Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”
– Matthew 2:2
“Star side up...”
The unicorn mare lapsed back into silence, at which point the woman she had been speaking to began gently shaking her head, wincing slightly as the motion pulled at the scars that covered her face, one of which ran across her right cheek from ear to the lower lip.
“You can’t look at things just as a product of chance, Moondancer,” she said, attempting to force as much conviction into her lying words as possible. “Call it God, call it Harmony or call it Fate, I feel there’s got to be a guiding hand or hoof in the flow of events. How else could we be here, not existentially, but in this exact time and place, if it wasn’t for a miracle.”
Around the two of them, the passenger compartment of a TARDIS rumbled and shook as the amazing vehicle settled itself down into a set point in relative space. Fifty other souls shared the jerry-rigged space with them, a mixed bag of humans and Equestrian ponies, all strapped into salvaged airline seats arranged in several concentric rings.
“You’ve got a lot of faith, Archbishop,” the mare sighed, smiling. “But please don’t mistake my despondency for despair… I believe in the rightness of the cause, and that gives me strength.”
“There’s no need to stand on formality, Dancer. I’m just Sarah…”
There was a final jolt, and the cabin abruptly stilled. Readjusting her glasses from the shock, Moondancer peered across the cabin and blinked in sudden concern.
“Oh, no…” she whispered. “I think Bonbon’s having another attack. I should go be with her…”
“Do you want some help?” the woman offered. “I’ve experience with Bonnie’s condition–”
“It’s alright, Archbi... Sarah. I know you mean well, but… you weren’t here, the last time Bonbon had to travel in one of these things. You’ve seen her mind broken, but you cannot fully understand her pain, not unless you witnessed the breaking.”
Moondancer fell quiet, then, blinking once, she unclipped her seatbelt, slipped down and, with all four hooves on deck, trotted away. At the same time, the exit hatch slid open, admitting another unicorn, this one just a filly.
“Dreamtime!” little Dinky Hooves shouted out over the cooling engines’ asthmatic wheezing. “This is Dreamtime, Australia. All ashore who’s going ashore! Next stop, Canterlot Prime!”
At her words, a stir rippled through the passenger compartment, and five or six individuals stood, carrying a variety of packages, personal firearms, survival gear and coded ciphers. Nodding to Dinky as they went, one pausing to ruffle the filly’s messy mane, they quickly made their exit. What remained was an odd bunch, even by contemporary standards. Besides the inevitable envoys and diplomats and military attaches, there was an awful lot of clergy. At least half the compartment’s space was occupied by priests, rabbis, imams, pujaris and shrine-maidens of every shape and size.
Gathering herself, Sarah focused on the breeze blowing from the doors, hot dry air scented with wildflowers and desert herbs, the perfume of the Australian outback.
‘Two thousand years ago,’ she thought, ‘we would have come by camel-train, like the Three Wise Men. Now we travel by time-engine... ‘
“Alright!” cried out a new voice. Sarah recognised it as belonging to Amethyst Star, the mare known to most as ‘Sparkler’. Sure enough, the eldest Whooves daughter entered from the control room, a greasy spanner tucked behind one ear, to stand beside her little sister.
“Ladies and germs, we’ve got ten new passengers coming aboard for the jump to Canterlot Prime, please make them some space.”
With a low grumble, the already-packed compartment’s living cargo rearranged themselves. Sarah, who’d just dropped her hand-luggage into the seat vacated by Moondancer, now pulled the bag and carry-case back into her lap, as did the man beside her, a venerable gentleman wearing a crimson skullcap. By silent agreement they shuffled up, creating a pair of free spaces.
“Any idea who’ll be joining us here, Cardinal?” Sarah asked, feeling the acrid taste of anxiety upon her tongue. “Did we get word on who was nominated to lead the Islamic delegation?”
“I have my suspicions,” grinned Pizzicato. “How about yourself, Archbishop, are you surviving?”
“I’ll keep,” Sarah groaned. She hated flying, and boarding a TARDIS was just as terrifying an experience for her as entrusting her life to the engineers of Boeing or Airbus. But at least now, four jumps on from her embarkation point, only one remained before they reached their final stop. “It isn’t just travel-sickness, though. What shall we see, when we arrive… arrive there...”
She hugged her bags a little closer, and swallowed. “I mean, it’s Canterlot.”
There was such dread in her voice, she might as well have been describing Mordor. Even a week after Commander Renee’s news that another Equestria was throwing its lot in with Earth, made subject earlier to Moondancer’s ponderous musings on determinism, the name of the Solar Tyrant’s capital still had power to freeze her heart. Although she’d been privileged to be among those quickly brought into the secret of Second Contact, delivered from the shadowy confines of political circles unto other institutions such as the upper echelons of her own Church, as part of a calculated ploy to prepare for the propitious moment when mankind’s survivors would hear of this miracle – it was a moment of revelation she hoped for and feared in equal measure.
“Yes, Canterlot,” put in a sonorous third voice, from the fellow sporting a magnificent beard seated next to Pizzicato. “But remember, this is another Equestria, another Canterlot. The Lyra we knew, she hailed from a different realm entire.”
“That’s right… thank you, Pyotor.”
As she drank in Patriarch Ustinov’s reassuring words, Sarah’s eyes flitted to Dinky and Sparkler, the two sisters chatting quietly in the midst of ushering the final passengers onboard. She couldn’t picture how hard it was for them, visiting a world not their own, but so much like the one they knew. In the time since she’d met them, she’d never seen the now thirteen-year-old Dinky without her combat vest, or Sparkler without the gold ring that pierced one of her ears.
‘As like as unalike…’
Then her gaze shifted to three mares seated on the opposite end of the compartment – a trembling earthpony who clutched at a battered old lyre like a child would a teddy-bear, and the pallid unicorn in glasses who had been Sarah’s travelling neighbour until moments ago, now gently stroking the other mare’s mane and whispering terms of comfort. Beside the pair sat a weary-looking study in pink, a creature sporting both a horn and vestigial wings, whose exhausted, deadened eyes stared off into some point a thousand yards beyond the bulkhead.
‘Bonbon, Moondancer and Cadance…’ Sarah thought to herself, chuckling mirthlessly. ‘The Prophet, the Pedagogue and the Princess…’
“Okay, hush it up! I’m your captain today and right now I’m speaking!” Sparkler shouted, waving a hoof as the onboarding passengers took their seats. “Final boarding is now complete. Please secure your seatbacks and tray-tables in their full upright position and prepare for a quick safety briefing from the smartest person in attendance; my kid sister!”
“Shoo, Sparks!” Dinky retorted, lightly butting her adoptive sibling with her head. “Go play with the throttles or something!” Then, turning her attention to the passenger complement, the little unicorn brightened up, a picture of adorability spoilt by the pistol holstered at her side.
“Welcome aboard TARDIS Diplomatic Flight NOVA-23 to Canterlot Prime and New New York. Departure will be in just a few seconds, after which we’ll travel at an average trans-relativistic speed of eight gigaparsecs to the planck constant, with an estimated arrival at Canterlot Prime in circa five minutes. Please pay close attention to…”
“So, gentlemen,” Sarah murmured, trying to take her mind off the unnerving briefing, which she had no wish to endure for a fifth time. “Recognise anyone?”
“In the event of spaghettification, your cushion may be used as a gravitational constant…”
“Well, I see Elder Kimberley of the Aboriginal Congress over there, Samwell Young from the Church of Latter-Day-Saints took the spare seat beside poor Cadance, and it seems that the College of Caliphs and Grand Muftis have nominated Jabril Hab Allah as their representative…”
“Really?” Sarah whipped her head across the room. “The hero of the Battle of Exodus? Where?”
“He’s just taken the seat next to you,” Patriarch Ustinov said wryly.
“Ah!”
“Hull sealed and rated to withstand horrors rated Gamma to Pi on the Lovecraft-R’lyeh scale of Eldritch Abominations…”
Turning, Sarah found her new neighbouring passenger to be a solemn-looking Arab, blind in one eye, face careworn by many years’ equal measure of hope and pain. Without saying a word, she felt her heart ache in empathy. She knew those feelings well.
“It’s an honour to meet another friend of Ambassador Heartstrings,” she held out her hand in greeting, and Hab Allah accepted it with a courteous nod.
“The honour is mine, Archbishop Morgan… but we are all Ambassadors now.”
“Thank you for your patience, we shall now depart for Canterlot Prime!”
There was a groaning rumble, and reality sung as the time-machine bent it like a pretzel.
‘In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets – when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta – there lived a tailor in Gloucester…’
Canterlot, when seen for the first time, was a marvel. To Sarah, the sight of countless Equestrian diplomats dressed in their finest, guarded by soldiers garbed for antiquated schools of war, was like something out of her childhood, a bit of Beatrix Potter come true. It was touched with pomp and circumstance such as Earth had not seen in many years, but most impressive was the figure who greeted the travellers as they disembarked from the TARDIS.
Princess Luna.
Sarah remembered the day, barely a year past, when she had been called to conduct the baptism of tiny Princess Elizabeth, and noted that Luna bore the familiar dignity and poise of the British Royal Family. A representative of the Equestrian Civil Service had clarified that her royal sister would make no appearance, and while the official explanation dictated that diplomatic receptions were the Lunar Diarch’s gig, a general, unspoken sentiment led everyone gathered to suspect that Celestia had deliberately removed herself from the proceedings.
Who could blame her, when her monstrous twin currently wreaked havoc on two worlds?
“We are charmed to make your acquaintance,” Luna trilled in a voice that sung celestial music. Making her way through the various groups of clerics, at last she courteously shook a hoof with Pizzicato, Ustinov and finally, Sarah herself, a glint of childish amusement in her eyes. “Please, correct me if I am wrong, but is not your party akin to those spoken of in old Earth jokes? A priest, a minister and a rabbi, was it not?”
Sarah felt struck silent by those eyes, young and vivacious, yet immeasurably old. She realised, with a sudden thrill of awe, that she was in the presence of a being who would have been full-grown when William of Normandy marched on Hastings. Not even Methuselah had lived to a thousand years of age...
“You are quite informed, Your Highness,” Pizzicato smiled gently, knowingly. “Marcus Renee’s to be thanked for that, I presume? Tragic though the circumstances may be, it is our gladness to state that recent strife has helped to heal the most ancient of schisms. We three here represent three such congregations, Roman, Orthodox and Anglican, now one church, reunited and whole.”
