“Because no one has more thirst for earth, for blood [...] than the creatures who inhabit cold mirrors”
― Alejandra Pizarnik
Princess Celestia was far from a goddess. Despite what ponies thought of her she was not a fully immortal mare. Yes she lived—in theory—forever, just as all Alicorns do, but sickness and mortal wounds affected her body just as much as the lowliest peasant or the bravest soldier.
A mortal blow with a weapon would still be a mortal wound. However, Alicorns had certain ways of dealing with such things.
It was here that Celestia found her mind wandering as she gazed out of the carriage as it pressed on below the towering spires of crystalline purple, and into the Empire that had grown to symbolise Equestrian values.
While also being a deterrent to the Northern ambitions of a... certain predator king, that had long since had his diplomatic relationships with Celestia’s rule strained by the vast emptiness of the north that she had insisted on not letting them have.
But such was not the time for politics. Celestia had journeyed at the behest of her niece, for she and her husband had found something in the castle that required a certain expertise in the areas of the dark arts.
An expertise that Celestia and Luna had.
Leaving the kingdom in her sister’s capable hooves, while she journeyed to Cadance’s realm, was no mean feat of diplomatic struggle. Luna had insisted she go, for her knowledge of dark magic had been considerably extended by her brief span as the Nightmarish entity that had so consumed her. But, Celestia had insisted that, should the darkness be too strong even for Luna, it could prove most damaging to the comparatively younger Alicorn.
Luna had relented. The memories still a sore spot. Someday they would both look upon the event as old mares looking upon a humorous moment.
The regal princess shook her head. Down that path lay only regret.
Celestia stepped forth from the carriage in a regal manner. Full of the grace of thousands of practices. She gave a warm smile to her niece and her husband, though that’s where the pleasantries ended. She was here for more official business. Business that she was loathe to complete, but necessary nonetheless.
“I trust the door has been properly prepared?” Celestia asked, walking towards the palace. She was flanked on either side by Cadence and Shining.
“Yes,” Cadance confirmed. “The door has been covered and everypony told not to enter it.” she assured her. “Not that it would be a problem, that section of the castle is only accessible by a spell,” she finished.
They continued to walk, Celestia gazing up at the palace proper. It had been centuries since last she laid eyes on it, and even longer since seeing it in a positive light.
Unfettered memories raced through her mind of the tyrant that once held the empire in his iron grip. Slaves would march around the palace for his own amusement, and he would brag to the princesses that they would be dragging the bodies of the dead around as they marched long days and nights without food, water, or sleep.
She and Luna only needed to hear that before they staged an uprising against him. Those few ponies brave or foolhardy enough to hear the Princesses call had fallen swiftly on the battlefield, but had given Celestia and Luna the time needed to banish the Dark King swiftly.
Unfortunately he also took with him the Crystal Empire in his last act of spite.
She shook her head to banish the thoughts. Such things had no place in the now-reformed Crystal Empire.
Stories of mad kings, darkness and slaves belonged now only in the deepest recesses of fictitious stories. And while it would have grains of truth to it, she would hope the memory of the mad king would fall swiftly into the same oblivion the king himself fell into.
“I trust you journey was pleasant?” Her niece’s voice broke through the fog of her thoughts and reminded her that she was, indeed, very much in the present.
Celestia put on a smile and nodded. “Oh, pleasant enough I suppose. There is only so much comfort you can get from a golden chariot,” she said to the younger Alicorn, somewhat teasingly.
Cadance laughed, a lilting noise full of genuine mirth. “I’ll take your word for it, auntie.”
The rest of the walk was spent in a still silence. The only sounds were that of the ambiance of a peaceful world. Birds tweeted relaxing sonatas, ponies were laughing around her, baring her naught but the cursory glance and polite nod. They almost treated her like any other pony, only bowing when she stepped close enough to tower over them.
She almost smiled at them genuinely, but held herself back from doing so. She was here on important business. Despite her interactions with indirect family, the matter was no less urgent.
Cadance stepped into the castle first, followed in turn by the regal sun Princess, and her royal guards. They stood out like sore thumbs in the crystalline and prismatic halls of the Crystal Castle.
