Joining of the Roads, Part II
The day was becoming late by the time Celestia found herself approaching the central square of Quartiza on the way to the palace. Strictly speaking, the radiating layout of the capital city didn’t require going through the center to get to any specific place, but it had been over a thousand years since Celestia had seen the Heart.
It was exactly as she remembered it: a sapphire the size of a pony, intricately carved into the shape of a heart and polished to a flawless sheen that floated and turned in midair as if it was being supported by an invisible air current. It glowed faintly, very neatly concealing the awesome power that was contained within it, and just being near to it made it hard to restrain a contented smile from the aura of peace and love that thrummed faintly in the arctic air.
And part of Cadence’s cutie mark was, as she’d always suspected, an exact duplicate of the Heart’s appearance down to the specific way that Du Arctis gemcutters had cut the facets.
“Pretty unsettling isn’t it, Auntie?” Cadence said as she looked between the Heart and the mark on her flank. “It’s as if someone tattooed it using the Heart as their reference.”
“I wouldn’t call it unsettling,” Celestia said. “That implies that the coincidence is unpleasant.”
“Fascinating then.”
“Exceedingly so,” Celestia agreed with an emphasizing nod. “It would handily explain your facility for making friends, though.”
“And how I got a rather silly full name like ‘I love Cadence’,” Cadance said. “It was kind of a relief to find out that my birth mother named me something sort of exotic-sounding but comparatively normal.”
“Repeated applications of hoof to head didn’t dissuade the spies who were pretending to be your birth parents,” Anori said.
“Then again spies tend to be extremely odd,” Krysta said. “For example, the painted mare spymaster.”
“If they hadn’t been on assignment, I’d have thanked them with a hug and a hoof,” Cadence said. “How did they arrange the tragic accident?”
Anori and Krysta looked at one another, and then at her. “Secret of the craft Cady,” Krysta said.
“But no one was hurt or in danger,” Anori said.
“That much I worked out on my own,” Cadence said, although Celestia detected a very light tone of relief. “I’ve just been wondering who died for the cause.”
“No one,” Anori said. “The two ponies died, but had probably been under preservation magic for some time.”
“Informed consent?”
“Sort of,” Krysta said. “Standard practice is that the family wanted cremation instead of burial, so they got a very beautiful memorial urn with the understanding that when the bodies were no longer needed, they’d get the ashes as well. Since the urn is the gravestone, families rarely care about having something in the urn.”
“So similar to how a pony will permit their body to be used for dissection and medical teaching after they’ve passed,” Celestia said.
“Similar, although it’s a rare family that’s comfortable with a loved one being used as a prop,” Anori said, before looking passed the Heart at the unassuming building to the north of the square. “I take it that’s the…?”
“Palace?” The guard captain nodded. “Emperor White is vainglorious enough to want it to look more grand, but that is going to take months and the project hasn’t even gotten to the stage of being planned. Nor will it, if I guess at your intentions correctly.”
“We have no right to depose your emperor, Captain,” Celestia said as the city guard spread out in a loose v-formation ahead, assuming the place of a diplomatic escort. ”I only hope to encourage him to be a better ruler, to inform him of the danger of the Evils, and to warn him not to interfere with my purpose.”
“And the reason you’re being so benign is that Field Marshal Shadow is likely to depose him when she arrives,” the lamplighter captain said.
“I didn’t create diplomatic peace by meddling when I could stand by and achieve the same thing,” Celestia sasid. “This will also be an interesting experience. I’d always seen Night White in passing but never formally met him.”
“So who gets to be emperor when White gets kicked out?” Cadence said, glazing up at the palace walls as they passed through them.
“He has a sister younger than him by a year,” the guard captain said. “She’s in the northwest at the moment to supervise the digging of a vertical shaft entrance to a crystal mine–she’s a structural engineer by trade–but when everything is settled here she can be sent for.”
“Is she away from the capital to…?”
“...keep Emperor White safe? Yes.” The lamplighter captain grinned. “Snow used to beat him up before she went to university, and doing her journeymare training with mining crews just made her left hook better.”
“The throne wasn’t important to her,” the guard captain said. “So when Night White was crowned, she was on her way north the very next day.”
