• Published 31st Mar 2012
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This Platinum Crown - Capn_Chryssalid



Only one mare can claim the Platinum Crown of Canterlot.

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Chapter Thirty Five : Interlude (the beginning)

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Interlude (the beginning)

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Luna

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TOP SECRET

Compartmentalized Access P 1-2, P 1-2A, NG2+

DO NOT REPRODUCE

REPORT on Incident Sierra Breaker Bull

“Appleoosa Incident”

Compiled From Night Guard Field Intelligence Assets

This is a PRELIMINARY REPORT for Princess’s Eyes Only. All data and analysis is based on unprocessed primary sources. Conclusions should be regarded as HIGHLY TENTATIVE.

This information is current as of timestamp

1001.08.12.0400

PRECIS

At roughly 1600 hours 1001.08.08, in the frontier town of Appleoosa, an unusually large outbreak of violence occurred between the Equestrian settlers and the indigenous bison population. Of note was not only the scale but the timing of the incident, as large numbers of ponies and bison were present in the town to celebrate an anniversary of peaceful coexistence following the short-lived conflict last year. Between 1600 and 1800 hours, the violence either spread or re-ignited in several areas both inside and outside of town, including within the bison camp itself. Compared to the incident a year ago [see Dawn Guard Records] the level of violence seen in this case was much more severe. No ponies are reported killed as of this time, though some were badly wounded. Additionally, a large number of indigenous bison are being treated for serious injuries.

Efforts continue to identify the cause of the incident.

TIMELINE

[Princess, I have added a timeline to the report, but bear in mind that much of it is speculative]

1001.08.08.0600

Indigenous Bison tribe finishes setting up camp outside Appleoosa on the invitation of the town. Gifts are exchanged, and the chief (Thunderhooves) speaks to a small crowd outside the town hall. The chief is given a pie - in an engraved, golden pan - as a sign of peace (?) and friendship. The pie is consumed on the spot as a sign of trust (?).

1001.08.08.1200

Celebrations begin inside the town and in the Bison camp and continue without serious incident.

1001.08.08.1600

The earliest report of an altercation occurs around this time, as a fight breaks out at a local salt and watering hole.

1001.08.08.1633

A traincar is attacked and another train overturned as rioting spills out into the streets.

1001.08.08.1630 (tentative)

Fights break out within the Bison camp between settlers and indigenous natives.

1001.08.08.1630 (tentative)

A farmstead outside town is trampled and the family there attacked.

1001.08.08.1700

Attempts to restore order devolve into more violence.

1001.08.08.1800

The riot abruptly ends. Most indigenous Bison in town are wounded or unable to continue to fight. The mob abruptly stops within half a mile of the Bison camp and withdraws back to Appleoosa.

1001.08.08.1820

The wounded are taken to a triage station by the railroad.

1001.08.09.0900

Authorities arrive from the Vice-Duchy of the Frontier to investigate.

1001.08.09.1500

Apology issued to the Bison on behalf of the Vice-Duchy (of the Equestrian Southern Marche). Mediation between indigenous Bison and Equestrian settlers concludes. Festivities for next year are put on indefinite hold. Bison tribe is given permission to vacate the area at their convenience and to resume normal activity near and around the Appleoosa region after no less than twenty days.

1001.08.09.1740

A small contingent of guardponies arrives to keep the settlers and natives separate and enforce peace.

1001.08.09.1800

Night Guard dispatched to area to conduct independent investigation.

INTELLIGENCE SOURCES

Civilian interviews

Indigenous first-hoof accounts

Vice-Duchy and Colonial Admin records

Vice-Duchy CDC staff

ANALYSIS of CIVILIAN INTERVIEWS

[Transcripts are attached]

The settlers of Appleoosa all describe the initial moments of the incident in great detail, but frequently fall into exaggeration or confusion regarding the details of the riot itself. It is expected that many are purposefully obfuscating to diminish their culpability in the ensuing violence. The Night Guard conducted interviews of more than a dozen witnesses in, around, and outside of town, including the Mayor and Sheriff.

All reports indicate that the festival was peaceful up until the initial incident at 1600 hours. There was some rowdiness, especially in the center of the town where a large dancing ground had been set up, but there is not a single report of a fight or serious argument breaking out before that time. While this would not account for pre-existing personal disputes coming to a head during the festival or private disputes becoming suddenly and unexpectedly violent, town authorities insist that Appleoosa had been stressing a policy of reconciliation and harmony with the indigenous Bison population. They were on watch for just the sort of personal fighting that is difficult to identify after the fact.

Most accounts from the town agree that the riot began at a local bar and salt tavern, where ponies and Bison alike were consuming heavily. The center of the dispute was speculated to be one “Braeburn Apple” and his close (allegedly romantic) relationship with a Bison female by the name of “Strongheart.” Voices within the establishment rapidly grew louder and angrier before erupting in a pitched fight between ponies and Bison. This then spilled out to the streets and the dancing circles and festival grounds.

A minority of accounts conflict with the above, however, indicating that violence had broken out or was already breaking out elsewhere in town at around the same time. Three accounts in particular deviate from the aforementioned narrative. One was from a civilian on the edge of town who felt a “sudden urge” to kick the Bison he had been playing cards with. A second account, from Braeburn Apple – who had been at the Bison camp and not the bar – indicates that ponies and Bison were already fighting sometime between 1600 and 1630 hours (the last of any timepiece makes his account difficult to substantiate). A third account came from a family at a homestead three miles from town, where a clock was visible. A small party of Bison braves approached the house, looking for directions to the town, and the meeting quickly turned violent, resulting in the destruction of the house. This incident may also have begun at early as 1600 hours, though the house itself was destroyed around 1630.

Many civilians reported a sense of “intoxication” that predisposed them towards a violent act. Some few used this excuse to explain a fight with another pony, but the vast majority (three in four) indicated a compulsion to fight the indigenous Bison they had invited to their town. Others claimed that “spirits were high” and that they had not forgotten the events of the previous year. Most were not openly repentant, regretting only that they had hurt the Bison, not that they had expelled them.

ANALYSIS of INDIGENOUS ACCOUNTS

[Transcripts are attached]

Those natives we still had access to and who were willing to talk corroborated much of what we compiled from the civilian interviews. We were unable to locate the braves who destroyed the farmstead outside town, but we were able to find several Bison who had been involved in incidents around town and not just at the bar or the dance circles. None had any form of timepiece, however, and they could not give an impression of when the violence broke out. Their accounts, though expectedly jaundiced, all indicate that ponies were the aggressor group.

Of particular note with respect to the indigenous accounts of the violence is the means in which the fighting took place. Previously, the Appleoosa settlers used laced and unlaced pastries to deter a Bison stampede through their town (with mixed results). All accounts of the current fighting indicate that the pony settlers moved to physically assault their opponents and continued to press the fight with great zeal.

ANALYSIS of VICE-DUCHY RECORDS

While the Colonial Administration of the Greater Equestrian Marche did not maintain garrisoned forces in Appleoosa at the time of the incident, a medical CDC unit was on-hoof during the festival and quartered out of a mobile railroad car. They were present testing for and treating Brucellosis in both the Bison and Equestrian settler populations and taking advantage of the festival to inoculate both populations.

Brucellosis is a contagious disease known to be endemic in the nomadic Bison tribes, capable of infecting a wide range of other species, including domestic cattle, pets like dogs, and even Equestrian ponies of all three breeds. The disease localizes in the udder or breasts, lymphatic system, and reproductive tissue, frequently resulting in miscarriages, infertility, reduced milk production, lameness, swollen joints, and swollen testicles. Prior to 1000.02 there was no treatment for the disease, and it was a leading factor in keeping the Appleoosa region closed for Equestrian settlement. A cure was developed by the Vice-Duchy Center for Disease Control, permitting settlement, and the CDC was present to both ensure the safety of the pony population and to begin to inoculate the Bison tribes.

