Dear Faithful Student

by Muramasa

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:
CAPITOL
STARLIGHT GLIMMER

---

I felt myself cough as I lay on the ground, and I could just barely see the blood as it hit the floor. My ears were ringing from impact, but even so, I could make out the calm hoofsteps that grew louder and louder as they closed in on me.

"And here I thought you would challenge me, now that you've had a fair shot," came a high-pitched, feminine voice. "You're nothing, Starlight Glimmer. You've failed at everything you've ever done." Slowly, I looked to meet her, and I spit in the stoic face that loomed below me. It didn't flinch.

"You're wrong, Melody," I told her feebly. "You're wrong. You're wrong." I found myself believing it less and less the more I repeated it, and for the first time, Melody Waltz looked down upon me with the slightest hint of a grin.

"No, I'm not," she started. "But that's not to worry, Starlight. Because I'm going to make sure you never fail again."

She charged up a bolt of magic, and I opened my mouth in terror as she stared into my eyes with a glare black as coal.

---

I woke up screaming.

It wasn't the first time I had done so in my life, and I was certain it would not be the last. Panting heavily, I rolled over sluggishly to look at the time on the wall. It was dark, but I could make it out.

4:30.

I reached for the glass of water at my bedside with my magic, but when I brought it to my lips, not a single drop touched them. Sighing, I slammed it back down onto the table and reached out for the light switch, finding it and flicking it on. The ensuing flash of light was more than blinding, and it took a thousand blinks before I could finally adjust to the light as I sat up in bed.

I don't know why I expected anything to be different, but the room was as I had left it, of course: The pleasantly purple walls were still pleasantly purple, the lamps and trinkets that adorned my drawer on the far side of the room hadn't moved an inch, and the mirror with a dozen of my favorite pictures scattered about it -- a gift Twilight had declared my "friendship wall" -- hung neatly above it undisturbed.

With a yawn, I clambered out of my bed and quietly opened the door, making sure to turn the light off as I did so. The trip to the kitchen from my bedroom wasn't that bad, thankfully, and my weary body knew it could look forward to getting back to sleep sooner than later.

I made sure to be as quiet as I could, and before I knew it, I had lightly stepped into the kitchen with my water glass in tow. Slowly, I reached into the fridge and grabbed the pitcher, pouring its contents into my cup and letting the water flow until I could tell it was only just above the halfway mark. I examined it once more and, when I was satisfied, I placed the pitcher back in the refrigerator and made my way back toward my bedroom, making sure to mind the water in my glass and carefully levitate it beside me.

I was halfway back down the hallway when I looked to my left.

Trixie's door was open.

It was only just ajar, but for the Great and Powerful Beatrice Lulamoon, it was a mile too much. Trixie was a very heavy sleeper, and she happened to sleep-talk a considerable amount while she was in slumber. It embarrassed her significantly, and she had always demanded that she sleep behind a firmly closed door "for the safety of herself and others". So to see it even a tinge open was highly unusual, and I found myself opening the door the rest of the way and peeking my head into her room.

"Trix?" I called out. There wasn't an answer from the darkness, and so I felt my hoof around the right side of the door and flipped a switch to turn the lights on.

Trixie Lulamoon was not in her bed, but everything in the room was spic and span. Her bed had been made neatly, and everything on the dressers and drawers in her room was arranged tidily as could be. Once I took a closer look at the bed, though, I saw a single piece of paper resting symmetrically on the top of it, and I rushed over to read what it said.

I had thought perhaps that Trixie had gone out and left a note, but once I read the very few words in pristine, perfect handwriting, I could feel my stomach drop to the floor.

Canterlot Castle. Tick tock.

- MW

I looked wildly around the room as my eyes shot wide open, and when I looked towards the floor, I could see it almost immediately. There were little drops of green littered by her bedside, made from a material I had come to know far too well over the past month.

No. This isn't possible.

A second ago, my body was begging me to go back to bed. In an instant, I felt a tsunami of adrenaline crash into me and swallow me, and a thousand electric volts up my spine sent me into overdrive.

