“Now approaching the Crystal Empire!” the conductor called down the length of the car as the tingle of the barrier frazzled my mane.
I glanced up to see the sun shining, the frosted window thawing to reveal grassy fields and hills. The crystal spire that was the heart of the Empire towered over the terrain in the distance, an aurora of sunshine and rainbows spreading from it to light the Empire even in the middle of the storm.
“Spike!”
“Wha— Hrrk!” The snoring pile of luggage beside me snorted and fell over, my assistant’s baggage fort collapsing upon him.
Gathering my saddlebags, I readied myself for whatever Cadance had called me for. Her last letter had been… vague… and I had prepared accordingly. I had packed more bags than Rarity at a fashion convention, and I had shrunk most of my books to make exponentially more room. It still weighed a ton, though—darn laws of conservation....
“Spike, we’re just about there.” I pulled everything off of Spike, sorting our bags into several neater, color-coded piles.
“Five more minutes…” Spike groaned, hissing at the light as he risked opening an eye and buried his head in his claws. “I was dreaming the ice cream mansion dream and I never get to see how that one ends….”
I glanced back out the window to see the train station approaching. “You know full well that it ends in a stomach ache!” I prodded him with my horn. “Spike! Get up!” The second prod accidentally turned into a painful poke as the train decided to brake at the worst possible moment.
“Ah!” Spike rolled to the floor rubbing his rump. “Alright! Alright, I’m up! And careful where you put that thing!”
“Sorry, but we’re here.” I smiled sheepishly as the train finished grinding to a halt. “Just be thankful I didn’t poke your eye out.”
“Look, Twilight, a dragon’s cave is a personal thing, you know?” The rubbing intensified. “The last thing I need is you both literally and figuratively tearing me a new one just because I slept in.”
“Yes, well,” I coughed, “I’m sure that would have been awkward for the both of us.”
The doors hissed open, and I gathered up all our bags in my aura. I looked at Cadance’s letter one last time before stuffing it in my saddlebags and heading outside.
“Now, come on,” I called back over my shoulder. “Cadance said she needed to see me as soon as equinely possible.”
“So I can take my sweet time then, right?” He sulked at my deadpan expression.
My grumbling assistant reluctantly pulled himself from the train, but began stacking the bags upon his shoulders nonetheless. It took a minute, but he really got into it—little arms and legs just quivering with excitement as he began to waddle towards the palace with the plethora of knowledge I’d packed; he probably couldn’t wait to start sorting everything.
The lucky little drake.
I watched him for a few more moments, smiling at his enthusiasm. As I looked above him to my goal, however, I frowned, bracing myself for the trial to come. I unfurled my wings and flapped them a few times to try and get a sense of the airflow.
“The wind is going…” I scrunched my face, eyes squinting shut. “…southeast?”
That wasn’t good. The last time Rainbow tried to teach me how to fly into the wind, I’d made an addition to the Ghastly Gorge.
My ears splayed back against my head as I looked back down to find Spike heading toward the castle, and I considered simply walking. It would be so simple, so easy.
No. I shook my head. Cadance needs me. I hadn’t jumped the first train up here just to get cold hooves and walk when I could kind-of-sort-of fly.
I pushed off the ground, wings flailing. A swirling series of loops, swerves, and terrifyingly close calls followed, but I did manage to get airborne for a couple of minutes. It was my greatest success yet, until the wind sent me careening into the inverted pyramid my assistant was carrying.
“Right, then.” I groaned, picking myself up and levitating most of the luggage from where it had entombed Spike. “Nevermind about carrying all our bags, Spike. Clearly, I’m walking with you today.”
There was no response.
“Spike?” Oh, I’d up and knocked the little guy right out. Odd. I hadn’t been going that fast, and my mass wasn’t high enough to jar something as sturdy as a dragon. A simple transfer of momentum shouldn’t have put him out.
Hrmm…. I jostled the bags in my aura a little. No, couldn’t be those.
Oh well. I levitated Spike onto my back. It was a mystery for another time—one that should be tested in controlled conditions where I could measure all the forces involved. For now, I needed to head to the palace.
