It was a rainy, cloudy night, as always these days, and the clock had just struck ten. At the Canterlot inn The Prancing Pony, the sparse evening clientele that still cared to visit was involved in brooding, hushed conversations, sipping the one beer they would drink all evening as slowly as possible. The small tap room, covered in rustic wood panelling, was gloomy, and so were its customers.
The door flew open, and the good dozen of ponies all turned to look at the newcomer. Apprehension lay in their eyes: no one here could use any more trouble than they already had, and any newcomer meant potential trouble.
In the doorframe stood a slender, pristinely white young unicorn mare, maybe seven-, eighteen, and looked at them with calm round eyes. She wore a soaked cloak that enveloped her body and hid away her mane. Behind her, the heavy rain pelted down in thick torrents, bombarding the cobblestone so insistently that it ought to have left holes. Lightning tore through the night outside.
Everyone present knew what the mare’s questioning gaze was supposed to mean, and the innkeeper, a withered stallion, sketched a nod: Yes, you can come in. She nodded and fumblingly closed the door behind her with a hoof. The sound of the thunderous rain was shut out once more. The innkeeper narrowed his eyes, watching her approach.
“Something to drink, lady?” he asked loudly as she came closer, stalking her hooves, her eyes wandering over the floor that was sticky with spilt beer. The whole room smelt of dirt and liquorice.
“No, thank you,” she said. She had a voice like molten butter, clear, smooth and mellow, that left a profound ring and seemed to betray a wisdom beyond her age, while still having a certain soft edge to it. It pleased the stallions present, no doubt about it. “I just want something to eat, please.”
“To eat! Of course. Well, what’s it gonna be?”
She hesitated. She did look very hungry. “You don’t happen to... do you have zucchini with toasted champignons?”
Unwittingly, he fixed her gaze on her as though she was a creature from another world — which, without his knowledge, she was. Then he screwed his face into a weird expression.
“Unfortunately, we just ran out of zucchini. How about grilled aubergines with a honey-mustard sauce and fresh lettuce? Or how about hay sauté with an aside of freshly-picked truffles, garnished with radicchio and a butter sauce, the milk for which I have milked personally from my large stock of fat cows —”
“I get it, thank you,” she said quietly.
“So taters it is?” His eyes sparkled irritatedly.
She nodded, hastily looking around; she felt suspicious looks on her back. She couldn't help but crane her neck to watch how he fumbled with stove and pot, but the stallion’s broad back obstructed the view completely. When he turned around, in any case, he held a plate full with unpeeled, but boiled potatoes on one hoof.
“There’s shoots on the—” she began, but bit herself on the lip when she met his gaze.
“That’ll be ten bits,” he said cooly. The price was outrageous, and he was closely watching her reaction to see if he could get away with it. But it had been in vain anyway.
“I don’t have that much,” she said truthfully.
“Oh? So how much do you have?”
“O-one.”
“Just one bit,” he said, and his eyes started wandering over her body. “Funny, I’d have thought you’d make more.”
She kept her eyes peeled to the ground and said nothing. His gaze rested heavy on her, but he seemed to conclude that she had spoken the truth. He raised an eyebrow.
“You know, there’s something off about you. Can’t quite put my hoof on it. But you’ve got shiny fur and pretty eyes, and yet you’re clothed like a beggar. And then, you’ve got a long horn, but by the looks of it, don’t deign to use it. Neither to open the door nor to accept the plate. Are you doing that out of courtesy, maybe? You think us lowly earth ponies will get all jealous if you use your horn powers?”
“No,” she said after a while and looked up, and her gaze was so deep that the barpony believed to be swallowed by it. “I ... I can’t use my horn at the moment, so I prefer using my hooves. It’s — a health issue.”
He stared at her and finally clucked his tongue, as if to break the silence. “A health issue. I see. I’m sorry to hear that. Say, would you mind taking off your hood? Just so that we can marvel at your pretty mane.”
She looked at him questioningly, but he didn’t change his mind. With a glance towards the plate of potatoes, she slowly pulled back the hood some with a hoof — just enough for a long, thick mane of a uniform pink to fall out. She could feel all looks on her, and the barkeeper was unwittingly biting his lower lip.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Pretty. Just rose, I mean pink, just a solid pink.”
“Just a solid pink,” she repeated, staring him directly in the eyes. She gulped, and her hungry gaze wandered back to the potatoes.
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked, now taking in the rest of her figure with less and less misgivings. “You look lank.”
“Yesterday.” She put the one bit she had on the wooden bar with a dumb sound. “And now, please.”
He looked at the coin, then shook his head. “That’s on the house. Diced daffodils would have cost you, but not this, don’t worry.”
“Thank you.” She was wary of his magnanimity, but too hungry to refute the offer on such high grounds; about to turn away from the bar and seek herself a secluded table, she turned back to look at him once more, her gaze lowered meekly, her voice a mere murmur. “I also don’t have a place to stay for the night,” she said in deference.
“Well, you’ve got no money, do you?”
“Trod, almost all your rooms are empty anyway, what do you want? Let her,” called out one of the shady stallions in the background. The single stallion that sat alone at the bar, drinking a beer, turned to throw him a glance.
“Oh, I would, but if I did that, all the homeless ponies would come here to stay for free, no?” the innkeeper retorted. “Gotta value my property, or I have nothing left. An inn that gives rooms away is not an inn at all anymore, but a shelter.”