“Another little miracle Lyra made possible,” Sarah murmured under her breath, still holding Luna’s hoof as she did. Hearing her, the Princess paused and smiled sadly.
“Yes, a most remarkable mare, Ambassador Heartstrings...”
The mention of the little unicorn sent a small ripple through Sarah and her colleagues all around the space of the Palace courtyard. Her hand shook for a second, and in return she felt the magical ‘touch’ of Luna’s hoof grip a little tighter in a shared moment of solidarity.
“Let us strive to build upon the foundation she has laid us,” the Princess continued without a pause or beat, turning to Chamber Tale. “Madame Prime Minister, if you would please?”
“Gladly, Highness,” the frail-looking old unicorn mare smiled, raising her white cane officiously, though conspicuously without the use of telekinesis, to designate various assembled members. “It is my pleasure to introduce Cardinal Enrico Pizzicato of Rome, Patriarch Pytor Ustinov of Constantinople and Archbishop Sarah Morgan of Canterbury, and by request of the Secretary of State, ask that you accept their Letters Patent, signed by Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, Papal Father and Archbishop of Earth, confirming them as the Nicene Church’s Ambassadors to the Royal Diarchy of Equestria.”
“My friends,” Luna inclined her head subtly. “I hereby accept these Letters Patent from His Holiness, and by affixing my sign and seal, do hereby declare you to be Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. May our people know peace and prosperity.”
People, singular. Sarah made careful note of that unifying choice of words, and how Princess Luna used an actual wax seal to accredit the letters, signing them with a feather plucked from her own wings. Putting on the same smile she used for countless sermons in tents and field hospitals around half the globe, the Archbishop of Canterbury accepted her letter back, but inside her heart was filled with sorrow. Because the last time she had witnessed such a ceremony was in London, when HM Elizabeth II accepted Lyra Heartstrings as Equestria’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
The property set at their disposal was ‘Trotter’s Life’, a sprawling manse in the Palace Quarter, possessing more than enough rooms to house the offices, consulates, chapels and living space required by the Council. Humans and ponies of the PHL stood guard at the doors, and Sarah was glad to see Moondancer among them. The bookish unicorn was no mean fighter, but also had brains and heart, both of which Earth and Equus alike had great need for right now.
“We can’t keep the truth of our pilgrimage secret forever,” Patriarch Ustinov said slowly, hunched forward in an armchair and cradling a goblet of wine in both hands. His greying beard flickered gold in the firelight. “As soon as we begin making enquiries, the Equestrians will know the truth of why we are here.”
“Lyra…” half a dozen voices murmured in acknowledgement.
A further dozen held their tongues, Sarah among them.
‘Welcome home,’ she somberly reflected, her eyes drifting once more to the rich Equestrian tapestries adorning the walls, interspersed with artworks and relics evacuated from holy cities and shrines beyond count. Rome, Lourdes, Jerusalem, Fatima, St Davids, Westminster, Mecca and Medina – each of them represented, and all long fallen to the advancing Barrier.
It was Jabril Hab-Allah who broke the silence. “We must make these enquiries…” he whispered. “To do otherwise would be a disservice, to our peoples, to our belief, and to our friend…” A pause fell, and the part-blinded iman sighed. “As it is, I last spoke to Lyra on the outskirts of Aden,” he said, each word carefully enunciated. “What she said at the time concerned me… if we are to honour her life rightly, we must know the truth of what she meant.”
‘Seventeen hundred miles. It’s been seventeen hundred miles since we left Jerusalem…’
Jabril mopped his brow with a sodden rag, cursing the sun, both for how it turned the landscape into a bake oven, and for being the emblem of the Tyrant whose Barrier had brought him here. The destruction of Rome all those months ago still conjured images in his mind of crazed panic, of countless priests engaged in a mad scramble over one another to evacuate the relics that filled the Holy See – without much concern for their own mortal lives, before the Pope himself issued an edict that their valiant efforts should focus not on trinkets, but on wisdom.
Thus, centuries of history encompassing Romulus, Remus, Religion and the Renaissance, were confined now to memory. St Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, gone. Yet the ancient scrolls of the Vatican archives were safely removed at the eleventh hour. And by the time the Barrier reached the Middle East, preparations had been made to save more than ideas.
So here he was. Operation Exodus.
Despite the Judeo-Christian overtures of the name, it was very much an international effort, a logistical ordeal which had seen temples, ruins and precious loci of the Abrahamic faiths and Buddhism dismantled, loaded onto a thirty-mile convoy of trucks, to be shipped overland to the Gulf of Aden. And at the heart of it all, oiling the gears of diplomacy and smoothing relations between churches, militias, and the bureaucrats of UNESCO, was Ambassador Heartstrings. Critics had made clear it was dangerous for her to be directly involved.
Lyra had made it equally clear that her involvement was non-negotiable.
“Urgh!” groaned the mare in question, riding alongside him in the passenger seat of the bouncing Peterbilt, Truck N° 328 in the convoy. She was unwinding reams of white cotton from around her mint-and-white mane. “Blast, I don’t know how the Saddle Arabians manage, but nature didn’t make ponies fit for this climate. Toss me a drink, would you, Jab?”
Jabril obliged, against his better nature unable to hide a smile as Lyra telekinetically ripped off the cap, inverted the bottle and poured the precious water all over herself, little caring for the waste, or for how she was getting the seat upholstery all wet.
‘She’s a crude creature… loud, obnoxious, promiscuous and unclean in her lifestyle…’
Until they had met in Jerusalem, Jabril had only rumor and hearsay – which oft bordered on heresy in his mind – to go upon regarding the little unicorn with the big reputation. Since then, well, he had seen enough to lend some credence to those rumors.
‘And yet she comes across as utterly pure!’
“What is this place?” Lyra asked, and Jabril flicked his eyes at an obliging roadside sign.
“The village of Bayt Az Zaydah,” he replied, and saw Lyra repeat the name to herself, a smile curling around her lips as she stared out the dusty cabside window.
“It’s beautiful…” she added, taking time to commit the tiny collection of homes to memory.
Confused, Jabril glanced from his own window, and saw nothing but dry fields and stone-baked mountains. They were now high in the hills of the Sana’n Governorate, in a punchbowl that at its southern end spilled out into open plains. The road would soon spill over too, descending the pass in a series of switchbacks, and in truth Jabril was somewhat concerned as to the convoy’s ability to negotiate such a road.
As if sensing his concern, Lyra turned and smiled, water dripping from her matted coat.
“We’ll be fine, Jab,” she beamed, telekinetically grabbing a fresh wad of cotton bandages and beginning the process of wrapping it around her dripping mane. “Stop being so intense and enjoy all the beauty around you.”
Once again, Jabril, formerly a Shia attaché to the Sunni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, glanced out his window, and saw dozens of villagers gathered beside the road. Some waved and cheered, while others threw down dried flowers and desert fronds. The remainder were knelt in prayer, faces pressed to the ground in awe and reverence. One old man looked up as the Peterbilt passed, and in his careworn face Jabril saw tears of hope.
This wasn’t a retreat, or a rout. Even if they were running away from the Barrier, in saving so many symbols of human faith, they were defying it.
Lyra was right, it was beautiful.
“Allahu akbar,” he murmured, and he saw Lyra nod her head enthusiastically.
“‘God is the greatest’...” she said, accurately translating the words of the Takbir. “It’s one thing I’ve always loved about humanity, how you guys don’t need to see the incarnation of your faith to take strength in Her, or Him. It’s really kinda humbling.”
That was perhaps the most annoying thing about Lyra – the sheer aura of wholesomeness she somehow radiated. Everything she did was done with such honesty it felt churlish to criticise. And she was respectful. By the Prophet, she lived a lifestyle so at odds with Islam that her whole existence was practically Haram, yet she never took any action that would defile a culture ready and willing to denounce her.
‘I’ll gladly take my original encounter with her as evidence enough of that.’
After witnessing the wanton destruction unleashed by otherworldly beings upon his planet, his first meeting with the Ambassador signified no less than a test of her integrity, a setup of the stage for things to come. Awaiting her inside the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, beside the Dome of the Rock from whence the Prophet ascended into Heaven, he had every reason to expect that the alien creature named Heartstrings would stride into the sanctuary without pause, arrogant in a belief that the sanctity of such a site lay beneath her. He had little experience of ponies being kind without being condescending.
Which was how he found himself, 1700 miles down the road and three months later, driving one of the convoy trucks, and why the mare riding shotgun had reams of cotton sticking out in tufts from her mane. When he’d heard the sound of a hoof politely tapping against the ground, waiting in the baking noonday sun, he’d stepped outside of the Al-Aqsa to find what he could only have described as a cartoon mummy. Wrapped from horn to hoof in white cotton scarfs, hiding almost every inch of hair from view, was one Lyra Heartstrings. It was lucky the material could breathe, or he imagined she would have passed out from the exertion of climbing the steps up the face of the Mount.
“I know I’m not exactly welcome,” she’d explained. “Being, well, unclean as I am. But since we’re here to save these buildings, I didn’t want to… taint them before we’d even started.” Seeing his surprise, she’d immediately trotted in a quick circle, examining herself. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake in putting these on, did I?”
This earnest humility was unexpected. A part of Jabril argued that it was a trick, a clever political ploy, but the sheer goofy enthusiasm that Lyra had shown in trying to follow the principles of sharia had convinced him otherwise. Quickly he’d realised that the Ambassador was many things, and one of them was guileless. Oh, she could lie and deceive inasmuch as any other living being, yet she didn’t have it in her to play ‘the long lie’, to look into minds and manipulate feelings and expectations.
Following the ‘Mummy of the Temple Mount’ incident it had taken considerable effort between himself, Lyra, and a surprisingly knowledgeable mare named Moondancer to work out a compromise that would keep the ponies within sharia without wrapping them up in so many layers they might collapse from heatstroke, especially since many were already encumbered by the weight of combat gear. Against expectations, however, it had been Lyra arguing for greater coverage, desperate to not tread hooves on any cultural toes. In the end the solution had been somewhat straightforward; mares would bind and wrap their manes and tails when working in places of significance to Islam, whilst their natural fur would be treated as organic clothing, which it was, and therefore perfectly acceptable to bear to the world.
“And besides…” Jabril had found himself adding, indicating towards Lyra’s cutie mark. “It would be a great sin to cover up that which is an expression of your very soul, God-given and sacred.”
