A Canterlot Unicorn in Princess Platinum's Court

CHAPTER THREE

NIGHT MARE

I was, for some time, alone in my cell. Unable to see, for the sun had set and my horn was ringed in iron, I measured out the dimensions of my cell with my hooves. It was, perhaps, two meters to a side and two high, with only a very small window just below the ceiling. This exercise took me some hours, or perhaps only one, but served to stop my shaking and center me.

It was, with this done, that I was calm enough to regain my mental faculties. Being me, I used them to berate myself for my own stupidity. Why hadn't I teleported away and run for the hills, well before they had a chance to lay hooves on me? What, precisely, had Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia herself taught me all those magic spells for if I was too dumb to actually use them?

Presently, I settled myself on my stomach to better chastise myself. It seemed profitable to list out all the things I could have done, in case the opportunity presented itself to actually do them at some point. With that in mind, I noted that I could have:

Cast any or all of a dozen rusting spells on the guards holding me, paralyzing them in their stupid, obsolete armor.

Cast the Want-It-Need-It spell on, say, Princess Platinum's tiara.

Transmuted the floorboards to bubblegum.

Used dark magic, of any kind. Why had I ever bothered if I hadn't thought to use it in the one situation it was actually useful?

And so I went, growing more inventive and less merciful as I went. It was when I, having noted in retrospect the lack of any wards against animation on the torches and statues in the throne room, considered what would have happened if I'd brought them to life, that my first genuinely useful thought occured.

Animation wards hadn't been invented yet. The first had been created by Legate Labyrinthine, in response to the destruction wrought the Come-To-Life spell in the Rebellion of Trottingham, invented earlier that year. Why would they put up wards that didn't exist?

I started thinking about all the holes in their security. They hadn't cast a blanket dispel on me when they'd arrested me, not that I'd been all that enchanted. They were using manacles and iron rings, not hoofcuffs and magic dampeners; the former could be escaped, the latter could not.

I dozed for some time, thinking of my new hoard of time travel enforced secrets. When I slept, I dreamt of the great weather factory at Cloudsdale, which allowed ponies to dictate weather with impunity, not just move it from place to place. I dreamt of taking Canterlot by force, leading an army of animated trees, as Commander Inglenook had done against the Zebricans in the First Ponic War. I dreamt of Princess Celestia, who may not even have been born yet.

I awoke with a plan.

I waited in the dark of the morning for a long time. I was considering the possibility that I'd been sentenced to starvation when I was drawn from my reverie by the sound of approaching footsteps.

A unicorn guard walked the long stone corridor that led to my cell. His coat was a grimy grey under chain mail barding, and his cutie mark was hidden. He shoved a wooden plate with my breakfast through a narrow slit in the cell door. It was bread and water.

"Her highness has weighed your case and sentenced you to death," he said. His voice was low and gravelly, his face scarred. "You are to be burned at the stake come morning tomorrow."

Inwardly, I'd already filled myself with so much false bravado that all I felt was disgust and mingled pity. The plan wouldn't work if I were my usual, sensible self; it wouldn't fit the mould. Even beneath that, I couldn't help but recoil at the thought. I'd got the death penalty over a painting?

Outwardly, I laughed. It was forced, but I'd been practicing, and it came out as a shrill, contemptuous giggle.

"Oh, how fun!" I tittered, clasping my hooves in front of my face. "You may tell your princess that I will accept her punishment, on one condition – oh, but this is no good, I simply must speak to her in pony."

"There is no condition," the guardspony sneered. "Nopony may question the princess's will within Canterlot, peasant, and-" his eyes widened fractionally. He'd leaned in closer to the bars, and so had I; this close, he could feel the heat radiating off my clasped hooves. Without my maintenance, even my double casting of Solomane's Nameless Spell was unravelling. Blessedly, it was designed to fail gracefully, releasing the trapped heat before the spellwork protecting me from it could unravel.

It hadn't been designed for the virtual oven of Princess Platinum's Court, but I was being burned at the stake regardless so what was the worst that could happen? I'd picked at it a bit.

"-and furthermore, I'd suggest you give up any trick you were planning and die with dignity," he finished. There was no conviction in his voice.

I settled down on my belly and went over my plan while I ate.

I guessed that it might be evening when the guard came again to give me my dinner, though I had no way of knowing. He seemed much more confident, this time, so I stayed silent and waited.

I spent the evening running my hooves back and forth over the edge of my mane and tail. Or, rather, my horseshoes, which being iron had inherent antimagic properties. Very, very carefully, I was deconstructing the outer layers of Solomane's Nameless Spell.

Clover came in the middle of the night.

I was awakened by the sound of her footsteps approaching, and within an instant I was perky. Adrenaline was a much more effective stimulant than coffee. I considered trying to develop some process by which I might bottle it, but it took no time at all for my mind to return to my impending doom and/or escape.

Presently, she came into view. She looked as she had in court, before, though she wore a different cloak, and her hair was pragmatically tied back.

Whatever she'd meant to say, she didn't say it.

My mane and tail glowed, waste heat and light straining the edges of Solomane's Spell. Wisps of smoke escaped periodically, as the aetheric envelope lost ever more consistency and strands of hair were incinerated. I tossed my head in a way I hoped was dramatic, scattering embers every which way.

"Good evening," she said evenly. "How are you?"

"Bored," I said. I tried to inject as much petulance into my voice as I could. "Amuse me."

"Unless you find being observed, and subsequently having your species identified, entertaining, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

I rose to my hooves and strode to the bars of the cell, and to her credit Clover didn't step back.

This was where I put to play my understanding of physics.

In the natural world, energy tends to go from high concentration to low. A tree, high in chemical energy, burns at a lower energy, and the heat dissipates to still lower and more diffuse levels. Magic, however, works in the opposite direction; it gathers energy into tight bundles, ready to be released.

