Chapter 11: The Errors of the Past
They reappeared on a black Gorgian marble teleport stage in Luna's wing of the Palace at Canterlot.
Luna led Twilight through the corridors of the Palace, so familiar to Twilight from the years of her fillyhood and the many visits she had made to both Sisters in the almost five years since Luna's Return and Twilight's posting to Ponyville. Guards saluted the two Princesses as they passed. Right now, in the hours of the predawn, the busy hum of the Palace was somewhat subdued, though never entirely: the Night Court was active as always in the darkness, and the Palace in general never wholly went to sleep, as its staff attended to the business of running a continental Realm.
The Moon Princess took Twilight right into the personal section of Celestia's wing, and through the doors into Celestia's living quarters. This was all quite familiar to Twilight; she was one of the few Ponies in Equestria who was more-or-less automatically welcome here, something which had been true since she had been accepted as Celestia's personal student, fifteen years ago. The quiet opulence of Celestia's quarters, the antique and in some cases literally-ancient furnishings, the calm at the center of the Realm, were all things Twilight took almost for granted.
The resident of these quarters came out of her bathroom wearing a towel wrapped around her head, a good portion of her mane bound up within, stray wisps of pinkish rainbow hair poking out from the comfortable cloth. Another towel, held in her aura, vigorously rubbed dry her white coat. She grinned at her Sister, then smiled warmly at Twilight Sparkle.
"I'm so glad to see you," said the ruler of most of the North Amareican continent, addressing Twilight. "I've been perusing your report --" she indicated the papers on her night table. "It's very informative and interesting. Well done."
"Thank you, Princess Celestia," Twilight said, and dipped her head slightly. She did not actually need to call Celestia by her title; she was one of three other Equestrians who were technically Celestia's complete social equal (one of the two others being Luna herself); but the habits of most of her life died hard. Likewise, the dip of her head was a compromise with her deep-seated desire to make a proper bow.
"There's no need for formality," Celestia said, maintaining her smile. "You are not only my fellow Princess of Equestria, but my dear friend, Twilight Sparkle, whom I have known since you were a small child. And, as I know well, one of the dearest friends of my Sister. Why," her eyebrows arched mischievously, "I daresay you're not so far from being family."
Twilight flushed slightly at the implications of that last part, but maintained her dignity. "You are my Most Beloved Former Teacher," she said, "and my devotion and respect for you are boundless. But ..."
"There's always a conditional with a start like that," Celestia said, her smile shrinking slightly. "In over fifteen centuries as Ruling Princess, one comes to notice such things. Pardon my interruption," she said. "Do continue."
"... But," said Twilight, "I fear that some of the conclusions I have come to in my research might be taken as critical toward you and some of your own educational policies, and I do not want to take advantage of our personal history nor of my own recent elevation in status as a platform from which to mount an attack against one to whom I owe every good thing I have achieved in my life."
"Oh dear," said Celestia, "are we to have a rebellion and civil war? Right here in my chambers?" She turned her head to smile at Luna. "I believe we still have your collection of model soldiers; they survived the ruin of our old Castle intact. We might take them out and fight a three-cornered battle in here, under any of a number of sets of miniatures gaming rules. This would probably be better than just having at it; I think that doing it live-action would be expensive in terms of repairs, don't you?"
Luna frowned at Celestia, moved a half-step closer to Twilight, one wing twitching toward but not quite executing a protective embrace of the smaller Alicorn. "It is not meet that thou should tease her like this, Sister. She has struggled hard and suffered much on behalf of both Harmony and Realm."
Celestia looked between her Sister and her Most Faithful Former Student, smiling gently upon both of them. "So that is how it is," she murmured softly, seeming for a moment to focus on something beyond the room. "Be good to each other, dear ones."
Luna flushed deeply, spluttering and managing absolutely nothing coherent.
Twilight literally knew nothing to say. She wanted to tell Celestia that she was assuming a lot, but she very greatly feared -- or hoped? -- that Celestia's assumptions were correct. She had seen that expression on Celestia's face before. It usually meant a prophetic vision. It was obvious what Celestia had just prophesied. She wanted to deny it, but she was far from sure that the prophecy was false: and any denial seemed too much to her like betraying a friend.
"Celly, thou canst not meddle in the lives of other Ponies like this!" Luna finally managed to get out, wings flared, her face a deep purple, with the flush spreading down her chest, possibly all the way to her barrel.
"Why not, Lulu?" asked Celestia curiously. "I've been meddling like this for two and a half thousand years. Maybe longer -- I was a bit of a meddler back when we were fillies, if I recall rightly. Besides, you need an utterly-loyal friend."
"I ... well, yes," said Luna, settling her wings back down more calmly. "Twilight Sparkle is one of my best friends."
Twilight noticed that nothing Celestia had just said in any way contradicted what she had previously implied, but she wisely chose to remain silent on that matter, merely nodding by way of agreement when the Sisters both looked at her.
"Indeed," replied Celestia cheerfully. "And one of mine." She turned her attention to Twilight, smiling brightly. "My dear Faithful Former Student, I have never demanded to be above criticism. Not by my subjects in general, and certainly not by you, my trusted and beloved friend and protege. I suspect I know just what critique you shall level at me, and I probably deserve it. But I shall let you speak for yourself -- which you generally do so very well."
"Uh ..." said Twilight. "Um ... thank you, Beloved Former Teacher. I ... I have to say ..."
Celestia looked at her inquiringly.
"As my report mentions," began Twilight, standing very formally, as if at a lectern. "Starlight Glimmer was one of your most-promising personal students. So was Dawn Starfall. And Sunset Shimmer. And myself." She paused.
Celestia nodded encouragingly.
"I cannot help but notice that all four of the Ponies named are members of the Light Clan, my own. And all but I went insane and became dangerous warlocks. And ..." Twilight's face twisted slightly, her ears drooped "... I went insane as well, briefly, and without provocation cast a highly-dangerous mind control spell, for insufficient reasons."
