What are your chances when you fight against something claimed to be inevitable, unstoppable, something that all living beings have gone through from the very beginning of time itself... And that something, decides it is time for all of you to go?
Ponies asked the great ones of this world this one question a million times through the millennia.
“How does it feel? To be.. well... Immortal?”
Another "Immortal", another answer.
...Princess Celestia replied to hers supposed resistance to the ravages of time indirectly, along the lines of “Everything must come to an end eventually”. Of course, she would be right in that assumption. Everything must and eventually will end. Yet... what if the collapse comes a lot sooner than everyone expected and in a form that they can't understand so easily or come to terms with?
Will they succumb or will they utilize every last resort in order to prevail? What is means to be alive? To be a pony? Battling with unspeakable evil, will you stay true to your convictions, morals and beliefs or will you lower yourself to its level just so you can stay alive?
To what lengths can somepony push themselves in order to survive, no mater the cost?
Most importantly, how to postpone a deadline given to life itself when its greatest architect considers it- a mercy blow.
===================================================================== The first chapters are undergoing some changes, although only purely cosmetic ones (Cause ima bad writer, duh), nothing story-wise will change. Once I write the whole thing I'll have it edited professionally. Because right now, it's just my dumb ass with the help of grammarly (It's not a sponsored message, I swear).
Cover art provided with permission from amazing MadHotaru
Each and every one of exceptional fables generally starts with a beautiful day, birds chirping, peacefulness reigning the world at large, holding most of the things by the throat in a state of blissful harmony. Periodically, the very existence finds itself waiting in excitement and anticipation for something exceptional to happen. Sadly, "Be careful what you wish for" applies to anyone, even a philosophical concept such as reality.
An ever-gloomy day of Monday doubtfully honored the village of Ponyville with its spirit wracking nature. Everything seemed to be covered in a thick layer of clouds, be it the sky with the very literal ones or expressions of the ponies themselves with the more metaphoric kind. Everything, except one place. Rising high above the rest of the mostly thatched buildings stood a magnificent tree shaped castle build out of various crystals who came in every imaginable color of the visible spectrum. The sunlight rays reflected off its surface in the myriad of dazzling hues on account of the whole sky in the perimeter being completely devoid of depressing shades of gray, clouds kept at a distance by the purest kind of harmony magic. Being a place of residence for the Princess, so in consequence, having an exclusive weather pegasus assigned of its very own, helped too. Probably. You never know with the Ponyville Weather Team.
If any of the feathered equines were still at work that late into the day, it would take merely a gaze into one of the building's many windows to take notice of the fidgeting neurotic mess bordering on a diagnosed psychosis or, as some liked to call her, Twilight "The Princess of Friendship" Sparkle.
“Oh Spike, have you seen my spare's spare quill? I can't find it anywhere!” Loudly whined the purple mare, wiggling nervously in the midst of her own spacious bedroom. The pictures of her colorful friends silently judged her hissy-fit from their places near the cosmetic mirror bureau.
Twilight's little dragon assistant allowed himself yet another slow breath as if frustration was given physical form, only to be expelled from his lungs at its own pace. “You're holding it in your magic, Twilight. Third from the right.”
She looked around the study/sleep-room and truthfully to his words, sought quill replacement was lazily defying gravitation above her head, right next to the spare inkwell and spare parchment. No ball-pen though. They're not to be trusted. “Oh... nevermind then...” Her demeanor seemed to flatten a little for a brief moment, only to return in full force a second later. “Wait, and what about my notes? Where did I...” Twilight said while already starting to nervously search for the priceless, not mentioning private, scribbles.
“I packed them earlier.”
“And what if I need-”
“Twilight, calm down, we've gone through entire checklist already. Three times I must add,” Spike replied attempting to calm the almost triggered Alicorn. He knew that it won't help much, but, a dragon can dream.
“I'm sorry Spike, but I'm just so excited! Not only archaeological expedition from Canterlot Solar University discovers traces of a civilization that predates discord himself but Princess Luna asks ME! of all ponies, to go there supervise and help them in whatever they may need my expertise for! Somepony needs my scientific expertise. I always knew this day would come!” She said all in one breath while jumping around a coffee table situated in the middle of the room.
“I don't like it.” Spike played the role of ever skeptic voice of reason. “The location part I mean,” He quickly added with that innocent smile of his. “All the places those ruins could be at, of course, it's Everfree. Almost in the middle of it.” Always this damned forest, he swore. Through their brief time spent together, he and Princess Luna always agreed on some key things, one of them being that the Everfree needs to burn. Right next to the "Snobby nobles of Canterlot" on the Hellfire List. “Also, since when you get tasks anymore after you became a Princess yourself? Moreover, from Luna and not Celestia,” He expressed his worries and questions, which dampened the princess's mood, even if by a little margin.
“Ahem, yes, I was too surprised when the letter showed up with Luna's royal seal, but it's not like she's commanding me to get up and go there. It's more like a friendly request.” That truth was rather hard to miss, with the letter practically begging to go and take care of this. Not that Twilight actually had to be encouraged even more. “Besides, she probably just knew I'd be interested in such a thing,” She responded, very well guessing Spike was just probably worried about her wellbeing, as always.
“Don't worry about me Spike, I'm a grown mare. I can take care of myself,” Twilight said with a big confident smile upon her petite muzzle.
Her assistant only made the sour face. “Somehow, I am not all that convinced.” A positive grimace instantly excused itself from Twilight face, tipped its hat and flew straight 'outta window to never return.
“Well then, better stop doubting me, mister. Was I ever unable to do that?” A barely noticeable hint of pride was carried within her voice.
“Do you seriously want me to answer this question truthfully?” Spike said as he raised an eyebrow and started stomping his left foot impatiently on the crystal floor, cliquing sounds muffled by the fluffy violet rug. If he actually had to count the times Twilight was barely considered a functioning adult, he would have to skip the claw counting. Better go straight downstairs and fetch the abacus.
“Err.. I'd better go already.” Color matching saddlebags designated as hers by the embedded cutiemark were magically levitated onto her back as she prepared to exit the room in shame and fake hurry. “I want to get there before sunset.” From a window in the study, the Sun was clearly visible, occupying a high position in the sky and feeding the earth its life-giving rays, so it was probably still around noon. “The very last thing I want or need is to be in the Everfree in the middle of the night.”
“Hey,” Spike suddenly called causing the purple pony to stop suddenly and look back at him curiously in anticipation. “Just... be careful, okay?” His voice was strangely quiet and barely heard by his companion. Classic Spike. Either overly emotional and forthcoming with his feelings or Rainbow Dash style shut-in.
She smiled and replied equally quiet. “Noted. You take care of the castle for me, agreed?” The Dragon only nodded silently, agreeing to once more be the warden of their house. Finally left on his own in complete silence as the mare left the room and soon the whole prismatic castle altogether.
Princess Twilight casually strolled through the rustic village while reading, a rather normal occurrence for the denizens of the temporarily quiet Ponyville. Hanging in front of her muzzle and levitating by the magic powers was a meticulously prepared map of the Everfree, as far as the changing forest could be efficiently mapped. Well, at least known to ponies regions of it. Because of her intense focus on the map, she omitted a pair of very distinct voices carrying through the streets and shattering the rural blissful silence, getting slightly louder and louder as she unknowingly got closer to their source.
“What the hell are you even doing? You need to lift it, not push it. You only got it stuck deeper!”
“And what, pray tell, do you think ah'm doin'?”
“I don't think it raised even an inch! I know it didn't!”
“Dash, this here thing weights close to half a ton! Ya know what a ton is?”
“You're supposed to be the strong one, aren't you?”
“Okay smartflank, you try it then.”
“No, thank you. I'd like my wings not strained. Again.”
“Ah thought so. Now shutup and push, missy.”
Under any normal circumstances Twilight would have already recognized two from the six of her closest friends from afar, but being so deeply committed to studying the safest possible routes through Everfree while walking has its obvious downsides and to be honest, Applejack and Rainbow Dash weren't exactly paying enough attention to be in a position of spacial awareness either. If she'd known what was about to happen she would probably stop immediately, but as everypony knows... once Twilight Sparkle starts reading something that genuinely interests her, which would be literally anything, the whole world could be on fire and she wouldn't notice the heat of her own burning mane. That is exactly a sole reason behind why she crashed headfirst into the edge of a big apple cart sitting in the middle of the road.
“Yeowwwww!” She cried in pain, immediately attracting the attention of her two nearby friends.
“Wha- Twilight!” The farmer of the pair shouted in surprise and alarm, followed by the prismatic pegasus rushing in hurry to help a friend in need.
The alicorn in question caught its head in her hooves, already feeling this week's regular migraine coming. There's always at least one. “Ow..ow..ow... why does that hurt so much? I've run into things countless times before!”
“Ohh, dagnabbit!” Applejack grimaced while closely examining the wincing alicorn. “You struck yourself pretty bad, Twah. Just above the eye and it starts to bleed quite a lot. You stay here with her Rainbow,” The enlisted pegasus nodded without hesitation, ready to do her part. “I will run to Sweet Apple Acres and.. grab...” Applejack eyes started to widen as if they wanted to escape the eye sockets of their owner. There, right in front of them, Twilight's wound stopped bleeding and simply started to close on itself. The blood even had the audacity to gather from the cheek and forehead and wave them a proper goodbye, just to offend the mother nature itself and seep back inside the laceration against gravity. After a few brief seconds of silence, there wasn't even a sign that the wound was present in the first place.
“That.. was..AWESOME! Quick, do it again!” Dash shouted with excitement as she did a quick loop in the air. After all, Dash without a loop? I don't think so. Despite that kind of reaction being the norm for the multicolored pegasus, Applejack threw her a quick glare none the less.
After helping the purple friend to stand on her own four hooves, she just had to ask. In order to satisfy her own curious urges, one needs to be inquisitive. “Wha...what in the hay was that, Twilight? Some kind of new spell you tryin' out?”
Twilight touched her brow a few times to check if everything healed properly and looked at Applejack. “N..no, I didn't use magic at all. It's natural,” She replied too casually, achieving only more confusion between them.
“Regenerative power straight from Spike's comics... you call that natural?” The famous "Brow of Judgment" was starting to act up, but before it could do so fully, It met its greatest adversary. Unexpected exposition.
“Well, natural.. for me at least,” The recently wounded was quick to explain and dispel any puzzlement. “That's just how Alicorn bodies work. Princess Celestia did tell me all about it when I became one, but I haven't thought it would be that quick.” The awe of discovering your body abilities is both amazing and terrifying.
Rainbow Dash, still hovering in the air, quirked her own eyebrow into the mix of other two. “So, now you have some kind of proper healing powers or what?” Pegasus immediately realized what she'd done and regretted her question as she just indirectly asked Twilight to explain something probably too complicated and boring, now she had the green light and the will to go full egghead on her.
“Yes. Well, kind of. You see, any Alicorn body contains such enormous amounts of purest magical energy, that it constantly needs to expel some, otherwise it will just build up and trust me, magical overload is not something you want nor something to be trifled with. Think something akin to a living, walking bomb,” The other two winced at the analogy, signaling that it certainly got across. “So, now think of an Alicorn's skin like a membrane for mana. It discharges magic evenly through its whole surface, but.. if the skin is damaged, instead of the membrane it starts to act more like a balloon with air(Magic in this case,) inside of it. And exactly like a balloon would do, magic starts to escape on the path of least resistance, most often some kind of a wound, and instantly heals it exactly like it's formulated and thoroughly described in Red Cross's Third law of Thaumic healing! Isn't that great?”
“Wait,” Rainbow treated the recent question as rhetorical. “So that's why the Princesses have those flowy manes and all?”
As a sharp gasp emanated from Twilight, Rainbow already knew she's not going to like the probable revelation behind it. “Rainbow! You just made an educated, not mentioning accurate, guess! On your own!” The purple pony was well beside herself with joy.
At the moment Rainbow's hooves reached her cranium and hooves tasted the dirt again, she thought that's it. She was going to die. The nerdiness, It's contagious. She knew, it took years of exposure, but now she knew to be right from the very start. Her theory was right, Yup, she regretted it alright and now apparently she formulated theorems. Theories! She scolded herself mentally. I'm already using big words! No, bad!
Applejack stood beside her, silently observing a clearly anguished Rainbow Dash, opening and closing her mouth a few times in an attempt to understand. “Okay, ah'm not going to pretend that I understood even half of the weight behind what you've just said... or whatever Rainbow is doin' now. But instant healing? That's mighty handy Twi! Hell, if I had one of them Alicorn features, I would kick apple trees as hard as I want.” Even with a mere second lasting gaze the great pillars of cellulose bestudded with droves of green managed to beacon her invitingly. “If mah' bones decided to give up on me, they would heal in no time and back to work I'd go!”
“That doesn't mean it would not hurt, you know,” Twilight said with the level of enthusiasm normally reserved for the inanimate slabs of concrete.
“Still would be nice, though.” Applejack cemented her conviction in stone.
“I suppose it would,” The alicorn admitted defeat with a sigh. She won't lie, despite the few drawbacks, it is ehm... nice. “Now, I have one question of my own. Why does exactly your biggest cart, full of produce, stand IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD?” The mix of frustration and curiosity overwhelmed the young mare, yet her orange third of a counterpart dismissed the blame, shifting it to the more avian part of the duo.
“Ain't my fault. Ask missus "Fast as lighting" over there.” She pointed in the self-appointed fastest mare's alive general area.
“Oh, buck off AJ,” Rainbow Dash once again flew to the cloudless air swiftly as a bird. Her pout and rejection of accusation clear as the skies she soared through. “You're the one who wanted to take this road in the first place.”
“Yes I did, BUT if I recall correctly and I do, you were the one who argued that we should go way quicker. Pushed cart so fast that it dug itself into the ground and now it's stuck. Am I right?”
Knowing that Applejack was correct, as she didn't lie, after all, the pegasus tried to formulate some kind of an excuse. “Well, you on the other h-” Only to be interrupted by groaning Twilight.
“Girls, there's no need to argue, don't even start. Look, I'll fix it for you, ” She exclaimed and quickly started the repairs just as she promised. Applejack felt as her own coat suddenly stood upright akin to an electrified ball of yarn, which usually meant that someone was using a considerable amount of magic. Then she watched as her wagon was encased in a field of violet aura and abruptly jerked up and to the side without spilling any of the succulent apples. Then the translucent magical cloud ceased to be as swift as it manifested itself.
“Whoa Twilight. I always kinda knew you were powerful, but you didn't even break a sweat this time. Whoosh, like lifting a book,” said Rainbow Dash, attracted to everything that requires a great deal of prowess or strength. Yes, even if by the strength you mean strong magic.
“That's nice of you to say Rainbow and I appreciate it, I really do.” The future Wonderbolt already sensed a "but" brewing somewhere in there and when Twilight gazed longingly at a nearby line of the fateful forest, she was more than sure of it. “Yet, I would be grateful if you kept that knowledge to yourself. Same goes for you Applejack.” Apparently being powerful wasn't something that sat exactly right with one of the four rulers of their land. That said, she looked pleadingly in the eyes of her both friends.
“Aww, why do you have to be like that?” Rainbow's expression changed true to her name, fast as lighting and into something resembling the face of a young foal that dropped their freshly bought ice cream. A fun interlude, precious and exciting, now laying in ruins on the floor and all broken.
“You know Rainbow, it might come as a shock to you, but not all of us like to brag about their capabilities and love all the attention they are getting because of that,” Twilight said with a slight trace of accusation in her voice, which shifted to anxiety and unease at a rather steady pace. “Even after all this time, I'm still not used to some ponies treating me like.. like I'm some kind of infallible demigod ascended to the heights of wisdom.” Her muzzle reflected a hint of disgust and outright revolt.
The difference a pair of wings could make for some beings. A change between "Powerful, but not worth the attention." and "Oh. My. Goddess. It's Her!" It is a skill to make friends with anyone. Yet, it is art to choose them rightly.
“Well, I'm not,” She declared with conviction, knowing that she wasn't any more special than anyone else. It's our deeds that prove our worth and even that's not always the case. “I am Twilight Sparkle, a former librarian, student and bibliophile. I'm their friend, not their superior officer.”
“Well, ya kinda ARE their ruler, Twilight.” The apple farmer truthfully pointed out with a Rainbow's silent accompaniment. Twilight was quick to deny their train of thought.
“That's not the point Applejack. What I'm trying to say is... if they treat me like that now, what some of them would do when they discover that "she's not only smart and has wings, she's rather powerful as well"?”
“Come on Twilight, if not everypony else, Ponyville's folk surely knows better than that, won't you agree?” Applejack asked carefully as if she wasn't certain of her own words. She did live all her life in this town after all. That made you a little wary of everypony living here, even yourself to some degree.
All she had gotten back was a blank slate of a stare from her regal friend.
“'Key, yer kinda right there,” She shamefully admitted, while trying to look at some most unimportant bushes on the side of the road. Still, the silver lining is always there. “But, at least our closest friends won't change their opinion on the matter, you know that.”
The goodwill reassurance paired with the gentle smile of a good friend easily got the point across. “I know, I know, but that unavoidable "what if" still sits somewhere deep in there.” She poked her temple a few times in emphasis. “I guess some things never change.”
“Okay, so that's settled. Why were you in such a hurry again?” Rainbow blatantly asked from her's safe position in the air, completely disregarding all the mawkish atmosphere that could only lead to more serious talks. No pony would want that, Goddess forbid.
“Oh, I'm on my way into the Everfree,” Twilight replied all carefree and immediately saw their eyes widen a little bit. Okay, that came out wrong, she thought. “Not without an important reason, I meant to say. I can't say too much, because I simply don't know much myself.” Much to her internal dismay, that part was just too true. “Princess Luna asked me if I'd be interested in Canterlot's University archaeological excavation site, which-” Twilight explanation was rather rudely interrupted before she could get in the lecture mode.
You could say a lot of things about Rainbow "Danger" "Professionalism" Dash, but not that she wasn't learning from her own mistakes, “Egghead alert. Don't care,” Attempting to seem as unimportant as she possibly could, the mare gladly gave up her talking privileges on account of Applejack.
“Well ah for that matter, care, but know I probably wouldn't understand a quarter of the important part and I, 'scuse me, WE still have some work to do,” Applejack lazily pointed with one hoof at the fully loaded cart, it's delicious cargo waiting to go inside somepony's belly. Now that it was in proper condition and ready for transport, that is.
“I perfectly understand, won't keep you away from your task then.” The former unicorn understood the value of honest work. Friendship is good and all, but it won't put the food on your plate. Not for long, at least. “I need to go anyway if I want to get there before Heart's Warming.” She was getting ready to resume her rudely interrupted trek, checking if the saddlebags were still attached as the should be. The last thing she would want is to let them slip off somewhere in the middle of the forest. They would be lost forever.
Twilight was about to leave them in peace when the reluctant voice of Rainbow Dash reached her ears from above. “Twi..?”
“Yeeees?” Twilight asked, turning her neck back in the general direction of the voice with a grin starting to wiggle its way onto her muzzle, akin to a worm wriggling its way through the dead carcass. Quickly and efficiently.
As much as Rainbow always would be hesitant to confess it, her friends could read her emotions way better than she would be willing to admit out loud. “Just...becarefuloutthere ,” Rainbow rather coughed quietly than said, as if she hoped no one incidental would hear her.
Now joined by a full-blown genuine smile strapped to the front of her head with an invisible tape of emotion, Twilight responded calmly as if fully prepared for the situation, “I will.” Which she was.
“Gotta dash to work, bye,” Rainbow replied almost in the form of one word and flew back to the now operable cart, indigenously checking the most unimportant of parts I hope to make herself scarce.
“Yeah, that thing that she said,” said Applejack and quickly added her own bit. “Both of those.” After that, with nothing more left to say she joined her spectral friend beside the applecart, ready to set out once more. Future arguing may be included in the package.
Looking at her friends getting further away while working in unison when none of them really had too, imbued Twilight with that feeling she always gets in the moments like this. “Don't worry girls. I've got this,” she said more to herself than anyone. She will pull her own weight. If she didn't, what kind of Princess she would be compared to the other three. Resuming her path that would ultimately lead her deep into the green heart of the ancient and mystical forest, the thoughts of her friends prevailed over the depressing reality that awaited her in the thicket of the unnatural forest.
The gargantuan woodland of Everfree, dreaded and mythical, was a place of both wonder and danger simultaneously. For any unprepared daydreamer would be swiftly made aware why almost no one dared to venture too deep or settle within the forest itself, barring a few scarce exceptions.
The menacingly looking tree trunks cast in a perpetual shadow courtesy of the light-blocking cover of twisted branches and sickly looking leaves were normally enough to dissuade any unwelcome visitors from getting past the initial vestibule part of the forest. The slightly more adventurous of the travelers could make it usually a quarter of the way before getting full-on Everfree experience. Putrid and indestructible Timberwolves fighting over territories with the bat-winged Manticores, Multi-headed Hydras lurking amidst the swamps in the company of camouflaged Cragadiles, radiant Ursas caring for their young within the depths of earth and Dragons sleeping the centuries away under the rich mountains of gold or other wealth. All more than ready and willing to take care of the more unfortunate ones to cross the path with any of the apex predators of their respective food chains.
Finally.. there were those who did not heed the age-old legends or any kind of warnings as they pushed forward, straight into the corrupt black heart of the primeval thicket whose vile mysteries long since faded from the memory of most living beings, immortal or not. Seldom any of them liked what they found inside and absolutely none saw the warm sunbeams of Celestia ever again. The very unlucky ones never died within, then again... they never truly left either.
“Be grateful that Everfree has a border, so you can stick close to it,” The timeworn proverb used by the communities living closest to the forest went. Simply speaking, if you had no vital business going inside.. don't. Sometimes, the whole world will be better for it.
However, all of that advise could be wrapped up in a nice cloth sack and drowned in a lake with a help of a few heavy rocks, swiftly thrown away and disregarded for the current individual broaching through the most infuriating part of the forest rather loudly, probably alarming all the beasts in a ten mile radius by doing so. But, what is yet another deadly monster in the eyes of the greatest predator of the universe? For none can compare or even come close.. to Idiocy. It always strikes suddenly, in the least expected moment, with an all-encompassing force. Other dangers pale in comparison, quickly disregarded just to get away from it most rapidly, for none can withstand it for too long bar the idiots themselves.
Being frustrated by it beyond the capacity of any mortal coil also could lower your tolerance for the forest's most menacing advances, need or want to care for such reduced to zilch.
“Vine... vine... more vines... aaaand... aha! Wait, no. That's a vine too. Drat...” Twilight cursed both her current position and the recent reasoning for certainly justified annoyance. “Who came up with the wise idea of marking the right path with colored strings of material? No, not in bright hues or something. Ohhhh noooo, why would we do something that's rational?!
The mare looked around her murky surroundings in difficulty, struggling to spot the next in the line of badly placed strips of cloth upon the branches of ever twisted trees. While none of the offending textiles fluttered even close in the range of her vision, something else was slowly approaching her mental horizon. A promise of a thorough reprimand.
Green. Dark.. green. “Just enough so that they don't stand out from literally EVERYTHING ELSE in this forest!” She shouted in frustration while examining yet another piece of low hanging flora which she thought to be the searched material, just for it to dare and turn out to be yet another useless piece of greenery.
“Oh for the love of.. WHEN I get there, somepony's gonna get a piece of my mind. I will- ” Rest of hers supposedly very drastic monologue never left the depths of her inner mind as she was suddenly interrupted by a familiar blue mane and the orange cranium it was attached to, as well as the rest of the pegasus guard roaming in front of her.
“Princess Twilight?” Flash Sentry cocked his head in confusion, not expecting to stumble upon Princess in the middle of the goddess forgotten Everfree of all places.
“Aaaahh?!” As predicted, Twilight did not take being suddenly ambushed lightly.
“Buh? Eh!” As predicted, flash produced intelligible scream as well, only even more disoriented than terrified.
“AAAAA!” Twilight continued screaming, resulting only in more daze on flash'es side, prolonging the peculiar shouting contest even more.
“Aah?”
“AAAAA.”
“WAGH?!WHY ARE WE STILL SCREAMING?”
“AAAAaaaaiiiii.. don't know.” Twilight stopped her self-induced fear loop and swiftly turned it into yet another outward cacophony. “You.. you just scared me half to death Flash! Why on Equis would you do that?! I thought you are some.. some kind of a monster, Manticore or.. I don't know.. something!” Practically in one breath, Twilight took out all the frustration on the poor sergeant, not really thinking what she was talking about or really worrying for something like proper logic at the moment.
“Do you think I would be announcing my presence to anypony if I was about to attack?” He deadpanned, slightly hurt at the indirect insinuation of his incompetence. He wasn't inept after all, just.. prone to hiccups. “And... why Manticore exactly?”
“I don't know if you noticed, but we're in the middle of Everfree. Where such beasts live? Not to speak of your slightly similar color palette.” Twilight conveyed her reasons on to flash which, in truth, convinced him, but he desperately tried to win this argument none the less.
“Come on, my mane color is the exact opposite of Manticore's. Red versus Blue, I mean come on.”
“You know what I'm talking about, flash,” Twilight wasn't getting any of it, not while she was at the edge of her patience from the previous display of whoever was responsible for the markings. Goddess watch over the poor soul.
Maybe Flash wasn't any kind of scholar, but he easily knew a lost fight when he saw one approaching from a mile away. Unlike he saw Twilight. Because.. he didn't, to be honest. “Fair enough,” At this point in conversation Flash suddenly realized who was he talking to. In theory, his superior. Not only his superior, like a lieutenant or Captain Armor.
No.
His HIGHEST superior, the very top of the ladder. The top of the ladder that was also the sister of his other, proper superior straight from the Crystal Empire. “I..I.. I mean, fair enough Princess, sir.” He stood in silence a few seconds before coughing and correcting himself. “Ma'am, I mean,” Flash mumbled quickly, visibly starting to sweat and not so visibly, think. I... just lost my job, didn't I?
Twilight sighed loudly, getting yet another repeat of what she was trying to explain to Applejack and Rainbow not so long ago. Even amongst friends, she had to clarify it time and time again. Somehow she knew, it wasn't the first and certainly not the last of such. “Flash, how many times did I tell you.. I don't like when you call me any official titles. We're friends, aren't we?” Twilight gestured between them empathetically.
Flash, albeit surprised, didn't waste a second to answer her question and jumped on the given chance immediately. “Of course. Of course, we are.” The crystal officer glanced around the forest uncomfortably in search of anything that could steer him away from the current talk. Though, when no Hydra attack happened, he had to say something. Unfortunately. “But... I'm a guard, that's like.. what we do basically. Calling higher-ups titles and such.” The hesitance didn't leave his voice quite yet.
Twilight let herself smirk a little. Just a little, “Well, don't be a guard around me then. Be yourself, Flash Sentry.”
Flash seemed to think for a split second. A quick flash you could say, before his visage brightened some more in an attempt to match Twilight's. “I can do that. I think so, at least. Habits die hard.”
Twilight smiled slightly, “Heh, I believe in you Flash. So... what brings you to these here parts?” Her half serious-half joking question pushed the conversation forward onto the more productive tracks, getting a shrug out of the soldier.
“Just patrolling, is all. Also looking for yo... oh... Ohhh,” Only now, he remembered his exact orders provided to him beforehoof. Two, the only two orders he had. Flash, you absolute boob.
“Oh?” Twilight twisted her head in question, already suspecting where flash was going with this.
“Exactly, capital O. In case I spotted you I should immediately escort your hide to the excavation site.” A well-placed head scratch was needed here. If he had his trusty spear instead of this broadsword, he would use that to do it. “Not uhh.. stand here and talk to you. For like fifteen minutes.” Broadsword was good and all, but he didn't need a haircut just quite yet.
So Gods do exist after all, for their mercy apparently does. “You have no idea how much I would appreciate that, Flash. Lead the way then.” Twilight encouraged him with a wave. In a probably completely wrong direction.
“Of course Your Majesty. Follow me, Lady Sparkle.” When he could literally hear the scowl the mare was giving him over his shoulder, he couldn't pretend anymore and resumed his trot. “Aw, all right. I'm done.”
When he ceased the banter, Twilight traded her grimace for a smile and happily obliged her friend's request. Following him even deeper into more of the underbrush and murky canopy ahead, the pair carved the way ahead in no less anguish than the mare had previously.
“aaaaand we're here. Lo and behold.” Flash pointed with his hoof at the current state of encampment for a dramatic effect. In all honesty, it seemed a lot cooler in his head than it was in reality. Twilight swiveled her head around, making mental notes now that the ample tent city was visible in its entirety.
Being so close to the proverbial heart of the forest had its rather obvious drawbacks, but fortunately, they weren't there just yet. The core was a rather loosely defined term, reaching from the true geographical center a few hundred meters in some places, only to stretch its corrupting tentacles a few kilometers more in the others. To the most studious ones, a true and accurate the map of the Everfree, if one existed, would look like a familiar image of a microscopic sample taken from the natural world. A true carbon copy of the ever hungry and pungent mildew transferred into the macroscopic scale.
Fortunately, a substantial number of guards from all three branches were assigned to providing the best protection the nation could afford. As long as they won't trespass on the inner land where the forest was considered slightly more than mere consciousness, it will leave them alone and no other beasts should be a problem to the highly trained soldiers of the royal sisters.
The campsite itself was a vast and extensive hub positively bustling with activity, ponies going to and fro with either materials to construct buildings or supplies to maintain such. Couriers delivering written instructions of workload between the more studious of the inhabitants and finally the experts themselves mingling with the ground in search of any traces left by those long since gone, thus fulfilling the sole purpose this whole area was established for in the first place. Alas, probably none of the clearly busy ponies would be the wiser a Princess just graced them with a visit if not for Twilight herself, making them aware with her's rather distinct voice.
“Excellent!” Twilight beamed happily. “Now I can go, find whoever is responsible for marking the way here, tell them what I think about handling that and what I think about them!”
“Exact.. wait, what?” Flash wasn't entirely sure he heard that right. Yet, before he managed to inquire more on the matter, the newest Princess already moved on deeper into the outpost, leaving him no choice but to follow. “Ehh.., here we go again...”
The true scope of the establishment just began dawn on Twilight as she pushed her temporal vengeance on the further slot. She grasped the scope only when they left the outskirts behind them after a few minutes of nonstop trotting, entering the part more intended as an inner ring of the whole thing. Where the edges were mostly composed of fields upon fields of khaki green military tents, the innermost part was dominated by the more permanent wooden structures and even a few stone buildings standing two or three stories high situated mostly dead in the middle. Although Twilight had no concept of just how long ago ponies came here in search of centuries past, she knew it couldn't be longer than a few weeks, which made the sturdy looking masonry even more impressive. Truly, a work worth titling as best of the earth pony craftsmanship.
Though I'm not entirely certain I want to know the costs of establishing such an expedition.. Twilight wondered as a delivery pony slipped past her with some materials, barely avoiding crashing straight into her and muttering a hurried apology while already running anew to his destination. Or even maintaining it... but, with supreme knowledge at stake no price is too high, right?
After taking a more detailed and inquisitive glance around, Twilight realized that this whole camp was less of an actual camp and more of a small, short-lived city.
Some of the wooden constructions were more specialized than the others. Sure, still a lot of them were just warehouses or another such, but there.. two buildings down you had a barber. Then there was a blacksmith next to it, just beside a makeshift outdoor gym for the guards wanting to stay in shape even after the hours. Also, one of the stone dwellings, she just now realized, was a tavern.
Easily visible through the windows, creatures going on and on about what kind of workday they just had to the merry smiles and jokes of their colleagues, their thirst quenched with some delicious cider, most probably delivered from the Ponyville itself. Ohhh, that's why the big apple cart was.. yup, got it. It was a refreshing thought that despite being focused mainly upon the pursuit of academia, ponies still delegated some time to bond and cherish their free time in each other's company. Simply spending the periods free of labor as friends. As a Princess of Friendship, Twilight could and certainly did respect that.
Though she could scarcely believe it, the camp here somehow contained even more ponies than before, with a few representatives of other races as well. The thing was packed, so it was no surprise that her arrival didn't go unnoticed for very long as she noticed somepony strolling towards her with a literal hop, skip and a jump.
Big, in fact.. massively built, dirt brown earth pony moved up quickly to the Princess just as slightly sweaty Flash caught up with his peer. He really ought to do more cardio. The newcomer stopped with a big smile, no doubt drawn by the presence of the ruler on site and the commotion they probably caused because of that. Yes, they. That one wasn't on Flash.. this time.
“Princess Twilight! Finally, you're here! It took you so long.. in fact, we thought you weren't coming at all.” He threw a quick, albeit graceful half-bow, minding the moves so that his wide brim Stetson wouldn't end up on the ground, again. “Deep Dig, Chief Archaeologist of site Everfree. I know, zero creativity, but at least it's easy to remember.” Deep Dig said with great enthusiasm that was unbelievably even bigger than his actual corporeal size. It seemed that rules of every temporal settlement still worked quite well. You want to meet the ones in charge? Go center.
Up close Twilight could see that the stallion was easily the size of Big Macintosh, maybe even taller. The simple round nerd-glasses which adorned his muzzle only brought out more of that curious excitement from within his teal blue eyes. Surely he wanted to say something more but ended up being outpaced by Twilight. “Ah, Mr.Dig, just the pony I wanted to see. Would you be so nice to search your memory for me.. who was responsible for marking the safe way leading to the campsite from the village of Ponyville?” Twilight inquired of the stallion, who quickly realized that the smile on princess's face instead of "gladness" actually said Answer correctly to my question or this will be the last thing you're going to do AT ALL.
The slightly abashed pony stammered a little under the pulverizing gaze of the much smaller mare, which in hindsight, looked a little comical. “I.. ah.. I think Thunderstroke was delegated to that particular task,” He responded, pointing at the Pegasus in question, who just conveniently happened to walk nearby while carrying some wooden crates on his back.
Twilight immediately snapped her sight left, for a nanosecond transferring from a kind mare to a new kind of pony magnet. Frightening the stallion who already eavesdropped on the whole conversation, she swiftly prompted him into formulating a masterful excuse. The Crystal Guard standing beside her surprisingly had vastly different concerns from work safety at the time.
“Thunderstroke? Whoa, your parents must have hated you..”
“Uhh, firstly.. I dindu nuffin,” He quickly pointed out, setting the crates aside as he started to slowly back away from the rapidly approaching Princess and looking for some help to the questioning guard. “Secondly, only my father,” He attempted to appease to their sense of humor, which unsurprisingly did not work. Yah, real smooth Thunder. Eh, they can't all be gems.., he thought to himself while pondering about this more profoundly, he needed to be more convincing this time. The is a high probability of his cojones being at stake here.
“It..'s not my fault, really, one hundred percent honest truth!” The hastily patched worthless explanation didn't seem to change alicorn's expression any, much less actually work properly as he intended it to. “Look, Princess, I'm really being truthful here. My task was to do, not to question how or why. I got supplies shipped here and used what I was provided. I know what's wrong with them..,” He stopped for a quick breather and his brow furrowed a little in frustration. “..But I don't exactly have time to fly to the closest town for a new shipment just because they're the wrong color, now do I?”
Twilight looked him over cryptically, searching with a critical eye for any kind of dishonesty, but she isn't Applejack. So when faced with finding nothing of the sort, she settled for believing him on that one. “Okay, I'm game for now,” Thunder breathed with relief, only to be reeled back in. “..But after we're done here I want your list of suppliers. Somepony could get lost in that forest, stumble upon some beast, one of many of its kind. I can guarantee... that close to the heart of the forest? There would be nothing left of whoever that was.”
After a brief glance at the distant tree line forever looming over the safe camp, Thunderstroke realized where she was going with this and who most likely would be held responsible if such a thing truly happened. “Understood, Princess.”
The Alicorn signed with relief that the point got across easily and turned back to Deep Dig with intent to continue right where they left of, “I'm sorry Mr.Dig, I'm sure you had something important to say before I interrupted you?”
“I..uh.. I'm just glad that the issue had been resolved swiftly. And no Mr's, Princess, Deep Dig or Dig will do, ”He stopped to take a quick calming breath, “Actually, yes. Just before I was made aware of your arrival, our teams discovered something seemingly astounding and it requires your immediate attention!” the stallion said enthusiastically, with his curiosity's flame kindled anew, it's glow reflecting in the rounded frames of his glasses.
Feeling he is needed no more, Flash started to slowly walk away from the scene fully intending to fulfill his regular duties. “I guess the appearance of smart stuff talk is also my cue to leave. See you around, Princess.”
Twilight didn't even bother to scold him this time. She simply started to follow beside Deep Dig towards their newly revealed destination, leaving the slightly confused Thunderstroke all alone in the middle of the camp with his supplies.
“And I... I.. will resume my work. Yes,” He elected hesitantly, not sure what else was there to do. Hey, he still wanted to be some kind of useful. He picked the boxes up, volatilizing from the premises before somepony else accuses him of breaking yet another thing that he simply didn't know he made a mess out of.
Already a good couple meters away from the poor fool, Twilight, now that her attention wasn't wasted on something so meager and paltry in the light of knowledge to be had, shifted into That one filly, who got a present on Hearts Warming, the one that they thought beyond reach mode. “So, now that everything is in proper order as much as it can be.. can you tell me more about that discovery, anything at all?” Now with her priorities shifted, she could actually relax and focus on why she was sent here in the first place. To take some of the burdens away and be in charge. Yeah, science! “Oh, I'm just so excited. I can't wait!”
Deep Dig properly shared her youthful enthusiasm, “Oh definitely, the same thing going on here without question. I'm just not as.. uhh.. expressive, as some would be led to believe.” He stopped by the station of a seemingly random Lunar guard who was close enough to hear the latest parts of the talk with the princess, attracting his attention by the way of a playful shoulder poke. “My emotional palette is rather.. dirt brown. Eh? Eh?” When the soldier rolled his eyes in the most disappointed fashion imaginable and outright left his post without a word in order to go elsewhere, Dig searched for others complaisant enough. “Anypony? Anyone?” Yet quickly gave up without much of a fanfare, like he was already used to it by now. “No? Ooo..kay then. Attempt Fifty-seven- Failed.”
“Uhhhh...”
The justified confusion of the violet blob in Dig's peripheral vision shook him out of his antics. What he probably didn't realize was that the blob did not only understand completely but empathized with him as well. “Oh, excuse me, Princess. That's just a little, let's call it.. an experiment of mine. My own private trek into the studies of friendship, so to speak,” His hoof joined an embarrassed smile as it scratched and corrected the hat upon his head. After sharing a quick chuckle between them, it was the time to get back on track.
