A Beginner's Guide to Heroism

by LoyalLiar

XLVIII - Lying to Celestia (And Other Acts of Heroism)

XLVIII
Lying to Celestia
(And Other Acts of Heroism)

So there it was. I did it. I won. I proved my innocence. I was the hero. It was time to celebrate. Ride off into the sunset, as it were.

“Morty…” Gale ended the thought by pressing her lips against mine, and with a subtle finesse, parting them.

For any bipedal readers I might have, the word ‘ride’ means something different to a quadruped.

Almost as soon as the contact had started, she pulled away. “How are we seriously here?”

I gave her a cocky one-sided grin, the most rational expression I could come up with. “If this isn’t enough, we could go somewhere more exotic.”

Gale chuckled. “And I thought I was bad about wanderlust.” She tossed her head just a bit, beckoning me toward the bed.

“I don’t know if I’d include wander in that,” I answered with the same grin. “It might be exotic for you, Gale, but this has been my bedroom for fifteen years.” I walked over to the purple mare’s side once more and placed a hoof on the side of her neck. “I already know everything about this room.”

“Want to show me?” she asked, half-lidding her eyes.

I nodded. “It might take a while, though.” Before she had a chance to reply, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against the tip of her horn.

I didn’t really have time to go further; the door creaked open behind me. “Gale, are you—”

“Shit!” Gale announced, standing fully upright and very nearly putting out my eye in the process. “Aunt Celestia, hey. How are… things?”

“I’d say my evening has been restrained.” Celestia’s eyes were locked on me as I nervously rebuttoned my blue vest. “I’m sorry if I interrupted something.”

“How?” I asked. “How did you The door has a trick lock.”

“Well, that’s exactly what I was worried about. Gale can’t teleport; how was she supposed to get out?”

It took me just a second to realize that Celestia had no idea of Gale’s ability to teleport. Just as grim realization clicked in the back of my mind, I found myself interrupted by the mare herself. Gale groaned and wandered over to Celestia’s side. “Nothing is going on, though; I was, uh, just about to go to bed. Is there something you actually need, or were you just worried about the door?”

“I was going to ask you if you’d seen Morty, though I seem to have answered my own question.” Morty, since Gale’s tired and you’re finally free, would you like to join me? I can escort you to Tempest if you like. He said you sent somepony to find him?”

I rolled my eyes and finished repairing my appearance. “Goodnight, Gale.” Celestia stepped out of my way, and then followed me shoulder to shoulder as we walked down the hall.

“Have fun, Morty.” Gale called back bitterly, before slamming the door behind us. Through the closed wood, I heard a parting jab. “I’m sure Tempest is more experienced, at least.” I paused for just a moment with a raised brow when I heard the trick lock click shut, but then shrugged and carried on my way.

“My apologies for interrupting,” Celestia told me as I stepped away from my own door. “Though in my defense, I’d hate to imagine what her mother would do to you if you carried on.”

I shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Celestia nodded. “The crystal guards said your work with Smart Cookie went well?”

“It was a boring, basic binding,” I answered. “It’s draining, but I’m the best necromancer in in the world. I explained the health risks, but I doubt there’s anything to worry about since he’s an earth pony. He’ll still outlive me.” Oh, how wrong I was about that. “Smart Cookie and Jade are busy catching up on lost time, and I’m down a couple spells from fixing him, so I need to sleep before I can do anything more about Wintershimmer.”

“More?” Celestia asked, raising a brow. “Morty, you’ve proven your innocence. Your work is done. Typhoon and Star Swirl and Luna and I will confront Wintershimmer the next time he shows his face.”

To be clear, lest you get confused by my response, I knew all too well I wasn’t done with Wintershimmer. This moment, right here, is the difference between a hero and a self-absorbed colt absorbed in hero worship.

“Yeah…” I agreed, nodding slowly. “I mean, if you need my advice or anything, I’ll be glad to help. But you’re right. It’s probably smarter if I stay out of the end of this.”