"And I fully-pardoned you," added Celestia.
"Yes," said Twilight. "Thank you, Beloved Former Teacher."
"You deserved that pardon," said Celestia. "In fact, you deserved a medal -- but then I'd already honored you for the deeds in which you took that hurt. I didn't want to keep picking at your old wounds."
"Beloved Teacher?"
"You went mad from the stress of fighting Discord," Celestia said. "My poor mad old friend, whose madness had already cost Ponykind a thousand years of stasis and suffering before then." She looked sad. "I could have prevented that, you know. I had fifteen hundered years to figure out how to discarnate him while denying him any housing. Unlike my own Beloved Former Teacher, who had less than a second in which to act to keep him from taking another Alicorn's power, and thus becoming unstoppable in this world -- and chose the right path though it meant for her the greatest sacrifice -- I could have slain him, and spared future generations the pain I knew he would cause."
"Beloved Teacher!"
"You are not really that shocked," Celestia said, a faintly sardonic tone creeping into her voice. "Dear Most Faithful Former Student, I wish most earnestly that you could still be the innocent filly I tutored, that you could have remained sheltered, as are so many in the gentle civilization I have fostered. But you could not -- the role for which I have molded you is far too demanding for the maintenance of such illusions. You were forced to learn many hard truths.
"One of which," Celestia continued, "being that I am perfectly capable of killing, and have done so many times before to protect my little Ponies. I do not like to kill, I would rather admonish or banish or imprison or even forgive -- but when mercy seems most likely to result in more suffering to the innocent, I can kill and have killed. That," she looked into Luna's eyes for a moment, "is one of the responsibilities of the crowns that we wear."
Luna nodded. "'Tis true," she said. "The Ponies sleep safe for the cause that we guard them from those who would harm them."
"I know," said Twilight. "I have attended to your lessons, including those which are not generally known to Ponykind. I know what You are, what You can do. Both of you. And ..." she said, "... I have read 'The Song of Syhlex'. Besides," she raised her head proudly, "I am a scion of the Lights, of an old military family. I have fought for the Realm myself -- I am, as you say, no longer an innocent child."
"Then you know that I had ample opportunity to slay Discord, in his current Incarnation as a material Draconequus," Celestia said. "And that I chose not to. And ..." she said, "... I think that by now my Sister has probably told you enough of our family history to know why neither of us desired his death."
Luna looked away in obvious embarrassment.
"Yes," replied Twilight. "You both loved him."
"We love him," corrected Celestia.
Luna looked angrily at her.
"Do not even try to deny it, Lulu," said Celestia. "I know you better than you know yourself. You never let go of love. It is one of your most admirable characteristics. And Dissy was raised with us, almost as a brother -- but not quite ..." she smiled gently at some memory, "... once we had defeated him, once the immediate threat was gone, we could no more slay him than he could slay us, in the thousand years of worldwide torment that he imagined to be but a greater continuation of our old Princess Game. It would be like slaying part of ourselves."
"'Tis true," Luna said, eyes at first downcast, then raised to fix firmly on Twilight. "As I did tell thee before, he was mine own very best friend in all the world when we were young. He was the best friend of both of us ... at first."
"So I could not kill Discord," said Celestia, "and thus I left him as a problem for future generations to solve." She looked at Twilight sadly. "For you, and your Companions, to solve. Yes, Twilight. I put you all through that madness, risked far worse for the world as a whole, another millennium of misrule, rendered perhaps even a Darker World than was the actual Age of Discord by the resentment he felt toward my Sister and myself for opposing him, and furthermore by ..." she looked at Twilight, thought for a moment, then said, "... I will not speak of the worst Darkness, not here and now."
Twilight Sparkle had no idea what to say to that.
"When you went mad," continued Celestia, "when you thought that you had to create problems in order to solve them for me, it was a terrible moment for myself as well. You nearly lost yourself," she explained, "and I nearly lost you. I was terrified at that moment that the price of containing Discord, perhaps only temporarily, had been the sanity of the finest mind and best Pony I had ever known."
Twilight's face warmed uncomfortably, and she could not meet the steady gaze of those loving purple eyes. She looked at Luna instead, and was even more embarrassed when Luna simply nodded, by way of confirmation of and agreement with the opinion of her Sister.
"I was incredibly relieved when my intervention, and that of your friends, proved adequate to shock you out of your madness," Celestia said. "You were stronger than the others! You went on, to see through the schemes of Chrysalis and defeat Sombra on his return, and in the end perceive the very timestream, and merge with your own greater Cosmic Self. When I knew that you had succeeded in your Ascension -- that my Sister and I would have the benefit of your loving heart and keen intelligence for the an indefinite future to come -- it was one of the happiest realizations I have enjoyed since I opened these eyes upon the world two and a half millennia ago. And, I hope -- a harbinger of things to come."
"About those others ---" Twilight began.
"I shall answer the question I know you are about to ask," said Celestia. "Yes, my Most Faithful Former Student," she said. "I had similar hopes for them, as well. And many others whose identities you do not know, down the long centuries since my worst mistake resulted in my millennial separation from my Sister. I have been cultivating worthy Ponies for a very long time," she explained, "hoping that there might be born one who might become a new Alicorn, able to take her place with my Sister and myself as a defender of the Realm, a protector of my little Ponies against the darkness which lusts to invade our world and consume them."
"Cadance --?" asked Twilight.
"Her coming was more welcome than you can imagine," Celestia nodded, "but she was not the one for whom I had been hoping -- towards which I had been bending my efforts for many centuries. She was, rather, the rebirth of an old friend, one of my own Sisters from the Cosmic Level. Her Cosmic Self had chosen to be born Pony in this time and place to help me, for She knew that my current incarnation would need her aid, and she came to assist me." Celestia smiled. "Which she has more than ably done, for in taking control of the Crystal Empire she guards the North of our own Realm, and brings back to us an ancient wisdom sorely needed in this Age of the World, a strength against what seeps down on us from beyond the stars.
