Chapter 5: Analysis

She strongly suspected from the very beginning that it had been caused by something she had done with Flash. For it to otherwise go off during the first time she had ever had a guest over to her studio, the first time she'd ever ... come close to having sex, with anyone ... would otherwise be an absurd coincidence. Possible, but not the most probable explanation.

Her first hypothesis was that it had been the sex. While it was not part of the modern mainstream Equestrian magical tradition, she knew that back in Tri-Tribal times, sexual acts had been used in rituals to focus thaumic energies to achieve large-scale effects. There had, for instance, been the Sacred Marriage of Earth and Sky between the Earth Ponies and Pegasi, referred to in classic accounts from the itself half-legendary, long-vanished Empire of the North.

They said that, in a time before the Age of Discord, the Commonwealth of the Earth Ponies and the Mandate of the Pegasi had each selected a mare to represent her Kind, and those two sacred mares had made love, an act which renewed the sacred bond and treaties between Earth and Sky, so that the Sky would rain upon the fields of the Earth and those fields nourish both Earth Ponies and Pegasi. That this act had been the centerpiece of a great Spring Festival, and had been consummated in full public view of the assembled multitiude.

Sunset Shimmer had read this as a shocked, fascinated filly, just turned twelve, and asked Princess Celestia disbelievingly if this was true. Surely this could not be possible?

Celestias surprised her. She told Sunset that it had indeed been the case, though the practice had been discontinued long before even Celestia's own birth, twenty-five centuries ago.

Celestia had even explained to her how it worked.

"Sex," her Former Most Beloved Teacher had explained, "is a very intimate act, one of the most intimate possible between two Ponies. It temporarily binds together the thaumic fields of the two Ponies involved, and if mingled with Love this binding may last a lifetime, and include their moiric lines as well. This may be used to enhance magic, both because it increases focus and because it combines power."

"We don't do that anymore, do we?" little Sunset had asked, rather frightened lest she learn that they still did; that the way she thought society and its rules worked had been simply a lie told to protect a little filly.

"Of course not," Celestia had replied, laughing throatily. "We're civilized now. We have much better techniques, which allow us to cast powerful spells without intruding on the private matters between lovers or spouses."

"Good!" said Sunset's filly-self. "That would be nasty, if I had to ..." at twelve she had neither the courage nor knowledge to go into such matters, especially to her Princess, so she paused for a moment, "... just to cast a spell," she finished.

Celestia smiled understandingly. "I would never ask you to do any such thing, dear Faithful Student. Also, such practices can be dangerous," Celestia added.

"Dangerous?" asked Sunset, mouth agape. "How, Beloved Teacher?"

"When one gives up something very private and special -- sex, or love, or friendship -- for power, one sacrifices a part of one's very self," Celestia explained. "One opens oneself to corruption. It is said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When one has power, or aspires to power, therefore, one must always take care to avoid corruption. For corruption can rot one out from within, and what may attain to power in the end may be but a Nightmare peering out from a fair form."

"Were the ancient Tribes corrupt, then?" asked Sunset.

Celestia considered the issue. "They were barbaric," she said. "They sought power as best they could, and their lives were brutal and short compared to modern Equestrians, and they saw it as but the way of the world if the Morningstar took the hindmost -- who were often their leaders, for they were most certainly brave. They took for granted that they must sacrifice their selves for their Ponies and Houses, and they did not see the philosophical contradiction. They were simple, and mostly good, like most Ponies -- but they were often misguided."

"They didn't have you to guide them, yet," said filly-Sunset, looking up at her Princess with a blind adoration which adult-Sunset now found painful to remember. How could she have loved Celestia so? How could Celestia have so betrayed that trust?

"No," said Celestia, warmly smiling down upon her, "they did not. Yet, mostly they meant well. Without philosophy, without learning -- without the Harmony -- they formed their morals as best they could, and sometimes practiced ancient customs which were not very consistent with their morals, but were simply their ancient ways, in some cases codifications of old events. They did not have schools such as my Academy, let alone Canterlot University, and their learning was largely the memorization of compiled traditions.

