Calling You

by AugieDog

Tenth Century

Standing on Aunt Celestia's balcony and watching the chariot carrying Twilight and Spike dwindle away till it was just a spot in the sky, Cadance wasn't quite sure how she felt.

Nervous? Of course! Twilight was hardly more than a filly, had only ever left Canterlot on field trips Cadance had put together for her! Just sending her to organize the Summer Sun Celebration in Ponyville would've been a big enough test of her abilities, but knowing what they were actually sending her into, Cadance found it took most of her self-control not to spring over the railing and speed after the now-vanished chariot.

But no. After all, pride also bubbled in Cadance's chest. All her hundreds of years of planning had paid off in ways she could never have imagined, and gazing toward Ponyville far off there in the misty distance, she knew without a single doubt that Twilight Sparkle was exactly the pony to pull everything together, organize the Elements, and save both Aunt Luna and Equestria.

A lilac-scented rustle behind her. "Is she gone?" Aunt Celestia asked, and Cadance could hear that same mixture of worry and confidence behind her words.

Turning, Cadance smiled up at her. "I imagine she'll arrive just in time for brunch at Sweet Apple Acres."

Aunt Celestia nodded and gazed into the mirror above her dressing table, but Cadance could read volumes of emotion in the droop of her neck, the slight shiver of her ears. "Tomorrow at dawn," Auntie said quietly, "either the world will plunge into eternal night, or a thousand years of a different sort of darkness will come to an end."

She looked back over her shoulder, the primal fire of the sun itself guttering in her eyes. "But I'll not fight Luna this time, Cadance, whatever else happens. She may kill me before Twilight and the Bearers can reach the Elements and learn of their connection to them, so I...I'll ask that you return to the Realm Between tonight and stay there till this all resolves. That way, when the Element Bearers do return Luna to herself, Equestria will still have two princesses..."

Leaping across the room, Cadance tucked her head under Aunt Celestia's chin. "Don't say that, Auntie! We've got to trust the plan!" Flaring her horn, Cadance summoned her checklist, the nervous part of her wanting the reassurance of looking it over once more. "I put the Elements' stone spheres in the old castle myself, and the clues we've been sprinkling into Equestrian folklore and literature for the past six hundred years will send Twilight and the others straight there. That's also the first place Aunt Luna will go—"

"After she's had her way with me."

"No!" It came out harsher than Cadance had meant, and she winced. "I mean, there's plenty of actual variables to worry about in all this, Auntie. We can't start driving ourselves crazy with pure speculation."

"But it's not." Aunt Celestia's voice was as matter-of-fact as if she was discussing the weather. "From the instant my last connection to the Elements evaporates at the final second before dawn tomorrow, I will be completely in Luna's power." Her sigh seemed to rise up all the way from her fetlocks. "The best I can hope for is that the Nightmare Moon part of her will want to keep me alive so she can gloat."

"The best? No." Cadance refused to give in to the gloom filling the room. Taking a very deliberate step back, she spread her wings, let her list dissolve, and waved at the open balcony doors. "The best we can hope for just flew off in that chariot muttering that the fate of Equestria doesn't depend on her making friends."

As she knew it would, that got a smile from Aunt Celestia. "Ah, Twilight. She is magnificent, isn't she?" Cadance couldn't help arching an eyebrow, and Aunt Celestia wrinkled her muzzle at her. "You know what I mean, niece."

And for all that Cadance wanted to keep needling her aunt, she decided against it: she wasn't Chrysalis, after all. "Yes, I do," she said instead. "It's been a long, tangled journey, but the six ponies who've come out at the end of it are simply incredible."

Aunt Celestia raised an eyebrow of her own. "And let's not forget Twilight's brother, shall we?"

Heat burst across Cadance's face, and Aunt Celestia's chuckle told her once and for all that her aunt could tell when she was blushing. It was just...ever since she'd first laid eyes on Shining Armor spinning his laughing little sister inside a bubble of purple magic, the merest thought of him had become enough for Cadance to get as giggly and stumbly and starry-eyed as any of the ponies she'd watched fall in love over the centuries. And it was even more wonderful than she'd always dreamed it might be, whether they were having supper with his family or sitting in one of the palace parks to watch the lights of Canterlot glowing below. He made her feel special and loved and...and complete.

