All the King’s Horses
We All Fall Down
How far would you travel, just to be proven wrong?
A Conversion Bureau story.
Prologue
Assassination.
In the human realm the concept was as old as politics itself. Yet here, in the magical land of Equestria, the notion was not only unheard of, it was downright unthinkable.
Princess Celestia, regent of the sun and living goddess to the Equestrian people, shifted uncomfortably on the plinth of pillows within a private meeting chamber. Lush hanging drapes filtered the daylight through the glass dome above, bathing the room in a calming warming aurora. Normally the small circular chamber would contain an arrangement of seating cushions and fetlock high Hors d’oeuvre tables, the perfect environment for entertaining friendly dignitaries. Sadly this was not the case today. Today it looked like a war room.
Elegant furnishings had been brushed aside or buried under heaps of scrolls and ledgers. Dominating its heart was an enormous map, unsettling to the eye as it subtly shifted and morphed to represent the living world beyond the castle. Upon it were dozens of markers, each a tiny horse’s head like the knight of a chess board, each representing a brand new settlement of newfoals. There were only a scant few within the bounds of her original kingdom, beyond its border though, they numbered into the thousands.
With the final days of earth had come a massive surge of refugees. Entire settlements had uprooted from their old world, scrambled to be converted and promptly stampeded across the divide in their millions. Some had left it too late. Many had stayed behind deliberately. But those who had arrived safely needed to be housed and fed, a logistical nightmare to which this room had been had been entirely dedicated.
Barely an hour passed without at least one of the two rulers of Equestria being subject to this hall’s purpose, often switching places when duty called the other away to court. Yet though Celestia had entered the chamber with every intention of continuing her work, she found herself sitting idle, inspecting something upon the knee high table before her, unable to bury herself in paperwork for the sake of distraction.
Subject to her intense scrutiny were the remains of a golden arrow. Whilst there was little left bar shards of its shaft and head, arranged as they were upon the princess’s table the nature of these fragments was easy to divine.
True weapons were scarce in this near peaceful land, thus it would have come as a surprise to many that this particularly ornate artefact had lethal barbs along the remains of its cutting edge. Some of these nasty little teeth had been sheered away, and had been used in the concoction of a poison most foul.
If the alabaster mare was being brutally honest with herself, she had come here for only one reason. She needed space, time to think, to consider events and place them in perspective. This meeting room was in a quieter part of the castle, nestled at the far edge of the west wing beyond the grand gallery. As such it rarely saw visitors of any kind, especially since the cleaning staff had been dissuaded from entering while so much paperwork was afoot. Disguising even her unearthly presence from prying magic, Celestia was sure to remain undisturbed in her troubled state.
It shouldn’t have been possible, but not more than an hour before the supposedly undying monarch had felt the icy chill of impending mortality thrust upon her aged soul. Usually a mere representation of a material form, benefiting only the sanity of her subjects, her body had been transformed into a living prison for her transcendent being. For the briefest of moments, blood had thundered through her vanes. Lungs previously unneeded had drawn in the crisp air, laced with the scent of the token meal and her own rush of fear.
Across her millennia of existence, the princess had occasionally dedicated thought to a foreboding question; Was it possible for her to die? Now the answer had been provided, by one of her own subjects no less. True, the Pale Mare whom had tried to force mortality upon her did not strictly consider Celestia to be her patron. If anything the filly must have harboured considerable hatred for the monarch of the sun. But whatever the child thought of its parents, it did not change the fact that a mother still cared for her foal’s wellbeing. All little ponies were like the children she had never sired and Celestia cared deeply for every single one, even those that had not been born on Equestrian soil.
It was just as well none would enter this room, the air itself felt heavy with inner turmoil. Years of careful meditation had given the eldritch godess mastery over her lingering emotions. Yet no matter how well hidden the physical effects of her grief were, a strong concoction of confusion and sadness was earthed itself in an entirely different manner. The weight of her sorrow would have likely crushed the spirit of any who ventured too close. Time, it seemed, had taken its toll upon her self control.
