Eternal

by device heretic

VI. Illusions and Illuminations

VI. ILLUSIONS AND ILLUMINATIONS

Nice to See Old Friends + She'll Need You + Listening To Words Unspoken + Just the Magic of Friendship + Spike's Little Moment + Dear Princess Celestia + Results + Dereliction of Duty + Scholarly Attitudes + Graduation Day + Just Rewards + Princess Celestia Makes an Omelet + Your Humble Servant and Loyal Subject + Your Real Name + A Sorority Invitation

~(E)~

Sunlight fell, weakly, through a curtained window, filling the room with a dull greyish light through a thin cover of clouds.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” Applejack whispered, automatically, as the first sunlight fell on her face.
Her eyes opened wide, the absence of her usual accompaniment out in the yard thunderous in its silence, and then several other mental gears started turning in rapid succession. Applejack’s head leapt from pony to pony to dragon, understanding creeping up on her. “Wake up! Everypony! Get up—“

“Mmmph. Shut up, AJ, I’m busy,” Rainbow Dash groaned, rolling over on her side, waving a hoof dismissively.

Applejack leapt on her friend, rolling her over bodily with a grunt of effort.

“Wow, hey, I didn’t realize—“ Rainbow Dash began, a sarcastic grin spreading across her features.

“Twilight’s missin’,” Applejack said firmly, staring down at the pegasus.

“What!?”

Around them, everypony else’s gentle stirrings from the magnificent dreams they’d been having—not about a field at all, which was strange, because hadn’t Twilight mentioned something like that?—became much more active and stressed. In their sudden, drowsy panic, pillows and blankets were overturned as if this would produce the unicorn, but to no avail.

She was gone, and it was much, much later than they had expected to be waking up.

Outside, there was a muffled sound of discussion as the sudden activity alerted the guards outside. The door opened to reveal a couple of guard ponies, one of whom was very familiar to everypony.

“Ah, you’re all up, I see,” the golden-yellow pegasus said. A silver captain’s badge gleamed on her blue and silver Night Guard flyer uniform. “Hey, Dash. It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it..!”

“Spitfire?” Dash sputtered. “What’s going on?”

The golden pegasus shrugged. “Well, to be totally honest, I’m not one hundred percent in the know about that,” she said in her usual calm, friendly tone. “But milady wants you guys to chill here for now, so…you know, chill.”

“You’re a palace guard?” Pinkie Pie said, eyes agog in a truly ridiculous expression of astonishment.

“Uh, yeah,” Spitfire replied with an awkward smile. “Dash didn’t tell you, huh? I’m not a Wonderbolt anymore, right? Somepony took my Captaincy.” The golden pegasus nodded at Dash. “Mare’s gotta make a living, and weather duty’s just not my style.” She favored Dash with a sheepish grin. “Actually, uh…since you’re here, and not going anywhere, I was hoping we could take the time to chat, RD. Haven’t seen you since Scoots and I hauled your drunk flanks home after your Wonderbolts send-off party.”

Dash blushed as her friends, despite their anxious preoccupation, grinned at her. Spitfire’s story here did not match up with Rainbow Dash’s own account of that evening’s events, but for some reason seemed much more credible. Cloudsdale Aerodrome still existed, for example.

“Yeah, I’d, uh…love to, but…we gotta find our friend,” Dash said.

“No worries,” Spitfire said, her face friendly and calm. “She’s with the princess, somewhere, so don’t get those feathers of yours too ruffled about her, hot shot.”

“If those two went off together, we know where they went,” Applejack said, firmly.

“You don’t understand,” Fluttershy said, anxiously. “She’s in a lot of danger!”

Spitfire smiled gently at her. “With all you guys here I have no doubt,” she said, with a little chuckle. Her easygoing attitude was beginning to grate on everypony’s nerves. “If I wanted trouble, I’d just put two or three of you in a room together.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Maybe I should split you up, now that I think about it…”

“Maybe you should just let us out, and save yourself the trouble of trying to stop us,” Dash growled.

“Sorry, Dash, no can do. Princess’ orders, and all—and more importantly, three squads of really serious dudes in armor standing around at my beck and call.” Spitfire’s small, familiar smile grew a little wider, and while her eyes still looked calm and easygoing, a dangerous gleam flared deep in them. “…and just so you, in particular, don’t get any ideas, there’s a reason I was put in charge of keeping you here.”

“Oh yeah?” Dash smarmed, reflexively contrary.

Spitfire moseyed up to Dash —there was no other word for it, she walked like somepony who couldn’t care less about anything else in the world, lazily and slow—and grinned smugly in the blue pegasus’ frowning face. “You can beat me in a straight sprint, no doubt, but you and I both know you can’t outrun me when you have to maneuver around, say, the towers here in Canterlot.” She winked and lowered her voice to a whisper into Dash’s ear. “Or maybe you just never really want to…”

Rainbow Dash’s face was now no longer blue, but solid red.

“Of course, I could always get some wing bands up here if you feel the temptation to have another little race too much to resist.” Spitfire added, waggling her eyebrows a little suggestively. “I would hate to have to haul you back here in front of everypony in Canterlot…”

Dash cleared her throat loudly, ignoring the suppressed snickers around her. “No, I…no. That won’t…be necessary.” She glowered darkly at Applejack, who was suddenly extremely interested in her hoof, grinning madly.

Spitfire stepped back, smiling brightly. “It’s so nice to see old friends, isn’t it?” she said, with a happy sigh.

“Spitfire, you don’t understand,” Rarity said, stepping forward. “Luna may have taken Twilight to perform very dangerous magic!”

The pegasus scrunched up her face. “That sounds…kind of like their job, don’t you think..? I mean—”

“We were supposed ta help ‘em, but…it’s about Princess Celestia,” Applejack added, stepping next to the unicorn. “They ain’t thinkin’ straight. Thinkin’ they gotta do it on their lonesome. They both might be in danger.”

Spitfire raised an eyebrow. “Well, I…don’t know anything about that,” she said, still calm, but the easy confidence was gone from her voice. “But the Princess ordered that you six should stay here, and stay here you will. Okay?” She tried to chuckle flippantly. “I mean, come on, guys, this is Princess Luna and the Arch-Mage, right? How much danger could they be in, really?”

Spitfire had expected explanations, yelling, arguments—things she could just let bounce off a professional, calm little smile in the noble tradition of guards throughout history. That she could deal with and yawn off, no problem. But the sudden awkward silence, the anxious looks as each of them looked to the others for the right words to say…even Dash, who Spitfire knew from long experience to be terminally inclined to thoughtless bravado, looked miserably worried.

The golden pegasus’ mellow was being seriously harshed. She turned away and stepped back through the door, tossing a worried look over her shoulder.

“I’ll see about that, I…” She looked away, frowning with indecision, then looked back. “I’ll see, okay? And Dash, think about what I said.”

Dash’s blush returned. “About, uh…chatting?”

Spitfire managed half a saucy grin. “No, Dash, about the wing bands. Just…stay here, will you?”

As the door closed, Spike closed his eyes again, curling back into his little nest of cushions.

~(E)~

“She’s coming.”

“I know.”

“Her resolve…could be a little more certain.”

“I know.”

Celestia’s eyes felt glued shut. She could feel, barely, the inevitable downward pressure of the sun, her ability to focus on keeping it above the horizon slipping. She dared not even try to sense the extent of its descent, trying to focus instead on marshalling all her willpower on recovering the balance point where she could just maintain the sun’s position, rather than fight its inevitable downward push into the horizon.

Pain and the strain of prolonged effort dulled everything. She could only just feel the sun anymore. Everything she could manage to summon from her mind was focused on keeping the sun in the sky. Fighting off setting.

For more than one thousand years she had been the Eternal Sun, shining over Equestria, she chanted in her mind. The familiar thought comforted her; it was a reminder of her identity, the role she had chosen in that darkest of times—the burden she willingly, happily bore, for Equestria and all her little ponies. They needed her to shine brightly, to drive away the darkness, to always be there, a constant in the ever-flowing, mercurial sea of change that was life.

If she focused on that, drove it into her heart…it would resume its place in the primacy of her mind.

Yes. This is manageable. Things just got out of hoof for a time. Focus. Yes.

“She’ll need you.”

The little truth, whispered gently as if to be the spoken equivalent of a sympathetic caress, filled Celestia’s mind with a spasm of fear.

In that moment of lost concentration she felt, with sudden and desperate certainty, the sun slip from her control again. Unbidden, a little whine of terror slipped from her, and humiliated tears welled in her eyes, stinging and biting behind her straining eyelids. She desperately re-focused on the sun.

The voice, for once, was mercifully silent.

~(E)~

Twilight regained awareness with terrifying suddenness, her stomach lurching and eyes opening wide as she took in a sudden breath. She was lying on her back, facing up into an endless blue sky; the air around her was dry as a bone baked under the naked sun and tasted like the ancient, stale air of the sealed, vault-like basements of the palace library, thick with the strange odor of parchment dust and moldering paper.

She took another deep gulp of the air, with the satisfaction of a true bibliophile.

The ground beneath her had the solid, but almost slippery feeling of fine dry sand; indeed, as Twilight rolled over onto her hooves, she had to fight the way it floowed and shifted beneath them. It was black, volcanic sand, Twilight noticed, although something in her cautioned her that this did not necessarily imply there was a volcano anywhere nearby. Here, things would have symbolic rather than naturalistic implications.

Twilight?

The suddenness of…whatever it was made Twilight jump. It wasn’t a sound, it was…a feeling. It was an awareness that somepony had spoken, as if the past had just now changed so that they had, after the fact. But the voice it hadn’t spoken in was familiar.

Twilight shuddered. It felt strange to "hear", which was a bizarre thing in and of itself. “Luna? Is that you?”

Oh, good. And you’re yourself?

She looked herself over, carefully, remembering Luna’s sense of violation after her own experience, here. “Uh, yes. I think so.”

Excellent. We’re already making progress. Where are you?

Twilight frowned. “Don’t you mean, ‘when’?” she asked, sourly.

So you’re in a memory you recognize?

Even here, Twilight could tell that Luna had recognized the little jab and was deliberately misinterpreting it to be difficult, that little grin of sly amusement touching her lips. “No, I’m in…a desert, I think. The sand is black, like volcanic sand, but it’s very fine.”

No landmarks? Mountains, ruins…anything of that nature?

Twilight took a moment to gaze into the distance, which vanished into a haze of heat. Doing so made her feel uneasy; the black sand was so strange, and holding it and the familiar blue sky in her vision at the same time felt wrong, somehow. “No, nothing. Just…a desert. There’s not even any wind. It smells like a library full of old books. Does that mean anything to you?”

No.

“I take it that you didn’t come here, then.”

No, Twilight. I…I awoke in the Temple of Two Sisters, as…it.

Twilight grimaced. “Sorry, Luna. Um…” she peered into the horizon again. There was no sign of anything, or anypony; just a wide, flat, black desert of sand, all perfectly still except for that which slid around under her hooves.

Ah! The sun, Twilight. Where is the sun?

“The sun?”

Yes. Is it rising? Setting? This could be significant.

Twilight looked up. The sun was directly overhead; high noon. She said so.

I…see.

Okay, let’s think here, Twilight, her mind said. What else could have been significant? Deduction requires data.

