"That will be all Mist Path, I thank you for your quick involvement." Celestia said kindly with her usual motherly smile as she watched Mist Path give his report. The folder was much thinner than usual, but then again, usually, he did work with a more generous time window.

"My princess, I understand the urgency of the situation, but please just give me some more time before-"

"You misunderstand, Mist Path, you already delivered all the information we required. I bid you a fair return to your quarters." The solar princess interjected quite forcefully, still displaying a warm aura despite the hard response.

"But-"

"Agent, you have received your orders." Captain of the Royal Guard, Tower Shield cut him off. "We understand your desire to support the crown in this situation, but further investigations as of now would be a misuse of time. The royal guard will deal with the terrorists."

Tower Shield was an old earth pony mare nearing her retirement. Her once golden mane faded into bronze with several locks of copper and her blue coat was wilting into a wooly mass. Despite the many scars and wrinkles plaguing her form, she stood proudly like the day when she first entered the military.

"Have a pleasant day."

"I-yes, of course. I will depart immediately. I bid you farewell." Mist Path said reluctantly, forcing an obedient response while physically straining himself from further remarks, it would not help anyone to be punished for disobedience.

He turned around, averting his eyes from the council of the sun of which members included names such as Tower Shield, captain of the royal guard, Porcelain Vase, head maid and spy specialist, her highness Celestia herself, Money Bag, royal treasurer, and Z, leader of the Agents. Z was by all accounts a mystery, some claiming him to be something unknown even to princess Celestia, an always-hooded, shaded, cloaked figure with unknown purpose in the government. At least, it was so to Mist Path. Hauhuthos Hillihuth the high mage and magistrate of the capital, Choking Phantom, the leader of the dark magic defense circle, as well as princess Mi Amore Cadenza and prince Blueblood were not present. The council did possess more unofficial members that were called into effect when required but had no permanent seat.

The Princess looked content as the door closed, but her ever-lasting smile fell ever the slightest bit the moment her eyes hovered across the lines of the document handed to her. Despite a princess having to have a more objective way of thinking, she very much so had many subjective thoughts seeing the pictures which could not truly encapsulate the disgust and, dare she describe it as such, anger of the twenty-three lives lost in the night. But, despite the brutality of the perpetrators, one image set her blood into a burning frenzy: The Mark of the Proud Lion Guild. They were a fanatical group believed to have been eradicated in its entirety after having tried and hung over three hundred members in Cluck Dale, the only cooperation between the unofficial Griffon Republic and Equestria, and the latest dispute between ponykind as a whole and The Griffon Kingdom.

"Z, find anygriff that could possibly have cooperated with the Lion Guild, they are highly unlikely to work with other races. Use discretion. Lord Money Bag, please calculate the cost of coming actions taken and inform the nobility of the duties they are bound by their title - opposition will lead to the erasure of their titles. Porcelain Vase, find out if there are any leaks within the castle that may have been spoken of. Tower Shield, inform the Guard to prepare for the possibility of military intervention in the form of a retaliation strike and hostage extraction, all measures are allowed and the mobilization of airships and pylons is granted. That will be all for now."

As the Princess spoke, her loving tone devolved into a near cold and coordinated tune. However, it seemed something entirely else was starting to melt within the alicorn. "Dismissed." She added shortly, and as she ordered, the individual members wordlessly stood up and walked through the large double doors, leaving her alone to her thoughts.

The Princess was not just alone in the physical sense, but also in an objective way.

Her posture remained momentarily high and regal, despite none watching, but for once, even in solitude, she let her form sink into an un-princesslike state. Her back arched forward, her elbows touched the table and she rested her head atop her hooves. Her breath quivered with her pained chest arching with each breath. Celestia could feel her composure crumbling, but she couldn't remember a time when she ever let her grief consume her this much. But she did, there was a time, so long gone, and yet as if it was yesterday, she remembered the very last time her heart was ever free to let it wallow in whatever emotion it desired, even the darkest of painful ones. The last time she lost control, the last time someone could hurt her so much with their absence and their disappearance as a whole. But that was her sister, this was different, but she knew it wasn't quite that, and she hated herself for thinking so... calculated about her very own emotions.

