Faster Than You Know

They meet at the station, and Chance nearly tripped over the small pegasus in his eagerness to get off the train the same time she was  petting on it. “My apologies,” he said when they’d finished bumbling and trying to side-step each other. “You’re Luna’s pupil, right? White Heart?”

The mare tilts her head at him, expression torn between annoyance and reverence. She drops the suitcase she’d been holding in her mouth to extend a hoof, curling it towards her body in the traditional greeting. “That’s correct, yes. And you’re Chance, the prophesized hero.”

Chance sputtered, “The WHAT?!”

Though she tried to maintain her stony stare, White Heart couldn’t help but chuckle after his exclamation. “Joking, of course. There’s no such thing as fate. However,” she peered around his broad form to glance at the train that was calling for its final boarding, “There might be some truth to happy coincidence. How do you feel about accompanying me to the Crystal Empire?”

Chance’s mind immediately started skimming through his mental library of history books, a jolt of excitement lighting his gaze as he remembered that the Empire’s Library held the only complete set of Princess Twilight’s writings. “I would love to go,” he said, practically bouncing on his hooves. White Heart blushed at the word choice, her wings fluffing slightly. “But I have something I need to do in Canterlot first,” he sighed after a moment of more rational thought.”

“And what is that thing, exactly?”

“I actually . . . Don’t . . . Know . . .” Chance admitted sheepishly. “But the map told me to come here, so there must be something here that can help me find the other Elements.”

“The Elements have slumbered for a thousand years,” White Heart deadpanned. “They can continue to rest for a few more days. Now be a dear and get back inside the train. The thought of having to visit the Empire alone makes me physically ill.”

Reluctantly, Chance allowed himself to be herded back onto the train, and even helped the mare lift her suitcase into the overhead compartment. “I’ve actually never been to the Empire before,” he admitted as the train began to pull away from Canterlot’s station. He gave the palace a guilty glance as they passed.

“I’d be shocked if you had,” White Heart said evenly. “Flurry Heart has kept her borders rigid and more or less impenetrable without express permission for over five hundred years now.”

Chance stiffened in the seat he’d taken across from her. “Er, then how are we getting in?”

White Heart scoffed, an attempt at humility that failed spectacularly when her feathers fluffed and gave her away. “I’m Luna’s student, why wouldn’t I have access to the Crystal Empire. We’ve attended formal dinners there with their royal household.”

Eyes alight with wonder, Chance leaned forward in his seat a little, “Wow!” he exclaimed, her ever more ruffling feathers unnoticed. “That’s excellent! Have you used the library there at all?”

A grimace cross White Heart’s face, and her wings wilted a little, “Actually, no. Flurry Heart has forbidden Equestrian citizens access to it since the Empire succeeded as its own country.”

Chance wilted, “What? Why? Why would they stop anypony from accessing knowledge. That’s just stupid.”

“No, it’s actually quite smart,” White Heart sighed. “Flurry Heart has cut us off from valuable knowledge and thus succeeded in making it nigh on impossible for us to ever dream of returning the Empire to Equestria’s folds. Especially so when the most valuable works there-”

“Are the complete collection of Prince Twilight Sparkle’s writings,” Chance finished for her. “Those books and scrolls are probably stuffed with all kinds of information we’ve either forgotten or never had. Spells, potions, even old mare’s tales could be hidden in the pages. But most importantly, they contain Twilight’s account of the Great Gryphon War.”

White Heart flicked one ear back in bemusement. “We have tons of war accounts in the Canterlot libraries, Celestia’s and Luna’s own among them. What’s so different about Twilight’s retelling?”

Chance frowned, “Many believe that were it not for the war she would have never left her throne. Perhaps we’ll find some sort of explanation in her last known written words, a concise series of events that lead to her being so consumed by grief and anguish she couldn’t face her country anymore. And maybe, if we’re lucky, a clue as to where she might have vanished to.”

“If she’s vanished at all,” White Heart muttered into her hoof as she propped it against the window, eyes fixed on the scenery flying past. “I know you said questioning it was disloyal in your speech the other day, but I’ve been skeptical long before I became Luna’s student. It’s been a thousand years and then some. Why wouldn’t she come home? Surely no one can grieve for that long.”

Tapping his own hoof to his chin, Chance said, “I suppose that depends on what you have to lose. How many ponies in your life would you cry for if they died?”