She inspected the impression where she had arrived, and the marks from her minor struggle to stand, in case they presented any clue about how she had arrived or some hint of directionality, but as she thought about it, a sneaking suspicion that the desert had arisen around her grew in her mind. There weren’t any suggestions that she had fallen, such as impact displacement—there was just a small, Twilight Sparkle-shaped depression in the sand.

Similarly, there was no sign of drifting at all—it was just a wide, flat, dry, strange-smelling, sandy expanse, vanishing into the horizon. Completely unnatural, in every way.

“Hmmm,” she said.

Found something?

Twilight sighed. “The opposite, actually. I’d give lot for some wings about now…” A thought occurred to her, and she began to use magic to create a little disc of sand beneath herself to levitate on.

Twilight, stop!

Luna’s "voice" was suddenly frightened and a little frantic, seeming distant. Twilight dropped to the ground, blinking. “What? What is it?”

Hold on, hold on…what were you doing?

“I was just levitating sand. Making a platform to raise myself up on. Why?”

You started your mane on fire.

“What!?”

There was a pause which Twilight suspected was supposed to be filled with a little snicker. Okay, okay…everything’s fine, just a singe. For some reason you started producing sparks in the waking world.

Twilight glowered, bringing a hoof to her face in irritation. “No magic, then, I take it.”

Just the magic of friendship, for now, I think…sister.

“Mmm, wonderful,” Twilight mumbled with a sarcastic half-smile. “Well, let’s see, then…maybe I can find a filly who wants her cutie mark around somewhere. One generally finds a way to get underhoof if I try to go about my business in peace…” Twilight looked around, and again failing to find any guide for herself, set off in a direction which failed to be any more or less appealing than the others.

~(E)~

Rainbow Dash was still glaring at Applejack, who was grinning madly, shaking her head with the effort of not bursting into delighted laughter.

“That filly wound ya right up the flagpole,” the orange pony snickered. “You’re redder than a red delicious in buckin’ season.”

“Shut up.”

“Where’s the big, bad Rainbow Dash, heartbreaker and mare on the go, now? Looked more like ya could barely look ‘er in the eyes for…well, you know. She’s got a nice pair o’wings on her, fer sure.”

“Shut. Up.”

“Honestly, you two,” Rarity sniffed. “We have much more important things to be doing than teasing each other.”

“Rarity, Ah gotta get when the gettin’s good, don’t Ah? An’ it’s good an’…uh, good, right now.” Applejack sighed. “But, yer right, o’course.” She gave her best friend another smug look, which the pegasus huffed away from.

“I can’t believe Luna would just take Twilight,” Fluttershy said, sadly. “It’s so unlike her.”

Dash gave Fluttershy a dark look, although she was privately happy to move on. “She wasn’t exactly thrilled to have us around, you know.”

“I can’t really blame her, poor dear,” Fluttershy replied, about as firmly as she ever did. “This must all be so hard on her, and she’s so sensitive.” Dash gave her a disbelieving look. Fluttershy frowned in her friend’s defense, blushing furiously.

Applejack nodded. “An’ Twi’s been through a lot. Ah can see her gettin’ a bee in her bonnet about Celestia, and usin’ the buzz to think with. She got real serious after she saw ‘er lyin’ there. Haystacks, so did Ah…but…” the earth pony shook her head. “There’s a part o’me that wishes Ah could agree with Spitfire, and jus’ leave ‘em to it. I may be an Element of Harmony, but what’s goin’ on here? It ain’t apple buckin’, that’s fer sure.”

“Well, we can’t just leave them. Even if we won’t be involved in the magic, per se,” Rarity said, looking nervous, her recent trauma not forgotten even though Luna had pronounced her perfectly healthy.

“Did anypony hear anything in the night that might have given them a clue how Luna got her out of here?” Dash asked, ignoring Fluttershy’s very slight narrowing of the eyes.

Applejack shook her head. “Nope. Ah was out like a snuffed candle. Had a nice dream, though…”

“I was the same way,” Rarity said.

They looked to Fluttershy, who quailed under the sudden glares and just murmured a hurt-sounding, “Sorry, no.”

“Me either!” Pinkie declared, happily. She had been unusually quiet up until now, sitting and listening with un-Pinkie-like patience. “But Spike did!”

“What?” Dash snarled, eyes ablaze.

“I heard the princess tell him she couldn’t put him to sleep like us because dragons don’t like Luna playing in their dreams!” Pinkie grinned hugely at Spike, who remained curled up, one eye open very slightly. The monocular glare he was giving her might be described as ‘poisonous’.

Applejack turned on him. “That true, Spike?”

The dragon’s other eye opened, letting him look around shiftily. “Ys,” he moaned in a tiny voice.

With a whoomph, Dash’s powerful wings spread wide in a reflexive threat display. “Well, maybe you’d like to tell us what you saw, then.”

“No.”

“Whyever not, Spike?” Rarity asked, stepping forward with as much poise as she could manage.

“’s none of our business,” he grumbled sullenly.

“I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t quite catch that,” Rarity said, leaning in and batting her eyes. When it came to getting Spike to talk, there was a noticable, and familiar progression of escalation; pretending not to have heard him and batting her eyes was, for Rarity, the equivalent of hanging somepony in the air and shaking them by the tail until their tongue loosened.

Pinkie grabbed a candle and held it right above Spike’s head, casting him into harsh light. “Yeah, spill the beans, stoolie! Grrr!” This menacing display was ruined somewhat by her collapsing into giggles, legs thrashing.

Spike curled even tighter, his tail wrapping around his face.

“Spike! Stand up this instant!” Mistress Rarity declared, haughtily.

To her utter astonishment, this usually-infallible method did not induce an instantly-upright Spike. Instead he slowly got to his feet, uncoiling unwillingly, and stood slowly to his full, unslouching, and—the ponies noticed this only now that they had provoked him—somewhat imposing height; even Applejack, tallest among them, had to look up to meet his eyes, now. The dragon glowered down at them, shifting unhappily.

“Uh,” Applejack murmured. Good golly he’s a big ‘un…’course, he’d never hurt us, but…scary!

Even Dash stepped back, wings shrinking back to her sides, but her face remained suspicious and demanding. Rarity, though, stood her ground, head upthrust, eyes gleaming. Spike looked everywhere but at her.

“Spiiiiike..?”

“I…we…this isn’t any of our business,” Spike growled. He really did; it was a very low sound, rolling out of him with as much affection as boulders crashing together. Fluttershy gave a tiny squeak of shock at the sound.

Rarity stood her ground, cocking her head slightly and looking at him inquisitively. The dragon squirmed. “Spike, you’ll feel better when you tell us.”

“Very well,” he said, which was a very un-Spike-like thing to say, enough to provoke an eyebrow raise from Rarity, which he visibly flinched from. It rose in one swift motion like a sword stroke, and he watched it warily. “But only because I want you to stop being suspicious of the princess, okay? Twilight left on her own.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash snapped, incredulously. “Twilight Sparkle, miss harmony and peace and togetherness and trust and friendship, herself, tricked us into being put to sleep and then left us to go face who knows what by herself?”

“You gotta admit, that’s a pretty good trick, Dashie,” Pinkie said in the thoughtful tones of an interested expert in the subject.

“Yeah, she really got us good,” Dash said, rolling her eyes. “So now she and Luna must be down in that cave with Celestia. If we hurry, we can—“

“No!” Spike growled, again. There was a throatiness to this, which spoke of the mighty roar that would, one day, thunder in the sky over Ponyville; the ponies instinctively flinched from the sound, staring up at him in sudden shock. He immediately shrank, having frightened himself, looking guilty. “No,” he repeated, quietly. “This is none of our business. I saw her leaving, and…I let her go.”

Instinctively, without really looking, Applejack snatched Rainbow Dash from mid-leap and shoved a hoof over her mouth. Muffled complaints were still completely audible.

Rarity cleared her throat. “Why?” she asked, prim as primroses, muzzle held high in the air.

“You guys…I mean, I’ve known Celestia and Twilight since I was a baby. I mean, Twi hatched me herself, okay? I mean…I don’t mean to say you guys don’t know, but…look, Celestia means more to Twilight, and Twilight means more to Celestia, than…there’s not really words for what they are. That’s why things got so screwed up, maybe. And now Celestia could be gone from Twi’s life, for the rest of her life. Maybe forever. If she decided she wanted to do this alone…I decided…” He held his head up high and proud again. “I decided that if she needed to do this by herself, just her and Luna, then…I understood. And you guys should, too.”

“Spike..?” the white unicorn asked, quietly.

He looked away, eyes shut. “I made my decision, okay?”

The dragon was somewhat stunned to feel a gentle pressure on his chest, and, as he turned to look, the barest whisper of a touch on his scaly cheek. He raised a clawed hand to it as Rarity backed away from him, his eyes confused but thrilled.

“You really have grown into a fine young dragon,” she said, quietly. She gave him about the most admiring look he’d ever received from her. “I’m very proud of you.”

He smiled, lamely. “Thank you. But, um, can I stop now? It’s really hard to keep being firm about this when I’m almost sure I’ll never see either of them again, now.”

~(E)~

Twilight put one hoof before the other.

Um…dare I ask if..?

“No,” Twilight growled. “Nothing new.”

From her point of view it had been several hours, but Luna said she’d only been doing this for about five minutes in the waking world. Subjectivity in the experience of time suggested…it…

It meant…something. Maybe.

It was hot here, that was for sure.

Twilight?

“Yes?”

Please stop whatever you’re doing. You look exhausted.

“Okay…” Twilight said, collapsing bodily sideways as Luna said this. A very little bit of the warm, black sand fluffed up around her, falling back to the earth in a strangely regular way; there was absolutely no wind here, so it all fell straight up and down, almost like liquid. In fact, Twilight was beginning to get the idea that she was breathing with her real body, not with this…astral form, or whatever you wanted to call it, and thus there probably wasn’t air at all. Which made her wonder why there was a smell, but…whatever…

She lay there, exhausted, feeling ashamed of herself. It had only been a couple hours; on some of her adventures, she’d travelled for days, keeping pace—well, okay, trying to keep pace with Applejack’s indefatigable stride across plains and mountains, through forests and swamps, from sunrise to—

Twilight twitched, just a little. More from the sudden pang of anxiety about helping the princess than any lingering…twitchiness, which pleased her in a distant sort of way.

Are you alright?

“Yep,” Twilight said, exhausted. “Just peachy.”

You twitched.

“Yeah, here too. Just a passing thought.”

Alright…if you’re sure. Your body isn’t as separate from your mind as mine can be, it seems…

Twilight smiled weakly. “So no magic, and if I get hurt here, I get hurt in real life. Super.”

I’m not sure it’s quite that neat, but…let’s be careful.

Twilight rolled up so she could look around, although she wasn’t entirely sure what compelled her to do this. She had no logical reason to expect anything but the uniform black waste stretching to the horizons, but hope springs eternal…

Above her, the blazing eye of high noon shined down, unmoving and unchanged.

Which way had she come from?

Twilight cast about. The only marks in the sand were those she had just made when she flopped to the ground, and even those were fading. Her hoofprints were completely gone—as if they’d never been there. She blinked a couple times.

“Luna, my hoofprints are gone.”

You were just…walking?

“Um, yes,” Twilight said, too aware now how foolish this sounded.

A thought occurs.

