When the Everfree Burns

by SpiritDutch

Chapter 41: The Longest Night of the Year

The night of the Summer Sun

Night was inevitable. I was guaranteed to come and end the day, but it would not last forever. Yes light would be replaced with darkness, but light would come again. It was not for no reason that countless proverbs referenced this endless cycle: As sure as the sun would rise was Twilight's favorite. Two states of being, two powers, two princesses.

But this night, this eternal night, promised no deliverance.

The dust was long since settled from the destructive exchange between Rarity and Ancepanox, but the black alicorn could still feel the stings and burns of where she’d been hit. The flesh and fur had restored itself, but the pain persisted in a certain way, an echo of the trauma her nerves had been exposed to.

An echo… An echo of pain since passed. In what world did it make sense that pain should persist after the cause had ended?

Ancepanox sat down and leaned herself against the base of the broken old sun throne. She had been in this spot plenty of times, in that other throne room, hundreds of kilometers away in Canterlot. She could not deny the view was the same beside both thrones, as she could see the whole room, destroyed as it was, and still the similarities in her head were eerie. Was the newer modeled on the older, or did a throne room anywhere in the world look about the same?
Not many other civilized throne rooms could sport as much carnage though. Applejack was nestled beside her, still unconscious but stabilized, but the other bodies were still where Rarity had arranged them, in mockery of the onetime grandeur of the Everfree Court.

Celestia… Ancepanox tilted her head back, to look at the limp body of the sun princess draped over that broken old throne. A dead principality, a dead castle, a dead Princess.
“Who are you?” She asked the corpse. “When Myriadess told me about Celestia the First, I could barely reconcile it with who I thought you were. Until she started talking about the siege, that is.” She sat up a bit more and fluttered her wings. “When ponies get hurt, we only have to deal with it for a few decades before we die. Mortal pain, like mortal lives, is transitory. But an alicorn’s? That lasts a lot longer doesn’t it.”
Her wide, saddened expression turned severe. “How can I hurt you now, Celestia? How do I cause pain that will last an eternity, like my predicessors did on this very spot a thousand years ago?”

Her gaze flicked momentarilly to Twilight Sparkle before she chose the next target of her ranting.

“Changeling. What was your name? Chrysalis? What an aweful name.” Ancepanox adressed the dead queen, laid off to the side of the dais, that damnible look of eternal surprise/anguish just as gruesome as it was when it was fresh. She’d begun to attract ants.
“You feel almost… suplamentary to this story. But it easilly could have gone the other way, and it would have been you pondering things and me rotting on the ground. But at the same time…”
She kicked a levitated a small chunk of rublic and pinged it off the changeling’s carrapice. “It was not you who was sucked into my story, nor me into yours. This is an alicorn’s tale. “
She threw another piece of rubble. “And despite that, I still want to saver the moment we had. I don’t even remember the words we exchanged, or the fight, and that’s fine because it was the moment wasn’t about that. It was about how much I hated you, and how that triumphed over your hate for me. Isn’t it lovely, and isn’t it poetic, that we can hate each other enough to kill despite just meeting? I was horrified when it happened but now I think that’s a welcome change from these ancient dramas I’ve been drawn into. Just two hates, and one death. Hell yeah.”

She stood up. “Were it so easy all the time! Gods curse the inventor of history, to deprive ponykind of the simplicity of deaths like yours, changeling!” She burst out laughing. “Ha ha!! And deaths like Myriadess’s! And deaths like those knights! Just so many chance meetings, chance convergences of fate that bring together two hates, and one death. It feels so good! Why does it feel so good to kill?!”

She paced around on the dais. Again her eyes turned to Twilight Sparkle, but she looked away. She wasn’t ready to talk to her yet.

There was a crunch as her metal-clad hoof came down on some glass. The shattered stained-glass, once the magnificent window between the throne room and the land of Everfree, now shared the floor with stone and dust and blood. Ancepanox picked up a shard, angling it back and forth to catch the moonlight in different ways. The crafts of ponykind were doomed to erasure by the course of time, and did not need mortal help to expedite the process.
As she angled it just so, Anceanox saw her own reflection. It was at the exact profile that had graced the moon’s surface for a thousand years, the mare in the moon. Ancepanox imagined it was Nightmare Moon herself, looking out at her.
“Am I doing a good job?” She whispered to Moon. “Is this mortal doing enough to protect the dignity and legacy of the Nightmare of the Moon?”

She looked up to the moon, then back to the reflection. “I wish we could have talked more, about ancient philosophy and history and all that. The months were not enough to let me know, truly, who you were. I’m sorry but I have to guess. I have to guess what you would have wanted, both for this body and for me.”

She crunched the glass into sand, then stood up to her full height. Let the discourse begin.

“Celestia!” She barked at the corpse, leaning over it. “Celestia, why did you take me as your student?! What inside of me gives me the distinct honor and privilege? Because I was a disaster waiting to happen, too powerful for her own good? Why did I get a student’s dorm instead of a cell on top of a mountain? From the very first moment, my capacity for destruction, perhaps even death, was obvious. Hell, my kairotic moment was the explosion of Cloud Creche!”
She pointed a hoof accusingly. “You knew. It wasn’t just my magical potential that made me a hazard, but something deeper, darker, and impossible to admit to me. Did you take me on as a challenge to yourself, to see if a pony with Dark dreams inside of her could be saved? Celestia, my princess, were you thinking of other Dark ponies who you could have saved from themselves?”
She grinned, knifelike teeth wavering between smile and snarl. “You can’t save ponies who don’t want to be saved, princess. You should have destroyed me and my family if you wanted to keep this from happening. Bucking, sit little filly Twilight down on the floor and turn her into DUST!”

Tears were beginning to well at the edges of her eyes. Angry tears, sad tears, she couldn’t really tell.

She pointed at Chrysalis again. “Do the math, Celestia! Can’t you see how much suffering letting me live has caused? Why do you let evil ponies live? Like me, like my mother, like this bug?! Celestia the First traveled the world with her sister driving fillies like me into the dirt. Who hurt you? Who made you lose your way?”

She picked up another shard of glass to urgently shout at the reflection. “How much did she really know? She was your sister, yet separated by succession and the years. What would she have said to you, or you to her? I wonder if you would have even been able to communicate, so alienated you two really were from each others conception of each other. You would have needed a translator.”
A translator, or a messenger, or a medium of common exchange. Ancepanox ground her teeth, the tears coming freely now. It was so undignified, she thought, and Nightmare Moon would never have cried like that.
“You should have chosen a different pony, Moon. You should have chosen a different pony, Celestia. Something was wrong with me and I could not be the pony either of you needed. I was both of your triumphs and failings, a idle seeker of virtue who let her Darkness linger. Not for any high minded reason, but because I was a student.”

She fell back on her haunches, feeling weak in the legs. “Historians don’t like to talk about inevitability, but on reflection, you couldn’t have brought us together and have it end in any way other than tragedy. Myriadess tried to prevent this moment, where I realize how bucking pointless all the ideology and posturing is. But this was inevitable. At the end of the day, Twilight Sparkle will give way to a monster.”

But Ancepanox knew, as she sniffled softly, that the cursed fate she was uncovering for herself was not to be mourned, but celebrated. If there was anything to be learned from Myriadess’s lecture, it was that the aspect of Dark was just another interpretation of existence like the Light was.
“Mom, dad, I’m evil.” Ancepanox whispered ruefully.

She looked into the glazed eyes of Celestia, and remembered what she had seen when those eyes were alight with hatred. Destruction, death, agony, and pain, that is what she’d seen.

Ancepanox wanted it. Every time she lost the veneer of restraint, pain and death followed: Chrysalis, Glori, Ripple Wreath, Myriadess, and nearly Rarity. Incalculably more if Forlorn Spark, the truest manifestation of that Dark desire within her, was counted.
Without control and without restraint, when she was being honest with herself, she wanted to make reality that bleak future full of woe and anguish. That perverted joy asserting herself, in a way that could not be denied, made her feel more in control than restraint ever had.

“Should I hate myself for what I am? Do the other creatures of the world deserve the least iota of protection from sadistic obsession. I could get away with it so easily. Astral Nacre and Velvet’s crimes in Canterlot prove this nation isn’t ready for creatures like me. None of them, no, not a single thing of this planet could stop me.” She said gravely. “That I know of.”

She nodded to herself. “What to do then? What to do, what to do, that’s the stressful question. What’s the future hold for me. There’s a humdrum, bourgeoise worry in me, a fear of falling from these heights. What do I do to keep what I have and rise even higher?”

Answers. From the very beginning of the accursed night she’d wanted her answers.
“No more putting it off. My circular speculation don’t get me any closer to the truth.”

At last, she allowed herself to look at Twilight Sparkle, resting so peacefully against the princess’s side.

Twilight Sparkle.

“I can feel your mind. It matches so well with what I was. You’re me.” Ancepanox mumbled, half-lidded, probling the little mare’s faint magical aura. “What a trick, what a feat, to put the cat back in the box. Last week Twilight Sparkle had the capacity to become Forlorn Spark, or me. Did Celestia change you too much for that to happen again?”
She knelt down by the purple pony. “I could ask her. She’s up there somewhere. Celestia the dream parasite. She’s the difference between you and me. You’re my past, but I might not be your future, little Twilight Sparkle, because of her.”

Things were coming to a head.
Ancepanox leaned forward, her breathless whispers tickling Twilight’s ears.
“Yes, my teacher, a certain word yearns to be tasted on this tongue of mine. Why? Why did you do this to me? I loved you, but with your dying breath, you spited me. Why did you save Forlorn Spark instead of me?”

