An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

27: Postlude One

The bars had been pumped full of so many magical counter-spells they generated their own heat.

Celestia draped herself across the prison door and let the heat roll over her. She imagined walking through the center of the sun, enveloped in her own aura, fire and fission soaking into her bones, and passing through to the other side renewed and purified. She pictured Twilight with her, but only for an instant--she was fried before she could break the surface.

Behind the humming bars, Twilight shivered in her cot. “Princess, don’t touch that, your coat will get all dirty.”

Celestia smiled, her first of the day. “The bars kill bacteria. It’s better than hoof sanitizer, really.”

“I didn’t know they could do that.”

“The bars kill bacteria so the pony inside can’t mutate them and make a virus.”

“You’re worried about the pony plague? Down here?”

The smile went away. “It’s a suicide deterrent, Twilight.”

“Oh.”

Fire. Always fire. Celestia was the sun, and the sun was fire. Hearth’s warming eve and funeral pyres. Fire carried her immortal essence. The spark of life, maybe. Celestia could never know for sure what happened before she was created, so it was entirely plausible she was the light that gave life to the universe. History books lied. Advisors lied. She didn’t really know whether the world was fine on its own when she dropped in or just an infinite powder keg.

"I suppose it goes without saying how sorry I am for all this."

What did Celestia know anyway? Poor Twilight. Celestia was so hopelessly confounded by a great many things. "Sorry is not what I want to hear right now."

"Then what do you want to hear? I'll say anything. I'll rat. I'll give whatever names you need. I want to help--I'm not the bad guy."

Celestia squinted as sunlight snuck through the small barred window and hit her face. She shifted a few paces to the right, stretched, and leaned into the bars again. Her eyes burned through the floor next to Twilight. "Right now I'm more disappointed that you let the heart get away from you, even if you were trying to steal it. Things would have been much easier if you had been successful. Are you sure you can't remember anything about the assailant who took it?"

"No," twilight lied, "with my injury, I didn't get a good look at them."

Celestia nodded. "Is it any better?”

Twilight nodded, rubbing a singed spot of fur on her shoulder. “I didn’t die, did I? It sure felt like it.”

“You nearly severed your magical-neural relay. I had to replace it and create a new leyline to feed it, but you should be fine. I’ll have to teach them to you sometime.”

“Maybe later,” Twilight suggested, awestruck.

Celestia nodded. “One of the guards you hurt has breakdowns periodically. Every few hours he shuts down. His relay is still twisted."

"I know. I can fix him, but the doctors won't let me near him. This cell has fourteen design flaws. Five of them are compromising. I could be done in five minutes, but I’m worried if the guards try to subdue me I’ll hurt them. Please, let me fix him.”

Celestia looked down. “This cell is the one we use when we can’t contain a prisoner in a normal cell. Starswirl spent a few drunken nights in here shooting lasers at the wall, back before he had discovered lasers. I put Luna in here once during our childhood when she wouldn’t stay in time out. A few criminals got executed in here too.” Twilight stepped over the stains as she scrambled into the corner. “If we took them outside they would have teleported away. Magic is as dangerous as it is miraculous. You of all ponies--”

"I would have turned him in," twilight whimpered, clutching the back of her neck. She let out a breath as her back hit the cold bedrock walls. "His plan was to travel into griffonia and sell it. I was gonna put a tracking spell on it. Rat on the buyers, Caramel, myself, everyone. I was gonna blow the lid off it. I never intended for it to get away."

"I know you didn't."

The sliver of light from the window fell away as the sun set. In a few minutes, the day guard would shuffle back to the barracks and the batpony night guards would take their place. The gates to Canterlot castle would close, and the day would end. The cell would be as it was in the night.

The more Celestia thought about her imminent departure, the more she appreciated the odd sense of peace. This wasn’t an ordinary prison. These catacombs held living skeletons, but somehow the place seemed twice as dead. The walls had a way of eating the echoes so that no matter where she was, she knew exactly how alone she was down here with Twilight.

“Have you slept?” Celestia asked.

“Did they find it?”

“Have you slept, Twilight?”

“What does that matter? You have to leave soon--don’t you? Tell me, please, if you don’t tell me I won’t be able to think about anything else until you come back.” Something in her eyes--sparks, but no warmth. Fear? “You’re coming back, right? Eventually? I’m immortal. I can wait. But please tell me.”

Celestia sighed quietly, and heard every sound. “Nineteen griffons are dead in their port city, I can’t recall the name. The thief must have crossed the border during the night before word could spread and sold it.”

“Was it the griffon king’s soldiers?”

“Oddly enough, no. According to our records the only criminal ties the group had were to the underground fur trade that died out after the war.”

“It wasn’t us who went in, though, was it?” Twilight sat up straight. “Did we invade Griffonia again?”