“Thank you, Hakam,” she’d replied, voice filled with respect, and he couldn’t help but laugh.
“Hakam is how one addresses my colleagues in the Jewish faith, Madame Heartstrings. I’m just Jabril.”
“Alright then, Jab,” she'd grinned. “Then you can call me Lyra!”
Once they were agreed, Lyra had zealously enforced the new ‘dress code’ among the PHL’s ponies throughout the remainder of the operation, and slowly the army of trucks wended their way out of Jerusalem, through Bethlehem, and southwards along the Arabian peninsula towards Medina and Mecca.
The Al-Asqa and the Qubbat Al-Sakhrah, the Wailing Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. All the most holy sites of Jerusalem had been dismantled by human skill and pony magic, loaded onto flatbeds and into shipping containers, and rolled to safety. As they travelled further, the convoy grew, more trucks joining its flow like tributaries converging into a mighty river.
And in sacred Mecca the most precious cargo of all was loaded.
Now, centuries of faith, bound in stone, rolled through Yemen towards the port of Aden, from where it would be shipped overseas to Australia, the farthest point on Earth from the Barrier’s Alpine hemi-centre. As N° 328 crested the lip of the pass, Jabril reached to downshift gears–
“It was ISIS… or what was left of them by that point,” Jabril scowled, relating the story to his peers in the warmth and safety of Trotter’s Life. “The cowards had decided that attacking the convoy was as a means to destroy ‘idolatrous’ works, objects blasphemous to whatever twisted form of sharia they upheld, and so they’d brought a cliff down on the road.”
“What happened then?” asked Elder Young of Salt Lake City. He was leaning forward, bony hands gripping his knees.
“When we interrogated the survivors, they attested that they’d planned to destroy that part of the convoy carrying Shiite relics. The idiots had an outdated form of the schedule however, and managed to isolate the wrong section of trucks.”
“What part?”
Jabril paused to sip his apple-juice. “I was riding in N° 328, the last of thirty-seven trucks carrying the dismantled Al-Asqa. Lyra grabbed the road, telekinetically, I mean, and stopped us before I could slam on the brakes, but falling rock crushed the five trucks ahead of us, which contained the mosque’s stained-glass windows… and then the fools came riding down the hill ready to destroy ourselves and the trucks behind us… which contained the Kaaba itself!”
He saw Young pale, and nodded. “Yes, the centrepoint of Islam, the First House of God, built by the hands of Ibrahim and Ismail…”
“Such a loss,” Young whispered. “It would be akin to the destruction of our oldest temples, from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City.”
“Yes,” Jabril glowered. “And we fought to defend the Kaaba with fury and vigor as you couldn’t imagine. But it was Yael Ze’ev and her Israeli commandos who turned the tide… and Lyra who saved the day.”
“How?” asked an aboriginal priest Sarah identified as Elder Kimberley.
“When our truck stopped the trailer jack-knifed. N° 329 swerved to avoid it, and skidded out. It broke through the road barrier and came to rest just on the downhill side of the road’s summit, hanging over a five-hundred foot drop. It carried within it the Kaaba’s Black Stone, and the Station of Ibrahim, but I was so consumed with rage and fury that I forgot all about it until after the battle. Then I turned, and I saw her…”
“Lyra?” whispered Sarah.
“Lyra,” Jabril nodded solemnly. “The truck was unstable and likely to fall, so she’d grabbed it with her telekinesis and held on for dear life, even with a gunfight raging all around her. I saw one bullet go right through her ear, and another graze her hindleg, but she refused to let go. She held that truck on the lip of safety, up until we’d winched it back from the edge and gotten the crew out… and that was when I asked Lyra if she knew what she’d just saved, and in all innocence she blinked at me and asked if I could remind her, because she’d happened to mislay her copy of the manifest!”
Laughter broke out, tinged with affection and sadness. Chuckling along, Jabril looked deep into his glass, and when the humour had died down, he continued in a low voice.
“She did it to save the crew. She knew the cargo was special, but for her the important thing was saving those two men from falling over the edge of a cliff...”
It was a common misconception that all of Equestria’s weather fell under the control of its sapient inhabitants. Pegasus magic and the arsenal of thaumatology indwelling Cloudsdale was a powerful force for directing the seasons into favourable weather, but the innate forces of convention, air pressure and the water cycle could not be entirely thwarted. Like any other biosphere, the planet Equus had its prevailing winds and ocean currents, and when these great powers stirred their meteorological muscles, it rested in ponies’ power to merely guide the weather fronts that followed.
Tonight, one such system was on the move. Thousands of miles to the east, an uncommonly warm summer had stirred up a mass of moist air over the North Lunar Ocean. Part of this front had funnelled into the Polar Jet-stream, carrying the water-laden clouds up into colder climes. Cooling drastically, they skirted Adlaborn, picking up further momentum as they hurtled through the upper troposphere. Then they reached the Crystal Empire, and struck the magical dome that protected the principality at full steam.
The resulting storm was quite spectacular by most standards, but not particularly impressive to the eyes of crystal ponies used to such displays of nature’s power. With much of its force spent against the dome, the weather front broke around the Crystal Empire. The better part of it veered northwards, following the Jet-stream, destined to finally expend its last strength somewhere to the north of Griffonstone.
However, a portion of cold, heavy cloud drifted south, and if left to its own devices, would have eventually developed into a mild summer storm that would have accomplished little except give the orchards of Appleloosa an additional sprinkling of water. But now, the front encountered an inexplicable belt of cold air as it passed over the flank of Canterlot.
The effect was to rapidly cool the water held in suspension within the clouds. Already on the verge of freezing, carrying within them a touch of arctic chill, in just seconds they crystalised, becoming too dense and mass-laden to remain airborne. Slowly, not long after the last blazing light of sunset had died to an ember, the first frozen particles began to flutter down from cloud-darkened skies...
The denizens of Equus worked with what nature gave them. Tonight, one gifted mage saw a chance to offer a bit of holiday magic, and nature obligingly gave her a weather front.
“When we’d finally reached Aden, I confronted Lyra,” said Jabril, quietly wrapping up his story. “So many times I’d seen her launch herself into a task, nearly suffocating herself in an attempt to satisfy sharia, standing fully exposed in a firefight to save lives… I’d begun to suspect there was something mental at work… because the more I grew to know her, the more it felt like her astounding deeds were a desperate act of penitence.”
Another ripple ran through the gathered clergy, this one touched with a degree of affront. Hearing it, he held up a finger, begging their peace. A quiet hush fell over the drawing room.
“I do not mean to insult her memory, but instead to honour the truth of her life. Lyra was wonderful, but as flawed as any of us. She had her sins, and it felt apparent to me that they troubled her deeply. So, before we parted ways, I asked if there was anything she wished to confess, not as her Imam, but as her friend...”
Countless eyes silently begged him to not leave the story hanging.
“She looked at me, with eyes suddenly so sad, so worn, I wondered if this was the same unicorn I thought I knew. There was a plea in them, a desperate plea for me not to hate her. And then she said these words to me; ‘Jab, every single life lost in this war, is another soul I’ve got to beg the forgiveness of… so I do everything I can to prevent that number from swelling.’ I told her she had nothing to fear, that she was the most wonderful mare I’d met, and…”
Jabril looked off somewhere faraway.
“She did not quite seem to agree. It wasn’t modesty in those eyes, no… it was honest regret.”
He lapsed back into silence, and Patriarch Ustinov took up the thread.
“I had a similar experience when Lyra and myself were evacuated from Murmansk,” said the Patriarch of Constantinople. “We spent two weeks in a decrepit nuclear submarine whose radiation shielding was long past its sell-by date. We needed unicorn mages in the reactor compartment to maintain containment. The poor ponies had to keep up constant casting, risking radiation poisoning if they slackened off their efforts for even a second. It’s not something I’d wish on my worst enemy, but Lyra threw herself in beside them and worked herself into a state of nervous exhaustion. We tried to dissuade her, we said she was a VIP, that she was the leader of the PHL. When she finally collapsed, I sat at her side and nursed her as best I could. In her delirium, she said things that still rest heavy on my soul.”
“Such as?”
“Well, she insisted that the PHL was more than her, had to be more than her, because she was the worst example it could follow.”
“I feel as if that’s something else admirable about her, though,” Elder Young said.
“Excuse me?” Jabril asked, confused.
“From what I have heard, Lyra never set out a line where she’d done enough, never settled for the bare minimum,” Elder Young explained. “Always believed more could be done.”
“Admirable, I will admit that,” Ustinov said. “But, Jabril… you heard her say it. Every life was one she had to beg the forgiveness of. Under Lyra, under it all, you could see a great scar, like someone had cut into that wonderful mare’s soul and it’d never heal. And she soldiered on regardless.” He looked off, seeing somewhere, somewhen faraway that only he could see. “I have no doubt that she did this out of the goodness of her heart, but you didn’t see her recuperating after her ordeal.”
“What did she say?” Elder Kimberley asked.
“She was incoherent, you understand,” Patriarch Ustinov said. “She looked like she was in the middle of a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. She was raving and sobbing about orchestras, about bags that stalked her and wouldn't let her notice them, and coral-reefs and holidays past. It was terrifying. When her fever broke, I asked about what she’d said, and she preten– she told me she had no idea what I was talking about.”
It was hard for anyone present not to notice him pause.
“But between the lines, oh, you could see that she blamed herself for the entire war, held herself personally responsible…”
“It was Lyra who proved the existence of humans to Equestria,” spoke up an extra voice, and eyes turned towards the sound of approaching hoofsteps. To their surprise, they found Moondancer, the habitually reserved PHL mare, tentatively approaching the circle of seats. “I was discussing it with Archbishop Morgan on the flight over from Earth.” Attention slowly focused on the unicorn mage, who quailed slightly, bringing up a hoof to adjust her glasses, a recurring tic of hers. “There were… ah, rumours of an altercation between Commander Renee and some troops who’d been investigating what made this Equestria so different from the one we knew. It piqued my interest and, because I have an eidetic memory, it didn’t take too much effort in the Canterlot newspaper archives to trace the point where our realities diverged… at Lyra’s discovery of the sunken remains of the Dream Valley Expedition.”
A slow intake of breath befell these words, but not a hushed gasp. Instead, Jabril saw his colleagues looking to one another, sharing nods. Smiling, he drew up a pouffle, motioning that Moondancer should make herself comfortable on it.