Ancepanox’s tears dried up.
She grabbed Forlorn Spark around the head, bringing them nose to nose. The dark alicorn mashed their faces together, the cold metal of the helmet against the other’s forehead, their mane tangling together, their horns grinding.
“That’s right, Celestia. I’m coming after you.”

The shimmering glow of magic was all the preamble before Ancepanox collapsed, her consciousness having departed her body for the Dream.

---

In another deep dark place, another cursed creature also wandered, less the questions of existance and more physical space. The cavern under the Mountain was vast and black, and even at its edges the place’s nature abused its visitors.

“Hmm.” Wreath took in his surroundings, and acnowledged he was well and truely lost. By the faint light of the firefly lantern, there was no telling one direction from another. He’d even turned and tried to go back the way he’d came but never found the cavern wall again. There were only the strange, towering statues spaced irregularly on the rough sone ground.

He had never been one to talk to himself, but he could almost hear the voice of Glori berating him. “What were you thinking?! Êtes-tu imbécile? How was running out into this damn cave at all preferable to the company of an old gentlepony? You could have grilled him for information and snapped him in half! Now you’re lost, and it’s dark, and we’re hungry, the list goes on! When we get back, expect the world of hurt! Tout ce monde!”

Wreath didn’t even have to elaborate to hard to acnowledge that he was a very small creature in a very large, uncaring void. A pebble in space. A particle of dust in the moonlight. Lost in the dark.
Wreath sighed, feeling that without an overseer to be disappointed in his follies, it fell to him to be disappointed in himself. Given the smallest iota of leeway, he immediately showed aweful judgement and lost himself in a hole he doubted even the gods could have found him in.

How many hours had he been there already? He held the lantern up and let it illuminate one of the solemn stone faces above him. Watch though they may, the dead stone gave no answer, only silent contemplation of his fate.

Stifling an irritated sigh, Ripple Wreath sat down on the stone underhoof. He looked from the statue before him to another, a dozen hooves to the side, a mere outline in the fleeting light.
Each statue was easily thirty hooves tall, bearing the countenances of solemn ponies in flowing robes. The sculpter had done a masterful job of capturing a strained control about them, like those ponies of action had not been pleased to be captured in still stone. Wreath could almost beleive they would rear up at any moment and crush him for his transgressions.

Still, their company was an improvement on Astral Nacre’s. He might wither among the stone and join them in their stillness, and he would not have to contemplate the blasfemies he would live out under the ward of the aweful alicorn.

He stared into the firefly lamp, wondering if it would be better to die in the dark. He was cursed, host to what Ancepanox had called a nightmare, an insideous evil whose first attack on his sanity made him tremble to recall. If he returned to ponykind and they found out they would kill him, because they knew as well as he that the nightmare was a mortal danger.
Wreath wasn’t even sure his family would take him back, especially one the full story was known. It was one thing to go crawling back to the family castle, cryig about a curse. It was another thing to admit how he had failed to protect Lady Glori, how he’d been humbled and shamed by the alicorns, forced to surrender himself to them. He could only imagine the rage his father would fly into once he saw the dented wolf helm. When pissant knightly families had only their honor to tout, they became vicious in its protection. Wreath had failed to protect him honor.

It really was better to die, so there was a slim change the world thought he’d died protecting Lady Glori. Maybe they would think he had an honerable duel with Lady Ancpenoax and-

He lurched, stumbling over his own thoughts.
Ancepanox… He didn’t want the world to think she’d killed him either. She was…

He squeezed his eyes closed and sighed. Thinking about the black alicorn, oddly enough, set him at ease somewhat. He thought about what she would say, and how she would asuage his worries. She had saved him from death.
Wreath wondered, what was his ‘progenitor’ doing at that moment?

---

To delve into the dream was rather like diving into a pool. Once you jumped, there was the rush of space and the crash into the refreshing waters.
Color, light, emotion, shapes and ideas that could only exist in the imagination or beyond the stars…
Anceapnox did not care for the art of it. In fact it was only making her angry. The swirls and sparkles of magic that coursed around her only served to draw out the process. She was not there for beauty. She wanted answers. She drove down with relentless intent, through the mire of energy and haze.

Here it comes.

The dream.

The dream that had been her dream.

With a flicker, the visage of the black alicorn came into existence. She sighed, and opened her eyes.

It was the top of a tower, a circular plateau of obsidian wrought bricks a hundred hooves across. Past the edge was void, dropping to an infinite oblivion.

“This place.... I know it.” Anceapnox tilted her head back, to stare past the lip behind her, to the endless levels of the tower extending down into the abyss. “I know. I feel, deep in my heart. I feel it more truly that I ever did in that cathedral library.”

But the solitary black spike of the tower was not the only occupant of the dream. Anceapnox lifted her eyes skyward.
The sun, as red and as bright as it had ever been in the real world, hung low in the void. In fact Ancepanox could sense a certain presence and tangibility to it, like it was actually there, within the dreamscape enclave of Forlorn Spark. It’s rays shown through the mire with perfect clarity, illuminating her.

“You-” Ancepanox’s voice caught in her throat. The sun was watching her. “But that means-”

One other, the most impossible of mares, stood before her.

She was also standing at the lip, on the opposite side of the tower. She looked over the void in silence. Hearing Anceapnox’s little whispers, her ear flicked.
“Luna?” The mare hesitantly twisted her head around to face the newcomer, the rest of its body following. The nebulous mane about it’s face pulsed and stretched with every word.

It was Celestia, but not quite the same as the regal alicorn laid to rest in the physical world. Her soul had taken the same shape as in the waking world, yet with surreal proportions, changing constantly. The edges of her form seeming to waver on the edge of nonexistence, reinforcing her alienness.
By far the most startling feature was her eyes, with ovoid pupils like a cephalopod, and which lacked any ability to focus giving her the look of staring far beyond anything in front of her, as if she could never stop watching the abyss around the tower, ruminating.

“You should be dead.” Ancepanox accused, trying to choose between advancing on the fallen princess or running away. “Are you just a memory, or a ghost, or a phantasm? Something else?”

“No, you’re not Luna. Not even Nightmare Moon. Similar, very similar, but not the same. A case of, hmm, convergent evolution, one could say. It looks just like her, but more.” Celestia’s bizarre eyes were unable to focus, and still Ancepanox felt the weight of their gaze. “Twilight Sparkle… One of the other Twilights.” She tapped the side of her head. “It’s coming back to me… Twilight, yes… I did not forget about you. You shouldn’t have come here.”

Ancepanox wanted to say so many things. She had to stay in control of her emotions, so she opted to say nothing at all. She closed her eyes to sort through the barrage of conflicting thoughts.
For a while, Celestia was similarly silent, looking the intruder up and down. “If you didn’t look so confused, you’d look frightening, terrifying even. Your posture is deteriorated too. You don’t intimidate a pony by being on their level, Twilight. You have to tower above them, have a presence.”

“Are you seriously lecturing to me right now?” Ancepanox wasn’t sure if she should scream or laugh.

“I am merely matching your cruelty, Twilight. You chose that manifestation to torment me, as is your prerogative I suppose.” Celestia tilted her nose up in the traditional Canterlot display of snooty superiority. “I thought you learned that I do not bend to that kind of emotional manipulation the last time you tried it.”

“W- What you think I chose this look because of you?” Ancepanox had her answer: scream. “Conceited bitch! YOU did this to me!”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re always so stubborn. You don’t even pretend to understand.” Ancepanox barred her pointed teeth, made for ripping chunks of meat off pray. It hurt just like the first time they’d argued, years ago. The gravity and circumstance was a little different this time. “Do you even know what you’ve put me through?”

Celestia blinked, one eye then the other. “Hmm, that is different, better. Ferociousness and its product, fear, has it’s uses. It adds a certain edge to petty politics when the opposition can not reliably say you will not maim them for being uncooperative. Personally, I found that mindless adoration and my cult of personality to be much more useful.” She pursed her lips. “Tell me, Twilight, what do you think?”

“I think-” Ancepanox expression reverted to stoic neutrality. She really wasn’t sure what to think of how erratic Celestia was acting, besides that she was being taken for a ride. She sighed and rubbed her forehead.“I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

“I apologize. I thought perhaps that we were ready for a forthright conversation. The visage of maturity belies a vulnerable soul. Just know I have nothing to hide from you anymore, and you, it seems, have nothing to hide from me.”

That was not at all true. Ancepanox would die before telling Celestia the truth about NIghtmare Moon’s death, and even worse before revealing what Moon’s body was now. And similarly, she didn’t believe the creature before her would tell her the truth.
“Do you think I’m interested about political theory right now? This isn’t a politician’s manifestation, princess, it’s a monster’s. This monster came to you with desire for only a single answer: Why?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Celestia blinked a little too quickly. “Clarify, please.”

“Tell me why you did this to us.” Ancepanox demanded slowly. “Why did you fabricate this fake Twilight, instead of doing right by me?”

“More changed than I realized, for you to be talking to me like that. How do you view me now? Not as your ruler, it seems, but your mind was already made up about that before you came. Do you have doubts, Twilight?” Celesia asked. “Are the convictions you came with failing you?”

“Shut up with that drivel! I’m not a stupid filly who would be impressed by that sophistry.” Ancepanox snapped. “And stop calling me Twilight!”

“What would you like me to call you then.”

“I am ANCEPANOX, the Twin Twilights!” She tried to say this with an air of epic proclamation, but her creeping grief stole her breath. “Because you killed Twilight when you chose a lie over me.”

“Ancepanox. Roanish, very much in naming convention of the ancient alicorns. It can mean what you think, but also ‘the treacherous dark’. It has several connotations, none of them very good.” Celestia sighed. “That is to say, not to my liking.”

“I don’t care. I don’t need your permission.”

