• Published 27th May 2012
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Assassinate Princess Celestia! - D G D Davidson



Mules trained in mystical martial arts attempt a coup d'etat to end Princess Celestia's oppression.

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Chapter 1: The Order of the Mule

Assassinate Princess Celestia!

by D. G. D. Davidson

Chapter 1: The Order of the Mule

I am half pony. I am half donkey. I live in two worlds, but am at home in neither. I am a mule.

And I have the Power.

Hot sunlight pours into my face from a cloudless sky as I sit in my chair atop a hill overlooking the crevasse on the edge of Ponyville. I move my front hooves down to the chair’s wheels; with one quick push, I can send myself hurtling downward into oblivion.

My hind legs are lifeless and shriveled now, my hamstrings severed. The old fear closes over my heart, threatening to swallow me. Doubt fills my mind. Yet, in spite of the weakness of my will, the Power still courses through me: even in my failure, it remains my one companion, my only solace. I focus upon it and kindle it until fear retreats, leaving behind nothing but the hatred and rage that are as intrinsic to my inner strength as the Power itself. I feel that strength in my forelimbs, feel it radiating out from my heart and pounding to the tip of every hair in my coat.

Even to the very moment of my self-inflicted annihilation, I will be strong, and my death will restore to my Order the honor my actions have stolen from it.


When I was but a foal, my sire took me to the Everfree Forest. Without a word, he led me in, and I shivered in the cool, moist air. I started in terror at the sight of trees with ghastly faces and strange shapes flitting through the woods. My nostrils filled with a damp odor of moss and pine.

He led me to a mountain, and we climbed. I stumbled many times over sharp stones, and I panted for breath, but my sire never slowed. We stopped once at a babbling spring and quenched our thirst. The water was so cold it numbed my throat.

At last, we reached the tree line and emerged onto a rocky, boulder-strewn slope where nothing grew but sickly clumps of grass. We looked out over the world, and I marveled at the sight of clouds scudding across the sky without pegasi to guide them. Rough and forbidding, Everfree stretched out below, a great mass of tree-shrouded land untrammeled by ponies. The high cliffs where Canterlot perched were visible in the distance, but they were empurpled with haze. They looked unreal, like something from another world.

My sire rarely spoke. His brown coat was patchy, his face deeply lined. He squinted and flared his nostrils, taking in the wild, hot wind. “Son,” he said in a voice deep and full of sadness, “you know what I am. I am not a stallion, but a jack, a donkey. We donkeys live hard lives, and I knew when I married your mother that my children’s lives would be harder still.”

“They call me a mule,” I said, “and they look so mean when they say it. What’s a mule, Daddy?”

“You are,” he answered. “The child of a jack and a mare is a mule. You will never have children of your own, and all your life ponies will despise you. But you have inside you something they can’t see, something they can’t understand. You have a strength nopony could ever have, so you must set your face against them and take their insults without giving reply. Learn to hate them as much as they hate you, but never show it. Outwardly, you must look and act like the fool they’ll always think you are, but, inwardly, you will always be better and stronger than they.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“It’s the way of the world, son. It’s the way of the mule.”


I was seven years old when they came for me. There were two of them, and they looked almost like donkeys, but bigger. Muscles rippled under their coats. Their faces were hard and bitter, their teeth misshapen. They frightened me, most of all because I recognized in them what I would become when I reached adulthood. I trembled behind the kitchen door while they stood on the front stoop and spoke to my dam.

I could hear her pleading, though I couldn’t make out the words. She said something frantic, and the frightening figures answered with quiet, rough voices. My dam’s voice rose in pitch, but still the two replied with perfect calm.

At last, my dam pushed open the kitchen door. Her eyes were red, and the fur of her face was streaked with tears. The two figures stood behind her, their faces rigid masks.

“They’ve come to take you away for a little while, sweetheart,” my dam said.

I felt my lower lip tremble as I asked, “Why?”

One of the two answered, “Because you are a mule.”

I ran to my dam and pressed my face against her breast. She lowered her head to my neck. I shuddered and cried, but one of the mules bit my tail and dragged me away.