"Pleasant and handsome," her aunt was going on, a twinkle in her eyes. "The youngest captain in the history of the Equestrian guard, and let's not forget his distinguished lineage. Why, one could almost say he was born for you!"

"Please don't." Cadance tried to keep her ears up, but she'd heard enough snarky comments on this particular subject from Chrys the last year or so: You couldn't've found a better coltfriend if you'd set out to design one yourself! Oh, wait! That's exactly what you did, isn't it? "I've almost stopped wallowing in guilt over interfering with the love lives of all those thousands of ponies over the centuries." She forced a smile. "So any talk about how I also managed to build my dream stallion in the process might just send me over the edge."

"You're right, Cadance, and I apologize." Aunt Celestia moved up to give her a nuzzle. "It's just so amazing to find myself in a joking mood mere hours before Luna's return, a time and date I've dreaded for—"

A knock from the door, and Aunt Celestia's horn glowed, pulling it open. "Come in!" she called.

The most recent Seneschal, as sober and serious a young pegasus mare as Cadance had ever met, stepped in, her saddlebags full of papers. "Your Highness." Seneschal bowed to Aunt Celestia, then stepped past her and bowed to Cadance. "Princess Cadance, I have the forms here that you wanted to review."

Blinking at her, Cadance opened her mouth to say that she hadn't asked to review any forms, but the sudden green flash deep within Seneschal's eyes froze the words in her throat.

In the doorway, Aunt Celestia shook her head with a gentle chuckle. "Always so conscientious, niece. I could almost give you the same friend-finding assignment I just gave to Twilight Sparkle, couldn't I?"

Somehow, Cadance managed to point a grin at her. "Still," Aunt Celestia went on, "I've some business I need to take care of as well before the Summer Sun Celebration tomorrow, so I—" Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat. "I suppose I'll see you later, Cadance." Nodding, she turned and left the room.

Letting her grin crumble into a gaping stare, Cadance hissed, "Chrys! This—! You—! What in the wide, wide world of Equestria are you doing here??"

"Visiting." And for all that it was Seneschal's voice, the toothy smile and lazy drawl would've told Cadance it wasn't her even if the green flash hadn't. "After all, this is likely to be the last chance I'll ever have to see Canterlot under the full light of day, isn't it?"

Cadance managed to do a little more sputtering, but Chrysalis waved a pale blue hoof and laughed. "But never mind me, Cady. You and your aunt go right ahead and idiotically risk all Equestria on six ponies who don't have half a clue between them. It's no skin off my nose." She rubbed her snout. "Of course, it's not really my nose...."

"Are you insane??" Cadance finally got out. "What if Aunt Celestia runs into Seneschal downstairs?? Or—??"

"You worry too much." A flap of her wings, and Chrysalis shrugged off her saddlebags, papers spilling everywhere. "Take it easy. It's not like it's the end of the world or anything."

"That's right." Slowly, Cadance felt her brain starting to bubble and think again. "It's not. Or haven't you noticed all that stuff I've been doing the past five or six hundred years? The stuff that's going to save the world?"

"Yeah, yeah." Green fire crackled over the false Seneschal's body, darkening her blue hide to brown, her face narrowing and aging, changing her into some anonymous pegasus. "No offense, Cady, but I've gotta tell you: soon as the sun stops coming up, I'm popping in here to offer my services to your Aunt Nightmare. I mean, can you imagine how the Calls'll flood in once she starts tearing this place apart?" A laugh, and Chrysalis spread her wings, trotted out onto the balcony, and flew off into the mid-morning sunlight.

Staring after her, Cadance was a little alarmed to find that she couldn't tell if Chrysalis was joking or not.

***

The smile on Aunt Celestia's face was absolutely sublime, her eyes shimmering with joy; not even trying to clear the lump from her throat, Cadance smoothed reality back into place and settled them into the front room of her suite in Canterlot Tower, the one lamp still burning low on the table where she'd left it.