Vice-Duchy records are much more precise than those of the civilian or indigenous interviews, indicating that the violence in town had reached the rail yard by a little after 1630 hours. An attack on the trains themselves was initiated by the Bison, successful in derailing one train but repulsed from an attack on the CDC mobile headquarters itself. After the fighting ended, virtually all of the badly wounded were taken to the CDC doctors for triage and treatment. We were given free access to CDC records, as the doctors tested for a disease-factor in the outbreak of violence, but the results were negative.

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

INTOXICATION

This factor remains a possibility, but does not explain the violence among populations that had not been drinking heavily or ingesting salt.

DISEASE

CDC records indicate no presence of diseases that could affect judgment or the mind, and all interviewees appeared lucid and cooperative just a day after the incident. Night Guard healers were unable to detect either magical or mundane maladies present, aside from Brucellosis among the Bison population.

CONTAMINATION

CDC medical records indicate the names of all the ponies and Bison vaccinated with the Brucellosis cure. This includes the entire town of Appleoosa, who were inoculated two to one year ago, and a small number of ponies who were checked up on before and during the festival. Out of the entire Bison population, only twenty-four had been vaccinated before the riot. We have been unable to discern any pattern between the recent medical activity and the perpetrators of the violence. As an example, not a single pony in the bar where violence may have first broken out was part of the CDC test study. Both the Equestrian and indigenous populations were tested at random and present no clear correlation at this time.

Additional investigation of the CDC after Appleoosa was able to track the clean-cars to a depot outside Canterlot. An independent investigation had yet to find any sort of contamination that could account for the violence in Appleoosa.

MAGICAL OUTBREAK

All but two civilian interviews indicated a strange compulsion towards violence on the part of the settler ponies, directed towards the indigenous Bison. One even described it as a “battle rage” of sorts. This is corroborated by the Bison accounts of aggression on the part of ponies, often displayed suddenly and with little-to-no warning. It takes years of training a pony to stress ‘fight’ over ‘flight’ in a confrontation. There are first-hoof accounts of young mares attacking Bison many times their size in this incident – accounts that cannot be easily dismissed as exaggeration.

Another factor that points towards a ‘magical outbreak’ of some sort is the disproportionate harm done to the Bison compared to that suffered by the settler ponies. The average Appleoosa pony is one fourth to one fifth the mass of an adult Bison. In a physical confrontation, even an earth pony would be easily outmatched. This disparity is exacerbated by the fact that most Appleoosa ponies have no martial training, whereas almost all Bison, male and female, are “braves” at some point and thus possessed of some experience in close combat. The males are also well-versed in the clash and bear horns that can easily kill or dismember a pony in CQB.

Yet, records after the riot indicate that the Bison were universally set upon by the settlers. Some were mobbed by numbers; others took down Bison by themselves. According to the Bison themselves, they did not hesitate to fight back, but were overmatched, to their own confusion (and, it should be added, many were shamed as well).

Dawn Guard records point to two possible sources of a magical outbreak that could have this effect. A bio-manipulation spell (physiomancy) could both enrage and empower an average pony to the level where it could fight with a Bison and win. However, all spells of this type on record are proscribed, and we did not detect any traces of body-altering magic in the Appleoosa settlers or indigenous Bison. There is also a parasite, C. horribilis, that was once endemic to parts of Equestria and that could cause an effect similar to rabies in its victims. The hosts’ bodies were mutated and compelled to attack others to spread the parasite. However, C. horribilis was eradicated over eight hundred years ago after the Second Great Ponyformation of Equestria, and there were no traces of malformation in the Appleoosa settlers.

CONCLUSION

The exact nature of the Appleoosa incident is still under investigation, but it is the conclusion of Night Guard Field Intelligence that there was some magical component to the riot that broke out between the Equestrian settlers and the indigenous natives. There is no other accounting for the lack of injuries among the pony settlers, the suddenness and ferocity of the violence, the impressions of “anger” described by many ponies, and “helplessness” felt by many Bison.

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Your Royal Highness,

Princess Luna,

As this occurred in my lands, naturally I would be happy to share any information I have with you regarding the unfortunate incident in Appleoosa. As you may know, my main concern in the area is the elimination of Brucellosis, the better to improve the health of both pony and non-pony alike, but it is in all our interests to promote harmony between ponies and our non-pony neighbors. If you wish it, I can send a company of my best doctors along with your Night Guard to conduct more tests. Otherwise, I fear I am still terribly indisposed dealing with the negotiations between Neighpon and Canterlot, to say nothing of other commitments. These things are important, but must be delegated to my subordinates.

I hope and pray that the violence in Appleoosa will prove to be an anomaly that does not repeat itself, but I will also keep a few guardponies close to the town, just to be sure.

Feel free to call on me at any time.

Respectfully,

Alpha Brass

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Auntie

Our physiomancy spells are all locked up in the Blueblood Archives. I don’t know any, but I’m quite sure nopony has even read those old scrolls in generations. Why do you ask? And C. horribilis? My aide tells me it is some sort of germ or worm? I assure you that even my family would not keep such a ghastly thing.

Also, I’m terribly afraid I must ask that we postpone any future “gaming nights” until after the royal wedding. I know I have been somewhat reclusive of late, but I also know we will have a great deal of time to spend together once my Princess-sister is off on her well-earned honeymoon. I look forward to it and to getting reacquainted with my favorite Aunt.

~

Blueblood

~

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Princess Luna stared at the scrolls and letters floating before her… before tossing them all into the fire in her personal quarters. The deed done, she rang a bell and waited for the door to open. She didn’t turn from the fire and the crackling white and red embers within it. Closing her eyes, she recalled all she had read. How wrong so much of it felt in her heart, for all the sense some of it made in her mind.

It was time to revisit a certain pony’s dreams.

It was time to get some real answers.

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Eunomie (i)

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Is it strange that I do not know when my mother was replaced by a monster?

It probably is.

I have never been good at reading others, you see. Understand that I would have expected Euporie to notice. She is the one with an eye for that sort of nuance. But if she did have a sense for when our mother ceased to be our mother, she never said anything. As a result, I can’t say when Olive Branch became a changeling, only that the switch occurred sometime in my fillyhood.

Euporie jokes, sometimes, that our real mother is on an extended vacation to the Gallopagos, being fanned with palm-leaves by tanned, muscular colts and sipping liqueur from a hollow coconut. She laughs when she describes it, but even she knows the truth. Our biological mother died, alone and afraid. Nopony ever found her body. To this day, nopony knows how the deed was even done. My own hypothesis is that it was one of her lovers. My mother had many lovers, you know. She likely took a changeling to bed, and the creature took the opportunity to replace her. If that was the case, then she was likely kept in a cell or a cocoon until her body wasted away, many years later.

I would like to say ‘I miss her,’ but I do not.

From what I later learned, the Queen Chrysalis who replaced my mother, Olive Branch, was not like the current Queen Chrysalis. Like most changelings, the elder Queen’s brood was kept small and unobtrusive. Her foremost concern was to survive within pony society unnoticed. She had, perhaps, a swarm that numbered in the dozens. She was nothing like the current Queen, who commands many more than a thousand.

I will not go on about my mother further. She died, and a changeling took her place. It was, I think, the first changeling to also find itself in a position of political power in Equestria. My mother was the Marquessa of the Frontier. The March, or ‘Marche,’ it is called, and in turn divided up into those colonies to the east, west, south, north, and overseas. Administratively, it is a Vice-Duchy. The Marquessa is a Duchess in all but name.

As I said, my mother’s part in things ends with her death.

Her death is also where the changeling invasion truly began.

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Rarity

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“Hell-lloo? Is anypony home?”

