"And they're Celestia and Luna. So it's not like you can just confront them," Twilight said. Though she wasn't exactly sure why she said it, it was such an obvious statement that it didn't really need to be called out.
"Actually, that's exactly what I was gonna do," Starlight said without hesitation.
Twilight, who was already worryingly fidgeting on her throne, leaned back in shock, just a bit too far, and tumbled off the side of her throne. As she landed on the cold hard crystal floor with a thud, the small the small crystal pony figurine she was using as a spell focus slid under the table. Had Twilight not been so preoccupied with being shocked, she would have been proud of herself for maintaining the spell on the distant musical figurine. Fortunately physical movement didn't directly translate though the spell, instead she was able to mentally keep her miniature self upright, though the counterpart figurine in Starlight's room wobbled dangerously.
"What?! Are you crazy?!" Twilight commanded the figurine to say as she picked herself up off the floor. Spike, always the helpful assistant, picked up Twilight's figurine and placed it back onto the map before he headed back under the crystal table, muttering something to himself.
Full focus back on her conversation with Starlight, Twilight gasped, realizing what she had just said. She threw her hooves up over her mouth, and then hastily sputtered out a hopefully more supportive line. "I mean, heh, you do whatever you think is best. This is your mission."
"Gee, thanks for believing in me, Twilight," Starlight said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I do. But the last time the princesses fought, Luna turned into Nightmare Moon, and Princess Celestia had to banish her for a thousand years! That can't happen again!" Twilight replied. She hoped Starlight would understand the gravity of the situation at hand. These weren't just two ordinary ponies, they were the princesses. The real princesses.
"Well, I can't do nothing. The princesses aren't the best at communicating with each other." Starlight said.
Twilight let out another gasp, this time it made it through the spell and was duplicated in miniature.
"Sorry. It's just, you said 'princesses' and 'aren't the best' in the same sentence, and it's making me nervous!" Twilight said.
She swore she could feel Starlight hitting her head on the table though the spell. Maybe she was going about this in the wrong way, maybe she should go to Canterlot and work with Starlight instead of trying to remotely micromanage her.
"I'm not much help, am I?" she asked sadly.
"No!"
Twilight didn't bother waiting for anything else, with that she let the spell drop and returned her full concentration back to the empty throne room.
Well, almost empty. She could hear Spike digging around underneath the massive crystal map.
"Spike?" Twilight asked, "What are you doing under there? Actually no, tell me later. Right now it's late, I've got a headache from using that spell for so long and I need to get to bed, but I want to write a letter first do you have a few minutes?
Spike stuck his head out from under the map table, for reasons unknown, he was wearing a miner's helmet, complete with a small electric light.
"Sure thing Twilight," he said before waddling out. Around his belly was a toolbelt, full of hoof tools. Twilight briefly debated asking him but then another pulse of pain shot through her skull and up her horn. It could wait for morning.
She walked to her room, with Spike in tow. There she got half of a letter dictated before she gave up entirely and dismissed Spike so she could get some sleep.
Twilight stumbled into the map room, still mostly asleep. Fortunately the rest had done her well and her headache was completely gone, all that was left now was to finish waking up. That of course, required coffee.
Spike, ever helpful, walked in moments after she sat down with a tray of food and a steaming hot mug of the glorious beverage. He set the tray down in front of her and she let the delicious aroma fill her nostrils as she added the perfect amount of milk and sugar to the drink. A sip was taken, followed by another and then a third.
The caffeine in the coffee didn't start its work immediately, but her brain knew what was coming and began to wake itself up in preparation for the jolt of energy. The gears in her brain started churning, her eyes lit up and she immediately became more aware of her surroundings.
The first thing she noticed is that Spike was, again, wearing his helmet and tool belt. This piqued her curiosity and she was about to ask what he was up to when he threw his claws to his mouth and let out a large belch. With it came a scroll that he managed to catch, he took one look at it and then handed it over to Twilight.
"Message for you, Twilight" he said politely.
"Thank you Spike," Twilight said.
"I'll be under here if you need me," Spike said. He flicked his light on and then headed back underneath the crystal map.
