A Political Pie Chart with Equal Slices
Shining Armor sipped his morning coffee with a contended sigh. He had awoken with a twinge in his knee, the one that still had a small sliver of shrapnel from a sniper’s shot outside Quebuck. He learned to trust his knee.
His knee usually told him if it was going to rain today, but that was suspiciously just as he checked the weather schedule anyways. His knee was far better at telling him things about his daughter, such as if she was having an ‘off’ day again. Shining was proud of listening to his knee and developing an entire code for the Heart Guard to communicate discreetly. Today, the ‘Maredusa’ protocol was in effect before he even left the bedroom and his lonely, heart-shaped bed. The guards would give his precious filly space if she went wandering, but they’d keep an eye on her.
Shining Armor loved his daughter dearly, but that did not mean she was all sweetness and light. In the recent years, she had grown moody, temperamental, and prone to sullen fits of poetry so bad they could be classified as war crimes. Shining carefully sipped his coffee to avoid spilling any of the hot substance on his fine blue mustache. His knee throbbed in warning again.
With Cady in Wittenland, Flurry’s probably up to some mischief. Shining closed his eyes and set down the morning paper. His horn glowed and he shut the radio playing the morning classics from his cadet days off. He had nopony to blame but himself.
Well, and Chrysalis. The Great War had torn away too much time from his darling daughter. He remembered marching off to the frontlines with a precious filly wearing his oversized helmet on her head. She had hugged his forelegs with her wings and pleaded to fight with him. Cadance had to wrench her away, and they watched from the balcony as Shining led the small Crystal motorcade out of the city to the west. The Changelings had crossed the border at night.
He could still see it in his mind’s eye. His wife and daughter on the crystal balcony kept him going through the assassination attempts, infiltrations, ambushes, and even through the rifle round blowing apart his knee. Many stallions did not come home to their loved ones, or did so in a box. Shining knew several cutie marks that never made it home.
But he did make it home.
For them.
And he returned to a filly that had dyed the blue streaks in her mane black.
Shining Armor had enough awareness to know he was not ‘hip’ and ‘with it’ anymore. What 'it' was always changed. For him, the 'it' was a rousing game of O&O set to rock-and-roll, but now there were new games and new music. His father, Night Light, had warned him as much. The time would come for every stallion and parent, but it seemed to come too quick for the Prince of the Crystal Empire.
“I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you.”
“Wise words, dad,” Shining said aloud. He sighed. The best thing he could do without Cadance was give his daughter space…but space was all he ever seemed to give her.
Space, and groundings under his warded shields. Let’s hope it isn’t one of those days.
On cue, the double doors to the dining hall opened and Sunburst trotted in. He tripped on a rug and laughed to himself, cape and hat jingling with bells. “Whoops! Good morning, Prince Armor! Up early?” The stallion’s long, braided beard swayed under watery blue eyes.
Shining frowned. “Are you okay, Sunburst?” He set his coffee and newspaper down.
“Yep!” Sunburst blinked rapidly and bumped into a crystal stool with a suppressed grimace. “What do you think?”
“About what?” Shining asked. “You braided your beard? Looks nice.”
“Crystal pony style,” Sunburst nodded, “but Trixie developed these new things called ‘contacts’ and wanted me to try them out.” He waved a hoof to his lack of glasses and blinked again. His eyes looked very bloodshot. “What do you think?”
Shining noticed he was looking more to the chair beside Shining than the stallion himself. He waved a hoof and Sunburst turned his head to him with a flushed muzzle. “How good are they?”
“Just like my glasses,” the stallion claimed. “A little itchy to put in. See?” The Royal Crystaller reached up with a hoof and placed it directly on his eye.
Shining cringed.
Sunburst pulled a giant lens out of his eye socket with a pop. He choked down a sigh of relief and set it down on the table. His other eye twitched and squinted. “Pretty nifty, huh? Flurry says it ups my rizz. Glasses are for squares.”
Shining frowned. “She throw you out again? Call you a diversity hire for stallions?”
Flurry Heart was at the delicate age of sixteen where everything seemed to be political to her. Being the heir to the Crystal Throne was always a burden. Shining had insisted after the war that his daughter deserved the best private tutors money could buy, and the Crystal Empire was very wealthy due to wartime Magitech production and their oil fields.