For twelve years, she was the guardian of Star Touch, a colt who invoked so many emotions on such a wide spectrum, that he might as well be both the greatest enemy and most valiant hero she met at once. The memories range from the lovely times, her little prince would jump on her lap time and time again during morning court, to the depths where he chose for but a moment in her lifespan to become but another citizen, leaving her once more alone.

Loneliness was her greatest fear. It wasn't death, her own or others, nor dragon, undead, nor demons, she looked them all in the eyes and bested even the most wickedest of them all, no, they couldn't push her into submission. However, after having her shell of solitude and 'content' opened and letting her feel the radiant warmth of companionship beyond that of a herald or subject, she had grown to be fond of, dare she say, describe as happiness and fearful of her old life. The mundane days of court and paperwork, the blunt galas and meetings, the boring political discussion, and the few glimmers of barely anything worth enjoying in the form of excess sugary foods that made up her day-to-day activity for nearly a millennia looping and repeating endlessly. She wouldn't be surprised if her very own subjects would describe this lifestyle as a form of torture itself.

And then it all changed when he entered her domain. Star Touch, an investment of sorts, grew up to be so much more than she could've ever dreamed of, the hope of motherhood. She could very well understand when mares and stallions alike chose parenthood as not for them, but the thought of seeing her very own offspring was a desire always present, but the horror of seeing her foal crumble away as an old pony was too dreadful to bear. But, like many things, she ruined the few winks of fortune granted to her time and time again.

What should've been a changing relationship morphed into that of a dictatorship, and looking back, she couldn't help but 'indulge' in the piercing and twisting sensation that carved through her heart. And despite the strict schedules that inched the poor colt closer to the Tartarus that was her own misery, he stood steadfast until she pushed away her student. Nothing could ever hurt her colt, he was such a kind soul, but one that couldn't bear the plight of others and thus strayed away from the crooked path of gold she paved. Oh, how angry she became when somepony, her own colt for that matter, disobeyed not her, but the Princess Of Equestria.

And when Star gave her another chance, she did nothing to change what was before, just continue everything while joyfully musing that her beloved, planned-through day continued like the well-oiled clockwork it was before. And now, what was different was quite simple: There was no reassurance for the future, only reflection of the past.

The regret of not doing more, the fear of not actually having been a mother but instead a teacher, even less than a tutor or mentor, were worries she wished ever so dearly to deny, but these dreadful thoughts were rekindled time and time again as she laid there, and a puddle began to form under her face. A pool of misery, sobbing and running mascara. And what was the thought that set in motion this horrible circle of misery? The thought of Star's death, or perhaps even his epiphany that he might be better off away from her after being away, without risk and duty and her endless restrictions. But the question remained, was it fear for him, her selfish self, or the plan she’s meticulously enacted for centuries?

She now felt as if the span of emotions in their relationship was always kept in a cage of her own choosing, but now fell to depths previously unknown: Vulnerability, misery, fear, anger, doubt, they all culminated into a toxic beverage that ravaged her mind.

The sound of a cork popping beneath the table roused the princess, but it was her own magic that did this. Celestia levitated a bottle of 'Die Lebensfreude', a wine produced primarily in Germane from local berries, this bottle was aged for fifty years in a dark oak barrel, before resting another two hundred years in her possession. She always thought that she'd open it at a more celebratory occasion, like a wedding or even Star's coronation that was due in two years, not as a painkiller. She held the bottle to her lips, and before she knew the wine was gone with few glugs and one breath, and yet the alcohol couldn't faze her, perhaps the light burning in her throat that was already present numbed the, in comparison, tame stinging.

"What am I doing?" Celestia said, before summoning tissues and cleaning her face with silk and magic combined. "I need to scour the dream realm, maybe I'll find him that way." She mumbled to herself, feeling slightly tipsy, and quickly began to cast a teleportation spell to her own quarters before becoming an even worse, drunken mess. However, before entering what once was her sister's realm, she first had to go somewhere else to attune herself with more 'positive' magic, lest she too was lost for time to come.

Though she vanished with a flash, she did it so many times, for her, it was but a blink, a pop before she appeared there where she desired to be, and with a little support from the might of the celestial body she herded and guided, there were only a hoof-full of places she couldn't appear in an instant. Now in her chambers, her eyes were lured to her desk, seeing her diary, a magically enchanted book capable of housing tens of thousands of pages despite the thin appearance.

Something drew her to it, but she felt an oddly dreading sensation harbor in the corners of her mind while viewing it.

