"There are things..." She tapped down her hoof in slow clops, her eyes locked on mine. "Things best locked away. We have some of those. The ritual to move the sun and moon, any unicorn could take part, not just me. But the taxing nature of it leaves them diminished, just a little. Every dawn and dusk, a little shred is stolen. Eventually, the pony is a husk, their magic completely shredded. You are left with a unicorn with no magic... and what sort of unicorn is that?"

"But not you." I recalled faint bits of outside-show canon about that. "It empowers you."

Her wings flared wide before slowly folding back, trying to control herself. "You know too much. Were you more ambitious, you could do so much harm, but you do not... You could be shaping our kingdom in your vision." She frowned, shaking her head softly a moment. "But there is more I would yet know."

"And that would be?" She was drilling, seeking. She didn't seem to be trying to sneak human knowledge from me, directly. That was something of a relief. "For however many tricks I share, you're still the ruler, and I'm just a guest."

Her hoof stretched towards me. "I do wish you'd stop saying that... You don't plan on leaving. You have accepted a paramour and promised loyalty. Back to the topic at hoof." She turned that hoof around, flatside up. "Frighten me."

"Pardon?" I struggled to think of what she meant by that.

"You instilled on me some shred of fear of smoke. You told me how bad that could be. Terrify me. Scare me." She lowered the hoof to point at me. "Tell me what awful things your people have made, that we must not even know of, that is worth locking this book of treasures away. Whisper to me the darkest secrets of your people, that I know to imitate them entirely is such folly I will never again consider it lightly."

Well, shit. There was a heavy question. Did I just jump to our greatest weapon? No, there were many beneath it that were just as horrifying. "Do you remember how the war began, the one we just resolved? A lone soldier hurling a weapon a considerable distance, impossibly far, by their standards."

"I do remember this." She nodded softly. "But that was a pony weapon, wielded in a pony way. What does that have to do with your people?"

"Imagine that power being in the hooves of even the youngest little filly. She would not even know what she was doing, but the result would be just as lethal. Many of the people in my kingdom have that power, to dispense death from afar, without need of strength, without the training a soldier would ever receive." I brought up one hand and held two fingers, pointer and thumb, close together. "Death comes in tiny packages, little rocks. They destroy your insides, tearing you open as it often hits so hard, it explodes out the other side of you, leaving you to bleed and suffer."

Her ears skewed at different angles. "What madness would drive a people to want such a thing? Are they victims of monstrous assault?"

"The only monster they see is in the mirror." I leaned forward, gazing back into her eyes. "With weapons meticulously built, they murdered any other species that could claim the title. They made a safe world, then turned on each other. If that alarms you, it gets worse from there."

She frowned at my tale. "My ponies would never..."

"With Celestia there to guide them, perhaps not." I hadn't meant to say that out loud. Too late. "But there are grander weapons. Weapons are one of our favorite things. The ability to fly faster than any pegasus, to drop heavy things from above, but they would not crush, they explode." I spread my hands in a pantomime of the fiery release. "Fire enough to make a dragon happy, leveling buildings and extinguishing lives."

"Does your ruler control this?" She inclined her head. "A grand weapon to protect their kingdom?"

"In a matter of speaking." I set my hands flat on the table. "What I described, there are hundreds of those, thousands of those. An entire field, ready to fly." Then it hit me. "What is the population of Canterlot?"

"Population? What a curious question. The last time we counted, there were many thousands." She tapped her chin, thinking on it. "Several tens of them. 6? Somewhere around there. Why?"

"Then we have more of this specific weapon than you have ponies in this city." I drilled the table with a finger. "We could erase Canterlot off the side of the mountain, reducing it to a smoking mess like the end of... a torch that's been used."

"Ian Langerman!" She suddenly shouted at me. "Why would such a violent people come to deliver us water? Why would such a violent people find love in a people so very alien to themselves? Can the same mind that dreams of such things then see beauty in the eyes of a creature so far removed from themselves? Enough." She brought up a teacup with her magic, taking a long sip. "Enough of that. I need to know more. What you describe is terrible, but I could simply not construct those. They do not sound simple. Could a lone pony even dream of making one? Could a lone human?"

"A person, or even a small group of people, would be hard pressed to make a jet," I easily agreed. "Let's move on to something that doesn't take as many people to do. Explosions, we like them. We like them a lot. For some holidays, we fire explosions in the sky just to watch the pretty colors they make. But when we are angry, we have mastered them."

"You already mentioned those." She shook her head slowly. "I am not any further scared."

"I didn't get to the best, worst, bomb." I pulled out my phone and quickly browsed to the right page. I twirled the phone and pushed it towards her, the video already playing.

She inclined her head and leaned in. "A desert. Seems..." Then the screen went white a moment. Her pupils contracted. She saw the heatwave. She saw the mushroom cloud climbing high into the sky. She saw heavy things bowled aside, the dummies of people incinerated.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," I spoke softly in veneration. "It would take only one of those, just one, to make Canterlot a barren wasteland, the rest of it likely sent sliding down the mountain in pieces. We can use the same source to power entire cities much larger than Canterlot. We had enough of these bombs to make a good attempt to remove all life of the world."