“Nothing short of Luna’s capture would make me invade that country again. The Crystalites are responsible.”

“Tell me it wasn’t Cadence. I know she feels obligated to lead battle charges, but this--”

“Cadence did not lead the assault. They were able to get a team in and out using long range teleportation links.”

“Have you heard from Cadence yet?”

Celestia shook her head. “She left early this morning with Shining Armor.”

“Does she know--” Twilight asked, but stopped herself.

The earth sighed, deep and lonely. Celestia couldn’t get much further from the sun than this. She could still feel it--she always felt it. But here in the depths of the catacombs she felt something else tugging her in the opposite direction. It pleaded her--go down! Further and further, deeper into the maze, until she never came back up again.

"Would you please sentence me to death?" Twilight asked.

"No,” came Celestia’s automatic response.

"I deserve it, though. I deserve to be shot like a traitor. I am a traitor."

"Whether or not you deserve it is irrelevant."

"I think it is."

"Then you still have much to learn, Twilight. There are more important roles you must fulfill in the coming weeks. You have a duty to Equestria--"

"Please kill me." Twilight slammed herself into the bars, pressed her nose into the opening next to Celestia's. She saw every flicker of light in her eyes. "Please, like me up against a wall and shoot me. Hang me. I don't care. Please."

Celestia brought herself to bear. Back straight, shoulders back, chin up but not too far, no longer leaning on the bars, she looked like a goddess again. "No," she asserted, "you can not run from your mistakes.”

“How is this running?"

Celestia paused. "Twilight," she said in a voice much softer than before, "there are many different ways to run away.”

Twilight stepped over the stains, sat down on her bed, and covered her mouth. “Okay,” she said into her hoof.

“Back before the age of diplomacy, even just a few hundred years ago, wars were more frequent. Rulers did what they want. If I don't seem shocked at this, it’s because I’ve seen rulers wiser and stronger than you stoop much lower doing what they believe is right. I believe you have a greater role to play. Your destiny did not end when that prison wagon shut its doors. A millennia from now you might still be trying to right this wrong, but a millennia from now Equestria might need the princesses as much as it needs them now.”

Outside the castle, the sun fell lower.

“Is Caramel still alive?” Twilight asked.

“Alive, and awaiting trial.”

“They’ll kill him.”

Celestia looked down at the stains on the floor.

“What do I do?” Twilight asked. “It’s over, it’s all over, and I’m still going. I want it to stop.” She turned to Celestia. “How do I make it stop?”

Celestia felt it all the way around, above and below. Twilight looked upon her in agony--goddess, princess, mentor, under stress, in duress, second-best--and Celestia clutched the sun helplessly so the earth wouldn’t swallow her up.

“I am--so hopelessly confounded by a great many things,” Celestia said.

Twilight picked herself up from the cot. She bit a little piece of dry skin off her lip and said, “I prayed to the gods so hard that nopony would get hurt.”

Celestia felt the earth turn and turn and turn.

“I think I know why it didn’t help,” Twilight continued.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s because they’re not gods. I am.”

Celestia paused. Interrupting a crisis of faith seemed so unimaginably cruel.

Twilight chuckled sadly. “It’s heresy, but what does that matter now if I don’t really believe it?”

“That’s a very dangerous assertion.”

“Dangerous in the wrong head. The cult leaders and crazies had ulterior motives, power or possession or money, or something. They thought they were god because it would be good for them.” Twilight turned to face the window, her eyes drifting across the bars and the outside. Faint monkish chanting filled her head. “I wonder if the old gods are scared of themselves, too.”

Celestia saw the sun reflected in Twilight’s eyes, and she was very, very afraid.

“Are you afraid?” Celestia asked.

Twilight turned to face the wall so she could no longer look her teacher in the eye. “Everything I touch bursts into flames.”

The earth implored her. Sink, it said. Way down in the center of it all, where it’s cool and dark and silent, where Twilight was not in a cell, where the war was just a distant memory, where everything was going to be okay. All she had to do was turn around and walk. Sink, the earth whispered, and leave her here. Leave her. Leave her--

Celestia tore herself away from the bars and hailed the guards. “Unlock the door, please,” she said.

“Your Majesty--” one guard began.

“Twilight is under my personal guard now. Report that to your commander right away if you’d like, or wait for me to tell him tonight when he wakes up, it doesn’t matter.” A pause. “The keys, guard.”

The two pat ponies flashed each other a look. The one closest to Celestia dug into his pockets and fished out a thin metal disk. “If I may speak freely, your majesty?”

“Of course.”

“She’s safer in here.”

Celestia slid the disk into the lock. “Duly noted.”