Oddly that made Celestia pause for a while. “The lines in my mind are fuzzing. I’m having trouble dissociating personal preference from objective virtue. Twilight, I think something’s wrong with me.”

“Yes, very wrong.”

“You were more right than you know, when you said I died. I feel that large parts of me are missing, and have diffused into this dream.” Celestia inspected her hoof, fluctuating, like the implication of a hoof more than a physical thing. “Time moves differently in dreams. I could not rightly tell if I’ve been here for a millennium, or mere minutes. Your arrival and state hints to me that it has been several weeks or so. Maybe less, if your fall was faster than I anticipated.”

“It’s been a couple days.” Ancepanox said. “I’ve ‘fallen’ very fast.”

“I wanted to avoid that.”

“Ironic then, that you caused it.” Ancepanox said. She took a daring step forward. “I won’t stop saying it, now matter how much you deny or deflect. The choice was in your hooves and you chose this for me. Just tell me why.”

“If you insist on the hardline approach then no answer will satisfy you.” Celestia frowned. “Before you loudly object, I shall impart what I can. Do you understand where this is?”

“This is my dream, obviously.” Ancepanox condescended.

Celestia glanced away, showing signs of annoyance. “Perhaps. I meant to ask what this structure was.”

“The Tower.”

“Of what?”

Ancepanox sighed. “The Tower of the Bard.”

“Yesss, yes indeed. The Tower of the Bard, mythical monument of a time before history. It was fallen long before me, or even the ancient alicorns, walked this planet. Yet here it stands again, skirting heaven.”

“You didn’t put it here.”

“Obviously not.” Celestia condescended in kind. “But it was here for me. The Tower was the symbol of the unity of all creatures under the sun, now disparate.” She resolved to match the dark alicorn, and take a step towards the center. “I needn’t tell you what you already know. This dream was yours.”

“And the nightmare stole it.” Ancepanox growled.

“The nightmare did no such thing, because there was no nightmare. You knew that too.” Celestia countered. “You gave up your claim to this dream.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“You, whatever you chose to call yourself, once shared the space of the soul of Twilight Sparkle with another thought. But when confronted with the prospect of power, you backed down, and she moved forward. It would be trite but accurate to call her Dark, and you Light.” Celestia whispered. “You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Forlorn Spark. You and her were segments of Twilight Sparkle’s soul, and when you rebelled, only Forlorn Spark was left.”

“THAT’S BULLSHIT.” Ancepanox roared. “She stole my dream, my body-”

“Why was she in tune with Twilight Dream and you not? Could it be that she was always comfortable in it, and you were not?” Celestia continued. “You couldn’t stand the dream, not only by your nature, but what it represented. You rejected the unity of the Tower, and thus you rebelled from Twilight’s soul.”

Ancepanox REFUSED to consider Celestia’s words. It was impossible in every single sense of the word. “I was Twilight. I KNOW I was. I had my agency and my soul.”

“I’m sure you would have perceived of it that way.” Celestia tisked. “But one wonders if you are a reliable narrator. Can a broken being like you understand what’s happening to them?”

“I understand enough.” Ancepanox was having trouble breathing like she always did when she got too angry. “I know the Tower of the Bard is not a symbol of unity. You couldn’t have picked a more obvious lie! The Tower is a challenge to the gods! The Tower is the monument of mortal accomplishment! The builders of the Tower wanted to pierce into heaven and make a name for themselves that even the ruin of time would not erase.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “Mortals accomplish things thought cooperation, my lady. A show of mortal power means a show of mortal unity.”

“The fuck does it matter. The gods knocked the tower down, so as far as either of us can speculate this tower stands for mortal folly.”

“In the waking world yes. But in this dream, despite the trauma of the dreamer and the efforts of a god, this tower stands.” Celestia went silent for time. “All the races of the earth built the tower with one promise in mind: The grandeur and power of the gods could be theirs. Their only fault was that they succeeded. They were mortals tampering with power far beyond their comprehension, just like you.”
Her form grew more solid for a moment. “So you don’t believe me. That’s fine. Of what consequence is the past anyway? The future, however, has its worries for you. Did you build the tower or will you knock it down?”

“It’s MY dream. Why would I destroy my property?” Ancepanox said. “If anypony was going to destroy it, it would have been you. It’s an open invitation to crush my dreams again.”

“I have adopted the tower.” Celestia asserted.

That made Ancepanox very angry. “It’s not yours to adopt! You are a usurper!”

“My apologies, I meant to say I adopted its dreamer.”

“A thief!”

“This again?” Celestia rolled her eyes. “You are being uncustomarily repetitious. I try to have a philosophical discourse, and you drive it back into squabbling. Have you no other words to say?”

“So much.” Ancepanox’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“What have you done to yourself princess? You were never this cold, even after times somepony had made you mad. Emotional ponies would denounce you in the most scathing terms in court and you would be laughing with them the next day. When someone in need came to you, you were the most compassionate and caring of any of us. Even when you had your distant moods, you had time and answers for me.”

“And?”

“This state you now exist in… You’ve mutilated yourself, princess.” Ancepanox said. Her anger had subdied, and now her voice was tinged with pity. “I guess I should stop asking why you chose her over me, and ask why you came to this place?”

“You’ve just recasted the question. You still can’t grasp my motivation.” Celestia chided. “I have just finished explaining it was not as clear a choice as you accuse. I had to look between two ponies, and make the difficult decision to which of them had the best hope to be what was needed.”

“Forlorn Spark, the nightmare that had gleefully been trying to obliterate you minutes before, was a better candidate for your aid than me.” Ancepanox uttered.

“I did, for all the reasons I mentioned. She had the dream. You were a wraith, and when my mother sun spoke through me she proscribed only destruction in your future.” Celestia was the one now voicing her pity. “I wish I was in a circumstance to give you a second chance, but you made your choices. You continue to make your choices. You stand there in a mockery of my lost sister.”

“She… She had the dream. She had this place.” Ancepanox turned away, wandering to the lip of the tower and looking out into the empty void. She could feel the gaze of both Celestia and the sun above on her back, waiting for her reaction. “It doesn’t make sense. I can’t reconcile what you’re telling me against your own words. You say Forlorn Spark was Dark and I was Light, that I chose not to embrace the dream, that her possession of the dream made you choose her over me… Celestia, am I mistaken, or are you admitting to choosing Dark over Light.”
She turned back to the princess. “Is this why you never taught me the history or nature of Dark and Light? Is this why I had to crawl through the muck to that ancient hack Myriadess to learn even the basics of these fundamental forces?”

Celestia, unnervingly, smiled thinly. “Do you think I’m evil, Lady Ancepanox?”

“I hold no assumption to morality, except that you wronged me.” Ancepanox answered.

“She thinks I’m evil.” Celestia nodded up towards the sun above. “She thinks that since I ignore her ordainments I am bringing doom to mortalkind. She thinks she is the only source of good and propriety in this universe.” Celestia tapped her head. “I decided that she was wrong. I see past the lies of alicorns and celestials. I decided that dogmatic adherence to my mother sun’s destiny was poison to the soul of ponykind. Like you, I saw past Light and Dark. Only old crones like Myriadess would call one side evil without irony.” She chuckled darkly. “How is she? I had forgotten about her.”

“Dead.” Ancepanox said.

“Ahh…” Celestia rubbed her chin. “That is for the best, I think. Indeed the era of absolutes has come to a close.”

“What a meaningless sentiment.” Ancepanox scoffed. “You act like coming into this dream was some great act of bravery. Do you want to be congratulated for defying your sun? You’ve been doing it for hundreds of years! Why does it matter now instead of then?”

Celestia said nothing.

Ancepanox glared. “You have an answer. I can see it in your face. You just don’t want to tell me.”

“It would anger you.” Celestia mumbled. “Before, I did it for myself. My apathy, my arrogance… This time, I did it for somepony else, Twilight Sparkle. Perhaps I could have saved myself, or at least ensured the succession. I chose to save Twilight Sparkle, and resolved to ensure the very best world for her.” He gestured around them. “Thus I came here, to save the sinner Forlorn Spark and turn her back into Twilight Sparkle. I knew she would not know, and therefore she would never be prompted to forgive me, but I would be able to forgive myself.”

Anceapnox was so sickened by the conceit she almost threw up. “You should have made amends out there with me, rather than in this fantasy.”

“Do you wish it were you I remade?” Celestia asked, but she could see the answer on Ancepanox’s hate-mangled face. “How I could I have? You were a dreamless dreamer.”

“I have one now.” Ancepanox posed. “Are you tempted to try?”

“Once upon a time, perhaps. Not anymore.”

“Humph. It only took one night, and I’ve moved past you.”Ancepanox said. “I am deeply, deeply changed from when the night began. Then I might have laid down my life for you. Now I have ambitions beyond pleasing you.” She bared her teeth. “I had no expectations for this ‘visit’, but now I’m convinced that your new Twilight must not make the mistake I did. I will not let her obsess over you. I will not let her love you.”

“You will not let her.” Celestia repeated, voice peaking in mild amusement. “You wish to protect her from the betrayals you think I have planned.”

“You’re going to sculpt her the way you see fit. If you don’t see the immorality of that then we have nothing more to talk about.”

“She was a broken, incomplete creature. It takes more than glue to fix a soul when it was broken the way Twilight was. Yes I had to change her. I wish I did not have to, but she was not sane and not complete.”

“Grand. The nature of Twilight Sparkle will be decided by the pony who betrayed her.”

“Why did you change your name if not to distance yourself from her?” Celestia leveled. “Why do you care about her? You are not sure if you want to speak her name with reverence or distain.”

“Buck off. You’re just trying to offend me now.” Ancepanox grunted.

“I would never. I cared deeply for you.”

