Tales of Eden

by BlackRoseRaven

Pariah

Chapter Five: Pariah
~BlackRoseRaven

After a few days of recovery, Twilight was finally allowed to leave Canterlot, and even though it meant leaving Spike behind, she knew she had no choice. Not if she wanted to see her world go back to normal.

But it would never be normal again, she thought, looking back at the wrecked front of Canterlot, covered by nets and supported by hastily-put-together scaffolding. Wreaths and flowers decorated the rubble: last prayers for loved ones who had been killed in the collapse of the castle's exterior.

She had to help put a stop to this. If the only way she could help was by... by being publicly shamed and blamed by Celestia, by risking her life moving this core to a secret location, by helping ensure the New Power Initiative was successful, then so be it.

It hurt, yeah. It hurt every part of her to hear that Celestia had blamed the breach on her, telling the world she had 'forgotten to seal the vault door,' resulting in Lord Black discovering the existence of the core. Ponies were furious with her, ignored her or screamed at her, but she just bore it for now. She would bear all of it, she would gladly be a pariah if it helped her sneak this core in secret back to Ponyville, where she could then take it to a safer, hidden place.

Somewhere Lord Black would never know about. Somewhere she could just hide away, and wait until she was summoned by Celestia, so they could activate the New Power Initiative and put a stop to Lord Black's plans.

She still didn't know precisely how that was going to work, but she didn't care about that. All she cared was that it stopped Lord Black.

Twilight sighed a little as she approached the wagon that had been set out for her, and Flash Sentry gave her an awkward smile: he tried to help, but she almost shoved him away as she began hitching herself up to the carriage: it was simple, small, almost funerary.

It held the core, but if anyone looked inside, they would see Spike, wrapped in bandages, broken and bruised and beaten. Just the way he looked where he was actually hidden away, in the depths of Canterlot, where Celestia had promised to keep him safe.

“Can we talk for a minute?” Flash asked abruptly.

“No.” Twilight murmured, looking at the ground as she pawed slowly at the broken stone, even as she secured the carriage's straps around her bruised body with telekinesis. “There's no point, Flash. You should go back to the castle.”

Flash shook his head, the pegasus biting his lip before he reached up and brushed a hoof through his blue mane, and then he blurted out: “I know something's going on! Princess Celestia would never... you would never-”

“Flash, I screwed up!” Twilight shouted in his face, and the stallion reared back in shock before Twilight snarled, through teary eyes: “I screwed up, and ponies died, and Spike is badly hurt, and no, I don't want to talk about it. Okay?”

Silence.

Flash cleared his throat, then he nodded a little, casting his eyes away as he murmured: “Yeah. Okay. Uh...”

He broke off, then gave a forced, weak smile as he looked up at her, finally saying: “Take care of yourself, okay? And... yeah.”

No magic words. No proper goodbye. No nothing, really. But Twilight felt a little ashamed of herself all the same as she turned her eyes forwards and began pulling the cart.

There were catcalls as she dragged herself through Canterlot. A few thrown objects. She almost wished one of the rocks would hit her, but they were ponies, and they had terrible aim, and they never threw the rocks at her, anyway, but at the carriage. She ignored them, though. She did deserve this, for failing to protect Spike, for not finding the answer in time.

As if the book fair had been so important she could just ignore a call from Princess Celestia.

She deserved to be raked over the coals, like she had been, again and again. She deserved worse for her selfishness, for her childish stupidity.

She left Canterlot, and walked on her own, down an empty road, towards Ponyville. It would be a long walk for a pony who wasn't in the best shape, both because of a life of study and leisure, and because of the injuries she'd taken during the raid on Canterlot. Magic could knit flesh and bone back together, but nerves and muscles took a while to catch up.

But she spent a lot of that time in her head, not noticing the aches or the tediousness of the plodding journey. She went over and over what little she knew, and the few bits of information that 'Mare Imbrium' had shared with her through encrypted letters.