“I’m sure we need a great deal more shelters than inns in these times.”
He sighed, then looked at her and nodded. A kind spirit. This one wouldn’t make obscene requests, she estimated. She hoped. A pretty young mare like you doesn’t have to be out in the cold rain... she’d heard that phrase more often than she could bear.
“But no word to anyone,” he swore her in. “If this gets spread around, people will run down my doors. The least thing I want is trouble. And you know what they say: render unto the innkeeper what is the innkeeper’s, render unto the Nightmare what is the Nightmare’s.”
And he nodded to dismiss her.
Princess Celestia balanced the plate to a secluded table and started tucking in greedily, shovelling the potatoes with her hooves into her mouth, ignoring the eyeballs on her and for once not caring about her appearance, only seeking to fill that large, gaping hole in her stomach as fast as possible. When the first hunger was satisfied, she did her best not to throw everything up again. The potatoes had gone bad at least a week ago, but who was she to complain?
Who was she to do anything anymore?
Celestia, who came from a different world, had no way of knowing it: but usually, when there’s peace, ponies congregate in shady pubs to gossip, talk about the weather, their friends and spouses, the hoofball matches and pegasus races, and (maybe all too merry) smiles abound. When there’s the menace of war, however, ponies only talk about war. It dominates any conversation, even the silent ones.
If words were spoken, it was in a hushed, raw, subdued tone, as if the walls had ears or as if enunciating these half-remembered rumours gave them a certain solidity, a reality that they tried to avoid. And yet, saying them out loud, sharing them with others, provided a certain relief.
Still chewing on the potatoes, Celestia started to pick up on shreds of words the ponies around her were exchanging. No doubt, they weren't expecting her to participate or even listen.
"—did you hear that the pegasi are renouncing Canterlot for good? Word has it they're building their own city, a city in the clouds —"
“— and here in Canterlot, they’ll put in a new mayor soon, that’s what I’ve heard, and it’s gonna be a unicorn who says is gonna crack down on anarchist violence —”
A groan went through the ponies. As far as Celestia could see, they were almost all earth ponies except for herself and the older stallion, who was sipping his beer alone at the bar. His eyes lit up.
“Of course, all the old officials disappeared, didn’t they? There ain’t no nobility at Canterlot anymore.”
“Good riddan—”
“Shh.” Two round, glowing dots turned around to look at Celestia. Below them, a mouth smiled apologetically. Soon, the agitated whispers recommenced.
One of them mentioned General Stronghooves. The name seemed to instil instant fear in the ponies. Celestia’s reaction, however, was rather different. It wasn’t visible to any of the other ponies in the sparse inn hall, but in the cover of the darkness, her eyes lit up with the determined expression only the betrayed can have.
That had been a different time, when she had been a naive child. Nothing of the sort would happen again. Trust you don’t have can’t be betrayed. You care, you lose.
She looked up: a pony had sat down opposite her. At first, she expected the lecherous gaze of a stallion with clear intentions -- but the unicorn sitting across from her was a mare. She had a long, wavy blond mane that had been bound up into ponytails for practical purposes. Her fur was a sleek brown, for the most part, with blonde spots here and there. Celestia estimated that she was barely two years older than herself. The mare’s eyes were green and sharp; her pupils, focused on Celestia, were narrow, and they had a strange sparkle to them, like those of a wild cat.There was a certain raw, unadorned prettiness to her.
“What happened on Canterlot Square?” the mare asked simply. Her voice was slightly smoky.
Celestia looked at her in surprise. “And... who wants to know this?”
“My name is Foxtrot. What happened on Canterlot Square?” asked the mare again, eagerly, hastily. “You know, don’t you? You know what happened?”
“Nobody knows what happened,” Celestia said finally, looking down onto her plate, now more politely busying herself with her potatoes.
“But you do,” insisted the mare. “Because you were there. Right?”
Celestia stared into the twilight.
Four weeks had passed since she had lost everything. Four weeks had passed since she had turned into someone else. Four weeks had passed since she was no longer a child, and since hopelessness, despair and distrust had spread throughout Equestria.
But what had really happened on that fateful day on Canterlot Square? She was unable to say. Because while she had been there, the reality of the events was ever harder to ascertain. She remembered bits and pieces, flashing to the fore of her mind with unreal intensity, like fever dreams. The dead Sweetcorn, his mane spread out and floating on a blackened puddle, his red eyes shimmering feebly. A stained-glass window. Images hanging in the air like wafts of mist.
Darkness. Darkness everywhere.
And then light. All-consuming light, and then nothing.
What had happened on Canterlot Square, what had been the events leading up to this disaster? Discord had presented her his version, but whether it was the truth, she simply didn’t know. She wanted it to be a lie, however improbable it was. She herself had done everything to find out. But no one could help her. No one could tell her what she needed to know the most.
She had revisited Canterlot Square. All the houses there were destroyed: that much was certain. The town hall had been razed to the ground. There were traces of flames, soot, blackened surfaces. The place had been cleaned up only provisionally.
There were no signs of dead ponies or anything of the sort, however. As though nobody had ever been there. And nobody dared to go there now any longer. Not because the square had been cordoned off, but because word had it that it was cursed.
