Twilight Sparkle trotted inside canterlot castle on her way to meet with the Princess of the Sun, her number one assistant waddling behind her with a pile of books about Equestria’s ancient history in his claws.
The sight was familiar to anyone having ever worked in the castle, and no one would have ever minded it before. But last week, Twilight Sparkle had ascended as an alicorn and was crowned princess. The new princess now had her fair share of maids and guards bowing to her, despite her insistence that she was still just Celestia’s student and that they shouldn’t treat her differently.
Today, her mind was set on something else. Her ascension came with lots of perks that proved rather pleasant. While most ponies would love to swim in the literal pools of bits in the royal vault, the access to the extra restricted section of the royal library proved to be much more interesting to Twilight.
During her research in this whole new section full of books she’s never read, Twilight came across interesting information about the weapons of the Princesses. She knew that Celestia and Luna used to wield powerful weapons but most descriptions of them showed an axe or a hallebarde for Celestia and a spear for Luna.
However, she discovered a book about a strange sword that could transmutate itself into different weapons. The same book called it a Regalia; a symbol of royalty. It must have belonged to the Princesses. After looking into other pre-celestial era history books, Twilight found mentions of other weapons and even a grimoire, all referred to as Regalia! She had to ask the Princess as soon as possible, and so she was trotting with her number one assistant to the Sun’s private study.
Arriving in front of Celestia’s office, where two celestial guards were standing, Twilight and Spike took a break, the latter needing to catch his breath, given the physical effort of following the new princess around with so many books. “Did you really need me for this Twilight?” complained Spike. “Couldn’t you have let me sleep a bit, it’s been three days since I’ve had a full night's sleep. You should rest more as well.”
“I don’t need sleep, I need answers,” declared Twilight. “It just doesn’t make sense, I get that history can change a bit but these are completely different Regalia from the most accepted ones, there must have been a time where the Princesses had dozens of those weapons if the books are anything to go by,” she rambled on excitedly, before sighing. “Look, Spike, I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I’ll talk to the Princess myself, you can go back to my room and sleep a bit, okay? We’ll pack our bags later before going back to ponyville.”
“Sure thing Twi,” said Spike with a yawn. “See you in the morning, then,” he announced, departing in the direction of their room, leaving the new Princess alone with the two stoic guards.
“Princess Twilight,” welcomed one of them. “Princess Celestia is expecting you, you can go in.”
Twilight nodded in confirmation and opened the door with her lavender magic. The inside of Celestia’s study never appeared to change, no matter how many times she entered the room. The single bookshelf full of Celestia’s personal collection of books sat opposite from the seemingly perpetually lit fireplace. Celestia herself was sitting on a pile of pillows in front of the fireplace, reading a book. Twilight was surprised that her teacher wasn’t sitting at her desk as usual. Usually, the Princess would be at her desk if they needed to talk about Twilight’s research, the pillows were reserved for tea time and such.
“Oh, Twilight, I’m glad you’re here. You took your time so I made myself comfortable if you don’t mind,” stated Celestia as Twilight closed the door behind her.
“Not at all, Princess!”
“I told you many times already; you and I are equals now, you can drop the ‘princess’ title and just call me Celestia,” remarqued the sun Princess. “Now, why did you want to see me? Your letter just told me that you had questions about our history.”
“Sorry,” sheepishly apologized Twilight. “And yes, I had some questions about Regalia.”
Celestia looked at her golden peytral and gave a quick glance towards her crown. “What about them?” she asked curiously.
“Not those, I mean these,” said Twilight as she levitated one of the books she brought to the princess and opened it to an illustration of a mighty golden hallebarde. “We don’t know much about pre-celestial era times and weapons just like that — all called Regalia too — appear in a number of ancient books. What’s up with that? Did you and Princess Luna have the need for so many weapons?”
Celestia’s mood fell visible. “Oh my dear student— No, I guess you’re not my student anymore. As I said, we’re equals and you have the right as a princess yourself now to know,” declared Celestia. “Come and sit down with me,” she offered.
Twilight trotted next to her mentor and sat on the pillows, deposing her pile of books near them. The alabaster alicorn dropped a wing on the smaller lavender princess. “You see Twilight, do you remember what I told you when you ascended?”
“You mean your lullaby?”
Celestia blushed lighty. “No, after that,” she said with a chuckle.
“You said that I had created new magic?” guessed Twilight after some reflection.