Princess Celestia shook her head and sat down on her large cushion, a bed set a meter away from her own bed, picked up at a Saddle Arabian bazaar that was perhaps the worst for her duty, given how lulling and comfortable it was. She scoffed bitterly and reminisced to herself after testing it out once and nearly missing a meeting with the then-current ambassador of Iron Stronghoof of the Feron Clan.

Lowering her head, she entered one space she could be her true self, reserved only for the fewest of few: The realm that was reserved for alicorns and those it deserved worthy of its presence.

Celestia - The Realm of Ascension

I opened my eyes to see a place that I haven't visited in well over a decade, though previously that time span might've looked pitiful to the centuries she had before let it exist untouched. Though it was more so of a metaphysical place of existence rather than an actual location, the power and influence it possessed well crossed the borders of reality it was where harmony was second only to one other place, but I knew very well that the tree had lost interest in me, or rather I lost favor with it.

Oh dearest Sister, what little more could've been needed to avert such tragedy, but a whiff of my time, but even then I couldn't grant thee, and if fate were to grant me a crooked hoof, perhaps I too am to live the life I've dammed you to. I thought with agony, clenching my eyes and averting my face as your lovely image blended into my vision from the clouded corners of my memory.

"Luna, Starswirl." I began, and leaned my head back, feeling but the faintest of harmonies tendrils caress my distorted mind. "Sir Silver Blade, Feltwebel Eisenhard, and my beloved colt, I've let you all siphon your hearts and feed mine with your faith, love, and devotion without ever returning any, causing you poor souls to wither away like flowers who weren't touched by the sun." I sucked in a sharp breath of air through my tightened lips while lowering my head. "If you see any chance in this, I will better myself."

"Though I warned you not to pour your heart into our grafting plan, I see you've sank to deeper depths." I heard his voice, and I couldn't quite tell what it was that set my blood ablaze. The desecration of this place, or his misplaced judgment. "Though that matters little, what I came to tell you, however, was that you hypocrites quite disgust me, though what you are is perhaps the only thing still able to touch me."

"I've been wondering where you have gone to, but now I wish I didn't," I said and lifted my head to meet his darkened, empty pupils that reeked with the corrupting, purple flame. How his crooked form appeared like tar within this sacred place, and how he tunneled his way through this plane's walls. "You've chosen a poor moment to insult me, Velvec."

"Hmph, quite demanding who insults me in the very next breath. Velvec Wanderer is dead, long gone, what remains however is a skeleton of his former principles now enveloped by a meaty armor of ambition. My name is Hauhuthos Hillihuth, Sunny Days, and you better remember it next time." Velvec said as I watched his cursed form waddle forward with carelessness and the grace of a drunkard, but then again, harmony was poison to his ilk.

"What kept me at bay? Well, there were some individuals I needed to inform of the most recent happenings, their insight and in some cases, relationships with others involved was quite valuable in my eyes." Hauhuthos said, before finally stopping but five meters away. He towered me, but I couldn't put my hoof on if he made himself appear taller, or if he for once straightened his posture. "As for my presence here, of your righteous holiness herself, what can I say other than remind you of the plan."

"If you think me to be senile, you're mistaken and before your involvement, I was about to search the dream realm of my colt." I rebutted quite hard, with much more aggression than I wished to admit.

"But this is exactly where you already trotted into the wrong alley." He said with the tiniest hint of mockery and a majority of judgement. He took a step forward, but not towards me, but to my side, and began to circle me. "Now? In the clearest of daylight? I could tell you right now that he isn't asleep, for a matter of fact other than his current state, including being alive, there is nothing to locate. I'd know, I was the one who felt his awakening in the first place, the one who watched his birth, held a spell of paralyzation ready when the foolish doctor was about to destroy my future protege, and even followed Gentle Touch to her abode. For alls' sake, I even watched till Agent Mist Path first had his little 'test' with the colt."

"You're monologuing to me what is already known." I replied with a sharp glare, and turned around, to close the distance by a little bit.

"Don't interrupt me, you're like a little filly who can't wait until her mother is finished bargaining with a sales pony." Hauhuthos shook his head with disappointment and widened the gap again. "But no, the reason I came here was to tell you that you're wrong, you aren't his mother."

