An Examination of Character
Author's Note
This story is a long short story, sometimes referred to as a novelette. It was written as a continuous stream of Celestia's consciousness as she discovers Sunset Summer and deals with the unending tribulations the foal and her own bad choices cause her. It is meant to be read in one breathless marathon session, but reads just as well as five chapters. I'll leave it to you to find the breaks that work best for you.
The sequence that details Sombra and the magic mirror refers to the fifth volume of the IDW comic, Friendship is Magic - Reflections, with a few liberties taken. This story would occur after the past depicted in the comic, with the added bonus of Celestia having spent some years together with her "prince."
I have an idea for an epilogue, but I need somepony to ask me to write it. Please comment!
An Examination of Character
I sipped my tea—strong, black, and syrupy with sugar—and eyed my picked-at bowl of kale and tomato salad. The vinegary dressing was sweet, but... For most any other guest at afternoon tea, I'd have ordered the palace chef to bring scones, caramel twists, and piping hot beignets with fresh butter and strawberry jam, or my favorite, which I craved now, molasses clove spice-cake with fig-cream frosting. I sighed. For any other pony, perhaps, but not for a snack with Flowing Waters.
You see, Flowing Waters was my physician. The tan middle-aged pony was also a friend, an advisor, and to a large extent, my conscience in these days of turmoil and uncertainty.
I could blame the turmoil on the curse, but the curse was my fault. I'd brought the ugly thing down on my head by abusing the magic from the Tree of Harmony to save myself from my blunders with my adopted sister. For almost a thousand years, the curse had attracted incursions of everything from the armies of the Timberwolf Federation that devastated the northern forests to magic eaters like the sirens that destroyed communities with their distempers, and though I'd lost Equestria twice, my little ponies still flourished. Incursions by new magical beasts increased now that I approached the hundredth decade of the curse, at the end of which Luna, her anger and incredible power only suspended in magical sleep on the moon, would roar back at me with no weapon at my disposal to compensate for her martial prowess. And the incursions were increasing, the most recent from the Bee Bears. Soon, my secret wars might become public and disturb the peace I tried so hard to preserve for my subjects.
Flowing Waters knew of my battles keeping Equestria safe. He flicked his sandy mane from one side to another as he studied me through bottle-bottom glasses with magnified dark green eyes, awaiting my answer. I had to talk to somepony—and the one pony who kept me healthy through the stress certainly had the right to know.
However, nopony knew about the curse as the curse prevented me from speaking about it. Flowing Waters did understand my uncertainty. He knew I made choices to do what I could and ignored what was less important. He acted as my conscience; his role was to assure I remembered my subjects.
I sipped my tea and redirected his question, "And what is your current project?"
His lips curved up ever so slightly and I realized I'd pranced into a trap. He rapidly wiped away a leaf of baby kale and said, "Since the Running of the Leaves, I've been working on supplying a winter homeless shelter for the ponies who live in Palisades Park and in the alleys of Cliffside. Help from you would surely make a difference."
Like I said, he was my conscience.
I imagined seeing Red Rambler, my exchequer, cringe, not to mention hearing the harangue Duke Pure Snow and the peerage would inflict upon me if I suggested yet another public project. I was an absolute monarch, but I had ceded control of everything—from the palace to my crown, including the tea cup that clinked into the china saucer—to the government in return for cooperation. Incredibly, Flowing Waters got me to sigh as I said, "The best I could promise would be ladling soup, what little good that would do."
"Oh, I can think of plenty good you could do just being there."
I'd really stepped into mud puddle, now! Thus I found myself strolling down Elm Street, our hooves clattering on cobbles worn to a wavy uneven surface after centuries of commerce through the warehouses of the Cliffside-adjacent business district. Ponies loading a lorry stopped and bowed when they saw me. I smiled and nodded. Since the stores had closed a half-hour earlier and hoof-traffic had disappeared, few noticed our passing. I had set the sun an hour age, and the lamplighter had been through and pools of flickering white light lit our path. The late autumn air felt crisp and cooled rapidly. "Where is the shelter?" I asked.
"A couple blocks back on Ponyville Way at Short Street."
"But you said—"
"I said that you could make a difference."
"But—" I frowned, but Flowing Waters didn't look back to see my consternation.
"Have I ever done anything that wasn't for your own good?"
That got a snort out of me. Daily workouts with the royal guard, at least fifty percent vegetables in my diet, and teaching one class at my school and at the university… "I guess you want me to take up a charity?"
He turned and smiled, pushing up his glasses. "Let's call it a hobby, to extend your horizons, all in the name of mental hygiene."
I smelled the burning rubbish but didn't realize where he led me until he turned right into an alleyway. I hadn't had to live outdoors or graze since the timberwolves had overrun western Equestria seven centuries ago, and the idea of living outside in the cold—only days before when the pegasi would bring snow—had not occurred to me. The connection between homeless and having no home hadn't made sense.
It did now.
About a dozen ponies had settled into the windowless brick-walled alley. The cobbles were filled with dried mud, except where a small stream of what I hoped was water leaked from a downspout. I saw a number of makeshift tents made of tarpaulin and one sewn together from dirty blankets. A few shipping boxes made a shelter for some others. Some lay on a couple of sofas, one that had been beige twenty years ago and another that had blackened paisleys. All the ponies wore a coat or sweater of some sort. While a purple pony wore a threadbare green pullover, most of the others wore something relatively new and clean. A gold and a tan stallion wore a sweater and a coat and a blanket. All except one pink mare quickly prostrated themselves as they noticed me. What had been a rumbling of voices became shocked silence, except for the pink one who faced a wall as if it were somepony, mumbling, "Nope. Stay there. I said, stay there!"
Next came the smell of unwashed horse.
I stood speechless, blinking, thinking how could Flowing Waters have done this to me, then thinking, of course, who else would have had the temerity? He knew the compromises I made to keep Equestria safe, the ponies I had to quietly send into harm's way so the rest could continue their lives in blissful ignorance. The good of the whole was not necessarily the good of the individual. To challenge my world view, Flowing Waters had brought me here to confront the existence of ponies who had clearly fallen through the many cracks—whether they chose to be here, or ill luck brought them low, or they needed help as the pink pony clearly did—awaiting the fall of winter.
Even a millennium of work could not produce a utopia.
One of the stallions in layers, a gold one with a gray speckled muzzle and blue mane, stood and said, "Princess Celestia, Your Majesty, Doc, would you care to join us?" He waved his hoof, making me notice an ingenious stove created from a metal barrel, grating, and a long sheet of brass. His rheumy blue eyes met mine as he said, "Supper is about ready." Upon the stove boiled a pot redolent (if you ignored the rubbish fire) of straw, dandelions, borage, and horse corn. A broken bale of hay, barely the right side of stale, stood beside the stove on the ground, the sugar and cooking oil dumped on top causing its surface straw to caramelize.
I might yet be ladling soup.
I had broken bread with the ponies and creatures of uncounted cultures, some who existed now only in my memory, and I knew better than to reject an invitation no matter how humble. I also trusted my doctor would not let me be poisoned.
Much transpired, enough to know I wasn't comfortable with these pony folk or myself at the moment, and I was certainly a sight (and gossip fodder) for a constable who stopped for a moment at the end of the alley. But, as I suspected, a rustic meal beyond plain was not why Flowing Waters had brought me here. The doctor asked the gold pony, "Deer Tracks, where is Her Highness the Queen?"
The de facto spokespony of the group said, "The Queen of Cliffside?" He coughed when he tried to chuckle and took a swig from a flask of what smelled like cheap brandy. "Oh, I suspect she has been watching us and is quite annoyed. She's very protective of her ponies and doesn't like strangers in her domain."
"Her ponies?" I asked, working my tongue at a sticky caramel straw caught between a couple back teeth.
"The all of us, every outside pony in Cliffside and Palisades Park. She makes sure nopony fights one another or steals stuff, especially from each other. She keeps the peace and we all feed her and find her a warm place to sleep when she asks for it."
"Must be an impressive mare."
Flowing Waters pushed up his glasses and shook his head when Deer Tracks opened his mouth. Instead the spokespony said, "Yeah. Impressive."
I said, "Perhaps I should meet her," but turned it into a question.
Flowing Waters confirmed my suspicion by saying, "I think that would be an excellent idea."
Nopony knew where The Queen of Cliffside was, but everypony agreed she would be near. She disliked missing supper.
As we later strolled, approaching an urban green zone named Blueblood Park from which the borage and dandelions had been harvested, I said, "I won't say that I enjoyed that. I don't like to lie."
"I did not expect you would, but it will allow you to speak knowledgeably with your ministers about the matter. However, it was necessary in order to meet the one royal personage who outranks you in your kingdom."
"Who is this 'Queen of Cliffside'?"
"Nopony knows," Flowing Waters answered as we crossed General Firefly Parkway. The city-block-sized park was surrounded on four sides by warehouses and factories and was dense with a pocket woods, browning lawns, and fields of late wildflowers—and sported a small duck pond. I noticed that the doctor walked studiously eyes ahead, only occasionally glancing around. Our hoof clatter echoed as I tried to follow his example. A few ponies crossed diagonally through the park on the way home from work, and, remarkably, none of the mild evening hoof-traffic headed for the restaurants of Cliffside on the Palisades Park strand stopped to bow when I didn't look at them.
It was a relief of sorts.
We turned from Elm Street onto Commander Easy Glider Parkway, crossing to the sidewalk opposite the park. The corner was dense with white-trunk spruce that waved slightly in the evening breeze. The few brown leaves still stuck to the skeletal branches spun like strange toys. The doctor whispered, "When I say to look, look down the street on the left, beside the post box. Okay, look."
I looked, and at first saw only shadow, but as I kept walking into the light of a street lamp the white of my coat illuminated the pools of darkness. I flared my wings, reflecting yet more light. A movement made me look lower than I expected I needed look.
There—
I saw a crouching little sun-color pony spearing me with bright turquoise eyes. Her mane was lion-like in extent and shimmered sunset-yellow with stripes of flaming red. We locked eyes for exactly three heartbeats. Her eyes narrowed and her horn glowed like an internally-lit aquamarine crystal; in an blink, she disappeared. I'd have thought she teleported, but no crack marked air expanding into a sudden vacuum.
"A-A- foal?"
Grand matrices of equations solved for distance instantly as I folded space and stepped out behind the red post box in a thunderclap, my fur steaming with the frost of in-between. Despite the short legs of an eight- to nine-year old, the foal had shot into the woods. Trees appeared and vanished. The cracking sounds of sticks, the crunch of autumn leaves, and the swish of fur against bark taunted me from a myriad directions, including the street, leaving me momentarily confused enough not to choose a path.
The doctor trotted over as what she'd done occurred to me. "She's casting multiple visual and optical illusions!"
"Intriguing isn't she?"
"And she keeps the peace amongst dozens—"
"—closer to a hundred."
"A unicorn strongmare. A foal?"
"A very clever foal. Nopony remembers ever seeing her parents. One day, four years ago, she took over, managing everypony and minimizing contact with the constabulary. Nopony is willing to say how she intimidated the roughnecks and the bruisers, but they either began to behave themselves or moved to the Lower. It doesn't take much of an imagination to guess what she did."
"Magic." Battle magic. Ooooo.
"No truant officer or social worker has a file on her. Very strong magic, indeed. Self-taught."
I stared into the forest as a new hope grew in my heart. "Talented," I breathed, blinking away tears I had thought myself incapable of shedding.
The curse had spawned a prophesy. It had appeared in a dozen books—including Crystallized Sky and Magic for Non-Unicorns and I knew had never had it because I had written them, the latter one with Star Swirl—or been issued from the slavering mouths of raving monsters as their reason to invade. Sixteen years ago, a glowing ruby oracle sang of my doom—forcing me to destroy it. All agreed. Less than ten years from now, the stars would align to assist Luna, still possessed by her Nightmare Moon mania, to wake her from the sleep that kept her imprisoned on the moon. The curse restricted my choices such that, though I controlled armies and secret agencies, I would find myself isolated upon her return. Being immortal did not mean that my sister could not kill me. Immortality and invulnerability are not the same thing. I found it hard to imagine that she would fail to succeed this time as only luck had saved me when she blasted apart the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters around me. Ascendant, she would refuse to raise the sun, dooming Equestria—neigh, the entire planet—to darkness and starvation.