“Anyway, back to the issue at hoof.. even considering all of my accumulated knowledge and experience, I'm afraid I won't be much of help explaining our most recent development. It's rather hard to do without seeing it with my own eyes, the vague and hast descriptions can get you only so far. To think, I was just getting briefed all about it when all of a sudden I'm being informed that you showed up, Princess,” He got excited as he waved two ways in emphasis. “Wonderful news here, even better there. Hah, what a day!” The hat almost fell to the ground again with all the adventurous passion bubbling inside the stallion's head.
“It? What do you mean by "It"?” Now Twilight's interest in the matter was seriously reaching dangerous levels, ones prone to emotional explosions if not satiated quickly.
“A place of cult, princess!” Finally, some answers came. “..Or even something more concrete, like a burial ground! From all the fuzzy descriptions I managed to get out of my workers, those two seem like the most likely ones. He reached to his muzzle for a split second, only to straighten his glasses and continue the explanation without delay.
“While acquiring yet another set of absolutely boring regular rock samples from one of our dig sites, no pun intended, one of the cliff walls just.. collapsed on the spot and revealed an entry to the cave system. No worries though, no one was hurt in all the commotion, the only result is just a lot of granite rubble left everywhere.” The mare breathed a little easier after hearing she didn't have to worry about anypony. As the countless tents shifted by as they walked, one particular part of the stallion's description interested her slightly more than the rest of it.
“A granite wall collapsed?”
“That's the thing. Normally that type of rock is rather resistant to outside conditions. It must have been positively ancient to just crumble like this.” Deep Dig wondered for a moment, going even as far as to produce an audible humming sound. “Well, either that.. or the Everfree screws with us once more, establishing its own set of rules in yet another branch of studies.” Even though he laughed immediately after, thanks to her alicorn physique, Twilight could hear a barely audible "Blasted forest.." coming from him. “When the present employees shook off the initial scare, they shined some light inside and saw.. now get this.. stone columns, distant minuscule markings on the walls... Suffice to say, they dropped whatever they were doing and ran like wind to inform me.”
“Wait, hold up, you mean to tell me... that they never went inside, and we are the ones to see it as first beings in probably countless centuries?” She absolutely needed to know, right now. If that was actually true, she will.. she could just..
“Yeah, that is exactly what I'm trying to say. Isn't it great?” Deep Dig responded and in the process fulfilled some primal desires hiding deep within the studious mare.
“EEEEEE!”
He smiled fondly at her unladylike display, noticing that it earned them quite a few curious stares from the naturally inquisitive creatures abundantly gathered around. “Hmm, nice to know somepony shares my point of view.”
Was he joking, how could she not? “Are you kidding?! Oh, this is just like that time we found cavepony all over again!” Twilight practically squealed with joy, only to remember the exact details of that little adventure. “Minus all the destruction, of course.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, it's a wonderful story I should tell you later, I'm sure you'll absolutely love it. But for now, I think we're heree!” The mare singsonged and dashed forward, towards the towering magma effusion of the past, leaving the confused and clearly disappointed stallion in the dust.
“But-”
“No but's, wisdom to be had awaits!” Lavender Alicorn denied him the flavor story, subconsciously pulling a roll of parchment and a quill out of her saddlebags.
Although reluctantly, Deep Dig agreed with her judgment. They have more pressing matters for now and it's not like he's going anywhere anytime soon. So with a promise of a gripping tale in the future, the thought became an action and brown stallion swiftly traded his Stetson for a spelunking helmet eagerly provided by one of his many assistants standing in front of the gaping maw of an entrance, now in the process of being warded off with the immortal and forever relevant, yellow tape.
And what an entrance it is... He mussed quietly, in awe of what mother nature could do in just a moment. Just yesterday he stood almost in the exact same spot and there was a cliff in front of him. I mean, there still is one, just.. less of it. It's also a good thing that this was just a starting point in a rather average sized mountain range stretching from here further south, almost all the way to the Ghastly Gorge. If they were at a higher attitude within proper mountains and that collapsed? He shuddered to think about the potential consequences.
“Ready?” The purple mare asked him eagerly, patiently waiting for him to get all the necessary gear. She thanked the very same pony who provided Dig with his helmet when he came back with a second one for her. With that addition and Chief Archaeologist equipped with a belt full of brushes and chisels, they were green-lighted to set off.
“Born ready, princess. Ladies first,” He said, encouragingly pointing with his hoof at the inviting entryway to the cavern.
“Don't mind if I do,” Twilight replied as she trotted happily inside the cave. Her companion for the foreseeable future was quick to follow, but first things first. With a hastened trot and speedy gimme that.. he reclaimed his stetson from the hooves of the yellowish pegasus, only to put it atop his helmet and cover it entirely.
After a short stroll inside in order to rejoin the mare, he wanted to apologize for the delay, yet any of that was instantly pushed at a further plan. Almost immediately he realized exactly what wonders the workers had seen and what was normally obscured by the dimness of the damp and humid underground. Now it was clear as a sky just why they reacted in such a way. Rows upon rows of enormous stone columns arranged in a chessboard pattern reaching high up, all the way to the ceiling of the immense cave. With frescoes and ornaments intricately carved upon their surface, they looked like a futile attempt to make stained glass windows out of solid rock. Walls of the cave, ceiling and even stone infiltrations themselves were decorated as well in the same, without question, very time-consuming style.
“By all kinds of existing Gods...,” Deep Dig said quietly in amazement while staring at the darkness obscured roof of the vast space with an open mouth “This is... amazing, to put it simply,” When his peer responded with a quiet nod rather than verbally, he continued. “Sheer amount of work hours to make something so beautifully complicated must have been astounding. Whoever the constructors of all this were, they must have been great in numbers. Otherwise making this would take decades... centuries even.”
Twilight just now stumbling out of initial shock, felt like throwing her two bits in, “Maybe they did just that... but, that's not the strangest thing. Look at the theme of all that art.”
This time Deep Dig took a closer look at each individual carvings rather than on the whole picture and that's when he saw it. All of the ornamental chisel-work showed various beings in distinct states of peril, ongoing agony or already dead. All of the elaborate depictions showed grievous destruction, carnage and suffering on a scale beyond simple mortal comprehension. Draconian scenes of lovers driven apart, children orphaned, families torn asunder, homes reduced to the ash by the infernal fires and futures burned to the ground displayed upon every imaginable surface.
The uncomfortable silence between the pair lasted a while in somber contemplation of the phenomenon, before Deep Dig took an example from all the depiction and tore their quiet wonderment asunder.
“Well, this got.. rather morbid pretty quickly,” Deep Dig stated, like if it wasn't blatantly obvious already. “If this really is a temple of a kind, it was definitely dedicated to a ruthless deity. I guess some things really are better off forgotten..”
That simple remark of the scholar stallion sent Twilight on a minuscule debate with herself, one that she had gone through countless times already at different points in her life. Yet, the answer she got to.. was never satisfactory enough...
Are they really? On the one hoof, yes by a thousandfold, absolutely. She repeated mentally once more. Who would want the abhorrent mistakes of pony ingenuity to linger and taint the bright future of all races with their pathetic visage? Unholy and depraved areas like Necromancy, Haematomancy, Moonchant? Having knowledge of them preserved in any kind is just asking for trouble down the road. Best of them to be lost among the ever-shifting sands of time for all eternity.
“Maybe it's a tomb? Belonging to some bloodthirsty warrior of past... or maybe..”
On the other side of the spectrum.. how are we to hypothetically defend ourselves from something we know nothing about because we cast that knowledge out? How are we to educate others about the dangers that go with the dark arts and properly discourage from pursuing them? A proper moral quandary and each answer had it's rather obvious downsides. In the first case, you have to trust the others to never unearth the buried wisdom. The second variant... you have to trust yourself enough to never tread into what you know.
With the internal discussion coming up negative once again and Deep Dig going on about the different possibilities regarding the true purpose of the cave, it was the time to resume.
“Mm.. maybe... but we can throw "maybes" around all we want, yet they won't explain the other strange thing that is going on in here.”
“Huh? Whatever do you mean?” Dig asked, pulled out of his deliberations.
“Take notice of the species depicted in the designs.” Now that it was blatantly pointed out to him, stallion's eyes went ever wider when he noticed another little detail he omitted, too absorbed by the joy of fresh discovery.
“But... that is not.. possible. They show multiple..” The archaeologist briefly struggled to construct coherent sentences. “They show Ponies, Griffons, Zebras, even Elk or extinct Caribou and.. it that a Changeling?”
“Exactly. Considering we both think the age of this place to be positively ancient, now confirmed to be at least a few millennia based on the species shown all around.. but to our current knowledge.. our species haven't met each other then yet..” Twilight started a sentence, likely waiting for him to complete it, to which he immediately complied without question.
“..That means we were wrong. Our ancestors DID interact with each other. Twilight, do you know what that means?” His head turned towards her in a pleasantly surprised smile, too shocked to remember any titles at this point, “This outright scrambles our Pre-Celestial knowledge to proverbial shreds,” The brown earth pony plopped on his rear to gaze around the rest of the spectacle in a moment of honored silence and he would sit where he sat for a long while if he hadn't just realized something very alarming. “Books about ancient history will have to be rewritten. Teachers reeducated, the curriculum's accommodated,” he gripped the brim of his hat, not sure if he was about to explode from the happiness or simply have a migraine.
“Very likely,” Twilight quietly agreed, already thankful for a chance to be a part of such an important revelation. “What's more, we're not even remotely done yet.
Deep Dig struggled a full minute to shift his curiosity away from the marvelous place around them, but when he finally succeeded, most of it was given to the strangely acting mare sitting beside him. “Why are you so calm about all of this? Life of a Royal cannot be that exciting...”
“I'm not calm. I could burst and explode in a bunch of colorful confetti any second now.” The pensive Alicorn truthfully admitted and that made the stallion finally notice. She actually shivered where she stood with giddiness. “It's just that.. I know there's more. This is probably not even the main, but an entrance chamber. Vestibule, of a sort. I need to see the rest of it. I can scream and cry in happiness all I want.. after I see all of it.”
“No argument here,” Deep Dig took the convincing explanation in stride and moved his keister up from the dusty floor. “It certainly looks that way from the placement of the pillars.” And indeed, in the middle of the pattern was a wider empty space, as if it was designed to guide whoever came visiting deeper inward. “We should proceed further. As you said, we'll have time to study.. all this, at a later date.”
Twilight expressed her gratitude in an instant with a simple smile yet one that meant more than a thousand words and led them further into depths of the dark cavern system. After a while, they noticed the area that they traversed slowly forgone the pillars and started to widen the available walking space only to resemble one of Canterlot Castle many hallways, finally encasing them in an elongated four walls and actually becoming a proper corridor. Wide and high to accommodate great traffic, spacious yet ominous. In stark contrast to the welcoming white walls of the palace, it brought only more carvings and depictions of misery. So much, in fact, that twilight started to wonder if this cave consists of something more at all, only to be driven away from her thoughts by her companion's rising voice.
“Do you see that shimmer too or am I just imagining things?” Deep Dig said cryptically, catching Twilight off guard. Though she immediately tried, nothing of the sort stood out, making her doubtful of what he was talking about.
“Shimmer? What shimmer? I see nothi-”
Not waiting for any kind of confirmation, eager stallion bolted forward in response, as if demonic forces of Tartarus itself chased him, “Let's go! A shiny among all the drab rock must be something crucial. It must!”
“Wait for me!” The mare shouted after him, immediately giving chase despite him being well ahead of her.
After a brief trot to catch up with Deep Dig's speed she was mildly annoyed, as she wasn't planning on getting her daily dose of exercise at this exact moment, “What has gotten into you?” As they stopped abruptly she looked the smiling stallion dead in the eyes while he continued to dumbly stare ahead with his grin slowly growing. “What could possibly be so.. so.. so...” Twilight looked at what he had been staring this whole time and suddenly lost her ability to word proper sentences.
One, big, rectangular room with no carvings at all. The blank walls telling no story whatsoever, decorated only by a myriad of stone tiles on each and every surface, ceiling and floor included. Slightly below the floor level of the corridor a set of plain stairs leading about four meters down. The room itself wasn't the thing that shocked Twilight though. In the middle of the room at a slightly elevated platform, lied a golden chest. No, Twilight thought. Not a chest.. a sarcophagus.
Despite most beings never seeing any, most of them would describe the one in front of them as worthy of a Princess.. or any kind of monarch really. If the carvings on the entirety of the place were minuscule then the ones before their eyes could be called microscopic. To say it would require a master of the art to even attempt something like this, would be a disgrace to the one who actually did it. Not to say that the structure was completely bereft of bigger and more artistic representations, like statures of different races inhabiting vast Equus or some mysterious depictions of various objects. Yet, most of the space was reserved by the never-ending tumult of wavy lines, coiled curves and interwoven circles or so would seem to an untrained eye. Twilight, by who she was at her core, instantly recognized carefully laid out runes for what the were. Beautiful.
The lengths to which some ponies will go to ward against malevolent spirits or ease the coming travel into the afterlife...
“See? See! I knew I saw something!” Dig argued, pleased with himself and for a good reason.
Twilight was no less amazed by his abilities. “How on Goddess above did you see that from so far away?”
“No bloody idea! Maybe I just have eyesight superior even to an Alicorn.” The strong smug carried across the room like a tangible fragrance. Which of course didn't stop Twilight Snarkle from voicing an appropriate response.
“You wear glasses...”
“So I do. So.. I.. do...” After promptly disregarding the entirety of the exchange like it never even existed in the first place, the archaeologist continued to stroke his ego. “So It is a tomb after all hahaha...” Deep Dig laughed quietly to himself and trotted with the intent of approaching the sarcophagus, only to have his ego curbed and trip on one of the dislodged stone tiles. “Oh, horseapp-” *Smack* “Ugh..” he uttered audibly his pain while laying face first on the floor.
Twilight threw herself right away to help him up, “Oh my gosh! Are you alright?” She asked while helping him to stand on his own once again. “You need to be careful. You tripped on this.. inscription?” She told more to herself than to him. How convenient is that?
“Inscription?” Deep Dig asked her while massaging his poor snout and putting back his helmet and more importantly his hat on its righteous place. Then his gaze corrected itself to reflect on text plaque situated right underneath his hooves. “Wow. I'm supposed to be the archaeologist here and I have no idea what language I'm looking at.” He was absolutely right, as most of the beings alive today would see nothing more than a bunch of squiggly lines and dots interconnected in a seemingly random pattern.
“I figured you'll say that. It's ancient Zebrican, Malao dialect to be exact,” she answered surprisingly quickly and just as swiftly being awarded by the blank stare from the stallion. “What? I had a lot of free time to learn various things as a filly,” Twilight responded meekly, yet turning it into pride a moment later by putting a hoof up to her chest, “Fortunately, ancient Zebrican lingo one of them.”
“Uh-huh. You sure you're Princess of Friendship and not something like.. extensive cramming?”
“Oh, ha-ha. Veeery funny, mister "Chief Archaeologist", who apparently can't do his JOB properly.”
Deep Dig looked only slightly offended, but that didn't stop him from exaggerating and turning it into another joke. “Ouch. You wound me. While we're at it, it seems like Princess of Acid would be an appropriate title for you as well.”
“Oh shush,” While she never asked him to drop the title, he did so on his own with what little time they knew each other and got a great deal more approachable. Judging by the things they both had in common, she could already feel they will be great friends. “Why don't you go look over that golden treasure ark of yours, while leaving the translation of this here to the professionals, okay?”
That seemed to lift his spirits a little bit, “Yes ma'am, you don't have to ask me twice.” With a mock salute and a shrug, he went to examine his finding of the century while Twilight, despite all the dust accumulated through the countless years of rock erosion, lied down in front of plaque and looked over her current task.
“Hmm, let's see here. In Malao, a number of dots in each character indicate which letter of the alphabet it is. While a total number of lines in a word decides the grammatical case in use.” Okay, so.. if we count that together... and treat THAT as separate line.. it roughly gives us..
With the time itself leading forward creation, Aboard chariot of gold from dust into a nation. To be the bridge between lady fate and mortal kin, A tool was created. That's all he'd ever been. Choose the hour, transform thought into action. Generation by generation, upholding a regency of abstraction. Blaze, undoing, havoc, peril and agony, Such a cruel life's masterpiece, its symphony. The binding mustn't ever be molten, Without them he shall be awoken Broken once, nigh attempt to break it twice, Woe to you who dare to be it's thrice.
Well, somepony here was one jolly barrel of laughs and an auto-didactic poet at that. Twilight summed up the entirety of the poem. Wow... what an extensive language. How in blazes all of that even fit in here?
At first glance, it seemed like one of those paranoid prophecies that some cardboard wearing ponies spew out at every street corner all year round, claiming it to be the end of the world. Yet, that one was a completely different case. After a few seconds, she started to connect all the dots. It wasn't some crazy bum dressed in last Tuesday's newspapers... It was a desolate, unreachable place close the very heart of the legendarily dangerous Everfree Forest. Cave with no apparent entrance, trapped behind the whole cliff of stone for an untold amount of time. Pillars, corridors and golden arks accented by multiple variously brutal carvings. Who, now she grasped, likely weren't a reminder of some brutal events of the past, but most probably a warning. A deterrent.
At that moment, she understood all too well. This wasn't a tomb, for whomever it belonged to wasn't gone or departed. It was a prison.
“Hey, Twilight! There's another inscription here. Come take a look!” Deep Dig reached with his hoof to indicate the place on the back of the shining case he was referring to.
Twilight's eyes widened with emotion instantly painted into her irises by the brush of horror.
“No! Don't touch it!” He looked at her with an interrogatively confused stare not sure what she was talking about, his hoof calmly laying atop of golden confinement.
Then, his whole existence turned into the least amusing festival of misery in written history.
“aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Deep Dig wailed in pure agony, as he felt excruciating pain all over his body. Unimaginable waves of torment tore through him down to a microscopic level, twisting all his insides, extinguishing every live cell and rendering it dormant. He could practically feel his organs turning into powder, suddenly vanishing with great fanfare and leaving vast void inside of him. He could feel his own heartbeat diminishing, yet he still unnecessarily continued on living, clinging to this plane of existence with or without necessary organs to do so. It was both physically and mentally arduous experience. It was slow, it was brutal, barbaric. It was probably the worst ordeal one could possibly imagine and bestow upon other creature.
All of it happened in the brief span of a few artificially elongated seconds full of dread on Twilight's behalf. She had to watch helplessly as a new friend and fellow researcher disintegrated in front of her, till the point in which nothing was left but a pile of dust on the now noticeably empty ground. The gruesome spectacle in front of her would turn into a ghost of a once pleasant thought, tormenting and haunting with its presence for the lifetimes to come, for it became integrated and intertwined with her very soul. Burrowed deep into her mind, nesting itself within her psyche and forever engraving its vile memory on her otherwise delicately impeccable retinas, akin to a pungent chemical reacting with an instant film.
Twilight never saw somepony just... fall apart. Heck, she never saw somepony die before. Now she watched in fear as a previously nice stallion who she met mere minutes ago, was transformed by the ways of pain from civilized being into a feral animal, thrashing around and screaming on top of his lungs like one possessed by a malevolent spirit. Twilight wanted to think. Thinking was a thing she did. Yet, unsurprisingly she found that she couldn't do so. Her rational and often pragmatic mind absolutely refused to acknowledge what had transpired in front of her vision, resetting itself by pushing all bad thoughts aside to be buried deeply, sadly along with all the other normal ones. It made Itself a completely new page of a blank scroll, just waiting for any kind of "ink" to fill it back up.
It all rushed back to her in milliseconds. Deep Dig was dead now. He died and she did nothing to help him in any way, shape or form, completely struck with motionless and held captive by the abhorrent situation that she found herself in. Now, she didn't want to think, no more. Now, she wanted to scream uncontrollably and without reason to the heavens. To call for help, the fact that no one will answer notwithstanding. To curl on the cold and dusty stone floor into a tiny ball of mournful misery and stay there for the rest of her presumably rather lengthy life.
Suddenly, the mare was brutally shaken out of her safety cocoon by the temperature drop unlike any other she'd ever felt, her surroundings becoming a bone-crushing island of cold amongst the thick rock walls of the, ironically, hot volcanic origin. In rapid succession to the bitter chill followed some more tangible signs of the degree drop as she could already see water vapor coming in the extended surges out of her mouth and nostrils. Twilight, already confused and cornered by fear into silent obedience, reluctantly focused her sight on Deep Dig or rather whatever was left of him.
She stared absently at his scattered ashes as if he was intended to return from the predicament that had befallen him and somehow rebuild himself anew. Defile the laws of nature on a whim, like they weren't there at all and attack her in a blind rage with a righteous vengeance any second now.
And from the ashes, he rose. Summoned by the taunting of the fate, appearing suddenly like a black cloud of thick smoke on the thunderous sky. Dust ascended from flat of the tiles powdered with remains, flying around and colliding with themselves in a vortex of particles formerly known as an enthusiastic archaeologist. What started to emerge from within couldn't be and certainly wasn't him, quickly making Twilight feel awfully small in comparison to the lurking entity. First to appear was a massive hoof attached to equally overgrown bones of a foreleg, its bleached white tint bereft of any tissue reflecting off the walls with an otherworldly sheen. Right behind it went a second one, equally tremendous and distressing as its predecessor. What followed them was a horn, but no ordinary one. Sickly alabaster cone reminiscent of an ivory tower standing tall and proud, with tip sharper than a sewing needle and length putting even Princess Celestia to shame it almost resembled a sword more than what should be, after all, living tissue. Yet, most hope-sucking and shocking to Twilight was not the impressive horn itself but rather what it was firmly attached to. After it loomed a huge skull studded with threateningly looking rows of pointed teeth, it's eye sockets glaringly empty and devoid of all joy or happiness. One could even accuse the pair of them to actively suck the light out of the area around them, making themselves seem like even blacker pools of noxious tar. All of those grotesque sections were affixed rigidly to a bare spine the length of a monumental whip, whose sickening creaking sounds echoed through the whole of the sizable cave.
When the complete skeleton stepped out of the disgusting whirlwind of former body parts, it was clearly visible how truly enormous its frame was, for it could easily tower above somepony like Celestia a good twenty inches while looking down on over millennium old diarch like on a still growing child. What's important to note, yet without the help of additional muscles and flossy coat to make the disproportion even more apparent that it already would be.
Remaining ash particles started to settle gently on top of the bone cage like a mellow rainfall against a glass pane, forming an ethereal cloak black as night itself, its onyx expanse covering and obscuring all visible cavities from the sight of anyone undesirable. The repugnant skeletal jaw began to move unnaturally without the help of any tendons, making the attempt to speak look like a poor joke of a first-year med school student.
Before it actually spoke in a deep, crisp and hollow voice.
“Thus, the sin of one became a fall for many.”
“Wha- what?” Twilight effectively forced her brain and lungs to cooperate with her once more, refusing to sit idly after such a display of absolutely abominable power, if she was any judge. “What are- who are.. who are you?”
“My dear Twilight, do not ask the silly questions you know the answer to beforehoof. It is not becoming of a mare blessed with an intellect such as yours,” He responded cryptically with conviction, showing his perceptiveness and making Twilight aware of his own intelligence in the process. Yet, not even once he turned to look or even casually glance at her, instead choosing to glare, what appeared to be, straight ahead.
The monstrous mass slowly started shuffling in her general direction and the nearest environment immediately reacted to his leisure movement. All the lowly and half-alive blades of the most resilient grass on the planet, ones that survived countless years in almost total darkness and absence of water, were instantly encased in a thick layer of hoarfrost the closer he got near its few foci. When "blessed" by some direct proximity, the already deflated plants simply darkened and rotted before the eyes of Twilight like a sped-up time lapse-movie.
What she couldn't see or feel, were all the microscopic specks of life wilting and shriveling along with their bigger cousins. Be it a small ant or a simple bacteria, no matter if it's technically alive or not. If it moved or performed even most basic of functions, it died under the influential aura of the newcomer.
When the creature finally reached his chosen final destination situated barely a meter in front of her, all life except for the mare was long extinguished and the feeling of punishment given to the plants barely a minute ago was finally extended to the lone pony as well. The will crushing frost, chilling Twilight's both mind and body to the very bone and freezing down each and every tissue except the ever-flowing blood in her lively arteries.
All the while a hideously long bony neck bent downwards to meet the young princess face to face and look her straight in the eyes despite not having ones himself. Somehow despite being unable to see anything but the immense darkness inside the sockets, you just knew that he was always keenly looking and observing everything around, boring into your psyche and building upon your most irrational fears to his advantage.
“Come now, I know you can do it,” he taunted and rushed the answer out of her.
Twilight summoned all of her wills, all of the once overwhelming power stored in her overflowing pool of confidence, just so she could use it as a deterrent in the emotion concoction designed to render any need to scream on the top of her lungs null and any need to run away obsolete. Somewhere deep inside, the primal instinct told her that this would be a bad idea, no matter how much she wanted to ignore it and bolt ahead.
“You are Death,” she said quietly, managing to dumbfound herself with her own simplistic declaration. Even imagining a scenario in which she would speak out loud those exact words was hard enough of a task. Thinking she would address them with conviction at somepony.. something.
Almost all from the many cultures inhabiting the planet had some personifying depiction of a death incarnate, be them long extinct or ones still existing to this very day. Roughly seventy percent of the known representations painted some form taken from mother nature -like a naked skeleton of a given species- she remembered reading once in a psychology study article. So it happened, the very picture of the stereotypical image designed by the civilization of equines starred down at her this very moment.
“There we go,” he said and rose his head back to its previous position, now standing tall above her once more. “Grim Reaper. Angel of death. Harvester of souls. Pale Pony. All of those describe me well enough, based either on the physical depiction or my primary function.” He stood a few seconds in complete silence. “Yet what you said, I feel is most fitting. It's short and efficient... but conveys so much information, all of it compressed into one light and easy to understand package. A characteristic it shares with the life itself when it's clearly in greatest opposition to it. Also, easy to remember. Perfect, one could say.” Another few seconds of silence followed the brief speech on the understanding of one's name, making it seem like the Reaper was thinking intensely.
“I suppose you want me to explain myself and the grand "master plan" you already perceive or outright assume the goal of as fairly obvious?” he asked while once again looking down at her, this time in a way which suggested quizzical expression and established his ability to emote as at least impressive, given that he lacked any eyebrows to do so. Twilight only nodded recurrently in silence, for she feared that any wrong sentence coming out of her would set him off. “I certainly could... after all, we're both abusing the principles by hoarding all the time in the universe for our own uses and agenda.”
When no response, not even a peep, except for the penetrating gaze came from the Alicorn, he took it as an invitation to continue the monologue undisturbed. “It shall be so then. I'll leave you be, allow your hate to mature and fester within you in peace for some time and in exchange... you will be my regal messenger. I'm making this exception available only because you are one of royal standing, so remember that... it's a deal I extend once, only this once.” Then he broadly performed what someone could call a glare in his doing. “Next time we meet each other, one of us is going to perish. However, remember... that I was never technically alive to begin with.”
Twilight gulped rather audibly, in her notion almost possessing a clear mental picture explaining the perilous nature of the struggle yet to come, its threatening substance ever closer. Surely it will require immense planning on her part, one that was painfully made obvious as one beyond her current ability, since as of now, it took all of her available courage to even talk back to the adversary without stuttering.
“No- not that I wouldn't appreciate some basic explanation from you, any kind of explanation really, but... and don't take this as a bit of advice on how to do your wrongdoings.. why would you tell me any of this in the first place? Don't you think you shouldn't tell your plans to somepony who can stand in opposition to you going through with them? Someone who can try and stop you, should you?”
It was always the same, endless cycle. They would lecture him of all beings, in turn, he would swiftly correct their impertinence and then, finally at the very end of the road, they would claim to know best from the start anyway. It was pitiful the first time around and it is so still. “You're starting to think too highly of yourself. It's not as if you could stop any gears already set in motion eons before your time. I have a higher purpose to fulfill and I thoroughly intend on doing just that, It is a decision set in stone. No living being can change it, not you, not your meager friends, not anyone.” The Reaper exposed more of his nasty yellowish teeth while sneering at her, showing the clearest emotion since his sudden arrival. Yet, any of that was simply irrelevant to Twilight at this moment, for his actions paled in comparison to the much more meaningful message carried by his words. Friends..? My friends? How does he- how much does he know? The mare tried to think of a viable reason behind his frighteningly accurate information while he continued his best to try and crush her fighting spirit further. “Revealing any of my reasons and motivations will not change a single thing in the grand game, for beings higher and older than you by a great margin made their final decisions. Pieces on the chessboard are long set and you, little pony, are losing.”
Twilight wasn't exactly sure how she's supposed to respond to that kind of statement, with how she received at best some residual information up until now. Losing? Losing what... and how? No, thinking like that won't do her any good. She figured her best bet for now is to sit quietly and listen to what the peculiar creature has to say for himself.
Another period of silence presented itself assuredly, Reaper once again immersed deeply in complex thoughts known only to him. Unbeknown to Twilight he didn't think about what to say to her, that was fairly straightforward. Rather... how. How do you simplify something so grand, so divine while in its original unchanged form, that a mere corporeal equine wouldn't be able to even begin acknowledging its splendor. It's something rather beyond its simple plane of comprehension.
“You're Evil.”
What? Did- did she mishear him... or maybe she heard him right but refused to simply allow herself to think about it, even for a second. What he meant by.. that she's.. what? Did he really suggest that SHE, of all despicable ponies out there working tireless day or night to earn such a title and wear it proud, was capitalized Evil? The one and only?
“Not you specifically. Ponies, as a collective body of society,” he explained too calmly for Twilight's own comfort before she was even done thinking about unraveling the mystery of his bold claim.
Did he just.. did he just read my m-, She caught herself mid-rant, before she thought of something that could complicate her already problematic situation even more. After all, if he's reading her thoughts somehow, he also would be made aware of how truly terrified of the aura he emanated she was right now. While all her previous foes delighted at the full range of emotions they could instill in the young mare, terror never was one of them. Fear? Yes, always... to very various degrees. Yet, what none of them accomplished, not Discord nor Tirek... Reaper had done in an instant. Apparently, he's pretty good at what he does. Such skill most probably comes with the occupation, she figured. Yet, Twilight known one thing to be paramount. If she could help it, she absolutely shouldn't give him the satisfaction of making her feel so. That's something she certainly doesn't want, nor could afford in front of him. Not that rather obvious slight trembling of her whole body wasn't giving it away already. Even the violet noble herself wasn't sure if it's the bitter cold or his presence making it happen, but.. getting back to him reading her mind...
“No. As a matter of fact, I didn't do anything of the sort. It is merely a rather useful aftermath of being around mortals long enough. Like a good watchmaker, you steadily learn how are they build and by the time you earn your mastery of the craft, you know how they tick inside. Think. Behave. Rationalize. Ironically to my very purpose, I know how they live.”
Ok.. okay, so he's not reading my mind. Probably. Which only means that he isn't right now. Not that he absolutely couldn't do it. Assuming he's not lying entirely by playing mind games in circles around me. Mentally slapping herself, Twilight tried to get her keen intellect back on track, where it could be most useful. Focus. Keep it together... remember what Princess Celestia said about any kind of diplomatic talks. No matter how fierce, they're all the same. Find out as much as you possibly can while giving away as little as possible. After all, this is just a more bizarre version of the diplomatic talk, right? With a glance up on her newest opponent in the mental game of grandiose chess, she believed her own reasoning less and less. Only with someone who probably won't negotiate. Not that I can or want for that matter and we both know this. Okay, calm. Calm. I'm calm. Listen, don't talk Twilight. Don't talk.
“So tense.” With his head curved curiously to the side personification of Death observed what he'd seen countless times before, yet its persistence through the ages never ceased to amaze him, even if it's just a little bit by now. “After assured that It won't be hurt... It's always the same. Always on a verge of a breakdown and a mere accidental spark could set it off, for it's ready to strike without warning and sometimes even without reason. Like an animal. But isn't that what you are at your core? Just a slightly more advanced animal? Still despicable of you, if you'd ask me,” he started ranting, chattering more with himself than the mare in front of him. A slight tilt of the white skull was performed once more to empathize while his every word was carefully tracked and analyzed by Twilight's methodical nature over and over.
Ready to strike? What on Equis is he talking about? she wondered between his convoluted sentences.
“I'm talking about your deeply encoded nature, my dear. Yours, your family's, your friends, neighbors or even complete strangers you've never met. Your nature is the evil I spoke of or rather the ability to sow it like no other,” The Reaper suddenly stopped, mulling over his last words for a second before continuing. “Actually, let me rephrase that so you can understand. at least to some meager degree. You see, no one is inherently evil. Yet, nor is he simply good. Creatures simply are, their alignment decided by themselves or thrust upon them by others and their actions. Those actions, yours own in this case, had led both of us to where we are today.” He pointed around with his foreleg, annoyingly reminding Twilight about the decorated cave around them as if she had any audacity to forget what happened here.
“The whole premise of life is based on what little time it has upon this material world and what it does with it. For It barely shows up and ends as a mere dust moments later. Logically, It should cherish its existence and better itself with every waking second it has, no? What does it do instead? It consumes without giving, kills what is good and beautiful, starts petty wars over most meaningless of reasons, sometimes leaves weak and sickly in favor of fully capable, destroys lesser beings that were so gracefully given to them to look after... It craves wealth on the expense of others, even when it isn't in need of a single luxury more. When it achieves a brief period of peace paid for with strife of countless, almost immediately squanders it attracted by any gain that it could have, no guarantees.” The dark lord audibly voiced his displeasure with the current state of affairs, at least as they were according to him.
“Most vile creatures of all life however... are ponies.”
Twilight could not believe what she was hearing. Accusing ponies of supposedly being the evilest and despicable of all existing life? Sure, they were not perfect, no one is... but the worst? That's far from reality and she knew it. Even races such as dragons, with as many embarrassing flaws as they had, weren't deserving to be called vile in her opinion. “What? That's not even remotely true!”
“One more word out of order and I will consider our agreement forfeit,” His mere brash glance was enough for Twilight to immediately shush herself shut. Despite his bass voice not being threatening in the least, it notified everyone around and warned of the consequences should anyone continue. “You speak when I say speak. You answer when I ask. When it is clearly your turn... that's how dialogue works.”
Stupid..stupid..stupid..Don't talk. Is that so hard Twilight?
Gargantuan pony continued without pause or her agreement as if he just stated a simple fact of existence no one agreed upon for they needn't. It would be so regardless of what anyone was thinking. Facts were prone to do that.
“Ponies. In their very design intended as paragons of purest harmony in this world. An example for others, something to strive for in the future and admire from up close.” For the first time since they started the whole debacle, Twilight saw something that could resemble a glint of a scowl on the Reaper's "face" and it wasn't a good sign in the least. “Nothing but a bunch of rancid lies under the guise of innocence. You let others wallow in their self filth while you prosper and marinate in complacency, additionally stroking the shaft of the whole state whilst patting its back at a job well done. Throwing others meager remains of what you have and not even out of the goodness of your heart... but to feel better about yourselves and I'll prove it.”
Taking a while to recall all the necessary details and sort through the immense knowledge that he now had, riled beyond measure but still standing calmly Reaper continued.
“Like sending a pair of ambassadors to asses the situation at a bordering foreign power. That's just some responsible thinking. Making the lives of a few citizens just a little less miserable, calling it a day and consider that it's a job well done? That's just plain cruel,” He started, at first confusing Twilight with the origin of such a scenario, yet she felt it sounded oddly familiar and somehow close to her. Despite taking longer than it should, Twilight finally recognized the rough sketch as a description of the ordeal Pinkie and Rainbow Dash went through at Griffonstone a while back. Before she had any time to ask where was this going, the ominous skeleton carried on further.
“Then leaving someone to their own devices by argumentation that they have to learn on their own in order to rise up from their knees. In order for what they rebuild to last ages. From what will they rebuild, tell me?” He waited for the answer, but it never came. “They'll feed their starving with barren lands? Maybe fix their homes with the materials long stolen by the brigands? Or pay each other for the work done with the money they don't have? No, the simple answer is... they won't last, period.”
When Twilight increasingly struggled in a panic to come up with any kind of answer or retort to his accusations, the shadow decided to insert the final nail into the coffin of this prime example in a form of a metaphor.
“Planting a healthy seed at the land where there are none is good and easy. Caring for what you've sown is truly righteous and a great deal harder.”
Reaper stopped for a few seconds, barely keeping his devout judgment in check, knowing it was not yet time to unleash it upon the world. He waited for so long already, what was a few additional minutes? So he started further explanation by the way a mare such as Twilight would understand the most... straight statistical data.
“When Deep Dig prematurely left the material world behind, so did his knowledge. Straight to me,” He painfully reminded the alicorn of the recently deceased, earning him a saddening grimace out of her. “So it appears, he was a rather well-read stallion. For our first example, did you know that in Manehattan alone there are roughly one hundred twenty orphanages?”
The already soundly conflicted mare was startled with a swiftness the Reaper displayed in recalling yet another saddening detail present in their society. W-well, I agree, that's by no means something to be proud of, but what that has to do with-
“..Or that Stallinograd is within the grasp of countrywide gangs for well over seventy years now? Maybe you wish to know murder rates of ever charming Fillydelphia? Mug statistics of prestigious and exemplary Canterlot? Rape data of never-sleeping Las Pegasus? Or even casual property damage of say... charmingly rural Ponyville?”
Twilight's eyes suddenly dilated in surprise, at last predicting where he was attempting to go with this train of thought.
“Yes, yes. Now I know about that too. What do you think fresh Princess? How much yours and your friend's little escapades has cost this country and its people? A million bits? Ten million? Maybe a Hundred? Like I've said in my previous example, the money isn't grown on trees, you know. Sometimes taxes are a sleazy thing to have. Do you ever wonder, how many foals living their lives in some distant remote villages had to work alongside their parents tending to the land, throwing away their laughably short childhood?” After the first time with Discord Twilight would recognize that kind of tactic anywhere. Sadly, with no way to disprove his confident words with knowledge of her own she had to assume that he was just trying to get under her skin using falsified picture sprinkled with detailed disinformation. Yet she promised herself that this wouldn't work. She wouldn't.. she couldn't let him.