"Keep your beak shut, shade." I said forcefully, and I couldn't believe I lost my composure so quickly, so fast that only afterward I realized my mistake, and perhaps this outburst surprised even the magus himself, who gave me but the shortest of quivering brows. "You never had any family, what do you know about it?"

"I don't know much about what makes a family, but I have entire libraries full of what most certainly de-qualifies a bond between ponies as 'family', Celestia." Hauhuthos stopped, snapping his head towards me like an owl, and the borders of his flesh ever so slightly appeared like smoke rising from tar. "A mother doesn't wish death upon her child for their unique state." He spat, and I felt pushed back.

"A mother doesn't poison her child, even if they believe it to be for their better. Neither does one seclude them from peers, social gathering, school, the public, forces them through grueling lessons so long as that of a highly acclaimed scholar. Oh, that wasn't even the beginning. Freedom of choice, honesty, loyalty, laughter or joy, those last three most certainly were strangers to you for the longest of times, no?"

I grit my teeth, but my eyes betrayed me as they focus on the ethereal ground. "Shut up." I whispered.

"Stopping so soon? But we have just begun!" Hauhuthos Hillihuth exclaimed joyfully and with schadenfreude. "How about all the lies through the years, not just to yourself, but to him? You picked him up like a piglet for the heart warming eve’s dinner, filled his head with all those hopes. Oh, you'll be a prince, you have such a silvery future ahead of you. Bollocks! You didn't even know if he had a haunch of a chance of survival when you picked him up, Tartarus, it only entered the realm of possibility a couple of years back."

"Shut up." I said audibly, lifting my head and glaring at the taunting monster.

"No, you will listen to me. You endangered the plan, the guide to a weapon capable of killing the goat, you, for your own twisted fantasy, a false happy end." Hauhuthos enforced his statement, stomped on the ground, and opened his wings in a threatening stance. "Every interaction with you pushes him deeper into the other goal post. You think those markings are just for show, those that appear on him like infectious fungus, huh? No, those are the sap of the roots from which nightmares blossom. Darkness in its purest form, and if things were ever to be pushed that deep? Someone cabable of controlling the spawn with a limitless mind, a terror that makes the lord of destruction appear puny."

I could feel the heat rising, my magic blazing with wrath.

"But of course, he also has the chance to end it all, the power to purify the everlasting stains on reality. A literal, immortal star exuding life and energy unlimited in its purest form, the prime magic preceding even the rotten gunk that are divine powers: the ability to command the world gate, steer the boat of fate and even dominate the forge of creation - how fitting that this brilliant light yearning for nothing but painless life and joy, one that is able to stand against the endless hordes of nightmares, hold and push back impending doom given form of a vortex is only buckling, breaking, crumbling and corrupting against you."

"Shut up!" I screamed without any restraint, and I had no remorse while getting in his face showing all the furry I had to bear.

"Why?! Can't accept that he doesn't need you? That you're not what you think you are? A parasite that feeds off my protege, cleaning your own guilt before throwing him into the pyre?” “My, looks like you can't even give the one foal you ever guarded even the illusion of a happy life! Aren't you just nothing more than a parody of a moth-."

"SHUT UP!!!"

And as his sentence finished, Hauhuthos fell back far, despite erecting a shield of hardened, black light it stopped only most of the blast. With quick, heavy, quivered breaths, resisting the urge to cough as the stench of burned tar filled my nose and the heat of my own horn scorched the tips of my brows. And it took a second longer before I realized that I unleashed a beam of pure fire upon the devil before me.

"You don't want to believe me, do you?" A formless, clean and yet distorted voice called from the half-incinerated body. The nightmarish mass suddenly shook with life, standing up with just the help of its legs, and the tar began to grow like a tree into the all-familiar form of Hauhuthos Hillihuth, unharmed, uncaring, unbothered like all nightmares. After all, they can't be killed by traditional means, not even draw so much as a single drop of blood. "Then let me put it this way, from an amalgamation between nightmare and pegasus, a bastard child of the unholy and misbegotten. You're an even greater monster than me."

I fluttered my brows and slowly rose while taken aback by the sheer callousness of his speech.

He smirked, though not with satisfaction or sadism even, but disappointment. "The difference, as obvious it is or oblivious you are, is that I admit my rotten core with a straight face. "

"Leave." I spat out, with no hesitation or resistance, and I meant it despite being shocked at how open and direct I was after a millennium of duties and masks. But that was just another lie to make me feel purer about myself than I actually was, didn't I? After all, I did just lose my composure and attempted to kill some~~thing~~one who spoke against me. "Don't show your face to me unless you're called." I whispered, but he heard me well.