"No, Twilight," she continued, "much as it may offend your humility, you are the one whose advent I have so greatly desired. You are the first of my New Alicorns, the promise of a bright future for Ponykind, for all the life of this Universe. And, if I did not love you beyond measure for your own sweet soul already, even before you revealed what you might become, I would have come to love you for your deeds. For you brought my own Sister, my dear Luna, back to me! And ..." she smiled warmly at Twilight, "... you have been a good and loyal friend to her, have helped reconcile her to the new Equestria I have made."
Twilight was not sure any more if what she felt was embarrassment, pride or some combination of the two emotions. Both Celestia and Luna were gazing at her with a love she felt she could not possibly deserve, but there was no way to avoid it without bolting out of the room, which would have been impossibly churlish. Still, though all this, she could not drop her main point.
"Those others --" Twilight began again.
"Yes," said Celestia. "The others." She straightened, breathed in and out. "Our original plan had been to bring Equestria back to and beyond the achievements of the Age of Wonders long before this present day. As part of this plan, we preserved the Crystal Empire, for they were one of the few surviving stores of knowledge from before the Cataclysm, and the only one entirely friendly to Equestria. It was in pursuit of this plan that my Sister was grievously wounded in her soul by that which had taken possession of Prince Crimson Quartz -- King Sombra, as you know him."
Twilight glanced at Luna, and was somewhat surprised to see her looking away in ... shame? ... her ears drooping and entire expression downcast. Luna had hinted to her several times before that she had made some terrible mistake, committed some grievous sin back then, something that still haunted her memories, but Twilight had not realized how bad it must have been. Luna looked clearly afraid, an expression which Twilight had rarely seen on the face of the Moon Princess. With a shock, she realized that what Luna probably feared was its revelation to herself, Twilight Sparkle.
"This was not the first time that my brave Sister took harm acting as my agent," said Celestia soberly, "while I remained safe upon my golden throne --" there was definite self-loathing in her voice, "-- but it was to have the worst results. For in consequence, she went Lone-Mad, and rebelled against me, and took into herself the same darkness that had claimed poor Crimson Quartz, and she became Nightmare Moon. And thus I lost my dearest friend and greatest ally, and had no choice but to attempt to rule Equestria alone.
"My first task was to stablize the Realm, which took about two and a half centuries. I faced numerous raids, invasions, rebellions and secessions, many serious enough that they risked tearing the land to bloody pieces. It was worse than most histories recount -- and in that era, I myself behaved less kindly than you may fully realize -- but in the end I did what must be done, and the Realm was again secure, strong and at internal peace. Such was what our tame texts now call the Consolidation.
"I now could turn my full attention to the task of regaining my Sister. The spell had some seven hundred fifty years to run, which I hoped might give me enough time for what I had to do. It is something you once guessed, Twilight Sparkle -- I know this because I saw the records of your geneaological researches -- but of which you, quite wrongly though flatteringly, ultimately deemed me incapable. But then, my methods were less direct than you probably imagined."
A shock thrilled through Twilight's system. She couldn't mean --
"Yes, Twilight," said Celestia, "I bred Ponies. To be precise, I favored certain lineages, and ensured that they intermixed with certain other lineages, and crossed and re-crossed."
Twilight's mouth fell open.
"It was easier than you might imagine, and involved little subterfuge and no real force," explained Celestia. "You must understand -- I had the power to assign Ponies to posts that would throw them into close personal contact with one another. All I needed to do was to find Ponies at around the right age, of the lineages I desired to cross, and so assign them. Personality and propinquity accomplished the rest. During the eras when arranged marriages were common, it was even easier, which created a moral hazard for me: I was tempted to encourage the retention of such customs long past the sociotechnical systems which suit them."
She cocked an eye at Twilight. "You actually tend to still be born on the worldlines in which I succumbed to those temptation, but -- well, let me just say that Twilight Velvet and Night Light are not Ponies who respond well to the use of force, even in a very indirect fashion. As might be expected, really, of the parents of two Ponies of such immense strength of character as Shining and yourself. In the worldlines where arranged marriages are still practiced by the Canterlot gentry, your home life isn't as happy, and this creates weaknesses, which our enemies use to ... well. All in all, I am glad that in most Equestrias, I chose to allow romantic courtship to evolve as a natural consequence of the greater wealth attendant upon industrialization."
Twilight closed her mouth. I suppose to her, courtship customs don't have the same force they have on me, she reflected. She's seen everything from the Arcadian splendor of Paradise Estate to the anarchy of the Age of Discord to the social truces of the Time of Thrones, and she's probably personally responsible for much of what I deem decent morality in modern society. I'm being temporally provincial, a serious failing in a student of history. She frowned at herself. It's just that, most of the time, I don't think of her as 'history.' She's more like my second mother. It suddenly occurred to her that, if she herself were the product of a centuries-long breeding program Celestia had carried out, "second mother" might be exactly the correct term with which to describe her Beloved Former Teacher.
"One of the Clans upon which I exerted my influence," Celestia continued, "was of course the Lights. There was, in fact, a prophecy that a great heroine would come of the Light Clan, and help free the Moon Princess from her enthrallment in Nightmare. I know this, because I was the one to make that prophecy, though not in my identity as Princess Celestia."
Twilight already knew that Celestia was fond of moving among Ponykind in disguise, so this did not entirely surprise her.
"I knew that a Light would be most likely to be the one to attune with Magic, and be an incarnation of that Concept --" Celestia sighed, "Causality at the Cosmic Level is difficult to express in Equestrian, or any tongue spoken on this planet. The Gallopfreyans, who are not from this planet, have the words -- but you do not yet know that language. Ah well. This is a problem with discussing time travel and worldline-shifting in general, which is something we're going to be doing fairly soon. I urge you to simply accept what I am saying, for now -- that you were both born as an incarnation of Magic, and were not inevitably Magic until you actually attuned to that Element, contradictory as that seems in the logic you have learned.
