Doing his best to remain absolutely silent, even in his clattering suit of legacy Canterlot barding, Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire slipped into the Royal Bedroom and eased the door shut behind him. It'd been a terribly long day of training. While the Crystal Guard were an admirably zealous lot, the fact remained that they were still missing a thousand years of military tactics and theory, and Shining Armor's accelerated classes were proving to be of mixed effectiveness. Case in point: their idea of a proper throwing-dessert was something called "white-pot" which Shiny had never once heard of, and they acted utterly confused when presented with a proper modern cupcake battery.
"What are we supposed to do with this?" they would say, looking to him with befuddled eyes. "Eat it?"
"No!" Shining Armor would respond. "Or rather, yes, but not in this specific situation!"
It was long, exhausting work—mentally more than physically—and by the end of a long training day, the prince wanted nothing more than to say good-night to his beautiful sleeping daughter and then slip into bed with his beautiful sleeping wife and join the two of them in the Dreamlands.
Despite his best efforts at silence, though, he heard the princess regnant stir in her sleep as he approached the bed. In the dim light, he could barely make out the bump she made in the bed's sumptuous comforter.
Rats, he thought. So much for not waking her. And then, a moment later, Well, at least there's a bit of a silver lining to it. What with the new foal, the couple's occasions for intimacy had been comparatively few and far between, and Shining Armor had really been craving some quiet bonding.
"Mm?" came Cadance's voice from beneath the comforter, throaty with sleep.
"Hey, hon," said Shining, slipping deftly into the bed. "Miss me today?"
"Mm hm."
Shining Armor smiled. "I missed you, too," he said. "And right now, I'm going to show you just how much."
Slowly, tenderly, the young prince reached out with one hoof and rested it against his wife's withers, then leaned down and placed his lips gently against her muzzle, pressing their mouths together in an intimate, passionate kiss. Cadance's scent filled his nostrils, the smell of roses and fresh citrus and...
...cake?
...angel-food trifle with vanilla pudding and strawberries?
Shiny frowned, pulling back from the kiss. Sure, ponies of all sorts loved a good trifle from time to time, but the smell of that specific dish opened a floodgate of memories from his Canterlot years, back when he was Captain Shining Armor of the Royal Guard rather than Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire. The smell of strawberry angel-food trifle was entangled with, absolutely inextricable from, one very particular pony...
With wide eyes and trembling hoof, Shining Armor touched the switch on the bedside lamp. The pony beneath the comforter looked up at him with a sultry, half-lidded gaze.
"Hello, my faithful Captain," said Princess Celestia.
* * *
Shining Armor awoke, screaming.
* * *
When you are prince of a realm, and you wake from a sound sleep into a screaming fit, there is no shortage of ponies who will come running to your aid. Thankfully, he'd been alone in bed; Cadance, ever the early riser, had likely been awake for several hours now tending to little Flurry Heart and fixing herself breakfast. Yes, they had staff who could handle both these things, but Cadance was on some sort of probiotic cleansing diet lately that the turnip-and-berry-themed royal chefs had simply not yet wrapped their brains around, and she absolutely would not hear of the idea of using a wet nurse.
So it was that Shining Armor dismissed the legion of sparkling crystal servants who came running to his cry of distress, and then spent the next five minutes pacing up and down the length of the castle's sumptuous master bedroom trying to shake the anxious jimmies out of his limbs. Cadance's Aunty Celestia was popularly regarded as the ne plus ultra of equine beauty, but her body wasn't the issue; it was her mind, that ancient, dotty, machine-like mind, wheels within wheels within a delicious pastry shell. Shining Armor was one of Equestria's most loyal citizens—or had been, at least, until he had been specifically tapped to help rule a friendly foreign power—but the thought of sharing a bed with its figurehead princess was nonetheless nearly enough to put him off his breakfast.
"Nearly" only counts in horseshoes, of course, and Shining Armor had never met a soft-boiled egg he didn't like. Once the nightmare was banished back to the swevens where it belonged, his hunger got the better of him; and after a quick and perfunctory grooming, he quit the bedroom in favor of Cadance's newly-constructed Royal Breakfast Nook, and all its attendant warm, comforting smells of potatoes, eggs, stewed tomatoes, and...
...angel-food cake?
Shining Armor's eyes went wide. He paused for a moment, frozen in terror, then took the remaining stairs to the kitchen and dining wing at a dead gallop (no mean feat of athleticism given the superabundance of staircases in the Crystal Castle). Nostrils flared with exertion, he burst into the breakfast nook as though it were on fire.
He was not prepared for what he found there.
Crystal Empress Cadance I, Princess of Love, Sovereign Protector of the Crystal Empire, Bringer of the Aurora, Keeper of the Morning-Star, was breakfasting on cake. Specifically, strawberry angel-food trifle. As Shining Armor looked on in horror, his wife took a delicate little sip of tea and then served herself another tremendous pile of gooey dessert using a pair of party-sized salad tongs specifically repurposed for the task.
Shining Armor's jaw worked, soundlessly. After a moment, Cadance looked up. Her pudding-smeared muzzle lit up with a warm smile. "Good morning, dear!" And then, upon studying him closer, "Everything all right?"