Rarity’s head dipped from left to right, sending a magical cone of light racing across the irregular cave walls. The source of the illumination was a hat of her own recent design, blue and black instead of that gaudy construction-saffron yellow, with a fashionably wide rim and a pastel bandanna affixed to the back to cover one’s mane and protect it from nasty things like dust. It would probably be a little less effective against a cave-in, but it looked as close to chic and fashion-fabulous as Rarity thought a hardhat could.

A second beam of light washed over an upturned mining cart of the sort Rarity recalled pulling during her last visit to the gem fields outside Ponyville’s limits. Spike had come along with her – the little dragon had been absolutely insistent – and he paused close to the cart to get a better look at it. It was one of the wheeled carts designed to be used off-track or even off-road. Others were meant to stay on the metal rails that ran through the thicker sections of the mines, just like little railroad cars in miniature. Like most things here, much of it was rusted from lack of maintenance or care. Another pony could be forgiven for thinking these mines were simply abandoned.

Well, they really did seem abandoned at the moment… but Rarity knew better.

“This way, I believe,” she said, leading her group down a somewhat familiar tunnel.

A pair of rough teenage voices grumbled, and heavy claw-steps followed behind her. She caught a glimpse of Garble out of the corner of her eye as the dragon used a claw to liberate something shiny from the cave wall nearby. It was only common quartz, Rarity knew, and as she expected, he tossed it aside once he realized how little it was worth. She’d less expected him to actually break off a piece and roll it over in his mouth like a piece of sour candy.

Garble and Fizzle were two of her escorts for this little expedition, with Spike being an unexpected third. The point of it had been to strike some sort of accommodation with the diamond dogs living close to Ponyville. Now that she was Baroness, Rarity understood that they all fell under her jurisdiction to varying degrees. She had left them to their own affairs since they had abducted her last year, but she had always wondered and feared that they might try a second time with another pony. Even if they had not repeated their mistake, the dogs were still living under her Barony now. Some sort of groundwork had to be laid to make sure that the gems here were being extracted in a way that wasn’t purely opportunistic.

Rarity frowned a little at that thought, knowing it to be somewhat ironic. Her own motives for last visiting here had not been exactly altruistic. Seen from a certain light, she had been just as opportunistic as the diamond dogs in her pursuit of gems and material gain. Nonetheless, she had something of a duty now to see the bigger picture. Bitaly had deals with their diamond dogs in Canida. There was no reason Ponyville could not do something similar, especially since Spike’s dragon friends had come to Ponyville to expand their personal hoards. Everypony and every-being stood to benefit from working together.

The first step was, obviously, to find the diamond dogs…

She honestly did not remember them being this elusive!

Back when she had been captured by them, the dogs had been almost everywhere in these caves, as common – and in many cases as gross – as lichen or mushrooms on a damp wall. Later, when she had talked her way into basically running their little group, she had seen where they lived and stored their jewels and other valuables. To her surprise and delight, the diamond dogs had amassed enough gems to keep the Carousel Boutique in stock for years. She and her friends had procured about half of it for services rendered. Privately, Rarity had pushed for so much not just to offset their initially rough treatment of her, but also so she wouldn’t have to come back and risk being captured again. In hindsight, she wondered if she had gone a little overboard hauling away so much more than she could use.

“Look! A helmet!” Spike yelled, running ahead.

“Spike, do be careful!”

He paid little mind to her warning, disappearing for a second behind a pile of rubble. When he emerged a second later, he had in-claw one of the coal-pot helmets the pug-like diamond dog guards used. It was almost as large as Spike’s torso, and as he walked back, Rarity could see a chip in the helmet where something had cut into it. Spike noticed it, too, trying to wedge a finger into the gap.

“Yo, Spike,” Garble growled, trailing one claw against the ceiling as he walked ahead. “Toss that here!”

Spike did so, and the red drake caught the helmet in midair. Garble stuck a sharpened clawtip into the gap in the helmet and turned it over, looking into the bowl. He sniffed and rolled the helmet around in his palm. Holding it up, the inside facing her, he pointed.

“Blood,” he said, simply. “Whatever punched through this did some damage.”

“Do diamond dogs often fight one another?” Rarity asked, using a bit of magic to snag the helmet and take a look for herself. She didn’t smell anything, but then, she was a pony, not a dragon. Looking inside, though, she could see a faint rust-colored smear against the dirty leather padding.

Garble shrugged. “All I know is they make gems.”

“Let us keep looking, then,” Rarity decided, clipping the damaged helmet to her white and indigo saddlebag. “This way, gentlecolts.”

Garble and Fizzle both made a heated snorting sound at being called ‘gentlecolts,’ but, nonetheless, they followed her. Spike, of course, stuck close by. The lights from their hard hats filled in for all the extinguished lanterns and pitch oil braziers that had – once – shed light on the dreary tunnels of the diamond dogs.

Prior to making her repeat visit, Rarity had taken some time to look further into the canines she had so rudely encountered the year before. The Daring Do books and radio dramas, she knew, often presented diamond dogs as allies of trolls and other monstrous cave-dwelling troglodytes, and even that mismatched Ahuizotl-creature.

According to Twilight’s more scholarly and respectable books, there were abandoned cave cities under the Macintosh Mountains to the south, and, of course, there was the modern ‘country’ of Canida that Sand Dune had described under Bitaly. In the donkey lands even further south, the oldest diamond dog tribes had built above-ground temples in the jungles. None of the books indicated that any diamond dogs should remain in the Canterlot Duchy. Quite the opposite! The ancient unicorn lords, who had something of a penchant for cruelty, had supposedly driven them out years before the tribes made peace and unified. They were not supposed to be here at all anymore.

But then, Canterlot was also supposed to have been mined out of gems centuries ago… so perhaps they had been attracted to the fresh gem veins outside Ponyville? In other words, it was possible the dogs had come here for the same reason she had. It stood to reason, then, that if the gems were mined out that they would leave. Was that what happened?

Curious, Rarity discretely activated her gem-finding spell.

She omitted the glowing aspect of it, making it impossible to really see the hidden gems, but providing enough that she could sense their presence. She had expected to find the mines empty except for a few scraps left behind when the diamond dogs left. Instead, her horn tingled energetically with the presence of tons of gemstones all around her. They were buried in the walls, the floors, the ceiling…! They were all around! This mine was far from played out, and the dogs were adept miners, albeit ones without much magic. They would know the mine here was still good.

So where were they?

“Oh! This is rather steep! Do be careful!” Rarity said, stopping short as the tunnel she remembered being led down only a year ago suddenly intersected with a much larger – much more recent – excavation. So dramatically did one cross the other that nopony, or nodog, had even bothered to smooth over a ramp between the smaller tunnel and the larger one, leading to a dramatic escarpment.

“W-wow,” Spike whispered next to her, tipping his hard hat back and sending a shaft of light up along the side of the intersecting tunnel and up to the ceiling. “This is big.”

“Yes. Rather like some huge worm or the like bored through.”

Rarity scanned the second tunnel with an appraising eye. It was crude, cylindrical, with some wooden supports built in simple supporting triangles and squares. Warily making her way down the incline to get to the other side, the ground proved to be very loose and very unfriendly towards guests with hooves. Whoever had excavated this huge tunnel had done so very quickly and very sloppily. Wastefully, as well, since there were a few broken gem veins sticking out of the walls. It didn’t look like they had even been worked to remove the valuable stones.

“Rarity. Look over there, a dead-end.” Spike pointed down the oversized tunnel. The supports just twenty pony-lengths away had been collapsed, causing the cave there to fall in. All that was left was an impassable pile of packed stone and dirt.

“And the other way?” Rarity asked, turning her light down the tunnel in the other direction. It simply stretched on and on. Even her magical lamplight couldn’t pierce the depth of it.

