CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
BLOOD
SUNSET SHIMMER
"Oh, my god."
There was nothing else to say. I had vastly underestimated the severity of Silver's problem, and I knew she hadn't even disclosed the majority of her struggles. A silence hung in the air for what felt like lifetimes, and if I had my way, the room would stay suspended forever.
Silver looked to both of us with tears now flooding in her eyes. I knew the look well, as I'd given it many times myself: she was looking for anything, and in the spur of the moment, I gave it to her.
I wrapped her in the tightest embrace I could manage. She didn't return the hug at first, letting her forelegs hang limply by her side, but after a few seconds, she slowly wrapped them around me. I didn't know how long we stayed there -- it could have been seconds, it could have been minutes -- but however long it was, I made sure it was enough. I could hear a long sigh of what I hoped was relief come from the former apprentice, and carefully, I unlatched myself from the embrace.
"Thank you," she said through sniffles. I was about to reply, but it suddenly occurred to me that Twilight had been strangely quiet: when I turned to her, I was greeted with a face I'd become all too familiar with in the time that I'd become her friend.
She was staring off into space, presumably at one of the trillion books that lined the shelves around us. She was muttering something to herself, and I knew well that the gears in her head were soon to fly off from the speed they were turning. I could see Silver tilt her head to the side in confusion out of the corner of my eye, and it took only a moment before Twilight whipped her head towards Silver and began a rapid-fire cross-examination.
"You saw hair," Twilight spat quickly. "You mentioned the colors. White and amber?" she questioned. Still attempting to fully process what she said, Silver nodded, and it was only then that I began to realize where Twilight was going with her line of reasoning. I could feel my eyes widen as I replied.
"Wait, you don't think it was--"
"A ritual," Twilight finished, springing out of her seat. "With hair and either sweat or tears as the catalyst along with some sort of rune. I'm willing to guarantee the location had something to do with it, too. He may have needed a high concentration of dark magic."
Silver's face grew more and more confused as Twilight bolted from her seat and shifted rapidly from bookshelf to bookshelf. She'd pull out books, flip through them at the speed of light and then casually toss them aside, likely leaving Spike with some chores he would rather not have as she chanted with every turn of the page.
"No, no, no, no, no..." Silver's began a slow change from befuddlement to amusement, and I could feel a matching smile of relief flood across my face: after the tale Silver had told us, seeing her grin made me feel much, much better.
"Is she always like this?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye. I was about to answer her, but a voice from behind us did it for me.
"I'm told she occasionally sleeps."
I had never met Prince Shining Armor in any form. I'd certainly heard a lot about him, though.
I knew who I was looking at when I turned to face him. He had been Commander of the Sunspears for a considerable tenure and headed the entire royal guard for just as long, and the presence he carried when he stood in the doorway was almost enough to earn my respect then and there. It's very hard to match up to the posture and guise of Twilight Sparkle, but the Prince of the Crystal Empire certainly competed.
Twilight immediately dropped the book she was reading to the floor, her eyes wider than the moon outside, and she ran as fast as she could to where her brother was standing.
"Shining!" she called out, a mixture of excitement and desperation lingering through her tone. She slammed into her brother in an immediate embrace (I winced at the potential impact to the hoof in her boot, but it didn't seem to bother her), but he held his ground rather easily, laughing all the while as he returned it. When he looked to where the boot was, however, his smile quickly faded, and he looked to his sister with grave concern.
"How is that healing? Are you okay?" he asked her. I assumed she'd likely written to him about the injury, and Twilight nodded her head carefully at the question.
"Yeah, it's fine," she answered quickly. "But I know you didn't come here just to check on me." I couldn't see her face, but I could feel her eyes widen in realization as she turned to the two of us sitting down behind her.
"But before that, let me introduce you to some friends of mine! The mare on the right is Sunset Shimmer. She lived in the human world for a while, but now she's here to stay!" I waved at him cheerfully, but his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he addressed me.
"Didn't you steal the Element of Magic from Twilight a while back?" Twilight bared her teeth at the question, and I could feel myself grow even more sheepish as I replied.
