On the horizon, the lights of Canterlot castle reflected tauntingly off the overcast night sky, replacing the stars that had long since disappeared behind the cloud.
Chancellor Dextrous glowered out of the high window. The folded invitation letter lay on the grand table before his throne, the seal of the Princesses impressed upon the ripped envelope with wax. Then he sat back and rubbed his chin with a hoof. On his head, the top hat glinted under the lights outside. Around him, the throne room was silent and still.
“I see the weather ponies are becoming lax about their duties,” he muttered. “Tonight was supposed to be clear for the shooting stars.”
“That’s not the least of it, Chancellor,” said Lady Omen to his right.
Her cape flapped as she unwrapped herself, flaring her wings wide for a stretch. The pair of them were peering down at a map of the Equestrian lands, carefully subdivided and sub-subdivided until it was thick with writing and lines. Almost a hundred tiny pieces dotted its surface, obscuring what little of it remained unblemished.
“Unicorns across the town are starting to become restless,” she continued, grinning up at him. “The usual palaver: not enough representation in local government affairs, lack of clarity about their social standing compared with the other tribes, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Hmph. As if the magical types need encouraging.” The Chancellor reached across and nudged one of the pieces near the mountain ranges, making it neatly fall on a dot of a town. “Did you know… the unicorns used to have cosmic significance, back before the alicorns rose to power? It was they who raised the sun and the moon as part of the quotidian cycle. What are most of them now? Either lowly tricksters or walking firework factories.”
Despite himself, he pursed his lips and glanced again at the envelope. Some of the wax had chipped where he’d clumsily tried to prise it off the flap, but even now he could smell the nose-scouring floral perfumes that suggested a florist’s had been packed inside at some point.
Her Ladyship frowned. “Walking firework factories? They’re not that dangerous, surely? Why, to pick an obvious example, Princess Twilight Sparkle was by many accounts a perfectly sane and good-natured individual.”
Perhaps there is an advantage to attending, he thought. The golden tickets would still be tucked away inside the envelope, and he could easily hire a deluxe chariot to take him and the Lady on short notice. Pleading overtime and heavy paperwork had worked a couple of years ago, so why not now? It wasn’t as if he would be lying.
“And it’s not as if unicorns are a high priority.” The Lady leaned forwards and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “There are rumours. Stranger creatures have been sighted near the capital. They say there’s a pony who has tamed a draconequus. A draconequus! One of the chaotic spirits!”
If I were there, he thought, in the opulent halls among the great ones of the realm, then it would be easy to perform a full reconnaissance. Wealth on display tells a lot about the nation that bought it, namely that they’ve just spent an awful lot of money on architecture.
Plainly self-aggrandizing nonsense, he thought. Why, our district gets by on nothing more than well-rationed timber and agricultural byproducts. Anything else is just showing off.
“There have been incidents, too,” continued the Lady, this time walking around the table with her gaze flitting from piece to piece. “Several invasions by shape-shifters, corrupted princesses, and escaped magic-eaters from the underworld, to name but a few. The citizens experiment with new forms of magic practically every year. The newest princess was just the most dramatic result, and of course there are the political ramifications and implications…”
That said, most of the attendees were deathly dull. He remembered all too well the incidents the previous year, when an ambassador from one of the griffon counties had tried to explain to him the socioeconomic value of absolute individualism. Nothing short of the Chancellor throwing his own drink down his own suit had seen the creature off, and then who had accosted him but those tiresome yes-ponies Jet Set and Upper Crust?
Hastily, he shook his head and emerged from the depths of his own thoughts. “I beg your pardon, my dear?” he said kindly. “I was miles abroad. You were saying?”
Lady Omen smirked at him as she came to stand on his other side, noticeably blocking his view of the lights. “Not growing fond of the ancient couple, are you? Need I remind you, Chancellor, that the political situation was a lot more stable when there was only one of them to worry about? This is hardly the era for indulgences and decadence, especially when the Gala’s not even a pleasurable experience.”
“Rest assured,” the Chancellor said, brushing the envelope and the letter onto the floor, “I was thinking about the campaign.”
There was no smile on Lady Omen’s face now. “Then you are committed? We will see them gone?”
“With their own instruments, and heaven knows my spies have unearthed enough examples we could exploit or create. To whit…”
Coughing and adjusting his mane with a rub of his hoof, the Chancellor stretched his neck and bit a corner of a scroll curled up between four of the pieces. Knocking one piece into a wobble, he yanked the scroll onto the floor and unfurled it with both hooves.
