A Contract to Reshape The Future

by Delmon

3 Learning Primer

Confusion sweeps through my mind. I pat myself, feeling the clothing on my once again human body. Moist grass wets the soles of my feet, soft dirt pressing against every step as I tentatively move around the plateau we stand atop. The white coated unicorn silently watches me as I move to look around at the scenery around the both of us. A stiff breeze causing her pink mane and tail to sway softly in the air. The sun hangs above our heads like a watchful guardian in the rose-tinted sky.

Several isolated patches of wild flowers waver in the wind passing by in my eyesight. More level grassland lies around us that end in a thicket of trees that surround the clearing we are in. I look up in the distance to see a familiar mountain lacking a city on the side of it. Instead, there is an enormous foundation of constructed stone with enough scaffolding dotting the outside of it to make me wonder how there are still copses of trees around the base of the mountain itself. A waterfall runs down beside the construction, which I assume is the source of the running water that flows down and past us to my right.

Hooves clop on the ground behind me as she moves to my side. “It is eerie how close to reality it is, is it not?” She muses to me, following my own gaze with her eyes. The mare’s voice is much less mature than the one than the one I know, but I recognize it all the same.

“Celestia?” I ask, my words a whisper. A hand raises to my forehead to rub at the phantom sensation of a horn lingering on my skull causing the tingling sensation lingering to fade away.

She nods to me, “Hello Vincent,” Then tilts her head at me, “I believe that is your name; it was the one I was given when he came to speak about you.”

“Then this isn’t an elaborate fever dream, is it?” I ask aloud, my eyes still taking in the landscape around us. It was breathtaking, the kind of view that I could only ever dream of living since I lived primarily in the city.

Celestia shakes her head, “I’m afraid not, and no, we are not dead. Your violation of my sister’s request to avoid using my magic appears to not have killed us.” she preemptively answers, interrupting me as I opened my mouth to ask the very question. It seems she expected that one.

“Sorry about that,” I mumble sheepishly back.

She shakes her head like you would expect a mother to express a hint of disapproval of their child, “You could not have known the risk you were taking without it being told to you. I don’t blame you. But, in the future please seek my sister's council if we are unable to communicate. Making a mistake is fine, but doing it in a safe and controlled environment, if possible, is ideal. ”

Ignoring the sudden bout of shame I am experiencing, I turn to face her with a level gaze though I had to angle my head downward to meet her eyes, “Well, since you just spoke to our local inter-dimensional entity, and pardon my language in front of royalty, but could you tell me what the fuck is going on?”

She winces at my use of the vulgar language, “I understand your frustration and make no mistake,” For a small moment Celestia drops that controlled mask, anger leaking into her voice, “If I had a better option, it preferably would not have involved a reckless disregard for the lives of others.”

My thoughts turn over what I could remember from what the nutjob wizard told me before he sent me off on a cosmic slingshot into an alicorn’s body. I think I remember him mentioning a deal with another ‘friend’. That would be Celestia then, it has to be. That conclusion only makes me wonder what the hell happened to cause her to take a deal with him. Curiouser and curiouser. While I am thinking about it I notice she appears to wait to give me time to think to myself. Patiently sitting in silence until I motion with a hand for her to continue.

Celestia nods again, “Returning to your question, he did not communicate with me with anymore information beyond than what he wished to. I think it might have been more than what you did receive. He spoke of you, saying that you managed to survive your soul’s placement in my body, much to his surprise. In addition to that, he told me that he would be very busy for the coming week. With what, I do not know.”

It is nice to know he had so little faith in me. He probably would have continued on hucking poor fuckers into Equestria if it didn’t work. I guess it is good to know I beat the odds.

“Who is this guy?” I ask her, “He seems like he does not care one way or another how something is accomplished, only that it is done.”

She hums at my question, taking her own time to think, “He would be a Lord of Hell, a very disgruntled one at that. Enough to turn against his former liege and undo all of the success his kind had made in breaching Equis. Truthfully I do not like him. Yet, I cannot deny that he has prevented thousands of corpses that were made when his sovereign betrayed the agreement we settled on when his kind made entry into the realm proper. Not to mention the severe destruction of the land that their forces marched through.”

My mind blanks, trying to process the information, “Hell, You mean to tell me that actual demons ripped up Equestria before this guy just up and undoes it all, a demon himself?”

“That, well, that would be a decent description of what happened. A generalization, but yes that is a fair summary.” She concedes to me.

“Why? There has to be some kind of cavat. A price.” I ask, It is the most prominent question in my head and most simple.

“Perhaps he has his own scheme in his land that this allows him to employ. It hardly helps us right now if that is the case. The price of the contract was your soul, did he at least inform you about that?”

No wonder he made that damn joke about wanting my soul, what an ass, “Yeah, I suppose he did,” I reply, crossing my arms with a frown.

