Callisto
Pinkie had always been early riser.
It'd started on the rock farm. Her father would be the first one up, and when she heard his hoofsteps going past her door, she would know that it was exactly one hour and forty-seven minutes before the sun rose. He'd be down to the kitchen, grab a quick before-breakfast snack, and be out in the fields before anypony else. Then, a quarter hour or so later, her mother would be trotting past her door as well, down to the kitchen, and the smells of food would start to tempt the hungry bellies of the little fillies still in bed. When Maud was still at home, she would be the one to get up and rouse everypony else, and when she'd left for school, the duty had fallen to Limestone. The routine would be the same every morning and Pinkie would be full of breakfast and out the door before Celestia sent the sun into the sky.
It'd continued with the bakery, when she'd followed her mark and come to live with Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Mr. Cake would be up first, and start bustling around in the kitchen, then Mrs. Cake would be up and following him. Pinkie, now the Maud of a house, would need to get herself up, and she'd hop, skip, and jump her way down to make the first, extra-big batch of morning muffins, and eat a few as an on-the-job breakfast, as the first rays appeared over the horizon.
Here, it was different, though. No matter how early or late she got up, the sun would never come out. How did ponies know it was breakfast time? They might just work and work and work on empty stomachs until they fell over! There were so many perplexing and perturbing things for a pink party pony to ponder about this peculiar place.
Pinkie gave a wide yawn as she rolled over, nearly rolling right onto Rainbow Dash and stopping herself at the last second before she disturbed her. Rainbow very much did not run on either a farmer's hours or a baker's hours and wouldn't be nearly ready for any wakey-wakeys, and so Pinkie carefully stealth-pronked out of bed on the very tips of her hooves. She wasn't surprised to see Applejack already gone, since she had a very similar internal clock, and so was probably already off to see her family.
Pinkie hoped that Applejack remembered to eat breakfast...
She shook the thought aside, and headed for their pile of belongings. It felt strange to grab her saddlebags and slide into them like this, but her Element of Harmony didn't like her Secret Super Special Pinkie Pie Hiding Place much at all, and wouldn't go into it no matter how many times she said pretty-please, so she couldn't stow her saddlebags away properly while they were carrying it and would just have to keep it with her all day.
That was okay, though, because she might just need a little help from the Element of Laughter to make this upcoming party the greatest ever!
Now she just needed to find Dusty.
So convenient to live where she did, where the time to sleep and the time to rise were not at the mercy of the sun.
Diamond Dust had been awake for hours already, and it was only now that the final scroll on her desk vanished in a puff of magic. Her ink was low, her quill in need of replacement, and she would need to buy more parchment before long. Being the primary pony in charge of the Umbral Society's information network, unfortunately, meant that most orders flowed through her, and with the chancellor--
It should have been me.
With the chancellor demanding perfection, it was up to Diamond to ensure that every gear in the automation that was the Society meshed together and turned at exactly the right rate. Nothing could go wrong, not the slightest thing could be delayed, or slip, if this celebration was to do everything it set out to do.
She still could not believe that the chancellor was choosing to trust that zony with the Stone of Severance. They were kin, yes, but barely, and far too unpredictable for her tastes. If pressure was applied in just the wrong way, she was certain that Zigzag was the gear that would slip and send the entire plan crashing like a derailed train.
Diamond pulled herself away from the desk, her stomach growling in protest for its needs being denied for so long. She would need to take a detour to the kitchens and grab a quick meal before resuming her duties, and her teeth ground in frustration at the limitations of her body. If only she could transcend--
No.
She shook her head, sharply. She could not think like that. To seek to be something beyond flesh opened a gateway not easily closed, and the last thing she needed when they were ushering Eventide into the new age was to trot down the path she knew would end in ruin.
I am Diamond Dust.
I am a unicorn, in blood, bone, and soul.
I am me.
And I will not seek to be more.
They all needed to hold on just a little bit longer, and then maybe the dark temptations would finally silence.
Diamond took a deep breath before she pushed her office door open. She needed to check on the celebration, and make sure it was a Winter Moon celebration worthy of Princess Luna. It would be their act of devotion, the baring of their hearts full of love for the long-returned royalty.
It would be a turning point for Eventide, the night that changed everything. She just hoped that the change would be for the better.
This tower really was empty.
It reminded Pinkie of the palace a lot, with the tall ceilings and wide halls, but the difference was that the palace always had somepony around. Even when the princesses weren't there, there were servants, guards, petitioners, other members of the royal family. It made the palace feel lively and bustling at all times. In comparison, the Ebony Tower had long stretches of quiet hallway, where the only thing that Pinkie could see were the green fire of the torches and the only thing she could hear were her own hooves and humming.