“Ah… a mirror pool capable of creating simplified clones… a ravenous breed of insectoid with a lightning-fast reproductive cycle… a machine for uprooting and shredding crops – including trees – in seconds… ah, and my personal favourite, the neglected castle in the nearby dark forest, which doubtless contains many forgotten spellbooks and tomes of secret lore. This is only a partial list, you understand.”
Even as he spoke, his mind drifted off to the Galas of yesteryear, long since banished to the corners of his memory. Once, when he was younger, he’d wandered away from the crowds and prowled the upper corridors of the castle. What wonders had he stumbled upon then? Mirrors sculpted out of the finest aluminium sheets, and decorated with every gemstone he could name! Menageries of exotic birds he’d found behind an oak door, including a cage with the rare and flaming phoenix! Chambers filled with shelves and chests, which in turn burst with the frames and wheels and lenses of crafted devices, all fit for a grand museum! Not least of all was the library, a canyon of shelves and spines so high he’d had to crane his neck to see the upper slopes.
“It shocks me,” said the Lady.
Chancellor Dextrous blinked his way back over the years, and gazed down at the layer of pieces that were swallowing his round table. Seconds oozed by before he remembered what he was doing.
“Yes,” he murmured uncertainly. “They used to make fine gateaux and serve only the choicest fruit punches.”
Before the Worst Night Ever, he thought angrily. Before the Gala degenerated into kitschy sing-alongs and stampeding animals and ponies smashing statues all over. Before the guards kept following me and standing in front of doorways I hadn’t tried. Before those six uncouth youths were allowed in.
“I was talking,” said the Lady in a voice that stabbed with ice, “about Operation Self-Immolation. We have agents in most of the economic hotspots and great cities. I say we delay no longer. This mess is long overdue for a cleanup, and every year that passes piles on more and more difficulties, details, and distractions.”
“Hmm?” said the Chancellor, still perusing the list. “You think this’ll be enough?”
“We have enough tools, and we’ll soon procure yet more of them. If we strike now, the nation will still be too busy trying to figure out what happened when we get the rest of the goodies and launch our own counterattacks. Ooh,” she added with a giggle, “I do love playing both sides!”
By this point, the Chancellor was fighting to stay grounded in the present. Not for the first time, the bright fires inside him, that kept him dancing over the plan like an ember on thermals, drew back, and he felt his mind drift slowly back down to the dark ashes.
“Yes,” he said, his voice soft with the sigh. Soon, the throne scraped back and he paced around the table, chewing the inside of his mouth as he imitated the Lady before him and examined the map. Despite her stare burning into the side of his face, the throne room around him easily snuffed out the discomfort, with its chill and its calmness.
“A lot of ponies will suffer,” he said.
Overhead, the chandelier had been unlit for months. Beneath his hooves, the granite floor bit him with its chill. Every inch of him shivered. He was going to be a grandfather next month. Both his son and his daughter-in-law had already promised to name it after him. Of course, they were in his district and therefore well outside the target zone, but that sort of thing crept up on him at times like this.
“If only we could ask them all, if only we had more resources, if only we had more time.”
“You’re a sentimental fool, Chancellor,” said the Lady. There was a bite of impatience in the voice when she added, “Leaving anyone special behind?”
Knowing full well it was a lie, he shook his head. Not all the ponies in his old Equestrian crowd had made him want to tear out his eyes. His gaze jumped across the map.
There, by the Manehattan piece; he’d remembered the Orange family, who’d told him about the latest in Manehattanite couture. Ah, now this was the good old frontier country, with its apple and orange and carrot clans; some of the rodeos had been the highlights of his visits, especially when the artists came up with their lassos and seemed to phase through the spinning cords. There! Lovely Cloudsdale, an ice palace from the age of Coliseums and temples, and a breathtaking view of the rainbow falls from a hot air balloon. He’d almost leaned out of the basket that day!
“You appreciate there’s no turning back now?” said the Lady, but her voice was too far away for him to care.
The Chancellor frowned and stared at the pieces again, flitting from spot to spot. Griffonstone, a wreck of birds’ nests and boisterous half-breeds! There: Applewood, wretched hive of glitz, glamour, and modernity. To the south sat the empty space where temples and forests crept like weeds on a garden. To the north boasted far too many villages and cities in a permanent winter wasteland that any half-decent pegasus should’ve cleaned up. Other untamed spots dotted the map like bald patches against an encroaching disease.
On his face, the frown hardened and began cutting into his eyes, twisting his mouth and lips but falling short of an actual snarl.
“How much better off we were,” he muttered, “before we travelled.”
“A clean slate would fix that.”
