• Published 29th Apr 2012
  • 7,997 Views, 542 Comments

Glim - Smayds



Sequel to Not My Destiny. The story of Twilight's daughter. Unavoidably, a story of impossible loss

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Chapter 03: Aegis Invictus

Chapter 3: Aegis Invictus

“Twilight, you’re driving everypony mad,” her older sister said quietly.

“I’m making everypony SAFE!” she shot back. “Equestria is the safest land in the world!” She flipped the pages of the book rapidly, slammed a hoof down on a passage and snorted in triumph. “Here! Right here! I knew it was this one! Listen: Of the three poor foals who unwisely climb this tree on this sad morning, not one shall live to see the evening sky. I saved three earth fillies from a tree in Trottingham this morning! I saw them as I flew over, they’d got stuck in amongst the highest boughs, and the branch they were clinging to broke just as I arrived! They would have fallen a hundred feet to their deaths!” She was grinning, her eyes slightly glazed, as she levitated her favourite quill and scrawled a small red X across the tiny passage. “Another one! That’s eight hundred and thirty down!” She blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her sight.

“And how many more to go before you complete this quest of yours? Millions? You haven’t slept for nearly four years, Little Sister. There are limits to your endurance.”

Twilight whipped her head around and glared at Luna. “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

“Twilight!” Luna trotted forwards and sat down right next to her. “What a thing to say. What a terrible thing to say. We understand why you’re doing this, and I’m so grateful that those three little fillies are alive and unharmed. Please, don’t for a moment think that I’m not. But if you profess a desire to only sleep when you are dead, then sleep may be coming for you much faster than you know.” She stood up again as Twilight frowned. “It’s evening. I have a duty to prepare for. Expect similar words from Celestia, Little Sister. What you’re doing will kill you, drive you mad, or worse.”

“Hey!” Twilight called as Luna strode to the chamber doors and opened them. “I have duties too! I have a duty to keep my subjects safe!”

Luna looked back and shook her head. “But you’re terrorizing them. They say that you’re scolding ponies for allowing their foals to trip over or bump their heads. We receive scrolls from mayors all over Equestria every single week, practically beseeching us to do something. Think of how important that is,” she said over Twilight’s attempts to object. “Our faithful subjects asking us to do something about one of their rulers. And you reduced the Governor of Hoofington to a gibbering wreck when he proudly told you they were building an enormous amusement park for foals.” She shook her head again as Twilight frowned. “A place of fun and enjoyment that would have brought happiness and delight to thousands, but you were too concerned about cuts and sprains. And you shouted at the poor stallion for mentioning it. I shudder to think what you’d have done had they actually built it! You’d have thrown him from office if Celestia didn’t convince you to leave the Court and calm down, wouldn’t you?”

Twilight nodded, unashamed. “The place would have been a deathtrap. I’d have had to monitor it day and night -”

“You’re already monitoring Equestria day and night, Little Sister. You’ve closed down playgrounds and sporting centres all across the land, and none of them were deathtraps. You’ve torn down childrens’ tree houses and boarded up wells. Important wells that small settlements need for their drinking water. You’re turning up to towns and stomping through the streets in your battle armour! That armour is designed to make you look terrifying to Equestria’s enemies, not to make our subjects fear their Princesses!”

“They feared you! After we saved you and you came to Ponyville -” Twilight blurted.

“Of course. I’d been locked away for a thousand years, and my battle with Big Sister had become the stuff of legend. The big bad boogey-pony of myth was suddenly real, right here in the flesh, come to bring eternal night. I was feared for what I had been, not for what I was.”

“I- I’m sorry,” Twilight said, her hard expression softening slightly. "I didn’t mean that. It was, what? Four months? You’d been back four months, recovering here in the castle. I remember all the royal decrees and announcements that you weren’t Night Mare Moon, you weren’t dangerous, and of course I knew you weren’t -”

“Of course you knew. You didn’t bow and scrape, I recall. That was heartwarming, and I’m glad things turned out as they did. I’m glad you’re my Little Sister. But as for the rest of the townsponies...” Luna looked briefly wistful. “The memories of a thousand years of legends don’t just disappear overnight, and I was a fool to forget this. I wonder if you’re not starting your own legend here.”

