Egestatem, Potestatem, Dissolvit ut glaciem
“It is very easy to break down something. Throw a stone through that window; that is easy. Try fixing it, and that takes longer.”
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu
A small collection of wagons lumbered along the stone road that led to the great capital city. Each wooden conveyance was painted in many colors, which had been faded by time and distance. Some large posters advertised games of chance or interesting sights, and grand entertainment. Gypsies of every pony race rode in the wagons or trotted alongside them, or bore them ploddingly along.
In the rearmost wagon there sat two ponies, a mare and a stallion. The mare was a light golden colored unicorn with a red mane, dressed in her loose dancer's attire with golden rings hanging off of her ears. She looked with some sadness and concern at the stallion. He was a light brown earth pony, with a mussed black mane. He was dressed in a patched and re-stitched black suit coat, with lace tied in a bow at his throat. He was rolling dice, over and over. Though a smile ever rested on his features the air about him was heavy and serious.
“Kako... we approach the Kingdom's central city,” The mare said, softly, carefully. “Your smile is... wan. You smile and you do not at the same moment.”
The stallion threw the dice again, his breath catching for a moment before he gathered them up to shake once more. “Lady Fortuna disdains this course. She would have us turn away, lest we all see what I have seen, what all in the city know...” He sighed softly and rolled again. “But, my bother is Rom Baro. I may not defy his will.
The mare shook her head and said, “But you are our drabani! You read the will of Fortuna, you see the working of baxt, you prognosticate our fortune!” She took a deep breath and calmed herself. “Husband though he is, I feel your dislike for this course. I do not like that he defies the Lady's will. Now that we know her we had done well as we obeyed her.”
“But you go along. You do not demand he turn away,” the stallion said, dice clattering before him. “What stops your tongue?”
The mare was silent for a moment, looking at the dice as they were swept up and then thrown once more. “As you said, Kako, he is Rom Baro. He chose this fate.”
“If only fate touched only they who chose it,” the smiling stallion said, rolling and taking the dice again and again. “He made his destiny. He turned the wheel when it need not have spun. And so we will all pay when Lady Fortuna's wheel stops...”
Brother and sister lapsed into silence, the mare looking thoughtful, and a little hopeless, while the stallion smiled his empty smile. He threw the dice, without ever getting a roll that took the sadness from his air, while the gypsies trundled along towards the city.
The citizens of Canterlot largely ignored the arriving gypsies. The guards whispered conspiratorially to each other, sizing up the collection of exotically dressed ponies. There was a surprising silence in the bustling city, a kind of fearful silence that had no obvious origin. The whole place felt as though under some kind of pressure that crushed down each citizen.
The gypsies themselves looked about them as they walked down the long boulevards. They had been through many a city, but none that felt like the capital. They expected to feel invigorated and excited, but the ancient buildings imposed the weight of history, while some indefinable disdain radiated from everywhere. It was not the normal hate for their kind. It felt like a spirit was judging them, and found them unacceptable.
Even still, the gypsies arrayed themselves in loose knots around their wagons, which were swiftly opened and put together as stages and booths. Games of chance, fortune telling, places to play, sing and dance. It was all there and being pointed to. Happy voices suddenly rang out in defiance of the hateful heaviness.
“Knock down the coconuts, win a prize!”
“Genuine gypsy music and dance!”
“Bagatelle! The Wheel of Fortune!”
“See what our Lady Fortuna has in store for you! Come and see your fate in the cards!”
It was not quite a hard sell to get the city ponies to come to the carts. They seemed to want to. They seemed drawn to them. There was as much disdain as there was desire in their eyes, but they were hungry for anything other than what they knew. When the dam broke it broke hard. They all rushed in to play games, tip musicians and the dancers, and laugh over the fortune-telling.
“I see... yes... I see the spin of Lady Fortuna's wheel...” The brown stallion said, sitting in a darkened tend before a lightly glowing crystal ball. He was flipping cards as well as checking the ball. “Yes... she speaks...”
“Who are you talking about?” The pegasus mare sitting before him asked.
“Lady Fortuna is she who rides the golden wheel of destiny. She spins our lives around, lifting us up and pulling us down,” the stallion answered, smiling even wider as he spoke. “She shows no partiality. Old or young, rich or poor, weak or strong. Our fates are hers to craft as the spinning slows.”