"That is certainly a thing I did, yes," I said awkwardly. "But I gave it back!"
"No, you didn't," Twilight said quickly, her eyebrows raised in amusement and a Cheshire grin plastered across her face.
"I sure didn't!" I exclaimed, leaning back in my chair. "But she did get it back and now we're best friends. And that's the real magic, don't you think?" I held my hooves out towards him in a gesture I assumed was my attempt at an Equestrian equivalent to finger guns, and the piercing gaze Shining had entrapped me with fell to pieces with a chuckle as revealed his facade.
"Eh, I don't think so," he began. "But Twilight has told me lots about you, and I'm glad to have you back home. Especially in a crazy time like this." I felt a wave of relief wash over me, and the only thing I could think to do was nod in silent thanks as he turned his gaze to the mare next to me.
"And who might this be?" Shining asked, nodding his head to Silver. It was impossible to hide the redness in her face from the crying she'd done recently, but Silver managed a to put on a very weak smile as she introduced herself.
"I'm Silver Jubilee," she said. "I'm, uh, new here." Shining nodded grimly, and he followed up with a question that was growing all too familiar lately.
"Are there any others?" All of us nodded our heads, but Twilight was the one to verbalize it.
"Just one," she replied. I had a feeling Shining knew the answer to his next question from the nervous tone of Twilight's voice, but he asked it anyway.
"They aren't like Zephyr, are they?" Twilight and I let the silence hang in the air for what seemed like eternity, and I knew that neither of us wanted to answer him (Silver, of course, didn't know). It was I who spoke up eventually, though, and I, too, failed almost entirely to hide the nervousness in my voice.
"She might be worse."
Shining stared at me blankly for quite a while, eventually changing his target to the ceiling above him. I knew he'd seen the work Zephyr had done at the Crystal Empire first hoof, and so hearing that sentence probably put a bit of a damper on his mood. Eventually, he sighed loudly, and he looked back to all of us with a sternness in his eyes as he spoke.
"Well, there's your answer," he began. "The Crystal Palace incident is about to break and, uh... we still haven't fixed them. We don't know if we can. We've tried the Crystal Heart, we've got the best doctors. Nothing's working."
"About to break? What do you mean?" Silver asked suddenly. I'd told her about what happened to Twilight and Rainbow in the Crystal Empire during the walk back to castle, so she was at least somewhat informed on the chaos surrounding us when she got here. That being said, I knew then and there that the severity of the situation was lost on her, but she started to understand real quick once Shining gave his reply.
"We've kept it a secret so far, but I don't know how long that's going to last," he began. "There were a lot of ponies Zephyr turned, and by some miracle, their next of kin we notified have been actually obeying their nondisclosure edicts. I haven't heard any word around the city that something crazy might have happened." Shining gave another sigh, leaning against the doorframe as he continued.
"And we're gonna announce it to the public before that happens. I was hoping we could get these ponies fixed before that, but it, uh, isn't looking good. That all ties back to the main reason I'm here: Zephyr is still out there somewhere, and Cady and I agreed that Flurry Heart isn't safe in the Crystal Empire. I couldn't imagine what would have happened if we'd come back from that trip early like we'd planned... " It seemed as if Shining was about to take a trip inside his own mind in regards to that possibility, but a wide-eyed Twilight quickly interrupted any hopes of it happening.
"Flurry's here?" she asked quickly. I leaned back in my chair in surprise, but Silver, who had no idea who Flurry Heart was, cocked her head to the side in confusion.
"She is. We aren't going to stay here for more than a night in the event he comes knocking on this door, but I thought we would drop by and say hello. By the way, the girls sent me up here to get you all. They wanna hang out in the common room and they brought out some games." Twilight immediately looked back to the book she was reading lying gently on the floor before turning to me just as fast. It was massively important -- the first breakthrough we'd had since the apprentices started appearing, really -- but we had also made a promise.
"It can wait," I told her, a hint of a soft smile across my face. "Let's go have some fun for once." Twilight made a faux pouty-face at the suggestion, but her even brighter glow in return that followed seconds later let me know she was in agreement.