The curse did not prevent me from teaching students. I had founded my school for gifted unicorns hoping to attract the best of this final generation, searching for special ponies who would be loyal to me despite an insanity they would never be able to understand. I needed an army of creative thinkers and magical powerhouses, though sadly few of any caliber had presented themselves. So many were satisfied with just learning Levitation and Illuminate.
However, if I shaped a clever urban guerrilla fighter, a natural—who, unschooled, taught herself illusions and battle magic—and trained her… Nightmare Moon would find keeping Equestria in the dark problematic. This queen could be my legacy—perchance, even my heir.
Flowing Waters tapped my shoulder. I folded my wings, having forgotten I raised them. My mane rustled before my face with energies from the magic pulse, alive in the lamp light as I looked at him.
He said, "Princess. Meet your new hobby. And she's adorably cute, too." He said nothing about the tears I felt rolling down my cheeks.
I raised an eyebrow. I remembered best her narrowed feral eyes, but she was cute in a way only a gawky 8-year old could be. "Wait. No way! I'm not raising a foal. Done that one too many times. If I tame her, you're raising her. She looks like a once in a century talent, but I'm not doing the mother thing again. I don't have the time." Not to mention that I'd failed Luna disastrously. And the curse wouldn't let me even speak of her!
"Fair enough, but she's your new hobby."
Neither my age nor my station prevented me from rolling my eyes or groaning.
"Doctor's orders."
All through the night, with silk sheets tucked to my chin, I thought about those intelligent but feral turquoise eyes. When sleep finally came, the foal haunted my dreams with alicorn wings of fire.
After lowering the moon and raising the sun, I skipped out on my morning workout and the royal audiences, asking my majordomo to reschedule. I bought some strongly perfumed peach rice candy at The Candy Apple, imported from the Land of the Rising Sun, then bought a small red wool cardigan at Kids Weir, finally finding myself trotting through the business district after the morning rush, whistling. My little pastel ponies in overalls, flannels, smart business sweaters, and gray winter hats shepherded lorries, toted briefcases, and pitched advertising campaigns as they trotted quickly along. Too many stopped to curtsy or bow, and soon my neck began to ache from nodding. I contemplated casting the bothersome-to-maintain Someponyelse, but it would defeat the purpose of being seen by a certain foal.
On Elm Street, I stopped before the alley and craned my neck around the corner. Surprisingly, I saw all the way to Cedar Way. Of the dinner guests last night, only the pink mare remained. Her fur was moist as if she had taken a swim, probably in Blueblood Park pond. She still mumbled to nopony visible, but—from her stance with her flank backed against a collection of stacked sofas, furniture, blankets, and sundries covered and tied by tarps—I gathered she guarded the trove. The stuff sat flush to the wall, stacked so that a coach and four, or even a moving van, could pass without worry.
I wondered if the Queen of Cliffside had arranged this. No traffic impediment to attract the constables, and a crazy pony any normal pony would try to avoid. Clever, if it were her doing.
"Your Majesty?"
I turned to see I was wrong about the constables. I saw a white earth stallion, dressed in a blue hat and the uniform of a beat officer, kneel. The bracelets of the hobbles on his utility belt clanked together. Beside his copper badge was his name, Good Eye.
I said, "Please stand."
He smiled and asked, "Is there anything amiss?"
I looked back into the alley. Since I now stood in full view with the officer beside me, I had the pink mare's attention. She whispered to her left as if warning a comrade about me. She had magenta eyes.
I said, "That one needs some help."
Good Eye said, "The duty sergeant thinks it's an act."
"Really?" I said. His eyes were blue.
"The lads and lasses think Sarge just doesn't want to unbalance the situation with the homeless. It's been peaceful for a few years now."
"She's clearly unhinged."
"I'll ask Sarge if we can have her looked at, if you say so, Your Majesty."
"Do you know why the situation with the homeless is balanced?"
He looked aside. "Maybe."
"Does it have anything to do with the Queen of Cliffside?"
"So I've heard."
"Have you seen her?" I pulled out the red cardigan from my saddle bags. "I bought this for her so she wouldn't be cold."
He looked uncomfortable. "We've all tried, Your Majesty, but she's a ghost. Best I've done is catch a glimpse of a yellow blank flank, about a month ago."
I chuckled. "I guess you won't be able to tell her I have a gift for her."
"Your Majesty–" He pointed his nose at the pink pony. "–if you leave it with Loquacious, the Queen will surely get it."
The sweater swished as I dropped it into the saddlebag before I trotted down the alley. The drying pony kept up her commentary and a rude stare as I approached. I heard the constable take a couple steps on the cobblestones, but then stop. My unexpected behavior had made him momentarily forget that I was able to defend myself. I stopped close enough to touch the middle-aged pink pony. She did smell faintly of algae from the pond.
I asked, "Do you know where to find the Queen of Cliffside?"
"Did ya hear that, Bogsy? That long-horn pegasus is asking us to squeal on Her Queenship— What!? Of course not, Bogsy!" Her eyes didn't leave me once. Maybe she was crazy, or retired military and good at her act. I had agents able to do this, though none that would look me in the eye to do it unless I ordered them. She did have a few burn scars on her neck, and a healed slash across her barrel, which hinted she was a veteran who'd seen too much of what I protected most of my little ponies from.
"Tell her I'd like to be her friend."
Loquacious spoke sotto voce, glancing pointedly with her eyes. With a sigh, I continued onward toward Cedar hoping that Good Eye talked to his sergeant about getting her some help. With a shudder, I stepped on to the sidewalk, only to have a dozen business ponies bow suddenly.
I smiled and walked on. I surveyed all the blocks within a four block radius, nodding to a few homeless ponies I now recognized, one desperately begging with a sign and pot for money, and another collecting junk from dumpsters to sell. I even walked through Blueblood Park, both the candy and the sweater floating in my magic as I followed every trail and looked under every bench, including into odd hiding places like a convoluted swan-shaped slide set and a tall rock cairn with little caves.
The lieutenant in charge of fitness for the royal guard wouldn't be able complain about me not getting my exercise today. In the end, I left the sweater and candy with Loquacious, who became uncharacteristically quiet as she stared at the two gifts while I departed.
I spent the early afternoon impatiently working through the meeting with my defense minister and rushing the public audiences, leaving not a few petitioners fuming when I dismissed them or surprised when I immediately granted a request. Gathering a hoof-pony and my under butler, I took a full spread of tea to the Canterlot library and cornered Miss Verdigris, the head librarian. She didn't mind being cornered into a high tea, and soon we invited Night Light, the assistant archivist. The blue white-maned old mare and the dapper young blue indigo-maned stallion listened attentively to my story. The archivist had a Moon in a Moon cutie mark, which distracted me at first with thoughts of Luna, but I took it as an omen. Soon I munched on an orange pistachio scone with strawberry jam while Verdigris gestured with her green rhinestone glasses while Night Light nodded, leafing through a half-dozen drawers taken from the card catalog.
That evening in my den, curled up in a flower-quilt comforter, I read through three grimoires about illusions by the glow of an aquarium filled with fireflies. One book came from the Star Swirl wing; I so missed the old stubborn curmudgeon, which reminded me he had died without me having been able to say a last goodbye because of a disagreement.
I studied how to detect illusions. Funny. It had been 160 years since I'd dealt with the Salt Lick Chupacabra, the last subtle magic-user to invade Equestria. I had become rusty.
In the alley, the following afternoon, the pink pony said, "Bogsy, the pony with the gold tiara is accusing us of stealin'. You tell her."
When I just blinked at her, she added, exasperated, "Bogsy's some kind of hoarse, or maybe you're deef. Us, we don't steal nothin' from nopony no-how never."
I felt the hair rise on my spine, and glanced immediately towards Elm. A couple of wagonettes crossed in opposite directions, one red, the other silver. I swiveled my ears and shook my head, thinking I'd heard the dopplered echo of hooves. I thought I was mistaken… and knew I wasn't. Magic spread out from its source like the smell of a broken perfume bottle, as was evidenced by the zephyr that roiled my mane and tail. In this case, I sensed snatches of magical equations and vague numerology that violated physics and warped reality.
Somepony had done magic nearby no more than a minute before.
No telling if it was the Queen of Cliffside, or some random passerby, but I thought the former. I trotted to the street, knocking aside, of all ponies, a baroness (Mount Batten?) in a yellow silk scarf and a dark blue coat. I ignored her "Your Majesty!" and trotted away, horn lit in the air, sniffing magic using Not Real, which I'd re-learned last night.
Not well, alas. I lost her trail. It was her trail, nonetheless, because within her illusions lingered the incongruous smell of a little pony who'd gone too long without her bath and a whiff of fragrant peach rice candy.
I wandered the streets so long that when I glanced in a furniture showroom window, I saw a collection of grandmare clocks and mantel pieces about to strike 5:15 PM. There in the Cliffside-adjacent district, without pomp or fanfare, I treated a surprised audience to a spectacle. In the shop window, I saw myself rear and spread my wings.
In my earliest memory, when I was no older than the Queen of Cliffside, I remembered sensing the ebb and flow of the celestial sphere. I'd later realize it was the magical forces I'd now describe using vectors, momentum, and friction. In those days, dozens of trained unicorns wrestled with the sun and the moon, and had needed do so since an evil king had crystallized the heavens into a machine that required unicorn magic to wind it up. In my early teens, the job had become suddenly harder, with day and night each lasting the space of two or three days. I had not realized it at the time that I had a special talent, even after the sun had suddenly risen when I had needed it to save my dying father and later noticed I'd gotten my cutie mark.
It took me until after I'd been watching a magic contest to find somepony who could help to raise the sun. As I filly, I wasn't invited to participate. I had had to watch from afar, but I had nevertheless heard the spell. It sensed to enchant me... and the sun rose, but I had become so convinced that a mare I could do only practical magic—mare's household magic—that I'd concluded I had to have been hallucinating under the effect of the spell.
Other ponies had noticed, though, and had tried to use me. That's another tale.
There, on a city street of Canterlot, I reared, paddling my hooves, and found myself in the same golden aura now that had now surrounded me then—without the flames that had made the original spell dangerous. I felt the searing liquid ball of sunlight, felt its path in the tracks of the sky, and pushed it one click southward before I slammed it beneath the horizon as if I were playing buck ball.
Pulling the moon up all those centuries ago had proved unexpectedly difficult, but I had done that, too. The Collegiate of Mages had tried to train me to use my magic better, but it never really helped—and soon we discovered why.
In an orphanage, we found a gangly midnight-blue, gray-maned four-year-old earth pony foal of Babble Loin descent. What made Blue special, and what frustrated me, was well indicated by the crescent moon cutie mark that graced her black paint-speckled flank. It had appeared, according to the staff, about the time that day and night became wildly irregular. The Collegiate gave the stubborn foal to me to raise, though I had barely sixteen years myself.
I named her Luna.
Queen Platinum, on learning about how well we worked as a team—and other thing—ordered us to her far away winter palace, specifically without my family. She disliked having an alicorn in Unicornia grabbing attention away from her. Her subjects grew less happy and the growing distrust within the pony nations attracted the Windigoes. As our relationship with Unicornia's neighbors worsened, it was no surprise that a tribe of crows came to me with evidence that the Windigos existed and the not the queen. The Rainbow Crows told me they'd discovered the demons' weakness. Sequestered in the isolated castle with Luna, I had to plot a way to save everypony. Bad times followed. I lost track of my parents in the migration from snow-covered Unicornia.
It's best to say that today's Hearthswarming Eve story isn't exactly accurate—but I wrote that history, and there was only so much credit I was willing to give. What I glossed over is fodder for yet another tale.
So, encased in a vainglorious golden nebula of magic, in the warehouse district of Cliffside-adjacent, I worked to push up the always resistant moon. Last, I spun up the sphere of stars.
My royal guard was worried; they'd found me after noticing I'd gone missing. Instead of flying home to the palace, though, I remembered hearing about a good restaurant—with a view of Palisades Park and the cliffside drop to the Ponyville plain—One Fell Swoop. The chef specialized in grilled vegetables and roasted grains. My entourage took over the tiny establishment. The new age mare running it didn't mind, and brought in a cymbal and gong gamelan group to entertain us and the few surprised customers already eating who hadn't expected to sup with a princess at their communal table. One colt, despite his mute parents and the watchful hungry royal guard, peppered me with questions about running the country between bites of garlic zucchini and toasted sesame corn.