“Sit yourself down a while, Dancer,” he invited, and when the mare gratefully obliged he steepled his fingers. “You always were a sharp one when it came to our Scriptures. Can you guess why we’re really here in Canterlot?”
Moondancer looked him in the eye, and nodded. “Yes. You’re here to determine if she qualifies for religious veneration…” Slowly, she pointed from one figure to the next, starting with Jabril himself. “As a martyr, a prophet, a tzaddik, a bodhisattva, an exalted one… and a saint. My friend Lyra.”
Different terms, different faiths, different concepts, all reflecting a single truth. That across Earth, the figure of Ambassador Heartstrings had touched a chord in human hearts, and now countless voices were crying out for her beatification.
“The council is genuinely interested in establishing religious ties with Equestria, you understand, Moonie,” put in Cardinal Pizzicato, an affectionate grin on his face. “We have questions and mysteries to explore, and at last have a chance to see where the various faiths of Equus intermesh with our own. But it should be obvious to observing eyes that we here were all chosen because we knew her as a person, so that we could ask the prying questions, and thus play the Devil’s Advocate.”
The bookish unicorn shivered, a look of subtle awe on her face. “It’s a wonderful gesture,” she told them softly. “And I really hope you find the answers you're looking for. You’ve made a pilgrimage in search of answers, just as Balthasar, Caspar and Melchior once did.”
At the mention of those names, Sarah stood and took her absence, slipping away through the parlour door without drawing much attention, or so she hoped. As she departed, she heard Pizzicato chuckling at Moondancer’s reference.
“...The Biblical Magi, the Three Wise Men. Yes, I suppose we are here in like manner, to learn the truth of Lyra Heartstrings. Thank you for being so open with us, Moondancer.”
Sarah laughed hollowly to herself, the crucifix around her neck suddenly feeling like a millstone trying to drown her as she climbed a vertiginous marble flight of stairs, past guards and statues, eventually arriving at the quarters set aside for her use. They were grand, to say the least, all plush couches and varnished wooden walls, and she felt sinful just looking at the decadent four-poster that was her bed. Admittedly she hadn’t embraced an ascetic pledge to renounce all worldly pleasures, but the notion that she’d be spending the next few weeks in five-star comforts while back home, her congregation suffered and died, struck ill with her.
‘Yet it’d be ungrateful to scorn the hospitality of our hosts… argh, why’s diplomacy so hard.’
Unbidden, the words ‘what would Lyra do?’ stuck into her mind, and trying to focus her thoughts on other matters she crossed to the window. Trotter’s Life possessed that which was most rare in Canterlot, space for personal grounds. Although three sides of the house faced directly onto city blocks, the fourth side opened onto a narrow private park, through which an ornamental stream ran until it poured over the cascading lip of the grounds and off the side of the Canterhorn. Already zen gardens and small shrines had been set up for the benefit of Shinto and Buddhist congregationalists, and the stream had been dammed to create a series of small pools that could be used for baptisms and ritual cleansings.
‘Regardless of what Lyra would do, she’d love what we’re building here,’ she thought to herself, and smiled faintly. If it wasn’t for the harsh reality of the war, it would have been beautiful to see so many faiths peacefully sharing space in this manner, to see rabbis and shamans and wiccans taking supper together.
‘But I still feel guilty, not just for being here, but for living a lie of faith…’
Sarah rubbed gently at a bracelet on her wrist, and the sound of it tinkling soothed her. Her eyes roved over the grounds, spotted something illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, a tiny lodge which guarded a side entrance into the mansion’s grounds. It was, she thought, a humble and charming little home, empty and vacant now, though perhaps some use might be found for it as part of the consulate’s mission.
‘Oddbody’s’ her memory offered up, having caught a glimpse of the cottage when they arrived at Trotter’s Life. ‘The lodge was named Oddbody’s’.
Then, as her focus adjusted, she found herself staring balefully into her own reflection, scarred and burned. Shocked, suddenly working up a cold sweat, she strode into the en-suite bathroom to turn on the taps over the sink. Hot water poured out immediately, the tap humming soothingly as liquid coursed through its neck. Cupping her palms Sarah washed the worst of the sweat off, before gripping the sides of the sink with both hands and regarding her reflection, trying to discern some truth as to the soul that hid behind her own eyes.
They were eyes old beyond their years, she knew that. There was a time when people told her she possessed a welcoming and open face, back when she’d just been the Bishop of Gloucester, but that was long gone now. Fire had stripped her black hair back to stubble, and ravaged her face so badly that even with the aid of magical healing, her right cheek was defined by that huge scar, the surrounding flesh pock-marked with craters and furrows where fire had burned deep. Thankfully, there was little pain beyond a general ache, and those who knew her said the beauty of her soul still shone through, but it broke her heart to christen a child whenever one screamed at the sight of her.
‘They elected me Archbishop of Canterbury because of what I endured, called me a miracle-worker. I’ve tried to do right by them, but none of it was true…’
She could still smell the burning wood, hear the cries of the children. And then the miraculous rumble of thunder, and the salvation of pouring rain.
‘They were right, that storm springing up out of nowhere was a miracle. But it wasn’t God who sent it my way… all those prayers towards heaven went unanswered. But the second I thought of Her, whispered Her name into my clasped palms…’
Her left hand came down to her right wrist, and pulled back the sleeve of her shirt to reveal the bracelet she hid beneath it – a golden lyre on a slender chain.
‘You saved my life, Lyra, even after your own had ended. But now that I’ve acknowledged it, who will save my soul?’
Her vision suddenly clouded. Sarah realised that she was crying.
‘Please send me a sign, whoever is listening, please show me which path I should follow.’
But before she could even wipe away the tears, someone knocked on the door of her quarters.
“Archbishop, it is Elder Kimberly speaking. You are called to duty…”
As it turned out, a small group of primarily human soldiers had just arrived from Equestria Prime’s latest municipality, New New York. They were in need of prayer and guidance. And as Sarah hurried down the stairs to do what she could, she hazarded a glimpse out of a window, where she saw several small particles begin to scatter down from the sky.
Thus she got her sign, and it filled her with dread.
“It’s… supposed to be summer here, right?” she said, voice faint as she descended the stairs into the consulate’s entrance hall, where her colleagues were welcoming their first congregants, several ponies among them.
“Yes,” Moondancer nodded. “We’re in the month of Rophon, the equivalent of July.”
“Well, back home it’s mid-December,” swallowed Sarah, and pointed to the nearest window, in which tiny falling flakes glinted gold, catching the firelight. “I don’t know if you could count this as a miracle, but it’s started snowing.”
“New New York!” Dinky called out. “Last stop, New New York. All ashore please!”
The TARDIS’s engines churned softly to a halt, the giant rotors spooling down to a gentle idle.
“That’s my girl,” Sparkler whispered fondly, patting the central column with a loving hoof. “That’s my good Baby girl…”
It wasn’t ‘the’ TARDIS of course, the one she knew her Dad secretly referred to as ‘Sexy’. No, this was a youngling of a machine, a snippet cut from the original during its convalescence and reconstruction in a new chassis. This was her and Dinky’s ride.
‘Baby’ was what Dinky had named it, and although the machine could not go very far forward, backwards or sideways in the timestream, it was still its parent’s child, amazing and beautiful and powerful, and growing all the time…
‘Just like our family…’ Sparkler mused, beginning to telekinetically wrestle the straps of her kevlar-lined vest, trying to get it off.
“AGH!”
With the inevitable result of her applying so much TK that the force she was exerting bled over from the straps she’d targeted. She managed to flip herself off the deck, perform a full aerial rotation and almost faceplant into the bulkhead, had Dinky not caught her mid-parabolo in her own magical field, slowing Sparkler’s impact enough to turn it into just an uncomfortable jolt.
“Sparks, want some help?” the precocious little filly teased.
“Alright, kiddo,” she chuckled. “Give me a hoof.”
The buckles released easily with the two of them working together. They were of Sparkler’s own design, incorporating gem-locks that would open only to the specific touch of a select few ponies and humans. After all, the family didn’t want it to become common knowledge that Amethyst Star was an alicorn.
“At last! I thought my wings would cramp up if they were bound much longer.”
Not a pegacorn, no – her wings and horn were perfectly functional, as was the earthpony magic embodied in her hooves. Nor was she a capital-A alicorn either, an artificially-empowered physical deity created to guide Sun and Moon across the skies. No, Sparkler was a genetically ‘pure’ alicorn, born with the same inherent potential of any pony, but without the magical lock on her genes that prevented those traits from manifesting. She was the rarest of things, an Equusite pony untouched by the Curse of Tirek.
As far as she was aware, only one other pony in the world right now qualified for similar status, and that was her adoptive father, in truth ‘something else’ dressed up to look like a regular pony, through genetic restructuring that was a perfect expression of scientific art. He was a far cry from Sparkler herself, it being no artistry that had freed her of the Centaur’s touch.
“Don’t do this, Amethyst! You’re a brilliant mage, but you can’t imagine the consequences if you activate that abomination you’ve crafted–”
Sparkler frowned, briefly biting on her lip. She had been a different mare, ancient and arrogant when she’d tried to undo Tirek’s damage to the pony race, and of course, it had backfired.
“Why not, Doctor!? My people are Alicorns by right, and we will be again! I won’t see us deformed and disfigured any more than they’ve already been, and my Amulet is the key to our restoration!”
“Faust has already set things in motion, she’s your friend, Amethyst, trust her–”
“Faust is no friend of mine! She abandoned all of ponykind to this lesser fate, sundered into three inferior forms!”
“Please, Amy, you haven’t seen the Equestria that the three tribes will create, how beautiful it is! The Fall of the Alicorns is time-locked, none of us can go back on that!”
“The ‘three tribes’ are ONE TRIBE, Madame Hooves, and will be again!”
But when the dust had settled and the rampant magic of her experiments had died down, two amazing ponies had dug through the wreckage and dragged a terrified filly from the debris, a gleaming amulet clasped around her neck, its inlaid gem burning with the scarlet light of an exorcised curse.
Doctor Whooves and his mortal wife, Derpy Hooves. Her parents… her world. The ponies who had forgiven her, raised her, introduced her to the wonders of time and space, and eventually let her share in their wonderful little family.
“Hey, Dinks?” she smiled, widely and honestly. “Want to go for a flight?”