"Yeah, you're right," she began. "Come on, Shining! I'll introduce you to Violet and Cobalt." The two began to walk out of the room and down the absurdly long flight of stairs, but when Silver went to follow, I rested a hoof on her shoulder and brought her down to her seat again. Twilight looked back to me moments before she disappeared, and when she realized what I was doing, she nodded her head sagely before she vanished down the steps. I turned to Silver immediately, keeping my hoof on her shoulder as I spoke: for the thousandth time that night, her face scrunched in confusion, but it was quickly alleviated once my first words came out.
"Hey, um, that was, uh... pretty intense," I began. "I don't know what it's like to feel the way you did, but know that all of us are here for you, Silver. I know this whole thing is still fresh in your mind, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but... are you feeling okay? Like, now?"
It took Silver a while to answer. She sat back in her chair and stared at the doorframe in front of us, letting words race through her head at a million miles per hour for what felt like decades. When I was just about to speak again to break the silence, she answered, not bothering to turn and look at me as she did so.
"...I was brought back for a reason," she started. "I'm here for a reason. I don't know why and I don't know how, but I am. Second chances like this just don't happen, but since this one did, I'm gonna try to make the most of it." She paused for a moment before turning to me with a reluctance swirling in her gaze.
"I... I might need your help, though. And Celestia's." I found a warm smile creeping on my face involuntarily, and I wrapped my hooves around her for another hug. I could tell she didn't like to be touched, though, and I knew the first one was a luxury: I made sure to make it short, and when I detached from her, I nodded my head in the direction of the door frame and slowly rose from my seat.
"You'll always have it," I said. "Now let's go drink."
I was, of course, coming down to the common room to have fun. I know we all needed it after the whirlwind of the past few weeks, and I was very much looking forward to truly getting to know the equine counterparts to my friends across the portal and get some real down time with my roommate of the past few months.
But there was somepony I needed to talk to first.
It didn't take long to find him, because I knew that if I found Violet, he wouldn't be far behind. Sure enough, when Silver and I entered the maroon washed common room of Canterlot Castle, Cobalt and Violet were seated together on a long red couch, seemingly locked in conversation and discussing something I couldn't quite make out. When the two of us approached, the both of them quickly waved in greeting but reeled their heads back upon spotting the pony tailing me. I sat down next to them and motioned for Silver to do the same, and after a moment of hesitation, she slid across the couch to join me.
"Hey, guys! This is Silver Jubilee, the one Celestia told us about earlier. Silver, this is Cobalt, Celestia's third apprentice, and Violet, Celestia's first." Silver merely waved awkwardly with a meek smile, but Violet and Cobalt were far more overjoyed.
"Huzzah!" Violet exclaimed, eagerly clapping her hooves together with a warm beam across her face. "We hath had much appetency for thine arrival. If thou would have questions for any of us, do not hesitate to ask!" Silver nodded before turning to Cobalt, who looked back to her with curiosity.
"What happened there?" She asked, nodding to his prosthetic. I immediately remembered back to one of the plans I'd given him, and I was delighted to see he had, in fact, replaced the stiff alloy leg he had made in the past. I'd given him the plans to a human prosthetic leg in hopes that he could design something around it, as I certainly wasn't about to attempt and design something myself. It looked as if he'd come up with something crazy, as he was now wearing a sleek black prosthetic in the shape of a leg with a joint in the middle that looked like a sphere of some sort. It was resting on the couch in a natural pose, and I began to suspect that there was more to the new prosthetic than just physical parts.
"Fought off a sleuth of Ursa Majors. You should have seen the bloody lot of them." That drew chuckles from the three rest of us, but Cobalt waved his hoof in dismissal shortly afterward.
"I'll tell you later tonight if you're keen. Do you like it?" He turned to me with that sly grin I'd come to know Cobalt for, and I figured he must have seen me looking at it when Silver mentioned it. I was about to answer with a warm grin, but that smile quickly dropped wide open as I saw the prosthetic move: he appeared to be bending it back and forth of his own volition, and I could see the faintest glow of magic emanating from the joint as he did so.