They blindfolded me. I walked between them for hours, and all the while my heart pounded. I stumbled many times because my knees shook. Once or twice, I whimpered, but they cuffed me until I was silent. Something crunched under my hooves. The air grew cool and musty, suggesting we were underground. The mules never spoke a word, and I was too afraid to ask them questions.

When they removed the blindfold, I was standing in the middle of a large room with rough-hewn stone walls. Figures with black hoods covering their faces surrounded me, and before me on a high seat of oak sat a creature unlike any I had ever seen before: she resembled a pony, but her beige coat was striped with black, and her severely short mane stood straight from the back of her neck, though a long, brown forelock fell across her solemn, deeply lined face. Gold jewelry hung from her ears. In one fetlock, she held a heavy wooden staff carved with images of strange, monstrous creatures.

“Do you know what I am, child?” she asked. She spoke with a thick accent, and it took me a moment to figure out what she had said.

I opened my mouth to answer her, but I was so afraid, I couldn’t make a sound.

She rapped the staff on the ground. “I will tell you: I come from a land far to the south. An adventurous pony mare traveled there, settled among the zebras, and married my sire. I am a zorse, a hybrid like you. When I came of age, I left my home and journeyed for long, perilous months to find the homeland of my mother.”

One of the figures along the wall removed his hood, and I saw that he was a mule. He gazed down at me with contempt, as if he were examining shoddy goods in a store. “She became the leader of all the hybrids in Equestria,” he said. “You will never learn her name, for we call her simply Granddam.”

“Ponies possess magic,” Granddam said. “Pegasi manipulate the clouds, unicorns cast spells, and earth ponies have a magical connection to the land. When the ponies interbreed with other species, the magic they pass to their offspring manifests as what we call the Power. That Power is within you, and, in this room, we will teach you to use it.”

Granddam stood from her seat and tossed something to my hooves. It made a loud, metallic ring as it struck the floor in front of me. I looked down to see an elegant sword with a long, single-edged blade. A lump formed in my throat.

“Take it,” Granddam said.

Trembling, I dipped my head to take the sword in my mouth, but something hard hit me and sent me spinning across the room.

Through tears, I looked up to see Granddam standing over me. She had reared onto her hind legs and now held the staff in both forelimbs. I had no idea how she had moved so quickly.

“Never lower your head,” she said. “The ponies will spite you and spit on you, but you must never lower your head.”

One of the cloaked figures slid the sword across the floor toward me.

“Take it,” Granddam said again.

I struggled to hold the sword in my forelimbs, trying to imitate the way Granddam held her staff. The sword wobbled in my grip. Unused to standing on two legs, I staggered backwards and fell into a row of cloaked mules. From under their clothes, they drew swords of their own and struck me with the flats of the blades. Again, I hit the floor. Tears sprang into my eyes.

“Get up,” Granddam said. “Get up. You are a mule. You have no allies, only enemies, but within you is the Power to slay armies. Get up!”

I stood and took up the sword. Again, mules surrounded me and struck me down. Again, Granddam told me to get up.

I don’t know how long it went on. It was like a nightmare from which I couldn’t awaken. Wherever I turned in that room, every figure I met was against me. Every inch of my body throbbed with stinging pain; fear and exhaustion filled me. The mules buffeted me until I fell and couldn’t rise. The sword dropped from my hooves and clattered to the ground. I tried to pick it up again, but my forelegs had grown so weak, I could no longer grasp the sword in my fetlocks. The mules swarmed me, beating me. I tried to curl up, to cover my face, to disappear. Their swords, like metal whips, rained down on my back, my head, my limbs.

“Get up!” Granddam said.

In the midst of the blows, I at last found words. “I can’t!”

“You can. The body is weak, but the Power is strong. When your natural strength fails, the Power sustains you. Get up!”

Bruised from ear to tail, I was past all limits, but the fear in my heart began to ebb, for I was so exhausted that I could no longer sustain it. When the fear disappeared, bitterness and hatred replaced it. Inside, I raged at the mules who tormented me, and I raged at Granddam, who stood over me with her stony face and watched as they beat me to death. When wrath overwhelmed me, I felt something else welling up in my heart as well--a restless energy I had never recognized before, but which I now knew had been there all the time. It spread out through my veins, pumped into my limbs, filled me. The pain disappeared, replaced by exhilaration. I picked up the sword and rose to my hind legs. The mules around me fell back. The sword did not waver in my grip.