"Okay Spike," Twilight said as she set the scroll aside. She took a few quick bites of her breakfast and another few sips of coffee. If she was going to be reading mail she wanted to be fully awake and fed before doing so.
A few minutes later she picked up the letter again. Looking at it she noticed that it bore Celestia's royal seal. While it wasn't unusual to get mail from her former teacher, more often than not Twilight initiated the conversations. There were none currently in progress and since Twilight knew she hadn't finished her letter to Celestia last night, she was curious as to what this letter could be about. She quickly opened the scroll and began to read.
It didn't take very long because, excluding the signature, there was just a single line of text.
Twilight, please come to Canterlot immediately. It's about Starlight.
As far as she could remember she'd never seen Celestia both underline and bold something in a letter before. Something needed her attention and needed it urgently. Visions of the her conversation with Starlight the day before popped into her head. That crazy mare must have done something drastic. Twilight dropped the letter on the table and began to charge her horn.
"SPIKEINEEDTOGOTOCANTERLOTRIGHTNOW!" she blurted out before her horn finished charging and she blinked out of the room in a puff of smoke and flash of light.
A thud came from under the map, the glowing energy that formed the image of Equestria blinked out for a moment, before coming back on, this time even brighter than before.
Spike stuck his head out from under the table and glanced at the map.
"Twilight, I figured it out! The glow crystal for your cutie mark had burnt out, I just had to replace it, Spike said, proud of his work.
"Twilight?" Spike asked, as he noticed he was alone. "Twilight? Where'd you go?"
Spike wandered out of the room, looking for the young alicorn.
On the cutie map, hovering directly over Canterlot castle, both Starlight and Twilight's cutie marks danced around each other, silently twirling back and forth.
There was a pop, a flash of light and puff of smoke as Twilight appeared directly in front of both Celestia and Luna.
"I came... as fast... as I could..." Twilight said, between gasping breaths. Long distance teleports were not exactly easy, especially into Canterlot Castle, which had defenses against such things.
"See sister, we really do need to shore up some of our protection spells," Luna said, glancing at the heavily panting Twilight.
"I suppose you're right, though this is Twilight we're talking about," Celestia said.
"My point was, these spells do wear down from time to time and they need refreshing. That and sometimes they need to be reworked when somepony finds a way to bypass them," Luna said.
Twilight caught her breath and looked around the room. She was ready for danger, she was ready for disaster, she was ready for... breakfast?
She was in one of the castle's many dining rooms. In fact it was the room Celestia had breakfast in, every morning. Twilight knew this because, having grown up in the castle, she had eaten here many times before. She took a quick look and saw some of Celestia's amazingly delicious smiley face pancakes sitting at the far end of the table.
"I... " Twilight started to say, then took one last look around the room. Something had to be wrong, but whatever it was, it wasn't obvious. She focused on Celestia and Luna, the only two ponies in the room.
Celestia looked... she looked like her normal regal self. Beautiful and bright as always, she was as radiant as the morning sun.
Luna looked... tired. But that was to be expected, it was a few hours past her normal bedtime and Twilight knew Luna worked a long shift. She had to be eternally vigilant, keeping all of Equestria safe in their dreams.
Other than Luna looking a bit sleepy, everything looked normal. She gave the room one final look over and then let out a gasp as she noticed the obvious thing that she had been missing.
Starlight wasn't here.
That really made sense though, since her assumption had been Starlight did something drastic. Starlight couldn't have done something drastic if she wasn't here. But, if Starlight hadn't done something drastic, then why had Celestia summoned Twilight about Starlight?
"Thank you for coming Twilight, please take a seat," Celestia said, nodding at the table. "Do you want some pancakes?"
"Um, your letter seemed urgent, is something going on? Where's Starlight?"
"Oh, well, I suppose it is urgent," Celestia said as she took a seat at the table.
"Well, it's urgent we fill you in anyway," Luna said as pulled a chair next to Celestia.
"Is this about Starlight? She got sent here by the map. She thought you two were having a problem. I told her that was impossible. Did she do something? Was it bad?" Twilight fired off sentence after sentence without letting either Celestia or Luna get in a word edgewise.