“Princess?” A crystal pony poked his head out of a doorway.
My ear flicked as I looked around for Cadance, and for the first time, I noticed just how empty the streets were. Several ponies were looking out from their houses at us, but we were the only ones in the street.
Wait. Why were they looking at—
“Riiiiight….” I facehooved, rustling my wings.
“Princess?” The ruby pony pushed his head out a little farther before suddenly wincing and hastily glancing around. “Do you and Spike the Brave and Glorious need any help?”
“Spike the Brave and Wha—” I couldn’t even ask the whole thing, breaking into a fit of giggles. “Please, just Spike and Twilight is fine.”
“As you wish, Princess Twilight.” The pony bowed. “Do you and Spike the Great and Humble need any assistance?”
“I’m— That’s not—” I sputtered, only to flounder at his earnest eyes. “Yes, we could use some help….” I glanced up and down the street. “Also, out of curiosity, why isn’t anypony out and about?”
“Oh, well, that would be the curfew.” The pony glanced out the door again, furtively shifting his gaze from side to side. “It would be quite unfortunate if any of us were to break the curfew.” He shuddered. “The punishment is being sent to the tentacle pits.”
Tentacle… pits…. How did that even— No. That way lies madness. Best not to think on it.
“That doesn’t sound like something Cadance would do.” I tried to school my expression, but failed, my face scrunching in distaste.
“Of course it isn’t!” He brought his hoof to his chest with a scandalised gasp. “Princess Cadance has been nothing but kind and understanding, and we are blessed that she and Prince Shining are our rulers.”
“Then where’d the curfew come from?” I arched a brow.
“It’s an old law passed by King Sombra.” The pony shivered, his glossy sheen momentarily dulling.
“Yeah, so?” My brow went further up. “Sombra is dead.”
“The law isn’t.” His ears wilted briefly before they perked at the tone of bells from the palace.
The streets began flooding with ponies at the sound, many clamouring to help Spike the ‘Brave and’—I snerked—‘Glorious.’ The pony who’d first offered to help gingerly stepped outside, taking a moment to bow again before he began picking up several of the bags I had floating in the air and placing them on his back.
“By the way, I am Ruby Rook, one of several advisors to Princess Cadance.” He looked up expectantly. “I believe you are here by invitation, yes? Please follow me and I will take you to the Princess.”
“Twilight!” Cadance galloped up to me the moment I entered the throne room. “I’m so glad you’re here! Shining and I have been trying to solve this on our own, but we’re at our wits’ end.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” I squirmed as I—for once—found myself being the one to awkwardly run a hoof through her mane, straightening all the split ends. “You want to tell me what’s wrong? All your letters for the past few months have been just fine until you sent me this.”
I pulled her crumpled, ink-stained letter from my saddlebags.
“Heh-hic!” Cadance gave a strangled, gurgling hiccup. “Shiny and I didn’t want to worry you or Auntie Celestia. We really thought that we could do this on our own, but…”
She trailed off, eventually falling into a vacant stare I knew all too well.
“Cadance!” I shook my sister-in-law like Spike always shook me. “What’s going on?!”
“Huh? The cat’s got it with the salad.” She blinked, pulled from her haze. “Oh, Twilight. The laws are all—” A shudder. “—the laws here are just awful, Twilight. They’re ancient, obsolete, barbaric, and there’s nothing Shiny or I can do to change them.”
I edged back a little from my manic sister-in-law. “Surely you can just—“
“No! There’s nothing!” She lunged forwards to grab at my hooves. “Forget his grimoires. You haven’t seen Sombra’s most unspeakable of texts!”
“Umm….” I ruffled my wings and looked to Ruby Rook, who seemed to be taking his somewhat insane ruler in stride. “Has she been sleeping?”
“One could say Her Highness has put our needs far too much ahead of her own.” Ruby bowed his head. “But that would insult her flawless nature.”