“Well, don’t keep it to yourself.”

It…is possible that she—her mind—hasn’t…noticed you yet. This is a very strange circumstance, after all; there might not be any part of it trying to notice things.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “It noticed you. Do you think I’m less…intrusive?”

Possibly. Or Celestia’s condition has degenerated further; or both.

“Of all the times not to have magic available, this is among the more inconvenient.”

Only among them?

Twilight groaned. “I’ve had a pretty interesting life, you know? There was this one time—I must have told you about this—that Trixie showed up again…”

Oh, I like her. She’s so funny.

“Look, it’s a long story, okay? I’ll tell you later.” The unicorn shuddered a bit, remembering the details. Harmony be blessed, Pinkie Pie had been around…

There was a little pause that included Luna’s look of unease. I…look forward to hearing it.

The unspoken vote of confidence, no matter how hesitant it had sounded, was a balm on Twilight’s flagging self-assurance. She smiled gently, letting the emotion flow over her, then marshaled her mental resources and set to thinking.

Hokay. Gotta communicate directly with the princess’ mind. No magic.

…except the magic of friendship.

Twilight’s eyebrows raised slowly, and she pursed her lips thoughtfully. It… just might work.

“I’m going to try something,” Twilight said, in the speculative tones of an engineer who’s put some thought into exactly how to move that boulder over yonder with this here matchstick. “Something friendship related. Tell me if anything happens on your end.”

Very well. Be careful.

Twilight got to her hooves and, tongue sticking out, dragged a hoof across the black sand in careful patterns. The effect was somewhat crude, and she wished she could have used a stick with her magic, but the words were more or less legible.

Twilight looked around; nothing was happening. She frowned, looking back at the letters, which were already beginning to fade. “Anything out there?”

No, Twilight. What did you do?

“Wrote in the sand. Gonna try again.”

It is one definition of madness to do the same thing twice and expect different results. I would have expected you, of all ponies, to realize this.

Twilight grinned as her hoof dragged through the silky-smooth sand, biting as deep as she could. “Didn’t you say rationality would be a poor guide, here?”

I suppose I did, but…I was really just backing up your decision to do this alone. Don’t misinterpret me for your own purposes. You know I hate that.

“A bee complaining it’s been stung? How strange.” Good heavens, why did she ever stop spending time with Luna? All the more reason to resolve this situation…so that there could be a thousand, thousand more moments like this with the pr—her big sister.

It was a little weird to say, even in her mind, but…in a good way. Twilight smiled.

Luna must have thought so, too, because her "voice" had a smile in it. Extremely amusing. Make your attempt, will you?

Twilight, panting hard, finished scrawling the words in the sand. “So?”

Nothing, Twilight.

“Nope, nothing here either. Just being thorough. I think we can say that nothing is observing the physical state of this desert—well, of course that must be so, otherwise my magic earlier would have caused some notice, don’t you think?”

Well, that was only telekinesis…and it only lasted for a moment…

“But you can hear me, right? Maybe other things are listening, too…I just need to use the right words.”

Ha! Magic words, maybe? Abracadabra! Alakazam! Please!

A familiar little grin of satisfaction spread across Twilight’s features. “Not magic words, just the right ones.” She cleared her throat.

Your horn is glowing. Are you doing magic?

“Sort of,” Twilight said, her joyful grin of triumph truly beautiful to behold. “Dear Princess Celestia—“

~(E)~

Luna looked up, face aglow with delight and hope. Silver letters sprang into life in the air above Twilight, tracing themselves into being with a simple but serene and elegant grace.

DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA,

I’M HERE! LET ME IN! UH…PLEASE!

YOUR FAITHFUL STUDENT,

~(E)~

“Twilight Sparkle!”

Twilight’s voice rang in Celestia’s mind. They were at once the most delightful, welcome words she had ever heard—her heart swelled with joy and relief at how proud and confident Twilight sounded—and a torture of such terrible severity that even demons would balk at it.

Oh, Twilight…I don’t deserve you.

“Took her long enough. I can’t believe she was just walking around—I mean, why? I thought she was clever,” said the voice. “Oops! Pay attention, Celestia, you’re losing your grip…”

~(E)~

“We should be there,” Dash moaned.

Spike shot her a halfhearted glare, his head resting in Rarity’s lap. He was only a young dragon, after all, and could only bear so much; it had broken the ponies’ hearts to see him struggle against his own biology and try to break into terrified tears.

More discussion had followed. Some of it had been rather heated, although that was just Rainbow Dash and Applejack’s way. As emotions grew more drawn out and the discussion went on, the inevitability of their conclusion drew more and more apparent. Their resolve circled the drain that Spike had seen right away: what, really, could they do to help? And what right did they have to interfere?

Dash, in particular, had been conflicted—torn between loyalty to Twilight’s safety and loyalty to Twilight’s right to pursue some closure, her headstrong bravado had burned out quickly and she fell into a dark, brooding depression. She had eventually manufactured a little nest for herself and steadfastly refused to speak except in bitter little interjections like this, apparently changing her mind about what they should do every time she worked up the nerve to speak.

They lay around the room in silence, everypony unsure to their bones. Pinkie Pie’s attempts to lighten the mood had fallen flat, even with her.

Suddenly, there was…something.

Rarity looked up from Spike, her eyes wide and wary. “Did anypony else feel that?”

“Feel wha…” Applejack said, but paused, looking wary. “Yeah, Ah did…”

She looked down at herself, putting a hoof to her neck where a jewel might hang on a golden torc. She had felt, just for a moment, the slight, ethereal pull that she associated with using the Elements of Harmony, the tug as the magic focused around the Element of Magic and formed into the great rainbow wave.

The five ponies looked at each other, unsure whether to be anxious or to indulge a familiar rising feeling of hope and inner serenity. Something was happening.

But as soon as they noticed it, the feeling passed, leaving them feeling even gloomier in its absence.

~(E)~

The world rumbled around Twilight. The black sand, shaking and vibrating weirdly, rushed inwards towards a point in front of her, making her slip and stumble as her footing became slick as ice, flowing underneath her. The great mass of sand built up in great leaps and bounds, in a bizarre, inorganic way; it was very much like watching a complicated bottle fill up, each shape seeming to grow and flow into itself on its own, rising high above Twilight into the still-cloudless expanse of blue sky.

A horrendous storm of swirling sand surrounded the black shape as great towering pillars of the strange black sand coalesced into being. Twilight blinked and coughed in the noxious storm, putting a hoof in front of her eyes, finding herself unwilling to look away from this strange sight. It was curiously beautiful, and had a strange emotional feeling to it; it was a thing that existed, coming into being; something like a birth was happening before her.

Sneezing and hacking, Twilight was finally forced to back away as the storm grew more and more intense. Howling winds, appearing from nowhere, sang banshee songs as the sands whirled and bit at her, making her snap and jerk as if she were being bitten by flies, shielding her eyes and face as best she could.

Then, with shocking suddenness, the storm died. Twilight unfolded from the reflexive cringe and looked up—

--at Canterlot Castle.

Twilight looked around herself in panic. She was standing on the main road up to the castle, decorative shrubberies on either side of her. Behind her, the road led down into Canterlot Town and from there, off onto the great plains in the shadow of the mountains, towards the south and Ponyville.

Twilight? Twilight! What happened?

“The desert, uh…sort of became…I’m, uh…standing in front of the Castle.” Twilight stared. The gates were thrown open, but the castle seemed to loom, even now in the midday sun, more than it ever had even when Twilight was a filly. It was as tall and imposing as, perhaps, most ponies thought it. And there were subtle changes; the decorative rail fences looked larger and thicker, the windows small and dark, the colors muted, the gold gilt dull. “Well, something like the Castle, anyways.”

Canterlot?

“Yeah.”

Can you go inside?

Twilight looked up at the open gates and then further up at the steps the keep, beyond which lay the annex and Great Hall. The great arched doors, edged in gold, seemed to swing in as her eyes fell on them. “I think it wants me to.”

Wants you to? You can feel intentionality from this place?

“No, nothing like that, it’s just that the doors are open.”

There was a long pause. I suppose there’s nothing else to do, is there…

“Well, it’s nice to get some results, if nothing else,” Twilight said, trotting forwards. As she passed the gates, they slowly swung shut behind her. She turned at the sound, and watched as the vision of the world beyond was obscured by a strange roiling mist.

Well, that was…promising.

The unicorn turned back to the annex doors, open enough to reveal a soft glow inside, a strange sort of smoky stuff spilling out of the bottom of the doorway, vanishing as it rolled along the ground.

Equally promising.

“Can you still hear me?”

Yes. Are you alright?

Twilight set her face in an expression of grim determination. “I’m going in.”

~(E)~

“Brave, isn’t she?”

“The bravest.”

“Shame there’s not an Element of Courage, eh? But Magic’s okay, too, I guess.” There was a pause that nevertheless conveyed a bored grin of intense smugness. “She really doesn’t understand where she is, though, does she? If only—and this is just a thought, you understand—if only somepony were there looking out for her.”

“She doesn’t need me…looking out for her…anymore.”

“Well, your sister is half-tagging along, I think, so that should be fun. Let’s watch, shall we?” the voice added, eagerly.

Celestia tried to refocus her attention on the sun, but every sound Twilight made caused her face to twitch into a little grimace of anxiety.

Focus! For Equestria, you stupid old nag. Put the sun back in the sky and rise. For everypony. That includes her, after all.

~(E)~

There was a knock on the door, but it was mostly for politeness’ sake. The door immediately opened and Spitfire entered, looking uncomfortable. Her eyes roamed around the room carefully, taking in the muted scene with growing unhappiness. Even Rainbow Dash was just lying in a stack of pillows, facing out the window, her body limp and face listless.

Applejack looked up. “Howdy,” she managed.

The guard captain tried to re-form her usual patient smile, but like a match lit in the wind it flared, sputtered, and failed. As she searched for words, she chewed her lower lip just a little. “Uh…look, guys, I’ve had both the commander of the guards and the chancellor of the Academy here…and, uh…”

“They think we should leave Luna and Twilight to it,” Dash said, her voice as bored as Spitfire had ever heard it. Not disinterested bored—Spitfire was very familiar with that tone of voice out of her friend—empty bored. It was a little disturbing to hear Dash’s voice so drained of emotion.

“I tried to explain that you guys are all worried that they’re not thinking straight, uh, without going into too much detail,” Spitfire said, a little bit of pleading in her voice, begging them to believe her. “They both say that we need to trust the Princess’ judgment. I mean…do you guys know what they’re up to?” She realized she was sputtering, trying to fill the cavernous silence, the ponies around her only half-paying attention.

“We kind of know,” Fluttershy murmured. “That’s why we’re worried.”

Spitfire forced her expression to harden, and she cleared her throat. “Well, the chancellor said that if you went down into the, uh, well, wherever that hole goes, you could cause more trouble than you help if you interfered,” she said, in an official-sounding voice.

Rarity looked up from Spike, who still had his head in her lap. “That’s possible, yes.”

“More’n possible, it’s downright likely,” Applejack agreed.

Spitfire’s eyes lingered on Rainbow Dash, who stared out the window with resigned thoughtlessness. It was turning out to be a dull sort of day, where a thin layer of pale grey clouds covers the sky, making everything just seem washed-out and unhappy. “You guys seem way less sure of yourselves than you were earlier, I gotta say. I sort of expected to get, um…you know, fought back at,” she said, lamely.