Finally, the Chancellor came to a stop beside the Lady, his back pointedly aimed at the window while his muzzle drooped over the nearest pieces. Still twisting his face in a frown, he reached across and swept eight of the edge pieces off the map. They rattled as they rolled ahead of his hoof, and then clattered on the granite before rocking themselves to a standstill. For the moment, a smirk wormed its way through his facial features.
“A clean slate,” he said. “And then the good old days. There’s nothing quite like wiping out the complications.”
Yet his insides tingled. Oh, they’d talked about this for months, and been thinking about it for years. Most of his fellows in the council missed the days before that dreadful Summer Sun Celebration, when the second princess had returned and brought with her nightmare after nightmare. Something had been snatched from them that day, which was all the more alarming because they hadn’t even noticed they’d been holding on to anything. And weeks later, when his spies had swamped him with more tales of towns getting raided and monsters running amok, he’d realized that what had been snatched away was the safety cord, and he was falling, falling, falling into an abyss he’d never dared to dream was there.
Equestria was chaos. Magic was rampant. There were either no rules or too many rules, but the effect was the same.
He glanced at the Lady’s wide, burning yellow eyes, and saw nothing reflected back at him. She’d hated the Princess Celestia from the moment they’d met during his first Gala – envy, he suspected, or fear of her power. But he had loved the princess. Such bearing, such swanlike grace and owlish wisdom! What a sunbeam she had been, and he – a mere Chancellor – had bent down to kiss her hoof! It had taken all his self-control not to dissolve into a fit of giggles. What a Gala that had been, and only his first!
His gaze fell on the envelope on the floor; the letter had fluttered further under the table, out of sight. How his chest had burst on that fateful day, almost a decade ago, when he’d heard the mail spill through the flap and wandered puzzling into the hallway of his country cottage! When he’d first seen the seal and cried out –
“Would you like to attend the Mythologue?” the Lady said calmly.
Snapping his gaze back to her, the Chancellor murmured, “I’m sorry?”
“The Mythologue. You never miss a reading. It’ll take your mind off these weighty matters. And I hear they’ve imported the crystal punch especially for you.” She flashed him a casual wink.
“Oh,” he said, trying to rake some enthusiasm from the coals of his chest. “Er, yes. They’re offering to read from The Collected Hearth’s Warming Eve Legends tonight, aren’t they?”
“He who pays the piper calls the tune.” She swept past him, making him scurry away from the table, and dragging the pieces under the hem of her cape. “I daresay we’ll only end up frustrated by more delays from our agents and spies, anyway. They really are getting tiresome. I imagine it’s because the mail ponies are going to protest any day now, ahaha.”
“Yes,” he said mirthlessly. “Quite.”
The grand portal slammed shut behind her. Only then did the Chancellor wipe the sweat off his brow.
He gave her a few minutes in case she’d stopped to eavesdrop, and then ambled over and dragged the envelope out from under the table’s shadow. Two golden tickets were poking out of it.
There were too many rules, too many complications. And what was yet another ambitious scheme to bring down the Equestrian realm? They had them almost daily now. No, it would be better to put the old country out of its misery.
And yet…
With a growl, he kicked the envelope back under the table, scattering the golden tickets. Lady Omen is right, he thought, I am nothing but a sentimental fool. I may be turning grey, but I’m still just a foal inside. It’s not as if the old crowd were that important… well, of course they’d get caught in the crossfire, but… dash it all! You can’t make omelettes without breaking…
But they’re not eggs, he thought, and as he thought it, his mind pounced. Claptrap! It has to be done. Sooner or later, you’ll have to do it! Then everything can start again. I’ll have the old, uncomplicated world back. Only then will it be acceptable to be a foal again. Not before!
Wincing, he hobbled over to the grand portal, his echoing steps taunting him as he went. He reached for the doorway, and then paused, hoof on the oak.
A few steps later, he’d hurried back and unearthed the envelope. No point in it going to waste. Tearing a chunk from the scroll he’d left lying on the floor, he hastily pulled out a pen with his mouth and scribbled two words on the parchment. The pen pocketed once more, he admired his handiwork.
“Not yet,” he read aloud in a whisper.
After scribbling on the envelope, he placed the new message inside and pocketed the thing. Ah well, he thought, the spies and agents are used to getting delays all the time. What’s one more going to hurt?
His insides squirmed at the clammy coiling of treachery through his chest. Yes, he’d have to purge the disorder sooner or later. But not yet. He just needed one more week. He’d be ready by the week’s end, this time.
Smiling at himself and patting his pocket with pride, he burst through the double doors and turned to ease them shut behind him. As he did so, his gaze strayed to the lights beyond the window, where he noticed the clouds had cleared, and the shooting stars began to streak across the constellations above. And for a moment, the nightmare gave way to an impossible dream.
