Equine Omnibus Orphanage

by Fon Shaolin

Burning Down the Reality (Twilight & Celestia)

Celestia, sitting atop her throne and surrounded by guards, waited. No amount of burly pegasi could help her in the coming conflict, but at least with them here in the throne room they could be under her watchful eyes. The Guard Commander had stated that he would either put his men with the princess or out in the castle hallways. To Celestia, it was the lesser of two evils. Their loyalty was inspiring, if nothing else.

Another powerful explosion rocked the castle and reminded Celestia of what she wished to protect her dear guards from. Her most powerful mages were already fighting – and losing – dozens of feet below them. She wanted to go down and help them, but her entire inner circle had overruled her. They would fight a battle of attrition, slowly withering down the enemy until Celestia could take her on for certain in the throne room.

It was a course of action that Celestia declared would be their deaths; they had agreed and said it was their duty.
The rumbling from below stopped and Celestia’s head slumped. She could pinpoint exactly where in the castle they were fighting and who was guarding that particular corridor: Star Shard, Professor of Astronomy and Divining at her own school. She had watched him grow up in Canterlot, become one of her royal attendants, and then rise to prominence at the Magic Academy.

And now he was gone.

Celestia felt his loss pile onto her back like the half dozen others she’d been forced to sit idly by. She had argued with them for as long as she could. Coup attempts like this happened to her at least once a century. She was the expert here – why should this one be any different?
She knew why it was, though, and her advisors did as well. They had ignored her and set up their magical traps in the castle. To stop them, Celestia would have had to take them out herself. She was the princess, they were the servants. They were the wax that burned away to protect the wick for as long as possible from the flame.

The guards straightened up. Celestia heard their armor rattle as they lined up in formation to guard her throne. There had been a knock at the door; it was a sign that the usurper had made it to the final room. There were no shakes from there, though – Luna had prepared gloriously, even more so than when she had challenged Celestia herself a millennia ago.

“Who better to be the last line of defense than me? I know her every thought, Sister, because I was thinking them myself. Don’t look so down – I might be able to stop her with a nice chat, one traitor to another. If not, I still have my own score to settle.”
Celestia wished she was on the other side of that door. Luna was only just coming back into her power and now she was thrust into the worst possible situation.

Why was the Moon Princess so obstinate? Together they would be able to put this down so quickly. Did she look so fragile to her court that she needed this much protection?

A horrible high-pitched whine filled the throne room. The guards had no idea what it was, but they were standing at attention. Celestia, though, knew the sound of her own barrier spell being hacked away at.

She rose from the dais. Her guard captain objected, but Celestia wouldn’t stand by and let them die right before her eyes. She had left six of her closest mortal friends and her sister at this monster’s mercy and no more. Their plan had failed and now it was time for Celestia to bring this to an end herself.

The wailing stopped. Some of the guards visibly relaxed, but Celestia knew better. She couldn’t feel her magic outside the door any longer.
“What are those things?” one of the guards asked. Celestia followed his eyes and saw dozens of red dots appearing on the enormous wooden door of her throne room.

They were the nails in the door. At every seem, every hinge, fire licked and twisted its way through the door. What had stood in the castle for hundreds of years was now being turned to cinders before Celestia’s eyes. The wood was burning as the nails melted and ran down the wood in great red sores of fire. A few of the guards ran toward the door to brace it, but the heat coming out of the entrance was fierce enough to drive them back.

The doorway yielded to the immense stress and fell forward with a lurch. Hot air rushed in as if it were being blown by a great bellows and behind the door was a wall of white and yellow flames. Fire crept into the room, driving the pegasi guards back. It wasn’t burning like a normal flame; it crept along the floor like shadows chasing a setting sun.

Amidst the bewildered guards, Celestia descended the steps of her throne. The distorted air driven forward by the flames retreated in her presence until there seemed to be a solid wall of swirling air just off the tip of her nose. Her guards shuffled behind her. They seemed to finally understand that this was something they couldn’t meet with muscle and hoof.

For a few moments the fires simply billowed, like some great beast taking deep breaths from just outside the door. Every push of air lit more and more of the throne room as fine tapestries and other trappings burned to cinders.

“Do you really feel the need to create such a spectacle?” Celestia asked, her voice flat and deadpan. “You used to not care about how you came across to others.”

“It’s something I learned from my teacher.”

The flames that were raging in the doorway did not subside, but nonetheless something was moving through them. It was a small figure, scarcely half Celestia’s regal height and with none of her defining features. What appeared from the flames was a small unicorn with ruby-colored eyes and an ashen-white coat. It stepped into the skittering fire that had consumed the royal red carpet up until it touched Celestia’s golden shoes.

