Chapter 8
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Chapter 8
The Night Court was an entirely different affair than the Day Court.
The lack of ponies was the main thing. The Throne Room of the Night was never witness to the crushed masses of the Throne Room of the Day—no fear of suddenly discovering you had claustrophobia. Instead, the Night Court was the home of punctuated boredom: nothing happened for hours, sometimes several nights in succession, but when a crisis did arise, it was inevitably exaggerated beyond all reason because it erupted out of such tranquility.
It was a good time to get one’s paperwork done.
Princess Celestia hadn’t slept in seven and a half centuries. It simply wasn’t necessary for her, after all. And during Night Court, she could allow herself to drift into a state between sleep and wakefulness that left her fresh to raise the Sun at its close.
...Or maybe she’d have to deal with the human and his ego tantrum, instead.
Voltaire stood there at the entrance of the Night Court, his hands involuntarily clenching and unclenching over and over again. In Celestia’s drowsy state, the rhythmic motions entranced her. Not for the first time, a fleeting pang of jealousy for not having such interesting appendages flashed through her relaxed thoughts.
Voltaire reached up and tried to adjust his wig to look presentable. Tried...and failed. “Your Grand Royal Highness,” he said through his teeth. “I most humbly request a brief audience in private, so that I might partake of your divine guidance.”
The Princess smiled lazily at the sheer number of words used to express such a simple question, without even managing to get to the question mark at all, which was sort of an odd way to...what was she thinking about again?
The night guards looked at each other with a smirk.
Oh, that’s right! Celestia thought to herself. He wants a talky. “You may speak, Voltaire,” she said breathily, her eyelids hooded. “As you can see, my advisers are gone, and I have no petitioners. Anything said in here will remain in strictest confidence, and my guards are absolutely trustworthy.”
Voltaire looked to the unicorn who was standing beside him, and gestured her towards the Princess.
Celestia watched with growing amusement as a nervous Eveningstar trotted right up to her and stretched up towards the Princess’s ear.
The winged unicorn brought her head down so that her Royal Translator would not have to strain herself. “How dramatic!” she whispered with a grin. “What does he want you to tell me?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Eveningstar whispered back. She looked over at Voltaire, who had thrown open the doors and was trying by stares alone to force the guards to leave.
If this is some kind of comedy by those two, it isn’t very good, Celestia thought petulantly. “Get on with it, Voltaire,” she said.
Voltaire responded by staring intently at Eveningstar and thinking two words very clearly in Latin.
Celestia imagined the thought, whatever it was, flying between Voltaire and Eveningstar, and dutifully followed it with her eyes. She then saw the unicorn fall back in shock as if she had been physically struck. “Eveningstar...?” she asked nervously.
Voltaire pointed imperiously at Celestia.
“I think this game’s gone on long enough, Voltaire,” Celestia warned. “You will tell me what this is about, right now.”
A very nervous Eveningstar finally leaned over and whispered Voltaire’s message into her monarch’s ear:
“Mind control.”
~ ~ ~
“Everypony out of the throne room,” Princess Celestia suddenly ordered. “NOW.”
She was wide awake. In fact, she suspected she was now more awake than she had been since the last time the dragons had threatened to invade.
Without a word, the four royal night guards marched out of the throne room.
“That includes you, Eveningstar,” the Princess told her adviser, raising her head to its full height in an attempt to intimidate her.
Eveningstar automatically started to walk away, then stopped herself so suddenly that she stumbled. “Nnnno,” she said, turning her head back. She looked like she had seen a ghost. “I want to know what he means. I think...I think I saw it happen, to him. He tried to tell me something, and his body turned against him. I...I would like an explanation.” She had an utterly lost expression on her face, as if she knew that what she was doing would ruin her life forever, but at the same time couldn’t stand to live with herself if she didn’t follow through. “Unless...unless you order me to leave.”
Voltaire closed the doors, then walked up to Eveningstar and rested a hand on her withers. “Well?”
Celestia sighed. “I can’t explain it without triggering it. A lot.” Two silver buckets, a table covered with a dozen glasses of water, and a pile of towels suddenly appeared before the human and the unicorn. Two pony-height buckets. “Are you really sure you want to go through with this?”