The walls hissed, cutting Twilight off before she could beg Celestia to reconsider. Beautiful oranges and reds and yellows lit up the walls, the reflection of an out-of-place sunset, moving up the walls in the path left behind by the rising sun just a minute earlier, darkening to lush, bruised purples and blues as they progressed. Twilight felt the counterspells snap around her and shivered. Without the giant radiator that was the cell door, cold enveloped the room.

The colors faded with the warmth. Twilight blinked back half frozen tears. She was not free. The sun was somewhere far away from her. Watching her. The earth tugged at her heart--Sink, it said.

Celestia opened the cell door. “Come with me,” she told Twilight.

Twilight stood. She stole another glance at the walls around her. Brown and black, like every other patch of raw earth. If she tried, she could blast a hole right through it and escape. The wall with the window was obviously the thinnest, but she didn’t have to go that route. She could topple the entire mountain if she wanted and crawl through the rubble. She could vaporize the mountain of earth and rock above her head, and Canterlot with it. She could walk back to Ponyville on a long and flat road, then flatten the road to cover her tracks.

She had no reason to escape. Celestia was standing in the doorway, offering her hoof. Freedom from the earth and the bars. And yet--and yet!--something like a repressed animal instinct burned her frozen limbs. Run. Run from the sun, run from Celestia, run from your friend, tear the mountain down around you bury your burden in stone rip it apart and run burn the city above and run--

“Twilight.” Celestia’s voice took her, like it always had. Did she know? Of course she knew. Celestia always knew. The decision to leave was no longer Twilight’s.

So they took a walk, up the stairs, through endless corridors, past a few more pairs of wandering guards waiting to be relieved of their duty, past the night guard walking briskly in the opposite direction, past more windows and more light--the sun outside didn’t quite shine the way it had in the cell--all in silence. They walked and walked until the path widened, until the sleek vertical shadows cast by the iron bars in the windows dimmed beneath projections of stained glass and massive polished pillars rose from the floor to bear the burden of the high, archless ceiling. They walked until the earth finally ceased to pull at them. Sink!, they heard one last time. And then they were in the sun, and they were free.

Twilight grimaced. She hadn’t seen the sun in a few days.

Despite it, she followed the silhouette of her teacher onto a wide battlement connecting the tower they had just exited to another identical one a hundred yards or so away. Guards stood every ten paces. Most of them glittered in the sun. Twilight ducked her head, partly to avoid looking at the army she betrayed and partly to avoid the force field encapsulating the battlement. Given that this was the only way in and out of the catacomb prison, it made perfect sense to have it--but that didn’t stop Twilight from reading files of what happened to the escapees who jumped into it. Files usually came with pictures. How high was it again? Ten feet? Fifteen? She cowered in Celestia’s shadow and walked on.

“I guess it doesn’t mean much now, because there’s no really fixing this,” Twilight said, “but I really am sorry.”

“It means something to me, rest assured.”

Twilight eyed the guards through her periphery. She couldn’t shake the feeling they were doing the same. They weren’t quite at attention, but when you’re encased in armor and holding a spear you don’t need to look pointed to look sharp.

Her fur burned. The light of the sun burned. Her shame burned. Though she didn’t feel it, she knew Celestia was giving her a look. It burned, too. “I thought it was what I wanted,” Twilight blurted. Damn the guards. They would stare until they died, and then they’d be replaced. “I was so wrong. Please, believe me.”

Celestia considered Twilight’s words. Their hoofbeats sounded like old drums, slow and shallow. They could see all of Canterlot and the sprawling metropolis it had become, but thanks to a quirk in the force field’s creation nopony on the outside could see in--not unless somepony were to run into it, that is. “We have all done drastic things in the past,” she finally replied. “You know my history with my sister well enough. You know your war wasn’t the first one in which we had to kill griffons. It won’t be the last, I fear. We live too long and see many wars.” Her war. Twilight’s war. Was this her punishment? Having her name pinned to a war? The thought made her want to spread her wings and fling herself into the forcefield. Maybe Celestia sensed this--maybe that was why she said, “Twilight, sending my sister to the moon was a mistake. Fighting a war was not. Do you understand?”

As they approached the second tower, Twilight finally noticed one of the few hopelessly outnumbered Equestrian guard propped against the door filing their hoof.

“Has the day guard retired already?” Celestia said, alerting the guard to her presence. “My, how time flies.”

The guard dropped the file and bowed in one motion. "Your majesties."

Twilight looked up--and instantly regretted it, damn the sun--but this was more important than the sun and her eyes and the purple sunspots she’d be blinking back for hours thanks to the stupid perfect weather.

The guard drew herself up and made a crisp salute. "You have our thanks for choosing our humble prison. It was an honor incarcerating you, your majesty."

Her eyes shimmered like broken glass behind her visor. Twilight’s frown hardened into a brittle grimace. In her haste to study the ground she caught sight of the guard’s file lying on the ground beside her.