It made the place feel very... lonely. Like the tower itself was sad that there weren't more ponies in it.
Clearly the Umbral Society needed a lot of Pinkie Pie Expertise. If they liked her ideas for the party, maybe they'd also take some advice on how to liven up the tower. She could ask Rarity for help! Sure, interior decorating wasn't her specialty, but she'd done a great job with decorating Town Hall for the Summer Sun Celebration, and her boutique always looked inviting.
"--Like a mare possessed, I tell you! I'd think that she was with foal, with how much she ate. Our entire stock of celery, carrots, and parsnips, gone!"
"I told you not to get in between Secretary Dust and the vegetables in the morning, but you didn't believe me."
"Well forgive me for being skeptical that a mare of refinement and taste like her would stuff her mouth full of raw produce and trot off like a scholar too lost in their research to feed herself properly."
Pinkie's ears perked at the voices, and as she turned the corner, she spotted the pair of servants, an exasperated-looking pegasus and a shellshocked-looking unicorn, both with dark coats that blended into the tower's gloominess. Grinning broadly at the sight of other ponies, finally, she pronked right into their midst with a enthusiastic, "Gooooood morning!"
"L-Lady Pinkamena!" The unicorn scrambled back, then stood up straight like a guard who'd been caught napping on the job. "Is there something you need of us?"
The pegasus flared her wings and gave a hop back of her own. "We can have breakfast for you momentarily, if that is what you wish!"
Pinkie opened her mouth to speak, but a loud growling from her stomach beat her to it. "An itsy-bitsy bit of breakfast would be nice," she admitted, but then gave a few more excited bounces. "But I was also hoping you could help me find Dusty!"
Both servants blinked owlishly.
The pegasus was the one who spoke up first. "The Secretary of Sorcery will be starting into her preparations for the Winter Moon celebration--"
"Exactly! And I'm gonna be helping make sure it's the party of the millennium!" She reared and let silver and blue confetti fly as she waved her front hooves. "So that means I've gotta find her and start giving her all my expert party pony advice."
They both blinked again, and turned to stare at each other for a long second before looking back to Pinkie.
"I can show you to the Grand Hall, where the celebration will be," the unicorn offered. "Secretary Diamond Dust will likely be arriving there as we speak. And we can have breakfast prepared and brought there for you to partake of without interrupting your work."
"That'd be super-duper!" She paused in her bouncing, and allowed the confetti to fade back to where it belonged. "Lead the way."
"I am surrounded by incompetence!"
The creatures around Diamond Dust cowered back away from her stomping hooves and sparks of green magic as she ripped the banner from above the stage and reduced the cloth to tatters. An offending shred of it, emblazoned with an M, A, and half of an R, fell in front of her, and as she reared in rage, she sent one of her iron-shod hooves directly onto it on her landing.
"Do any of you empty-headed foals have any idea what you have done?!" she shrieked, the neigh echoing off the walls of the Grand Hall. "A banner proclaiming our devotion to the Princess of the Night, a return of the moon to its true mistress, the beginning of a new age, and you, all of you, would dare to throw her benevolence, her grace, her favour for her splendid Eventide, back in her face?!"
"Miss Dust, we don't--"
Diamond whirled on the creature who'd spoken, and the slight-build hinny froze under the force of her glare. "Of course you do not! Because none of you care to educate yourselves, when the information has been available for moons. Something as simple as our glorious princess's name." She turned away again, addressing the room once more. "All of you, together, could not scrape together enough of a mind to know not to address Her Highness Princess Luna as Nightmare Moon!"
She stormed up to a set of decorations emblazoned with the Mare In The Moon, and forgoing her magic, tore them down with her teeth, spitting them onto the floor as her stomping hooves continued to echo through a hall made to hold hundreds. "I ought to drag you all to the edge of the Shroud at noon and kick you into the sunlight one by one, to remind you how blessed we are!"
An empty threat. She knew it even as she spat it at them. She could never bring herself to be cruel enough to throw one of the creatures she was responsible for into the rays of the sun. Of course, none of them would know that, because none would be brave enough to call her bluff, and so they all cringed away, quaking. There was a flurry of apologies, all of them speaking over each other, and Diamond considered rearing again if only to make the sound cease its assault on her aching head.
"Have no fear, Ponyville's premier party pony is here!"