“I’ll take that as a no,” I sighed. I lit my horn to cast a simple sleep spell, and Cadance soon loosened her grip on me, slumping to the ground with a soft snore.
“Get her to her room and go tell my brother I’m here.” I glanced about. “Speaking of whom… where is he? He should never have let Cadance get this bad.”
“Prince Shining Armor has spent the past few days sleeping off his own attempts to find a solution to our problems.” Ruby dutifully levitated his princess up, frowning from strain yet never complaining. “Her Royal Highness forced him to take a break, much like you have done with her. I fear she may have put more of a kick in her sleep spell than she meant to, though.”
“Oh, Cadance….” I shook my head. “Put them together then and make sure somepony is there to update them on everything when either one of them wakes up.”
“Yes, Princess.” He bowed, shoulders shaking as he continued holding Cadance up with as much dignity as he could.
“I told you my name is just Twilight.” I frowned at him.
“Yes, the Just Princess Twilight.”
“Eurgh…” I groaned. “Just go do what I told you to do and get back to whatever you’re supposed to be doing. I’ll be in the library trying to sort this all out.”
I walked into the library to find several tables buried in open books and scrolls. The writing upon them was so small and intricate that they seemed to be full of inky black pools that wavered and warped. It hurt my eyes a little just to look at them—let alone read them—but I was a mare on a mission, and nothing would stop me now.
“Okay, then.” I licked my lips and inched between the mountains of paper to reach the biggest, thickest, and gnarliest book I had ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon. Squinting so that my eyes were almost closed, I leaned in so close that my muzzle squished against the parchment.
...ond scolde héo spræc grytta·héo biþ wðdseócu…
Discord damn it all, Cadance should have called me sooner. Old Equish was tricky at the best of times, and infuriating at the worst. A single glance of Sombra’s microscopically neat yet questionably correct grammar was enough to make my stomach roil—and I had training in how to read this.
Good thing I had my library.
I leaned back and cricked my neck, standing to weave my way through the books back to the entrance. I needed a few of my personal notes—and Spike—if I was going to get anywhere anytime soon with this.
“You find anything yet, Spike?”
“Nope. Just an endless list of stupid laws. What about you?”
“Same thing….”
“You find any funny ones at least, Twilight? I found one that says any crimes committed while twirling mustaches are legally required to be pardoned by the ruling body of power.”
“Well, there’s about twenty pages’ worth pertaining to the definition of illicit sodomy, all of which Sombra probably broke in that little dungeon we found beneath his bed.”
“Huh? What did you find in there?”
“Nothing, Spike. Nothing at all.”
“Hey, Twilight?”
“Yes, Spike?”
“Why is there a law saying donkeys can’t sleep in the bathtub?”
“I don’t know, Spike…. Maybe Sombra was just an ass.”
“Guess that explains the smell.”
“Hey, Spike?”
“Yeah, Twilight?”
“Does this say what I think it says?”
“You mean this law on pickles only being pickles if they can bounce?”
“No, the one below that.”
“The one where chewing gum is a fineable offense?”
“Yeah. Do you see anything wrong with it?”
“Well, if I remember right, gum wasn’t invented until—“
“It didn’t exist yet, Spike. Didn’t exist! How the buck did he even come up with this?!”
“Well, Twilight, I just found a law forbidding fish from getting drunk….”
“Fish?”
“Fish.”
“What does it define as a fish, Spike?”
“Uhh… ‘Any creature that has or has had any combination of fins, gills, or a tail.’”
“Discord, damn it all.”
“So do you think Shining and Cadance use it?”
“Use what, Spike?”
“The dungeon.”
“What dungeon? Sombra built a lot of them.”
“You know… the one beneath his bed?”
“Oh, eww! Spike! Why would you even ask that?”
“Because I can’t forget it no matter how many laws I read! All I can imagine is Cadance, Shining, and Sombra secretly breaking the many and varied laws on sodomy while they twirl their villainous mustaches and laugh!”
“Oh, Spike… you forgot the mustache twirling would get them pardoned…. That basically makes it legal.”
