of these things; your whole being is thrown out of balance. If physical pain warns you about an injury to your body, emotional pain warns you about injury to your soul.”
Theory was looking at Twilight with wide, shimmering eyes, an enormous, dopey grin on her face. “Yes!” She laughed, clapping her hooves together in childish glee. “Psychosomatic trauma,” she beamed. “Oh, this is wonderful.”
Somehow, this wasn’t quite the response Twilight had been expecting. She hadn’t said anything wrong, had she?
“Er, are you okay?” she asked Theory with concern in her voice, though that concern wasn’t strictly for Theory’s well-being, but mostly for her own and her friends’ safety and sanity.
“Yes,” the unicorn replied happily. “I made a terrible mistake.”
“Pardon my confusion,” Twilight said in the same slightly worried tone of voice, “but why are you so—excited about that?”
“Oh, but do you not see?” Theory smiled wide. “Making mistakes is how you learn. If you make a mistake and you realize it, then you have already learned enough to invalidate what you thought previously.” She bounced up and down on the tips of her hooves.
“The fact I am already making mistakes means I am already exploring regions of parameter space suitable for testing the validity of my models, which in turn means I am already learning so much!” She settled down onto a much calmer, less excited smile. “That is why making mistakes is a good thing to which an appropriate emotional response is happiness.”
“Well,” Twilight supplied hesitantly, “I guess that makes sense?”
“It does,” Theory replied seriously. “There is another thing that makes sense now: hurting Mi Amore Cadenza was a horrible and stupid thing to do. I realize now that I was wrong in experimenting on a pony by stimulating negative emotional responses like this.
I am deeply sorry that my misjudgement has caused all of you so much grief and strained the goodwill you extended towards me. I hope you are willing to look past this because I am taking the chance of reformation Luna offered me seriously and I do want to try and learn about friendship from you.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Rainbow Dash exclaimed, jumping in between Twilight and Theory with a flap of her wings. “Wait a moment! First, you say that you didn’t do anything to Cadance, and now you’re suddenly sorry that you hurt her?” She frowned at Theory. “Do you really expect us to buy this bunch of horsefeathers?”
“I talked to her, I never denied that. Before, I just did not understand that what our conversation made her feel was anything but a passing curiosity,” Theory explained herself. “I misjudged how ponies think and feel, I misjudged how Mi Amore Cadenza thought and felt, I made a mistake based on that, and I hurt her without intending to.”
She had now settled on a calm, subdued tone, nothing like the manic, intense exuberance of her outburst just moments ago.
“That is what I am sorry for,” she concluded.
“Sure,” Rainbow said snarkily, “you didn’t think you’d hurt her, but you still locked her in her room while she was crying?” She crossed her forehooves, hovering just high enough to look down at Theory. “Yeah, I don’t trust a word you’re saying.”
A slight furrow creased Theory’s brow. “Yes, I did not think I hurt her, which is because ‘hurting somepony’s feelings’ is a concept I am only now really beginning to understand. I locked her and her husband in their room because there are dangerous monsters in the castle and they were acting irrationally. They might have gotten seriously hurt if they had gone about the castle in that state. It was safer for them to remain in their room until they had calmed down. As for not trusting me, that is fine.” She gave a short smile. “I do not encourage you to trust me. I only ask you to accept that what I am telling you is true.”
She paused, looking into Rainbow’s eyes, then sighed before the pegasus could speak up.
“You suspect I had ulterior motives and wanted the castle empty for my own purposes.” She shrugged. “I do not deny that my endeavours in exploring the Crystal Citadel were aided by being undisturbed and neither do I deny that I did come here to learn more about the Crystal Empire. However,” she said with sudden emphasis, “it was never my only reason for coming and it also does not invalidate my concerns over their safety.
And before you accuse me of that as well, no, I did not fabricate any lies about the presence of monsters in this castle. I assure you that they are real and that the quarantine is completely justified and legal.”
Theory’s iridescent eyes met Rainbow Dash’s sullen glower, two shimmering pools of light, unblinking, hypnotic.
For a moment, all was quiet.
“But if the quarantine says everypony has to leave the castle how come you stayed inside?” Pinkie’s question interrupted the stare-down. Eyes previously locked in ocular battle turned toward her, though it wasn’t clear afterwards who had looked away first.
“Doesn’t that break the law as well?” she asked innocently.
It was a really good question, Twilight thought. Theory’s entire line of argument to worm herself out of the hole she had dug herself had been based on her being sincere about taking up Luna’s offer of a second chance and reformation, and the interaction between her and Cadance being a big misunderstanding. Now, it was one thing to hurt a pony’s feelings because you were actually unaware of how that whole thing worked, but breaking the law was another, particularly since the rules in place there were that much less ambiguous than social and emotional considerations.
If Theory had known about and ignored the castle lockdown, then that opened a pretty clear line of argument that she wasn’t really that serious about following Luna’s rules and, by extension, being reformed.
“Quite the contrary.” Theory smiled. “Since I am by categorization according to paragraph 2a of the Pony Mutant Quarantine Act a trans-material entity of cosmic power and thus subject to the quarantine, I can not legally leave the castle until such a time as the quarantine is lifted.”
For a brief moment, Twilight had that horrible feeling of disorientation, confusion, and losing the figurative ground beneath your hoof that one may encounter when, in deep concentration, reaching for the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle only to find that it does not fit. To say she was puzzled would be an adequate though very mild way of putting it.
Her mouth moved soundlessly as it stumbled over several almost begun sentences while Twilight’s brain feverishly reorganized several knowns, unknowns and suspicions.
After a second of hesitation, she asked “Didn’t you help that Guard Captain set up the quarantine?”
Theory nodded. “I did bring to his attention both the situation as well as the law in question, and I did assist him with the bureaucratic formalities,” she confirmed. “Captain Sentry proved to be most cooperative.”
It slowly began to dawn on Twilight why she wasn’t quite sure what to make of this bit of information. Since the start, she had been comparing Theory to Discord – if both were spirits of something or the other, why wouldn’t they be similar?
Certainly, it had seemed that way with the constant strangeness and games, the put-on, upbeat childishness and overall bizarreness that marked her interactions with each. There were differences, of course. Where Discord would always be fidgeting, pulling faces and entertaining himself with outrageous use of powerful magic, Theory did almost none of that, and just calmly talked her own personal kind of insanity.
Still, Twilight had caught herself and her friends following the same pattern as with Discord, alternating between trying to angrily talk Theory down and begrudgingly going along with some of her mind games.
If anything, Theory was more invested in those than Discord ever was – while he would've probably appreciated the irony of quarantining yourself, he would never have gone through the actual legal and bureaucratic processes.
The notion that the castle lockdown was, in fact, completely legitimate seemed to give a whole new dimension to Theory's angle of argument, and now Twilight wasn’t even certain anymore whether or how much of this really was just one of those games spirits played on ponies.
What if Theory was being sincere about this? What if Theory really had not wanted to hurt Cadance?