Shining also remembered the goth crowd being a literal punching bag by everypony in high school, even his O&O club. Flurry could, and would, punch back hard, but he did not want his little filly growing up with the yearbook qualifier “Most Likely to Summon Demons” under a picture of her with black eyeliner and more piercings than one could count.
With Equestria reforming to a parliament and Council of Friendship, the Yaks federalizing into clan-states, Nova Griffonia, the Polar Bears, and the Penguins forming a northern republican alliance, the Crystal Empire was left the only true absolute monarchy left on Equus. Queen Velvet had been restored to the Olenian throne, but she implemented regional elections and voting. King Thorax ruled over a demilitarized Changeling Lands in an Equestrian-backed Junta more than an autocracy. The Free Changeling Hives remained volatile.
Some fillies would have been ecstatic to ascend to absolute power, but Flurry was not most fillies. The first-born alicorn and hope of the Crystal Empire seemed determined to be the most contrarian possible heir to the Princess of Love. It was no surprise that Flurry had gotten quite political and quite vocal. The Crystal Empire was always slow and behind the times. Shining nodded to Ruby, one of the kitchen servants passing by the table. She said something in Old Ponish and he smiled awkwardly.
“No,” Sunburst chuckled, “that just reinforces the Marearchy. She actually apologized today.”
“Oh?” Shining asked with surprise. Perhaps it isn’t a bad day after all.
“Yeah,” Sunburst nodded. “The new tutor seems nice. A little old-fashioned, but nice.”
Shining paused with his coffee mug halfway back to his lips. “The what?”
“The new tutor,” Sunburst said slowly. He tried to shove the contact back into his face and succeeded with a full-body shudder and an audible pop. “Severyanan unicorn? We spoke briefly. She says she spent her whole life studying political science.”
Shining Armor set the coffee mug down and ran through his mental checklist of things Cadance had set up before she had to leave with Twilight. Something was going on in the Riverlands with the upcoming Coltstream Summit. River Swirl was finally launching her total federalization campaign, and the cutie map had hummed back to life for the first time since the Great War.
Celestia and Luna helped unify Equestria, Cadance and Twilight can help unify the east. Griffonia was a continent and ocean away. It would mean weeks of a lonely bed for him and boring diplomatic meetings for Cadance, but Shining accepted that as his duty. And she accepted that as hers.
But neither one had discussed getting Flurry a new tutor. It’s Spring Break…did she pull somepony from the university? Shining stood up. “Is Flurry in her study room?”
“She’s actually taking notes,” Sunburst answered.
Shining frowned harder and chided himself for not listening to his knee.
Something’s rotten in the Empire.
Shining Armor and Sunburst stood outside Flurry’s personal study. There was a poster for a death-metal band called The Defilers on the sturdy crystal door. The lead mare was screaming hard enough into the microphone that veins were bulging on her neck. The bassist had also set her guitar on fire in the background. Shining, politely, rapped on the crystal instead of the poster. It was signed by all the band members and covered in a protective charm.
The two voices continued speaking inside the room. Shining could not hear through solid crystal, but one sounded distinctly like a Stalliongrader. It seemed to waver, not as loud as his daughter’s nasally voice. That was another sign something was wrong. Flurry normally pitched her voice as low as she could these days, better to whine about the state of the world. She was actually laughing along to something.
“Flurry Heart,” Shining announced. “This is your father.” He had to lean up against the door to make sure his voice echoed through the crystal.
His darling daughter stopped laughing. “Ugh. Go away, dad.” She forced her voice to sound lower in addition to using the Royal Canterlot voice. “I’m studying like you want, even though it’s Spring Break. Most fillies have the week off.”
“Who are you speaking to?” Shining asked.
“Somepony cool. Go away.”
Shining hummed and tested the door. It was locked and warded. “Can I come in?”
“NO.”
The crystal chandeliers rattled in the hallway. Shining remained steadfast. “Flurry, I am coming into your study. I’d like to meet your new tutor…especially since I’m not aware you have a new one.”
There was no audible response from the other side of the door.
Sunburst chuckled behind Shining and he produced a thin, boney key. He nearly poked Shining in the tail with it. “Grisly as it is, I get why you kept it.”