"How did you do that?" I asked, entirely unable to hide the amazement in my inflection. Silver, too, seemed bewildered, and I could only watch Cobalt's face grow even more confident as he explained it.
"Right after I blew the bugger off, I experimented with infusing prosthetics with magic to make it so I was able to control it like my real legs. There was a failure on two ends back then, though, because Celestia and I were having trouble devising a true enchantment to make it freeform and the gears and joints I was trying to use to make it happen couldn't quite move the way I wanted them to. Back then, I settled on a limp. I don't actually need a prosthetic, of course, but I didn't want to walk around with a missing leg." Cobalt stood up from the couch, moving the prosthetic in multiple directions: if it were colored like his coat, I would have never guessed it was fake.
"That plan you gave me was very helpful. It got me thinking of how I could make a joint that could move in any direction like a real leg with considerably less effort. Once I made the leg from plastic and used alloys for the socket, we had to figure out how to put a spell on it that could link my thoughts to the movement. It took Sparkle all but a day to figure out how to enchant it. That mare is something, I tell you." I was certainly impressed, and I could see Silver's eyebrows raised as well as she nodded and examined the new prosthetic a little bit closer.
"She really is," I began, turning back to look Cobalt in the eyes. "And have you started on the other plan I gave you?" I could practically see the excited twinkle in his eye as he nodded enthusiastically, giving off a long whistled before he answered.
"It's absolutely brilliant, Shimmer," he started. "But it's a quite the task. Celestia and I secured the materials through a contractor and I've been working as hard as I can. I'll let you know how I progress." I once again sensed confusion from Silver, but I decided it would be best to tell her as much as I could tomorrow once everything got settled in.
For now, though, I wanted her to feel more comfortable with the gang, so I looked over the room. Pinkie and Fluttershy were engaged in a game of Dragon Pit (by the looks of it, Fluttershy was losing), while Rarity and Rainbow were locked in a conversation with Shining and Twilight. Finally, Applejack and Luna appeared to be playing some sort of card game, but I couldn't explicitly tell who was winning or what game they were even playing based on their reactions.
"I'm gonna go get some wine for the table from the kitchen," I began, turning back to the three of them now. "Do any of you want anything?" Silver waved the request off with her hoof, but Violet seemed much more inclined.
"I would savor some mead, if 'twas available," she said. I raised my eyebrows and looked to the ceiling at that request: it was a bit odd for the times, but it made plenty of sense that Violet would have enjoyed it a thousand years ago. I simply shrugged before beginning to walk back to the doorway, nodding my head quickly as I replied.
"Hang tight. I'll see what I can do." The group nodded, and I was happy to see that Silver began to talk with the two a bit as I was walking away. With a bit of a dumb smile on my face, I whipped around and headed out of the common room to make the relatively short walk to the kitchen.
It was natural, of course, that the kitchen would be close to the common rooms: there were often guests that needed to be fed, after all, and the nobility of Equestria (everywhere, really) didn't like to be kept waiting. It wasn't long before I slipped into the kitchen, the stark white walls, the row of refrigerators and the large table in the center all too familiar from when I'd sneak into it during my days living in the castle as a filly. I was surprised to find that I had some company, though: Starlight Glimmer entered my line of sight beneath the kitchen sink, seemingly looking for something in the cabinet below.
"Whatcha looking for?" I asked her, appearing behind her. I'd hoped to make her jump, but she remained still as a statue as she continued to rummage through the cabinet.
"A bottle opener. I'm picking Trixie up from the station tomorrow and I want to make sure I know where one is... aha!" Triumphantly, she ducked out of the cabinet and held up what appeared to be a kitchen multi-tool of some sort, but it certainly had the bottle opener she was looking for.
"I'm gonna rinse it off real quick. What brings you here?" She turned to the sink and hit the lever to start running the water, and I quickly stepped towards one of the many refrigerators in the kitchen and popped one open.
