Sun & Moon Act II: A Crown Divided

by cursedchords

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Romance, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Drama, Original Character
Length: 209623

Three hundred years after defeating Discord and assuming the throne, Celestia and Luna must confront new threats from both the past and the present. How far will each one go to preserve the things they care most about?

This is Sun & Moon, a full history of the lives of the two alicorns around whom Equestria's story is indelibly wrapped. And this is its second chapter: the story of the rift that almost tore the country apart, just as it was getting started.

Three hundred years ago, Princesses Celestia and Luna together defeated Discord and created the Elements of Harmony. They overcame the separate factions of Discord's nobility and the Orders of the Resistance to forge a new nation, peaceful and prosperous. Since then, they have worked tirelessly to build it up, rebuilding a democratic government in Canterlot and promoting the growth of cities and towns all across the land.

However, new threats are rising. After knowledge of Pegasus magic was lost during Discord's reign, a multi-year drought seemingly without end is now threatening to plunge Equestria into a famine, and to tear apart the peace that has held for three centuries. The two Princesses will have to use all of the resources at their disposal to stave off conflict, yet how far can they go while still keeping true to the ideals that got them onto the throne in the first place?

Separately, high above Equestria in Cloudsale, the young stallion Wind Swept struggles to come to terms with a destiny that is still mysterious to him. Thrown to the surface in a freak dust storm, Wind will have to understand a life that his fellow pegasi forsook centuries ago, and come to grips with the part that he will play in the upcoming struggle for Equestria's future.

And hanging over all of this, a shadow from a past before Equestria watches and waits, ready for a chance to plunge the world once more into a darkness without end.

Map by me
Cover Art by CrimsonRose97
Editing by The Fan Without a Face (who I most heartily recommend)

Published 2021-08-30 22:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2022-06-23 22:00:13 UTC

Star Swirl's Letter & Map of Equestria

Retrieved from the Star Swirl the Bearded Collection, Canterlot Archives
Dated: 16 Planter’s Moon, 1476 th Year of the Solar Throne (30 UIT)

Dear Clover,

If you are reading this, then it means the new Queen has taken my advice and kept you on as Court Mage in spite of everything that has happened. I understand that you may be cautious, perhaps even wary of accepting this post, but I assure you that it is necessary for you to continue to serve. Right now the kingdom requires a steady hoof at its helm more so than ever, and I fear that Platinum, whatever her pedigree, is not the pony to provide it.

You would of course be justified in asking why I have decided to depart in the middle of such uncertainty. Rest assured that were it not for the shortness of my time, I would be providing you with a complete explanation. Sadly mistakes of my past have arrived on my doorstep and are angrily demanding their due, and every moment I ignore them I do so at both my own peril and that of the whole kingdom.

Know this. Your former master and my former friend, King Solaris, is known to have died just this past week, slain in the midst of the Uprising. This story is not true. In fact, Solaris lives, though he left our kingdom that night, in search of what I do not know. But thanks in part to my own help, he now stands poised to unleash a danger greater than any I thought possible. Thus it falls to me to avert the calamity swiftly descending upon us.

Please do not try to follow me, for this task is one that I unknowingly appointed for myself years ago, a penance that I must bear for the mistakes that I made in my blind ambition. Whatever noble aims I placed before my eyes as I sowed these seeds, it is now my responsibility to bring in this treacherous harvest, and whatever the eventual end to this expedition, it seems increasingly inescapable that it shall be my last. Our kingdom needs you now more than ever, Clover, and I could not bear to think that my actions will have hurt anypony more than they already have.

My laboratory shall finally be open to you, its key delivered along with this letter. The answers to all of your questions are in there, buried in the depths of my research notes, and I beseech you to seek them out in whatever time you have. Should I fail in my task, the fate of all may yet rest in your hooves, and everything you need to know is held within those words.

Clover, you were always one of my best students, and I know that you will face the upcoming strife as well as any proud unicorn should: with an upright sense of justice, order, and reason. It is my greatest sorrow that I will not be able to watch as you inevitably eclipse all of my trifling achievements. May Harmony stand with you.

Your mentor and friend,

Star Swirl

Map of Equestria

Chapter 1: The Twin Thrones

“A Princess is more than just a leader. She is a shining light of hope in times of trouble, and a rock of order upon which the law relies. She is an unwavering guardian of all her charges against whatever foes await them. She is the very model upon which her country is built.”