Twilight looked momentarily puzzled. “What do you mean? Starting a legend?”

"I think you missed the point of what I said, Little Sister. They feared me for something I had once been, but was no longer." Luna’s following words hit Twilight like a slap to the face. “Your efforts to wrap all of Equestria in cotton wool are fast transforming you into a figure as feared as Night Mare Moon."

There was a brief, stunned silence, then Luna turned back to the doors as Twilight started spluttering in shock. “We all have that same duty of care you spoke about. We think you’re going about it in exactly the wrong way.” Closing the doors behind her as she left, she heard her Little Sister’s response through them perfectly clearly.

“I HAVE TO KEEP THEM ALL SAFE!”

“No you don’t, Little Sister,” Luna murmured to herself as she walked sadly down the spiral staircase of the tower. “You just have to let them live their lives. I hope you learn this before it’s too late.”


Twilight sat back on her haunches, eyes wide, legs splayed awkwardly in shock and confusion as she thought about Luna’s words. Those words had badly shaken her. Quite literally. She was trembling, and she couldn’t stop.

Am I terrifying my subjects?

She thought about her grand plan. Her Invincible Shield, she called it. Her effort to protect every subject under her care - which meant every single living thing that resided inside Equestria’s vast boundaries. She’d thought she was up to the task, and, surprisingly, she’d found that she was.

Who needs sleep if I’m saving lives?

Be rational. Your Sisters are upset with you, so you must be doing something wrong.

Twilight knew that her methods were... unorthodox. She didn’t bother with food or drink. She never slept. She only returned here to her private chambers, the sanctuary of the oldest book in the world, when she was certain that she’d managed to avert one of Starshine’s prophecies. She’d nullified more than eight hundred of them in a little over four years. That was great, but then she did some quick mental arithmetic and arrived at a very gloomy conclusion.

Yeah, a prophecy averted every two or three days. And there’s two, three thousand predictions per page more-or-less, and there’s about seventy two thousand pages, so, um, that’s... two hundred and sixteen million, eight hundred thou...

She blinked.

So, at this rate... Maybe a million years before I actually manage to cross off every single prediction in this...

Her head snapped upright.

A million years. A MILLION YEARS.

Her horn ignited. “Big Sister, Biggest Sister,” she mouthed, her horn flickering in time with the movements of her lips as she sent her magic streaking across Canterlot to find and whisper in Celestia’s and Luna’s ears, “I need you. I need you both.”

A brilliant yellow-white burst of midday sun. A dazzling silver flash of brightest moonlight.

“I’m an idiot,” Twilight said, face to the floor as her Sisters stepped up to her shaking form. “I’ve been such an idiot.” She raised her face, and caught Celestia’s concerned eye. “What have I been doing? These colts and fillies need to bang their knees and graze their hooves. What have I been doing?!” She lowered her gaze as the tears started flowing in earnest. “My subjects... My subjects are terrified of me. They won’t dare to put their foal on a swing, in case I turn up and punish them for putting the child in danger... It’ll take me forever! I’ll never finish this task! Why did I even start?!”

“We know how wise you are, Littlest Sister,” Celestia said. “Far, far wiser than Luna or myself.”

The Princess of the Night continued, nodding as Twilight’s ears flicked at that strange statement. “We know that you have been doing what you thought was right. That is why we never directly interfered. You are a Princess of Equestria,” Luna said in an extremely proud and regal voice, “and far be it for us to contradict your decrees. Though you’ve made many decrees that we do not agree with, we knew this moment would come. Well,” she admitted, “we hoped it would come. We... We were beginning to doubt.”