"Violet wants mead. You wouldn't happen to know if we have any, would you?" To my surprise, Starlight answered almost, immediately, speaking up over the sound of the sink.
"Yeah, the third fridge from the wall you're facing. Violet wanted some earlier when you went out to go--"
Suddenly, Starlight inhaled sharply, and I heard the water turn off abruptly and the bottle opener clank into the sink. I whipped around to find her holding her right hoof over the sink, the multi-tool now neatly placed to the side. There were plenty of sharp objects that went along with the bottle opener, and it didn't take long for me to deduce what had happened.
"Did you cut yourself?" I asked her worriedly. Starlight immediately nodded, taking her left hoof off her right for a very brief moment to wave off my concern.
"Uh, yeah. No big deal." She turned the faucet back on with her magic and levitated a roll of paper towels towards her, letting me know that there had to have been some bleeding to go along with the nick.
"Is there blood? Here, let me--"
"No, no, no!" Starlight muttered loudly, furiously beginning to wrap some paper towels around the hoof in question. I'd reeled back a little bit at the urgency of her tone, and it wasn't long before she'd created a makeshift bandage that had covered almost the entirety of her foreleg, much less the hoof in question. She held it up very briefly, but she put it down to the ground just as quick, lieaving it out of my sight behind the large table in the center of the room.
"All taken care of for now. I'll go to the nurse and get a proper bandage on it right after I'm done here. No biggie!" I eyed her with a single eyebrow raised before looking back down to the hoof I could no longer see.
"Are you sure?" I asked her, an unconvincing inflection carrying through my tone. Starlight used her non-injured hoof to wave me off once again.
"Positive, Shimmy," she said, looking back to me with a grin. "Go get Violet her mead. Celestia knows the mare deserves it." I eyed her for a few seconds longer, but it didn't take too long for me to sigh in defeat. As timid as Starlight often was, she was more than capable of asserting herself when she wanted to: I thought this was a bit of a strange reason to do so, sure, but I wasn't going to question it.
Not tonight, at least.
"As you wish, Princess," I mocked, bowing slightly to sell it. I turned around to the fridge Starlight mentioned, and sure enough, there were quite a few brands of mead waiting for me inside. I wasn't entirely sure why Celestia had stocked so much -- perhaps Luna still had a taste for the finer days -- so I picked the two bottles that looked the most intriguing before slamming it shut. I began to speak to Starlight as I did so, turning around to meet her.
"I'm not sure if you saw, but Shining--"
I stopped dead. Starlight was gone: in fact, if I hadn't just spoken to her and watched her patch up her cut, the kitchen almost looked liked she'd never even been there. The bottle opener was gone, the paper towels had been returned to their previous location, and I couldn't even see any drops of water in the sink.
I looked around one more time as if I would maybe somehow find her before shaking my head violently and beginning to walk out of the room.
"I haven't even started drinking yet," I muttered, rounding the corner of the doorway.
Thankfully, the hallway didn't leave me contemplating in silence for too long, and I quickly passed through the doorframe of the common room I'd left a few minutes earlier.
It looked like everypony was still engrossed in their prior activities, and sure enough, Cobalt and Violet were still talking on the couch in the corner of the room. I trotted over to where they were sitting and levitated the bottles onto the small round table next to them. Another look around the immediate area gave away that a certain pony was missing, and I looked to the pair with confused eyes as I put the bottles down.
"I brought two just to make sure you weren't left out, Cobalt. Where's Silver?" Violet had already begun pouring the mead into a glass that had seemingly materialized out of nowhere, but Cobalt pointed his hoof at the doorway I'd just come in through.
"She left after talking for a bit. Said parties make her nervous." I could feel a disappointed sigh escape my lips, but I was very glad that Silver had it in her to talk with some ponies before retreating. I would figure out where she was later, I reasoned, but I would let her have her alone time for the moment so she could ease into everything.
I scanned the room for any sign of Starlight, but it appears she intended to do as she said. She wasn't here, so I assumed that she had, in fact, gone to see Doctor Scarlet to get that cut checked out. I sat down on the couch next to Violet in defeat, and she could easily hear the sigh I gave off the moment I hit the seat.