My eyes moved over Granddam’s face, and I saw the tiniest of smiles twitch her mouth.

A mule silently rushed in to strike me. Without trembling, I turned and met his blade with my own.


For three weeks, I trained hard in that secret, underground hall of the hybrids. When it was over, the mules blindfolded me and took me home. They came for me again many times throughout my foalhood. Always, they arrived unexpected at our door, covered my eyes, and took me to that dark place where Granddam taught me to harness the strength within me.

My sire worked hard as a farmhoof and wore himself out in service to his pony masters. He died when I was small, but I did not weep at his death. I felt no sadness; I merely felt resentment. My dam, an outcast because she had married a donkey and foaled a mule, made a pittance working as a street sweeper. I watched her grow gaunt and lined from work and worry, and I nurtured anger at the ponies. That anger fed my Power, and I excelled in my training. I bested all the other students in combat. At times, I even bested my teachers.

I was fifteen when they came to give me my final lesson. My dam sat in her rocking chair on one end of our dark sitting room and watched me practice my forms. The sword in my hooves glinted as I swung it.

“You’re so different from the little foal I once knew,” she said.

“I’ve grown strong,” I answered.

“You used to be so gentle.”

“Gentleness will not protect me from the ponies’ spite.”

“Do you really need protection? Is that what this is about?”

I swung the sword downward in a smooth arc. “My training forms a wall between me and them. Because I am strong, their insults do not touch me.”

She sighed and looked away. “You’ve grown so cold. I’m also a pony, so you’ve built a wall between yourself and me.”

I sheathed my sword, knelt beside her, and kissed her cheek. She winced and pulled away.

“Even your lips have grown hard,” she whispered. “I don’t like what the mules have made you.”

“You’re the one who made me a mule, Mother. The Order has simply shown me how to be one.”

“If you hate ponies, does that mean you hate me as well?”

I didn’t answer her.

“You’re half pony, you know.”

“I’m a mule,” I said. “That’s all I’ll ever be.”

Two mules walked into our home. One of them held out the blindfold and said, “It’s time.”

I stood and brushed his hoof aside. He smirked, but said nothing. He put the blindfold away.

My eyes uncovered, I followed them out of town and into a root cellar behind a barn. We walked through a long, earthen tunnel lit by lamps full of fireflies until we emerged into the hall of the Order. I walked to the center of the room and glared at Granddam, who smiled at me from her throne.

“What shall I learn today?” I asked, allowing insolence to enter my voice. “To kill a pony in one move? To throw the shuriken? To move swiftly and silently over any terrain? To leap buildings and run up walls?”

“You have already mastered these skills,” Granddam answered.

“What, then, is left for you to teach me?”

“Come and see.” Granddam put on a voluminous cloak to cover her stripes.

I followed her out of the hall. We walked to Ponyville’s train station, where we caught the Friendship Express for Canterlot. We sat in a crowded third-class car near the caboose.

“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked.

Granddam gave me a warning glance from under her hood. She leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Instead of asking foalish questions, why don’t you examine the other passengers and practice your skills?”

I did as I was told. Sitting across from us was a unicorn mare with a tan coat and a daisy for a cutie mark. Unicorns were potentially dangerous opponents because they could use levitation magic as a weapon; however, this mare was reading a book, oblivious to her surroundings. I estimated that I could kill her in less than a second with two blows, one to crack her nasal bones and a second to thrust them into her brain. Sitting beside Granddam was a pegasus mare with a blue coat. I couldn’t see her cutie mark from where I was sitting, so I had to take into account an element of unpredictability. I had to consider, too, that pegasi were difficult to incapacitate because their hollow, latticed bones were denser and stronger than those of other ponies and because the sacs in their lungs prevented them from running short of breath. Nonetheless, I believed I could kill her in less than five seconds: she had one rear hoof dangling down to the floor, so I could smash her coffin bone with a quick strike, causing debilitating pain, and then thrust a hoof into her jugular groove to crush her windpipe.

