The Ascension Code

The ride to the Crystal Empire took longer than Twilight would have liked, but at least she and Spike had gotten to nap along the way. And when she wasn't resting, Twilight was reading the book on dark magic she'd gotten from the library. Of course, Twilight wasn't planning on becoming a dark mage and wresting power from Celestia or anything like that, but she was dedicated to learning all magic, even that which was traditionally called evil.

She had the theory down now, Twilight realized, and only the actual spells remained by the time they arrived in the station of the Crystal Empire. It was leagues slower than Twilight's usual reading speed, but Starswirl wrote in Old Equestrian, which she had to mentally translate. On top of that, some of the concepts outlined were difficult to translate into modern Equestrian, and Twilight had to consult a pocket dictionary.

"Wow, It's almost morning here..." Spike mused as they stepped onto the platform, and into the waiting hooves of their relatives.

"Sunshine! sunshine! Ladybugs awake!" Twilight chanted with her sister-in-law, but stopped when she realized she was still speaking in Old Equestrian.

"Sorry," Twilight yawned. "It's been a long train ride."

"We can tell." Shining noted sympathetically. "Let's get you two into bed, and then we can talk later."

"You don't hear me complaining." Spike grinned, before hopping up onto Twilight's back to doze.

* * *

After a nice long rest, Twilight finally felt ready to deal with living ponies again, and emerged from her guestroom feeling refreshed. She followed a servant's directions to get to the library, and found her brother and sister-in-law hard at work.

"Don't you guys have servants to do that?" Twilight asked, startling her brother so much that he actually fell off his stool.

"Yes, we do," Cadance explained. "But we're looking for a book, and we don't want anypony to know."

"Why not?"

"It's nothing bad, it's just that... These ponies are really... Panicky, you know?" Shining added, and Twilight recalled the incident that occurred when the Empire first reappeared, how everypony freaked out about the crystal heart.

"Ah, I see. Prudent choice, dear brother." Twilight nodded, and turned to Cadance. "Can I help? I recently invented a spell that can search an entire library in seconds."

"We're looking for a book about Princess Amore, the last Empress." Cadance explained. "Specifically, one with pictures and descriptions. Aunty Celestia once told me I was the last living descendant of Amore's line, the child of a younger brother, to be specific."

"I see." Twilight nodded. "Haven't you been able to find any pictures of her?"

"Not a one. Amore was a very well-liked princess with a lot of support from the people, so it would make sense for her to have a portrait made." Cadance continued. "At first we thought Sombra might have destroyed them all, to erase evidence of past rulers, but we found a portrait gallery with a painting of every Emperor and Empress, all except Amore the third."

Twilight finished working on her spell matrix once Cadance finished her story, and cast the spell. A huge pulse of magenta magic ran over every book in the library, and with a tell-tale pop, a single book teleported in front of Twilight. Skimming through the pages, Twilight made quick work of the book, and closed it with a snort.

"Has your reading speed improved, little sis?" Shining asked, impressed by the display of magic.

"No, I just skimmed until I found the right passage. Some description, though. It hardly tells me anything." Twilight muttered.

"Well, what did it say?" Cadance asked, leaning forward.

"It said: 'Her violet wings didst flutter more fairly than any other pegasus' on that day.' I can't even tell if 'violet' meant they were purple wings, or if it's just an antiquated figure of speech."

"Wait, 'any other pegasus'?" Shining mused. "Was Amore a pegasus?"

"I was a pegasus by birth, maybe she was too." Cadance added.

"No," Twilight countered, "The passage referred to her coronation day, at the age of thirty-two. You ascended before that age, and I did too. Odds are, if Amore was an Alicorn, she would have had her horn by then, right?"

"Did the other rulers in the portrait hall have horns?" Twilight asked curiously.

"I don't remember..." Shining replied, thinking back to the rows on rows of old portraits, only recalling that they all looked stuffy and old.

"I'll go back and check!" Cadance volunteered, and darted back out of the library, as fast as her wings could take her.