Celestia looked at me sideways, amused. “Well well. I’m surprised, Morty.”

“You are?”

“I expected I would have to work harder to convince you. Some part of me was worried you’d take ‘being a hero’ too far and insist on being the one to save Silhouette single-hoofedly.”

“Well, let’s be realistic,” I answered. “I’m fantastic in a duel, but to beat Wintershimmer, I need at least three of my hooves. My balance isn’t that good.”

Celestia’s divine laughter rang off crystal halls. “I suppose some things don’t change so quickly.” We walked a few more strides in relative quiet—the gemstone floor making a truly silent walk impossible. Then, at a junction in the hallways of the crystal spire, Celestia abruptly stopped. “There was also a crystal mare asking after you.”

“Glitter?” I asked. “I already told her I didn’t have time for dinner.”

“I don’t know who ‘Glitter’ is,” Celestia told me.

“Just before I left, before this whole debacle started, a palace maid rammed a cart into Wintershimmer. Another maid, Glitter, tried to intervene for her, and Wintershimmer muted her with his magic.”

“Permanently?” Celestia asked in a tone of shock.

I nodded. “You’ve met the old bastard. Are you really surprised?”

“How horrible!”

I could only really nod. “Well, I had Jade lend me a bit of her magic after I was done with Cookie. When I ran into Glitter in the halls, I decided to see if I could undo the spell. It turns out he’d just used Pique’s Self-Sufficient Stasis locally on the path through her vocal chords, rather than actually transmuting any of her anatomy. So that was easy to fix.”

I watched Celestia’s immaculate forehead wrinkle just a touch, and then she turned to me. “Was Pique the one who wore a wizard hat with two points on it?”

“Archmage Pique of Six Summits died seven hundred years ago; how am I supposed to know how she dressed?”

“At this stage, Morty, I have no idea what you do and don’t know. You solved a murder that took place before you were even born, and then you somehow used that to resolve the threat of an impending war. In any case, I doubt we’re talking about the same pony. Here.” Gesturing to a door off the hallway, Celestia smiled. “Go on.”

The door in question opened on a rather small sitting room; one of many in the spire. I hadn’t spent much time in any of them, as Wintershimmer rarely engaged in meetings he could avoid, and ponies who wanted to live long, fulfilling lives generally avoided being seated with him for any length of time. The room itself seemed nice, hosting two loveseats, a pair of tall-backed chairs, and a small coffee table supporting a vase of what looked like saffina.

I barely noticed any of them.

Sitting on the couch facing me was a crystal earth pony mare with a rich sapphire coat under a shock diamond mane I knew to have resulted from stress and not age. Her face was defined by sharp lines with jagged cheeks and wrinkles that I knew were sharp enough to cut flesh. She wore a suit of armor somewhat older than the crystal style, and a black void crystal amulet hung from her neck, much like the one Silhouette had worn not so long ago.

“Mortal,” she greeted me, standing up without a hint of a smile.

I considered turning and walking out of the room right then and there, but I felt Celestia close behind me, blocking the path in the course of trying to enter the room. So instead, I paced forward calmly and delivered a single word with all of the spite that I could force into its two short syllables. “Mother.”

“I see you’ve brought the Equestrian goddess with you,” my mother replied in her thick, brutal crystal accent. “Are you going to introduce us?”

I glanced back to Celestia, who smiled in my direction despite the hatred I hadn’t bothered to wipe from my own expression. “Mother, this is Celestia. Celestia, this is Castigate, my beloved mother. You might have heard of her as Warlord Halite’s… what was it? Third in command? Fourth?”

“Halite is in the past for me and for the crystals,” Mother replied, more to Celestia than to me. “Jade has united us, even if peace is beginning to make us complacent.”

I took one deliberate step toward the crystal mare. “What do you want, mother?”

“To congratulate my youngest,” was my reply. Mother even made something of an attempt at smiling. “In killing Wintershimmer, you’ve done what I wished I could do for thirty years. The crystals are better off without a softcoat sorcerer playing Jade for a puppet.”