I continued to amuse myself with such thoughts until the train at last pulled into the capitol high in the mountains. When we left the car, I sucked my breath through my teeth, surprised at the cold; it was late fall, and a frigid wind blowing off the snow-capped peaks was howling through Canterlot’s white spires. The wind bit through my coat and stung my skin.

I followed Granddam through the streets to the gate of the palace. The armored pegasus guards merely glanced at us and stepped aside. We walked in, and I couldn’t help but gaze at the tall stained glass windows, the vaulted ceilings, and the crystal chandeliers.

Granddam nudged me. “Stop gawking. What have I told you about how a mule conducts himself in public?”

I recited the lesson: “I must appear oblivious, foalish, ignorant, clumsy, and complacent. My face must never reveal the fire within. My thoughts and emotions are under my control, and my face conceals them.”

“Very good. Then memorize the rooms through which we pass, note their entry and exit points, and stop staring like a tourist.”

I nodded and composed my “false face,” the expression of stupidity, good nature, and obsequiousness that mules wore in front of ponies.

We walked into Princess Celestia’s broad audience chamber. The princess herself sat on a golden throne, from the foot of which sprung a burbling fountain. Colored light from the stained glass windows played across her white coat, and her long, misty hair flowed and waved as if it were floating in water. I had never met the princess before; in spite of my pride, and though I tried to keep my composure in accordance with my training, my knees trembled.

When Celestia saw us, she rose from her throne, dismissed her guards, and called for a servant, who appeared from behind a tapestry. She ordered tea. The servant ducked his head and left. Within moments, Granddam and I were sitting at a table with the princess.

Celestia kept the teapot well out of our reach. She personally poured for both of us and waited for us to taste the tea. After we had both sipped, she levitated her own cup to her mouth.

I moved my eyes back and forth between Celestia and Granddam’s faces. Granddam was serene; she had an almost perfect false face, though she could never entirely mask certain traces of her proud spirit. Celestia, on the other hoof, had an air of calm that appeared forced. Under her careful composure, she was nervous.

After a moment, realization struck home, and my heart leapt: she feared us. The immortal ruler of all ponydom was afraid of the mules.

We drank in silence for a minute before Celestia spoke. “Silver Buttons keeps criticizing the taxes I’ve levied on the outer provinces.”

“Unfortunate,” Granddam answered.

“And Fancypants refuses to contribute to my latest charity fund.”

“Perhaps he’ll come around,” replied Granddam.

“Ruby Twinkle has been printing pamphlets suggesting Equestria needs a senate to reduce my power.”

“I’m sure nothing will come of such newfangled ideas.”

We drank in silence for another minute. Granddam finished her tea, set down her cup, and stood. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon, Your Highness.”

I followed Granddam out of the castle and back to the train station.

“Do you read newspapers?” she asked me.

“Sometimes.”

“Read one tomorrow.”

The next day, I walked to the newsstand and picked up a copy of the Ponyville Express. I flipped through the pages until I found the national news from Canterlot, and there I read the stories I had anticipated with both eagerness and dread: Silver Buttons had died the night before of a mysterious heart attack, Fancypants had given generously to Celestia’s charity, and Ruby Twinkle had gone missing.

I now knew the true role that mules played in Equestria.


Soon thereafter, Granddam and the mules inducted me as a full-fledged member of the Order. By day, I worked as a farmhoof; I presented myself to the ponies as harmless and vapid. I worked hard bucking hay, bucking apples, plowing fields, or doing whatever work I could get. Ponies insulted me and laughed in my face, and I responded always with an easy grin. Then, at night, I slipped into a black body suit, put on a mask, took up my sword and the other tools of our mystical art, and dealt with the dissenters who threatened the country’s peace. Many times, I with other mules visited Princess Celestia in her palace and sat with her at tea. She never gave us instructions, never asked us questions. She merely complained of her troubles, left us to do our work, and made sure that the local governors throughout Equestria did not pass laws interfering with hybrids.