“Fizzle!” Garble barked, hopping down the side of the tunnel. “Go check it out. You find any of these guys; bring ‘em back here.”

“Ehh? Me?” the lanky, white dragon asked, one claw picking at the frill that served as a dragon’s ear. Garble growled in response.

“Yeah,” he snapped. “You. Do it.”

“It would be much appreciated, thank you,” Rarity said, and the two teenage dragons turned to stare at her.

“Yeah… yeah, alright,” Fizzle finally agreed, stalking down the huge tunnel.

“You know,” Spike whispered, “if this were one of Twilight’s horror stories…”

“I’m sure young Fizzle can handle himself, Spike,” Rarity replied and started back up to the other side of the cave. The rubble here was just as difficult as it was on the descent, however, especially for a mare who wanted to avoid getting more dirty than she had to. “Oh. This is so very--”

“You’re taking too long!” She felt a hand slip beneath her belly and lift her right up into the air with a yelp. A few seconds later and Garble released her to fall back onto all fours, now atop the escarpment and back on the original tunnel, past the intersection. Rarity whirled on the teenage dragon, scolding him as she brandished her hoof.

“That is not how you treat a lady!” she admonished and used her magic to help Spike scramble up to join them.

Garble stared at her in utter incomprehension. “What’s the problem now?”

“A mare’s undercarriage is very sensitive,” Rarity informed him once Spike was alongside her. “Besides which, I’d rather not be carried around like somepony’s pet cat.”

“So… what?” Garble held out his hands and then brought them up, mimicking her being slung over his shoulder, like a pig or a sack of potatoes. “Is this is better?”

“NO!” she cried. “Worse!”

“Like this, then?” he asked, holding out his hands in front of him, in a bridal carry.

“Absolutely not!”

“I could carry you in my mouth.” With a morbid smile, he made sure to display the mismatched set of steak knives that passed for his teeth. “Better?”

“Most certainly not better,” Rarity answered and sauntered past the dragon. “Just follow me.”

“Stupid picky pony,” the surly dragon garbled.

As Rarity forged ahead, she just barely heard Spike whisper to his fellow dragon, “I always thought she’d like the shoulder-carry thing?”

“Guess not.”

A roll of her eyes and Rarity started down an incline that she knew lead to where many of the diamond dogs had stored their valuable prizes. She could hear Garble’s footsteps close behind her and see Spike’s hard hat light weaving a circle of yellow against the walls up ahead, along with her own. The presence of the two dragons – perhaps oddly – filled her with confidence. Spike was wonderful, as always, but Garble was a somewhat reliable young stallion… or stallion-like-creature. She was mostly sure he would jump at the chance to maul something if it seriously threatened her. After all, without her, he wouldn’t be able to expand his hoard with gems and gold from Ponyville.

Moving at a brisk pace, a little spring in her step, she rounded a bend and came face to face with a thick metal grate built into the walls of the tunnel. Her eyes settled on the lock to the door, set into the lattice of welded metal bars, when a low growl interrupted her thoughts of treasure and exploration. A bright light erupted somewhere up ahead, and, with an upset and frightened wail, Rarity fell back on her hindquarters. Hooves reacted instinctively to cover her face and her eyes from the sudden, glaring light.

“Rarity!” Spike yelled, already close by.

“Hey, we found them,” Garble muttered, and she felt him pull her away from the metal bars.

“Dragons! Thieves!” a voice yelled, though it sounded more like ‘teefs’ than ‘thieves.’

“Stick ‘em!” another voice snarled. “Stick ‘em with the pointy end!”

Rubbing her eyes, Rarity could see – from behind Garble’s scaled torso – that there were diamond dogs behind the metal grate. They were the armored sort she remembered from before, brown in color, with heavy jaws and snub-snouts. A rank of them carried spears in their thick paws and, more worryingly, a group behind them had some sort of weapon held up at shoulder-height. It took a second to realize that the weapons were crossbows. She had seen them in the White Company’s armory. That was most certainly new. The dogs here had not possessed crossbows last year! From behind the grate, they could make a pincushion of the two dragons, to say nothing of the soft, squishy, decidedly unarmored pony behind them!

Still…! This was her business to attend to.

Boldly pushing past Spike and Garble, Rarity held up one hoof to draw the dogs’ attention.

“Hello there! Excuse me!” she sing-songed in her most pleasant tone of voice. Trotting right up to the metal bars, she smiled and held a hoof first to her cheek and then to the steel. “I am terribly sorry to drop by unannounced like this, but we have some important things we absolutely have to talk to you about!” She tried to look around past the phalanx of guard dogs. “I trust this isn’t a bad time?”

“Stay away, pony!” A small dog snapped and held up a meaty claw. “Give em a pointy end on my go!”

“We’ve going to be shot at, aren’t we?” Garble asked with a grunt of annoyance.

“Come now!” Rarity insisted and batted her eyes at the guards. “Can’t we just sit down and talk? I know I’m more of a cat-pony but…”

“That voice,” another dog said, pushing through the armored guards. His eyes widened as he saw the visitors to the mine. “You!”

“Oh! Hello again, Rover,” Rarity greeted the diamond dog with a warm smile. “How have you been?”

The gray-coated diamond dog looked much the same as ever with his diamond-studded collar and passably-fashionable red vest. He stared at her for a long couple of seconds, as if deciding whether the ‘whiny white pony’ was someone to welcome back or just put a few quarrels in. Like she remembered, he seemed to be the stallion-analog in charge of this rough crew, and all the others paused in whatever they were doing to stare at and defer to him.

“You remember me, don’t you?” she asked, a little teasingly.

“The loud pony,” he stated, and Rarity winced at the rather rude impression she had left behind, even if it had been on purpose. He didn’t stop at calling her ‘loud,’ either. “The whiny pony.”

“My name is--”

“Miss Rarity,” Rover interrupted, taking a few steps over to the grate that separated them. He leaned against it, elbow against the metal, and Rarity could smell that one other thing about him hadn’t changed. He still hadn’t bathed. She gasped and reached into her saddlebag with her magic.

A few seconds - and a few generous spritzes of cologne - later, and at least the poor fellow wasn’t quite so noisome.

“Awwh!” Rover grimaced, shaking his head and trying to wipe the cologne off his muzzle. The entire rank of diamond dogs behind him raised their spears and crossbows to fire at the pony that had so assaulted their master.

Rarity ignored them.

“A little something to mask the smell,” she explained, putting the cologne away. “We really do need to get you a good bath… and maybe some shampoo… but later.” She saw Rover glaring at her, one eye narrowed and the other sitting beneath a twitching eyebrow. “I’m very glad you remember me.”

“What,” he asked, leaning closer to her, “do you want?”

“Rarity,” Spike whispered, warningly. He was scared, she could see, but as much for her as he was for himself. He was such a gentlecolt, really.

“We want gems,” Garble announced. That one… was less of a gentlecolt, most times.

“Dumb dragon,” Rover growled, pointing at the red drake. “No gems for you!”

“Hey!” Garble, heedless of the danger, stomped towards the metal bars. Rarity hoped he wasn’t about to put the thickness of those dragon scales of his to the test. She didn’t fancy Spike or her own chances if it came to that. “Why not?! And I’m not dumb! You’re dumb! Like twice as dumb! Or... half… as dumb? If you’re half as dumb, are you twice as smart? Or, if you’re twice as dumb, are you half as smart?”

The confused young dragon struggled with the quandary. “Hmmm. Fractions are tough.” Then he dramatically pointed a claw at the similarly perplexed diamond dog. “Anyway! You know what I mean!”

“Garble, please, let me handle this?” Rarity tried to be placating and polite in framing what was not exactly a request. Thankfully, the dragon growled, low and angry, but backed off. She turned to Rover. “I can see you haven’t been in the mines for some time. What’s wrong?”