“Life at the outskirts isn't as pastel and colorful as it is here, closer to the representational part of the grandiose charade. How many adults had to walk hungry all day long in order for their offspring to live happily, just because they had to pay the crown their share in order to repair the damage that you and you alone caused? You'll have to admit, your mere presence attracts trouble to anywhere you go. Remember the proverb, The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.”
Twilight had enough of it. No more of this... slander! Meddling and muddling her already tarnished psyche to the point where she couldn't tell the right from wrong was too heavily reminiscent of some outlandishly absurd Sombra-Discord hybrid. Even if any of his claims were remotely true, how bringing it up now could justify any of his actions, present or previous. That's not true! That's not... It can't be! No! No. He's lying! He tries to undermine my world view, mock my.. no, our way of life. So far it.. he, has been nothing but hostile towards me. I wouldn't put manipulation of facts past him by now. But I'll let him go on like that a little bit more. Maybe he'll let slip some valuable piece of information I could use later.
“I will simplify things a bit and make this short as much as I am able. Just for you.”
He paused for a few quick breaths that he never really needed in the first place but ones that, in his wisdom, were needed for a dramatic delivery. A sudden appearance of a pair of red spheres in the previously empty sockets revealed the surprising fact that indeed, he had something substituting for the eyes. Significantly more scary thought though, was that up until now he simply decided not to open them. The terrifying replacement for eyes, surely superior beyond the limitations of their fleshy counterparts were cast upon Twilight in the most chilling gaze that she ever received and actually physically felt on her. It was like being intimately touched by an inanimate gesture.
She almost wished that she was dead instead of facing that sort of look.
“You're... a disease. A miserably failed experiment. A mistake in the grand equation. An irrelevant speck of grime in the vast greatness of cosmos. Something that is neither wanted nor needed. You will be gone soon enough and no one or nothing will ever miss any single of you.” The conviction to the case presented by his voice was frightening, clearly caring over a previously decided message. “Better to just put you out of your misery... before you go and somehow do it yourselves.”
That is his sole purpose... his.. unholy mission, as self-imposed it is. To destroy me, my friends and anyone else who dares to stand in his way. He's just another threat to our harmony that I can dispatch on its merry way. I can do it, right? Tirek.. Yes! Tirek wanted to do basically the same thing, brutally subdue and wreak havoc and look where that has led him. Straight back to his cozy place in Tartarus. With the help of my friends, I can do it! I can-
“By now you know some of my motivations,” he interrupted her hopeful train of thought rudely. “Yet, like a mirror, there is always a second side, so listen well and let me start from the very beginning.” For the first time since his coming Twilight felt something resembling a sudden inflow of curiosity within herself. That always was, is and will be the way of living creatures. While she indulged in the primal want to know, the walking skeleton started pacing around in a calm manner, akin to Twilight's own chosen method for clearing one's thoughts in the times of need.
“All the studious of this world would no doubt give up a limb or even life for the information I'm about to disclose to you, so listen well,” the Reaper grimaced as if he fought with himself whether to tell her or not. “For the countless centuries an endless number of ideologies or religions had risen up and crumbled alike, with but a hooffull surviving to this day. Yet almost all of them had a vision of something greater, beyond and above them. They conjured whole pantheons of beings able to manipulate the world according to their whims. Weather, emotions, concepts, even mortals themselves. You name it, surely there was someone contrived to control it,” he droned on slowly, wanting of the thought to grip the brain like magical fire would encompass the flesh thoroughly and relentlessly.
“Sometimes they formed and shaped the laws ruling the world around a singular entity, so immensely powerful and all knowing that you could as well call it omnipotent and omniscient. Unlimited and eternal... Almighty.”
Twilight could and did look on ever dumbly. Was he truly hinting at what she thought? Did he really implicated that.. that...
“Oh, yes. I see the realization setting in quite nicely already.” The Reaper undoubtedly took a sick pleasure in tormenting her like that. “Informing and educating, like a child who should already know better now. I'm telling you of a God. A one that on everything you know and see bestowed a blessing of existence. A one that very much exists and a one that sometimes chooses to act on the world it created.”
Now there it was, finally out in the ether and free to echo around the recently empty cavity that normally should house a brain of a certain mare. She assumed right, dammit. A God. Now, if anyone would to confront her with such a claim without any proper evidence, she would laugh it off and quickly dismiss them. But... out of him...
“So, a while ago ..once upon a starting precipice of time, if you're so curious.. our Creator, this infinite architect, by then it already knew that what it had forged shall turn to dust someday, according to the set of laws it itself established. Maybe not right then and maybe not for a long time, but it will have to come to an eventual end someday in the distant and cloudy future.” Though having virtually none guaranty that his words were even remotely true, for the sake of the future and pony kind Twilight efficiently restrained the basic scholar inside herself for now. Receiving credible information about the one supposedly responsible for the design of the entire universe and everything in it? It had to be charted as one of the greatest mysteries in existence, way up there with the meaning of life, the secret of eternal youth or unreachable understanding of Pinkie Pie.
That was good and everything, but also had some of that utterly intimidating overtone for the ones who tended to think a little bit too much. Namely, ones as Twilight. If the most prominent theories on the current and future state of the universe are true (.. every little piece of data gathered till now suggests that they are..) and it really is infinite... that would mean it required an infinite knowledge to design it, infinite resources to build it with, infinite amount of time to actually do it and infinite presence to maintain it further.
Meaning... if there truly was anyon- anything that orchestrated all of the genesis on its very own, under its sheer power alone.. It would have probably planed this very moment as well. It would be watching both of us right now, most possibly.
Now better than anywhere in the past was the appropriate time to admit something. Twilight, despite her rather academically shifted persona, never considered herself an atheist. More like.. agnostic until proven otherwise. However, after the recent one-sided "debate" or rather exposition dump of the fiend before her, one truth was made painfully obvious. She suddenly felt rather self-conscious about sensing an additional pair of eyes on herself, following her every move with cold calculation and it wasn't a pleasant feeling of attention, not by a long shot. They felt more judgmental and piercing than any gaze cast her way by disappointed Princess Celestia. Ever.
“And for the.. how do you- ah!Pièce de résistance of the whole debacle, In all its glory and wisdom the Creator gave the final task of ending the mortal plane someday.. to me,” he revealed the biggest secret yet, one with terrifying consequences for all involved. “However I wish... whenever I wish. The decision how and when to do so was, and still is, solely mine.” If Reaper could appear smug, now would be the perfect time to do that for him. “It would seem, that it trusts some of its creations more than the other ones.”
Another installment of existential dread pushed violently upon Twilight's psyche. To think that any single being had that kind of authority, to end them all... and based on a pure whim, no less. Yet little did she know, a little respite would be given to her.. only to come back with its bigger brother and crush her even worse than the first time around.
The Reaper lifted his hoof to the ceiling in an attempt to signal a particularly important part. “But.. one was made crystal clear. If I should fail, it would not intervene in the least. "They worked for it and they've earned it.", it said.” The skeletal servant made a strange set of facial motions, making it seem as he wasn't entirely on board with the upper management decision.
All the while Twilight couldn't believe in the cruel joke she was just served dead cold. Making both sides able to fight and virtually setting them up to battle at some point sooner or later? That's like.. the grandest and most mischievous gladiatorial duel of all time!
“That's just.. cruel! What kind of a God is that?”
The sudden outburst of defiance roused the Reaper a little and made him quick to explain, strangely without any kind of hinted anger this time. “Pray tell me, where exactly is it written that an all-powerful being who reigns supreme should also be a caring and kind individual?”
The dark servant continued when the silence was the only answer he got.
“Just like you, it's not evil nor good. It and Its decisions just.. are. It's making them because it can. Who are we to tell it no?” The reference to them both, including Reaper and Twilight alike, didn't escape her keen attention. “That it can't do that since it would be immoral to do so? Maybe it is by mortal standards, but in the greater picture it really changes nothing.”
When the Reaper finally stopped pacing around, he looked upon the ceiling of the cave in a gesture Twilight wouldn't attribute to the rather brutish, if certainly intellectual being. A sign of wonder and doubt, while from the other side of the spectrum crept both conviction and resolve.
“Building a whole world and then leaving it alone to either rise above expectations or decay into nothingness.” He sealed his concrete faith in the might of his maker. “Does that signify indifference for its fate and cruelty to whatever he created... or is it.. generosity of all things, the act of granting you a free will and tools to forge your bright future yourself?”
“There is no right answer, little one.” Turning his sight from the "sky" he looked upon Twilight once more, glowing eyes open this time around. “It is and always have been a matter of chance. If you use the gifts given and flourish, to paraphrase- "You worked for it hard and you rightfully deserve it", If you fester while squabbling and disappointing... you die. Simple as that.”
When no response came even after such a revelation, not an angry one nor defiant, the beast decided on pushing yet another needle into the pincushion called alicorn consciousness.
“You have to face the music, as they say... and please, don't infantilize yourself. Surely you've seen it coming. Beings called Gods do not care for your petty feelings, for you're just an amusement park to them at best... and guess what? As of now, the tickets stopped being profitable. This whole joyride on the coaster of life stops here, today.”
With that metaphor, the Reaper spoke the final line of his latest round with a tone somepony could even call sympathetic. The last of its kind out of him they'll ever hear.
“Once more I've decided. Enough is enough.”
Twilight couldn't believe that.. that.. utter crap! Just what kind of an existence is this supposed to be? A reality without any higher purpose, in which you're not even allowed to make one for yourself because everything will be decided by someone else anyway? Then, as it turns out.. It's rather true what some use to say. Sure, search for the answer to the questions about your existence all you like... but are you sure you want that kind of knowledge?
Suddenly Death spoke. Any kind of twisted sympathy, as little as he had it displayed previously, now gone forever. Twilight wasn't sure if he predicted her thoughts once more or if he had really started reading her mind this time around. “I'm hardly a dullard. I simply know that you will be one of the biggest thorns in my side. Luckily for you, I keep my promises so that you'd have your chance to be that insignificant thorn at all. Remember this kindness.”
Kindness? He calls promise of killing everypony I ever held dear, kindness! Twilight was almost riveted to the stone flooring with building anger.
“That's why I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Can you keep it hush-hush, just for me?” he asked, this time with almost genuine sweetens in his voice which in tandem with his unnerving appearance created a rather grotesque image. When the purple mare agreed silently, the choice not up to her anyway, it only stepped up to a highly unsettling level of creepy.
“I don't do anything halfway. If I'm to cleanse the world of all that is even remotely breathing, I'm going to make sure that whatever comes after you will remember this as a lesson and a warning. So I WANT you to know what awaits ahead. I know no mercy, forgiveness or sympathy. Those are mortal principles and If I should choose so, they do not apply to being such as I. It's true that I may know what they are, I may understand where they're coming from, I may fake them myself or even decide to bestow them upon someone, but I will never truly feel them. We prefer, as one of your books states, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth approach. Only, unfortunately for you on a thousandfold greater scale.”
The Grim Reaper closed the already minuscule distance between them even further, almost to the point in which Twilight could feel the cold breeze that tried passing for his breath on her own face, with her eyeballs threatening to freeze over like the poor plant life.
“But let's make this even more thought-provoking now, shall we? You'll agree that lessons are better learned hard after all. Go, prepare yourself, rally your troops, evacuate your citizens, go ahead and give them a spark of false hope. Give yourself a feeling of duty to your loved ones, say them straight in the eyes that you will protect them, keep them safe from all harm, lie to them and as you do it.. think about their comforted faces. This will be the last time you see those ever again. Where there is a crime, there is also punishment. You are too far gone to come around. Face it, princess, your world is coming down whether you like it or not.”
That brief "speech". That was the one thing it took to strip away all the confidence Twilight managed to build up earlier, for it to vanish in an instant. Now she stopped lying to herself, this was nowhere near Tirek level. It was not a matter of freedom or enslavement. It was a case of live or die.
When the pale skeleton was finally satiated and contended with his marvelously villainous work, he rose slowly in preparation to leave the place that previously acted as his point of residence for an untold amount of time. He passed Twilight like she never existed in the first place and prepared for a lengthy walk to see the light of the day star for the first time in millennia.
While Twilight stayed where she sat, with her gaze fixated somewhere untold thousands of kilometers ahead of her.
Reaper, currently climbing numerous steps leading from the inside resting chamber to the outside world, decided to speak his last piece to her.
“Oh.. and a little friendly tip for you before I go. I would watch my back if I were you. For it will get stabbed, sooner or later,” he said with twisted assurance upon reaching the very top of the stairs. Little did Twilight know, not Universe, nor Reaper were done destroying her psyche just yet.
The apparent pupil of the higher being turned his head a little to gaze behind with disinterest and lazily waved with one hoof as if to recall a dog to his heel. “Come, Deep Dig.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
Those three little words were enough to break the inner "spell" put on Twilight and brutally force her to return from the mental banishment she sent herself on, turning her gaze in the general direction where once Deep Dig stood beside the golden ark. And surprisingly, where he stood once more.
But as soon as Twilight set her eyes on him proper, she truly wished she didn't. Instead of a once proud, strong, cheerful stallion, was a literal monster pulled straight from the adult horror novels. Eyes appearing to be overcast with thick mist akin to someone befell with cataract, coat a matted pale shadow of its former self. Sunken jaw and cheeks ..or better described.. lack of the latter with rotting teeth clearly visible through created holes. A big gaping and revolting chasm in a place where his chest should be, cracked ribs and no longer beating heart out in the open. Left rear leg completely devoid of any supporting flesh, naked to the very bone. At last, various spots all over his body were missing coat, with some cases devoid of skin and muscle tissue as well.
Twilight's terrorized scream sounded anew through the entirety of the cave and to anyone uninitiated in the current situation it would sound probably much like a pure terror of somepony being murdered ruthlessly. In this case, the one murdered was Twilight's innocence... or what was left of it at this point.
A small distance away, under his black cloak Reaper managed something that any observer would call an alarmingly unholy attempt at a smirking smile.
“I'm glad you can appreciate how he turned out. I've done what I could, while working with what little material I had left,” he said more to himself than to her, knowing very well that she probably didn't hear any of that, to absorbed in her cacaphony of terror. With opportunity to amuse himself passed, he slowly yet steadily proceeded down the long corridor towards the outer halls and in short time the surface proper. =====================================================================================================
Twilight lay on the cold stone slabs of the former prison for goddess.. or god... whatever knows how long. The passage of time mattered little to her, she had far more pressing concerns as of now. She quietly wept to herself without care if somepony could actually hear her desperate plead for consolation. Now Deep Dig was not only dead. Now he suffered a fate worse than death by an untold margin, displayed in any conceivable measuring scale.
And it was all her fault.
Why? Why did I let him touch that blasted tomb? If I just ..sob.. stopped him. He... he probably had a family! A one tha- that loved him. Such outgoing pony surely had many Friends who'll miss..Friends... my... my friends. The damnable bastard of a bone bag will go after mine..sniff..friends and countless other innocents for sure. I can't let him do that, I can't. I must warn them! Princess.. I must get to the Palace, warn Princess Celestia and... and Luna too. All of them.
Accompanied by the overwhelming feeling similar to a ton of lead laid screwed to her scalp and interwoven into her bones, Twilight struggled to rise. After trying to perform this indeed gargantuan task of resilience for what felt like literal hours, straining for what seemed to stretch indefinitely into eternity, she felt a mysterious newfound reserve of power previously hidden from her sight somewhere deep inside. Yet in the end, It mattered not from whence the power came as long as it helped her do what she must. She won't allow anyone else to get hurt because of her foolishness and in order to do that, she needed to hurry.
With this most recent thought taking a hold of the greater part of her mind, she set herself on a one-track path leading outside the cursed cave and to the world above. Trailing after the Reaper.
Why was this always happening to her, specifically?
Now worse than all the previous times combined, of course, but it mostly followed the same cursed pattern. When life is nearing perfection and encloses around idyllic tranquility as much as it possibly could, with the ongoing motion on the right track to somehow get even better... yet another ancient evil bent on conquering or enslaving them all emerges, striking once more with the ferocity of a rabid Timberwolf. Sometimes packing a force more akin to a solid pack of them.
One would think the fate itself hates her guts with an undying passion. Fate... or any kind of higher power to be honest. Yet, taking into account the knowledge that she now unfortunately possessed and considering the state of the world they live in... "Uhm. It sure checks out." Something out there definitely loves to watch her squirm and wriggle in agony once in a while, just for the kicks of it. No matter if it's a primordial force of nature or a cruel God, the truth is rather irrelevant. Same difference with similar results.
How? How do you exactly fight against that?
You don't like snow and cold? Then literally try to kill the season of winter, wise guy, see how well that turns out.
At any time in the past, if you would have asked Twilight -how hard she fought with those adversities each time?- her answer would certainly be along the lines of always giving one hundred percent out of herself, no matter what. Now, she wouldn't be so sure she'd state the same without hesitation. All those enemies and obstacles she encountered in the past had never driven her so far, only now the fear which she'd never known pushed her to be so blindingly desperate, grasping at all the straws she could. As she changed her trot into a full-on gallop, she had just about enough time to put a little thought into it all while running through and past countless orate stone pillars bathed in the unforgiving darkness which threatened to swallow them whole if she wasn't careful enough.
That only now, when the life of her and literally everypony else was not endangered but guaranteed to end if they did nothing swift and concrete about it... only now she would know the meaning of true commitment and sacrifice. All the previous challenges that she overcame while giving her "one hundred percent", will pale in comparison to what she will have to give.. or give up, to overcome her current predicament. "Almost there, I can see the entrance". Her ultimate test of resolve and tenacity at clinging to any life she holds dear. Probably the only test in existence that she wasn't looking forward to, at all. Well, maybe there was one thing about it that she anticipated. Its end.
She was planning on reaching the surface properly and then working from there on ahead, figuring out this mess one step at a time and formulating some kind of a rough plan, as much as she could plan for it. Some logical, intelligent and coherent course of action that would allow her the be the victorious one even in the worst scenario.
Yet all her determination and conviction vanished in an instant then and there, popped and gone like a fleeting soap bubble when she saw what was eagerly waiting to greet her to the brutal outside world. Knock knock, hello, it's horrible.
Instantly, she started to sputter out a string of incoherent babble that wouldn't pass for any kind of speech even in the scorching sands of expansive Zebrica. For terror, unimaginably distilled horror bestowed upon the innocent and pure was laid out plainly before her, the concepts like utter destruction or bloody violence and complete disregard for the sanctity of life visualized to their gruesome fullest.
A body... or rather various parts of multiple ones strewn about in the fashion that made them seem like a single whole.
Beings torn apart to little shreds of fresh meat and scattered all over the place willy-nilly. The ones with their eyes not gouged out had them glossed over with empty mist of whites and grays, life long since left them for an eternity. Ponies a lot of whom she saw not even a few hours ago.
Twilight looked to her left in a spontaneous spaz of a movement and unwillingly met the look of panicked despair till the very end, frozen in post-mortem stiffness. With the rear legs of the pony missing altogether, all the way to the abdomen, no one had to be the Shadow Spade herself to figure out that the other end of a pony viciously thrown a few meters away to the side -and conveniently missing its upper half- once made a whole with the rest of the scarlet smeared carcass.
To think that the blood hadn't yet the time to coagulate into the rather disgusting dirty-red goop mixed in with all sorts of little leaves and twigs, still more than happy to spill all around with adorably little trickles. Probably warm, too. On top of that, she knows him... she.. knew him. It was the very same pony who passed her and Deep Dig their spelunking helmets.
Was that the last thing he did? Making sure she would be safe from whatever harm could befall her? His last action being an altruistic act of kindness and generosity imposed by his job description? Would he choose that as very the last move? Was it fair?
Hell no. Hell no, twice.
She quickly became engulfed and swallowed by pure fear to the point of a disoriented daze.
Such a precarious feeling, that one. Being scared of something hard enough for it to confuse us instead. That rare state of mind in which the brain isn't willing to accept the outcome of its physical observations, so it refuses to acknowledge the true and material explanation backed up by visual evidence at all. Only to stumble upon the fact that it has not yet thought of any other reasoning, leaving itself baffled in the process.
So, baffled it was. With Twilight's brain suspended in metaphorical limbo for now, her very inner being was torn apart with various unwanted emotions. She was positively jittery, divided between her need to look for any survivors and justified urge to flee from the unsettling image as far as she possibly could. Torn between looking dead-on at dismembered ponies in front of her or looking away, only to be met by even more sacrilegious carnage.
She knew whatever her decision turned out to be, she would probably regret it all the same. The alicorn cursed it with all her might, however still submitted to the natural curiosity she was born with to take the reigns and lead the pony she was to the blood tainted water... one that she indeed wasn't keen on drinking.
To her immediate right, mere meters away, stallion petrified in endless and eternal agony. He appeared to be sitting in his final moments, with one foreleg thrown casually over a piece of wooden railing for support. The end must have met him head-on while he was taking a well-deserved break from the hardships of labor, the pony never imagining the brisk pause in work will be made quite a lasting one. Now... bifid in the middle right through his cranium, all the way to his bloated belly. Both halves of thick skull clearly visible, left out in the open to the unforgiving and chilling winds while the slippery spine slid sideways spawning sickly sounds, sportingly stretching selvages of sane spirit and slumping to the side in a staging solo spectacle as the sad support spindle that it was.
Most surprising of all.. his heart. Still beating after all, albeit sorrowfully weak.
*Thump*.. *thump*.
Fixed in its desperate attempts to keep the owner alive, yet losing the unfairly set fight with each passing second. The very last performance played In front of Twilight's eyes as it pulsated for the final time before it went to join the rest of the body, only goddess knows where.
Simply.. beyond.
That- this... abhorrence. This.. absolute violation of basic principles of decent harmonious beings, that ponies were supposedly in their very design. It was simply too much. Too much for the shambled mind clinging to its last ticket to sanity. The train left a while ago and so the metaphorical ticket was nothing more but a useless piece of paper adrift within the mindscape's imaginary winds.
Twilight started to walk ahead slowly, meticulously putting one hoof in front of the other. The two bodies have been quickly forgotten by her rather damaged mind.
Step after step. Akin to a mindless machine setting out with one purpose only, an automaton that was never gifted free will in the first place. With every emotion long forgot she shuffled along the road using simple and stiff movements, fitting into the surroundings with a well-played role of a walking corpse.
As she pushed forward, other bodies started to appear here and there like tasty mushrooms after a downpour. One, for example, was missing its whole head.. along with the rest of a spine it was previously attached to. A different one was... well, that's just it. Was. Now no more present, in body, so to speak. Only a bloody patch of dirt in the middle of an unnaturally quiet forest. She even stepped on something rather crunchy along the way. Branch.. or maybe an ashed bone. She never looked.
Countless other unfortunates appeared wherever she'd look, so she simply didn't. Bodies strewed right about everywhere, now nothing more than some blobs of color in her peripheral vision. Walking for the longest time, at some point, Twilight felt something wet marring her face and obscuring her vision. "Tears." She stopped to use her hoof, wiping some of the offending fluid away and confirming that those were indeed the droplets of liquefied emotion she was currently staring at as they soaked into the coat of her fetlock. "Huh."
With no current way for providing spacial awareness or knowledge of the time passed... or even a concept of such, Twilight's mind had no need of knowing how long she already spent in this state of detached unconsciousness and she wouldn't need it for quite some time to come, if not for one unexpected thing. A sound, to be precise. A wheezing and pitiful breath.
And what was breathing.. lived.
“H-hello?” The meekest question yet produced by the mare carried through the silent shrubbery, jerking her awake and making her look around in fright. That's when she saw it. A source of the sound... and a one that probably wouldn't answer back. A branch going through one's lungs tended to make such rather difficult to accomplish.
Being violently thrown out of near catatonia into the real world would have left anyone perturbed, let alone an individual so delicate and innocent as Twilight. "He.. He-help. Help?" The cogs of her waking mind did their very best to set her along the path to make something right in all the wrong she already experienced so far. "Have to.. he needs! I have to help!"
Twilight's legs moved on their own, quickly bringing her right beside the wounded stallion and making his state painfully apparent. Violently thrown against a tree and its sharp lower branches with such a force that he looked like somepony stuck to a natural version of a pincushion. With needles the diameter of a railroad screw. Through his throat.. and lungs and also all the rest. He looked like a porcupi- "No, no time for-"
“Don't move!” She shouted in panic, noticing the fault in her reasoning rather quickly. “No, that's dumb. You literally can't.” Unsurprisingly, when the leaf green pony only gurgled pitifully in response, Twilight skipped the whole thing she was doing altogether, going straight to action. “Then just wait- uh.. hang, I'll just-”
Just then, she heard probably the most offending sound in her whole life to date.
A quiet wheeze of the last breath leaving the lungs of the unfortunate bastard.
“NO,” Twilight demanded In a tone normally reserved only for Rainbow Dash asking about doing double loops in the castle. “Don't you just d-d.. No!” Unfortunately for both her and her's psyche, the body decided to make some use of its newly relaxed muscles and swiftly slide down the short branches. *Splat* It impacted the ground with a dull thud and splattered itself all over the immediate area.
“Ah!” Twilight jumped in fright at the sudden sound and when nothing else happened, waited a few seconds before asking a most futile question with the ears lowered, yet still clinging to the last slivers of pathetic hope. “H-hello?” When none answer came, without any hint of apprehension or disgust she lowered down and resorted to gently nudging the newest slab of flesh with her nose.
...Corpse.
Twilight just watched as this whole colossal mistake greedily claimed yet another victim for itself and she couldn't do anything about it. Another one added to the already tremendously long list, soon to transform from the once living and breathing individual and become nothing more than a sad statistic in the obituary books. Another no-name since... it was fairly possible not a single soul would recognize the mauled body. "D-dammit." All of a sudden, her ears changed position 180-degrees in an aggressive fashion. "Dammit!" The frown turned upside down, yet not into a smile but a vicious snarl none but a certain powerful individual had seen before.
“F-F-..Fuuuuckkk!Ahhh!” Twilight cursed the heavens most uncharacteristically and with an earth-shattering roar lashed out against the innocent blood-smeared tree. The splinters and small pieces of wood flew around as the rage aided alicorn obliterated the plant in one swift hook, leaving nothing but a mangled stump in its place. “Cunt!” The mare swore out of character for herself, all who knew her cringing in the distance for reasons unknown to them all the while she clutched at her mane to the point of ripping it out in a mixture of anger and angst. “Arse... crap,” With her words losing both volume and harshness she pulled on her violet bangs harder and harder, showing the first signs of hyperventilation. “D-damn...”
She had to leave. Now. Run away from this cursed place, find someone willing to help her.
With a powerful cry of misery, she bolted down the road with tears flying anew, freely and unimpeded this time. Reaching surprising speeds considering her erratic and at best uneven breath, her run was interrupted only by the irregular sniffs and whimpers of a broken mare who wanted nothing more than all of this to simply stop.
As long as she could run at all, she would run away from it all.
Ever towards the edge of the camp and into the forest proper seemed a better idea than lingering in such a wretched place even a minute longer. Running past countless tents and shelters once bustling with activity, now devoid of all joy and cast into the permanent silence, she ignored the sights and ran with the supposed hell chasing her.
The young Alicorn would ignore them till the end of time if not for her reaching the edge of what was considered safe this deep in the forest. Just when the boundary of wilderness seemed like a promise of safety from the despicable, Twilight stopped dead in her tracks utterly crushed by the sight before her.
Multiple eyes stared at the newest piece of prey emerging from the pony-made grove of deliciousness, perceived by the apex predators as nothing more than an easy opportunity for a filling snack on the chilly autumn afternoon. Now, a lone purple pony was all they focused on, all their shapes and sizes swiveling around in wait to pounce with the killing blow, malevolent observant globes of predatory hunger promised death all night round and in the most gruesome of ways for intruding upon the grounds of the ancient enchanted forest as if it was sacred to all creation. Dozens upon hundreds of pairs stalked the foliage in patience, waiting for the signal to strike and snuff out the single life before them with a ferocity of a whole forest incorporated.
Yes, confining the mare and her thrice-damned soul to the bloody fate inside the crooked misery circle of the clearing in an act of twisted revenge was what The Forest required of them all. It was what The Forest wanted.. suffering.
From that particular individual.
Pure and unadulterated punishment for all the years Twilight outright owed the mass of foliage. A debt that would be paid one way or another, sooner or later. Even if this evening proved to be yet another one which the forest lost, the time would come. Even if today was the best possible opportunity of the many following years to come. The wilderness could wait. For now, it wasn't going anywhere.
If not today.. then tomorrow... and a day after that. There will be a tomorrow, as it ever was. They always come back. They come back regularly until they eventually stay for good, even if it takes many centuries for them to succumb to the subtle whispers. All will be added to the vast legion as one of the many servants. Then, all their goals would be clear, an endless expansion forevermore, until nothing was left but The Forest and its sole existence.
It was like the will of the greenery itself was somehow at play, commanding all possible creation at its disposal to keep her inside the circle at all costs, no matter the damage to itself or its brethren. For what was the loss of some, if its name was legion and it was indeed many?
Confronting her from the depths of foliage Twilight recognized the fleeting shapes of multiple Timberwolves packs, towering Hydras, hissing Cragadiles and Cockatrices scrawling at the first rows over each other. Further down were the dangerous multi-headed Chimeras, venomous Manticores, ferocious Wyverns. Rare Harpies, elusive Wyrms and indomitable Tortugas. Far and few between, but unfortunately still present were the undisputed barons of the forest - intangible Penumbran Creatures, elusive Dream Demons, immaterial Concept Spirits.
Though most of them sans the scarce few could be immediately defeated and utterly pulverized at her current power level, the utter shock and frequent terror amputated any mind of her own, making her vulnerable even more to the unpleasant reality presented and forcibly spoon-fed to her.
So once again, she chose the lesser of two evils and... run away. Away from it all and into the slowly setting star of her beloved mentor. At this point, she was willing to give, sacrifice anything to make herself scarce and avoid the horrible machinations of the powers well beyond her that wanted nothing more than make one more beloved ivory pawn to place on their chessboard.
She had run in mostly random directions for so long that her lungs started to burn with the lack of adequate oxygen, which was an accomplishment in itself as an alicorn. By that point, she was well back into the inner camp and the utterly horrid scenery on the site only added to her prolonged suffering to come.
To any would-be observer, she was most obviously hysterical, cantering around in amok but ever closer to the center of the habitat. As much as she wanted to avoid it, she saw them. She saw them all... scattered around like trash in gruesome poses and frozen in a deranged nightmare-inducing death forms, senseless violence showing the nature and all that is good exactly what it thought about its goody-two-shoes bullshit.
A mare with a gash along the entire length of her bloodied side dangled from the impromptu sign of the campsite tavern off a noose made from her own artery. Yet with a perfect ante-mortem autopsy performed, no major vessel was heavily damaged, making the actual knot a possible cause of death by stopping the flow of oxygenated blood. She either died of strangulation or chocked, both so similar in the way to go and near equal in horribleness.
“Stop..”
A faithful Lunar Guard brutally pinned to the coarse ground with the butt of his own broken halberd, punctured straight through the belly and out the other side. Pierced in such a way as to miss any vital organs, not to kill but to trap by the way of causing excruciating pain to the body. The blade of his trusty weapon snatched and treacherously embedded in his foreleg, allowing the blood to flee freely. With no way to move and quickly get out of the ruthlessly improvised torture, the poor protector outright waited to bleed out in misery, unable to help others. Let alone himself.
“Please..”
The blacksmith she passed on her way previously, now with the smith himself used instead of a tool on a rotating grindstone. The greater part of his head missing with its only reminder being a bloody smear on the wheel itself, his teeth knocked out and scattered around on the ground like a spilled powder candy while the rest of the carcass appeared to be about well-done in the merciless fires of the blast furnace.
No matter the consequences, all repercussions be damned, she just wanted all of this to end one way or another.
At this point, even outright death would be a merciful fate, just to spare her the mental olympics her mind had gone through.
The realization was a hard-hitting one and albeit diminished by all the malignity of it all, it certainly got through. One way or the other, whichever was simply faster.
She wanted to die. She wanted to die.
And... the power surging inside her responded to her pitiful and anguished claims, fully convinced that something must be done. Though none of the other Princesses ever fully explained it to Twilight just yet, It was a simple fact that they were simply... different, from almost all creation. For their powerful magic possessed a will of its own in the direst circumstances. And took advantage of it.
Keeping them alive at all costs in a hopeless situation... or swiftly ending their permanence when the danger to others became more than their continued existence was worth.
Yet, as with all small reference groups, the phenomenon was poorly researched if at all. Worked ill and in horribly unpredictable ways, known only to the cruelest gods. Most often, the subjects just went completely insane from the increased stimuli, becoming even more of a danger to anything around them.
It was like submerging yourself in acid to commit suicide. Just left the acid for others to deal with.
As such, the first ridiculous instinct her overdriven body decided upon was to expire. While providing the consciousness with most pleasant of hormone-fueled thoughts, of course.
Die, just keel over and die. Croak with a popping sound made by the expiring carton of milk and perish. Just fold on herself like a fleshy oriental origami with the sound of fracturing bones and dammit DIE!Just split herself open by scratching her eyes out, pulling the eyelids so far they snap like a bloody rubber bands, drop to the ground hard enough that her pelvis comes up so high it makes her a new pair of horns so the total comes up to the three, make swift on her imminent promise to rip off her own tail and use it as a Heart's Warming doll weaving material. Die, just let her fucking DIE!
“No more!” The purple mare cried desperately into the ether, only for no one to hear the plead. Except for the fate, of course, its first notion to always trip her up.
Being violently thrown back to the ground where she apparently belonged, by a slip of a hoof of all the things, Twilight landed hard and face first in what her still conscious mind expected to be dirt. However, when she touched down, something unsettlingly wet immediately jerked her awake. The mare touched her face once more, naively expecting to see a thick layer of brown mud. Yet all she saw was ruby afterglow. Acting on pure instinct Twilight involuntarily licked her lips and tasted something she never felt in such blatantly obvious quantities. A tinge of metal, iron-like taste.
"That's- this is- oh my holy! It is... That's blood! That's all blood!" Twilight frantically noticed, immediately bestowed with an urge to return everything she ate for today's breakfast back into nature where it belonged. Though that kind of luxury was never granted to her, as she raised her eyes in a foolish attempt to find the source of all that copious fluid.
If her very being, mind and soul weren't already thoroughly raped senseless, then what she saw certainly would have delivered the rest of needed nightmarish lubricant for the fate to get behind her rather comfortably.
Young. She was so.. so very young. Barely starting to reach adulthood in fact... maybe seventeen, eighteen tops. Probably one of the numerous students of paleohistory attending one of Equestria's many schools that were involved and interwoven within the project. Now violated in the most gruesome way imaginable by somepony sane. Protruding right from the ground was a wooden spike, similar to the ones used in early earthen castle palisades and now serving as camp protection from many of Everfree's monsters. Her little petite body studded on the stake right through her abdomen all the way to the head. Its sharp tip easily knocking out her teeth and sticking outside through the mouth. With her eyes still wide open, it was clear they were wet from openly shedding tears of pain and infirmity against forces much stronger than herself. Her teal mane striped with lines of brilliant apricot now had many additional ribbons of carmine red with her surely once beautiful coat stained with her bodily fluids beyond any proper color recognition.
Twilight wasn't about to continue her crying just like that by chalking up the mare as a yet another victim. Instead, the innocent martyr of the irrational slaughter became the tipping point that the newest Alicorn needed to practically howl with grief. From all that was happening to her. From Deep Dig's "not so final" passing, through mutilated bodies of others she encountered, all the way to this very pinnacle display of ingenious cruelty. At some point in her shout cacophony, she bit her cheeks hard enough till her blood started to pour freely and mix with the foreign one already present on most of her muzzle, neck or hooves.
A beautifully encyclopedic example of ruby sunset was now in the middle of metamorphosing itself into the twilight of change and in a few brisk minutes, it was about to turn into the calmly blue and quiet dusk. Hues of orange and yellow rained down upon wild and untamed forest, elegantly composing themselves together with butchered ponies blood spilled absolutely everywhere, making the whole scenery look even more sinister. In the middle of all this sat a lone princess, covered from hooves to the head with a disgusting mix of living claret and ichor, surrounded by bodies and suffering while screaming on top of her lungs, acting as a lonely beacon of despair in an otherwise calm and quiet camp in the middle of nowhere.
Anyone willing to watch and stomach the poetically gruesome scenery would argue they found themselves on a set of some dramatically vivid horror novel movie adaptation. So that's exactly how it appeared before Thunderstroke right now.
Up until now, he laid the lowest that was possible without moving from the hiding place procured on a whim. With him being too afraid to even dare peek outside of his improvised hideaway between wooden crates that he so untiringly carried earlier this entire day, he lay dormant for the longest time. When the terror-inducing screams started he instantly recognized danger approaching and when they intensified it was a rather obvious sign for him to hide. Even when they all ceased, he wasn't about to taunt the fate and look outside in curiosity. So he waited in fear for his well-being, his surroundings soon to be shrouded by the veil of shadows that would allow him a swift escape into the embrace of the night sky. Yet when the uproar started anew, he was most confused, for it was not even in plural but a singular form. A scream.
In his eyes, it meant that somepony was still out there, still alive or in peril and that was all he needed to, albeit reluctantly, leave his convenient hideout in order to offer help to whoever needed it. Lead ahead by a belief that danger has passed or was dealt with, he crawled out slowly and into the open. As probably all currently living individuals, he too was not prepared for what greeted his eyes.
Now he stood not more than a mere meter away from his hideaway, struck by gutty sacrilege around him. Amongst all the existential dread in his proximity, a scared, frightened princess. "No. A mare." Just a plain pony stripped of all her grandiose titles in immediate need of consoling and reassurance. Thunderstroke tried his darn hardest to avoid looking directly at all the.. Urp.. gore, as he very slowly approached the distressed in question. He's no front line fighter by all means, but when he saw the misery of others "... it's just.. not right, to leave them on their own, left to fend for themselves." Be it friend or, like in this situation, almost a complete stranger whom he had unpleasant previous experiences with. To him, it made no difference. "Everypony needs somepony.. as much as they would like to deny it.".
When he finally reached the distraught mare, some slight doubts started to present themselves in a new light or rather the absence of it, the horrible imagery now tenderly washed by the gentle hues of incoming night. Yet even despite all the blood she was covered with, Thunder pushed past the invading thoughts of aversion and hugged the littlest alicorn the tightest he could without hurting her, horribly staining his own coat in doing so.
Twilight was abruptly summoned back from within her pool of misery, the very first instinct telling her to fight or flight. When she felt pony hooves around her, despite not knowing whom they belonged to, Twilight obediently stayed where she was and relaxed her muscles a bit.