Shining accepted Sombra’s Skeleton Key with a grimace and threaded the thin bone into the lock. The dark magic hummed, peeling through the wards and unlocking the door. “Make sure to put it back in secure containment. My magic feels grimy even holding this thing.”
“Of course,” Sunburst accepted.
Shining pushed open the door with a hoof.
Flurry Heart laid on a cushion surrounded by scribbled notes. She crossed her forelegs and stuck out her pierced bottom lip. A nose ring scrunched with the rest of her muzzle, and she tossed her dyed mane back. “Brilliant,” she trilled. “A tyrant using another tyrant’s tools to stay in power. Compensating for something, dad?”
Shining liked to think he was a permissive and progressive stallion. He accepted his daughter getting swept up in the post-war fashion craze. The younger generation liked to wear clothes all the time, having grown-up with media and war reports of uniformed mares and stallions. Shining even accepted the “retro-changedling” look championed by goth fashion. Flurry was wearing her solid black leggings with holes cut into them to expose her light pink fur, protesting the post-war culture of bright, Harmonic colors. Her black dress complemented them.
Even if it was too short and exposed too much of her Crystal Heart cutie mark. Shining wasn’t sure how wearing a short skirt was worse than being naked, but somehow it prompted leers and staring. Her dress was also backless to account for her wings, and she dyed her pinions black and purple to match her mane and tail.
Shining Armor triple-frowned at the spiked choker around her neck proudly displaying a dog tag with ‘TOOL’ engraved on the metal. He shook his head. “Flurry—” he stopped himself as he finally noticed the other mare.
Flurry’s teacher was indeed Severyanan. That was clear from her outfit, dated as it was even when Shining was a colt. It was a proper burgundy dress with a frill around her neck and ridged cap. She was a tan unicorn with a blue mane that turned frosty white at the tips, and seemed to have deep bags under her red eyes.
She was also floating a hoof off the ground and surrounded by an otherworldly blue aura.
Shining closed his mouth and stared at the mare.
The mare stared back and looked him over. “I am equally surprised by you,” she finally said, and her voice was a soft Severyanan with an echo behind the words. “You are Prince Shining Armor?”
Rather than address her, Shining turned back to Sunburst after the stallion bumped into the doorframe. “Those contacts aren’t going to work out. Take the rest of the day off.”
“Oh, thank the Heart,” Sunburst wept, probably not intentionally. “I think I’m going blind.” He stumbled back into the hallway.
Flurry snorted. “Go on, be a square.”
Shining ignored the ghost and returned to his daughter. “Flurry Skyla Heart.”
Using her full name did nothing. Flurry rolled her eyes. “What?”
“Please tell me you did not summon a ghost at the crack of dawn on a Monday.”
“I summoned her last night,” Flurry nickered. She pawed through her notes and held up a diagram that was vaguely shaped like an upside-down heart with her golden aura. “At the stroke of midnight, dad. Everypony knows that.”
“I did not,” the mare remarked.
Shining nearly reeled when Flurry looked apologetic and dipped her head. “I’m sorry for inconveniencing you. I guess it’s a good thing you met him now. You can see how much work I have to do.”
“Time has no meaning to me,” the mare waved her hoof. She floated around in the air without moving her legs to face Shining Armor. “I greet you, Prince of…” she stopped and her eyes scrunched, “the Crystal Empire, correct? What is the year again?”
“1019,” Flurry responded. She shook a few folders at her side. “We have a little more to catch up on.”
“Perhaps your father can assist,” the ghost suggested.
Shining was floored when his daughter did not immediately scoff and suppressed her wince of disagreement.
Focus. Ghost. Bad.
Shining took a deep breath. “Flurry, send it back.”
Flurry scoffed. “Oh. My. Heart. Dad, you did not just do that. I cannot even. What gives you the right to use the wrong pronouns on the differently-living?”
“Flurry, you tore open the veil to Dis and dragged a spirit from its rightful rest.”
“You don’t even know what that means.”
“I know necromancy is illegal.”
“No physical body,” his daughter sing-songed. She reached into her dress and pulled out the Crystal Heart. A chain pierced it and looped the artifact around her neck. It thrummed with dark energy.
Shining choked on his spit and his legs locked up.
Flurry rolled her eyes again. “It’s one of the spares, dad. Sometimes I use them as coasters for my soda. Get real.”