She sought out the stories of ponies who had been on that square, waiting for Sweetcorn. On her cautious prowl through Canterlot, a city now grey with despair and shuttered windows, she had sometimes found faces she believed to recognise from the crowd of demonstrators on Canterlot Square; but she was afraid to talk to them in fear they might recognise her for who she was, something she had to avoid at all cost. In his final and grandest trick, Sweetcorn had, after all, convinced the crowd that the Queen, Celestia’s mother, had betrayed them all.
Apart from them, very little had transpired from Canterlot Square — at least very little that was spoken out aloud. All that everyone in the city knew was that something horrible of one kind or another had taken place there. The known facts went somewhat like this: anarchist protestors and Sweetcorn sympathisers had been on Canterlot Square. Then, some kind of riot had broken out there, the same night the Grand Galloping Gala had taken place up at Canterlot Castle — from which none of the invited nobles would return. And finally, people had seen a great shadow in the sky over Canterlot, like that of a giant bird of prey.
A shadow now known only as the Night-mare.
After that, darkness had enveloped Canterlot Square and the events on it, and everypony that had witnessed them had either committed to silence or been too unreliable to be trusted. Some said that nothing had taken place there, and that everyone had escaped unscathed before somepony fed it to the flames. Others said that multiple or every single protester on the Square had died, assailed by either, according to the respective version, an entirely unfamiliar threat — the Nightmare, by Queen Gaia’s soldiers, or by Gaia herself, even; by her daughter, or by Sweetcorn. In short, common, reliable knowledge about the actual events on the Square was nonexistent. Ponies believed what they wanted to believe and feared everything. If you are not sure who the enemy is, the most prudent strategy seemed to deem everyone the enemy.
“How do you know I was there, the night of the attack?” Celestia said finally, preferring not to deny it.
“You said you lost your horn’s power. You’re not the only one, you know. I’ve heard that so many times from so many unicorns that they lost their horn’s powers that day.”
It was true. Celestia had heard the same stories. For some reason, unicorns present on that square has lost their powers afterwards -- but for most, they had come back after a while. Not so for Celestia, and she had her suspicions as to why.
“You’re right, I was there. But I prefer not to talk about it. And what is it to you, anyway?” Celestia said finally, without challenge, just looking with open, calm eyes at the mare opposite her.
Foxtrot lowered her gaze. “I’ve lost someone on that square that day. Someone very important to me. And I don’t know where he is now, I haven’t heard from him, and nopony — nopony — can tell me.”
“Who did you lose?”
“My fiancé.”
Celestia nodded slowly. “I lost someone on that square, too,” she said finally. She didn’t know where it came from, her faith in this strange mare, but she decided to hold on to it nonetheless.
“Who?”
“My mother.”
The mare looked at her, with hurt, green eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Celestia only shook her head.
“And now? Do you have other family you can go to?”
Celestia shook her head.
“A father?”
No.
“Siblings?”
Celestia hesitated, then again shook her head.
“So you’re all alone in this world.”
“That’s right. Thanks for rubbing it in.”
Their eyes met, and for a short moment, Celestia believed to have seen a rush of sympathy — or admiration? — in the mare opposite her that was so very different from herself.
“So where did you go then?” Foxtrot asked. “I mean, afterwards.”
Celestia’s gaze wandered off into the distance.
When she had woken up, in an abandoned alleyway, days had gone by. She had no idea how she had gotten there, how she had left the Square, where she had collapsed after that sudden outburst of boundless power, after channelling the one source of warmth and light inside her that would never go away and driving away the dense darkness that the Night-mare had left in her wake. After her awakening.
Whatever the details, now she was no longer a princess. Instead, she was homeless, orphaned, lost, without a bit to her name. Washed up on hostile shores. She couldn’t use her wings anymore: the left wing was still broken and healing only very slowly, still causing her atrocious pain sometimes that she attempted to swallow down. In any case, no one could see her wings. If people realised she was an alicorn, she would raise unnecessary suspicions that were bound to get her discovered sooner rather than later.
So she tried her best to adjust to the new situation. Tried to make ends meet and become the pony she thought she needed to be now, instead of clinging on to the pony she had once been. That had been the past, now was the present.
She made do. But feeling so alone, she had done horrible things — not just for money, but also to fill that gaping, aching emptiness in her that she tried in vain to deny. On bedsheets in salacious nights, Celestia had desperately attempted to fill it up, only for it to come back with a vengeance; reliving the feeling of falling down into a deep abyss time and time again, and then, only standing at its precipice, the addictive bliss and torture of mind. But when the feeling had waned and receded, every single time, she felt like another part of her had been lost. As if the hole in her had once again grown bigger, sucking everything down with it into the abyss of oblivion.
And there was a simple truth that Celestia was too ashamed to confide in anyone. Since that night on the Square, she hadn’t been able to cast the simplest of spells. Her magic had, after that sudden and uproarious outburst, completely dried up. Because it lay in chains — Celestia was sure about that. Because it was bound off by something that she would need to break off. A poisoned spot on her soul that would keep her from doing magic again. She tried to ignore it; but that was impossible. That ugly spot on her soul was also, she was convinced, the reason why the multi-coloured sheen had left her mane to leave an even, unremarkable pink behind. That way, her mane raised less suspicions, to be sure -- but it also was visible proof that something had been lost in her.
Her attempts to combat that poisoned spot on her soul were futile, but agitated and breathless. When afterwards, after a short while of exhilaration and short breath, she drifted off into a shallow slumber, it never lasted for too long; either were the feelings still too present, or she had seen haunting images in her dreams that faded away with the dawn. Then, those half-remembered images momentarily seemed more real to her than the new truth she was finding herself in.