Ancepanox spat. “You cared more about the idea of me than you did of me. When the reality didn’t match your idea...” She turn her hoof up. “I get it now. All this happened because I didn’t match your expectations.”

“Cruel words.” Celestia sighed. “In a certain twisted way, you have surpassed my expectations. You are forging ahead, though it is down a Dark path, to embettering yourself, becoming strong. Your radiate power and it makes me ache even more to know what I lost with you. Forlorn Spark was right: Our daughters will become everything we were, and more.”

“I am NOT your daughter!”

“She who was led by me, taught by me… In a certain way, your current state of mind and body was born by my actions. What more is a daughter?” Celestia twisted her head back to look longingly at the sun at the distant, abyssal horizon. “Now I hope for another. Yes, it is selfish to desire to shape Twilight to my ideal, but it is the love of a grandmother that guides me. It is all for her, really.”

“YOU’RE SICK!” Ancepanox’s disgust boiled into rage. “If you cared at all about me, why didn’t you show it when you were alive?!”

“None of that matters now. You don’t matter. I’ve already won. This is as real as anything can be for me, from now until the end of all things. Exit the dream and kill us-” Celestia shivered. “Please don’t do that, actually. I need more time, before I can accept death. I am not ready yet.”

“You... selfish-” Ancepanox clenched her jaw, hard enough to have trouble speaking. Every word was laced with malice. “selfish… selfish… I can’t even believe-”

The sun dipped closer to the horizon.

“What are you going to do, oh Twilight, oh Ancepanox?” Celestia asked. “Are you going to leave us alone, or will you try to stop me?”

Ancepanox didn’t reply. She knew with conviction that Celestia had to be stopped, but she could not simply turn to violence against her former mentor that easily. As much as she was filled with hate, Celestia was her princess, her muse.
Of course, the Dark stirred with every feeling, yearning to rampage. however the Dark seemed to recognise damaging the dream around them would be a sacrilege.

“Flipping through her memories, I begin to wonder where I could have recovered you, and what the latest point would have been to keep you from going down this split path.” Celestia spoke again, and she summoned her magic. The space just beyond the edge of the tower was filled with faint images from Twilight’s memory, or rather Forlorn Spark’s copy of the memories. Each of them bore obvious differences from Twilight’s, the marks of Celestia’s tampering. “I have made so many little changes now, trying to tune every moment of her life just right, that I forget just what it was like when it was happening. But as I said, that hardly matters now. That past is gone.”

“No. It isn’t. Because I’m still alive, and no amount of wishful thinking will change that.” Ancepanox seethed. “And I’ve had enough of your posh! Your guilty consciousness is shit-all to what you have to answer to me for.”

“And so you bother me, like a bad dream, a nightmare, so I can explain myself. How very like you, Twilight.” Celestia never strayed from that mournful expression, even as her tone took a turn for the scathing. Ancepanox had not expected to hear her former empress take the offensive. “You seemed to work so hard for my satisfaction, but you took the first opportunity to oppose me. My decision has been vindicated: You valued the power I could give you over your relationship with me.”

“WHAT?!” Ancepanox’s cry was more pitiful than intimidating. “How can you say that, after looking through my memories? I LIVED for your approval! I spent every waking moment imagining the moment you would do so much as smile and say ‘Good job, Twilight.’. Instead, what I got from you was years of torture! You obviously care much more about the act of teaching the magic than you did about me! You wanted a doll to pose and play with!”

“I-” Celestia looked into Ancepanox’s eyes and saw genuine pain. Her perspective of those events, years ago, which she had reinforced over and over to assure herself that she was doing the right thing, was cracking. She just had to reach out, offer her hoof. With a single word, a quiet apology, she could save Twilight from Ancepanox.
But Celestia was too committed, too far gone. Instead of opening up, she doubled down on her delusion. “I died to redeem your past, to offer the name of Twilight Sparkle another chance, and this is how you act? This purification is more than you could ever deserve. I should CELEBRATE that you abandoned that name!”

Though she should not have, Ancepanox shuddered with a grim euphora that Celestia was shouting too. “You have no right to decide what is pure and what isn’t. This dreamer and I shared a history, a memory, and a past! You have taken her dream and twisted it, terraformed it for your habitation. Riddle me this, Princess Celestia: What is a dreamer without her dream?”

“Do you wish I was dead?”

“That is not what I asked!” Ancepanox hissed. “You may have a right to continue to exist, but that does not entitle you to change a sentient being to your liking. You can not force her to die with you!”

“Twilight, I healed her!” Celestia waved over the obsidian tower, where the painted memories were fading just like Celestia eventually would. “If you think we are evil then kill us.”

“Kill you?” Ancepanox frowned. Celestia’s goading was getting more visceral.

“That is how the Dark gets its way.” Celestia looked down her snout at the other alicorn. “I want you to throw aside your pretentious, and come to what is the obvious concluding point of your line of logic. Tell me you want to destroy me, Lady Ancepanox.” Celestia snickered darkly, a sound nopony had ever heard from the princess and one the other never wished to again. “Then I will know for certain how far you have surpassed my expectations.”

Ancepanox stared at her.

“Well?” Celestia barked. “Why did you come here? Do your violence, nightmare!”

“I am not a nightmare. There never was a nightmare.” Ancepanox said.
The situation had flipped, and now she was once again the meek one contending with an angry princess. Celestia had a lot she could be insanely irate about, if only she knew: What Ancepanox had done with her sister’s body for one. Celestia couldn’t know, she’d told herself. Any amount of personal pain was worth keeping the horror away from Celestia. The princess deserved punishment, but never that.
So with a clearing mind, she examined the situation. She had succeeded in turning Celestia from apathy to antipathy. Could the she be pushed farther, to see as Ancepanox did that anger was just a tool of self defense? The two of them agreed on many things, despite all the talking past one another.
“Princess Celestia. Have you been honest with me?” She asked quietly.

Celestia scowled. “Quite frankly it is more than you deserve. Yet I have been.”

“What I deserve? Are you telling me to hurt me, or because telling the truth is its own good?”

“No. It’s because you don’t deserve the effort of duplicity.” Celestia snorted.

“You cared for me once. Do you no longer? Not at all?” Ancepanox asked.

Celestia gave a half-hearted shrug. “I am discovering my feelings anew.” She closed one eye, then the other. “You want to tell me something, don’t you. Hmm. Under it all, you have all of Twilight’s tells. You can’t distance yourself from her as much as you think.”

“If anypony else was here, would you tell them what you’ve told me?” Ancepanox glanced away. “Do we… still share something, princess?”

Celestia arched one brow. She cleared her throat, and gave her answer much more quietly than before. “A history.”

“I see.” Ancepanox whispered back.
She was filled with hatred, despair, and sadness, and the selfish parts of her wanted to share that with Celestia. Celestia had guided her for most of her life, and it had led to this sorrowful moment. All the problems she faced were the princess’s fault.
On the other hoof, it had been a good life while it had lasted. Celestia, at least within her own logic, was still protecting and helping Twilight Sparkle. She really did mean well, and perhaps it was just her deteriorated state that meant she could not explain herself well.

Ancepanox wanted to extend the benefit of the doubt. She really did.

But on the other hoof, she had sworn to fight back against those who would harm her. Celestia had harmed her egregiously.

“You must know better than most ponies that we all are capable of terrible things in dire circumstances.” The dark alicorn said slowly. She was apprehensive: Hurting Celestia would not come as easily as hurting Myriadess, even if her weapon was mere words. “There are times when there is no good solution.

“It is not action, but intention that matters.I stand my what I’ve done.” Celestia shot back. “I will face history on my back as I have in my past.”

“I’m not talking about you anymore. Not entirely anyway. I mean myself, and the despicable fate we both share.” The black alicorn swallowed her doubt before continuing. “Your accusations of hypocrisy as closer to the mark than even you might realize.”

“Do you expect me to repay that complement in kind?”

“I expect you to LISTEN! You were always such a good listener, and if you recover one iota of your senses I hope it’s that!” Ancepanox shouted. “The battle against Forlorn Spark pushed you past your limits and it was still not enough! Same with her! Same with me! Same with Nightmare Moon! Our all was not enough! How were we expected to keep sane in those circumstances. It should have been obvious some of us would resort to such heinous acts of desperation.”

“I don’t regret choosing her at your expense and I never will!” Celestia continued to shout.

“No! LIsten! I mean your sun, and I mean Forlorn Spark! We killed! Celestia, we killed!” Ancepanox stumbled forward, tears pooling at the edge of her eyes. “You and I, we pushed away the Dark within us, and it came back as terrible demons that ruined this world! Your hateful sun, me, and my dark daughter! They are us, and we killed.”

“Your cryptic-”

“God damn it Celestia!” Ancepanox bounded forward, coming within hoof-reach of the other alicorn. “We’re all murderers.”

“W- What?” Celestia stumped over her response. She refused to believe that what Ancepanox was saying was true. Not because she didn’t think it was possible, but because all the time she was in the dream she had assured herself that by changing Forlorn Spark she would give redemption for all that had happened.
She looked into Ancepanox’s eyes, trying to detect a lie. They were a strange blue, not the color of her lost sisters, and not quite Twilight Sparkle’s. Something deeply disturbed her about those eyes. They did not remind her of her sister, or even of her student. It reminded Celestia of herself. Those eyes had a lively mortal joy in them, cast in shadow by the potential for great evil.
“Killed? I never killed anypony.” She cleared her throat shakilly. “Not this night I haven’t! The nightmare and Forlorn Spark were-”

“You KNOW there was no nightmare. There was only me. There was you. There was Moon.” Ancepanox whispered hoarsely. “And you scored the only kill of the night. Your sister.”