“Well, we haven’t just been sitting here, you know,” Spike rumbled.

“Yeah, I…I think you scared the door guards a little bit there, with that rumbling of yours, big guy.” Spitfire tried to give him a smile.

The dragon blinked, his draconic features unreadable. “Sorry.”

“No, I mean…don’t…worry about it,” Spitfire replied, miserably. “I’ll be straight up with you guys, this is killing me just to watch,” she said. “I can’t imagine what it’s like for you.” This was, unthinkingly, directed at the back of Rainbow Dash’s head.

That selfsame head stirred, just a little. “Well, they’re right…this is some heavy stuff. Where would we start, helping out? We just have to trust them.” Reluctant resignation oozed off of Dash’s voice.

“You’ve got those Elements, don’t y—“

“The Princess didn’t want ta use ‘em,” Applejack said flatly. “Magic is as magic does, I ‘spose.”

Spitfire chewed her lip again. She had begun to regret taking this special assignment—chosen specifically by the princess to keep a lid on her old friend, Rainbow Dash? She hadn’t been able to resist the urge to accept the honor, as well as the opportunity to tease Dash, for even a second!—the very moment she’d seen the worried faces of the six friends when she walked in the door this morning, and her resolve to obey had drained quickly.

Spitfire was not, in fact, a particularly good guard. She had been hoof-picked as a captain by the princess because she was disciplined, intelligent, and an experienced leader and squadron commander, but like all true flyers, all of that strictness and self-control was dedicated wholly to supporting her in making her own choices and living life the way she truly desired—free and unrestrained—which made her an excellent guard right up until she decided not to be.

As the Princess had given Spitfire her orders in the dead of the early morning, the pegasus’ eagerness at the forthcoming opportunity to mess with Dash hadn’t prevented her from noticing the Princess’ regal calm and aloofness was exaggerated beyond even Luna’s norm. Something was wrong, and the extreme reaction of these six had shaken the strength of Spitfire’s dedication to duty further towards making her own decisions about what should be done.

And it meant Dash was being no fun, and that just wouldn’t do.

“Look, if the commander and the chancellor had decided to have me take you down there…what would you guys have done?” Spitfire asked, her mind scheming away.

The five ponies and dragon looked at each other, and then back up at her as if she were not getting the point.

“Spitfire, hun, we’re not gonna try anything—“ Applejack began.

“Just…would…I mean, you’ve gotta be able to do something,” Spitfire insisted.

Everypony else’s eyes opened wide, a glimmer of hope flashing in their despair.

“We don’t really know if there is anything for us to do,” Pinkie Pie said, a little animation returning to her features. “It’s gotten even more magical than normal! And when I say that, man, I’m talking…Woosh! Bang!”

Rarity cleared her throat and shifted a little. Spike raised himself up from her lap, looking nervous. “I think at this point, Spitfire dear,” the unicorn said, “It would be enough for us to feel like we’re there if they need us.”

Spitfire’s little grin bloomed. “Does that sound about right to everypony?” After some mutual glances, there was a small chorus of nods. Spitfire began speaking quickly “Okay, listen up, then. There’s only two guards left in the tower, okay? They’re at the top of the stairs outside the door. And that chamber in the floor is open.”

“What happened to the other guards?” Dash asked, rolling over in her nest, giving Spitfire a very suspicious glance. “You said you had like forty ponies down there.”

The golden pegasus grinned ferociously, her eyes ablaze. For somepony with such an aggressive name, Spitfire generally seemed calm…until she really got excited. She was at least Dash’s equal as a true adrenaline junkie. Dash had only ever seen such an extreme reaction in the usually-mellow mare in the grips of extreme adrenaline overdose, on the tail end of the most extreme stunts the two of them could manage, or while her mind got lost planning a new routine, imagining the crowd’s cheers.

“We’ve spread them out. Too many guards around this lonely old tower draws too much attention…and I may have been fibbing, just a bit, you know, to make a point.” Spitfire’s grin shrunk from fiery to sly. “But it seems that I’m about to commit a serious dereliction of duty! Imagine that, a guard captain…shameful, really. As loyal citizens of Equestria, it would be your pleasure to report such irresponsible behavior…”

“Uh, Spitfire, why are you…” Dash asked, nervously, blushing, as Spitfire prowled up to her.

“And it would just be terrible if, not that I would think something like this would happen, but if those guards were somehow overpowered and tied up with, oh, the manacles I seem to have carelessly left outside the door…”

Applejack’s grin threatened to remove the top of her head from the bottom. “Oh, mah, wouldn’t it just,” she said.

Spike frowned. “We’ll just be…there, right? No interfering unless we have to.”

“Yes, dear.” Rarity put a hoof on his claw. “You were right; we were too eager to join in. Princess Luna and Twilight needed to do this for themselves.” She looked up at him, seriously. “But they might need us, so let’s just be there for them if they do. No matter what happens.” The dragon smiled at her in relief.

“Alright, then, is everypony on board?” Spitfire said, giving Dash a smoldering look.

“No!” Dash exclaimed, beet-red.

“You’re so cute when you’re flustered,” the golden pegasus purred, and kissed her, chuckling only a little as she heard Applejack’s gleeful call to the guards before happily losing herself in Dash’s suddenly eager embrace.

“Whoa,” Spike said.

“Grown up you may be, but not quite this grown up. Go get ready.” Rarity gave him a little shove with a hoof, and the dragon lumbered away, blushing. She shook her head at the pair. “Honestly.”

~(E)~

Twilight wandered the castle.

It had been more or less her home for years, and she knew it very, very well; now and then she found herself mistaking this facsimile for the real thing, expecting to see familiar ponies’ faces at their posts as she lost herself in thought meandering the familiar corridors. Nopony else was here, of course, but…it was very, very realistic.

Of course it is..!

“Luna?” Twilight asked, startled. “I was speaking..?”

No, but we were thinking along the same lines it seems—this is a representation of Celestia’s mind, and the castle is as good an image for that as anything. She’s probably around here somewhere, lost, or trapped…but the other rooms might be emotions, memories, dreams…

“You sound…eager.”

This is all very different than anything I have ever experienced before. It’s all very interesting. But it makes sense, doesn’t it?

Twilight paused. “I’m deeper in Celestia’s mind than you were in mine, aren’t I?”

Well…I’m not sure.

“Oh, excellent,” the unicorn groused.

I would speculate, one scholar to another, that this is unprecedented. Celestia is a unique case, after all.

Twilight’s all-too-excellent memory recalled the many reports and records of first expeditions of various kinds that she had read in her life of constant, voracious research. “Let’s hope there are a minimum of crocodiles, then…snakes, too.”

What?

“Never mind. So…” Twilight had been wandering through the east wing of the palace, near the kitchens. Like everyplace else she had been in the empty castle, every door that didn’t lead to another corridor was locked—well, not locked, exactly, the doors just wouldn’t open, not even to her most vigorous kicks. The only ones that seemed to be operational were the tall, arched doors from one hall to another, which opened and closed at Twilight’s approach in an eerily expectant way; she had sat in front of one, to see what would happen, and actually got the impression the door was becoming impatient with her. “If I were Celestia…where would I be..?”

Or where wouldn’t you be. After all, she’s not exactly in a healthy state of mind; being trapped in an unpleasant or unfamiliar place might represent this.

“An excellent point; however, it still gets me nowhere if I can’t open doors.” Twilight regarded a nearby handle irritably. “I’m going to try to force it open.”

…with magic? Twilight, that’s dangerous.

“Well, I pulled as hard as I could with my mouth,” Twilight said, blushing at the memory.

Oh, very well…I’ll watch you carefully here.

“Fortes fortuna adiuvat,” Twilight murmured.

Agh! Nothing good ever happens when somepony says that!

Twilight summoned her magic and tried to manipulate the handle. It seemed to squirm and flow as she wrapped telekinetic force around it, and when she just tried to press down on it with a little finger of force, it went straight through with a little ghost of resistance, as if she were pressing on a stream of water.

Twilight! Stop! Please—oh, heavens…

“Sorry, sorry,” Twilight said, grimacing.

Well, if you’re very lucky, Rarity will have some idea what to do with this.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “My mane is the least of my problems, I think.” The unicorn sighed, and looked around. “So, let’s…work from what we can guess. This is some sort of representation of the Princess’ mind…and it knows I’m here…”

Maybe it doesn’t know what to do with you. It seems clear that Celestia isn’t controlling things herself.

“Because I had to attract the mind’s attention, or—“

Well, by similar logic, she also hasn’t kicked you out yet, which is more or less equally likely.

Twilight’s stomach flipped. Somehow that represented the ultimate form of rejection—no, not somehow, it really did, in every possible way—and thus, the confirmation of at least some of the worries that still lurked and prowled in her mind.

Twilight hissed between her teeth, grimacing. Don’t think about that stuff. Solve the problem. Find Celestia. Get answers. Maybe save the day. Just another day at the office…tree…library…wizard’s tower…place. Nothing you haven’t done before, a hundred times.

Are you alright?

“Yes.”

You twitched again. Did you feel me touching you?

“N…no,” Twilight said, suddenly wary. “Why are you touching me?”

There was an embarrassed silence, then: Just…a nuzzle. Sorry.

“Don’t apologize, don’t apologize!” Twilight sputtered, hastily. “Thank you!”

You didn’t notice it, though?

“No.”

So we have more information. About your senses.

Luna sounded both a little sad and eager to move on, so Twilight let the whole issue pass. “Um, I think…I think I’m going to try to, ah…communicate, again.”

It is the way Twilight Sparkle traditionally speaks to the Princess. A…curious phenomenon.

“Yes, it is,” Twilight said, a wry grin spreading on her features at Luna’s little dig. “Alright, then, here I go—“

~(E)~

DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA,

IT’S ME, TWILIGHT SPARKLE…UM..I’M…TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOING ON. I WANT TO TALK TO YOU. LUNA AND I CARE ABOUT YOU A LOT AND WE WANT TO HELP. AND I THINK YOU AND I NEED TO WORK ON SOME CLOSURE ABOUT SOME STUFF. IF YOU DON’T, UM, MIND.

YOUR FAITHFUL STUDENT, TWILIGHT SPARKLE

~(E)~

“What were you teaching this poor filly?” asked the voice, in Celestia’s. Its tone was a strange mixture of amusement and impatience. “I mean, really, for another forever she’s running around even though she already knows what she has to do! She said what she has to do—“

“Let her figure this out on her own,” Celestia interrupted. Her voice was raspy and harsh, her throat dry as the desert Twilight had arrived in.

“Oh, was that your teaching method?” This time, there was a derisive little snicker. “No wonder she’s stumbling around.”

~(E)~

There was a loud creak as a door opened behind Twilight. She stared at it.

“Uh…the door to the parade grounds opened.”

Well…

“Yeah, I…yeah,” Twilight said, and stepped through.

~(E)~

The first sensation was of noise, so close and at such volume that it was a physical presence, pressing down on her. Twilight felt her heart try to match rhythm with the bass drum, which pounded away as the symphony orchestra around her blared The Pride of Equestria, movement 3: “March of the Wizard," the theme of the Academy. The rising height of the final few bars rang in her head even after they had finished playing.