Eldraatic code was very simple, but elegant, Twilight thought: every paragraph started with a series of letters, followed by a string of numbers. The numbers were page, line, and word references, and the letters were references to certain stories in the Eldraatic universe; for example, T M O A 12.3.5 4.5.6 8.10.11 was 'The Myth Of Auralyon,' page twelve line three word five, page four, line five, word six, etcetera.

In short, T M O A 12.3.5 4.5.6 8.10.11 translated to 'Be safe, Twilight.'

The Eldraatic stories, old supernatural stories, were not really Twilight's forte, but once she understood the code it became extremely easy for her to cross-reference books and figure out what she was looking for. Part of the novelty of it was that even with precise numbers, she could never be sure if she was using the correct book: if a message appeared garbled, it was up to her to figure out if she was using the wrong story – many of the Eldraatic myths began with 'The Myth Of' or 'The Story Of' – or if she was a page or line off due to print changes.

But it took her mind off things. And Mare Imbrium was very clever, sometimes piling code into code for particularly important messages: she had once decoded a line to realize it was all numbers, only to realize those numbers were referencing a page and paragraph number of the book she was using to codebreak. Once she'd locked on to that, she'd tracked down the page and paragraph number, and found a riddle waiting for her, one she still hadn't entirely grasped the meaning of.

'For there is no cry like a child's to their mother.'

Was it supposed to mean that Celestia was going to look out for her somehow?

She found that hard to believe. She knew it was all necessary, but some bitter, angry part of her couldn't get over how Princess Celestia had completely distanced herself from her, and made her a pariah. Had it really been necessary to make all of Equestria hate her?

No. She understood. She didn't want to understand, but she understood it was more than a matter of politics. Lord Black couldn't suspect anything.

She shuddered as she shifted a little, feeling a faint pang where his Kirin had electrocuted her: every time she thought about it ,she could feel the shape of that Kirin's hoof as it had pressed into her, as he had channeled electricity through her. And bitterly, she wished that they had just killed her, like they had killed the rest of the ponies they'd come across.

Murderers. Animals, not ponies. But that was all she really knew about them, too: Mare Imbrium had only shared a little bit of information with her about what they had discovered, which wasn't anything any pony with half a brain couldn't figure out anyway. They were highly-trained, highly-dangerous, and extremely heavily-armed: they weren't like any enemy that Equestria had ever faced before.

It was all going to come down to whether the New Power Initiative worked the way it was supposed to or not. Twilight hated that she couldn't do more to help, that she didn't even know what that entailed, that her only job was keeping this hunk of rock safe...

She understood why there was so much secrecy, but part of her questioned why Celestia hadn't at least told her there were four pieces, and two of them had already been sent... outside of Equestria? What did that mean?

Had Celestia sent those other pieces to the Crystal Empire? Even through this haze of confusion, of sadness and anger, that was the only logical place her mind could lock on to. She doubted that Celestia would share a relic with such a magnitude of power with the griffin kingdom, after all...

But maybe she was wrong. Maybe their straits were so dire that Celestia would risk the greed of the griffins in order to build something powerful enough to stop Lord Black.

Twilight realized she was doing it again. Fluttering around and around in her head at the edge of the real question, the source of that sinking feeling worming around in her stomach.

She looked up, at the blameless blue sky, beautiful and untouched by the chaos below. She looked around, at green fields, at the distant homes of farmers and ponies who might not even be fully aware of the scope of what happened in Canterlot; who most certainly weren't aware of the real level of catastrophe looming over their heads.

She asked herself silently if the New Power Initiative wasn't just some kind of extractor, something that would be used to help the people of Equestria, but if it was a weapon.

The cold, logical part of her mind told her that yes. Yes, it had to be, because a shield generator wouldn't be enough to stop Lord Black. Because both Mare Imbrium and Celestia herself had already inferred as much, that they weren't going to just stop Lord Black.

They were going to make him go away.

A pleasant euphemism for murder.

But it wasn't really murder, was it? He had already attacked them first. He had taken dozens of lives, or at least he was the force behind that.

Who knew how many more mercenaries and soldiers were on that ship? How many more weapons of mass destruction, of bombs and guns and killing machines?