"No, it's not impossible," Luna said. "We were having some issues. But I think we can work them out."
"But you're the Princesses!" Twilight said, not sure if she could believe Luna's statement.
"Exactly," Celestia said. "And do you know why we have the title 'princess'?"
"Because you lead Equestria?" Twilight asked. It seemed the obvious answer, so she was sure it must be wrong, even though it was right.
"When we first came to power, some ponies wanted to worship us as gods. Instead we took the title of princess because we are not gods. Luna and I may be immortal, and vastly more powerful than any other ponies, but we are not divine perfect deities. We can and do make mistakes," Celestia said.
"Like I did with when I became Nightmare Moon," Luna said, her ears drooping in sadness.
"Or like I did when I ignored the loneliness that lead to your change," Celestia said, reaching a wing around her smaller sister.
"And as we both did as we ignored each other's hard work in the last few months. Something we might have gone on doing had Starlight not pointed it out," Luna said.
"So she did confront you?" Twilight asked, shifting nervously in her seat.
"Wait, you knew what she was planning?" Celestia asked, tilting her head in confusion.
"To confront you? I didn't like the idea but it was her friendship problem to solve, I didn't want to get in her way." Twilight said.
"Twilight, you're supposed to be her teacher, part of being a teacher is letting students learn things on their own but another part is instructing them. Starlight is too new of a pupil to be entrusted to do everything on her own. There is a reason the maps sends ponies in pairs, you should have been here to help her and guide her. Think of all the lessons that we did together, how will you ever bond with your student if you always send her off alone?
"But the map didn't send me, it only sent her!" Twilight said.
Celestia merely pointed down at Twilight's cutie mark, which was flashing gently.
"That wasn't like that yesterday, I swear!" Twilight said, still staring in shock at the glowing cutie mark. She had been too frazzled to even notice it and had no idea when it had started flashing.
"Hmm, that is odd. I do believe you. Perhaps there is something wrong with the map," Celestia said. "In any case if you knew of Starlight's plan you still should have said something to her. Let that be a lesson to you as one teacher to another. You need to learn how much freedom to give your student, when it is appropriate to let them be and when it is appropriate give them firm guidance. Something Starlight clearly needed, especially when her plan something so... foalsih."
"I too must express my disappointment in thee Twilight. Casting a spell on other ponies without their permission is never acceptable. You should have taught Starlight this as one of her first lessons."
"What?! Starlight knows that already. She learned that after the mind control incident that occurred while I was giving my overview on enchanted objects in Equestria."
"Apparently, the lesson did not stick," Luna said dryly.
"Wait a minute... Starlight said she was going to confront you, not use magic on you! Did she try to mind control you into getting along?!" Twilight exploded out of her chair, her wings twitched wildly and her tail flew back and forth as she shouted at Luna, terrified of the possible answer.
"No, she cast a spell to switch our cutie marks." Celestia said with just a barely detectable hint of annoyance.
Twilight stopped mid-step and sat down on the floor hard.
"Buh..."
Before either Princess could speak up, Twilight forced herself to get up off the floor and then ran over to Celestia. She could have sworn everything looked fine before, and when she reached the Princess she let out a sigh of relief. The golden sun of Celestia's cutie mark still adorned the royal flank.
"I thought you said she switched your cutie marks."
"I said she cast a spell to do so. It didn't work." Celestia said.
"Hmm... That's odd... but good!. I just don't think I've ever seen Starlight unsuccessfully cast a spell before." Twilight said.
"Oh it wasn't a mis-cast," Luna said while holding back a yawn. "It would have worked, had it had been cast on any other ponies."
"Then why didn't it work?" Twilight asked, scratching her head with her hoof.
"Twilight, Luna and I are the most powerful ponies on the planet, by many orders of magnitude. We also have the most number of potential enemies. Some of which have similar levels of power. Do you honestly think we do not have defenses in place to prevent various forms of attack?" Celestia asked.
"I um..."
"It would be completely reckless of us to not protect ourselves. Can you imagine what kind of harm could befall this country, or even this world if any powerful unicorn could come along and tamper with our magic?" Luna asked.