Their golden armour contrasted not only with the floors and walls, but with the armour of the local Crystal Pony guards. These Crystal ponies came from a much wilder time, where wars and assassins were prevalent to the point of requiring twenty-four hour, rigorous patrols.
Their armour was polished to a mirror shine, their coats were hardened from the local magical effect to be equally so. Light would blind their enemies, and they would roar into battle with the fearsome drive to either cut down all their enemies, and die valiantly for victory, or honourably in defeat.
No Crystal guard would be caught dead with a clean blade.
Even her stalwart Royal Guards were sweating in intimidation.
She shook her head and focused her eyes forward as she was brought to the heart of the castle. The throne room where her niece took counsel with delegates and court with nobles and—she hated to use the phrase—lesser subjects, alike was almost as large and unintentionally intimidating as her own. Whilst also being comforting in its serenity and gentle in its commanding tone.
When last she saw it all those centuries ago it had been shrouded in a shadow so deep that all that would be seen were the eyes of the King, and ponies would grovel at his offer of light and accept all lies he would say as truth.
Again her mind wandered. Celestia had to remind herself that her dear niece was in charge now. A far cry was the Alicorn of Love from the sadistic and dark-addled mind of a corrupted and Capnomantic king.
“Would you like to see the object now?” Cadance asked, turning to her aunt with her best teasing smile. “Or perhaps later when you’re rested from the journey?”
Celestia, for the most part, ignored the teasing jab at her blow against the chariot she rode in on, however she did smirk ever so lightly, almost imperceptible to the untrained eye. So much so that both Celestia’s and Cadance’s guards exchanged looks that spoke of concern that the younger Alicorn had been impudent in some way.
Celestia went to speak, but took a split second to stick out her tongue playfully at her niece before beginning.
“Well, it would be a lie to say that I didn’t want to catch up with my niece and nephew-in-law over flushing out Dark Magic from a doorway,” she began, hearing her niece laugh. “But,” she admonished. “let’s deal with the business at hand first, then we can catch up ‘till our heart’s content,” she reasonably finished.
Cadance nodded diplomatically before motioning to a guard off to the side. He stepped aside diligently as Cadance’s horn powered up.
It wasn’t her usual, love-fueled magical aura. This one was much darker. Ambient hues of purple, green and onyx-black shot forth in a continuous beam, and from the sheer power of the unexpected burst, Celestia readied a counter-spell against the form of incantation Cadance was casting, but there was no need for it.
The spell hit harmlessly on a crystal behind the throne in the room, and there on the floor opened a mysterious panel, plunging into the depths of darkness.
Cadance’s footing wavered as the spell was shut off, and Celestia rushed to her side once again to catch the Alicorn before she righted herself.
“I’m okay, it’s just… Dark Magic doesn’t agree with the Princess of Love,” she weakly smiled and shook her head.
Celestia smiled, betraying a look of concern under the thin veneer.
“You go on ahead, Auntie, I may have to go lie down…” she trailed off and left, four guards in tow, leaving Celestia’s own to fill the gaps.
It would seem, she thought to herself, that I am going down alone.
And so she did. Down into the darkness, with nothing but the golden light of her horn to illuminate step after descending step she went.
Sombra’s affinity for stairs matched that of Crystals, it seemed. With the darkness and the residual dark magic came the dark thoughts that had plagued Celestia’s mind since she arrived.
Had she known of this place while Banishing the mad king, perhaps she could have secured the Crystal Heart then and saved the Empire from its 1000 year purgatory.
Regrets weighed heavily on a ruler of a country. Especially one who had been around for hundreds of lifetimes. Regrets of war when peace would have been a more profitable option, of those times she had failed those she cared about most…
She shook her head resolutely. Only shadows and darkness lay down that path. As impenetrable as those currently swirling around her and fleeing from the light of her horn. They spread over the stairs, retreating around her before encroaching again behind her, seemingly sealing her off from her escape.
Celestia had her suspicions that the darkness was not naturally occurring.
Finally, she reached the floor itself. Gazing at the door in question, she saw it was draped with a red covering, suspended via a railing, and openable by a golden cord.