"Oh, Cadance," Aunt Celestia murmured, her voice as gentle as the drift of her mane. "Thank you! That was...was...was—"

A shuffling at the open doors of the balcony, and Aunt Luna peered in, the starlight nebula of her mane gleaming silvery-blue against the darkness outside. "Forgive my intrusion," she said, "but I sensed your return and wished to inform you of—"

"Oh, Luna!" Aunt Celestia positively flowed across the room to Aunt Luna and embraced her with her wings. "It was the most wonderful experience! The next time you and Cadance have a free morning, you must visit the Groves Beyond with her!"

Aunt Luna leaned into the hug, her eyes closed and a smile on her lips. "Thank you, sister." Aunt Luna stepped back, her smile fading. "I, however, still have fence-mending I must do here in the Mortal Realm before I dare venture into the Groves again." She glanced at Cadance. "You have maintained the mosaic of love quite splendidly, niece, and while I have made some progress toward reweaving myself into its fabric, I have not yet arrived at the point where I would feel comfortable leaning upon it for support."

Cadance had to nod. "It just takes time, Auntie."

"Indeed." Aunt Luna had always been the more serious of her two relatives, but in the aftermath of all that Nightmare Moon business, she'd seemed positively dour. Still, she'd begun loosening up somewhat since visiting Ponyville for her first Nightmare Night—and just the thought that Twilight had blossomed enough in her new home to offer friendship advice to other ponies made Cadance grin every time Aunt Celestia shared the letters the Element Bearers sent her. Cadance only regretted that she hadn't yet had a chance to meet most of the ponies who'd occupied so much of her time the past half millennium, but she knew that once she and Armie announced their engagement, Twilight and all her friends would—

"However," Aunt Luna went on, and the intensity in her voice snapped Cadance's attention back to the here and now. "While tending the dreams of our little ponies this night, I have been feeling most uneasy, and I would consult with you both."

All the relaxation drained from Aunt Celestia, and she seemed to grow even larger, her neck straightening and her mane expanding. "What have you sensed, sister?"

"It is frustratingly nebulous." Aunt Luna's mouth went sideways. "But that it is a threat to Canterlot, I have no doubt whatsoever."

Aunt Celestia nodded once. "See what else the night will tell you, Luna, then meet me atop the Tower in three-quarters of an hour. I shall in the meantime awaken Shining Armor and set the guard on full alert." She turned, and Cadance just managed to pull her mouth closed, the energy flowing from her two aunts like nothing she'd ever seen before. "Thank you again for an enjoyable evening, niece. Keep your ears open in the Realm Between, and let us know if you hear anything." Aunt Celestia stepped past Aunt Luna, her wings reflecting white-gold in the lamp light as she leaped from Cadance's balcony.

Aunt Luna watched her go, and the love radiating from her soothed Cadance's fluttering stomach. "I had prepared proofs of my observations," Aunt Luna said, turning her dark but dazzling smile to Cadance, "should my word no longer be sufficient. But now I see in truth that I have regained my sister's trust."

Cadance smiled back. "You never lost her trust, Aunt Luna. And you never lost mine, either."

The shiver that shook Aunt Luna's mane made the stars in it dance, and Aunt Luna reached out, touched her horn to Cadance's, then turned and vanished into the night outside the balcony door.

Puffing a breath, Cadance considered. Her aunts obviously had the situation well covered, but it wouldn't hurt to stick close just in case. She couldn't stop a grin at the thought of her poor Armie getting rousted out of bed with dawn still a couple hours away, and she began heading for the door, thinking she might take word to the kitchen staff that preparing several gallons of tea and coffee would be a good idea.

A throat cleared behind her. Turning, then, looking over her shoulder, she saw—

She saw herself looking back from the door into her office. "Well!" her double said, the voice just about perfect. "Fancy meeting you here!"

It took Cadance a couple blinks before she could get her mouth to work. "Chrysalis? Is something wrong?" A thought made her mane bristle. "Aunt Luna was just talking about a threat to Canterlot! Have you heard something?"