The restaurant would be swamped for months having had me visit it.
I returned to the palace satiated with fond memories of a congenial evening, but with little to show for the day. I hit the books (and the throw pillows and quilts before the fireplace) in my den and worked to dawn. I got notes of complaint from my ministers whose morning meetings I cancelled implicitly by falling asleep after raising the sun.
In the afternoon, I walked in on a meeting of the Collegiate of Mages at the university and waylaid Wind in the Willows, the single professor—and an ancient one at that—who specialized in illusions. Together with Second Lieutenant Green Ivy, who was attached with S.M.I.L.E., I practiced detecting and looking through illusions in the castle gardens, courtyards, and passageways. I quickly realized that the advantage was with the illusionist if she were quiet, still, and observant. Most illusions worked best if they made sense to the deceived, like a rose bush in a flower garden, or a stone wall cutting off one leg of an intersection in a stone castle. Seeing through them required skepticism and a willingness to walk into thorny shrubs or tap walls. Getting a whiff of nearby magic helped, and the more I practiced, the more I sensed the mathematical basis of an illusion once I identified it, which allowed me to dispel it.
Identifying it was the hard part.
I ordered the royal guard to begin training to thwart illusionists. Soon drill sergeants from various agencies and trainers from the constabulary joined the castle hunt-and-hide game. Most of the steadily increasing threats to Equestria had been blundering monsters or armies, but I could imagine how a lone wolf illusionist or spy could wreak havoc. More the reason to capture the Queen of Cliffside—to train her properly and to learn from her.
I spent three more days training.
I hadn't practiced casting and detecting so much magic since Desert Rose of Saddle Arabia had discovered how to prevent a unicorn from casting magic by using a charmed iron ring. She had decided to conquer the world. I had allied Equestria with Griffonstone to thwart her. She was the only alicorn in Tartarus and was ringed there just to ensure she didn't cause trouble.
Come to think of it, Desert Rose had called herself a queen also.
Dealing with my annoyed finance minister and the foreign office (I'd put off a state dinner), made me unable to return to Cliffside until the late afternoon of the fourth day. Despite being a bright, cloudless day, any place shaded from the sun hovered above freezing. The first snow was scheduled in a day or two. As I returned to the alley, my breath steamed from my nostrils. Shadows played in the alley—around the stacked boxes, barrels, furniture, and tarps—accentuated by late sunlight at the end of the alley and the glare hitting the tops of the brick building three stories above.
I sniffed for recently cast magic, but detected nothing other than the slightest confusion hovering around the pink earth pony who was still chatting animatedly with herself. Her pair-of-ears cutie mark gave me no clue to her talent. Luna hadn't been the last non-unicorn pony I'd encounter able to cast magic spells thanks to her cutie mark, but I suspected Loquacious wasn't the source of what I sensed.
Green Ivy had suggested that in non-threatening situations, my next step was to ping the area like a bat. I cast a sound spell and tuned it to make a sound that echoed well in the alley. The pink pony immediately quieted and looked at me.
I said, "I'm trying to make friends with—" Snow and tears! How could I make friends with somepony I had no choice but to call by a title? "—with Her Majesty, the Queen. Have you seen her?"
Loquacious' glance to her left at my cue made it easier to sense changes in the winds of magic. Though the little brat remained hidden, it made sense that she would have been skulking amongst the stacks of stuff. As my hooves clattered, adding to the echoes in the alley, I struggled to get a fix on her. She was a strongmare—but also a child.
A child… My mouth hung open seconds as I went mute, caught in an emergent thought. I remembered the glimpse I had gotten of her and her fiery dusk colors. Yellows and bold reds. Had she not been abandoned—surely she had been—her parents would have found naming her obvious.
Buttercup? No, no... Queen Marigold? I scrunched my nose with a vision of a red variegated yellow marigold, assaulted with a memory of the flower's peppery smell, and shook my head. Anyway. It was what it was. As sweetly and as friendly as I could, I said, "Queen of Cliffside! I really want get to know you."
The magic zephyr shifted, swirled, condensed, and became more familiar. I struggled to listen and decipher another potential deception or an attack. With her bright coloration against the smoke-stained dirty alley walls, I ought to see her. I worked, as I had just learned to do when facing an illusionist, to see what I wasn't seeing. What I got was a sense of a muffled zone in the shifting echoes.
"Please," I said looking directly at the aural anomaly, squinting.
I heard clattering behind and to my right. It sounded like cheap horseshoes. I fluttered to turn completely around. Wings flared, I trotted some steps before I realized that four stones skipped toward the sidewalk on Elm Street such that they sounded like a trotting pony. A purple pony stumbled over them and disappeared down the street.
I shook my head, momentarily stunned. I'd sensed her transforming an illusion into Levitation. This time I did hear hooves a-gallop, but had missed their start due to my sound spell and my wings muffling the sounds coming from behind.
I spun as I heard the glee of a child's laughter dopplered by a spell, catching a vague glimpse of a flicked red and yellow tail, like a slap, as foal dodged onto Cedar Way.
Sly. Clever.
"Your Majesty!" I cried, launching myself skyward. Unfortunately, my wingspan compared to the width of the alley hampered me, preventing me from taking full strokes and brushing my pinions against the brick. The disorienting feeling of half-flying half-falling forced me to shift my wings crosswise in the alley, and because I hadn't started that way, I had to scrabble my hooves against the wall and partially climb, my shoes sparking against the brick, to gain enough upward momentum. Even so, heart speeding in my chest, I had to flap against the pyrite encrusted black shingles of the sloped warehouse roof until I gained lift.
"Ugh!" I was so frightened that I'd injure myself that I forgotten the foal. I shot skyward, then, still rattled, swooped down on Cedar, ungracefully skimming the top of a lorry and banging the top of a bus with my hooves. Ponies gasped and instinctively hugged the storefronts and jumped into doorways, spooked by my flying shadow. It always startled a pony's horse-brain. As I landed, I found myself apologizing, something as royalty I rarely did anymore. Regardless, my ponies bowed to me. My confusion and frustration combined into humility. My face heated up.
Surely, the Queen of Cliffside was rolling on her back in some protected spot, laughing her tail off at my sophomoric attempt at acting royal.
And watching me.
I looked at the business suits and coveralls of my subjects, looked through the glass storefronts at sofas and kitchen appliances, looked into doorways and at stacks of wares ready to ship on the street. There were red postboxes, water plugs, newsstands, dumpsters, and parked wagons.
She was surely watching me and I desperately needed to discover from where.
I had no doubt the Queen of Cliffside had been expecting me, watching and waiting for me to arrive, and undoubtedly had preceded me into the alley noting my direction. What else had she to do? School? I was school. She found me interesting, and I didn't flatter myself on that. This foal had learned her magic not from school, or thanks to the loving prompting and cajoling of a parent or sibling, but by studying others. To survive. Alone.
My demonstrations of magic could not help but fascinate her.
Her ability to make a foal of me, crashing about the alley and dive-bombing the street, had to amuse her immensely. It would me! And she surely continued to watch as I stood here now, ponies bowing to me on the sidewalks, the street, and in doorways.
I had to act the part of somepony interesting. Not threatening. Be the pony everypony wanted to know.
With the greatest humility, I curtseyed to my gathered subjects. "Please stand and go about your business, my little ponies," I said.
As I trotted off, the crowd applauded by stomping their hooves.
I noticed Good Eye, the white constable earth stallion I'd seen earlier in the week. He swayed slightly as he gazed thoughtfully into the alley, jiggling the hobbles on his belt. As I followed the tenuous trail Her Little Majesty had left me, I felt a sudden sense of foreboding.
I strolled along Cedar and south on Ponyville Way, nodding to all those I saw to forestall them from bowing, speaking to the few peerage whose names I knew. I even encountered a recent petitioner, a mint green mare whose coat was stained like she'd fallen into a vat of grapes and then cherries on alternate days. I got her to talk about the new dye process the exchequer was investing in for me as I turned west on Aspen Lane. Soon ponies acclimated to seeing me wander about and stopped remarking, though they surely kept an eye on me and gossiped. It gave me time to stop and stare into storefronts. I wasn't interested in antiques, or at the next store full of fancy red earthenware and colorful hoof-blown gold and silver swirl art-glass vases. Though I made the proprietors nervous, I knew I captured my little watcher's curiosity.
She'd eventually look were I looked. After awhile, she might decide to meet me. And if that didn't work, I'd at least be able to predict where she might be if I decided I needed to force the issue.
On Palisades Park Road, usually called Cliffside on the Strand by the younger ponies, I took time to look at the eateries. In Equestria, nopony had to go hungry. Over the centuries, I'd fought to maintain the parks and green belts throughout the city and lining the hills, and not for my stated aesthetic reasons. You just didn't say to a pony, "Oh, you can graze here." While camping or traveling, anypony might put down her head or tear some herb or leaf off a passing shrub, but, generally, a civilized pony in the modern era didn't want to act like a horse. During the bad times of Queen Platinum's mismanagement, nopony cared about proprieties, and earth ponies had no choice even before the Windigo famines, but Equestria was founded to be different, as a chance to think differently, for both genders and all the tribes to benefit from their diversity and differences, to make the world better for everypony. That rarely translated to perfection, however, and in these days, with Equestria under attack from creatures who sniffed unstable magic or saw weakness as my curse ticked down to the end of my days, every city in Equestria was green or surrounded by pasture. Palisades Park, lush with a dozen pocket woods, was replete with lawns and ornamental grasses and other delicious plants. Ponies would pay platinum bits, not just gold, to build where the parks stood or on the green cliffs that overlooked the drop to the Ponyville farming plane, but I had made sure that only the palace grounds and the airship docks could ever use that coveted space, and only for security and safety reasons, not for the view.
Sadly, the lawns remained cropped without resort to gardening tools.
The westering sun illuminated the whitewashed stone of a bakery with the name Our Daily Bread in gold letters, accented by hearts and flowers. I thought about what the queen grew up eating. Her larder stood starkly autumn-browned, with little green, behind me, and would be thus until winter wrap up. On the glass shelves in the window lay cupcakes with cherry and chocolate frosting, little biscuits with rainbow crystal sugar, and oatmeal cookies—not the gooey kind, but the type high in sugar, made thin, and burnt just enough that they became super-crunchy and caramelized, like a caramel candy apple. Standing in the packed bakery, head and shoulders over the herd, I made a show of sampling a few, still hot and smelling of caramel, meriting an audience in the window which I thought included a silhouetted foals, hooves on the glass.
I purchased a grainy dozen.
I wore naught but the coin purse hidden in my breastplate. Without saddlebags, I strolled out slowly levitating the white bag. Away from the bakery, the scent of cookies became notable. I crunched on a few as I read restaurant menus, spent time thanking Lemon Drop of One Fell Swoop for the meal a few days before, and nodded to patrons enjoying the reddening light of the late afternoon sun as they sat in cafe chairs, sipping hot lemonades or tea in their fuzzy winter jackets. I bought a darjeeling tea with three tea bags at Buck Star Tea and heaped it with spoons of sugar. I also stopped and bought some honey brittle packed with cashews because I needed it and knew the sweet toasted scent would attract one particular foal.
I needed the sugar and the caffeine, regardless of Flowing Waters' caustic remarks about my abysmal diet. I crunched on half the brittle as I noted the time, waiting until the last minute to cross over to the park. I trotted across the crackling dried grass to the fenced-off shear half-mile drop that gave Cliffside its name.
The sun lay inert, orange and red, to my right on the horizon. Below, the various lakes and rivers fed by the Canterlot Cascade glittered. Winds buffeted the trees and fields of late hay. Ant-like traffic on Ponyville Way still moved at this late hour. Beyond, the ironically-named Everfree Forest brooded, dark and full of shadow, a festering scar even today as a result of my battle against my adopted sister using the powers of the tree of harmony. The subterranean tree, the most powerful magical entity in the world, lived angrily at the center of the cursed blight.
Another tale to be told some other time, or maybe best forgotten.
The redwood top bar of the fence clopped resonantly under my hooves as I put down the bags and cup far enough behind me that it made a good target to filch. I took a deep breath, clearing my mind. I searched for and found the stubborn granite orb Luna so adored. Did she adore it now, exiled there? I doubted she was conscious of her plight, her visage spread across the moon in the form of gray lunar seas, but who knew?