The diamond dog narrowed both eyes at her, clearly growing suspicious. “Why do you care, pony?”

Rarity reached through the bars to brush his vest away from his side, revealing a ragged cut in his side.

“Who did that?” she asked, just barely touching the scar. It was fresh. These dogs had been fighting, possibly only days ago. Serious and concerned, she turned to look her former captor in the eyes. “What’s been happening down here?”

She still hadn’t explained why she cared or why he should answer her, she realized.

“I run things up top now,” Rarity added, and Rover tilted his head in response, as if to say, ‘You expect me to believe that?’

“I’m the over-boss,” she asserted. “You know what that means? Rarity is Big Boss.”

The other dogs – simple-minded though they were – all recognized her words. ‘Big Boss.’ This pony was a Boss. Rover was the cleverest of his group, as far as Rarity had been able to tell. He scratched his chin.

“Since when?” he asked.

“Not long.” Rarity grimaced at the rust and dirt getting on her pristine white coat, but trying to put it out of her mind, she suddenly reached forward and brought her hoof up. She grabbed Rover by the collar and brought him close until they were almost nose-to-nose, only the metal bars left to separate them.

“This is my business now, too,” she said in a low voice that brooked no disagreement. “I want to deal with you, Boss to Boss. Understand?”

Rover worked his jaw, rough, sharp teeth grinding together.

“Yeah, alright,” he conceded, and she let him go. Straightening his diamond studded collar, the canine went back to leaning casually against the grating. “So, what you want, ‘Boss’ Rarity?”

“A trade in gemstones for one,” she replied. “And I want to know what happened down here for another. Were you attacked?”

Rover nodded. “Yeah. Da Bad Brood, they said they was.”

“Other diamond dogs?” Rarity asked, though it was a guess. ‘Bad Brood?’

“Dogs and some other things. The dogs came first,” Rover explained, pointing back down the tunnel. “Cut across our mines. So we say, ‘You gotta pay! This our turf!’ No pay, so we fight. They have some bad boss. A Queen Boss.”

Rarity felt her heart skip in her chest.

“A Queen?” she asked, leaning more forcefully against the grate, heedless of the damage it did to her coat or mane. “They said they had a Queen? Are you certain?”

Rover nodded again. “Yeah, yeah. Queen. Diamond Dogs have Kings, once, but no Queens. Dunno about these Bad Brood mutts.”

“How many were there? Where were they headed?” Rarity asked, trying to keep calm. If these creatures were what she thought them to be…

Rover scratched his head, and Rarity groaned, realizing he wasn’t exactly dealing with a group renowned for their skill with numbers. The idiots could somehow use and maybe even build crossbows, but asking them to count was probably going too far. How a situation like that even worked, Rarity couldn’t begin to guess.

“Couple hundred,” Rover answered to Rarity’s mild surprise.

Yes, some dogs were definitely cleverer than others.

“Don’t know where they digging,” he continued, and his claw strayed to the wound on his side. “Deep. Digging deep. Big tunnels. Maybe headed for under mountain.”

“What mountain?” Rarity asked, though she suspected she already knew.

“Big Mountain,” Rover replied and, a moment later, confirmed her worst fears. “Pony’s Mountain. Biggest Boss Pony’s Mountain.”

Canterlot.

- - -

Eunomie (ii)

- - -

I never knew my biological father or even who my biological father was given my mother’s proclivities and lifestyle. But I have come to know my step-father rather well, and like the changelings he wishes to destroy, my step-father’s story also picks up where my mother’s leaves off. His name is Alpha Brass, son of Cruciger, of the line of Bismuth, who began with Arsenic.

He came to our family as a young colt, only a couple years older than my sister and myself. He was the one to open our eyes. He showed us the lies that had spread through our home. Chrysalis and the previous Queen drained the love from him, tortured him… tried to break him. They did not understand him.

The Terre Rare are not normal ponies.

They have never been normal ponies.

- - -

Celestia (past)

- - -

Upon seeing her niece, the Lady Arsenic, Princess Celestia’s first, treacherous, terrible thought had been that she should kill the mare before her, who she had once loved as a surrogate daughter. That she would be wiser to let one, poor, maligned, mistreated pony die, and be sure that Equestria knew peace. Some weapons, it was said, were too sharp to be safely wielded, and that those swords were better broken if they could not be blunted. It was a thought that troubled and shook her to the very core, because it was exactly what he would have done. And it was exactly why he could never understand one that fundamental aspect of harmony that defied all reason.

Before that, however… Princess Celestia met with her other niece.

“Princess! Thank the stars you’re here!”

The fraught exclamation came from Lady Blue Belle, forty eighth of her name, formerly Ruthenium, third of her name. The Duchess of Canterlot and Unicorn Princess had a frightened, confused light in her eyes as she hastily bowed to her ruler. It was an elegant bow, despite the obvious haste, but it was followed by Blue Belle’s high-speed chatter, another sure sign of her agitation.

“S-s-she’s… she’s done something to herself!” Blue Belle cried, gesturing to her face with a silver gilded hoof. “Oh! Oh, you should just see it. What would father think? What would grand-mother think? Oh, oh!” She swooned, drawing a long breath. “I – I feel faint just picturing it again! It was so ghastly! I don’t think I have words!”

Celestia felt her mask begin to slip at the unicorn mare’s overwrought airiness. It was not a befitting trait in a royal, especially in what could escalate into a crisis.

Please! Please, please talk to her!” the unicorn mare boldly reached for Celestia’s hoof to kiss it, imploring all the while. “Do something! Do… do something! Make…!”

Blue Belle looked up at her with crystal clear blue eyes, possibly the one trait the sisters shared.

“Make her go away,” Blue Belle pleaded and bowed quickly before backing off. Her mind, however, latched onto this thought, now expressed before her Princess and her sovereign. The noblemare drew up to her lithe but impressive height – though Celestia still towered over her handily, as she did all ponies. With a perfect alabaster coat, golden mane, and regal complexion, she looked every bit the Duchess and Princess.

“Make her go away,” she repeated. “Canterlot does not want her. Canterlot does not want to be ruled by her! Please, make her understand that and… and make her go away.”

Celestia had listened in silence, betraying nothing of her thoughts.

“She is your sister,” Celestia said, finally.

“Be that as it may,” Blue Belle insisted. “Highness,” she begged. “Please.”

Not wanting to hear any more from her niece, the Princess simply walked past her. She would have walked right through the smaller mare, except Blue Belle scrambled out of the way, trying to retain her decorum and dignity despite the gaffe. The door ahead opened with but the fainted application of her magic.

The first thing Celestia noticed was the sound of heavy rainfall. The room before her was open to a very large balcony, and all the doors and bay windows had been left wide open. Normally, this would bathe the opulent chamber in glorious sun or moonlight, but today, with a scheduled downpour, the incessant pitter-patter was bleak and oppressive. The air felt heavy. Only what faint light filtered through the clouds found the sunroom, and that was meager, dimmed, and honestly uninviting.

Back turned to the door, a single mare sat on a folded mat on the floor.

“My little pony,” Celestia said in greeting. “My little Arsenic. It warms my heart to see you again. You left very abruptly.”

“You mean to say: my sister ejected me from the city that is my birthright,” the noblemare stated, slowly turning and offering the Princess an elegant bow. “I needed to leave to prepare certain things. But here I am, Princess Celestia. The prodigal daughter returns.”

Celestia saw, right away, what Blue Belle had meant.

Arsenic was an earth pony from a line of unicorns. THE line of unicorns. Where her sister was tall and fair, with perfect white coat and flowing mane, Arsenic was of average height and build, her coat indigo-blue and her mane a darker shade of the same, always cut short.

Celestia had caught the mare trying to use diet and exercise to better mold herself into a more courtly shape, but it was not one that came naturally to earth ponies. A lifetime of effort and Arsenic remained shorter and stouter than her younger sister. Celestia knew secret shame when she saw it, and it had never been necessary for Arsenic to say how much she hated how she looked.

