A Balancing Of The Scales
“Hold firm! Remember who you are,” commanded Captain Honorable Accord. “You are the pride of your nation and the Royal Guard of Celestia. And the Guard’s spears waver in the face of no threat!”
Two dozen of Celestia’s finest formed a wall of spear heads and earth pony flesh with practiced ease, ready to meet whatever threat that was killing their allies on the other side of the only entrance to this hall. War cries, bloody screams and panicked confusion were the only muffled indicators that the battle still raged beyond the grand, wooden doors. Determined eyes stared at the ornate carvings of that portal, steeling themselves for whatever force that has been trying to claim the life of their beloved Captain.
Honorable Accord stood on a table behind his men, one of a scattered few in this forgotten place of meeting. As his gaze passed over his line of disciplined soldiers, instinctually looking for and failing to find a flaw in their formation, his mind reeled. Desperately he tried to glean SOMETHING useful from the memories of the past hour; were they Lunar Rebels, how many were hunting him, he’d settle for what they were for Celestia’s sake! Try as he might though, all he could remember of the things that were out for his life were twisting shadows, glints of steel and sprays of blood from his loyal men, all sacrificing themselves to save him.
With a final scream the conflict on the other side of the doors came to a sudden halt. Silence reigned in the torch lit room; even the normal sounds of night that usually surrounded Canterlot Castle failed to drift through the few open windows. The oppressing absence of sound pressed in on Accord’s eardrums for what felt like an age. In a moment of slipping discipline, he found himself wishing he had either wings or magic so he might fly out of one of those high windows. Chastising himself for his moment of foolishness he gripped his own spear tight, lowered his helmet’s face mask and readied himself to do his tribe’s renowned tenacity proud.
With a crash the heavy doors flew open! An ill wind raged across the room for a moment, shrouding the Guard in brief darkness as the gale threatened to snuff the torches along the wall. With an effort the light returned, rattling the tenacity of the warriors with the sudden nearness and stillness of a single figure, it seeming to have materialized from the darkness not a few trots from their line.
“Mare-Do-Well…?” one of the soldiers whispered to himself.
Draped in a ragged cloak, wrapped in dark cloth and wearing a torn mask and hat to hide her identity, the shadow of Accord’s fears just stood there, breathing lightly as if the past hour of constant death dealing wasn’t any strain at all on her endurance. The silence was broken only by the slow dripping of blood off of the common kitchen knife she held in her teeth.
Rattled, the Captain gave himself a single shake and assumed command of the situation, reinforcing his men’s discipline with his own bravado.
“You’re out of tricks fiend. You face the pride of Equestria on solid, open ground. You cannot win! Disarm and stand down, and you will be treated with fair-“
His voice fled as her head snapped up and they locked eyes. Even through her mask he felt as a rabbit caught in the gaze of a dragon.
“I have to make a world full of smiles,” she said calmly and, somehow, disturbingly clearly around the knife she held. “I will remove anything in the way of that wonderful tomorrow.”
For a moment, that is all Honorable Accord felt he was. Just a thing. Not a captain. Not a soldier. Not a pony. Just some pathetic thing, an obstacle easily removed by this creature.
With a second shake and a growl, the Captain raised his spear and screamed “FOR EQUESTRIA!!!”
And the Guard charged and cried “FOR EQUESTRIA!!!”
And the forgotten room knew death.
And Honorable Accord knew fear.
Staring at the wave of spears, her only movement was a grotesque ripple of ticks and twitches that passed over her body. Just as that wave broke and crashed over her, she began to dance. She moved through the pride of Equestria like a possessed marionette, always where stabbing spears, kicking hooves and biting teeth were not, constantly twitching and shaking, jerking away from attacks she had no sane right to know were coming. If her totentanz had a partner, it was her knife and the arcs of blood it painted on the crowd, walls and floor. Unnatural precision found all the chinks, holes and folds in the armor presented to her partner, blindly and unerringly finding new flesh and fresh paint for its evil art.