The grounds were packed to the brim. As her mind reeled with sensation, Twilight tried to latch onto recognizable images: she saw before her the familiar faces of her parents, hugging tightly, her mother weeping proudly, her father’s face split in two by his grin. Her friends, all her friends—the Elements, Zecora, various Apples, Spike, everypony and everybody—were in the front row, barely containing their urge to cheer and laugh and dance around. Behind them sat nobleponies, dignitaries, emissaries of foreign nations, prominent scholars, and other ponies of importance, all looking pleased.

The sky was blue. The sun was shining. The air was fresh.

She was wearing her cape, the one Rarity made her. Twilight looked back at it in wonder, feeling the brooch bite at her neck a little—the downside to having such a pointed cutie mark, she supposed. She was also wearing a broad-brimmed hat.

What the hay was going on..?

“Citizens of Equestria!” announced a familiar drawl behind her. Twilight spun in place, to see the fat face of the Academy Chancellor standing behind a podium, suspended above which was an enchanted iron ring which amplified his voice. The thunderous noise it made had surprised the audience, and he was adjusting it a bit with his magic. “Oh, excuse me,” he burbled into his beard as he fiddled with it, peering intently.

“Uh—“ Twilight began.

“Citizens of Equestria! And of course, honored guests from many lands! I, Fireheart the Thirty-Second, Chancellor of Her Majesty’s Academy for Gifted Unicorns, am honored to present to you, erm, Her Majesty, Princess Celestia!” The Chancellor’s voice roared at her despite his efforts, but the crowd seemed immensely pleased by what he had said.

Twilight frowned. “But this isn’t how—“

The chancellor stepped down, and behind the podium appeared an even more familiar figure—the slim but tall figure of the princess, in the fullness of her beauty. She looked down on Twilight with a radiant smile and gave her a wink.

“P-princess!”

“Shhh, Twilight. You’re supposed to be looking proud! Smile!” the princess whispered. She turned to the little iron ring and cleared her throat. “My beloved citizens, and friends from the many nations of the world, I am so pleased that you could all be with me today as I…“ she paused, looking a little embarrassed. “Forgive me, I’m just…a little moved. Ahem. As I was saying, thank you for being with me as I, with great pride, confer the title of Arch-Mage on my most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle!”

There was a storm of applause.

“But…we held the ceremony in…and there weren’t…” Twilight murmured, but nopony paid her any attention. “And you didn’t say a word. You just looked at me…”

“There has not been a new Arch-Mage in many, many years. It fills me with pride to once again have the honor of presenting you with another gifted wizard, whose talents will surely bring pride and honor to the Academy, as well as wisdom and knowledge to the whole of Equestria.” Princess Celestia looked down at Twilight, her face a portrait of overwhelming affection. “I’m so proud of you, Twilight.”

Twilight turned and looked up at her. “But this isn’t how—“

“Furthermore,” the princess said into the ring, ignoring her, “On a more personal note, I would like to convey publicly my pleasure in formally ending her time as my ever-faithful personal student. Though it will grieve me to lose such a loyal and exceptional pupil, my loss is Equestria’s gain, it seems…” She chuckled, beautifully, and the crowd politely laughed with her. “Twilight has become her own mare—no, forgive me. So many of you know her well enough to know she was her own mare long ago…and I am only formally acknowledging that she outgrew me, before the world.”

Twilight’s eyes widened in terror as Princess Celestia looked down at her, smiling.

“You don’t need me anymore, do you? I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

~(E)~

Twilight stumbled backwards, heart pounding, as the door closed behind her.

Twilight! Can you hear me?

“Yes,” Twilight hissed, eyes wide. Her body was heaving, like she had just thrown up.

You were screaming!

“I can’t imagine I wasn’t.” Twilight brought a hoof to her face. “Was I just screaming, or were there words..?”

You kept saying things like, "That’s not what happened."

“I don’t know what happened. It was so much like a memory…but it was wrong.”

Wrong…how?

Twilight tched. “It wasn’t the right memory. It never happened. It was a ceremony raising me to Arch-Mage, but it was on the parade grounds, not in the Hall of Histories. And there were hundreds of ponies there! I mean, you remember how it actually was, there were only about twenty ponies. Pinkie Pie couldn’t come, for example, but she was there in this vision…”

How strange.

“And I felt like…it was directed at me. There was a Princess Celestia there…she told me I didn’t need her, and that she was proud of me.”

You’re very clever to pick up on that, I think. It’s not her, just a vision of her…

Twilight hugged herself. “Agh, I feel awful. Here, anyways.”

You look normal here. Twilight, I think…I think this is more dangerous than I expected. If you were just moving through memories, that would be one thing; but I think…I think her mind is trying to trap you, or scare you off, like I worried it would.

“Well, it won’t do so by trying to convince me I don’t need her.” As Luna had instructed, Twilight consciously remembered the dream; it filled her with warmth and surety, just as it had in the waking world. It wasn’t about what Twilight needed, anymore; she had everything she needed. It was about what she wanted.

Still, I think we need to…to…

“To what?”

I have no idea. I wish I could be there with you.

Twilight closed her eyes. “For what it’s worth, I do, too.”

Thank you.

“I…have to try again. I’m going to go somewhere else in the Castle and try to speak to her.” Twilight got to her hooves a little unsteadily and set off determinedly. “I’m still not sure if the actual location I’m in has any meaning, or can provide any advantage, but there is a place I could try, which might give me home-field advantage, if it does.”

Oh? Where?

~(E)~

“Ah…Ah can’t believe…” Applejack stammered. Her head throbbed. “Why did Ah think that was gonna work?”

Next to her, wings bound by a thick, belt-like leather strap and legs bound in metal shackles, Spitfire blushed crimson and gave her a sheepish smile. “I dunno, my part worked out pretty good.” She looked up into Rainbow Dash’s eyes, and they gave each other a gentle smile.

“We’re all very pleased for you two,” Rarity growled. She’d be covering this black eye up for the next couple weeks, and the manacles chafed.

“You guys need to stop asking me to be the one to hold ponies down,” Fluttershy said. She was the only one who was unbound, since all the guard had to do was look at her and she froze. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not very good at it.”

Spike, who was rather expertly chained such that any movement whatsoever would almost certainly break something, huffed irritably, releasing a plume of green smoke. “You might have mentioned they were unicorns.”

“Hey, sorry, I was a little caught up in the moment, okay? I’m too used to being in charge of pegasi, I guess.” Spitfire chuckled. “Ah, well, I was getting tired of being a guard, anyways…you can only fly around the palace so many times before it gets boring.”

“Well, how’s ten years from next Friday sound as a time for your first date?” Pinkie Pie said, happy as anything even though she was wrapped from the neck down in sturdy iron chains. “I can get you guys an extra cupcake free at Sugar Cube Corner. Being the mayor has perks, I love it!”

“First..?” Spitfire mused. “Dash, what have you been telling these ponies..?” Rainbow Dash, if at all possible, turned even redder.

“Ah, well, since we have the time…ya might as well fill any gaps in our knowledge,” Applejack said, giving Dash a wicked grin. Next to her, Spitfire did the same. Dash’s face went stormy.

Spike sighed, looking up at Rarity and Fluttershy, who gave him the most sympathetic and apologetic smiles they could. He tried to return it, but couldn’t help that the corners of his broad mouth were tugged downwards as if lead weights were tied to them.

I’m sorry, Twilight…just be safe, okay?

~(E)~

DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA,

THAT WASN’T THE KIND OF CLOSURE I MEANT. PROFESSIONAL CLOSURE…NO, I MEAN, I GET THAT. I THINK YOU AND I NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHAT OUR RELATIONSHIP REALLY IS…

YOUR FAITHFUL—

The door to the room where Twilight occasionally stayed overnight as a filly creaked open. Twilight looked at it carefully, swallowed, and stepped through.

~(E)~

Twilight opened her eyes. She felt warm, and comfortable; she didn’t care to move, which suddenly seemed like altogether too much effort for too little benefit. The smell of home surrounded her; old wood, breakfast cooking on the stove downstairs, her books...

Everything seemed…fine. Comfortable. Familiar. She let her eyelids droop again, drifting back off to sleep, here in her old bed at her parents' house—

Wait, what?

She sat up in the bed, suddenly, looking around carefully, studying every inch of the room. This place was more bare lately than it had been when she was very young; even when she lived in the palace, at the Tower, her room at her parents’ home had been filled with the little trinkets one accumulated, little physical memories. But now it was a room that her parents left furnished for guests, with one particular guest in mind, who visited all too infrequently from distant Ponyville. It had that strange feeling of being a room prepared for you by someone else, where even familiar objects seem slightly strange.

And breakfast was cooking downstairs. Alert, now, Twilight could hear the sizzle of eggs on a skillet—one of her mother’s least favorite breakfasts, so Twilight always indulged in it whenever possible. When she and Spike had first taken up residence in the Library, he’d actually gotten a little creeped out by her gleeful little giggles as she fried herself two sunny-side up eggs for the seventh day in a row.

The unicorn stepped out of bed, carefully, trying not to make any noise on the creaky floorboards that had been the bane of her youth as she tried to sneak out to stargaze or, on that one silly night, to attempt, as a filly, to sneak into the palace forever after a fight with her mom about teleporting in the house.

She stepped down the hallway, and carefully descended the stairs, ears alert for any sound. She heard nothing except the sounds of somepony busy in the kitchen—chopping, pouring, scraping, cabinets opening and closing, the gentle ring of magic manipulating tools with careful precision.

Fear, or something like it, gnawing at her, she stuck her head around the corner of the stairwell, as she had so many times as a filly…

…and stared.

“Oh, you’re up. Good! I was hoping this would wake you…”

Twilight felt glued to the spot. Rage boiled in her heart. “How…dare you..!”

Princess Celestia, in Twilight’s mother’s best white apron, was making an omelet.

Nothing, nothing, nothing in all her life had lit Twilight’s fury so readily. Frustration, building over time—that was an old friend, a wrath that she knew well and had cultivated into something like an art form. Being friends with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie teaches tolerance, after all, especially when they were both bored at the same time.

But this? Oh, Celestia had to know. She took tea with Twilight’s mother occasionally, after all. They must have talked about this, privately, between mares…come to an understanding…

Celestia smiled. “Do you want green onions in? I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

This was an unfamiliar sensation in Twilight, this immediate, flaring rage, and she didn’t know how to control it; the best she could do was compress it until she could speak. She prowled around the stairwell and into the kitchen, her hooves clopping with terrible gravity.

“You. Are not. My mother.” The words came out in quick succession, one-two punches of undiluted, barely-restrained, mind-frying fury.

Celestia smiled at her, patiently. “You said you wanted to know the truth about our relationship,” she said. “So…here you are. I’m sorry, I’ve been a little selfish…”

“You are not,” Twilight repeated, “My mother.”

“By what standard?”

“Any!”

Celestia actually laughed, bright and delighted, as if at a child asserting that something couldn’t possibly be true because it just couldn’t. Twilight, for the first time ever, felt something like hatred for her mentor’s beautiful laughter and her bright smile. “Twilight…I know this may seem hard to accept, but—“

“It’s impossible to accept. This is a lie.”

Celestia frowned slightly. “Would it really be so bad, if I were your mother?”

“Yes.”