In either case, the awakening after these always came with a crash. The by now distant feeling, both interior and exterior, made her feel disgusted with herself: what had felt meaningful and fulfilling the night before now felt revolting and empty. What was more, it disconnected her from anyone she had ever thought she had been, relegating memories ever further from truth and ever closer to fantasy. Celestia had changed, definitely and forever.
She was always quiet as she went, careful not to wake the peacefully breathing pony on the bed, leaving the chamber and descending the stairs on light hooves, but with a heavy heart.
“I made do,” she murmured.
Celestia wondered whether the mare opposite her could read her soul and see the abysses she had been to. Whether she could sense her despair, either out of empathy, or maybe because she herself had been there, too. A part of her wanted Foxtrot to understand. So that her fate may become a little lighter, once shared.
Foxtrot nodded thoughtfully, scanning Celestia with her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me,” she murmured. “You’re young, you oughtn’t have the weight of such a fate on your shoulder.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Celestia gave back. “You’ve lost someone, too, that’s enough to gnaw on.”
“Say, I didn’t catch your name before?”
“— Sunray.” From the corner of her eyes, she believed to see one of the stallions at the bar turn around curiously.
“A pretty name,” Foxtrot said, observing Celestia’s reaction.
“Thank you. Say,” she frowned, “what was your fiancé’s name? I’ll be on the lookout for ... for any news on him.”
“Chuckbolt.”
Celestia gulped.
“You know him?”
She quickly shook her head, but Foxtrot was watching her curiously.
“Just heard of him,” Celestia said. “He’s — he was in the army, right?”
“He was,” she said sadly. “And so was I. But not anymore. The army has changed, after all.”
“Stronghooves?”
Foxtrot nodded, scanning her.
“Say, do you have enough money to survive for the next days?”
“Yeah.”
“So, if I understood that correctly before, you think one bit is enough?”
Celestia said nothing.
“How did you earn money before? Or did you always enjoy someone’s charity when it came to food?”
She jerkily shook her head. She didn’t want to speak about it.
“Did you steal?”
“Never.” And that was the truth.
Foxtrot, biting her lips, slowly reached into her saddlebag and took out a large, silver coin, putting it on the tableplate. She pushed it over to Celestia, still fixing her with her eyes.
Celestia returned her a questioning look; when she realised the mare’s intention, she just shook her head in shame. But Foxtrot insisted.
“It’s just money. Nothing important. Take it. I’ve got more where it’s come from. Better for you to have something to eat than for these pieces of metal to lie around uselessly, don’t you think?”
She looked incredulously at the money on the table, at least a hundred bits, and then back at the mare.
“Why are you helping me?”
“We all need help. And because I’m a unicorn, too. That binds together.”
But that wasn’t the bond Celestia had been looking for.
“And a mare.”
“And a mare. — Listen, if you care to come.” She handed Celestia a parchment with a hastily scribbled address. “Me, and a few friends of mine, we meet on Sundays at dusk, at the old Observatory on the hill. Do you know where that is?”
“I do,” said Celestia tonelessly, frowning. She had been there, once, as a filly with her mother: tt used to be called Royal Observatory. But apparently, that adjective no longer was part of its name.
“I would be happy to see you there. I think we might even still have zucchini, if not for long.” Foxtrot smiled, a little sadly, but genuinely. There was something in her gaze that captivated Celestia. That stirred something in her heart.
“Well, goodbye, Sunray. We gotta stick together, remember that, and we all need friends, especially in these times. I’d be happy to see you again. And tell me if you’ve got news on him.”
“I will,” Celestia said quietly. She watched the young mare leave through the door into the rain. But she knew already, of course, what had happened to the mare’s fiancé Chuckbolt: he was, without a doubt, dead.
Still thinking about that encounter, the first one with a friendly soul of this kind, she gulped down the final potatoes still left on her plate, feeling the utter satisfaction of a full stomach and vanquished hunger. She looked around. The other ponies were still talking in hushed voices, except those that sat drinking alone. No one besides her was eating.
Foxtrot, she thought. She looked at the parchment the mare had left her, with chickenscratch announcing that they met at dawn every Sunday, at the observatory. Celestia wondered if she should go. She couldn’t really trust anypony; but she had to trust somepony, and Foxtrot had made a connection with her. We all need friends, she’d said.
Suddenly, Celestia realised that something was wrong. She felt the innkeeper’s gaze on her, and slowly, every head in the inn turned towards her. He extended a shaking hoof to point at her.
“You’re Princess Celestia,” he said, white-faced.
Her satisfaction over a full stomach was immediately replaced with sudden sickness. She felt the blood rush to her skull, her vision becoming clearer, her flight instincts firing.
“Listen —”
“W-well, I’ve sent someone to give word to the army and — and I’ve closed the door, and you can’t es-escape from here and — “
Two stallions approached her left and right and grabbed for her, and she was already preparing to buck out at them; but somepony else took over that duty for her. The cloaked stallion at the bar had struck down the innkeeper and was pointing a bow at Celestia’s two attackers, shifting it from the one to the other. The taut string tensed with his horn, which was glowing in the gloom of the dark room.
“Get away from her,” he growled. It was a voice that she immediately recognised.