That only serves to make her snort in irritation, “I told him that he should be clear about the circumstances with any creature he ropes into this.”

Celestia presses a hoof to her temple to soothe the growing headache I assume she's having, “Listen, let us just take a break from trying to decipher the unknown in our equation at the moment. If you or I figure anything out or learn something else we will return to it. Larius is a deal maker, he made a deal with me. I dislike him. You dislike him more than likely as well. Shall we move on?”

“That sounds fine to me, I guess,” I mumble back. Who knows how much time we have to talk like this. I’d rather learn something else rather than tripping over ourselves in speculation.

She closes her eyes in response then takes a deep breath. After a short while, she sits on her haunches and looks up to me, expecting me to do the same. Not seeing a reason why I would not, I take a seat next to Celestia. The grass is remarkably cushioning, it makes me wonder whether grass is like this in Equestria normally. Soon enough the crisp air and the relaxing warmth of the sun saps away even my own impending migraine over the demon that caused it. It is nice.

We both sit on the grass brooding. My thoughts turn to my younger brother for the first time since being sent to Equestria: Trevor, he's a local cop at the police department back in Fieldview. He would always joke if he had a dollar for every time the bullets from his service weapon bounced off the people he was trying to arrest, he would have retired by now. Back then, it made me laugh when he first said that to me.

Ever since I got into the courier business three years ago, the seriousness of his words have rung true far more with me. People who can rip light poles out of the street and swing them like they were playing a pleasant afternoon ball game are far more common than I thought. More than half the people I ran packages for had some sort of power, an ability that put them above the normal person. Being the older brother, the idea that I should always have my sibling’s back seemed right to me. But, how does a normal man stop a person who can casually generate electricity from their palms? The answer comes quickly to me. Why, another person who can shoot lasers from their eyes and generate shields in front of them out of hardened, physical light, of course.

Government black projects to induce manifestations of powers were speculated non-stop across the internet now. It was hard to find a forum or imageboard that didn’t have a general thread for posting about it.

It causes my lips to turn upward before my facial muscles force them into a neutral line. The simple ridiculousness of the idea doesn’t escape me. People with powers are becoming rapidly more common on a scale that the nation’s governments cannot keep up with. I just hope Trevor is still doing his thing and not getting into anything he can’t deal with.

Then, what I have been avoiding as hard as I possibly can this whole time leaps in front my train of thought; do I go back? And if I could go back, where would I even start to figure that out? I don’t know the first thing about magic. My only interaction thus far with my new found mystical powers being a sudden, uncontrollable telekinetic storm that had enough force behind it to crack marble. I can only imagine what happened after I passed out.

Celestia turns her gaze to me and I pretend not to notice. Thoughts of home still linger in my mind. Her eyes trace my face. Regret begins to bleed into her regal mask. She stifles it with a sharp exhale that I allow to catch my attention.

“This is what Canterlot used to look like two years after Luna’s banishment,” she says to me, a solemn cadence tinting her voice. Celestia stands to her hooves and trots ahead, “Wasting time like this won’t help you or myself.”

The world around us begins to morph, causing me to leap to my feet. She briefly looks back at me. I stare bewildered at the environment around us as it begins to mix together like watercolor art. I look back to the pink-haired mare, scared to take a step towards her. She nods reassuringly at me and motions her head forward before continuing in the direction she was walking in. I take slow strides to follow her, carefully stepping in the liquid below.

“I was so stricken by my guilt and foul mood that I could not bear being in the Everfree any longer, so I made a decree to build another capital city away from the old one. It was a necessary relocation even considering my feelings. With the elements being inactive, they no longer supplied the Tree of Harmony the power necessary to keep the Everfree from running wild around the city itself.”

As she speaks, hardened, smoothed stone takes shape under my naked feet. A tasteful blue colored strip of carpet ripples over the stone in front of us as we move forward in the forming hallway. Broken statues of ponies in armor flank our sides. Dimly burning torches highlight our way ahead; their soft illumination barely enough to cast light around them. I notice the occasional random hole in the ceiling blown open in the direction of the night sky which does a better job of providing light to see with than the torches.

We walk on down this new passageway, Celestia leads ahead of me. Her current expression is as guarded and unreadable as I would come to expect someone who has been alive for centuries.

The hallway we walk through ends at an archway that leads to a large hall. Inside, are two large tapestries hung in the middle of the area. A depiction on the golden and yellow cloth of one is of the sun. The other a darker and blue hued cloth is of the moon. Two sets of stairs ascend opposite of each beyond the tapestries at the end of the hall. I continue to closely trail behind Celestia, my unease about the instability of the world around us shelved for the moment.

“Why are we here Celestia?” I ask, curiosity bubbling in my voice.

