A New Sun Rewrite

by Pinklestia

Tired

"People always said that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." - Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks: My Story 1992 book by Rosa Parks and James Haskins

---

Celestia stepped up to the door, composed herself, and knocked twice. The door swung inward, revealing a room the size of an aircraft hangar. Mag had somehow climbed over Celestia and was hugging her like she was the most comfortable giant pillow pony thing ever..Normally she would have fallen, but she seemed to be sticking to Celestia somehow.

The floor was more smooth stone, thousands of square yards of it, so polished and level that you could set a basketball down anywhere at all and it wouldn't roll a millimeter. The room, if 'room' could be applied to something so large that being in it felt like being outside, was also a mess. Rough cubes of various metals, mostly copper, bronze, brass, that kind of thing, lay scattered and stacked with no system of organization or eye for decor. Scrap and wreckage littered the floor as well, piles of steel shingles or scales, drifts of iron leaves, mounds of speckled wood ash and an apparently limitless array of other absent-minded arrangements of debris, waste, and raw material were all strewn around the space.

At the center of the room there was a worktable taller than a two-story building, and behind the worktable stood a giant.

He looked like a stocky human more than anything else, but with no eyes or eye sockets, and too many fingers with too many joints. He wore an apron of some kind of thick, stiff cloth, and something like pants. He was enormous.

Some tiny metallic thing fluttered down from the distant rafters of the room and landed on the giant's shoulder. The giant turned to it for a moment and turned back.

The giant spoke. His voice was so inhumanly deep that some syllables were simply too low for Mag's ears to register. "Cordial greetings to you, glorious one. You have chosen to make your presence known in the proper way, I see, but elected to let your most honorable sister wander. Do you plan to distract me while she digs through my collection?"

"I am here," said Luna.

"Oh? But is that not a mortal voice I hear?"

Then Celestia and Luna told their story. Mag noticed she didn't merit an introduction, or would have if she wasn't almost asleep. Also if she had been awake she would have noticed how the two Regents of a dead World
told the story very differently than they'd told it to Mag. The content was the same, but the delivery was fact-filled, unemotional, and full of precise language. Events were almost unrecognizable. Celestia had calmly observed the end of her world, checked her watch, proceeded briskly to a hospitable world, and made camp. After resting, she went back to Equestria to more closely examine its remains -

"Why did you not examine them while you were there the first time?" said the giant, whose title was apparently "sculptor," or "milord" if you were feeling familiar. The pink unicorn was the one taking notes and paying attention, Mag was so tired she was wondering why her body was refusing to just go the buck to sleep as Luna would say if she wasn't Luna but actually Mag pretending to be her.

"I preferred to consider the situation in a more comfortable place, so I left as soon as I felt able," said Celestia.

Back in Equestria, Luna entered the mind of a mortal -

"Why did you bring a mortal with you to Equestria?" said the sculptor.

"My own reasons," said Celestia.

- and then the three of them returned to camp. Neither Celestia nor Luna mentioned Earth, humans, or any detail on where they'd set up.

The sculptor noticed this. "What are you not telling me?"

"I think we've covered every relevant detail," said Celestia.

"For instance, you didn't provide a name for your mortal."

"This is Mag Wilson," said Celestia.

Well, there was the introduction. She would have to make the best of it... or would have but she was too tired. The pink unicorn made Mag wave a hand to say hello and then Mag finally felt asleep.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Mag saw herself in a dream talking to the Regent.

"Hello, milord Regent." said the dream Mag with a pink voice.

"And what are you?" said the sculptor.

"A white human woman being puppeted by a construct of her imagination because her conscious mind just went to sleep."

The thing on his shoulder fluttered. "Your first lie," said the sculptor. "I'm told you are brown, not white." The regent seemed to ignore the whole construct of her imagination thing, even if Celestia... well she seemed confused.

"It's just an expression. It means Mag's skin is paler than some peoples'. Milord."

"Oh, a metaphor," said the sculptor disdainfully.

"I'll try to warn you next time I'm about to use one."

"Or you could be silent," said the sculptor.

"Yes Regent sir." Then the pink unicorn stopped puppeting Mag and have Dream Mag a piña colada that tasted like strawberry pizza. Dream Mag wondered if Luna was watching things like she was.