Celestia sighed. “No time like the present…” she murmured to herself.
She gripped the cord in her golden aura, watching as the red covering slid back, and the foreboding, ominous door came into the dim light of her horn.
She resolutely gritted her teeth and charged up the most powerful dark magic spell she knew. From deep within the recesses of the knowledge she had accumulated from oh, so many wars and battles with dark and light armies and beings both.
She had reasoned that the only way to purge the dark magic within it, would be to blatantly confront it, and defeat it within the hallucination it instigated. The more powerful the dark magic fueled into it, the more would be purged upon its defeat. The only downside being that the hallucination itself would be all but impossible to overcome.
Celestia had the utmost confidence that she could defeat whatever would be thrown her way.
And so, she fired the spell at the door, and watched as it swung open. Anypony watching her would have seen her scleras go a dark green of the deepest swamp, almost black in their intensity.
She was prepared for anything…
Except for what actually showed up.
She was surprised when she saw not a vicious entity shrouded in impossible magic, nor her fear of the many villains she had defeated uniting under one banner.
What she saw was herself, reflected back in the dim light. It showed her eyes a being totally black, though the Princess reasoned it was only a trick played by the shadows.
The reflection was shrouded in darkness, no, it bled into the darkness and became one with it as the borders of the figure became harder to see.
Try as she might, Celestia couldn’t look away from those piercing, hollow eyes…
And then it moved. She found herself moving with it, as though she were the reflection. It pressed its hooves up against hers, and cracked its face into a contorted image resembling a smile. Rows upon rows of jagged, white teeth showed through the haze.
Celestia could feel herself smiling in much the same way.
It was her. Celestia shouldn’t have accepted it, but she did. This image, this, twisted, malformed image, was her. And try as she might, it seemed that, as of now, it was more her than, well, herself. It was, after all, the one in control.
“What are you…?” she whispered quietly, seeing the mouth of the reflection waver in its crooked attempt at speech. She could almost hear its voice, and strained to hear more, before resoundingly deciding that she never wanted to hear it again.
When it spoke next, she wasn’t spared by hearing her own voice mask it. She was, however, subjected to feeling her own mouth mimic the actions of the pony behind the glass. No, not pony, she reminded herself. This entity is not a pony.
“I am all of your mistakes,” the thing said. “Your regrets. Your callous and cold acts of selfishness you inflicted to spare yourself the knowledge that you had failed,” she all but finished, spitting at her with all the venom she could muster.
“Selfish…?” Celestia asked, hearing the grating voice of the thing in front of her ring in her ears. She had been called many things, but never, ever selfish.
“Indeed,” the mare proclaimed. “How many times have you solved problems by banishing enemies? Or imprisoning them,” she asked, smirking at Celestia.
“Lacking the drive to see that they get what they deserve. What you know they deserve.” she taunted.
“You keep them alive so as to not be haunted by their faces every night, like you are with all the soldiers that have fallen in your name over the centuries.” The relentless assault continued.
Celestia was forced to do nothing but listen.
“And when you realised that Sombra could not be encased permanently in the same way, you dispatched Twilight Sparkle as your personal hitmare so that she would be visited by his dying scream in her dreams, instead of you.” she accused, pointing a hoof at the Princess.
Celestia was jarred by her own hoof moving as well.
“That’s not why I sent her…” Celestia defended.
“No?” the mare in front of her asked, a hoof going over her chest. “Oh, yes,” she feigned remembrance, clopping her hooves together in mock realisation. “You sent her to learn the importance of self-sacrifice. So, not only did you hope for her to destroy Sombra, but, perhaps you hoped she would fail in her task…” she paused and gazed accusingly at Celestia, those deep, hollow eyes piercing deep into her soul.
Celestia felt that those eyes bored deep into her very soul. She suddenly felt very exposed.
“...And die!” she spat again.
“Don’t even dare think I would hope that to become of Twilight!” Celestia vehemently defended, not willing to put up with the mare taunting her about her most beloved student.
“You couldn’t even keep your own Sister from falling into Darkness.”
That was a comeback Celestia hadn’t expected, but it didn’t cut as deep as it would have. Many times had she used that very card against herself in midnight internal debates.