I was good at what I did, but the killing was mechanical, uninteresting, and unfulfilling. I detested ponies generally, but I did not know the individuals I slew; their deaths meant little to me. Before any mission, I always felt my heart fill with fear and excitement, but when I had completed my task, I felt nothing but emptiness.

My daily life was different. More than once, I longed to reveal to insolent ponies what I truly was. More than once, I longed for the thrill of killing the ponies I knew. Once, in late fall, I had a temporary job on Sweet Apple Acres, a large orchard near Ponyville. While I was working, I happened upon Applejack, a farm pony, who was having a ridiculous argument with Twilight Sparkle, the pompous local librarian.

Their argument ended without resolution and Applejack walked away. Twilight Sparkle snorted in exasperation and said, “That pony is stubborn as a mule!”

After she said it, she looked over her shoulder and, apparently noticing me for the first time, added, “No offense.”

I showed her my false face, grinned, and said, “None taken.”

Inside, I thought about how it might feel to cut her throat.

A few months later, I was in the Prancing Pony, a disreputable tavern. Following the practice of the mules, I refrained from drink, but I had before me a glass of soda water colored to look like sarsaparilla. I frequented this tavern at least once a week to give the ponies the impression I was a harmless sot.

Hunched on a stool at the bar, I overheard a conversation that Berry Punch, a drunken reprobate, was having with a couple of airheaded mares named Lyra and Bon-Bon.

Already tight, Berry Punch knocked over her glass and giggled as sarsaparilla ran across the counter. “Okay, ya gotta hear this,” she said. “It’s just hilarious. So, ya see, a mule and a donkey are on a desert island--”

She was laughing so hard, she could barely tell the joke. When she finally managed to blurt out the punch line, Lyra and Bon-Bon tittered.

Berry Punch fell forward and slapped a hoof against the bar. Wiping tears from her eyes, she looked up at me and said, “No offense.”

I pretended to be inebriated and replied, “None taken.”

Inside, I considered how easy it would be to reach out and twist her head until I broke her neck.


A few months after that, I was walking through Ponyville’s town square at midday when our local weather manager, Rainbow Dash, flew over and scattered leaflets. She called out something about a meeting that night for the town’s pegasus ponies.

Rainbow Dash was a flight school dropout and probably the worst weather manager in Equestria, spending most of her time napping. I had no idea how she’d gotten the job. As she flew over me, she deliberately dumped an entire bag of her leaflets on my head and shouted to the pegasi in the square, “Be cool or be mule!”

Then she flew down and hovered in front of me. With a contemptuous grin, she said, “No offense.”

Something in me burst, but I kept my false face on. I smiled back and answered, “None taken.”

Inside, I thought, I know where you sleep at night, Rainbow Dash!

The rules of our Order were very clear: mules did not take personal revenge on anypony. Nonetheless, at midnight that night, I pulled on my black body suit, sheathed my sword at my flank, and crept to Rainbow Dash’s floating cloud palace, an elaborate château of pillars and rainbow falls that looked as if it would have been more at home in Cloudsdale than in rustic Ponyville. The usual fear and excitement filled me, but now they had an especially keen edge: this wasn’t dirty work for the princess; this was personal. I wondered what it would be like this time. I wondered if, after the kill, I would finally feel some thrill instead of the deadness and disappointment I usually felt.

Her palace hovered several feet off the ground. Even though only pegasi and other flying creatures had the magic to walk on clouds, that couldn’t stop me. I slid on a set of special bell boots woven from pegasus hair and dipped in pegasus blood. I threw a grappling hook and caught a balcony on the second floor. Hauling myself up, I slipped through a window and, as I expected, found myself in Rainbow’s bedroom. She was sleeping on a cumulous mattress with her limbs wrapped around a tortoise.

I pulled my sword from its sheath and laid it against her neck. “Open your eyes, Rainbow Dash,” I hissed. “Open your eyes and look in mine before I cut you.”

Her eyes snapped open. She sucked in her breath and, to my surprise, raised her hind legs and gave me a double kick to the back of the head, knocking me forward. Since my blade was lying on her throat, she might have killed herself by that maneuver, but the sword turned in my grip and failed to cut.