The giant rested his strange hands on the table, palms down. He didn't look in her direction, but then again, he had no eyes. "I have taken up the responsibility of keeping a collection of dangerous devices, ideas, and knowledge here my world, with the aim of learning to counter them, or, in some cases, to suppress them. Yes, sometimes I work to suppress the transmission of dangerous ideas between the worlds. My collectors know which books they must collect from travelers, what thoughts must be kept in quarantine in the worlds in which they belong. Mortal construct, can you guess which world produces the greatest number of things I must ban? You may speak."

"Humans," said Mag in a pink voice, meaning it was the pink unicorn again.

"Earth," said the sculptor.

"Yes, sir."

He shook his head. "I would say you are not welcome here, human construct, but how can I? So many of the things here belong to humanity that some parts of my world look like an outpost of Earth, even though humans so rarely venture out of theur mirrors. Tell me, when humans makes war, do they still light wild boars on fire and chase them into the enemy?"

"No, they mostly just drop explosives out of flying machines. It's more efficient. Sir."

"So I've read," said the sculptor. "Princesses, your majesties, I cannot help you at this time. You look for knowledge. For our purposes, we might separate the knowledge in my possession into two categories: those which humans have found, and those which humans have not found. As for the first, it would be useless to give you information you can as easily get from your human friends, and as for the second, I have no intention of putting yet more dangerous information within their reach. However, once the mortal has died and Luna is free, if you leave the human world and swear not to return to Earth with the information you glean here, whatever it may be, I will give you access to my archives. Good day." He started fiddling with some tiny metallic thing on his worktable.

Celestia blinked a couple of times but didn't move. "Lord sculptor, I consider myself a good judge of character. Knowing my reputation, would you agree?"

"No, I wouldn't. I heard about that 'Nightmare Moon' incident. Now Princess Luna stands in front of me, such as she is, walking free and more or less alive. This is not an acceptable risk. If you had sense, you would leave her here."

Celestia's features went hard. She opened her mouth to speak. Then Mag's body covered Celestia mouth with her hands and she spoke in a voice so pink it was irritating.

"Your sculptorness, what if I asked if we could see the books in your human section?"

"Who is spea - oh, the mortal construct again. Why do you want to see the human library? Everything there is already known to humans and therefore to your creator's people."

Mag's body gave the sculptor a smile so good Mag herself wouldn't have been able to do better if she was the one controlling it, even if the Regent was supposedly blind and might not be able to appreciate it. Or maybe it actually could since being a Regent maybe he could see anyway.

"Humans know all kinds of things they don't tell each other. I'll bet one of them knew something about magic at some point in history, and, from the sounds of it, there are probably copies of that person's notes."

He frowned a colossal frown. "Human books of dark magic? I have more than you two can carry." Now Mag smiled for real instead of the pink unicorn doing it. "And as the books are the property of your creator people, and your creator is an individual of good standing with my library except insofar
she is human and is making a construct talk for herself, the rules I live by insist that I give your creator what is hers... if she asks for it in person."

Then Dream Mag found herself moving her body mouth. "Please give me what's is mine then."

And after that Mag felt in such a heavy sleep she did not see what her body was doing anymore.

---

"Interesting human you brought here." The sculptor said to Celestia, noticing that Mag had fully fallen asleep."What sort of dark magic books was she looking for? I overheard you earlier. Planar curses, existential weapons, supercosmological phenomena, the practical effects of paradoxes, and similar topics. However since she is not awake to say so..."

"Then what will you do?" Celestia asked.

"Not give her anything of course, but she can come to look for a book when she wakes up."

Celestia frowned but she said nothing to avoid Mag getting hurt or the human losing her new mother.

"So I will now show you the way out," said the sculptor. He pulled out one of his cubes of brass out of a pocket, and, with the sound of shrieking metal, he flattened into a rough dish. He set it on the floor, pulled out his flask, and poured water into it.

Then rudely showed Celestia and Mag into the water. Celestia had no time to look for an edge and didn't even have time to ask because before she knew it she was outside the World and floating on the lake with Mag still glued to her back.

The sculptor had just used his Regent privileges to kick them out his World.