Twilight made the mental effort, did so, and nodded by way of confirmation.
"Magic was the Concept I could most directly midwife," Celestia continued, "so I set up my School for Gifted Unicorns primarly as an institution to lead potential Magics to me, though of course it had an incredibly useful secondary function in training elite Unicorn mages and scientists. I ... made other arrangements ... for the other Concepts, and encouraged certain other lineages in other ways. For instance, I promoted the Pegasus flying contests and created the Wonderbolts, in part to act as an attractant for potential Loyalties. And I watched key lineages of all the Three Kinds.
"I had prophetic visions, I knew something of the physical characteristics I should be looking for, that might serve as visible markers of the Concept behind the Pony." She sighed. "Do you know that Pinkie Pie is close to a dead ringer for her ancestor Harmonia? When I met Harmonia, when I perceived the extent of her intellect and heard the beauty of her voice, I thought I had my Laughter, but had somehow missed her in her youth. Yes, Twilight --" there was bitterness in her tone, "-- I mistook a serial killer for the Joy Bringer. Remember that, if you are ever tempted to imagine me infallible!"
Something suddenly occurred to Twilight Sparkle.
"Our apperance," she breathed.
"Yes, Twilight," confirmed Celestia. "Starlight Glimmer, Dawn Starfall, Sunset Shimmer and yourself look much more like one another than is explicable purely by being Lights. It is a marker of being a potential Magic. There were and are many others, of whose existence you are unaware."
Twilight was horrified, her eyes widening as she imagined a legion of mad cousins.
"Most," Celestia said, "suffered no terrible fates. I taught them, developed their minds, and they went on to have brilliant careers. If I were disappointed that they had proved incapable of Ascension, I tried not to let them see it. There have been many who have -- you might call it 'partially attuned' -- they developed unusual capabilities which may have been the gifts of their related Concepts, without actually turning out to be Incarnations of those Concepts."
Twilight breathed a sigh of relief.
"But yes," Celestia continued, "some went mad, in part or total. Understand, Twilight Sparkle, I was guiding mortal Ponies toward an expression of what earlier ages might have termed 'divinity.' I helped them develop their special powers, express their Talents more fully and completely than is normal even among Ponykind, which is a species well-suited to such a program owing to the existence of the Marks --"
"Cutie Marks?" asked Twilight.
"On this world, only Ponies and closely related sapients have what your time has so amusingly chosen to call 'Cutie Marks' -- I did not invent the term -- an external and visible expression of Talent, and beyond that of Destiny. A direct link to the worldlines, to the sort of awareness expressed in the Pool of Truth and the Paradise Entity. Have you never wondered how strange that is? The Crystal-Imperials, who knew that the Marks had greatly increased in specificity and scope in the Cataclysm, developed whole fields of science and magic devoted to their study ... but I digress.
"Know this, dear Twilight, I did not mean to drive anypony mad, let alone intelligent young Ponies whom I, for the most part, loved as if they were my own children. But I was trying to accelerate the natural course of evolution -- the growth of Ponykind into the great race it is destined to become, if it can survive -- and this imposes stresses ..." she looked down, sighed hard. "I evade my own responsibility. Yes, Twilight Sparkle, I knew that what I was doing would drive some number of my students mad, and yet I did it. I behaved as a criminal, a warlock under my own laws, and if you desire you may hold me accountable in a century or so -- if Equestria survives, and I do, which are two things far from certain at this present moment in history."
Twilight felt a pang of unease at Celestia's self-condemnation. She knew that Celestia must have done what she did for the greater good, and that the risk attendant to her students seemed justified by the benefits that so many had gained by her tutelage.
"Beloved Teacher," said Twilight, softly. "I would never accuse you of such crimes."
"I accuse myself," Celestia said. "Where does teaching end? Where does abuse begin? Tell me the answer to that riddle, and perhaps I will be able to forgive myself for this someday. Or not, for the answer may not be entirely to my liking."
Twilight did not know what to say to this.
"What thou didst, thou didst in my cause," said Luna, speaking up unexpectedly. "And for all the Realm. The blame is mine own, for having fallen in the past, birthing the problem that thou then must make shift to solve." She stepped forward, gently nuzzled her Sister. "Do not take all the blame onto thine own self. My back be broad enough to bear that burden."
Twilight moved up shyly, touching her nose to theirs as well. The three shared a moment of pure closeness, then Twilight stepped back and spoke:
"I suffered some of those stresses, Dear Beloved Teacher," she said, "and I helped one of those who went mad. I forgive you any harm you have done me, and I promise that, to the extent that it I can consistent with the good of the Realm, I shall do my part to undo any harm you have done others."
"That -- and success -- may be the best absolution for which I can hope," replied Celestia earnestly, a tear in her eye. She visibly gathered her composure.
"So, yes, Twilight. Starlight Glimmer was my student. She was, of course, a very intelligent filly, but a relatively late bloomer. She was thirteen when she got her Cutie Mark -- old enough that she was starting to fear she might be adermosignotic. One unfortunate aspect of the Marks is that the greater the Talent, the longer it may take to develop to the point that the Mark displays. And -- in a nigh-inevitable cruelty -- many Ponies mistake Mark for maturity, so that the adermosignotic are wrongly imagined to have remained in childhood. Most Ponies find their Marks between ages nine to eleven. I can only imagine the anxiety Starlight must have felt for a few years, and the rejection she may have experienced from her former friends, as they received their Marks and she did not.
"I can only imagine this," Celestia continued, "because even as a teenaged filly, Starlight Glimmer was a very private Pony. It would not be correct to say that she was shy and withdrawn, because she was not. She was superficially very extroverted; always willing to express her opinions. She made friends with little difficulty, but -- as your psychological profile of her indicates, and I must compliment you on your accurate reasoning from very limited information ..."