Beyond the decorative walls that surrounded her melancholy, Celestia felt the undercurrents of reality gently ripple at her sister’s approach. A shiver ran along her spine, her cracked façade doing little to hide that twinge of shame, knowing that the event had shaken the infallible pillar that she represented to pony kind. She didn’t want to be seen like this, but Luna would pursue her none the less. Sighing inwardly, the princess took a calming breath and gathered her wits, allowing a regal smile to cover her frown of concern.
So gentle was the hoof-rap upon her chamber door, it almost conveyed a hope that the occupant wouldn’t answer. Sadly the same could not be said of the voice that followed it.
“Sister? Are You Within?”
Clearly, princess Luna wasn’t taking any chances about remaining unheard, each syllable launched towards its intended listener, projected less ‘at’ the door and more ‘several meters beyond it’.
Since returning from exile, the younger of the two Equestrian monarchs had taken some time to adapt to the customs of this advanced age. Announcements were the worst casualties, the dark coated alicorn simply accustomed to a time when enunciation over large crowds was a dally necessity. But even her casual speech was at times curt and harsh, despite the lack of ill will on the princess’ part.
She was getting better though. Four years ago, a ‘whisper’ like that would have taken the ornate doors clean off their hinges.
Across the room, the gold filigree handles were enveloped in a sparkling aura, each respective door swinging open of their own accord. Stepping soundlessly into the room, a tall ebony Mare glanced across the scroll strewn floor to where Celestia was seated. Eyes narrowing slightly, Luna closed the doors with a gentle touch of magic and strode towards her elder sibling with an air of intense forthright nobility.
“Luna,” Celestia greeted calmly, “I take it that our ‘guest’ has been suitably housed?”
“News of your attacker is not what brings me to your door, Sister.” The princess of the night snapped, as though there was no possibility of disobedience. “Explain thy self.”
Despite being under no delusions as to what her sister was demanding, Celestia’s gentle smile twitched just enough to convey a hint of regal confusion.
“Luna, I’m afraid tonight’s events may have left me somewhat slow of mind. Please lower your tone and be a little more specific.”
In a flash of dark light the midnight alicorn closed the distance between herself and the recumbent monarch. Azure fixed upon mauve as their eyes locked barely inches apart, the latter widening slightly in surprise while the former narrowed, a conflict between livid fury and desperation brewing behind tapered their lids.
“Cast aside thy mask in my presence and elude not the crux of thine’s seclusion!” Luna hissed, biting down to hold back a tide of emotions that strained to escape her breast. “You idle within that shell to hide your presence from me, after that mare... This night would have seen your end if I had not intervened.”
Though Luna’s grammar rarely slipped back into Old-Equestrian these days unless highly strung, but under the circumstances her stress was understandable.
Under the conflicted gaze, Celestia’s facade yielded, averting her eyes lest the inner turmoil begin to fracture her practiced shell.
“Indeed,” She said gravely, her attention firmly upon the golden remains, “It seems Equilonia’s secret weapon was not buried deep enough, am fortunate you had not departed for the night court.”
“I told thee- ‘You’, to drop the mask, sister. Explain to me why my intervention was required at all!” Replied Luna, relenting the pursuit but not her stony glare of almost maternal worry.
“Luna, I was hardly in a position to turn her on the spot. The mare had poisoned me, after all.”
Heckles rising once more, the night’s matron sat heavily before the bench and twisted her head to see into her sisters eyes. “Horse apples. Utter horse apples. Even bound to a mortal form you could have purged the toxin from your body with but a thought. You chose not to. You were going to LET her kill you!”
Silence met Luna’s accusation, leaving the princess’s words hanging in the air like an ugly fresco. Biting her lip slightly, an utterance scarcely louder than a breath passed the elder’s lips.
‘If my death had been her intent, you would not have had the opportunity to intervene at all.’
“Alas I did not catch that, sister.” Pressed the ebony mare, noting the shudder pass through her sister’s withers, “Or has the night left you slow of tongue too?”