With Discord, it was simpler. He was never really sincere about anything. Being sincere wasn’t chaotic, it wasn’t Discord.
But what about Theory? Theory wasn’t Discord, she wasn’t some aeon-old chaos spirit who had probably lived longer than any of the princesses.
What about her excitability, the sudden mercurial mood swings that came out of nowhere and went nowhere, the childishness, what if those where sincere?
Theory was a knowledge spirit and less than a day old. What if she actually, in some strange way, was a child?
But if she was being sincere, then why— “I should have asked this earlier,” Twilight said, “but why did you come to the Crystal Empire in the first place? I thought you said you just wanted to do some renovations for your underground, er” – she faltered briefly, trying to find a fitting description – “dungeon?”
Complex! Secret underground complex! She should’ve used that one, Twilight thought while feeling slightly irritated, but it had come to her just a moment too late.
“I asked permission from Luna for an opportunity not only to begin renovation of the Everfree Technologies Alpha Compound’s facilities,” Theory began quietly, “but also to resolve some questions left open, some loose ends left untied. You see, over the years there were some unpredicted elements, events, things not accounted for in the Watcher’s plan.” She looked down at the floor but still continued, voice clearly intelligible yet far away, as if lost in thought. “While the predictions were corrected and the plan adjusted, it was not always possible for the Order to deduce why these anomalies had occurred. And since quite a few unforeseen events were connected to the Crystal Empire, I wanted to investigate the reason why the Empire’s influence did not properly factor into the Watcher’s and the Listeners’ prophecies.”
She looked up again, directly into Twilight’s eyes, and said, determined, firm “That is why I came here. If you had asked me back at the compound, I would have told you then. But you did not ask, so I saw no reason to bother you with the details of my activities.”
Really, Twilight thought, she should have seen this coming. It followed the same pattern, after all; another detail that had slipped past her then was now casting doubt on what would otherwise have been a strong indication of Theory’s insincerity. The odds were that this wasn’t something Theory had left to chance, and there really wouldn’t be any way to undeniably attribute any of her actions to her being uncooperative. And in this case as in any other, it wasn’t really possible to tell whether Theory was wilfully exploiting her and her friends’ negligence or not.
Twilight was slowly beginning to accept that the whole question of whether Theory sincerely wanted to reform or whether she was just stringing them along for some weird spirit game would in the end just turn out one big in dubio pro reo.
Of course, she considered, there was also the possibility that Theory was being sincere about wanting to be reformed and wanting to learn about friendship, but was still going to take as much leeway to pursue her other strange goals as they would give her.
Before Twilight could come to a conclusion, Theory started moving, turned, and stepped away from the group of friends, up to the corridor’s crystal wall. She gently placed a hoof against it, and the moment the hoof touched the wall, Twilight almost thought she could hear a subdued resonating chime or hum ringing through the walls and the floor, like the sound a wine glass would make when softly struck.
“This city,” Theory started, “contains the oldest artificial structures in all of Equestria. Some, such as the castle itself, are more than ten thousand years old. They are relics of a bygone time and part of a different fate than that of Equestria and her ponies. As a result, the Crystal Empire altered Equestria’s fate simply by becoming part of her, and these changes, both major and minute, have continued to shape everypony’s fates to this day.”
Her hoof remained in place, but her gaze danced upwards, along the engaged columns lining the sparkling walls up to the elegant arches of the high ceiling.
“I know this because I saw it. I traced threads of fate and causality through the tapestry of time back to the origins of the Crystal Empire, I placed my ear against the Crystal Heart and in its beat, I heard the song of its makers.
I climbed the central spire and found the hidden orrery which those who came before used to map the old stars, and I wandered down into the catacombs Sombra had excavated and saw that which he unearthed in secret.
And I confronted the princess who is heiress to this place and its legacy and I showed her the alterations of fate she herself had caused.”
She pulled back her hoof, turned her head back to the pony friends. “I confronted the heir, but I did not consider the pony. I made a grave error and hurt her when I should not have done so.” Determination flashed in Theory's eyes as she turned again, towards the opulent door to the Royal Suite. “I need to apologise to her.”
The large door gave way to a pulse of her horn, and she cleared the doorway at a brisk trot so that Twilight and her friends barely had time to react before she was already halfway through the parlour on her path towards the Royal Family’s rooms proper.
Rarity took a hesitant step in the direction of the door. “Should we just let her walk back in there, alone with Cadance?” she asked.
Rainbow Dash scoffed. “After what happened last time? Hay no!”
Almost inaudibly, Fluttershy voiced her thoughts. “But if she wants to apologise, maybe we should...” she began, only to be drowned out by a much louder Applejack.
“I reckon it might be okay to see if she really means it,” Applejack said, confidently adjusting her hat. “If things go pear-shaped, we’ll all be there for Cadance.” She passed the others a smile.
Twilight couldn’t really disagree with that notion. She gave a nod to signal her agreement and made to follow Theory. “Cadance won’t be alone. We’ll make sure of that.” It might even help her to have Theory apologise and clear things up. And wasn’t the willingness to see your faults and change your ways an important step in getting reformed? Letting Theory do this would also let her prove that she meant what she had said.
With apprehension, the six ponies moved back the way they came, through the parlour, past exquisite furniture and extravagant tapestry into the same corridor which led to the Royal Couple’s bedroom, following with several seconds latency after Theory herself.
They caught up to her at the bedroom’s door, where Theory had paused to give it three knocks and wait for a response before entering.
Cadance’s answer came slow, hesitant, apprehensive. “Yes? What is it?”
Theory turned the handle. The door swung open and the unicorn stepped through, clearing the doorway so the six pony friends could enter as well. “I have come to apologise,” she replied softly.
Twilight slowly followed her into the bedroom, her friends trailing behind. Cadance was still on her bed, but had sat up as Theory entered; she still looked somewhat under the weather, but it looked like she had at least washed her face and brushed her mane in the meantime. Her expression was nervous and tense, perhaps even slightly fearful. She didn’t say anything, so Theory spoke up again.
“When we last spoke I hurt you badly. Not out of malice, for I had no intention to do so, and not out of negligence, for I was aware of how you felt and how I caused you to feel,” she said. “It was out of ignorance that I hurt you, for I did not understand how you were hurting.” She placed a hoof against her chest. “My heart, regrettably, is made of harder and colder stuff than yours, and the pain that affected you so deeply was, to me, a simple curiosity. Now I know better, and I am sorry for the pain I have caused you.” Theory lowered her head, letting it hang down so the tip of her horn almost touched the floor.
Cadance’s expression had darkened as Theory had gone on, and now that she spoke up, her voice was bitter.
“I should find it surprising that a spirit of knowledge pleads ignorance of all things, but at this point, I don’t.” She cocked her head as Theory met her gaze, and her tone grew questioning. “You already all but admitted to me that you do not know love. Now you say you don’t know pain. Do you really know me, like you said? Do you really know what might have been, like you showed me?”