“Oh. S-surely this is all in jest. We know there are no gods, save for the royal sister. Only they are worthy of praise,” The mare said, looking almost guilty after just hearing of the strange figure.
“Yes, most say so. Most do. Most do...” The stallion trailed off, stare growing distant and vacant. His smile twitched but never fell. He finally snapped back to himself and slapped down a card suddenly. “You have a job but you fear losing it. You will find that certainty both is and is not set. However, in time you will find that a stallion you know will have a job if you require it. It will not be a good job, for there will remain a pall, but it will be there.”
The pegasus blinked and nodded slowly. “Okay... I guess that's... good...” She dropped a few coins on the table and trotted out of the tent, shaking her head.
“I hope she never has that opportunity...” the stallion said, sliding the coins off the table and into a pouch. “I see the futures that could be and will be and never can I disentangle them. I know the past I have lived and all the futures I never did. Sometimes... it's hard to be this thing that I am...”
New information always passed eagerly from lips to ears. The weird, the novel, the unexpected. The naughty. Heresy. Heresy in the city of the sisters. Living goddesses. Yet some trail-traveling nopony spoke of a mysterious goddess that no one knew. It was exciting to imagine touching a new deity, even if only through an unhinged stallion.
Gossip traveled fast in the city of the Sisters, because there were always palace ears trained for the new and improper. From spies to guards to the palace, all in the time it took the rumor to swirl through the crowd. Though talk of heresy should have gone right to the Princesses, even the normally unflappable and bloodthirsty guards had not the will to deal with the indomitable Princesses. They knew the truth behind the ecclesiastical smoke and mirrors. They went to the go-between, Prince Blueblood.
Prince Blueblood played at being a useless dilettante and libertine, but the front was almost unnecessary. Those who did not know the truth knew to suspect something of him. He had poison lips, a venomous tongue and a diseased mind. Every single inch of him was toxic, but no one dared refused his virulent form. They knew there were fates worse than his pernicious presence.
Prince Blueblood scowled as the news was whispered into his ear by a guard, who slipped away with his head bowed and eyes carefully averted. Blueblood made his way over to a balcony and looked down upon the city. His keen, cruel eyes picked out the sight of the gathered gypsies, and all the ponies availing themselves of the services.
Gypsies. He knew of them as vile, sub-equine creatures. The guards had had their fun with one already and as far as he knew she had been properly taken care of. But this was a wholly different group. Wanderers, parasites leeching the money from the citizens, with their gambling, their vile music and fake fortunes. If anypony was entitled to suck the blood of the citizenry like a vampire it was him and his noble cohorts, not some mere sub-equines.
Public opinion was easy to sway against the gypsies. Fascination only went so far; when his considerable gravity was added to a repudiation of the creatures the animus of the public was assured. Whether they acted out of genuine hate or fear of disfavor it didn't matter. They could be convinced to hate, and hate powerfully.
He had many reasons to hate the wretched vermin infesting the city. But the talk of heresy was what pushed him from apathy to action. His aunts, the goddesses, were the alpha and omega of all creation. They had long since annihilated all the ancient cults, and only the most ancient records indicated such a thing had ever existed, and kept only the specter of Discord as a threat. Their power was great and it served well. Nothing could be allowed to weaken it.
“Guards!” Blueblood called, trotting purposefully away from the window.
A small contingent of guards rushed into the room, bowing. “Yes, my prince!” One cried.
“Arrest the gypsies that pollute our city, the ones performing and carrying on,” Blueblood tersely commanded.
“What charge do we present, prince?” The lead guard asked.
“What change?!” Blueblood exploded. “They are gypsy scum! Sub-equine vermin! Remind the population of what they are. Remind them of their hate,” He said with a solid stomp of his hoof.
“Yes, my prince. It will be as you have said,” the guard said, trembling.
“Do not taint our clean palace with them. Use the square as a gathering place. And summon the ecclesiastical authorities. They are more than mere gypsies, they are heretics, babbling about some fake goddess of fate. They must learn the price for such dissident insolence. Go, perform your task,” Blueblood said, with a commanding motion of his head.
“Very well, prince!” the guard said. All the guards saluted and rushed out to do as commanded.
Blueblood walked out to the balcony again and looked down on the wagons. He would go down to watch the arrest, and the questioning and... he could order any particularly delicious mares brought to him, and impose any penalty he wanted. He could even see what kind of creatures would dare defy the wills of his aunts. He had heard about the deranged soothsayer that was the heart of it all. Such a creature would be fascinating to see.