Twilight smiled at the praise.
"... these friendships ran shallow, and she dropped friends as readily as she made them. Similarly, though she expressed an interest in the opposite sex, and easily found escorts to social events, she did not actually fall in love. It was as if she had developed skills for dealing with other Ponies, but only very superficially. Her surface interacted with their surfaces, but there was no deeper contact, no true meeting of hearts and souls, such as you have found with your Companions.
"I should have realized what this indicated -- what is the point of having two and a half millennia of experience with other Ponies if one does not notice such things? -- but I fear that I saw only what I wanted to see. I saw only Starlight's promise. I did not realize her alienation, her detachment from Ponykind; a ruthlessness bordering on sociopathy and a hunger for true friendship that was frustrated by her own inability to risk her own heart, a hunger which combined with that alienation and ruthlessness to create a warped and terrible purpose.
"Understand," said Celestia, "Starlight Glimmer's Talent is truly immense, and her potential would have been wonderful had she not gone insane. It is -- a meta-Talent for Talent, just as your Talent is a meta-Talent for Magic. Talent is essentially the inborn ability to master that aspect of Reality within that Talent's scope. Just as you can understand and cast any spell you perceive, Starlight can understand and affect any Talent she perceives. She cannot manifest it -- she might have gained that ability in time, had she Ascended -- but she can sense and affect it with her own magic. And, because she can to some extent do this with her own magical talent, she can attain great mastery of any magics upon which she focuses.
"It occurred to me very quickly that this might be the key to my Sister's liberation," Celestia continued. "A Shadow maintains its mastery by warping the virtues of its mount against her -- in Luna's case, it turned her affinity with the night against her, twisting it into an obsessive hatred of the day, and of myself, then using Luna's own courage and integrity to fuel her defiance and rebellion."
Luna nodded in confirmation, eyes shut, lips tight-closed.
"A Mark is an expression of one's Talent, of one's own soul," explained Celestia, "and hence if one could manipulate a Mark, one could affect the soul of which it was a manifestation. A mage with the power to affect the Marks of others could have restored the proper shape of Luna's soul, reversing the deformation inflicted by the Night Shadow. If this could have been done, Luna might have been able to drive out her possessor without the need to be purged of it by the Elements of Harmony -- which was a dangerous remedy; it badly weakened her, and might have killed her, depending on how far the Shadow had corrupted her, something of which I could not be certain."
Twilight drew a sharp indrawn breath, looked at Luna in alarm.
"I think you see then," said Celestia, "why I so very much wanted to believe that Starlight would be my Sister's savior. The plan which actually succeeded was risky: there were dangerously serial elements. Had you or any of your Companions fallen, even merely wounded, you could not have employed the Elements against the Night Shadow. I was counting very much on your competence and of that of the other candidates, and on my belief that Luna would not really want to harm you or them, especially because she had known three of you in past lives. Happily," she smiled at Luna, "I was quite right, and the quest proved successful.
"Had Starlight fully developed her potential and been available, on the other hand," pointed out Celestia, "she alone might have been sufficient for success. And the Elements still would have been available. I actually, when I originally thought on how to rescue Luna, conceived several promising schemes. Only one came near fruition," she looked at Twilight, "the one you carried out. It was a close-run thing."
Twilight wondered briefly what the others might have been, but now was not the time to ask such questions.
"Now," said Celestia briskly, "on the future threat posed by Starlight. You are right that she cared greatly for her commune. She imagined that she was building a new model for Equestria, shaping a new Destiny, and given the nature of her Talent, she may have actually been right, though I do not think that it would have been an Equestria in which it would be very pleasant to live."
"I was curious about that myself when I saw her village," Twilight commented. "If everypony's Talents were suppressed, how could they have grown enough food to eat? Or crafted what else they needed to enjoy civilized lives?"
"The simple answer is 'with great difficulty.' Starlight," Celestia sighed, "was always very enthusiastic, a skilled tactician and strategically-gifted. She had not, however, the patience to understand the social and economic underpinnings of any large-scale operations. Our Town, writ large, would have been a subsistence-level Realm, in which Ponies would have suffered miserable lives, forever at the edge of actual starvation; her own edicts would have inevitably been enforceable only with the application of universal terror. I do not think that she could have maintained it for more than a few generations, even if she became an immortal Alicorn like ourselves; but those few generations would have been horrible for those who endured them.
"Though Starlight is very intelligent, she did not see this and probably does not see this now. Her commune was ended through your own actions," Celestia explained, "and hence she can fix all the blame on external causes, without stopping to consider just why it was that her Ponies rebelled so completely against her, once her seeming perfection was cracked by the revelation that she had retained her own Mark and Talent. She blames you and your friends -- and I would dare say mostly you."
Twilight nodded. "She probably thinks I control my friends just as she controlled her followers."
"Exactly," confirmed Celestia. "And to her, the consequences were emotionally-devastating. She probably considered her followers to be her friends -- the first group of friends she had ever managed to keep for more than a year or two. Some, such as her chief lieutenant, she may have imagined to be her soul mates. Think how you would feel toward somepony who robbed you of your friends."
"I'd be heart-broken -- and furious toward anypony who did that," said Twilight. "I might want some sort of revenge."
"Starlight Glimmer will almost-certainly seek revenge," agreed Celestia. "So the question becomes: what will she do to seek it?"
"She might just try to ambush and attack me," said Twilight. "But -- I'm not really all that easy to defeat any more, am I? I'm an Alicorn, and I've had some experience in life and death battles."
"One might say that," commented Luna, confidently smiling at Twilight. "Thou art no raw recruit, and have not been for some years now."
"Don't underestimate Starlight Glimmer," Celestia warned them. "She is a very powerful and skilled mage, and is two decades your senior," she pointed out to Twilight. "But I agree -- a simple ambush and magical duel would not be her preferred approach. Even though she might win, she would have no assurance of victory; indeed, I think the edge might be yours, provided that you remember her ruthlessness, and are equally willing to strike her down.