The two stallions let go of her and slowly retreated as he approached. Just now, the barkeeper was getting back up on his hooves, dizzy, and noticed that his keyring had been taken. The other guests stayed frozen in total fear.
“Everypony on the ground,” the cloaked stallion barked. “Now!”
There was sudden commotion as everyone hurried to follow his order. Celestia breathed flatly, through the nose, her heart pounding feverishly in her chest.
The stallion approached her and, putting a hoof on her chest, pushed her back towards the backdoor. Without saying a word, he dragged her along towards the back of the room. She closed her eyes.
“When I say run,” her murmured to her, “you’ll know what that means, won’t you.”
Using the magic of his horn, he inserted the key into the backdoor’s lock and turned it around. It clicked. He still wielded the bow menacingly at the rest of the ponies in the pub. The pasty innkeeper threw nervous glances towards the front door.
It burst open — the front door. Two soldiers entered, in heavy armour and themselves armed with bows, pointing them towards Celestia and her protector.
“RUN!”
They bucked open the backdoor, bursted out of it and threw it back into its lock with a clatter, galloping out into the night and the rain of the dirty alley as fast as they could, getting away from that place as soon as possible. They could never return to that inn, that much was clear. Someone had been on to Celestia’s tracks.
They lost themselves in the seedy entrails of Canterlot, not its formerly pretty centre, but where the real life was going on, the shady web of alleyways and cluttered backyards, framed with high-rise, dirty buildings left and right. Finally, when they were sure they couldn’t be followed anymore, they caught their breath under a wooden bridge, next to the river, finally sheltered from the rain. It smelt of water and urine. They watched the rain bombard the water surface with concentric rings; above them, under heavy clouds, thunder pealed. They were soaked to the bone.
Finally, they had regained their breath. The hooded stallion, still panting slightly, threw her a look. His voice was mild and rough.
“Sunray, really — couldn’t you have come up with a less telling alias?”
There was a knot in her heart as she answered, her gaze desperate. “Acier?”
He pulled back his hood fully. Age hadn’t dealt him a blow; instead, the changed situation of war and exile appeared to have imbued him with a new vitality, arisen out of necessity. His grey fur shimmered slickly with the rain, and his brown eyes fixated her, not without warmth.
The harsh face, with all its carved-in wrinkles, metamorphosed into a soft smile. It was a smile of more fortunate circumstances.
“Tia.”
To be continued, maybe....
While this is an independent story, some passages reference events in "The Price of Grace." If you would still like to read that story yourself, be warned that this summary obviously includes spoilers.
In “The Price of Grace,” Luna and Celestia grow up together at Canterlot Castle, but at the same time apart. The young Celestia grows attached to the much older master of the guards, Acier, who becomes the father figure she never had. It is revealed that Discord has pulled the strings of her and Luna's separation, eventually utilising a puppet body called “Sweetcorn” to sow distrust and strife. Through a wily scheme, Discord manages to stage his final act on Canterlot Square, killing Luna’s and Celestia’s mother Queen Gaia by her own daughter Princess Luna and taking over Luna’s soul, turning her into Nightmare Moon. Celestia is unable to prevent this.
At the end of The Price of Grace, Celestia inherits the token and artefact of her mother’s power, a diamond called the Eternal Flame that is worn on a gold collar, and finds the awakening of her own dormant, magical power. However, she is now in exile in her own country, and Canterlot Castle in the hands of Discord’s minions and military apparatus. Meanwhile, Discord has succeeded in sowing distrust and strife in the whole of Equestria. The air smells of civil war, and Canterlot slowly sinks into a bleak despair.
General Stronghooves morosely looked up at the rain, as though he could will it to cease by pure spite. He bit down on his teeth, careful not to taint his well-polished, golden armour. His hooves were already soaked in mud. Above, strong and supple legs with thick musculature moving underneath, bulging under his armour. They lent a surprising heft to his gait. To each of his forehooves, a sword was attached, running parallel to his forelegs and glinting menacingly when a stripe of light hit it.
But a more subtle force lay in his eyes: eyes like tiny windows to a poked fire. His gaze was alert and searching and furious.
Nopony around. The street he walked was empty. Not a soul, not even mice or rats that otherwise scurried around the capital merrily. They must have perceived the particular aura that surrounded him. An aura that promised crushed critters under his hooves with a twitch.
He paused as his eyes lit upon the wooden sign he had been looking out for. It was an inn's sign creaking in the wind. The Prancing Pony. For a moment, he stood perfectly still as he looked up at the sign, chin up, chest out, like his own monument. As if he was focused on doing something invisible. Maybe sniffing in the rainy air, like a predator for prey. A cloud slid away, and narrow beams of moonlight lit on his face. His jaw was taut, as if he was clenching it.
“The Prancing Pony,” he muttered.
***
“Acier,” Celestia said silently.
The stallion’s hard gaze metamorphosed into a smile, chiseled but soft.
“Tia,” he said. There was uncertainty in his voice.
Just inches from them, outside the bridge's protection, rain poured from heavy clouds like a revelation of divine motives, heavy drips shattering on the grubby ground like tiny bursting worlds.
Acier's mane was soaked and clung to his face in waterlogged streaks. His cheeks, like hers undoubtedly, had taken on a rosy sheen from the coolness of the rain. Every crease and wrinkle on his forehead promised to tell its own story.