Down in the city no one suspected anything. The music played, the ponies danced and the fortune-telling stallion continued to use crystal and cards to give odd futures that he stated with powerful conviction. And he likewise stated with conviction that he was seeing his visions of what was to be with the assistance of a Lady Fortuna. Nothing was amiss.
“Halt! All of your gypsy scum gather in the center of the street for arrest!” Guards swarmed in suddenly from all sides, brandishing spears. With them were a few priests of the Sisters, who looked disdainfully on the assembly.
“What is the meaning of this? How can you do such a thing?” One of the assembling ponies looked sternly at the guards. He was a short, portly unicorn stallion, his dark green coat the texture of felt, his long mane red and black striped.
“We have official orders! Who are you to question us?” One guard demanded, pointing his spear at the stallion's neck.
“I am the Rom Baro, the leader of this band! I know all the laws and I know that we have not broken any of them!” The stallion insisted.
“Not broken any laws?” One of the priests stepped forward, looking simultaneously pompous and disgusted. 'You have violated the most sacred, the most vital! You have committed the foul sin of heresy! And that is truly the most egregious of legal violations. All this talk of some farcical goddess that pretends to the status of our great and glorious all-powerful princesses! This... fortunate thing...”
“Dame Fortuna,” the brown stallion said, attracting all eyes to him. “That is her name. She must be respected. She controls our fate, after all.”
“Such filth! Rank heresy!” The priest spat.
One of the guards rammed the butt of his spear into the Rom Baro's belly. “What a cruel 'goddess' you worship,” he sneered, “To think that she could fate you to suffer abuse like this.”
“Bring them!” Another of the guards commanded. The citizens who had been enjoying the festivities either shrank back in obedient fear of the guards or began hurling insults at the gypsies.
“This is... this is impossible. This can't be happening!” The Rom Baro muttered, pulling close to the fortune teller.
“No, not impossible,” the fortune-telling stallion replied quietly, still smiling as he trotted beside the Rom Baro.
“But there are laws, protections, all of that,” The leader insisted.
“There are. But there is also fiat and the blind eye. Not all follow the orderly randomness of Lady Fortuna. Some have only chaos and disorder in their hearts, defying the natural order of impartial applications of fortune,” the fortune-teller said, looking around at the ponies yelling and shaking their hooves.
“I can't believe it. Here, in this city. But at least we may appeal to the sisters for mercy, they will help us,” The Rom Baro asserted.
“I told you Lady Fortuna disdained this course. I told you. I saw the future. I know I see so many futures, so may words that never will be, but I know from whence they spring. This was ever to be our fate if we disobeyed. You hope for mercy. You hope for law. You hope in vain,” The fortune-teller said.
The Rom Baro was silent for a moment. “It's true, isn't it? The rumors I have heard. Tell me truly, brother. Lady Fortuna has shown you the truth, hasn't she? She has shown you what I only suspect is so.”
“I see the spin of her wheel. But it is so. I have seen what rumor has whispered in your ear. It is so. It is so,” The fortune-teller said.
“There was money to be made here, lots of it. The size and richness of the city was always a prize. I desired it. I thought there could be no harm. There were laws. Laws...” The Rom Baro said, drifting off to silence.
“There is no protection from what we have found. There is only the spin of the golden wheel. We have the same chances as we ever have had. We have the opportunity to show we will be obedient to whatever the wheel's spin shows. We had the chance to avoid the direst fate, now we spin for a possibly less-dire fate. Lady Fortuna have mercy on us, your faithful...” The smiling stallion said, his head hanging low.
The gypsies were marched to a large plaza, herded together, stallions mares and foals alike. The crowd grew more dire as they went, either genuinely allowing their antipathy to come forth and overpower their need for fun or they were putting on the face for the sake of their neighbors and relations. By the time the last of them had been brought the crowd was screaming obscenities and throwing garbage.
One of the priests stepped forward and motioned for calm. “Good citizens, I see your rage. It is an appropriate rage, a holy rage. You hate them, as has been the tradition from time immemorial! But temper your hate. Do not so mindlessly despise these filthy vermin. Fan the flames of your hate with the knowledge that, more than being worthless creatures fit for spitting on, they are also heretics!” The word made the crowd scream all the louder. “Heresy, against our great Princesses, against the goddesses! Such vileness, blasphemy. That any other force could claim godhood, especially one no civilized creature has ever heard of. Impossible! They worship some idol, some fake, some figment!”