Shiny tossed his head and allowed himself a calming nicker. "Fine, honey," he said, trotting over to the breakfast nook's little table. "Just, ah, a little nightmare."
"I'm sorry," she said. After a moment of thought, she nudged the trifle dish in his direction. "Maybe some cake will help?"
"No!" Shining exclaimed, a bit too loudly. And then, more quietly, "Um, that is—no, hon. Not exactly hungry. I just need a little coffee."
Cadance frowned at Shining's uncharacteristic display of breakfast ascetics but then shrugged it off. "Whatever you like, dear. I'm just going over the morning report. Would you care to join me? I've always valued your input and insights."
"Absolutely," he said, pulling up a cushion. "You won't believe this, but I'm actually looking forward to discussing trade agreements."
"No trade agreements today," said Cadance, sipping at her tea. "Today is all about tax policy."
"Taxes?" said Shining, fear beginning to trickle back into his gut. "But—"
"Yes?"
"How exactly to put this." Shining weighed his options for a moment before deciding on "blunt." "Honey, the government of the Crystal Empire is funded entirely by voluntary donations from our grateful populace."
"Well, of course, right now it is," Cadance replied. "But it's such a theoretically uncontrolled and unpredictable cash flow. We need to secure our government for our daughter's rule. I estimate that'll take a thousand years or so, but time does tend to slip away on one, and we can't afford to get complacent."
"I... guess that makes sense." Shining glanced at the pile of incoming paperwork. "What about that envelope on the bottom that's buzzing and glowing?"
"Hm?" said Cadance. "Oh, that. That's a message from Flurry Heart's brand new Royal Crystaller, Sunburst!"
"Looks... important?" Shining hazarded, eying the envelope warily.
"Oh, yes. Sunburst has just learned of an ancient prophecy predicting the return of King Sombra, and he sent me an urgent message informing me as much." Cadance hummed an absent little tune to herself as she continued perusing the proposed tax policy documents.
"Ha," said Shining, nervously. "No, in all seriousness."
Cadance continued her work, still humming. "Sit down and have a few oats, at least," she added, after a time. "After I'm done with the taxes I still have to figure out a way to humorously sabotage the upcoming Snow Day festival in order to 'liven it up,' so I'm going to be a while here." The envelope continued to buzz noisily at the bottom of the inbox.
"Honey, are you actually telling me that the dreaded tyrant who ruled the Empire before us is... coming back?"
"Yep," said Cadance, pulling a fresh pile of paperwork in front of her. "Ooh, earned income credit policies. These'll be great fun."
Shining stood bolt upright. "I'll assemble the Crystal Guard. We've spent moons preparing for just this scenario. Entire moons."
"Relax, dear. The situation is well in hoof."
"Okay." The stallion took a few deep breaths. "Please let me know the plan of action so I can at least coordinate with the Guard."
"The plan is very simple. In a bit, I'm going to write a little note to Sunburst and gently chide him for reading far too many books."
Shining blinked. "Honey, you can't be serious."
"Of course I'm serious! Have you seen how many books he owns?"
"The sum total of our government's response to the rebirth of a conquering tyrant dictator is to scold our magical advisor for being well-read?"
"Oh, Shiny. Don't be ridiculous. Of course that's not all we're doing." She shuffled a few more papers around the breakfast table. "This is just step one. Step two is me telling him to get out more and make some new friends."
Shining could do nothing but stare.
"Actually, dear, I will need some help from the Royal Guard after all. I would like Sunburst and that cute little Flash Sentry to become very good friends, if you catch my drift. Their coats go together so nicely."
Cadance's attempt at a cute little leer hit the iron-hard wall of Shining Armor's abject terror and fell limply to the ground between them. She figuratively looked at it lying there for a moment. "Shiny, whatever is the matter?"
"Cadance," he said, earnestly, "look at yourself. Does this behavior seem a little... familiar to you?"
Cadance's brow furrowed, her violet eyes filled with concern. "Ruling the Empire? Of course, dear. We do it all the time."
"Not that! The tea! The tax policy! 'Livening up' Snow Day!" He gestured futilely with one hoof. "The bizarrely blasé response to world-ending menaces?"
"Shining Armor, what's wrong with you? This is all fairly standard protocol."
"Not standard for you, though!"
"Shiny, please trust me. I am doing my absolute best to rule this Empire in the way I feel is right."
Shining shook his head. "It's just... Cady, something feels wrong. Maybe I'm being weird because of that dream."
"Do you need to lie back down?"
Shining Armor massaged his poll with one hoof. "I... think so, maybe. Yes."
Cadance rose from her cushion, crossed to her husband, and gave him a little peck on the horntip. "Very well. I'll see you later, My Faithful Husband."
Shining recoiled as though struck by electrical shock. He recoiled, retreated five steps, lost his limbs in a tangle beneath him and crashed awkwardly against the wall of the breakfast nook. Cadance's eyes went wide. "Shiny!" she cried. "Are you all right?"
"No," Shining wheezed. He staggered to his hooves. "No, I'm not."
"Shall I send for the Royal Physician? I promise you he's over his leech fixation."