“Exactly. You see, the ascension to alicornhood never was a secret, it is just forgotten because of how rare it became over the millennia.”
“But, that is so vague of a requirement! There must have been so many alicorns in the past!”
“Well, yes, there used to be more of us, and if the stories I’ve been told are true, there even used to be a civilisation full of alicorns,” simply stated Celestia, making Twilight froze from shock. “Don’t look at me like that, there are some things even I don’t know, and what happened before my time is one of those things.”
“But you’re almost two thousand years old!”
“Are you calling me old, Twilight?” indignantly asked Celestia.
“What? No!” panicked Twilight.
A silence fell into the room for a moment before Celestia exploded into laughter.
“I’m sorry Twilight, you should have seen your face ahah,” chuckled the sun Princess, which helped remove the fake tension.
“Luna was right, you really enjoy mean jokes like this,” pouted Twilight.
“Let’s go back to the matter at hoof,” proposed Celestia and continued without any response. “As new magic was getting rarer, some of us started to disappear.”
“Why was that happening?” inquired Twilight.
“Grogar was happening. He created magic to steal other’s magic but didn’t ascend. And so, he chose to hunt the alicorns instead,” responded Celestia.
“The Grogar? The father of monsters? I thought he was just a legend!” exclaimed the lavender alicorn.
“He wasn’t, unfortunately. He and his student were the reason the Regalia were made, it was during a time where the elements let themselves be used only on rare occasions by non-wielders, so we needed another way to defend ourselves.”
“But what are they exactly? And how many were there?” questioned Twilight.
Celestia shivered. “There were six. For the six of us who managed to live long enough to make them. They are powerful weapons made to channel our respective powers and help us defeat Grogar and his student.”
“Was he really such a threat?” sadly asked Twilight.
“We believed he was, both to us and to ponykind. His own power gave him so much control over the world that we had to respond with our own creations. A hallebarde that could shatter mountains, a bow that could pierce its target before the string on it relaxed, and four other weapons of such power were necessary to slow him down enough for us to come up with a plan.”
“A plan for what?”
“We couldn’t kill him, he and his student had made themselves into shadows that could never be erased and so we decided that the only thing we could do was to banish them.”
“How did you do it then?”
“Me? I didn’t do it. No, another alicorn, one of my dearest friends, had the idea at the time.”
“Who was it?”
“Gusty the great, alicorn of enchantments.”
In the war room of the Castle of the Two Sisters sat five alicorns on equally as many thrones; four mares and one stallion. The round table around which the thrones were set had maps of the continent laid out on it with red and blue pony-shaped pawns placed on top of said maps, as if to represent soldiers holding positions. A sixth throne sat empty, with some veil covering it as if to protect it from the dust.
“Grogar’s armies are still marching from the badlands, his troops don’t know death; every kill on either side just comes back to serve him, and we are quickly getting overwhelmed,” reported Alchemia. The green and black prince of transmutation moved the red troops in the badlands towards the north. “I spent days with Gusty taking them out in an effort to slow them and nothing has worked, unfortunately,” he explained.
“Yes, we fought as hard as we could, but it ultimately was for nothing. We heard things do not go well on your end as well?” asked the white alicorn of enchantments, turning to the other alabaster alicorn in the room.
Celestia watched the room with a serious frown, before speaking up. “Luna and I might have found a way to fight off Grogar’s army, but first we believe that Princess Amore has something to say about Prince Sombra’s absence,” she remarqued coldly.
The cream colored alicorn sat up from her throne at the mention of her name. “I am afraid that Prince Sombra has betrayed us,” she declared with disdain as the room was filled with gasps of shock at the news. When silence eventually returned, she continued. “It is the tragic truth, unfortunately. He got absorbed by Grogar’s lies and turned on us. He captured the crystal empire in a day and I had to flee to preserve my life and warn you,” reported Princess Amore as she materialised toy-sized crystal troops on the battle map in the crystal empire. “He enslaved the empire’s population and is currently walking the frozen north to Equestria.”
“This doesn’t surprise me, it’s not like we couldn’t have seen it coming. ‘Prince of the dark arts’? Really? Couldn’t he make it any more obvious?” sardonically commented Gusty.
“Art thee insinuating that We are a traitor to thy person too, then? As Princess of the Night, We, too, have learn’d the dark arts, shall thee treatest us like a traitor too bi cause of this fact?” Asked Luna from her throne with no small amount of anger in her voice.