“Lady Fortuna!” The fortune-teller cried out with a smile. “If you are going to excoriate her worship then know her name.”
The priest turned on the fortune-teller, scowling. He passed through the line of guards to confront the smiling stallion. “You dare continue to speak your blasphemy? You admit it in such a place as this?”
“I said, if you would speak against something, know its name and what it means. To act in ignorance is nearly as bad as acting in evil. It may be the same thing,” the fortune-teller said, calmly.
“Who is the leader?” The priest exploded in rage.
“I, sir,” The Rom Baro said, stepping in front of his brother. “I am the leader.”
“Tell this fool to mind his position. He could talk you all into a fate worse than the one you will find now,” The priest huffed.
“He talks us to all fates. He is the drabani, he is our soothsayer. He is the prophet of Lady Fortuna. If he is speaking she moves him to speak. He is seeing our destiny in her wheel,” The Rom Baro said.
“Dame Fortuna has spun and now we receive the fate to which we have been led. This is her way. This is our way. This is how it will be,” The fortune-teller said.
Before the priest could release a tirade a guard came up and whispered to him. Following the guard's indicating hoof he saw an elaborate carriage parked far from the proceedings. He nodded slowly and turned on the smiling figure. “You. Go with the guards. As for the rest, your false prophet has talked you into your fate. Place all the blame on him.”
“Place all the blame where it belongs,” the fortune-teller cried as he walked off with guards flanking him. “Lady Fortuna only spins the wheel and gives her favors across the world. I only speak what I have seen. Yes, put the blame where it lies, put the blame on who has choice, who has intent. Put the blame on the head from whence fiat springs!”
“Move! No more speeches, you're done for now,” a guard hissed harshly into the stallion's ear, leading him towards the carriage.
While the fortune-teller was being led away the guards and priests were busy binding the gypsies, restraining their legs and tossing them into loose piles on the stones of the plaza. The foals screamed and begged, while the adults cried, but were steady in their bearing. They whispered to their foals and spoke of the mysterious workings of fortune. They continued to be calm, even as they found themselves splashed with alcohol and brushed with pitch.
“You spun one wheel too many,” the golden-toned unicorn mare said to her husband, shaking her head sadly.
“My brother was right. He was always right,” The Rom Baro said with a shake of his head. “When first I heard of this goddess I never knew how much she would affect us. But I never had perfect faith. I always thought I could make the big score and ignore the working of destiny's turn.”
“Do you believe now?” the mare asked, as the freezing liquid splashed across her body, and a frowning stallion went by to paint pitch across her, the straw bristles scratching at her body.
“I believe... I always should have...” The Rom Baro suddenly screamed, “I believe! I believe!”
“There! See? In his last moments, conversion. Too late though it is his spirit will at least know the truth of the ways...” The lead priest began, looking smug and pompous.
“I believe in you, Lady Fortuna! I should never have doubted! Mea culpa,” The Rom Baro cried. He then looked up to the sky and began to sing, “O Fortuna, salve Fortuna...”
“All the other gypsies seized on the song, and lifted their voices high to join him, “Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve! Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle! O clemens, O pia, O dulcis meretrix Fortuna!”
The song ended abruptly in cries of agony as the priests and guards threw torches onto the restrained figures. The crowd of observers gave a muted cry of delight as the flames rose up and the ponies flailed on the ground. They had been trained to regard public executions as good things, and to ignore injustice, from assault to sexual brutality if done by the official. Even so, to see so many set alight was difficult. Even if socialized hatred made them hard to those they were trained to vilify, there was no denying the screams and wails were still equine.
Empathy was what made most wander away, having done their civic duty. They had kept up appearances. They left while the bodies smouldered and the barely-living moaned out incoherently. They would go, vomit, drink, and do as they were told. They would forget, dutifully, and pretend that life was perfect. They were under the auspices of the sisters. The sisters loved them. They would never be hurt by agents of the sisters. Mares, stallions and foals were completely safe. If they drank enough, comfort would come.
The carriage which had sat apart from the happening pulled away after the fire and screaming had largely died down. Within Prince Blueblood was sitting with the smiling fortune-teller, who was restrained and held in place by armed guards. “You smile as your folk are burned? Strange, I never knew that common sub-equines could feel such a rarified and heady feeling as ecstasy in the death of others.”