The question took her aback a little, and White Heart considered it in silence for a long minute. “If we’re counting individuals, just one.” Luna, she thought, she didn’t think anypony else deserved such from her. “But if we’re discussing ponies in a broader sense, a kingdom-like sense . . . I would give my life before I saw Equestria get destroyed, no matter what I think of what it’s become. I might be priceless to a few ponies, and yeah, maybe they’ll grieve for me when I’m gone, but if my death were the only way to protect my country? I wouldn’t hesitate to spend it. Or anything for that matter,” she added. “Whatever I have that I can give to keep Equestria safe, it shall be given.”

Something nostalgic struck a chord in Chance’s chest at her words, and he cursed internally for leaving the Castle so hastily without bringing something that could help him find the other Elements without the use of the Thrones. He took a moment to study the small pegasus’s profile as she continued to stare out over the land as it rushed by, the way her eyes seemed to spark with determination so strong Chance knew it would only falter in death. “You love the kingdom,” he said, a simple statement that for some reason got White Heart’s head to turn.

“Of course I do,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Chance made a vague circular motion with his hoof, “Oh, I don’t know, the general hostility of being a pegasus in a unicorn run city, the animosity between you and the other council members, the way anypony would rather toss their own foal into the lake before themselves these days.” He drew off as White Heart’s ears dropped slightly at that last one. Though he didn’t continue the train of thought allowed, internally he still questioned if that was something that hit a little too close to home. “Excuse me for flattery,” he continued with an awkward cough, “but, White Heart, you are a rare gem amongst ponies. I can see exactly why Luna chose you as her student.”

White Heart was thankful that it wasn’t a more humid day, because her feathers were already fluffed beyond reason and she couldn’t imagine them being any worse.  “O-oh,” she stammered, “Well thank you. I think.”

“You remind me a little of her,” Chance said. “Of  Princess Twilight,” he amended when she cast him a confused look. “You both love your country, would die to keep it safe. It’s very noble.”

Something nearly akin to anger flared in her stomach at that, and she pushed a forehoof to her cheek as she pointedly directed her gaze out the window once more. “I hope I’m nothing like Twilight Sparkle,” she said testily. “The very thought that I could abandon everything the way she did makes me sick.”

That was the end to the conversation it seemed, because his attention almost immediately and awkwardly turned to his saddle bags on the seat beside him. Chance extracted a notebook and spelled, self-inking quill from its depths. White Heart watched out of the corner of her eye for a moment, mildly fascinated by the speed at which he wrote and drew, whatever notes he was taking soon becoming accompanied by sketches she could barely begin to comprehend. Some she recognized as runes and spell circles, others as cutie marks, military precision flight patterns,  and even jewelry. The majority of it was stuff she never expected any earth pony to be knowledgeable about, especially the magic, but that seemed to be what Chance wrote about the most. It was after she watched him draw a ninth spell circle in the margins beside a complicated equation she guessed was somehow formulaic to whatever the spell did that she dared to speak up again.

“You’ve studied magic?”

Chance glanced up at her, his forehooves tucked comfortably under his body and the quill still gripped between his teeth. From the look in his eyes, White Heart suspected he’d gotten so lost in his work he’d forgotten she was there. “Not exactly,” he said around the quill. When she continued to stare at him, he carefully returned the quill to his saddle bag, as she apparently wanted an explanation he couldn’t provide while working. “I studied history, and a lot of Equestria’s history as you might expect is very deeply tied with all kinds of magic. I’m not talking about that modern stuff either, or even most of the spells that would have been common during the height of Princess Twilight’s reign. I mean old magic, the kind that flows through the earth and the sky and the sea and holds more power within its core than our two Princesses combined. There is a deep, old magic in this world that isn’t governed by the usual rules of science and alchemy, and it comes in many forms. It’s made crystal that when spelled or touched at the right time creates a portal to other worlds. It’s the sort that has no agenda, no moral code, and grants balances the world on a constant thin line between Harmony and Chaos. And once, I suspect it was the same magic that created alicorn princesses in the first place. If I can get a hold of Twilight’s records, I’m sure I could figure out whether that hypothesis is true or not, and perhaps even devise a way to call upon that exact magic again.”

“To what, make more alicorns?” White Heart frowned skeptically. “That doesn’t seem like the greatest idea as the two we already have don’t get along well enough to sit at the same table for more than an hour.”

Chance shrugged, “Well, like I said, it gives both Harmony and Chaos. We have no idea whether or not the magic used to create the gods that walk among us is chaotic or harmonic, it could be either. And if it was the former, that might explain why so many things happened the way they did during the war.”

“Maybe,” White Heart muttered. “But honestly, I’m not sure if I want any of that information. I don’t think we need more alicorns, and I don’t want to know what conglomerate of terrible events made Princess Twilight leave her home and never look back. All I want out of any of this is what you talked about in your speech, what we lost at the same time we lost our Princess. If this old magic works the way you think it does, I hope it takes a little pity on us this time and grants Equestria Harmony.”

She folded her hooves together and rested them on the windowsill, body slumping as she did so. There was something . . . Weary about her, Chance thought sadly. She couldn’t be much older than himself, and yet her maturity and cynicism made her seem like an old soul, as his mother used to say. I couldn’t be easy being the Princess’s student, to have so many look to you for help and advice. Chance was starting to feel that pressure himself, actually, an uneasy weight that had settled on his shoulders to remind him of how much all of this depended on him, on his research and his wit.

“You never said,” he whispered, watching as the pegasus flicked one ear his way to show she was listening, “what exactly what we’re going to the Crystal Empire for.”

White Heart stared out the window as the Smokey Mountains and the smaller foothills of the Unicorn Range whirled past. “Luna says we need to get Amber Bright. She thinks Amber’s the only pony who might be able to help you actually find the Lost Princess.”

“Is Amber Bright the empire’s version of you?” He guessed. “Student to the Princess?”

“Not exactly,” White Heart muttered into the space where her hooves folded together against the cold glass. “Flurry Heart has never used the title of ‘Student’ on anypony.  Amber Bright, like her parents before her, her grandparents, her great grand parents, as far back as the day the borders closed, have all lived under the watchful eye of the Empire’s Princess.”

Chance narrowed his eyes, “They’re not slaves, are they?”

“No, but they might as well be,” White Heart said with a dismissive extension of one wing into the space between their seats making a brushing off motion with her spread feathers. “Couple hundred years ago, Radiant Glory managed to slip out. Her grandfather, or maybe it was great grandfather, I don’t remember. The books focus more on how furious Flurry Heart was. Amber Bright’s family . . . They went there willingly before, lived in the Empire for centuries and were allowed to come and go as they pleased. It was only after the borders closed that things got bad. Flurry Heart forbade them from leaving the Empire ever again. The line was thinning at that point, and Luna thinks she panicked, think that she let herself be blinded by the love that fed her beacon and forgot that everypony had a right to forge their own paths. We’re going to convince her to let Amber Bright leave with us not just as a statement to the Empire, but for the very same reasons Flurry Heart keeps her in the first place.”

A spike of anxiety made Chance’s mouth run dry. “and what . . . Uhm, what reason is that, exactly?” he managed to squeak out. He could guess, and perhaps he’d already done so correctly, but he wanted to hear it all the same. There were no concise records of Twilight Sparkle left in Equestria, Flurry Heart had demanded them be under her care within the walls of the Empire because Twilight was her aunt, and Luna was too tired of war, of fighting, to tell her no. Chance suspected that whatever White Heart said next, the reasoning behind Flurry Heart’s actions with Amber Bright’s family would have a similar origin.

“In the Empire, Amber Bright does hold a title, it’s just not that of Flurry Heart’s student.” The Pegasus mare’s gaze never wavered from the window. “They call her The Last Daughter of Twilight.” She waved a hoof, “Sometimes it’s Twilight’s Last Daughter, same thing though. Obviously she’s not the Lost Princess’s actual daughter, she’s mortal, and too young, but she is the last of her bloodline.” White Heart smiled bitterly, “Funny how easily something that powerful can be extinguished, isn’t it? If Amber Bright doesn’t have any foals of her own, she really will be the last.”

Chance’s brow furrowed. “How can that be? How can there be only one pony left after a thousand years? I mean . . .” He frowned, and White Heart side-eyed the look of concentration on his face. “If I trace my line back far enough, or Tartarus any pony’s line far enough, I’ll find an element bearer. How can Twlight only have one?”

White Heart shrugged, “You’re the history buff. Shouldn’t you know?”

A snort made it’s way out of Chance, flaring his nostrils in what White Heart recognized was a simmering level of frustration. Whoops, seemed she’d touched a nerve. “We just discussed how the Empire’s Princess has all of Twilight’s writings!” He slammed a hoof into the train seat around the word “Just,” and White Heart tried not to laugh at the utterly infuriated expression his face had morphed into. “We don’t even know the name of her daughter anymore, the last pony to see Twilight, we know nothing. And worse, we somehow know less than nothing about who the father was.” He ground his hoof into the seat cushion, “When we get there I’m heading straight to the library. Flurry Heart will have to vaporize me to stop me.”

“Don’t go around saying that or she actually will,” White Heart nickered.

They were two stops away now, and Chance watched every other pony except for himself and White Heart exit the train cars and file out onto the Vanhoover transfer station. Nervously, he cleared his throat to confirm with White Heart that it really was okay for him to be accompanying her to the Empire, the thought suddenly twice as intimidating now that they were the only passengers left on the train. Even the conductor had stepped off, and waved the train on its way again with a flash of magic to trigger it back into motion. “Hey, are you sure-”

“What Element is in your family tree then?”  White Heart spoke over him. Chanced frowned. “Well, technically a few, like I said it’s been a thousand years and then some, it’s weird to find ponies who can’t trace their lines back to one of them, if not more than one. But it’s all very, well, spacey I guess I should say. There are a lot of gaps, and to be honest I’m not entirely sure I’m just drawing the wrong conclusions. But I can trace my line back to General Turbo Charge-”

“A good one, but not an Element Bearer,” White Heart pointed out.

Chance rolled his eyes, “I’m aware. Which is why I wasn’t done talking yet. Turbo Charge’s parents are one of the blank spots, but a few moons ago I discovered a clue as to who they were while I was researching for my dissertation. It was just one book,” he smiled, “So again, not sure if it’ll stand up in court. But in one recorded autobiography from a soldier fallen in the war offhandedly mentioned that a pegasus named Honey Crisp had delivered a bunch of apple pies to the entire force. And that Honey Crisp, who we know was Fluttershy’s daughter, was Turbo Charge’s sister. What about you?”

“Not a drop as far as I’m aware,” White Heart said. “I’m from the coast.“ Chance visibly winced in sympathy. “None of us over there have any Element blood that was worth keeping a record of.? By the time I was born all that was left of it was ashes and scattered tales that rode on the wind.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Nah,” White Heart smiled, “Not really. If I’d been born into one of those families that knows they have ties to the original Elements, I’d probably have grown into a real . . .” She lowered her voice and put a hoof to the side of her mouth, “Jackass.”

“We’re the only ones on this train,” Chance deadpanned, “And I’ve never seen a donkey come this far north.”

“It’s still better for appearance sake not to go slinging around insults,” she replied. “But seriously though, even the ponies who are like only vaguely and far removed from the Elements act like stuck up sirens when they find out about it. Like what’s that mare’s name, the one with the music and stuff that’s been popular recently?”

“Jade Sonnet?”

“No. the other one.”

“DJ Rhythm Hoof?”

“No, the other one.”

“. . . Stellar Chord?”

White Heart clapped her hooves together, “Yes! That one! I hear she’s been showing off her genetics to rise to fame as fast as she has, and considering she’s about our age I wouldn’t be too shocked if it were true.’

Chance cocked his head, “Which Element is she related to?”

“No clue, I just listen to the gossip and pass it along when convenient.” She jumped down from her seat just a heartbeat before the train came to an abrupt, screeching halt that sent Chance hooves over head onto the floor. And of course, White Heart’s suitcase decided that was that and bopped him upside the head when it fell. “Now, if you’re ready, I can see Princess Flurry Heart is already awaiting our arrival at the station.” She jerked her muzzle subtly towards the window where Chance could see the Princess, and beside her unicorn mare with a harvest gold coat and gold and violet curly hair. “Oh good, and she brought Amber Bright too,” White Heart added as she picked up her suitcase in her mouth. Chance stared after her, heart hammering in his chest as he took note of the unicorn mare’s cutie mark, a gold laurel wreath with a four pointed blue star at the center. There was no mistaking it, even though he’d only ever seen stained glass and tapestries of the Lost Princess. Amber Bright looked every bit like she could be Twilight Sparkle’s daughter.