I triggered my special spell, a mixture of Motivate and Levitate with Slippery and other magical spice factored into the amazingly beautiful equations. I felt the magic bathe me. This type of maneuver was desired by nature itself and the natural world leant its strength to my alicorn magic to continue the necessary daily motions one evil king had irreversibly broken. A numinous golden glow surrounded me, visible through my eyelids. I felt myself levitated and flapped to push myself further into the sky as I pushed at the moon. It mulishly resisted, allowing itself only to be dragged with great effort onto its crystal track.
Perhaps it was the extra sugar in my tea or my sugary honey brittle snack, but the baleful night world quickly went click into place. The shock rattled my bones. The sun, as always, slid down like spaghetti thrown at a wall, and, as had become the common in the last century, I managed a spring-rebound using the sun that spun the stars into motion.
I settled onto the grassy knoll and saw the fogs of golden magic dissipate into glimmers and firefly sparkles around me. Quick lamplighters in distant Ponyville were already lighting the gaslight street posts. As I watched, windows in the tiny buildings lit up. The lakes sparkled in the pale light of the moon.
I turned to find an audience of cheering pastel ponies, many stomping the ground or the sidewalk where they stood in the new dusk. Lamplighters galloped beyond, a spark wand in their teeth. The richest districts always got the quickest service, and the one containing the princess, more so.
At my hooves, I saw the bag of cookies and the bag of brittle beside my tall cardboard cup of cooling tea.
Somepony hadn't taken the bait.
Yet.
But she would feel emboldened. The most fun I'd had practicing with the royal guard and my instructors had been dodging ghosts and illusory shadows after dinner. Whilst the ears could always be fooled, night made optical illusions more real. Not that the Queen of Cliffside needed that boost, but she undoubtedly appreciated it.
I trotted out of the park, treats trailing me in my daffodil yellow aura, and headed back toward the warehouse district. I had to wave off the royal guard that had decided I had gone missing again, and one overzealous mare with a decided frown. I had to zot a few unlit street lamps going north from the start of Ponyville Way. I didn't wish to be at a complete visual disadvantage. Under one such lamp, I saw a newspaper rack and gasped (though I hadn't bothered to read the headline). I put down the snacks, heating them surreptitiously to maximum fragrant lusciousness as I did so. My copper bits went schlick-clink in the slot. I unfolded a broadsheet in my magic.
"Well isn't this rich! Unnamed ministers bemoaning princess' sudden inaccessibility! Sources wondering if the crown is having second thoughts about the Equidoran trade negotiations. Ha!" I said aloud, flicking my tail, "Ha!"
I strategically walked away from the news rack, leaving my snacks behind. I hoped my little queen didn't notice me swiveling my ears to listen behind me.
She was good, very good. But not perfect. I heard the tea cup tip over and spill. I'd flattened the bottoms of the bags and put them under the cup in the hope the tea wouldn't interest her, and it hadn't. I heard the swish of water and the hollow pop-pop of the emptied cardboard container, and the clatter of little surprised hooves, despite the waning evening hoof and lorry traffic.
I pretended not to notice, but easily followed the direction she took, which transected the street. Not only did the breeze from the cliffs waft the scent of hot oatmeal cookies, but I caught hints of a magic unlike that of Motivation unicorns often used to move wagons instead of pulling them. It had to be some sort of chameleon spell, judging by the convolutions of the magic numbers that pinged my horn. Though I couldn't see her, it wasn't an invisibility spell. Even Star Swirl had agreed such things did not exist. One spell, Don't Look Don't See Don't Hear came close, but the math of the arcane thing taxed even my horn. It required you to be hyperaware of your surroundings so that you knew what sounds you made and what observers would see as they looked past you. It made it impossible to use while mobile, rendering it questionable for anything but ambushes; a parlor trick at best. No, what she was using was basic and strong. A bit of Not Interesting and a bit of Color Blending—a spell that fascinated Dean Wind in the Willows, so I knew it well.
Bingo! I caught the chiaroscuro outline of little hooves galloping, which allowed me to hear her better as she dodged a taxi, bounded onto the sidewalk, and dodged left onto Aspen Lane. Was she really doing three spells at once, or had she merged three spells into one transformed equation? I folded the broadsheet and passed it to a surprised pony trotting by in a blue-striped gabardine suit without looking at him. I was too stunned even to blink.
Who was going to be whose student?
It would take an especially cunning and powerful unicorn to master Princess I-Spit-On-Subtle Luna. Could the Queen of Cliffside be the one? Could she rule Equestria?
Better a tyrant than the slow death of no sun to grow food. And I might yet teach her statecraft, though in a sense she had proven the inclination in how she had managed to discover a détente between the constabulary and the vagrant population.
For an instant, I danced on the tips of my horseshoes, making a rapid-fire clatter which startled an already wary population of homebound ponies who watched me standing there. Excellent, I thought (not about startling them, but my prospects), and made to follow my newest hope.
Aspen Lane proved vacant except for a lorry being pulled west and two workers going home. The smell of cookies wasn't hard to miss. With a clue to the queen's spell, I noticed motion down the street. I knew where she was going, too.
The alley. Her home. With her prize.
I took to the air as it made me quieter and faster than the little racehorse. I hoped she wouldn't go to ground in a doorway, a walk-down cellar, or some open window into a factory. She didn't disappoint. As I set down on Cedar Way, I heard a rapid clatter of hooves, despite a dozen factory workers and a team of four pulling an enormous load on a flatbed. And then I saw her. She'd dropped her illusions, but not her treats.
I guess she thought I'd forgotten her.
When I craned my neck around the corner into the alley, I found the scene lit by a couple of beat-up brass hurricane lanterns filled with glowing magical rainbow pebbles. The scamp, her mane poofed up like an imitation bonfire, laughed as she easily levitated the furniture, some of it massive, out of the trove. She wore the red cardigan, the rich wool cable-knit finery with a shawl collar looking out of place in the dingy surroundings. Besides the pink psycho-guard, a couple other dusty stallions watched, both unicorns, as her green aura grabbed and placed a sofa, the makeshift oven, and a small pantry cabinet with genuine ease. Five tie-downs on a soiled brown tarp simultaneously unknotted themselves. Out came tables, stools, and frayed bedding.
Nopony noticed me as she sat herself at what had once been a premium empire-style spindle-legged coffee table, now with a darkly begrimed and chipped heavy travertine top. As she pulled down the dirty paisley cloth sofa, she also dumped out the contents of my two bags. The cookies tried to roll, but she caught them and arranged them in a two by three grid. The brittle pile went crump as she broke them into shareable chunks. She motioned the babbling pink pony over with a wave of her hoof. But as she approached, Loquacious looked up.
Her magenta eyes locked on mine. Simultaneously, a phlegmy voice to my left said, "Your Majesty!" but in a borderline rude way a parent upbraided a foal.
I jerked out of my stupid fascination to face the elderly gold spokespony with rheumy blue eyes I'd met with Flowing Waters. Deer Tracks. He had that disappointed daddy look and tapped a hoof, though he had ducked his head in a sketchy bow.
He said, "Is it polite to spy on ponies?"
I actually gasped. The unabashed cheek!
The correct answer was yes. As the only remaining monarch and absolute ruler of Equestria, the answer was that I alone defined polite. All rights and property stemmed from me to be granted or revoked upon my whim. I had sent Puddinghead to Tartarus in the fifth year of the founding of the nation for implying I was uncouth. (And… I kinda was a face-in-the-plate food-horse.) I remember the Puddinghead fiasco only because it started a bit of a civil war—okay, a bad civil war—that I resolved by admitting I was young and foalish, and, oh yeah... going to Tartarus to fetch the apologetic albeit apoplectic pony and bring him back with me.
The practical answer, and right answer, was no. It was impolite to spy. Being polite was practical because I needed everypony's cooperation to assure Equestria's survival. No was right also because...
I wasn't born a royal.
I was born a peasant unicorn of High Desert (pre-Saddle Arabian) heritage in a mountain pass village above the Red Serpent Sea, long-forgotten but known for the acacia wood we harvested, and, I think, the wooden utensils and bowls we carved. Though it was ages ago, I ended up deposing the rightful queen of Unicornia with the aid of a foreign-born adopted sister.
I was an usurper. Not a royal—but I did write the histories, as I am doing now, and that counted most. I knew certain truths in my heart, even if I'd forgotten the details after a thousand years. I couldn't remember the names of my parents or the colors of their manes, though I imagined I did. Though I could remember my first love, the only thing I could remember of my first born was the pain of— his or her birth.
That and many other memories also suffered the same fate. Many intentionally. It takes a century to thoroughly forget some things. You see, the Tree of Harmony's curse also afflicted me with immortality.
Think about it.
Ashes and dust in the wind. So many ponies!
The cycle of life...
Would you not try to forget, too?
Bang! The incredible clatter of rusty iron horseshoes against a thick plate of rust-swirled cream-colored stone shocked me from my thoughts.
I turned to see the queen, enraged, standing with her front hooves on the coffee table. Her anger projected through the glare of her turquoise eyes, the clench of her teeth, and a stance that made me think she was ready to charge me. Had her yellow and red mane transformed into actual fire, I would not have been surprised. As I watched, the strongmare reared and banged the table again and screamed, "No welcome! No. Welcome!"
Deer Tracks said drolly, "Perhaps you should leave, Your Majesty."
I looked at him, eyes narrowing. I did not blink as I said, "I have come to see the Queen and so I shall."
"Oh, alrighty then," he said, backing away and reflexively ducking into a full bow, "Your Majesty."
The other ponies, except to Loquacious, prostrated themselves. This served only to anger the Queen of Cliffside more, now with all four hooves planted on the table.
Manifestly not what I wanted.
Thinking quickly, I curtsied to the self-proclaimed queen, eyes momentarily down, while saying, "Ponies, you need not bow to me in the presence of your queen."
The stallions responded quickly by getting up and retreating.
When Loquacious lowered her head and began stalking toward me, the queen struck a hoof against the table and said, "Stay! Behind!" motioning her back. Whilst Loquacious started a heated argument with two unseen companions that apparently had been reinforcing her charge, she did obey and joined the stallions.
To me, Her Majesty reiterated, "No welcome! Go!"
I slowly walked closer, saying, "You wear the sweater I gave you. I bought those cookies as a prize. You won the game when you took them! You are very clever."
"Go!"
"I brought you gifts. The least you could do is talk to me."
She stepped back and I stopped. "No want talk, want take." She pointed with her nose curtly at me for emphasis, indicating the missing pronoun you.
You don't want to talk. You want to take—me. She wasn't wrong.
Had nopony taught her to speak properly? Well... with her magical prowess and that strength of personality, likely nopony had the temerity. "I just want to talk."
She stepped back again, guessing that my agenda ultimately made my words a lie. One hoof slipped off the table, so she followed with her hindquarters. Eyes narrowing, she said, "Know strong kind. Take foals away to bad-where where no see."
Child services and truancy officers. Of course.
I took a deep breath and lay on the cold cobbles, my head at her level with her standing on the table. I tried to look non-threatening—though seriously, any unicorn with open eyes was dangerous if you were in her direct line of sight, physically if not magically. I said, "I want to give you the gift of a home that's warm and dry in the winter, and all the food—"
"No!" she interrupted, retreating completely off the table. "No take queen from ponies queen protect." A green aura gathered around her horn. "Not ever!"
With that, like a heat mirage, she shimmered away as I sensed her ducking down, dodging toward the remaining furniture judging by the momentary but quickly fading sound of hooves. Snow and tears! She'd cast an entirely new spell! Was she making up her magic real-time?!
I jumped into the air, correctly pivoting so as not to jam my wings. The ponies, including the pink one, cringed against the brick wall as I arced down to land on the table where I triggered my sound spell and worked to sense any magic. Squinting, I looked to see anything subtly incorrect against the brick wall, the shelves, the couple of stools and bedding still stacked with tarps. I cast a shadow from one of the two wane lanterns behind me, giving her the advantage.
Something crunched under hoof.
The cookies! I spun one after another like china saucers toward either side of the heaped furniture. The foal yelped in the alley down toward Elm Street. I grabbed the tarp and shoved it in her direction, but with the agility of youth, she wheeled before it could envelop her. I caught a glimpse of a yellow and red mane.