“Lady Fortuna showed me the course. I spoke the words. Now none of my folk languish in your dungeon, tortured or worse. A single conflagration and they were done. Her wheel came up mercy. And you delivered it. You are most gracious, and noble, and kind,” the stallion said, his smile pulling tighter, just a hair's breadth from being mocking.
“Impudent creature!” Blueblood spat, slapping the fortune-teller hard across the face. The lack of reaction made him scowl deeper. “What do they call you, blaspheming heretic?'
“My name fell away long ago. It no longer mattered in my service to Lady Fortuna. But a title must be applied that I may be called. They know me as the Smiling Rover, or just the Rover. I wandered until I found my new family, then I wandered with them,” The Rover answered.
“You sound like the jabbering madponies we keep locked up in that dank asylum. You're entirely mad, it seems,” Blueblood said, looking less upset and more disturbed.
“No... no... Not mad. Funny. Odd. Eccentric. Unusual. Discord drives folk mad; Lady Fortuna makes them funny. Harmless, yet helpful. Harmful and helpless would be the likes of the selfish and grasping who seek to control all.”
“Your oddities are no different than madness. You talk in riddles and worse, talk of nothing! Control is all there is in this world. All that matters in all the world. Without control of every single aspect in the world there is weakness. Let the common rabble, the worthless meat-ponies be so helpless. But I have ultimate control, ultimate power,” Blueblood said smugly, affecting a proud posture.
“How strange... you make such statements, and yet... as the priest implied, they said that the deaths of my folk were their responsibility. But I know from seeing the wheel it was you. Your doing. You killed them. Intent never left. Yet still... in another and equal way you obey Lady Fortuna's will. This matter of holding control sounds like a puppet, tugging at his strings and denying they exist,” The Rover said.
“A vicious lie! Blasphemy!” Blueblood roared, slapping the Rover repeatedly, cutting his lip and spattering blood around. Still, the earth pony never stopped smiling. “I have control. You said I killed them, I did. I chose to liquidate the worthless sub-equines! They deserved nothing but death for being as they were. Tradition had fanned our hate, and it is good. That they were heretics was just the easiest way. I chose. I do not follow the workings of destiny!”
“You embrace it, you follow it eagerly, grandly, completely. You don't fight it in any sense. Fate is as it is. A wheel lands, a die shows pips, a coin lands heads or tail. It is foolish to rail against that happening. You may be angered at the fate you got, the card you turned, the show of the die, but it is improper to be angry that an outcome came up at all. You don't control that which is outside of you, however you may think it is so,” the Rover said.
“Cards, dice, wheels, the excesses of a gambler. Gaming is a proper pastime only of the noble, who may have debts forgiven by the cringing gamesters, not for such lowly peasants as you,” Blueblood snorted. “Your riddle-tongued speeches mean less and less. Turning a card says nothing of fate. Search him for his cards,” he said to a guard.
“Yes, sire,” one of the guards said, digging in the Rover's tattered attire. He pulled out the long cards of the Rover's tarot deck. “Here it is, sire.”
“Yes, the strange gypsy cards. You lesser beings cannot even have proper gaming tools. Such strange things,” Blueblood said, idly flipping three cards over. Number seventeen, The Star; the Page of Coins; the Queen of Coins.
“I wish I could not read sad portents in the cards you touch, but I know what Dame Fortuna has spun in the future. This vale of tears will be watered, because it is both fate and fiat. Some inclination draws the innocent pure to their destiny. A destiny I wish could change.”
Blueblood passed on commentary, and turned over more cards. Number one, The Magician; and the Knight of Swords.
“Loss is hard, when it comes of hiding the truth. Fact frightens only those who shrink from the bright light of scrutiny but do ill in the blackness,” The Rover sighed, still with his smile.
“What rot,” Blueblood said, grinning as he flipped a card. Zero, The Fool.
The Rover stared into nothing, smile going wan for a moment. “I... the worlds are kind, but unkind in the same measure. Lady Fortuna forgive my distaste, but I am not perfectly inured against all vision...”
Blueblood cackled as he turned more cards. Number fourteen, Temperance; the Page of Rods; and the Knight of Rods. “He acts as though these pasteboard bits of trash are causing him pain. Wonderful!”