"Very well, your highness." Hauhuthos spoke with a parody of a little bow and vanished by melting out of reality itself.

"You don't know horseapples about what you're saying you dumb bird, nothing." I hissed with venom under my breath, and the tugging sensation of some origin I couldn't locate pulled at my chest, and sadness crunched my heart fiercely. "I'm his mother, no one would tell me otherwise." I clenched my teeth, and subdued, –I tried at least, the stinging sensation that concentrated in the corners of my eyes.

I opened my eyes with a grimace, tightening my facial muscles and glaring at whatever my vision showed me. I couldn't quite put my hoof at what bit my ego so terribly, whether it was the arrogant, but true boasting of hooty, or the fact that I was unable to do anything until nightfall to scour the dreamscape. Of course, I could also doubt the owl's words and use the scry orbs the second it was ready to see if my little colt was indeed within reach of a teleport spell, or at the very least, that in addition to an hour of flight as teleporting such a long distance would require the magic of the sun. I would never forgive myself if I burned down the hideout and star and every griffon in it, though less for the latter.

A knocking rang forth into the room and echoed in an aura of annoyance and frictional anger.

"I remember very well having asked for no disruptions." I called out, still resting with life slowly returning to my legs and my old, scarred wings.

Though my statement was very clear to understand even to the loftiest of ears, what followed was a heavy impact that rocked the door and startled the hinges. A futile attempt as the door was able to withstand a day-long siege, but nonetheless likely shaved off a decade of my nerves, and invoked memories of a persistent and annoying stallion attempting to court me in my young years during the unification period.

"This better be important." I muttered to myself with annoyance, a habit that still persists to this day and has been following me since the days of discord. How dare he make me speak my every thought. With wobbling and uneasy legs, I rose and slowly trotted towards the door, anticipating another 'knock.' With a huff, I developed the multilayer spell grid and turned it to activate the opening mechanism, but while my magical perception was sharp, it seemed my eyes had waned quite a bit, for the moment the door was open, one pushed through.

One very angry mare.

"Where is my colt, where is Star!" Gentle Touch pushed through the opening, and with her forehead connecting with my injured, bare chest, pushed me back, not out of strength but pain.

I hissed as I could feel my ribs bent inwards, the damage that haunted me for so many years was now triumphant in a second of carelessness.

"Talk!" Gentle Touch barked, rage clashing with panic and fear. One of her hindlegs reared back and with a heavy kick closed the door with a thunderous impact, shining pride upon her farmer heritage. "Where is he!?" She screamed loudly, and when I stood my ground, not inching a step backward anymore, she reared herself onto her hind legs and stared me in my eyes.

Fury, anger, and a total loss for her surroundings made her appear almost feral with heavy breathing, barred teeth, and a scrunched-up muzzle to show. Was I scared? No, but it most certainly did not help my surprise to see another unicorn stand up to me, both figurative and literally, in well over a thousand years.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean 'I don't know?' You always acted like you knew everything, and now where it once actually matters you don't know?!" Gentle Touch challenged, pressing her hooves into my front, though now I could feel my limits reach for me.

"Take. Your hooves. Off me." I restored, slowly grasping her limbs with my magic in preparation were she not to do as I asked, but she was compliant.

"Here, have your way again, now where is he!" Gentle Touch asked the same question again, expecting a different answer.

"I don't know-"

"You know much more than you want to tell, you always keep so many secrets, but I'm done with it and I'm ashamed to think that I still believed that holy, divine facade!" Gentle Touch roared, with tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, though I could not quite see whether they were from sadness or pure unbridled rage. "I've always believed you're the best at everything, the smartest, beautiful, powerful, just like every filly, just like every colt, and I kept on believing this damn lie. I told myself this while I just idly smiled while my husband went to the guard. I kept on believing even when my husband died in some bucking suicide mission in griffon lands, when I-I lost my first foal to grief and stress. And w-when you came to me after I had Star for a little while, I thought life would be sweet and easy once again. But I was wrong. I was so bucking wrong, I knew it but I just couldn't wrap my head around the-the totally absurd thought that you aren't all That, but I just kept nodding, and smiling and keeping my trap shut through everything. And now... now..."