Eveningstar wearily raised herself on her hind legs and rested her forehooves on the rim of her bucket before giving her monarch a look of equal parts resignation and defiance.
Celestia looked over at Voltaire, who gave one look at the unicorn’s much larger belly before positioning his bucket a bit further away from hers. “Are you sure you don’t want to get a few ‘how dare you’s in first?” she asked him. “‘Freedom of thought’ vs. ‘loyal actions’...that kind of thing?”
Voltaire shook his head. “Get on with it.”
“Very well.” Celestia closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. Before her, the doors locked and the windows were covered with a substance that looked like wool. The ears of the three in the room simultaneously popped, like the room had been suddenly teleported to the bottom of the ocean. Celestia opened her eyes and started her explanation with an odd twang in her voice—this was because another spell was clamping her nostrils shut. “The Roman told me much about the human world during his time here. It appeared to be a place where reason and understanding have a weak hold on human passions. As a result, humans frequently resorted to violence to solve their problems.
“Equestria is not like that. On Equestria, violence is never the permanent solution to any problem. But in the distant past, the ponies didn’t know this. The Hearth Warming Eve story you hear every year is a very polite version of the truth. Before the tribes united to found Equestria, they were at each other’s throats. Not for a few months, as the play implies, but for generations. Generations of hatred. Generations of betrayal. Generations of...” ...here it comes... “...killing.”
Celestia turned her head and waited nearly a minute as the human and the unicorn before her emptied their stomachs into their respective buckets at hearing the forbidden word, and then reaching down for the glasses of water and towels to recover. Eveningstar’s reaction was somewhat delayed, as she first had to absorb the meaning of a word she had never heard before in her entire life, before she had the experience of reacting to it. When they were done, Celestia then turned back around and continued speaking as if nothing at happened. “When I first became princess, I was young, and naive. I was also foalish enough to believe that just by outlawing something, I could make it disappear forever. So I cast a spell so powerful that not even I could reverse it, a spell to prevent anypony in Equestria from even thinking about...”
“...pinking,” Voltaire interrupted, bringing up the first dueling term he could think of. “Let’s agree to call it ‘pinking’. And I notice you left yourself out of this little arrangement.”
“I may have been foolish, but I was never stupid,” Celestia replied. “I banned only two thoughts. Actually, I banned a few other things, but none of those are still in effect. That’s because my little ponies are very clever, and they managed to think of ways to break every one of my silly little prohibitions when they really needed to be broken. The same applies in this case. If a single pony ever figures out how to think about, um, pinking, without getting sick, then the prohibition will be broken for all ponies.”
Voltaire gave the Princess a long look of accusation and disapproval. “You really should have known better,” he chided her. “Did your parents never instill in you the notion that you should leave the free will of your subjects alone?”
At the mention of the words “your parents”, Eveningstar panicked, and started furiously shaking her head back and forth in warning. A confused Voltaire then looked over at Celestia, who was staring at him with utterly dead eyes. Assuming he survived the next five seconds, Voltaire congratulated himself on finding the one topic liable to drive Princess Celestia into a homicidal rage, a very useful lever to have against your monarch and employer. And then he threw up into the bucket for thinking about a homicidal rage.
“I misspoke, Your Royal Highness,” Voltaire pleaded on bended knee after cleaning up. “There are no words to cover my blunder. It is obvious that you have suffered enough for what you have done.” Please don’t kill me, he thought. And then he sprang back up so he could make another contribution to the bucket. Not that there was anything left to contribute by this point.
Eveningstar had been thinking to herself while the human was going through this, causing her to realize something. “Your Highness,” she said cautiously, “I think I can break the spell for you, if you’d like.”
“I’ve long since acknowledged the uselessness of my actions,” the Princess said. “I still believe that ‘pinking’ will never be a worthwhile thought for a pony, no matter how desperate the circumstance, but I have no right to prohibit the thought itself. If you think you can break the spell, Eveningstar, go right ahead.”
“Thank you, Your Highness. Voltaire, I need you to give me the word for ‘pinking’, the actual word, in every language you know.”