"No!" Shining said again, a bit too quickly. "I just... need a little nap. Maybe this'll all go away after a little nap." He staggered back in the direction of the stairs leading to the Royal Bedchamber, stumbling over an intricately-sculpted crystal statue of one of the native tiny ewes.
Cadance startled. "Shiny!"
"No!" Shining cried out. "No! No need to come help me up!"
"You're probably right," Cadance mused. "Giving you assistance would deprive you of a valuable learning and growing experience, after all."
Shining Armor screamed. Again.
***
Doing his best to remain absolutely silent, even in his clattering suit of legacy Canterlot barding, Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire slipped into the Royal Bedroom and eased the door shut behind him. It'd been a terribly long day of—
Wait.
Doing his best to remain absolutely silent—
A little worm of doubt wriggled its way up Shining's neck, right up the line of his mane. Something was wrong.
"Honey?" he said, uneasily, walking hesitantly toward the lump in the coverlet. "Are you... under there?"
"Of course, my faithful husband," came the atypically husky contralto from beneath the covers.
"Yah!" Shining cried out, leaping backwards as though stung. "Nightmare! Nightm—"
The words had not even finished leaving Shining Armor's lips before there was a frightful noise, like a massive clocktower bell being rocked by a thunderclap.
"Citizen!" came a stentorian voice that shook the walls and rattled the imaginary furniture. "We have heard your cry of distress! You need have no fe—"
Luna, Princess of the Night, stopped short, eyeing Shining Armor blankly. After a moment, the corner of her lip trembled upward, struggling to stay in place.
She emitted a tiny, desperately-controlled snort.
"Your Highness," Shining said, bowing testily.
"Rise, Shining Armor," Luna said. "How may I assist the former Captain of the Royal Guard? Perhaps you need help locating the missing tiny little filly?"
"I'm... sorry, what—"
"The tiny little filly who was screaming her head off a few seconds ago?"
"Very clever, ma'am," said Shining, fuming. "Ha, ha."
"Perhaps there was no tiny filly? Perhaps somepony was in here poking a piglet with a stick?"
"Ma'am, if we could focus—"
"Yes, yes, of course, Shining Armor," said Luna, regaining her mien. "Direct me to the incubus in question."
"Oh, honey...!" came Celestia's voice, from the four-poster bed.
Luna's lip quivered again. Shining could see Luna bringing all her prodigious earth pony strength to bear on the simple task of keeping her composure intact.
Her strength gave out. Luna collapsed to the floor, howling with laughter.
Luna collapsed to the floor, howling with laughter.
"Your Highness," said Shining Armor, squeezing his eyes shut in irritation.
"Yes, yes, of course," said Luna, getting her hooves under her and wiping away a tear or two. "Let's begin exorcising your demons."
"Shiny," said the phantasmal Princess Celestia in his phantasmal bed, "what's going on over—" and this is as far as she got before she was smacked in the face by a bolt of coherent blue-white energy from Luna's horn. Celestia let out a sharp, surprised yelp and promptly evaporated. Nothing remained of her but a wisp of sparkling smoke.
Silence ruled the bedchamber. Luna's eyes were wide and gleaming.
"Well!" she said, eventually. "I guess that's done!"
"I guess so," said Shining Armor, uneasily eyeing Luna's expression.
"So this is a recurring nightmare, yes?" Luna asked, her face unnervingly keen. "Have it every night, do you?"
"This is only the second time, but—"
"Wonderful!" Luna exclaimed, leaping on Shining's words as though she wanted to eat them. "You just keep having this dream, and I shall show up every time you shriek for help! Then I will blast my sister in the face and everything will be fine. You have nothing to worry about!"
Shining edged backward toward the bedroom wall, not at all sure about the factual truth of that last part. "Um, sure," he said. "Your Highness. If I might ask, though, isn't there something where you're supposed to teach me some life-lesson so the nightmare actually goes away?"
"Yes, you're right, of course," muttered Luna, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her hoof to her face. "Duties." She cleared her throat. "Shining Armor, hast thou any unresolved issues in thy life that might have sparked this terrible dream?"
"I thought you could peer into the past of ponies' waking lives."
"There were complaints," said Luna, briskly. "Now we must rely on the subjective reports of the victimized. So, anything?"
Shining glanced floorwards for a moment.
"This is in strict confidence, right?"
"Of course!" Luna bellowed, knocking over an imaginary lamp.
"Well..." said Shining. "Lately, Cady has been acting a little... strange. Nothing I could put my hoof on before today."
"Strange how?" Luna asked, leaning forward.
Shining faltered, made a few false starts, and then decided to call a spade a spade. "She's starting to act like Princess Celestia."
Luna's eyes narrowed. "I see," she intoned, tapping at her muzzle with one silver-shod hoof.
Shining found himself waiting for laughter that was not immediately forthcoming. Steeling himself, he dedcided to bring on the pain sooner rather than later. "Silly, right?"
"Not at all, subject," said Luna, pensively. "Indeed, 'tis a matter of ponderous import. These personality changes suggest that young Cadance is beginning to bloom into full alicorn flower. Your spouse, dear Shining, is experiencing Alicorn Pubescence."