“What I showed you,” Theory replied solemnly, “was more than conjecture and prediction. It was contract; contract like the rise of sun and moon, the immutability of time, or the nature of causality. It was a contract of fate, one that was broken. The world which I showed you was the world in which I was meant to exist. The very Gate by which I was to enter this world was that contract’s seal and my birth was the fulfilment of its terms. The fact that it was broken represents a denial of my right to existence.
The vision of this world I showed you was not meant or made to hurt you, rather the reverse is true. Though it wasn’t you that broke the contract of fate, it is you that is a symbol of this breach and of the new fate that took its place.”
A hoof went up to Theory’s chest, paused there, while she said “And yet, despite this new fate, I am here, present, alive, real, Theory. I exist in denial of the fate that you represent, just like the way you exist as Crystal Princess is a symbol of denial of the fate I represent.
Destiny and the forces that govern it have declared war on me before I even existed, that is the truth your reality tells me. The mandate of destiny has placed us in opposition, such that only one of us, the Princess of Love and the Spirit of Insight, may exist in this world.” Theory’s deft hoof danced, indicated ‘you’ and ‘me’, drew an all-encompassing circle, and settled back to rest.
“Please understand I am not trying to excuse my actions and mistakes,” she pleaded, “I just want to help you see why I acted in animosity towards you. Again, I did not intend to hurt you, and that I did was a mistake. What I did intend was to instil animosity and incite conflict; conflict between me and you and you and your destiny. That, too, was a mistake. Destiny had designed for us to clash, and I wanted you to see a confrontation I believed was coming, wanted you to understand how your destiny had already shaped this world so you would be at odds with it, question it, struggle with it.
I was too ready to indulge in the machinations of fate and the game of lives that so readily develop between and around Spirits like me. I paid too much heed to them and too little to you, as you, as a thinking, feeling pony. I disregarded what mattered to you, what might matter to friendship as far as I understand it, and I realized too late that you and Twilight and all the other ponies of Equestria would teach me love and friendship much better than a dangerous game of chess against destiny. That as well was a mistake, my first mistake, and it led to the other two mistakes in turn.”
Theory sighed, her shoulders sagged, her gaze darkened and dropped again. For a moment, there was silence, but it did not last long enough for anypony else to start a reply.
“I do not want to fight you. I believed that I would because that is were the paths we were set on would lead us, but I know now that I do not want this. If friendship truly is as powerful as you and your friends believe it is, then we can break free from this fate and walk a different path. I know I can not take back what was said, both because what I said remains true and that I said it remains true, but I can take back the spirit in which it was said. I want you to understand what you saw not as an accusation, not as a prelude to animosity, not as a denial of your victories, but as a window into the deep complexities of how our actions affect the world around us, as an opportunity to see your choices from a different perspective. Ultimately, even the greater knowledge with which we judge the actions and decisions of our past are as imperfect and incomplete as the knowledge that we based those decisions on in the first place. As such all judgement is flawed to some degree and calling a choice right or wrong is always done from a certain perspective that depends on what we can and cannot see when we make that call.”
She looked back up at Cadance with a brightened, hopeful expression. “I realize that this is no consolation for you right now. You feel like you can either dismiss all I said or face responsibility for the ways you, according to what I told you, shaped the world. However, the truth is that what I showed you is just a selection focused on details relevant to the precedents of my arrival, and the impact you had on this world is much more complex and diverse. What I showed you is what your destiny means to me. You need to remember what it means to you.”
Twilight turned toward Cadance to gauge her reaction to the monologue, so she only caught the flash in the corner of her eyes. Theory's horn flared up, a luminiferous red spark flickered across its length in the time it took Twilight’s eyes to jump back to Theory.
Before any of the ponies could do something, before Twilight could even place the familiarity of the spell, the spark leapt from the tip of Theory’s horn to Cadance’s. Just moments afterwards, Rainbow dove into Theory, sending both to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
The others were more hesitant. Applejack took a few faltering steps toward the scuffle but wasn’t sure whether and how to intervene, Fluttershy seemed torn between supporting Rainbow Dash and Cadance and shying away from potential conflict, Pinkie Pie had produced a party cannon from somewhere but was now questioning whether this was the right kind of emergency and Rarity was still getting over her initial stupor.
Trusting her friends to keep Theory under control for the moment, Twilight turned back to Cadance. Her sister-in-law hadn’t moved despite the commotion and was sitting still on her bed, absently staring into the distance. It clicked—context, observation, and familiarity of the magical pattern lent themselves to a relatively harmless conclusion. The spell Theory had used was some variant of a memory spell. “Are you alright?” she asked Cadance apprehensively.
Cadance blinked and blankly looked at Twilight like she had just noticed her. “I think so,” she said distantly. She blinked again, then added with more focus “I just remembered how I got my cutie mark. I think I also remembered every time I called on its magic to help somepony. It was—strange somehow. And a bit overwhelming, because it was kind of all at once. I didn’t really remember all the names and faces, but mainly what happened, so it was hard to separate similar occasions and to keep track of what happened where and when.” Cadance’s brows knit together, and she closed her eyes, went silent for a few thoughtful seconds. “I think I can only remember all the details for some of them, but for most, it’s quite hard.” She opened her eyes again. “So yes, I think I’m mostly okay.”
“Don’t worry – unf – I’ve got her pinned!” Rainbow’s muffled voice came from the pony pile. Pinkie and Applejack, both standing next to it, looked unsure whether to join in.
“Memory spells usually either augment a pony’s ability to remember in general or amplify certain memories shared by the spellcaster, but there are always limits to them,” Twilight thought out loud. “So this was different from what Theory did before then?” she asked.
Cadance nodded in reply.
“Then it probably really was just a memory spell she just cast, though I’m not sure how exactly it would work given that she wasn’t there for any of the stuff she made you remember,” Twilight concluded.
“I believe this form of physical contact is called a friendly hug or cuddle,” Theory commented jovially from her mutual enlacement with Rainbow Dash. “I am grateful for you giving me this practical lesson on the expression of friendship and not violently assaulting me.”
“It does put some of the things she said into perspective, though,” Cadance mused. Twilight waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t do so.
“Hng—let go!”
Twilight looked over to the commotion. Rainbow had apparently changed her mind on who was pinning whom, and Twilight sure as hay couldn’t tell from the outside who in this Gordian knot had the upper hoof. Applejack looked ready to intervene but didn’t know where to start.
“While you are very soft and fluffy, I will respect your wish for this embrace to end because as a good friend and nice pony you will not try to attack me as soon as I let go.” Theory slipped from the entanglement and rose back onto her hooves in one fluid motion, leaving Rainbow on the ground wrestling with herself for a bit before managing to sort her limbs again and getting up as well.
“This was fun.” Theory smiled. Dash just glowered.
“You really shouldn’t have just cast a spell on Cadance like that, ” Twilight said with a tired sigh. “And I really shouldn’t have to explain why.”