As long as you're still alive, you can make a difference. Even if by positioning your near corpse in the way of incoming adversaries.
Thunderstroke sat there with her the entire time, awkwardly hugging her form from behind in silence while formulating cohesive thoughts and sentences. Trying to, at least, yet something needed to be said. “I'm not.. I am not going to pretend it's okay now. We both know that it's not. But I think... I know that it passed us for now. The danger, that is.” He considered his next words carefully. “Whatever is happening and whether it's over or not, I think we're not in its reach anymore. From this point it will all get better, you'll see,” He waited a few seconds quietly in order for her to calmly process his encouraging words... and to come up with more of those on his side.
“You have friends.. family too, I think. They will help, or at least try to.” "O boy. I suck at this whole cheering-up thing. No wonder .. I ... I'm not so sure myself. I heard about some kind of... shock setting in, possibly. Just maybe not quite reached me yet, dammit." “Remember, as long as you're still alive and kickin' you can make a difference or help, no matter how little.”
Once again, they sat in silence for a few more minutes full of tension. Their sullied coats lost some of their easily recognizable colors as the blood coagulated and darkened, turning into a macabre version of camouflage against the dark of the night. Thunder was fully prepared to stay there until Twilight was once more capable of at least basic functions which, to his surprise, apparently already happened as she broke the silence.
“I... thank you, Thunder,” she said with a meekness worthy of Fluttershy, surprising him a little.
“Heh. At least you didn't choose "Stroke".” He celebrated his nickname quite casually considering the circumstances and easing the atmosphere a little more. “How'd you knew it's me?”
“You have that crass edge in your voice,” she replied equally casual as if the both of them weren't covered head to hoof in bodily fluids and turned to him while being released from his grasp. “It's.. rather specific. Yes,” Twilight heeded his last words as they echoed within her, searching her vast memory for anything that could even remotely help now. “Like listening to a choking blender or a male Rainbow Dash.” Help both of them. Last.. of them. Maybe I could- well, yes. But...
That ridiculous mind of hers brought her thoughts to thinking about her closest friends and the fate that could befall them if she wasn't quick enough. If something happens because she hesitated for a few seconds--. In a blink of an eye and driven by pure impulse, the resolute mare decided. It won't do her any good in the long run, but it was the only way even remotely feasible as of now. Thunderstroke saw magical energy surround the recently elongated horn for a brief second and vanishing almost instantly, like the light of a candle snuffed out by the metal prison of an extinguisher.
"Adfectus Sera", she morbidly thought when the deed was inevitably done and over with. "And its more common name, 'Fool's Prison'. A spell with the function as obscure as its name would fully suggest. Locking the mind under a tight dome of most foul magicks and barring the way for almost all emotions, be them negative or positive. Leaving only pure analytic capabilities, turning an individual basically to an automaton akin to a calculating and unfeeling machine composed of neuron mater instead of circuitry. Of course not without a whole backlash of consequences, immediate or impending. But we can worry about this later. Now, the course of action."
Now, under any normal circumstances, Twilight wouldn't even consider using the self-harmful spell, but that Twilight took her proverbial coat and left the building a few dozen minutes ago. What was left, for a brief time anyway, could be called a perfect clone with the lovable Princess's memories. While the charming mare everypony knew was gone, it wasn't true that the spell removed the ability to differentiate right from wrong out of the affected by it. In fact, they could do so with clarity never thought before. They just weren't morally compelled to follow one or the other.
A logical thought uplifted to the heights of simplicity. Like arithmetic, it robbed the mind of its complex thoughts and forced it to be weighted by simple pluses or minuses. Multiplied or divided. Yet, the outcome was always rather simple. Positive or negative. True or False. Yes.. or No.
A truly terrifying spell, to be sure.
Someone timid and peaceful in their ways could calmly ask you to choose between the silver and gold platters. Only to deliver the severed head of a serial killer on the utensil of your choosing, just so they don't upset your taste in fine silverware. If the action saves more lives than is lost by doing it... it's just some basic mathematics. That's why they asked about the platter as well. Fondness is yes, dislike is no.
With the ability to be moved by all the horrible images around them removed from the picture and gone altogether for the foreseeable future, she thought about her original plan in the new light that stallion's words shed on it. Her friends... she had no time to lose now. She knew that better than anyone, yet... mindlessly throwing herself at the danger with the Elements in hoof not only wouldn't do her any good, it could be in fact counterproductive. Concepts of faith or hope were good and all, but there are no guarantees they would work in a situation like that.
Even with her friends, they couldn't and won't stop this madness on their own. When you have allies, you might as well use them. Their help, at least. Her best bet was to get to the capital city of Canterlot as quickly as possible and, as much as she hated the thought of it, do exactly as the Reaper said and "rally all their forces".
“Princess, what was that about?” Thunder inquired as to what she'd done just now, being in the dark with most of the unicorn sorcery. He might not be the brightest, but he was nothing if not attentive.
"Hmm.. it won't make any difference if I tell him the truth now, but it might become a fright factor. In his eyes, he has enough to worry about, not adding a husk of a princess to all that." “It's just a simple calming spell, just so I don't..hmm.. freak out on you again,” she thought on how to authenticate her quick lie even further with an efficiency of a calculator. “Would you like one too?”
“I'll pass. I'm actually way too calm about this for any of my likings,” he said quickly, not sure which one- thinking about all that has happened or refusing to do so, was in fact worse for his remaining psyche.
“Suit yourself.” Excellent. Now her altered behavior will pass as a light non-invasive spell sprinkled with a healthy dose of authority and professionalism. "Yeah, right. Professionalism after something like that. Anypony who knows me would not buy that one bit. Good thing it's just him then." “And do call me Twilight, forget the Princess bit. I think we're way past introductions by now.”
“ 'Kay. I guess you're right 'bout that. So... so what now?” Stallion asked her, not sure where to follow with any of this really.
Instead of replying to him right away, she analyzed his appearance now that the spell provided her with superb means to do so. She also wasn't and literally couldn't be angry anymore at him for the previous hiccup as they had more pressing matters now. "Let bygones be bygones,", she thought while quickly noting all his visual traits.
His coat.. or what little of it was visible from under the shroud of dirty red, an interesting shade of blue. Something between teal and turquoise with his mane almost the same shade of brown that Deep Dig... had. The only difference was a single stripe of blue going through it, a likens that his tail shared in earnest. "Now, THAT'S teal, for sure. Also, I'm surprised I just noticed that his mane and tail are stylized to look like lightning bolts. Or were.. before I kinda, sorta... soiled them with blood. His morning routine must be the most terrible affair." Lastly, his cutie mark. A black melting heart being struck by two thunderbolts from either side. "Huh, morbid. Somepony's parents were quite unimaginative. Though I won't lie to myself, I'm a little bit curious about what it means. I will have to ask.. later though. Now relay the plan."
“We need to be in Canterlot as of.. right about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Hol' up, we?” he gestured between them, already having a bad feeling about this whole plan of hers.
“Yes, we. I'm not about to leave you in the middle of the most hospitable Everfree and as I don't exactly have the time to escort you to the nearest village, you're going with me,” Twilight accentuated that she won't leave him all alone on his own, which he in fact deeply appreciated.
He nodded while preparing himself for a long flight. “If you say that and think it will be for the best.”
“Now, now. Hold on.” She flexed her hoof in front of the stallion, causing him to cut all preparations short. “We could fly, but I think that my solution will be a lot faster,” She said while starting to build up a huge amount of magic, easily among the biggest ones in her life excluding the whole 'fighting Tirek with godly combined power' case. It's not a time to be modest or careful.
“What are you- o. . . no.. no, no, no. No. You're not just suggesting outrigh' teleporting there. That's like a- that's like.. sixty miles and a shit ton more! There's no way in hell I'm doing any of that!” He said with fear plainly written into both his voice and face as he involuntarily backed a little bit away from her while she was still in the process of building up the required magic. Yet, after a few seconds of tense silence and exchanging vastly diverse stares, Twilight replied coldly.
“I never said it was an optional suggestion.”
“You-... you don't understand, I usually take teleports really ba-” a message that he tried to get across never really managed to do so since his molecules were abruptly displaced within the spacetime.
“Aaaaaand, that would conclude my report for the day, Your Majesty.” The firm yet gentle voice echoed around the expansive throne room of Canterlot Castle. “In short, not as turbulent as it once was.”
“Sigh...” The melodious yet sturdy and caressing voice of Princess Celestia filled the void of the expansive chamber with smilingly humorous notes as she smirked her way into the hearts of those of the more mortal variety. Picking up upon the subtle undertones, she replied. “You've taken to diminishing your predecessor accomplishments too much.”
“I've said 'turbulent', not 'bad',” The armed stallion noted the pure technicality. “So, no real animosity there. Just plain disapproval,” He replied with a smirk of his own creeping the way forward. The aura of comfort he spread over the Solar Guards present in the hall seemed to be working wonders, as they were visibly more relaxed after nearly completing their twelve-hour workday.
Chalking it all up to yet another one of his many eccentricities, the Princess chose to move on. “Pressing ever forward.. do you have anything to add before the shift is transferred, Lumia?” She addressed the barely visible silhouette pressing against the shadow made by one of many pillars. “Also, you are not required to be on guard even when you technically haven't started work yet.”
“With all due respect Your Highness, I'll stick to my work ethic, if you allow. For now,” The mare replied with respect necessary when addressing a royal, all the while getting her point across with crystal clarity. She made almost all lower-ranks on duty slightly uneasy, her mere existence making the impression on the night itself, seemingly bending the emotions of those around her just by being in the near vicinity. Not that she cared for the little feelings of her counterpart's recruits.
Suddenly, when the great doors to the grand hall of the throne room opened at exactly one hour after moon-rise, it was enough for Celestia to recognize the concealed and subdued arrival of her beloved sister.
While entering the chamber of her soon to be opening night court, Princess Luna only needed to send an approving look into the near shadows for the gesture to be recognized. Acknowledging the clear command with a devoted nod, the contour of a pony retreated, merging with the shadows for the night to come once more.
“As such, you can retire for the night Captain.” The Day ruler tried to send her subordinate off on his merry way, fully knowing that he would politely agree with her and then completely disobey when he was beyond her watchful sight. She could swear, he worked 24/7 and just like the celestial bodies never really took a break.
The two Captains were fully deserving of each other. She could swear, each another generation was even better at what they do.. but by outright disobeying her orders. Was it finally the time when her little ponies developed faster than she could follow? One could hope.
“Of course. Rest easy as well my liege.” He jokingly made a show by performing an exaggerated bow with his chin almost touching the ground in reverence. Though he opted to exit the throne room properly through the front door, he was no worse in swiftness than his night counterpart. That, they both had in common. Soldiers on duty since crossing the doorstep of their homes.. both ways.
“Though do remember the task I gave you, please. No pressure, just make it happen.. eventually.” She reminded him before he fully left for the evening.
The smile graced his bright visage once more, though this one was completely different from the previous one. More amused than anything else. “As if I could ever forget. Understood, none the less.” The door clicked with finality as he left both crowned heads behind, the one towering over the night realm finally drawing near the throne.
“Oh, hello Luna! How are you doing this fine evening?” Princess Celestia started the usual greeting exchange, while ignoring the previous presence in the hall as if it didn't happen at all. The other demigod calmly trotted ahead whilst her starry mane joyously danced around as she walked up to her solar counterpart sitting on their -very comfortable, mind you- throne.
“Verily, 'tis.. "ekhm" I mean, yes, it is a very nice evening indeed,” Princess Luna replied, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Truly, she has no idea what thou couldst insinuate.
“Still?” ..giggle.. The older sister tried to hide her amusement and kept failing horribly. “You know, it's slightly charming you're having those little throwbacks every now and then.” She shifted to a more familiar and homely patter of speech for her usual formality of a Day Court. If anyone knew her well, they knew grandiose and imposing weren't her thing outside of the mask.
In turn, Luna's expression took a more sour pout note. “Oh, like you don't have any personality quirks Missus Perfect Pony Picture. I bet you're positively busting in anticipation of when you can retire for the eve, only to go to the royal pantry and eat some cake.*Cough*Fatty. *Cough*”
“Hey! I heard that!” Celestia's face now displayed the anger with a truly Discord worthy fake.. ness. “And I have you know that yes, actually, I would like some cake.”
“Of course you would,” Luna countered with rolling her eyes the slowest she possibly could in her current form. “So you'll be quite happy then If I point out you can do all of that and more. All you have to do is to make haste, remove your way too big posterior from thine spot and make way for the better sibling.” Luna smiled and attempted to ultimately win their sisterly squabble centuries in the making while climbing the ornate steps leading straight to the ornate throne.
"Oh, so we're playing dirty now? Fine and dandy." Celestia smirked during the process of stepping down from her usual place of residence for the last thousand years. “You. The better one? Ha! Let's agree to disagree, dearie. The popularity polls would suggest a different outcome and I'll lose those to you only under one condition. You're free to take the first place, as long as you somehow make pigs fl-” The Sun's Princess retort, which in her hindsight would grant her deliciously sweet imminent victory, was cut short by literal thunder and sparkle of a violet stroboscope light. Temporarily blinding both sisters and the pair of personal guards who till now stood a quiet vigil, only to throw themselves into battle stances, ready for everything despite their collective blindness.
“-dddddddddddddd-” *CRASH* “OW! 'Fookin hell!”
Alright, almost everything.
“Apologies. Are you well enough?” As soon as both guards and princesses heard a familiar voice they relaxed a great deal, though still remained wary of the second one of the pair. “I never used that spell to travel such great distances in pairs before. So while teleporting two ponies instead of one, as usual, I guess something was bound to go a little awry.”
“Wait... what? You KNEW something Is gunna go wrong? And what do you mean 'I never used'- *urp*.. wait, hold that thought, excuse me for a moment...”
All that was registered by the temporally vision-less ponies of the throne room were sounds of frantic running towards one of the expansive walls and emptying one's stomach. “Well, not only I fell like punctured weather balloon now, but from that fall... my ass hurts. Almost like I was eight again and raided the pantry for the cookies. Which is a great deal, by the way... If anypony cares for any of that...”
“Are you positive you're still in one piece?” Twilight said with a mostly flat undertone, barely rising above the background noise of the almost vacant throne hall. Which normally would go unnoticed by most of the normal ponies, yet.. the ever keen and eternally perceptive Celestia was anything but a normal individual. Blessed -or cursed, as some rather vocal would argue- with the abilities putting even most recently developed electric devices to shame, she was able to pinpoint and catch the smallest possible nuances. What she found, was not what she wanted. Not, at, all.
"What is she... is that really m- our Twilight? I know for a fact that she just asked for the sake of it, her tone showing absolutely zero genuine concern." A quick basic magical scan of the Alicorn's immediate surroundings told her that it was indeed Twilight's aura and no one was attempting to impersonate the young mare. "But, there is... a thing, for the lack of a better term. Something... more. Or less...? The lack of that something?" The Ever-kind Princess felt more troubled by the second, not able to identify the strange readings she got. For all the countless years she spent on studying ponies inside and out, both mind and body, she couldn't get a clear reading. For the first time in quite a long time. Why? Why was that?
“Yes, yes right of course.” The queasy male voice bubbled from a comfortable distance. “You carry right on. I'll just be here... coughing up my guts... into this potted plant... here...”
Finally, when the merciful Goddess allowed the shroud unwillingly pulled on their eyes by the sudden light show to be lifted, the Royals were expecting a somewhat unpleasant view considering the given conversation, but not... THAT. Both of the sudden visitors had their coats matted and manes disheveled in the most gruesome of ways, resembling animate corpses more than any live beings. Stained all over with dried blood and even pieces of gore, if not for the voices, the two would appear as rare intruders to the castle security perimeter.
They wouldn't even be in need of disguises if that was true, for if someone was not familiar with the crimson of blood, they would think the red of the stranger's coats a natural design.
"By the merciful creator..." Celestia thought with dread drilling into her cranium like a really bad dream she couldn't just wake up from. Yet, considering her very sister ruled over the dream realm.. traces of fear kept creeping upside her forelegs like a pair of unwelcome millipedes. Countless thoughts like a myriad of tiny legs wormed their way forward step by step, never stopping, never yielding.
With all previous state issues immediately forgotten in favor of the one she cared for, white monarch shifted into worry and quickly came towards disheveled Twilight. “My- what happened? Are you hurt in any way?” She balanced at the precipice of shouting, yet restricted herself to mostly simple questions for now.
Initially, the Sovereign of Night expected a reaction out of herself very similar to her sibling, with instantaneous concern over the first friend she made after her millennium long banishment. The one who had the key role in saving the moon mistress damned soul out of its well of self-depreciation.
Instead, she felt the Sun master scan the area for any traces of foreign magic, indicating that Celestia already felt something out of the ordinary shenanigans. After all, the star blessed alicorn never did anything of the sort without a solid reason or firm suspicion.
Right after collecting her jumbled thoughts and assigning them to her returning vision, worry became inadequate of a word for Luna to describe her own emotional state. Now? She became plain uneasy.
Seeing the current sorry state of the next astral mare for herself was all she really needed in order to understand. Twilight's appearance was at least concerning, that was crystal clear for everypony with a gift of vision present. Yet for Luna that wasn't the biggest unpleasant surprise of the evening, not by a long-shot.
"Her eyes." She noted with a sudden dramatic decline in a state of mind for the worse, though staying the ever strong pillar her loved subjects needed her to be, as little of them were present here at the current time. "Her innocent, beautiful eyes." The purple irises left forever tarnished with the hint of a mistake, never to be the same as they once were. "Those.. nay..."
Luna feared.. no, anticipated in horror the day that sompo- someone, anyone, would dig out her most vile secrets that ought to be buried till the day Sun inevitability expands and consumes this planet along with them. Ones that should stay in the mostly forgotten age of Nightmare and the victims it claimed.
She knew, for all that is holy and sacred, she knew this day would come sooner or later, despite all her efforts to weave the strings of time otherwise. She cursed fate itself for making her reach the time at all in which she found the vile eyes somewhere else than in the evening mirror.
And to find them attached to one of the dearest companions she would come to enjoy on the journey they call life?
A normal, lesser mare would be utterly crushed for life. Not that the frailty of mortals made it any easier for her, for she would be living for a very long time. Along with a very narrow circle. A circle that was about to diminish once again if she did nothing to prevent it.
Heavens above, she will do anything in her power to cheat the future and conscript the time to her advantage, bending the fate itself to her very will.
"I would recognize that defiling gaze no matter how many centuries passed and no matter where I looked. Devoid of any joy of present or worry of the future, washed of all emotion that any living being should express. Uncaring and empty like a daffodil sandwich plate on Fridays." Just like hers was, once upon a nearly forgotten time. A quick magical scan of her own revealed everything she absolutely needed to know. Not wanted.
"Adfectus Sera." The ancient words barely crossed through her thoughts and she already felt the resentment flowing freely. After all, It's not so hard to recognize the spell that one has conceived in anger so many moons ago and feel the disdain for ever bringing it upon the face of beloved Equus. "One such innocent as Twilight shouldn't even know these vile remnants of our past existed in the first place. Let alone speaking of actually casting any of that... self-mutilation."
The spell was, as one of her- Nightmare Moon's lieutenants once described it - 'a little suicide.'
Luna heavily weighted her available options and decided to stand by for now despite all her senses telling her to go in 'for the kill'. If the purple equine and her companion were in fact injured, Celestia would be more than adequate to help them... and if she wasn't struck with harm... well, then they had some precious time yet. As such, it will surely resolve itself through simple conversation. One way or the other, it will end in hugs... or in shackles.
“No. No, I am not,” The newest arrival hastily responded to Celestia's worried inquire, ending the necessarily prolonged inner monologue of the stellar guardian. “Not that any of it is important right now.”
Though in her very design resistant to the hottest flames the universe could produce, Celestia, The Princess of the Day Star itself, recoiled like she was burned by the core of the very fire she has kindled thorough centuries. “Are you kidd- not important? Let me look you over!” she ignored the rather irrational response, insisting on having it her way.
“Listen Celestia, we don't have time for any of this sweet talk!” Princess hesitated for a moment when met by her own name of all things. “When you're dealing with the things none of us understand, you listen!”
It was true that she often requested of the newest Princess to be called just that, simply Celestia. Not Princess, not Your Majesty, no Grace's or other Prima Donna's. Yet, to actually hear it out loud willingly and without any complain or protest from her former student... even the atmosphere itself was tense enough to be her enemy in this, whole matter only enlarged by the tone in which Twilight addressed her. She knew that type of barely hidden emphasis better than anypony else alive. Luna might be almost as old as her, but she didn't spend that time governing their kin for the last millennium. The simple type that said roughly - "I don't require your attention, I require your attention. So, be quiet and listen."
Celestia figured that's exactly what she's going to do when met with such a request form her former student, all the while counting that as being verbally overwhelmed by someone for the third or fourth time in literal millennia of her life.
“You need to assemble THE ENTIRETY, and I mean all of it, of The Royal Guard, EUP or even paramilitary forces. Are we crystal clear on that?” The outright commanding tone carried over with the subtlety of a wrecking ball, the stunned alabaster alicorn too... intimidated, for the lack of a better word.. to negate any of the orders given. Twilight Sparkle, The Unicorn turned Alicorn giving unrestrained commands to Princess Celestia, Sovereign of the Day, Radiant Mistress, Omnia Vi, Lux Omnipotens, Sol Invicta, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
Somepony other than her sister giving her outright orders for the first time in history would be simply exhilarating if not for the gravity of the given situation. She would literally jump in anticipation like a filly in the light of a new experience... if it wasn't her virtuous and innocuous Twilight providing it to her.
“Call upon every ally that we have made abroad and send somepony to retrieve my friends, bring them here with a necessary escort, if need be. Gather every resource or asset available to us as of now. Both Captains of the Guard, Chief of Intelligence, Generals, great mages, magical prodigies, everyone! We need to.. nee... to-” Twilight's head suddenly felt heavy as a thousand bricks stacked upon one another. It was difficult to even think of straight sentences and her eyesight was getting worse by the second.
As expected, that was it. Her signal to step-in had come and Luna started to trot closer to take place along her sister, closer to friend afflicted with the ultimate curse.
“What, why? Twil- Twilight!” Celestia suddenly found herself to be on the verge of a panic attack. A reaction she got very rarely. Something she thought was now beyond her after the last time.. with... Yet, there she was, once again about to be proven wrong and made mockery by the fates. In front of her eyes, one of the most precious former students was covered in blood and starting to stagger, resembling clear symptoms of some serious internal injury or even outright serious blood depletion. Which was never good, ever for an alicorn. "No, no ,no, no! This can't be happening yet again! I need to-"
“Step aside, sister dearest. I need to question her post-haste.” Luna's sudden involvement and slight reversion to the more formal speech interrupted Celestia's train of thought for a brief moment, before making it all the more rapid and hostile towards anyone but Twilight herself.
Hostile would be a recorded understatement for the centuries to come -on account of the one Royal Scribe Ms. Raven being present-, as well as the Solar Guards attending the site slipped some of the juicy tidbits outside to the masses, yet with even more of a dramatic depiction of what they perceived as the wrath of the heavens ponyfied. Now, some may say they were a little biased... but when you're met with the acrimony of a demi-god in all their right? Not omnipresent, not all-knowing, but still powerful enough to vaporize you in seven entirely different and equally painful ways?
You tremble. You shiver. You question? You question.
How could a beloved epitome of righteous equinity turn into a ponyfication of the searing flames consuming both your flesh and soul in a split second... in a split second. Question. To think that such a short sentence, a single word really, was the sole reason behind releasing hundreds of years worth of pent up frustration. With overwhelming power unleashed in a single moment, the heavens themselves trembled before the weight and might of 2 octillion tons of white-hot plasma compressed into a frame of a single equine.
“WHAT?” Sun Demi-God belated her outrage while unleashing a devastating sample of her imposing Royal Canterlot Voice, shattering each and every single one of the deeply cherished stained glass windows which composed the long throne room hall in a split second, making them seem as if they exploded all at once, filling the place with cacophonous thunder that would terrify even the bravest of warriors in an instant.
Adding more of an insult to the bravery of her devoted guardians, she terrified them even further by outright igniting. If spontaneous self-combustion was indeed a thing that truly existed... that, would be it. Her ethereal mane full of color gone in a second and replaced by the blindingly foreign and monochrome flames of anger, coat visibly distorting the air around with the heat it gave off, glimmers of blazing light licking her form all around, making the entirety a whole new level of disturbing.
The guards, be it her own or Luna's, cowered under the unknown tone, which continued in all its terrifying glory. “You want to talk with her when it's crystal clear something's gone horribly wrong and she requires medical attention? What we need, is to get her to the hosp-” she tried to explain in her explosion of genuine and righteously perceived anger before being once again rudely interrupted by the younger sibling.
“She'll be perfectly fine.” Both Luna's eyes and voice spoke the most sincere of statements, singing of nothing but the truth. “I promise you that, but this is of utmost importance,” Luna replied trying to calm her sister's ire, if only for a little bit. “Trust me.” A little bit more was all they had, in fact.
Despite not having any clue whatsoever what game her sister was playing at, surprisingly and against all odds, Celestia chose to give up her king and hope that it was chess they were playing after all. Handing over the proverbial reins and resigning was one of the toughest things to do for her, but whom to trust if not her own sister? Along with a thousand different colliding thoughts, hesitation flashed in Celestia's eyes in the shape of a single photon despite it not carrying any real information. On the verge of tears brought on by all the conflicting emotions she felt, all the fear of what would happen if she resisted even more, she looked upon Luna and recurrently nodded in agreement before she could start questioning and doubting her own decision.
With the decision made, all of the previously undergone changes evaporated like they were never truly there. Not that any of her "little ponies" cared at this point beyond their collective fear.
“Thank you,” Luna expressed her eternal gratitude for the faith put in her, pigeonholing the thought of future repayment. And now..
“Leave.”
The word was a rather simple and straightforward one. As such, anypony with any semblance of preservation was immediately aware that Princess of the Night aimed it at them. Not wishing or risking the ire of the Alicorn, everypony came to their senses and left post haste by any exit available. Be them maid, servant or Guard, all obeyed the order without question and soon enough, only a select few were present within the throne room.
Switching her full attention to the twilight of the certain mare's consciousness, she mentally prepared for the harrowing days to come. “Now, Twilight, what is the most urgent message you possess?” She asked quickly and to the point, not wishing to complicate the deed even more than it needed to be.
“I.. d- da- de- dead,” Twilight managed to mumble under her muzzle quietly, with each passing second losing her motor functions, with them even the ability to speak properly. “A..all d-dead.”
“Dead? Who's dead? Is that their blood then?” Luna asked as prudently as her voice allowed her without shouting, knowing well she had little time left to do so. "Wait.. I remember now. Today is the day she's supposed to supervise on that archaeological excavation. The one that- I.. told her about..." “Twilight, focus!” The Night Princess futilely tried to regain the last pieces of her friend's consciousness in growing panic, before it goes away for quite some time. “It is paramount. Whose blood it this? To whom it belongs?” The very last bits of the question were practically screamed by Luna in Twilight's face, more from hurry and stress than any actual anger.
Little did the Diarch know that she wouldn't get anything from her friend anymore. The reason behind that being poor mare's hearing shared her sights fate a short while ago, rendering her the victim of magical coma which in essence made her mostly unresponsive to all but the most drastic of incentives.
All the while Princesses worried and distressed over her sorry state, Twilight's world was starting to get dimmer and overly dark all of a sudden, shrouding her in the unpleasant veil of darkness before she plummeted to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
All the while a retching sound echoed in the centuries-old hall of the Diarchy once more.
It understood her inter struggle and... frighteningly, she somewhat had a clear understanding of it as well.
Pain spoke to her in a way none other emotion could even attempt to imitate.
Her world became pain and nothing else for that stretch of time. Was it a second, an hour, even a full day? None of that mattered as her head wished to split in half any time now, threatening its owner with suffering for another eternity to come. She knew the purely theoretical price for using that spell, but... for all that is holy and sacred, she never thought that kind of migraine and jumble of thoughts was even possible. With eyes still closed from a blinding headache she tried to sit from her laying position.
“Twilight.. don't,” she heard a familiar voice of Princess Luna echoing gently, albeit still carried with a commanding overtone. “Here, let me help you with that,” Twilight felt a shroud of magic spell envelop her cranium in its mercy and soothing the pain away while a large fluffy pillow lightly slipped its feathery softness behind her back, immediately allowing her to sit without enduring some truly titan worthy effort.
She never even got a chance to think about the situation she was in, almost instantly feeling a backlash of her reckless spell striking her with its full consequential force. It all started with a little sob, after which Luna already knew what was about to follow, preparing herself for the coming talk. Which was, in hindsight, apparently a long time coming.
“Let it out Twilight, just let the heartache flow out entirely,” she said and came closer only to envelop the purple mare in a sorrowful hug. “It's the only thing that will even remotely help you right now.”
Twilight knew the consequences of her actions, of course. Yet even despite that, she couldn't stop herself from developing many negative emotions that threatened to wrap her in the ever-greater shroud of depressing thoughts. A simple sob slowly developed into a cry which turned into a full-fledged lament with tears streaming freely, staining Luna's pristine coat and flowing mane completely wet.
Both of them stayed a strong while in this position, Luna allowing Twilight to get drained of the very last tears available to her body. With the older Alicorn attached to the younger one in a crushing hug of overwhelmingly appropriate understanding, it was almost poetic justice considering their mutual history. The savior of the Night needed some proper saving herself this time.
It simply didn't matter to the pair how long they stayed like this, just that at some point forward they would get better, at last. After Twilight physically couldn't cry anymore even if she wanted to, her emotions were in relative check once again. As such, she asked a simple question with a hesitance worthy of the meek Fluttershy of years past.
“Wh- where's Prin... Celestia?” ... ...
"She just had to ask that one. Curse her benevolent spirit."
“Do not worry over it.” The reassurance sounded weakly over the room, ominously resounding with a hint of personal failure. “She would be here in a heartbeat to support you... IF, I didn't specifically ask her to stay put in her chambers and keep herself far away for now. I also asked my guards to steer away anypony who might come.”
Luna did.. THAT?What was she.. why..? Why would she... Unless.. Well, no way like asking outright.
“Why'd you-”
“Why did you used that Goddess forsaken spell Twilight?”
That. This one plain question was enough to completely terrify the young mare out of her wits into the pits of panic like no other single sentence could. That simple abrupt change of subject threw her into the spiral of thoughts from which there was no escape, yet she would do anything in order to avoid the subject as long as she could. What was even worse than that, The Night Sovereign's tone was of the accusing kind, one that she never heard out of the mare in her life.. and now that she did.. it terrified her.
Enveloping and encompassing all that dared defy it, like a rime choking plants on a chilly midnight evening. It wouldn't kill them... it wasn't making them all comfortable like either.
Gaze only mildly accusing, yet.. full of unrestrained understanding sorrow. -I understand you, but I'm outright disappointed in you-, the words said.
Luna knew. Luna knew darn well what had happened, to some extent... and wouldn't release that knowledge out of her hooves. No matter what.
Somehow... somehow It was hurting more than Celestia being in the night princess place.
Celestia would always forgive. Luna would similarly forgive... but never forget. For any of them, never was a rather long time.
“Ho.. how did you find... How?” Twilight asked her in makeshift response, trying to salvage the shattered hopes of avoiding this talk as long as she could. Already predicting the simplistic answer well before it struck with the weight of a thousand bricks.
“I conducted a magical scan out of pure worry for you and when I found the things not to my liking, I acted. I'm not stupid Twilight,” the response came, confirming Twilight's suspicions to the point. Sometimes the Princesses were pragmatic to a fault. Shame they decided to do so now out of all times.
The unusual period of silence echoed around the overly decorated chamber, making the incoming confession she had to make even more foreboding. More so, it was more devastating when it turned out they were in Luna's private bedroom. It was like inviting yourself into someone's home and destroying their tea set, just because you felt like it.
“I'm the one that invented the damn thing in the first place, so I would recognize it everywhere no matter the situation,” The ancient Alicorn said flatly, overtaking the conversation completely and holding it hard by the proverbial reigns.
Okay, that was not in Twilight's predictions for the day. When the guilt of the pair reigned fully, none of them dared to break the silence. both of them feeling like they just committed a capital crime.
Then again, Luna was the older one. The one that should be more responsible and set the example to follow.
“It was among my darkest pieces of work ever conceived, made when I was still.. well.. out there.” Twilight knew what the diarch was getting at and wasn't going to inquire more on the matter. All of that was behind them. Period.
“Still, my question remains. Even more than ever so. WHERE did you find it? I will not accept any deception you try to spew my way.” The bile suddenly coagulated Twilight's way into an acidic interrogation unbearable for any living creature for too long. The question seemed like a feeble choice between answer or die. For Luna to subject her to that..
“Ca- Canterlot... Archives.” The words flowed bitterly like a ninety percent cocoa chocolate. Thick and wrong to the core, unless you added salt. Why don't you just eat a spoonful of pure cocoa, you freak.
“Of course, The Archives,” Luna sighed, slowly releasing Twilight from the rather prolonged embrace that was becoming just a tad too tight. “It's always those accursed Archives,” she vocalized her most obvious thoughts in a split second. “I swear, one of those days I will burn them completely to the ground till none is left, as they cause only problems. Damn all the wisdom and good that they could give.”
While any threat to knowledge would normally set the newest Alicorn ablaze in an instant, surprisingly it was the last thing to rile her up for now and when no further questioning followed, Twilight took it upon herself to explain the convoluted reasoning behind the mostly forbidden search of the arcane.
“As to why, I just wanted to- I thought... ughh. I'm useless, okay?” There it was, said and forever out there. It was sure as The Sun burning that somepony like the more edgy part of the stellar duo would remember that little thing literally forever.
Luna thought she misheard at first, for anyone would think that, really. The one that saved her, pulled out of the bring of corruption multiple times, defeated and reformed Discord with some help, figured out the deceptive Queen of Changelings, saved the Crystal Empire from complete destruction, battled Lord Tirek with the power of not one but four Demi-goddesses, rescued the Pillars out of the Limbo like it was a school project due Sunday, all the while becoming an Alicorn like it was not that big of a deal. Experiencing adventures everywhere she went and she had the audacity to say she's apparently... useless?
What?
It would not stand. Never.
As long as she breaths, Twilight "Deus ex machina" Sparkle wouldn't have a reason to call herself anything else than extraordinary.
Yet, firstly she had to figure out the cause of all this self-deprecation that would be there for the weeks to come. Calmly.
“Whatever do you mean by that Twilight?” Night sky itself asked with the practiced tone of a eternal governor, one that she resented the most if somepony asked her about it. Friends do not talk about "weather".
“Without my friends, I mean. When.. when we're together I can overcome everything the world throws my way and I know that for a fact after all that has happened to us. On my own... what do I have? The ideals of friendship are good and all... but if there are no friends to hold onto, those won't exactly work, now would they? I'm not a valiant fighter like you, or an overly skilled diplomat like Celestia... not even so understanding of other's emotions as Cadance is,” she stopped for a second to recollect her thoughts into a coherent sentence that would get her point across. Hopefully. “After Tirek's rampage and later Chrysalis's abduction happened, I began to think. -"What if I was separated from my friends with no way to reach them and forced to fight truly alone? What then?"- “...And... I knew the answer. I would fail.”
“Twilight-”
“I would fail. Fail myself and everypony else that depended on my success, knowingly or not. The whole world would burn just because I couldn't bring myself to stand up and fight as I should.” At last, Twilight opened her eyes and looked straight into Luna's sad ones with determination for the first time this evening. “That's why. I searched for something to help me overcome the issue, the hole in the equation, to give me the edge I need... and found "The Goddess forsaken spell", as you put it. So that, just in case my methods failed me, I wouldn't fail.”
Princess Luna sat on her chair in silence, leaning on her hoof and pondering. "She is rather fixed on her implied inadequacy. I need to rethink all of this. Better say a few reassuring words now, change to the more pressing matters, and resume the issue later. While I would like to say -Your putting the "Goddess forsaken spell" in quotes just proves my point, for you do not see it the same way I do.- I think the former is a better plan. For now, at least." “Twilight... think about what I'm about to say, truly. Your friends are your support, yes. But not by being there, but by simply... well, being, yes?”
“Huh?”
“Look at your issue this way. When you're all as one, they are your very foundation and you work together against a common foe. But when you're alone and without them, you fight FOR them. Twilight, I know, I'm sure, that if you by any chance find yourself truly alone and abandoned you would fight to reconnect with them or so that they have more time to formulate a plan that grants you a chance against an overwhelming enemy. They are your strength despite all circumstances. Whether they are with you at the time or not, no spell, no matter how powerful, will substitute for the strength that bond grants you.”
Well, obviously. But hearing it from someone other than yourself? It made for a-
“I know you more than you think I do Twilight. More than you would like me to know you,” Blue mare allowed herself a little bit of a smile. “Or at least I like to think so. I know that you would do everything in your power to not disappoint us, or especially, your closest friends. You wouldn't fail anypony as long as you try to make a difference. It's all we could expect of you in the end.”
“I- thank you... Luna.” Twilight smiled back at her a little as well, maybe not completely cleaned of doubts, but at least feeling a little bit better about all of this. In the end, what Luna didn't know was that she cast the spell because her methods had already failed for the first time. The strengths the bonds granted were inadequate and no matter how vile, the spell had actually helped, in the end.
“Think none of this. We're always here when and if you need us,” Midnight smile slowly excused itself from the muzzle once again replaced by a sad look of pity. “Now, I'm sorry to say this, but with that first unpleasant part behind us... we must move to even more unpleasant issues.”
Twilight knew they were going to discuss this matter sooner or later. "Later would be preferable, if you ask me."
“What happened back there?” Luna asked quietly, eyes suddenly full of worry like none other had ever seen. Well... one had seen them previously. She wouldn't tell anypony though. “Did you had anything to do with this?” she asked with seriousness in her voice, albeit with a hint of fear of what she would inevitably hear. Condoning your first friend in a thousand years to a damnation just after reassuring her you weren't a threat was not a preferable option by any means.
"Wait, what? Me? They think that I... might to..." “That's ridic-” *CLANK* Twilight was prepared to defend herself immediately and attempted to throw her hooves in the air as she often did in moments of frustration. The only thing she achieved was slight pain and sudden entanglement of her upper appendages. "What the-" For the first time since she awoke her eyes were used to look at anything different than Night Princess and what she saw strapped around her forehooves was not making her happy in the least.
