The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Postscriptum: Petition

✨✨✨

Dear Princess Celestia,

This title is not a mistake. For me, you are always a Princess.

Thank you for the opportunity to learn a lot of new and interesting things, even after two decades of my undivided rule. Not that we are talking about phenomena of a cosmological scale and no less danger.

The spell you sent me is working. In principle, any prepared unicorn can cast it, although it seems that it will be much easier for alicorns. At first I thought it was a teleportation spell to an unknown place. There was a sandy shore, a river, an artifact in dry grass. But this place doesn't behave like decent places should. For example, I cannot move the artifact even a bit. I tried to cross the river, and almost went too deep into the lands of the dead.

Still, I understand that you gave me the spell so that I would look at the artifact and draw conclusions. Another test, right? I don't mind, as even now, after all these years, I still have a lot to learn.

Well, here is my report, since you requested the report.

The artifact is perfectly cubic. It looks like a stack of kirin Weiqi boards made from a material unknown to me. It is fireproof, like all valuables of kirin origin.

When I understood how it works, for a while I tried to damage it. In fact, it is not an artifact. It is not even a material thing. This place, and this object, is rather a way and method of seeing reality. A certain angle of view, and your spell just helps one find that method. Wherever I cast a spell, I still end up there and then, looking at the cube from a specific point in a specific direction, and there is not even a speck from the sun in the dim cloudy sky. The intersection of all four layers of being: reality, dreams, death and everside.

This is the first reason why I was late with the letter. The second reason is my fear.

I am a brave pony and you know that. I know that myself. Harmony gives me the strength to write on.

Like kirin Weiqi, this illusion is in a sense, with a certain stretch, entertaining. Kirins have their own ideas about games.

In a standard kirin Weiqi, you can choose two modes of the game. The normal one has a few basic rules that evolve in a near-infinite number of complex patterns; the extended one adds a way to establish a significant relation between each move and a kirin, an event or a situation.

Extended rules then expand again and again, reaching in their final form about a thousand sheets of ceramic fiber. Actually, kirins were using asbestos but, no matter where and by whom the full rules are written, they tend to spontaneously combust. Thus, the game begins with the reality we know and then goes into "what if?"

In normal play, each move is a new layer of the 3D board. They are removed from the bottom and placed on top. There, on the bank of the Last River, it happens by itself. Transparent incorporeal layers descend from above, others move downward.

To read an extended game, you have to be a kirin or think like a kirin. Here you can be any creature. The game itself will draw the resulting situation for you as if it was real. In general, it is both interesting and useful. A wonderful game that would be nice to teach our students. I'll introduce them to it, eventually.

I got distracted again. It's too scary and unpleasant.

Certain moves cannot be made on this board. Not because knowledge of the rules is somehow woven into it but as if such a move could not happen at all.

Also, I wrote "as if it was real"? I will not cross it out. I would instead say that “full immersion” would be more honest.

With such a toy you can become lost in phantasies for years. You see, looking at the options for a possible future, and looking for the best among them, is very exciting and it takes the more time the deeper you try to look. I think if you look too deep, then pretty soon you will start playing slower than real time.

It remembers past games and all the players of it. I would never have found this feature without my share of magical artifacts researched. That should have served as a warning to me.

In addition, if you enter the game with sufficient magical power, then make an alignment that meets the reality you know, agree with partners on what to do next and fulfill a number of additional simple conditions and restrictions, then you can change the reality of the original world.

I think this is a very, very dangerous thing.

I conclude the report here.

Now for what you probably would like to hide. Something that I would not mention in other circumstances, but I am obliged to do it in my status as the ruler of Equestria.

I found the party you have set with Luna. I know what you want to do.

Are you sure that reconciliation with Luna— well, more than just reconciliation— Changing the history in accordance with "We never had a fight between ourselves"—

Is it worth it?

I understand why the idea can be attractive and I promise to support you if you really do want to follow up on it. You have the right to make such a decision. This promise I list not only as a pony, not only as your former student, but also as a Princess.

Still, please take your time. In just a day, I found six probable and close ends of the world. I attach a list of them in the addendum.

I am glad that you wrote to me. I hope it’s more than just a hope for new data or an alternate opinion from me. I hope that I got the letter not only because you were too afraid to speak with me about it in a direct and personal way. No riddle is worth trust, you know?

In the end, it was an interesting riddle to solve.

But if my opinion is actually important, it is simple: Don't do it. Don't risk it. Please.

If you are to follow a play you likely desire instead, then you should know that I agree, or I would have agreed, even if in the new history I will no longer be. I agree with that move... and with all subsequent ones that the game will require of us.

This is not the first draft I have written, and choosing my words I have already delayed this letter for almost a day. Only with the past sunrise— I swear I will never look at the Sun as an ordinary light source again. We usually do not appreciate enough of something mundane until we lose it.

Please, do not do that.

After writing this letter I will go and hug my friends and students. Everypony I find.

We are very lucky to have a beautiful, almost optimal world. We are one step away from really pushing this luck.

Don’t make such a step.

Your faithful student ██████████ Twilight Sparkle.

P.S. I shall always be by your side.

Comments

[Shai-hulud_16]

11026791
"Something indestructible" by Chatoyance, had something not similar, but close. (And that was awesome!)

[Numinos]

Don’t make such a step.

And then they did, weren't they...