Gentle Touch gritted her teeth, and gnashing rang forth as she drowned her choking tone out with growling. "And now you took my colt as well!" She slammed her hoof down on the marble, cracking it ever so slightly, just like Star once did, albeit to greatly lesser effect, while sparks of magic dared to ignite into one plausible explosive spell. "Why don't you just take me as well?!"

My mouth hung slightly agape, and I swallowed hard. "Gentle Touch, I was hardly responsible nor wishing for-"

"Don't you bucking cut me off!" Gentle Touch roared, shipping her hoof forward. "You don't notice anything, not now where he is, nothing when he was here, and I'm almost glad that he's not here with you." The sneer of disdain bit quite deep in my heart, much less however the accusation itself. "Wasn't it enough to push him through all of those mind-crumbling lessons? More than ten hours of school at the age of five, fourteen at ten, what were you aiming for, huh!?"

"You always expected so horribly much, I didn't understand half of his homework at eight! You pushed him further and further and he tried everything to appease you. Do you even know how many times I've caught him studying 'till four in the morning just to meet whatever goal you threw at him? Do you know just how far he pushed himself to make you happy? He forgot to eat for two days while I was gone to finish another project. He kept practicing magic till his poor horn cracked, and do you know what he asked afterward? Do you!? 'Can I try again in an hour?' Can I try in another hour... Most ponies can never cast afterward and he just tried to go further and that at nine bucking years old!"

Gentle Touch slowly walked forward with her horn tilted slightly lower and forth and emerged a fickling stream of burning hot mana that cut through the air and scorched the saddle Arabian bed into a crusted pile of smoldering coal.

"But that is... is just the colt Star is, always trying to make everypony happy. He would douse some silly little illusion he got s-somewhere and go, volunteer, wherever he could. Soup kitchens, clinics looking for assistance, building sites for orphanages, and housing for the poor, he was practically signed up with whoever one could volunteer to - don't even get me started on all the things he gave away! Knitted blankets, sold art, helped the poor, giving away his time, possession, bits, and everything that wasn't nailed to his body - He hated seeing ponies suffer!"

"Hate, anger, the pain of others agonized him more than any injury he did to himself, and he took it all in. Yes, I didn't just watch idly while you watched my foal like a potted plant, did you really think I wouldn't notice him absorbing all the foulness, and bitterness ponies spewed? That ponies started to become so much happier, how the grass became greener, dead trees bore fruit again, flowers bloomed and even that some sick miraculously got healthy again, hmm?"

I clamped my muzzle tightly, I never assumed Gentle Touch to be oblivious, but most certainly not as observative, definitely not to these degrees. I also never felt this much magic radiate off her before, it was like she became a whole new pony, and the scent of burning... oh no.

"Did you think I was this dumb? I practically haven't aged in twelve years, I even am so bold to say I became even younger. I've watched my foal become such a wonderful colt, but no, no, no, no you come and try to ruin him at every corner he takes!"

I gulped as I saw Gentle Touch raise her, flickers of her magic briefly illuminated her face moment by moment, revealing the tears and mascara-stained face of an enraged mother.

"You just took and hurt him at every corner! Would it have killed you to give him more than a few words a month? Console him while he tried to understand that the world he saw wasn't like we did? Reassure him that he wasn't a monster?!" Gentle Touch hissed with venom, and another arc of furious mana curved upward and scorched a deep hole into the warding enchantment that secured this very room. "No, you would always send him to a doctor or professional, to study him like a-a slab of meat! He couldn't talk with no one other than me about himself to the point he didn't talk at all!"

And as I blinked with my dried eyes, the crackling magic around her becoming bold and paining my eyes, I found myself a moment later toppled on the ground. I groaned and agony painted my faze, only for all emotions to quickly flush away when Gentle Touch's muzzle firmly collided with mine and remained there.

"No, and he kept going, and I doubt it was because he loved you, no, he just couldn't grasp that some ponies will always just be miserable, or maybe he just knew that he couldn't leave you after all your flying eyes did always look after him." Gentle Touch said in a low and almost predatory tone, and although I kept my face unchanged, she knew very well the answer to her claim. "He always saw them, and just happily nodded. Until you broke him. I haven't seen him cry since he was a little foal who just lost his birth mother, never saw a glint of pain till this curse, these scars afflicted him. In the end, he couldn't even bear your hate."