“Youngest?” Celestia asked. “I didn’t realize you had siblings, Morty.”

Mother laughed until she started to cough. “‘Morty’? You let her call you by an ass’s name?”

“You may recall, Mother, that you are the reason my name is ‘Mortal Coil’. Thank you very much for taking the time to congratulate me on committing accidental ponyslaughter. I must make you so proud, following in your hoofsteps.” I turned to Celestia. “I have two half-sisters, but I wouldn’t call them family. Nor for that matter, would I call this one family. We’re done here.”

As I scornfully pushed my way past Celestia, Castigate called after me. “You’re my blood, Mortal. And you certainly never got your strength from your father.”

I was halfway down the hall when Celestia caught up to me, obvious concern covering her face like spilled ink on a page. “I’m sorry, Morty. I didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine,” I muttered back. “She’s just another reason for me to hate the Union.”

“Still… I had no idea your family was so…”

“Martial?” I prompted. “Or do we want to jump straight to ‘evil’? She’s barely a memory for me anyway. I was an embarrassment to her. No crystal mare wants to give birth to a ‘softcoat’, like she said. Father raised me and housed me, at least until I got my apprenticeship…”

Celestia slowly slid a wing over my back. “That’s behind you now, Morty.”

I brushed off the white feathers, then turned to look up at my looming companion. It took a long time for the words to come, though. “I don’t know if it ever will be. That’s… With all the running and the fighting, I’ve been avoiding it. But the truth is, I don’t think it ever will be. I wouldn’t be who I am without Wintershimmer. I’d be like that mare… Or a wreck, like Father.”

“You can’t worry about who else you might have been in another life,” Celestia observed sagely. “Family informs who you are, but it can’t define you unless you let it.”

“That’s my problem. Wintershimmer defines me. Not my family.”

In response, I was given a quirked brow. “Morty, family doesn’t come from blood. Blood is just the default.”

“You know, it seems like you’re building toward the idea that Wintershimmer is my ‘spiritual father’ or whatever you want to call it. And if that’s the point you’re making… maybe you should reconsider it?”

Celestia shrugged. “You get to decide, Morty. At the end of the day, we all have to decide for ourselves. I know Luna and I chose one another.”

“Wait, you aren’t actually—”

“And I know Graargh chose you,” Celestia interrupted with a calm in her voice that deemphasized an otherwise forceful interruption. “Speaking of which, you may want to bite your rear right hoof and use it to scratch your ears when you next speak to the Triumvirate.”

“My rear right…” I glanced back, then frowned. “I don’t think I’m that flexible, Celestia.” And then it dawned on me. “What did Graargh do?”

“Oh, I’m certain I don’t know,” she replied with a knowing wink. “How could I? I’ve been here with you fighting Wintershimmer since we left Everfree.”

“Fighting Wintershimmer…” I muttered back, briefly distracted by the return of the topic I’d been avoiding. For want of a gentler distraction, I continued my pace. ““Let’s talk about something more pleasant. Like botulism, or genocide.”

“Morty.”

“Ah, excellent choice. I am a much more interesting topic. Was there something more specific you wanted to talk about, or just me in general? Good looks? Magical talents? Godlike oratory?”

“You know that isn’t what I meant.”

“It’s late, Celestia,” I answered. “Point me in Tempest’s direction and I’ll get out of your mane.”

Celestia frowned, sensing my sudden urgency. I could only hope that she misinterpreted it as the vapid banter of the self-absorbed colt I honestly was. “Just this way.”

“I grew up here, remember? I can navigate just fine on without a chaperone. If you tell me the room—”

“That only confirms that you’re trying to get away from me, Morty.”

I groaned to cover that fact that in my mind, I was swearing. My best smokescreen was to go on the defensive about something unrelated. Fortunately, a still present concern from my departure from my bedroom gave me something to work with. “I’m not going to go running back to Gale behind your back, if that’s what you’re really worried about. The mood is pretty well ruined.”