Everypony knew.

Above all else in the world, Arsenic wanted to be a unicorn. She wanted it, and she wanted Canterlot. Primogeniture and the right of succession would have at least given her the crown and the throne, but because of what she could not change, that had all been taken from her, too. It was simply the cruel politics that surrounded the Platinum Crown: a unicorn was given preference over an earth pony. More than that, the little ponies wanted a unicorn Duchess and Princess… and the sad truth was that Arsenic had not been the most endearing or social of mares. Blue Belle had been unkind when she had said that ‘Canterlot did not want her.’ She had been unkind but not untruthful. Canterlot did not love Lady Arsenic.

As Arsenic’s face caught more of the light, Celestia saw marks over half the young mare’s face. It looked almost like a ‘Y’ had been tattooed over both of her eyes. The ends of each tip of the ‘Y’ were capped by a small circle, and each circle bore a faint rune, two over each eye and one below, cut into the cheek. Celestia’s own eyes narrowed at the sight, one masked behind her flowing ethereal mane, the other clear to project her displeasure and unease. She recognized the lines not as tattoos in the skin, but as a faint magical glow emanating from an actual groove cut into the flesh.

And Arsenic’s once blue eyes, the one link to her sister… were now a burning, bleeding red.

“Do you see? I finally found a solution to my disability, Princess,” Arsenic explained with a grin, running a hoof along the magic that scarred her face. “These are so much better than relying on my voice to cast magic. Have you ever seen anything like it? I call them an earth pony’s ingenuity.”

A disability she had called it.

A disability... to be born without a horn.

“Tartarus! My poor little pony, what have you done to yourself?” Celestia quickly crossed the distance between them, cupping Arsenic’s chin with her hoof and raising her face upwards. “You shouldn’t have--”

“I am an earth pony whose special talent is magic!” Arsenic impudently cut her off, jerking away and out of the Princess’s grasp. Her eyes glowed like red, angry embers, barely held in check by the neon blue magic that flowed out of her body into the runes, keeping a measure of control over her eyes.

“An earth pony! Whose special talent is MAGIC!” Arsenic snarled, repeating the same words but letting hate drip into them. “Look at my cutie mark! The cutie mark that mocks me!”

She wore no dress or gown and pointed boldly to the mark on her flank: a purple, asymmetrical, eight-pointed star. A similar star with twelve points would one day be surrounded by five smaller stars, but this one stood alone on Arsenic’s flank.

“There is no field I can plow, no crop I can grow, no life I can nurture that will make me forget that I. AM. A. BLUEBLOOD.” Arsenic sucked in a deep, calming breath and quickly regained her composure. The fire in her eyes receded, from a bonfire to a mere smoldering pool of embers.

“I am a Blueblood,” she repeated, and then a third time, as just a whisper. “A Blueblood.”

“Those eyes… they came from a catoblepas,” Celestia said, and the vile thought from before repeated itself. Against every compassionate fiber of her being, she took stock of the room, where they stood in the Palace grounds, and what spells would be required. To kill.

It had been a thousand years and more since she had done so, but the old training was still there.

For Equestria she…

“That’s right!” Arsenic replied, smiling. Desperate pride in her accomplishment conflicted with the fact that she had to know that it was not to be seen in a positive light. She laughed, lowering her head, shoulders shaking. “That’s right. Amazing. You recognized them right away! My idiot sister had no idea, of course. It was a catoblepas… a gorgon… a great bull! With iron for skin… with breath that turned ponies to stone. Merely approaching the beast drove the most hardened guard and griffin to fits of terror.”

She reached up to her face again, her laughter growing soft.

“I know you told me to accept who I am… but this… this is who I am, too…” Arsenic shook her head and boldly looked back up to meet the critical gaze of her mentor and Aunt. “Without a horn, I’m useless. But I can’t grow one, so I had to find other ways. Didn’t you always tell me to find a third way? A loop hole? Learning to use my voice to cast spells was the first step, but you know what sort of spells incantations are. Then it occurred to me that there are a number of creatures that project magic using their eyes!”

“So…” she concluded with a triumphant grin. “I did a little research… and I found a dread gorgon… and killed it and took its eyes!”

The audacious noblemare focused her eyes on a nearby tallow candle.

And the candle moved, floating towards her.

“As for the risks,” Arsenic continued as Celestia tracked the candle’s progress, flying through the air and making little loops, leaving droplets of wax that cooled into eerie floating bubbles. Before the Princess’s eyes, Arsenic breathed a semblance of life into the flame and the wax, reshaping it in midair into a tiny, fiery hummingbird. There were precious few ponies who could so effortlessly manage such a feat, even with a horn.

“Life is risk!” Arsenic declared with a laugh, “and I am no mere apprentice! I have triple-reinforced the containment magic and tied it to my own life force. So long as my blood flows, these eyes are well under control.”

Celestia’s frown deepened at the confidence in the mare’s voice. “And your mane?”

“You know about that side-effect, too?” Arsenic asked, surprised. She ran a hoof along the dark blue locks of hair in her mane, hair that almost seemed to sway and move on its own accord. “I just have to keep it cut short – a simple solution to a purely cosmetic complication.”

“My little pony…”

“I am not a little pony!” Arsenic interrupted her, that brief glimmer of cheerful discussion evaporating. “I’ve always hated how nobles condescendingly call normal ponies that. Even from your lips, Princess… I can hear the dismissive note in it...”

“I do not pretend to be your equal, but I am a noble mare,” she stressed, sucking in a breath and standing tall. “And I have returned to claim my home, my throne, and my crown! Once Canterlot and the Stable of Lords see my power… once I demonstrate how I can use magic now, without restriction… the rightful heiress will have what is hers. As you agreed with them to take my birthright from me, I thought you should also be the first to see my resolve and my rebirth.”

“I am born again,” she concluded, dipping her head in a bow.

Celestia could feel it, too.

Arsenic made no further display of the power she had. There was no need of it. It was obvious to anypony who knew what to look for. Like a tuning fork, Celestia felt her horn and her wings vibrate faintly in the presence of Arsenic’s star field. No doubt the guards outside could feel it in their wings, too. Unlike the magic that the earth pony mare wielded with her voice – a form of old magic that included the Royal Canterlot Voice as the simplest cantrip – Arsenic truly had found a way to cheat fate and use unicorn magic. Though the eyes instead of the horn.

But where had she even gotten such an abominable idea?

“You can feel it, can’t you? The power I always had within me?” Arsenic raised a hoof and brushed the side of Celestia’s front leg gently, tentatively, anxiously. Reverently. “Princess… Auntie… you can’t possibly say I’m unworthy now, can you? I will bring the challenge to my sister and--”

“You will not,” Celestia boomed, and though she hardly raised her voice, the fixtures in the walls shook.

Arsenic opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to continue the speech she had rehearsed in her head. She opened her mouth and said nothing as she processed what she had just been told.

“What?” she asked, dumbly, and shook her head. “No. No. I…! I am eldest!” She pounded her chest with a hoof for emphasis. “Me! The right was always mine, and now… now I’m basically, functionally, the unicorn I was born to be. I have my family’s blood. My father’s blood and my grand-mother’s blood and Platinum’s blood! I am the rightful heir!”

Celestia stood straight and made no move to comfort or confront the mare beyond plain words.

“Arsenic,” she said, sternly, but the young noblemare was already starting to suck in gulps of air, anger displacing confusion and uncertainty as she paced around the room like a caged lion. “Blue Belle was given Canterlot. You must accept that. Nothing you do to yourself will change that. Certainly not this… mutilation.”

The Princess could see the gears working in the earth pony mare’s head.

Even as her cold rage began to give those thoughts focus.