She gulped. She felt numb and fresh from the bombardment of precipation herself, a prickling sensation of a hundred tiny needles pricking her all over, but not unpleasant. But the numbness was there. And her hooves were dazed from all the galloping they'd done.
“You know, Tia,” he said after a moment of silence, his soothing deep voice flowing around them like water around a rock, “I got something in my applebag that's sure to be better than potatoes.”
He opened it with his horn, and it was full of apples. The same saddlebag he had had the Eternal Flame in.
“You want one?” he asked mildly.
Without thinking, Celestia nodded. He placed a red apple in front of her with his horn, but she didn't pick it up, just stared at it like some foreign object. He began to eat himself, nonchalantly, staring out over the river. A silver horseshoe floated there.
Celestia took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eyes. She couldn't believe to have met him back here, out of all places, in the underbelly of Canterlot. She started to speak against the thunderstorm.
“I — thought you were —”
“Dead? No. They won't be getting me so easily.
“Not dead, I mean, I — I thought Stronghooves had — he'd have you under his control.”
Acier looked back at her. “That's what you thought, isn't it? Well, he had. But it was't all that difficult to get rid of that sod.”
“Acier, I —” She closed her eyes. “I betrayed you. I gave you away to Stronghooves I surrendered you.”
He said nothing and instead continued to stare at her.
“If I hadn't,” she continued, “if I hadn't — been so stupid, been so selfish, then all of this wouldn't have happened, I know you wanted to sop me from leaving the castle, and ins-instead of listening to you, all I thought to do was to have you ar—rested and -”
The words failed her and she just looked at him for a while. He sighed.
“It's okay, Tia. If anyone has done any wrong, it's not you. It was my job to protect you. That was the promise I'd made to your mother. To protect you, and to watch out for you. And I haven't been able to do that. If anybody's, it is my fault.”
“Don't say that,” she said with some bitterness. “Don't say that. You know it's not your fault. You know it's mine. Why are you saying that?”
“Well, it's too late to go back in time now. What has happened, has happened. No matter the consequences, we gotta start over with what we have now. That's how this game works. You fall, you pick yourself off the floor. Ad infinitum.”
“But — “
“But what?”
Celestia shook her head. She couldn't quite put in words what she had felt; it was a sort of hunger for punishment. She wanted to be chastised for her misdeeds. She wanted someone to finally speak the word she had been waiting for, to resolve her of this kind of unshared guilt that she couldn't let outside, not let escape the confines of her mind, the burden that was getting heavier with every second that passed. She wondered if he could read that in her gaze. Probably not. The wall between them was thick and high. She shook her head in confusion.
“Acier, how — how did you escape?”
He cocked his head. “Like I said, that really wasn't all that difficult. After all, Stronghooves has never been the brightest bulb in the socket. I told your mother that, but you, of course, were on a different cloud altogether. Not that I can blame you for that. After all, things were just very confusing at the time.”
“But what happened after I left the castle?”
“It was pretty easy convincing him to let me go. You know, I wasn't born yesterday, and ponies tend to believe the far-fetched and fancy and conspiratorial over what's easy to see. Luckily, you left us with that letter.”
“You just told him you really were working for Discord,” she said.
“Exactly.” He smiled at her. “And then, I left at once, looking for you. But I have no wings, and Discord's web already had the castle in a tight grip, so that I could hardly trust in anypony else. I galloped off towards Canterlot.”
She perked her ears to attention and scrutinised him. “Did you see—”
“—what happened? Well, when I arrived in the city, at the Square, there was this dense cloud of darkness. I knew right away what had happened. Always knew it was gonna come to this. I stood there for a while, just seconds, in one of the alleyways near Canterlot Square, facing that wall of darkness, and not daring to go one step further.
“Well, before I could think of anything else, there was this blindingly bright light. Blazing and glistening, ballooning up and driving away all that darkness as though it had never been there. I couldn't believe my eyes. But of course, I knew what had happened.” He looked at her, and she was sure to detect a trace of sadness in his gaze.
“You knew that—”
He shook his head. “And then it was all gone. All that darkness. Just like that. As though someone had turned on the lights. Just a normal September evening again. I stepped towards the Square. But there, in its centre, lay something surrounded by a strange and glowing aura. A pony. You.”
“But not only me,” she said silently.
“That's right. Not only you,” he said flatly, but didn't say anymore. “I knew I — I had to act quickly, before ponies were going to come and see what had happened. First of all, I dragged away that Sweetcorn guy. He had to disappear, no doubt about it.”
“But why?” she asked and immediately regretted the question.
“Because he's their idol and the symbol of his own martyrdom. You can't let them build a legend around that. I mean, it's happening anyway — that guy was clever, oh so very clever — but if they had his body, it'd be a hundred times worse and they'd put him in a glass casket or something.”
She said nothing, somewhere astray in thought. He had always been a practicality she had lacked.
“You had him disappear,” she said silently.
“That's right.”
She nodded and tried to catch the thought hovering in front of her.
“And — and my mother, did you —”
Her voice trailed off. If there was any question improper to ask, it was this one, and she knew it. But something in her needed to know. She bit down on her lip and waited for an answer. Acier just looked at her, his gaze deep but superficially emotionless, impenetrable, unchanging.
“Yes,” he said tonelessly. “I also had to make her disappear.”
