Lessons for a Benevolent Tyrant

by Hustlin Tom

Chapter 8

It was mid-morning when Princess Celestia invited Starswirl to her private gardens. She had had the cooks prepare a small brunch for her friend of barley rolls and honey with butter on the side. It did look quite delicious, but the Princess restrained herself from taking a nibble of her guest’s food. The morning sun passed over the low hedges of the garden, shining through the cascading trickles of water flowing down a nearby fountain. The birds of the morning chirped happily in their nests in the hedges, and from her lounging bed the Princess could easily look out and see all the beauty the world had to offer her today. She sighed contently; she hadn’t had a morning like this, to just sit back and enjoy the serenity of the day, in several years.

The Princess did not hear Starswirl coming towards her until he rounded the corner in the hedges not too far off, with a mass of tinkling and sloshing things, along with half muttered curses. When he finally came into full view, the Princess was astonished to find him carrying several instruments, beakers, and arcane tomes either on his back or in the air with his magic. After laying each of the tools down on the bed he was meant to sit on, he sat down on the cobbled path that led into the private gardens.

“Would you believe,” he began with a wheeze, as he was finally free of his heavy load, “That there isn’t one good alchemical guide relating the forces of magic with the body for hundreds of miles around for the next sixty years?”

The Princess raised her forehooves up in the air, “No?” she said with a question.

“Neither could I! I had to go looking for a good copy for the equivalent of fourteen months just this morning!” He cracked the book open to a page at random, and groaned deeply, “And wouldn’t it figure that some vulgar foal annotated all over the pages with nonsensical drivel!” He tossed the book back onto the lounge with a frustrated growl, “Worthless!”

The Princess laughed to herself a little, “Perhaps you can complain all about it after you’ve had some food.”

Starswirl waved his hoof a little, “Oh, I’m afraid I’m not hungry right now, thank you.” His stomach thought otherwise as it grumbled in a low guttural tone. “Well, perhaps a little.”

After feasting on his breakfast, the disgruntled sage was put in a little better of moods, and wanted to get right down to his study on the Princess’ biology. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he declared, quill at the ready to his journal, “Do you remember your younger years?”

“A little,” Princess Celestia said as she tried to draw back the thick curtain of time, “I remember the first thing I did after being created by my mother. My sister and I fought Discord.”

“Ahh, yes. Discord, the Lord of Chaos, the ruler of the Before Time.”

“I remember that mother sacrificed herself to make the world, Luna and I. She created us to stop Discord’s evil rule, and with the Elements of Creation, we sealed him away.”

The scholarly Starswirl scribbled away furiously into his journal, “When did you begin to realize you and your sister were different from everypony else?”

The Princess ruffled her wings, and continued to think, “We knew we were different from the beginning, having both wings and horns. But we didn’t realize just how different until we lost our third husbands. The both of us were nearing our first century and a half of existence then, and it was then that we realized we would only bring ourselves and our mates greater pain if we keep taking spouses. We were never sick, and we didn’t physically age; we were immortal. I wouldn’t even begin to find out the true extent of my abilities until later on.”

“Do you know how old you are now?”

The Princess paused and strained her mind to think. Finally, she gave up, “I can’t be sure, but I’d say almost five hundred?”

“Do you remember any of your husbands at all?” Starswirl asked as he continued to write.

“No,” the Princess said, and her face became slack with melancholy, “I don’t remember their names, or even what they looked like.”

“I’m sorry,” the elderly unicorn said regretfully.

“It’s alright,” Princess Celestia quietly responded, “It’s literally ancient history.”

“You mentioned that you didn’t know the full extent of your powers until later. When did you learn of your additional abilities?”

The Princess’ face filled even more with sadness and regret, “Nightmare Moon.” The silence left in the wake of saying that dreaded name was palpable. “I remember that day all too well. It has been seared into my memory for the past three hundred and one years. We fought so hard. She was trying to kill me, and I was trying to stop her from killing everyone in the world. I should have died, and I would have, multiple times if I had been anypony else, but my body kept resurrecting me. I’m not just immortal; I’m also indestructible.”