“Which is why we couldn’t use her as a coup figurehead,” one of the lamplighters said. “She told us that she would only involve herself with the succession if the throne became vacant, but that she didn’t otherwise care. Kind of hard to depose an emperor when the possible empress has to be physically dragged into the revolution.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t have the crown forced on her,” Anori said. “Power is often best in the hooves of those that don’t want it.”
“The only ponies that know what passed between Snow White and her parents choose to keep it private,” the guard captain said. “But it must have been earnest enough that they permitted a good empress to dig holes while a poor emperor sat on the throne.”
As they approached the main keep of the palace, Celestia felt her steps faltering and then stopping entirely as she looked up at the edifice. There was something about it that felt… unnatural to her. Squat, square, with black curtains drawn across all the windows bordered by diligently-applied whitewash, it gave her a similar feeling that she’d had when approaching a tomb during the twilight hours: a sense of unwelcome and a very particular feeling of wrongness.
“Is there something wrong, Your Highness?” the guard captain asked.
“Is the palace normally this foreboding?” Celestia said.
“Not normally,” he said. “Emperor White finds the arctic sun irritating and has often demanded that the windows be blacked out like you see. The change in its appearance has caused the spirit of the structure to become imperious and unwelcoming.”
“It feels like more than just a sense caused by appearance,” Cadence said.
“Princess Chidinida, if I may?” At the nod from Cadance, the lamplighter captain continued. “I assume that you’ve spent time in your family home, in your queen mother’s palace.”
“Not a lot of time,” Cadence said. “My home is in Equestria and circumstances are such that I only found out about my mother a few months ago.”
“Even a short time works for my point,” he said. “How would you describe the feeling around the palace? How does it feel to walk around there?”
Cadence looked at him for a moment before she nodded. “So changeling structures tend to take on the emotional radiance of the changelings that occupy them?”
“Over an extreme frame of time,” he said. “This palace has remained in this state for hundreds of years.”
Cadence gave him a nod and then looked to Celestia. “Auntie, I believe what he’s…”
“I understood him Cady,” Celestia said, giving her niece a smile. “If my own palace has that kind of radiance…”
“...it does,” Anori said with a nod from Krysta.
“...then I’m so used to it that I don’t notice.” Celestia gathered herself and started walking forward again. “I still feel that something isn’t right here.”
“I agree,” one of the lamplighters siad. “It’s muted but there, like a tickle on the edges of your awareness.”
“I also agree,” the other elderly lamplighter said, raising his lamp slightly.
“I see no alternative to entering and finding out more,” the guard captain said, even as the other city guard shifted their grips from ceremonial carry to port arms.
“Are there any of the Bell Watch on post at the cathedral tower?” the lamplighter captain asked.
“No,” the guard captain said. “Field Marshal Shadow ordered them posted in the towers of the outer and inner rings to make sure the warning bells were audible everywhere outside the capital.”
“Dammit,” the lamplighter captain sighed. “Sensible orders, yet I wish we could approach this with at least a single bell and candle.”
“Would the inclusion of this ‘Bell Watch’ really make that much of a difference?” Shining asked.
“All the difference, in actual fact,” the guard captain said. “They were hoof-picked by Matchlight during her reign. According to them, they still are.”
“A passed empress is still hoof-picking members of a military order of the Empire,” Shining said.
The guard captain shrugged. “Their delusion about Matchlight still selecting them for service is a small price to pay. But it’s a moot point because they’re not here. Captain, if yourself and the other Lighters will support us?”
“Sure.” The lamplighter captain stepped up to the front of the group, while the other two fell into position behind, creating a rough triangle with everyone but the lamplighters themselves inside of it. At a nod from the guard captain, the lamplighter captain pushed the double doors open and walked into the dim interior of the palace with his lamp held high.
In any other circumstance, the palace would have been shockingly luxurious, shocking because its exterior was so utilitarian and unremarkable. On the other side of the featureless granite, the walls were paneled with white wood from which polished brass candelabras emerged regularly to ensure that every inch of that paneling would be well-lit with soft magical light. The ceilings had been covered in some kind of white stone, likely marble, and was mirrored by the floors. Artwork–some of which Celestia was certain was genuine and from artists who’d passed away centuries ago–was displayed almost as frequently as drapes and the lighting fixtures which gave the entire space the feeling of being a museum rather than the workplace of royalty and their staff.