And with a single, new, cheerful voice, all was right with the world again. Diamond never thought she'd be so happy to see an outsider, but the sight of Lady Pinkamena Pie bounding over to the damaged decorations and gathering the pieces was like a healing balm. "I'll get all this up to Princess Luna quality in a jiffy."
Diamond Dust took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, tension left her as much as the air. "Lady Pinkamena. My thanks." She turned to glare once more at the trembling creatures. "Finally, somepony competent."
"Aww, it's not their fault, Dusty." Pinkamena popped back up into her field of vision, the faulty decorations having vanished... somewhere, and patted the still-shaking and now confused-looking hinny on the head. "They're trying their best. They're just not party ponies. But that's why I'm here!"
The next series of events that was one that Diamond Dust would need time, distance, and at least one obscure tome to fully understand what was done, and once she'd figured it out, she would be incredibly impressed with the mastery of rare magics. In the moment, however, she only had what her eyes told her, and the vague sense that magic had occurred.
There was a cannon. There were decorations fired from the cannon. And then there wasn't a cannon anymore.
Diamond Dust looked up at the banner that said Welcome Home Princess Luna, decorated with crescents, as the other creatures stared with wide-eyed bafflement. "That is..." She felt a content smile fall over her face, and nodded. "Excellent, Lady Pinkamena. Thank you."
"No problemo!" Giddy laughter was followed with a wide grin. "And just call me Pinkie! Everypony does."
Ah, yes, the Bearers of Harmony are new nobility who prefer informality. "Well then, Pinkie... If I may trouble you for some advice on entertainment?"
"Oh! Oh, I have just the thing. There was this game on Nightmare Night with spiders that Princess Luna just loved."
As Pinkie chattered, Diamond pretended not to notice the other creatures sneaking to the doors of the hall and fleeing through them. They were likely waiting for the shoe to drop, for her to fly into a frothing rage at Her Ladyship next, and the thought almost made her laugh.
"And we can do apple bobbing, and pin the tail on the pony..."
Pinkie was exactly the pony she needed, here and now, to ensure that this part of the plan went smoothly. Somepony who knew the tastes of the newly-returned royalty, and not only that, the fact that an outsider had been welcomed as part of the preparations would help them begin to push back against their isolationist reputation.
It was a reputation that would take time to unravel. Generations, even. She supposed, in that way, they and Princess Luna had something in common.
She hoped that the princess would see it that way, too, when all was done.
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That raises some interesting questions, but given how the Element of Magic reacted to being in another universe, it's probably for the best.
Diamond Dust is a perfectly stable pony with no psychological fissures whatsoever. Certainly none looking for an excuse to burst apart at the slightest provocation.
Honestly, I'm amazed there was any documentation on the matter.
Looks like things are moving along quite well now that the professional has arrived. All we have to worry about are just what the locals' ulterior motives are... and how much is them being subtle out of force of habit rather than any true sinister intentions.
I have yet to be convinced that this would be a bad thing, Dust.
Hmmm...
Gah, it's starting to drive me mad, wondering just what this cockamamie plan of theirs even is. I could speculate, easily, but I don't have enough evidence to even be confident if what I'm speculating is anywhere close to accurate.
All I know is that, whatever it is they've got planned, they feel they have need to keep it of utmost secrecy, utilizes shady characters they don't fully trust, requires some form of ancient and likely dark magic they don't totally understand, and above all else, they have reason to fear their guests would take issue with it all, enough to want to try and stop it before it happens if they were to know. And that's all enough to raise plenty of alarms over.
11521983
Well, here's some choice cuts to consider:
So far, everyone we've seen that lives inside the Shroud with the exception of Masquerade spontaneously combusts in sunlight, or is at least badly injured by it, and this is generally regarded as not a very good condition to have.
In spite of the scheming, all six "executives" either genuinely like Luna and the Bearers, or want to like them so badly that even the narration thinks so.
The Shroud is still up, even though it should have collapsed by now, and there are a lot of monsters around Eventide, even though the apparent amount appears to be abnormally high for anywhere in Equestria.
Some kind of eldritch entity related to both the night and to dreams is hanging around, and even though Penumbra is willing to deal with it, it's clear that she and all her confidants regard this as extremely dangerous — dangerous enough that even Masquerade, who it has been established likes to upset formal things for fun, won't deal with it unless Penumbra becomes incapable — leading towards the conclusion that they are entreating it out of necessity.
The apparent lynchpin of their plan is an artifact known as the Stone of Severance.
All of this leads me to believe that... well, on the chance that I'm right, better not to risk ruining the story for others by accidentally guessing it, but I have a hypothesis.
I continue to enjoy the story; thank you for writing. :)