In her rage, she expected another bright little laugh, but to Twilight’s horror, the Celestia before her hung her head in shame. The unicorn felt an insane urge to rush forward and comfort her; the vision was taking her in. A feeling of filial shame was washing over Twilight’s heart, demanding to know why she would willingly hurt her parent so.

“It’s true, my daughter,” Celestia murmured. “I’ve been so cruel to you, lying for so long.”

Twilight’s eyes opened wide, lit with rage. “You haven’t lied—“

“Haven’t you ever wondered why I took, for the first time in a thousand years, a personal student? A little filly, the ‘daughter’ of a bookseller and a romance novel author, who—for all that her lineage was so unremarkable—showed an unprecedented aptitude for magic?” Celestia said, looking up with guilty but determined eyes at Twilight. “Don’t you see why I might distance myself from you? Guilt weighs heavily on my heart, Twilight; it’s been driving me away from my only child, keeping the truth of my love for her hidden for so long.”

“Shut up!”

“I should have left you with them. Your life might have been smaller, quieter…but I just couldn’t. They begged me not to take you back—they pulled on my heart, reminded me of the reasons I told them I was so unwillingly giving up that beautiful foal, so long ago… And to know that you were born mortal? My own daughter! So powerful, so intelligent, so loving, so beautiful…we should have eternity together.”

“No. I don’t accept this.”

“Twilight, I know this is hard to hear, but, please—”

“No!”

“Twilight…it’s important you understand this. Listen to me. Your father—“

Twilight stamped a foot in rage. “My father is a bookseller. His name is Orion. I love him.”

“Yes, Twilight,” Celestia said in a tiny voice. “He is.”

Twilight held this pathetic excuse for Celestia in a glare of absolute loathing. “Don’t you even dare speak about my father that way—“

“Please,” the simulacrum begged. “Please, let yourself be my daughter. I know I’ve left you alone for too long…but come to me now. Accept my mistakes, your father’s mistakes—“

“The only mistake I’m going to accept,” Twilight snarled, “Is that any part of you thought this would fool me for a second. I’ve told you about my mother. I’ve asked your advice, how to talk to her about us. How to make her feel better, when she broke down, terrified that you were more of a mother to me than she was…”

“Twilight, I just couldn’t confess the truth to you…she agreed to raise you as her own. I shouldn’t have led you along, I should have told you—“

Twilight’s hoof lashed out and struck the Celestia firmly under the eye, drawing blood.

“Twilight!” Celestia wailed, recoiling.

“Let me out of this vision. Now. You are not my mother, Twilight Dream is. My father is a bookseller who loves her to distraction. You are not my mother and I do not think of you that way. You taught me, you didn’t raise me. Twilight Dream and Orion did.” Twilight’s voice was dark and furious, each word a hammer driving home a nail in one fell stroke. “They raised me to work as hard as I could and live up to your expectations and my own hopes. They are proud that their daughter is your student and an Arch-Mage. I will not stand to hear them insulted like this, when they sacrificed and suffered so much fear and doubt…on both our accounts.”

The Celestia, one hoof raised to its bleeding face, looked at her piteously. “Would it really be that terrible, to be my child?”

Twilight’s voice was a flame compressed down into a controlled, unbelievably hot point of blue light. “Even if it were true, I would spit it right back in your face. My parents are my parents; you are my teacher. Have your own foals, if you want one so badly!”

~(E)~

“Oh, my…feisty. I like her.”

Celestia didn’t respond; she hadn’t dared even look at the images that the voice was apparently so enjoying. She was desperate to focus on the fading sun. Nevertheless, the sound of voices found its way into her mind despite her efforts to ignore them.

Twilight’s rage, rejecting that part of Celestia’s love for the unicorn so categorically, was a little painful to hear. She did not deny that she had maternal feelings about her protégé; it would be strange for her not to. But it had been time to outgrow them long ago.

Nevertheless, it…even if it was demeaning, there was a part of Celestia that quietly wished Twilight were her flesh and blood. She was not Twilight’s mother, though she had so often played that part in small ways from time to time, as every adult pony did for other ponies’ foals—especially teachers to the very young, which Celestia had most certainly been in this case.

But some dark parts of her, the small, mean parts, whispered that it would be so much easier to understand her relationship with her student if she were. Wouldn’t that just make everything…so much simpler? And there was obviously an appeal to the knowledge that somepony so precious was bound to you so closely—and yet, at a comfortable and impassible distance.

That said, most of her was alive with joy to hear it.

Twilight’s ability to see through the feeble lie pleased her, first of all. It was one of those little stories that seemed absurd and easy to reject at first, but stuck in your mind because it had little hooks of the possible buried deep inside them, curvy words like maybe and well there was that one time...

Twilight’s unflinching loyalty to Twilight Dream and Orion, who loved her deeply, was her best defense against such an insidious falsehood, and they were the ones who deserved to feel the special joy of having such a wonderful daughter.

More generally, there were many parts of Celestia that were pleased to hear Twilight reject such an imbalanced relationship, although some reasons why she desired more equality between them were much more noble than others.

Celestia shook her head desperately trying to put all of it out of her mind, but Twilight’s voice, speaking to an inaudible Luna, was a magnet for her attention.

~(E)~

“Tell me this is not something the Princess is doing intentionally,” Twilight roared, the door shutting behind her. “Tell me this wasn’t something she controlled!”

Well—I don’t think so…Twilight, what’s wrong? What happened?

Twilight huffed out her anger, snorting loudly. “She tried to convince me I was her daughter!”

Well…the thought has crossed my mind, from time to time—

“Not you, too,” Twilight snarled. “I am not her daughter.”

What makes you so sure?

Twilight fell onto her haunches, face firm, her rage spitting and snarling in her mind as it cooled from white-hot to a smoldering red.

How many times had she, herself, wondered? How many times—agh!—how many times, as a filly, had that idle speculation crossed the line into something like hope? How many times had she had to look into her mother’s tearful face, as they talked about this, and lied, saying that she had never, ever wished Celestia was her real mother for even a second?

But she didn’t, not really. The thoughts came less and less often as she grew older, but having them all shoved in her face, hearing that beloved, trusted voice speaking the secret, guilty wish of her filly’s heart…no. It had been…too much.

And the wake of the rage, the burning trails in her mind where adrenaline had surged so recently, was agony. Her head throbbed angrily. Twilight clutched her head in her forehooves, eyes slammed shut.

Her parents were generous and loving ponies who had endured their daughter being remote from them for much of her life, knowing that she was getting something from Celestia they could never have dreamed of giving her otherwise. And they were so, so proud of her. Twilight loved them. Even if somehow it turned out she was Celestia’s natural daughter, Twilight Dream and Orion were Twilight Sparkle’s real parents.

“I said it to her in there, and I’ll say it again now: even if she were technically my mother, she’s not my real mother. My mother is my mother and my father is my father and that’s that.”

I admire your conviction, no matter how poorly stated.

Twilight sneered. “Hilarious.”

If it helps, I’m not entirely sure if my sister and I can—

“Look, I know you’re just trying to help, but…just give me a second, okay? I’ll be fine. It was just kind of…intense.”

Silence, from her elder sister, was a blessing, just now. Twilight gave her next move some thought.

“I’m going to go to her study,” Twilight said, eventually.

What is your reasoning this time?

Twilight sighed. “It’s where she and I conduct private business, as associates…or did, anyways, before this all started going really bad.”

It occurred to me as well that you might be provoking these…disturbing...visions by asking about your relationship with her. Remember, we are seeking out the true Celestia, not some aspect of her mind or her emotional state towards you…although I’m not sure how exactly to go about doing this.

“I think I’ve had my fill of talking about our relationship for the moment, anyways,” Twilight said, her hoofbeats ringing out loudly in the empty corridors leading up to the study.

~(E)~

DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA,

I HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR STUDY IN THE HOPE THAT YOU AWAIT ME THERE.

…ER,

YOUR LOYAL SUBJECT AND HUMBLE SER—

The magnificent mahogany study door, flanked by two ivory statues of Celestia, her wings outstretched around the orb of the sun, creaked open.

~(E)~

Twilight stepped inside the door, a little nervous, as she always was when she entered.

This place had been the one place besides her chambers that Celestia had insisted Twilight not enter without Celestia herself or, at the very least, her express permission, and old habits die extremely hard. Being summoned to them, and entering under the professionally suspicious eye of the guards, without Celestia nearby or a little note clamped in her mouth felt made her feel like a naughty foal. Some things stick in the mind, despite her efforts to take pride in it as a sign that she was now an adult and a loyal servant of the Princess like so many others she had seen coming and going while a student.

“You wanted to see me, milady?” she asked, looking to the writing desk at the far side of the high-walled and imposing chamber, where Celestia stood, quill flying over a parchment with the precision of a thousand years. In the far corner, near a window, the phoenix Philhelmina yawned hugely on its golden stand with a little squawk.

“Oh, Arch-Mage! Yes, please, come in,” Celestia said distractedly. “Thank you for being so prompt.”

“I am ever at your service, milady,” Twilight said, approaching the little raised ring around the desk that served as a de facto pulpit when Celestia was addressing visitors here.

Celestia turned a harassed smile towards her for a moment. “You are well?”

Twilight smiled brightly at this rare show of open affection. “Yes, thank you. And yourself?”

“The same as I ever am, my dear. If only every correspondent I had was as reliable as you, I might be able to keep track of Equestria for an hour at a time.” Her expression fell into one of mild concern. “Are you alright? What are you looking for?”

“Oh, I…” Twilight trailed off. “I thought I heard milady’s sister. Is she here?”

Celestia turned back to the parchment; the quill had never stopped scratching away. “No. Night Court was somewhat draining, I understand, so she is resting for the day.” The quill pulled away from the parchment, and Celestia stared at it, lips pursed, for a moment. Twilight stood patiently before her. With an irritated expression, Celestia added a few more lines to the missive and then signed it carefully, rolling the scroll and sealing it with practiced ease. She set it in a large basket next to a bookshelf nearby and turned to Twilight. “Ah, forgive me. You must think I’m terribly rude.”

“Never,” Twilight said. “I’m afraid I sympathize all too well with getting visitors just as I finish a letter.”

The princess smiled a tolerant little smile , briefly, and summoned another scroll to herself. “This is…no, I’m sorry.” She replaced the scroll from the rack she had summoned it from, selected its neighbor, and turned back to Twilight, frowning as she saw the unicorn peering around herself anxiously. “Are you well, Arch-Mage?”

“I could…swear I heard Luna…”

“Princess Luna,” Celestia corrected her, sternly.

Twilight looked up at her, confused. “Yes, of course…I’m sorry, I…”

Celestia set the scroll on a little pair of hooks on the writing stand. “You’re worrying me. Have you been resting?” The princess seemed a little annoyed by all this, and put hoof under Twilight’s chin slightly more roughly than she perhaps needed to. The alicorn moved Twilight’s head from side to side, looking over her features with dispassionate, professional interest.

“Yes, milady. Eight hours, as regularly as I can—“

“So, once a month or so? I know you.”

Twilight blinked, guiltily. “The trip to Canterlot was a bit trying, milady—“

“You work too hard. And yet…” Celestia let Twilight’s head fall from her control and gave her something like a sympathetic look. “It pains me to take you to task for it. You are, indeed, the humble servant you claim to be in your letters…my kingdom, for ten more like you.”