I threw the honey brittle, trying to get a range on her so I could grab her directly, but she was too clever by far. She'd sacrificed the integrity of her illusion to cast Levitate. While I had tossed the honey brittle in her direction, she caught it and shot it back at me with the velocity of an arrow.
I drew my wings across my face. Sharp glass-like sugar pinged off my breast plate and bounced off my wings, but peppered my right leg and the elbow of my left wing hard enough to draw blood. Had she gotten my eyes…
"Look, young lady. This is no longer a game." I readied Shield in case she threw the cookies or anything else. I stepped off the table and levitated the hurricane lanterns to illuminate the homeless cache and to throw confusing double shadows to bollix her illusions. "Ask for anything you want, but you are going to go home with me tonight."
I sensed a storm of magic brewing. Again, different equations, different effects, all ad hoc, none of it standard. I groaned. "You want to make this difficult, don't you?"
"No so," whispered a new voice.
While the queen's voice had the high piping sound of a foal turning into a filly, this voice sounded much older, a filly in her teen years. Another one!? Had Flowing Waters missed that there were two foals in the Cliffside camp?
Of course there were two! It explained how they managed the incredible feats of illusion they'd performed. They worked as a team, one protecting the other. While I coveted a prodigy capable of capturing Luna, a team that could work to a similar goal was a safer bet.
I stepped back, ears and eyes still working to acquire targets, but trying to appear willing to negotiate if anypony proved willing. I said, "I don't want to make it difficult. Come out and talk to me. I would rather you chose to come with me."
"Okay," said the small filly voice. "No hurt me." It came from behind the stacks of soiled white mattresses with red and blue ticking.
"I promise."
The first movement I saw was a nose. Nostrils pulsed, then I saw a muzzle that swam in the shadows before becoming definite. Sure of what she smelled, she crept out further until I could see the outline of a horn, downturned ears, and the dark curls of a mane with a deep, bouncing wave. As the filly advanced, I could see her limbs were muscular. I could not at first make out her colors, but, as she crawled from under the shadows, something deep in me recognized something.
My heart fluttered, then raced. My skin chilled with a presentiment of fear.
As the shadow filly crawled into the light, I realized I failed to see the color of her coat and mane because they weren't colored. Her coat was the dull gray of iron quenched in oil after being removed from a forge. Her wavy, elegant mane had a silky sheen in the light, but was the darkest black of midnight. Her eyes gleamed a deep emerald green.
I gasped, stepping back, memories flooding in from a past I had worked very hard to forget. I stumbled back against the sofa, edged right and backed until my flank suddenly banged into the frigid alley wall. How could this be happening to me?
She stood tall for what appeared to be a twelve year-old unicorn blank-flank. Her cheeks were aristocratic and fine-boned, her nose dainty, and her eyes expressive with threadlike eyelashes. As she spoke, her voice rang sweetly, though she spoke with the queen's syntax. She said, "Name mine Sombre."
The feared memory thunked into my skull with the impact of a hammer blow, sundering me to the ground. My chin cracked on the cobblestones and I saw stars.
In the years following the curse, Star Swirl's alchemical knowledge hit its peak. In search of the magic that had powered the gems from the Tree of Harmony, he instead mastered the science of time and space and, together with his student Barthemule and their disciples, filled a library with treatises and grimoires. From his research, one of the devices he built proved to be a gateway to other parts of space, different eras of time, and alternate universes. All of it was based in part on my discovery of the Cerberus gate into Tartarus. The apparition his spells created reflected all light. Properly framed in an oval structure that allowed it to be tuned by reading a spell to it, a pony could step through it into a different world. At first it proved unstable and we visited a proto-pony world of giant toothy reptilian horses that walked on two legs. Over a decade, we refined the proof-of-concept device until we could make a spell to tune in worlds with similar histories but alternate pony forms, like deer or apes, or worlds with ponies with alternate histories.
One day, Star Swirl's spell broke my heart.
It may sound trite, but I met my first love on the other side of a magic mirror. The Sombra of the mirror world had become a fair prince, not an evil King. The evil in his world had not cursed the crystal pony subjects of my Equestria, but something else. His fairness and wisdom had united the Crystal Empire, The High Desert lands, and Equestria together, and in that world, Luna had never had the responsibility of raising the moon.
But here, in the alley before me, a peculiar filly looked at me, surprised at my behavior. Had my prince, my truest heart, had a daughter that looked like him, this filly would have been her. I recognized my Prince Sombra in her every fiber. Oh, snow and tears, did I recognize her! The breeze in the air even brought me Sombra's unique horsey-flowery scent. And though the logical part of my mind told me it could not be true—could not ever be true—that though the timelines of the mirror and our world did not run in sync, if she were his daughter…
It meant she would be my first born foal that I could no longer remember. She would be the foal I had lost when Star Swirl discovered that I had traveled many years in the alternate universe in the space of weeks. Star Swirl and I knew that too much contact would destabilize our two universes, but I had thought minimizing the visits by modulating the passage of time between the two would fix things. He didn't think so. He shut down the portal and hid the specifying spell. We argued and I couldn't get by all the lies I had told him about the times I had been in his laboratory. I couldn't tell him I had traveled while he slept, taken a lover, and had recently borne a foal. It had been my High Desert peasant pride. And I understood I had been a bad pony. Craven, even. I had nevertheless refused to speak to him after that, my oldest and dearest friend, expecting him to come around to my thinking.
Not a month later, the elderly pony died.
I had not been able to say goodbye to anypony, not my friend, not my love, nor my foal.
There had been any number of mirrors after that, but none exactly right. After a couple centuries, I had stopped hunting through his notes and had forgotten everything.
But not completely, it seemed.
"Okay?" the filly inquired, coming closer and lowering her head to examine me better. Her eyes glistened. Concern dripped from her voice like thick syrup.
I began to cry.
She said, "No hurt me?"
What about me? I should have known better. I had vulnerabilities buried beneath vulnerabilities, and while I began to understand the magnitude of the audacity of the foal's attack, I was nonetheless broken. I lay there. Broken.
I said, "I promise."
She said, "Name mine Sombre." A hoof, the speckled gray of granite just like my Sombra's, reached out and touched my right leg. I felt it even though by now I knew it wasn't real but a very good illusion. I shuddered, the play of emotions in me reluctant to see it dispelled because it filled a hole in my soul that could never be refilled.
"Okay?" she asked. I could feel her warm breath on my face, and when I looked, the breeze seemed to ruffle her fur and shape her black tail as she swished it.
I moaned.
"No hurt me?" she repeated.
I vaguely remembered reading about simulacra in grimoires the griffons and I had captured from Desert Rose's stronghold, reading and doubting the mathematics, not to mention the science behind them. I could now testify that simulacra were no fantasy, no myth. As tears streamed down my face out of my control, I looked up blinking at what my primal rabbit brain insisted was the visage of my first foal.
Armed with that logic, as I tamped down my longing and loneliness, glimmers suddenly surrounded Sombre. With effort, staring into her emerald eyes—eyes which could have been those of a guileless abandoned foal, or her father and my lover—I began to see through her.
"Okay?" she asked as a hoof rubbed my cheek.
With a groan, I looked to my left and to my right, to Elm and to Cedar, but everypony had left. The Queen of Cliffside had vanished, no doubt physically, having sundered her enemy thoroughly. While the simulacrum faded, I didn't even have other ponies to verify whether the apparition actually looked as I perceived it, or if the self-proclaimed queen had woven some mind contagion that wormed its way into the most vulnerable part of my brain, forcing me to relive the nightmare around the one tragedy that in its immediacy outweighed the thousand-year curse.
I closed my eyes and sobbed. For minutes, I endured the broken record of Sombre's words, and the thankfully fading touch of the illusory beast. I mourned my long dead… one last time.
I still didn't remember my foal's name.
My tears finally dried, leaving the fur on the sides of my face stiff. I heard a tentative, "Your Majesty?"
I took a deep breath. I recognized Good Eye's voice and looked up at the concerned white unicorn constable. My eyes burned and had to be red. I sniffed as I looked around, but was alone but for him in the alley.
Sombre had disappeared into a fever dream.
He offered a hoof up. I stood and sniffed again, looking down at him, ruffling my wings and putting my feathers back in place.
He asked, "Is there anything I can do?"
I looked at the bits of scattered cookie and honey brittle and felt my chest constrict. Child's wealth.
Child's love.
Weaponized.
I was still a bad pony.
I looked at the disarrayed discarded furniture, then at Good Eye in his starched blue uniform. I huffed. Where had he been when I needed to verify what I had seen? I walked toward Elm, preparing to fly back to the palace. I stopped with us standing in a white pool of light from a street lamp to say, "Who knew that homeless ponies could be so dangerous?"
He looked thoughtful as I flew away.
That night in my bed, with extra blankets, I lay not sleeping, a breeze entering the window. Pegasai had already gathered clouds. Tomorrow, they would kick the snow out of them. Regardless, I wanted to wash Sombre's clinging scent out of my nostrils, but even the icy air didn't help. A part of me wanted to discard the notion of working with Her Majesty the self-appointed Queen of Cliffside, to tell Flowing Waters off until I'd frightened him so badly he'd cease to be my friend. The curse would go to its inevitable end. Did I need to make my last years an unmitigated hell? I didn't need the Queen of Cliffside. Equestria was lost. It was what the curse had been telling me from the beginning.
With me dead and gone, perhaps Equestria would recover. It was all an illusion of power, anyway. It was what the curse wanted to burn from me, wanted to punish me for. If I accepted the inevitable, accepted my punishment, and let it all be over, perhaps Nightmare Moon would vanish. Luna might prevail; she might lead Equestria down a better path than I ever could.
That meant I had to have hope.
Faith…
Ha! And ha! Faith just wasn't in my nature.
I fell asleep resolving to try again, perhaps in a year or two, when I healed my grief, when Her Little Majesty matured and realized I wasn't a danger but an asset. She had learned so much on her own. She was more magical than I was. I had never been a prodigy, just oddly talented and ruthless given a cause. She had all three assets and didn't yet have a cutie mark! She would surely learn by herself that another world beyond Cliffside awaited her.
Surely...
My majordomo shook me awake, his horn aglow with a bright blue light in a dark room. I arose with a scream. I'd been locked in a loop of Queen of Cliffside and Sombre dreams, each a variation of the other, one or the both attacking with hooves or words and always bruising me, or throwing me down a cliff, or locking me alone behind a mirror, or chaining me to a restriction zone in Tartarus. And each time, they'd hit me with knife-sharp cookies, or darts of honey brittle. I would always be bleeding as I was approached, incapacitated. The queen's voice would become clearer, more articulate, more eloquent.
"These are my ponies. I will protect them until my last breath. My ghost will destroy you if I cannot. You are unworthy to rule. You are unworthy to breathe!"
I screamed again and galloped to the balcony, threw open the french doors hard enough to smash the glass out of them and rip the draperies. Forelegs clamped over the white marble balustrade, I screamed "No!" again and again, then stood hyperventilating, looking over the gardens and the university campus beyond.
The nightmare faded.
Ponies. Gardeners. Students. They stared, while a couple of guards scrambled toward the palace. Dark billowy clouds obscured the sky, but thinned at the horizon where an abandoned moon lay inert.
As the dream faded, I realized the spectacle I'd made. But then I froze as another memory hammered me.
That "my ghost will destroy you if I cannot" speech had been my words to Queen Platinum when I challenged her rule.
I reacted viscerally.
Fortunately, I turned around before retching, splattering the marble floor. I collapsed, bringing up naught but bile. Over and over I kept thinking that the Queen of Cliffside had challenged me the same way I had challenged my Queen Platinum. Intuition insisted that I had become to her what I abhorred in my distant. I don't know long I lay there, but it was Dr. Flowing Waters who came to clean me up and get some calming chamomile into me to wash the awful taste from my mouth.
I didn't tell him what happened, but I did say that I was going to assure more money would be spent to help the indigent in the city, regardless what my counselors said.
I needed to let the Queen of Cliffside win her battle. Time would heal the damage I'd caused. Opportunities would present themselves.
I needed a vacation.
I was also two hours late raising the sun and the city was in an uproar. The whole thing, last night's battle and the dream—and everything in between—was ominous and I should have remembered that I was cursed.