Taking a steadying breath, Celestia buried the traitorous thought and finally returned her errant gaze to her unrelenting sibling. “Tell me, Sister, what did you see in her?”
Luna blinked at the question. Though some earnest reciprocation was better than the stone wall she had met before, she knew where this line of enquiry was leading.
“Surely her motivations are irrelevant?” She tried, “After all, they were based on a falsehood. You could have no more set these events in motion then you could have prevented them.”
“Perhaps,” Celestia accepted, “But you saw into her essence when you shared the grain of truth. You know what led her here, that her allegation holds some mode of truth.”
Relenting somewhat, Luna cast her thoughts back to the ethereal threads of foreign memories, the experiences of two mortal lifetimes flashing before her mind’s eye as she reviewed their content.
“She believed you responsible.” She replied at last, “For everything that happened to both her, and the human race.”
With the guilt in the ivory mare’s eyes cutting through the majestic façade, the younger sister fell silent, wishing that the banishment of pain was among her talents.
Shaking out her billowing mane against the gradually returning solar wind, the ivory alicorn stood slowly from her cushioned respite. Turning towards the intricately designed glass windows that stretched across one whole wall of the domed chamber, the princess stepped carefully across the paperwork minefield until her nose almost touched the delicate crystal surface. Beyond a short balcony, White Tail Valley opened up in a breath taking vista, its crisp forested mountain sides and grand waterfalls shimmering in the light of the full moon above.
“Dear sister, you were once quite fond of the phrase ‘Knowledge is not necessarily the same as Understanding’. Would you say that you ‘understand’ what she tried to accomplish here tonight?”
While the question did not seem rhetorical, the wistful alicorn didn’t wait for Luna to reply.
“She wanted to make me mortal. Not to end my existence directly, but as a theft of choice. An ironic form of justice, I suppose our newfoal’s are right.” continued the elder with a hollow laugh, “The Pale Mare truly comes for all in the end.”
Carefully, Luna rose and stepped around the fetlock high table and joined her sister by the gold edged windows. Drawing up alongside Celestia’s slender form, she lifted a wing across the withers of her only sister, whose heart weighed more than the castle in which they resided. “Sister, listen to me. Their time ran out hundreds of years ago, when Equestria first heeded the planet’s call. Everything about an amazing civilisation would have vanished in the blink of an eye without your intervention. What you did was not an act of selfishness as she believed, nor was it without thought or tact. Seeing within her, I don’t think she even believes them herself. Though her own pain is real, Sarah’s accusations hold no credence.”
For a moment, the celestial sisters stood vigilant of the twinkling valley beyond. Somewhere, beyond the infinite horizon, a million points of light sprang from lamps, fires and hearths, each a testament to a dozen lives that had been preserved from a dying world. Every life had its own story, long enough to fill a dozen volumes with precious moments and memories. And in the time they had been bought through the bastion of Equestria, each would write many more before they joined the great herd. Even for the ancient beings that lorded over this green and pleasant lands, such a wealth of experience was dizzying.
“Show me.”
Lost in the moment, Luna glanced up at her sister for some indication that the elder was serious in her request. Immortal they may be, but even the princess of the night was often left shaken when sharing the memories of another. Yet her sister simply gazed off into the waterfall lined valley, relaxed and awaiting the flood of experiences that would help her understand ‘why’, to view her own sins from the perspective of another beyond the sphere of the goddess’s influence.
Closing her eyes, the princess of the night allowed herself to slip briefly from the physical world. To the mortal perception, bristling deep blue fur surged as the star-field of her mane flooded every facet of her being. Gradually she coaxed the trailing thread of experiences from the void, spurring it towards the similarly glowing form of Celestia.
There was a rush of frozen resonance, the barest trace of an ethereal song intertwined with a near extinct scream. In an instant it slipped from attention as the atmosphere crystallised, sound returning to the world in the form of a mechanical tone, pulsing alongside a tremulous heart beat.
...beep...beep...beep...
And then, there was light.