Dinky nodded her head eagerly, and Sparkler hefted her effortlessly in her own TK, planting her rump firmly on the deck and sending her adoptive sister flying around Baby’s control room, giggling with euphoric glee. The time machine seemed to respond in kind, core humming and lights glowing softly in harmony with their delight.
“There’s love here…” intruded a new, accented voice, a touch of awe lacing every syllable. “So much love.”
Not looking away from her sister, Sparkler waved one wing in greeting. “Hey, Ana.”
The PHL woman in question gently closed Baby’s door behind her as she stepped in, taking care to re-lock it from the inside. Sniper-rifle slung across her back, she crossed over to sit cross-legged on the floor beside Sparkler, for a long time simply watching as the mare ‘flew’ her little sister around the vaulted chamber.
“Wanna see something cool?” she said at last, unslinging her backpack and unzipping a pocket to reveal a glowing cluster of misshapen balls, seemingly woven from overlapping flower petals.
“Oh, wow!” Sparkler breathed. “Are these… are these Dad’s flameless fireworks? You managed to synthesize the formula?”
“Ja, jeg gjorde,” replied the gifted young chemist. ”Fancy trying them out?”
“Does the sun set on Celestia’s flank, of course I do!”
Grinning, they began to toss the flameless fireworks into the air around Dinky. Immediately the twisted balls fizzed and sparkled, bursting into magical jets of light that filled Baby’s interior with harmless magical illumination. Dinky laughed gleefully as Sparkler arched and danced her way around the flashing strobes, and the two young women seated on deck laughed along with her.
It was a particularly interesting set of events that had introduced – or rather, reintroduced – Sparkler to Ana Bjorgman, many weeks ago. Really, it all began when the human woman unexpectedly came knocking at Baby’s door, seeking out the amethyst mare for a private conversation. To Sparkler, she was just one of the many human personnel brought onto Equus, until one crucial question was finally asked.
“So, the wings been bothering you since they grew in?”
“I… er, don’t know what you’re talking about, miss.”
“You, are, an, alicorn.”
Somehow, Ana just knew of their little secret, despite all efforts to keep it hidden from both watchful and casual eyes. And that was the tip of the iceberg...
“Do you remember two sisters, playing in the snow?”
“Two does, two daughters of the North? Yeah, I knew them, once upon a time.”
“I dream of them sometimes… and that scares me, Amethyst.”
“Sparkler… my friends call me Sparkler.”
“Well, ‘I’ remember you as Amethyst.”
“No, Amethyst Star died when Celestia and Luna were foals, an old and bitter mare.”
“Tell me about her, please?”
And the conversation that followed, between alicorn and woman, quickly veered off into the long, half-forgotten and unspoken secrets buried in both of their pasts...
‘A great story for another day,’ Sparkler mused, unable to hide an affectionate grin as she snuck a sideways glance at her cutie of a human companion. ‘But I’d never imagine that I’d rediscover an old friend… inside a new friend.’
“So,” Ana said, eyes shining as she tossed a few more fireworks, a rosy flush on her cheeks. “Word on the street is, you delivered a particularly interesting contingent to Canterlot earlier.”
“Yup, Clerics and God-botherers,” Sparkler chuckled, telekinetically launching her own projectiles with pinpoint precision. “They’re all part of some big package-deal consulate set up in the Palace Quarter, and if they want to proselytise their old mythologies, then Canterlot is welcome to have them.”
She paused to wink good-naturedly at the crucifix Ana prominently wore around her neck. Sparkler held no ill-will against religion, but after hearing tell of some of her father’s adventures, heck, after her own experiences and travels in time, she’d long ceased to find appeal in any formalised system of belief.
“It’s hard to see Celestia as a deity,” as she had once explained in confidence to Moondancer, “When I lived through the centuries preceding her birth, and on one adventure I had to stand in for Clover the Clever and foalsit the princesses. Luna wouldn’t stop dribbling and Celestia was sick all over the carpet.”
“Love is no myth, Sparkler,” Ana replied, holding up one of the fireworks. It burst in her hand, jets of brilliant magic shooting out from between her curled fingers. “It surrounds us, binds us…”
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,” Sparkler said, finishing the famous quote, smiling contentedly. “I believe in love, Ana, just as I believe in friendship and magic and the strong and weak nuclear forces.” She brought a hoof up to touch gently against the human’s chest, feeling a great heart beating strong and sure beneath the simple vest. “But that love comes from in here, not some distant and capricious intelligence from out beyond the stars.”
Ana did not answer, but instead reached out and clasped her own warm hands around the hoof resting over her heart. Seeing a teasingly knowing look in the young woman’s eyes, Sparkler’s wings ruffled briefly. They still itched, having only just grown in in the past few months. She hoped they didn’t foreshadow transition into adulthood. She wanted to remain Dinky’s sister, and Derpy and the Doctor’s daughter for a while longer, yet.
‘The old me wasted centuries brooding over the ‘perfect’ family she couldn’t have. Please don’t let the new me forget the one I found…’
Flicking one hoof across her own eyes to hide the tears that threatened to spill over, she recited another quotation from memory.
“‘Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy…’” she spoke aloud, sighing. “Thank you, Sir Terry. Love and friendship and harmony are things we bring into the world, and all the tools we use to harness it are constructs of skill and magic, but ponies have always seen them as holy… and deify those who wield them.”
“The tools themselves may not be divine,” Ana shrugged. “But I see a loving hand in their provision… when Equestria needed heroes, Twilight and her friends stepped forth. And when Earth needed her most, Lyra came. And the timing was so right, and perfect, I can’t help but see these things as heaven-sent, ya know.”
Sparkler gave another smile, but it was wan. “There’s the danger of religion, Ana. When people begin looking for patterns in events, when they begin building stories, suddenly everything becomes transformed. How much of scripture do you think reflects what occurred thousands of years ago… and how can we predict what people will say of events transpiring here…”
“You’re worried about Lyra, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I am. She was bold, brave, charismatic, and died a martyr. Cults have been founded around lesser figures.” Sparkler waved around at the interior of Baby. “The whole war is in a time-lock. Until it ends, none of us can travel into our future to see the outcome. Nor can we ever hope to alter the circumstances that caused it. But when the war’s over, when the flow of time carries us beyond the lock, I’m afraid of what I’ll see when I jump just one hundred years forward, even if we win. Will we repeat old mistakes? Will there be crusades in Lyra’s name?”
“Is that why you’re brooding over this Oecumenical Council?” Ana asked archly, and when Sparkler turned a feigned grin of ignorance on her, the chemist bopped her on the nose. “I can read your thoughts like a book, little miss pony. Are you afraid that it’s the first step towards formalising a Cult of Lyra?”
Sparkler held her eyes for a moment, and then slumped forward, wings hanging limp at her side. She supposed it must have seemed incongruous, an alicorn looking like she’d just dragged herself out of bed, weighed down by kevlar and despair, but she didn’t care.
“Yeah…” she admitted at last, and Ana laid a hand on her shoulders.
“Well, don’t sit here worrying about it! Go to Canterlot you silly filly! Talk to these ‘God-botherers’, help them not make those mistakes!”
Sparkler felt another grin touch her lips, and this one felt honest...
“Spaaaaaaarky!”
Then Dinky came hurtling down from above and struck her like a cannonball, the little filly having kicked off the central rotor and broken free from her TK ‘wings’.
“Are you moping again, sis, trying to carry the entire universe on your back!?” the unicorn filly lectured, sitting proudly atop her sister’s upturned belly. “Well don’t!”
Sparkler laughed, real and true, unable to feel glum when looking into those gold eyes, so full of wonder and love, so much like Derpy’s... like Mom’s.
“You little brat!” she laughed, inverting herself and tousling Dinky’s mane, before giving her a gentle shove. “Go warm up Baby’s engine, we’re jumping back to Canterlot.”
She turned to Ana, who was smiling at the display of sisterly affection. “Thanks for that.”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet!” the Norwegian redhead smirked. “I might have had a slight ulterior motive in hitching a ride to Canterlot…”
“Aweh! Open up!” a new voice roared from outside, accompanied by a banging on the door. “Ana, it’s Viktor, you said there’s a rabbi in Canterlot and that Sparky was giving lifts.”
The fact that Ana visibly flinched was not lost in Sparkler’s eyes.
“Kraber?” Sparkler said, deadpan. “Really, Ana?”
“Hey, he asked politely, okay? Well, Aegis did,” the chemist explained quickly, obviously not entirely at ease despite herself.
“Of course I did,” answered a deep baritone voice. “Viktor can be shy sometimes.”
“Shy! Him?” Sparkler tried and failed to conceal her laughter with a coughing fit.
“You’d be surprised,” Aegis said wryly. “The foals said they wanted to come, then it all just sort of snowballed.”
“Alright then,” beamed Ana. “Let’s make a pilgrimage!”
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that, not when taking aboard a contingent that included such luminaries of violence as Viktor Kraber and Yael Ze’ev, but with Ana on passenger-control, Sparkler and Dinky still managed to put Baby down only a half-mile off target – in spite of Kraber having managed to set the central rotor on fire.
“We’re here!” Ana cheerfully announced - even if her neatly braided hair was slightly singed. “Hopefully.”
“Not bad, all things considered…” Yael remarked, popping the doors open to confirm where they had landed. “Canterlot Palace Gardens… looks like you parked us right in the hedge-maze.”
“We missed the landing? Darn! Let me adjust a few details, we’ll be right on target this time.”
Coughing and covered in smuts, Sparkler stepped to her side and breathed heavily. Immediately she shivered, feeling a chill in the air which had not been there before.
“Dinks, what’s atmospheric reporting on external weather conditions?” she called out, and the bright little unicorn quickly reported the temperature was dropping faster than if it had been sporting a pair of cement slippers, with the barometric pressure crashing at equal speeds.
“That… that is not normal for summer,” Yael observed, and pointed. “Look, there’s ice forming on that statue.”
Sparkler glanced, and saw a stone likeness of a stallion poised atop a low plinth, icicles already forming on its lower jaw.
“That’s not natural,” she murmured. However, when she recognised the horrified features illuminating the piece of ‘artwork’, she allowed herself a malicious little grin.
“Heh,” chuckled Yael. “Guess we’re lucky that this world’s Celestia doesn’t ‘stone’ her enemies. I’d hate to be frozen out in the cold on a night like this, like that poor sculpture..”