Arsenic – the poor, foolish mare – she had always been a creative and daring student, diligent and driven above all others and all else to prove herself. Her special talent was magic, a field of study she could barely participate in without horns or wings. Against all odds, she had taught herself the difficult art of vocal casting and invocation. She had learned Warding Words, the sounds that ears could not hear, and the Art of Tongues. Magic was her curse and her obsession because it embodied all that she could not have, just as the Duchy itself and the Platinum Crown was the physical embodiment of what was forever out of her reach.

Arsenic. Celestia could see it in her eyes. Arsenic had always been quick to come to conclusions that other ponies agonized with. As the pacing noblemare’s new, crimson eyes narrowed, Celestia knew the dark thoughts pooling in her former student’s mind. If only… if only she had understood that friendship was a magic of its own, a magic that did not require a monster’s transplanted eyes or learning a language not meant for ponies to hear, much less speak.

Arsenic. In that moment, Celestia knew, the noble mare was thinking of murdering her sister.

With Blue Belle dead, there would be no other choice but her.

“How…” Arsenic muttered, and her voice barely an octave above a whisper. “How can you say that? Even now? After all I’ve done… to myself… to make myself worthy… to make myself better?” She slowly closed her eyes and her voice took on a broken, bereaved tone. “How can you still reject me, Princess?”

“Am I… am I so abominable to you?” she asked, and Celestia saw tears in Arsenic’s eyes. The young mare’s teeth were clenched as she struggled to control herself, either from lunging at her mentor and aunt or from breaking down entirely. “I can use magic now…!”

“It was never about the magic, my poor pony.” Celestia reached a hoof out to gently brush her one-time student’s mane, trying one last time to make her understand. She could feel the hair move under her hoof. “You did not have to do this to yourself. I told you… I told you so many times…”

“You told me, yes, but I’ve heard their whispers and their laughter.” Arsenic’s mercurial sorrow morphed so easily, so quickly, back into rage. Her teeth bared and her body tensed. “How could I forget their sniggering behind my back? Even the other earth pony nobles. How could I forget? How could I ever forgive?

“I know why they turned from me, but you…?” Arsenic nuzzled Celestia’s hoof for a second before backing away. “Tell me the truth. Why you? Why did you forsake me, too?”

“I did not forsake you,” Celestia told her, stamping a gold-clad hoof against the floor. The rare display of pique actually seemed to give Arsenic pause. “I always knew you were destined for great things, Arsenic, but those things are not in Canterlot… and your family’s crown… it isn’t something you can wear. Especially not now. Trust me.”

Arsenic’s upper lip curled as she sneered, weighing her Princess’s words.

“You said the same thing before!” she growled, but her anger was tempered by despair. “A softly spoken rejection is still a rejection! Canterlot is--”

“Canterlot is not your home.”

Arsenic’s brow furrowed. “It…”

“I have known you since you were a foal,” Celestia declared, raising her voice just enough to ensure she was not interrupted. Just enough so that every word could hit home in the noble mare before her. “Do you still trust me? Do you still love me, my sweet, difficult little niece?”

Once, Arsenic would’ve all but jumped to yell, ‘Yes! Yes, Auntie!’

This time, for the first time in her life, the young noblemare answered the question with silence.

Neither trust… nor love, then.

Celestia wondered if perhaps it was what she deserved. It was within her power to veto any but a unanimous proclamation from the Stable of Lords. She had final say on which sister inherited the Platinum Crown. On the night of the vote, knowing she would lose if it came to a popularity contest, Arsenic had come to her Princess and her Aunt to beg for intercession. She had repeated the same arguments then as she did now: that she was eldest, that she was capable, that her lack of a horn would not be an impediment, that her sister cared only for parties and revelry… she spoke, and when that failed, she argued, and when that failed, she pleaded.

She had begged for the crown… and the next day, Celestia had placed it upon the head of her sister. Arsenic had not attended the ceremony. She had not kissed her sister’s hoof. Instead she had left and began to gather allies. Celestia had hoped against hope to rein her in. Her spies in Arsenic’s entourage did not fail her. She knew the brewing signs of a civil war when she saw one. Now the black sister had returned for revenge. It was a narrative that Princess Celestia understood all too well.

“Tell me, my niece: do you blame me for your father’s death?” Celestia asked, lowering her eyes in memory of her fallen nephew. He, too, had been a master of the Warding Word. He who had taught it to his earth pony daughter had ended a bloody war with a single sky-shattering whisper.

And it was she who had sent him to war.

“For father?” Arsenic asked, vigorously shaking her head. “No. No, Princess! Of course not!”

“Yet I sent your father to assist our griffin allies,” Celestia argued. “I empowered him to lead an Equestrian army to their relief. If I had not, he would still be here, and so would so many other stallions.”

She could have let the griffins fight on amongst themselves. How much was a pony’s life worth? How many years of peace? What was the price paid for security and stability? A thousand years she had ruled Equestria, and the hardest questions still had no real answers.

“I was there, Arsenic, when he kissed you and your sister on the cheek and promised to return home. You cried when he left... do you remember? You cried then, but you didn’t shed a single tear when his body returned home.” Celestia felt the pinprick of tears in her own eyes, for her beloved nephew and for every other son and brother and husband who fell intervening in the griffin’s senseless civil war. “Tell me, my little pony, how can you not blame me?”

“Because if my father had not gone, I would have!” Arsenic insisted, strenuously shaking her head. “He did not just give his life for you, but for Equestria! It was duty and honor! Duty and Honor!”

“And if I had sent you, you would have gone?” she asked.

“Of course!” Arsenic replied, instantly. It was as the high nobility were taught to be. Her indignation from before began to fade in light of the unexpected inquiry. “I miss my father, yes, and he could have better chosen a successor… me, I think… but he died a hero…”

“He put what was needed of him before his own life,” Celestia finished, and Arsenic’s eyes widened in realization. She was in a logical trap, and she knew it.

“He did,” the noblemare admitted, morosely nodding to herself. “But--”

“Do you know why Equestria has so many nobleponies? What is it that makes you noble?” Celestia asked, not giving the other mare any respite.

It was cruel, but it was not cruelty. It was this… or a fight. Sister would not be allowed to fight sister. There would be no more sororicide in Equestria! There would be no more Lunas. No more bloody wars or defiant statues or timeless banishments. Ponykind was better than it had been in her time. Kinder. Gentler. She had seen to it.

“What is it I ask of you that I do not ask of the small ponies? The little ponies?” the Princess asked, and when Arsenic blinked, she found the alicorn towering over her. “What makes you noble?”

“Sacrifice,” Arsenic whispered, looking up at her with a distant expression. Not awe, but realization of what lay ahead. “Sacrifice and service, Princess. Ours is to carry the spear and the shield…”

Still, she did not necessarily want to accept what she saw coming.

“But can I not serve Equestria from your side?” Arsenic asked, brows furrowing. “Please. Do not turn me away, Auntie. My place is by your side. You are… all the family I feel I have…”

For just a moment, Celestia felt herself waver. She loved her nieces and nephews, one and all. The troublesome ones she often loved most, because they were so difficult. She had held her distant kin in her wings when they were born and when they died. She had embraced them in joy and sorrow, holding daughters when mothers died and mothers when daughters passed before their time. Princess she was, royal and high, but Celestia wanted nothing more than to wrap her wings around this dark, misguided foal and tell her she was loved, that she was wanted, that she was valued, no matter how long it took.

She also knew she could not, not yet.

Arsenic was not the sort of pony to put stock in words over acts. She would never forget that her sister had the crown that was, by rights, hers. She would never forget the faces or names of the ponies she felt had slighted or insulted her. Even as a little filly, she had written down the names and features of the ponies she hoped one day to repay for their poor judgment.