"Not as such." Chrysalis sashayed into the front room, Cadance staring to see her own body moving so...so slinkily. "Though I do find your aunt Luna—what was her phrase?" Chrysalis cocked her head. "'Frustratingly nebulous.' In a good way, though: I'll have to cultivate her, I think, when this all shakes out."

"Shakes out?" Cadance gave a couple more blinks. "Not quite sure what you're getting at, Chrys."

"Understandable." Chrysalis nodded. "I haven't told you yet, after all."

The fevered glint in those eyes, eyes that Cadance normally only saw in the mirror, convinced her that smiling would not be the correct response here. So she just nodded back. "Is this something I should sit down for?"

"Couldn't hurt." Clearing her throat, Chrysalis touched one front hoof to her pink chest. "For I have come to make good on the promise I made some decades ago. I hereby present to you my proposal for settling the dispute between us."

Cadance swallowed. "And what would that proposal be?"

"A contest, let's call it." Chrysalis moved her front hoof back and forth between herself and Cadance. "To see who's right about love and who's wrong."

Unable to stop her mouth from going sideways, Cadance gave Chrysalis is half-lidded look. "Is that what our dispute was about? 'Cause I thought it had something to do with the way you and your changelings were disguising yourselves as ponies to suck love out of their significant others."

Chrysalis shrugged. "Mere details. At its core, however, our dispute comes down to the following: you see love as some mystical, all-powerful, all-knowing force that pervades the universe, binds all ponies together, and makes us all live happily ever after, while I see love as a natural resource like flowers or sunlight, something that's useful, renewable, and quite tasty when you get right down to it."

Tapping a hoof, Cadance did her best to bury the chill that squiggled down her back beneath a mask of annoyance. "We coming to a point here anytime soon?" she asked.

"We are." Chrysalis took a breath. "The challenge will pit my definition of love against yours, and the winner—" Another of those slow smiles. "The winner will take all."

"Remember those 'mere details,' Chrys?" Cadance was starting to feel a little actual annoyance now. "I'll be needing a few of those right about now."

Her eyes narrowing, Chrysalis gave as insincere a bow as Cadance thought she'd ever seen. "Four simple words, Cady: I take your place."

The three o'clock in the morning silence filled the room, Cadance breathing it in and feeling it fill her as well. "Just hear me out." Chrysalis gestured to the office door, her golden shoes catching the lantern light. "And maybe do some of that sitting down you mentioned earlier?"

Her neck feeling rusty, Cadance nodded and somehow forced her hoofs to carry her into the next room to one of the lounging sofas she kept there. Chrysalis came in behind her, the green glow of her magic pushing the door closed. "The rules would be simple, too. You would go somewhere nearby and sit: from my research, I would recommend the mining caverns beneath Canterlot. Are you familiar with them?"

It struck a tiny bell in Cadance's memory, images from her first few centuries. "But they've been abandoned for— Well, since before Aunt Luna's exile, certainly."

"Exactly." Chrysalis spoke quietly, Cadance for a brief instant not sure that she wasn't hearing her own thoughts. "The caverns aren't a place anypony will just be wandering through by accident, so if you're there and somepony finds you, it'll be because they're looking for you. And if they're looking for you, it'll mean they discovered I wasn't you, and you'll have won." Her eyes gleamed like glass marbles. "Get it?"

Cadance could hardly form the words. "You...you want to impersonate me while I sit in a cave somewhere? And when Armie or Aunt Celestia or somepony realizes you're not me—"

"If they realize it."

"Well, of course they'll realize it!" Cadance found that she'd leaped to her hoofs, had flashed across the room, was standing nearly muzzle to muzzle with the very image of herself. "Chrys, this is insane! You can't possibly believe you'd get away with something like that!"

Only Chrysalis's lips moved, curling into a slight smile. "Then you have nothing to worry about, do you? You'll spend an hour or two examining the fascinating mineral formations below the city, then they'll come for you. What could possibly go wrong?"