I jumped away from her. She flapped her wings, rose from the bed, and dove for me. I rolled forward and ducked her kick.

I had read her dossier: I was aware that she knew Karate and that she could move quickly enough to break the sound barrier, but I was confident that she was no match for a mule with the Power.

I spun and struck with the sword. She twisted out of the way and tried to sweep my legs. I ran up a nearby pillar, flipped over in the air, tucked in my hind legs, and brought my hocks down straight into her back, flattening her against the floor.

I reached down, wedged a hoof under her left hip, and touched a pressure point. I felt her body seize up from the pain.

Turning her over, I placed the blade against her neck again. With one slice, I could sever the muscles of her neck along with her jugular vein, carotid arteries, and trachea. Then I could enjoy watching her bleed and suffocate to death.

About to strike the final blow, I paused and considered. In my heart was the bite of excitement that my illicit hunt for vengeance had granted me, but I sensed that, if I made the kill, the emptiness and emotional dullness I always felt in the act of murder would descend on me again.

Better than to kill an enemy, perhaps, would be to have an enemy who would always fear me.

Bending down so my muzzle was only an inch from hers, I looked into Rainbow’s eyes and saw in them what I wanted to see--terror. In her wide pupils, I could see my own masked face faintly reflected. I could see my own eyes, the calculating, cold eyes of a trained killer. Rainbow trembled beneath me, and my excitement intensified.

“I can kill you anytime,” I whispered. “Anytime. Just remember that.”

I stood and kicked her once. I placed beside her bed a poisoned cupcake with a note that read, “You are in our power.” Then I backflipped out the window and landed on the ground below.

My actions had been reckless in the extreme, and I had possibly endangered the Order, yet my anger was temporarily sated, and my elation was immense.


Only two weeks later, Granddam called a meeting of all the mules. I worried that Rainbow Dash had talked, that the secret Order of the Mule was no longer secret, that somepony knew it was I who had attacked the weather manager.

The mules gathered into the underground hall and waited in silence until Granddam took her throne. I swallowed a lump and wondered what my punishment might be.

But the meeting wasn’t about me; Granddam threw into the middle of the room a copy of an amateur newspaper from the local elementary school. The paper fell open to an image of Princess Celestia gorging herself on two enormous cakes.

“This is most compromising to the princess,” Granddam said, “and it has appeared in a student paper written by little children.”

A heavily scarred mule named Wind Breaker pulled back his hood and said, “According to the rules of our Order, we do not assassinate children, Granddam.”

“Of course we don’t,” she snapped. “But we have a different problem. For years now, ponies in the outer provinces have complained that Canterlot taxes them too heavily, taking so much of their flour and sugar that their foals often go without bread. We have in the past silenced such opposition, but now we know the reason the taxes are so high: they go to fill Princess Celestia’s gullet.”

Another mule named Rheumy Eyes pulled back his hood. “What does it matter what the princess does? She ensures that the law is lenient toward mules and donkeys. She prevents the governors from outlawing interbreeding. If she wants to starve settler ponies, let her.”

Granddam sighed. “I have led this Order for many years, but I did not create it. Its founders wanted to teach mules to harness the Power for the greater good so everypony might benefit from our mystical skills, but I fear we have degenerated into nothing but a league of assassins that merely maintains the power of a tyrant.”

“Many ponies have for some time murmured that they would like a more representative form of government,” Wind Breaker said, “and rumor has it that they have Princess Luna’s sympathies.”

Rheumy Eyes snorted. “A republic? Ridiculous. I have a better idea: why do we not seize the reins of Equestria ourselves? Could the ponies possibly stand against all of us, armed as we are with the Power?”

“Oh, yes,” Granddam answered, her voice dripping sarcasm, “and after we hybrids have taken control of the country, we will of course be able to bequeath happier lives to our children.”

Every mule in the room laughed.

Rheumy Eyes grumbled. “If we made ponies and donkeys our slaves, we could force them to produce more of us--”

“Enough!” said Granddam. “Would you have liked it if your own dam and sire were slaves? No, my mules, the future belongs to those who can produce the children to populate it. We hybrids merely pass through this world, leaving no legacy behind. It is our task to better others’ lives, not our own.”