She thinks to herself a moment, pausing in her gait, “I feel that you should better know me as a pony, and, I admit, I am also bringing you here to impart a lesson on you.”

A lesson, I guess I should have expected that. Even if things might be different like the demon said, Celestia’s tendency to tutor life lessons thankfully appear to be intrinsic to her as a character.

She smiles at me, “If you would care to learn it that is. You are not my student, but I would be humbled if you accept. I would rather not force you to do anything you did not want to. I owe you that much.”

“Of course, I would be glad too,” I say to her, sincerity in my words, “I assume that when this, whatever this is, ends, that I will be acting as you again?”

“Yes, you will be,” She replies, a frown settling her lips. Celestia turns away then walks up to the two stairways upward, hooves clicking on the uncarpeted stone beneath her.

“It would be prudent for me to teach you all that I can in our future meetings. Your time on Equestria will most likely not be a short one Vincent,” She calls back to me, treading steps upward, “There will be much to cover if you would ever have a hope in Tartarus to help my little sister keep Equestria running smoothly.”

With her proceeding forward, I take it as my cue to follow alongside her. We ascend the stairway to the right together. Arriving at the second floor, portions of the moon are visible from the shattered windows we pass; a crater formation of a pony distinctly visible on its surface. I notice her eyes glance to it then return their attention to the large double doors that lay ahead. Another sun and moon is embossed on the white painted wood. Two alicorns are on reared up on their back hooves each facing one another with their horns surrounded in a respective golden and blue hued glow.

Her aura shimmers around the surface of the wood as she grips the two large doors and pushes them open to reveal a throne room, and it certainly has seen better days. Both the large throne chairs appear as if something sheared large chunks of the stone work that they were made from. The four mosaic windows flanking us left and on the smoothed stone walls are half destroyed; warm yellows and blues of the stained glass still remained on the pieces still affixed to the frames. A red carpet completely covers the floor in front of the risen steps that lead to each solar and lunar themed seat; what I think is supposed to be a crescent moon and sun together within a circle in a golden etched pattern lies in the center of the fabric.

It’s hard for me to be sure because the etching of the sun is burnt right out to the masonry below it; my eyes narrow as my imagination fills in the details of what happened. It wasn’t hard to jump to who might have done that.

I look up to see warped metal struts that once supported a glass ceiling above the room. The metal bends in an arc inward that causes me to think that something crashed through it. Sure enough, my eyes trace a trajectory that lines up from the broken ceiling into a large rend in the carpeted floor that ends in a crumbled wall. An assortment of rubble is spread around haphazardly in the room to fully set the picture perfect ideal for a destroyed room.

Celestia slowly moves into the throneroom, her eyes fixed on the remaining crescent moon on the carpet. I stand to the side, watching as she traces an outline around the moon with a hoof in thought.

“This shall be your first lesson,” she murmurs softly to me, “My sister and I are not infallible.”

She turns her sight firmly to me, her magenta orbs holding my own eyes in attention, “Though, perhaps you have already gotten a crash course in that lesson with the knowledge that I signed a pact with a demon of all things.”

I slowly nod, not sure what to say to that.

“Being alicorns, we are immensely powerful beings. The best of all three tribes of ponies together in one. A living representation of the unification of ponykind to face threats without and within. I do not know if we can die of old age, but we are effectively ageless, not immortal in the truest sense.” She tells me, her attention turning to the broken thrones that rest atop of the raised steps in front of us.

“Despite our power, make no mistake, we can die. Still, It will be a challenge for whomever that wishes to attempt to end your life. Do not let your inhabitation of my body cause you to be overconfident.”

“I just barely figured out how to walk without looking down Celestia. I don’t think I’m that confident.”

She chuckles, her laughter measured in length, “Just a gentle reminder from my mistakes that I made. Being young is a crippling disability.”

I raise an eyebrow at her joke, a half-smile on my lips, “Alright, I get it. Is there anything else about Alicorns I need to know?”

“Yes, in fact, there is,” She responds, “Your current appearance is that of when I was a thousand years younger.”

“Blueblood mentioned that,” I say to myself, “That must have shocked your sister when she saw me.”

She rolls her eyes and turns back to me, “It did. With that, and your uncontrolled release of magic, you are going to be under a very close eye from her. Regardless, we’ll worry about that at a later date. The point I was going to raise is that the current size of our magic core can alter our physique.”

Remembering what Luna said earlier, “So, right now we are running at half your usual juice then?”

“That is one way to put it, but you are right,” She says, A layer of amusement in her voice, “Luna was incorrect when examining us. She made the assumption that we released half of our magic core in some way and that this is a temporary state. She is wrong.”

“We are weakened by the breaking of our attunement to the sun, and until we remake our connection we shall remain this way.”

“So, do you want me to attempt to reconnect to the sun then?” I ask, trying to follow her train of thought.