"The Marriage of Earth and Sky itself began," Celestia explained, "because a Pegasus Commander actually made a strategic marriage with an Earth Pony Chancellor, and they publicly consummated it to assure their peoples that this was not merely a marriage in name only. And the alliance worked -- it was in fact one of the events which turned the Three Tribes into a confederation rather than a constant Kind- war -- and they decided to do the same thing again and again, because they wanted the alliance to endure. That's how traditions often get started."

"Oh ..." said Sunset. "I guess it worked out all right, then."

"Indeed," replied Celestia. "But I am not sure it was because of the sexual rituals. Rather, over time, as the Pegasi and Earth Ponies cooperated, and the Unicorns joined their league, Ponies of all the Three Kinds began to meet in friendship, and sometimes in love, and in time many of them understood that the Ponies of the other Kinds were people, just like themselves, though different in form.

"And when they had friends, and spouses and kin of other Kinds, they no longer had the heart to harm them. They joined together -- and this is how they survived the Windigoes, and the Great Migration, and carved out a new homeland for themselves here, far to the south of the Old Homelands. And so, too, they survived the Age of Discord, and emerged even stronger, to become our Realm.

"There are many forms on the Earth, and in the Universe beyond, many different ways in which intelligence can express itself. But we are all one. We are Life, and we have the common goal of surviving and thriving in the Cosmos. This is the purpose and power of Friendship, and the Love of all for all. Never forget this."

At the time, little Sunset had been so very impressed. Though now she knew it was nonsense. She had been rejected because she had, somehow, not striven hard enough, and somepony else had doubtless replaced her, and she would never Ascend, never find her true destiny, if she did not make herself ruthless and hard.

She wondered what she would do if it did turn out to be a flare of sex magic.

Sunset still found the idea of sexual rituals repulsive. They offended against the morals she had learned as an Equestrian filly, a scion of the scholar-gentry of Canterlot. Sex was ideally part of Love, or at least one's duty in Marriage. It was not to be used like that as a tool of spellcraft. That was barbaric and vile, foul warlockry.

Though ... would it be so bad, if her partner was Flash Sentry? She had felt so warm, so happy in his embrace. She really liked him ... if he had only been a Pony, maybe a Unicorn, or even a Pegasus (for some reason she couldn't imagine him an Earth Pony), a stallion of her own true species. If he had been Pony she would have fallen in love with him. Been unashamed of him. Been proud to name him her Special Somepony.

But he wasn't. She had to deal with the reality of what she was, and what he was. She was a Unicorn of Equestria, heiress to a proud and ancient civilization, aspirant to Ascension. And he was a barbarian -- a dear barbarian, to be sure, but still a barbarian, the product of a civilization no more morally advanced than that of the ancient Three Tribes before the Great Migration, who sought battle for plunder and gave their virgin daughters to obscene rituals. Mere feelings could not hope to bridge such a gulf.

Perhaps she could simply use him for the rituals? The idea appealed to her, but she feared that she was deluding herself. She already felt closer to him, warmer toward him, from just the intimacies they had already enjoyed. If she took him as her lover in truth, regardless of her self-stated motivation, she would be lost. She knew it. She would fall in love with him, and no longer really care to return home.

But if it was sex magic, and it worked, dared she ignore the potential of such power? Why must the path to her true destiny be strewn with such moral conundrums?

Thus it was with trepidation in her heart that Sunset Shimmer consulted the readout from her device to discover the timing and hence deduce the nature of the thaumic sure.

And found, to her great surprise, relief, and ... oddly enough, disappointment? ... that there had been a steady thaumic output during the period that she had been playing the guitar with Flash Sentry. And a single, anamolous spike toward the end, which may have represented either that really hot and steamy moment before Flash backed off, or possibly her vision of her Alicorn. She wasn't sure how to interpret that.

Nevertheless, the main conclusion seemed obvious.

It wasn't the sex.

It was the music.