Theory's smile became just an idea quizzical. “Using memory spells is a tried and tested way of helping ponies who have been discombobulated by some capricious trickster back to their proper self,” she argued. “Even if they expressly do not want you to.”
Twilight took a moment to fully work out what Theory was alluding and caught herself before blurting out any of the obvious responses that came to mind. This was the same pattern again, she realized. She thought about her responses to Theory's argument, turned them in her head, trying to anticipate how Theory would counter them. After mulling over it for a second or two, she finally said “Sure.”
She waited for the exclamations of protest and surprise of her friends to quiet down, then asked Cadance “Are you okay with it?”
Cadance looked surprised as well but caught herself quickly. “I guess I am,” she said slowly. “I know I shouldn’t be, but in hindsight, I really needed that reminder, so I think this did help quite a bit.”
“That’s good to hear.” Twilight smiled at Cadance, then turned back to her friends. “Since no harm was done, I don’t think any of you have a problem with it?”
She winked at their flabbergasted faces. Applejack frowned, Fluttershy and Rarity looked confused, and Rainbow Dash’s look of horror and jaw-dropped disbelief was a sight to behold, but they all got her hint and trusted her to know what she was doing. None of them spoke to the contrary.
“Good.” She looked back at Theory, who was still smiling. “Still, if you’re trying to solve a problem by casting a spell in the future, it’d be a good idea to ask one of us first, even if it is another emergency. It’s not that I don’t trust your judgment, but you said yourself that you’re still learning about friendship, and a lot of ponies are a bit more skittish about that sort of thing than Cadance here is. I know that probably sounds unnecessary and laborious to you, but Luna did ask us to do our best reforming you and teaching you about friendship, and sometimes a more roundabout solution to a problem can teach you more than a quick and efficient one. So would it be okay for you to take things a bit slower in the future and ask us first before using magical solutions?”
Theory nodded. “Of course, Twilight. I would be happy to benefit from your and your friends’ expertise on this in the future.”
No distraction, no discussion. That was good, Twilight thought, because it indicated that Theory was at least serious about wanting them to try reforming her. Also because she was really starting to feel tired with the constant rhetorical sparring.
“Cadance,” she began again, “I’m very sorry you were pulled into all this. I feel like a lot of this could’ve been avoided if we had paid more attention to how we handled this whole situation, so I’m just glad you’re feeling a bit better now.” They shared a brief smile. “If it’s okay with you, I think my friends and Theory and I should just go now so we can all move on from this mess.”
“It’s alright,” Cadance said quietly.
“One last thing.” Everypony turned back to Theory as the grey mare started talking with the same solemn, subdued tone she had delivered her apology with. “I realize that after the way I acted, you will probably want nothing to do with me ever again,” she said to Cadance, “but I earnestly hope that my failure today does not have to stand between us forever and that maybe one of these days, we can meet one another on friendlier terms.”
Cadance’s expression was unreadable. “Maybe,” she replied.
Theory smiled and softly said “Thank you.”
The six friends and the aberrant unicorn left the Royal Chambers in silence, Applejack and Rarity flanking and all but herding Theory, with Rainbow Dash flying a few feet above the ground, lagging slightly behind and keeping a honed eye on everything.
They had left the grand, two-leafed doors behind them and passed a good portion of the corridor leading up to the Royal Suite when Theory spoke up again.
“Say,” she mused, “you would not happen to know where Shining Armor went? All things considered, I owe him an apology as well.”
“After we talked, he went outside to talk to the guard captain and lift the lockdown,” Twilight replied. They’d have to go past the guards outside when leaving the castle anyway, so as far as she figured, stopping by to clear things up with Shining wouldn’t even be a detour. With a bit of luck, they might even catch a train that wouldn't get them back home too late—the day had been draining on many different levels, and she was beginning to feel that.
“I see.” Theory’s expression was bright, amenable, and utterly unreadable. “So you have determined that it is once again safe for ponies to freely access the castle, then?”
“Well,” Pinkie replied chipper, “we kinda just assumed that there wasn’t any danger to begin with because you had just made all of that up...”
Twilight stopped, the whole pony procession came to a halt and Pinkie interrupted herself. Slowly, audibly, Twilight breathed in, her mouth a narrow, tense line.
“Theory, could you please tell us what kinds of monsters there are in the castle right now?” she asked laconically.
“Obviously there is me due to my nature as a Spirit,” Theory began, raising a hoof to indicate herself, “which is categorized under paragraph 2a of the quarantine act as a trans-material entity of cosmic power, then paragraph 14b defines the notion of a pony mutant with emotion-based magic as a blanket term for creatures such as Changelings, Sirens or Windigos which however also applies to Princess Mi Amore Cadenza” – she gestured over her shoulder, back to the Royal Suite – “and lastly the characterization of an amorphous, abhorrent beast from the Outer Spheres in paragraph 5 describes the insurgent servitor that is currently rampaging through some of the guest rooms on the fourth floor.” She pointed up and slightly to the side.
Applejack frowned. “Wait, so you’re saying that you used Cadance as one of the reasons for this quarantine malarkey?” she said, pointing a hoof at Theory.
Theory shrugged. “I did not create these regulations. As an alicorn fuelled by the power of love, Mi Amore Cadenza fulfils the specifications of paragraph 14b, and that is that.”
“The other monster you mentioned, this amorphous beast, is that a threat to ponies?” Twilight asked impatiently, her right ear twitching.
“Absolutely.” Theory nodded sharply. “The entity in question is the size of a train car and will attempt to entangle and envelop any pony it encounters to dissolve them using its caustic secretions. Additional hazards it poses to ponies may include but are not limited to dismemberment, lacerations, strangulation, contusions and loss of appetite.”
“And why,” Twilight asked, this time a bit louder, “didn’t you tell us about this earlier?”
Both eyebrows raised, Theory replied levelly “I brought it up as soon as you mentioned Shining Armor was planning to lift the quarantine. It did not seem a pressing matter before as the servitor was contained and isolated within the castle and thus nopony was in imminent danger.”
“Okay. Fine,” Twilight said. A weird monster in the Crystal Palace was about the last thing she wanted to have to deal with right now. “So we’re going to have to deal with this, too.”
“Does that mean we’re going monster hunting?” Rainbow Dash asked eagerly from above.
Twilight sighed. “Yes, Rainbow, we’re going monster hunting.”
“Awesome!” Dash cheered.
“Let’s just get moving,” Twilight decided. She turned back to the markless unicorn. “Theory, you lead the way. Also, I would like to know what we’ll be up against here.”
“Gladly.” Theory smiled. “It’s this way to the stairs.” She indicated a general direction and resumed her trot, the rest of the party trailing after her.
The group of friends followed the pale mare through the shimmering corridors, up a winding flight of stairs, then through other corridors towards a section of the castle reserved for guests, incidentally close to a different set of guest rooms where the ponies had stayed the night in the Crystal Empire during Princess Twilight’s inaugural visit scant two weeks prior.