Shining grit his teeth. “Just because your mother is gone for the month…you don’t get to summon the dead.” He looked to the side. “Should be grateful you didn’t summon Sombra. He seems more your type.”
Flurry clicked her tongue. “Fascism leads to failed states. Interesting you’d go to him first, tyrant.”
The ghost blinked. “Who?”
“We’ll get to him,” Flurry told her. “He’s the reason I’m in this mess.” She twisted her angry stare back to her father. “Mom would just tell me some Harmonic crap about letting the dead rest or whatever. Thank the Heart she’s busy in Wittenland.”
“Her job as the Princess of Love is important, Flurry.”
“Doing what?” Flurry challenged. “A therapist could do her job. She's not like Auntie Twi.”
Shining tried to think of something related to his wife’s relationship counseling service that would truly amaze his daughter. She had always been rather tight-lipped about it. He tapped a hoof on the floor.
Deep in the mountains of Wittenland, a lone tower stood. One figure in a long cloak struggled up the mountain pass, chipped pink hooves tripping on rocks under the gale force winds. Rain lashed down her black cloak, leaving the imprint of a horn and wings. She struggled forward. The weather was unnatural and wicked, the consequence of a spell gone awry. And it was spreading.
Unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies blocked the road, eyes swimming and crackling with green energy. They moved like marionettes, too clumsy for firearms. As they closed in on the lone mare, her magic lit up, turning from blue to bright pink. A bubble of love erupted with the pop of a soap bubble that overwhelmed the storm. The ponies fell to their hooves, eyes clearing. Some cried, overwhelmed by the memories of their loved ones that missed them.
“Go,” the hooded mare said. “Down the pass. They are waiting.”
One stallion shook his head and sobbed. “You cannot best the Queen.”
“It is not her I seek,” the mare answered. “Go. Await the clearing of the storm.”
They left and she struggled forward under the wind. The tower was old and ancient, weathered and worn, but the magic surrounding it clawed at her mind and snarled in her ears. She pushed her way through the rotten door and struggled to the summit. Nopony was there to stop her until she reached the final floor. Wind and rain pounded the stone roof and leaked down the walls.
Mi Amore Cadenza shrugged off her cloak and readied her horn at the top of the stairs.
Across from her, a decrepit, aged mare with brittle white fur laid atop a wooden throne like a corpse. Her breath wheezed. The purple mane atop her head was falling out, and the mare smiled with rotten yellow teeth. “You…” she rasped, “you have no power here!”
“I am the Princess of Love,” Cadenza replied. “Love has no boundary.”
The mare laughed and raised a bony hoof. The storm outside intensified.
“Queen White Star,” Cadenza pleaded. “You are sick. And ill. You desired reform for the land. Your ponies loved you.”
“The only illness is them,” a voice said from behind the broken throne. A stallion teetered out of the darkness wrapped in a black cloak. His fur was bright and healthy, unlike hers, and his eyes were not jaundiced.
Despite all that, he looked even more haunted. He gazed at Cadenza like she was a monster from his nightmares. “I dreamed of you coming here,” he stuttered. “And I dreamed of you killing us.” His stare hardened. “You…you will not. Whatever enemies sent you—”
“None sent me,” Cadenza denied. “I came here on my own.”
“Lies!” the stallion screamed. “Lies like Barrad! But I am stronger now—We are stronger now!” His horn glowed and he hurled a spear of magic towards the stairwell.
Cadenza dodged with her wings and fired a bolt of pink magic. It missed the stallion. “Silver Star! Listen!”
“No listening!” Silver Star brayed. “Only I can keep us safe! Only I can keep my sister safe!” He fired another wild bolt and corrupted magic blasted against the wall. Despite his use of dark magic, the stallion stayed bright and healthy.
Each blasted drained more from his sister’s fur.
Cadenza fired another bolt and missed the stallion. But she hit the sagging mare and more blue returned to her white, blind eyes. Silver Star continued to fire wildly, far outpacing what the alicorn could output. She was never going to win a magical duel.
But she never intended to. She was counting on love.
Queen White Star slumped forward and her crown fell off her head. Bits of her mane tumbled with it. Her brother paused mid-spell and whirled to her. “No! No! Wake up!”
Cadenza landed immediately and her horn glowed. The Queen was still breathing, but it was a near thing. She was mostly dead. Only mostly. There’s still a chance.
