Children of Darkness and Light

by Aquaman

The Advisor

“Is this on the record?” the unicorn asked, focusing much more on the mirror in her hoof than the dragon seated behind her. “Because if it is, my answer is that I served twelve wonderful years at the behest of Princess Twilight Sparkle, and I treasured every second I spent in her magnificent, sagacious presence.”

“Mm-hmm,” Spike said, suppressing a sigh as he added to the largely inane scribbles on his notepad which this meeting had produced so far. “I’m a Guildmaster, though, not a journalist.”

“Is that so? Well, in that case, it was a fucking nightmare, and I’ve never regretted a resignation less.”

The acerbic response hung in the air unaccompanied for a moment, then — with a blink Spike saw in both the hoof mirror and the vanity mirror dominating the dressing room — the mare seemed to realize who she was talking to.

“I don’t mean to disparage her character, of course,” she added, tone still level even as her gaze grew apologetic. “She was perfectly lovely one on one, and heroic to a fault. I suppose that more than anything was the… struggle we all faced. She simply couldn’t be convinced not to handle everything herself. Even the things for which she was, bless her heart, somewhat ill-equipped.”

Spike nodded, scribbled on his pad, and let the silence drag out again. He knew he’d done enough by now to get the mare talking without his interference — and once she deposited her hoof mirror in her purse and swiveled to face him, that was just what she did.

“She trusted too easily,” she said. “Feels strange to criticize any creature for such a thing, but that was the unfortunate truth. We compiled report after report of developments in Senna: the rise of the Freiherde, how Chain Lightning went from Chancellor to dictator all but overnight, the anti-changeling rhetoric of course, and she was as concerned as any of us about all of it. But all she would say is that we couldn’t interfere in the democratic decisions of another nation. As if ‘interfering’ was what we were suggesting.”

“What were you suggesting?”

“That we ought to be more than just concerned. That the Freiherde were largely combat veterans looking for anyone to blame for the lot they’d drawn after the First War, and that creatures with broken bodies and minds can be convinced all too easily that their soul is a fair price for the power they feel they deserve. It was cynical, yes, undoubtedly, but no matter what Lightning did, through all the purges and the propaganda about Lightning and his lackeys being the ideal equine forms, she could never bring herself to believe they might actually do the things they spoke of.”

The mare folded her hooves in her lap, seeming to compress herself atop her stool as if trying to force a feeling in her heart from bursting out through her chest. “She was the same with Zaniskar,” she murmured. “We’d tell her about the Celestians, about the threat they posed to her legitimacy and authority, and she’d say, ‘Who am I to tell another creature who or what to believe in?’ And with the Water Emp… with Mizuma, the very same: ‘So what if they want to govern themselves without the Crystal Empire butting in? Doesn’t every creature deserve to be free?’

“She had such ideals, such an unshakeable belief in the goodness of every creature, if only one could find out what they wanted and give it to them. It was inconceivable to her that someone given a gift would next demand a hoard. She couldn’t wrap her head around the idea of it, never mind the reality. And I wish she’d been right. I truly do. The world she thought we lived in was a better one, a beautiful one.

“But Senna… no intentions could be good enough to excuse that. Seeing rallies in the hundreds of thousands, buildups of troops on the borders, intrusions over those borders into the sovereign territory of other nations, and then looking us all in the eyes and saying, ‘Don’t worry, Chain Lightning assured me that he just wants to reunite his ponies with their families. That part of Kůňský is majority-equine anyway. He promised me he’ll leave everyone else alone, and Orlov will help make sure of that.’ She’d spoken with Gavriil Ironclaw too, you see. Received promises from him as well.”

The advisor snorted, and looked past Spike’s shoulder just long enough to wave off a pegasus bearing a clipboard, who’d been halfway through telling her that her panel was about to begin. “You know what she called that?” the mare said through a sour smile. “Her little ‘give them what they want and they won’t ask for more’ scheme? ‘Peace in our time.’ Peace for who, you ask? Not the Kůňskians, that’s for sure. Or the changelings.”

The mare stood, and through the door the pegasus had left cracked open, the rumbling drone of ponies stuffed into folding chairs in an airless recording studio served as backdrop for her final thoughts. “She wasn’t naïve. She was intelligent and kind, zealously so in both regards. She was a Princess. And it wasn’t her fault that what we needed was a leader.”

“And you’re saying that on the record?” Spike asked, following the unicorn through the dressing room door and stopping at the stage’s edge.

“On the record,” she replied as she strode onto the stage and into the spotlight’s glare, “is there anything else worth saying?”

Comments

[GaPJaxie]

You're nailing the vibe here.

[Sunny]

Welp, Twilight becoming a Chamberlain analogue I can see and not see. It does feel like post-80-days she'd have been more...well, less naive about the world.