"That sounds... icky."
"Far from it, Shining Armor. It is a beautiful, natural process that must be navigated very carefully."
"So it's beautiful and natural, but dangerous?"
"Yes, Not unlike a stretch of class five rapids. Possibly terminating in a picturesque waterfall." Luna frowned. "More there is to say, but there is no time for it now. Meet me in my old observatory above the Castle of the Two Sisters."
"Respectfully, ma'am... can't you tell me now?" Shining squinted away a sudden migraine, and lifted a hoof to rub an aching shoulder.
"I fear not, Shining Armor," said Luna, as the wall began to waver behind her. "This dream fades quickly."
"What? Wait!" Shining cried, as the walls of his bedroom began to stretch and elongate.
"No time!" Luna said, fading into the distance. "Seek me in Everfree! Seek me in Everfreeeee..."
Shining grappled at the fabric of the dream as the world dissolved into a tunnel of spun colors that pulled him forward towards an increasingly brilliant white light that grew closer and closer and
* * *
Shining Armor woke. This time, he did not scream, for he had a purpose.
* * *
The morning sun was bright and pitiless through the glinting walls of the Crystal Citadel's Winter Garden. Her Royal Highness Princess Cadance was busily tending the Empire's encyclopedic collection of delicate subarctic flowers, the lolling, babbling form of Her Royal Highness Princess Flurry Heart strapped securely to her back in a brightly-colored Mommy's First Saddle. The Empire's winter garden operated on a principle inverse to most other winter gardens one might encounter. Instead of sheltering delicate warm-weather plants from the bitter cold, the Empire's garden served as carefully-regulated cold-house for the frost lilies and ice irises and all other sorts of tundra flowers that could not otherwise withstand the blistering gentle warmth being spat out by the Crystal Heart. She sang quietly to herself as she tended the wabe surrounding an odd, spiky-looking sundial installed at the center of the garden.
"You've come... such a long, long way..."
It was into this scene that Shining Armor stepped, a frown of determination fixed on his muzzle. He walked grimly toward his wife and infant daughter, hooves crunching against icy crystalline gravel.
"Honey," said Shining Armor, "we need to talk."
"Certainly, My Faithful Husband," said Cadance, smiling at him with reserved, calculated warmth. She continued to polish the sundial's odd red-and-black gnomon with a chamois held gently in her telekinetic aura. "And I've watched you... from that very first day..." she absently sang.
The garden feature caught Shining's eye and he struggled to remain on-message. "I, um, just had a chat with Her Royal Highness Princess Luna."
"Oh, Lulu!" said Cadance, delightedly, causing Shining to twitch. "How is she?"
"She seems fine, but listen, something's come up. We need to make a lightning trip to Ponyville."
Cadance turned around, startled. Her sudden movement caused Flurry Heart to loll in the saddle, putting her in hoofreach of the sundial. The heir apparent to the Crystal Throne instantly began inspecting the sundial for things she could put into her mouth.
"Ponyville? But I have machinations to attend to here! I can't possibly spare the time!"
For a moment, Shining nearly relented. There was in Cadance's words enough of her Royal Canterlot Wife Voice to fill Shining with proper husbandly terror.
"Well," he hedged, "I mean, we could look at the calendar. Put it on the schedule..."
"Bah," Flurry Heart advised. Her tiny questing hoof brushed against the gnomon of the sundial. There came a sickening green-black flash, and the baby's eyes glowed red. "Buh," she intoned in an unnervingly stentorian manner.
"Honey...?" Shining asked, as his daughter pulled her hoof away with a confused expression on her face. "What's... what's that on the sundial?"
"Oh, that?" replied Cadance, pivoting around. "That's King Sombra's horn, from after I exploded him. The Long Scouts discovered it on one of their patrols." She frowned. "Did I forget to inform you or anyone else that that happened?"
Shining clenched his jaw. "Why is it sitting in the middle of our garden?"
"Oh! I thought it might be a good idea to install a physical remnant of a defeated major adversary in the middle of a popular public space without even a word of either explanation or warning. After all, what harm could possibly—"
"Ponyville," said Shining Armor. "Now."
"But—"
"Now," he repeated, igniting his horn. In a flash of arcane energy, he encased his wife and daughter in a transparent pinkish force globe. Ignoring the twinge of headache that always accompanied any over-extension of his power, Shining squinted his eyes and poured everything he could into the shield, fully expecting some form of magical retaliation from his god-tier alicorn bride.
After a few moments, he unsquinted his eyes. Cadance was just... standing there? She didn't exactly seem to enjoy the experience of being encased in Shining's force field, but neither was she moving to try and dispel it.
"Darn it! I've been rendered completely powerless and helpless all of a sudden! I mean, I know I protect the Crystal Empire and am personally responsible for the administration of the power of love throughout all Equestria, but this is a force field!" She sighed, heavily. "Welp, guess I'm beaten."