Celestia left the lake and a peryton saw Celestia and bolted or tried to, Celestia turned it to ashes since she was angry.

"Well, what have we learned today dear older and wiser sister?" Luna asked using Mag's mouth.

"Besides the fact that my daughter needs to sleep regularly?" Celestia asked and scared away some abomination far away just with her look alone.

"Very well that works. By the way, the Nightmare is back."

"What?!" Celestia then looked closely at Mag. "Are you two all right?"

"It made an offer to Mag, Mag cast her out, and the Nightmare left peacefully," said Luna.

"But where is it now?"

"Earth," said Luna. "It said something about Eastern Europe, Mag can probably show you the place to you on a map later."

Celestia began to pace. "But it could be anywhere tomorrow, and somewhere else again the next day. We must find its host and keep them contained, or else who knows what could happen?"

"Without a book of dangerous human magic to steal from us, it won't be that terrible. Is very likely the Nightmare can't actually do anything the host is unable to do by herself. And now it has a mere mortal instead of a Regent since the Eldest is not a woman and the Nightmare in unlike to offer something he will accept anyway."

"Luna! Why are you so calm about this? What if she gets to empower a tyrant? Don't you loathe tyranny?"

"I do loathe tyranny but I do know the Nightmare, the best we can do is try to ignore her and she will seek us out."

"Really? Then I wonder what the consequences would be for one of Earth already politically powerful tyrants to gain the power of the Nightmare," said Celestia."Wouldn't you be more worried then?"

"If she does that we would soon find out Then we could invite the Nightmare for tea and see how desperate she gets to try to win me or Mag over."

Celestia blinked "I see, you think the Eldest will get involved somehow."

"Of course he will, insane or not is his World. And Mag mentioned stories and legends about to her World dealing with beings like the Nightmare before."

"Fair enough," said Celestia

"Let's finish this discussion at Mag's home," said Celestia. She teleported them to the mirror.

Using Mag's body, Luna made sure to hold tight to Celestia as they passed through the mirror...

... and burst out of the California lake together. Dawn had come and the sun was behind the treetops. Celestia broke through the ice on the surface of the lake by flinging her wings open; water and shards of ice sprayed to either side of her. She shook out her mane like a model in a shampoo commercial. Luna lurched out of the lake on all fours, apparenty the spell Mag had used to stick to Celestia had ended.

Luna looked up to see something of a tableau. The shore was absolutely crowded with people. Most of them were EMTs in wading boots and warm clothes. A coroner stood by, leaning against a tree and shivering. The fat man sat on a nearby gurney, wearing two trauma blankets and looking teary. There was even a small news crew with a handheld camera, though no one had a microphone. The camera's red light was on.

There were ten humans onshore, not counting the sleeping Mag herself, and all of them were staring at Mag's body, completely ignoring Celestia as if she did not exist.

Then Celestia took in a human form that looked like the a princess out of a fairy tale. And in voice almost but not quite wonderful to be true yelled "Surprise! Magic is real!"

And then she teleported them into Mag's home. The effort taken was terrible so Celestia dropped herself in Mag couch and felt asleep.

Luna covered her sister with a blanket and found herself with no one else to talk to.

"Mmm. What would Mag do in my place? Onwards, to the Google!"

Author's Note:

A beta reader is still wanted.

This is the big moment the rewrite had been heading to, leaving Luna alone with access to the Internet!

Comments

[BestinDworld]

I hope Luna does not look up clop by accident

[lolitsjack]

Last few paragraphs have a lot of grammar issues.

[Ranun]

This looks beautiful.

[Zer-Author]

Once more, you have managed the delicate balance of tying this story to the original, while retaining this versions own unique style. The conversation with the eldest in particular was magnificent.

[Captain Nitpick]

9516421
The entire chapter has grammatical issues. Frequently entire missing words.

[Pinklestia]

9517287
Hence why I keep asking for a Beta reader in the author notes.
9516979
Thank you.

[MosAnted]

That Regent is kind of an asshole...

Then Celestia took in a human form that looked like the a princess out of a fairy tale. And in voice almost but not quite wonderful to be true yelled "Surprise! Magic is real!"

And then she teleported them into Mag's home.

Well, *someone* is bound to have noticed that...