“no…”

“Your own sister. You beat her down, Celestia, with such unrepentant brutality. She never stood a chance. Run away if that’s what you want, like you ran here. Make-believe until your manifestation dissolves into nothingness. Deny it with all your might, as is your prerogative. But nothing can change that fact.”

“you’re lying”

“Put two and two together, princess. You can see now that everything, and I mean everything is your fault.” Her accusatory glare softened. “But I’m here for you. Can you accept me, not a student, but a concerned friend? We both have things we refuse to believe. If we put that aside for now, there is so much we can accomplish. Can you undo this damage and set a yearning soul free, for me? Just maybe, it can be our fault.”

Celestia’s eyes grew distant, even locked in a stare with the other alicorn.
After a long while she turned away, strode to the edge, and again gazed at the infinite horizon.

“Princess.” Ancepanoxlicked her lips. She had expected that to work. “Princess?”

Celestia’s ethereal form was much more tangible since Ancepanox’s arrival. “Twilight… I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry for how I have been treating you.” She whispered. “I have been treating you like a subject and a student, when you are not that anymore. You are... You are my equal.”

Ancepanox was a bit annoyed and flattered at the same time. “Thanks. Can’t help but comment that I’m alive and you’re technically not.”

Celestia wasn’t done pondering though. “My lady, what will you do if you get everything you want?” She whispered. “Will you go around looking like that, enjoying the chaos my absence will surely cause?”

It was a digression, but clearly Celestia wanted her to talk while she wrangled with her own feelings. It was progress.
“No princess. I honestly don’t care about that kind of thing. I’m not sure what I’ll do, after I find out why all this happened.” Ancepanox was only partly lying. “Coming here was the last obligation I have to the past before I’m free to decide my own future.”

“Yes… I imagine there are many opportunities out there while it’s darkened by night.” Celestia mused softly. “My mother sun may have her manipulations sow amongst the light she provides the world, but it genuinely brightens the path of those who seek happiness for themselves and others.”

Ancepanox had many quips she could have thrown out, but opted for silence.

“Lady, ahem, Ancepanox.” Celestia turned back and smiled sheepishly. “Whatever you are, I can try earnestly, to accept you. I think there are many things we can compromise on.”

“Sure.” Ancepanox nodded. It was a nice sentiment but there was only one thing she and Celestia could be in contention over, and it was the one thing neither would budge on.

“We have much to talk about.” Celestia went on. “I could see you and I becoming genine partners for the transition to the world without me.”

“Don’t push it. You have a lot to answer for.” Ancepanox said, voice dipping. “And don’t think I’ll take a rain check on justice. I’m not leaving and giving you a window to cause trouble.” She laughed to herself. “I don’t trust you. It’s a good thing I won’t have to be worrying about alicorns after you’re gone, because you’re all brats.”

Celestia did not laugh at that. Nor did she slip back to apathy or consternation or anger. For the first time she looked afraid. Something was dawning on her and it was not good. “You said Myriadess was dead… You killed her, didn’t you.”

Ancepanox nodded. “I did. She had it coming. She tried to manipu-”

“No no no! My lady, if you killed Myriadess, that means the other one knows!” Celestia said in a panicked hurry. “If she suspects I’m gone, there’s no telling what she’ll do. Oh goodness…” Celestia ran a hoof through her mane, while she tried to steady her breath. “We could have a very large problem on our hooves.”

“If you’re making this up-”

Celestia shook her head. “This is not a joke. There is a grave danger.” She shook her head, trying to grasp a solution. “The guardian under the mountain. After me, she is the last alicorn.”

Ancepanox sighed. “Well thank for waiting this long before telling me.”

---

Aurthora Airy swept the splintered remains of the lab table into a tidy pile, picking out the instruments that still looked functional. Phyte’s lab was nearly picked clean. Only a few spots were left to check.

“The best part about the eternal night is no one getting on your case about keeping them up too late.” Prosser was saying, whacking random devices things with one of the sturdy surgical hammers. “No, when time is meaningless, one one is saying ‘Sir, sir, please stop playing the trumpet its past midnight.’ ”

“I didn’t know you could play the trumpet.” Aurthora said, only half paying attention to what he was saying. She began collecting the spoils, especially the ones she thought Lady Velvet would find interesting, in saddlebags. It would take more than one trip to get them up to Canterlot, but since Sel Lech had shown her the direction of the surface tunnel before he’d left, she was not to worried.

“I can’t.” Prosser snickered. He whacked a beaker with the hammer, shattering it. “Say my lady, what did you think of that visitor we had?”

“The nightmare alicorn, yes.” Aurthora hummed. “I have no opinion.”

“None? I encountered her atop the city wall, and she came off as quite the frightening character.” Prosser said. “Perhaps you are waiting to hear Lady Velvet’s thoughts.”

“So should you, sir.” Aurthora said.

Aurthora noticed something under one of the cabinets, the corner of a thin notebook. She pushed the cabinet away and grabbed the notebook, brushing away the tin layer of dust that’d settled on it.

Journal
Volume II

New Frontiers in Experimental Sciences
Phyte

“Councilor, I have found something!” Aurthora eagerly exclaimed. It was the first documentation of Phyte’s activities that they had managed to recover. Her minions in the Musician’s Guild had destroyed everything in the guild building itself and the catacombs rather than let it fall into the hooves of the guard.

“Is it a pinchy thing?” Prosser asked. “As respectable as this collection thing, it lacks the vaunted pinchy thing, bane of nipples and loose skin the world over.”

Aurthora blinked. “Ah… No.”

“Then why are you telling me?” Prosser turned his back to Aurthora and began his dawdling inspections again.

“Excellent question.” Aurthora let out a sigh. She cantered closer to the firefly lamp and opened the journal to it’s first page. She noticed that just under half the journal’s pages had been ripped out, mostly from the front.

I have run low on stationery and paper materials. I will be using this notebook until I am able to appropriate more. Seacrest Blackhorn will no longer be needing it.

I will be moving the core of the surgical operations out of the Guild to the new hideaway, within the Vaci Arcanum. The very limited exploration my musicians have made into the cavern have so far revealed it to be uninhabited.

The statue garden that dominates this section of the Arcanum concerns me. It blocks the way to the center, where I believe the deeper sections can be acessed. The towering statues have some hidden nature, I am sure of it, but I refuse to linger around them. Everypony I send to find a way past disappears, and I do not think they are merely lost. Something despicable therein lurks. Celestia may know, but I do not wish her to learn that I have breached the Arcanum, at least not yet.
I will not be sending any more explorers. I am content with my corner where I have my hideaway.

Still, if I am to reveal the full measure of the Arcanum’s secrets, I will have to go deeper eventually. Moving my experiements out of the guild hall will give me more liberty to try loud tests, and thus my schedule is accelerated. Before too long, I hope to create something that can survive the deeper horrors. The lost artifacts would be a great boon: I have only just scratched the surface with the dragonfire cages we found in the upper catacombs. My old friend Clover has many trinkets that yet lay among the shadows.
Who knows what great strides I could have made while I still had my babies to help me. The great stress I feel would have been relieved just by their presence. Damn Celestia for sending them away.

The next round of experiments will begin tomorrow, in the new theater. Each successive step I have replicated has brought better and better results. Soon, I may have a sane one.

Week Two since move

All of the surgical subjects, both those in post and those awaiting experimentation, have been moved into the new Arcanum lab. I expect only one subject of this round will recover: Seacrest Blackhorn, the orator volunteer to whom this journal once belonged. The others are too damaged, and I will dispose of them soon. Thank goodness for the move, for their screams would have awoken the whole Old Town at the old laboratory.

But I digress.

Seacrest’s body has been remarkably resilient, fusing well with the other components. Minimal scarring around the throat and dragon gland transplant could mean that he will be the first success of that procedure. Therefore I have not only matched, but surpassed Celestia the First’s old crossbreed work, from what I know of her experiments long ago.

I must admit, I must move very carefully from here on. Celestia does not know of my work, but she surely suspects. I do not know the degree to which she is aware of her ancient predecessor’s explorations…
The fear strikes me now that Celestia had already walked this path, and I am catching up. For all I know, the experimental notes may be hers and not Celestia the First as I thought. The old notes, much in the spirit of Clover, has genius and madness and great daring. The notes of her experiments end halfway, but I suspect she must have continued the work until the end, to truly discover the nature of mortal and god.
I hope it is an answer too great to be shared, rather than one too disappointing, for either way the world is ignorant. Absolute power is close at hoof. The artifacts in the Arcanum will show me the way.

I will need more dragonfire soon. The tests consume great amounts. The usual deal with Celestia will restore my stocks.

Week Five

I can hardly believe it, but life has stirred from the depths of the Arcanum. Two ponies, two unicorn mares, simply strode out of the shadow. They called themselves Dances-on-Graves and Entanglement Theory.

I include this in my experimental journal because they claim to be the authors of the notes I found in the catacombs. I find it hard to believe, as they are both very young, and yet they were able to recite the theorems word by word.
Allegedly, the catacombs lair was one of their past hideouts. They were not very forthcoming about where they their more recent shelters were. They both feel very familiar to me, but I can not quiet place them. In their paranoia they cover themselves. Dances-on-Graves is their mouth, and seems to be the more devious and coy, but the more meek Entanglement Theory strikes me as the more dangerous. There is a dark tinge to her aura, that makes me fear for my life and works.

I am vexed, truly.

The duo proposed a deal. They had experiments they wished to conduct, similar to mine so they say, and were willing to share their knowledge in exchange for tools. Wherever they came from, they seemed to know the secrets of the deeper Arcanum, lost since Clover, and thus held the key to my progress.
Thus I agreed to their deal. They served me an extensive list of materials, then disappeared back into the shadows of the Arcanum.

My concerns grow. I don’t believe their claim to authorship of the notes, but they clearly had access to them, or ones like them.