All of this was ruined, however, by the fact that a stifling gloom hung over the interior. Candles being actually lit was infrequent and very little natural light seemed to be penetrating into the palace, effectively concealing all of the artwork and lovely paneling, and the sections of marble.
The gloom even seemed to hang over the guards standing at their stations: there was a strange lack of the spit-and-polish that was typical for palace guards, and as their party drew closer to the pullers, Celestia could see that they were looking tired as well.
“Welcome to the palace captains, Lamplighters, Princess Celestia and companions,” one of the guards said, the slightly glassy stare not at all reflected in the well-enunciated words. “Do you have business with His Imperial Highness?”
“Quartermasters first of all,” the guard captain said. “Personal business.”
“Well they’re known for keeping a very close eye on things,” the guard said with a shrug. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to get, but make things too dangerous for them and they’ll rat you out.”
“Maybe we should speak to them directly then,” the guard captain said. “Maybe have His Imperial Highness intervene for us?”
“I’m not sure he can.” The guard grinned. “He’s not mightier than the bureaucracy. No one is, that I know of.”
The guard captain sighed and nodded. “A difficult truth to accept, but one sort of has to. Very well, if you’ll guide us to the throne?”
The two guards nodded and with sharp military precision, despite their tired expressions, they turned and began marching further into the palace. After a moment, the guard captain followed with the v-formation of guards bending into a rough diamond as they followed their two guides. Despite the plainness of its exterior, in good light the interior of the palace would be a work of art, more of the marble, artwork, and candelabras creating a corridor of loveliness that someone would walk through to get to the actual throne room; except for the lack of towering stained glass, it reminded Celestia of the Canterlot palace.
In the dim light, Celestia could see a pair of large doors swinging silently outwards as they approached, and caught a glimpse of heavy stone liberally inset with crystal and a quartet of guards manipulating the doors two to a side, before they were through and were standing in a throne room that Celestia recognized immediately. Unlike the marble, stone, and metal that was used as decoration for the rest of the palace, the throne room was rendered completely in crystal: tiles of it decorated the floors and walls, chandeliers were suspended from bronzed chains from the ceiling speckled with quartz that glimmered like a perpetual night sky, and polished steel fixtures with enchanted crystal were spaced around the room to give a soft, soothing white light.
At some point, before Matchlight, the actual thrones of the emperor and empress were raised up on a dias and made of the rarest green crystal only found in the empire, beautiful translucent stones with speckles of reddish impurities that glowed in the soft light of the crystal torches. The new ones were level with the ground and made of the same opaque blue crystal that the Heart had been cut out of, with the previous thrones skillfully repurposed into a mural depicting the capital city of Quartiza as it would be seen from high above, series of concentric circles of buildings arrayed around the tower of the Heart.
Very little of this was visible in the pale, flickering light that the torches gave off as they approached the throne, leaving Celestia’s memory to fill in details that were practically invisible in the darkness. Sombra–Night White–himself was just barely visible as a shadow distinct from the throne he sat in, a stallion in the opulent robes and crystal crown that marked him as the emperor and the way he was slumped in his seat, he appeared to be asleep.
Celestia waited several moments for the guards standing at attention to announce her and her traveling companions, as was common protocol for visitors, but several moments later she realized that while the guards that had escorted them had looked tired, these were completely asleep, their halberds leaning listlessly against them as they slept in a locked-knee stance. Unsure of what else to do, she inclined her head in the direction of the emperor.
“Emperor Night White, I apologize for the abruptness of my visit and how I come unannounced into your palace under armed escort, but the situation seemed urgent enough to warrant unusual boldness,” she said.
There was silence from the throne for several moments. “And what is that situation?” a faint baritone voice asked, having the very slight resonance to it that the emperors and empresses of the Crystal Empire typically used when speaking, a method that somehow cut through background noise as surely as the booming Royal Canterlot Voice that was preferred in the Equestrian court.