“Yeah, ‘poor thing’, right…” Sparkler agreed.
“What’s this is about?” wondered Ana, who’d joined them for her own peep out the door, squinting at the statue.”What’s that?”
“Ah, don’t worry,” Sparkler told her dismissively. “Looks like they’ve found a replacement for Lord Discord’s place in the palace gardens since he got his probation to aid the war effort–”
“You call that ‘probation’?” Yael interrupted her, laughing. “From what I hear, it’s as if he awarded himself a full pardon, the Royal Sisters’ say can go hang! Chumming it up with Commander Renee must really help matters.”
“It’s a good likeness, though,” added Sparkler. “And say what you will, definitely a prettier face to decorate the place with than the Lord of Chaos’ mug. Probably’s got to do with the absence of that perennial look of ineffable smugness inherent to the Platinum lineage…”
She trailed off, her bright humour slowly vanishing. The last time she’d seen a petrified pony, it had been on an ill-fated rescue mission together with her family, the final one conducted by the old TARDIS before events necessitated its complete rebuilding. And remembering that day, the only thing she felt thankful for was that she hadn’t been witness to the breaking itself.
Bonbon hadn’t been so lucky, awaiting her turn to be executed after her beloved Lyra.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s get across town to the consulate.”
“Uh, Sparkler?!” Dinky trilled. “It’s getting more… um… fiery… in here!”
“It wasn’t my fault!” roared Kraber’s voice. “This time.”
“Viktor, we told you not to touch the glowing thing!” Sparkler sighed, turning away from the doors and kicking them shut with her hind hooves.
“I thought at the thing! I didn’t touch any buttons!”
And, after a breath exchange of invective, the juvenile TARDIS warped away, leaving the petrified form of Prince Blueblood to the deep and silent night, the first few particles of frozen water slowly drifting down out of the darkening sky.
Not everyone slept tonight, and in many houses whose occupants had work in the morning, nothing stirred, not even a mouse. In those households’ dreams, however, much took place. Loves were won and lost, great battles fought, surreal escapades unfolded the likes of which no waking mind could contemplate. Each of the self-contained narratives made their own little ripples in the Dreaming, rippling and overlapping in the magical realm shaped by sleeping minds, but few were privileged to witness such a rich tapestry from the perspective of an observer, and not as one of the many millions of weavers.
One person saw. Standing on a low bluff of misting ideas, with eyes that were young and old at the same time, they witnessed the patterns in the stuff of those dreams, whirling and rippling like a breeze across a sea of shimmering lights. Each one a life, some standing apart and alone, others dancing together in loving constellations.
She reached out a hand towards one mountain of lights, and closed her eyes. From it she drew fleeting sensations, of mulled wine and cordite, blood and mistletoe. A world at war, in what should have been a time of peace. Her other hand lifted towards an empty space in the void, curling into a fist. From out of the darkness swarms of lights burst into being, pulled from a foreign place. Fingers splayed, the watcher gradually drew her palms together. As she did, ribbons of light coalesced from the either, netting specific lights together.
“It worked,” she whispered aloud.
Her task now complete, she let out a shuddering sigh, shoulders twitching. When her eyes slipped open, she saw the web of light she had traced out, and smiled wistfully, running a palm through her spiked hair. Then, sensing another presence, she turned her head slightly, to catch sight of a glowing figure, who was examining the display with what she hoped was approval.
“I’ve synched up the dreams,” she explained, partly out of pride. “Anyone in New New York dreaming of someone back home on Earth, well, they’re now sharing their dreams with those loved ones. The connections don’t last long because of the time dilation between worlds, but I’ve managed to synchronise them inside the dreams themselves.”
There was no answer, but then, there never was.
Sighing, the young woman stepped forward and dropped into open space. As she fell she shed her form, hair bursting into a mane of short, flickering flames, a pair of wings erupting from her exposed back. By the time her hooves touched the misty ground, she had assumed the guise of a lithe young alicorn, with a simple gold tiara wrapped around her brow. Embers and motes of smouldering dust rose from her mane, swirling in an unseen breeze.
“Hallo?” she called out, peering around for the observer, who had disappeared into nothingness. “I just wanted to talk, my name is…”
She paused, verbally stumbling, and then finished lamely.
“Exile. I am an Exile.”
For a second, she thought her ears caught the echo of a gentle laugh, affectionate and playful. Then it passed, as fleeting as a rainbow. A smile rising to her own lips, the mare who called herself ‘Exile’ turned her attention to the spot where the apparition had been standing.
“Now, that is weird…”
A single dream lay anchored here, isolated from the rest of this vast ocean of lights, unusual in its substance. Most dreams were fleeting things, winking in and out as the brainwaves of their owners danced in slumber, fading away in daylight. Exile only needed to glance at it, though, to know this particular dream for a constant, unchanging and unwaking, the hallmark of someone caught in permanent sleep, or a coma… and it was hurting, emitting a frail whimper that pierced to her soul. She reached out with a hoof, but hesitated, hovering over the steady mote of light.
Unseen, in the solitude of the dreamscape, Exile bit her lip.
‘I know what it’s like to have someone poke around inside your head. Lightning’s mistake showed us all the dangers that can be made by even the smallest change…’
Looking closer, she perceived something alien within the dream, an invasive black ripple, slithering beneath the light. Frowning, she clenched her jaw and took a deep breath.
‘But this is my job now, and if this pony is trapped inside a constant nightmare, I’ve got a duty to help…’
Steeling herself, she brought her hoof into contact with the ball of light, and felt her face relax into a blissful smile as it exploded outwards in a warm sphere, strings of thought and memory washing over her like a wave, leaping and rising to form… a garden maze, dominated by a statue that depicted a stallion rearing back, mouth opened in terrified protest. A tiny colt sat in its shadow, staring up with tearful eyes at the frozen form.
As Exile breathed, ‘setting into’ the dream, the context of the scene flowed into her, thoughts and memories brushing against her own. Involuntarily her lips curved into a soft smile - even as her heart beat in fear of putting a hoof wrong, she understood what she was seeing, and the emotions at play. This was her domain, as natural to her as air. Suddenly serene, she wondered if such were Luna’s feelings whenever she cradled the moon in her magic.
‘Just relax, be honest, don’t manipulate, you’ll do fine. You’ve got this.’
She was the Exile, Princess of Dreams, and someone needed her help.
“Hey there, squirt!” she called out, and with a terrified squeak the colt spun about, toppling over onto the grass as he did. Trotting forward with long-limbed grace, Exile lowered herself into a bow, managing to keep an easy smile on her face as she did. Kids she loved working with, even mental projections of childhood.
“Greetings, Prince Blueblood.”
The tiny colt, white-coated and golden-maned, cautiously brought himself upright, carrying himself with adorably affected manners.
“We are… we are honoured by your visit, uh.. lady, ah…”
“Exile, Princess of Dreams,” she replied, twirling a hoof in salute. “How can I be of service, Your Highness?”
“Of… of service?” he repeated, looking confused. “But… but you’re a princess. Princes and princesses don’t serve, they are served upon.”
“Do you really believe that, kiddo?” Exile laughed, tousling his head with one hoof. “Nah, that’s your pa speaking, not Blueblood of Canterlot, beloved of Celestia.”
“You know Auntie Celestia?” he replied, before his tiny features contorted in understanding, the key words in their exchange finally standing out. “Wait, you said Princess of... oh dear,” he said, with an inflection that made it clear he wanted to say something far more coarse. “If you’re here, this, this is a dream, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Exile tipped her head, the grin softening slightly. “And it doesn’t look like it’s one you can wake up from…”
“No…” Blueblood backpeddled, shaking his head. “No, no, no! I can’t be stuck here, I CAN’T!”
A tremor visibly ran through the maze, the already gloomy hedges becoming gnarled clusters of thorns. The tiny colt turned to flee, and found his way blocked by a towering figure of stone and shadow, a mane of solar fire crowning a pair of imperious eyes.
“WORTHLESS WORM!” the spectral Celestia roared, “TRAITOROUS WRETCH!”
“Auntie, please, no!” the colt cowered, throwing his hooves up in futile defense.
“YOU HAVE EXHAUSTED MY PITY! LET EXILE IN STONE BE YOUR PENANCE!”
A beastial hoof came crashing down...
“Enough.”
...and shattered into a thousand fragments of shale. Trembling, Blueblood slowly opened his crossed hooves, and saw Exile standing over him, glowing eyes regarding the abomination with silent contempt.
“Get out of here, malediction. He is in my care.”
The walking mountain drew back its broken leg, opening a mouth of magma to below its rage. Exile, visually a scab against it, stood upright, wings vanishing into her back and golden armour manifesting on her human frame.
“I don’t know who the hell you think I am,” she said softly, a green cape clasping itself around her neck as a burning sword and shield manifested in her hands. “But I know what you are, a scrap of Queen Celestia’s malice. Thwarted ambition, senseless rage and self-hate, a worthless cluster of parasitic emotions preying on a hurting mind that takes joy in dragging everything else to its level. But this is my realm, and as the Princess kitted out like the cover art of a death metal album I’m repeating this one last time: He. Is. In. My. Care!”
The nightmare roared again, reaching forward to crush her. Then she raised the sword like a blazing wand, and the beast froze, fiery eyes flashing in surprise.
“Yeah,” Exile smirked. “There’s a new sheriff in town with a host of badass deputies, and this dream ain’t big enough…”
Slowly, she lowered the tip of the blade to the ground, and the nightmare followed it, quaking like a landslide, compelled against its will to sink into a kneeling bow.
“Leave us.”
What must have been intended as a defiant roar came out as a terrified whimper, and the statue crumbled to dust. Smiling, Exile hefted the sword over one shoulder and grinned down at Blueblood.
“As I said, at your service. Now, lets see if we can make this dream a happier one.”
The maze shattered into a million scintillating fragments, and when they flashed away, the two of them were standing on the open quarterdeck of a sleek airship, a resplendent, regal alicorn on the figurehead. Open blue skies dotted with floating islands sporting almost every climate and biome found in Equestria stretched into the far horizon, and far below flowed an endless carpet of clouds, almost like a rushing ocean. Strange birds, some of which seemed to have too many eyes, some of which were oddly equinoid or humanoid, flew overhead. A rainbow curled over the deck. and a light summery breeze whistled through the rigging.
“Wow,” Exile whistled. “Pretty awesome taste.”