As I approached the throne room where I had my audiences, Red Rambler, my pegasus exchequer, tried to waylay me. The violet mare flipped her long green mane. I could not help but notice her gold-bit-filled red wagon a cutie mark. She said, "Your Majesty, you may not add further expenditures to the budget!"
Had Flowing Waters spilled my plans?
I looked ahead to the Equidoran trade delegation, small short-maned ponies all of them with fur in variations of puce, and one bluish nightwing, apparently a servant by the load he carried. He spotted my approach and moved behind the others. His ancestors had been Luna's guard and native to these lands, but had left when Luna and I had had our last falling out. I'd heard the nightwings still had legends that painted me as something evil. The ponies all wore the same bargain-basket tan wool coats. Coming from an equatorial nation, they probably didn't like the snow. All but the tips of the nightwing's black leather wings were hidden. I looked from the Equidorans and back to Rambler and said, "It's a negotiation, not a discussion of foreign aid."
"No. No. The city budget is very tight. All this raising awareness you've done is causing demands—"
I stopped in the doorway to the hall. "Raising awareness?" Perhaps not Flowing Waters…
Rambler didn't answer because Duke Pure Snow, a massive white earth stallion with a strawberry mane (red, striped with green), was stalking up past the delegation and drawing attention as he did. He wore a red waistcoat with a white sash and an embroidered snow flake crest outlined in green, and a black cravat. "Your Majesty! Your. Majesty," he said with incredible bombast, as if nopony could hear him approach simply by the stomping of his anvil-iron-sized hooves. He dwarfed all the farm ponies I'd ever met. "How many times have I told you no new civic programs this quarter!"
Now the Equidoran delegation, the guards around my throne, and my secretary with her pile of papers stared. The milling commoners awaiting the general audience—not to mention the castle-beat reporters in the roped off area near the door, began to look also. I'd raised the sun late, gotten sick on my balcony, and now this. I rolled my eyes. "Had I decided to initiate a new program, I'd have had you cut back a subsidy, like to Marvel Earthworks or your pet Haymaker Guild." That stopped him. His lips compressed as I added, "But I haven't—" Yet. "—As we agreed." Quieter. "There's a time and a place, you two—"
"Agreed?" the two asked in unison, looking each other in the eye. Oddly, they both had blue eyes.
"The League of Concerned Mares is demanding funding for shelters and jobs programs!" cried the Duke at the same time as the Exchequer said, "At your request, the constabulary is reorganizing their patrol division and requesting to hire more constables for the beat, guards for the jail, and increased training staff."
I blinked at them. I filled in cheese and mayonnaise between the two slices of bread I held: Homeless ponies.
Something stupid had happened.
Me.
The events of the last number of days hadn't happened in a vacuum, nor had they been just between the Queen of Cliffside and I. While I had tuned out the audience I inevitably gathered wherever I'd gone, that audience had nevertheless been there. Common ponies in the warehouse district, aristocrats and foodies in Cliffside on the Strand, guards who searched for me when I wasn't where they expected me, and constables who paid attention when anything disturbed the status quo. If the princess was interested in the homeless issue, it was for her faithful subjects to be interested, too—in their own manifestly incompatible ways.
I remembered Good Eye's thoughtful expression last night after he found me alone in the abandoned alley amongst the detritus of the homeless camp. I remembered telling him to tell his duty sergeant to get Loquacious help. Most of all, I remembered stating, "Who knew that homeless ponies could be so dangerous?"
I was a thousand years old and still a foal!
I stomped my foot at the entrance to the throne-room. I out-massed the Duke Pure Snow 3 to 2. I not only made a sharp bang on the floor, I cracked the marble. I had everypony's eyes on me now, my ministers, my guards, and my petitioners, including the peerage, the commoners, and the Equidorans. I couldn't care less. Suddenly nervous that my plans lay shattered, I had to know the extent of the damage—immediately.
I teleported and stepped out of in-between beyond the throne-room doors, causing a purple petitioner to dance away. I galloped to the stairs, where I teleported again though the palace doors into the garden courtyard, crunching into snow that powdered the walkway tiles. Even on a cold day like today—with a light flurry coming down to rest on topped rose bushes and leafless branches and castle ramparts—the cold of in-between steamed off my feathers. I shivered as my nose grew cold. My worry made it hard to visualize my next jump downtown, so I flared my wings and jumped into the blue-gray overcast sky. A gray pegasus guard in brass regalia jumped into the air behind me. I didn't stop him, but he'd have to keep up.
I flared my wings, coming in fast, raising a cloud of snow as I landed before the alley on Elm Street. A green mare pulling a wagonette swerved around me while hoof traffic bowed, but I ignored the rest as I walked, stunned at what I saw.
Or rather, at what I didn't see. The alley lay empty. Wagon wheels had turned parts of the alley to blackish slush. The cache of furniture, a meager but important stash of homeless pony community wealth, had vanished. Evidence of some of it being dragged away was visible in the snow, but the morning flurries had softened the scars.
Loquacious was gone.
A yellow mare with a dark violet mane and a denim uniform coat pulled a cart down from Cedar Lane, her hooves making a muted clippty-clack as she came by. "Your Majesty," she said as she approached while I stared at the empty brick wall. "Nice that the constabulary cleared out the alleyways," she said as she passed. "About time. Makes it less scary to use them."
"Snow and Tears," I said quietly. Appropriately. There was snow, and tears began to freeze on the fur on my muzzle.
I remembered the Queen of Cliffside saying "No take queen from ponies queen protect." Something told me nopony had taken her anywhere. I also remembered her saying about me that I "No want talk, want take." To any extent that I had implied I was okay with the homeless camp and didn't mean to threaten them—either speaking to her or her "subjects"—miscommunication made me a liar.
I heard the guard's wings and the clatter of brass horseshoes as he landed. I turned to him and said, "Corporal Quill. Please fetch the constabulary officer in charge of this precinct and bring him here, now."
"Your Majesty!" he said, ducking his head before jumping into the air.
I returned to staring at the empty wall and thinking. I had wanted a vacation. I had wanted a time of healing for the two of us, but if I were her, and a thousand years ago I had very definitely been her, what I had seen happen was a declaration of war. I had torn Unicornia to shreds. I doubted that Her Little Majesty could cause the utter havoc I did in my late-teens; I had had a gleeful no-sense-of-humor 8-year-old alicorn Luna at my side to help, but still… No doubt the queen could cause havoc. No, would cause havoc. If she attacked the constabulary, she'd go from a vagrant and a truant to a criminal. If she hurt an officer, or worse, I might find myself unable to properly intervene.
"Snow and Tears," I cursed, but when that wasn't enough, I yelled it again at the wall forcefully enough to burn my throat. When it had the temerity to echo back at me "Snow and Tears!", I bucked it hard for good measure.
I heard the exit bang of a teleport and turned to the entrance on Cedar to see a blue mare in a blue constabulary uniform and jacket. I saw gold sergeant stripes and moments later Good Eye came galloping up, skidding precisely to a stop beside his duty officer. Together, the pair approached me. They both bowed at a distance of two-pony lengths, doffing their hats momentarily. Snow still swirled down onto their manes. "Your Majesty."
"I may have implied that I wanted the homeless population of Canterlot cleaned up. That wasn't my intent."
The older mare blinked at me, then glanced at her underling.
"It isn't Good Eye's fault. I did say they were dangerous… In any case, the most important thing is that nopony harm the Queen of Cliffside. You've heard of her?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. Everypony on the force has, though nopony ever gets close enough to catch her."
"I also want any impounded property—"
"Um—" the sergeant said. "Goods in damaged, badly soiled, or pest-infested condition are always thrown away, Your Majesty."
I bowed my head and sighed. "Return everything you have. Send me a manifest of everything discarded and from where."
"I'll do my best." Translated: Nopony thought these things important to report.
"Any arrests?"
Good Eye said, "Loquacious was committed to Lower Canterlot General."
The sergeant added, "Five were busted when they got in the way of the cleanup. A dozen others were taken to the shelter and told to stay there until after the pegasus weather brigade clears out the storm at the end of the week."
"I want this fixed."
The sergeant coughed. "Respectfully, we followed the procedures and the law, Your Majesty. I can only fix this on your direct orders. The precinct may go over budget."
Good pony. She knew how the system worked. "Consider it a direct order," I said, looking away.
"Your Majesty," the two said together and trotted off, leaving me alone.
Oh, not quite alone. I looked up at Corporal Quill, hovering quietly, and said, "Good job. Return to the palace."
"Respectfully," the pegasus said, mimicking the sergeant's tone, "that's against my orders. The captain of the guard revised protocol this morning, considering you were sick— Your Majesty!"
He must have seen annoyance in my eyes. "Tell my captain of the guard that he can go to Tartarus, and that I'll send him there if he doesn't leave me alone for the next two hours."
"Your Majesty, he'll say he'd look forward to the vacation—"
"Go."
The pegasus bowed in the air. He said, "Two hours, yes, Your Majesty," and shot away.
Did you ever notice how when other ponies act competently around you it makes you realize how incompetent you are? I sighed and walked on to Elm. The fact was that the captain was right. His job was to guard me from harm, but the only way I was going to catch Her Little Majesty now, before she did something we would both regret, was to walk out there as bait, a target for her ire.
I walked slowly east toward the park. I had to apologize. Though realistically I can't be responsible for every misconstrued order, it was nonetheless my fault. I was the leader. Everything in Equestria, every privilege and all property stemmed from me. Looked at from the point of responsibility—and, snow and tears, the word "responsibility" was so very synonymous with "Celestia" that it defined me—what went down from me also bounced back up like a rubber ball. I always had to catch. Part of the job. Part of pretending to be royal. Part of my many curses, real and self-imposed.
In the Queen of Cliffside's case, I doubted she'd be forgiving. I never forgave Queen Platinum her vanity and selfishness, nor could I, not that she would have ever understood the concept of apology, slights were forever, but still… with this particular foal...
I had to try.
As I walked, I started say to nopony in particular, "Queen of Cliffside, Your Majesty, I wish to talk to you." News of my illness this morning had spread, and my talking to myself surely confirmed it. I was self-conscious for about half a block, but the few strange looks I got helped me remember that I had sacrificed everything for the sake of Equestria, including my adopted sister. I was Equestria. What was personal pride and dignity in the face of that?
I needed a student to carry on after my demise. Somepony who'd know how to fight for those she protected, would be clever, and would not give up. Somepony like the teenage High Desert unicorn mare named Sunny Daze who thought she only new practical household magic.
As I approached the intersection before Blueblood Park at General Firefly Parkway, I heard a clatter of hooves on the shoveled sidewalk behind me. Intuition—and a couple of ponies in matching cattail-lined red parkas looking distressed at somepony following behind me—allowed me to guess what kind of pony approached.
"I'm sorry," I said as an elderly gold stallion paced me to the corner. "Dreadfully sorry."
"Your Majesty," he said in full earnestness. I saw him sketch a full bow in my peripheral vision. We both looked forward, momentarily equals, standing on a busy street corner. He wore a scarf and our breath formed clouds above our muzzles, surprising because the brandy on his breath ought to have acted like an antifreeze. He added, "I literally collided with my nephew at the palace when I came to petition you because of the raid early this morning. He was apoplectic that you considered cutting subsidies to the Haymaker Guild. I wish his father disowned him instead of me; at least I'm only a harmless drunk."
"You're Duke Pure Snow's uncle." I snorted, imagining the blowhard colliding with his vagrant uncle. The condensation made vapor donuts. I agreed with Deer Track's sentiments.
"I figured out from his tirade about you not being aware of the quote trouble you cause just by talking or leaving the palace unquote, that the raid wasn't your fault—"
"When ponies do what they think I mean, that makes it my fault."
"Suit yourself, Your Majesty, but I can't hold it against you. I saw a kind heart in that white feathered body of yours. I figure you're going to make this right."
I took a deep breath of cold air—
"Here," he said, levitating a rusted tin flask in a light blue aura. "You need this."
Not showing being taken aback, I asked, "May I?" I didn't wish to take even the tiniest wealth from the poorest, not after the damage I had wrought today.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
To the abject horror of the growing crowd of aristocrats, business ponies, and workponies, all in colorful coats with knit sweaters or scarves, I unscrewed the cap and took a swig of the homeless pony's offering.
Uhhhhhh...
That burned. I worked not to cough as my throat constricted and then my belly warmed. Not total swill.