“An… entity, I would term him, calling himself ‘Sotto Voce’ is in the Empire and by declaration and discovery, I’ve learned that he intends some mischief with the Crystal Heart,” Celestia said. “He is a thing from outside our own world, something called an ‘Evil’, and from what I can discern is bodiless but able to make his presence felt and speak if he chooses.”
There was another long silence from the throne. “I see.”
Celestia furrowed her brow at the strangely sedate response from the Emperor. This is the inept, spoiled brat the others were referring to? “I would offer the assistance of myself in this matter, along with the aid of my Captain of the Royal Guard, my niece Cadance, and the two changeling honor guards that accompany me.”
Another long silence. “Do not be concerned, Princess, it is… taken care of.”
Celestia blinked. “You knew?”
“Of course.” Night White paused. “If you would like, I could have the lamps turned up so that the Lighters with you need not use theirs.”
“That will not be necessary.” The lamplighter captain stepped passed Celestia, his lamp glowing more brightly than it had been. “The facade has already worn out its welcome.”
There was an amused snort from the direction of the throne, at the same instant that Celestia realized that she could no longer see the lamps, or the guards at the foot of the throne. “So I see,” the voice from the darkness said. “These lamps of yours are an interesting device. They remind me of lamps from a completely different place. I shall find it very engaging to study them.”
“I think that if you could touch them, we wouldn’t be alive anymore.”
“Don’t be silly, boy.” And like a switch had been thrown, the light resonant baritone slipped into the distinct cultured Pillars accent and became more feminine–and familiar.
“I don’t care for slaughter,” Zambet said, materializing out of the shadows and close enough to the aura of the lamp that Celestia could clearly see her horrifying visage. She had shed the imitation of a pony, now bipedal and thin with clothing seemingly made of the shadows around her draped loosely over her frame. But she was still cleanly divided between living flesh and skeleton, and her eyes having the appearance of rubies wreathed in violet flames floating in the center of her sockets had been preserved. “It wastes good food.”
“I suppose you’re the one that Sotto Voce was referring to when he said that he was not the one we would be facing,” Celestia said as evenly as she could.
“Oh no, Princess, for I am also a piece on a board set and moved by another,” Zambet said with a broad smile that wrapped all the way around her face and to the base of her ears, needle-like teeth gleaming in the steady light from the Lamplighters. “I admit that when I checked the archbishop, I didn’t expect the queen to move herself into my grasp but it would be foolish not to carpe the diem.”
“Since we’re not inside the mental landscape you pulled us into before, I take it that the lamps the lamplighters carry prevents you from touching us,” Cadence said.
“Absolutely true,” Zambet said, the disturbing half-living half-dead smile not budging. “But the power I wield can be solid enough to make an airtight dome around the aura of those lamps. It would take… not that much time, really. I have also made the preparations necessary to prevent any prey, no matter how strong, from leaving my web.” Her eyes shifted to Celestia. “Check.”
“You’re responsible for the dimness we saw, I take it?” Celestia said.
“Yes,” Zambet said. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it. I know you saw the construct I built around your Tree of Harmony to mute its ability to obliterate Canceros and his kin, and I make it a practice to repeat methods that have proven themselves effective.”
“What could you gain from placing the entire palace in your power?”
“A snack while I wait,” Zambet said. “Although it’s more of a light meal than a snack. These ponies are delectable, a rare and exotic vintage of fear that whets my appetite fiercely; I’ve only seen their like once before, and those ones threw me on a bonfire.”
“So that’s…?” Celestial gestured towards her skeletal half.
“The darling little mortals worked out that fire held no danger for me, so they added something extra,” Zambet said, her unsettlingly broad smile becoming a vaguely pleasant expression now, and the gaping grin shrank to a more normal breadth. “I was quite young and stupid, and had not yet learned that among the countless worlds that float in the Void, there are many that contain dangerously clever mortals. But what does not kill you teaches you, and I learned so much from the single error that I really do owe those mortals something only slightly malicious.”
"I seem to recall you referring to your fleshless half as punishment for failing to keep your world to the 'Weaver,'" Celestia said.
"That is also true," Zambet said. "I gave her my word that I wouldn't hunt on the world she forbade. I broke my word, and reaped the consequences. The Weaver of Fate can punish in person, but she prefers to bend fate to inflict punishments instead. She bent mine such that I arrived on hunting grounds that would put me in extreme danger without knowing, and the punishment was delivered by my own tendencies and folly."