Taking a couple steps back, Cadance tried to follow the logic, but— "It doesn't add up, Chrys. I mean, what do you hope to get out of all this?"

Her ears folded, her eyes narrowing. "Equestria's changed the last few years, Cady. To put it bluntly, your aunt Luna notices things you and your aunt Celestia never did, and she's more than willing to go poking around in dark and dusty corners investigating the things that she's noticed. So I want this ended between you and me, because—" Her ears rose, that little smile coming back. "Because if they don't discover it's me and don't come to rescue you..."

Her words trailed off, and for several heartbeats, Cadance could only stare at her. "You'd take over."

Slowly, Chrysalis nodded. "And you'd retire to the Realm Between, contemplate the true meaning of love, and take care of any Calls I and my changelings might need you to deal with."

The implications scattered through Cadance's thoughts. "Chrys, you don't have to do this. We can—"

"We can what??" She slashed the air with a front hoof. "My hive is barely subsisting on the thin gruel of dead ponies' love when there's a vast and limitless banquet of living love out here we could be feasting upon!"

"No!" Cadance couldn't hold back any longer. "End-of-life love is a love beyond any other, love at its most refined, concentrated and exquisite! It should be much more nourishing for you changelings than any other sort of love! And besides, the only way you've been getting living ponies' love is through deceit and treachery!" She forced herself to stop, take a breath, moderate her voice. "Lying your way to love is never the answer, Chrys! Love is a gift, precious and—"

"Love is an electro-chemical particle wave!" Green fire crackled up and down her horn. "Your bodies create it and radiate it in a process as easy and automatic as metabolizing oxygen or digesting food! I mean, as near as I can tell, most ponies don't even know they're doing it! It's more like exhaling or sweating to them than anything else!"

"That's not true at all!"

"Then prove it!" Chrysalis stomped both front hoofs into the carpet and glared, Cadance's breath catching at the ferocious look on her own face. "Prove me wrong!" She smiled, but everything about her somehow got even more ferocious. "Or just admit that I'm right and get outta my way."

In the silence that followed, Cadance felt both frozen and melting at the same time. "I...I don't want you to get hurt, Chrys," she finally managed to say.

"Don't worry about me." That smile faded. "Now, do we have a deal, or don't we?"

"Insane...," Cadance muttered again, but she nodded. "So where's this cave, then?"

Comments

[AugieDog]

Now:

Ev'rybody go re-watch the "Canterlot Wedding" episodes, and we'll meet back here for one last chapter, "Another Beginning," on or about August 12th!

Mike

[Glazius]

And of course, mind control is fair play, because if love is something beyond what is known, surely it can break it.

[AugieDog]

2981311

It's like they say:

"All's fair in electro-chemical particle-wave emission and war."

Mike

[Music-and-magic]

Gah!!! I keep putting off reading this, and it's just all!!! Augh >.<!

Don't mind me...

[AugieDog]

2981723

The story'll be here:

Waiting patiently for you whenever you're ready.

Mike

[Music-and-magic]

2982755
i got caught up, but i just don't know ... I guess i've been waiting for things to fall apart on the girls since the 5th century >.<

[Art of the Derp]

2981603
So I'm curious. How did Chrysalis find out about quantum mechanics? I suppose it's possible that they could have set up a double slit experiment and happened to stumble upon the photoelectric effect, but how did they set up the electron version? Or did she just happen to build a particle accelerator out of magic, love, and changeling spit in the realm between?

[Lurks-no-More]

Whoah. So... Chrysalis basically dares Cadence into imprisoning herself, because the alternative is to admit that you accept the Changeling definition of love as more valid and true than your own, undermining everything Cady has stood and worked for for the last thousand years. That's impressively devious!

[AugieDog]

2983230

One of my:

Experiments with this story is the tight, tight, tight narrative focus on Cadance, and Cadance--at least as I'm writing her here--is all about conflict avoidance and resolution. That's why that scene in part two of "Canterlot Wedding" where she and Twilight burst in and stop the ceremony is so important. To my way of thinking, it's the first time that it's dawned on Cadance that Chrysalis maybe isn't exactly her friend.