“Euragh….” My jaw stretched from yawning so much that it threatened to dislocate itself. My eyes ached from blearily squinting at the so-called books in front of me, and my vision swam as it tried to keep track of my position in the sea of ink. “What time is it?” Shuffling past a snoozing Spike, I crawled through the labyrinth of bookshelves to a window and squinted at the setting sun outside. I could probably squeeze another hour in before dinner.
“Twilight, you still here?~ I brought you breakfast!~”
Ah, Cadance had her cadence back. Now if only she didn’t sound like she was about to drop dead.
Wait. Breakfast? I squinted out the window again and glared at the sun for a few moments. At the minute, on the minute—like a finely tuned clock—it inched upwards instead of downwards.
“Horseapples,” I muttered.
“Oh, Twilight!~ It’s my turn!~” The light clip-clop of hooves on crystal signaled delicious doom. I didn’t need breakfast! I needed to find—
The heavenly scent of freshly brewed coffee chased all thoughts of resisting a break from my head. I floated through the shelves on fluttering wings, centering in on the scent of coffee and… cinnamon?
I turned a corner to find Cadance wafting the aroma of her goods with her wings—baiting the trap as it were. She giggled as she saw me drifting towards her with my snout up in the air. I jolted forwards slightly with each sniff, the scent of food literally driving me forward.
I took the cup and bag of cinnamon rolls from her, my stomach roaring in protest as I looked between the two with uncertainty. My gnawing hunger demanded more than a granola bar, and yet more coffee, so I pulled out not one but two cinnamon rolls and teleported them into my stomach.
There was another rumble from my insides—half content purr, half starving beast—so I fed it another cinnamon roll for good measure before taking a sip of the good stuff.
Pure, black coffee. Scalding hot and bitter was the only way to take it. Sorry, Celestia, but tea just doesn’t cut it.
“Good, aren’t they?” Cadance snagged a pastry for herself, though she was lucky to get her hoof back. “Had to at least make sure you got something to eat. I knew sleep would be a lost cause by now.”
“Mhmmm.” I nodded as I ate. “You feeling better? You don’t normally pull a me.”
“The Princess of Love title didn’t come with classes on criminal law,” Cadance chuckled. “Being hoofed an antiquated empire and being told to bring them up to speed is a little more responsibility than I’m used to.”
“I’d say it’s more than antiquitated.” I grimaced at the monolithic tomes of statutes and laws as we came back to where I’d been studying. “Can’t you just overrule everything with a royal decree?”
“That was the first thing I tried,” Cadance sighed. “Some of the laws are magically enforced, though. Not all of them, mind you, just some. Everypony is… reluctant to find out which is which after the entire city broke curfew to celebrate.”
“The tentacle pits were very, very cramped.” Ruby Rook spoke from right behind me, causing me to jump about a meter into the air.
“How long have you been there?!” I held my chest as my caffeinated heart tried its best to hammer its way out of my chest.
“I’ve been here for your entire conversation with the Princess, Princess.”
“But how did you get behind me?!” I pressed.
“Being advisor to King Sombra for any length of time teaches the noble art of becoming a wallflower, Your Highness.” He bowed, and I twitched. “Forgive my intrusion, but I felt it best to try and wait for an appropriate opening to inform you both that the Crystal Dreams Spa is ready for you.”
“The spa?” I arched my brow at Cadance.
“I’m not letting you fall into the same trap Shining and I did,” Cadance chuckled. “Sure, this is all a bit… trying… but we’ve made it this long without any major mishaps—”
“Besides the tentacle pits,” Ruby interjected.
“—besides the tentacle pits.” Cadance nodded. “But we need to be at our best if we’re going to beat Sombra at his worst.”
“Alright…” I sighed. “If that’s what you want, the spa actually does sound nice.”
“To the spa, then!” Cadance gestured grandly. “Away!”
I was getting beaten to a pulp at the spa with Cadance when it happened. Complete and utter panic. There was no warning, no sign, no omen: there was only the sudden sound of a record scratching as I murmured something in my state of half-comatose bliss. All the crystal ponies around us stopped what they were doing to stare at me like they were suddenly deer in one of Bridleway’s musical spotlights.