"She could just teleport..." Twilight giggled, amused by her sister-in-law who still did things like a pegasus sometimes.

"She likes to do things the old-fashioned way." Armor replied, with a faint smile. For a moment, they just listened.

"Did you miss me, Twily?" Shining asked quietly, once the sound of wing beats disappeared into the distance.

"Of course I did, B.B.B.F.F." Twilight replied with a smile, and nuzzled the white stallion's neck. "I always miss you."

"I think of you all the time now, whenever I find something I think you might like, or when something you've said comes flooding back to me." Shining explained, with a warm smile, the smile he reserved only for Twilight.

"I think of you often, too." Twilight smirked. "Like when Spike leaves the toilet seat up, or when I see a royal guard getting wasted on New Year's Eve."

"Twilight!" Shining laughed, and pulled his sister into a headlock. "Is that any way to treat the brother who cares about you?"

"In all truth, I really do miss you, Shiny." Twilight conceded. "You need to visit more often."

"I'm back!" Cadance announced, fluttering through the door, and she gave only a passing glance and an 'aw!' to her husband and sister-in-law's roughhousing. Twilight simply teleported out of her brother's grasp and timed her exit-portal to land on top of him.

"So? What did you find?" Twilight asked, finally getting up from on top of her brother.

"Well, the portraits are all busts, so I don't know about wings, but I saw for a fact that not a single one of the previous rulers had a horn!" Cadance exclaimed.

"Well... It's not uncommon for other pony nations to have non-alicorn rulers, right?" Shining Armor mused.

"Yes, but, that doesn't match up with what Aunty Celestia told me..." Cadance murmured, and Twilight froze, remembering the incident of yesterday, with her mentor's deception.

"What exactly did the Princess tell you?" Twilight asked, almost afraid to find out.

"When I was just a filly, I ascended. Celestia took me under her wing, and explained that my status as an Alicorn meant I was destined to rule the Crystal Empire, which would one day return. To the rest of the world, I became Mi Amore Cadenza, named after the last Empress herself."

"So it doesn't make much sense when paired with the idea that none of the past Empresses were Alicorns." Shining Armor clarified. "What would be Celestia's motive to lie?"

"To bring the Crystal Empire into Equestria?" Twilight offered.

"No, that doesn't make sense either. The Empire is fully independent of Equestria." Cadance explained.

"She didn't want you to think too hard about your ascension!" Shining exclaimed, stamping down a hoof as he realized it. "And it doesn't matter that the empire is independent, because you'll still do whatever your Aunt wants you to. She practically raised you, Cadance. Why wouldn't you listen to her advice?"

"The only way I'd stop listening to Aunty Celestia would be if she... Lied to me..." Cadance whispered, plopping down on the floor in a sitting position as she thought about why her aunt could have deceived her. Was it intentional? Was it merely a mistake?

"That sort of reminds me of something." Twilight mused. "Did you ever encounter a runic door in the Canterlot Library?"

"Not that I recall." Cadence thought, her mind drifting back to her foalhood in the capital.

"That means the notice-me-not ward probably wore off recently." Twilight muttered aloud.

"Er, pardon?" Shining interrupted her thoughts, and Twilight drew the two books from her saddle bags.

"I found these yesterday, in a corner of the Canterlot Library that the princess insisted doesn't exist." Twilight explained, a tad bitterly, as she levitated The Art Of Ascension over to Cadance "You might find the answers you need in there."

"Celestia insisted it didn't exist?" Cadance asked, eyeing the book. "Are you sure?"

"She insisted so hard it gave me a temporary memory wipe." Twilight replied, glaring at nothing in particular. "It would have worked too, if I hadn't put safeguards in place after I got suspicious."

"Okay, geez..." Shining rubbed his forehead with a hoof, thinking hard. "So Princess Celestia lied to Cadance about how she ascended, and lied to Twilight about that hidden room in the library. Any good explanation for using a memory spell on my little sister?"