Week Seven

My situation grows more desperate. Seacrest was due to be released tomorrow, but a major infection arose in the hybrid tissue in his dragon glands. I was about to declare him a loss, when Dances-on-Graves appeared and healed him. The magic she used was unmistakably that of the Celestiaan.
How is it possible? I can not say. My pet theory is that she is an ancient creation of Celestia that escaped. Implausible, but how else could she have that magic? Unless...

Regardless, of her identity, she gave me a new list of materials she required. She must be trying to construct a base, so great is the demanded volume of iron, copper, and glass. I tried to tell her about my progress with her experimental theories, but she expressed extreme disinterest.
Entanglement Theory, however, watched everything. My mass experimentation methods intrigued her massively. She seems genuinely eager to learn and, as she states it, ‘drag down god and extricate his secrets’.

I know not what I have dug myself in to, but I like it.

Week Nine

I have diversified my list of allies.
Twilight Velvet, an up-and-coming local noblemare has reached out to one of my musicians and made offers. Lady Velvet holds an unclear resentment against the empress, and aims to undercut Celestia’s power in Canterlot. She knows of my grudge against the Celestiaan and expressed a willingness to go into business. She has requested some of my contacts and pertinent information, and in exchange she will strike against imperial power in ways I can not.

I found all this very agreeable. My influence on the surface has dwindled, and Celestia can not squash a known aristocrat as easily as she could me if I caused trouble. Hopefully, Lady Velvet’s shenanigans will distract Celestia from my work. With Entanglement Theory’s added notes, I get closer every day to total success.

Again, I put this in the experimental notes because Lady Velvet additionally requested to see the results of my experiments. She asked to see Seacrest Blackhorn by name, in fact.
One of the guild mares must be gossipping. I will have to guess which and make an example of them.
Regardless, I will send Seacrest to her. I have already moved on, and he merely takes up space.

Week Ten

My daughter has come back to Canterlot. She made a grand show of herself in the halls of my guild, and none of my musicians thought to apprehend and bring her to me. That will be fixed.

Destiny must be nervous of my progress. They bring my children back to be to distract me from my goals. Nay, that will not happen.

If I secure my daughter, Celestia will have nothing to hold over me. Besides, with how my methods have improved since those first experiments, there are many improvements I could make to my daughter’s rudimentary nature. Octavia can bring her in.

Things are going my way, for the first time in an age.

Week Eleven

My daughter is dead. The gods are collecting their debts, it seems. The world is losing its joy for me. What remains?

Purpose. I get nearer the god’s secrets every day. Entanglement Theory tells me so.

Week Twelve

I have accelerated my plans. No more small iterations. I must have a fully functional experiment as soon as possible. If the next test remains sane, I will immediately jump to the last stage.
I have appropriated a perfectly ironic body for the next experiment, that of former vizier Fancy Pants. He died to severe blunt-force trauma to the head. Here is to hoping that his brain is recoverable.

Dances-on-Graves and her friend Entanglement Theory have stopped visiting me at the Arcanum lab.
The situation both above and below grows more worrying.

Week Thirteen

Fancy Pants is completed. I predict a full recovery of the use of his body and magic, and partial use of the additions I made. It is wonderful. Now I can say I am on the edge of perfection and mean it.
I thought of Black Bell today. It has been quite I long time since I communicated with her, even though she is one of the more friendly of my fellow Stars. Her experiments were always more esoteric… Considering how long Black Bell has been abducting politicians and aristocrats, she must be very knowledgeable about how to use noble blood. When I have my perfected experiment, I should visit her. Griffany is nice this time of year.

This journal grows long and winding at times. My sanity is wearing thin. I hear my daughter’s voice in the stone. Something big is coming. A thousand years since we Stars became what we are, and it comes to a head now.
If there is one thing my experiments have proven, is that old friends are never very far away. I am coming for you, Clover.

Week Fifteen

I have been betrayed. Twilight Velvet has apparently been in contact with Shale, that devious bitch, and aspires to undercut me! My old experiment Seacrest is with her on this too. Velvet has been massively successful in garnering political support, using a fop actor pretending to be the returned Blackhorn prince. I should have been more suspicious of how she knew so much, but I was too focussed Celestia: I think Velvet is a descendant of something very powerful, and is awakened to it. I am beginning to fear. Velvet is more of a threat than Celestia was, because she has active motivation to destroy me. I sent a cadre of guild mares but they disappeared; The black earth pony hangs Velvet must have stopped them. What powers have infiltrated Canterlot while I have been preoccupied...

And to that motivation, I think Velvet will try to perform the ritual. Shale must be helping her. I dare not think what she will create. I will make escape plans.

No more journal entries until I finish preparations. There is no need to tell anypony in the guild about this. They have served their purpose. They will now die to protect me, and the sweet music we wrought for generations will stop in just before its last stanza. Disappointing. I was so close.

Week Sixteen

Dances-on-Graves has just gone up to the surface, after bidding me farewell. Entanglement Theory told me they have made a staging area and are assembling the resources to stage a departure. They detect it too, the impending change.
The Vacuous Arcanum has been much colder than usual. I fear what sorcery those two mares concocted. I hear noises from the deep shadow. I leave with the week.

Before I go, I have a few things to check on with the guild. Pegasi from Cloudsdale have allegedly been surveying the building. The guild agents tell me it has to do with the arrival of Rain Gnash. I remember her father when he was the IHG captain, but I have intention to become acquainted.

Addendum:
Everything is falling apart. Lady Velvet’s allies have beset me and a Nightmare is among them! That was something I did not expect. I foolishly thought that was a transgression too far, that I could summon Celestia to stomp down the presumptuous creature, but even she has fled.
I hardly understand what is happening anymore, expect that I must leave before my enemies close in on me. Goodby, Dances-on-Graves, Entanglement Theory, and good luck to you.

Aurthora lowed Phyte’s journal. She didn’t know what to think of it but then again she had never been the academic type.

She assumed Dances-on-Graves and Entanglement Theory were the ponies Sel Lech had been looking for. If the journal was to be believed, they were already gone. Gone to do something up on the surface.

“I have a bad feeling about this.” She mumbled. Her other take away was that the Arcanum she was in contained something more evil even than Phyte.
“Sir Prosser.” She spoke up. “Don’t stray too close to those statues.”

“Eh? Think they’ll fall on me?” Prosser, still fiddling with various things, quipped.

“No, sir. That would be a very merciful end.” Aurthora put the journal in one of the saddle bags. “What menaces whose whose amusement those statues were made will make your suffering last.”

---

Aurhora Airy’s grave warning came too late for Ripple Wreath, lost and wandering among the monolithic stone figures. He was now kilometers into the maze, in a world of darkness save to the small circle of light created by the firefly lamp.
The Arcanum was not meant for ponies. Even when it was new, its monumental scale and stark stone excavation was oppressive to the pony mind and senses. Since its cured fall, even the most measly exploration or habitation was impossible. The pitch black was less a consequence of a lack of light, but a feature of the air, a inexplicable curse.
Some creatures, however, survived and thrived where the sun could never touch.

Then, without warning, every firefly in the lantern died.

“Oh no no no no.” Wreath whined, tapping on the glass urgently, trying to revive the little bugs. “Please come back. Don’t leave me alone.”

The faint light faded into nothing. Wreath sat perfectly still.

“This is no good.” He groaned. “Not a fan of this at all.”

Wreath started to see things. The perfect dark was too absolute for him, and his mind tried to fill the abyss with shapes and color.
He tried blinking away the hallucinations. That worked for a bit.

Then he realized he actually was seeing his surroundings. He could see without light.
Wreath blinked in surprise. Yes, he could see in the dark, in complete absence of light. Not perfectly, and his vision in the Arcanum still dwindled to nothing at about thirty hooves distance, but it was better than nothing.

“Ancepanox’s curse.” He mumbled, a bit awestruck. He didn’t want to think of the implications. “Whelp, this is pretty neat, and if I turn into a bat or something in exchange, I think that’s fair.”

Feeling strangely liberated by his new power over the darkness, he looked up to the nearest statue, and took the time to appreciate the details. The mason had clearly been a master of his craft, capturing perfectly the personality and appearance of the subject at a ten times greater scale.
It was an earth pony stallion. His face was gaunt and slightly wrinkled, protected by a neatly trimmed beard and short hair. His eyes suggested wisdom and cynicism, though a certain wishfulness, as though his days had been spent looking at a distant horizon. He was wearing a chain mail and gambeson covered by a traveling cape, which seemed to billow slightly in an imaginary wind.
A warrior prince from ancient times, Wreath guessed. The eyes were enrapturing, a perfect summation of the rest of it, yearning for something beyond his reach.

Wreath scooted forward until he was at the statue’s base, trying to see how fine the details got. Every inch was shaped, every hair of the pony’s coat and every fiber of his clothes, in the what was likely the exact likeness of the subject, save one detail.

A circular plate of a shining silver metal, platinum by Wreath’s amature guess, was laid against the back of the forehoof, where nopony without heightened dark vision would see. The plate bore an etching of a short passage.

Lector
Prince of the Riverponies

The world was not enough for him, and so he lead his people into Tartarus
I honor your drive, but not your judgement
The Eternal Garden is your new charge, undeath your royal right
Protect my Deava, enthroned in the throes of collapse

“Lector?” Wreath mouthed silently. He knew the name, and a bit of the story. In real history, the prideful warlord had nearly unified Equestria, but fell into madness by his thirst for conflict. Wreath’s homeland had been a part of Lector’s principality, as well as most of the riverpony lands and Eastern Coast of Equestria.
Wreath also vaguely recalled an old opera inspired by him, King Cobalt. Cobalt led his nation into a mountain, eventually descending into Tartarus like the plaque said. He briefly fancied that this was the mountain in question, and that Tartarus lay ahead of him. But it was just a story, an allegory.