"What's more," Celestia continued, "if she merely slew you, this might to her seem an inadequate revenge."
"Killing somepony sounds like pretty adequate revenge to me," Twilight commented. "Maybe even a bit excessive."
"Remember," said Celestia, "you did not slay her. You made her suffer. She will want to make you suffer similarly in return. Ideally, she would rob you of your friends, as she believes you robbed her of hers."
Twilight's eyes widened in horror. "You think she'll attack my friends?" She turned toward the door. "I should get back to them, make sure they're all right ..."
"Calm thyself," said Luna. "We have no cause to believe that she will attack your friends directly, or on the instant."
"Yes," said Celestia. "In fact, she is very unlikely to attack right now. She will have been weakened by her previous defeat, and will want to recover her strength and plan her course of action. She is somewhat impatient, but she will not simply show up at Ponyville and start destroying the town. Indeed, her own belief that she is a benevolent reformer will make her quite unwilling to directly harm those whom she considers innocent. At a minimum, she would research her opposition, try to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both you and your Companions, before making her first moves, overt or otherwise."
"And thy friends are mighty," added Luna, "and have unusual powers. Starlight Glimmer is strong, but she cannot match Dashie's speed, or Pinkie's precognition, or Fluttershy's Changeling abilities. Starlight does not know the details of their powers, but she knows that they have strange abilities, and also that she did not have to face them the last time, for she was able to ambush all of them together in a way that she would find difficult to repeat. If she tries to take your friends one at a time, she will not get far before she fails at a try, or the others mark her actions. She knows this: her plan will be more cunning than direct attack."
"That's both a relief," said Twilight, "and a concern. I'd almost rather she just jumped up and attacked me, or even us -- I could deal with that."
"The next question would be, therefore, the nature and extent of Starlight's powers," said Celestia. "These are greater than they might be, because -- trusting Starlight Glimmer as I did, and hoping that she might be the key to saving my Sister, I did what was in retrospect perhaps a very foolish thing."
Twilight looked at Celestia in alarm.
"I let her study freely the writings of Starswirl the Bearded," Celestia said. "All of them."
Twilight did not, exactly, faint. At no point whatsoever did she lose consciousness.
But she did find herself, very suddenly, sitting on the floor.
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This would make the show's explanation an over-simplification directed at juvenile minds that cannot understand the adult world fully. It's like trying to explain away a vanished pet by telling the tinies that Cinnamon the guinea pig ran off to join the circus.
6704245
The show's explanation of which of the things I explain here?
But yes, though I try hard not to contradict canon. Celestia's revelations are all of things which were either hinted at or resolutely ignored in the main series, such as Discord's odd romantic affect toward herself.
And, while Twilight Sparkle is innocent compared to the two elder Alicorns, she's really an adult now, and that's one of the reasons why Celestia feels that she should let her know unpleasant truths. Even ones that put Celestia herself in a bad light. This is especially true because Twilight's survival, and the Realm's, may count upon Twilight knowing certain truths.
6704978 The show has to keep things dumbed down a bit so as to not bomb the tinies and angry up the soccer moms.
6705006
Essentially, yes. Mind you, my Equestria is a "gentle culture" as Celestia calls it: it is caring, polite, loath to violence, and not impressed by promiscuity. It is a much nicer society than modern Earth, even modern America. It's the sort of civilization in which most behavior is almost as sweet as shown on the TV series, and I made it that way in part because of what I was seeing on the TV series.
My explanation for it is that Celestia influenced it that way from the beginning. Also, the Ponies are in general less aggressive than Humans, though they are not inherently any more virtuous. The downside is that Equestrians tend to be more conformist and less curious than Americans: Twilight Sparkle and her friends, of course, are very atypical Equestrians in that regard. Equestria has also received its liberties as a gift from on high rather than realizing their necessity and winning themselves itself, which might be a weakness in the future.
Celestia, of course, is much more ruthless than are most of her people, though she is a benevolent and moral despot. She's the one who sometimes has to make hard decisions -- and sometimes even carry them out personally. She can't afford to be innocent -- her Ponies are too much in need of her wisdom.
And in the Crystal Empire, for reasons he did not comprehend, Shining Armor wondered whatever happened to his Hyperspace Hyperwars army.
There's something incredibly ironic about Discord's unrule leading to any kind of stasis. He'd probably be horrified if anyone ever pointed it out.
Given her ultimate opponent, Celestia has to play the long game. That doesn't make it any less horrifying for the pieces when they realize just how long the strategy has been running.
Also, interesting to see that Gallopfrey is a thing in this universe, though I suspect Ditzy Doo could've confirmed that.
What I love most about this interpretation of Starlight Glimmer is how it establishes her as a perfect nemesis for the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Yes, she never clashed against them, but a battle of metatalents would be fascinating to see.
And that was an exquisite Oh Crap moment. You made it resonate even when the audience saw it coming. At least, you did with me.
¡At last, in one of your stories set in the present, Princess Twilight Sparkle gets confirmation that Princess Celestia bred her! The upside is that she and her relatives are more intelligent and magically talented than 99% of ponies, but at the cost of bring broken alleles of genes together, thus leading to a propensity for insanity.
In another worldline, is a Princess Celestia who, rather than consanguinity, went the other direction and crossed the most powerful equines of different species. In other universes, We have Princess Twilight Sparkle the Mule, Princess Twilight Sparkle the Zony, and Princess Twilight Sparkle the Zonkey. ¡Imagine this!:
The all powerful Twilight Sparkle ruling all of Equus and working on invading Equii in other universes and spacetravel so she can conquer her universe too. Her long-range goal is to conquer as many universes —— ¡not just the Equii in each universe, but every world in each universe! —— as possible. This Twilight Sparkle is generally, extremely intelligent and magically powerful, but her forte is mindcontrol; she makes the Sirens before Starswirl the Bearded banished them look like amateurs.