Every single one of them was guilty. They were all hardened soldiers, terrorists who had participated in the attack on Canterlot, who had hurt her friends and family, who had turned her whole world into an upside-down nightmare.

They had to be.

They just had to be.

Didn't they?

Even a few hours ago, Twilight would have said 'yes' without any hesitation. But now, given the time to think, to wonder, to question, she was starting to have her doubts. She believed that Lord Black was a Bad Guy and that Equestria had to do something to defend itself, to retaliate against his evil, but the narrative that Princess Celestia had created demanded that she believe Lord Black magically showed up the moment that Princess Celestia had discovered the stone.

A stone she had cut into four pieces, and hidden three parts of, as if she had known this would happen all along.

For the first time in her life, she felt a stirring of mistrust in her belly for her mentor, her heroine, her second mother. And she hated it, and feared it, and wanted to quash it, but her cold, rational mind demanded that she figure out the answer.

Something she had learned growing up was that no matter how people bent or distorted it or lied about it, a fact did not change. The truth, did not change, no matter how much you might want it to be different. You could try and reshape it, you could view it through a different lens in an academic paper, you could talk about how it really meant something else; but the truth itself was both intangible and immobile, and even if you tried to hide the reality of it, someone else would come along and unveil what it really was.

Sure, whether or not people wanted to believe in it or hide from it wasn't something you could control. But Twilight knew that when you tried to remain willfully ignorant of something, when you tried to hide from the truth, it was like a splinter in your mind. You got really sad, or really angry, while it burrowed deeper and deeper into your head, and it made all your claims sound hollow to yourself no matter how much you might strive to convince other people, and you knew you were doing something wrong, or at least you weren't doing anything right.

A large part of her didn't want to accept it, she wanted to justify or ignore it, but she couldn't pretend that something wasn't wrong here. She didn't know what it was, or why it was, she only knew that something was wrong here, and it was because of more than how unsettled it made her to be sworn to secrecy, and to only know bits and pieces of what was going on at any given time.

She thought about asking Mare Imbrium, but was worried that it would get back to Celestia, assuming that Mare Imbrium wasn't the Princess of the Sun. But Twilight was pretty sure she wasn't: her style was too different, her wordplay was much more imaginative. Princess Celestia was always very structured in her metaphors: it wasn't that she didn't have creativity, but rather that she was always predictable or, well, patronizing, for lack of a better word, like she didn't think Twilight could safely figure something out without the answer being right in her face.

Hadn't she proved that she was able to use her mind, though, from all the strange and wonderful adventures she'd been on?

Twilight shrugged off these thoughts: they were lurid and useless, and she needed to focus on... well, if not the here and now, then she needed to try and figure out what was wrong here, why something wasn't feeling right.

She needed an answer to that question; no, she needed more. She needed the truth.

But at the same time, it wasn't like she could just stop what she was doing, what she had already gotten herself into. She had to complete her mission, too: bring this core somewhere safe and keep it safe from Lord Black.

Just because she was worried about what Princess Celestia might not be telling her, she also knew that Lord Black was her enemy, and he couldn't be allowed to take these cores back.

But what did that mean? That just led to more questions, to a harder conundrum for her to grasp: if she had misgivings about Princess Celestia, but she knew Lord Black was her enemy, was she overreacting by wanting to know the truth? Or was it possible, that just maybe... everyone was doing something wrong here?

That was terrifying to consider.

Her structured mind, the way she had been brought up – like just about every other pony in Equestria – demanded that there had to be a good guy, and there had to be a bad guy. Sure, she had learned a lot about shades of gray, but that was different when it came to friends and family... wasn't it?

She lived in a good country of good ponies. That meant they had to be the good guys.

Right?

Twilight shook her head, then looked up in surprise as a voice shouted her name. She saw someone running towards her a moment before a pink blur smashed into her, making her wince before she found herself surrounded and buried by concerned ponies.