She closed her eyes and in a flash, imagined Acier dragging away, using his horn, the motionless Queen Gaia. It was a very clear and sharp vision. The evening sun was golden and red over Canterlot Square, and she saw herself lying unconscious in its centre.
Yet of course, he had been right in doing so. He couldn't have left her mother's body there. For a while, she contemplated asking him where it was now: but was that really a question she wanted to know the answer to?
“In situations like this,” he said in spite of himself, “you need to think practical, and quick.”
Practical. Quick.
For a moment, the two stared out onto the river. Its surface was agitated and restless from the incessant bombardment with rain, and it sloshed wildly against its bed. Celestia was thankful that they were in the dry, but she did throw a quick look over her shoulder: this wasn't the most private place. From the bridge above them, the clip-clop of hoofsteps sounded, all lost wanderers. A feeble stroke of lightning halfheartedly sought its way downwards, but apparently lost interest halfway through and just faded away. And the night was dark again, safe for the gloomy illumination of torchlights.
Celestia sighed. “So you were the one who got me off the square.”
“I was,” he said earnestly. “I brought you to safety, that was all that mattered. You were fast asleep, a deep, dreamless sleep, that much was clear. I'd never seen you like that. Like a pupa. Closed off, shut off from the world, and plunged into another one. As if something was changing in you. Because your eyes were open, and they were moving as if they could see something in the distance. It was scary, Tia,” he said more casually than would have been authentic.
She wasn't surprised. There was something glum in her hope.
“Acier,” she said grimly. “I don't want you to call me Tia anymore. That's not who I am. That's behind me. I've changed.”
“And yet you call yourself Sunray out of all names.” He raised an eyebrow.
“That's different. But Tia — I've just changed, I —”
She took a deep breath, but before she could go on, he had spoken again, not looking at her, but somewhere into the void.
“You know, you didn’t need to say that. I could see that you’ve changed the very instant I looked into your eyes. It’s always raining now, isn’t it? Heavy, grey rain, everywhere, all the time. Well, it seems as though all the rain has flushed the spark from your eyes. They’re not lavender anymore. They’re grey, too, and washed out. I can’t look into those eyes and not feel as though something has died somewhere, and there’s really enough things that remind me of death in this world already, thank you very much.”
She blinked, feeling a melancholy spread in her that was just barely distinguishable from hollow affection. She furtively closed her lids, as though she was hoping to recreate some of that spark by shielding her eyes from the light some.
“It wasn’t that hard, really. I simply told him I was a collaborator of Discord, and he believed me. You see, at that point, Stronghooves had finally realised something that he had been missing out.”
“That the guards were running over to Discord.”
“Exactly. And once that happened, he knew which site he was going to be on. He tends to jump on bandwagons if he has the opportunity.”
“And now Discord has made him his general.”
“It’s Discord’s idea of a joke,” Acier said darkly. “Stronghooves is Discord’s very opposite. He wants military order and takes things more seriously than anybody, first of all himself. Chaos is a foreign thought to him. And what was more, Discord knew of your little ... story with him.”
“He did it to tease me?”
“That sounds just like him, doesn’t it?”
She nodded slowly.
“Discord doesn’t want to win a war, unlike someone like Stronghooves. No, no, all Discord wants is provoke one. That’s his energy. After all, he’s not a pony. He’s a force of nature. And so are you.”
She shook her head. “I’m nobody. I have lost everything. There’s no reason to expect anything of me. You see where that leads. I even betrayed you, when I should have —”
He waved his hoof dismissively. “Don’t worry about that now. If that’s what you want, then all is forgiven. Just make sure you lead us out of all this.”
She turned her head and looked out over the river.
“In Canterlot Castle, it never rained,” she said. Stray streaks of her rose mane covered her view. “And it never snowed. It was always warm, even in winter. But the truth that it was a prison. A prison, keeping me inside, locked in a golden cage. I can see that now. Now I’m free. Now at least, I can live a life that’s mine.”
She slowly raised her head, as though looking for confirmation. He stared back at her, his gaze inscrutable.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
She hesitated, trying to put into words what had tormented her for so long. She had to say it. She had to tell someone. Her eyes sought out the vague beyond.
“I met her, you know,” she said, her voice steady but remote. “My mother. She was still there. Almost as if Discord had wanted her to stay alive long enough for me to still see her.”
She registered vaguely that he took a shallow breath.
“I talked to her, or... she talked to me. All that time, I wanted to feel sad. I knew that’s what I was supposed to feel. Sad about her. But instead, I felt something else. I felt this invisible wall between her and me. As if it kept the sadness from reaching me. An error in transmission. She told me she had started to see too much of her in me. What she meant to say was that she saw nothing of herself in Luna. She talked of grace. I didn’t say it out loud, but I wanted to tell her to shut up. I didn’t feel sad. I just felt angry. So very angry.”
She didn’t dare look at Acier, who didn’t say a word. Sheets of incessant rain floated over the river like fog, illuminated by the streetlights.
“Why did you feel angry, Tia?” he said finally. His voice lacked any tone.
She gulped. “Because she’s left me all alone. All alone in this world. Even though she promised to always love me. Us. But she didn’t. She didn’t. And then she just died, just like that. Under my eyes. As if it was nothing.”
She kept her eyes glued to the ground, her head bowed down. Her gaze was fixed because she needed to hold on to somewhere. Her eyes needed to rest if her mouth couldn’t.
“Did you cry?” Acier asked finally. It was impossible to tell what he was feeling.