Celestia looked at her for a moment. "You don't even resent it."
"I am older than you can comprehend, and I became that old by accepting my failures as a result of my errors, and eliminating those errors." Zambet smirked. "Besides, she can simply destroy me if she feels like it. Resenting her is futile."
“The princess was right: you’re a very polite monster,” the lamplighter captain said. “With a Pillars accent, no less.”
Zambet looked curiously at him. “I was not aware that the term for it predated the movement of the Empire outside of the flow of time. Fascinating. I shall be very interested to learn more about this place, more than I learned for myself by reading. More than that, I find your race of pony to be very interesting indeed.”
“You’re stalling,” Celestia said.
“And with awe-inspiring economy of force I might add,” Zambet said. “Which I find suspicious. Your sun exists and is especially vivid here, so you could be making a spirited attempt to break out. That you elect to stay and talk to me without much fuss tells me that you anticipate time to be a resource you can spend for advantage.”
“You haven’t given me reason to simply obliterate you and have done,” Celestia said. “Yet. You seem to regard time to be on your side as well.”
“I know something which you do not,” Zambet said. “I also know that you are waiting on the arrival of Miri, Luna, and the five remaining Elements to effectively secure Quartiza against the plans of my employer, although you do not yet know who they are. I know also that the Lamplighters travel in fours if they’re providing escort to someone of importance, so you were confronted by Sotto Voce and his error gave the fourth Lamplighter cause to leave your company and gather an army to frustrate our purpose.”
Ah, so that is what she meant by earning her tenner, Celestia thought. “Miri?”
“I and Nachtmiri Mien are peers, and will sometimes refer to one another by familiar names.”
“Peers.” Celestia frowned. “So equivalent.”
“I would not call myself her equal,” Zambet said. “I do not create, and she does. What makes us peers is that neither of us involve ourselves exclusively for our own interests. There is always an employer.”
“So who is yours?” Shining said.
Zambet smirked and waggled a skeletal finger at him. “That would be telling. Suffice to say that my employer is on their way. Whereupon I can finish my part, collect my pay, and then haul plot.”
“What kind of currency would be of use to you?” Cadence siad. “It couldn’t be anything material.”
“A ten bit doesn’t exactly spend in the Void,” Zambet said with a half smirk that once again extended further than was entirely natural. “Although I should lift one from the palace vaults as a souvenir. Equestrian ten-bits are distressingly plain and I’ve been taught that it would be extremely unwise to get within reach of any changeling noble, so I’m afraid the Empire shall be…” She trailed off and her eyes shifted back and forth, her expression slightly puzzled. “...making a… donation.”
Celestia looked side to side as well. “Is there a problem?”
“Always.” Her eyes shifted to the lamplighter captain. “The fourth pony was not a mere Lamplighter, was she?”
He shrugged. “She’s my marshal.”
“That’s what I thought.” Her eyes shifted back to Celestia. “I do apologize for making the ruler’s charming personality considerably more charming, poor sleep will do that.”
Celestia blinked at the sudden shift in conversation, and the brisk businesslike tone in Zambet’s voice. “You speak as if you’re bidding me farewell.”
“For the moment.” Zambet’s unnaturally wide grin spread across her face as she stepped back out of the light. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Celeste, and we’ll have a far more… interesting conversation.”
Celestia didn’t have any time to process this because even as Zambet stepped back, a resounding kshh of what sounded like breaking glass came from behind, and she instinctively turned towards the sound. While the oppressive darkness remained, concealing the crystal lights if not snuffing them completely, Celestia could clearly see a sputtering blue flame held aloft, its pale light dimly reflecting the shaft of a torch. After a moment, the flame started approaching accompanied by the steady, marching cadence of iron-shod hooves against the floor.
And then there was a resounding thong of a great bell and the darkness rushed aside to reveal a single changeling clad in a black greatcoat over blood-red gambeson, carrying a torch with a blue flame in his telekinesis along with a silver hand-bell, brilliant viridian eyes glowing beneath a tall broad-brimmed hat. Celestia had never actually seen a member of the Bell Watch before, but from the aura of unflinching purpose to the fact that his approach had caused Zambet to leave immediately left no doubt as to who he was.
