Sometimes our lives are suddenly changed by circumstances beyond our control. But when the situation changes, we work it into our plans.

An earth pony guard burst into the throne room and galloped towards the throne, yelling as he went: “News from Northern Equestria, your highness!”

“Yes?”

The guard bowed before her with his helmet in his arm. “I am simply to tell you that... it has returned.”

Celestia gasped, her eyes wide. She turned to the pegasus guards at the side of her throne. “Find Princess Cadance and Shining Armor!”

Not ten minutes later we were there. We'd been ponynapped from the Canterlot airship harbor where we were waiting to board a luxury cruise for a relaxing week to ourselves, and for a moment I thought the Royal Guard was attempting a coup.

Instead we found ourselves brought to the throne room, where both my aunts were locked in a heated discussion that ended the moment they saw us enter. An unspoken message passed between them, and Luna trotted out of the hall, leaving us to speak with Celestia in private.

She nodded at us as we approached. “My niece, Captain. I apologize for bringing you here so dramatically.”

Shining opened his mouth to speak but Celestia cut him off with a hoof. “Please allow me to go straight to the point. Cadenza, Shining Armor, I have a mission for you. Something astonishing has happened. It is no exaggeration to call it a titanic development. It will require you to scrap all your plans for the near future.”

“Your highness, what's the matter?” Shining Armor asked.

“The Crystal Empire has returned to Equestria,” Celestia said, and then her voice turned low. “As has its ruler.”

Shining Armor didn't know. It had been wiped from history, because frankly some things are so dark and evil they should never even be remembered. Even I did not know all the details: Auntie Celestia had only told me hints, fragments, across the centuries, as if to say any more would loose the tyrant again upon the world. But I knew enough to know what this meant.

I listened quietly while Celestia told us the full story of the fall of a once-glorious nation. Shining was shaken to the core at the story of the forgotten king's cruelty. How he ground the hopes and dreams of his subjects to dust to feed his mad desires for power. How he tortured them to the point where the torture became its own end.

The beast had returned, but he was weakened. He was not our mission, though I had to restrain my husband for the lust for justice flamed within him and I could tell that already he was planning ways to hunt the monster down and destroy him for ever. Our mission was of love, not war.

The Crystal Ponies had suffered slavery and torture under the lord of cruelty himself. Now they were a broken tribe of ponies who knew only fear and despair.

The Princess of Love would protect them, nurture them, and make them whole again. With my husband by my side.

We would be the leaders and guardians of our own kingdom. That is what Celestia told us.

I looked back at my cutie mark, that elaborate jeweled heart. It was unique in all my experience: never had I seen another pony with anything like it.

In my thoughts I recited the words of the Princess's Oath: I swear to be a guide to my people, a servant to their needs, a shield against their enemies.

The Princess of the Crystal Heart was going to rule the Crystal Empire. This wasn't just a mission. It was my destiny.

I heard the voice in the back of my head warning me, as Celestia spoke, of what this would mean for my special project. I had always willingly stayed in Auntie's shadow, and counted on my relative obscurity and the short memories of ponies to conceal the lineage of my life-mates. As the ruler of a nation I would no longer have that advantage.

But there would be time to find a solution to that. First, there was a tribe of ponies in a far away land, enslaved, tortured, broken in the most intimate and terrible of ways, who needed my love to heal them. I was not going to let them down.

Author's Note

Next time: Blessing.