I did my very best to stomp off in a mild huff, but Celestia proved a difficult pursuer to elude.

“What’s bothering you, Morty? It’s more than just family, isn’t it?”

“Well, if we’re being that blunt, I’m still a little bit horny. Thank you for that.”

Celestia held a wing to her mouth. “I thought that sort of crudeness was in Gale’s camp. What happened to the heroic archmage?”

I felt the irritated scowl I was wearing fall away for a very real vacuum of expression. I must have come across hollow when I replied, rather sadly, “I’m still seventeen.”

“Morty?”

“Please just go away.”

Celestia closed her eyes, and then nodded once. “Tempest said he’d meet you upstairs; apparently there’s a bedroom with a balcony that he was flying from. Please, Morty, if you need to talk… you’ll know where to find me. I want to help you.”

As she turned and walked the other way down the halls of the spire, I whispered to myself “That’s the problem.”

---

Silhouette’s bedroom wasn’t a place I had visited often, and even more infrequently had I been happy about it. That particular day, I didn’t feel much by way of strong emotion, save a rather natural hesitance to go through with my plan. I remember standing outside the door with my hoof held in the air for some time before I finally decided not to knock and instead to just throw the door open.

For the first and only time in my life, doing that to Tempest was not a mistake. The pegasus scout was gliding casually back and forth off of Silhouette’s balcony, on the far side of the room past Silhouette’s walls of weapons and more than a few oil paintings she’d inherited from her predecessor.

I didn’t have to call out; Tempest saw me only a few seconds after I entered the room and glided down toward me. “Morty.”

“Good evening, Tempest.”

“You wanted something?”

I gave him a short nod. “I need you to take a few messages for me.”

“Messages?” He frowned, sounding particularly tired. “I’m a scout, Morty, not a messenger. And even if I were, I don’t work for you.”

I nodded. “I understand that, Tempest, but it’s important.”

“I’m sure you think everything about yourself is important, but—”

“If I don’t get this message sent, Wintershimmer will kill Silhouette.”

Tempest replied by flapping his wings twice, flying over to a particularly wide painting on the wall. He slipped a wing behind the frame, and swung the painting out on a hinge to reveal a secret cache of liquors. “Alright. Fine, I’ll write, but I need a drink for this.”

“What? How did… I didn’t even know that was there.”

“It was wide open when Queen Jade lent me the room.” Tempest shrugged. “You want something?”

“I… sure.”

“What?”

“I don’t really care,” I told him. “I don’t plan on tasting it. Just hurry up. This is urgent. I need to get a message to Diadem and Archmage Star Swirl, and the Sisters can’t know about it.”

Tempest shrugged with his hoof-shoulders, still using his wings to pour a rich amber liquid into a pair of tall crystal goblets. “Oh. Well, if that’s who its for, you can just tell them tomorrow. We’re all going back to Everfree after Mom and Platinum and Puddinghead talk to Jade.”

“This can’t afford to wait that long.”

Tempest looked down at the two drinks, regarded the bottle, and then completely topped off one of the glasses. As he recorked the vessel, he glanced over his shoulder toward me. “You want me to fly back to Everfree tonight. You think that whatever Wintershimmer is up to, he’s held off while you were locked in Jade’s dungeon, but now it’s down to one day.”

“I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important.” I reached out with my magic and picked up the less full of the two glasses. It smelled like oak and anise and the strength of the alcohol burned my nose. “I’d go to Blizzard, since I know I can trust her, but she’s not as fast of a flyer as you. And I don’t really know any of the other ponies who pulled the carriage.” I threw back a mouthful of the drink, and managed to at least swallow it before the fiery taste left me holding my chest and coughing.

“Fine, Morty. What’s the message?” Tempest plucked a feather out of his own wing and tramped over to a desk Silhouette had left in the corner. His full glass sat abandoned beside its source within the hidden bar. After a moment of grumpy scrounging, the scruffy soldier turned back to me. “What’s so important?”