“What did you say?” my masseuse squeaked, her hooves shaking just a little as they ceased their heavenly assault on my back.
Groaning, I forced an eye open in a futile attempt to view her without lifting my head from the table. “Mrgmmff… no, don’t stop…” I groaned and squirmed a little, wings twitching. “You were so close. I’ve been feeling that knot all night….”
“What did you say?!” Her hoof jabbed me in just the right place.
“Ahhhh…” I moaned, melting into a puddle of royal goo as the tension in my back eased. “Gosh, crystal palaces are murder on the back. I’m so glad I live in a tree.”
The hoof prodded a little deeper.
“Wha— Ow!” Suitably jolted, I finally picked up on the unnatural and deathly silence. The only sound to be heard was Cadance’s soft snoring as she snoozed once more beneath her masseuse beside me.
Everypony else barely dared to breathe.
Fuzzily, I tried to play back the last few minutes in my head, but my memories were as fluid as my muscles. There was nothing but foggy visions of cloud nine.
“Did—“ I tilted my head. “Did something happen?”
“You don’t remember?” There was a hint of hope that crept into my masseuse’s voice that made me squirm a little.
“No?” I looked around at all the petrified spa ponies.
“Oh, good….” Everypony breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Then, my stomach growled, and the entire room tensed.
“Eheh….” I blushed and rubbed the back of my head. “I guess I’m a little hungry….”
“She said it again! Quickly! Or it’s the pits for us!” The entire room bolted into action, all but a few crystal ponies stampeding out the door.
“Sapphire!” my masseuse hissed at an attendant prancing from hoof to hoof off to the side. “Remember your training! Go get the good hay, now!”
“Yes, ma’am! Sorry, ma’am!” The attendant fled.
Bemused, I blinked as my masseuse began shakily kneading my back again.
“D-don’t worry, Princess.” She bit her lip as she stuttered. “We keep only the finest hay here. I’m sure you’ll find it suitable for your purposes.”
“We’re all out of hay!” Sapphire screamed from the hall.
My masseuse was suddenly a quivering wreck. “Oh, no…. But that means—”
“—the tentacle pits!” her partner finished.
With a squelching pop and the smell of rotting fish, the hooves on my back disappeared. The pony working on Cadance soon followed, startling her awake as poor Sapphire ran into the room. Chased by a massive purple tentacle covered in smoking green and red eyes, we could only gape in horror as she futilely resisted being dragged back through the door.
“What did you do?” Cadance whispered.
“All I did was say I was hungry….” I whimpered. “Then everypony freaked out and that happened.”
“I have hay to pay!” One of the customers who fled earlier galloped back in with a bale of hay on their back. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but I had to run home in case the spa was all out.”
“Umm….” I bit my lip. “So did I accidentally invoke one of Sombra’s law’s? Because I’m so sorry if I did.”
The pony was slumped, gasping for breath as she sat next to her hay. “Every citizen of the realm must keep a bale of hay on hoof in case the king and his whorse come by.”
“Excuse me?” I arched an eyebrow.
“Not that Your Highness looks anything like a—“ the mare coughed. “Anyways, you’re a guest of Princess Cadance, who’s basically the king, so we have to have hay on hoof for you if you’re hungry.”
Another squelch heralded spacetime ripping and tearing to let a mass of tentacles deposit the spa ponies that had been spirited away. They looked between the bale of hay and the pony who had brought it before lunging to hug her, sobbing wretchedly.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
“They were everywhere! Everywhere!”
“I still feel their eyes crawling over me!”
“Cadance,” I growled at the sight. “Break time is over. Go grab Shining and Spike from whatever they’re doing. We are going to break these stupid laws before tomorrow dawns.”
Cadance frowned. “But how—“
“Just do it!” I ground my teeth as the slimy, sticky spa ponies continued to lament their unjust punishment in the pits. “We’re sure to find something if we look hard enough. Sombra had to have left some sort of out for himself in case he broke one of his own laws. He might have been insane, but he wasn’t stupid. We find his out and we find a way to out everypony else in the Empire.”