Along the way, Theory outlined to them in a manner more verbose than succinct but no less precise what they would have to expect of the thing that awaited them at their destination.
The servitor, as Theory called it, was an artificial form of life created to be the perfect servant, capable of adapting the configuration of its amorphous bulk of protoplasmic flesh to any sort of labour required. It was not truly sapient as a pony was, she explained, but did possess a keen animal intelligence, similar in sophistication and resourcefulness to a crow or an octopus.
Their creators conditioned these creatures to work menial tasks and guided their metamorphic capabilities by hypnosis, but their mutating nature and certain aspects of their biological precursors made this form of control unstable, and they tended to rebel, such as this one had. Nonetheless, it still retained parts of its indoctrinated behavioural and morphogenic patterns belonging to its original function in cleaning sewage pipes in the vast cities of some alien civilization on a distant world.
Likewise, their heritage inexorably drew them to places where the veil between worlds was thin, leading to them getting lost in the skein between realities, to resurface in a different place, a different time, a different world, just as this one had.
The thing they noticed first in their approach was the smell, a putrid stench of rot and decay and, more subtly mixed beneath that, a strange, acrid note that made their eyes water slightly. The stench grew in intensity as they got closer, getting to the point where it was almost unbearable when they rounded a corner and saw, in the corridor before them, a glistening, oily smear leading from the opposing corner across the corridor between several open doors until it disappeared into the open door nearest to them. The carpet was gone where the slick trail crossed it, and the edge close to them, where the smear turned into the doorway, was frayed and blackened. The group stood still, and for a moment, all of them were silent save for their somewhat laboured, almost gagging breaths.
Piercing the quiet through the open door came a wet smacking sound, a slow dripping and gurgling interposed by the intermittent glacial tearing of fabric.
“We’re here,” Theory provided.
“Yeah, thanks.” Rainbow gagged and coughed. She rolled her eyes. “I couldn’t tell.”
Before things had a chance to escalate from there Twilight interjected, addressing Theory with “From what you describe, this servitor is basically a giant, dangerous animal, not deliberately hostile to ponies, but fiercely territorial, correct?”
“The servitor instinctually cleans its surroundings of any foreign organic matter. It does not distinguish between living and dead in that regard,” Theory confirmed. If the stench and the fumes rising from the slimy coating on the floor affected her, she didn’t show it. “Apart from that, it does not actively seek out prey.”
“Right.” Twilight blinked to clear her eyes, grimaced. “Fluttershy, do you think you can try talking to it? Maybe if it understands it’s not supposed to be here you can convince it to leave and go somewhere it doesn’t pose a danger to anypony.”
“Um, I’m not sure if my special talent will work on it if it’s not really a natural creature,” Fluttershy said hesitantly, “but I can at least try.” She began shuffling towards the door.
“You can do it, sugarcube,” Applejack cheered Fluttershy on, trotting alongside her. “We’re with you all the way!”
The rest of the group moved with them forward, some more eager than others.
Rarity was the least enthusiastic of the troupe. “Well, at least most of the way,” she whispered, eyeing the disgusting smear on the floor with a horrified expression.
At the edge of the carpet, they slowed down, reluctant to come into contact with the layer of ooze on the floor. Still, at least part of the spacious guest room was visible from this angle. Peering through the door, the first impression the ponies had was that of small, blinking lights shining from a dark room; yet this was not the case. Instead, the majority of the room’s surfaces, floor, walls and ceiling, were covered in a slick, almost black substance that undulated and flowed over everything. The bed was almost completely covered, thick, viscous tendrils were crawling up the curtains, which were slowly tearing up under the added weight. The moist surface of the servitor’s dark flesh constantly shifted, extruding small protrusions that blindly flailed through the air before being reabsorbed, and pale green, bulbous pustules that seemed to rise to the surface and sink back, glowing faintly from within.
Again, everypony was silent for a few seconds. Going for a good gasp of shock isn’t really the same when the air’s so biting it makes your skin itch.
Fluttershy swallowed, took a few shallow breaths, then gently took off, gliding a bit closer before speaking up. “E-excuse me?”
Another pregnant pause, then the thing inside the room reacted. Waves rippled through it, beginning at the corners of the room and moving inward, where, in the room’s centre, a swelling clump began to form, quickly growing in size. The luminous bulbs clustered on the blob’s surface, small eddies swirled to become opening and closing holes, undulating funnels, the now massive lump started to slowly pulsate, distending and contracting, and an odd, haunting whistling filled the room, ranging from a deep, tuba-like buzz to the shrill piping of a piccolo played by an unskilled flautist.
Two notes the dissonant wind orchestra played, then it fell silent.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry to disturb you,” Fluttershy apologized. She smiled at the rotund mass that reached almost up to the ceiling. ”I’m Fluttershy, and who are you?”
Two low, long tones, then a few short ones came, as if in answer. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. If Fluttershy could talk to it, then the problem was as good as sorted out.
“That’s a nice name, but I don’t think I can pronounce it,” Fluttershy replied politely. “So, I know you’re very busy cleaning the place,” she went on, “and it does look like you’re doing a really good job, but maybe you could clean somewhere else?”
The central mound of strangely fluid flesh shuddered, and let out a repeating three-note chord until Fluttershy interrupted.
“I know you don’t want things getting dirty, that’s okay,” she reassured the servitor, then, as the piping had subsided, she explained “It’s just that this place already has pony cleaners, so you don’t have stay here and clean everything. Also, this really isn’t the right place for someone like you. Wouldn’t you rather live underground or underwater in a nice dark cave instead of here on the surface? I bet you’d like that.” She offered a reassuring smile.
All over the central bulge’s surface, small, temporary pseudo-limbs frayed outwards, flailed agitatedly and sunk back into the surface, accompanied by a brief staccato of irregular chirps and followed by a drawn-out, low buzz that was only interrupted by the curtain rail being ripped loose from its mounting and noisily falling into the embrace of the writhing tendrils below.
Fluttershy let out a little gasp. “That’s a very rude thing to say,” she said sternly, frowning at the faceless blob. “There’s no reason to talk about them like that.”
“Is everything okay, Fluttershy?” Twilight called up to her pegasus friend. She coughed. “Is there a problem?”
“He’s being a bit obstinate about leaving, I’m afraid,” Fluttershy replied. Her additional height and the air current created by her wings lessened the impact of the heavy, creeping fumes on her respiration despite her greater proximity to the servitor. “And he said some mean things about the cleaning staff.”
“Do you think you can figure something out or should we try a different approach?” Twilight asked.
Fluttershy thought about it a few seconds, anxiously rubbing her forelegs together. “I think I’ll try being more insistent to get through to him,” she decided. Twilight nodded approval and understanding.
“Okay mister,” Fluttershy addressed the creature again, “I know you’re upset, but that’s no excuse for calling ponies names. Even if you don’t approve of their standards of cleanliness, the Crystal Ponies still live here and you should respect that.”