“I serve at milady’s pleasure, of course.”

“Of course.” Celestia summoned the scroll. “Here are the candidates for the upcoming Trials. Do look over them, would you? The chancellor puts a great deal of stock in your opinion—“

“TWILIGHT!”

The sound came from Philhelmina. The Princess and the Arch-Mage stared at the bird, golden and beautiful, in shock.

“Uh…yes?” Twilight asked. She frowned slightly as the Princess gave her a disapproving look.

“IS THIS THE TRUTH?” the phoenix squawked, the sounds awkward in its beaked mouth.

Celestia’s face grew dark. “What does that mean? ‘Is this the truth?’ Nonsense.”

“A bit of a philosophical puzzle, isn’t it?”

The princess waved a hoof dismissively. “In any case…have a look at those names, will you? There’s something else I wanted you to look at…let me go get it.”

Twilight looked from the bird to the princess. “Aren’t you worried about Philhelmina?”

Celestia sighed. “Of course I am. Forgive me, but let’s complete our business together, and then I’ll see what may be done.”

“It would be no trouble for me to—“

“Didn’t we just talk about you overworking? Please, my dear Arch-Mage, leave some work for everypony else around you once in a while,” Celestia said, with a somewhat patronizing grin that very much suggested that while the princess thought it was very cute that Twilight wanted to help, she doubted the unicorn could do anything about matters one way or the other.

Twilight felt an unusual pang of—well no, it wasn’t a pang. She felt humiliated and miserable, even though everything was completely normal. And what was with her immediately offering to help with that obnoxious bird? She hated the wretched creature.

She unrolled the scroll.

MAKE HER ADDRESS YOU PROPERLY.

Twilight yelped and dropped the scroll, heart racing; it rang and rolled on the ground with a loud metallic noise. Alien thoughts suffused Twilight’s mind, confusing her. Her vision swam, as if she were seeing this room and a strange parody of it at the same time—a pleasant, brightly-lit place, more like a sitting room than a study, welcoming and friendly…

Celestia returned, hooves clacking irritably on the floor. “What has gotten into you, honestl—“

“Milady…princess…do you…feel anything strange? Everything seems out of sync, all of a sudden…” Twilight staggered, leaning against a bookshelf, which fell beneath her weight. One, overwhelming desire consumed her mind: she wanted Celestia to call her the right thing. Not Arch-Mage, some other title…

“I don’t feel anything,” Celestia said, a little sternly, annoyed by having to take care of a grown mare on top of everything else. “I think you’re ill—you need to rest. Lie down. Now, Arch-Mage, you’re stumbling—“

“Thass naw my name,” Twilight slurred. “Dun call me tha, thass na who ah yam…”

She meandered forward drunkenly and collapsed on her side through a glass table, shattering it. In a way, she managed to catch most of the pieces before they hit the ground. “Ah, wha happn’d…hurts…cant sink ride…” Blood pooled rapidly on the floor.

“Twilight!” Celestia cried. Her apathy and slightly cold professionalism vanished—her face, which had been tight and cold, was now the familiar warm and open face of the Princess.

Twilight’s face screwed up. Familiar? Celestia has always been haughty and businesslike. This friendly face was the strange one…why did everything hurt so badly..? Why did nothing feel…real? And why was she so desperate to be called the right thing..?

The princess cradled Twilight’s head, carefully avoiding the little gashes and shards of glass there. “Twilight Sparkle!”

“Nah, nah,” Twilight moaned. “Call me da rhye thin. How I sign ledders.” She coughed, and blood stained the alabaster hoof of the princess, splattering on her gilt shoe.

Panic bloomed in Celestia’s eyes. “My…humble servant? Loyal subject?” she asked, desperately.

Twilight’s eyes rolled back in her head. “Nah, like I yam a filly, whatchoo call me…”

Celestia, breathing shallowly and panicked, looked down at Twilight’s ruined torso and whimpered, her mind screaming at her immense memory for some words that would satisfy the nonsensical wish of her dying student. Finally, out of the depths of recall, as if another pony’s voice spoke in her mind:

“My faithful student?”

~(E)~

The voice had said nothing as the scene played out, but now: “Just couldn’t let it go on, could—“

“Be quiet!”

~(E)~

The first breath, taken in deeply as Twilight’s eyes opened wide, was a fiery agony as air spread across places her brain still thought shards of plate glass were piercing her.

“Ahhh!” Twilight howled against the sudden pain.

Foolish, foolish filly!

“That’s nice to say to somepony who’s dying…” Twilight whined.

Me, not you…And you’re not dying.

She was lying on her back in the bright corridor outside the study. Twilight looked down as best she could. Her body failed to be riddled with grievous wounds. “Oh.” She got to her hooves, the weird psychosomatic pain fading. “What happened? It was like I was another pony…”

You changed your name; names are important.

Twilight scrunched up her face. “No, I didn’t…”

Twilight Sparkle, Arch-Mage and my most skilled colleague, you know very well that Twilight Sparkle is not your only name.

“Titles are not names—“

Correct. Titles are words that mean what you do or have done; names are words that mean who you are.

“You’re talking about faithful student,” Twilight said, warily.

You began signing the last letter, so to speak, with "humble servant and loyal subject", the way you have been signing them since you and Celestia began the final stages of your drifting apart. There is a part of you which believes that to be who you are to her, or you wouldn’t have used it to try to get her to take you seriously. Is that who you are?

“Well, no—I mean, I am loyal, but—“

I should say, is that all you are? Remember when I told you, in your own mind, that the last thing Celestia needs are more subjects…

Twilight frowned, feeling foolish. “Well, no, I suppose not.” That there had been a doubt in her heart at all made her squirm guiltily, both for shaming herself and for, in a small way, rejecting herself the special relationship she was seeking to reforge.

Then don’t address yourself that way unless that’s how you want Celestia’s mind to treat you. You need to be her Faithful Student if you’re going to be anything more than useful to her.

“So…my self-perception, and how her mind reacts to it, are driving visions here..?”

That’s what I believe, in any case. Because you defined yourself incorrectly, you were trapping yourself away from yourself. I lost my connection with you almost instantly; I had to work hard to find you again, and force my way into the vision.

“So this is…totally subjective.”

Not quite; I think I’ve figured it out. When you address her, you’re defining yourself to her, providing her mind with a frame of reference for dealing with you…so when you asked her mind for a definition for your relationship, it tossed out a relatively “safe” role for Celestia, emotionally—a mother. When you called yourself her humble servant, I imagine you were seeing something to that effect—a bit of a perception trap.

“It was awful,” Twilight moaned. She remembered that Celestia, proud and distant, and how Twilight had been perfectly happy fawning for her with truly wretched obsequiousness, desiring only to be useful to her beautiful, but aloof mentor, her self-denial total, her being so willingly enslaved that even the irritated, half-caring attentions of a monarch giving out orders was a joy.

So…moving on from there…hmm.

“Maybe if I manage to…speak the truth about her feelings about me..? Or, no. Not quite right, um…if I correctly self-define, and address her the way she would want me to, I might gain more access..?”

Luna’s “voice” was strangled and unhappy. Twilight could see in her mind’s eye the irritated frown the dusky princess got when she was frustrated and worried, even here. Agh, that just seems too neat. But I’m not sure what else we can conclude from this.

“There’s something else,” Twilight said, thoughtfully. “In the vision, towards the end…well, this vision involved a very aloof Celestia, as you might have guessed. But at the end, I…was hurt, rather badly, and the Celestia changed into something more like the real one. She seemed confused, but—“

That’s…odd.

“You don’t think—“

No, I do. And that makes me very happy to hear—Celestia might be in there, somewhere, trying to help you. I know that she would never willingly let you come to any harm if she could help it.

Twilight suddenly remembered something. “Um, my body—“

Cuts. Long ones, but shallow. What happened?

“I fell through a plate glass table.”

There was a fretful pause. Try not to do it again, sister.

Twilight felt that it would not be appropriate to point out that this had been a direct result of Luna’s attempts to wake her up. Ungrateful, certainly. “So are we letting go of the idea that where I am has any meaning to what happens?”

I shouldn’t think so. In the mind, context, and connections between things, is everything.

“I’m going to the library, then,” Twilight said, after some thought.

Let’s be a little more careful with forward planning. What exactly do you intend to do?

Twilight smiled. “I’ll ask if I can be her sister, too.”

~(E)~

The guards changed.

The two who had suppressed the impromptu prison break brought their replacements in and explained, in detail, exactly what had happened, taking a certain amount of relish and license in the exciting tale of getting the drop on the most famous heroes of Equestria. The new guards were Day Guard pegasi in bright golden armor; one of them looked extremely young and was somewhat awestruck to see two of his favorite Wonderbolts of all time grinning up at him sheepishly.

“Don’t get stupid, colt,” one of the massive Night Guard unicorns growled at him. The young pegasus’ face took on an expression of exaggerated seriousness and he sniffed at them, haughtily.

The door closed behind them as they left. The prisoners heard some more muttered discussion, and then silence fell once again.

“Ah still cannot believe Ah thought that would work,” Applejack muttered. Spitfire gave her a pained, apologetic look.

“Hey, uh, guys,” Spike said, nervously. Something was weighing heavily on his mind.

Rarity gave him a little smile, expecting him to be fretting about Twilight. “What is it, dear?”

“Uh, this may sound strange, but…what time is it..?” Everypony looked at each other in confusion, but as their attention was called to the time of day and they looked around the room, a grim feeling of foreboding rose in their hearts.

“Well, that was the ten o’clock guard rotation,” Spitfire said, the only pony who was not now looking around at the light in the room suspiciously. “Unless they’ve changed something. You guys woke up around eight.”

Spike had been left in a position where he was facing the window. At the top of a spired tower, the sun was peeking from behind a tall, golden ornament, shaped like a stylized sunburst with an empty, circular center, part of a carefully-maintained ornamental sun clock, designed to be readable from the outskirts of the palace grounds.

“Yeah, call me crazy, but…looks like three pee em to me,” Spike said.

~(E)~

Twilight rounded the corner and approached the broad red-lacquer doors to the Royal Library.

The Academy library was bigger, of course, but here was proof that bigger was not always better. The Royal Library was a testament to the art of bookkeeping, its contents carefully managed by a proud lineage of Equestria’s finest archivists and scholars; here could be found rare scrolls and books of ancient lore of such antiquity that only Academy-trained unicorns were allowed to handle their crumbling pages with the most precise telekinesis possible.

Twilight had always enjoyed rare privilege here, although she had not really understood it until she had managed the Ponyville library herself for a time. She had given little thought to extending the same rights she had enjoyed here as a filly to some of Cheerilee’s students and…well…Scootaloo had brought back the Ponyville Library’s copy of Second Wind’s The Art of Flight eventually, along with a bag full of bits to pay the late fees.

It had been Twilight’s first real special privilege as Princess Celestia’s student. Oh, she had been allowed to wander the palace more or less freely, but there were quite a few other ponies with that freedom. But to be allowed to take De Celestia Mobile to her room overnight, after a brief lecture from the stern librarian, Madam Redmane? Even the princess had been shocked to find Twilight snoring happily on the floor in front of the telescope, the ancient book carefully propped up and open to that night’s star chart.

