Of Ponies and Fate

(This is the last major time skip, I swear...)

16 years later....

Shrouding darkness filled the nooks and corners the lone candle's light failed to reach in the office of Iniquum Edict. The unicorn himself was filled with a similar darkness, one he dared not look directly at for fear of what he might find. He believed in his path with all his heart, but the guilt weighed on him all the same.

Guilt?

Why should he feel guilt for sending a gift of goodwill to his contact in Zebrica?

The medallion had wanted to be sent.

Wait, why did he have a contact in the zebra tribes? They were the enemy. A spy perhaps? He couldn't remember. Nor could he remember why he had sent the only thing his father had ever given him.

A series of violent headaches forced him out of his introspection before he could scratch the surface of his questions. The clock above his mantle piece chimed, signaling the time as one o'clock in the morning.

It was well passed time he found respite under the covers draped over his couch. He could have slept in the family mansion but found his every return to the place haunted by the ghost of his father. Never had a word of pride or approval passed his late fathers lips.

As a young colt this had upset Iniquum to no end, leading him to ever greater accomplishments in order to garner his fathers favor. He had to admit, however, that it was this very temperament that had seen him to the heights of power and wealth he now enjoyed, but even this was but a stepping stone to even greater accolades.

What he now sought was to change the very foundation of Equestria.

He had started small, with a few of his fathers old acquaintances, gathering favor until he had become the leader of his very own political faction within the royal court.

The isolationist factions' purpose was to push laws and policies that brought Equestria closer to a self-sustaining state without relying on foreign resources.

The progress was slow going thanks to interference from princess Celestia at every turn. The faction itself was only a front. A temporary seat of power that served to mask Iniquum's true motive. Only his closest advocates within the faction had even an inkling as to his hidden agenda.

Let no pony say it was heresy, or the actions of one with no respect for his goddesses. He loved princess Celestia and princess Luna with all his heart, but he saw the inadequacies of their rule.

As beings who had seen the rise and fall of centuries beyond count they saw the country as unchanging and beyond threat. Of that they were sorely mistaken. Even with the last two years of crisis upon crisis they still would not acknowledge the growing fear that preoccupied the thoughts of much of the royal court.

He would have been lying if he said he wasn't suffering from the same unexplainable anxiety that seemed to permeate all of Canterlot.

He looked again to the inviting blankets of his make-shift bed. With an exhausted sigh he made his way over to them. It was only a week until the royal wedding, he thought wearily.

He had layed down and was pulling the covers over himself when he looked out his west facing window to cast a weary eye to the translucent glow of the force field surounding the capitol. Mabey some celebration would bring an end to his unease, and Canterlot's as well.

It was with these thoughts that he fell asleep into fitfull dreams of a shadow that stalked him, staying just out of sight. It taunted him, making its presence known while it tore at the edges of his mind.

That same night, hundreds of miles away from Iniquum's office, a pegasus express courier was flying post haste for the port city of Manehatten. With the largest airship port on the coast of the Sea of Dawn's Passage, it served as the hub of all trade with the countries across the vast eastern waters.

The parcel she carried that night was marked with a golden stamped insignia, signifying the package was to be delivered with the highest priority.

Despite the warmth of the summer night, a chill traveled down her spine and raised the hackles on her withers. There was something almost unnatural about her delivery tonight. Like a great bird of pry was stalking her, gliding in silence, invisible amongst the clouds.

More than once she had thought she saw movement in the corners of her periphery only to find that nothing was amiss.

In the parcel the medallion stirred, coming out of its meditative state. It had sensed earlier in the night that its thrall had started to break free of its influence and had to reassert it's will over him. Reaching over such a long distance telepathically was difficult, and it left the eldrich artifact feeling drained.

It had chosen its current thrall because of his intelligence and ambition but it made him willful and hard to control. Soon it wouldn't matter if he broke free. The malevolent being within the artifact teemed with anticipation. When it made the shores of Zebrica its real work would begin.

The sun crept over the window sill of a musty study, revealing a piled mess of scrolls, and tomes stacked haphazardly all over the floor.

A small mountain of books in the corner of the seemingly unoccupied room shifted as the morning suns light spilled over it. This was followed by a string of muffled expletives from the pony buried beneath.

A few seconds of silence fell over the crowded room before the pile was enveloped in a light blue field of telekinetic magic and lifted into the air.

"Oh sweet Celestia, I'm alive!" The owner of the study managed between fits of coughing as he stacked the levitating books into yet another dangerously tall pile instead of filing them back onto the shelves that lined the room.

He found that when he shelved his books in an orderly manner he could never find the book he was looking for.

It was this same system that had nearly killed him the night before when he had passed out while deep in his studies of gryphon hierarchy and it's effects on international trade, and rolled into one of the many towers of books.

The resulting collapse dropped a particularly heavy tome of contemporary tax laws squarely onto his head, making this the second headache the frustrating book had givin him.

With the immediate life threatening crisis now behind him the groggy unicorn made his way carefully to the other side of his study.

His desk was situated against the wall just under his window and like the rest of the room, was a mess of parchment and scrolls. At the top of the center stack was a letter written in meticulous horn script. The lines of practiced cursive belonged to his intellectual rival and long time friend Twilight Sparkle.

"Intellectual rival" might be taking it a bit too far, but since most of their correspondence quickly became scholarly debates, he felt the idea held some merit, though they were from vastly different fields of study.

Her primary focus was on the study and application of modern magical theory, but her grasp of almost every conceivable subject never failed to impress. His own field was centered around the study of foreign cultures and relations, though he dabbled in the application of an ancient form of magic the zebras had perfected that used glyphs to control and execute spellcrafting, in fact, it was in this type of magic that his cutie mark had originated.

