Chapter One
No pony knew what the Princess did with murder weapons. As far as Equestria was aware, Celestia would walk into the sealed room at the Canterlot Police Station, and emerge some time later with answers. The best speculation was that she performed some kind of divining spell. She preferred it that way.
"Open," Celestia instructed the guards, who moved to either side of the heavy metal door and obeyed. She could have told them they knew the drill, and the result would have been the same. She could even have said nothing. Her image in Canterlot, however, relied on rules. Formality. Protocol. She hated it, and hated its necessity, but any sign of weakness could leave her trampled under the hooves of the power-hungry nobility. She strode into the near-barren room, her regally flared wings barely fitting through the doorway, and turned.
"Leave us," she ordered, and the door swung shut. A moment later, she heard the click that signified the lock's engagement, and finally let her wings fold to her sides. She dared not say anything before casting her own soundproofing spell to reinforce the mundane one already in place.
No pony knew that their beautiful, serene Princess would spend hours screaming out her heart's furies and manifold torments. With sound locked away, she could finally give voice to her passions in safety. She shouted, she cried, she collapsed on the floor and begged the universe to be fair. Only out of painful duty would she silence herself, rise, and acknowledge the hours of the evening. Most ponies had no idea why some sunsets were so baleful, or the rise of the moon sometimes torturously slow. Only in Canterlot did a few know how these strange twilights corresponded to the Princess's personal involvement in police work. Only Celestia knew her heart broke every time she raised the moon and watched her sister's face, forgotten by ponykind, sail through the night sky.
Princess Celestia was known as the wise, the beautiful, the regal, the powerful - to some ponies, a living deity. Princess Celestia was the tired old pony who, after sobbing out the last of her tears, finally dragged herself from the floor to confront her work.
The latest barbarity lay next to a glass of oily liquid on a small oak table at the back wall. The grey metal of the arrow's shaft stretched diagonally from one corner of the table to the other - nearly six feet. At its notched end, the metal was fletched - almost decorated - with three black feathers, each at right angles to the other. At the tip were three silvery blades in the same arrangement, each tapering - and then curving backwards to a vicious hook, clearly designed to make the arrow's removal as damaging and painful as possible.
Twelve hundred years earlier, a younger Celestia would have shuddered and wept for the barbarity of the weapon. The Princess locked in that room felt only a vague sadness, dulled by over-exposure to the twisted creativity of those few who found themselves capable of murder. She only noted that its fashion was similar to Gryphon weapons adapted for her guards, although the hooked tip was an unnecessary cruelty. Certainly, she could have examined the arrow more closely, noted that it could have been intended as a bolt for a crossbow, or that any weapon capable of firing it with reasonable power and distance would have to be larger than a pony, and thus operable only by a skilled unicorn or another race entirely. She could easily have found, from acid tests, that the shaft metal was Minotaur steel. She could have bothered to read the report of who was killed and who might have had a reason to do it.
Forensics, however, did not interest her. The Canterlot Police were sufficiently trained and equipped to handle that, and that the weapon now lay in the sealed room meant their many, skillful methods had failed. Besides, Celestia preferred to talk to the weapons themselves.
"By the sun and the stars, by the moon and the seas, cries scorned justice for truth," she said solemnly. Each word dropped a puff of star dust from her lips to swirl upwards and be absorbed by the tip of her horn, which began to glow with power. "Sun's rays, burn deception. Moon's gaze, pierce darkest lies. Oceans, wash clean this slate; stars, bear witness to this date." She chanted the words thrice, and released the energies that had built up to blinding intensity. The power of binding to truth washed over the room in a golden flash, and the ritual was complete.
The pact Celestia invoked could be traced back to the ancestor-shamans of Zebrica, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, and from there into lost, unwritten history. Much would be asked of her in return, but she would pay any personal toll for justice, save justice itself. She owed her subjects, she owed Discord, she owed her sister that much.
The ritual had its advantages, as well. As all "spells" of Zebra origin, it required no personal strength or use of magic; the alicorn's horn was merely a convenient point of focus. A truth spell of similar potency, cast through the magic of Harmony, would completely drain her, or leave any but the most magical unicorn comatose before fizzling out from lack of power. She could not afford to have less than her full reserves for her next spell; the ritual was the only way to do both in one night.