Throughout the discussion, I stared down at the newspaper open before me. There, emblazoned in its pages, was the Princess of the Day with a slice of cake in hoof, gazing toward the camera with a mixture of surprise and guilt on her frosting-smeared face. She presented her subjects with a façade of wisdom and purity, yet we mules who murdered her enemies had long known that her velvet bell boot concealed an iron hoof. Beneath an exterior of benevolence, she was a merciless despot. Now, simple schoolfoals had unearthed yet another layer: beneath the merciless despot, Princess Celestia was a mere glutton heedless of the consequences as she wallowed in her dissipation.

Rage, my familiar companion, appeared again in my heart. I loathed the ponies, and this princess was the leader and symbol of all ponydom. Here was the proof that she was, in the end, no different from any other pony: beneath whatever exteriors they presented, ponies were nothing but self-absorbed weaklings ripe for a mule’s blade. I remembered the thrill I had felt when I tormented Rainbow Dash, and I tried to imagine what pleasure I might have had were it Celestia’s throat to which I’d held my sword and Celestia’s frightened eyes into which I’d gazed.

I remembered, too, what I had sensed in Celestia while first sitting with her at tea--fear. She had feared the mules; she had feared me. Pony fear was like a drug to me, and I wanted more of it.

But such talk would not please Granddam. I had to choose my words carefully.

I slipped off my own hood. “Granddam, if we removed Princess Celestia from power, we could take control temporarily--just long enough to give the ponies time to create a constitutional government.”

Granddam nodded. “You talk sense.”

“No mule here is talking sense,” Wind Breaker answered. “You forget that the princess is an immortal who moves the sun. Assuming she even can be killed, would dawn still come after her death?”

“Celestia moved the moon after she imprisoned her sister,” said Granddam. “Perhaps Luna could move the sun.”

“Luna might not appreciate a coup d’état,” I said. “We may have to kill her as well.”

“Didn’t the unicorns formerly move the sun and moon themselves?” Rheumy Eyes asked.

“They have lost that art,” Granddam answered.

A memory pricked me. I recalled that time years ago when I followed my sire into Everfree, and I remembered the sight of clouds flowing through the sky. Inside Equestria, the plants and animals depended on ponies to care for them, and even the seasons couldn’t change without ponies to wrap them up, but just outside the nation’s borders, the wild world looked after itself.

I felt a surge of joy. This was the answer.

“I don’t believe Princess Celestia really moves the sun,” I said. “That’s why she claimed the ability to move the moon as well--she had to have an excuse for why night still appeared on schedule after she banished her sister. The princesses are frauds.”

The other mules gasped and stared at me.

“Nopony contests the princesses’ claims,” I said, “because so much in Equestria depends on ponies. Yet I have been in the Everfree Forest. I have seen clouds gather into great columns, and I have seen them release lightning and rain without pegasus ponies to move them. I have seen trees and vines growing free without earth ponies to tend them. I have seen animals gather their own food. All around us, the world moves on its own. Only in Equestria has it become so torpid as to require pony magic. Why should the sun and moon, which light the whole earth, answer to the princesses?”

Granddam leaned her cheek on one hoof and gazed at me, an amused smile on her face. “And what of her immortality?”

I drew my sword from its sheath. “She is flesh and blood, and flesh and blood will always answer to cold steel.”

“Are you willing to undertake this task?” Granddam asked.

I felt the Power building in my heart, felt my head growing light. “I am,” I said.

“If you are caught, you cannot implicate the Order. We will disown you and claim you were acting on your own.”

“I am a mule,” I answered. “I have no allies, only enemies, as you yourself taught me, Granddam.”

Granddam rose from her throne. “Who is in favor of this venture?”

All around the room, mules drew their swords and raised them into the air. Only a few, Wind Breaker and Rheumy Eyes included, kept their swords lowered. My heart pounded hard. My chance was coming. I would have what I most wanted.

“It is settled,” said Granddam. “We will show the princess what happens to tyrants who want to have their cake and eat it too. The Order of the Mule shall assassinate Princess Celestia!”