Her friends were on every side of her, and she trembled for a moment before she quickly pushed at them, managing to make herself a bit of space. They stopped talking over each other as they all looked at Twilight, watching the way she rubbed her face before she murmured: “Thank you, girls.”

“Are you okay?” Applejack finally asked.

They all looked at her with worry, and Twilight gave a faint smile before she nodded briefly, looking up at the sky. How had it gotten so late already? Oh, her whole body ached; how had she not been aware of that? And was that really Ponyville in the distance now?

She laughed a little, then closed her eyes and shook her head, admitting after a moment with a faint smile: “Not really, I guess. I'd... I'd really like to get home.”

“Let me pull that for you.” Applejack volunteered, and Twilight didn't really have a chance to resist as Rarity immediately started undoing the straps. She tried to protest, but Pinkie Pie smiled as she pulled her aside, and the powder-blue pegasus Rainbow Dash threw a foreleg around her companionably, flicking her rainbow mane out of her face with a smile and a somewhat-awkward, but well-intentioned reassurance.

Good intentions could mean a lot, even if they ended up causing more trouble. Or at least that was what Twilight had always believed. She still believed that, even though that made her wonder... when there was so much more at stake, was having good intentions enough?

Her head was heavy, her responses slow as they walked back to the library, but her friends didn't bother her about that, or hold it against her. They trailed around the carriage, escorting her and her precious cargo home, keeping her safe from both prying and concerned eyes.

Twilight wasn't really paying attention: she was lost in thought and misery again, and so it wasn't until she heard the click of the carriage door that she snapped to consciousness, blurting out something wordless. But the damage was done as Rarity and Pinkie Pie stared in confusion into what wasn't a medical cart, but instead at a large, sealed steel trunk.

The rest of the purple unicorn's friends – sans a confused, still unharnessing Applejack – all stared for a moment before Twilight grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it closed. She breathed hard for a moment, looking back and forth at her friends, glaring at them almost defensively as she desperately tried to think of a way to explain-

“Twilight, is that a coffin?” whispered a very flat, very afraid Pinkie Pie.

Twilight trembled for a moment, and then she slumped and closed her eyes, shaking hard for a moment before she shook her head and whispered: “It's a long story girls. Let's... let's go inside.”

Then and there, without even realizing it, she had made the decision to involve her friends. She went against Mare Imbrium and Princess Celestia's orders, guiding her friends into the library and leaving the carriage outside, the slumbering illusion of Spike still visible through the narrow, curtained windows of the transport.

Twilight's friends didn't have a chance to react: they barely had a chance to all enter the library before Twilight started. Sometimes she whispered, sometimes she shouted, but they heard every word she said, even if they didn't understand all of it, even when Twilight stumbled or her story circled into itself. Sometimes she sat, sometimes she stumbled around, sometimes she cried, but they all knew the best thing they could do for now was just listen. Twilight was wrestling with something none of them understood, not really; with issues larger than all of them. And right now she needed to express that.

They had all heard, of course, that there had been a tragedy at Canterlot. That a foreign power had started a war with Equestria, and Cloudsdale and every other cloud city in Equestria had been put on red alert, because the enemy had a floating fortress of their own and could be anywhere.

They'd heard other rumors too, of course, but they had all put their concern for Twilight first: after all, they all knew her well enough by now that while she wasn't always the neatest with her normal life, she was peerless when it came to her professionalism, and it was impossible to believe she had made such a massive, foolish mistake.

It sounded like she had been through hell, and her friends wanted to do all they could to help her. But as Twilight finally quieted, sitting and snuffling on a pillow as Pinkie Pie gently rubbed her back, they looked at each other and silently asked what they could possibly do.

Fluttershy was the first to speak, asking quietly: “But Spike is... he's alive, then?”

“Yes. As far as I know...” Twilight sounded unsure, and it was hard to blame her for that. Comatose and broken... how alive was that? “I'm sorry about-”

“Not your fault, dear. It's ours, really. We shouldn't have tried to open it without your permission anyway.” Rarity answered with a small smile, as she brushed back her coiffed purple mane in an anxious gesture. “But... do you think there's any way we could see him?”