We still looked forward. More ponies stood aghast.
I felt better suddenly. Did you know that timberwolves drink turpentine? I found that out at a peace summit. Kind of pushed sharing protocols to the limit, didn't it? I said, "Kind sir, may I have a bit more?"
"Yes, My Princess."
This time I drank a long pull and felt warmer still, ignoring the fire in my throat and careful to hold my breath. Ah. It made my belly warm; I'd definitely regret this later. Surely the brandy killed any germs he had left on the container? "Thank you. You are kinder than I deserve. You need not use a title with me, Deer Tracks."
He wordlessly took the flask from my yellow aura and nodded with the aplomb of the peerage, which he technically was. No wonder the Queen of Cliffside had picked him as her prime minister. As a last lorry and six—lashed two stories high with tarped velvet furniture—passed through the intersection, I crossed and he paced me. Our audience scattered, as well they ought. As I crossed again to the sidewalk bordering the park, he said, "I figured you would also be going to apologize to the queen. Um... Not a good idea."
I sighed. "No choice. Putting myself in her horseshoes, I can imagine her getting herself into a lot of trouble."
"It would be her trouble," he pointed out.
"And trouble for anypony she hurt, but it is much bigger than that." I took a deep breath and added, "When my sister returns, the queen may be the only pony who can save Equestria."
Deer Tracks gasped. Looking pale, he sped up a step and looked at me and said, "For a moment there it was as if your mouth disappeared and your words became gibberish." He looked worried.
I chuckled. It was an effect of the curse. "You heard I was sick this morning? You've heard of the alicorn flu?" I equivocated. "Not contagious unless you're an alicorn. Weird symptoms."
"Weird doesn't describe it, Your—"
A snowball hit him squarely in his cutie mark of splayed black crescents. Another hit him in the nose. I walked by him as he bucked reflexively and tossed his head.
I looked into the park and thus saw a snowball curve around a copse of trees in a turquoise aura with no time to react. The finely guided missile struck me in the neck and knocked me back. I stumbled into the brick wall of a storefront, unable to get traction on the icy pavement, bounced off and clatter-hooved into the street.
A hunk of sidewalk skittered away and dropped over the curb the same instant I did.
I fluttered my wings and kept myself upright. A bus and eight barely swerved. The stallions pulling it would have trampled me had I fallen over. Blood trickled from the torn skin on my neck and cooled there.
Had she aimed more to my left, she could have hit my throat; higher, my temple. She had aimed to hurt me, or dissuade me, not to maim.
"Queen of Cliffside!" Deer Tracks cried into the park. "Please don't pick this fight!"
For her prime minister's betrayal, the next missile, an undisguised rock, hurled at his flank. I was faster. Not on the draw, alas because of the brandy, but I fluttered in front of him and interposed my breastplate with a resounding clank. Some training you don't forget, I guess. I cast Shield, though I knew in my gut that the adorably cute little foal was already changing tactics. I would be.
"Get out of here, and tell everypony to stay away, even the constables—"
"But-but, Your Majesty!"
"That's a command!"
Dropping the shield, I levitated him into an obscuring snow drift at the corner. I reflexively cast Teleport. A glass storefront exploded in a cascade of tinkling glass behind where I stood. I popped out of in-between in the middle of the park, steaming with both frost and anger, laced with the respect I had had only for a few enemies, like the Palm Giants or the Quetzalcoatl.
I respected flexibility.
Didn't mean I wouldn't win, though.
And I could teach about flexibility. I cast Shield and expanded it out around me, pushing a duck across the water and out toward the trees. I walked forward and caught sight of tiny hoof prints in the snow. I changed course.
A sudden wave of snow shot up, completely blinding me and frosting me from the tip of my horn to the dock of my tail. Right. Shield worked for physical objects, not magic. I dropped the spell.
I heard a belly laugh and rotated to face my opponent.
I knew she learned magic by observation; I just hoped she didn't have a talent for doing that quickly because she was already too clever by far. The last thing I needed was for her to learn more spells to throw back at me.
I shook off the snow and righted my crown, ready to dodge another snowball or rock. All around the park, perhaps frightened by the smashed storefront or snow rising up to envelop their princess, winter-clothed ponies ran, abandoning sleds and hats and shopping bags—leaving behind more stuff to throw at me.
Or... it was the snow ponies that appeared beyond the hoof prints I'd spotted. The creepy things looked horse-like, but were sculpted crudely as a foal might do. Bits of dead leaf or bark gave them eyes, ears, nostrils, and a baleful smile. I saw a faint turquoise aura as they assembled, then as they moved like chess pieces. If this was a Sombre-style psychological attack, it wasn't working.
Not my nightmare.
I grabbed a gliding snow golem in my magic. It went poof into a pile as I stepped out of in-between searching for clues as to whether she had to be near to build it. It wasn't an illusion, but I also saw no tracks. Magic swirled all around.
I whirled around, condensation streaming from my nostrils as streamers of frost-steam rose from my hide.
I said, "Queen of Cliffside, Your Majesty, I want to talk to you—"
"No welcome!" sounded a chorus of a dozen snow ponies surrounding me. An aural voice projection spell.
I suddenly understood the tableau she'd baited me into. She needed backing for her illusions to blend into them. I could crush them into piles of snow, but I had gotten her to talk so I decided not to do that yet. You have to hear all the no's before you can turn them into yeses. "Please talk to me."
"No talk. Go!" she yelled, a single voice jumping from one snow pony to the next with each word. "Protect outside ponies. Best bad pony, go-ed bad pony. Queen angry!"
"I know. I'm sorry—"
"Sorry's no fix. No fix. Go fix! No return Cliffside, fix!"
The magic around me shivered and shuddered, shifting like fog in an unstable wind. My mane kept changing direction to match the unseen currents. She was close by, but every sense gave confusing echoes, so much so that I began to feel that some of the snow ponies themselves might be illusory reflections. If she was moving, her chameleon illusion was morphing instantly as she stalked around, but she only had to maintain a very small angle to my eyes. Had there been sun, it wouldn't have worked. Had I had an ally outside the circle, he would surely have seen her clear as day, but I was in the middle of the park with not a spectator in sight. Her hooves didn't even crunch in the snow!
As in chess: check. Best to give up a playing piece. "I am returning everything taken—"
"Bad pony take," a snow pony behind me stated in a satisfied tone. I glanced back to find it had glided closer.
"And I'm returning what was taken. The constabulary— Sorry. It was I who made a mistake. I'm releasing all—"
"Talk," the one behind said. "Talk," the one at 2 o'clock said. "Talk," the one at 10 o'clock said—all with growing exasperation.
"Your ponies, your things. I'm returning them now."
"Good. Go. No return," the snow pony ahead said, sounding less resonant than the rest. All the constructs had slipped within three pony-lengths. "Go or bad pony pay."
My heart skipped a beat. That sounded like a threat...
She refused to accept apologies, or gifts. What could I do to break through to her? Everypony had something they wanted. Everypony. What did a queen want?
Right— "More ponies need your protection."
For a moment, everything went deadly still. The air had been calm, other than flurries zig-zagging down, but now the magic steadied. Gathered together. Had I interested her? My heart beat a little faster.
Did I push? Did I wait?
A calm…
…before the storm.
From nowhere and everywhere I heard a hissed whisper. "Pay."
All of a sudden, it felt like the ground had gone elastic. The horizon around me distorted and pushed upward, making the snow-covered park lawn reach for the sky, or more viscerally, the ground feel like a trampoline I'd fallen into. The world tilted, mostly to the right. The trees on Elm Street shifted around and leaned, then smeared… and my stomach turned—which was a feat since I was used to acrobatic flying. I stumbled, though my inner ear told me the effect was entirely visual.
The solution was to close my eyes, but I knew closing them would result in me being stoned again. I back-peddled, trying not to lose my balance.
Her goal: make me teleport out of the park. Getting me to flee was her last step in a full military rout. Fortunately for me, Professor Wind in the Willows had taught me Twirly Gig, and, more importantly, the transform necessary to reverse the effect of an attacker's Twirly Gig in order to cancel it.
I had yet to meet a pony who entered my school for gifted unicorns who knew they could cancel another's spell who hadn't been specifically taught that it was possible to cancel spell. If I did this right, I might reveal the scamp. I imagined the equations, sampling the sums whirling in her magic as I cast the spell. With a syrupy visual twist, the smear on reality began to right itself.
That was odd. Dozens of foal-sized hoof prints littered the snow. The act of noticing caused me to lean to the illusory horizon and stumble. One of the snow ponies had moved, or I had, and I reflexively jumped forward. As I tried to orient myself, the count of hoof prints doubled, then doubled again, crossing themselves.
My spell fully triggered and countered her spell. It snapped with a sound like a brittle twig. Like a design on a stretched and distorted balloon suddenly released, the park snapped back to normal. However, my brain had compensated. Normal became the new dizzy. I side stepped twice.
And, gotcha!
The Queen of Cliffside appeared, dancing around unstably, making prints. Though transparent, I saw her red and yellow mane flop to the other side of her head and her tail whipping side to side as she fought for balance. I got a good glimpse of her looking away in the direction in which she began to topple.
I reached with my magic to pin her.
Nothing.
"Bad Pony!" she yelled.
That came from three-quarters behind me. I'd been duped. I should have jumped aside, or done something, but I was stunned.
Hooves connected with the bone at the hock of my right rear leg.
Something went pop. Not the bone, but the tendon. And it didn't matter because I collapsed backward as her foal illusion disappeared like a mirage. As I rotated going down, I caught a glimpse of the real her wearing my red cable-knit cardigan. Pain took away my breath, but I managed to flutter a pony-width away to prevent a second strike.
She'd bucked me full on with perfect aim.
Snow rose up in a momentary whoosh and settled as I heard the snow ponies say in alternating voices, "Bad pony. Go. Or pay. More?"
My rabbit brain took over. Fight, flight, fight, flight, fight— I grabbed for her.
Nothing.
I grabbed again to the right.
Nothing... and all the hoof prints were gone. I fluttered off the ground, spraying snow around, looking.
Instinct insisted I teleport now, but before I could cast, I landed. The shock of my right rear leg touching the ground froze me the same instant that squirming ropes appeared like snakes. They wrapped the ankles of my forelegs.
I cast Teleport reflexively. The matrices of numbers that described the vector to the snow drift I'd dropped Deer Tracks into solved before I could stop myself.
The spell backfired, crisping the fur on my forehead circling the root of my horn as I screamed. Experience and reflex allowed me to catch the magic explosion before the conclusive magic could pummel and ignite the tissue below. I blew the energy up along the spiral of my horn, throwing off a spiral of flame wobbling towards the heavens. A headache stabbed me through the eyes and down my sinuses. It added to my snapped tendons and bruised neck, making it harder to think clearly.
The ropes tying themselves around my legs were actually stretchy fabric cables, solidly anchored into the ground. Anchoring had made my mass equation dramatically wrong—transforming my teleport vectors into irrational numbers by subtracting the mass and vector of the earth. Anchoring rendered another teleport attempt impossible. Hobbling a unicorn with a chain to a stake in the ground safely immobilized her.
I was now safely immobilized.
But I hadn't burnt out my magic, not that in my wildest nightmare did I think the foal had used the tactic intentionally, or understood what she had done. A backfire would have stunned a less experienced unicorn, possibly crippling her for life, but not me. Nopony immobilized me. None had since my seventeenth birthday, and Queen Platinum had paid for the attempt dearly.
I snapped together a force spell, splitting the beam between the two ropes that had knotted themselves tightly enough to make the pulse of blood in my legs heavy and hot against the constriction.
Snow and tears! The ropes were woven from flame-retardant material that resisted the spell's heat effect. I coughed, craning my head away from a noxious cloud that puffed up as the fibers melted away, incidentally burning me, causing me to lose precious seconds, and all idea of where the daughter of a timberwolf had scampered.
Thrilled and terrified—and I do mean terrified—I levered myself up on three legs, prepping Teleport in case there came another attack. I stood, wings flared, my eyes wide with the fear I barely kept tamped down in order to look for and sense magic, and not to flee. Think! Think! Think! Think! Think!
She'd surely feel she'd stripped me of my dignity. She'd made me pay—with my right rear leg held to my belly, dripping blood from a cut to redden the snow there... and from my neck. The right move and I'd be vanquished.