I don't remember what happened to the glass I'd been carrying, but I was sure it probably exploded into a thousand pieces as I sprinted out the door. The first place I wanted to go wasn't far away, and before I knew it, I'd nearly kicked down the door that led to Cobalt and Violet's room and scrambled for the light switch.

And I was greeted with the same thing.

A cleaned-up room and the very same note, resting gently on the bed. Melody Waltz had broken into this castle and kidnapped all of my friends, all while I slept not-so-soundly in my room. She knew I was here, avoided me, and left a note in every room she had entered like some sort of sick calling card.

I was being toyed with.

I couldn't wait an hour on the train to Canterlot. No, the anger within me would erupt long before then, and when it did, I wanted a certain changeling to bear witness to it.

In other words, I had to teleport to Canterlot. This would normally have been an impossible task: Teleporting someplace an hour away was more than fatal for even mages of the highest pedigree, and even zapping somewhere that took fifteen minutes to get to came with an extraordinary risk of magical fatigue. Somehow, I had to figure out a way to do it in about five or so minutes.

I found myself on auto-pilot as I started running down the hall. If there was any place that could have something to help, it would probably be Cobalt's lab, and I could only hope that he had been in bed with Violet and not working on something when Melody had taken him. It was a ways away from my room, but my hurried pace saw me bursting through the door in no time.

It was subtle enough, but there was disarray. Things that I knew had been on his workbench were on the floor, and my eye caught a single blast mark from a magical discharge across the left wall that disappeared behind a cabinet. Cobalt had been in here, it seemed, but fortunately for me (and unfortunately for him), it looked as if Melody had captured him with very little resistance.

It only took a few seconds for me to realize what was wrong with my line of reasoning.

For the most part, I had zero idea what most of the things in this room did. There were a ton of gears and bolts and gizmos I could not identify, and most of them didn't look like they had an ounce of magic capacity within them. The only thing I did recognize was the drone Cobalt had rebuilt, the goggles that were paired with it sitting nicely next to it on the table and seemingly untouched from the scuffle that had occurred. I almost wanted to destroy it -- I was still mad at it from our sparring earlier in the day -- but just as I was about to walk out of the lab to try and find something else, I stopped dead in my tracks.

The drone!

I whipped around and stared at it, burning its image into my mind. The drone was charmed, just like Cobalt's prosthetic leg was. It had a loop of magical energy inside of it that could form themselves into a certain allotment of combat spells to make the use of combat magic effortless. I didn't need it for combat magic, though: I only needed the energy that was currently inside of it. Rushing over, I grabbed the glasses with my magic and placed them snuggly on my eyes.

Now to figure out how to turn this thing on...

Suddenly, the drone roared to life, and I probably would have jumped a thousand feet in the air if the ceiling would have let me. I didn't have time to be embarrassed, though, and my shock quickly turned to wonder as the drone floated seamlessly at my command. Cobalt had never told me what he saw through the glasses, and I was surprised to see that the innards of the drone were entirely visible through the lens. I didn't know what anything inside of it was, but I could see the magical energy loop in the color of my aura flow freely around the machine, and I felt a smile spread slowly as I moved the drone around me.

"So this is what that charm feels like..." I muttered aloud. I turned to the wall to cast a simple magical bolt, and it came firing from the drone at lightning speed, colliding and leaving a black scorch mark across the wall at my mere thought of the action. I didn't expect to feel the energy, but it was as if I were lifting a paperweight with a levitation spell.

Under better circumstances, I could have played around with it for hours, but I quickly closed my eyes and reached out to the drone with my magic. I could feel the magical pool inside of it (thankfully, we were already linked with the goggles), and I envisioned the drawbridge in front of Canterlot Castle as vividly as I could picture it in my mind.

"All or nothing," I said to myself, and with a grit in my teeth, I let the spell fly.

---

I wished the stars I was seeing the moment I arrived were the ones in the night sky, but I wasn't so fortunate.