Were all the statues labeled? Wreath got to his hooves and cantered over to another one. This one was a unicorn mare, regal in dress and poise, clutching a crown against her breast. The plate and message was in the same place on her hoof.

Tomorrow Hope
Princess of Unicornia

The last Platinum Princess sought to live up to her family name
If only she had seen how I exploited her
The Deava, my power and image, is never to be trusted, though it is too late for you now
Protect that sinner as you would protect the sin

Wreath had never heard of Tomorrow Hope, and the only knowledge he had of the Platinum Princesses were that they had led the unicorns from the old northern homeland to modern Equestria.
More intriguing was the second reference to the ‘Deava’, a name that he doubted was even Equestrian. By the connotation, it was quite unpleasant.

Wreath moved on to the next statue. The unicorn it depicted had the most arrogant smirk, his clothes luxurious silk, his pose tilted back in self-assured contentment. The unicorn’s eyes were startling, as they reminded him very much of Glori’s cousin Seacrest. “Creepy.”

Argo Blackhorn
Prince of Canterlot

Betrayed and killed by his nephew, Sombra Blackhorn
The blessing of riches could not protect him from those blessed with power
Now she with the most power binds your will to hers, she is the Celestiaan
You will stand in vigil of my Eternal Garden that you hated so much

A much more recent historical figure than Prince Lector. It was common knowledge that the last Blackhorn prince had died just before Celestia claimed his city of Canterlot as her new Capital after the fall of Everfree.

“Ah. It’s like a gallery of famous leaders, or something.” Wreath tapped his chin. “The Eternal Garden. Kinda a lame name.”
Whatever pony had put the statues together was clearly a bit unhinged based on the plaques, but that was to be expected if they put their ‘Eternal Garden’ in a huge dark cave. It could be no more recent than Prince Argo, a thousand years or so, and if the little messages were not metaphorical ponies of past eras would have known about it.

The question remained however, why was it all here, for whose pleasure had it stood, and why had it been forgetton?

Ripple Wreath was moving to the next statue when he snagged his hoof on something, causing him to faceplant on the cold rock. He look back, and saw the black vine that had caught him dissolve into dust. “This place really was a garden. Not very eternal though, was it.”

Still, plants meant light, water, and hopefully a way out. He picked himself back up, readjusted the makeshift saddlebag, and turned around. Having a clear direction to go for once, he followed the black vine along the ground, his eyes glued to it’s snaking path, ignoring the scattered statues lest they caused him to lose the vine.

But despite his run of decent luck, a swell of great unease was forming in his gut. He thought he heard a distant, quiet shout of alarm, but he dismissed it as imaginary for it lacked the echo-y peculiarity of the other sounds in the cavern.

He stepped onto something cold, or rather, a patch of the cavern floor even colder than the surrounding stone. He looked up, to find that he had stumbled into the shadow of something large. At first he thought it was a column running from the cavern floor all the way to the ceiling, for it seemed silhouetted against the emptiness behind it even in the near pitch black of the cave. How could there be shadow and silhouettes in the dark? Something was very very wrong.

But as it’s eyes opened, and the vine that he had been following jumped up and seized him, he realized the misjudgement he had made. He was pulled to his knees by the vines as they ripped into his skin with their thorns. “What?!” He yelped.
The great shadow shifted, and the vines began to drag him forward, pulling tighter when he struggled. His saddlebag and wolf helm were crushed against his side.

“What indeed.” A clicking voice that carried a multitude of tones, as though played on a xylophone, echoed in his ears. “Is that you Sunset, or another? Come closer.”

Wreath tried to speak, but could not open his mouth with the vines binding his face.

”A pony. Not who I was expecting.” He could hear the bizarre voice more clearly as its owner drew him closer. “A trifiling distraction. Has a way been reopened, as Sunset said?”

He was close enough to see it now. At first he thought it was a pony standing on its hindlegs, which if it had been it would have to be as tall as the statues all around them.
He thought next that it was a hippogryph, for it’s head was an oddity befitting its voice and surroundings: It had an avian look, with a long beak and a extravagant feathery crest, but its two spiraling horns and cat-like slitted eyes subverted that. The fact that it also had a long mane, tangled up in the black vines that covered her, further complicated attempting to define the beast. She was like a peacock-pony-goat hybrid.
She, for while its species was ambiguous there was a definite femininity to its curved body and lashed eyes, was clearly ancient. She reminded Wreath of a fairytale beast or corrupt demon from the legends of Celestia I.

“Come closer, come closer. Let us get a better look at you.” It chirped.

Wreath had not been entirely wrong with his first impression of the shadow, for the gigantic creature was attached to a jutting rise of rock, pinned like a butterfly in a display case. The black vines ran around and through her chest, hoofed legs, and feathered wings. Each limb was pulled in a different direction and impaled, in mimicry of a torture rack.

“MMHHPH!” Wreath tried speaking to no avail.

The vines lifted him up to the creature’s level, so that her glowing maroon eyes were staring directly into his. ”An earth pony. Did you walk here, earth pony? You stink of odd magics. Perhaps your arival is the one I was anticipating after all. Or, as Sunset warned, a bumbling tourist? Which is it?”

She lowered Wreath to the ground at the base of her rock, and loosened the vines from most of his body. Able to move his head once more, he looked back up at the enormous thing, just as much a prisoner as he was. He noticed a glint on the back of one of her forehooves: An embedded metal disk just like on the statues.

“Who are you?!” Wreath could barely open his mouth with the vines still around his face. “What do you want with me?!”

Surprisingly, the long shot worked, and the ancient creature paused. It stared at him for a long while. “Know you not?”

“N- No.” Wreath stammered, unable to move anything below his chin. “I- I’m lost.”

“We are all lost. Every one of us. Those who are not lost have not strayed far enough from the path.” The creature said indifferently. “You don’t even know who I am. Dissapointing. You must not be who for whom I wait.”

“I, um, would be eager to learn your name, should you deign it, my lady.” Wreath said meekly. Living around harsh ponies like Countess Glori had given him a certain skill at avoiding their outbursts.

The creature, however, was not impressed. “As if you are fit to speak it. My mother gave it to me, before she sealed me away here. I have a name with a purpose; To tend to those who need completion at any cost. I am an oracle, but sacrifices are made by those pilgrims who come to seek my truths. They are Dark truths.” It tilted its beak up haughtily. “I am Agana, the suzerain of sin. Knowledge, the forbidden fruit, the greatest sin, is my crop. And this is my Eternal Garden.”

Wreath was scared. Somehow the thing before him terrified him far more than Ancepanox or Astral Nacre had. The alicorns were malevolent almost by accident, where as this one was silenlty enjoying watching him writhe.
“L- Listen, please. I’m trying to find a way out of here.”

”The way out?” The creature called Agana asked, more to herself than Wreath. “It used to be that there was no way out, and that the pilgrims entered the arcanum knowing that. Opening new passages is a mistake.”

“I don’t know about any of that. I got thrown down here magically.” Wreath mewled. “But I saw other ponies. They must have come down through whatever passage you’re talking about.”

The creature Agana stared at him impatiently.

“Uhh, Lady Agana, please, can you let me go?”

”You may have noticed the creeper is not a part of me. I do have a measure of influence over them though. If I ask them...” Agana muttered, and the vines pulled back from Wreath, dragging their thorns along his skin a last time. But before there was any time for relief, the mare’s twin horns began to glow and he was seized by maroon magic. Agana hissed in amusement at his renewed struggles. “It has been such a long time since I have had a pilgrim to play with. I can not pass up this offering, unwilling though it may be. Especially because it is unwilling.”

“I’m not a bloody pilgrim! I’m just a knight!” Wreath protested. “Damn it can’t one of you monsters leave well alone?”

“As I said, for as long as I have been imprisoned here, there has only been but one way out. Those seeking completion would join with me, for a brief and euphoric peer into the true nature of the world.” Agana said, her melodic voice taking on a tinge on anticipation.

Wreath wanted to turn away from those thin maroon eyes and the horror that bore them, but he could not. The magic was crushingly strong, and for the first time since the horrors had started, Wreath began to cry. “W- What? Join with you?”

“I will try not to kill you, but Sunset has been such a tease, staying just out of my reach.” Agana lowered her head as much as she could, speared as she was, until she was looking straight down at Wreath. Magic spun and arced between her horns, faster and faster, forming a halo-like disk of her dark energy. The great black vines moved with her, starting to writhe and tremble in anticipation of their occult union. “I will try to limit how much of my power enters you, lest you are overwhelmed.”

“Please, you don’t have to do this! I don’t want enlightenment! I just want to go home!” The patch of cave around Wreath was bathed in blue-ish light as the glow around Agana’s horns grew. Though she was still above him, pinned to the rock, he could feel her as though she was touching him. He could smell the blood on her breath and the sweetness of the vegetation that surrounded her. He could read out the message on the plate nailed into her hoof.

Agana Nacre
The Oracle I Made

I once had a friend like me, fallen from grace, filled with hate
By her word, I felled a kingdom, two princesses, and the delusion that Dark would die
In her honor, I created the Daeva, and this is the first, a gardener of the mind of ponykind
Perhaps she was not so great of a friend, after all

He smelled flowers and rot from that plaque, a trace of it’s horrible commissioner. In a way, it reminded Wreath of the monstrous alicorn Astral Nacre.

Agana, ignorant of his reminiscence, activated her spell.
”So, little earth pony, let us see if you are the one I have been waiting for. So many questions… Did you kill Myriadess, or know the one who did? Is Celestia weak enough to challenge? What strange magic pollutes your blood? Yes so many questions.” Her glowing eyes filled every corner of his vision. ”And alicorns don’t ask. They take.”