"Bah," said Flurry Heart, casually annihilating Shining's force globe. Shining frowned. The Fledgling's Forbearance incantation that Official Royal Crystaller Sunburst had prescribed for Flurry Heart had worked like a literal charm at first, dampening the foal's particularly problematic magical surges. Unfortunately, in recent days, its intensity had been creeping up to the point that it had begun to wipe out magical auras and spell effects from the baby's immediate surroundings, not just from the baby herself. Prior to today, this had been entry #1 on the list of weird and concerning magical things happening to his immediate family, but it had recently been bumped down to #2. Shining lifted the filly off his wife's back, placed her gently on a bed of lamb-ear, and reestablished the globe.
"Ponyville," Shining repeated.
"Oh, well!" Cadance babbled, as Shiny began to drag her out of the garden. "I suppose it has been a long time since I've checked up on Twilight and all her studies..."
"Justify it however you want, but we clearly need this trip." And then, quitting the conservatory, he added, "My future sanity depends on it."
All was quiet in the Winter Garden for five minutes.
Then Shining galloped back in, plucked his baby up from the lamb-ear, and galloped back out.
Thirty-six hours later, Shining Armor flopped his digestive-juice covered body onto the newly-reestablished rope bridge spanning the Chasm of Harmony that encircled the Castle of the Two Sisters. A timely application of a self-targeted force shell had made him (suddenly) too big a morsel to pass through the digestive tract of the hunting cragodile that had briefly succeeded in eating him shortly before the timberwolf attack. Even now, he could hear the distant baying of the terrifying half-vegetable predators. Shining hauled himself forward across the planks of the bridge, leaving a trail of sludge and offal from the cragodile's gut. This'll deter the timberwolves, he thought, frantically. They're too smart to wander onto unhallowed country haunted by the leftover remnants of Nightmare Moon. Shining warily regarded the darkening sky. It had been his original intent to have all his business in the Everfree sorted out by nightfall, but the constant carnivorous plant attacks and the half-petrified left hind leg (cockatrice) had slowed things down a touch.
He shifted his gaze to the crumbling castle before him, raised his eyes to the tallest intact tower, and beheld a light in the darkness of his own personal night. It shone, gray and flickering, from the high observatory tower. Gathering himself, he clumped across the bridge, half-dragging his stone rear hoof, and crossed the castle's threshold to its echoing, immaculate Great Hall. Shining took a moment to look around the space and, once again, admired the hoofwork of his sister and her five friends. The old castle had been fixed up and polished into something that once again resembled a royal living space.
The whole business had been done in honor of Princess Luna, of course, who now maintained her permanent residence in Two Sisters instead of Celestia's Canterlot to keep the Diarchy's inter-sibling spats to a minimum. Obviously that's why it had been done. After all, why would anypony devote a lot of time and effort to cleaning and fixing up the old castle in Everfree if they were just going to leave it fallow, untouched, and completely unused, like some sort of abandoned plot point? That would just be silly. Obviously nopony would do that.
Wending his way through the echoing hall, Shining eventually located a grand staircase leading to the mezzanine, and bit by bit he eventually made his way to the far more narrow, far more winding set of steps leading to the tower. After a substantial climb, he found his way blocked by a stern wooden door with gray light seeping out the edges. Shining took a deep breath, summoned his courage, and gave the door a series of light hooftaps.
"Hark! A visitor!" came an overwhelming voice from beyond the door. Such was the force of the outburst that the door itself flew open and clocked Shining in the muzzle, knocking him ten steps backward and causing him to fall in a heap of limbs at the next highest landing. "Who sets hoof into the demesne of Luna, Princess of the Night?"
"It's... uh, it's me, Highness," said Shining, eventually managing to untangle himself, which was no mean feat given his half-stone leg.
"Oh, Shining Armor," said Luna, at a far more reasonable volume.
"Yes, ma'am," said Shining, clomping his way back up the stairs. "You sent for m—"
"Enter and be welcome, most exalted Prince of the Crystal Empire!" bellowed Luna, knocking Shining back down the stairs.
"Ow," he said, weakly. Despite being even more injured than before, Shining made the quick threat assessment that Luna was probably less dangerous close up, where she was less likely to unleash her devastating sonic attack. He clambered up the steps. "Yes! Coming!"
"Do not tarry, Shining Armor. My nightly duties come apace!"
With tarrying the last thing on his mind, Shining re-achieved the top of the steps and peered into the observatory dome. The sight inside was, well, a bit informal, especially when he compared it to Celestia's pristine and awe-inspiring public audience hall. Sprawled across a beanbag chair was Her Royal Highness Princess Luna, telekinetically eating a bowl of cereal and idly manipulating a vertically-mounted stick with her left hoof. The cereal, Shining saw on closer inspection, was not really cereal at all, but rather an entire bowl of only marshmallows that had been plucked out of the mix of a normal box of Magic Charms (tm). Shining noted with bemusement that, in addition to the actual cereal, all the pink heart, blue diamond, green clover and purple horseshoe marshmallows had been discarded as well, leaving an entire bowl filled only with yellow moons. Luna's stick appeared to be controlling the motion of a small white line of pure arcane energy in some sort of cavernous dark box. Luna's beanbag had been placed directly before the box, and it had her full attention.