I felt as if I'd taken a massive blow to the head where there was none, and my legs gave out beneath me the moment I touched the bridge. For all I knew, I could have been anywhere, because my vision was a slew of lights for what seemed like an age. I wasn't sure how long I'd laid there, simple resigning myself to the overwhelming sickness of the magical fatigue.

But, like all things, it slowly passed. One by one, I regained the feeling in my limbs, and the stars that fluttered about my eyes began to fade to little nothings. The beautiful green and the water below that surrounded the entrance to Canterlot Castle slowly seeped into my vision, and I could feel my own breathing start to slow to a reasonable rate.

With a groan, I carefully staggered to my feet. This certainly was just where I'd envisioned it, and there was a single thought running wild in my mind.

I'm alive.

I had teleported an hour away to Canterlot -- the very edge of Canterlot and up a mountainside, at that -- and I was no worse for wear (permanently).

The first thing I noticed was the snow. The weather pegasi here must have officially begun Hearth's Warming's snow season tonight, but the snow wasn't falling gently. There was a biting wind that howled around me as well, and it swept my mane and tail as the snow flurried around me. The cold was far from pleasant, but the pounding headache I currently had from teleporting here was doing a bang-up job of distracting me from it.

The second thing I noticed was a medium-sized wooden cart near the front door. The back of it was open, but I knew there was nothing in it because I knew what it had been used for. I had absolutely no idea how Melody managed to round up so many ponies and bring them to Canterlot in such a ridiculously short amount of time, because there was no way in Tartarus she could have teleported here unless Cobalt had made a second copy of his drone last night for kicks.

My eyes widened at the thought of the drone as I whipped around to look for it, and I quickly found it just a few paces behind me on the bridge.

To my shock, the goggles showed that the drone was working exactly how it was before. The magic I'd siphoned from it hadn't done a thing to it, and when I thought to summon it to my side, it rose from the bridge and floated toward me with a gentle hum. I found myself smiling at the drone for the second time in the last few minutes, but this time, it was of sheer disbelief.

I had expected Cobalt's drone to be destroyed. And now I was at the gates of Canterlot Castle with a highly advanced weapon.

I spotted a bush off to the side of the gate next to where the cart had been parked and trotted over to it, resting the drone gently within the shrub. I placed the goggles with them, and I made sure to take in the area I had put them in and burn it into my mind the best I could.

"Stay sharp," I told it, and with a sigh, I strolled over to the castle gates.

There were no guards, but I wasn't expecting any. I grabbed the handles of the massive double doors and pulled, and they opened slowly to reveal the castle's glamourous insides I'd seen just three days ago. The castle was dark, strangely enough, but the light of the moon did a more than adequate job of lighting the way.

When I walked in, the gates closing behind me echoed through the main hall. Once it died down, the only thing I could hear were my own hoofsteps across the tile and the muffled whistling of the wind outside. If I were anypony else, I would have immediately assumed the castle was empty, but I knew far better than that.

Somehow, I knew where she was. I'd been dreaming about this encounter for days, and I knew the changeling I so desired to see again was only a few twists and turns away. Celestia and Luna's seats were not far from the entrance -- Celestia wouldn't want the nobles walking too far to Day Court -- and so before I knew it, I turned a corner into the vast and brilliant throne room of Canterlot Castle.

And it had certainly changed since I last saw it.

Stuck to the pillars on the left and right walls were cocoons exactly like the one I had been held in. They were somewhat transparent, but I could see through each and every one perfectly clear. Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were attached to the pillars on the left side, while Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Trixie were attached to the ones on the right. Sunset, Twilight, Violet, Cobalt, and Silver were entrapped as well, but they were all arranged on the pedestal that held the two thrones. Luna was here, too, but she was being suspended from the ceiling above the thrones much like I had been suspended on the ceiling of the cabin in the Everfree Forest.

On Celestia's throne was herself, but she wasn't wrapped in her cocoon like the others were. Melody had left her eyes unshielded, so I could perfectly see the horror in them as they turned to me. There was a hint of relief in there somewhere, too, but the Princess of the Sun seemed more scared for my well-being than relieved for hers.

On Luna's throne sat Melody Waltz.