“Luna, calm down! Gusty, we will have a word in private later about your comment,” reprimanded Celestia. “As for you, Luna, I understand you were close to Prince Sombra—”
“Actually he calls himself King Sombra now,” butted in Princess Amore.
“King Sombra,” continued Celestia, mildly annoyed. “But you mustn't put your feelings over the facts. He chose his side and will assume the consequence fully, despite his status.”
No one dared to continue after Celestia’s last statement, and so she carried on with the next subject. “Now, as I was saying, Luna and I might have found a way to defeat the army of the dead and possibly Grogar himself.”
“What do you mean, ‘possibly’?” inquired Alchemia. “He’s absorbed the power of so many alicorns, our brothers and sisters, what could possibly stop him now?” he asked.
“Weapons. We have found a way to make weapons imbu’d with our pow’r. Weapons of such strength that we could defeat any evil,” Luna explained. “We have already created ours. We shall show thee how to make those for they will be needed in the coming fights”
From behind her throne, Luna levitated a tall spear, dark as night, with two heads held by a lunar crescent at its top. “This is our spear. We can conjure the pow’r of our stars with it. We can also bring it into the dream realm and deal real damage to the souls of those We strike.”
The assembly of alicorns all looked at the spear with respect and disbelief at the power inside it. “How did you make this Luna?” inquired Gusty. “There is so much power in it, there’s no way you could have fabricated it. It’s probably stronger than any of us!”
“You are only half-right, Gusty,” said Celestia. “We looked through the research of our mentor, Star Swirl, and of other alicorn’s works and came up with a way to infuse our power inside a weapon. For unknown reasons however, those weapons increase whatever power we gave them substantially.”
“This doesn’t seem right, there has to be a price to pay to get these things,” argued Alchemia. “Tell us, Princess Luna, what does it cost to create such weapons?”
All eyes turned to the lunar princess, who returned the looks with silence. “Thou art right to be wary of how We made Our spear. T’is dark magic, after all. We have chosen to give away Our immortality to acquire it,” confessed Luna.
Once again, the room was filled with gasps of shock at the revelation. Only Celestia kept herself calm and waited for the noise to die down before speaking up once again. “My sister has made the right choice. I too will make this sacrifice if it means defeating Grogar. I only fear that the two of us won’t be enough against the tyran and his new ally.” Celestia paused an instant, pondering how to formulate her thought “That is why it pains me to have to ask you, the last of the alicorns, to make yourselves mortals and fight with us in hope of defeating this evil.”
Silence filled the room, the tension almost palpable.
Finally, Gusty shot up from her seat, wing deployed, as if to draw attention to herself. “Luna, Celestia, I know that the three of us had our differences of opinion over the years, and in normal time I would never even have accepted a seat at the same table as you two. Fortunately for you, we are facing the most evil fiend that has walked this land and I can put aside our past squabbles for this. However, you’re asking a whole lot from us, don’t you think? Immortality was granted to us by Mother Tempora when we ascended, giving away her gift seems a bit much in my opinion.”
“As selfish as ever I see,” commented Princess Amore. “I’ll gladly give away eternity to save the present. What chances do we have to win against Grogar without these weapons anyway?” she asked rhetorically.
“About zero point six percent, actually,” responded the oblivious Alchemia. “What? I crunched the numbers while you were talking,” he explained in response to the many looks the others gave him.
“What about you, Prince Alchemia, will you go with this fool’s plan?” asked Princess Gusty.
“Obviously yes. My mentor, Princess Crystal Oracle, had predicted creations of such weapons, I just didn’t know I would be part of it. I know that if the weapons aren’t made, Grogar most likely wins. I remember her telling me that ‘The Great White Mare’ was the one to finish the horned beast.”
Gusty groaned at the mention of the alicorn of Divination, if she predicted something so accurately then they had to create those weapons to have a chance to win. Everypony was now looking expectantly at Gusty for her final answer. “Fine. I guess there’s no point in being immortal if he ends up killing all of us anyway. Show us how to make these weapons, Princess Luna,” ceded Gusty finally.
The mentioned lunar Princess nodded in affirmation. “Good, We shall now show you how to make your new Regalia.”
It was Celestia’s turn to be surprised at Luna’s words. “Regalia?”
“Aye sister, We think the name fits the tool. Those are symbols of our pow’r as alicorns aft’r all,” she explained.
Everypony at the table agreed on the name for the new weapons and arrangements were made to start the process of creation of the alicorn’s Weapons of War.