A guttural gurgle came from the thing as it shifted its mass, a drawn-out squeak as it dragged a slick tentacle across the window pane, then a couple of jittering bars of dissonant skirl as it finally replied.
“I am not taking that kind of lip from you,” Fluttershy chided. “I know it’s not your fault you’re here, but you have no right to drive ponies from their homes and break their belongings just because you think they’re too dirty.” She sighed, her expression softened. “I really want what’s best for everyone here, not just us ponies, but you as well, but I can’t help you find a proper space to live if you’re so uncooperative. I don’t want to do things like this, but if you don’t behave yourself and try to work this out together with me, I’ll have no choice but to use” – she paused dramatically – “the Stare.”
The bulbous lump of malleable flesh quaked, seemed to swell further, all while releasing a repetitive three-tone piping, warbling and offensive to the ears of anypony with a sense of music.
It didn’t require translation or explanation for the rest of the ponies. Fluttershy’s expression told them all they needed to hear. “How dare you,” Fluttershy burst out, “how dare you say something like that? How dare you mock the idea of creatures caring for each other?” The intensity of her glare was almost tangible. The Stare’s power radiated from her like heat, and although it wasn’t directed at Twilight, she still felt a shiver run down her spine. “I’m trying my best to be nice to you, to make sure you feel welcome and to work something out that you’ll like, even while you’re still in the process of making a complete mess of this place that some poor pony is going to have to clean up while being unapologetic and rude, and you know what? It’s okay, I can take that. But when I extend my hoof to you in friendship and kindness and all you do is laugh at me, that’s where I’m going to draw the line.” A beat of her wings sent Fluttershy closer to the foul-smelling blob, fiercely staring right into its luminescent, milky orbs. “You are going to stop behaving like this now, you are going to leave this room and this castle and this city in peace. You are going to leave, and then we’ll find you some nice place to stay where you can live without upsetting anypony. But first, mister, you will have to apologise, to me and to the ponies whose things you have ruined! Is that understood!?”
For several long seconds, only Fluttershy’s agitated breathing filled the silence.
And silently, the servitor started moving. The central mass swelled as its distributed flesh flooded back together, and with a suddenness and speed that belied its enormous and blubbery constitution, it began lumbering towards Fluttershy. Whipping tendrils extruded from the surfaces of retracting tide and advancing mass, curling, reaching, grasping for the butter-yellow pegasus hovering before the formless monstrosity. As it charged, it broke the unnerving quietness with which its bulk moved, resumed the unholy, shrill piping, called out “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
With a yelp of surprise and fear and a flap of her wings, Fluttershy propelled herself backwards, twisted in mid-air, and dodged through the doorway, away from the tidal wave of flesh that rolled towards her. Not two seconds later, the servitor’s massive body, too big for the door, slammed against the door frame with a wet smack that sent a noticeable shudder through the building.
The group of ponies, now rejoined by Fluttershy, started a cautious retreat backwards as the servitor began slowly pouring out of the door into the hallway, still piping “Tekeli-li” again and again.
“What the hay is that thing’s problem?” Rainbow Dash asked as they regrouped a good distance down the corridor.
“I’m sorry girls, but I don’t think he’s going to listen to me anymore.” Fluttershy landed and looked back at the creature, which was still forcing its mass through the doorway. She seemed upset with herself. “I’m sorry, I should’ve tried harder.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Fluttershy dear,” Rarity told her, “I’m sure you tried your very best. I don’t think any of us could have made an attempt half as good as yours.”
“It’s not your fault that meanie’s being a bad blancmange instead of a pudding pal!” Pinkie Pie added.
“Tekeli-li!” Three doors further down the hall, the servitor had fully exited the room and reoriented itself towards the ponies. Its flanks on either side touched the walls, and it filled the corridor halfway to the ceiling, making its slowly accelerating advance seem more like a rolling ocean wave than the advance of a living creature. All the while, the unnerving piping continued. “Tekeli-li!”
“Guys, I think we should get to kicking that thing’s” – Rainbow broke off in confusion over the creature’s lack of persistent anatomy – “whatever it has!”
“I don’t reckon kickin’s gonna do much good here,” Applejack observed with a look at the advancing wall of dark flesh, faintly glowing orbs and coiling tentacles. “Not unless you want it to grab y’all.”
“As if!” Rainbow boasted as she launched herself towards the ooze-like being. “I’m way to fast for that.”
She soared past the tendrils whipping towards her, delivering a few good hits as she flew past. The servitor slowed, directing its attention to the pegasus attacking it. Rainbow dodged and weaved past the onslaught of temporary limbs reaching for her, scoring a kick at a large, pale pustule and another into the flesh of its central bulk.
However, her initial whooping and laughing of excitement was suddenly replaced by a sharp “Ow!”, and she fell back to the group. Covering Rainbow’s retreat, Rarity launched a decorative unicorn bust from a nearby alcove at the creature, which harmlessly bounced off and fell to the floor before getting swooped up by a curious tendril.
Rainbow landed amongst her friends and immediately set to cleaning her hooves on the carpet. “Whatever big ugly here’s covered in, that stuff really stings,” she complained, prompting Fluttershy to come closer and help her injured friend.
Rarity followed up the bust with a similarly effective vase of flowers. This one got caught before hitting the floor, and the inquiring arms removed the floral spray, quickly crushing, dissolving, and consuming it.
“Tekeli-li!” Now free of its assailant, the servitor began speeding up again.
With no way to dissuade it from attack and none of her friends in the line of fire, Twilight sent a vibrant beam of energy against the servitor. She had been going through some of her spells, but none of her more sophisticated options had really seemed promising, so in the end, she had just settled on a simple and reliable kinetic energy blast. The magical attack danced over the monster’s wide front, cleaving off tendrils and tearing a long gash into its flesh.
However, as quickly as the damage had been done, it seemed to be undone almost as quickly. The seemingly big wound rapidly scarred and healed, growing a new outer skin-like layer in a matter of moments, and the shaved-off arms were scooped up and reabsorbed just as swiftly; the servitor rolled forward another length and the superficial injury had completely vanished.
Twilight, who had been lining up another shot, let her hornlight wink out—it just didn’t seem very effective. She turned to her friends to see if any of them had any immediate ideas on what to do here, but in their worried, questioning face she found only a mirror of her own perplexity; they were hoping she had an answer to this. Twilight looked back forward and with a start realised that the servitor was quite a lot closer than she had anticipated. It thundered towards them, its corridor-filling bulk looming over them as its front section distended up and forward like the crest of a great wave about to roll over them. A gust of foul-smelling air pushed along in front of the servitor hit Twilight’s nostrils, almost making her gag.
Rarity shrieked, Fluttershy yelped, a monstrous, wet slap rung through the hallway as the servitor’s front slammed down and came to a halt, stopped by a magenta barrier of force that bisected the corridor in front of it like an extra wall. Instinctively, Twilight had shaped the shield she had conjured up like a wall instead of a dome as usual. Now, seeing the black flesh pressed against it and the milky, glowing orbs peering at them through it, she was quite happy to not be sitting under a magical dome with a fifty-ton layer of airtight malicious ooze on top of it.