So I spoke.

Archmage Star Swirl, Archmage Diadem,

I write to you out of a desperation borne of urgency.

Here in the Crystal Union, we tested my theory that Wintershimmer had bound himself back into his still-living body. I had expected the resulting confrontation to be the end of the matter, but instead, we found that he had replaced his own corpse with one of the candlecorns. Unlike my earlier confrontations, Wintershimmer wasn’t interested in throwing this battle in the interest of framing me, and he very nearly defeated us—including Celestia.

I had before assumed that Wintershimmer was capturing souls because he needed them for mana, but it appears that was a deception. When we fought him as a candlecorn, he had no souls bound to the golem body, but he had seemingly unlimited mana. He was also able to control the golem despite being in a magically warded vault—hence, he could not have been projecting his control through physical space on the natural plane. Those facts gave me the final clue I needed to understand how he was possessing the golems at an apparent distance.

I would wager my life that Wintershimmer has hidden his physical body in the Summer Lands. By performing his half of our ritual from the inside, and using the unlimited mana of the Summer Lands itself in lieu of my half, he will have been able to create a physical space in which to place his own body, and that of Silhouette, my crystal friend. Because the Summer Lands—or more accurately, the entire Between—are not directly attached one-to-one to points in the physical world, Wintershimmer was able to effectively be anywhere in the world for the purpose of controlling his golems.

Wintershimmer’s goal is to find a body that will get him closer to immortality, if not grant it outright. And, as I have explained, he nearly bested Celestia, Gale, and I together while using only the body of a candlecorn. I believe you will agree that his natural body will be stronger still, and that we can’t risk him getting hold of a useful younger body that he could inhabit directly, without stitching a horn to an earth pony forehead. We also have to act fast, to prevent him from binding the horn of Solemn Vow to the body of Silhouette. To be blunt, the Sisters absolutely cannot be present when Wintershimmer is confronted. Even if they are likely to win, we can’t afford to pay the price if he even managed to kill one of them. The same logic is true of both of you.

That logic is not true of me. As you have likely heard my horn is too tightly coiled to serve his purposes. Furthermore, I know Wintershimmer’s tactics and tricks the best out of anypony alive. If anypony stands a chance of stopping this plot of his and saving the souls he has stolen, that pony is me. This isn’t some act of egotistical heroism, as I have been accused of. I trust that you will believe me, for two reasons. The first is that I’ve proven my innocence and that Wintershimmer is a real threat with absolute evidence here in the Crystal Union, so I have nothing to gain from this conflict.

The second is that when I confront Wintershimmer, I am almost certainly going to die.

I’ve made peace with this fact. As much as it is anypony’s, Wintershimmer reaching this state is my fault.

I can’t describe my plan in detail, because though it is unlikely, it is possible Wintershimmer will scry this message or otherwise learn of its contents. What I can request, however, are my needs from you, in descending prioritized order.