”Every language?” he said in utter despair, before gathering his courage. “Very well. You know what it is in Latin. In French it’s tuer (hurk!), in Spanish it’s matar (ull!), in Italian it’s uccidere (huhhh!).” He stopped at this point, breathing heavily and wondering if he’d pulled a stomach muscle yet.
“Is there any relationship between those languages?” asked Eveningstar.
“Well, they are all descendants of Latin, the result of the breakup of the Roman Empire,” explained Voltaire.
“The Empire broke up?” asked Celestia. “How sad. The Pax Romana sounded like the closest thing to pony civilization that you humans ever managed to achieve.”
“It’s alright,” Voltaire replied, happy for a break from the recitation of misery. “We currently have a Holy Roman Emperor, which everybody says is even better than a plain old Roman Emperor. It’s just too bad the Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”
“The three words you gave, they didn’t sound very related to the Latin word,” said Eveningstar.
“No, they didn’t. They appear to be approaching the concept from different directions. You see, the Latin caedo most closely resembles the English kill, while the Spanish matar is derived from Latin mori, meaning simply ‘to die’. The German töten, on the other hand...”
The Princess watched with silent awe as Voltaire effortlessly got through a minefield of words for “killing” without once getting sick, and apparently not even noticing.
“Oh, do you use the phrase ‘on the other hand’?” asked the translator with enthusiasm. “We use ‘on the other hoof’. What happens when you have more than two possibilities?”
“We take off our shoes,” Voltaire joked.
“Now töten actually sounds like the Griffon word for a natural death, hocken, literally a being coming to death,” said Eveningstar. She produced the “ck” sound by lightly striking her throat with a hoof. “Based on the usual rules of conjugation for that language,” she continued, “the bringing of death would be hockick, which as you can tell is an echo of the Equestrian hoyhie, yet one more sign of the deep interrelationship of the pony and griffon tribes from the beginning of time. So, Princess, how did I do?”
“Very impressive!” said the Princess. “You managed to break the spell on ‘killing’ with no unicorn magic used whatsoever.”
Voltaire involuntarily winced at hearing Celestia using the dreaded word, but then he relaxed when there were no ill effects. “So, what’s the other forbidden thought?” he asked.
Celestia’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, I’m not telling you that. It’s...it’s absolutely disgusting, and unlike killing, there’s no reason to ever think about it, ever!”
Voltaire only had to ponder for a few moments before making another trip to the bucket. “Ah, that one!” he exclaimed.
“How did you think of it so fast?” Celestia asked incredulously.
“I couldn’t have survived puberty without it,” Voltaire replied. “And the Church agrees with you that it is a mortal sin. The Church hasn’t quite gotten around to damning Christians for eating ice cream, but they’re getting around to it.”
Celestia scowled. “Ugh, I get sick just thinking about it.”
“Ice cream?” Voltaire asked with a silly grin.
“No!” Celestia replied with a laugh. “You know what I mean.”
The human shrugged. “Fine, you can keep it forbidden if you really want.”
Eveningstar looked back and forth between the two of them. “I don’t really want to know, do I?” she eventually concluded.
After they had exited The Throne Room of the Night and walked back out of the hearing of the guard ponies roaming the halls, Eveningstar turned to Voltaire. “Now that you can say it, what was your second prayer?” she asked.
The human beside her hesitated. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
“Try me.”
“I told you that I revealed truths that would transform humanity,” he said without looking at her. “My second prayer is that I might die before the day comes that they start killing each other over those truths, in my name.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.067 seconds
Total duration
971 users online
357,707 hits today, 2,561,249 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2023
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2023 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Now if you must comment on the cruder aspects of this chapter, could you at least show a minimum of decorum? It seems you can't read any delicate discussion of the topic without being immediately inundated with the most obvious innuendo.
I shall be taking my place over here, behind this lightly-perfumed lace handkerchief.
(Or mustache. ...same thing, really.)
1002479
Nope.jpg
"Ya could be clever as Voltaire, but it won't get ya nowhere if ya wanna sell dissskksssss.