“Good day Miss Celestia,” he said, his accent very strongly Germane. “If you will follow the trail of lamps to the outside, I have business with your escort.”
Celestia blinked at him. “Excuse me, Mister…?”
“If you will follow the trail of lamps to the outside, Miss Celestia, I have business with your escorts,” he said.
“Sir…”
“Follow the trail of lamps to the outside,” he said. “I have business with your escorts, Miss Celestia.”
“Excuse me, but what lamps?” Shining Armor said.
“The ones beyond the throne room door looking after the palace guards,” he said. “I should have thought it implied by my instructions that you were to leave. Now, leave.”
Celestia furrowed her brow at the stern-faced changeling. I cannot remember the last time anyone’s talked this way to me. But then she felt the hoof of one of the older lamplighters on her shoulder and saw him nod towards the door from the corner of an eye, and decided that it wouldn’t do any good to argue. “As you wish sir,” she said and walked passed him, trailed by Shining, Cadence, and the two throne guards.
“That was one of the Bell Watch the city guard captain spoke of,” Cadence said as they passed through a gaping hole right through the center of the two doors to the throne room.
“Must be,” Anori said.
“I haven’t seen someone back down as fast as Zambet since some stuffy griffon bint ragged on Cryssa,” Krysta said.
Anori winced. “I forgot about that incident. Thought Baroness du Luc would throttle her on the spot.”
“So did she.” Krysta looked at Celestia. “Sort of radiates an aura of being happy to deliver a haymaker to the next person to look at her wrong.”
“Strong stallions feared Martella for that very reason,” Celestia said as the arctic sun shining through the open front door began materializing out of the gloom. “I have it on extremely reliable authority that during the troubles right before the Exile, her elderly mother stopped a mob by hobbling out on her cane and just looking at them. I’m still not sure whether it’s an inherited trait or a skill passed down.”
“Both.” Celestia stopped and looked towards the lightly drawling voice to find the solid frame of Marshal Cloud Runner knelt beside the sprawled form of one of the palace guards, helping him drink from a canteen, a lamplighter’s lamp beside her.
“The inherited part was the presence, being able to menace without appearin’ to threaten them,” Cloud Running continued, taking a draw from her own canteen before helping the guard take another slow drink. “The skill was bein’ able to cow only the sorts they wanted scared of ‘em.”
“I see.” Celestia frowned down at where the guard was laying, then looked around and noted several other guards around, some slumbering with simple blankets and pillows, some being cared for by a half dozen or so Lamplighters. “May I help?”
“Thanks, but it’s not needed,” she said. “They’re exhausted, starved, and severely dehydrated but it’s easy to give a body sleep, food, and drink. The ones that’re in bad straits are bein’ looked after by the watcher, an’ while we don’t have substantial food on hoof, ‘bout a dozen watchers an’ a division of pullers are hauling a whole mess of rations in from an estate.”
“Earned your tenner,” Shining said with a big smile.
“And then some,” Marshal Runner said with a grin. “Thought I was fetching a watcher and some muscle from a watch post. Pretty much the whole damn order was waitin’ with a real big stick, already packed and ready to move like they knew I was coming.”
“Can’t imagine how they would,” Celestia said. “The only ones who knew that any of this was coming were the antagonists, Sotto Voce principally. Although she could have been deceiving us, I don’t believe that even Zambet was aware we’d be here.”
“Zambet?”
“The one who did all of this,” Shining said, gesturing at the dimness still hanging in the air. “When we first met her, it wasn’t clear that she was this powerful.”
“Our working theory is that she’s some manner of psychological predator,” Celestia said. “We know she can worm her way into your mind and show you what she wants you to see but I don’t know how it’s meant to benefit her. She claimed that the reason she was even in the palace was to get a ‘snack’ while waiting, but found a light meal instead. Said that the residents had a rare and exotic vintage of fear which… I don’t understand. Nothing about the guards we saw indicated fear, only exhaustion.”