“And you so willingly banished her almost as soon as she turned,” the mare shook her head condescendingly. “You may not think yourself capable of such things, but you forget, I am you. Your desires and darkest secrets, your Midnight Dreams nopony can know,” she smiled derisively as Celestia’s defences crumbled steadily.
“You are a shadow of me. And I demand that you release me immediately!” She all but screamed in anger, rattling the glass of the mirror, yet unable to move.
It was a hallucination. Celestia had to remind herself of that. Only a hallucination.
“What is a shadow?” the mare asked rhetorically. “A mirror that cannot speak,” she finished. “For how long have you surpressed me? How long have you sought to bury me as deep in your mind as you possibly could? And now I have been given a voice. Your voice. And you don’t like it. Because I am right, aren’t I?” she finished.
The silence was almost oppressive. Palpable in its intensity. Able to be cut with a blade, and suffocating.
“I didn’t…” she began, only to be cut off almost immediately.
“You didn’t think that the thing you fear more than anything in this world would be yourself,” she smiled a bit wider, showing off those serrated, shark-like teeth. “Your own mind. Your flaws and mistakes laid bare for you to finally see.”
Celestia remained silent again.
The reflection never missed a beat in her assault.
“How many more? How many would worship the ground you walk on, and die at your call?” she asked.
Tears found their way out of Celestia’s eyes for the first time in years, matting her fur as they trailed down her cheeks.
“Luna? Cadance? Shining? The only one who got wise was Sunset Shimmer,” the mare decided.
Celestia gazed up at her almost pleadingly. “Stop this…” she weakly ordered.
“But you couldn’t have that,” she continued, unabated, not even noticing Celestia had spoken, or not choosing to. “Again, your prized little hitmare came into play and ‘reformed’ her. Leaving her stranded in that world when she was no longer a threat,” the mare shook her head, Celestia feeling her own shaking as well.
“I said stop it…” Celestia ordered, with more fervor, but she could feel her resolve slipping into the beginnings of true despair.
“How awful do you treat your previous students? I shudder to think what you would do to Twilight if she ever gets smart and leaves,” she trailed off, allowing the suffocating blanket of silence to return.
Celestia was shaking her head, and managed to utter a single word;
“Please…”
The mare chortled cruelly.
Celestia flinched.
“The great and powerful Celestia,” she began, full of a vile mirth that made Celestia shiver. “Grovelling at my feet. How pathetic.”
Celestia gazed into her reflection’s dark eyes angrily.
“You don’t even deserve the name. Celestia means heavenly, did you know that?” the mare tilted her head at the pointless rhetoric. “How ironic you have fallen so far from deserving that monicker now… Celestia…” the name no longer sounded sweet coming from the lips of the thing staring her down.
It became a mocking mantra, and Celestia closed her eyes as her last defence.
“Celestia…”
It was torture. And she had nopony but herself to blame.
“Celestia…”
The voice became gentler, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy trying to fight off the remaining tears from becoming full blown sobs. She could not allow that thing to win anymore than she already had.
“Princess Celestia.”
It was cruel. Nopony should have been so cruel. Sombra was once a normal unicorn, tainted by the seductive powers of the Darkness, as her sister had been.
“Princess!”
Was Sombra her fault as well? How many other villains could she have prevented the rise of if she only had...
“Celestia!”
She shook her head off, finally coming back to the real world. The mirror was gone, replaced only by a stone wall. A pure, grey, stone wall. Absent was the nightmare, but not the sorrow.
“Auntie please!” Cadance’s voice was next to her.
Celestia immediately turned, and, upon seeing her niece’s compassionate eyes, and the concerned eyes of Shining, she finally broke down.
She sobbed for the first time since the first nights of Luna’s absence. Full-body sobs that wracked her whole body. She had thrown her hooves around Cadance, who was now shushing her and rubbing her mane, comforting her like one would a foal.
Suddenly the weight of the world crashed down on the Princess’ shoulders. And she saw nothing but black, enveloped in the soft warmth of a loving family embrace.
Author's Note
I was very cruel to Celestia, wasn't I?