“Yes,” she said. “I cried. I cried more than I have ever cried in my entire life up to this point. Even when I read Luna’s letter. I cried, and cried, and cried, until I was not sure if the puddles on the ground really were from the rain or from my own eyes. But I knew something was off. Something wasn’t how it was meant to be. Because I didn’t cry for my mother, oh no. I didn’t cry for her, even though I should have. Instead, I only cried for me. Selfish, childish tears for all that I’d lost and would never get back. Wallowing in self-pity and boundless egoism.”
He was silent. From the corner of her eye, she saw that he kept his eyes wide open, looking in the opposite direction. But their exact expression remained hidden by the shadows.
“And then it all stopped, just like that. Like a turned-off tap. In that instant, I had a brief vision of the future. Not even a vision, but a simple certainty. I knew that I was never going to cry again. No matter how long I was going to live, no matter what was going to happen, never, never again would I shed another tear.”
She slowly turned her head to look at him. “Is all still forgiven?” she asked, her voice foreign and rattling. But her eyes were wide and searching. “Is all still forgiven?” she repeated.
“I can’t absolve you from that,” he muttered finally. His beady eyes seemed to look right through her. “Nobody can absolve you from your own feelings.”
She nodded, maybe disappointed, but most of all, disgusted with herself. “That day,” she went on, “that day, I had sworn to do everything I could to get revenge on Discord. Revenge for what he’s done to me. Revenge for what he’s taken from me. I wanted to make him pay. To hurt him. Not be gracious. Not even with my horn. With my own hooves. Do you understand?”
He sighed and lowered his gaze, but she still fixed him intently. Her lips quivered. She needed him to understand. She needed someone to understand, finally, anyone.
“Anything?” he muttered darkly.
“Anything.”
“Then he’s already won.”
She recoiled in surprise. Celestia hadn’t expected that answer. The stallion’s gaze lay heavy on her, as though he had seen someone entirely new in her that he had never noticed before, that he didn’t recognise. Celestia could hardly blame him for that. She herself didn’t recognise who she was anymore. She lost herself in bottomless nightmares where she fell into that black abyss time and time again, plunging into the depths, swallowed by that suffocating darkness.
“Thoughts like spiders,” he said. “Can’t you see that? Weaving their poisonous web in your mind, envenoming your heart. That’s what Discord does. Don’t let him do that to you, too. Not you out of all ponies.”
“Why not me? There’s nothing special about me. I’m not better than the rest of us. Better get used to that thought.” She drooped her head and looked glumly at her cutie mark. “Celestia Sunray, and Luna Moonlight? Nothing but a cheap metaphor.”
“But it’s all we’ve got, cheap metaphors. I guess they’ll have to stand in for genuine hope.”
She shook her head. “Who says I have any more right to rule than Discord? Who says I’m anything more than him? I’m not the best of us. I sometimes wonder if I deserve this life at all.”
“If your thoughts should turn to death,” he said quietly, “you gotta stomp them out, you hear me? You gotta stomp them out, do you understand? It takes effort to have hope. That’s why the weak have none.
“You once asked me,” he went on, “if I had ever broken a promise, and I told you yes. You couldn’t know that at the time, but I was talking about a very specific promise. One that I had made to your mother. I swore I would protect you, if necessary with my death.”
“Then you’re the opposite of me.”
“Because you would never die for somepony else?”
“Because I can’t,” she said darkly. She glared at her own cutie mark. “Celestia Sunray, and Luna Moonlight.” She shook her head, incredulously, but with endless sadness. “I’m not sure this is a game I wanna play.”
“Are you giving up?” he asked outright.
“I can’t give up, I never pl—”
“Yes, you did play. And you don't just play for yourself, mind you. You're playing for all of us. If you want to or not. Do you still have it?”
“Have what?”
“The Flame.”
She nodded.
“Then not all is lost.”
Finally, Acier had enough of the gloomy talk. “Here, have one.” He lifted the apple lying untouched in front of her into the air before her. “And don’t tell me you aren’t hungry. You are. We’ll have another time to think about what we’re going to do next.”
She finally accepted, reluctantly, but genuinely thankful.
They ate in silence. The rain abated and gave the tormented river surface a rest; single thick, heavy drops fell to the ground from the bridge above them. She was thankful that they had the fire, as the coldness of winter was already drawing closer. Their dancing shadows were cast on the bridge’s underbelly like an eery echo from another world.
Celestia had said more than what she had wanted to say, and just like expected, sharing her sentiments had been a double-edged sword. It had externalised some of her shame, but now it was out in the open, it seemed even more oppressing. As she cast sideway glances at Acier, eating with dignity, she couldn’t help but feel inferior to this no doubt braver pony than herself. She again wondered why he didn’t have a cutie mark. She could always ask later. There was a time for everything. The whole trick was to find that time.
They raised their head. Somewhere in the distance, in the general direction of where they had come from, a column of thick smoke rose up into the air.
“He brings out the worst in ponies, you know,” Acier said glumly as he stared at it. “Discord. This whole city be damned if things go on like this.”
Celestia thought of Foxtrot. We all need friends in these dark times. She still had the note with her, with a date and a time on it. Then Foxtrot’s image disappeared, and Celestia believed to have seen a different face in the dark rain.
“The Night-mare,” she whispered.
Acier said nothing as more and more rain bled into the river.