A snap judgement, followed by a snap of her horn. Panic and resignation. A flicker of magic as she opened the door for Celestia. A duplication spell pulling magic from a leyline outside the forcefield, something that wasn’t really supposed to be possible--but then again, neither was ripping out a pony’s soul through their spinal column, and had she balked at that challenge? Duplicate the elements, arrange the atoms, perform a cross-dimensional planing spell and lock it in fourth dimension so nopony could see it or touch it, so she could push it through the impenetrable rock of Canterlot mountain, through incalculable years of geology and a few magical failsafes, into the cell block of the little-known Canterlot prison reserved for ponies like Caramel Apple.

She gave it a soul, too, before she sent it off. For once, she didn’t really know what she did to that little file. She had sensed something while she was attacking the guards in Ponyville--and she realized that’s exactly what she had done, attacked them--something deep in the leylines than she could not reach in a hundred alicorn lifetimes. It frightened her. Not as much as the threat of the future or a sudden loud noise, but it was there. It would be there long after the future had come and gone. It moved through the magic like an ancient predator, silent, proud, clinging to life. A spark. Given the sheer impossibility of such a creature, even for a rule-breaker like herself, she surmised that the only rational thing it could be was a soul. Whether it was a big soul or a little soul or all of them or just one didn’t matter as much. If a pony of all things could have a soul, so too could a hoof file. She didn’t want to take any chances, at least.

And then it was done. She and Celestia were walking past the guard, who swept low again to pick up her file in a half-assed bow.

Twilight paused before she could enter the tower and stared across the horizon. She felt it, every last one of them, the fillies and colts and old folks. A sick twisted figment of her former self reminded her of her duty to them. She held their fire. She saw their souls. Every one of them burned with life.

In her infinite fallibility, Celestia took it as a sign of weakness. “We must go,” she told Twilight. “Follow me.”

Twilight spent one more aching second staring into the sun, burning bright spots into her eyes, before she tore herself away from the railing.

“Can I go home?” she asked.

“No. There is talk of more fighting. We need you here in the capital to coordinate diplomacy efforts. You were always the best out of us four when it came to coordinating.”

Twilight risked a glance over her shoulder, but they had already gone too far into the tower to see outside. She thought about Spike. “What kind of fighting?” she asked.

“There are rumors the Griffon king wants to avenge his loss in the war and gain back the borderlands. He won’t win, not with his nation still in disarray, but he has no shortage of hatred. That is all he needs. A pony is strongest when he is at his lowest. I’m afraid the same applies to our feathered neighbors."

The two walked side by side down a wide and winding staircase for what seemed like ten minutes until they reached a vault door. The weight of a million tons of rock hung above her head. The earth spoke her her again--sink, it said.

“You remember the war room,” Celestia said. “We’ve redesigned a bit since the assassination attempt.” Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Twilight taking small, measured steps backwards. “I know you don’t like this room after what happened, but it’s safe here now. You need to be an alicorn to get in.”

“Is there some sort of horn-lock like the last door? Horn locks can be broken.”

“You’ll be happy to know there aren’t any locks, because there aren’t any doors.” Celestia shot a stressed smile in response to Twilight’s confused hum and added, “The door is just for show. It doesn’t open. If you could somehow rip it away from the wall you’d find more wall behind it.”

“Where is the war room, then?”

Celestia tapped her hoof on the floor. “About fifty feet beneath us. The only way in is to perform a cross-dimensional planing spell.”

Twilight thought back to the file. “Lock yourself in the fourth dimension and just--sink?”

“Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.” Celestia took note of the pain on Twilight’s face. “If you’d like, we can do it together--”

“No, it’s fine. I was just thinking about the castle.”

“Yours?”

Twilight nodded. “Spike should be going to sleep right about now. He’ll wonder where I’ve gone--he didn’t know about any of this.”

“Dragons live a very long time. I know he’ll understand, one day.”

“I hope so,” she said, lying through her teeth. The sad truth was, she hoped Spike hated her for what she had done. She hoped he would say something cruel, something that would linger for half her life. She hoped he would throw things, storm out, maybe leave for a few months. She longed to see resentment burning in his eyes. She wanted to see his face--just see it once more before she went into the war room, just once more, his eyes, it didn’t matter if he was happy or not. Just once more before she slipped beneath the cool earth. Once more.

Celestia’s form dissolved as she faded from three dimensions. Her eyes glowed like the fiery sun and then disappeared in a flash of light. The staircase echoed like the distant thunder of cannons.

Twilight turned her thoughts back to Spike one last time. She imagined him stretching his stubby arms over his head and yawning. She imagined him smiling at the sun as it poured through the castle window.

Then she lit up her horn and sank.