But I was also thrilled. Were I humorless Luna, sure, the ground would be bubbling lava, but I wouldn't be sending an untrained foal against my adopted sister. I was seriously impressed—and terrified. Sweating. Heart-racing. Terrified. Did I say terrified? I began to shake. Retreat looked to be a good choice.
Where was she?
Why didn't she speak?
Had she taken the distraction to retreat, figuring that leaving me humiliated would be enough "payment"?
I stood, huffing air as my body cried for me to retreat. Clouds of condensation shot from my mouth into the frigid air.
Clouds of condensation...?
I heard no movement, but I cautiously panned my eyes left without moving my neck, then right.
There. A little puff of condensation at half a pony-height. A few moments later, slightly left of the position.
The little feral miscreant wasn't even sweating it! The temerity of the foal!
I calmed my breathing, keeping Teleport prepped as I worked up a classically well-formed levitation spell. I used a derivative equation to keep them both firmly in mind. She wouldn't injure me again if this were another illusion and I chased a canard.
Ready…
I pretended to be tracking something ahead as I caught another puff of breath in my peripheral vision.
Grab!
The foal whinnied as if a puma had landed on her back, bucking as I turned trying to push down to keep her in place.
Instantly, her illusions snapped. Seven of the dozen snow ponies vanished, as did all the snow in the tiny arena I occupied. I saw some half-inch rebar bent into a wicket and jammed into the ground with the remnants of the rope. Tripping on it would have broken an ankle. She had planned this and lured me into her trap!
The foal became visible. I saw yellow fur, a red sweater, and the flames of her sunset-colored mane. Her tail whirled for balance. I'd managed to push down only on her withers. She grunted, bucking for all she was worth.
But I was an alicorn. Some things even she wouldn't break.
Condensation snorted out of her nose before she screamed, "Bad pony!"
She was looking my way. I saw calculated ferocity burning in the glare of her turquoise eyes before I realized her horn had lit up like an aquamarine with a beam of blazing sun refracting through it.
The primaries from my right wing, the feathers closest to her, jerked free from their root in the bone with a inconceivable wet snap. The world went completely white. I screamed my throat raw.
Pain stabbed through the center of my finger bone, but I remained upright, somehow. I shook my head, groggily trying to clear my senses as, horrified, I saw six white feathers twirl and whirly-gig down, probably primaries nine through three. I fluttered, trying to get out of her grasp, but she caught me again, this time facing her. I felt like a sparrow caught by a house cat. She grabbed my flight feathers, the secondaries, and before I could squirm away, jerked one out on my left, and too many out to count from my right, like stitches from a hem, one after another after another.
I triggered Teleport, but her vicious attack had caused me to lose my prep. Numbers flew through my head into oblivion, transporting me nowhere. I flapped, but I got no lift from my stinging right wing. Though the size of my wings were proportionally incorrect compared to what a bird my size would need—no pony could fly as I bird could—I also got lift from channeling my magic through the feathers now scattered at my hooves. My head whirled.
All the magic I had left, and all I was going to have going forward, was levitation because I still pressed down on her. Specks of my blood made my lost feathers stand out even against the frost-killed brown grass. The red pool accumulating behind me was both unmistakable and chillingly large.
Had my guard disobeyed my orders, any second the foal would be a mass of battered bones.
I had to control her! Immediately!.
Instead of pushing down, I flipped her head over hooves, trying to disorient her, trying to break her concentration, to prevent a third grab of magic represented by the pernicious aura that was nonetheless forming around my wings. "Stop this!" I yelled.
"Pay!" she yelled back.
This time, I felt her grasp go lower, for the base of my wings, for the joint where my wing connected to my flight scapula. And…
Dear Luna! She twisted.
I shook her upside down, yelling, "Stop! Please stop!"
"Bad pony pay!"
She twisted harder and bucked as I tumbled her in the air. She proved as impossible to disorient as a seasoned Wonderbolt. I thought to fling her away, and how to do that without hurting her, though she had no intention of not hurting me. Now, instead of twisting both wings, she put her full force into my right wing.
With a crack, she dislocated it—and kept pulling!
I fell on my left side, taking her down with me. She squirmed and bucked, but kept up the pressure on my wing, tenacious, with the misconceived confidence of immortality only youth, or stupidly accursed alicorns, counted upon.
Pain gnawed at my mind, ripping at thoughts that became progressively less coherent. The one thing I knew, I wasn't going to let go. It was stupid, but I feared I'd never find her again if she escaped.
As she tried to pull my right wing off as if it were that of a butterfly, she grabbed underneath me for the left wing joint. She knew! She knew it would take just a bit more pain and I'd lose control of my magic. Or lose consciousness, or both.
No.
Again I noticed the condensation around my nose and that around hers.
I shifted my grasp to her muzzle, clamping her mouth closed, stretching her lips to make a seal, and pressing her nostrils closed.
In controlled terror, she got her legs under her and pulled away as if I'd tied her head with a rope to the fence, pulling further and further away, and succeeding in that because though I was an alicorn, I had limits that were becoming more and more taxed as she twisted at my wing and I felt my ligaments tearing. I was gasping, having trouble seeing.
She could win. She knew that and she didn't give up even as I shouted, "Let go and I'll let go."
But she didn't.
And I didn't.
It took thirty seconds, but she tottered suddenly, then collapsed onto her front knees. She wiggled her head back and forth as if that could get her loose, but it couldn't.
The pull on my wings began to wane, but it didn't go away. The sides of her chest heaved, but I wasn't letting go first.
With one last effort, she let go of my wing joints, only to grab the end of my right wing to jerk out the last of my primaries before she went boneless and fell over.
I waited the count of seconds it took for her horn to go dark, to assure she was unconscious… or dead, though I hoped the former.
I let go.
I levered myself up from my side, ligaments, tendons, and joints screaming I would damage myself just by even thinking of moving. The world around me swam and I heard screeching noises in my ears. I couldn't flutter. I could push with my left wing. I only had my forelegs to pull with.
I managed it, only to stumble and barely keep from doing a header that would have surely knocked me unconscious.
As I hobbled and limped the five pony-lengths to the body, my right wing limp at my side and my right rear leg up, the screeching in my ears resolved into voices.
The Battle of Blueblood Park had lasted no more than two minutes with the foal becoming visible about a minute in and unable to breathe half a minute later.
My captain of the guard, wearing full brass armor, his limp red mane stuck through his helmet, landed with a thud as I fell in a barely controlled manner before the fallen feral queen's head. Flying high to avoid the ire of his princessly commander, the sudden view of a revealed foal in a cute red sweater disassembling his alicorn princess had probably stunned him in disbelief. I'd lived it and I hardly believed I'd let it happen. I leaned and turned my head to put my cheek beside the foal's nostrils. The brown-spotted white stallion looked unable to articulate, he was so shocked, but after a pause, he cried, "Your Majesty!
She wasn't breathing. She wasn't breathing!
I ordered, "Get me a doctor!"
"Your Majesty!" He looked toward the street. "He's coming. Dear Sweet Celestia," he breathed, with no sense of irony, "You're bleeding!"
"And. She's. Not. Breathing!"
I vaguely thought I knew what to do, and when the captain didn't move to assist, I reached out with haphazardly sputtering magic and half-balanced force equations to press and release her chest. I switched to holding her nose closed and breathing into her mouth a few times, then pressing her chest saying, "No, no, no."
She looked so innocent, her eyes shut with curly eyelashes, her body gone limp. A hope, possibly the only hope for the future of a free Equestria faded quickly away. Forget hope. I'd settle for her alive. Had I not pressed this. Had I just retreated. So like me.
More breaths. More compressions of her chest. Uncontrollable tears wetting my cheeks.
"Celestia, move aside."
I looked. For a moment, I didn't recognize the tan stallion or the gold one behind him. It was Flowing Waters, followed by a huffing and puffing Deer tracks, and behind them a uniformed pastel herd of unicorn and earth pony guard and constables. I couldn't move. Already my injuries had stiffened. I settled for sliding sideways on to my left side to yield some room. The pain brought nausea and the beginnings of slipping into shock. When Flowing Waters veered toward my bleeding right rear leg, I screamed. "I don't care about me! Save her!"
A dark green aura lit around his horn as his magic slipped like a sharpened rod into her head and into her chest. Suddenly she coughed, inhaled, and gave a querulous whinny as she spasmed and began breathing. She remained senseless, but was alive.
As Flowing Waters turned his bespeckled face toward me, I said, "Thank you. You saved me from a very bad mistake."
He snorted, somehow filling the gesture with incredible irony. "Fighting her was a mistake. Even at your youthful age, I would have thought you'd have known better."
I chuckled weakly. It was cliché, but laughing really did hurt. "She's too much like me, way too much like me. Had Queen Platinum had her as her champion, I would not have lived to become a princess."
"Queen Platinum?"
I shook my head and made the mistake of chuckling again. Flowing Waters had slipped his magic into my rear leg. His cutie mark talent was growth magic. He could command any injured tissue to regrow and it did. I felt the length below my fetlock go pins and needles as he worked on mending the gash. I said—mostly for the benefit of the gathered crowd because in the middle of the spell he didn't hear much—"I meant Princess Platinum."
I heard murmurs of confused agreement, and recognized the voice of my appaloosa pony captain of the guard. I looked him in his amber eyes. "Somepony is so going to visit Tartarus next week."
He grinned, giving me no clue if it worried him at all.
When Flowing Waters finished, he stood and said, "Fetch an air litter. I want her flown back to my office in the palace."
My captain, the only pegasus guard, jumped into the air.
I looked at the fallen Queen of Cliffside, peacefully lying there, hobbles now shackling together her front and rear hooves. I watched as a constable attached the chain to her convenient rebar wicket.
"Ring her," I said, and had a momentary vision of Desert Rose's crudely forged iron torus with smoking red-hot sigils. The modern version was a lot more sleek.
The constables in hearing-range cringed. Most anypony so dangerous they had to be ringed to suppress their magic went on to Tartarus, never to return.
I said, "Look at me!" and looked pointedly at half my feathers scattered at everypony's hooves. "She's way too good at magic for any of you if she could do this to me."
I got nods as a set of constables galloped off. The rest stared at the foal.
As the unseen weather brigade picked that moment to kick it from a light flurry to snow, I said, "Flowing Waters!" Melting flakes started peppering my nose and accumulating on the cleared lawn.
He jerked his gaze from my dislocated wing so that I saw his magnified dark green eyes through his bottle-bottom glasses. "Yes?"
"Remember our deal? I tamed her. You're adopting her."
"Is she worth it?"
Quietly, to him, I replied, "Oh, very very worth it." I knew my adopted sister. Had I had this pony at my side, properly trained, I would have not needed the so-called Elements of Harmony that had worked so well against Discord but had decided to punish me when I used them against Luna. I rested my head on the ground and added, "She had every chance to strangle me, even when she had to conclude I was going to kill her. Yes. She is better than me. But we need to keep her unconscious until she's ringed. Can you do that?"
He nodded.
"I'm not minimizing it. She'll be a challenge." Our not-really-royal heads lay nose to nose. From the perspective on the ground, asleep, I again noticed how she looked innocent (unlike me). And Flowing Waters was right. "She is cute."
Some of the guard behind me snorted.
Flowing Waters had taken the moment to stop the bleeding where my feathers had been pulled. He looked up and asked, "Did you discover her name?"
"I think she answers only to Queen, and we're certainly not calling her Queenie."
"What then?"
"She's so much like me, without the solar cutie mark, I'd consider calling her Sunny Daze. Better might be Snow Fury. It would be a very appropriate name. Nopony named her foal for an event.
"What's that got to do with you?"
Sunny Daze was the name my mother gave me, which I changed when I had to deal with Queen Platinum. I chuckled, then groaned. Would I learn? "Never mind. Long story."
I looked at the Queen of Cliffside's sunset-color fur and lion-like mane of sun yellow with blazing red stripes now dusted with snow. Again, as I had that first time I glimpsed her, I thought how the red seemed to shimmer like the sun did as it lay on the horizon, ready to be put to sleep for the day.
"Whether she likes it or not, I'm naming her Sunset Shimmer."
The newly-christened pony groaned and bent her right leg, flailing to get her hoof down on the ground. Ten guards and constables jumped at her, with Flowing Waters crying, "Get out of my way!"
I just laughed.
Ow!