More than that, Arsenic was not a pony who had ever grasped the meaning of forgiveness. It was the biggest reason she had never really understood the magic of friendship. She was incapable of forgiveness, either in others or in herself. Those ponies who had insinuated that her being an earth pony meant she was also a bastard and not of royal blood… would not be long for Arsenic’s Canterlot.

Though it broke her heart, Celestia knew what needed to be said to save this pony from herself.

“Am I to fall on a spear then?” Arsenic asked, challengingly. “For peace? My sister’s peace?”

“In a way, you are,” Celestia replied, and the cold response actually evoked an amused smirk from the dark noblemare.

“Tell me,” she demanded. The unspoken addendum being, ‘it had best be a spear worth falling on.’

Celestia intended just that.

“First, you must know that Canterlot is not a place for a pony like you,” she began, and she saw Arsenic’s frown deepen at the news. She had been hearing variations on this theme all her life. “This city and this country have lost a Duke and a Prince in your father… who I loved… but your father was a stern stallion, Arsenic. Too stern. Before they loved him and revered him as a fallen war hero, many ponies chafed under his imposed austerity. They came to me when he canceled Galas and parties and tournaments. You know your father had little love for these things.”

Arsenic’s jaw dropped at hearing such things, such truthhoods, from anypony, much less her Aunt and Princess. She had to be very nearly in shock. Yet it was all truth. This was all the bitter, nasty truth – the awful medicine that would save her life.

“I see so much of him in you,” Celestia continued and lowered her head enough to brush their cheeks together. “You would follow in his hoofsteps, I know, but Canterlot needs Galas. I don’t even like many of them myself, but the city needs them. It needs parties and tourneys and all the revelry that you find wasteful. Canterlot exists to rule and to export joy. That is the truth of it. The parties your sister so-loves do not detract from Canterlot. They enhance it, and they make Equestria as a whole happier as well. Right now, the little ponies need happiness. They need what your sister brings.”

“My sister,” Arsenic muttered. “My frivolous, flighty, airheaded sister… needed…?”

For just a second, she seemed to believe it.

“Is that it? It can’t be just that?” she asked and Celestia pulled out of their nuzzle. She wrapped a wing around Arsenic’s side to guide her back to the balcony. The two mares stopped right before the pouring rain.

“There is another reason as well,” Celestia admitted, hoping her honesty could pierce Arsenic’s thorny shell.

“What is this spear then?” she asked after a few moments of staring past the rain at the foggy mountain city and palace beyond. “What task am I to perform in my exile?”

“Conquest,” Celestia told her.

Arsenic tensed, her blazing eyes – stolen eyes from one of the worlds’ deadliest monsters – drifting over to her Princess and Aunt. “Conquest?”

“Did you expect anything less?” The great alicorn asked with a smirk. She adopted a pose she knew to be effectively regal and stared out into the city below them, her mane flowing around her. “As you said, you are not a pony to plow or to sow or even to nurture. Perhaps you can reap, then.”

Arsenic remained silent, her expression guarded, waiting to hear more.

She wanted a name of a place.

“Two Rivers,” Celestia said after a long silence. “The divided realms of Germaney. I want you to bring them into the Equestrian fold, once and for all.”

Arsenic’s silence was far from a rejection. Celestia knew that look on her face. That contemplative look. Already the gears in her head were in motion of how to do it. It was a problem. A challenge. Arsenic could never resist a challenge. It was in her nature to try and solve it, often in an efficient – if heavy-hoofed – manner. She was tempted. She only needed to justify it to herself.

Germaney.

It was a wild and fractured land. Ponies had settled and migrated there dating back to the fall of the Old Kingdoms. Many of the ponies that had come in the second wave with Starcaller had set down roots there to escape the ponies that they had tried and failed to subjugate. Over the centuries, they had mingled with native species, including small griffin tribes, forming petty Principalities and Free Cities. Germaney had been officially added to the Equestrian nation for trading purposes when an assembly of lords had pledged to “Honor the Princess” in return for a Royal Charter recognizing certain rights.

That had been more than a century ago, and the Duchy of Germaney or ‘Two Rivers’ had seen little but turmoil ever since. There were no ponies more warlike or fractious. Bluebloods had made attempts over the years to better pacify the region, to little success. All it had ended up doing was to create more branches of the Blueblood line that fought amongst one another and pretended to hold a right to power. The Warmbloods were the most notable. If Arsenic was wise, she would start there.

“The land is in chaos. Ponies are suffering. Can you bring harmony to this realm for me?” Celestia asked, letting her listener’s silence go on at long as she felt comfortable. Now, she felt, was the time to strike, while the iron of the thought was still hot.

“I may also die in the attempt,” Arsenic reasoned, but she didn’t sound adverse to the idea. “But, as I recall… if it were unified, Germaney would become the largest Duchy in the country, and it would have tremendous influence over Prance as well.” Arsenic glanced to her side and at the Princess. “Say I do this. Say I succeed. What is to stop me from turning the land under my control against Canterlot and my sister?”

Celestia’s smile was radiant, beatific... serene.

“Only me,” she admitted.

“Hmm.” Arsenic grumbled, her smile growing. “Only you,” she agreed, knowing what that meant and what threat was veiled behind the loving smile. “Do you think you can really trust me, even then?”

“I think you hate your sister with every fiber of your being,” Celestia replied, and it hurt to even say the words. Sisters. Sisters should not fight so. “But I think you still hold love for me, for your father’s legacy, and for Equestria.”

The rain continued to beat down on the city before them.

“Equestria spurned and rejected me,” Arsenic reminded her.

The implication was there. Equestria wasn’t the only thing to reject her and take away what she considered hers. Revenge was a sweet and succulent fruit for some ponies, harmony be damned. In that moment, as lightning cracked, Celestia saw another dark mare – an alicorn and not an earth pony – standing next to her in brooding silence.

Luna…

What would she do with an army and a grudge? Sadly, Celestia already knew the answer to that question. She had experienced it and lived through it. Yet Luna deserved a chance to redeem herself. And this pony? Surely she did as well.

“One day,” Celestia promised, one wing falling over Arsenic’s shoulders, “a daughter of your line will rule in Canterlot. I swear it, my little pony. I swear it.”

Arsenic grimaced at the ‘my little pony’ remark.

“But not me,” she said.

“Not you,” Celestia answered.

Arsenic’s stolen eyes, crimson and smoking, slowly closed as she came to terms with her acquiescence. Celestia smiled and felt a moment of pure triumph. There would be no war in Equestria. There would be no sisters shedding blood. There would be no loss of life. It was not quite harmony, but it was a step in the right direction. It was a promise for the future. There was another matter, too, of no less importance. Arsenic’s power was immense. It had all been trapped in an earth pony, but if she had been born a unicorn, her magical power would have been unprecedented in this day and age. Even in the Migration Era, a time when ponies made the earth beneath their hooves tremble, her power would have been formidable.

If a daughter of hers could inherit that same power but temper it with friendship and love…

“I will hold you to your promise, Auntie,” Arsenic said, and the curious remark caught Celestia by surprise for a second. The dark noblemare’s eyes were still closed and her expression inscrutable. “A daughter of mine will rule in Canterlot beside you. She will serve you and love you as I always dreamed I could. One day.”

“One day,” Celestia agreed.

“And I will see it come to pass,” Arsenic insisted, and as her eyes slowly opened again, the pupils all but vanished beneath the crimson smoke. “A part of me will always love you, Auntie, but I don’t forget a promise.”

Nor, Celestia knew, did her forsaken niece forgive a broken vow.

But that was the maddening secret to friendship and harmony: it required trust… and faith.

- - -

Author's Note:

This is first half of the interlude before the final arc. The Wedding Arc.
Just thought I'd explain why there are two interludes. I cut it in half for brevity, such as brevity is when it is still thousands of words! hahaha

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