- Journal of Princess Luna

“And so, it is my great pleasure to declare the new Baltimare bridge officially open!” Princess Luna declared, hefting a novelty-sized pair of scissors with her magic and cleanly snipping the bright red ribbon that stretched across the eastern end of the bridge in two. The action was met with polite applause from the modest crowd of ponies which had turned out for the event, braving the oven that this midsummer afternoon had turned into. There wasn’t even a hint of a breeze in the air, so the Sun’s full power was felt by all out on the ground. Even Luna was having a hard time staying as cheery as usual in the heat.

With the ceremony finished, Luna diverted her attention to the journalists in the crowd, all marked out by their open notepads. “I have a few minutes to take some questions,” she said. She had a banquet to attend later in the evening which she would need to prepare for soon, but it was crucial that she connected with the thoughts of the average ponies, primarily those away from the capital.

“Front Page, Baltimare Sun!” cried an orange earth pony in the front row. Luna gave her a calm nod, and she opened up her notepad. “Princess, the Baltimare Bridge was planned and developed six years ago, when the Silverwater was otherwise impassable. Yet, with the drought, the river can be forded now in several places. So what purpose does this bridge still serve?”

“Good question. While it’s true that the river has receded several feet in recent years, surely you know that the recent drought has been a weather anomaly. An extended one to be sure, but a temporary situation all the same. When the weather, and the river, returns to its normal state, this bridge will once again be the only way to cross.” Luna ended off with a meaningful smile for the reporter, who seemed to be satisfied with the answer.

In truth, she had hoped that she could perhaps avoid thinking about the drought today if possible; it was the only thing that anypony wanted to talk about these days, or so it seemed. Granted, it was certainly an important issue, but answering the same questions over and over again did get tiring eventually.

A sea of hooves shot up from the crowd as she turned for the next question. This time she pointed to a lanky cyan unicorn in the second row, the political correspondent for the Equestrian Times if she was remembering correctly.

“Concerning the drought, some ponies tell me that if we had more trained and certified weather ponies in the country, things might be a bit more livable. Do you have any comments on that, Princess?”

Despite the critical question, Luna didn’t let her smile slip. “Well, naturally if we had more trained pegasi in the country, things would be better. That is why I’ve created the Royal Weather Academy in Canterlot, in the hope of increasing the size of our weather forces to a point where they can manage the country.” The Weather Academy itself had been in existence for a number of months now, but it was always a good thing to remind ponies about it.

A hopeful murmur passed through the crowd. “And how long do you think it will take before the newly trained pegasi can put an end to the drought?” asked the Times reporter, furiously scribbling notes on his pad.

To this Luna sighed. This was the part that she didn’t like having to say, true enough that it was. “Unfortunately, no amount of pegasi can create rain out of nowhere, well-trained even though they might be. With a large enough force, I hope to be able to control the winds, but as far as ending the drought goes we must still trust in the inevitability of rain.”

The unicorn nodded back, signaling the end of his questions. Right beside him, a soft pink earth pony mare stood up. “Your Highness, one of my sources told me that in fact you have a sister.”

A muted chuckle passed through the crowd. “Yes, I believe that I may have heard that rumour too,” Luna replied, relaxing a little now that the topic of the conversation had changed.

“It has been months now since we last saw her in Baltimare,” the reporter continued. “Years even, if my memory serves correctly. Why exactly are you the only Princess that ventures forth from Canterlot whenever there is an event to be conducted?”

Luna gave her own chuckle at the question. Celestia never believed it when she was told how much the citizens wanted to know about her. If she ever did decide to leave Canterlot for an evening, it would be a national event.

“My sister and I each serve Equestria in our own ways. If you ever have the opportunity to travel to Canterlot, I recommend that you take a moment to visit the Senate while it is in session. There you’ll get to see everything that Celestia does as part of her responsibilities. Personally, I’m more than happy to let her deal with that work, since it means that I get to spend more time out here with you. One day, perhaps, I shall convince Celestia to join me for another bridge opening.”

There were nods about the group, but more than a few knowing shakes of the head from the more experienced members of the press corps.

One day, Luna thought, maybe if Canterlot burns down or something.