"Art thou perturbed?" she asked, looking to me with concern. I quickly shook my head to dismiss her.
"No, I'm fine," I told her. "I just had this strange encounter with Starlight. Has she been acting... strange at all lately?" I knew Violet didn't really know Starlight, but I was at least curious to see if even she had noticed any odd behavior. She shook her head in the negative before answering, though.
"Starlight does not appear bewitched in my eyes, no," Violet began. "Peradventure she is merely overtaxed from the chaos? Gods know that I am." I looked to the ceiling unconvincingly, but in my head, I agreed that it was a definite possibility: she was known for being very frantic with her emotions, and this may have just been her own strange way of releasing the tension that all of us have held for so long now.
Or there's something wrong with her.
"Yeah, maybe you're right." With another sigh, I grabbed the bottle of mead and a glass in front of me (it appeared somepony had laid out a few them for us) and began to pour, letting it fill just below the brim before I started sipping. I wasn't exactly a huge mead drinker, but even I could tell that it was very good. I expected no less from the sisters' personal collection, but it was still nice to enjoy it.
I was about to say something to Violet and Cobalt, but I could barely open my mouth before an unmistakable cadence called out from behind us.
"Hello, everypony! Sorry I'm late!" My eyes widened at the voice, and I whipped around to see Princess Celestia only just waltzing through the doorway. She had stripped herself of her regalia, and it looked like she was looking forward to relaxation after being exhausted from the meeting she had been in the entire day.
Unfortunately, I had to rob her of it.
As I put my drink down and began a power walk over to her, it became apparent that I wasn't going to be the only one to do so. Twilight had rushed Shining over to greet her as well, and we met with the Princess at the same time. She appeared shocked that Shining was in the castle, but I managed to speak up before any of them could explain.
"Princess, there's been quite the development," I said. Twilight and Shining nodded sternly -- Twilight must have informed Shining of her intent to speak with the Princess -- and she looked to the three of us with narrowed eyes.
"What development? Is everypony okay?" We all quickly nodded our heads, but it was Twilight who answered her.
"Yes, we are. There's, uh... a new friend of ours that you probably want to talk to."
Celestia couldn't be fooled. There was no way to soften to blow, no way to try and put it gently when she asked us who our "new friend" was. She knew, and I could see the color drain from her face and her eyes widened as large as her sister's moon at the mere insinuation of her former apprentice. We let her take her time, watching her stare at the wall behind us as the gears raced through her head until she finally posed a question without breaking her gaze.
"Where is she?" She asked softly. Twilight looked to me with a questioning glance, but I quickly shook my head to indicate I didn't have an answer for her before I replied.
"She was here, but she apparently left a few minutes ago. I have no idea where she could have run off to." Celestia stared for a bit longer, letting my words register again and again before, to the surprise of us all, she turned her gaze to Shining.
"Did you bring Flurry?" she asked simply.
I don't know how Silver had found Flurry Heart. Shining had certainly not told her where she was, and there was an approximately infinite number of rooms on the second floor of the castle, but Celestia had seemed confident that she'd achieved the task nonetheless. She must have been quite the savant with children, I reasoned, but Celestia didn't explain how she knew where her former student would be.
She just did.
I could hear Silver talking before we'd even entered the room. She was asking Flurry questions she knew would go without an answer, praising her for something that none of us could see. Celestia was silent the entire walk upstairs, and Twilight, Shining and I didn't dare say a word where she wouldn't. It was always going to be hard for Celestia to go back to her apprentices, but after hearing Silver's story, I tried to brace myself for any number of scenarios that could occur.
When we walked in, the first thing we saw was Silver's back to us. She was sitting down with Flurry watching her play with some blocks that Shining must have stored in the room. Where she had been talking and playing with Flurry before we came in, she was now entirely unmoving her muscles tensed and her limbs locked to her side.
We said nothing, Silver hadn't turned around and she didn't hear anypony's voice as we approached her: there was no way she could have known that her former mentor was standing behind her.