Twilight was quiet, chewing at her lip nervously, and Rarity said quickly: “Of course, not right now, but... after all this is over. I know you probably weren't even supposed to talk about...”

She broke off, and Rainbow asked after a moment: “Why were you supposed to keep all this secret, though? Like, even from us. Doesn't Princess Celestia trust us?”

Twilight didn't have an answer to that question. Reasons and excuses bubbled up in her throat, but her mouth didn't want to speak them; for once, instead of defending her Princess, Twilight's mind instead paged through all the pressure Celestia had put on her to keep things quiet, and secret... and how little any of that had mattered, because Lord Black had clearly figured everything out anyway.

How many secrets had Celestia tried to keep? How many had she failed to? How many of those things she'd tried to suffocate in the darkness had ended up in the wrong ears and the wrong hooves?

How much of this was Princess Celestia's fault?

Twilight shook that last thought away. That was still too much for her to think. So instead, she shook her head and murmured: “All I know is that Lord Black is dangerous. Princess Celestia wasn't exaggerating about that. I'm... I'm scared of what I've gotten you all involved in now-”

“Well, don't be!” Pinkie Pie smiled brightly, nodding firmly as she hugged Twilight tightly, making the unicorn wince a bit. “Friends help out friends!”

“Yeah! I'm not scared of some coward in a flying machine!” added Rainbow Dash with a huff and a swing of her hoof.

“We all want to do what we can. You just name it, Twilight, we're here to help.” added Applejack, nodding firmly.

Twilight smiled faintly at this, and then she sighed a little as she chewed on her lip before blurting out: “I want to hide that crystal in the ruins of the Castle of the Pony Sisters. Can you help me?”

“Of course!” Pinkie Pie said brightly. “It'll be just like old times! Just like when we met,we'll go on a wild adventure through the Everfree Forest!”

“Fighting Nightmare Moon. Learning all about ourselves and each other along the way.” Rarity added with a small smile.

Fluttershy giggled a little, then she said softly: “But I hope it's not quite that exciting...”

“Hey, don't worry, Flutters. I'll protect you.” Rainbow Dash winked. “After all, we all remember how I saved the day, right?”

“I think Twilight was the one who saved the day, Rainbow.” Applejack said mildly, but she smiled all the same at Rainbow's infectious courage.

Twilight laughed a little herself, but then she quieted, looking down, chewing on her lip for a moment before she said quietly: “But this isn't going to be like that time.”

All eyes turned towards her, that brief warmth bleeding from the room as Twilight's face slowly became solemn, and she said quietly: “Back then... that first time we met, we were all tested. Nightmare Moon didn't fight us. Nightmare Moon... Princess Luna, she wasn't our enemy. She didn't want to hurt us. She was watching us, judging us, but never really tried to stop us. Looking back on things, it all seems so clear now...

“Lord Black isn't like that. Lord Black isn't like... Nightmare Moon, or Discord, or even King Sombra or Queen Chrysalis.” Twilight murmured. “What we've seen, what we've been though... jokes, compared to him.”

“Chrysalis nearly took over Equestria, though!” blurted Rainbow Dash. “I mean, she was sapping the life out of your brother, she even defeated Princess Celestia!”

Twilight remembered, remembered it all very well.

She remembered the horror at it all. She remembered Celestia's face.

She remembered discomfort and revulsion. And something else. Something sly, and watchful, as if Princess Celestia had been silently judging them the whole time. As if even as she was hung upside down in a cocoon, she was somehow still in control.

“And not a single life was taken by the Changelings. And in the end, Chrysalis was blasted to the other side of Equestria.” Twilight replied, before she touched the bandages still on her body, saying quietly: “Lord Black killed twenty-six ponies, and injured hundreds more. Anyone who got in their way, his soldiers just mowed down. And he'll kill us, too. He won't capture us, or stun us, or monologue and reveal his weakness like all the others did. He'll just tell his soldiers to kill us, while he watches from the safety of his floating fortress.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then Rainbow Dash said, very quietly: “I'm... I'm sorry, Twilight. I didn't mean-”

“It's okay. I still appreciate the thought. I just want you to know... what you're getting into if you help me.” Twilight answered, shaking her head briefly. “If he catches us or tracks us somehow, you'll be fighting for your lives. For all our lives.”