"Are those.. chains?" Indeed, they were. Heavy and bulky tungsten chains, thick like a ship hawser and inscribed in a myriad of intricate runes so tiny one could think the metal had ants all over it. Yet, any self-respecting mage would instantly recognize the sheer power behind the minuscule inscriptions, each holding enough magic to power a complicate multi-layer matrix array. Also, just in the corner of her vision above her forehead, she saw a piece of something attached to her horn. "Why am I wearing-"
“Magic nullifier? Safety precautions.” Other Princess fidgeted in her place and looked as uncomfortable as somepony can possibly get. “Please, try to understand our actions Twilight. After the way you appeared in the throne room... we couldn't- I couldn't let you be without some kind of a safeguard. If you absolutely want to be mad at somepony..” The Princess let out a sigh of resignation. “..let it be me. Celestia was rather opposed to any of this, while I was the one to insist on restraining you.”
“Bu- But why? Why did you-” Twilight couldn't understand this. She did nothing wrong. She's innocent of anything they think she might have done! And Celestia knew Luna did it! Didn't like it, no, but allowed it!
“I know this is clearly a breach of trust you've put in me as a friend and a heavy strain on our relations for some time to come, but as much of an ally I can be, I am also a ruler who must protect all those under her care. Sadly, even if it was Celestia in your place, the chains still would be necessary. At least till she gave some explanation.” Luna clearly expressed what she was asking of the younger pony, both as a friend and a fellow ruler... she just hoped it would all be forgiven.. someday.
With a wish to have all this behind them as quickly as possible, Luna continued with a pleading look. “I'm only asking you for an explanation Twilight. Nothing more, nothing less. If I deem it truthful, I promise you upon my honor as a Combatant of Nightmares, the title I hold most dear... they will be removed within the hour,” Luna appeared to be conflicted on what she should say next, either to not influence Twilight's answer or in fear of what she will hear back. “I will ask you questions and please, leave absolutely nothing out, even if it may hurt.”
"Please Twilight, prove me wrong for all that is holy and sacred. Show me that you did not start the spiral that I have gone so long ago." The anticipation was eating the mare alive bit by bit, just as the light of dawn ate the night each morning, making her realize one thing in particular. "I've never wanted to be wrong so badly in all my one and a half thousand years of life. Let me be wrong. I beg of you all who shall listen."
Unwise of Luna's internal struggle, Twilight only nodded reluctantly, feeling the grave atmosphere of the situation and mentally prepared for the judgment to come as the judge started her interrogation in a true "Noire-Esque" fashion save for the cliche faded background to go with a trench coat.
“Now, the current hour stands at 2:43 AM on Tuesday morning. You were out of it for approximately six hours. Yesterday you were to be supervising the newly founded Everfree Archaeological Site as per my request and direct invite, only to appear in our throne room without any notice and covered hoof to head in blood, not yours I might add, with stallion known as Thunderstroke in tow.” Luna recited the important info out of memory. With it being nearly perfect you might as well make good use of it. "Such name.. a particularly unfortunate fellow."
She considered how to phrase her next sentence without sounding accusing, but when none presented itself as such, she settled for the most direct route. “Now, we had interrogated Thunderstroke while you were lying unconscious and what we heard is... horrendous, to say the least. I'll be honest with you Twilight, I'm breaking all the proper protocols by doing this, but I'm fairly confident in my evaluating skills. As such, I have only two simple questions for you. First, are you responsible for anyone's death? Unintentionally or.. directly.”
“I... no. No, I'm not,” Young alicorn responded truthfully to her mostly clear conscience, albeit frightened by Luna's forwardness while the elder alicorn observed Twilight's expression carefully, akin to a hawk watching the vulnerable prey. "Aren't I though? Truly?" Wasn't she responsible for that one pony perishing before her eyes while skewered to a tree? Wasn't she responsible for not stopping Deep Dig in time, which led to literal Death personification being released? No.. all excuses. That pony's fate had been already decided long before she got to him and if she wasn't present somepony else would venture into the cavern in her stead. Then.. they would have died just because they happened to be in her place, but weren't her specifically.
“Good. Secondly, why where you both covered in blood?”
The only thing that particular question managed to do was to remind the violated mare of what she had unfortunately been through. “I- I was.. just tripped, is all. Into- that mare was.. she was- and all the blood... was...”
As always, It had all started with a single sniff, only to spiral down into the hair-pulling trembling mess of a person chained to the spare bed in the dimly lit royal chambers. None of it mattered, none. How could it? All of those were- she did nothing to prevent any of this, she thought while hyperventilating even more. What kind of Princess lets something like that happen and mar the face of this planet? What kind of pony does that? Was she a pony after all of this still, could she call-
Luna threw herself onto Twilight with an embrace, feeling that mare needed this more than anything. But this time, Luna herself opted to want it as well. Twilight's chains and nullifier were removed in a split instant, so fast that Twilight hasn't even noticed it in her inner sorrow. Luna felt that she already knew the forthcoming answer but hopefully asked nonetheless. “Did anypony...”
“No.. just the two of us. Just...,” Twilight replied in sadness, immediately knowing what the Princess was asking about.
“Goddess above...” Former nightmare thought aloud in disbelief, her eyes quickly darting about while searching for the needed numbers on an expedition within her recent memory. “All of them? You mean that almost six hundred-”
"Six- six hundred?" The newest demi-god repeated within her mind in unbelieving fright while countless images of the perished flashed before her. "There were many, but... this many? Six hundred?" The biggest death toll in the most recent centuries put squarely on her shoulders. Were there over half a thousand dead just because she couldn't- "No, pointing blame gets no one nowhere. I.. won't turn back time... although..."
Fortunately or not, at this point Luna recognized some of the inner intricacies of Twilight's mind working, sensing the mare's thoughts zigzagging into a bottomless spiral of terrible ideas fueled by the mix of doubt and blame. Not a second later the violet mare was struck with a sleeping spell only one currently living individual could conjure.
With Twilight collapsing safely in her embrace Luna began weaving an intricate array of a spell only a few select knew.
All of them long gone.. except for her.
Violently thrown into in midst of other's memories was never pleasant.. sadly, necessary. Fortunately, the spell allowed her to learn the context of a memory without actually viewing it in person, just as she could find nightmares in her Dreamscape and vanquish them without being subjected to them herself if she chose to do so.
Memory after memory Luna traveled, with her physical visage becoming more troubled by the second. Learning that a lot of beings perished was one thing. Knowing exactly how they did so... but that's why she was here in the first place. One after another the offending images altered to a mostly vague blur or vanished altogether, while the more important ones who would deliverer context stayed where they should.
Just like remembering someone with being unable to fully describe their more prominent features. It's a shame that the spell worked only a few hours back, not even full half-day.
Luna knew, was sure of it in fact, that If the other mare ever learns of it... of what she just has done... Twilight would never forgive her.
Yet... that was what the most of Luna's life came to, in the end. Do... or die.
And that was the price she would gladly pay in the future if it only meant sparing Twilight mental scarring of this untold magnitude. Yet what is done... is done forever. With a duo of spells, much simpler this time, Luna sent a mental message to be delivered with one and roused her companion with the other, Twilight awakening with no memory of what happened except blinking for a split second.
“Oh, well I... I'm truly sorry you had to go through that, Twilight.” Luna continued, muddying the border between her spell and her companion's consciousness even more. "You shouldn't. No one should. The recent times are vastly different from the centuries past, gone the barbaric and violent ways of old." While Luna never wanted to admit this to anypony, it was Celestia that convinced her to embrace the rather uncomfortable truth. "Most of the wars and suffering were conducted for one, sole and exact reason. So the generations of the future won't have to. Especially someone like you, Twilight. You and your friends are just... too pure for all of this." She might have been considered the warrior princess over the centuries, yet... none of that would have mattered if Celestia wasn't there to reassure her they were doing the right thing. Without that... Nightmare Moon could have set her eyes on a different target altogether.
“We are- I am... sorry. I am sorry.” After all of those thoughts... and it was all she could have voiced. It sickened her to the core. I'm sorry? What message did that carry over beside.. pity? It was like telling your own foal that the Dream Islands weren't actually real. You knew that, and you weren't particularly sad about it.
Wisdom comes with age, they say. "Lies. Will idiot become a sage with time? No. Just as somepony sociably handicapped won't integrate with others fully no matter what they do."
“Yeah.. me too.”
With all those internal monologues for naught as always.. and that issue taken care of, they could.. move on. Always, always Luna would be the one to instigate that. The fact that you won't ever get there, doesn't mean you should stop trying to reach your target.
“Well, I don't sense any maliciousness in you. Either by my own intuition or by magic means. But please..,” Tears started to appear in Luna's own eyes for the first time this evening and for the sixth time this millennium, which was a doubtful accomplishment in itself. “...Do not make me do this ever again.” The softest voice Twilight heard out of the Lunar Princess enfolded her into an origami of emotions.
-The Warrior Princess. The Mistress of a Night Realm. Mother of Darkness. Creator of Shadows.- To be honest, all of those titles flew right out of the window as soon as moisture appeared in the eyes of a darker Alicorn for any other reason than pain.
The night-mare was clearly.. disturbed on some psychological level, if for entirely different reasons than the newest.. member, of a family was. Yet, how could you refuse when please was involved?
“I won't. I promise,” Twilight spoke without a second thought. She won't. She'd rather forsake herself then betray the trust that the diarch pinned on her as of this moment. It was rather evident Luna had troubles with fully trusting anyone in this time and age, so any displays of it should be cherished.
“Good.” A rather simple confirmation came. “That's.. cool and good,” Luna repeated hesitantly, the erratic train of thoughts leaking to the waking world.
Twilight was a particularly bright and clever pony despite any temporary circumstances, so even from that little glimpse into her elder's emotions made available by different phrasing, she suspected something more was afoot. And played on her suspicions immediately.
“There is.. there's something else. That you want, isn't there?”
“I... yes, yes there is.” Luna paused to recollect her thoughts, mentally preparing sentences fit for every possible reaction. So much for going in gently and playing by her own rules. “You need to go. To Celestia and explain yourself.” After a split second of consideration, the decision was made. “All of it and none less. She needs, deserves, to know.”
Twilight's heart stopped at this very moment, doing so very often recently. No, she couldn't.. couldn't, period. She never wanted to fail her former mentor, even now after all these years. And in the case she would be forced to reveal the whole truth, she wouldn't just outright fail her. Celestia would be disappointed. Devastated, even. Twilight couldn't let that happen. Not now, not ever.
“Luna, I- I-- I..” Twilight stuttered, freighted by thoughts of her former teacher learning the truth.
“Can't?” Luna asked quickly. “Or won't?” She started as if reading her thoughts. “Twilight, I believe you are not fully comprehending your situation.” the smaller sister stopped for a brief moment to find an appropriate response from her ever longer mental list. “Setting aside that Celestia has a right to know, do you honestly think she will not simply ask? Worse yet, figure it out herself?”
She let Twilight think about it for a second and let it sink in properly. “I know my sister all too well. Twilight... she would interrogate you without you ever noticing her doing so. She would have found out not only about your usage of that spell, but also that you avoided telling her. So by extension, not trusting her enough to tell her the truth.” Twilight trembled and spiraled into well engraved fears. "And surely finding more appropriate punishment."
“No, Twilight. She would simply keep quiet, never even telling you.”
The youngest princess looked at Luna with an obviously questioning look. She.. wouldn't? How would she-
“Know that?” The smug tone carried over the answer rather well. “My sister is not the only pony I study closely.” She smiled. “A lot of experience in reading ponies helps too.”
Only one question threw itself forward for fresh Alicorn. “Why?”
“That is quite simple, Twilight. She would never want to see you hurt, be it physically or mentally. And hurt would be something you'd feel if she ever decided to confront you about it. She would know that telling you won't make her feel better, quite opposite really. The reveal would only succeed in making you miserable as well. She would keep that knowledge to herself, consciously choosing to be hurt for the two of you. It's just the kind of pony she is.”
Once again Luna gave Twilight a minute to process all information given in quiet and solace of her own mind. Yet, before she could do so in full-on research mode, there were more inquiries to come.
“You telling her of it,” Luna presented the near hypothetical situation. “Will it hurt? Yes and both of you, but to a lesser extent than only one bearing that knowledge. After that.. I think you'll agree with me, be it friends or family, time heals wounds. Trust me, of all beings... I would know.” Luna's eyes meet Twilight's, both immediately knew what the Diarch spoke of and understood what must be done, even if it was one of the most painful things Twilight would have to endure to date.
“Okay,” Twilight sighed with resignation. She knew when to throw in the towel. “I'll do it.” She allowed herself a brief assessment of the situation she found herself in and decided to deal with it sooner than later. “Right away even. No amount of planning will prepare me for this.”
“I'm glad you understand to an extent, and.. for all its worth, I am sorry about this.”
For a brief moment before a confession that would be long remembered, the only thing that met her, was silence.
“It's not your fault... It's all mine. Always will be.”
Twilight stood in front of a simple birch door known to everypony working on the grounds of Canterlot Castle... maybe even everypony in the vast land of Equestria, considering all the pictures in history books and such. In fact, it was such an uncomplicated design one could mistake it for a guest room if not for an ornate sun symbol stuck right in the middle and accompaniment of the Inner Royal Guards standing on each side of it.
With the two guardians now missing and waved away by the mare pacing in the corridor, she had all the space within the empty passage to pace and make herself nervous all over again. As always, the time was her sworn enemy.. but she couldn't put in off any longer.
Hesitant to knock as if the door would bite her, once more she stopped mere inches from striking the wood. Well, maybe not bite, but it will surely hurt like one.
She was so entranced in her self-induced turmoil that she overlooked her loud knocking, didn't hear the shuffling of hooves behind the doors in response. She had no way to escape, not an inkling of a chance to react as she was tightly enveloped, firstly in a yellowish magic embrace and after a sudden sound of a slamming door, in a real carnal hug. She was never given even a second to recollect her thoughts before she was assaulted with words from a worried princess of the day star.
“Twilight! Oh my world above, you have no idea how glad I am to see you!” Princess Celestia said practically in one breath without any kind of pause. What Twilight couldn't see for now, is that immortal millennium monarch was on a verge of full-on cry, incipience's of tears already gathering up under her tired eyes. When the few precious seconds occurred as an eternity in the lives of both would-be ponies, they passed as such for entirely different reasons. A time to think, reflect upon what they wanted to say.
The case was, Twilight knew what she wanted to say. Or rather, she knew what she had to say. She honestly doubted her own ability to tell Princess Celestia all of this on her own accord without being forced, so while the alabaster behemoth stayed quiet Twilight settled for observing her surroundings in an attempt to delay the inevitable.
"Yep. Same place as always, identical to the one I was already thousands of times in". She instantly knew that, proved right not only by her eyesight but also attacked with the feeling of sitting on the round plush carpet. Probably The carpet, the very same one that she sat on so many times as a filly, often reading books right beside Princess Celestia engaged in filling literal towers of paperwork. "I never knew what all the fuss is about. Paperwork is relaxing." Right next to her on the nearest wall of the room, the carpet gave way to an ornate fireplace standing vigil over the room, already burning bright and radiating warmth that felt like a pleasant hug full of motherly love and care. Now that she thought of it, Twilight never saw that place unlit. Not even once. "Such is the charm of living in the place made entirely of stone, I guess." Opposite of the fireplace and at the same time on the left wall from the entrance was her favorite thing about this room, excluding Princess herself. Books. Hundreds of them neatly placed in their rightful places, cataloged and kept with care. "She never let me read all of them when I was little. Picking some of them for me, saying that the rest are "super top secret" and "as far as she knows I'm not a special agent with clearance." Twilight thought to herself with a slight annoyance, only to have it resigned a moment later by superb nostalgia.
"Now that I think about this, it was probably a good idea. Not giving a young filly possibly dangerous books filled with forbidden spells conceived at the dawn of time that ought to be by now long forgotten." Also on the same wall, was a door to the next parts of Celestia's chambers. Living room, bedroom, bathroom. The essentials for everyone, no matter if you are a fairly normal fleshing or the immortal avatar of the eons-old celestial body.
"This is only her office after all." And as all offices should this too had a massive, albeit simple, oak desk. It sat in front of bow windows few meters tall and wide, strategically placed so they would overlook almost all of Canterlot and lands ahead. The desk itself was more of a bureau than a desk, honestly. Multiple cabinets and drawers filled to the brim with documents and copies of them overflowed and invited only one of the pair. Such is the life of a ruler. Legislation.
After a few seconds spent on watching the room itself, Twilight knew she couldn't stall any longer, even if all of that took her a brisk moment and bought her a few seconds of respite at best.
"Better do it quick than twist the knife all slowly and personal", she thought.
“Pri- Celestia, I have a confession to make.”
Celestia knew this was coming, yet.. No. She would politely endure whatever it was that her student was about to trust her with. Such is her duty, listen to whoever wishes to spill their issues to her. “Is it about the whole throne room... thing?”
“Well, in a way,” Not-quite-mauve mare replied truthfully. “Before you ask, I didn't hurt anypony.” She said, learning from her past experiences.
“Oh, I wasn't even going to ask. I KNOW for a fact you wouldn't hurt anyone in any situation other than self-defense,” Celestia smiled slightly more for her own benefit than anyone else, releasing smaller princess from her prolonged hug and staring into the purple eyes as deeply as she could. “So, go ahead. Say what troubles you. You don't have to say anything that you don't feel comfortable talking about as I can ask Luna about all the details. Later.”
"So she already figured out that Luna got all she could out of me.. just as Luna said she would... perfect."
Twilight's eyes lost even more of their youthful vibrancy while remembering Night Princess's foreboding words. "Oh, if I could sit quietly Princess. If I only could. Well, here goes the damnation."
“I used Adfectus Sera on myself.”
Though Celestia never made any sound and none movement graced her body, it was clear that this wasn't what she expected, nor wanted to hear. You just knew by the way her stare drilled into you like a pair of near sub-zero icicles.
“I.. found it in The Archives and wanted to use it as an additional assurance in case something beyond my purview ever happened. Luna already gave me a.. -a piece of her mind, so to speak, on the matter. As I said to her, I now tell this to you. I'm.. sorry.”
Celestia's mind registered all the words directed at her very person, though it was reluctant to do so. After all, that's how it all started. How she had lost her sister all those centuries ago.
That was just enough to reawaken the long-buried emotions, the volatile catalyst to a much more destructive fire burning deep within.
"No! Twilight would never! She's a good pony, pure at heart and... my.. my family! She couldn't! She... surely never meant to- " Unfortunately for Celestia, that kind of thought left her mindscape weakened and vulnerable. This exact time was chosen by someone utterly infuriating and destructive alike to resurface from the fiery pits of her inner psyche. Unfortunately, once started, this reaction was like the wrath of the sun itself. Self-sustaining.
That little, tiny voice, from the darkest depths of your mind, at first coming only to spread doubt and uncertainty, just like a particular creature that Celestia had known for a long time.
"She's a family? So is Luna. She's a good pony? So is Luna. She never meant to? We wanted and still want to believe that so did Luna. But did that ever stopped... Luna.. did it?"
"No.. it did not."
"No, it certainly didn't. Now, your precious Twilight is making exactly the same mistakes your sister dearest. We know how the dance goes. It starts small and quietly like a waltz. Only to blast you like a full-speed train of a foxtrot when you least expect it!"
Celestia wanted to agree with the voice, say to herself that she had seen and understood what it meant. But no. No, this time she will not stand by and watch... and certainly, she won't become a paranoid and panicked mess because of some devilish whispers. She will do as she should have done with Luna all those years ago and not make the same mistake twice.
"No, I'm done listening to you. I won't fall to your taunts and start fearing what my old student might have become. She won't. Because this time, I won't sit idly either. I will help her through this as I believe in her and in her ability to understand that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it!"
"..."
"As you wish. But if or rather when the worst happens and you are forced to strike her down mercilessly, all you will hear from me is -I told you so-. "
"I will cross.. or rather burn.. that bride, IF I come across it. Now... Begone."
And just like that, all entirety of this rather peculiar conversation, which was in fact just a bizarre monologue, has concluded. It played out in her head in the matter of milliseconds and had gone without fireworks, pizazz, or any indicator that it has happened in the first place. The only thing that showed her that it was in fact at all there, was a resolve. To never make the very same mistake twice.
“I forgive you.”
“H..huh?” Twilight stammered, not even sure what she was asking for beyond simplest inquire. While the words echoed between the individual violet neurons at the speed of four hundred sixty kilometers per hour, they were still too slow for her to register the meaning of the words said. As such, the marble alicorn had to repeat herself.
“I forgive you, Twilight,” The most boreal of the manes repeated. “I won't lie. I think I should be furious right about now, but I'm not.”
Twilight looked at her former mentor like she had just casually grown herself another head on the fly. “I'm.. not sure I quite follow you.”
“Twilight... after Luna's return, one of the very few things that I could do was to be there for her. That.. and talking. So, we talked.” Celestia stopped for a quick breath. These things and topics were never easy, even after a thousand plus years.
“It wasn't pleasant, but we talked almost about everything related to the rising of Nightmare Moon. All the why's, how's, and such. Her fears, dreams, doubts, hopes. It often lasted for hours a day, well before and after the court... through the course of a few weeks.”
Twilight listened with bated breath as if receiving a new lesson, which in essence she kind of did. It was not exactly often of Celestia to talk about such personal matters, even with her closest circle. Centuries of the political games and being wary about what was said to whom left her doing the same hurtful things even outside of the governmental structures full of bureaucratic jargon invented only to torment.
Sometimes she thought that incarcerating Tartarus, punishing and torturing Hell... all of it was truly not needed. People did a mighty fine job on their lonesome.
“After all was said and done, Luna wanted only one thing of me. Well.. two to be precise, but falling under the same category. Firstly she begged for my forgiveness, which mind you, she had from the very beginning despite anything she would say. Secondly, she wanted me to promise that I won't allow it to happen a second time, quoting -she would rather kill herself than endure it once again-. I immediately agreed to both, naturally. What Luna doesn't know, is that I slightly modified the latter promise on my own.”
Younger alicorn was already suspecting what Celestia had changed in the binding words and while not believing she would go that far, after what she learned about her in the recent times, she suspected that the ever benevolent equine would trot any lengths to bear such a burden for someone.
“Ah, observant as always I see.” Twilight's elder continued, warranting herself a slight smile with a hint of pride. “Yes. I promised, to myself this time, that I would not allow this to happen to anypony, anyone, as long as they are under my sphere of influence, as long as I have the power or means to do so.”
Celestia slowly turned around to look out of the windows and gaze upon the vast land that many called hers. She never heard bigger baloney in all her many centuries of life. Walking up to them she smiled at the thought of having that much in her hooves none the less.
Standing before the land she called home as her witness she started slowly, albeit with conviction like no other. “I do not ask to change the tides of oceans or reverse passage of time, but... If all of my power, all of the supposed might I posses fails to rescue one single individual from the well of self-destruction, what good does it do to me? To anyone?”
While the rhetorical question hung in the air for a while, Twilight did not dare intrude upon the unusual moment of openness from her beloved mentor, allowing her to bring the speech to a conclusion in peace. And so the elder Alicorn did while she grew tired with looking upon Equestria as a collective whole.
“A such, that is the price of my promise... my very power. From the control over massive chunks of cosmos above, down to the simplest and most basic magics as my own wellspring. Because, to be honest... unlike Luna, I'm too much of a coward to make the promise upon my life...”
Although Twilight's suspicion was quickly proved, she still had trouble with understanding ramifications of such an act. It could hardly be called a commitment or responsibility. This was a burden, outright punishment even. She was well aware of just how ridiculously powerful Princess Celestia was, in all aspects of the word, but even she couldn't keep watch over so many beings constantly. It would drain her both emotionally and physically. And as much as Twilight hated to admit it, Princess wasn't infallible, she just couldn't actually do that. Could she?
“Especially, if it's my friend or family member. Which you BOTH are.” Family. One, simple word, but with such a complex meaning and myriad of reasons behind it. Hearing it raised Twilight's spirit immensely, and though it made things slightly less tense, a lot of complicated affairs still remained out in the ether.
With Celestia knowing Twilight practically her whole life, she noticed the radiating distress immediately and knew just the thing to do.
“You know, I'm not just saying that. Technically being Cadance's sister-in-law and her being my niece, makes us a family in the eyes of law. Just so you know,” she said, slightly wiggling her eyebrows, illuminated by the fireplace burning to her left.
Twilight couldn't help, but chuckle a little under her muzzle. She exactly knew what Celestia was doing, being around her for a long time forces you to catch up to her mannerisms eventually. "But to hell with it, don't let anypony say it's not effective."
After a minute of silence, they both knew sadly it's time to get back to the matter at hoof, not that any of them wanted to do so.
Celestia decided, she will be the captain to steer this vessel of a conversation forward. “I know I told you this already, countless times in fact, but I will repeat myself once again and surely not for the last time,” she said, drawing Twilight's full attention. “I have the utmost confidence in you. You already surpassed all of my previous students, even if I would combine the achievements of some of them.”
Such high praise only resulted in a blush from a purple pony and a few quiet gurgling sounds of embarrassment.
“Not only that, but I'm sure you have even greater future ahead of you. Future that does not include succumbing to the darkness as my sister did for one simple reason.” White ruler of the day stood up, walked right to her former student turned equal, only to lift her head to her elevated eye level with a hoof, as she did often in the years past. “You're not her. You are your own pony, shaped by her own experiences and stimuli. A pony that made different decisions and mistakes through the years. Learned vastly diverse things and never touched or even heard of some others.” With a genuine smile on her face, she concluded. “And this time around, that pony has a myriad of others, who will listen and help in any way they can.”
After a speech like that, all Twilight could do was open her mouth and draw a blank, so she satisfied herself with simplicity. “Th..thank you. And.. I'm truly sorry.”
“You're very welcome Twilight,” Celestia said, a smile never leaving her face for even a split second. “And don't worry, I'm not angry.”
Sweet peace and heavenly quiet commenced, once again ruling over Celestia's office. Twilight was now deeply in thought and all she wanted to say back in return was something nice, it was only right to do so.
Celestia could almost see gears turning in a little princess's head, knowing her process of thought a little too well. "Nay, none of that now."
“How... how are you feeling?” she swiped initiative right from under her younger friend's nose.
"Ehh.. annnd there she goes. Always caring for all, except one. Herself". “Depends on what you're asking about.”
“I was the one to interrogate Thunderstroke, you know,” Celestia replied, surprising Twilight a little. “After the way you two appeared, I wanted to make sure he wasn't responsible for doing something to you. If that were the case, as much as I'm ashamed to admit it, I would likely turn all of this into a... personal vendetta.”
That one took Twilight aback. She always knew Celestia lived through her fair share of hard times, full of wars and various discontent, as she was probably older than the stone her castle was made out of. To some extent, Luna was right about a few things. Albeit progressive and kind, the solar ruler had a more unrefined coarse side. Centuries of living in the rough world that Equis was back then, shaped a pony like none other experiences could. Some well-practiced behaviors simply don't go away, they can change at best... but they're always there, buried deep down somewhere.
“From what he said and from your attitude alone, I'm presuming that's not the case, yes?”
Twilight responded without missing a beat. “No... no. He was very helpful in fact.”
“Oh?” Celestia had to admit, that was not something she expected to hear about a rather simple-minded stallion she met, at all. To think of it, he was rather.. scared of her, if she could word it that way. Even more so than any of her subjects should be in presence of authority, just like he.. knew something more than most of them did, like he was privy to a secret not even Celestia was sure she knew. "Hmm..."
“Yes. He tried to calm and reassure me after.. after all that has happened. He succeeded, somewhat.” "I'm.. not going to spill he contributed a little to my decision to use the spell. Yeah.. better leave that one out. For his sake."
Unwavering Princess could see the distress of her student clearly as a day. “If you don't fell up to..”
“No, I can't avoid the subject indefinitely, pretending that it never happened. Those ponies... died. And nothing will change that.”
Thinking about how to best breach the subject, Celestia settled on the most direct approach. “I cannot imagine how you feel right now. Experiencing death for the first time is, lightly said, not pleasant. To see it claim so many at once...” She thought for a short while. “I'm sorry you had to see that in the first place. My sympathies.”
“Thank...you?” Twilight replied, uncertain how to respond to that.. detached delivery.
“When you live as long as I had, borders between various emotions and reactions start to fade. In my own time I killed more beings daily than died yesterday, so my perception of all that is a bit different from yours. Still, it's a tragedy,” she replied, her look distant, somehow even more so than when she looked out of the window on all of Equestria.
“Uhh...” was all Twilight could come up with and all she got was a sigh from the princess.
“I'm.. sorry, Twilight, ” Celestia said, slowly chewing the inside of her cheek, thinking on how to proceed with such a delicate matter without revealing her own emotional distraught. For all her countless years of practice, she felt pretty socially inept right about now. “Don't misunderstand my words Twilight, inside I grieve deeply and I am outright furious. They were individuals and souls that will never be brought back no matter what I do. They were my subjects, my citizens, my ponies.” She looked at the younger co-ruler with a realization she should come to earlier.
“No, not mine. Ours.” she corrected, witnessing realization caress Twilight's face as well and causing her to nod slightly. “But understand, venting my anger at somepony or something won't help me or anypony at all. The path of vengeance is an empty corridor, one that can only be filled with blood and misery... nothing else. While the only thing that will bring me some peace of mind is lawful justice.” Celestia showed a delightful smug and directed it towards Twilight. “And justice is what we shall get.”
“What do you mean by that?” The Friendship princess could already say with all certainty, she won't like her mentor's answer even a little.
“When you were.. uh, out of it and I was *ekhem* occupied, Luna took the liberty to send a mixed company of Day/Night Guard to the scene. One hundred twenty-five capable ponies, best of the best. In fact, they should be reaching Ponyville by now.”
“NO!” was all Twilight could outright shout with sudden authority while being subjected to the most grievous news. She won't let her worst fears come true yet again. She would rather die than let that happen.
Celestia slowly lifted the knee of her forehoof towards her chest, reminiscent of a foal who stole the cookies from a forbidden jar. “No?” Was all Celestia could meekly ask back, surprised by the outright commanding tone of her former student.
“No!” Twilight repeated with conviction. “Didn't I specifically ask to gather forces? Not to send them away!”
Although it took her longer than she would have wished to, Sun sovereign came up with a proper response. “Listen, Twilight, I think Royal Guard is more than capable to- ” white mare tried to get her point across, only to have her response interrupted.
“No, YOU listen!” Twilight shouted, advancing forward and forcing Celestia to take a step back. “They have no idea what they could go up against! At best, He's probably not there anymore anyway!”
Celesta still stood on three legs, fully prepared to withdraw even more and stunned by her smaller friend outburst. "I.. did she just.. lashed out at me?"
Twilight took a few quick calming breaths while staring at her former teacher before her expression changed rapidly, realization suddenly dawning on her with horror.
“Oh... I mean... oh, I'm sorry- I don't..” Twilight thoughts raced in all directions at once. "What.. the hell am I doing?!"
Celestia took some liberty to take a quick breather herself, hiding her apparent surprise a little. “N..No. You have nothing to apologize for. I'm the one thinking she knows better when in reality I have less knowledge of the situation than you. And there is still a matter of your emotions being scrambled by Adfectus Sera.” She took another deep breath of reassurance. “That's.. that's most probably the case.” They both heard it, she sounded more like she tried to convince herself than state a known fact.
“Maybe. That's.. likely.” Twilight vocalized her thoughts out loud, not calling the other mare on it.
Celestia cleared her throat loudly and forgetting the outburst before asking, calmly this time. “He?”
“Huh?” Twilight replied, suddenly pulled back from her land of heavy thoughts into a conversation.
“You mentioned a "he" of a kind. Somepony involved in all of this?”
“Oh.” Well, that wasn't planned. Okay, maybe planned, but she certainly wasn't going to tell Celestia now, like in right now. Yet, the cat's out of the bag. “I am.. talking about the one responsible for it.”
“He?” Celestia asked once more, just to be sure. “Singular?” That did not bode well, ever. Anyone capable of such a widespread carnage is a national threat at the least. "Could it be...? Another chapter of mine past returning to haunt me and hurt the ones I care for?"
“As far as I'm aware, yes. He.. It.. it's particularly difficult to describe, sorry.” Twilight looked apologetic towards white mare once more before deciding. “I... cannot tell you.”
“Why.. not?” The Princess asked, clearly not expecting this. Her student had numerous secrets she wasn't comfortable sharing with her in the past, but it was always a matter of "I don't want" not "I won't".
“Not right now, at least,” lavender pony explained. “I need to think about it more. How to explain all of this,” she said, performing another round of intense thinking, to the point you could practically see the vaporization from her forehead. “I'll tell everything when everypony I requested gathers, promise. It's not like telling you now would have changed anything, we still need to have the others informed.”
“Alright. I understand.” In fact, she did not. Why was Twilight refusing to tell her? Was she.. hiding something from her? What could be worse than that spell? "I suppose, it matters not. I might not understand, but I trust her. If she's refusing, she clearly must have some kind of an important reason. She promised to tell later and if I'm a master at anything, waiting is certainly one of those things."
The other pony had a myriad of her own doubts as well. Acting like that toward the princess felt like.. betrayal of some sort. "I feel terrible.Yet telling her now would only accomplish sending her into a panic." Celestia wouldn't do anything without consulting with her military advisers anyway, and Twilight would only have to repeat herself to them once the time came. "It's better to wait. And ask if there is any progress on that field."
“And how that goes, anyway?”
Albeit appearing a little deflated, Celestia answered without a pause. “Everything is advancing as you requested. Anypony deemed important enough for the country was called upon to show up on the palace grounds, effective immediately. All active bases and outposts notified and told to be ready for deployment at a minutes notice,” she remembered something rather important, certainly worth addressing. “What about the company sent to the Everfree? Shall I recall them?”
Twilight mulled her inquiry for a while before finally responding, “No. It would be pointless and only take precious time. Have them stay where they are, in Ponyville. In the worst-case scenario, they can protect the town. Just.. send a dozen or so of them to retrieve the bodies, before the wild animals take care of that.” she lifted head from her reverie and looked Celestia in the eyes. “It's the last thing we can do for any of them.”
Diarch nodded, completely agreeing with this course of action and continued her assessment. “In fact, almost everything is ready. We only waited for the Elements and some of the higher hierarchy to arrive. Also, for you to wake. Since you're up and about that leaves us only waiting for them to show up.”
With most of the things going according to plan, Twilight figured going forward as if nothing out of the ordinary happened would be for the best. “So, I guess, we shouldn't waste time and better hurry, met up with the already present and wait for the rest. Now, only one thing left.”
“Hmm? And what that would be?” Celestia couldn't remember anything or anyone more that they needed. Unless her former student held yet more surprises in her proverbial sleeve.
“Teleport Thunderstroke here for me, please.”
"An.. interesting decision." “Him? May I know why?”
“Oh, that I can answer. It's quite simple actually. I need him as a witness, he should confirm anything I say,” Twilight replied casually as if it was the most obvious reason under the sun. While having a slight smile forming under her nose, she continued. “Besides, you would be surprised by how attentive and useful he can be. Could come in handy.”
Celestia replied with another of her famous smirks, not questioning her peer's judgment any further. “If you wish so. One stallion, coming right up.”
With a horn lighting up and a quick fizzle of magic, another resident was added to the carpet club the two were exclusive in for quite some time now. Albeit teleportation of somepony without their knowledge usually ends with massive amounts of confusion.
“Hol' shit, Someponystolemycell, got them right!”
Yep. Confusion alright.
Before he could say anything else, Thunderstroke noticed not one but two Princesses staring right at him, silently asking for an explanation with curiosity.
He looked right back at them. Firstly at Twilight, then at Celestia, with an expression showing that he wanted to ask them something, only to doubt his plan and turn to Twilight once more.
“Did you just tele..” *URP*
“Uh Uh!” Elder Princess acted up immediately, quickly casting a spell which calmed all of his stomach complaints. “Please no,” She said flatly, remembering the last time he was teleported into her vicinity.
Luckily, Thunderstroke only burped up some air in the presence of two crowned heads. He looked to Celestia in appreciation, “Thank you.” Then he turned to Twilight and proceeded to give her the best stink eye ever conceived.
“I feel dumb. Dumb and out of place,” Thunderhoof whispered all nonchalantly.
“Out of place, maybe. Though I wouldn't say you're dumb.” Twilight replied while turning to him.
“I never said I'm dumb. Only that I feel like so. It's not strange tho, considering I'm wearing this. Why am I wearing this, exactly?” Thunderhoof rambled while fidgeting with a black bow-tie provided to him mere moments ago.
Twilight looked at him disapprovingly. “Stop that!” she scolded at his fidgeting lightly. “You're in a meeting with ponies crucial to running your country. You just should look nice. And that's the only thing we had on such short notice. So quit playing with it!”
The blue stallion did not give up that easily. “But it itches! What is this made of, sisal? Do I look like a bloody cat to you?”
“If it was struck by lightning, then yes, a little,” Twilight said more to herself than to anypony in particular.
Not hearing or completely ignoring her remark, the stallion continued. “On top of that, I sat through interrogation conducted by millennia my senior demi-god like a champ and this is what I get?” When he saw Twilight's raised eyebrows, he cracked faster than ice in boiling water. “Okay, I cried instead and she had to calm me down, but that's hardly the point.” He admitted shamelessly before continuing his rant.
“And what am I even doing here? I only met you yesterday and you want me to call you by name.” Hooves raised high in resignation he complied. “Okay, I say, but then I meet that demi-god today, Princess Celestia turns out, well, on interrogation, but still.” he paused, only to take a breath and manage a scowl. “Then, you drag me to a meeting, with not only Her Majesty present but her sister as well, princess and prince of the Crystal Empire, BOTH captains of the Royal Guards, Ministers of the... Ministries, Generals of Army, and... whoever that old piece of wood right there is!”
Twilight lazily looked where he was pointing with his hoof, already noticing her eyelids started their twitching. “That's a Minister of Culture and Environment. Your department.”
“Mine dep-... I work for the government?” Stallion asked with a hint of genuine bewilderment in his voice.
“Thunder, for all that is holy-” Twilight attempted to say something while burring her face in both of her hooves before she was stopped by a hasty arrival of a celestial guard into the spacious room.
“Princess Twilight,” he called for her immediate attention and rescuing her from committing a proper 1st-degree murder. “Your friends have arrived, shall I lead them in?”