She turned to regard a confused stallion where seconds ago the little colt had stood, and dipped her head in a subtle bow.
“Prince Blueblood,” she said, discarding her battle garb in a flicker of gold light, instead plunging one hand deep into the pocket of a green bomber jacket, spreading the other wide to encompass the high-flying fantasy. “Welcome to your dreamscape.”
The unicorn princeling stepped to the ship’s rail, gazing out over the crisp expanse of open possibilities. His mouth pursed, and he lowered his head.
“I thank you for aiding my, Lady Exile… but that nightmare was one of my own creation…”
Exile briefly frowned. She’d learned that it wasn’t unknown for people trapped in magical slumber to become somewhat aware of their condition, gaining lucidity and some degree of control over their dreams, but she’d yet to see one trap themselves in a nightmare, unaware of how their torture was self-inflicted.
“...I deserved to suffer,” Blueblood continued. “For the pain I brought my auntie.”
Ah, suddenly it all made sense, and Exile could not help but laugh..
“Wow,” she snorted, rolling her shoulders. “And I thought Luna liked to self-flagellate. Maybe it’s a hereditary thing. And what about those?”
She pointed to several black masses, stormclouds that towered over the vista like malignant mushrooms.
“Those…” he looked away and grunted. “Those are dreams provided by the Lord Discord, reminding me of how worthless I am…”
“Wow, stick but no carrot,” she snarked. As the yacht soared over one of the black growths, she reached out and caught a tendril of thought in one palm.
Immediately a narrative poured through her mind, of a Canterlot at Hearthswarming, celebrating another year’s peace and prosperity. In the palace, the Sisters two gleefully welcomed Cadance of the Crystal Empire, First of Her Name to a family reunion. Twilight Sparkle was there, as were her dearest friends…
...the only missing piece on the board, conspicuous by his absence, was one Prince Blueblood, for this was a world where he had never been born.
‘Wow, reverse-Wonderful Life much?’ she remarked internally, and fastforwarded ahead in the story to confirm her suspicions. Sure enough, Blueblood’s absence and complete non-existence only served to the betterment of Celestia, Canterlot, Equestria and (somehow) Earth, though by that point the visuals were becoming so abstract that she suspected Discord had been binging on German expressionist cinema before he sat himself down in the director’s chair…
“Yeah,” she said, pulling herself away from the dream, letting the fragment of cloud slip away through her fingers. “This kinda self-hate, this isn’t healthy… and it makes you a target.”
“For what?”
“For the horrors trying to invade all our dreams,” she replied, tone briefly fierce. “Nightmares give them an entry into your mind, and once they take root they fester, multiplying and swarming until they can spread across the Dreaming to another sleeping mind…”
“But, what evil could work such black magic?”
“Your dearest aunt, seen through a mirror darkly…” she replied, holding out one hand and conjuring an image of a mad alicorn, a being of solar wrath and mindless rage.
“Celestia Regina…” he said, dread suffusing his words.
“Yeah, and right now she’s trying to bring her little war to Canterlot Prime, your Canterlot, but she can’t reach it physically, so she’s trying to touch it through the Dreaming, spreading fear and hopelessness; that nightmare of petrification at Princess Celestia’s hooves was the perfect venue for her, practically a welcome-mat laid out at the door to your psyche, you understand?”
“Yes,” Blue nodded, before looking up sharply. “You’re human. How did you come by such magic? How did you ascend to Princesshood?”
“I’m whatever I want to be in the Dreaming,” she replied, getting a booted foot onto the rail and swinging herself into the rigging. “Now how I got there, that’s a fun story. But it’d take too long to explain, and I’m not sure you’d like some parts of it.”
“I don’t know, from what I can see, it seems like a pretty interesting tale,” Blueblood probed.
“Yes, but there’s a time and a place for everything,” Exile answered. “And right now we’re dealing with your hangups, not mine.”
Quickly scaling the shrouds hand-over-hand she perched herself on a crossbeam and beckoned to him. “Come join me up here.”
Blueblood found himself at her side without taking a single step, and quietly reminded himself that he was dealing with a powerful and unknown quantity.
“Let’s just say that I was a self-made monster who got a second chance,” she said, staring out towards the horizon. “And trust me Your Highness, I deserved that chance less than you… but somepony decided I was worth something.”
She paused and looked him in the eye, reverting in the blink of an eye back to an alicorn mare. Blueblood felt his blood chill; she might have looked as young as Cadance, but there was blood and fire in her gaze.
“What’s your worth, Your Highness? You might not have done much to deserve petrification, but what did you do to avoid that fate? And what will you do when you get out? How will you make penance if not in stone?”
“How are you paying off your debts?” he replied coolly, “Self-proclaimed monster that you are? Is it in the ‘services’ you provide?”
She laughed sardonically, and waved a hoof around them. “You see all this around you? That nightmare you were living? It’s my kingdom and my prison, and I’ll not escape it until there’s nothing left to dream…”
“You can’t ever go home?”
“...oh I can visit, in my dreams, but I can’t live there. I can fight the nightmares Celly sends to invade the only true sanctuary a sentient can have, but I can’t make much else of a difference in the waking world.”
She turned her attention back on him, and Blueblood felt an instinctive urge to kneel in the presence of an alicorn. The worst day on his life had been the day he’d felt that reflex when being reintroduced to Cadance, a moment that left him seething in humiliation and jealous rage…
‘But Cadance never deserved my contempt…’ a treasonous voice whispered in the back of his mind, and he flicked his eyes away.
“Well?”
“I can… I can start by apologising to the people I’ve wronged, assuming I’m ever given the chance.”
“Will that be the end of it?” Exile asked, curious. “Actions speak louder than words. And while you might make apologies that could bring a tear to a Timberwolf’s eye, I think ponies would sooner respect Blueblood the...” she considered. “The worker, the hero, than Blueblood the apologiser. Apologising is the all-important first step, but where do you go afterwards?”
He gave no answer, staring out past the prow as if a course would suggest itself.
“Come on Blue, work with me here,” Exile pressed, before glancing down at the yacht’s varnished deck. “Okay, let’s start over. You clearly do love skyliners. Why?”
“I was happy on deck,” Blueblood replied without hesitation, a wistful grin on his face. “At school, ponies would dream of home… I dreamt of skyliners, because I wished they’d been my home. I’d pretend to be a tramp raised on the cloud-freighters whenever I left campus,” his smile faded a little. “I got beat up a lot.”
“Why did you want that? What made living in the lap of luxury so terrible to you?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Blueblood said. “Living the high life... wasn’t the same thing as living free. The Blueblood family creed bore the words: The Family Is All. Not as heartwarming as it sounds. For the status of the family - usually the arrogant elders, or your parents - you’d have to get good grades if you didn’t want to be the family buck-up. For the family, you’d have to marry well, regardless of love or class. Maybe once it meant companionship, but… not anymore.”
“Family counts a lot, but it doesn’t have to be the ponies that gave birth to you,” Exile said softly, her own expression growing distant. “The people you live with, travel beside, fight alongside… the friends you love.”
“Didn’t have much of either,” Blueblood said. “Most of them just said ‘Oh, his laugh sounds of money.’”
Something stirred behind him, and Exile’s gaze flicked to it. As Blueblood continued to lament a lonely childhood, her eyes focused on a half-smothered memory acting itself out on a distant plateau of clouds, of two young unicorns playing in the grounds of a sumptuous mansion. One was Blueblood, but the other was a mint-green filly with a spunky mane. Recognising her, Exile smiled, realising just why she had been guided to intercede in this particular dream.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure more ponies cared for you than you realise,” she said. “And a stallion like you, brains and brawn in one package, has a good chance of making friends once you get out. Earth and Equestria alike could use a few more skyliner engineers or pilots right now.”
“Will… will I get that chance?” he probed, and she nodded.
“I can’t say how long it will take, but I’ve caught a glimpse of Princess Celestia’s dreams - she misses the nephew she once knew, and I think she’ll come looking for him sometime soon…”
The yacht turned, skimming along the face of a towering massif, a cumulus city that would dwarf even Canterlot. Rays of light shot through it from behind, illuminating shapes moving within, accompanied by laughing voices. Slowly, Blueblood made his way along the masthead spar, one hoof wrapping around a guy-line.
Behind him, unseen, Exile smiled and lit her horn, reaching out to the dream, massaging it back into life. The memories were stiff, half-forgotten, and the emotions buried deep, but Blueblood’s mind was open to receive them, and that crack was enough for her to push it wide open.
‘Annnnd… there we go.’
Like a cataract pouring from a torrent, the light poured through, turning the racing wall of cloud into a perfect screen. On it, radiantly happy, two youthful cousins laughed and gambolled with their royal aunt, in what seemed to be a game of Guardponies and Sky-Pirates.
“And now, young adventurer, you face the might of Tyrranabelle-May, Queen of the Pirates and Dread-Wench of the High Seas!” proclaimed Celestia, a patch over one eye, mane tied up in a series of fantastic rainbow ringlets. “Open your treasure holds and surrender yar plunder, or you will face the wrath of my Crimson Cutlass!”
“Never ruffian!” answered a defiant Captain Cadance of the Royal Guard, words squeaked around a toy sword held in her teeth. “Equestria will pwe-vail against your evil!”
“Ho-ho-ho!” chortled the privateer princess, a hoof held mockingly to her mouth. “And what will little ol’ Captain Cadance do to hold off my Obsidian Fleet… you’re outmatched and all alone…”
“No she isn’t!” shouted a proud young voice, and all eyes spun to a young colt in a tricorn hat, poised atop the edge of a palace wardrobe. “She’s never alone!”
“Admiral Blueblood!” ‘Tyrranabelle-May’ gaped, voice raised in utter terror. “NO, IT CANNOT BE!”
In response, the valiant Admiral hurled himself off the edge of the wardrobe, a living cannonball against which no defense could shield. As sure as the sun’s rising, he ploughed into his foe, and aided by the capable Captain Cadance, dogpiled the villainous vixen and brought her to the ground in a tangle of flailing limbs and giddy laughter.
Watching on with a glad smile on her face, Exile saw silver specks flitting past her, and realised that it was Blueblood tears, swept back on the airstream.
“This is a good place to be,” she said softly, seeing his ears lift in recognition. “Find the essence of that little colt, and let him grow up into the stallion he could have been.”