• Both of you must be prepared to cast and maintain the Summer Lands ritual for the duration of the fight from somewhere outside the scope of our duel. I gave Diadem the steps for the ritual during our prior meeting, so I can only pray you are able to cast it. If so, I recommend Proxy’s Transmission, which you will need to set up in advance in order to maintain the portal from a safe distance.
• Prepare the ritual somewhere other ponies aren’t likely to walk in on us, for obvious reasons. Your lecture hall will do nicely if you don’t mind the likely risk of the destruction of a lot of benches.
• Somewhere in the palace tomorrow morning, you’ll find a servant named Humble Servant; he will have hopefully repaired the damage to my coat of the Order of Unhesitating Force. Please retrieve that.
• Find my golem, Guardian Angel. Inlaid in the golden halos are a series of emeralds that should be charged with my mana. Attach them to interior of my jacket.
• Take the actual core of Angel—the hoof-sized rock in the middle of the halos—and stick him in the right breast pocket. It’s made of folded space, so he should fit there without making a bulge in the garment.
• Find Graargh - which is to say, ‘me’ - and bring him to meet us.
• If possible, acquire an equivalent number of emeralds from another source, charge them, and affix those to my jacket lining as well. Do not bother with more than double the original set of emeralds; my body will likely pass out from physical exhaustion regardless of whether or not I have mana left over after seven spells.
• Enchant the fabric of the jacket itself with at least Tabard’s Unassailable Aegis or equivalent magic. Ideally, the interior of the garment will be made to resist basic telekinesis from anypony save the wearer.
• Acquire a bandolier of some kind capable of holding gems infused with prepared spells, and said gems to fill it. Prepare as many as you can of the following:
• 3 Temperance’s Unpleasant Purge or some other spell to eliminate illusions.
• 3 of some form of hemispherical or spherical shield which is airtight.
• 1 Gully’s Gravitational Grasp; ideally this spell specifically rather than some of the other spells which manipulate gravity. I want the spell to only affect my body. Rather than upward, please make the spell reorient gravity forward.
• 1 gravitational inversion that affects an area.
• Two flasks of liquid fire, and two of a metal-corrosive acid, for dealing with golems.

With luck, if my plan works, I will arrive in Everfree tomorrow well ahead of Celestia, Gale, and the Triumvirate. So long as you can keep Luna away, we should be able to avoid putting anypony else in harms way.

I really don’t know how to end a letter like this. Good luck?

— Morty

Tempest looked up from his writing. “You’re serious about this?”

“I can’t tell you more. But before you leave, can you tell the other pegasi you had pull the wagon to be ready to leave with just me first thing tomorrow?”

“Morty… This is going to get you killed. What about the little bear? Or Blizzard’s mom? What about Gale?”

I took a long breath. “Don’t, Tempest. Please.” I took another sip from my fiery drink and managed not to cough. “I need to do this. I’ll talk to Graargh myself. Tartarus, I don’t even know what he’s supposed to be, and she apparently does. You and Blizzard can talk to Luna if you want to know about her mom; I’m not any good sticking my muzzle in that anyway.” I stopped, and took another drink.

“And Gale?” Tempest pressed. “She likes you, Morty.”

“I know.” One more sip. “That’s why I need you to write me one more letter.”

“You don’t want to write this one yourself?”

“I can’t write.”

To his credit, Tempest merely raised a single brow. I shook my head slowly, and he turned back to the desk.

“Alright.”

“Dear Gale…”

Comments

[Fireeaters]

Nice, more hints on the 'agelessness' or what have you.

[djthomp]

Ride blocked by Celestia, probably intentionally if I had to guess.

I'm really glad it to read that that poor mare that Wintershimmer muted got helped by Morty.

Oh hey, Morty's mother. We've heard so much about her, but I can't say I expected to see her in the story.

“I grew up here, remember? I can navigate just fine on without a chaperone. If you tell me the room—”

“That only confirms that you’re trying to get away from me, Morty.”

Whoops.

I would wager my life that Wintershimmer has hidden his physical body in the Summer Lands. By performing his half of our ritual from the inside, and using the unlimited mana of the Summer Lands itself in lieu of my half, he will have been able to create a physical space in which to place his own body, and that of Silhouette, my crystal friend. Because the Summer Lands—or more accurately, the entire Between—are not directly attached one-to-one to points in the physical world, Wintershimmer was able to effectively be anywhere in the world for the purpose of controlling his golems.

Ahhh, that makes sense, and if correct basically explains everything.

Morty is definitely right that they can't afford to let Wintershimmer have an alicorn body and power, so this is probably about the best idea he could have. I do wonder though how well Luna could do against him in a theoretical fight, given that she is apparently the actual greatest living necromancer.

[ArcaneDust]

Tempest replied by flapping his wings twice, flying over to a particularly wide painting on the wall. He slipped a wing behind the frame, and swung the painting out on a hinge to reveal a secret cache of liquors. “Alright. Fine, I’ll write, but I need a drink for this.”

This is hilarious XD