Clever never made no one rich. It doesn't appeal to the teenage market. THE TEENAGE MAAARRKKKKKEEEEEETT!!1!"
1002578
"Teenage market"? More like teenage wasteland...
Update? Another one? Sir, you spoil us.
Also, I shall endeavour to keep any further comments free of double-entendre. I shall, however, remain silent on whether or not I shall use single-entendre. For now.
I love that line about the Holy Roman Empire. That's just so classic!
Hmm interesting. At the end of the last chapter I thought Celestia was just pranking Voltaire for referring to his god as male. But I guess making someone violently ill is a little harsh to be considered a prank.
This is an interesting story and is probably the best HiE I've read. The first 10 or so chapters of The God Particle were excellent but it fell apart after that. So yeah, this is currently my favorite HiE.
How can those poor creatures survive without that second thing!
Ice cream... Have those two words now forever gotten a second meaning that I will remember for years? Only time will tell...
Not bad, his first day in Equestria and he already discovered things unknown to anypony else, except Celestia of course. At this rate Voltaire will soon be on par with Celestia whereafter the only conclusion would be that Voltaire will surpass her. Voltaire will not be sent away due to the fact that Celestia feels pity for him for being stuck in Equestria, but because he becomes a genuine threat to her, an annoying inquiring one at that.
With luck, perhaps Voltaire will discover one or two absolute truths while at it.
1003150
I'd attribute it to willpower or that their minds work in a different way, but that is just me.
I love this fic...i truley do.
1002601
I was quoting "Darkside", by Tim Michin.
I approve. Please continue with the utmost haste
I expect Celestia will be grateful when the second prohibition lifts, although it will take her at least a century to realize that gratitude.
1017675
Most of the changelings had both horns and wings. They're all completely different from ponies except in their very basic shape. Power boost? Maybe, but that's pushing it. Yes her power comes from the love she drains but trying to put her up higher than she should be rather than putting Celestia down a few pegs is what I'm saying the real danger is when considering the canon. If you can figure out the number of unicorns it takes with special talents in magic to raise the sun and moon then you have Celestia's 'power level'. If we said it took 100 unicorns, only 30 actually talaneted in magic, then that is still far from the godlike powers many tribute her. That is still below Zeus, below Odin even, and is nowhere near an Yahweh. That's what I was trying to get at. Making her a god in anything but the eyes of those she rules would be against the canon.
It is possible Chrysalis is not normally as powerful as Celestia, but she isn't much alone. She got lucky but her real power is her swarm. She's not a big player like Discord or even Nightmare Moon. Celestia though isn't as powerful as either of them. People want to make her a goddess but she's closer to Galadriel than any any goddess of mythology. Immortal and wise, powerful in many ways, a big player, but not the absolute power.
1027976
A perfectly valid point--I'm the one who set up this complicated translation dynamic, and I still manage to forget about it from time to time.
But even if he heard "I try to learn from every pony I encounter", then that would still imply that Celestia never bothers to learn anything from non-ponies, so I feel I should only get a few tenths of point deduction for the error.
This is the part where I need to pay the judge $100 to find in my favor, yes?
I dig the reference to the French Revolution at the end there. This is some pretty good stuff. Voltaire is (dare I say it) in character from what I would expect of the historical figure. I would, however, insist that he MUST bring up the 1755 Lisbon earthquake (unless the story is set before that chronologically) due to the huge impact it had on his worldview.
Well, I'm outta here. Mental block on killing? Really? I'm done.
I'm not entirely sure I get what the second "thought" that Celestia banned was. It couldn't have been sex, because otherwise how the hell would Ponies reproduce and something like that doesn't strike me as being something the Catholic Church would be in a tussle over (religion damned that bit quite awhile before Voltaire's time). Would it be incest?
1077235
A hint: You could go blind.
I'm guessing rape.
1077235 Ice cream: usually vanilla, and when it gets hot, it's warm and sticky when it runs all over your hands.
banning masturbation?
that's it, i'm siding with Discord.
1097586
>Haha, The Fap has been doubled!
Seriously, Celestia can go buck her prismatic mane for all i care.