Fire from the burning walls and columns leapt to the pony’s head and flank, creating two blazes where a mane and tail should be. She stepped up until her head had to tilt up to see Celestia’s face.

Too close. Too uncontrolled. Too dangerous. Celestia’s own magic started leaking out, lacing the room and pushing back against the conjured fire. The powers of the Sun were based off heat as well, though different than the earthly variety. All of the flames save those on the pony’s body were instantly snuffed out as the princess burned away all of the flammable kindling in a pulse of magic.

The usurper seemed unimpressed with the display of power. She moved her head, taking in one side of the room and then the other. “You really are going to have to show me how you can do localized bursts of magic like that,” she said. “I would have asked Luna, but…well, she wasn’t in the teaching mood.”

“What have you done to my sister?”

“She’s having a little time-out until she comes to her senses.”

“The only senseless thing my sister did was try and talk to you first.”

“And that’s the kind of attitude that I’ll have to break you of if you’re going to be my senior advisor.” The pony raised a hoof and nonchalantly poked the wall of magic separating her and the princess. “Luna turned me down and now she’s sitting back on her moon; I know you’re not as foolish.”

Celestia’s eyes narrowed into slits. She would make it up to Luna; her sister, despite her attitude, still hadn’t gotten over her last imprisonment. “Don’t worry, you’ll find I’m not so foolish as to try and bring you back. It’s clear to me that madness has consumed you. Your professors…they were your friends. Did they get the same generous deal that you are giving to my sister and me?”

The fire-coated pony shrugged. “Why should they? The first thing about statecraft I learned from you was that regular ponies can be replaced. You two – well, we three, now – can’t.”

“I didn’t replace you, Twilight.”

Twilight Sparkle, the former private student of Celestia, stomped her feet. Embers sparked from the polished stone floor of the throne room.

“Of course you didn’t replace me, I replaced you!” Twilight snapped. “I’ve tapped powers that you never could have taught me! You were holding me back!”

The alicorn snorted. “Fine. You replaced me. What, then, could possibly drive you to this? Boredom? Lack of attention? Are you a pet that needs constant supervision and pats on the head to behave?” Celestia found that she couldn’t, and didn’t, want to hold her tongue. “Would you like to sit in my lap like a pampered cat as you used to? I could tell you that everything will be alright and you could write me a friendship report. Would you like that?"

“Enough!”

Celestia physically braced herself against the wall of raw magic that erupted from Twilight’s body. The air around her was crackling with tiny wisps of fire that arched this way and that. Not for the first time did Celestia wonder how she had missed so much potential in a student. Twilight had certainly been talented, but this was beyond even her most archaic of pupils from eons past. None had ever been so comparable to her own sheer force.

When Celestia said no more, the small pony gained some composure. “I’m not here to chat, Celestia. You know exactly what I want. Give me the recipe to the stone, give me your throne, and give me your loyalty. If you don’t—”

“—horrible pain and an eternity of imprisonment until I come around to the new order of things – I know this script, my student. You’re not the first to read it to me.”

“I will be the last, though. I know how powerful the others were compared to you. I’m a better student than they were. You and I both know it. You chose me because of that.”

“I chose you because you were interesting. You have power, but only so much. Luna was exiled not because you need her, but because you couldn’t destroy her. Even in a weakened state, it was probably all you could do to bind my sister.”

The ruby fire in Twilight’s eyes gleamed. “So, you’re admitting to your little delaying tactic. You feared to face me without a gauntlet prepared.” Celestia’s eyes narrowed. “Professor Ellipse told me all about it in the ballroom. I know it had to be Luna’s idea – she lost to me in Stalliongrad, after all, and knew that I’ve gained a piece of same thing the two of you have. It was a good plan, in theory: if you could actually defeat me at this point.”

Celestia shook her head. “I don’t know why Luna insisted on facing you alone. I don’t understand why any of them bought into her plan. You are not so powerful as you believe, Twilight Sparkle, or have you forgotten how well a judge of character I am? I did, as you say, choose you for a private student.”

Twilight’s horn lit red with a solid pillar of flame. “A test, then! To see if I’m correct." The heat in the room returned full-force as whatever magic the pony had mastered started to spark back to life. Her smile became a wry white line as she stalked toward Celestia. "Are you sure you feel up to the grading?”

“I think I’ve done this particular test enough times that I don’t need an answer key,” Celestia murmured as she too began to draw out the significant bulk of her power, “my dear, faithful student.”

Author's Note:

This was the first time I really dipped into the idea of Twilight and Celestia as adversaries, way back in 2012. There's no denying that I enjoy writing Twilight as a unicorn more than as a princess, simply because I think you can do much more with her character.

Comments

[an1979]

So... Double K.O. ?