“Yes, please. Right away, before I hurt him,” she replied with the last part spoken quietly, mentally thanking the guard for a much-needed rescue while standing up and circling a big square table they were all sat at.
Twilight figured she won't have to wait long and was proven right when a mere moment before the said guard could open the big ornate entrance, it opened itself from the other side, smacking him right in the kisser.
Starlight Glimmer, a well-known student of The Princess of Friendship waltzed through the entrance, not even noticing a helpless guard laying behind the doors. His metal helmet ringed almost like a tuning-fork, while the rest of Princess's friends waltzed in a few steps behind her.
“Twilight! Are you alright? We came as fast as wecouldand blab..blah...”
Rarity heard only a scarce few first words that came out of Starlight's mouth. Through the course of her life, she learned how to tune out most of the unwanted sounds, turning them into mere background noise. It was indeed very helpful when one was concentrating on delicate stitches that required utmost precision. Or... for instance, protecting herself from a barrage of knowledge that could leave the muzzle of a certain unicorn-turned-alicorn pony at any moment in the years past. Now, it served its purpose perfectly, only featuring different pony. Not that she wasn't grateful when any of them explained something that could only bring benefits to their knowledge, she truly was, she just wasn't exactly..*uhhhh*.. most capable to keep up with their speed and dexterity of language, yes? Honestly, dear Starlight can be sometimes as bad as Twilight in that regard.
Hmm... now that I look around, we were never invited into this particular room. Indeed, it surely looked unfamiliar to most of them. It wasn't very spacious per se, most of it occupied by the truly massive table in the middle with a map of Equestria and beyond permanently etched into the sturdy wood. Judging by the map I'm guessing this is some kind of a.. war room? No wonder we were never here, Equestria wasn't at any real war for at least a few centuries. Yet I thought a place like this would be a tad... bigger.
Of course, not counting all the space that ponies around the table took for themselves, (about thirty of them from what she managed to estimate), those aren't exactly pocket-sized either. Another case were the things that got the room smaller visually, like a red carpet leading from the entrance straight to the table or those curtains hanging over the tall windows to the left. Ugh, Burgundy? It only caused the room to look even smaller and darker! Like- like some kind of a.. a closet! They should.. no, no Rarity. Now, it is not the time to fuss about some tacky drapes, especially when your friends might very well need you.
Easy said and easily done, Rarity came back from her internal monologue, only to not be surprised at all that Starlight was still going at it.
“...and then Spike wanted to go, but he couldn't, thus.. there's only six of us. Soooo... what's going on?”
Twilight could only blink. Okay, even I'm impressed. Was she breathing at all during that? Purple mare thought, failing to notice the rapidly approaching blond-maned orange earth pony, more focused on formulating her response to the verbal onslaught.
“Starlight, I admit... you asked so many questions that I already forgot half of them, but I can assure you tha-”
*SMACK*
All conversations between the rest of the friends or government officials stopped, as well as all the important talks in progress at the table, ceased altogether. Every head in the room, be it simple adviser or a General, turned itself towards the direction from which the sound came from, only for their sight to stumble upon a very surprised purple princess. With her mouth hanging open and hoof caressing the rapidly bruising cheek most attributed the cause to be a very angry orange farmpony whose mouth performed a scowl never seen before on the normally peaceful muzzle, her hoof still not lowered after swing position.
“A-Applejack!” The fashionista of the group hollered across the chamber for everypony to hear. “That was absolutely uncalled for!” Rarity shrieked with astonishment still present in her voice.
Applejack just chose to ignore the alabaster mare and proceed without acknowledging her or anypony at all.
“Goshdarnit t' heck, Twilight! What's the one thin' Ah' asked ya not t' do?!”
“I.. Uh..” Twilight's bewilderment allowed her only so much leverage, not that her friend was going to allow her to formulate any kind of a response anyway.
“Exactly! Ye just go an' do it! Not only not keepin' yerself out o' harm's way, but almost jumpin' right into it. While bein' at it, usin' borderline black magic! On yerself o' all ponies! Are ye out o' yer mind?!”
That sort of revelation was rather shocking news to almost all present within the room. Princess using black magic? Princess Twilight using black magic? Princess Twilight using black magic on herself? Nopony dared say anything, but they all vigorously wondered if any of that was true, and if yes, then why and for whatever reason? They were all sending unsure glances and looks between themselves as if they were asking each other if any of them knew about this. Even the Royal Pair of Crystal Empire were participating, quite shocked and uncertain of the accusation, not sure what to feel. Anger, sorrow, astonishment.. or all of the above?
Worse yet, the statement came straight from the Element of Honesty. Which meant either she was misinformed.. or it was true.
When everypony realized that none of them actually had the answers they were collectively looking for, all of them turned to the Royal Sisters, seeking for the much-needed guidance. Everything they received were the stares full of meaning, yet so unreadable as ever. Both sisters were of one mind on this. It was not their place to give all the answers to them. Any that sought the counsel of the princesses understood, they were not going to get the answer from them. Everypony present participated in the silent questioning. All, but one.
Capitan Sunstreak of the Royal Celestial Guard remained stationary through the whole ordeal with not a peep out of him, his nigh orange mane covering his left eye, making it invisible for the Princesses to his left. He acted and looked like everything the captain of the guard should be.
After all, he knew the truth. Of course, he had to. He needed information just like he needed air to breathe, he dealt with it like a merchant dealt in merchandise. If the princesses wouldn't tell him what was going on, he wouldn't send his subordinates into the midst figuratively blindfolded.
He never was one to follow orders completely mindlessly, but as Princess Celestia once said herself in a private meeting between the two, "I don't need a puppet, I have too much of those. I need a Captain and I have none.", the day before his inauguration no less. He knew what Applejack had said was true, omitting the fact it would be hard for Element of Honesty to lie. Princess Twilight used black magic on herself to avoid an imminent mental breakdown after the death of archaeologists in the Everfree. How much dead? That he did not know. Princess was still rather out of it when he received his hurried orders. What killed them? He did not know. Exactly for the same reason, but he was sure it wouldn't remain a closely guarded secret much longer.
Purple mare wondered about the most inappropriate things at the moment. How did Applejack know about that? This could only mean..., Twilight slowly turned around to face the rest of the Princesses, looking for a culprit. “You told them?” The silent venom dripped from her voice, laying foundations for their slowly developing distrust.
The only one looking even remotely guilty was none other than Princess of the Night itself. “I- well- your friends were worried and in a response letter they asked for and- I.. not exactly.. work my best. Under... pressure.” I am choosing this exact moment to cease talking.
Reading her internal decision perfectly, Twilight voiced her own rather icily. “Yes, you better do.” I think we already established that when you swapped places with Celestia that one time. Own pace and all. Still... Twilight elected not to fight on two fronts at the same time and leave it be for now while focusing on her painfully honest friend.
Initial shock bestowed upon Twilight long passed, allowing her to turn to anger and retort in full. “Am I out of my mind? You're the one coming here by my invitation, insulting me the first second you walk in, on residual information at best. Am I out of my mind? Have you looked in the mirror?” The last sentence practically verged upon shouting, encouraging the farmer to respond in kind and start the match between the two.
“Yea! In fact, Ah did! This very mornin'!” Applejack replied all too proudly to not be intentional. “Ya know wha' Ah saw? Me'self!”
Purple mare just smirked in a self-perceived victory. “I think that one went over your head.”
One that orange mare responded to in kind. “Ditto. An' I know one other thin' that went across yers.”
While none dared to stop the exchange, not even the three Princesses, Fluttershy couldn't listen to this anymore. Two of her best friends going at it like a pair of furious dogs, ready to leap at each other any second now and rip themselves to shreds. “Um, girls, stop.Please?”
“Why you cheeky-” Twilight wanted to end that thought appropriately yet reigned herself at the very last moment, hoping they weren't quite there yet. “But, thank you for a reminder! I meant to ask all along, was that really necessary?” She asked in sarcastic anger, gesturing to the rapidly disappearing bruise, none of it quite there by the time she ended her inquiry.
All Applejack could do was snort in dismissal. “Oh, please! Yer an Alicorn, ya could probly' take an arrow throu' that skull o' yers! Not plausible with how thic' it is tho'.”
“Girls. Don't do this. I said stop!” Fluttershy did not care for it. Not. One. More. Second.
All that the country mare retort accomplished, was only making the Alicorn angrier. “That is hardly an excuse! It's the meaning of the hit and thought behind it that counts!”
“Well then, clearly none o' that thought did get throu'. Le'me try again!”
“You. IDIOTS. STOP!”
All of the pair's banter immediately ceased, the outburst demanding attention both theirs and everypony else present, with their and all the other's heads snapping to the yellow pony with clear disbelief of just who was talking to them.
Twilight just had to open her big mouth and ask. “Flutter-”
“NO! Both of you, shut up!” The normally nervous voice cracked in the middle, yet It was all that was needed to stop Twilight before she even started. If any aspiring comedian would be present on-site, he would surely treat this as a starter to a great joke. A timid pony goes in the war room and hushes the government of a country shut..
“You're friends and adults! Start acting like ones!” Fluttershy demanded with a raised voice and met no opposition. “If I hear another foalish, pointless argument about "who started first" or "whose fault was it", Celestia help me, I will snap and smack BOTH of you!” She outright shrieked at the end, giving all a clear choice between two options.
None of them pleasant, but one was void of being hit.
Silence reigned the room, seconds filled with uncomfortably quiet time just kept pilling up. Nopony knew what to say or even if they should say anything. Fortunately, there was always one particularly alabaster pony with an out of these kinds of situations.
*cough* “I.. think that Fluttershy had made her point rather clear. This is hardly the time or the place for any of this.”
Now that everypony had a little while of peace to think in silence about how all of this started and had gone through, they started to see that both Fluttershy and Princess Celestia had been completely right and all this could have been avoided if they just talked calmly in the first place, not squabble about who had failed the other more.
“ ...right... You're absolutely right Princess...” After a moment of thinking, Applejack could see she went kinda overboard with this. “Ya too, Flutters.” A very similar thought process was also undergoing in the depths of Twilight's own mind, unsurprisingly leading her almost to the same answer.
“Yes, we're sorry... I.. I'm sorry Applejack, shouting at you, being angry about the things that you couldn't know about..” Some kind of excuse seemed prudent. “...just, believe me. Saying I'm having a bad day would be an understatement of the century.”
To which the farm pony just shook her head.
“No, ah'm the one that should be sorry, yellin' at you over the situation you had no control about and probably tried to avoid, but I'm just mighty worried sugarcube, is all. "Beating" sense onto ya seemed like a good idea at the time, considering what you did to 'yerself could only bring all kinds of trouble to both you and us. Just much, much later.”
“Noted. Though it was a.. crude method, it worked a little,” Twilight replied attempting to wiggle a small smile to her features.
“Once again, sorry 'bout that. Are you okay, at least?”
Now Twilight's smile got just a little bigger. “You said it yourself, I have a thicker skin. I think I'll manage. Friends?” The outstretched hoof waited for the other just like it, only slightly more orange.
This time it was Applejack's turn to smile. “Since when did we stop?” She met the Alicorn halfway and shook her foreleg prominently, yet generating a much smaller response to her substantial strength than in the years past. I was a far cry from almost identical interaction with the weaker unicorn of old.
They both quietly laughed at the exchange as they started to slowly walk towards their respective places, leaving terribly confused Starlight exactly where she had been standing next to them this whole time through their argument.
“What... what just happened?”
As all the rest of the six started to walk nonchalantly as if nothing happened, not wanting to prolong this any further. Rainbow Dash who was near absent through the whole ordeal, electing not to get involved as soon as Applejack started the whole thing, now walked up to the Starlight only to start whispering into her ear. “I ask myself that half of my life. One day I know exactly why we're best friends, then on the same day only a minute later, I have no idea why I even like them. Let me tell you one other thing that I know for sure since I was a kid, though. Angry Fluttershy is fucking terrifying. ”
Leaving the poor mare with that wisdom to dwell upon, Rainbow walked right past her unsure sight, straight to the place marked as hers. Right beside her Friends/IDon'tKnowThesePoniesMrOfficer, right next to the Princesses.
Rarity quietly considered what could possibly Rainbow Dash say to Starlight to spook the poor girl so much, while Pinkie Pie was more focused on repeatedly poking the stunned guard-stallion, still laying on the floor.
“Pinkamina Diane Pie! Stop bothering that unfortunate pony, right this instant!” said Rarity as soon as she noticed what her companion was doing.
“Awww, but, I'm only checking if he's okay...” replied the pink pony, attempting to explain her peculiar behavior.
*gurgleemh...*
“Yup, he's fine.”
“Ugh... just.. take a seat darling, please.”
Simple instructions. She could do that. “Okie lokie, Rarity!” Pinkie said while bouncing towards the seat provided to her, with the finesse of a mountain goat.
“She'll be the death of me, I swear...”
When Princess Celestia made sure that the last ponies to arrive took their respective places, they were almost ready to begin. Only one quick thing to be taken care of as her horn flashed briefly. "Vocavit spell, three.. two.. one..."
“You called, Your Highness?” asked a pair of royal guards, who just entered through the side entrance, opposite in relation to the windows. The polished golden armor complemented their coats resplendently, one a lovely shade of brown and the other a silvery shine, respectively.
"Punctual as always." “Yes. Please, be so kind and help Private Stale here get to the infirmary and get him checked for any signs of concussion.”
“No, I don't want to go to the circus...”
“More signs, in any case.”
They nodded and saluted briefly, their orders clear. “At once, your Majesty,” she heard them reply and seen quickly trotting in, grabbing the injured stallion at his forelegs.
“Come buddy, they'll get you patched right up.”
“But I don't like brussels sprouts, mum. They taste like cabbage. I hate Cabbage. ”
“Me too pal'. Me too.” One of the guards tried to comfort the wounded in tow while leaving the room.
All Celestia did was to slowly glance at Starlight Glimmer as she stared back at her with a sheepishly nervous smile.
“Eeeheeheh... sssoooo better start already, yes? Enough time wasted after all, heh?”
“I would believe we should, yes, though it is not my call. I'm not the one who summoned this committee here, after all.”
Murmurs started to raise among the gathered, not quite expecting this sort of development. She didn't? Then who was to lead this meeting forward? Princess Luna, perhaps? The recall orders that they all received had come with her seal after all. They did not have to wait long, having their doubts quenched by the princess immediately, “All of this is arranged on the request made by Princess Twilight.”
The newest Triarch requested the whole ordeal? So could the topic of the meeting be the dark magics that the princess used, apparently? Have they backfired horribly or did not what she wanted them to do and they were summoned to solve this conundrum?
While they all wondered, immersed in their little worlds of thought, Twilight had a verbal fight with none other than herself. Should she outright tell them or maybe ease them into this a little, step by step? She figured they will be shocked, either way, there is no easy way to go about this, not exactly. Remembering her own words helped to come up with a decision a little.
"...No point in twisting the knife..."
“Ho, ho. I wouldn't have "thought" it better myself, Twilight!” said a body-less voice, in a very characteristic, almost mocking tone.
Easily said, the lavender princess was not amused he chose this exact moment to show up. “You're late,” she said, a bit annoyed.
“Um, you expected me to be on time? Heellooo, Discord here, which literally means dissonance and disharmony,” Now not-so-body-less voice responded, allowing everypony to easily recognize the brand new addition to the room, in a form of the mismatched creature made with and driven by pure chaos.
Twilight was having none of it. Not today of all days. “Just take your place so we can begin.”
Discord just raised his lion paw in defiance, performing a prime example of art called accentuation. “Nah, I don't think I will, I prefer to flow where I am.” Spinning a few times like a good roast, he finally settled on flipping belly up before continuing. “By the way, why so glum my sparky chum?”
“Discord, over six hundred ponies just died.”
That seemed to stop the lord of disruption in his tracks, putting his great mood on hold while making all his prepared jokes a little inappropriate and making him blink a few times in silence. All the rest of the gathered were taken aback too, a few gasping here and there, previously not aware of any casualties being in the equation. Finally, he stated the painfully obvious.
“Well, that's not funny.”
“No, no it isn't. Can you take your seat now, please?”
“I'd... still prefer to hover, if that's okay with you Twilight,” Discord replied, surprising everypony with his sudden docility. After all, if the chaos spirit himself chooses to be polite, you know it's serious.
Twilight paid him no mind, “Suit yourself,” she responded, ending matter quickly and letting him lazily glide behind them. Not only he has been subdued a little, but all the ponies around were too. With a few necessary exceptions, none of them knew why they were summoned. Now, it was more than transparent.
“Now, forgive me if I sound awfully inconsiderate..” The rather stunned Rarity clung to the other available topic, doing anything to avoid touching the elephant in the room for a while longer. “..but I have never thought I'll hear of such a thing as "not funny" to you.”
While almost invisibly, Discord still cringed. “Firstly, ouch.” Contrary to the popular belief he did possess feelings, as jumbled as they may be. Yet, that's what decades of villainy will get you, he supposed. “Secondly, I always thought of death in any way, shape or form as... incredibly dull. Any truly permanent things are just icky.”
A few cogs instantly turned inside Rarity. "Wait, he wouldn't-"
“All this material. Such a waste...”
The old cogs still worked well, it seemed. "*sigh* He would."
While quite a few slowly inched themselves away from the floating spirit, one stallion did quite the opposite. “Really? Lord of Chaos? What's next, afternoon tea with Queen of the Changelings?” Thunderstroke asked in a mock fake whisper, clearly heard by Twilight and probably all the others present.
The Alicorn and gathered just choose to ignore him.
Okay, you can do this... “Welcome everypony.. and Discord. I feel like introductions won't be necessary, considering all your lines of work somewhat correlate. If somepony is not familiar with each other, I'm sure it will clear up itself while in talks.” Twilight started, stealthily looking at the notes she prepared for herself in the brief time that she had before the meeting.
“Yesterday, Monday - 14 August, approximately 7 to 8:37 PM by the direct invite of Princess Luna I was present on the grounds of Everfree Research Installation Site, a joint venture by the National Museum of Equestria and University of Canterlot, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Environment. A site established a mere two weeks ago and sorely dedicated to uncovering and investigating a chain of ruins that predate all of us present combined, probably princesses and Discord included.” Twilight recited from her keen memory, a crisp informational reminder. She took a few seconds to draw a breath and let the basic knowledge sink into everypony's heads.
Now, that is.. something I would like to see, actually. Discord thought to himself upon hearing this, a little ticked off that something dared to undermine his authority in being an old geezer. That was his job.
Upon deciding they were given enough time, Twilight continued, “Barely few hours before my arrival, a cliff collapse revealed an entrance to the cave, a supposed burial site, which was left unexplored before I along with-” Twilight paused a little, a loss clearly still fresh in her mind. No.. not now, “..with Chief Executive archaeologist of the site, Dr.Deep Dig, proceeded inside.”
Collecting her words, she chose to go about the matter briefly. “A full report on what we found inside will be available to all after the meeting but in short..” She thought about it and decided to go with simple yet effective. “It was.. stunning. Simply the biggest and most ornate cave I, or anypony for that matter, had ever seen. Upon closer initial study of the carvings found there, we formulated a theory that it was built by a joint community of almost all modern intelligent species a few millennia ago.” That seemed to revive several members of the meeting, most of them from the more concurrent to the case pieces of governmental bodies.
One of such decided to be more verbal in his approach. “Forgive me Princess, but I do must ask. Do you truly believe your assessments are with all certainty, correct? By the rouse they caused, I see I'm not the only one with an understanding of how much that would change our knowledge of ages past.” All he met with were a bunch of head nods and grunts of approval from all around the massive table. Twilight recognized him as the Minister of Education, it was only natural he'd be interested in such a subject. She decided to humor him.
“Though it is not the time for such a talk, I can assure you, any risk of a mistake in that regard is almost marginal.” She'll make sure the discovery is accredited to Deep Dig. She can do at least that much for him. It is only right. “I'll make sure you'd be the first to receive the complete files after the meeting.” Not that you will want to read them at all after I'm done talking.
He thanked her with a curt nod and urged to continue, to which she complied. “After reaching the central chamber, which was holding an opulent.. casket of sorts, before I could translate the warning existent on the scene, Deep Dig got a hold of the sarcophagus. Unfortunately, touching the tomb liberated a Monster, leading to the chain of events that resulted in the deaths of six hundred forty individuals. ALL who were present on the site at the time. The only one currently alive of the staff is present here Mr. Thunderstroke, ” Purple pony said, pointing to the stallion sitting right beside her and shifting all the attention briefly to him. “If anyone else miraculously survived, they likely fled the site long ago. Not that I know of anyone actually succeeding.”
After the revelation, the temperature of the room visibly plummeted after hearing that juicy tidbit. While they were made aware of the casualties earlier, hearing it in more official detail somehow carried more weight.
Now that they knew a little bit more about the situation they found themselves in, almost everypony wondered how to start dealing with this issue. Though still quite a few of them were wondering what for they were needed. Sure, the death of so many is a true tragedy, but with what a Minister of Economy can help, for example? Maybe dealing with the grants for the families of the victims, but the rest? Surely it was a task for the guard, not them.
As some thought of the guard, so did the guard part of the gathering thought, but of something completely different. If everyone involved in the dig site had truly perished, that meant the provided protection as well. Namely, other guards. "Twenty-five." It made his blood boil. For a fight, for retribution, or just with plain anger. He just hid it a lot better than others did. All of this resulted in a hushed discussion between the gathered and so the cat was out of the bag. "My cue along with it", thought Captain Sunstreak.
“So...” he started calmly, resulting in most of the attention being shifted to him and talks quieting. “A monster. That our duty is to deal with,” he stated, shifting a little so he could lean on his forehoof. “From a tomb.. gods know how old.. so what? An undead? Necromancer? Lich?” He needed to know what he was fighting, so it would stay dead. After his question, attention shifted once more back to the Princess Sparkle, everypony in anticipation to know as well.
Twilight looked straight into his eyes and he responded in kind, both looking like a predator and prey, their observers not completely sure who was which. She was the first to break the moment by not responding at all, only to stand up from her place and walk a few paces.
While it wasn't unusual for yet another "Big Bad" to resurface, it was true that the previous times were luckily lacking or minimized in terms of casualties, which sadly made this time the first. No lucky streak lasts forever and while still saddened, the oldest beings in the room were no strangers to unnecessarily large losses of life.
“Twilight?” Princess Celestia tried to ask for an explanation from her former student, only to be completely and utterly ignored. "This has never happened before. Nor the stare competition, nor the silence present right now. Something must be truly amiss."
Even Luna, though she knew Twilight significantly shorter than her sister did, could tell something was most awry just by looking.
"Undead.." Twilight wondered. "Oh, if only.. never thought I will say that, but I would be glad if we got something like a Lich to fight, instead." She had to think over the words she was going to use, the right delivery of those was of utmost importance.
“I'm... not sure how to tell you this, exactly.”
Sunstreak shifted his hooves in encouragement. “Simple, just describe it to us. We will take care of the rest,” he supported his words with a gesture of slamming his hooves together.
All Twilight could do, is to throw him a disapproving glare and quickly explain. “It's anything but simple, captain! It's a death incarnate, demise and destruction following wherever he goes. Most probably capable of things beyond our imagination and sane assessments of things possible, transcendence's the very concept of life and death! He is more powerful than us, possibly infinitely more resourceful, more intelligent, more cunning, more perceptive, faster, stronger, and from what I presume he literallyCAN'T be killed!”
If the fear wasn't already a little present in the hearts of ponies surrounding the table, it very well was now, after a depiction as colorful as this. This time without any kind of pause, somepony new, so far sitting quietly, took initiative.
“...Death incarnate... hmm,” said elderly stallion while stroking his long gray beard that almost blended with his ivory coat. Dressed in the red robes with a gold trim, which Twilight recognized for a fact of only one pony bearing them, Snowy Raiment, The Archmagus of Canterlot. “Surely you don't mean it literally, was it some kind of a fallen mage, bound demon or-” he wanted to ask further, only to be immediately interrupted by the young princess delivering one of the most fatal blows of this meeting.
“No. THE Death.”
After that statement, nor Archmage nor anypony else dared to continue. Everypony was pale and looking at her in hopes to hear that she was only joking. This had to be a joke and a bad one at that, just had to. When they received none of that from her, they turned to the rest of the princesses, for if this was a joke, they had to be on it! To their collective fright, the Princesses were just as shocked as them, clearly not expecting to hear this. All of them would last in their little private hells, for various reasons, if not for one pony who was having none of it.
“'Kay, everypony stop,” demanded a raspy voice. “Death. Like in, Death. The Reaper, Grim Pony, Pale Angel, all that.” it inquired more, revealing itself to be of source from none other than a thestral with enchanting red velvet eyes.
“A physical manifestation of corruption and extinction, yes,” Twilight replied without any delay.
“With all due respect, I'm calling bullshit on that, ma'am.” She got answered equally fast.
Those two simple sentences were the trigger for everypony to suddenly engage in a loud, messy banter. Some argued with each other, some tried to speak to the lavender princess in hopes for an explanation and some of them shouting at the bat pony for speaking to her superior in such a manner. After all, it was not a way for a Captain of the Night Guard to behave like that.
He could bear this gathering so far, but even Shining Armor's patience had its limits, which have just been exceeded with somepony, basically a stranger to Twilight, attacking her like that. “Listen here, you paratrophic leech-”
“ENOUGH!” A voice boomed adequately loud to stop all other shouts and freeze everypony in their tracks. Being on the receiving end of Princess Luna's Royal Canterlot Voice tends to do that to you. “I was under the impression that I was to participate in a state meeting, but it seems I took a wrong turn in the hallway, because this is apparently kindergarten!” Luna glanced a little at everypony present, stopping on her devoted captain before continuing.
“Especially you, Captain. I myself have certain doubts and questions, as anypony in this room I presume, but there is no need to be crass about your disbelief. ” Luna scolded the night guard, at which Shining could only chuckle under his breath.
“Why do you smile, Prince Armor,” Luna said shifting her attention to the said stallion. “You are equally at fault, only putting more wood into the bonfire..” Now that she pointed it out to him, he remembered that he can be a wee bit overprotective of his sister. Even despite her current social status being "I could jail all your asses". His smile of victory slowly turned into one of apology, to both the princess and the captain.
“One reason or another, truth is, ponies are still dead and the one responsible is running free. I advise we put an end to this, regardless of whatever that something is.” Luna was right, that, they all knew. Collective murmurs of agreement sounded around, once all were out of their stupor.
“Though one thing, I still don't understand,” stated one of the few generals present. “From what you told us so far Princess, you never fought him, correct?” After a brief nod from Twilight, he continued. “So, not to sound distraught about it or anything, but... why are you alive.. or the other fellow?” Thunderstroke slid under the table just a tad more.
Luckily, that wasn't something she had to think too much about. “Plainly speaking.. according to him, he spared me, allowed to live, only so I could deliver a message. To you all, present in this room.”
The very same general, now recognized by many as a high admiral of the Equestrian Navy, wasn't done his line of questioning just yet. “Message? There is a message? Forgive me, but we're informed of this just now, because...?”
“Because it's nothing more than a nicely woven and colorful way to strike fear in us,” replied Twilight, seeing acknowledgment in the admiral's eyes. “Also, a way to raise his credibility. If I told you about it sooner, but not about him, it wouldn't make a lot of sense now, wouldn't it?
“No. I suppose not. Now, if you could...”
“Certainly,” she mulled a few thoughts around quickly. “It's actually very complicated in its simplicity.” "Very complicated.." “In his eyes and mind, we were destined to be a perfect example for others of how life should be. Peaceful, caring, considerate. But, life failed, we're not how we were meant to be, end of the line. It's time for a reset of the board and a new beginning. Game over, everypony go home.”
For the very first time, Cadance decided to intrude, a rather unexpected notion out of the diplomatically lesser princess. “How so? To all our knowledge, Equestria is the most peaceful place on the planet. No wars, major or minor, crime in decline, health standards rising. Or am I mistaken?” she asked, looking around the room questioningly.
Her statements only opened a new front, on which a few more knowledgeable than her could shine within their five minutes. “No, not at all.” Reported Minister of Health. “According to all the pieces of information and reports available to me, none other period in history was more on the rise in quality of life than ours.”
Minister of Internal Affairs confirmed the words of his predecessor. “Quite, almost everything the same here. There never was a more safe time to live, omitting a few.. *ekhem* hiccups.” Everypony knew what was he talking about, several sour expressions seeing the light of the day. “But those were fortunately quickly resolved by the Element Bearers or their...” He proceeded to look in the Starlight's direction. “Associates.”
Twilight could do nothing more than agree. “Yes, all three of you are right. Or according to him, would be, if it wasn't going much deeper.” Such a shame she will have to dash these convictions too.
It was the turning point of the talks for her, for a one, very simple reason. As much as she felt a sense of displeasure at the fact that the idea itself had been conceived inside her mind, she knew that the situation can be used to push the ponies on the right paths, make them think. Because where ponies think, ponies also do. With the right mindset and guidance, they would do better, be better, just like the Reaper wanted them to be in the first place. And that will blossom and bring benefits later on, assuming they will survive this at all. And all of that domino effect starts with pushing the most important ponies in the country in the right direction of thought, of course with Twilight's favorite form of inspiring ponies - well prepared and passionate speeches.
Only this time with a slight dose and sprinkle of dashing their hopes and dreams.
“As much as I hate to admit it, he is right about one thing. When we met, he buried me under a pile of facts about our society, a lot of which I checked before this meeting and confirmed them. A lot of them. Simply said, our society is cracked. For example, the fact that we are the most peaceful country on the planet, where ponies can feel safe and secure. True, but try setting hoof a few paces outside of it and all that awaits you is either death or slavery, basically zero protection. I know why it is so, we simply don't have enough personnel or resources to do that, so it's justified. It doesn't mean the problem disappears.” she looked in the direction of a few generals, receiving a somber, yet agreeing looks.
“Orphanages,” she continued, now turning her attention to the various ministers responsible for vast arrange of the state matters. “Almost no pony adopts foals above thirteen years old. Excluding a few cases, most of them are forever stuck in the bureaucratic hell of legal loops. Not wanted simply because they're not cute enough, like the younger foals or you "can't" raise them "your way", supposedly too late to do that. Once again, it's just not affordable for the governmental structures to launch the adoption process so late, such as, for example, increased costs of psychiatrists and psychotherapists often needed in such a process. After all, it's a lot more difficult to shape an older mind, already accustomed to certain things.”
When once again she was met with a collection of bleak expressions, Twilight turned to the final recipient group of her speech, The Princesses and both captains.
“Or my final example, crime syndicates. Crime is in a decrease, true. Muggings and pickpockets. Organized crime is thriving, never better, wallowing in its blood filthy riches. Often because they are allowed to. It's just profitable and convenient for the authorities steered by the nobility and wealthy, to keep it that way. Think about all the lives and money saved, that could be irrevocably lost if we had been putting them into fighting the crime. And what if it costs us life or two, look at all the ones we've saved by cooperating. A lot of nobles have outright ties to organized crime, too. That gives them even more influence, not only on the dominion but the law itself. For them, it's all just simple mathematics. Pros and cons. What is to gain and what is to lose. And those who have to be sacrificed on the way to the gain do not matter. That is the world that it came us to live in until the end of our natural lives. I could take another few hours of your time, sorely on the base of saying these knickknacks and statistics, depressing you even further.” She ended the more somber part of her monologue, seeing the Princesses bitterly agree that they aren't independent from the nobles as much as they would have wanted to.
Twilight progressed further, this time addressing all of them, none in particular.
“As much as I HATE, absolutely despise these facts, it's not changing that they are indeed, facts. We are quick to love, true, but equally fast to hate and stand for what we believe is right. Rooted in our ways deep into the metaphorical soil, and just as an olive tree stays healthy thanks to its long root, the very same roots make weeds so difficult to eradicate. Those fundamental principles, truths, that make us, us. That we can't really change, only strive to be better.”
“I am agreeing with The Reaper on all of that, a hundred percent. But there is one, fundamental difference between us, that means the world and makes us two different sides of the barricade. Reaper, he had chosen to write us off. Me, as a Princess of Friendship, as a Pony, I choose to give us a chance. After all, everyone deserves one.” Twilight concluded her meticulously made speech, shifting her stare in the direction of her student while delivering its last passage.
Everypony was staying silent, almost each of them for a different reason. Astonishment, shock, surprise, reverie. Though all of them knew that somepony eventually had to say something. And as the saying goes, the "less knowledgeable ones" are the most vocal.
“Holy fuck, do you have gift of the gab, or what,” said Thunderstroke, not even receiving a scolding from anyone in the room.
“Even though I would use different words, way to go sis. I'm not sure if I want to clap or cry,” echoed Shining Armor, his voice akin to his words, not sure if he wanted to wholeheartedly agree or deny said words with all his might.
"There, they're both brutally made aware of their flaws and not saddened but pushed on the path to fix them." The main Marechiavellian schemer of the hour thought about basically manipulating everypony. "Goddess, I feel awful." Even if it was for a good cause, that still wasn't making it right. "Then why am Idoing it?"
Although Twilight wasn't planning on being quite so dramatic anymore, she still had some things to say and point to get across. “After his "oh, so passionate" talk, Reaper basically proceeded with a declaration of war on all of Equestria and announcing extinction of the ponydom.. or maybe it was all of creation. Things get a little muddy from here.”
As Luna was one of the first to shake off her surprise, she figured she might as well be the first to address the issue further. “Anyone who makes such threats is either completely insane or telling the truth. One is bad, the other is worse. Question is, whichever of them is the truth?”
Celestia wondered that herself, and even if she had high confidence in Twilight's abilities to evaluate the contents of one's soul (or the lack of it), she had to ask, make herself absolutely sure about all of this. “Twilight, are you sure? Is it possible it could be anything else?”
“I'd figured you'd ask, so that's why Thunderstroke is here with us,” Twilight replied, attracting attention to the stallion, which looked very nervous all of the sudden. She knew just the way to go about this. “I know it's not pleasant, but.. can you tell everypony about what you saw? Don't be afraid to add your thoughts, whatever they might be. At this point, anything could be helpful.”
As Thunderstroke found all of the eyes and ears focused on himself, he wondered if agreeing to come here was such a good idea after all. But he figured that, as long as he could help, no matter how little, he would be brave and do so. It is the only thing he can do right now. He owes the deceased much more than this.
“Well, in fact.. I feel bad to disappoint anypony, but the truth is, I can't in any way confirm what Princess Twilight said. About The Reaper himself, I mean.” His words were listened to with great interest by everypony, after all, he could say something to affirm or refute the Princess words, as the only other living witness to date. “I never saw him, or anything else for that matter. I hid as soon as I heard everypony else screaming. I only saw the.. aftermath,” he paused to calm his quickly rising emotions. “He may be either God or just bloody crazy, but I can tell you one thing. Those screams, bodies, the way he... mutilated them. It's not the job of a sane one. Something that even the craziest couldn't do, only ones that were designed to do something like this. It looked like the work of somepony with absolutely no emotions. Work was almost surgical, but not with him as the surgeon.. he was the scalpel. ”
It was not much, everypony knew that, but they also realized one thing. Death could be one of the very few "beings" capable of such acts, possibly having it in its nature. It helped Princess claim, if only by a little.
“I know I am not an expert in any of this..,” started Starlight Glimmer, wanting to add something from herself and help her teacher in any way. “..but, was Twilight ever wrong about any of this? She and her friends defeated most of these evils in recent years, more than any of us ever will. I think they all have the most authority in here. At least, I think so, and believe her,” she said, smiling in her mentor's direction, quietly assuring alicorn that she has her back, also receiving a smile in return.
“Starlight is right,” continued the case Applejack. “As Twilight friend, I say to trust her. An' as an Element of Honesty I say, that what she said, is the truth.” Now it was her turn to nod in Twilight's direction, basically saying - Despite all that happened, I want to help you, my friend.
“Now hold on,” said one of the high ranking military officers. “We've never said that the Princess was lying. Simply that she can be mistaken. Too many times we've seen beings thinking themselves gods. Forces of nature even,” he said receiving a few affirmations form his compatriots.
While everypony was in a state of deep thought, thinking on how to solve this conundrum one way or another, one pony already had an idea. Not that she very much liked it, but what can you do.
“There is.. one way,” called once again a captain of the Night Guard. “But it's, not especially pleasant, per-se,” she said mysteriously, swiveling her head towards Princess Luna in question, who immediately picked up on what she was speaking of, but had to ask anyway.
“Lumia, you're not thinking of...” Luna trailed off, wishing they were thinking of two completely different things, only to be shot down when her captain nodded back to her.
“Precisely. Please, Princess, make it an order, before I change my mind,” Lumia replied, clearly not wanting to do any of what was about to happen. "Lumia Verguis," Luna thought to herself, looking at the bat pony in question. One could not mistake her for anypony else due to her coloring, a great rarity among thestrals. Though her coat of dark indigo was fairly common, it simultaneously complimented and clashed with her cadmium yellow mane. It especially shined when paired with her armor, made in the color of her coat, completed with gold trim all over it. Even the helmet, which was now off on the table, allowing everypony to see the scar going through her milky white right eye, otherwise partially covered by her helmet.
"Lumia Verguis," Luna thought once more. "A pony who clashes in absolutely everything. Starting with her coloring, going through her speech manner, once crass and brutish other time polite and sophisticated. Finally ending on her work ethic, either following rulebook to the letter, or completely ignoring it and coming up with her own, as it suites her." If she wasn't such a good pony, Luna doubted she would even end up in the military. Maybe she is a "little" rough around the edges, but that only helped in her line of work. After all, Night Guard was vastly different from its solar counterpart.
The purpose of The Solar Guard always was more about being universal and multi-functional. Maintaining order in times of disasters, acting as a police force in specific cases, dealing with all that could disrupt public order, basically an all-purpose, big, militaristic entity.
The Night Guard, on the other hoof, was more of a special unit case. Far less numerous and more rigorous in their recruitment, for they dealt with all things considered either too delicate or too dangerous for their equivalents. Needed to catch smuggling ring red-hoofed, you got the Night Guard. Needed to track and destroy a dangerous monster, you got the Night Guard. Dealing with all things requiring gracefulness or sheer brute force, all things arcane and unnatural, mystic and dark. And if you needed anything in the department of the brute force, look no further than Lumia Verguis. "Though she can be graceful and manipulative, if she really needs or wants to."
“Are you positive that this is the way to go about this?” Luna asked her further. “There is no telling what you might see or hear.”