She had donned Celestia's crown, and she wore it snuggly as she sat ruggedly. She was just as I had remembered her, her long and flowing pink mane and tail and her light blue coat muted by the darkness. Her eyes were a different story, as they glowed a sickly dim green and pierced through the gloom as she stared through me on my arrival.

"You're very early. I wasn't expecting you for another two or three hours."

That high pitched voice that was smooth as a stone wormed its way into my ears, and I continued to walk toward her as she eyed me down.

"Hello, Cyrilla," I told her as I walked over to her. I was expecting a reaction, and I got it: Her eyes widened greatly for only a second, but the expression faded as quickly as it came.

"You've spoken to Chrysalis," she noted. "I've been reading as many documents and newspapers as I can. She's a disgrace. A once-great ruler reduced to exile at the hands of reformers." Once I got right to the start of the stairs, I stopped, and I felt a single eyebrow raise as I replied.

"And here you are, doing her bidding," I told her. "I know you love Celestia, Melody, and I know you hate Chrysalis. She strangled you in her own throne room. How could you serve someone like that?" I had expected a reaction from her, but the only thing I got was a shrug as she sat stoically.

"I was going to do it myself in my quarters the next night. She actually did me a favor, you know. I needed to die for the rune to take effect."

I wanted nothing more than to throw Melody off of the throne she was sitting on, but unfortunately, the mention of the rune stopped me right in my tracks. She knew, it too, and I saw the vaguest hint of smile flutter across her visage as she looked down upon me.

"Questions," she cooed. "You have more than one, I presume." I wasn't going to humor her, but I did need answers, and I found that grit in my teeth baring down harder than it could stand as I began.

"You did this," I said, motioning to the apprentices at her hooves. "All of this. How did you do this? How did you figure out the combination rune?" She raised an eyebrow at me.

"So you've discovered that, too. Zephyr was gifted in many respects, of course, but he was blinded by his own hubris. He believed that the key to summoning somepony from the dead involved the collection of extremely powerful artifacts, which is why he collected Sombra's horn at the Crystal Empire and the Alicorn Amulet. He made the same mistake back then, too, and that's why his attempts to revive his beloved Chrysanthemum resulted in an empty, voided husk.

"I'd found his writings in Celestia's study one day while I was snooping around. She always keeps it in the same place, which is why I was able to find it yet again when I disguised myself as you. I must admit, I was rather sloppy for my own pedigree, and that cut I suffered was nothing short of sheer bad luck, but that's beyond the point: I figured it out all those years ago, Starlight. You didn't need dark magic artifacts. You needed... a being. Flesh. Blood. Hair and bone. The key to getting the rune to revive somepony was to give it pieces of them, and it would assemble the rest."

"And how did you get everypony here so fast?" I asked her, motioning with my hoof to the pillars. "It's been just hours, and I know you pulled them here with a wagon." To my surprise, Melody simply shrugged.

"I had Celestia and Luna captured for a while, all thanks to you. In quite the twist of fate, the one day you broke out of your captivity in the Everfree was the day I went to check up on you, so I teleported to the edge of town to appear as Zephyr. You did exactly what I wanted you to do by warning everypony, so you all graciously moved out of Canterlot Castle and back to Ponyville, leaving the princesses free. I actually took Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash the very day you all arrived back. As it turns out, if you have a wagon and look exactly like the local mailpony, nopony gives a damn what you're carrying. I took the rest of my audience tonight while you were sleeping, and I only just got here about a half an hour or so. I must say, you made excellent time. Did you teleport somehow?"

"But why?" I interjected, ignoring her own questions. "What is this all for, Melody? Chrysalis told me... she told me that you were instructed to 'break' Celestia. How does this do that?" Melody simply nodded at the sicking declaration, and I felt a fire burn deep as she continued.

"I was given an order, but the manner and time of which it was completed was never specified. Zephyr wrote in his journal that he wished to be magically preserved in death, and Celestia granted his wish, which allowed this whole plan to kick into motion. He was buried in the Canterlot Gardens in an unmarked grave, and I took locks of his hair after I dug him up and put him back.