His ire was entirely justified, as mind manipulative spells were completely illegal in Equestria, and Celestia was the last pony any of them had expected to use it, and on her beloved student, no less.

"Why here? Why now?" Twilight mused, "If Celestia wasn't behind all this, I'd almost believe the convenience of all these secrets coming to light in the space of two days was her doing."

"I get what you're saying." Shining added. "It's a bit too convenient, if you ask me."

The siblings were interrupted by a sudden gasp from the pink alicorn, who murmured a quiet 'oh my' as she read from the book she'd been given.

"What did you find, Cadance?" Twilight asked, teleporting over to peer over the mare's shoulder. Her former foalsitter used her magic to highlight the paragraph she was on, and Twilight read aloud.

"'It is important to note the difference between an alicorn, and a pegacorn, which is merely an exceptionally magical unicorn with wings, or a pegasus with a useable horn. A pegacorn doesn't have the ethereal mane that an alicorn will sport, and they will only grow to be the size of a full grown stallion (if a mare), or a head taller than the average stallion (if a stallion). A pegacorn does not possess earth pony magic as the alicorn does, and will not live longer than the average pony.' Oh my stars, Cadance-" Twilight stopped reading, and looked her sister-in-law in the eye.

"I know, Twilight. It's just been another lie." The pink former pegasus sighed with a downcast glance at the book. "We're not really alicorns."

"Now let's add 'lying about my wife and sister's alicornhood' to the pile of things Celestia needs to answer for." Shining groaned, and even he, former captain of the royal guard, had dropped the Princess from Celestia's name for the moment.

"Okay, so, keep calm, keep calm." Twilight chanted, and she and Cadance worked through their breathing exercises.

When she finally felt calm enough to not have a panic attack, Twilight got a determined expression and turned to the two older ponies in the room.

"We have got to get to the bottom of this!" The lavender (pegacorn?) exclaimed, and Cadance nodded briskly.

"I agree." She replied. "But since we don't know who to trust, I think it's important that this remains between the three of us."

"Agreed." Twilight and Shining answered together.

"I'll keep researching the pegacorn phenomenon," Cadance explained.

"And I'll work on a mind-circle, a ritual outlined in the book I read on the way here." Twilight said, bringing out her version of the journal, and pointing to a diagram with a wing. "It can help us figure out if our minds have been deeply messed with."

"Define deeply." Shining asked, frowning with concern.

"Anything bigger than a basic memory spell. Like... Like a geas, or a total memory replacement." Twilight explained. "Something even worse than what Celestia did to me earlier."

"Even worse?" Cadance chimed in. "I don't even want to consider the possibility that Aunty- that Princess Celestia could have done such a thing."

"Can we really put anything past her at this point?" Shining noted, as Twilight began drawing the circle, and the stallion cast a sound proofing spell around the library. "She lied to you about being an alicorn and an empress. She put an illegal mind spell on Twily!"

Cadance seemed somewhat cowed by that thought, and her ears drooped as she thought it over. If Twilight was affected by her mentor's betrayal, Cadance was devastated. Ever since her ascension, Celestia had practically raised her, and she suffered deeply from the knowledge of her actions.

"Circle's done." Twilight noted, making the last sigil of her chalk drawing on the floor. Modern magical practices required very few ritual elements, so the very act of drawing a ritual circle, showed that this was old magic. She cast a preservation spell to keep the chalk from smudging as she stepped inside.

The two married ponies nodded, and stepped into the chalk outline with Twilight, who powered up her horn, and flooded the construct with magic, activating it. According to the instructions, a green light surrounding the pony indicated a clean slate, while a red light showed tampering.

"Big brother... Cadance..." Twilight whispered, though the haze of green light around her body. "You're under a geas."

She traced the spell back as far as it would go. The exact date couldn't be pinpointed, but based on certain markers, Twilight put a rough estimate on twenty years ago. Approximately the year she was born.

Twilight Sparkle had just enough presence of mind to conjure a pillow before she fainted.