Shining was just on the point of becoming confused as to the function of the obstructive thing when there came a pinging sound, and a tiny cube of white sorcery materialized within the darkened box. "Approach our royal throne, good prince!" Luna thundered, her eyes never leaving the tiny white cube. It seemed to drift in Luna's direction, but when it got close, Luna used the joystick to maneuver the little white line to intercept it and send it drifting back across the length of the box. At the far end, it encountered another line which moved independently of Luna's stick. With a sharp pinging noise, the second line sent the cube drifting back towards Luna.
Staring at the odd thing, Shining found his formerly-pressing concerns about Cadance momentarily evaporating. "Your Highness," he said, "what, um, in Equestria is that?"
"'Tis a marvel, no?" said Luna, looking over her shoulder. "We call it 'Ping.' We have spent many moons perfecting it. The goal is to use this controller to secure my side of the box against the wicked depredations of the white square."
"So, don't let it touch your side?"
"Precisely!"
"Like it's doing now?"
Luna's eyes went wide. "Gadzooks!" she cried, leaping at her control stick as though it were a departing train. it was too late; the white square crossed Luna's side of the line. An obnoxious klaxon sounded, and a floating white number "1" appeared on the far side of the box.
Luna's eyes went wide. She sucked in a deep breath. Shining looked frantically around for something to hold on to; unfortunately, a moment too late.
"Noooooooooooooooooooo!" cried Luna unto the heavens, or at least the portion of them visible through the observatory roof. The force of the utterance was such that Shining was flung back out the door and halfway down the stairs again. He landed with a dull thud.
"...ow..." repeated Shining Armor, weakly.
"Oh well, on to business!" said Luna, from above. "Where have you gone to, Shining Armor? We distinctly recall instructing you not to tarry!"
"Yes, Your Highness," said Shining, unfolding himself with some effort and thudding up the steps again.
"Make haste, and also, prithee tell us what business come you on this evening?"
"You, um, told me to come see you. Last night. In a dream."
"Oh, of course we did," said Luna, levitating a spoon full of milk and marshmallows up to her mouth. "Our apologies. The Dreamlands often do not follow the normal courses of time, space and memory. From our perspective, the conversation you speak of happened long ago. We scarce can even recall the details."
"I was dreaming Celestia was in my bed and then you blasted her in the face."
Luna spat marshmallow milk all over the floor. It was about half a minute before she could speak due to the debilitating sniggering.
"We remember that now!" she exclaimed, eventually. "That wast basically the best!"
"Ma'am, can we please—"
"Yes, of course," said Luna, wiping away a tear with her silver-shod hoof. "We were discussing alicorn pubescence, were we not?"
"Yes. Specifically, how to stop it."
"Oh, of course," said Luna, turning back to her game. "It is no use, Shining Armor. You cannot stop it."
"There must be something. I'm thinking about spending the rest of my natural life married to Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia and I'm not liking it."
"Be at ease, good prince," said Luna. "'Unstoppable' is not the same as 'immutable.'"
"How do we, ah, mute it, then? Tame it down?"
"It cannot be tamed. Only redirected." Luna set down her cereal, arose from her beanbag, and began pacing across the length of the room. "A mature alicorn," she said, "exists in one of two different states. One is that of a relatively normal, well-adjusted immortal goddess-pony."
"And the other?"
"Celestia," said Luna.
"I want the first one," said Shining. "Honestly, I think Cadance would want it too."
"Of course you would. Thankfully, we have a solution. We are in possession of an ancient, mystical scroll of great magnitude, potent physic against matters of misaligned destiny." As Shining watched, Luna strode purposefully over to a coffee table and began searching through the layer of assorted detritus that topped it. "Where didst that dumb thing go?" she muttered to herself.
Shining waited patiently, afraid of engaging the Moon Princess in unnecessary and potentially-hazardous conversation. Eventually, Luna dislodged a timeworn ebony tube from the mix. It tumbled to the floor. "Aha!" she cried. "Starswirl the Bearded's second unfinished spell!"
"...Second...?"
"Yes. Know'st thou how the first one made a hash of the destinies of normal ponies?"
"My sister composed this whole big song about it, so yes."
"Well, this one makes a hash of the destinies of alicorns."
"That sounds... titanically unsafe, ma'am."
"Pah," said Luna. "Only in the hooves of somepony who isn't the princess of all friendship, and thus reflexively, magic."
Shining winced. "Twiley will never go for it. Not in a million moons."
"We have confidence you will win her over," Luna replied. "But before we begin the fraught process of tinkering with destiny, are you certain your spouse is headed down the dark path to Celestiahood?"
Shining thought hard.
* * *
"It's great to have you and Cadance over to visit again!" Twilight gushed. "Plus, the adorable presence of li'l Flurry Heart gives me time to break in my new castle's Crystal Nursery!"
"You have, um, a nursery?
"Yep! Only the most comforting and nurturing jagged friendship-crystal edges. I'm telling you, B.B.B.F.F., this new castle has everything." She leaned in close. "Everything."
"Er, great," Shining said as he approached the in-castle replica of his foalhood room, A thing which had been exciting at first but which was gradually getting weirder and weirder the more he thought about it.
"Cadence has been up here unpacking," said Twilight, pushing open the door. "She's really been into that old ant farm of yours!"