Celestia charged her horn once more, this time drawing upon energy of her own. She cast her will out upon the vast expanses of Harmony, calling to the Elements themselves. Generosity. Honesty. Kindness. Loyalty. Laughter. Magic. She had to appease all six before a spell so atrocious as hers could be permitted. Her mantra to them flowed easily through her mind and lips, perfected by practice.
"I give life of my own life. I bind myself to truth, at the hooves of forgotten ancients. To this, I give what is still tender within my heart. To this, I swear protection above my own." She hesitated. The last two Elements were the most enigmatic; Laughter was almost foreign to her broken soul, and Magic - already an overly-general and nebulous concept - had become dormant when she had done what she could not bear to remember and lost her role as Bearer. While her plea was always accepted before, the decision seemed to come with increasing reluctance. Perhaps the Elements were a council, and the ones she failed to please were simply out-voted? Their ways were a mystery to her, but regardless, she continued.
"I swear upon my sister to bring a smile. The fabric of Harmony I will weave without flaw. Look upon the magic that surrounds and binds me - know I cannot tell a lie." Princess Celestia, the most powerful and respected single pony in the history of Equestria, waited for her plea to be heard by the very forces that allowed her peaceful nation to exist in a frightening world. She knew it would take them time, and waited, statuesque, as though her alabaster coat had become porcelain.
It was a full hour she stood in place, cramping her muscles and stressing her control, but only her eyelids ever moved. She could not remember why, but it seemed to have become a part of her appeasement at some point, and she was not willing to find out whether it was really necessary.
"Granted." The sound across the ley was as thousands of ponies singing two notes in harmony. Celestia knew, from her time as the Bearer of all Elements, that the voices were of every Bearer - from the obscure dawn of their existence to the indefinite future, their Harmony spanned time itself. She permitted herself to relax her straining body, and sigh in gratitude. While it was pointless to thank the Elements, she always made sure to do so. It felt appropriate for a lesser being to thank a greater force that did not have to permit her existence.
Finally, the Princess turned to the table once more, building the energy that allowed her - and any common unicorn - to weave her own piece into the vast, patchwork quilt of Harmony. She stitched new threads into the ley, the light of her spell blinding and still growing in intensity as she fed it power. She drew the focus into the very core of her being and poured into it years of her extreme long life, before casting the entire spell and one final element into the arrow with a flash that rivaled her own sun's brilliance. Then she could see nothing, as the room returned to its natural dimness and her eyes struggled to re-adjust.
While Celestia waited, the arrow began to grow. Longer, thicker, more blunt. She knew what she had to do, whether she could see it clearly or not, and levitated it off the table to hang - tip towards her - in front of her face. While her exhausted magic struggled to hold it up, she refused to let go until the spell completed its work.
Four hooves appeared on the floor below the weapon, each covered in steel-grey fur. A little further up, the knees formed by themselves, growing up towards the arrow's shaft, and reaching down for the hooves. A bushy, black tail came into existence, opposite and below a pair of silvery eyes. From there, all the parts of a pony grew towards each other in a rush, engulfing an arrow that turned to vertebrae and disappeared under flesh and a thick coat of grey. As his features resolved into a firm, determined face, an explosion of feathers announced the growth of wings.
Celestia released the simple levitation spell that drained what little was left of her magic, and smiled at the pony standing before her, whose expression quickly turned to one of bewilderment.
"A moment, please." Without waiting for a reply, she drank from the glass that remained on the table. Ordinarily, the... whatever it was... tasted absolutely disgusting, with a texture that made her retch involuntarily. But as drained as she was, her entire body craving nourishment - she had expended a great deal of physical energy, along with magic - the drink was simply divine. The palace chef had apparently discovered the recipe in the back of a cookbook preserved from pre-Equestrian times, when unicorns were often at war or fighting rebellion against the other pony tribes and needed a way to keep exhausted sorcerers from collapsing on the field. While no food or drink could restore a pony's magic, this one had all the right ingredients to deliver a lot of physical energy in a hurry.
The glass drained, she lay down on her belly to make herself less imposing, and addressed the ponified weapon - who was examining his hooves in confusion - face to face.
"Hello, dear little pegasus. My name is Celestia. Please, will you tell me how you came to be here?"