---

Rarity had been watching Ancepanox for half an hour, searching for any sign of a trap. Her shadowy profile peeled itself from the wall, and reasserted itself in three dimensions with a puff of teal magic.

“Oh darling, you actually passed out.” She tittered grimly to herself. “I never did envy your sense of timing.”

Rarity’s coat was still charred and cut where Ancepanox’s magic had burned her. She winced as she approached the sleepers, limping slightly. She rewrapped the tapestry around her neck tighter, taking care to keep in constant contact with at least part of it.

“Ooh! You even left Applejack here for me to play with when I’m done with you!” She scooped up one of the heavy stone orbs from the model solar system, the same one Celestia had used to kill Nightmare Moon. “You are so thoughtful! Now be a dear and stay asleep for this next part.”

~~~

On que, as soon as Celestia was finished shouting her warnings, Ancepanox felt a horrifying pressure at the back of her mind.
It was a psychic voice, like Astral Nacre’s or Myriadess’s, but magnified a thousandfold in strength. Anceapnox felt like she was being bellowed at from an inch away, by a shout that would blow her to the depths of the Dreamscape if she didn’t hold on tight.
Yet it felt like it coming from inside her own head!

The dark alicorn stiffened, weathering the shouts that only she could hear.

Celestia saw this, and inched forward. “What are you doing? Is something wrong?” Then she twitched involuntarily, and her shocked expression betrayed she could feel a small part of it too. “No, already?” She mumbled.

Without warning the dream around them began to heave, shaking every imagined molecule and mote. Ripples of agony reverberated up and down the tower, making the obsidian behave like so much putty.

Ancepanox reeled, clutching her head with a hoof. An image was coming through, forcing itself into her vision. An eye, very much like Myriadess’s, crafted from platinum and painted in orange.

“Unwanted attention.” Ancepaox grit her teeth to keep from screaming, trying to fool herself that the pain was only in her mind, a part of the dream. “I think somepony’s trying to get in my head.”

“How is it reaching us here?! Is your waking body safe?” Celestia recoiled.

In a rush of alien sensation, Ancepanox could see the face of her accoster, through the eyes of another. The monstrous sentience was abusing the intangible link she had formed when she spread her corruption to Ripple Wreath.

Panic only came when she saw the look of horror on Celestia’s face as she described the sight. “It’s the other alicorn. Looks like I bucking bird…” Anceapnox uttered. “It has my progeny.”

---

From Ancepanox, the foul and intrusive probe of the ancient alicorn spread to all the others she had touched and was connected with.

Rarity’s knees buckled and the magic from her horn evaporated. The heavy stone sphere she’d picked up dropped to the ground and rolled away. She tried to get back up, but her limbs refused to do anything other than twitch in pain. She could see Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, and Ancepanox similarly tortured, their unconscious bodies spasming and their muscles tensing.

“Damn.” Rarity sunk to the ground, accepting her predicament. “I really wanted to crush her head again.”

---

Dash scrunched her nose. She could feel something like a mosquito's buzz between her ears. She scanned the forest around her for trouble but saw none.

“Can you hear that?" She asked the filles. She had gotten them to safety in a forest clearing closer to the village, but it was still not safe enough that she could seriously considering leaving them to go back to the castle.

“Nah.” Apple Bloom was poking the campfire they’d made with a stick. The other fillies shook their head as well. “Must be your imagination.”

~~~

“Fascinating. Most fascinating.” Agana cooed. Her maroon eyes were glowing more brilliantly than before, but besides the first few seconds of pain, all Wreath was feeling now was pulsing discomfort at the base of his skull. “A new dark star is asserting itself. How fortuitous I have caught one of its formative progeny. Yes, this will be a development to watch.”

“Are you done yet?” Wreath grunted weakly. His entire body had gone numb and he couldn’t tell up from down.

”I’ve yet to start.” The towering alicorn laughed, starting to find its enthusiasm. “As I said, I will let you go. But not before I have some fun with this young parvenue.”

---

Ancepanox’s manifestation within Forlorn Spark’s dream began to fray; The more her mind tried to resist the psychic assault the harder it was to stay within the mind of the dreamer. Not that that dream was faring any better.

“Ah geez.” She sunk to her stomach. “Myriadess was nothing like this.”

Celestia was faring better, succeeding at staying on her hooves. “Myriadess was a soul in a jar. Of course she wasn’t a problem.” She mumbled, eyes closed, shivers running up and down her body. “Not to mention you’ve just attracted the attention of the alicorn specifically designed to attack dreams.”

And attack it did. The stones of the Tower began to crack and deform, and the void around them seemed to grow heavy and crushing.
Only the sun above the horizon, ever observant, seemed unaffected.

“I can’t…” Ancepanox tried to pushed herself up. With a sharp ringing, a renewed psychic pinch pushed ber back prone.
“C- Celestia! Help me!” She pleaded. At any other time, it would have been an appeal for divine aid, but no, it was a very personal and desperate cry.

Her dreaming form was becoming a nebulous.

Celestia was riveted in place, compelled to watch as her the carefully manicured dream around them was fissured. The black alicorn before her, helpless in the throes of abject agony, was just as much at her mercy as at Agana’s.

Celestia remembered her youth, when she was a willful and adventurous princess with the mind of a child, only just come into the world. She enjoyed exploring the world around her, uncovering the secrets of her predecessors, particularly Celestia I. The entombed oracle Myriadess and the impaled oracle Agana were among the most dangerous: The former oracle because of her guile, the latter because of her raw power.

Seeing the Ancepanox, the very image of Nightmare Moon, so pitiful and vulnerable, also stirred a deeper memory, something that did not quite belong to her.
Celestia I, the most regal and powerful of the line of sun princesses, had seen that scene in parody in the Everfree Castle. That time it had been Celestia herself that had struck Nightmare Moon down, using the power of the Harmony to banish her.

She tried to let that memory carry her away to a more pleasant place, but she could not escape the fracturing of the the dream. She couldn’t bare to face the pain and the disorder that she could not fix. Helplessness in the face of the great enemy, the oblivion of death, the inescapable outcome, filled her with transfixing fear.

“I- I can’t.” She backed away.

Control is what ponies craved more than anything else, but Celestia felt it more than any other. Eight-hundred years of absolute rule had her hooked, and when Celestia lost control she lashed out.
She could still remember the screams of her regents as she burned them, her first experience with death. It was so long ago… Was she the same pony who had done that? True she had not undergone succession, but surely eight-hundred years was as much difference as outright replacing her. She was not the kind of pony who killed recklessly anymore, she told herself. She had to believe that. She had to believe she was a benevolent god.
She did not kill her sister. She had to believe that.
“I’m a good god. I’m a good girl.” She mumbled, cradling her head. “And nothing bad is going to happen. I’m in control...”

At least back when she was a murderer, she had passion and drive.

“What is wrong with me…”

Instead of the Tower of the Bard, she was standing on the southern watchtower of Canterlot Castle. Twilight Sparkle was there, enraged and incised. Celestia could hear the echoes of her promise, that had rung hollow in her former student’s ears. ‘Never forget I trust you implicitly. I will always trust you.’

Had that been a lie? At the time, Celestia hadn’t thought so. Despite the rift that had formed between them, she had still considered Twilight a pure and trustworthy subject. She’d known then as she knew now what Twilight was capable of, but trusted her anyway.
Had so much changed since then?
“I’m a good god. I’m in control. I promise I’m in control.”

Was this to be the end of her life and works? Her old acquaintance Agana, reaching through dream and space, would tear apart the dream, Twilight, what once was Twilight, and cast Celestia herself into oblivion.

Celestia opened her eyes. That wasn’t what she wanted. She wasn’t in control. She hadn’t been in control for a very long time, even when she was still alive and reigning in Canterlot.
Celestia had never been in control.
Even when she was rebelling against her mother sun, sabotaging the ideal of Equestria and abandoning her duty, it was just adolescent destructiveness. She was in control of nothing, building nothing, caring for nothing. She was smugly declaring her unwillingness to play others’ game but presenting no alternative.

And perhaps, for a brief time, she had control over the dream of the Tower. That was ending. As Ancepanox had accused it was all her fault.

Caught up in her hallucination with Twilight on the watchtower, Celestia’s heart ached with self-loathing. She wanted to interrupt the memory, wash away the lies and tell Twilight the truth. She wanted to break apart that cold and formal demeanor, so Twilight would see how much she truly mattered to her. But the past was past, and if Celestia was to cure the ailing relationship, it would have to be then and there, atop the Tower of the Bard in the dream.

Celestia’s empire didn’t matter. Her past didn’t matter. She herself didn’t matter. It was all dead anyway.

“I reveled in my death. I reveled in my Empire’s death. But my legacy is alive.” She whispered, pulled as much power to herself as she could. Resolve, purpose, and newfound certainty refined her appearance, making her defined, almost like she was alive again. She looked back at her sun a last time, then back to Ancepanox. “I can save you. I will save you. This will be our fight, our problem.”

Hoof touched hoof, and they turned together against the tortuous wave of Agana’s spell.

Comments

[SpiritDutch]

Editing this chapter was hard. Celestia and Ancepanox were all over the place. It kindof sucked. It's so much better now I cringe at the though of someone reading what was there before and coming off confused and disappointed. Alas...
Phyte's diary is changed a bit as well. Interactions with Sunset and SciTwilight- sorry, I mean Dances-on-Graves and Entanglement Theory are more fleshed out, as are everypony's goals. At the time I wasn't really sure about what the ultimate purpose of the various transcendence projects was, but now that I do, Astral Nacre, Phyte, Black Bell, and Sunset all make more sense.