Twilight pushed the door open. Shining Armor, wincing, peered in. He found Cadance sitting in front of the shelf with the ant farm on it, gazing at the little box of sand with an expression that might charitably be described as "unhinged."
"Oh, hey, little guys!" said a transfixed Cadence, her eyes wide and her face fixed in a wild grin. "Just look at you scurrying about your little lives down there. It all looks so orderly and peaceful!"
She lifted the box in her telekinetic aura and gave it one good, strong shake.
"Ha!" she shouted. "I bet that'll give you all kinds of opportunities to learn!"
"Honey..." said Shining Armor.
"I EXPECT LETTERS!" she screamed, at the box.
* * *
"Absolutely no doubt about it," said Shining Armor.
"Well, then. We entrust you with this most sacred and dangerous spell." She floated the scroll over to his teleactive radius, and he gingerly took hold of it. "Use it carefully, for the health and wellness of your alicorn bride."
"Don't worry, ma'am," said Shining Armor, saluting. "Between me and my sister, this scroll is in good hooves." His face darkened. "I still have no idea how I'm going to convince her to help me, though."
"Fear not, good prince," said Luna. "We know of a way."
"Shining Armor!" said Twilight Sparkle, cheerily. "How was the Everfree Forest?"
"Taxing," he said, dragging his now fully-petrified leg behind him.
"You look a little stoned."
"I feel a little stoned," he replied, even as Twilight's horn began to twinkle. In a bright flash of magenta, Shining's leg was healed, his saddlebags were spiffed up and cleaned of stomach acid, and the whole of his person suddenly began smelling faintly of lavender.
"Scene Break's Status Quo!" she exclaimed, pleased. "Good for straightening manes, drying clothes and removing stains that are no longer relevant to your ongoing personal narrative or life goals."
"Oh," said Shining. "Oh! Uh, thanks! Can you teach that to Cadance? It might come in handy for spiffing up after fussy baby nights."
"Sadly, your daughter is too important to your narrative," said Twilight, turning back to her book. "It's an unpredictable spell that way! If we try it on Rainbow Dash's wing breaks, pfft, nothing. But if we get our manes wet, it dries them right off! Just so long as we're not too humiliated or ashamed by them being wet."
"So it only fixes... unimportant things."
"Yep! But I'm sure you didn't come here for me to bore you with obscure magical theory, amazing though it may be. So! What can I help you with?"
Shining Armor clenched his teeth. There was a right way to do this. A moral way. The actual, literal truth. He took a deep breath.
"Okay," he said. "First thing when I got back from the Everfree, I spoke with Cadance. She's still really into that ant farm, by the way. I think she was trying to figure out how to send them on quests or something. Anyway, I explained what I'd seen and what Luna's been telling me, and she eventually agreed with me about the whole situation."
"Situation...?"
"Twiley, your sister-in-law is becoming her Aunt Celestia."
"What's the situation? Does she need help with it? I don't know if I'm qualified to advise her on how best to do it, but—"
"We want to stop it."
Twilight stared blankly at Shining Armor. He could almost hear the hamster-wheel turning in her brain.
"Why?" she eventually asked.
Shining winced, inwardly. "Because... she's much too special! It would be a shame to have more than one Celestia, right?" Shining still felt on solid hoofing. For certain definitions of "special" and "shame," that all was literally true, right?
"Oh." Hamster hamster hamster. "So, we're... preserving the specialness of Princess Celestia?"
"Yes."
Twilight nodded, much to Shining's relief. "I can get behind that. How are we going about it?"
Aaand here came the hard sell. Shining lifted the scroll containing Starswirl's Second Unfinished Spell from his saddlebags. "We need your help giving destiny a little nudge."
Twilight's eyes narrowed. "No."
"Twiley, just—"
"No! I tinkered with destiny before, and it nearly destroyed Ponyville! Apparently, twenty-four hours without my friends on the job results in widespread social unrest and destruction! How much worse would it be if I pony around with the Protector of the Crystal Empire?" Twilight crossed the room, turning her back on Shining Armor. "Sorry, B.B.B.F.F. It isn't happening."
Shining Armor bit his lip. Luna had warned him it might come down to this. "Okay. I understand." Then he levitated the scroll back behind his haunches and brought it around the other side.
"Ooh, look! Look at this!" he said. "What do I have here?"
Twilight's eyes widened. "What do you have there?"
"It's something Princess Luna gave me!" True. "I don't totally understand it!" True. "It's a kind of magical spell that she said only you could figure out how to cast!" Close enough to true as to make no difference.
Twilight's eyes went wide and sparkly. "Ooh!" she said, rearing up and pressing her hooves to her cheeks. "Can I see? What is it? What is it? What kind of spell?" Twilight practically snatched the scroll out of Shining's telekinetic field. "I don't recognize it! I better cast it to see what it does!"
"Uh, Twiley—"
"No time! I need to find out the function, purpose and eventual end effect of this spell by immediately invoking it!" Twilight's horn ignited and the spiral whorls were instantly surrounded by complicated architectures of magical current, intricate cornices of light that seemed to suck in the rest of the room's illumination.