Growing up, she was bullied for what she is. As an all-powerful adult tyrant, she has made it her own. ¡She is, the Mule!
This is a cross-over with Foundation.
Feel free to use it, or not.
If I may add something, I had a realization for one such reason why Sunburst never contacted Starlight Glimmer after getting his mark.
Remember the books nearly fell on Starlight. Children tend to either accentuate or minimize the negative consequences. In this case, it means that Sunburst's mind came to the conclusion that he nearly killed Starlight. It doesn't matter that both of them were stacking books. What matters in his mind is who they nearly fell on, and that his perception of himself was of a good pony. And so, out of guilt, he never contacted Starlight ever again.
6707125 I can't fault you at all for trying to finish the excellent stories you've got in progress. Good luck!
6707111
That makes a lot of sense. Also, keep in mind that we have only Starlight's word for it that she had no psychological problems before the incident with Sunburst, and Starlight is perhaps an Unreliable Narrator. For all we know, she had the kind of creepy intensity that would make Wednesday Addams seem cheerful and normal. She rather does today, and she's much better at hiding that sort of thing as an adult, one would imagine. It's possible that Sunburst's family wanted him to keep clear of her.
Likewise, I explicitly state here that a lot of other stuff happened later in Starlight's life to drive her to the point of wanting to be a warlock. As a matter of fact, Celestia doesn't mention the Sunburst incident, probably because (I wrote this chapter after I saw the Season Five Finale) Starlight never TOLD HER about it. Starlight would have wanted to impress Celestia with her own intelligent, reasonable sanity, and Starlight is according to Celestia's own description pretty good at hiding the core of her personality.
As Celestia regretfully admits in this chapter, one of her weaknesses is that she wants to think the best of everypony, and in addition she is vulnerable to wishful thinking. Celestia saw Starlight's promise, and didn't want to realize that Starlight was already far gone toward madness even as her student. Celestia never would have given her access to Star-Swirl's secret spells if she had known how crazy Starlight was already.
Besides, you need an utterly-loyal friend."
Pipsqueak ironically filled that role on his own without any meddling from Celly.
I have read 'The Song of Syhlex'. Besides,"
Ironic since in the pony pov verse, Bahamut is a benevolent king, and balances out Tiamat's grasping claws.
Darker World
I saw what you did there.
"hoping that there might be born one who might become a new Alicorn,
Ironic that Sunset ultimately succeeds on her own with the help of her friends. (After she gave up the desire to be one.).
Personally, I wonder if only Radiant Hope knows the truth of who and what Sombra is.
Reminds me of Sonic Adventure 2 when Rouge taunts Shadow The Hedgehog when she shows him the picture of the ultimate life form prototype named Shadow (the Bio-lizard) and teases him, "So who, or rather, what is standing in front me?" (I have a sudden mental image of Chrysalis giving the same taunt to Sombra. )
"Do you think, you're the real Crimson Quartz?"
The one real problem I have with this chapter, is that it completely eliminates the contrast between Queen Majesty and Princess Celestia. That contrast is PART of what makes them unique characters!
Gallopfreyans
Doc'.
as an incarnation of Magic, and were not inevitably Magic until you actually attuned to that Element, contradictory as that seems in the logic you have learned.
See what you did there too.
"so I set up my School for Gifted Unicorns primarly
And I imagine unless she bothered to fund a gifted school for other tribes, it just created a sense of unicorn elitism and superiority on the other tribes. (AFter all, one world line had AJ become magic.)
"Yes, Twilight," confirmed Celestia. "Starlight Glimmer, Dawn Starfall, Sunset Shimmer and yourself look much more like one another than is explicable purely by being Lights. It is a marker of being a potential Magic. There were and are many others, of whose existence you are unaware."
And another nail in Trixie's heart to learn she was never even considered.
. She knew that Celestia must have done what she did for the greater good,
Starlight Glimmer believed she was serving the greater good too, remember THAT!
adermosignotic
????
And Diamond Tiara meanwhile, was left confused and had her wires crossed on her own mark.
What's disturbing is that when Glimmer and Twilight met the first time, Twilight easily outclassed her when the markless spell wasn't a factor... but after a year of being on the run... she was basically Twilight's equal...
Starlight Glimmer hates her own cutie mark.
She hates Twilight for two reason (and by extension would hate herself as well). The idea of a pony who is 'more important' than others. AND Twilight forced her to develop the special talent she HATES having.
After losing Starlight, I honestly wonder if Celestia just decided to CLONE HERSELF and created Sunset Shimmer using traits she figured would create the ultimate magic user... (I refuse to believe the Sun cutie mark is random luck.).
She is somewhat impatient, but she will not simply show up at Ponyville and start destroying the town.
She's not Trixie who wants EVERYONE to know, or Sunset who wants CELESTIA to know more than anything.
"It's possible that Sunburst's family wanted him to keep clear of her."
That feels too much like an excuse. Besides the fact that filly Starlight was clearly heart-broken.
It's ironic that Celestia HOLDING BACK Sunset (I guess in this context due to what happened with Glimmer), was what drove a wedge between her and Sunset. Double moreso, if Sunset felt, even if unconscious, that she was meant to become a NEW Incarnation of Celestia.
"Sunset Shimmer was different from all of you." (IMHO, Sunset Shimmer was the only student with a closer relationship to Celestia than Twilight... Which might have been the problem. She WANTED to be Celestia 2.0 more than anything... and didn't understand WHY Celestia was not letting her progress at the speed she could so obviously go!
Ironically, there WAS a mirror in G1 that explicitly existed to give single mares a clone daughter.
After what Celesita just confessed to, cloning experiments and outright genetic tampering to make Sunset a mini-her is no longer outside the realm of possibility (and why Sunset's entire obsession is centered around succeeding and surpassing Celestia, she's doing what Celestia PROGRAMMED her to do. I wonder how Celly would react in universe if someone accused her of THAT! Seriously, I'm left wonder what lines are left that Celestia won't cross. And without lines we won't cross, how is there anything that defines us?)