Lately, he had taken to bouncing ideas off of Twilight instead of his contemporaries. Their investment into the current politics of the royal court colored all their views on global relations and besides, she always seemed to possess a unique take on things that he and his colleagues didn't have. This was probably due to her personal studies assigned to her by princess Celestia.

                  Next to the letter and his half written response was an unopened piece of mail. It had arrived a few days ago but he had been far to busy to open it then. The letter opener next to his writing quills glowed with a blue aura as it ascended toward the similarly floating envelope. Inside the envelope there were two letters the first of which was adorned with the royal seal. His breath caught as he frantically opened the letter, wondering how he had failed to give this message proper attention.

Dear Sage Quill,

You have been formally invited to the wedding of princess Me' amore Cadenza and Shining Armor, Captain of the royal guard. The festivities....

                   He skipped the pomp that most formal letters had and scanned for a date. He found it.

"IT'S TODAY?! What time is it?!" his head swung from side to side frantically searching for a clock.

                     It was eight-thirty in the morning and the ceremony didn't start till later that evening, plenty of time to prepare he reasoned. With this he calmed quickly, but still berated himself for such a large oversight caused by his lack of awareness. The second item in the envelope was a personal letter from Twilight.

Dear Sage,

Enclosed is an invitation to my brothers wedding. I don't know how he forgot to send you one, but since I'm managing the details of the celebration I took the liberty of adding you to the guest list. I apologize for the late notice and hope to see you there.

Your friend,

Twilight

                     Exceptionally short and informal for the Twilight he knew, he also couldn't help but notice telltale signs in her horn writing. His studies into diplomacy had led to a number of techniques that allowed him to gauge the mood of others. There was an emphasis in the curves of her letters that showed she put added weight on her quill when forming them, a sign of intense stress, though she was probably just swamped with the work that came with planning and managing a wedding.

                      Deciding to get some fresh air before the wedding he made his way to the door, weaving, and at some points, climbing over his self imposed mess.  Beside the door his experimental leaf green cloak hung on the coat hanger. It was his most successful product from his studies into zebra glyph magic. Sigils of protection were painstakingly woven into the fibers of the cloak, invisible to the naked eye.  He had tried to pitch the idea of using the process to make more effective armor for the Equestrian military, but had been shot down on account of the cost and time it would take to outfit everypony. On top of that, there was the issue that it was a limited use. When the cloak ran out of sigils it was rendered useless until a meticulous ritual spell was used to recharge it, and offered no protection on its own.

                      With a yank of his teeth he drew the cloak over his back, concealing the long scars etched into his side, as was its secondary purpose. He hooked the leaf shaped clasp with his magic and opened the door, setting off down the hallway of the palaces' research wing.

                       In a different wing of the palace a pegasus guard captain was wading through a mountain of paperwork. The guards workload had tripled since the barrier around Canterlot had gone up. His desk was littered with complaints from business owners and nobles, worried that the severe restriction of access to the capitol would adversely effect trade. In other words they were worried their investments were in danger of losing profit. He was disgusted at thier attempt to conceal thier selfishness and couldn't imagine a more useless waste of time than to reply to the pompous lot, nevertheless it was his duty to allay these fears. And then there was the planning of the weddings security detail. Why his fellow captain Shining Armor had to have his wedding at such a time as this was beyond him.

'Mabey he did it to get out of this nightmarish paperwork', he mused.

                      Silver Lance rubbed his head with his forehoove in an attempt to prevent his headache from getting worse, to no avail. He had so much work to do and not much time to do it in, having been invited to the wedding as well. His dress uniform was freshly pressed and hung from his open closet door, a reminder of his ever looming deadline.

                       With a sigh he pushed the parchment he had been using to pin a letter on away and moved to a window that overlooked the sprawling city below the palace.  Canterlot looked just as peaceful as it had through all the decades of his service. The only noticeable difference was that instead of the azure sky, the morning was dominated by the glowing violet barrier that would deter all threats from outside the city.

                       If only the current crisis was all he had to worry about. He tried not to let his mind wander down the path so many in the royal court had taken, the facts, however, were there. There had been more national crises in the last two years than in the last two centuries, but that was no reason to see enemies where there were none. The political group of isolationists he had spent nearly twenty years fighting at every opportunity had an explosive increase in support. Their paranoia was reason enough to fear for the future of Equestria, and any reassurance he had taken in the return of princess Luna that the power of the crown would grow stronger had all but disappeared when he had performed an inquiry as to the opinion of the court where the wayward princess was concerned.

                      The majority of nobles didn't see princess Luna as a political power yet, and it didn't seem that was going to change anytime soon, even princess Celestia's power was in question. Her failure to stop both Nightmare Moon and Discord, instead sending a group of fillies in her stead had considerably weakened her position. No pony, noble or otherwise, would dare say it openly, but Silver's intelligence reports confirmed the rift in Equestria's power base. In these reports he heard a recurring name as well.

"Iniquum Edict." just saying his name out loud made Silver's skin crawl.

                      The sneak had done well for himself over the years. Though only a minor noble, he had risen through the tangled ranks of the political arena on cunning alone, to sit squarely at the head of the isolationist faction.

                      He shook himself vigorously, forcing the bile in his throat back down. This was supposed to be a day of celebration and here he was rapt up in his dark thoughts. Looking once again at his pristine dress uniform he decided to end his work early today, and went to unfolding as he prepared to don it.