“Tragedy, loss, foolishness. Greed, malice, hate for the plebe and prole, the ones that make the universe work. Why must they go?” The Rover sighed, though he smiled on.
More cards turned over. The eight of Swords; the two of Cups; and number Eleven, Justice.
“So many lives. Innocent, in all cases. Held tight to be broken like a window before the stone of a mindless vandal, or used up as though they were nothing, thrown aside, when they have real value. Value as living beings, sapient and vital. And the chance to strike, to hit the rotten core of pain and suffering, that it is subverted... Lady Fortuna, your wheel spins so fast...” The Rover groaned, in a kind of agony.
“This suffering is so strange. I know agony but his smile is so strange,” Blueblood said, turning over number Nine, The Hermit.
“I see the end of the road; that it takes away another quiet innocent is proof this world is too tainted to be worth any sight. Looking into the spin of the worlds is the only cure,” The Rover said with a shake of his head.
Another card went over. “What does your false goddess see in this?” Blueblood eagerly asked, holding up number Six, The Lovers.
“Broken, shattered, ruined. Always ruined. So many worlds of violence and severance, cut apart by wicked thoughts and foolishness. At least half will live to see more than this poison. To see a world that doesn't need a Prince who hates all the ones that make nations rich. After all, the Prince doesn't work. Aren't they that take from others called parasites?” The Rover asked.
“Silence!” Blueblood screamed, throwing the deck of cards at the Rover, smacking his face and hitting his body several times. The fact that he didn't stop smiling only angered Blueblood more. He said nothing else as the carriage went on, into the palace.
The Rover was escorted into the dungeon, passing by cringing servants who looked down and away, and guards who smiled knowingly. His eyes cast around the cells, seeing things that weren't there, wouldn't be there, were there. “I see... I see everything. Lady Fortuna you are kind with this horror, as I now see what may be and what could never be,” The Rover said.
“Do you ever cease your meaningless jabbering or is your addled mind so polluted with your heresy that you vomit up words as those plague-riddled monsters we keep vomit up the gruel we throw on the floor for them?” Blueblood asked, with more frustration than anger.
“Speaking is one of the... consequences of Lady Fortuna's touch,” The Rover said, step faltering a bit.
“Just what kind of babble is that?” Blueblood asked.
“I said she does not make others mad, merely funny. But she does this not out of consequence but out of nature. You see... I have seen the worlds,” The Rover said.
“'Worlds'? What worlds? There is but one world,” Blueblood asserted.
“How little you see, and how much less you know. There are worlds upon worlds. Worlds in which I am a mare, in which you are a pegasus. I have seen worlds where you are kind...” The Rover began.
Blueblood waved a hoof dismissively. “It must be terrifically dull.”
“It is more exciting than you can envision. Divorced from the Iron Law you walk in the light. The hails, the cheers, the glories and adulation, earned not taken. Given, not stolen. You can hardly imagine it,” The Rover said with a bigger smile and distant gaze.
“I can imagine many things and I imagine that losing the life of libertine freedom is foolish and ignoble. If I am not free to hurt others then they are superior, and that is impossible,” Blueblood flatly stated.
“But, the worlds come. Discord shows them all in one huge, blinding, paradoxical, insanity-forging flash. Lady Fortuna shows them at her will, in her time, in pieces. But slow, steady and bearable. The mind is loosened but not unhinged. It is allowed to slip into the visions,” The Rover explained.
“But how does that explain your endless chattering?” Blueblood demanded.
“Because the future you see, the past you must know, the worlds you learn could have existed won't always be pretty. No, no... no... Lady Fortuna does not sugarcoat the turn of the wheel. You do anything to douse the ugliness that occasionally flashes behind your eyelids. You plead with her to see anything else. Everything else. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g... and you play games to keep your brain from boiling to froth. All her games of chance, all those that are touched by her hoof, until you become good. You can become good at that which is in the hold of fate because there are ways to supplicate to destiny and change the outcome, if only for another turn of the wheel,” The Rover said.
The Rover's tone had become loose and distant, his eyes more vacant, while she smile remained on his lips. Blueblood pulled back, disturbed by the strange stallion. Only then did he deign to notice that the Rover's flank was blank. “What is this? Where is your mark? All ponies have marks as adults, no matter what.”