“Perhaps they didn’t give her much fear,” Marshal Runner said. “So what she could squeeze out was real tasty. Anyhow, don’t know how they knew but we’re ‘bout to have more help than we know what to do with.”
“The Bell Watch.”
“An’ Field Marshal Light Shadow apparently,” Marshal Runner said. “Not sure which one’s the bigger stick. You’ve seen what the Watch can do, but Field Marshal Shadow’s special.”
“You mean her immortality?” Celestia said.
“Yeah, never dying is cool, but she’s the only field marshal I know who’s got her own castle.”
Celestia blinked. “Her own castle?”
“Yeah,” Marshal Runner said, finally getting up from the side of the guard she was helping and moving on to another. “Way the buck up north. Glass roof in iron fittings, doors with hinges that looked like they were made of silver and gold, crenulations, turrets, the whole kit.”
Celestia furrowed her brow. Glass roof in iron fittings? Bimetal hinges? “Do you remember the numerical pattern of the crenulations, Marshal Runner?”
Cloud Runner frowned thoughtfully, “No, I didn’t ever think to…”
“Three and two.” Celestia could feel her neck wrenching from her turning her head so sharply, but she hardly cared. The sight that greeted her matched the voice that was wonderfully familiar from millenia of mutual company: Luna, flanked by her daughters and the rest of the Elements, her expression fighting to remain stoic as she looked at Celestia.
“Light Shadow did indeed copy our old home Tia,” she continued, “and we are all in very grave danger.”
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How many chapters long will this story be?
11219807
Long enough, to be enjoyed for years to come.
11219807
I'm still working that out, honestly. I don't think it'll be longer than 500k words because my plan for the entire thing is that once the big event happens, a lot of things resolve quickly. However, it's kind of hard to know for sure how long it'll take, in terms of chapters, to really bring it all to the conclusion I have in mind.
I don't really care how many chapters are forthcoming, your story has captivated my mind and heart and I will diligently read unto the very end.
Continue on, my friend, the faithful are watching, and enjoying every word!
11244416 I appreciate that. Most of the time, I feel like I'm writing this story for an audience of only me because I never really get feed back or commentary. Maybe eventually I'll get a reader who is so deeply offended by my mistakes that they'll tell me about them in pedantic detail. :)
11258518
in principle, apart from mentioning Cadance as the daughter of Celestia, I have not noticed any deviations so far. And even if you think about it, this plot hole can be closed by adding a couple of lines from what supposedly one of the princesses says: "It's good that during these dark events Cadance was on a long-distance business trip to establish international relations with the zebras (or any other distant country) and these terrible events bypassed her." ;)
11258542
Cadence as the daughter of Celestia? What?
11260777
I don't know how my comment ended up in the last chapter, but my reading is still in chapter 16.
11260782
Strange. Oh well, I've seen stranger things. Carry on then, I'm enjoiying your commentary. :)
11279705
Since I posted that, I did some thinking and realized that I got the time scaling wrong. I represent Twilight as being in her late-20s, so Cadance would be in her 30s, and she's the second-youngest so at least a year younger than Thryssa (who I'd peg at 37) so Chrysalis could not be younger than her early 60s because in my head, I'd always thought of her as being at least an older-20s when she was crowned queen. But queens do indeed have longer lifespans than the average changeling but most critically, they don't really suffer from senescence (the effects of the body wearing out towards the end of a long lifespan) so a queen in her 90s barely seems to be in her 40s.
What I failed to convey in the text and is only really explained far, far later is that the princesses are essentially immortal so they have to have a system of recalling things. They find this far easier because Equestria is a diarchy so they can work together to assemble an accurate memory of something based on their bits and pieces they naturally consider important. In this instance, Luna is remembering the bit about how queens are unusually long-lived for ponies and how they don't seem to age, but remembering how many queens there have been in a given span of time, which would yield an accurate idea of how long they live, is something Celestia would remember better. So working together, pooling their knowledge, the two sisters combined would correctly remember the approximate lifespan of a queen. Luna being alone, and frankly wishing that the current queen has been alive long enough to have known Amaryss personally, causes her to think that the queen lifespan is about triple what it actually is.
Very long explanation, sorry, but I don't usually get a chance to roll out my author worldbuilding thinking machine.