And the singing. Oh, the terrible, innocent singing. Piercing the cloud of screams and cries with the same inevitability of her blade piercing organs, Accord’s hearing was assaulted with that mad song. A song reassuring his beloved soldiers how small they are, how inconsequential to this insane spirit. A song sung with a voice that the Captain’s own sanity demanded that he deny it sounding familiar.
Twitch jerk pierce scream fall shake jerk slice scream twist pierce silence cry shift crash twist crack fall spin cut splatter wail stab silence kick twitch jerk trip slice bleed shake lunge jump sing descend sing pierce sing yank sing splatter sing fall sing sing SING SING!
Silence.
Death stood calmly, covered in blood not her own.
Six of Accord’s own were left standing in the puddles of red and piles of gore that were their brothers.
The Captain shook on his pedestal of a table.
One of the six, Brave Soul if Accord correctly made out his cutie mark under the blood, let out a desperate war cry, one swiftly echoed by his comrades. As one they circled and charged their foe, giving her no place to dodge. Their weapons guaranteed that if she tried to jerk aside again, all she would meet is death at the end of one of their spears. She rippled with ticks and twitches. The spears neared. She raised herself onto hind legs, fore hooves high in the air, her body twisted at unnatural angles. The spears clashed. Her cape was torn off, her outfit ripped and her skin cut, her hat impaled and resting at the end of a spear head, and she was trapped in a cage of wooden shafts. But body remained whole, and her life still burned.
“Smile…” she whispered, her fore hooves descended, limbs pinning the shafts next to her body.
“Come on and smile,” she said through gritted teeth, spinning and wrenching with in-pony strength, lifting the six off of their hooves as one and flinging them all towards the open doors.
“COME ON AND SMILE!!!” She screamed at their prone figures, finishing her song, breaking the will of the pride of Equestria, sending them fleeing into the safety of the dark corridor beyond.
She watched them run, a hunter judging them as unworthy prey. She turned her gaze once again to Honorable Accord.
Spear forgotten, he stumbled backwards, falling off his pedestal onto his back with a painful crack. As the devil approached he scrambled backwards, unable to take his eyes off of her. He backed up into a wall as she mounted his former table, staring down at him. With her hat gone, her strait pink hair drifted lazily in the slight night breeze coming from one of the windows out of Accord’s reach. His eyes were drawn to the one point of bright color on this specter, the torn section on her flank, revealing a cutie mark of blue and yellow balloons on a pink background. A gash rent a crimson path through her mark.
A fact crashed through Accord’s pathetic denials at that sight, a fact he couldn’t accept just from her singing voice.
She was his love.
“L-lady Pie?”
A slight pause in her stalk toward him. She descended from the table like a whisper and continues towards him.
“Lady Pie it’s me!” he pleaded, scrambling to get his helm off and tossing it aside, fully revealing his face to her for the first time this night. “It’s Honorable Accord! You know, H.A.? Like a laugh? Don’t you remember!?”
Another pause, this one longer. She loomed over him, like a still and silent gargoyle. She twitched once, twice, and on the third the very end of her hanging hair frizzed ever so slightly.
“Honor…?” she whispered, recognition on the edge of her voice.
A glimmer of hope bloomed in his chest. A faint speck of light, like the first ray of Celestia’s dawn, promising a beautiful day even after the darkest night.
The slight frizz straitened, she continued forward, and Accord’s glimmer was snuffed.
“…I love you Pinkie,” he quietly lamented, accepting that which was now inevitable, using her common nick name for the first time.
“I have to make a world full of smiles,” she recited mechanically, transferring the blade from mouth to hoof. Her voice dead and monotone. “I will remove anything in the way of that wonderful tomorrow.”
She raised Mr. Cake’s favorite kitchen knife.
“…sorry.”
A knife fell. A captain died.
And a mask absorbed a tear.
Six months earlier..