Starswirl scribbled like a madpony, trying to get all the crucial information he was receiving down to parchment. He looked up at the Princess as she had stopped, and he found she was staring off into the distance, her mind caught up in the memories of darker times. “I remember that day too,” the sage said hollowly, “I was traversing the eastern deserts, in Zebharan country, when I saw the event unfold in the sky. A solar eclipse! I would have been elated if I weren’t so terrified; eclipses aren’t supposed to even exist with the way the sun and moon are oriented!”

“She brought the moon around the planet,” the Princess murmured, “She almost knocked us out of our orbit. It’s actually what she wanted, Starswirl,” she looked up with haunted eyes, “She wanted to kill you all with darkness and ice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before, when we last saw each other?” the elderly unicorn asked.

“I wasn’t ready yet,” she said quietly.

The sun had reached its zenith while the two friends had been speaking; it was now high noon. Starswirl looked to his instruments and gear behind him, and he quietly got up from his seat on the ground. He started to prepare them for their appropriate uses, and while he was doing that, the Princess silently watched him. “You are an incredible pony, Celestia,” Starswirl finally said, “You are one of the most amazing individuals I’ve ever had the fortune to meet, for both your character and your abilities.” He turned around to face her, all of his instruments ready, “May I please examine you now?”

“Of course,” the Princess softly obliged.

Starswirl approached her and began to prod the muscle areas in her back where there should be several nerve clusters. Her body responded with the appropriate twitches of any other normal pony, but when Starswirl tried to scry for the physical locations of the nerve clusters, he could not find them. He frowned, and continued writing in his book, which was floating beside him. He plucked one of the Princess’ feathers from her right wing. He looked down the hollow center of the feather’s shaft, and then scrutinized the shaft’s exterior and all its attached barbs and hamuli. He plucked two more feathers and stowed the lot of them in sufficiently sized vials. He tried to cut off a small portion of the Princess’ tail, but the scissors he used slipped right through the gossamer substance. Frowning even deeper than he had before, Starswirl simply took a small jar, lured a portion of her tail into its interior, and quickly sealed it up before it could escape. For good measure, he also took a small filing of the Princess’ horn, catching the falling shards of keratin in a small test tube. The old unicorn then took a magically formed blade and made a small cut along the Princess’ side. The Princess winced, but otherwise did not respond. Starswirl quickly swiped up some the golden energy that escaped the Princess’ body with another glass jar. His curiosity in full swing, he took a glance inside the wound itself as it began to close. He gasped the tiniest bit, “By all the stars in the sky.” He made some final cursory notes, and then he took all the samples he had gathered to the different alchemical devices he had stored on the lounging bed.

Princess Celestia got up from her own bed and came over to Starswirl’s mock laboratory table, and she watched over the old scholar’s shoulder as he began his bank of tests. He burned one of the feathers with ordinary fire and another with mage’s fire. The common flames seared through the first feather, burning it up in a couple of minutes, while the feather that had been set alight via magic remained. The purple flames played across it, but it didn't burn at all.

“Remarkable,” Starswirl said aloud, “Lowly fire stimulates the phlogiston and caloric particles in your feathers, but arcane flames do nothing of the sort!” The sage turned to Princess Celestia, “We definitively know one new thing about you now; you’re magic-proof! Actually, a more accurate way to say it would be this; you cannot be magically altered against your will, but you can still be magically manipulated.”

The Princess blinked and cocked her head in thought, “In other words, I can be physically damaged or harmed, but magic has no effect on me?”

“Precisely. Now, let’s have a look at your tail hair. Obviously, it is not a physical tail; not like it used to be anyway. It feels like some kind of magic in and of itself.”

Princess Celestia nodded, “It’s an aftereffect of when I used the Elements against Nightmare Moon. I had initially thought it would fade with time, but it obviously hasn’t.”

“Hmm,” was all Starswirl replied as he began introducing multiple strange fluids into the test tube containing the Princess’ horn filings. As he swished the liquids around in his telekinetic grasp, the two of them saw that the ingredients in the elixir began to react violently. The Princess acted on instinct, throwing up a small containment field around the vial just before it spontaneously exploded. Rainbow light flashed from out of the magical force field in all directions, before it just as quickly died out.

Starswirl sat unmoving for a while, before gasping for air. As he began to breathe a little easier he rasped, “I think I felt my heart skip a couple of beats there; not good for an old coot like me!”