"Afterward, I filled a vial with my own blood and put the rune at a place I knew was brimming with dark magic: The Castle of the Two Sisters, right on Luna's ruined throne. Of course, for the rune to bring back the dead with something in common, I had to die, and so I had planned to kill myself once I had everything in order. As it turned out, I didn't need to."

"You still have answered my question," I growled. "What's your game, Melody? Why did you do this?"

"Because Celestia cared more about me than any other pony a thousand worlds over," she started, looking over the Celestia. Her eyes were wide and empty, and she darted back and forth between us in a panic. "And I knew how much she had cared about Violet, and about Zephyr, and about Cobalt. And so, no matter how long it took for the rune to work, I was going to bring every apprentice she had ever loved back from the dead. I was going to let joy flood her heart at their return... "

Suddenly, her horn ignited, and the cocoons that held Celestia's apprentices floated gently into the air. Slowly, they rose to where Luna was, and they suddenly attached to the ceiling around her in single file order. They were all squirming in a hopeless attempt to free themselves -- I could practically hear Sunset and Silver's profane shouting -- but it was no use, and they simply hung suspended around the Princess of the Night. Melody stood up from her throne and, with a single motion, tossed the crown upon her head behind her into the wall. The clang echoed piercingly throughout the throne room, and she let it ring until it perished before she finished.

"...And I was going to strip them away from her, right before her very eyes. One by one. And once the last of her beloved students and the new memories she had made with them faded with the old ones, she would lose all she's ever had."

That was when it broke. That was when the calm, collected, and unimpassioned resolve of Melody Waltz flickered if only for a moment, and the shake in her voice and the twitch in her eyes showed me who she really was. She was desperately torn between the duty of Cyrilla and the love Melody Waltz had for Celestia, and now that she was inches away from carrying out a plan that had taken over one hundred years to complete, the conflict within her was a raging storm of locusts behind a curtain hanging by a thread.

Melody Waltz was dangerous, but there was one more thing my mind just couldn't let go.

"Why did you not capture me?" Melody looked to where the Elements were being held on the pillars of the throne room, glancing at them as if to make sure their cocoons were withstanding their everlasting escape attempts.

"The reason for the Elements was simple. I couldn't have even the slightest risk of them banding together. But you? The mare who once believed so much in equality bent to the will of one who towers over others? You interest me, Starlight Glimmer, and once I kill you in a few minutes, your mentor will get to feel just a taste of what Celestia will feel by sunrise."

I was done talking. Melody had made a grievous mistake of letting me live to be her warm-up and to be a twisted example for what was to come, and I had absolutely every intention of proving it. She began to climb down the stairs, and I took the steps back to accommodate her. Once we were done, we both stood in the center of the throne room only mere paces apart.

"You've been doing your reading, Melody," I spat, no longer pretending to be civil. "But there's one thing you still don't know about me."

"Oh?" she asked, her horn firing alight with a sickly green glow. "And what would that be, Starlight?" I felt a sly grin draw itself on my face.

"For somepony who used to believe so much in equality..."

I closed my eyes and envisioned that shrub beside the gate. I remembered exactly where the drone and goggles were, and as my horn ignited as well, I felt their presence as I fired off a teleportation spell.

The goggles popped into existence firmly on my face. The drone landed beside me in the air with a wobble, but I had already thought to power it up as it appeared out of thin air. It came alive with a hum, and I could feel our shared energy coursing through me as I looked to the drone and saw the gears and wires do its work.

"...I don't like fighting fair."

Comments

[Hooper_Canson]

Kick her ass Glimmy

[Arzoo]

The cast all getting captured offscreen is incredibly lame.

[ZanyZapper]

9982466
Eh, reading about Melody confronting and capturing 10 or so ponies over and over sounds way worse. That kind of thing makes me start yelling "ok I get it, get on with it!" I'm perfectly happy with how it's played out.

[Yutah123]

Well, all the most important ponies in Equestria captured again, just like that. Worse, in fact. They're prisoners in their own capital.

I love ponies and their optimism, but they really need better security measures.