“It is invisible!” The Rover shouted suddenly, making the guards reflexively point their spears at him. “My destiny is no longer mine. It changed the day Dame Fortuna came into my life. She made me see that I was changed. That what I thought of my talent was no longer so. Now it is her that I follow. None can see the mysterious strings of fortune, and so none see the mark that leads me.”
Blueblood growled in frustration, as though suddenly becoming aware of where he was and what he was doing. “Guards, fetch me a blade. This is pointless. Just another chattering madpony with nothing to add to my glory. This talk of fates and worlds and places where I am not what I am is meaningless. I am as I am and there are no other ways to be!”
As the guard fetched a nearby knife from a set of them the Rover laughed a bit. “Oh Prince... if you had awoken on your right side and not your left your day would have followed the path that derived from that. Had you been born with one bit less in your store or with one servant less in your retinue things would have been different. The same as if those that influenced you had been given different experiences, such as exile, personal loss or the realization of the interconnectedness of others and the need to maintain peace and happiness.”
Blueblood lifted the blade up, a curved thing very like a dagger, but with a plain handle and no guard. He approached the rover who made no move to flee. “Foolishness. I was born as I was and all my influences were as they were. There are no changes. There are no alterations. We move as we move and I am as I am, with my will!”
“And that is fate, is it not?” The Rover laughed. “But more... you cannot admit there could be another way. There would then be some sensation that you missed. You cannot admit there might be a better way. It is anathema. To thing there could be some different path. If that were so... it would mean you were wrong...”
Blueblood didn't respond at first. He simply used his magic to bring the blade forward, slashing along the Rover's flank where his mark should have been. The flesh parted readily before the keen edge and the blood flowed down. But nothing was revealed. Another motion peeled a layer, to see if it was hidden. But there was nothing. “No magic and no flesh covering... where is it?”
The Rover smiled on and shook his head. “It is like I said. Lady Fortuna is my fate. You cannot see the invisible threads of destiny, so why would the mark be present?” He asked, with hardly a catch in his voice.
Blueblood cut a few more times, first over the flank and leg, then up the Rover's side. He had noticed something. “You didn't scream. They all scream. Even the most stalwart will when I touch the areas I know to touch. But you didn't. Don't you feel anything?”
“It hurts. The same as any other pony would be hurt. The same as others have been hurt,” The Rover said, expression and tone unchanged. “But it is my destiny. It is as I have seen. I know nothing will change with a scream, in any world or circumstance. So why would I?”
“Your body is not so controlled. Even knowing it you must scream, I have done what will make you scream!” Blueblood insisted, slashing the Rover's barrel and back.
“So... is yours also so commanded by external circumstances? Perhaps... by forces outside of your control?” The Rover queried with a laugh.
“You impudent beast! Your body is not my body! My superiority makes me something beyond you!” The cuts moved up the Rover's neck, as the side of his body became a collection of blood runnels.
“I see... I see... when violence is the resort it means the ideas have run out. From smooth suavity and surety to mindless rage. I see what Lady Fortuna has always wanted me to see...”
Blueblood slashed the Rover across the face, right over his eyes. To emphasize his point he stabbed the blade into both eyes as well. “Can you still see? Does your false goddess give you vision now?!”
“I see better than ever...” the Rover said, laughing. As he laughed, a pendant fell from the back of his neck, swinging on a chain he had not been wearing before.
“What? What is this?” Blueblood asked, pulling the pendant with his magic. It was a gold necklace pendant rendered in an ancient style. It showed the top half of an alicorn, who was smiling slyly and had her front legs spread out to indicate what was below. The bottom half was a wheel, which looked capable of spinning. It was divided into four segments, each marked with letters of an alphabet Blueblood couldn't identify, but showing pictures of plenty, poverty, and moving towards one of the two. “Where did you get this?”
“Lady Fortuna came to me when I found that. Ages ago. Eons ago. A lifetime ago. When I was what I was, I found it. Then I became what I truly was, what I was supposed to be all along,” The Rover replied.
“An ancient treasure. Blasphemous and heretical, but it's worth money. There must have been more! Tell me where it was!” Blueblood demanded.
“Oh there was more. Glittering gems and gold. Silver. Precious woods. Ancient artworks of every description. I could have walked away with other treasures. I had to choose. She told me I should have taken the nocturlabe near it if I wanted a bauble. Perhaps the next opportunity...” The Rover said with a calm, pleased tone.
“Tell me where you found this trove of wealth you...” Blueblood began.