She didn't want for a reply, instead she continued to talk.
"After Lord Tirek escaped Tartarus, Celestia and I worked together on a spell designed to protect our magic from being stolen or otherwise tampered with. We had designed the original version of this spell millennia ago, when we first fought Tirek. Unfortunately he was able to find a flaw it's design and was able to bypass it near the very end of the fight. I struggled to hold him back, fighting for control of my magic, were it not for a surprise attack from Celestia, he might have managed to steal my powers. With Tirek safely imprisoned in Tartarus, we never updated the spell to fix the flaw. There simply wasn't time to do so after he escaped, but after he was returned to Tartarus we updated it and in fact, made some new additions."
"Oh, well that's good. Hopefully he'll never get out again but at least you're prepared." Twilight said. "But, if Starlight failed to switch your cutie marks, then what's the problem? I'm not trying to downplay the situation, it should have been obvious to her that she should have never tried to begin with, but at least nothing bad came of it."
Celestia laughed nervously at Twilight's statement.
"Nothing bad... Right?" Twilight asked, noticing Celestia's reaction.
"Luna mentioned we updated the protection spell," Celestia said as she rested a wing on Twilight. "And that we made some additions to it. Neither of us were affected by Starlight's spell but Starlight ran afoul of the protection spell."
"What does that mean?" Twilight asked tapping her hoof impatiently.
"We were quite surprised when she simply disappeared," Luna said with a poorly suppressed giggle.
"Honestly we didn't even know what had happened at first. It took us a moment to analyze the residual magic and figure out what Starlight had done and that she had triggered the automatic response," Celestia said.
Twilight's jaw dropped open in surprise. "Residual magic? Disappeared? Oh sweet Celestia, your spell didn't kill her did you?" Twilight asked, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer.
"Oh of course not," Luna said with a giggle of her own. "We try our best not to kill our adversaries."
"Then where is she?" Twilight asked.
"Well, at the time we only knew of one being who could potentially interfere with our magic. And there's only really one place he belongs. So we figured, why not update the spell. If it detects an attack on our magic, it was designed to automatically send the attacker, presumably Tirek, back to where he belongs..." Luna said, trailing off at the end.
Twilight blinked slowly, her mind grinding away at Luna's statement. She was a smart pony and it didn't take long to figure out what had happened. Her eyes lit up... and then she lifted a hoof to her face.
"But that means..." Twilight said.
"Yes Twilight, that is why we called you here. Luna and I are going to be working though our issues but we have a task for you. You need to go get Starlight out of Tartarus."
"Shit."
The sounds of tortured screams echoed through the immense underground cavern. Far across the massive room Starlight could just make out a large cage that housed a small decrepit figure. Tirek was her guess but at this distance it was hard to tell. His cage hung from a thick chain and was suspended over a lake of fire, even if he should escape the cage, he had nowhere to go. A number of similar cells were scattered throughout the room some empty, and some occupied by unnamed horrors that made chills run up and down her spine every time she gazed in their direction.
She was lucky enough to have been placed in an empty cage, well and truly away from any of the hellfire. The downside was a lack of light, since her cage was mostly covered in the dark shadow from the massive stone staircase that lead up the the gates of Tartarus. Also, the cage was only mostly empty. The bones of some long dead monster were sitting in the far corner. She had tried to go near them to push them out of the cage but when she approached, they started to rattle and a demonic whispering appeared in her head. She had wisely decided to let them be and instead moved to the opposite corner where she had been sitting for days now. Or maybe hours, or months, possibly years?
Time seemed to pass oddly in the underworld and she had no real idea of how long she had been imprisoned. The only thing she knew is her magic didn't work down here, and she hadn't yet starved to death. Whether that was because she hadn't been there that long or because Tartarus wouldn't let her die until her imprisonment had ended, she wasn't sure.
Suddenly her cutie mark, which had been blinking on and off ever since she was forcibly removed from the capital, ceased its glow. The dim light had been her only real source in the cage and it now faded away completely, leaving her to sit in the dark.
The tortured screams grew louder.
"I guess they solved their problems," Starlight said sullenly.