It had been, in retrospect, the first lesson on the magic of friendship, although of course she hadn’t written a report to the Princess about it. She had merely taken care to return the book much earlier than Madam Redmane had requested, and had been awarded one of the sour-faced mare’s fleeting grins. Twilight had only been offered the very rare chance because of her status as Celestia’s student, but the respect and future lenience she earned had been the result of the respect the little unicorn had shown in her turn. Twilight looked back on that now, and realized that it had been good to learn not to rely on her unique status for the things she wanted in life early on.

Even now that the librarian was a creaky, ancient pony who spent most of her day dozing in the sunlight, Twilight was always respectful and obedient to her, and was thus accorded more indulgence even than the Academy’s most respected faculty. For example, the old mare didn’t glare at her too harshly when she took one or two scrolls more than the limit of six back to her reading desk. Respect was a two-way street, between the Arch-Mage and the head librarian, and they walked down it willingly.

Twilight blinked out of the reverie, shaking her head and breathing deeply to clear her mind. Madam Redmane wouldn’t be waiting for her here…which was a shame, because nothing on earth would have comforted her more than the gentle snores coming from the old rocking chair, creaking with soothing regularity in front of the east windows in the early afternoon.

She could do with some comfort about now, which is why she had decided to come here. Luna hadn’t asked, and even if she had, Twilight wasn’t sure what she would have said. It was easy to say to herself that she would have told Luna the truth, but the part of Twilight that was always watching knew that Twilight Sparkle had learned the true politician’s art of sincerity, as opposed to complete honesty, and it had become something of a bad habit—one that she intended not to indulge now.

So the princess’ mind wanted Twilight to address herself properly, and find the right way to speak to the princess? None of the silly pretenses towards being associates anymore, fine. Acknowledge—no, make a point of referring to their relationship as special…provide a safe frame of reference for the princess to use. Alright, then…

“Dear Princess Celestia,” Twilight began.

~(E)~

Luna looked up, her expression harried and weary, at the silver letters.

DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIA,

IT’S ME, TWILIGHT. UM, I AM JUST HERE TO TALK TO YOU, OKAY? LUNA AND I ARE WORKING HARD TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU AND WANT TO HELP. IN FACT, I WANTED TO MENTION SOMETHING ABOUT THAT TO YOU…LUNA AND I HAD A TALK, EARLIER, AND…UM, SORRY, THIS IS STILL A LITTLE STRANGE, BUT…I GUESS SHE KIND OF ADOPTED ME AS HER SISTER, SORT OF. I WAS HOPING YOU COULD SPEAK TO ME AS A SISTER AS WELL, EVEN IF I AM THE YOUNGEST BY FAR…BUT YOU CAN TRUST ME, AND I CARE ABOUT YOU A LOT. I HOPE YOU BELIEVE ME.

NO MATTER WHAT, I AM STILL YOUR FAITHFUL STUDENT,

TWILIGHT SPARKLE

The princess of the moon frowned anxiously as she felt the psychic link to Twilight tug a little, and vanish. She lay down before the stone bier and waited.

Comments

[StatusQo]

so much mind fucking going on

[Pony Paradox]

"You are not my mother, Twilight Dream is."
My head-cannon is now officially updated

[LittleSallyDigby]

“Mmm, wonderful,” Twilight mumbled with a sarcastic half-smile. “Well, let’s see, then…maybe I can find a filly who wants her cutie mark around somewhere. One generally finds a way to get underhoof if I try to go about my business in peace…” Twilight looked around, and again failing to find any guide for herself, set off in a direction which failed to be any more or less appealing than the others.

That reminds me. Scootaloo is captain of the Wonderbolts (and Spitfire is a Night Guard captain- loved that, by the way). Apple Bloom was helping with the wedding (and Diamond Tiara has completed her apprenticeship with Rarity, an even quicker nod which I also loved). I suppose it's a bit much to hope that you have any plans for Sweetie Belle at this point...

[LittleSallyDigby]

“Uh,” Applejack murmured. Good golly he’s a big ‘un…’course, he’d never hurt us, but…scary!

Remember the words of Doctor Muffin Top. "He's... A DRAGON!"

[LittleSallyDigby]

“You really have grown into a fine young dragon,” she said, quietly. She gave him about the most admiring look he’d ever received from her. “I’m very proud of you.”

He smiled, lamely. “Thank you. But, um, can I stop now? It’s really hard to keep being firm about this when I’m almost sure I’ll never see either of them again, now.”

I'm proud of him, too... I suppose...

Quote tags work here! Why isn't there a button for this?

[LittleSallyDigby]

A familiar little grin of satisfaction spread across Twilight’s features. “Not magic words, just the right ones.” She cleared her throat.

Your horn is glowing. Are you doing magic?

“Sort of,” Twilight said, her joyful grin of triumph truly beautiful to behold. “Dear Princess Celestia—“

Damn, you're good.

[LittleSallyDigby]

“We don’t really know if there is anything for us to do,” Pinkie Pie said, a little animation returning to her features. “It’s gotten even more magical than normal! And when I say that, man, I’m talking…Woosh! Bang!”

I would be asking where that word had come from if this were anyone but Pinkie Pie.

[LittleSallyDigby]

“You’re so cute when you’re flustered,” the golden pegasus purred, and kissed her, chuckling only a little as she heard Applejack’s gleeful call to the guards before happily losing herself in Dash’s suddenly eager embrace.

Yes.

[LittleSallyDigby]

“Ah…Ah can’t believe…” Applejack stammered. Her head throbbed. “Why did Ah think that was gonna work?”

Everything in this scene is more amusing than it has any right to be. Why do they still ask Fluttershy to hold ponies down? They've got Applejack and Rainbow Dash and Spitfire, this time- not to mention the frickin' dragon!
Rule of Funny, I suppose.

[LittleSallyDigby]

Twilight’s voice was a flame compressed down into a controlled, unbelievably hot point of blue light. “Even if it were true, I would spit it right back in your face. My parents are my parents; you are my teacher. Have your own foals, if you want one so badly!”

I've read a story where Twilight is Celestia's secret foal. It was very good. It had a central premise, however, which involved Celestia having cast a spell to hide her daughter's true identity, and included herself in the set of targets. Without that, though... Celestia just deciding to have her filly raised by others, and then taking her back, without ever telling her, and then showing up in her mom's apron in a dream doing something her mom would never ever do... sounds exactly as nasty as Twilight's reaction suggests.

Celestia smiled. “Do you want green onions in? I’m afraid I don’t remember.”

Also your British is showing.

[LittleSallyDigby]

I keep talking about everything but Twilight and Celestia. Time for some of that. I like the continual hints as to the nature/identity of the voice Celestia struggles with, first of all- it knows what Twilight's up to before Celestia does, it counts seconds when it gets bored, vaguely British and decidedly un-Celestia-like manner of speaking despite using the sun princess's own voice... I can just about hear it coming from Nightmare Moon, which reminds me of how differently NMM spoke when compared to any example of Luna. Perhaps refusing to set is what makes ponies into Nightmares? If Celestia's been using her bond with her subjects to make it easier for her to be the Eternal Sun, no wonder Luna became Nightmare Moon when she did- she refused to lower the moon as a tactic against Celestia's reluctance to set, but she couldn't convince herself that keeping it up was a good thing, so she made herself into the villain...

I liked the links between Twilight's "letters" and the scenes Celestia's mind provided for her. The "humble servant" one- and the way it went badly awry with Philhelmina talking in Luna's voice- was enjoyably surreal. Nopony who puts one part of the floor above another should be allowed to rule a country.

Onward!

[deathtap]

Another well written and delivered chapter. I approve of such wonderful prose.

[NacidoCoqui]

To her utter astonishment, this usually-infallible method did not induce an instantly-upright Spike. Instead he slowly got to his feet, uncoiling unwillingly, and stood slowly to his full, unslouching, and—the ponies noticed this only now that they had provoked him—somewhat imposing height; even Applejack, tallest among them, had to look up to meet his eyes, now.
-----
“No!” Spike growled, again. There was a throatiness to this, which spoke of the mighty roar that would, one day, thunder in the sky over Ponyville; the ponies instinctively flinched from the sound, staring up at him in sudden shock.
-----
^ This. This story is already full of so much win, and seeing Spike as no longer the little chubby, lovestruck whelp, but a young dragon beginning his ascendency into the powerful wyrm he'll one day be is just awe-inspiring to me. An amazing read so far, bravo! And now, back to the story for me!
V/R,
Q
SGT, USA

[-Key-]

A few things one I don't think applejack would purposely try to annoy dash while their friend is in trouble, I'm also not sure if head canon or people actually don't know who twilight's parents are her mothers name is twilight velvet and her fathers name is nightlight also I'm pretty sure they are bankers.

[Borg]

1438136 The only things canonically known about Twilight's parents are their appearances. I personally tend to call them Orion and Star Sparkle.

What was Twilight thinking, signing that message as "your loyal subject and humble servant"? Had she forgotten that that's a significant part of why they even have this problem?

[ProfessorClockwork]

588100 Really? Nightmare Moon? I keep thinking Discord. Probably because I think that counting the seconds is something that Discord would do; and the way Device Heretic has written the "voice's" dialogue just seems to carry a mischievous & disorderly character like Discord.

That aside I'm constantly impressed with each chapter. Each one keeps going deeper and deeper in depth, in terms of creative writing.

I can't wait to read how it ends.

[Snowstreak]

“Let her figure this out on her own,” Celestia interrupted. Her voice was raspy and harsh, her throat dry as the desert Twilight had arrived in.
“Oh, was that your teaching method?” This time, there was a derisive little snicker. “No wonder she’s stumbling around.”

If you read the comics, you'll know why it's so cool that you wrote this well over a year before them.

[JAK0723]

Spike shot her a halfhearted glare, his head resting in Rarity’s lap.

Rarity looked up from Spike, who still had his head in her lap.

I'm having some trouble visualising this, how would someone rest their head on a pony's lap?
Unless the pony sat like Lyra, I'm guessing it would be uncomfortable. And if they were laying on their back, it would probably look pretty suggestive.

[Foxes]

4793190 You know, thirty-eight-and-a-half weeks later, as I was reading this chapter, I had the exact same thought. Word-for-word. Scary.

[equestrian.sen]

5916743
I as well. I think Spike's head was in Rarity's front legs.

[Conscat]

6406351 I struggled with visualizing it until I just settled on him resting his head on her back, which seems to be the effective equivalent of a lap.

[Dragonwaz]

It is one definition of madness to do the same thing twice and expect different results. I would have expected you, of all ponies, to realize this.

And it's a stupid definition of madness. You can never do the exact same thing twice, time changes everything. If you slap someone every time you meet them you'll get a lot of different results. If you punch a wall you'll get pain and if you keep punching it you'll get blood.

[Carnation83]

I am very proud of Spike standing up to the others and saying they need to respect Twilight's decision.

And I LOVE the part of Twilight defending and reaffirming her ties to her birth parents! For several seasons, it was easy to assume she has a very emotionally distant relationship with them, and I'm glad to see this story disagrees with that.

[Enderstorm]

The magnificent mahogany study door, flanked by two ivory statues of Celestia, her wings outstretched around the orb of the sun, creaked open.

Isn't it a bit morbid for Ponies to have things made of ivory? I mean, in their world, things with tusks actually talk.

Then again, I guess Braeburn wears a leather jacket.