She just did.
Flurry's questioning noises when she picked up the blocks were the only sound that coursed through the room for a lifetime before anypony spoke: it was Twilight who broke the silence as she took a step forward.
"Do you want us to go?" she asked softly. I supposed that the silence grew tiresome after a while, because she answered almost immediately.
"No," she said simply. She turned around to look Celestia in the eye, and the tears started as soon as she made the contact. They flowed softly at first, but with each passing second, it grew worse and worse. Flurry seemed to notice before it got too bad, though, and she began to call out in distress at the sight of her new friend beginning to cry. That forced a sob-filled laugh from Silver, and she turned her head around slightly to levitate Flurry right into her lap.
"Come here," she said. She rocked her slowly, and the worried visage Flurry displayed a few seconds ago quickly faded to an obliviously upbeat grin before too long.
Silver didn't speak for a little bit, attempting to gather herself, but it was no use. The tears kept on flowing, and there came a point when she abandoned any hope of talking to Celestia with a dry face.
"I... I messed up," she started slowly, still rocking Flurry back and forth. "Really, really badly. I know I must have tortured you every night, and my parents, and my friends but I... I needed help. I needed help, and I was too scared and too prideful and too angry to ask for it." She paused for a second, opting to simply lose herself in Celestia's gaze, but she picked herself up sooner than later.
"I went to the Everfree Forest that night, Celestia, because I knew deep down that I wouldn't come back out. I don't have an apology that would be enough, and you have every right to be furious and you have every right to not forgive me--"
Suddenly, Celestia stepped forward from where she was, taking two or three steps before she kneeled down in front of Silver. Slowly, she wrapped herself around her, including Flurry Heart in the deep embrace. Flurry was merely happy for the affection, giggling wildly as her aunt embraced her, but Silver had an empty look on her face as she let her front legs hang limp to the side for the second time that night. Celestia whispered to her, but it was just loud enough for the rest of us to hear.
"I'm here now," she stated, wrapping around her just tight enough to accommodate the both of them. "I'm here now."
When I had hugged her earlier in Twilight's tower, it'd taken her about a minute to finally return it.
She was quicker this time around.
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Why do I get the feeling that Starlight wasn't Starlight, but the last "student" we are missing?
Oh dear! What will she will have done? And why with the... Hmmm. Quite a few things yet to be revealed!
Time for R and R!
Keep going! ;)
Yes, Twilight is absolutely amazing.
Some point get the Inquisition! 'Starlight' definitely isn't Starlight as we know her.
Somehow, I misread both mentions of Celestia as Cadance and only noticed something off halfway through reading this paragraph.
Well crud. I just had to figure it out right as the scene that lays the evidence on thick began.
Just the mention of Starlight caused me to remember...
...Melody Waltz's previous slip up in mentioning Trixie's tour going as far out as Manehatten. Also Sunset definitely saw something suspect and had her brain fiddled with to cover it up.
Anyway, another great chapter!
9611237
Starlight is time hoping and she has a changeling covering for her I put bits on it
9621263
...well I could certainly use the money so I'll put bits up against that particular theory.
9621366
You can't bet you have insider information. Jk heh
9621366
*puts 15 bits on the table* half right is considered a draw and no grasping at straws
Hm. I'm assuming Starlight is going to be Melody Waltz, the changeling student. Since she cut herself, I would assume changelings have blood that isn't red and doesn't show up as red when they're transformed, so if Sunset saw green blood or whatever then the gig is up right away.
Actually, I'm going to throw out something of a more far-out theory that I doubt is anywhere near correct, but just for fun, since my mind chases off after really weird tangents when there's an obvious set-up being made. Since something had to have revived Celestia's former students, it's possible time travel was involved to some extent. Maybe in the past, the present, or the future, Starlight got to messing with time travel again to save somepony and inadvertently revived all of Celestia's students, including the madponies. In the process, she also did something to herself that's causing her to flicker in and out of time so she shows up briefly and is disoriented, before disappearing again
The plot thickens!
Ah. I see.