“Now what?” Pinkie asked.
“What I don’t understand,” Twilight grumbled, “is why it even started attacking us. It seemed to be fine with Fluttershy talking to it until it suddenly wasn’t.”
“Um,” Fluttershy made, looking up from nursing Rainbow Dash’s acid burns. “I think he’s confused and I might have scared him and that’s why he’s lashing out.” She shuffled her hooves on the spot. “I think he doesn’t have a lot of experience dealing with other creatures and only knows to ignore or attack them. I don’t think he ever learned to change his behaviour for the sake of others, so he’s really having trouble understanding what we want of him.”
Thud!
The shield flickered, the dull pain of magical feedback shot through Twilight’s horn and she winced. The servitor had reared back and thrown itself against her forcefield while they had been talking. Her shield had held, but keeping it up had just become a lot more taxing. If it kept doing that, sooner or later it would break through.
As if it was reading her thoughts, the servitor started pulling back for another charge.
“Okay,” Twilight said, “we need to come up with a solution, and fast. My shield won’t hold for much longer. Fluttershy, you say we can’t convince it. What other options do we have?”
“I say we just blast that stupid thing with the Elements,” Dash suggested sullenly as she sat on the floor on her hind legs, her foreleg stretched out to let Fluttershy fuss over it.
Fluttershy didn’t look up as she applied the improvised bandage to Rainbow’s leg (it was a product of Pinkie’s emergency party supplies, Rarity’s emergency sewing supplies, and Theory’s suggestion of an ad-hoc recipe for a chemical neutralization agent) and said “I really don’t want us to hurt him. It’s not his fault he never had any loving parents or positive role models and he shouldn’t be punished for that.”
Thud!
Twilight flinched. She could feel the beginnings of a headache build up at the base of her horn. There was a distinct chance that tomorrow, she would wake up with a migraine. “I realise that, Fluttershy,” she replied, “but does anypony have any other suggestion?”
“Any other suggestion?” Theory asked innocently. She smiled. In her bright eyes, the interplay of colours mirrored the glow of golden light flooding through indigo clouds.
The other ponies looked at Theory, then at Twilight, who had the slightly pained expression of someone asking themselves why they kept trying to drink pure lemon juice. The ensuing awkward silence was quickly interrupted by another Thud! as the servitor slammed itself into the shield again.
Twilight grimaced, then said with a voice of forced calm “Let’s hear your idea, Theory. The short version, please.”
Theory nodded. “I have a banishment spell,” she said.
“Why didn’t you—“ Twilight started, then decided that no, she wasn’t having that kind of discussion again, not now. She took a deep breath and exhaled. ”Never mind. What’s the catch?” she asked instead.
Theory’s eyes wandered over the group of six. “None of you can perform this spell or even verify its function without lengthy prior study,” she explained. “You’ll have to let me cast it and believe it does what I say it does without proof.”
“I can’t say I like the sound of that,” Applejack decided. “But I also don’t like the idea of using the Elements on that there critter if Fluttershy ain’t on board with it. So I don’t know what I’d rather we do.”
“Where would that spell send him?” Fluttershy asked. “And would it hurt him?”
Theory’s expression was neutral, her eyes were gleaming. “The spell would cause the servitor no harm and return it to whence it came, to an in-between separating concurrent realities. You have my word for that.” A cynical little smile twitched in the corner of her mouth. “Of course, on the other hoof, you only have my word for that.”
Thud! The servitor cried “Tekeli-li” as it struck the shield once again.
Twilight groaned. She swayed, took a step backwards to regain her footing. This time, the assault had pushed her barrier and by sympathetic feedback also her back just a bit. Her horn felt like it was on fire and her head like it was caught in a slowly tightening vice; by her estimate, she could only take two or three more such hits before the shield would shatter.
“Let’s please just not waste any more time,” she managed to say before she had to close her eyes shut and wait for the newest throb of pain to subside. She opened her eyes again and met Theory’s, where she found the unspoken question for her approval. She nodded.
As the servitor pulled back for another charge at the shield, Theory stepped forward and her horn began to glow with arcane energy. For a moment, Twilight felt Theory's magic touch her shield, then her connection to the spell was already severed. The magenta glow of the ethereal wall turned a darker crimson as Theory took control of it, and a moment later, she had stepped through it.
The servitor paused halfway in the motion of gathering momentum for its next attack, for a moment unsure how to react to this new development.
Theory raised her head high, and the magical glow around her horn doubled in intensity. Sparks trailed off her horn, weaving lines of light into the air before sinking back into the dense lattice of magic they sprung from. The light curdled, wisps of electric blue condensing amidst the dance of red fire, expanding, interlocking, twisting. A tightly curling, glowing blue shape rose up from Theory’s horn, wrapped around itself and folded into itself in the strange way that suggests the embedding of highly complex topology into a space of too low dimensionality, an impossible tangle of curving surfaces that hung gently shimmering weightless in the air, thrumming and whispering like hushed brass winds.
Glittering blue light reflected in the servitor’s milky sight-organs, and with a shudder it resumed its motion, lunging towards Theory, tentacles thrashing around in front of it.
The knot of light tightened and simultaneously unfurled, pulsed once, its ghost-like light flooding through the corridor and gently suffocating all noise. The angles twisted, distance buckled and vibrated. The glowing geometric vortex pulsed again twice, thrice, then more, in a rhythm encoded by the mathematics of fractional dimensions. Strange pattern danced across the forcefield separating the ponies from the spectacle, and the thrumming grew to deafening soundlessness.
Meanwhile, the servitor seemed to slow down. Its tendrils moved languidly through the air, and trailed some sort of fog or white smoke as they reached for Theory's body; in fact, the odd mist appeared to be rising from its entire massive shape.
The fog grew thicker with each pulse of the luminous hypersurface, partially obscuring the servitor’s glacially advancing bulk. One of its mist-trailing arms curled around Theory's leg, but instead of wrapping around and gripping tightly it slipped and passed, with a slight disturbance of the surrounding fog, right through, twisting idly around itself, increasingly wrapped in fog, its flesh increasingly translucent. With another pulse, the transparency spread over the mist-shrouded body, its contours blurring in the thicker and thicker fog until no clear distinction or separation was visible in the nebulous, ponderously shifting shape of roiling mist.
The entire time, Theory hadn’t moved. Now, she did. A wave and tilt of her horn and the thrumming stopped, the flickering blue shape above her changed. The knot of non-trivial geometries collapsed into itself, and as it did, it seemed to pull back all the light that had flooded forth from it back into it. Waves of pulsing light rushed inward, dragging the ghostly fog in twisting spirals with it, into the imploding whirl of angles, curves, and light. Finally, the blue wisp winked out, and the corridor was euclidean once again. Theory’s horn dimmed and the shield dissolved as she turned around, giving the ponies a clear view of the now much emptier hallway. Even the oily sheen that had previously marked where the creature had spread its caustic slime had vanished. The revolting stench lingered yet but was already growing fainter like the recollection of a half-remembered dream.