My lips quivered, but as I tried to make a sound or something that was supposed to resemble a sentence, Gentle Touch twisted her hoof, and inaudible music escaped my throat.

"Be silent!"

"He would've kept going, even died just to see you smile at least once." Gentle Touch sucked in a sharp breath of air, and averted her eyes for a moment, before meeting my pained gaze once more. "And he even gave you another chance after you isolated, abused, hurt, tortured him for all these years like a dependent victim of domestic violence-I should've at least tried to take him as far away as I could even if it would've been futile!"

An electrical strike coursed through my body and all air left my body as her hoof impacted with my ribs, and although I felt my magic passively concentrate to retaliate, something kept me from doing so.

"And you just kept going like nothing ever changed, but something did. He stopped being so joyful, stopped being happy, even his smile became a pale imitation of what he used to shine. Just always keeping this stoic image, just like you, donned with a fake smile." Gentle Touch leaned nearer, so close that our eyelashes touched. "I found two of my first aid kits that disappeared and were replaced with bits. And do you know what? They were all used up. Bloody bandages, empty cans of disinfectant, chipped and blunted surgical scissors and knives, used bandages, and worst of all? Burned tissue and horn splinters."

My eyes widened to their fullest, and it wasn't for the pain growing so intense in my chest that my flesh became numb.

"You better pray to your ancestors that he didn't need it because of you, because I will ask him once he will be back and if the answer is what I dread, then I will give back all the pain you caused my poor little colt in his stead."

And as these words left her lips, and she stared a little bit longer into the depths of my soul, she did eventually jump off me and turn her back. She didn't care that she just attacked the ruler of the nation she lived in, that through all this I was well within my means and even rights to use my magic unrestrained to possibly severe effectors nor for whatever problems for the future she may have caused to herself, all she cared about was to speak openly. After all those years of just blindly smiling, nodding, and following my wishes like every other pony. Had one asked me before I met Gentle Touch, then possibly I would've doubted there were any citizens of Equestria who didn't follow me, wouldn't do just about anything even if it meant to face death itself.

Gentle Touch proved me wrong, and with the wrath of a mother scorned, managed to strike me deeper into the ground than even the most dangerous of foes I've faced in well over a thousand years of life.

As the door was ripped open, it wasn't closed properly after all so the mechanism didn't trap her here, the bang of the door threw my diary onto the floor with two pages facing upwards, two pieces of paper I marked with a very particular reason. With a grunt, I slowly pulled myself up, only to falter, stumble and crumble onto the floor. I groaned with pain and dragged the book towards me, sliding it across the floor like a mop, before finally looking into the revealed pages.

And I read it with horror.

And then the next.

The one afterward.

'till the very last page, I wrote yesterday.

There wasn't a single, genuinely happy thing written. Progress was noted, and achievements marked, but not a sentence a mother would write of her foal, no, it sounded like the documentation of a scientist on a lab experiment. That was exactly how I wrote about her colt: Like a piece of meat. And who did I lie to, when I first had Gentle Touch sign the paper what was he to me? What was he yesterday? Always the same, just with a different name. A chess piece to best my ancient opponent, a piece of the puzzle I was fixated to solve, a way to finally end the terror that was the goat of six horns.

And in the end, I became just as much of a monster as him, going over the lives of countless to reinforce my rule, Equestria as it is known today only to sink below even the depths that were the nightmares.

"Akh!" I exclaimed, and threw the book into a corner, scattering the pages in all directions and I didn't care. A searing, scorching pain dared to rip my heart into countless pieces, but not before hollowing it out. I whined and bit the air for any kind of release while groveling on the floor. Tears escaped me while my eyes remained open, and I could feel how my very consciousness was on the verge of slipping while not allowing me to be whisked away into the black. And as I laid there, sweat and tears soaking my fur and feathers, staining the carpet and my hide, I couldn't help but note:

In a thousand years, my ribs have never pained my heart any less than today.

Author's Note

Sometimes the greatest shock can only be given by ourselves in a moment of relaxation. after a millennia of loneliness dominated by pure control and a looming doom over her heard, after many atrocities done to so much so gain a chance for the survival of equestria from an ancient evil, Celestia realises how much she changed and what she become.