“See?” Inquired Twilight, natural curiosity overpowering her full-on Princess mode.
Dark Princess prepared to begin her simplified explanation. “I can perform a spell, able to vividly show only the select memories of another,” she said. “Specific date, time, to the second,” explanation continued, coming to the point when all Luna could do, is sigh. “Although, it is a double-edged sword. Viewed memories vividly imprint themselves on the observer's mind. No memory mending spell will ever help, they simply cannot be ever forgotten, regardless of what has been seen.”
"It's not so bad," Twilight thought. “I doubt anypony could forget all that anyway, so it's pretty irrelevant.”
“Let me finish,” Luna spoke warningly. “That is the minor concern of the two present.”
This Twilight did not expect. “So, what is the second one?” she asked but already predicted something much worse.
Luna sat quietly for a moment and then spoke. “That is the real problem. Or not. It depends on how you look at and use it. For the second part is a lot like soul bonding.” Luna revealed, seeing Twilight herself and the atmosphere around the table visibly getting even tenser.
“At the time of the connection, observant will feel all that the target has felt at the time of the events. He will know the target's thoughts, worries, desires, emotions,” Luna stated with emphasis on the last one, clearly reminding just what exactly happened with Twilight's emotions at the time of Everfree Slaughter. “But it goes both ways. Target will then feel the watcher. How he perceives the matter on his side and how what he saw and felt affects him. Once more, thoughts, emotions, etc. Also, both participants will not only know all about each other from that period, but they will also understand it as well. It won't only be a lot like you would be there, with the difference of being in another body. It will be like you were that person. Almost perfect, partial harmonic fusion.”
"Oh.. well, that seems like a lot." Twilight wondered. "I don't think I have any other option, though."
“I am the sole user of this spell and so I watch over the participants, making sure they always know all the risks and are both willing.” Princess looked in the direction of her captain. “And since it appears our dear captain has already decided, that leaves only your decision, Twilight,” she looked her fellow Princess dead in the eyes before asking. “Will you do it?”
Lavender mare thought about this, this time definitely coming to the conclusion that this was her only option. She only wondered why did the night guard decide upon it. "It seems her sense of duty and respect, given where she feels it should be given, outweigh her less desirable traits." “Do it,” she said. “Only promise to hold me down, if I freak out or something, okay?” she proclaimed, asking only for this one thing.
Luna could only allow herself a brief smile. “It.. doesn't work like that, but if anything happens, we'll all be here.”
After being reassured by Luna, with all her friends showing their support by kind words of encouragement, Twilight and Lumia were instructed to sit opposite of each other on the floor and mentally prepare themselves. Although, curiously, with the corner of her vision Twilight clearly saw Celestia observing like a hawk, stern expression almost chiseled on her features.
“Princess..?” Lumia asked timidly, nothing alike herself from half an hour ago as if her body was hijacked.
“Yes?” prompted her Twilight, interested in her demeanor further.
Captain looked a bit sad, remorseful even. “For all that it is worth, I am sorry for that earlier. It was.. unnecessary.”
“No problem,” Twilight told her, slightly feeling like she was talking to another pony, although it wasn't unwelcome change. “I guess it is a part of your job. To question and investigate. I cannot be mad at you for that.”
“Thank you, Princess.” Lumia looked a bit better, now that she could consider herself forgiven. “It feels a lot better to not hold a grudge against somepony, looking at what we're about to go through. Together.”
As they settled the matter between them, Princess of the Night loomed above like an omen of a rapidly approaching change. “I don't know how you could be, but I'll ask anyway. Are you both ready?” After receiving two confirming nods, she loaded her spell and allowed herself a little bit of humor. “You may feel a slight sting.”
“With all due respect, Princess. Fuc-” Captain Lumia Verguis never had the time to end her retort properly, on account of being violently thrown seemingly through time and space, though she knew her body never went anywhere, still sitting on that cold marble floor of the palace war room. After what she felt like an eternity spent in the universe's waiting room, a lot of things were shown to her, very rapidly, and although normal pony couldn't even differentiate them, she spent a literal and a metaphoric infinity on each and every one of them. An ornate cave, easily the top five of the most beautiful things she saw in her life and along with it, a sense of wonder and cheer with a hint of overwhelming worry. Things, emotions, that she knew were not hers, but at the same time, somehow felt... right.
Princess Twilight Sparkle never saw anything, but nor she anticipated anything like that. She felt a feeling of contempt, an artistic appreciation even, and she exactly knew what had caused it. The Cave. She had not seen it, but deep down inside, somewhere, she knew. Just like that.
Lumia saw an ancient grave, gold and alluring in its own special way. She saw this exquisite tomb releasing its total opposite in a form of the beast incarnate. She saw a poor stallion, for whom she felt nothing but trust and kinship, literally turned into dust and re-molded in the image of grotesque. The things she felt were nothing short of shock, anger, fear and sadness. But a bit later she also felt a tinge of hope and commitment.
Twilight knew what was coming next, and all that was coming with it. She felt surprise, then loathing and aggressiveness like she never felt before. What was not predicted, but felt by her nonetheless, were slight traits of apprehension and anticipation, that she now shared.
A thestral saw a return journey, filled with hope, only to have it crushed and replaced with terror a moment later. A self-imposed slow walk of a convict, destined to fail sooner or later, slowly accepting its misery. A sense of disconnection with reality. The images of all the mutilated, violated, humiliated beings, alive just minutes ago. A young mare, bestially killed in a gruesome manner, way before her time. A feeling of grief, anguish and despair.
An alicorn endured. A surprise being replaced by shock, aggressiveness replaced by rage, the anticipation by a swift will to burst into action. At last, after a brief moment of disgust, the rage was once again replaced by pure fury, wanting nothing more than to spread righteous violence to whomever deserves.
A pony saw a lone survivor, abandoned and detached from all the madness and carnage around him. She felt a small comfort, that was still pilled under all the negative emotions. An attempt at supporting somepony made. But there was something else beginning to break through, a sense of commitment, of duty and obligation, all bound by a glue made from love. She knew of one decision to be made, and then she felt it. Vigilance, Ecstasy, Admiration, Amazement, Remorse, Contempt, Optimism, Submission. Then all at once, it went quiet.
A pony felt a sense of serenity and acceptance, though still dwarfed by all the ferocity. Then a great spike of awe, quickly replaced by the feelings of Vigilance, Ecstasy, Admiration, Amazement, Remorse, Contempt, Optimism, Submission. And just like that, all at once they went away, leaving her alone in a blind silence.
Both mares opened their eyes and looked at each other, barely a second after the spell was fired upon them. No one dared to say anything, waiting in anticipation till they start first. All of them were right, both of them had so much to say, yet none of it came out.
After a full minute of only exchanging stares, Lumia was the first to speak up.
“As the spell does nothing to change the personality of a pony, despite the fact that I know the answer to my own question, I have to ask,” Said the guard and looked directly at the Twilight's pupils. “What.. the fuck.. was THAT?!”
All ponies in the room were taken aback, as the last words of the Lumia's question were practically shouted, even the Princesses thrown off guard a little.
“I thought she was meant to understand.” Somepony from the crowd whispered, which was keenly caught my Lumia's heightened thestral senses.
“I DO. I'm just not happy about it,” she said, to the surprise of the doubtful.
“So...” Princess Luna started. “I presume the spell worked as intended. Did you find the answer we were looking for, captain?” she asked her trusty soldier, not sure what words will come out of her throat.
Lumia, not wanting to delay, spoke straight from the heart, for she knew what she was about to tell, was true. “It is true,” she said simply. “All of it, is the truth. Not even one thing out of place. If that... thing, isn't a threat to the sanctity of all life, I'll gladly resign as the captain of the Night Guard.”
She leaned forward in a clear attempt to offer a hug to the purple Princess, which the mare in question gladly accepted. They both knew their respective reasons, why the had both needed it. After an experience such as this, none could understand each other feelings on the matter better than them. They knew everything about this one moment, that they practically lived through each other bodies and minds. Regarding many different things, they were still strangers, but at this moment, they were one whole.
As they remained locked in their hug, the rest of the table was coming to terms with the fact presented to them. It was indeed all real, and they had to plan a battle against a literal death. How in the Equestria are they going to do that? Is that even possible? Some of them already conversed about their respective contingency plans, to the best of their ability. The Royal Sisters conversing with each other, while most of the elements were attempting to calm Fluttershy's freak out and Rainbow's bravado, surprisingly, only Pinkie Pie sat quietly in thought.
A sudden realization dawned upon Lumia. “You're aware that.. if he didn't touch that tomb.. then maybe..”
Twilight was none slower to respond. “He didn't know... he couldn't...”
The only one still listening to them was none other than Shining Armor, the well-being of his sister more important to him now, than making impossible plans for what might happen.
“What are you two talking about?” he asked, his loud voice by itself driving more attention of some from the table to their conversation.
Both of the mares broke the hug and looked at him, wondering how to exactly say this. “You see Shining, the thing is..,” Twilight started, allowing Lumia to continue. “..It could have been probably avoided.”
That seemed to attract the attention of the other ponies, breaking them off of their many conversations.
“What do you mean by avoided?” Shining asked more perplexed now than before he vocalized his previous question.
Although Twilight wasn't looking forward to that, she wished to get it out as soon as she could. “Deep Dig was the one to touch the sarcophagus, while I was busy translating the text.” Twilight looked like she was about to be ready to take all the blame for it all. “If I was only a few seconds quicker and warned him, he wouldn't touch it and probably all of this wouldn't be happening right now.”
An old friend in the form of ever-present silence came with a visit once more, making itself comfortable, though not for long, as it was broken by the least expected pony, found in the Minister of Culture.
He couldn't believe he was about to ask such a question, it seemed almost like the most unbelievable and improbable thing that could ever happen. “So what you wish to tell us, is that... basically, all of this... possibly the biggest war to come in the history of the entire ponykind, no, history of the entire world..” He made a pause, allowing himself and anypony else a moment to process that. “.. is caused by Goddess honest accident?”
Even with the given time, not a single pony could just believe how horrendous that sounded. It was a whole race equivalent of dying in the sleep. No flare or planning to something like that. It just happened.
“Kinda ironic in a mundane way, isn't it?”
Everypony heads swiveled around as quickly as it was allowed by the laws of physics, towards the source of the voice. When they found out who the owner of the voice was, a few of them had to rub their eyes. Two guards standing beside the door, now had the intruder right between each other, quickly springing into action and leveling their spears at... him... at it.
A quadrupedal figure, clearly attempting to resemble a pony, standing slightly taller than Princess Luna, in consequence towering above the guards a good head and a half. Some mere looking at the creature was disturbing one's very soul. A horrible amalgamation, made from various parts of a pony long since started rotting away, exposing all the less eye-pleasing parts of the equine anatomy, everything glued together by a sickly, truly vile looking, green exudate. Almost none of the parts matched the others in appearance, some of them looking fairly "new", while others technically should cease to exist at this point. The only part of his looking relatively normal, was his horn, if only for the fact of being a bare chunk of keratin.
His massive snout missing its cheeks, exposing the yellowish decaying teeth visible on both sides. Tongue whirled inside in preparation to speak once more, before being halted in its tracks by a sudden interruption.
“Halt!” shouted one of the guards. “Stay where you are!” he warned.
Second of the guards tried to say something too, but he paused as soon as he felt something rising in his throat. A violent cough shook his whole body, making him drop his spear in the process.
“Blear, are you all right?” asked his worried partner, while suddenly feeling slightly itchy.
Blear Glimpse never replied to his question, more fixated on his white hoof, which he used to suppress a cough, now stained vivid red. He would be staring at it in surprise a while longer, if not for a dripping sound echoing loudly somewhere near him. Shifting his leg a little, so it wouldn't block his field of vision, was all he had to do, to notice a red puddle slowly growing on the floor in front of him. A quick movement of a hoof to his muzzle confirmed what he already suspected. A source of dripping was him, or more specifically his corrupted claret filled mouth.
A loud thud threw him out of his thoughts, only for him to see his companion on the floor, writhing in anguish, desperately trying to scratch some invisible itch, known only to the afflicted. He rubbed so fiercely, that he started to rip off parts of his coat. Glimpse would have heard the poor stallion screaming, if not for a slight issue with his hearing. All he heard was a slimy sliding sound, followed by a wet plop, and then he heard nothing at all. Since his head just got slightly lighter on the left side, he went to investigate, only to find his left ear missing. He would have started a scream of his own, if not for a fact that he was swept off his legs, quite literally, considering that his right foreleg just broke off on its own. All the sounds he could make right now, were a few grunts of intense pain, as he fell forward, due to a lack of support.
Blear Glimpse's companion, Tough Shield, wasn't faring much better. He just wished for somepony to kill him, to end all of this! A feeling akin to the thousands of little worms, squirming inside of him, burrowing tunnels through his skin, muscles, even bone. He felt it all. He heard the blood going through his vines, felt it, its liquid existence tingling his very being. He could smell the stomach acid digesting his today's breakfast, a foul stench of acidic based gases. He could taste the flavor of his own synovia, like some kind of a sick, bone lollipop. His senses were all over the place, in places they shouldn't, couldn't be.
A few paces to his right, completely unnoticed by him, lay his fellow guard, slowly falling to pieces, now only able to emit gurgling sounds, his vocal cords long since turned into a meaty paste. He could only passively observe while laying in a pond of his own bodily fluids, as to his left, his longtime friend just gave up, his brain overloaded under the strain of sensory onslaught he just received. He figured he didn't have much left too, last of his internal organs withering away. ..Wait up.. Shield..
Though none of them said anything, reactions of ponies around the room to witnessing such horror unfolding in the span of mere seconds, were easy to predict. Quite a few of them just outright vomited, only the toughest and sturdiest of them managing to stay still thanks to the years of training, despite being disgusted all the same. The most "delicate" of ponies, like Fluttershy, were shielded by the great white wings of the celestial ruler, at the first signs of something being wrong. She wished she could do that for all of them, but even her wings were only so large. A couple of ponies, like Rarity, just satisfied themselves with losing consciousness.
A newcomer just ignored all of it, like nothing ever happened. He stepped over the piles of body parts and stopped a few paces ahead, only to say the same thing he was about to earlier, before being rudely interrupted.
“.... As the whole beginning of complex life was an accident on a micro-cellular scale, the beginning of its end was brought by an accident too. Ironic. I would laugh, if it wasn't so pathetic.”
The only one who moved from their place was none other than Princess Luna, and she did so with the utmost confidence and conviction. “Now,” she started getting closer, while building up a magic load in her horn. “Would you be so kind, as to tell us thy name before we vaporize you into the oblivion?”
That he could do. He liked when the victims knew the name of their future executioner. It seemed more close, on a personal level. “Pestilence my name, let's go with the age-old cliché and say tormenting you, will be my game.” when he flashed her something that attempted to pass for a smile with that mangled mug of his, Luna hasn't said anything, very well knowing all of that was just to ire her even more. “And though it would be amusing to watch you try, I believe you have a saying. "Don't shoot the messenger", was it?”
“You revoked that privilege yourself, the very moment you lifted your repulsive hoof upon our subjects.” As much as Luna wanted to obliterate him there and then, she despised the fact she couldn't. He possibly could be a valuable source of information. "I will hold myself for now. For... three minutes. Maybe."
The now introduced Pestilence seemed not to be worried in the slightest. “That just means I have to be quick and efficient, just the way I like. Fortunately, I'm just here to say this,- your time is up.”
“Time? Time for what?” Starlight asked while standing up, to form a line between the rest of ponies and the enemy, alongside Luna.
When Twilight was in need, she wasn't there for her, off doing magic practice with Trixie. When she was struggling with herself of all things, she wasn't there for her either. Now was her time to make up for this mistake. She will do everything in her power for it to not happen again, as long as she is here. "I will find a way to solve this, no matter the cost." Maybe her teacher was the more mentally sturdy of the pair, but that doesn't mean she won't need support from her friends, along the bumpy way.
“Your preparations, of course,” replied Pestilence, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He smiled deviously. “Which only means, I am allowed to do something like.. THIS!” The rotten stallion shouted.
Quick as lightning, the green goop he was conglomerated with, lashed out in a mighty swoop, akin to being gifted a will of its own, in a form of a far-reaching tentacle. Far enough to grab Starlight's leg and pull her right into his greedy embrace.
Now, alicorn senses are superb to almost anything organic. Some of the technological or magical contraptions even. But the speed the nasty stallion just displayed was beyond Luna's conception. Normally, she was able to see separate muscle movements of others, even before they were aware of making them. But this... she wasn't exactly sure it was a movement at all. It was like he just teleported to the desired location, within nanometers of the target. She couldn't react in time to something that she couldn't see. A little more than a blink of an eye was enough for the situation to spiral out of their control.
“Starlight!” The mentor of the mare in danger shouted immediately in fear.
"That's it", Luna thought. Keeping him "alive" any moment longer, will only bring more harm than benefit. "A simple beam of "Rudis Potentia" should do it." Her sole task was only to aim it precisely as to not hurt Starlight and put a lot of power into it.
The entrapped mare tried to say something, only for her grip to be tightened, making her unable to offer any advice. “Uh-uh.” Pestilence discouraged the blue Princess from trying anything. “One wrong move and she bites the dust.”
It was a fat chance he will honor his word anyway, so Princess Twilight decided for a quick leap with the help of her wings, only to land in the exact place Starlight occupied just a few seconds ago. “Release her! NOW!” she demanded, igniting her own horn too, which just caused Pestilence to choke captured mare a little.
“You just like to watch others suffer, don't you?” he tried to undermine her resolve, only managing to make her even angrier in the result. She knew that was his intention from the start very well, and damn, was it effective.
All of them were tense, the situation made into a classical stalemate. "We can't touch him, and he can't touch us or Starlight, which is his insurance." Luna, being as old as she is, knew that those moments often had only one solution, solution that she, nor anypony present would like, not, one, bit.
The only ones who could resolve this kind of setting, was either some kind of an outside force, something Luna was doubtful will happen, or the captured herself. Only she could attack her subduer, something she probably would have done if her magic wasn't blocked by the goop oozing from the stallion.
The truth was, even if she could use her magic, Starlight herself wasn't sure she would be able to use it. She was absolutely terrified. It was one thing to stand up to him, just like she'd done to Chrysalis some time ago, and completely another one to be captured by him, being touched by his collapsing existence, rotting flesh and septic fluids, being frightened by a complete lack of his breath on your neck. It was as close as being scared to death one could be.
“Now,” Pestilence picked up the issue again. “..If you don't mind, I would like to take little Mrs.brave here, on a little trip. A fun way to spend some time, together,” he said in a mockingly nice tone, confirming Luna's fears. "No one is getting no one, we both withdraw."
A soon as he was done talking, starting from the bottom of his hooves, he turned slowly into the very goop holding him together, while looking like a sick display of melting ice cream made of flesh. What was more surprising, when the transformation reached Starlight's height she appeared to change as well, turning along with him.
"Like hell, I am going to allow that!" Twilight shouted mentally, immediately intensifying her magical output in preparation to unleash an attack.
“Stop, let him go.” The Night Princess surprised her, putting a leg on her back. Twilight turned to deliver her best - "Are you out of your mind?!" stare. Her fellow Princess was quick to elaborate. “If you attack in any way, Starlight is done for,” she said, quietly enough, so only Twilight could hear. “Either you hit her accidentally, or he will dispose of her quickly for you. ” Luna knew what she was about to say wasn't very reassuring, but she had to say something. “If he hasn't killed her by now, he must have some sort of ulterior motive. And if so, we can still save her. But if we do it without preparation, I don't like her chances.”
Twilight could only look blankly at Luna, searching her mind for some sort of a miracle solution, that will get her precious student free of the mortal peril.
Luna needed for Twilight to believe. “Trust me,” she said. “Starlight is a strong pony, she will prevail. Our job is to rescue her when the time is right.”
Purple alicorn knew that her friend was right, and she hated it. But for all that is good, she won't act if it means endangering another, especially somepony so dear to her. She just had to accept the inevitable. "Again."
Starlight couldn't hear what they were talking about, but when they appeared to be done, one glance from her mentor could tell her everything she wanted to know so desperately. It told her, "Everything is going to be okay, we will get you out of this somehow". It gave her a certain amount of strength, making her feel at least slightly less worried about her future.
But now she felt something different, an irresistible feeling of a foreign presence, and she wasn't talking about the abhorrence still tightly clinging to her. Being a highly trained mage that she was, she could feel it clearly. A sense of wrongness, of something that should not be where it was trying to get in. It entered her mind and as much as she tried to resist it, she couldn't win this fight. "Do not even try," astonishingly she heard Pestilence's voice in her head. "When I connect with someone, even once, it's over. They cannot resist, not for long at least." She felt as he had snooped around, viewing everything even remotely interesting or useful to him. She could practically hear him grin when he found a particular set of memories. "O....Oh....Ohhhhhhohohohoho... Mrs... Mrs. Starlight, you will never know how much time and effort you just helped me save." The mare couldn't know what he had found, but she was certain it will be used against her with all ferocity.
By the time he was done, almost their entire bodies were a pile of green sludge, save their heads. That was fine for Pestilence, for he had only one thing left to say.
He looked directly at the teacher of the one he was cavorting with, in such a serious and meaningful way that it was plainly seen he wanted to make sure that what he was about to say, would stay with her for quite a while.
“It seems you're a very forgiving pony, Twilight Sparkle. Let's see if by the end of this, you can forgive yourself.”
With those final words, both captor and captive completely turned into the ooze, now slowly seeping through the tiles of the floor, soon to be completely gone.
After their vanishing, the only thing that could be heard in the room was abbreviated breathing of a very angry alicorn princess and none dared to stop her from doing wherever.
“Twilight-” Princess Luna tried to say something, only to interrupted by the infuriated Princess screaming.
“Arghh!” she growled loudly, striking the floor with her hoof hard enough to smash it to pieces and leave a small impact crater. The crashing sound was even loud enough to wake up Rarity from her genuine pass out.
After her righteous outburst Twilight stood quietly, with her head hanged low. No one dared to say anything, with most of the ponies just afraid of her possible reaction. Afterward, what felt like an eternity for everypony, without changing her position or even lifting her head the princess addressed anypony that listened.
“Just... just assemble the armed forces.. don't make me regret this and let Starlight's sacrifice go to waste,” she stated quietly and when she was finished, immediately teleported away in a flash of violet light.
Just as everypony was quiet when she was still present, they were doing the same now that she was gone. Half of them not sure how to proceed from now on, the other half that knew how was just really reluctant to be the first ones to do so. Though none of them expected to be rescued from the pickle by a most unexpected individual in the form of a normally very cheery pink party pony.
“I just.. can't believe Starlight is gone,” Killed the silence Pinkie Pie, rarely being seen so serious.
Rarity, who was just now coming to her full awareness with the help of Fluttershy, looked around the room in confusion, only to find no trace of their mentioned friend, indeed. “G-gone?” she asked. “What do you mean by gone?”
Princess Luna was quick to pick up the question before it starts to live a life of its own. “Gone, no,” she replied with confidence, not only to Rarity but to everypony who was listening. “We can still get her back if we play our cards just right.”
The declaration seemed to pick everypony up a little, the toughest of them already planning forth with passion. “Speaking about "our cards",” one of them spoke up, drawing attention to him. “Just tell where, princess, and we will begin preparations immediately. The armies shall march forth!” he said passionately, resulting in the nods of agreement from the most present.
Their enthusiasm was quickly subdued by Captain Sunstreak. “That's the problem. We can't.”
That seemed to upset a few. “And why ever not?” asked another one of them.
“Because...” Lumia started replying, walking up to her own seat in order to sit down. “We're going against Death, as much as I hate to admit it,” she grumbled to herself, but loud enough for everypony to hear. “Even if we were going to treat him like any other regular undead, and believe me there's nothing regular about him, then we have three problems. Firstly, we don't know where he is. Secondly, if we even can defeat him. Thirdly, if we can, then we don't know how.” She thought of a final convincing push. “Unless you just planned to throw yourself at him with spears and expected it to work?”
When none dared to challenge her assessment, somepony had to take control of the situation.
“As much as I hate to admit it myself, both captains are quite right,” spoke for the first time in quite a while Princess Celestia. “Doing anything rashly would just result in our swift perish. That's why, until any further developments present themselves, you're all to continue the collection of forces and tightening security nationwide,” she ordered, looking in the direction of her sister to inquire if they were of the same mind. After receiving a silent approving nod, she continued. “So it's decided. All ranked Senior Officers or above are to stay, and along with us begin on the preparation of plans for as many possibilities as we can, everypony else is relieved until further notice. You can go and tend to your duties.”
Everypony addressed nodded in understanding, bowed to the princesses, and started to filter out of the room. Celestia then turned to the remaining element bearers. “And you all can go find Twilight. I know you would do so anyway, as I would if I wasn't needed here. Goddess knows she needs you, now more than ever.”
“You got it, Princess!” replied Rainbow Dash, naturally being first to act. “Come on everypony. Let's go!” she encouraged them as they too prepared to leave the room in search of their friend. Yet, before they could..
“Wait..,” somepony said, halting them in their tracks. They, along with the rest still occupying the room, turned to the source of the voice, only to find it being a plainly looking solar guard, one of the few remaining.
“Yes, soldier?” Princess Luna asked him. “Something important to report?”
“Yes, in fact,” he said, omitting any titles. “Based on the recent revelations, I believe I have a message for you,” guard exclaimed. Not giving anypony a chance to reply or question, he started twitching uncontrollably. He did so a few seconds while being enveloped in the field of green magic after which fall, he turned out to be nothing but a changeling. Not allied, old looking, black, hole-ridden changeling.
It immediately threw everypony into battle stances, prepared for a defensive fight. To their collective surprise, he did not move, his eyes glowing an unfamiliar emerald color. He spoke, furthering their surprise more, for the voice that came out was not even male. It was feminine, a one they knew too well.
“My, my,” Queen Chrysalis spoke with an uncaring voice, it's emotional depth worthy of a translation spell. “How will I ever get my revenge now that the poor Starlight is whisked away?”
When none of them replied to her taunt, though disappointed, she figured that cutting to the chase is the thing to do.
“Now,” she started. “From what I understood from your little meeting, either you win or we all die. Sooner or later.” she waited for any sort of confirmation to her words and though nopony spoke, she received it in the form of a brief nod from the Princess of the Night.
“I see,” she paused for a second to think. “In that case... I may have a proposition for you,” she said waiting for their reactions and mentally cursing the cruel world for pushing her to do that.
Most of the ponies seemed to know precisely where this was going with not a single one liking it, but none of them spoke out loud just yet. None but Thunderstroke, that is.
He sighed deeply in defeat. “Okay, I give up. Where's the tea set?”
She wanted to be angry... furious even. To be justified out of it all and throw a childish tantrum of gargantuan adult-sized proportions, to rage unrestrained while turning things she possessed and cherished to mere ash. She was unquestionably tempted by the devilish thoughts to do just that and not look back at the possible consequences.
She was, to be truthful, she really was.
She just... couldn't bring herself to express it as she felt she should. How could she? With everything that has happened, how could she possibly externalize her hate for so many things all at once and not explode into a bloody mist out of pure malice accumulating inside of her? Hate directed at the ones responsible for the horrible setting they found themselves in, at Luna and how right she was, and lastly at the situation itself for even daring to occur. Somehow, the whole world itself was guilty of this heinous crime against her, even if just a little bit.
No. It all paled down under the hatred for the one pony who failed everyone the most.
Herself.
Mmm.
Hate.
She never knew the true meaning of the word itself up to this very moment, she supposed.
Not really.
Hate was just an emotion she knew to exist somewhere out there and one she witnessed upon the faces of her many adversaries time and time again.
Sadly.
That twisted sneer of purest hatred directed at a singular thing, be it something as random as a situation, something so intangible as an idea, or something so insignificant... like a person.
Specifically her, most often.
Now.. that. That kind of wrongness and outright stain upon the face of the world was something for her to stand against. After all, it was her partially self-imposed duty to be the one adversary to the most negative of emotions, one of which was the aforementioned hate.
But to have it not directed at you, but projecting it at somebody.. to feel it so direct and... concentrated... was just novel. New. Fresh. Like a breeze of putrid air overwhelming her. Rotten and unwelcome yes, still.. new. A terrifying kind of novel, one that could ensnare and pull in like a decently sized brick of a lecture.
And she did love a good book.
She wasn't completely detrimental to her beloved psyche just yet tough.
Not all of it was her fault, obviously. But that changed nothing in reality, for her sins lied elsewhere. Among all, first and foremost, she was the one responsible for her many weaknesses and lack of better judgment. She wasn't a foal no more, one to be held hoof to hoof and shown the way of life. She should have known better. For if she wasn't so utterly incapable of protecting the ones she cares about, maybe, just maybe... none of this would have happened.
Deep Dig would be alive along with all the others and brainstorming the solutions to problems they now had. Countless ponies wouldn't have to risk their livelihood in the coming struggle that no one can truly emerge victorious from. At those kinds of battles no one wins in the end, everypony loses, at this one even more so. And Starlight... Starlight would be here with them... with her. Instead, she failed the one she should protect most, one she swore to protect from any harm.
She didn't outright fail to enact her duty. Worse. She.. let her precious student to be taken away, by the decisions she had made. On purpose... willingly.
That revelation.. it... hurt.
Not like a shattering kick delivered to her many ribs or a magical blast of a corrupted villain taken straight on her cranium. She would prefer those multiplied by a thousand-fold enacted upon herself than condemn and forsake the one who trusted her with their very future.
It hurt deep down, at a level none could access but only a narrow circle of people. A kind of hurt only you could enact on yourself.
It felt like.. betraying Starlight.
Betrayal was not something they did. Not something she would have ever done to anyone. It was that horrible thing that those not quite in the light did sometimes. Yet.. here they were.
Damn not given. Friend gave up on.
Done. Taken care of. Bye. Bon voyage. Auf wiedersehen. до свида́ния.
The sin of looking into the eyes of your friend and non verbally telling her.. farewell. Above all, doing so...
It felt like abandoning the hope, the hope she had as her ally for most of her life. It felt like writing Starlight off the picture and saying the words she heard once before said by another - "You are no longer of any use to me."
That.. then.. it would mean she stood among the ones she pitied the most. She would be just as despicable and vile as they were, she would be among the ones she swore to beware off.
She wouldn't be a solution, she would become the problem.
She would be the one that needs to be taken care of.
...
...
Ironic.
Broken by the things she faced on a practically daily basis, the things she should be used to. Yet, it seemed they chipped at her day by day, week by week, year by year ad infinitum. Some Princess of "Friendship" she was. Powerless to a fault and unable to protect her friends. The very thing that makes her what she is supposed to be.
Apparently.
The funny thing is.. if she gave in to the temptations and attempted to protect the ones closest to her by any means available... She would both fulfill and fail her very purpose.
Wasn't she just a one-trick pony? Throw friendship at it... and If that doesn't work.. then what? More friends? More beings willingly trusting her to protect them from harm only to be hurt when it doesn't work.
Was she ready to accept this kind of trust put in her? Was she ready to break this kind of trust?
That brought up a good point actually. What will her friends think of her now that they know a little bit more of the bitter truth?
A true scoop into the refrigerated mess of her ice cream mind.
Oh.. who was she kidding? Of course, they will forgive her and try to get across a point that it wasn't her fault in the slightest. It wasn't, not entirely, no, but some greater part of it for sure.
She could admit that most of her choices were almost flawless.. when it came to manipulation and she didn't mean to do so. Sometimes her mind just "did her a solid" and worked faster than she did. It was a good move on its part to choose her old tower as a place of solitude and escape from the bad outer world.
None of the possessions she left behind before moving to Ponyville were disturbed, a thick layer of dust gathering on some of them and obscuring the passages of time even more than she wished them to. Yet, despite that, the floor and furniture were kept pristine and spotless as if somepony expected her to return at a moment's notice.
“Ever the hopeful pragmatist, huh?”
And so she gazed from the third story of her old living arrangement upon the capital city of Canterlot at large, a rather comfortable beanbag she sat upon adding to the already nice experience considerably more. While she could berate herself for the faults real or imagined, she couldn't belittle the blessings she received over the years. One such as this view, for example.
Oh, and what a sight it was...
She gazed at various species meandering about below her stare and at the reflective palace situated directly on the other side of The Mane Row. As per timeless tradition, the prestigious tower she occupied as of years previous and as of now should belong to the Archmage of Canterlot, as it did in the centuries past. Yet, it didn't. Not then, not now. He wasn't offered the location in the first place and when finally approached about it, he outright refused anyway. Said it was a "premature celebration" of when she'd take the position...
...And now it will serve as her temporal arrangement while staying in Canterlot as a Princess. Once in.. upon a time.
“Me, here. Celestia... there,” Twilight's thoughts meandered about from topic to topic as she looked upon the towering spires of the royal palace once more. Them being illuminated as the most prestigious and historical site all the while she sat here in the darkness with only grim thoughts as her accompaniment.
“Princess on one side of the coin, I on the other. As it was for years.” She paraphrased the circular layout of the capital city, which sat on the engineering marvel of a platform system with the biggest and main one approaching two miles in diameter. “Not the units we use, but.. at least it sounds better than three point twenty and so forth of kilometers.”
So close, yet so far. With their enhanced Alicorn sight, they could stand in front of some random windows and literally gaze into each other's eyes. As if they were a naive student and an overprotective teacher once again. It was all so, so simpler back then...
Damn it. As much as she couldn't handle any whatsoever, she needed a drink right about now. After all, it already has been a great while since she teleported here all the way from the Palace and her friends surely didn't-
“Twilight dear...? Are you here, darling?”
Or... she could be mistaken too. Somehow they knew. Either they knew her way better than she would like to admit or somepony had told them where to find her. Probably somepony big, alabaster, and concerned for her well being more than she should be.
Damn the incorrigible good will of some people. Why couldn't they leave things as they are? Miserable, yet simple and uncomplicated.
“I am,” she responded from her place on the most comfortable of beanbags present. Because it would be rude not to. “Third floor.”
She heard their hooves clopping on the marble rich flooring of the entrance, so saying "come in" would be utterly pointless by now and as such Twilight sat quietly as they climbed the stairs to the level she currently occupied, bypassing the many dusted knickknacks laying all around and entering her field of vision from both sides at last. They weren't saying anything too, only soundlessly coming up to her with two or three of them settling down on the remaining beanbags.
Goddess bless beanbags.
They all sat quietly now, looking out of the big wall-replacing window down below on the surrounding town, which encompassed both tower and the castle quite literally and metaphorically with its neon glowing lights and a nearly endless amount of nightlife. Rarely any sights could compare to the countless tiny dots that made up the entirety of the Canterlot's visage. The moon, sitting high up by now, gleamed more brightly than ever and guarded the passages of the night for its followers, yet not dismissing its duties and even showing the way to the ones lost or adrift. While all the hustle and bustle commenced down bellow, they sat up here in relative safety and quiet of the prestigious place, in all likelihood not disturbed through the enchanting night if only they wished so. All of the above with their serene nature brought both tranquility and agitation for the unknown, not letting anypony forget the events of the day past.
All in all, it made up a fairly compelling picture.
“Beautiful, isn't it?” More stated than asked.. Pinkie Pie of all ponies, breaking the proverbial ice. More of an Iceberg.
While it took a moment, the next pony spoke as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
“Yes,” Rarity started shyly, yet firmly. “It is quite the view,” she agreed without any hesitation or even overall flair so common to her. “But as much as it is stunning, sadly we can't beat around the bush and watch the pretty scenery for the rest of the evening, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary has happened.”
The rest of them, albeit still sitting hush quiet, cringed a little knowing the words to be true.
“Twi,” Rainbow Dash spoke unexpectedly, rasping with her voice even more than usual. Surprisingly not while flying, but from her own comfortable beanbag. She didn't even turn her head away from the window while talking.. “I know you well enough to know it's the last thing you want to hear right now, but I'll say it anyway for your own good,” she paused so her friend could register all of it for sure. “Nothing of the stuff that happened was your fault, get it?”
The purple alicorn was not wasting any time to respond. She had this one prepared. Check. “Speak for yourself Rainbow... as in, that's your opinion. I'm a Princess AND a teacher now, I am supposed to be the one to avoid or resolve situations like this, or eventually, take the blame when it doesn't go nowhere near well.”
A quiet and timid voice of Fluttershy brought itself forth faster than even the rainbow pegasus could react, supporting Rainbow's claim while taking Twilight's point into consideration. “You may be The Princess.. a teacher, true, but first and foremost you always will be Twilight Sparkle, A friend.”
“Fluttershy's right,” Rarity interjected herself once more. “You are Starlight's friend, and you acted as such. You made the decision that was "best" for her at the moment,” she paused for emphasis. “You did the best you could.”
Just to prove their point more and secure the logic with an iron seal, Applejack spoke for the first time from her standing place right beside the window and leaning against it in wonder. “Everypony's right, ya know. Heck, after everything we heard there if I didn't know any better... I'd say, would've been half expecting you to blast straight through her just to kill them bastards and save the others he could hurt.”
Others scrunched their muzzles a little in a collective agreement that it was not the best time to bring their unexpected guest up, but before any of them could say anything worthwhile, Applejack continued.
“But ya didn't,” she said with a hint of pride hidden deep underneath. “Ya didn't. You acted as her friend, not as a cold calculating brea- burea- whatchamacallit- scum of a paper politician. Instead gave her, and more importantly us, a chance for a 'damd good rescue.” Orange mare made a pause and used that brief time to look at the one she was talking to. Just really look at her. “Don't cha worry 'bout that part, we'll rescue her. We're just not the kind of ponies to leave one of us behind,” she concluded, earning a unified murmur of similar answers.
“That's what I'm afraid of,” Twilight said apathetically, surprising everypony with her response after they registered the meaning behind it.
“What do you mean?” Pinkie Pie asked finally. Rarely speaking any if at all and acting out of character for herself since the beginning of it all, now still looking out of the window, no one expected her to ask the question. Everypony just assumed she was once again in the world of her own making.
What do they know?
Twilight debated with herself for a while on what to say. “Everything”, she thought. “They're friends and it affects them, they have a right to know”.
“That's why I used Adfectus Sera.” She attacked frontally with the full might of an Alicorn in rage and quickly akin to a blade cutting flesh, albeit carefully choosing her own words. If she kept the charade for so long, no reason to slip now of all times. “The spell out of the arsenal of Black Magic,” she explained like a true scholar. “A spell which subdues each and every single emotion of the user so he can assess the issue with a clear analytical mind.”