A slight nod indicated her words had been heard, and with a flick of her magic she put the yacht’s rudder over, banking it over in a hard turn, straight into the depths of a happy dream.
“You want to help your family, your country? Then don’t indulge the nightmares Blueblood, don’t let the Queen in…”
“I will, and thank you, Princess...”
Just before impact, she flared her wings, and as the air caught under the feathers and flicked her away from the yacht, Blueblood turned and made eye contact with one another.
“Good luck…” they said together, before everything dissolved into a warm haze of light…
“Woah!” Exile gasped, eyes opening wide as she coalesced back into the misty country that was the Dreaming. Glancing back over her shoulder she saw Blueblood’s dreaming holding steady, clean and bright, it's whispering voice singing of happiness and hope, not fear and regret.
“A job well done…” she smiled, and lifted a wing to her eyes, holding back tears. Then her gaze turned upwards, to the billions of other dreams in her care, and the dark slick of malevolent nightmare threatening to entwine them. Feeling suddenly small and incapable, her smile tipped towards a frown.
‘But still a long road left to go…’
“Princess Exile…” a voice spoke softly, and the alicorn turned to see a tall, athletically muscled young woman ‘phase’ into being beside her, clad in functional plate armour and sporting a silver tiara of similar pattern to her own, paired with a soft orange under-jerkin and maroon cloak. But a quick glance revealed that she wasn’t entirely human, for no natural combination of homo sapiens DNA could yield up pink hair and silver eyes...
“Just ‘Exile’ will do, Nepenthe,” the alicorn smiled wanly. “I’m not much of a Princess.”
“The consent of the governed says otherwise,” the armoured arrival corrected her wryly, a teasing smirk on her lips. As she stepped forward, reality blurred, and she fell to all fours, a peach-coloured unicorn guardsmare. “And after you did so much for my family and I, we don’t think of you as any less than Celestia or Luna, our Princess of Dreams by right and by acclamation…”
A shimmer of magic morphed one of her twin short-swords into a silver-backed mirror, and levitated it up. Exile flinched a little at the sight of her reflection, but didn’t look away. She regarded her transformed body, her mane of flickering flames and rising embers, and smiled a little. At the very least, her new look was sexy as hell…
“Alright, let’s make a deal,” she said, lifting a hoof to bat the mirror back at its owner, managing to make the gesture seem playfully refined, and not a clumsy swipe. “You can call me Princess whenever I refer to you as Captain. Keep our professional relationship businesslike, and the rest of the time we can be friends.”
“That suits me just fine, highness,” the Captain of the Pretty Privates saluted, before her eyes drifted to the network of intertwined lights in the sky. “Oh, wow… you did it?”
“Yeah,” Exile laughed. “Merry Christmas, Nepenthe.”
The unicorn battlemage climbed to the edge of the cloud bank and twirled in place on her hind legs. As she spun, she briefly assuming human form, arms held out and blades in hand, a laughing sword-dancer pirouetting balletically under the shimmering web of dreams.
“They’re just like fairy lights! Rio would have loved this...”
Then, laughing, she toppled back into the clouds, spreading her limbs to press a snow-angel imprint into the misting stuff.
“Thanks, Exile…” she said, pausing for breath. “It’s nice to see something that was… that was important to the person I was.”
Then the moment of festive magic passed, and she reverted back to being a pony, her expression growing serious. Once again, a professional soldier, born and bred. “I have my report.”
“Cool, let’s hear it, Captain.”
“The Princesses of Love have begun their training together back in Rem, and the girls have appraised their basic skills. As we expected, Cadance the alicorn is crazy-powerful, but lacks the military training to direct her power appropriately. We’d like to get her into the same training regimen as yourself, since we’ve already configured it to bring out the best combatant from an Alicorn.”
Exile winced, remembering a few-too-recent sparring bouts where several of her guards, Nepenthe among them, had delivered a terrifying effective wailing on her that proved that strength alone was no substitute for inbuilt military skill.
“Thinking of giving up?” the unicorn teased, and Exile forced herself to hold her head high, looking up to where the taint of Queen Celestia seeped into the Dreaming.
“No…” she shook her head. “I might not be that skilled, but I’ve got you and the girls at my back, bringing me up to speed. We’re going to fight that thing, and we’re going to win, for everyone’s sake.”
“And there’s the Princess I’m proud to serve…” Nepenthe declared, before a shadow flicked over her face. “Unlike some I could care to mention.”
“Is this about the other Cadance, the PHL pegacorn?” Exile quizzed, and receiving a nod of confirmation she fielded the obvious question. “What’s she like?”
“She’s a battle-damaged emotional wreck,” Nepenthe replied bluntly, and Exile snorted fondly.
“That’s no different from most people who fought on Earth, whichever side they were on.”
She shot a brief grin at the guardspony, but Nepenthe did not so much as blink.
“I’m serious, Princess. I wouldn’t be so concerned if not for the fact that the Earth’s Cadance is a frighteningly good combatant who knows mental and empathic magic inside out. We fielded her against Newspeak in a sparring match and she came out the winner, had my gifted little hypnotist of a sister nuzzling up against her like she was her long-lost mother… and after probing the dreams of a few people who’ve worked alongside her, I honestly don’t trust her.”
“Was that where you’ve been?” Exile asked, her tone gaining a hint of interrogation. The other mare shrugged, and she pressed harder. “Captain, speak boldly. I’m not going to judge.”
“You already are, Princess Exile. You might not mean to, but I can hear the disapproval in your voice.”
Exile paused, and swallowed.
“I’m… new to this, we all are... all of us are still finding our feet. But we’re not going to make this work unless we can trust each other. Nepenthe, please.”
The use of her name enough to ease the tension.
“Look, Ex,” Nepenthe sighed, discarding her cloak and flopping sideways to sprawl on another bank of dream-saturated cloud. “You shared your power with us so that we could fight Celestia alongside you in the Dreaming, but that came with a tacit acknowledgement that we could also use those skills in the furtherance of our duties, and a trust that we use it wisely. So yes, I went diving in the dreams of a few PHL agents, and I phished a few disturbing snippets regarding our Pretty Pink Pegacorn Princess Potentiary.”
“Tell me, Nep.” Exile gestured with a wing, piling another cloud into a puffle on which she could rest her own weight. “What did you see?”
“They’re naturally gifted at walking our road, both versions of her are. I think this is the empathic element of their special talent at work. But, and I think this is important... the alicorn Cadance is blatantly a novice, awkward and clumsy. On the flip-side, Cadance of the PHL is far more supple in shaping it… and she’s already applied elements of that skillset in interrogating captives for them. That’s not a beginner’s work. It’s the product of such willpower, I wonder whether to feel frightened.”
Nepenthe paused and snorted.
“Sometimes seems there’s too many alicorns running about these days…” she added, a wry smile gracing her muzzle as she winked. “Back when I was ‘born’, there was just the Tyrant, One and Singular.”
“Celly’s toxic… and trying to push herself into any nightmare that she can stick to,” Exile frowned, motioning first towards Blueblood’s dream and then up into the polluted sky. “I just kicked one part of her to the curb… but if she’s projecting her malice into Equestria Prime, that confirms she’s got someone on her side adept at manipulating the Dreaming.”
“The Weaver?” Nepenthe hissed in disgust, remembering a past encounter. “Who could she be?”
“I don’t know,” Exile sighed. “That mare guards her identity well. Only, I’d ardently wish for her not to be who I think she is, if only because I’ve got some idea of how it feels to cut yourself off from everything you knew and loved. But I know, too, how far into the darkness such loss can push a person… and if there’s one thing true about the Weaver, it’s that she’s driven by love...”
“Would she change her mind if she were told of how the Centaur has extended his Curse toward the human race?” Nepenthe scowled. “Of the evil underpinning the potion and all the newfoals? Heck, I’d give her first-person eyewitness testimony!”
“I’d like to think so, but I just don’t-”
Exile stopped suddenly, anything else she might have said cut off by a flicker far off to the side of her vision, a mass of light that moved amongst the dreams, born on an expansive pair of wings.
“Speaking of too many alicorns…” she murmured and pointed, but Nepenthe had seen it too, and immediately jumped to her hooves, swords flicking out of their scabbards, ready to defend.
“Stand down, Nep…” Exile ordered immediately. “Chill, its fine.”
“But nopony’s supposed to be able to access the Dreaming except for us and Luna…”
“She goes wherever she’s needed,” Exile said softly. “That’s her, Nepenthe. That’s the pony who came to save the worlds.”
Slowly, Nepenthe lowered her swords, eyes widening.
“That’s her? The impossible mare? The undreamed?”
“Yeah,” Exile swallowed, voice softening to an awed whisper. “Nepenthe, meet Lyra Heartstrings.”
Reverently, unseen by mortal eyes, under a holiday sky woven from starlight and the stuff of fantasies, the Alicorn of Dreams and her Captain of the Guard sank into twin respectful bows...
TO BE CONTINUED…
Author's Note
And we're off! 
Lyra's theme: A Lifetime of Adventure, by Tuomas Holopainen.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hearthswarming, and welcome aboard, one and all!
This story had its origins in a very simple question: could Lyra, a hero and martyr in the world of Spectrum, qualify for sainthood? The subsequent investigation turned up some interesting results, and inspired this exploration of the character.
Readers of 'Last Train From Oblivion' might recall that Lyra has already made a guest appearance there as an alicorn presence within humanity's dreams. This story aims to grow and built upon that, as well as develop concepts and themes introduced in its seasonal predecessor, 'Joy to the Worlds'.
Who is Exile? Did Sparkler really create the Alicorn Amulet? Are we really doing what it looks like we're doing with Ana? Who managed to produce a snowstorm in the height of summer?
While we can't garuntee immediate answers to all of these questions, we can promise that those answers will eventually step into the light, striding in tandem with the generation of young gods and immortals sired by the Conversion Bureau Wars.
Until then we hope you join us on this journey, as believers, athiests and agnostics alike dive into that shadow world where faith and magic overlap. We hope both that you've enjoyed what you see so far, and that we've not trodden on any toes. The writers of this piece embody a wide range of religious and cultural backgrounds, and do not wish to promote one such worldview above another. In matters of religion and cosmology, there are no certain answers, and our aim is that this story reflects that truth...
Especial thanks to Vox, Sledge, Doctor Fluffy for collaborating on this chapter, and of course to Redskin122004 for creating this amazing sandbox in which we're now playing! 