Throughout the day and into the dark hours of the night we toiled, swimming in an inky black sea of legalese and idiocy. The frightening and bizarre assortment of laws Sombra had written was as astounding as it was exasperating, and each of us had to take at least one break when his tyranny became too much to bear.
As the night went on, I began to despair that we might not find anything, even between the four of us. It was only as the first light of the new day peered into the library that hope was found.
“Aha!” Spike held up part of a scroll of parchment longer than my checklist for crafting checklists on how to prepare checklists for making checklists.
Clearing his throat, he readied his most official-sounding voice. “No King shall be beholden to the laws of the Crystal Empire, for all Kings are perfect and beyond reproach—unlike certain Princesses of the Sun and Moon.”
He waggled his scaly brow at me. “Good thing you aren’t Celestia or Luna or you might have counted as breaking curfew yesterday.”
“Spike, you’re a genius!” Several avalanches of paper crashed down around us as I swept my assistant up and hugged him fiercely.
“I don’t get it….” Shining was staring at us vacantly. “How does that help us?”
“Simple.” I smiled deviously. “You two are about to become the proud Emperor and Empress of a large number of very small, very united kingdoms, all with a population of one.”
My brother looked to his wife. “Honey, should we be worried she’s doing her happy dance like that?”
“I get to use my cartographer’s tools!” I squealed, wriggling my rump as I hopped about in circles with a green-faced Spike. “I knew it was a good idea to bring them!”
“I don’t think so, dear.” Cadance leaned into Shining. “It seems Twilight and Spike have found us a way out of this mess.”
“Yeah!” I chirped. “Isn’t it great?!”
“But what is the actual plan?” Shining sighed. “I don’t want to have to tell Celestia we turned the entire Crystal Empire into a nation of newts or something.”
I froze mid-leap at the thought. What would Celestia think of what we were about to do?
“So, long story short…” I was sweating profusely as Celestia listened to me with a neutral expression. “…every citizen of the Crystal Empire is now the king of their own incredibly small nation of one. All the borders have been drawn and officialized, and Cadance and I wrote precedent for inducting new kings when foals are born.”
I bowed. “I hope you don’t mind, but they really needed some form of help.”
Celestia sat there, judging me. She stared into my soul and laid me bare for all to see. She rose from her chair to her full height, and she opened her mouth to assuredly banish me back to magic kindergarten.
She took in a breath and—
“Snerk! Eeheeheehaahaahaahaa!”
—she fell to the floor, laughing.
“Do I—” she snickered. “Do I have to give them all wings and horns to make it official? Ahaahaahaahaa! Oh, I can’t wait to see all the nobles’ faces at this! Fine job, Twilight! Fine job!”
“Thank you, Princ— I mean, Celestia.” Got to watch the P-word. “I was a little worried I’d overstepped my bounds.”
“Hardly, Twilight.” Celestia smiled. “If anything, it just means you are prepared for your greatest trial yet.”
“And that is?” I stood a little taller, waiting.
“Letting me and my sister take a vacation.”
“I’m on it— Wait, what?”
A suspiciously princess-shaped dust cloud and some scattered regalia on the floor was the only response I got. I stared at them with dawning horror, and I realized I would not, in fact, be getting sleep any time soon, even though I was back in Equestria.
I was prepared for this, though. All I needed was the right book.
Levitating a tiny black square from my saddlebags, I unshrunk Sombra’s big book of laws and began to flip through it.
“Alright, let’s see if I can find something revolutionary.”
Author's Note
Writing flat comedy is a lot harder than some people give it credit for. There's a big difference between just joking and actually being funny, and even trying my hardest to write this as flat comedy, slice of life still kept on creeping in.
Anyways, most of the laws I mentioned are actual laws, somewhere, somehow, someway. I think my favorite is the French law that says every citizen must have a bale of hay on hand in case the king and his horse come by.