"Twiley—"
"Just a minute!" Twilight cried, singsong. The earth began to shake. Small flecks of crystal began falling from the ceiling.
"Twiley—"
"I said a minute!" shouted Twilight, over the rumbling of the earth. Spinning clock-faces of force sprang up about her hooves. The air began to taste of metal. Gashes opened in reality itself, revealing great patches of inky void not so much lit by stars as feebly punctuated by them. Something that was not quite sound and not quite color radiated from the ground zero that was Twilight Sparkle, resonating and reflecting against the unyielding walls and ceiling. There was a sickening lurch, a quick sensation of movement, and Shining felt the entire universe fray out like yarn fibers and then re-twist itself widdershins into something, well, basically similar to the naked eye, but fundamentally different in structure.
There was a sharp "twang" and the room snapped back to normal.
Twilight blinked.
"Huh," she said. "Guess it didn't do anything! Oh well, off to bed. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator, Shiny. The odds of you being sucked through the tiny space/time pinhole to the Frozen North I'm using as a refrigeration device are quite small!"
Yawning, the Princess of All Friendship and All Magic trotted off toward her bedchambers.
Shining Armor shook his head. Alicorns, he thought. What are you gonna do? And then, more soberly, What can any of us possibly, possibly do?
Shining Armor's climb back to the castle's guest room was the single longest walk he'd ever experienced. Every step felt like a furlong. Twilight's spell had clearly done something, whatever she believed, but was it the correct something? The sky was the proper color. The grass was green under the moonlight. The delicate ice-cream stalagmite of Canterlot still clung to the side of the Canterhorn like a single frame of a fashionista performing a choreographed twirl around a lamppost. Everything looked perfectly ordinary.
He paused for a moment at the door. Then he decided that it did not behoove a stallion of action to tarry at portals. The future was the future, after all, and unless he felt confident asking his little sister to keep rolling dice with the cosmos—which he did not—it was best not to continue to dwell in suspense. Best get on with it, really. Strike while the iron was hot. Something like that.
So, after spending the time span of multiple sentences explaining to himself why he shouldn't delay opening the door, Shining Armor opened the door.
His wife wasn't yelling at the ant farm any more. That much was a heartening sign. She was not, however, immediately in view. Hesitantly, Shining pushed the door open further.
The first thing he noticed was the box.
It was huge, and dark, and contained within its depths a host of dancing arcane sparks. Near the top of the box were rows and rows of crudely depicted changeling invaders marching inexorably downward. Occasionally the box would make a little whizzing sound, accompanied by a small squee of satisfaction from the beanbag chair planted in front of it.
Draped across the beanbag was a rumpled swath of pink alicorn. She was staring intently into the box and fiddling with some buttons on a tiny panel in front of the beanbag with her hooves. A spoon was suspended in a pale blue telekinetic field spare inches above a bowl of cereal. No, wait—not cereal. To his dawning dismay, Shining Armor noticed that the bowl was full of extracted marshmallow bits from a box of Magic Charms cereal—specifically the heart-shaped ones.
The pink alicorn looked up from her wooshing, bleeping box. Her face lit up in an expression of joy.
Oh no, thought Shining Armor.
"Hail, sweet husband!" bellowed Cadance, knocking him backwards out of the room. "How fared your adventure with the destiny-alteration spell?"
Shining struggled vainly for a moment to upright himself in the hall outside the door. "Went great, honey!" he said, with the feeling of a cavern opening in his gut. "No complaints!" Shining tried again to get his legs under him, but before he could sort everything out, he felt himself being lifted gently into the air and placed on his hooves back inside the room.
"Buh," said Flurry Heart, setting him down as her aura winked off. Shining Armor's foal returned her gaze to the ant farm on the floor in front of her. Occasionally she telekinetically plucked one of them up and placed it in a location unfamiliar to it, whereupon she watched its confused flailing with rapt attention. A half-eaten slice of mushed-up angel food cake lay on a colorful baby plate nearby.
"Bah buh bah," said Flurry, to the ants, imperiously. The ants waved their little feelers around in royal deference.
Cadance gave Flurry Heart a sour look. "Look how the ants fawn upon you, dear daughter."
"Bah," said Flurry Heart, airily.
"Would that they looked upon me with such respect!" she cried. "The ants have never loved and appreciated me the way that they have you!"
"Buh," Flurry Heart replied, narrowing her eyes.
"Do not strike that tone, daughter of mine! You do not possess the power to banish me!"
"Bah," said the foal, coldly, toddling over to Shining Armor's hoof and hugging it tightly..
"Your father will not fetch you the Elements of Harmony, young filly! For one thing, they are in a tree now!"
Shining Armor watched the escalating feud between his wife and his daughter, expression blank and eyes distant. Eventually he wandered over to the ant farm and gave the collected mass of lowly creatures a brotherly pat. Shining had once read a legend that a pony who happened to become the object of an alicorn's affection would never pass from Equestria; that the powerful magic of a princess's love would sustain them through the ravages of age and keep them alive for centuries, so that they might forever experience the beauty of a relationship with one of the most noble and powerful creatures in all Equestria.
Shining Armor now found himself beloved of two of them.
He found himself hoping that the legend was wrong.