Theory wore a thoughtful expression as her eyes wandered over the six ponies before her. “Curious,” she commented. “I do not think this was a friendship problem, was it?”
“Well if it was,” Pinkie mused, “I don’t think I learnt anything from it. Did any of you girls learn anything?”
Fluttershy ignored them, stepping towards Twilight, who was standing still, breathing slowly with her eyes closed, and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Twilight, are you okay?” she asked softly.
Twilight opened her eyes and gave Fluttershy a faint smile. “I’m fine, just a bit tired.” She sighed and turned toward Theory. “What I would like to know is why you didn’t do that” – she gestured vaguely toward Theory and down the corridor – “earlier.”
“I had to ask for your approval first, obviously,” Theory replied, “and you all were very busy finding your own solutions to apply to the problem. I did not want to stop you or trivialize your efforts by imposing my thoughts.”
That was about the kind of patronizing excuse that Twilight had expected. She sighed.
“Alright, but couldn’t you have at least warned us that the Stare wouldn’t work?” Twilight asked.
“Yeah,” Applejack agreed, “that servitor thing gave poor Fluttershy here quite the fright.”
Theory raised an eyebrow. “Such a warning would require certainty on my part in failure on Fluttershy’s part. However, I could not be sure whether and how the famous Stare would in fact affect the servitor simply based on prior evaluation of Fluttershy’s abilities,” she explained, earning a range of sceptical to blank faces in response. Before any questions could be voiced, though, Theory continued her elucidations.
“You see, if the circumstances of this confrontation had lent themselves to Fluttershy learning a friendship lesson and accomplishing some measure of personal growth, this might have enabled her to utilize the potential of her talents to a greater degree than previously and then succeed in solving the problem. A warning and show of non-confidence in Fluttershy’s ability to handle the situation might have precluded the possibility of such an outcome entirely. Lacking my understanding of it may be, the magic of friendship is a powerful force indeed and has on previous occasions helped ponies in times of crisis grow beyond their limits and achieve feats that before might have been considered impossible. Given your group’s particular affinity for this type of magic,” she concluded, “I thought it wise not to discount its possible influence on your efforts especially given my, again, quite limited understanding of the subject.”
“Fair enough,” Twilight said after briefly thinking the argument over. She might not have agreed with Theory's point, but she sure as rain wasn’t going to just start arguing against the power of friendship. A proper deconstruction of Theory's argument, if even fully possible, was going to take a lot more time and energy than she could spare right now. And even if she did manage to make Theory concede the point, then the very line of discussion of the relevant minutiae would just pave the way for the argument of a plausible, genuine, and excusable misjudgement. Even considering the possibility made Twilight feel tired.
“Let’s just go,” she proposed, leaving the implied ‘home’ and ‘to bed’ unsaid.
Theory nodded. “It is time.”
Twilight blinked, slightly confused. “Time for what?”
“The sun sets,” Theory replied. “I gave Luna my word I would return to her supervision and report for debriefing after dusk in Canterlot. As I would like to keep my promise, I ask permission to transport to Canterlot in a timely fashion.” She looked at Twilight expectantly.
“I’m not going to let you run off on your own again,” Twilight said. They’d just finished clearing up the fallout from Theory's last unsupervised escapade. “We’re all going to Canterlot together.”
“So you are not opposed to me travelling to Canterlot, but you want all of you to accompany me?” Theory asked. “May we leave now, then? I do not wish to be late.”
“Yeah, sure.” Twilight turned towards her friends, gauging their opinion. “Is everypony good to leave?” Nods and other gestures and sounds of affirmation were the response.
“Good.” Slowly, deliberately, Theory raised her left foreleg. Her eyes glittered. “Brace yourself,” she said, and swiftly brought it back down on the shimmering crystal floor. Her hoof hit the ground without a sound.
A shiver ran down Twilight’s spine, something like an intangible gust of frost blew through her, chilling her from the inside. The castle, the world around her seemed to fade, turn into glass, revealing the boundless sky beyond. For a moment, the translucent world glittered in the light of the setting sun. Then it shattered, falling away completely to leave her stranded in an infinite expanse of bright stars and dark void.
The sky that was now above her, beside her, below her was both darker and brighter than any night sky she had ever seen, marred neither by a cover of clouds nor the haze of the horizon. The sun shone merciless to her right, while the moon gleamed like ice to her left and all around spanned the intricate web of all constellations known to ponykind.
Twilight turned her head, saw her five friends behind her, staring into the vast sky with varying expressions of awe, surprise and fright; saw Theory standing in front of her, facing away, her left hoof raised.
The intangible gale returned as a storm, a sudden sense of vertigo and movement twisted Twilight’s insides as if she was falling fast through the emptiness. The hoof moved, and the floor came up from below to meet it, shards of crystal flying together, turning opaque, setting themselves back in place, into floor, walls and ceiling. With an almost inaudibly deep, bell-like chime hoof and floor met, and reality was solid once again.
Twilight slowly released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding – wasn’t sure she had been holding, for who knew whether more than an instant had really passed – and tried to shake the disorientation of hurtling through space just a thought ago. They were indeed not in the Crystal Empire any longer, she realised. This architecture, these halls were more familiar to her; this was the Royal Palace in Canterlot.
A few minutes after Prince Shining Armor lifted the quarantine of the Crystal Palace, a lone royal pegasus courier who had been held up by the lockdown entered the castle with an important message to the Crystal Princess. After being admitted to a late audience with Princess Cadance, he informed her of the worrying disappearance of her three fellow princesses Celestia, Luna and Twilight.
Cadance, who had spoken to Princess Twilight not an hour ago told the messenger that she already knew that Celestia was missing, that his information was outdated, and that according to Twilight, Princess Luna was already back in Canterlot managing the affairs of state.
The poor pegasus, who had spent a good part of the day commuting between Canterlot, Ponyville and Fillydelphia before being sent north to the Crystal Empire, barely managed to hold back his tears, thanked the princess for her time, and quietly decided to file a request for an early vacation.
He returned to the Captain of the Crystal Guard to ask for overnight accommodations before his return trip to Canterlot and was assigned a bunk. Reaching said bunk, he immediately collapsed onto it from sheer exertion and proceeded to sleep for the next nine hours.
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Why'd you make this chapter so long? Will any future chapters be this long?
10363457
The short answer is: It just happened.
The slightly more elaborate answer is: When I wrote this chapter, I knew what things had to happen in it and those events formed a relatively cohesive whole. So when the chapter turned out a lot longer than I thought it would, I didn't really know how to split up in a way that made sense; that's why I didn't break it up into smaller chapters.
I really don't think chapters this long are going to be the rule going forward. If a future chapter does turn out longer than it really should be in the writing processs, I'll probably put some more effort into splitting it up into smaller chunks.