“Absolutely not,” she deadpans, throwing me for a loop. Her jaw sets sternly and she straightens her posture. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was giving me an order.

“Uh, why would we not want to do that as soon as possible?” I say back.

“I am worried about the integrity of your soul Vincent,” She tells me, the bluntness behind her words unmistakable, “The tremors you were experiencing are not caused by magic core exhaustion. That is your soul essence straining to mingle with mine. My fear is that when we reconnect, the amount of magic source that will flood our body will cause your soul to break.”

Oh great. Wonderful. I’ve had enough bad news for a lifetime now. The sun just might barbeque my soul if I try to connect to it. I’m not that surprised. Being human doesn’t afford me the natural ability to withstand direct connections to celestial entities very well; I would hazard a guess.

“Jesus christ, Celestia!” I throw my hands up, “Keep on giving me more shit to worry about why don’t you!”

Shifting her mane side of her neck to the other, she flattens her ears, “Sorry, but it was important for you to know. I do not want you to even attempt to raise or lower the sun until we can be more certain about how stable you are.”

At least she is not trying to get me killed. I cross my arms, and focus my attention on her once again. The mare smiles, deciding to pivot in a different direction for the conversation, “How much do you know about tax code and the general structure of a functional government Vincent.”

That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one. I know enough about government to know that it never usually functions the way it should. No matter what policy it is implementing.

I groan and sit on a nearby large piece of rubble big enough to be a makeshift seat, “Why don’t you tell me Celestia,” the defeat audible in my tone.

My frown is clearly visible when she materializes a whiteboard and several markers behind her. For once, her enthusiasm is plain to see. How exciting.

“We’ll start with the basics,” She starts, noticing my facial expression, “For your sake at least.”

---

“Equestria’s tax policy is based on a complicated set of parameters to account for socio-economic status and hopefully we won’t have to touch on it too much sinc-”

“-epending on the the business, additional fees may be required for operation in th-”

“The way Luna and I organized the governance of the Kingdom revolves around three simple principles. One is a simple hooves off policy in most matters that only concern the local populace of townships. Problems are best solved by the ponies affected by them and not by somepony hundreds of miles away. I believe that’s a good summary for something as simple as that, let us move on to th-”

“We have executive power over any and all legislation approved by the nobles in our respective courts. Our decision to enact them is typically the final say. However, if there is a super-majority of support for the tabled policy, it will cause my sister and I to hear the proposition jointly. Still, it will not pass without our approval. Normal ponies can petition Luna and I directly if they so wish.”

“Now if you would take a look at this tree chart. There are not that many organizations that supercede local administration, but there are a few... Vincent, keep your eyes open. Actually, hold on, I think I may need a bigger white board.

“I think we have time for a basic foal’s introduction to basic magic channeling. Your mistake earlier was that you started the channel without the usual safety taken to mitigate backlash from a flubbed spell. You attempted telekinesis without any idea of the simple spell weave to keep it from running wild with the source feeding it from your magic core. I recommend finding a book in my study called, ‘Clipped Clove’s Simplified Foundation of Magic’ it's actually an introductory text from the returned Crystal Empire. It was sent to me as a curiosity by Cadence. How long ago did it return? I think it's been two months now.”

I attempt to pay attention to everything she is saying, I really do, but it is difficult to soak everything she is saying at once. Ironically enough, if I didn't spend so much time reading about human politics to laugh at it, I would have no damn clue what she is talking about. Tax policy, structure of government, and finally the brief interlude about magic is the only thing that is keeping me from actively wanting to die. It feels like hours, and she is still talking even now. How can she even do this? It's like being back in university again. Except this time I am the only student in the class room, and the room the lecture is in is the ruins of a castle. In my bleary haze of learning, I just barely grasp on the mention of something very important I'd like to clarify.

"Wait, hold on. What was that about the Crystal Empire again?" I interrupt her mid-sentence. Something about how magic is an intrinsic force in all life, probably.

"Vincent, that was a non-sequitur that I said a half-hour ago, and I'm not going into history yet." Celestia blinks at me, the marker in her magic's grasp hovering just an inch away from the whiteboard.

She looks behind herself at the whiteboard, and the scrawl of notation of theories and governmental functions that cover the whole thing. A grim realization slowly crosses her face.

"Perhaps I have over done it, I sincerely apologize." She chuckles to herself as I struggle to keep my eyes open.

Celestia gives my form a once-over, her voice taking on an ethereal quality, "You're returning to the waking world. Try not to get yourself injured anymore. Even with the resilience of an alicorn, you appear to be quite adept at managing to hurt yourself."

I mumble unintelligible words in reply. My eye-lids shut, no longer being able to stop them from falling down. The color of the world around me becoming blindingly bright.

Author's Note:

Not dead yet. Life has a habit of getting in the way, that is for sure.