(To be honest, Celestia's confessions here remind me too much of the fanfic where mortal ponies using the elements kill them (I assume by cutting their lifespans insanely short), and when it happens to Cadence's entire village, Celestia's only complaint is that she didn't get the results she wanted and considers Cadence an annoying side effect).
http://meto30.deviantart.com/art/Archmage-Sunset-s-Last-Stand-575572357
I wonder if Trixie SPOTTED Celestia's disappointment in Trixie ... but had no clue what Celestia's disappointment WAS. Which would go a LONG WAY to explaining Trixie's thinly veiled insecurities. (Ironic since the mirror world showed Trixie could have become an alicorn after all).
6711086
That is seriously epic -- and sad, since the likely sequel is Sunset's death or capture.
6711056
I've always liked the idea of Pipsqueak becoming Luna's friend, and I think that in the vanilla-verse this might well lead to outright (gender-flipped) Wife Husbandry on Luna's part toward him, in time. Of course, he's one of the younger children about town, so this wouldn't have borne fruit for around 10-15 years anyway.
In the SWSV, this is one of Luna's very standard ways of finding a lover, because this lets her have him for a good long period -- Luna's "lovers" tend to be pretty close to what most mares would consider "husbands" (Luna's inclined to monogamy) but the problem is that they're not immortal. And if this squicks people out, tough -- Luna is the one who has to deal with the fact that every stallion she loves winds up dying in a century or so, usually less leaving her bereaved.
One of the reasons why I credited you in the Notes for this chapter. Celestia doesn't believe that this is a good moment to tell Twilight that there's an alternate world where Twilight, Discord and the Sisters screwed up in such a way as to create a hundreds-of-thousands-of-times repeated thousand-year time loop of endless suffering for all concerned, and that Twilight herself was even more to blame than Discord for things being that bad. Her point in this conversation is to build Twilight's confidence in case she has to fight Starlight, not demolish it completely.
The way I think that works is that Attuning and Ascension is the sort of thing which can't be done if you're consciously forcing it. It's obvious that Sunset Shimmer was, as a child, far too emotionally-immature to succeed at it. The same is true for Trixie as of YOH 1505 in the SWSV, though she's now much more emotionally mature than she is at the time of Luna's Return. Though, Illusion isn't the most emotionally-mature of Alicorns, anyway.
Though in the SWSV the Lulamoons are actually offsprings of the Lights (though neither Twilight nor Trixie currently know this) and Trixie actually Ascends in the end. Trixie is in any case has a very rebellious spirit, and only responds well to authority-figures she personally likes (which is why Piercing Gaze is ultimately able to usually get her to listen to him, and why she's willing to obey Luna's orders as the leader of her Loyal Band, later on -- and it takes some emotional adjustment before Trixie comes to like Luna).
Oh, I do.
Twilight has a huge moral blind spot where Celestia is concerned. She loves and trusts Celestia so wholly that she has difficulty seeing anything Celestia does as morally wrong. In part, this is because Celestia is herself a highly-moral Pony and tries very hard to avoid doing evil, but she's not as critical of Celestia's failings as she would be anypony else's.
I would argue that Celestia's millennial breeding program, the way Celestia did it, wasn't that morally wrong. However, it was very manipulative, and she never explained to the participants that this was what she was doing. And it's not the worst thing Celestia's ever done.
Luna also loves Celestia, but has a more realistic sense of Celestia's limitations.
Twilight herself might drift into evil by meaning to do good. She's a natural meddler herself, and is very confident in her own reasoning. This strikes me as her most probable path into Nightmare -- trying to set up a Realm of Perfection in which everypony was good and friendly to one another -- because they had no choice but to be.
Literally "no skin marked." Adult Blank Flank Syndrome. What Grey Hoof and most of his kin had, when they were still alive. They still have Talents (Grey Hoof was a party planner and general organizer, Three Leaf a herbalist and healer, etc.) but their Cutie Marks never visibly manifest.
6711078
Celestia didn't force anypony to marry. She simply manipulated families and individuals so that the ones she wanted to marry would be more likely to marry. (During the periods when arranged marriages were normal, she simply helped arrange the ones she wanted to have happen). This may have even resulted in happier marriages than might otherwise have been the case, since the traits for which she was selecting were generally positive ones and she ensured that their bearers met under circumstances where marriage was probable. Likewise, she didn't deliberately drive anypony mad. What she did was put gifted youth through a program of study in which there was a high chance of receiving a very beneficial education and a small chance of insanity.
She was doing this to try to push Ponykind toward a higher evolutionary phase faster; for the very good reason that she feared that if she didn't, general disaster would ensue. The unethical part of it was that she didn't tell anypony what she was doing. Celestia notably feels guilty about this; it's a good thing that she does, because if she didn't see this sort of thing as immoral, she'd be tempted to do it for much more trivial reasons ("Hmm, I could improve milk production 5.3% if I incorporated the Heart of a Forsaken Orphan into the heating vats, and we have too many forsaken orphans lying around anyway ...")
6711840
Sorry if I upset you.
6711866
Actually, it was upsetting Celestia herself in that scene!
couple thoughts
huh look like celestia fail to account someone doing that on there own free will like pipsqueek (And i wonder if she suggested luna to do this: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ho5_DBrMusA/Vmc0Icn85GI/AAAAAAAACXI/k8yb9hI8JsY/s1600/Princess%2BLuna%252C%2BWeb%2Bof%2BDreams.png
something tells me that admittance was the hardest thing celestia did and was upset with herself!
uh-oh so starlight got a head start on all those spells that can't be good.
good chap.
I think Celestia may have fibbed a bit about Cadence. I mean, you are fighting a foe who but is vulnerable to love, there could be few more useful allies.
I think she understated Cadence's role because C is married to Twilight's brother & she doesn't want to interfere with their marriage.