We'll get into all that in the final chapter next weekend.

2983289

One of my:

Theories about the whole "moving between Realms" thing that Cadance and Chrysalis do is that it's related to quantum tunneling. So they have an instinctive understanding of how to fiddle around with de Broglie wavelengths and all the more jittery bits at the basis of creation.

Besides, I think Twilight has demonstrated several times in the show how any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.

2983575

One of my:

Biggest peeves with the "Canterlot Wedding" episodes is that Cadance is just sitting there in that cavern when Twilight crashes into her. She's not wrapped up in a green changeling cocoon, she's not unconscious, she's not really injured in any way: she's just sitting there looking depressed. So this wager is just about the first thing in my original notes for this story.

One more chapter to go!

Mike

[Klein]

2984736

Biggest peeves with the "Canterlot Wedding" episodes is that Cadance is just sitting there in that cavern when Twilight crashes into her. She's not wrapped up in a green changeling cocoon, she's not unconscious, she's not really injured in any way: she's just sitting there looking depressed. So this wager is just about the first thing in my original notes for this story.

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying you think Cadance should have had the ability to escape, or are you saying she should have still been trying?

[AugieDog]

2991806

The existence of Cadance:

Was originally announced, if I'm remembering correctly, in December of 2011, about the time that "Hearth's Warming Eve" first aired. I took two things from those events: one, that there was a third alicorn in Equestria, and two, that none of those three alicorns were around when Equestria was founded.

I then wrote "The Birth of Harmony" to address these issues, and in that story, I made Cadance roughly equal in power to her two aunts--Celestia and Luna watched over the realm of the living, and Cadance took care of the realm of the dead. I knew that the writers of the show were not going to take that route, but I thought it would be fun to have the cute little pink alicorn be Equestria's death godess.

Four months later when "Canterlot Wedding" aired, nothing in that episode directly contradicted my theory: they never said that Cadance wasn't as old as her aunts, and they never said exactly what realm she was in charge of. So, if I was to keep my story as close to canon as I could, I needed to come up with a reason why one of the three immortal rulers of Equestria couldn't manage to get herself out of a cave.

Of course, now we all know the actual answer to that question courtesy of G.M. Berrow and her novel Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell where we finally get Cadance's completely-authorized-by-Hasbro backstory: she's a pegasus who earned her princesshood something like Twilight did at the end of the last season, not one of the immortal rulers of Equestria. So it makes perfect sense that a being like Queen Chrysalis, who when she was all juiced up on love was able to defeat Celestia herself, could concoct a way to keep Cadance prisoner in that cave.

But I'd already come up with my own idea, and I wanted to write a story about it. That's why this series has the "Alternate Universe" tag. So to answer your question, the Cadance I made up would have had the ability to escape quite easily. The Cadance we've come to know since "Canterlot Wedding," however, is not the Cadance I made up. My "head canon" made a problem where there wasn't one, and this story here is a direct result of me trying to solve that non-problem.

That Long-Winded Mike Guy

[djthomp]

You couldn't've found a better coltfriend if you'd set out to design one yourself! Oh, wait! That's exactly what you did, isn't it?

Bwhahahhaha!

"No offense, Cady, but I've gotta tell you: soon as the sun stops coming up, I'm popping in here to offer my services to your Aunt Nightmare. I mean, can you imagine how the Calls'll flood in once she starts tearing this place apart?"

I think I love this Chrysalis.

[AugieDog]

2995065

I knew going in:

That I was gonna have a great time writing Chrysalis and Celestia. What's surprised me is how much I've enjoyed writing Cadance. Some of that, I think, is that I wanted her friendship with Chrysalis to be credible, so I had to "up her game" in their scenes together. But whaddaya want for a 40,000 story with essentially only three characters in it?

Mike

[Puzzle Reader]

Given the background you've already written about Cadance and Chrysalis, I like the idea of it being a "contest" way more than a betrayal.

[Razzy]

This Chryssie is awesome. And methinks Cadence overestimated the nourishing power of end of life love.

Cya
Raziel-chan