“Threats are nothing. I know what you may do and I know how I will respond. But even if I were to take you to the very spot, and had you stand in my own hoofprints you would find nothing. I found it by Lady Fortuna's grace alone. I was meant to find it, fated to find it. To pick a piece, that piece, and to know of her turning wheel. When I spun her glorious golden wheel my life became what it chose for me. That gave me my path,” The Rover said, speaking sternly through his tight-pulled smile.
“Is that so? Well then... it's mine now...” Blueblood flicked the wheel and set it spinning, each of the four fates passing under the gold Lady Fortuna's smiling face. As the wheel slowed Blueblood could see each segment more clearly, so he pressed his hoof down, stopping the wheel on plenty.
Upon doing that the pendant changed. The metal mare's face fell into a scowl and her sculpted eyes glowed red. The whole pendant turned from gold to iron and began to corrode. It flaked and powered into a dull red mess that just blew away.
Blueblood jumped back and looked stunned. “What trickery is this?”
“You attempted to force fate to suit you. You may finesse your destiny and take advantage of every skill the vagueries of nature grant you to make what you can of it. But you can't cheat Lady Fortuna. Forgotten though she is, and with as much contempt for her as is held she is still a goddess. You wished for the Eumenides. Remember that it was you that demanded to meet my lady in her guise of Nemesis face-to-face,” The Rover said, voice balancing between sternness and hidden happiness.
Blueblood could only stare is disbelief at the Rover. Eyes gone, blood dripping from his form, in chains in a dungeon, he still smiled... and still carried in his heart unmistakable contempt. Blueblood was glorious! Blueblood was unassailable! Blueblood was the greatest being in all the world! He would not let a petty peasant make him look foolish. “Send for the headsman. We will make an example of him. Your head will decorate the pile of bodies of your fellows, a warning to blasphemers and heretics who deny the power of the divine royals.”
“Now that's real fear. Hating what frightens you so. Where are your smooth assurances and your ego? Where's the grandiosity? I accept this, too. I accept this end,” The Rover said.
Blueblood cuffed the Rover sharply. “This was my will, not something you accept. You act as though it was your doing, but it was always me.”
“That is so, that is so... Dame Fortuna, even in this I am ready.” The Rover said, suddenly walking away from Blueblood and towards a new figure. He was clad entirely in black, with a hood that hid his features. He magically held aloft a large, sharp ax stained with old blood. “Etiamsi omnes, ego non. Etiamsi omnes, ego non. Etiamsi omnes, ego non...”
“Silence his mad tongue for good!” Blueblood commanded.
The headsman stroked the ax down and easily severed the rover's head. His blood gushed out on the ground from the neck, while his head rolled slightly, landing on its side following a heavy thump on the stone floor. Blueblood lifted in up to see the look of death, a frown at last on the insolent face. But he did not find it. He found the same smile below the gouged eyes. The lips moved and the Rover's voice croaked out, “Tu quoque.”
Blueblood's magic faltered and he dropped head head while taking a step back. He looked down on the smiling thing and shuddered. “Guards, quarter the body and put the pieces on pikes at the four corners of the place where the gypsies' burned bodies will be left. Then boil the head and remove the flesh to be similarly piked in their midst.”
The guards went off to do as commanded, while Blueblood went to bathe, and to rest himself after the confusing and unusual happening. Things would return to normal once he had used his iron hoof to show the consequences of incorrect belief.
It did not go as he had planned. The body quarters were placed, and the burned bodies were set outside of the city as a warning. But the Rover's head never made an appearance. Even with the skin removed some strange curve of the fleshless jaw and some odd light in the sockets where the eyes had been still suggested a smile. Even breaking the bones never erased the shadow of the smile.
Blueblood would forget it in time. He had other matters to consider. His friends had needs. He had needs. He had hungers to sate and thirsts to slake. No petty stage illusion would make him forget his drives and desires. He would continue on as he had intended. There was nothing to the whole matter. He was certain.
The Rover, too, had other matters to consider. He had been faithful. He had watched the wheel and walked the road to the end, faithful and true. The reward of destiny was to be allowed to try again. To be at fate's direction elsewhere. In another world, in one of the world's he had seen.
The golden wheel spun, but a gentle hoof traced along the edge to slow it to a better stopping point. So that he came around anew, hearing, “Congratulations, ma'am. It's a colt.”
“If you are neutral toward injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu
