At Faith Value
"...and from then on, it was always said of all the Hearth's Warming Eve celebrations that Snowfall's was the Hearth's Warmiest! The end."
Starlight stared dumbfounded at her mentor, trying to rationalize how such a grammatically astute mare could read a word like 'warmiest' without getting a serious brain aneurysm. Starlight herself could feel a bit of a migraine developing, and she'd spent nearly half of her fillyhood in remedial Equish. How could anypony as brilliant as Twilight Sparkle overlook something so blatantly obvious?
The mare in question, as always, remained entirely oblivious to her student's brief moment of self-lobotimization. She smiled instead, happily shutting the old, brown tome to look up at her pupil. "Well, that's it!" she said. "Thanks for letting me read you the story." The lavender mare hopped down from her place on the posh velvet sofa she'd repurposed as her perch to trot towards the room's doorway. "Guess you can call it a night."
Starlight barely managed to stop herself from letting out an audible sigh of relief. She certainly didn't want to come across as ungrateful, even if she didn't really buy everything Twilight said about Hearth's Warming. It was nice to know that they could sit patiently with one another and agree to disagree like grown a--
"By the way," Twilight interjected, unwittingly derailing Starlight's train of thought. The unicorn could feel herself dying a little on the inside at what she knew was coming next. The lavender alicorn drove on, not noticing the thousands of innocent pedestrians she was running over with her idea train.
"Spike and I are heading downstairs. And if you wanted to, you'd be welcome to join us."
This was it. Starlight knew that she was in a bind. On the one hoof, she knew that she really, really didn't want to go down there and celebrate a belief she had no stake in. On the other, her friends were downstairs hoping she'd observe their traditions, and Twilight had just thrown her an open invitation as a princess of Equestria. Still...
"Thanks, Twilight! I'm glad we could listen to each other like grown mares." She hopped out of her seat with a cheery smile, nodding to her mentor. Twilight returned the smile before leaving, clearly convinced that her student would follow her.
Starlight waited a few moments before trotting out the door. She followed along the familiar paths and corridors of the crystalline palace she called home, noting the faint glimmers of refracted light that shined off of them in the still moonlight. She was happy her mentor was willing to let her make her own decision, regardless of her own viewpoint, and at that moment the shrill lover's call of her pillow beckoned her with loving adoration. How could she possibly refuse?
- I -
Twilight Sparkle finished her mug with another deep swig of apple ale before glancing back at the palace room's clock, noting the time with a grimace before drowning herself in yet another mug of booze. Her ragtag team of assorted friends had finally started to notice her frayed state and looked among one another to decide on who should approach her. A series of shrugs, nods, grimaces, and random farm noises followed before Rarity drew the short stick.
"Darling..." the white mare started in the most non-committal way she could think of. She glanced back at her friends for any ideas they could give her, but all she saw from them were kissing motions from Pinkie and she was fairly certain that right then wasn't the best time to start lezzing out with her distraught friend.
"Are you quite alright, Twilight?" she asked. The purple mare perked up for a moment, looking around before her eyes settled on Rarity. Her mane was starting to fray at the ends, and Rarity could swear she saw stress lines shining through her fur coat.
"I'm absolutely fantastic!" the utterly disheveled princess stated, shoving a smile on her face for the sake of her friend. "Never *hic* better!"
Rarity quirked an eyebrow at her friend. She wasn't serious, was she? Still, she didn't know what to do with the mare. She had a few tricks up her sleeve, but they usually had more to do with the romantic side of things. Her friends clearly picked her for a reason, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what. Unless... A quick look back at her pack of friends didn't give her anything useful, so she decided to go for it anyways.
"No, darling, you're drunk." The white mare pulled her friend into a hug, affectionately rubbing her muzzle in the princess's mane. "It'll be alright, dear. Whatever he said to you, it doesn't matter now."
"Uh..."
Well at least she'd gotten Twilight's mind off of whatever was going on. Maybe she should follow this through?
"Twilight, darling, it's fine!" Rarity snuggled closer to her friend, pulling the lavender mare's chest up against her own. "You're among friends here! You can tell us what went wrong."
"Uhhhhh..." Twilight's face had clearly gone into sleep mode as her mental computer tried to process all of its sensory data input. After assessing the sheer amount of overload it was facing, her mind decided it was a good idea to go on strike and enter bluescreen.
Rarity pulled back and smiled at her friend. "So what's his name?" she asked.
"Uh...................................."
Twilight's brain booted.
"Well, it's a she, and I'm just wondering why she isn't down here, celebra--"
"Oh my!" Rarity gasped, pulling back from her friend. "S-so you're into that kind of thing. Well, um, I'm not the judging type, so that's great!" She slowly disentangled herself from her friend. "Still makes one wonder about all of those times we've had sleepovers..."
"What? Why?" Twilight asked, clearly confused. "It's not like it's been a secret that I've been having some difficulties with Starlight. Cohabitation with a former enemy does that."
"Wait, so you aren't even technically dating her? Kinky!"
It took a few moments for Twilight's virgin mind to catch up. "What? No! She's my student, Rarity!"
"Oh, so you haven't told her yet out of some misplaced view on student-teacher relationships?"
"No!" Twilight frowned. "I'm just not into mares, and certainly not Starlight."
Rarity would later shrug it off, but she almost swore she could see Rainbow Dash slump in defeat.
"What's the problem, then?"
Twilight sighed. Her friends were clearly trying to help her out, and now that she was done figuring out what her friends were assuming she could finally address the situation.
"There's nothing much I can do," Twilight said in defeat. "If she doesn't want to believe in Hearth's Warming, we can't make her." The purple mare stood up, trotting over to the drinking table for another swig. She uncapped another keg of apple ale before pouring herself a glass.
"That's not all, is it darling?"
The princess took another deep swig before looking back at her friends.
"No. If we don't somehow get her to believe, we run the risk of summoning the Windigos again." Twilight took an even deeper swig at that. "If we don't do something about this, and fast, we run the risk of dooming Equestria to the same fate that almost destroyed it a few thousand years ago."
The group stood in utter silence as they thought over just what all of that meant. Several moments passed before Applejack spoke up.
"I might not like it, but my Granny told me a few ways ponies used to deal with other ponies that didn't believe in her day."
Twilight perked up.
"What are they?"
"I don't know if I should be telling you. They're not exactly nice, but--"
"No buts! The fate of Equestria lies on her unconditional and unwavering belief in our beliefs! Spit it out!"
"Well..."
- II -
The sound of shattering glass forced Starlight awake. She sat bolt upright in her bed, looking around in that panicked yet drowsy state of somebody still half asleep, trying desperately to orient themselves. She rolled off her bed with a loud thud.
"What the hell?!" the mare cried out, trying not to strangle herself with her own comforter. A small part of her addled mind wondered what her obituary would look like if she did die that way. 'Here lies Starlight, murdered by her own bedsheets.' How embarrassing.
The sound of muffled cries broke Starlight out of her line of thought, and she looked over to find a comically dressed Rainbow Dash trying to pull a shard of glass out of her wing. Starlight was just about to comment when the door to her bedroom slammed open, the bolt and lock shattering under the sheer force of Twilight's magic.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" she reiterated, this time with a bit more force. "I was sleeping, if you hadn't noti--"
Twilight forced her mouth shut with a wave of magic before signalling her friends to fan out and surround Starlight. Pretty soon, the young unicorn and former dictator found herself being dogpiled by a mass of pony bodies, her head forced down into her mattress. She tried to summon up the arcane energies distinctive of her race, but the cold feeling of steel slid onto her horn before she could act. She tried to force the spell through anyways before being scolded by a brief, sharp pain in her skull.
"Now, now, my student," Twilight said, trotting closer. "You should know better by now than to try and fight your way out of a horn suppressor. This is Aitlyn make, designed with an alicorn grade suppression system. You could waste a thousand years trying to fight your way out of it."
Starlight would probably be cursing her mentor if it weren't for the fact that her muzzle was clamped shut tighter than a taxcollector's hoof around a bit. Her mind raced for any way out, but nothing seemed to present itself. With nothing else to do, the mare resigned herself to scowling at her captors.
"What do we do, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked.
The lavender mare turned her back on them.
"Take her away."
- III -
The thick, rusted chains around Starlight's hooves chaffed her skin a little. Not enough to really hurt, but just enough to make sleeping near impossible. She couldn't really see anything around her, but the distinctive sound of dripping nearby told her she couldn't be too far from water.
Had it been three weeks? She knew it'd been at least one, but after that her mental clock had started to shut down from lack of any light to help keep measure. She knew that she should've been starving by now, but for some reason her body sustained itself just fine. Perhaps another enchantment on that blasted suppression ring her horn had adopted? Not that it really mattered to her, regardless.
She shouldn't be here. She knew that much. The fact that she was clearly somewhere underground was fairly damning, and a small part of her wondered if there was something she'd done during her brief period as a dictator that Twilight was just now uncovering. Perhaps they'd come across some of the necromantic applications she'd uncovered during her time over there, or maybe they'd finally thought through the long-term side-affects their time travel had done on the multiverse.
The worst part for her was not knowing. She didn't know what she'd been arrested for, what had driven a mare that had just a few short hours earlier been trying to induct her into her faith to turn around and shove her into a jail cell to rot. Whatever it was, it had to be something heinous. Good mares don't betray friends lightly, and as far as she knew Twilight had seemed genuine enough.
Time passed endlessly. Starlight could hear every drip, not quite sure if she could ever measure time with it. Days, weeks, months? Time was a thick sludge she found herself crawling through, waiting for the inevitable moment when Twilight would come down and punish her. As time continued to pass by, she found herself worrying more and more. Twilight wouldn't have left her there if she thought Starlight was innocent, right? So that meant anything she'd done had already been discovered, weighed, measured, and found wanting. She was doomed to retribution, a mare left to--
A brief flash of violet light lit up the cavern around her as Twilight teleported into the room. There was another brief moment of darkness before Starlight heard some muttering and a distinct magelight formed near the alicorn.
"Hello, Starlight."
"P-princess?" Starlight noticed the other mare's warm smile, and for a brief moment she felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe if she said the right things, she'd be freed.
"I'm so sorry, Princess! Whatever it is I've done to you, I didn't mean to do it!" Starlight smiled up at her captor, hoping against hope that Twilight would forgive her.
"It's alright, my student," Twilight said, trotting up to the worn, disheveled figure that was once the mare known as Starlight. "I know that it can be hard, repenting for your actions. Just know that I don't blame you." The lavender mare smiled down at her. "After all, I was once like you."
"R-really?" Starlight was awed. "You mean that you were once a vindictive dictator of a small tribe of sycophants in a small, isolated village?"
"No, not like that!" Twilight huffed. "The sin we share is a bit different than that."
"Oh?" Starlight was clearly confused. "And what sin would that be?"
The princess stood back, looking at her student with the firm continence a mare who'd just witnessed a crime so heinous, so spectacularly appalling that her very core couldn't help but sneer at it. Her eyes bulged with righteous indignation as her wings flared out, the wrath of a goddess emanating from her very being. Starlight waited with baited breath to hear what atrocity she'd inflicted on her fellow ponies. Now was the moment of truth, the moment she discovered what kind of monster she was made of.
"Heresy."
It took a few moments for Starlight to get what Twilight was driving at. It didn't take long for her to piece it together, and she looked back at her mentor with the annoyed expression of a mare whose idol had just been knocked off of their pedestal before hitting every notch on the way down.
"Come again."
"Heresy, Starlight." Twilight scowled. "The ultimate sin that not even the Elder Gods themselves can forgive if the pony that committed the crime does not themselves repent."
"You've got to be joking!" Starlight groaned. "You're holding me prisoner down here for Celestia knows how long over that bucking Hearth's Warming thing?"
"This is no joke, Starlight Glimmer. You've committed a crime against ponykind, driven a spike into the very fabric of what makes us equine, and you dare to mock my authority? How dare you?"
"You said dare twice in as many sentences, Twilight. Sloppy."
"W-well it's not like you're perfect!" Twilight huffed.
"Yeah, true. But at least I don't say 'warmiest' like it's a real word."
"It is too!"
"Is not."
"Is too!"
"Is not."
"Is too!"
"Is not."
"Is too!"
"Is not."
"I too!"
"Is not."
"Is too!"
"Is not."
And they continued on like that for literally five hours. Eventually they both collapsed from vocal exhaustion, clearly overexerted from the force of moving their lips that long.
"I win," Twilight panted, trying and failing to rise to her hooves.
"No, I do," Starlight huffed, desperately gasping for any air she could fill her lungs with. The two stared at each other for a while before both giving up.
"Why don't you just believe, Starlight?"
"Because I still don't know if it's true," she answered. "How can you expect me to believe a fairytale without any evidence to back it up?"
"Nightmare Moon was real!" Twilight interjected. "How do you explain that?!"
"Nightmare Moon and Hearth's Warming Ever are two entirely disparate concepts, and I didn't believe in Nightmare Moon until she returned."
"Aha! So you do believe in Nightmare Moon!"
"I never said I didn't," Starlight said with a grimace. "She's clearly a real entity given what happened a couple of years ago. I'm not denying that."
"But you're not accepting Hearth's Warming!" Twilight pouted.
"If Hearth's Warming ever proves itself the same way as Nightmare Moon, then I'll believe in it just as readily."
"Why not just believe in it until evidence states the contrary?"
Starlight paused at that, trying to articulate a rebuttal that makes sense.
"Well, if Celestia told you that she raises the sun every day and you never saw her actually do it, would you believe it?" Starlight paused, trying to piece together her statement. "Didn't it take her actually showing you for you to believe it?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because sometimes not knowing is better," Twilight replied with a smile. "Would you ever truly enjoy life again if you knew that you were ruled by a despotic dictator that kills subjects that don't adhere to her supposed godhood if she wasn't actually a goddess that could raise the sun?"
"Well, no, I'd--"
"Exactly! That's how I stopped being a heretic! I asked myself the same question when I was a filly and almost made the huge mistake of voicing it to Celestia when she was still teaching me!" Twilight hugged herself. "It was a scary time for me, especially after Blueblood's uncle was flogged to death for committing heresy. I just couldn't live with it anymore."
"So what'd you do?" Starlight was actually interested now. For once, she finally started to connect with her mentor. Maybe they weren't so different after all.
"Oh, that's easy!" Twilight said with a manic grin. "I drank bleach!"
"Wait, what?!"
- IV -
The wind whipped through Twilight's mane as she stood near the whipping post. She watched with a sorrowful expression as her former student was dragged up to the wooden post, her hooves being forced around it before being chained up tight. For some reason, the heretic didn't even seem that interested in the horrible and gruesome punishment she was about to face.
"I'm sorry it has to be like this, Twilight," Celestia said, wrapping a wing around the other princess. "Sometimes, heretics must be purged for the greater good."
"Yeah, I know, but still..."
The white monarch looked down at her student with a smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. "Sometimes a leader must be willing to do what is necessary for the sake of the greater good. If you don't give the order, the Windigos will return and plunge our nation into a permanent winter." Celestia leaned closer and whispered into her student's ear. "Wouldn't want to see them starve, would we?"
"N-no."
The monarch leaned back. "Good," she said with a chuckle. "Just make sure none of your other friends try to challenge us like that again, alright? Wouldn't want to repeat this."
"I understand, Princess."
"I know you do, Twilight, I know you do."
"Princess?" The lavender mare looked up at Celestia.
"Yes, Twilight?"
"How do you raise the sun?"
The monarch smiled at her. "Does it really matter how I raise the sun so long as it gets raised, my dear Twilight?"
"I suppose not."
"It's good that you understand that, Twilight," Celestia said, nuzzling the smaller mare. "It warms my heart to know that you trust me so deeply."
A white feather flicked on the end of Celestia's wingtip. Behind the stone pillars that faced their back, several guards moved back to their hiding spots, their use no longer relevant. They moved into their respective places, unaware of the goings on of the world around them.
As Twilight watched the executioner stride forward with a black, leather mask and a thick, wooden whip, Twilight felt the urge to smile. She looked up at her mentor with adoration, glad to be alive in the company of the one mare that could truly inspire her. She looked up at the sun, and saw that it was good. And for a brief moment, she felt the urge to say so.
"It's a nice sun, Princess."
"Thank you, Twilight."
- The End -