Solomane's Nameless Spell was a very interesting example. Although used as a temperature regulator, it was actually an energy collector. Under most circumstances, there was no real reason to use it for anything but its intended purpose; it was easily dispelled, its presence was obvious to anypony who knew what it was, and there were better ways to collect energy than walking through it. Demonstrations of its energy gathering properties were relegated to the annals of industrial accidents, and the subject of mandated safety videoreels, not heist novels.

Nevertheless, Solomane's Spell had picked up every scrap of heat I'd been exposed to in Princess Platinum's throne room, and had had no safe place to vent it. Once I'd left, it hadn't vented the heat at all - lacking any direction to do so - leaving several hours' worth of direct sun exposure in the incredibly compact areas of my mane, my tail, and my horseshoes.

I felt the iron bars deforming at my touch, from the moment they passed through the envelope of the spell. I felt the parts of the spell that should've excluded the bars from the envelope fizzle and die, from where I'd carefully taken apart the exacting, redundant safety precautions.

Clover did take a step back, then. I pulled back. Then iron cooled the moment it left my hair, the spell bringing the heat with it, leaving only a head-sized dent in the bar where I'd touched it.

"A ... a Night Mare, then? No, of course you are, the mane is kind of a giveaway. Why are you here? I hadn't thought any of ... any of you actually existed. I thought ..." Clover trailed off.

(To her credit, Night Mares did not, in fact, exist. Just as well, because I had no idea what Night Mare was supposed to be.)

"There are stories," I hissed through my teeth, trying to choke my voice into a rasp, "forgotten stories, legends gone to rot. What good is it, a story no one tells? I wanted a new story, something to be told around a dying fire in the dead of night, something to spook foals in their beds."

"You ... wanted to be part of a story?"

I cackled. "And you've given me one! The clever advisor, who outwits the villain and – ah, but our story isn't over yet. Why, we finished before we began, without gnashing of teeth or tearing of manes. Nopony will want to hear of the story of the Night Mare who was summarily executed. No, it won't do at all."

"The guard said you had a condition for the princess. Is that what it is, then? We answer your riddle, beat you at chess, maybe, and then what? I doubt burning you at the stake would accomplish much."

"And then I leave, of course! Not to trouble you, at least, ever again. Perhaps your children, when they grow old, and forget the stories. Who can say?"

"And if we lose?"

I stroked the bars of the cell with one hoof, sending red streaks along its length. "I suppose I'll have to find a city with a more cunning advisor."

"No." Clover smiled coyly, and I felt my facade crack just the slightest bit. "If we're to have, as you say, gnashing of teeth and pulling of manes, then I demand compensation for my part in this."

Somewhere behind the lies, where I was a unicorn and not some bizarre fictitious monster set on Celestia knows what, I was screaming who cares what she makes you agree to just get the dampener off!

But, of course, I wasn't a unicorn. I was a monster of the night, and nothing about being in a cell upset me nearly as much as Clover not agreeing to my devil's bargain.

"Com – pen – sa – tion," I hissed, stretching the word as far as it would go.

"I propose a counteroffer, and make no mistake, this is a negotiation. If you could do as you pleased, you wouldn't have gone to such lengths to draw my attention. You'd have burned the mountain to cinders and gone off to do as you pleased elsewhere. You need something from me."

I smiled my most forced smile. It was more of a grimace. "Counteroffer away, oh cunning one."

"A contest, which we must both agree on. If you win-" Clover swallowed nervously "-you'll have my soul, but none other, and must agree to leave Canterlot forever, and never again set foot on the mountain. And if I win, you'll give me your true name, and I'll bind you to a lamp, to serve me forever."

"Hardly a fair bargain," I said, while inwardly I was jumping up and down shouting yes, yes, yes! "I'm to content myself with only one, from the entire sumptuous bounty of a city? And how am I to know you won't weasel out? Perhaps you'll refuse every challenge I offer, and we'll be in negotiations until you die of old age."

"Am I to take that as agreement, pending details?"

"...pending details."

Clover stroked her chin. "A time limit of three days. If at the end of those three days we can't come to an agreement, the challenge will be chosen by ... I'm not sure."

"Counteroffer," I snapped. "I will make eleven challenges, and you will make eleven of your own, and both of us will give our word that those offers are made in good faith. If none of those are agreed to, then I will pick a member of your nobility, and, free of either of our influence, they will choose for us. Is this agreeable?"

"Agreed. Do I have your word, then?"

I laughed, injecting as much shrill evilness as my throat could handle. "Why, of course not. But it's a start. How will I be assured that you will keep your word, mortal? And, should the contest be protracted, where will I be accommodated? Surely you don't expect a being of my stature to put up with this hovel?

"You must provide your own means of forcing my word. As for accommodations, I will draw a circle of salt and silver within a comfortable room suited to a noble visitor. You will be brought what you desire, within reason, and released only for the contest. You will not harm any citizen of Canterlot, nor damage its property, nor sabotage its interests, while you are its guest. Is this agreeable?"

I chewed my lip as if deliberating, and held the pose for a long time. When I judged I'd come across as suitably conflicted, I said, "fine. But to ensure your will be done, and our bargain kept, I will place upon you my malediction; that if you should reserve your offers of contest for a period of longer than three days, or if you should offer me any injury or attempt to bind me before the contest is concluded, or if you should attempt to fetter me in any way beyond the circle of salt and silver, I will remove the horn from your head, and take from you your magic for the rest of your life, and the same for any citizen of Canterlot who violates our bargain. Are we agreed?"

Clover gasped and took a step back.

I offered my hoof.

Quivering, she touched it, then leaped back. My horseshoe was red hot, now.

"Agreed."