The Princess of the Night stood alone, again, on her ornate balcony. With a sigh she watch yet another beautiful sun set, her royal breakfast perched on the rail unfinished. Logically she knew that her sister can be very busy and sometimes has to miss their sunsets, that couple of free hours they both spare to be together before Celestia retires for the night and Luna has to begin her vigil. After a week strait though, her heart ache has finally started affecting her apatite.
With another sigh, Princess Luna closed her eyes and mentally readied herself for her first nightly duty of raising the moon and stars, thinking of the walk to the ceremonial platform she uses for that task. “I wonder what few ponies will show up to watch tonight.” She muttered to herself.
“Could I watch?”
“AHH!” screamed Luna, startled and surprised at the sudden voice behind her. Leaping and twisting to see where it came from, she stumbled back into the rail, knocking her unfinished meal off into space.
“Gotcha,” giggled the regal form of Princess Celestia.
“Tia!” the younger sister exclaimed, dropping all formality and lunging at the larger Alicorn. She wrapped her forelegs around her sister’s neck in a tight, familial hug. Celestia immediately returned it with a hoof of her own.
Still with a bit of a laugh in her tone she asked, “Lu, what were you thinking about so deeply that I could just walk right up behind you?”
“Oh just…” she started, breaking the embrace and turning back to the sunset. “Just thinking about how after even five years worth of attempts I still have only gone a small way towards re-earning our people’s love.”
“Now dear sister,” chided Celestia as she came up beside her to join the viewing, a small, knowing smile playing at the corner of her lips. “I think you do not give yourself enough credit. I believe you would be surprised about just how far you have actually come with them.”
“Then why such a low attendance at my night raisings? Especially this past week…”
A knock came at the glass door before it was opened by one of Luna’s two new personal guards. She noticed it was the one that was smaller than most other Royal Guards.
“My lady,” her Guard said with a bow. “Forgive my intrusion, but if we don’t leave soon you will miss your ceremony ma’am.”
“Of course,” Princess Luna replies, resuming her own regal attitude. “Let us proceed. Will you attend tonight as well my sister?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Celestia answered, that smile still barely remaining out of Luna’s sight.
The three walked through Luna’s book and scroll lined chambers before being joined by her second black armored guard in the castle corridor. The other guard took his place next to the small one, stressing the first’s size with his own gargantuan form. Though in terms of raw power the large one is the superior, Luna learned early that the smaller made up the gap with athletic prowess. Together they were all the protection that she needed, and she loved them for their honest and loyal dedication. Over the past year they more than earned their place as her personal guards.
After several minutes of moving through the castle, something started to nag at Luna’s mind. Something about the castle itself. She worked on it in silence, putting her analytical mind to the task, taking stock of everything about the corridors, the windows, the sculptures, the pennants. All seemed to be in place and it took until they stood before the grand doors of the castle entrance before she worked it out.
“Where has everypony gone, sister?”
“Hmm?” Celestia hummed in that knowing sort of way.
Luna looked at her, finally noticing that smile. “All the servants and most of the Royal Guard are missing from their usual posts. Where are they?”
“Oh, they all asked for the night off and I granted it. Something about a big event they wanted to attend.”
“‘Big event?’” She asked confused. “I have heard of no big event happening tonight.”
“I know,” Celestia replied, the small smile turning into an unhidden grin. “Makes sense that you have not heard of it, given the fact that everypony was doing their best this last week to make sure you did not find out.”
With that the two dark armored Guards opened the main doors, and a tidal wave of cheering crashed over the small procession. A sea of smiling faces and waving hooves greeted them, everypony wearing festive colors from every spectrum of the rainbow, but all also wearing at least some item dyed the color of the night. Banners both professional and homemade were waved ecstatically in the night breeze, each bearing Luna’s own cutie mark. Lamps and torches illuminated every street, every window, every doorway and every tree branch that could hold one, covering the city of Canterlot in a blanket of stars. Music, joyous and celebratory, mingled with the loving calls and cheers of what looked like every pony in Equestria.
Celestia leaned down to her stunned sister and whispered in her ear, “Happy Birth Night Lu.”