Though all of them knew about the existence of the spell before, they never knew its exact purpose and now that they had... her friends were too astonished to ask any questions. So, Twilight just continued her explanation.
“I used it in order to deal with everything quickly and efficiently. Before you've all got a chance to charge right into the middle of it and put yourself in even more danger than you already are. You saw how well that idea turned out,” Twilight waved her hoof meaningfully and ended her confession on a more somber note, closing her eyes and waiting for the incoming backlash.
One that would inform her that she was being an idiot. A doofus about all of this. Stupid. Wrong.
When it didn't occur in an expected amount of time, Twilight slowly opened her eyes only to see her friends, albeit sadly, but still smiling nonetheless. Some still didn't turn their heads away from the window.
“Twilight,” Rarity opted to be the one brave this time. “It is truly too sweet of you to be worried about us like this, but truthfully, how many times already we've been in our fair share of dangerous situations through the years? I for sure don't even count them anymore.” She admitted, flipping the gorgeous purple hair out of her eyes.
“Yeah, I reckon you're right, Rares,” Applejack agreed with the marshmallow mare. “Besides with all that is sure to be comin', there's absolutely no way we won't get involved somehow, now is there?” She pointed out the obvious. “And to be honest, between me and Rainbow Dash, how much time do ya think would pass before we found some troubles of our very own? Mostly by Dash's fault, 'thou.”
“Yeah, you tell he.. wait- Hey!”
Pinkie just snorted quietly under her muzzle, not able to stay overly serious in the light of some well-placed situational humor.
Fluttershy felt like adding her last two bits too. “I think what all of us are trying to say is, you don't have to do it all alone Twilight. You could, probably, but you don't have to. Besides, I don't think some ponies would let you do that.” Fluttershy silently inquired, looking in the other's direction.
“Nope!” Applejack said smiling and folded her forelegs while at last sitting down, signifying the end of an argument.
Pinkie Pie figured, now it was her time to shine. Figuratively, of course. She would do it literally, but, she was kinda short on glitter right of this moment and confetti just does not cut it for some weird reason. Probably the shiny-es-ness.
“The girls are right, TwiTwi!” With all their spirits properly lifted, she took the opportunity by its horns and proclaimed loudly. Too loudly, as usual. “The only thing you need is us! And friendship and hugs and parties and stuff! Buuuut, mostly us. You know what they say, there is no US without U! Hihihihi, get it?!” Pinkie laughed as she, somehow, pulled everypony from their places into a group hug.
“Uhhh, Pinkie Pie,” Rainbow tried to answer, struggling very hard to breathe. “Literally nopony says that and it was cheesy as all hell.”
“Ehh, cheesy 's what I do,” Pinkie replied while tightening her grip even more, just to get the point across.
The group of friends stood there for a while, assaulted with a weaponized love from their very own Pink Menace™. Seconds passed by and by, yet there was no end to the bodily onslaught in sight.
So, being confronted by the unexpectedly serious question from the pink pony was the last thing resident purple Princess expected to happen.
“Twilight?” The former rock farmer asked timidly, unlike any question she ever asked. “Can I be serious for a moment? Like.. reality level of serious?”
Albeit she was surprised, Twilight formulated her answer quickly and easily. Mostly on account of being too stunned to formulate anything different. “Sure Pinkie, you know that you don't have to ask us for permission or something.”
“I know, it's just... I don't like being serious. It's so... dull.” Pinkie replied while breaking the hug, confirming her friend's intricate guesses. This is going to be one of those rare times when Pinkie Pie spreads wisdom instead of fun, they all thought.
“One could go on and do so many more wonderful things rather than clinging to the past while being tied to the reality,” She said, earning herself a full row of mist blank stares. The collective of mares saw this particular behavior from the pink mare just third or fourth time through all the years they've been together, so they gaped at her like a herd of newly born kittens. So, not at all, closed eyes style. Heck, probably her own family is not used to any of this behavior and possibly never will be.
When met with silence deafening, Pinkie continued with a bare hint of disappointment. “Ehh, my point is..” she looked in her purple friend's direction. “I just want you to know... when we'll rescue Starlight, and I say when because it's a given, you'll do it as Twilight Sparkle. You'll do it because you're Twilight Sparkle. Not because you'll learn a whole assemble of dangerous and potentially self-harming spells designed by the most twisted minds of their respective times.”
All Twilight and the rest could do is listen, none of them even daring to interrupt this rare moment of astonishing clarity.
“You're giving yourself too little credit, Twilight. You can do amazing things on your own. If you want, that is.”
Young Princess wanted to halt the already decorated monologue and argue that all the things they did, they did only because they worked together. Pinkie was the quicker hoof upon this side of the mountain, though.
“Now,” Pinkie wanted to have the first and last word, so she gave it her all to achieve it. “I'm not undervaluing the power of cooperation and what true friendship can do, but.. though I hate to be the one realistic here, you have to face the truth "lavender". You are an Alicorn. A powerful, immortal, timeless pony, who shoots magical beams out of her magically elongated horn while flying on her magical wings. One of five ponies who are literal physical embodiments of celestial bodies, abstract concepts or forces of nature, chosen by the world to carry out its convoluted fate. By all definitions, basically a demi-goddess in her own right. There are very few things you cannot do.”
“Bu- but..,” Twilight was speechless. It was one thing to know some of those, while totally different to hear it as a given fact from somepony else. Especially somepony so close to you.
“No, no but's,” Pinkie interjected without question, unnaturally serious face occupying her visage. “Yes, The Elements are possibly the quickest and most reliable way of doing things, but not the only one. If you choose to do something differently over the course of a longer period, you could do it on your own with that big brain of yours. With us, it's just... easier. You're here to do amazing feats of magic and greatness and we're here to help and support you along the way. As friends tend to do.”
Tears already started to gather under Twilight's eyes with her cheeks blushing, regardless of if she wanted them to or not. Damn that pink tear master.. jerk.. pony person, damn her well-placed arguments.
“Need I remind you that you're the one with a pair of wings, your highness? I think not. What I'm reminding you, is that you got so far through thin and thick without falling to the treacherous promises of an easier way from the dark magics. So... why start now?”
With their mouths hanging agape in unison, be it from undisputed confusion or a perverse shock of understanding, all the present could only come to the same conclusion. If she only wanted, Pinkie- no, Pinkamena Diane Pie could appear not as a bubbly mess of a foal-mare, but as a studious and knowledgeable sage of her times who dispensed wisdom from her mighty wisdom tooth. One that could take the economical and political stage of their country by its muzzle and say "You're mine now.", but she simply chose not to, as that wouldn't give her most happiness.
Not that they would ever say it out loud... or anyone would believe them if they did.
Pinkie Pie? THE Crazy One? Yeah, right.
Pinkie smiled for the first time since she started her perceptive monologue. “In a big summary. Burn some of those pesky books of yours and believe in yourself for once, you doofus. Paraphrasing, but I cooked up a good one, if I do say so myself.”
Twilight from the House of Sparkle rarely omitted to formulate some kind of an answer beforehoof, but now it was certainly one of those times. As they say, "If you have nothing to add, then stay quiet", and as such she said nothing, lounging herself into the already wide open arms of her pink friend instead.
It always ended with a hug, damn the mare.
“Wow,” Rainbow Dash broke the silence, astute as ever. “Just wow. That's out there. Now.” She fiddled a second in her place. “I didn't even know, that you knew so many, ehh.. big words.”
*giggle* The quiet laugh of Pinkie Pie outright pitied the simplicity of some minds and their innate ability to shift the topics from uncomfortable and taboo to pleasant and goofy. Or maybe it was actually their virtue instead of a perceived vice? Her mental council was still debating.
...They hadn't figured that one just yet.
“Well, when you work with and know so many various creatures as I do, you tend to get pretty articulate as a consequence, Dashie.” She sweetly used her friend's nickname like it was the name of a Goddess. “Happy little mistakes.”
A cup of good 'ol coffee was just the thing he needed right now.
Dark, black, bitter and all nice. Ready to stain your teeth yellow to all hell and slowly melt them with its acidic goodness. Mess up your receptors with caffeine and alter your perceived reality, even if just by a little bit... even if for just a little bit.
Yet, some would think themselves better and above it. Spoil the drink with things like sugar or milk.
“It tastes like this for a reason.” It was the penance for trying to trick the universe, for daring to step out of the line. All the while the powers cosmic said- "Now now, none of that." ... and made existence itself bitter. Some liked the taste, though.
“...Barbarians.”
Maybe he needed something to take a bite out of too. He was getting rather cranky all of a sudden. “Hmm. No, better not. I could very well throw up or something. And this is such a nice, cozy café. I couldn't do that to them,” Thunderstroke debated all the pros and cons of a food item to go with his coffee. “I'm thinking.. cake. Big slice style.”
Now that he thought about it more deeply... “I.. am not even entirely sure what do I have in my stomach as of late. Could be anything really. Twigs and leaves. Blood and gore. Now, that's a thought. What if I started to vomit blood that could somehow get into my mouth yesterday? All brown, gunky and digested by now. Boy, would that be embarrassing...”
But not as much as if he had gone with the bearers, probably. Refusing to go with them in search of Twilig- Newest Princess... was the right thing to do. Or.. at least he thought so. He felt as such... also, none could deny that he was terribly out of place from the very start. At the meeting, he was useful for a few seconds, tops, if at all. Well, that's 'cause they dragged him there in the first place.
As for the search of somepony who dared to call him a friend, he wasn't sure if he could say the same about her. Not that he wasn't grateful for it or willing to be her colleague in this whole jumble of a mess, quite the opposite in fact. The thing is, he wasn't so sure he should call her a friend quite yet. Or at all. It felt.. rushed, or even not appropriate, like he was undeserving of her friendship. Who was he, in the end? An awfully displaced pony caught in the matters he was not suited or meant to resolve.
He really shouldn't be here at all.
Trust him. He would know.
Although, the truth was more than transparent at this point, even for him. Willingly or not, he was roped into this and he wasn't getting out of it anytime soon. Whether he liked it or not.
So now he was here. Sitting at this, although nice, still, a cafeteria, when the world was in mortal peril and he knew so for a fact. A situation so dire and desperate, that even the sworn enemies of the state were willing to cooperate for the greater good.
And here he was getting a nice evening coffee.
Of course, in the end, they are only looking out for themselves. If it didn't concern them, they wouldn't even lift an appendage to help in any way, shape or form.
Well, at least for Chrysalis that's true. Yes, Chrysalis. He absolutely refused to use her self-imposed title.
It is safe to say, that nopony expected her sudden appearance earlier today. Let alone the talk and proposition that followed it.
“Long time no see, Majesties,” The repugnant double voice echoed, the last word almost hissed out with a clear resent as if their collective title burned her lips akin to some acid as the word left them.
Princess Luna wasn't about to stay behind in the newest game and be bested in the art of verbal fencing by an overgrown cockroach, so she gave as good as she got. “As far as the seeing part goes, that's the one thing concerning your person we were hoping to never do again.”
“Ohh, now now, why all the sudden hostility now?” The repulsive equine-like creature outright cooed, mocking all that she heard. “I did come here in the presentation of some good will, after all.” Chrysalis pushed ever further, so it was time for Celestia to speak up.
“The most goodwill I've ever seen you display was a mercy blow dealt to your enemy. So forgive me if I'll be crude and unpleasant saying this, but... state your business and get the hell out of our castle.” Any normal, common ponies, would be terrified to hear such hostilities coming from the mouth of the sun princess, but not the gathered. They knew her too well. Too well, indeed. “Although we did agree to hear your plead, it does not mean we like it more than we would normally. So, do hurry up. Please.”
Strangest of all, the former Changeling Queen seemed to agree, stalling just a little bit. “Wait, let me just-” The small old boring-looking changeling puffed up into sickly green flames, only to reappear as a much more familiar form of a once strong and proud femme fatale. “Rude,” She stated in response to the previous comments of the big white. ”But not uncalled for. For one, you're right, I'm awful. Second, when the time is of the essence, we all agree it would be preferable to make haste.”
The Element bearers sat quietly near the exit, still remembering the last encounter with one of their most persistent enemies. Since no pony said anything, as always, the former changeling leader took the opportunity and tried to make herself right at home by walking up her temporary vessel to the rest of the ponies present in the room.
“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” a rather menacing voice warned her suddenly, reminding everypony that Discord, The Demigod of Chaos, was indeed still there with them. With his self-proclaimed devine being sitting uncharacteristically quiet for most of the meeting, it surprised some that he chose to act now of all times. Yet none tried to figure out his undoubtedly surreal agenda in all of this, for that would surely be a path that only led to utter madness for years untold.
He materialized in front of Chrysalis by means known only to himself and blocked her way ahead with a menacing glare. Directly intervening for the first time today made all present sure of one simple fact. If none of today's bombshells, like announcing the Ponyfication of Death or reckless soul-bonding made him act, not even one of the adversaries outright revealing himself... and this did... no pony would or could intervene. The last thing any of them want is to interact with Discord when he's like this.
All were made sure he reached his serious phase. And the very last thing you want is a serious, capable of acting and orderly Discord.
“Very well. Have it your way,” The Bug Queen said, knowing better than to challenge the literal embodiment of Chaos Forces. It was like challenging The Universe itself. You could win. Probably wouldn't.
Yet, nevermind all that. He was probably hanging around in wait, just because something unexpected could happen and amuse him for decades to come, Chrysalis thought.
Her message was beautiful in its simplicity and she voiced it so. "I will help you," she said as if it were the most obvious and uncomplicated thing in the world. Yet even the most simple things usually had an epilogue of some kind. “In exchange.”
“Of course,” Snowy Raiment voiced out of all ponies, as if the presence of the Queen did nothing at all to him. “Even when the world supposedly could crumble into pieces, you seek to gain something out of it. So typical for you.. it's almost painful.” He rolled his eyes as if he was predicting it from the very start. Which he did.
“My dear mage coot, I only ask for this one, tiny, simplest of things,” She started to respond, gesturing her puppet's hooves ever so closer, yet not so close as to aggravate Discord. “When the entirety of this rather ridiculous debacle is over, when all of our enemies lay defeated and broken and you..” She gazed at the Archmage with a knowing grin. “Finally admit you were wrong.. I want to be left alone. We want to be left alone.”
“We?” Applejack asked suddenly, only wanting to confirm her already concrete hard suspicions. Though no pony expected her to speak up while what was in essence a diplomatic talk carried on, all of them knew by now to not treat her like a simple farm mare, for she was so much more than that. Even The Queen herself knew that.
“Me. Me and my children. My hive,” she replied while turning Applejack's way, accentuating the last word with the ferocity of a mother hen. A chitinous, atrocious, carnivorous mother hen. One thrice the size and weight of a normal pony and one possessing the height of an ordinary door frame.
“And we are supposed to just believe any of that? What guarantee, if any at all, we have that you won't turn against us the very second you have an inkling of a chance to overpower us?” Cadance asked her greatest adversary to date, being the one with the most reasons to not trust her. For some rather crystal clear reasons.
It was obvious none of the ponies would discuss the matter with the Queen present, so the final decision fell square on the princesses haunches. All three of them looked into each other's eyes, exchanging thoughts without words as much as they possibly could.
Seeing that the likes of Rainbow Dash were increasingly more willing to attack the Changeling invader, Princess Celestia looked to the more reasonable of the elements, namely Rarity and Applejack, only to secretly give them a nod meaning that the ponies present will take care of the complicated situation, and they should go tend to their far more important task.
She had let one student down.
She wasn't about to fail another.
What almost no pony had picked up upon was a different covert signal meant for another two ponies present, one of which retreated straight into the shadows while the other one just calmly walked up to the side entrance and left the premises as if nothing even happened.
Fortunately, none of the critical parts of the confrontation noticed any of that and the two elements understood the given signal, proceeding to hurry the rest out of the room. Some with none and some with more protest than expected of them, although, everypony of the five eventually left the room to finally start the search for their distressed purple friend. Surprisingly, the last to leave was Fluttershy, stopping for a brief second and looking back in the Thunderstroke's direction questioningly.
All the called out stallion managed was to shake his head in the "no" gesture slowly, being as overwhelmed as he was right now by all of this. How increasingly stupid of him.
Ancient beings, slaughters of innocents, Princesses, Knights, Army and Souls. No pony paid him enough to deal with this shit.
No pony paid him for this... period.
Despite not being sure just why exactly he wished to stay, the yellow mare accepted his decision with a nod and swiftly left to join the quickly retreating rest. Leaving him only with The Queen-bitch of the world. “Oh joy embrace me,” he thought morbidly.
All the Changeling Queen had done was to look over her shoulder with a question already vocalizing. “Oh, so we are going to fight then?” she asked coyly. “You're minimizing casualties?”
“Don't make me shoot you,” Cadance replied with a hostility normally unheard of the sweet and kind Princess of Love. “From many places at once,” she said looking up to Discord, who nodded back in full agreement.
“Fine, fine,” Chrysalis had given up the issue unusually easily considering how the conversations with her usually went. “We're not going to need them here after all. You three can make all the decisions by yourself and my end of the bargain is already known,” she said, signifying that she won't cause any immediate physical trouble, allowing Discord to float away from her for now and everypony else to relax. Even If just by a little bit.
It didn't mean she wouldn't get under their skin in some different yet equally twisted way.
“Though the purple wench surely would like to know you're dealing with the devil.” She thought of one of her greatest enemies. Twilight, Starlight and Cadance. The three were always top three and always battled for the first place. “That whitewashed cult leader better not die before I can get to her...”
“You better not smudge Twilight's good name again, if you know what's best for you.” Celestia warned the shapeshifter, making most ponies present, sans few, hair stand on their end. “Do not test the limits of my hospitality further.” The longest-reigning monarch replied almost instantaneously, signifying she could endure the insect's act only for so long before taking action.
“Hah, hospitality?”
“You're still alive, aren't you?”
While the Titans among demi-gods clashed, mortals sat quietly and hoped not to get caught in the possible crossfire. For if even the two of them decided to act now, it would have been a battle of a raging fury and inextinguishable fire against the overwhelming hate and hunger of a million souls. Which is to say, probably none of the present mortals would escape alive.
Yet as it was often the case, Celestia was the first to speak, undoubtedly with some intricate plan already in motion.
“What is exactly your game Chrysalis?” she asked plainly as a day she represented, no longer playing games for once. “It is quite unlike you to be the one forthcoming with such a proposition, especially considering all we've.. "been through together".” After such a question everypony involved instantly knew what was she talking about, shivering at a mere thought. “Secondly, why ask this out of us? It is not like you're unskilled in the art of crawling away and cowardly hiding from us, you could probably avoid us very well on your own. You could try to hide from all of this conflict altogether, hoping to survive all on your own. So.. why aren't you?”
Surprisingly, no witty retort or a clever insult came from the mare, even after all the undertone insults directed at her. Ones to her character, ones to her methodology and ones to her emotions. Only almost a full minute-long silence followed. They would know for sure it was so if they only asked.
Discord counted.
When she finally responded, no pony expected her to be as quiet and calm as she was. “When I told you it's a sign of goodwill.. I was serious,” she said meekly, a behavior totally unlike and unbecoming of her.
Of course, only to return to her old self a mere second later by squashing any sign of self-perceived weakness. “Besides, how would I live if all my food was dead and gone?”
Once more, the princesses shared the looks between each other in silence, this time even quietly looking to some of their subordinates for help while the black mare observed all of this exchange without any protests for the moment. “So, do we have a deal?” she asked with finality, feeling the decision was reached long before she asked.
To the surprise of everypony, the first to answer was not one of the elder princesses, but the normally avoidant of diplomatic proceedings Princess of Love.
“Yes. We do,” she answered and signed a pledge for everypony. “Yet I must know, how exactly would your help look like?” she inquired further, not trusting "the help" to be something inherently good or altruistic in this case. Never.
Never again.
Chrysalis seemed almost happy with the answer given. She was even more expressive than usual considering the answer came from Cadance herself. “That's all I needed to hear,” she exclaimed. “As for my help. Don't you worry any of your pretty heads, you'll receive it. As despicable as I am, I'm not a one to back out of an agreement.”
The Sun Diarch's "sixth sense", trained to perfection through the many centuries, made itself known regardless and prompted her to speak immediately. While she still could, it told her.
“Chrysalis, it is very important to-” she tried to say only to be interrupted by the first of changelings. To their knowledge.
“You know, I'll just.. go.. skedaddle,” the Queen said as quickly as she could with a pause thrown in-between. “Tell Twilight I said "Hi".” And just like that, with a final defiant cackle, Chrysalis ended the connection between her and the lone drone.
Luna tried to shout over her, for all it was worth. “Don't you dare to-” But it was all for naught as the drone outright burst into emerald flames and collapsed like a bag of potatoes where he stood in the most dramatic of displays, his body hitting the floor with the might of a thousand empty shells crying out in sorrow and reverence for the fallen martyr.
Not one of the princesses even had to vocalize the order, as a few of the higher-ups present outright threw themselves to check on the changeling. All the while some of them stayed where they sat without motion, which immediately showed the clear divide even among the highest command. After a dozen seconds, the one that was checking the pulse just nodded somberly to the princesses. Considering he was the present Minister of Health, Red Cross himself...
“Damn it all!” the darkest coated of the remaining trio yelled, releasing some of her internal struggle and frustration outside and making it widely known which one of the siblings was more frustrated by the eternal enemy of Equestria. “Damn to hell that overgrown mosquito!” Luna stomped the ground in well-justified anger, feeling like she lost a battle once more. Worse, she wasn't even sure if she had lost.
She just knew she didn't win.
All the while, Cadance hasn't said anything out loud, immediately turning around and consulting quietly with her husband.
As always, it seemed that Celestia will have to be the voice of reason in this grand circus of emotions and confusion. “Calm down Luna, please. There is nothing we can do for him now. Well, almost nothing...” she said, looking in the direction of the ones that just confirmed the death of the carapace clad spy. “If you..” she exhaled. “If you could fetch the additional guards and get him to the morgue, please.”
As one of the ponies saluted to the princess and trotted out of the room, Thunderstroke decided that he'd seen enough of the existential horror and dread for the evening. With his luck, he'd better leave before they ask him to be the attaché for the Changelings. To hell with the fact that they are supposedly reformed and allied now. No. Just no.
Blissfully sitting under the coolest of moonlights in his recent memory and drinking the ridiculously overpriced coffee at one of many high and mighty establishments of the Canterlot's main street -Harmony Avenue... or... ugh.. The Mane Row as some would call it, blast them from midnight all the way to dawn.
It was a busy evening too.
Now that he thought of it, he was never on this particular street during his few and brief visits into the city, even if it was the main one. Well lit, with a lot of ponies going about without a care, attending to their daily businesses and errands or just having plain old evening fun. The road itself paved with a beautiful imported cobblestone interwoven with artistically placed marble or granite pieces here and there. On the sides rows of brass lanterns jutted upward, powered by the super-charged high-grade crystals instead of crude solutions like simple bowls of oil. It was the best yet the most expensive option on the market. Last but not least, the facades of buildings themselves. Each different from the other, but they all had a singular common point. All of them just reeking of glamour and splendor. Most possibly, you would be able to say “exquisite” in wonder and gag at the tackiness at the same time.
Such was the second "business card" of the Canterlot beside the Palace itself. Of course, it leads straight from the town gates right up to the throne room door. Just because it could. Just because it should.
And to think all of that.. luxury and pomp could be gone within a single week. Made empty husk of a dead city with the inhabitants nowhere to be seen, just like that. All the wealth and power muted by the sheer amount of horribleness and then rendered just dead quiet like a cassette tape stuck on its end. Countless centuries of history concluded by nothing more than some background white noise. Hush-hush. Good night. Bye bye.
Maybe tomorrow. Or even today, all in a few minutes for all he'd known. All the ponies and even a few representatives of different species he saw right now, going about their lives.
Poof... done and gone.
The guy he just saw selling balloons, the children that bought them eagerly and the parents who reluctantly paid for them. The waitress who brought him his newly brewed house-priced coffee.... and himself.
All of them unaware of the impending danger, none the wiser of the death slowly and steady breathing on their backs. No pony would even know what had happened, excluding a hoof-full of "lucky" insiders, himself included. With the exception that he was not cut out for any of this whatsoever.
Why did they ask him?
Why did she ask him?
Why did she ask him?
There had to have some profound and devine reason, way beyond his simple plebeian grasp. He wasn't Starswirl after all, nor his esteemed protégé. No wandering hero, not even a local leader. For all that he had unfortunately done in his short life, they shouldn't even-
...
...nevermind all that. None of it mattered as of now, for all he cared. He questioned his already fragile psyche while the world he'd known crumbled around him in a bloody pile of gore a mere few.. whenever that was.. ago. To panic uncontrollably now out of all times.. would be just stupid.
Right up his alley of stupid actually.
Right. It seemed he wasn't getting any concrete answer out of himself. No outright panic, no overwhelming calm.
“Half measures it is.”
Some small part of him wanted to run from any random one pony to another and scream about the forthcoming cataclysm, but the other part realized he would look like all those nutcases they write about on the seventh page of the vile newspapers. Cardboard cutout costumes, bells and all. "Doom is near everypony, repent to the true Goddess or perish and linger in the eternally scorching fires!"
Poor fuckwits.
What should he do? He couldn't just sit and do nothing, could he? In reality, he probably could, but would he? Could he?
Did he dare?
His coffee was getting cold. Only more bitter by the second.
Good. Yet.. bad.
“You shouldn't sell yourself short just quite yet, you now?”
Thunderstroke turned to the source of a sudden commotion immediately, fully expecting to see one of the self-proclaimed preachers. He almost broke his neck on the most sudden twist he performed as of late when he recognized the voice, yet that bastard of reality told him it was even worse.
The voice, It proved to be the Captain of a Guard. Both Captains of the BOTH Guards, even if only one of them currently spoke to him.
“Grand. Just dandy.”
There they were. The prestigious and rarely mingling ponies stood at the very edge of his coffee table, like some friends of old would do. Showing out of the blue and hoping for a chat. How's it going chap? Care for some evening tea over crumpets on the out and a chit-chat?
“Fuck me to literal hell.”
“I've seen that face many times before,” Captain Sunstreak continued just as if he was this imagined friend of times long gone. “The face of "Where am I, why am I here, and what the hell do I do?". Am I right?” He asked, accompanied by the completely excessive mount of gesticulation, one that most ponies would be confused to even follow.
When he received no sliver of the confirmation out of the storm stallion, the silence became enough evidence on itself. “Bingo. Just as I thought.”
“Mind if we join in?” he asked nonchalantly, akin to the best of con-stallions... and Thunderstroke knew his con-stallions.
Thunder just briefly looked over both of them already imposing their overwhelming presence on him and gave his approval, however unneeded it was. “Ye, sure.” Not that it mattered or was acknowledged at all. He just tried to get the point across. “Mi casa.. et cetera...”
“You're awfully hard to track down for a civilian,” the fiery stallion initiated the talk smoothly before pulling a chair from another table like he owned the damn place and sitting down. “I'll give you that much.”
His brown maned unwilling companion was not entirely sure of how to respond to such.. praise? “Thanks, I guess,” he settled on. “I was just.. going wherever the most splendid of nights took me.” Which earned him an underhoofed expression from the silent Night Guard. Something between a smirk and a scowl, as if she couldn't decide upon just one. Which was more unsettling than pleasing with those fangs of hers.
As if the fact that she already sat at the table in a chair of her own wasn't freaky enough.
There wasn't any additional chairs even remotely near the table.
She wasn't even remotely near the table previously.
As both of the veteran guards started to make themselves comfortable in their respective places, the solar one, being a unicorn, used his magic to distribute himself a brand new top brand cigarette, complete with THE tackiest golden flip lighter. It even had a shining etching of Celestia's cutie mark on it...
All in all, it was so stereotypical, it must have been an inside joke of some sort and Thunderstroke wouldn't believe otherwise.
The act of smoking finally prompted the Captain's nocturnal counterpart to speak for the first time since they came here completely uninvited.
“Do you HAVE to smoke near me?” she asked with a definite scowl this time, fangs showing in clear displeasure. “My head is still hurting after that heck of a spell and you're not helping whatsoever.”
“Hey, what can I do?” He shrugged with a cigarette already lit and about halfway done. “It's relaxing in our line of work. You should try it.”
“Pass. Contrary to common a misconception I'm not partial to Frutti-di-Mare. Especially cancer,” she bit back with the ferocity of a thousand tiny crab pincers.
“Eh,” Sunstreak shrugged again in blatant dismissal of her honest and well-placed rebuttal. “Suit yourself.”
Now that the initial prattle was quickly done and equally fast forgot, both of them turned their heads to the poor Manehattanite stallion still sitting where he was, slurping in innocence his completely cold and very overpriced coffee.
As the big black plastic bag containing some dead-weight of a changeling was quickly removed from the room by the helpful pair of guards pushed forward by their princess's orders, most of the still present stood in their designated places like inanimate figures on the chessboard of the political scene, ready to be pushed to their planned places, whether they liked it or not.
Yet, they were definitely alive and breathing individuals. Ones that, according to some, should be working like ants right about now, tending to Equestria and its needs. While some would give them extended leave.
It seemed like the horrors experienced by some would have to be corrected by others once more. Not that she minded.
The experience makes the master, they say. As such, she is The Master.
“My ponies, please, focus on the here and now.” Celestia's voice reverberated through the chamber with the grace of a gentle giant. Yet as it traveled, it ensnared almost everypony as if it was enchanted.
Ministers mended their ruffled mane styles she imposed centuries ago and straightened the crooked pieces of clothing sanctioned by her decades ago. Generals had fallen upon their drilled norms of the Equestrian military and stood on attention, just like the generals of old saluted her before the battle hundreds of years ago. Secretaries waited readily to write even more, brandishing paper and quill over the magic means, to the knowing displaying the forgery paranoia of Celestia. Now, only to give them all a little push. “As.. tumultuous as the Queen's tomfoolery was, there is nothing we can do about it.. for now. ” She reminded them while steering their collective thoughts onto different tracks with immediate ferociousness.
“After this generous display we just had today I think none of you can deny Princess Twilight's claims any longer,” Such a simple sentence, yet one that caused such complex cocktail of emotions within her little ponies. Be it anger, denial, confusion or sadness, none objections were voiced aloud for almost a disturbing amount of time, allowing her to continue undisturbed. “As such, your standing orders are as follows,” While her fellow Princesses voiced their non-verbal approval once more..
When it came to the ponies.. those who could, worked their quills faster than light, for it was a historic moment to record, even if a sad blemish in the chronicles.
Those who should, had listened to every word, knowing their decisions would decide the fates of thousands upon thousands of innocent souls.
...And ultimately, the ones that wanted information for their own selfish gain, rubbed their hooves metaphorically, already tasting the future power and wealth amassed within their grasp.
“As of tonight... Equestria is in a state of War.” The dreaded words had fallen like a grim shroud over all with morbid finality, sealing the feared decisions in stone and nothing short of a divine miracle could change them. Those with the most military background would say that the worst has finally happened within their lifetime, a thing their grandfathers prophesied since time immemorial, at least five generations. The ones with some political merit would be scared. All for their positions, most for their families and friends, some for their wealth and power, scarce most sincere ones feared for the common pony they swore to serve and protect. A select few smiled internally, for finally, it was their time to shine upon the annals of history.
Be it within the bounds of heroism and bravery or calamity and corruption.
Yet none of them could deny one simple fact with a clear conscience. No matter if on utterly lucid or at a subconscious level, all of them were simply terrified.
Politically and legally speaking, Equastria wasn't at war for the last.. two hundred years. A record of any nation on the planet, yet... The last being King Guto's Excursion upon north-east coast of the continent in a desperate attempt to save what was left of the Griffon Empire. After that fell apart spectacularly, only the Dragon Lord Pyre tried anything outright hostile against Ponies and that day... even dragons learned to fear true fire.
Though, before any could ponder more on those thoughts.. “A mere situational grand speech full of promises and simple instructions, but...” Princess Celestia actually inhaled, as if her massive lungs were not enough for the shout to come. “..AS HAVE PRINCESS TWILIGHT ORDERED!” She started her almost eardrum busting roar, one that any of them would remember for as long as their memories allowed. “GATHER OUR ARMIES, READY OUR ALLIES, PREPARE THE FORGES AND STRIKE THE IRON WHILE IT IS RED HOT!” Luna already knew what was the most prominent issue with her sister's speech and was prepared to pick up the fallout, reforge it into what it's meant to be. “DO NOT FEAR FOR THE CLANDESTINE AND THE OBSCURE, FOR BOTH ARE ALREADY PERSUADED TO SIDE WITH US. ALL THAT IS LEFT.. TO ARMS, FOR EQUESTRIA!”
As quickly as she could.. “What our sister had on her mind meant- tend to your designated duties without causing unnecessary civilian panic and bring Equestria into something akin to a state of nationwide natural disaster, if I had to dress it into actually existing terms. Colloquially, pile up your respective units, ministries or resources and wait for further instructions. Dismissed.” .. she picked up to pieces and glued them back into something more coherent.
And just like that, almost all of the present sans the Princesses started to filter out of the room, duties assigned, plots to prepare and strategies to plan. As soon as they shook themselves awake and gained their hearing back.
Within a two dozen seconds or so, the room remained mostly empty.
Now that they were mostly alone..
“Don't you have your share of subjects to protect?” Luna inquired of her niece and husband out of concern, unfortunately using the same condescending tone she used mere minutes ago on reflex. Immediately, she received a slight frown in response, which wasn't her intended feedback.
At all.
“We acknowledge what needs to be done and it will be done. No need to be crass about it.” Shining voiced for the both of them while Cadance prepared a teleport for the both of them over a long distance. Destination presumably being their Crystal Palace.
“N-No! It's not what I had-” But before Luna could explain anything the pair was gone in a blink, ready to tend to their own duties regardless of what the Princess of the Night thought. All that remained for her was to hide within the solace of the shrouding forehooves.
Now. Now that they were all alone..
“And here I thought you could withstand the whole meeting, reeve up you inner fire. For you to trip-up at the very end.. tut tut.” Discord actually said the onomatopoeia out loud, still hovering above the sisters. “I had a bet going on that, you know...”
Though he knew better than to tease her too much this time around. Twilight and Fluttershy had some influence over him, finally getting through that thick non-euclidean cranium bones of his. “I'll go do my own thing to help you. No reason to be cruel now.” With the last words he dissipated into thin air, as if he was never there.
All the signal for Luna to speak up. Now that they were truly alone.
She hoped..
“How is that thou mess up once again, we pick up after you and not a minute later I am the one at fault?” Luna slipped at her dialect once more only to come back to the modern speech not a mere second later.
“Oh? I "messed up", did I?” Celestia inquired of her dearest sister while not diverging her sight from the door most of the ponies left through not so long ago.
Oh?
Oh.
She simply loved it when her sister got like that. Completely adored that.. that thing that she did. The Night Sovereign lingered a while longer within her private shell for as long as she could, stewing within her very own thoughts a little bit longer.
“You mean to tell us you actually pinned all of this on her?” The Dark Mistress was daring enough to attempt some semblance of a mock surprise. “That you botched up this speech of yours and reverted back a few centuries in your vocabulary on purpose?”
Now, the most radiant pony in the room wouldn't confirm any of it.. though she wouldn't outright deny it either.
“Even IF I did,” The more mischievous of the duo started with a soft smirk forming. “It was because she needs it. As quickly as she can get it.”
“Oh.” Luna summoned all of her eloquence at once into one word. “How so?” she asked for the sake of it. “She needs all the stress and pressure? The attention of a whole country on her?”
“Ah, not that you doof.” Celestia outright disregarded all decorum when it was just the two of them. “They should know who is the one shouting Timberwolf.” She stated cryptically, recalling a particularly old fable. “But considering that contrary to the age-old tale, it came true and the Timberwolf actually came this time...”
A little bit more of the situation sank a little bit more this time.
“In hindsight... it makes for quite a poor analogy.” Celestia admitted.
Luna felt like all of this happened inside some grotesquely twisted dream belonging to one of her many subjects. For only them could conjure such vivid yet believable images. Only they could make up any of those many things her sister just said.
“I.. Don't quite follow,” The younger sister admitted truthfully. “Afraid you have lost us at "the wolf" part.”
Well, while that little tidbit out of her sibling cemented most of her hopes in the boots of her own making, the millennium monarch approached the matter like a true honcho mafioso of the last thousand years.
And to be honest, absolutely no surprise there. Her own inability to match up with the ever increasingly changing times could be only assigned to her ever progressively failure as a ruler. To be truthful with herself, as much as she tried to change for the sake of her little ponies quickly enough, she just couldn't... keep up.
When they developed new technology, she was stuck on the basic setup instructions. When they wrote plays, scenarios and poetry, she found herself longing for the old classics. When they asked about her take on the architecture of a newly opened art-deco skyscraper, she was stuck on why does this Rococo building look so modern and subdued. When they asked for her expertise on the newest magical theories explaining Clover's Third Theorem, she could provide some insightful thoughts.. just barely.
She had to face the music as any good composer. With endless time and effort on their hooves, all reprises became better than the original.
The little ones had overgrown her.
As of now, she was old and feeble.. a burden to their progress. Being asked about opinion out of courtesy. She had became.. obsolete.
...
...
...For centuries as of now she had known...
Those who do not adapt.. are replaced.
And as much as they needed her to go away and shift away into the shadows of history... she couldn't deny herself playing them the last selfishly arranged sonata. That's just the despicable kind of pony she was, bitter to the very end.
The difference between her and her recently returned sister became more than apparent at this moment, as her sibling was the one to miss the meaning of their age old sayings. Ones they shared... once upon a time.
...
Luna is adjusting way better than her it seems.
Good.
It seemed she couldn't connect with anypony anymore. Not her subjects.. not even her own sister. “Figures”. “Simply put,” She patiently explained for her dearest of siblings, utterly ignoring all of the internal monologue that would ultimately change the course of a vast nation. “If we win, this way she'll become a savior of us all in the eyes of populace and none shall question her forevermore. If we don't... well...”
All of the roughly self-proclaimed confidence she had left evaporated within a second, while the reality forced one of the demi-goddesses to transform the attempt at scarce humor into an unwanted scowl. All of her well-intended plans, decades into making, sometimes even subconsciously, could be rendered completely moot within a moment. She thought not only of the time rendered useless, but of the lives that she- “No, none of that now”.. it was a matter reserved for later. Much later.
“It won't matter after all.” Her insincere smile almost reached the corners of her cheeks by now. =============================================================================