Silver Star kicked the crown aside carelessly and wrapped his sister in his cloak. A vial of blood hung from the stallion’s firm neck. Unlike his sister, he did not look a day over twenty-one, at the prime of his life. Cadenza knew he was far older. He turned to the alicorn with violence in his eyes. His horn glowed and the mare in his hooves weakened further.
“Silvy,” White Star croaked. “Please…”
Silver Star shielded his sister with his body. Despite his solid build, he shook like a leaf. “S-stay back! Just…just leave us alone! Go away!”
“I cannot let you hurt her,” Cadenza answered.
“I’m not hurting her!” the stallion whinnied. “I’m keeping us safe. K-keeping her safe!”
“Her, or you?” Cadance asked. Her horn dimmed and she left herself exposed. Silver Star’s horn glowed again. His sister shook in his hooves as more of her life drained away. This time, he could not deny it. He turned horrified eyes down to his sister as more of her mane fell away.
“N-no!” His horn guttered out. “No! We’re together! We…please!”
“Silvy…” the mare’s eyes closed.
Cadenza stepped forward. She eyed the vial of blood that swirled around the stallion’s neck. “You bonded your souls together with dark magic, but one was dominant. This was not love. It was obsession.”
“Help her!” the stallion screamed.
“You must help her,” Cadenza said softly. “You are her brother.” Her horn glowed and she seized on remnants of old foalhood memories, of mercy, of brighter dreams. “And she is your sister. She believed in you, despite all that you have done.”
Silver Star wept. “I just made it worse. W-what can I do?”
“What can you undo?” Cadenza prompted.
Silver Star reached down and touched the vial. For a moment, fear overtook his eyes and he turned a paranoid, vicious stare up to the alicorn. But she held resolute and closed her eyes.
The storm stilled around the tower.
“Please, ask her to f-forgive me.”
Cadenza opened her eyes. “You may ask her yourself. I swear it.”
The stallion shattered the vial with a hoof and collapsed. He aged rapidly as his sister shuddered back to life. Her fur lightened and grew softer, and her eyes cleared. She coughed and gasped, trying to crawl to her brother. The stallion grew very old, very quickly, and soon would breathe his last as the corrupted magic took the toll of decades. White Star held her brother’s feeble hoof.
She wheezed and tried to smile. Her brother did not hear her.
Cadance pressed a hoof to her barrel and pushed her breath out. She thought of the villagers below, the citizens, her family, and the two siblings attempting a final reconciliation. She grit her teeth and opened her eyes.
Mi Amore Cadenza began to float in the air as her horn crackled. She turned her eyes to the encroaching shadows in the tower and pink light radiated out from her horn. “I told you: I am the Princess of Love. Love has no boundary, no domain. It is eternal. Death cannot claim it.”
The shadows coiled around the weeping walls.
A pink light shone against the darkness, and the forces beyond did not comprehend it.
“I have power everywhere.”
Yeah, I got nothing…
Shining exhaled. He blinked several times and turned to the floating mare. “I’m sorry for my daughter’s behavior. And mine. But you need to leave.”
“That domain is your daughter’s,” the ghost nodded in acceptance. Her lips quirked. “This is not the first time I have met royalty, and your daughter is a far better host than Celestia.”
Shining’s tail lashed and he stared at the Severyanan. Something niggled at his memory, something long forgotten in a half-remembered history lesson that was quickly glossed over. “Who…who are you?”
Flurry chuckled lowly and leaned her head on her upturned hooves. The mascara under her piercing blue eyes made her stare seem sharkish. “You don’t recognize her, dad?” She smiled. “Oh, this’ll be good.”
The mare dipped her head and bowed, though the genuflection was pointless considering she was floating above Shining’s horn. “I am Caramel Marks.”
Shining frowned. It took him a second to recall history classes.
Marks.
Markism.
Communism.
Shining Armor, proud stallion of the Royal Guard and Equestrian patriot, looked to his daughter in horror. She smirked back. “Yep,” she waggled a pierced ear. “That one. Or would you have preferred Sombra?”
Flurry had not just summoned a ghost.
She summoned the ultimate communist ghost.
Marks coughed into a hoof with non-existent lungs. “I take it I am fondly remembered?” she said hopefully.