She sagged in place, the cup approaching for another sip, but it shook in her grip. That had rattled her. "I... see... And this... This is the penultimate?"

"We improved on that design." I reached for my phone. "That was the very first we detonated. We built bigger. We built better. A single pony could make less-refined versions, if they knew how, and had the power supply, a rare mineral. It would not level things as well, but would make any area it exploded in unlivable, where anycreature caught in it would get sick and die."

"And this is a fate you would see us avoid. Tell me. Tell me and be truthful." She raised her eyes to mine, resuming the contact. "What do you see, when you look at us?"

"In you, specifically?"

"We can start there." She smiled gently. "We have met and talked before, though you seemed to know me before I knew you. What do you see?"

That wasn't a simple question. "I see an archetypal caring mother. I see someone that cares enough for her people, her ponies, she would remain on her throne for over a thousand years, not out of some want for power, but because she was afraid no one else could protect them as well as herself."

"Over a thousand years," she breathed, licking her lips. "Do you speak literally?"

"I won't answer that."

She frowned then. "Wicked thing." Her magic flickered into being around a cookie and she hurled it at me, bouncing off my chest. "Insufferable tease. Do... Did I look just as young, in that future?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose... not." She smiled faintly. "Allow a mare a moment of vanity. If I must rule as a wrinkled old mare, I will do my best to be dignified."

"You are ever a youthful vision," I allowed with a little smile of my own. "Some had theorized you are entirely unaging, immortal."

"Some?" She inclined her head. "Are we a famous thing, in your kingdom? How absurd to consider; that a people so unthinkably violent would wish to know of us..."

"There are subtler threats." I saw her perk. "Ideas can be the most dangerous thing."

"More dangerous than your bombs and the means to deliver them swiftly wherever you wish?" She sat up. "This I doubt, but do go on. Terrify me."

"Your people stand on the edge of many potential changes. If I rushed to offer it, your people would have more food than ever before. With it, you would have more ponies than ever before. Seeking opportunities they couldn't find on farmland far too productive to need them, they will flow into cities unequipped to handle them. Society will change. It must. It will be painful. Ponies will die and suffer."

"But you also hold the answer, do you not?" She brought her forehooves together. "Your people have already passed this point, I can see it in your eyes."

"The answer is a new world." I spread my hands. "And our answers... are not yours. The Equestria I know did not accept human answers to human problems. You emerged from this time in ways I don't know. You still had bustling farm communities connected to grand cities, some more advanced than others, each standing so proudly. I don't know how you reached that point."

Celestia sank back. "But you offered us water, and now offer a way to hold knowledge. You continue to offer. If you do not know how to reach the desired place, this vision, why do you meddle? What are you trying to do?"

"That... is evolving." She peered at me skeptically. "I'm being honest. When I first came, I thought I would just sprinkle ideas, change the world... The more I worked at it, the more I realized your world, your people, were more complicated than I gave them credit for. Just throwing ideas around wildly would, at best, see to their surface problems."

"We have many of those." She slid to her hooves, standing and approaching, the teacup setting itself down on the table. "Why not fix those?"

"Because your people deserve to stand on their own fe--hooves." I stood up as well, not feeling comfortable with her rising over me with the distance shrinking. "There are ponies that want to fix those problems. If I can open the way for them, that feels like a better answer."

"And so you turn away from providing answers." She was close enough for me to smell her gentle breath. "You are something of a mother yourself."

I had to consider that. "Uh..."

"Father, if you prefer." She inclined her head. "You would see your children grow. And we are your children, it would seem. You set your hooves on us with the utmost of care, trying to encourage us to make our own motions. Violent human, even the most fierce of beast can know peace, for their offspring, and you have decided we are that."

Not the way I would have put it. "You're cute!" I admitted with a frown.

"Look at you pout." I wasn't pouting! "Like a doting father, called on their pride. What father does not consider their children in such a way? Their fillies are the cutest things to ever walk. Their colts, the most handsome. Yes... Ian Langerman, I think I understand you now." She turned away, starting to stride for her part of the table.

"We will copy and seal your knowledge. We will reach only for it when all else is lost, when ponies simply cannot find their own way. But, I believe you hope, that will never happen." She looked over her shoulder. "Still, it will be a comfort, to know it is there."

She sat down, and so did I. She made a sweeping motion and the sweets floated to the side and down to the floor, leaving a single cake behind. She cut into it and divided it into two healthy wedges she put on crystal plates, one before herself, the other towards me. "Ian Langerman, water bringer, lightning bringer, and knowledge bringer. I accept you. Long may our relationship thrive."

She raised a glowing fork with all the ritual a royal pony could muster. "To the future."

"To the future," I echoed, a smile spreading. The future looked bright ahead of us.

And we ate cake.

Author's Note

Thank you for walking this path with me. Now you know why ponies have doorknobs! And other things that don't make much sense with pony anatomy.

Written early for patreons who got this ahead of everyone else. Want to get early chapters, or even your own story written? atreon!

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