*considers Chapter 8... then looks at all the other obviously highly-informed fan fics about Equestria...* But... ponies love clopping. Especially the Princesses, apparently. Celestia and Luna both have extensive 'collections' of 'instruments'. The fan fics wouldn't lie!
ice cream?
You do realize that the reason the Pax Romana worked was because of the permanent, professional armies of the roman empire?
"Play nice or we will kill your people, take everything you had, and then salt the earth where your city once stood."
1240757
You can choose to read Celestia's statement in at least two different ways:
Optimistically, you could say that Ovid sugar-coated the Pax when he described it to Celestia, and so she thought that the humans just decided to be nice for once.
Pessimistically, you could remember that Celestia is capable of turning any city she pleases into a fire-sterilized hole in the ground (or, if things got really messy, simply decide not to raise the sun for a decade...), realize that the ponies probably know of this fact, and speculate about how similar the Pax Romana and the Pax Celestia really are...
The beauty of the pessimistic interpretation is that it doesn't even require that Celestia be a tyrant to work: even if Celestia is completely pure of heart and would never wish to harm even her most rebellious of subjects, that still doesn't stop her subjects from being cowed by the possibility of her righteous wrath--it's one of the perks of being considered a goddess.
1002479 I'm afraid I don't understand.... What was the second one?
I don't get it. I understand banning the concept of killing, but why the heck would Celestia ban the concept of masturbation?
1288141
I'll just point you at the explanation that was dragged out of me after commenter after commenter hounded me on it: 1083795
The forbidden Ice Cream...
:D
Hamburger time?
(
)
I started reading this story believing that based on its premise it would either be awesome or a complete train wreck. It has proved to be the former from what I have read thus far. This story has thus far been witty, inventive, intelligent, and a barrel of laughs. You can bet I'm going to continue reading this and recommend it to others.
1878255
Thank you for your enthusiasm. It is very gratifying.
1002601
More like 100% all Australian Travesty.
LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PERSUTE OF HAPPYNESS
1027994 I'm replying to an ancient comment here, but I wanted to point out that you have the excuse that the translation cap probably learned the difference between "everybody" and "everypony" already, especially since the ponies in your story tend to use both at different times.
Since I'm making a comment, I'll tell you that I waited for this story to complete before starting it, and so far I'm enjoying it thoroughly.
1878255
To be frank, my impression is that both the former and latter are completely accurate.
1052109
But whatever shall we do without your guiding light of intuition? Surely, this fic will crumble like a house built on sand if you abandon us now! We would undoubtedly be lost without your enlightened reasoning.
At least we can consider ourselves fortunate that you chose to grace us with a comment announcing your departure.
tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/sarcasm-sign.gif?w=500&h=247
2729321
Eh, personally I appreciate knowing why a particular reader doesn't like my story. I'm under no obligation to care, but I am curious. And sometimes they point out a significant flaw that I can correct in my next story. After all, I've currently got 21 down-votes, and far fewer than 21 explanations posted.
That's why I always leave little negative notes on the few stories I read that offend me so much that I down-vote them.
Dictating others' sexuality is some repugnant fucking shit, particularly like this. Fuck this Celestia with a god damn crowbar.
I wonder what the word is... I'm honestly confused about this word, what is it?
3812898 Actually, considering what Voltaire said, "I couldn't have survived puberty without it.", I believe they're referring not to someone's sexuality, but good ol' masturbation.
3865870 Definitely not. Refer to above statement.
That is a legit prayer.
This chapter has the potential to make pron a lot more hilarious.
At least for the next weeks, whenever I stumble upon a story involving... ice cream... I will imagine the character suddenly tossing their breakfast.
As of this chapter, Celestia is officially Tyrantlestia. Mind control is NEVER justified. I'm done.
1077409
Most of us didn't grow up with parents stupid enough to actually feed us that bullshit line.
1288183
Wow. That is probably the worst justification I've ever seen for thought control. Man, you don't go around half-stepping when creating evil tyrants, do you? You know, for the first chapters, you actually had her somewhat sympathetic, now I'm kinda hoping this one ends with the fucking bitch swinging from the gallows.
Truly a depth of feeling and expression fit for a monarch.