Twilight Sparkle looked at the other two Supreme Rulers of All Equestria through her tears. “How...” She coughed. “How did I make such a stupid mistake?”

Celestia half-laughed, half-cried. “Luna and myself have made far worse mistakes than this.” She knelt down and nuzzled her youngest Sister, her best friend. “What’s important is that we...” Celestia’s voice caught in her throat.

“- that we learn from our mistakes,” Twilight said. Celestia nodded, sniffing, as Luna wiped her eyes.

“We thought we’d lost you,” the middle alicorn said.

“Lost me? Lost me?” Twilight said, getting to her hooves along with Celestia and grinning at the Princess of the Night. “Okay, yeah. I did go a bit crazy there. But...”

Twilight walked away from her fellow alicorns towards her chamber’s huge west-facing glass double-doors, the ones that used to be connected via a short walkway to an enormous covered balcony, demolished almost four years ago because there was no longer any use for it. “I still worry about them. I mean, right now, there’s colts and fillies and mares and stallions hurting themselves. There’s millions and millions of ponies out there,” she said, sweeping a hoof across the magnificent vista under the reddish sunset, “and I made the mistake of trying to mother them all. I... What a stupid thing to do.”

She felt her Sisters on her left and her right. A soft wing closed around her. “You know,” Luna said, “this is almost exactly what Big Sister tried to do almost five thousand years ago, when we first came to Equestria and offered to guide the three tribes. Trying to protect everypony, when such a task was beyond her. I was too young and foolish at the time to object.”

Twilight’s eyes opened wide. “Young and foolish?! But... You would both have been about two thousand years old!”

Celestia laughed. “Maturity is independent of age, Littlest Sister. I would’ve thought you should know this by now. Your thousandth birthday is next year, and Luna and myself are both fast-approaching seven thousand. In many ways, we are all still children. But in many others, you are, by a long way, our far more mature Eldest Sister.”

Twilight blushed. She didn’t feel like she deserved such praise. She opened her mouth to say so but all that came out was a yawn. Now that she’d abandoned her pointless quest, her magically-powered wakefulness and endurance was fading away rapidly. “You know,” she said, in an effort to cover her embarrassment, “I think I’ve earned a nap.” She trotted away from the doors and pulled down the sheets and comfortable duvet on her large royal bed. She kicked off her shoes and climbed in, not bothering to take off any of the rest of the regalia she’d started to wear on her foolish crusade. “It has been four years... And I am very tired. Don’t let me sleep for...”

She was out cold as soon as her head hit the pillows.

Celestia drew the bedclothes back over Twilight’s gently-snoring form as Luna closed the windows and balcony doors then magicked all the curtains closed. The two older alicorns left, shutting the two doors gently behind themselves. Luna spoke to the two pegasus guards outside the chamber. “Nopony enters, nopony disturbs her, please. Not for any reason.” Both guardsponies saluted proudly, nodding.

“How long, do you think?” Celestia asked as they walked together down the tower’s winding staircase and back to the castle’s upper halls. Luna thought for a moment, her horn starting to glow faintly as the setting sun dipped below the horizon.

“Probably two months, more likely three. Maybe longer. I slept for three months when she and her friends returned my sanity, but that was an entirely different situation. Four years with no food and no sleep... Maybe even half a year, Big Sister.”

Celestia nodded. “She needs it. And we need to start making some proclamations. It wouldn’t do if Twilight’s thousandth birthday celebrations were marred by everypony being terrified of the subject of their adoration.”

The glow from Luna’s horn had spread to cover her entire body. She halted on the stairs for a moment and closed her eyes as she finished spinning the magic that moved the sky all night. Opening her eyes again, she looked at Celestia and nodded. “We should start on that right away. It’s not much more than a year away. I’m afraid Little Sister is going to miss her nine hundred and ninety ninth birthday at any rate.”

As the two alicorns continued down the stairs, the third of their number quietly snored in her warm, comfortable bed as the first of the dreams started.

One more reason that she hadn’t slept since Spike had died.