“We're stronger together than apart. And there's no way I'm going to just stand idly by and let anypony hurt you, Twilight.” Applejack answered, nodding firmly.

“I want to go with you. I want to help.” Fluttershy said softly, biting her lip. “I... I know it will be dangerous. But I'd feel terrible if anything happened to you. Even if I can't stop it... maybe I can at least be there. And what if I can?”

“Hey, the more hooves helping, the faster we can move that thing, right?” Rainbow added. “It's not like you could carry the thing alone into the ruins, either, after all. You're going to need our help.”

“And we're here to help!” Pinkie Pie added enthusiastically, smiling brightly as she popped up to her hooves beside Twilight. “Let's go!”

“Not yet, Pinkie. Tomorrow. We should leave early in the morning.” Rarity said, before she smiled over at Twilight. “And if you don't mind, I'd like to use a different wagon to move it. Something we can pull in pairs, perhaps. Applejack, do you remember that equipment you brought over for me once, when I had all those heavy pallets of new luxuries for my boutique?”

Applejack nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, me and Big Mac use 'em to move crates of apples and some of the equipment around the farm. That thing in there wouldn't be hard to move at all. I assume you don't want to just leave the carriage sittin' there at the ruins, after all. Or wagon, or whatever we use.”

Twilight shook her head, answering: “I think I have some idea of where I want to hide the carriage. If... if no one minds, I'd like to move the wagon somewhere else. I'm hoping it will throw Lord Black off the trail if he figures out how we moved it.”

She fell quiet, then added in a murmur: “Morning should be okay, but we have to be careful. I didn't take Princess Celestia seriously when she said Lord Black had eyes and ears everywhere, but he really must have spies, or maybe some kind of powerful scrying magic. That means we have to be careful about who we talk to, or what we do. You all need to keep this secret, between us only. Otherwise, it might put more ponies in danger.”

The other five mares traded looks, then they nodded one-by-one. There was silence for a few moments, and then Twilight asked abruptly: “Do you want to stay here for tonight?”

It wasn't clear immediately who she was talking to, until Twilight smiled faintly and rubbed at her face, whispering: “I don't want to be alone tonight. You're all welcome to stay or go, and if everyone has to leave, I understand, I-”

“I'll go grab my stuff and come right back!” Rainbow said firmly, and then she dashed out before anyone could say anything.

Applejack sighed and shook her head, then said: “I'll come back in an hour or two. Gonna go get you a proper wagon.”

“I'll come with you, Applejack. I have a few things I want to pick up, anyway.” Rarity added, and then she said gently to Twilight: “You just worry about yourself, dear. We're all happy to be here.”

“You got that right! We'll have a party! A sleepover party!” Pinkie Pie said brightly, bouncing around Twilight before she blushed and dropped low, whispering: “But a nice quiet one, too, 'cause I know you probably want a quiet night tonight, huh?”

Twilight just gave a small, wan smile, and Pinkie nodded firmly before she said positively: “Don't you worry, though, Twilight! We can handle anything together, so long as we don't break apart!”

With that, the pink mare bounced out, ushering her other friends out in front of her, leaving Twilight to reflect silently on Pinkie's parting words, and the wisdom hidden in them.

Comments

[Yami Vizzini]

Man, Celestia doesn’t do anything by halves. (Except when it comes to locking her secret transports, apparently.)

Bringing in the other Manes seems to have even odds of being the right thing to do to change the course of things, or to make things even worse.

[BleuBlooms]

How many secrets had Celestia tried to keep? How many had she failed to? How many of those things she'd tried to suffocate in the darkness had ended up in the wrong ears and the wrong hooves?

Dude this great. Like I really had to sort derp at the beggining but...it really makes all this sweeter. Have her question. Great job!