The Princess teleported the messy remnants of the test tube and its contents away, “So what does that little accident tell us?”

“Well," the old unicorn said as he continued to breath in and out deeply, "it tells us what we already knew; you have an unbelievably large supply and grasp of magic, but not only that, your body at any given moment is literally coursing with the stuff! I’m actually somewhat surprised you haven’t blown anything up simply by touching it!”

“Which then leaves the golden energy; why did you gasp when you looked..inside me?”

“Because when I peered into where I should have seen flesh and blood, I saw magic. Pure, golden magic! You may have at some point been just as frail and ponylike as the rest of us, but you certainly aren’t now!”

“What am I then?” the Princess asked, mystified by what Starswirl was trying to say.

“You are magic! You are a wellspring of pure, undiluted, amazingly powerful magic! It explains why you can never die, how you can so easily change your form and regenerate, how when some unicorns can barely lift a medium sized rock, you lift the colossal sun and moon every single day! You have transcended mundane material existence, and have become a being of almost pure Form alone!”

“Form?” the Princess shook her head vigorously, “I don’t understand. What is form?”

Starswirl held up his hooves and waved them a little, “Let me explain,” as he quickly tried to summarize his thoughts into as simple of statements as possible, “It has been postulated by some in the magical community that the universe has two planes of existence; the world of Matter with a capital ‘M’ and the world of Form with a capital ‘F’. The world of Matter is what we live in and readily interact with, while the world of Form is where the most ancient and powerful magicks find their source. Some even believe that the world of Form is the source of all magic. Each creature that draws breath has some measure of both Form and Matter. In equines, for instance, earth ponies have a greater connection to Matter than Form, while pegasi have a greater amount of Form than earth ponies do, and unicorns have the highest amount of Form compared to the other two races.” Starswirl pointed to Celestia, “You are an alicorn, and not only that, you’ve touched the Elements of Creation, which apart from Discord or your sister Luna makes you not only the most powerful being in all of existence, but one of the most perfect!”

“Hold on, you’re saying Discord was a close to perfect being?” Princess Celestia said incredulously.

“In his own way. He is true to the Form of Chaos; just because he is a near perfect being does not necessarily make him a good or coherent one. You and Luna are very true to the Form of Magic I’d wager. Magic has some inherent connection with Chaos, in that it has the power to spontaneously create and alter. Magic also has a connection with the Form of Order, in that it can make things perpetual and eternal.” Starswirl paused to collect his thoughts again, “Imagine yourself as a constellation in the night sky; the more true you are to your Form, the brighter your stars shine. Your stars, Tia, have been burning out, because you have not been true to who you are really meant to be these past couple centuries. I’m here to teach you things like Generosity and Kindness for the good of yourself and your subjects; to relight your stars’ fires.”

“And to make me more true to who I am once again?” the Princess offered.

“Exactly!”

The sage began to pack up his things and lift them onto his back, “I have to go about returning all these things. I’ll see you in six days’ of your time for a lesson on Honesty.”

Princess Celestia was still trying to process everything Starswirl had told her in the last couple of minutes and was momentarily lost in her thoughts, “Hm? Oh yes. Good day, Starswirl.”

“Good day, Princess,” the scholarly unicorn said briefly before disappearing into the afternoon air.

Comments

[LoneUnicornWriter]

Wow a great explanation of what princess Celestia really is :D

[Hustlin Tom]

3341565
While how I've applied the idea is my own twist, the idea itself is actually the creation of Plato, the second of the three greatest Greek philosophers. When I had read his idea of a dual plane existence of Form and Matter, the idea of Form, a mysterious force of measured perfection, seemed to resonant with the idea of Magic to me. Philosophy can actually be interested and not so daunting if given the chance, don't you think?

[Puzzle Reader]

3341948 Philosophy is always more interesting if you can find a way to apply it to ponies. As is everything.

[Csquared08]

And suddenly, headcanon. Headcanon everywhere. I'm okay with this.

[Walabio]

Princess Celestia seems to have a limited memory; so, she has to forget in order to remember. She cannot remember her deep past well.

[Alan Smithee]

Starswirl's here to relight Celestia's fire?
Celestia can't remember her last husband?
Suddenly, Viagra commercial.