She was just about to point to another reporter in the crowd when Luna felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She turned to find a tiny pebble there, held up discreetly by the magic of Steady Brow, the leader of her personal guard. The heavyset unicorn was standing off to the side of the stage, and with a subtle lifting of his left eyebrow he indicated that there was something she needed to know. “Excuse me one moment,” she told the crowd, before taking three quick steps down from the platform and ducking behind the bridge’s near support.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

Here behind the bridge the rest of her personal guard was gathered: Brow and Lieutenant Heart were the unicorn members, clad in gleaming mail that was lacquered a dark purple. The guard also included three pegasus scouts, although they weren’t usually at her side, instead sticking to the airspace to watch for incoming threats. So Luna was surprised to see Guardspony Swift on the ground behind the bridge, his sandy yellow mane somehow still flat to the scalp despite his time in the air.

Swift snapped her a speedy salute before answering. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. I’ve caught sight of a large dust storm developing several miles to our north. I believe that it’s turning our way. We have about fifteen minutes, maybe, until it’s on top of us.”

Luna cast a look up at the sky’s northern horizon, but for now it still seemed clear. Dust storms had grown frighteningly common in the plains of western Equestria, and they could occur suddenly, even on a clear summer afternoon. She turned back to Brow. “Is there a weather-pony detachment out here that can deal with it?”

Swift spoke up again. “I already thought of that, but there is only a bare skeleton crew here. Enough to wrangle what moisture they can out of any clouds that go by, but none with storm training. And on my own I would be useless against a system this size.”

Luna took a step away from the group, turning back until the skyline of Baltimare was in her vision, just around the stone pillars of the new bridge. She had seen what the larger storms could do, the whole sky turning black with dust, the wind whipping the grit into every exposed space. Ponies could do nothing except shutter their windows and hunker in their basements, waiting for the storm to pass. And all the while the topsoil was ripped away, and everything that had been growing was torn up by the roots.

The thought made Luna shudder. This wasn’t the way that ponies were supposed to live, in fear of the whims of the weather. As a filly, she had learned that they were supposed to guide the winds, shape the atmosphere, and keep things peaceful for the rest of the nation. In part, that was what she had hoped to restore in founding the Academy. The thought of another city’s crop lost to a random storm was simply too much for her to bear.

“It wouldn’t be just you,” she said, turning back to look at Swift determinedly. “Together we can stave this off. Captain Brow, I’ll need you to placate these journalists while we’re gone, Lieutenant, I want you to…” She stopped when she saw the look in Brow’s eyes: concerned and solemn.

“I’m afraid that I can’t recommend that course of action, your Highness,” Brow replied. “While I have every confidence in your abilities, and that of Guardspony Swift, my job is to keep you alive.”

Swift nodded, though he too looked disheartened. “Maybe if we had a whole platoon of storm specialists, we would have a chance, Princess. Maybe we could divert the storm. But it would be a huge risk.”

Luna lowered her head as she weighed her options. If she ordered it, they would have to follow her, and do their best to protect her against the storm’s wrath. It was Brow’s job to keep her alive, not decide how she should spend her time. Yet, at the same time, he did have a point. Nopony would be served by her risking her neck in the skies, and there was a high risk of injury, which carried its own problems.

“Okay,” she said solemnly as she made her decision. “Let’s get everything tied off here, and then we’ll head back to Canterlot.”

The guards all nodded before briskly trotting off to warn the crowd and get things prepared for her departure. A gentle breeze blew out of the north, blowing Luna’s mane into her eyes.

Out on the horizon, she spied the storm’s first feelers, wisps of black that seemed to hang in the distance. Underneath them, she knew, whole fields were being stripped bare. This late in the season, there would be no chance of replanting them, and nothing would grow without rain anyway. Another loss in a record that was growing longer and longer.

Luna shuddered again. Most of the time, she was thankful that she didn’t have Celestia’s job. Staying cooped up in the capital every day would be maddening. But at least her sister didn’t have to deal with the results of the drought firsthand. Hopefully, her day had at least gone well.

Celestia banged her gavel, the crack of the wood resonating around the square chamber. “The chair recognizes the Senator for Canterlot’s Fifth District,” she intoned, turning over a small hourglass to mark off the Senator’s time.

Across the room, there was a grating sound as a chair was scraped back, and the Senator got to his hooves.

Pensive Prose was one of the ranking members of the committee, the roots of his deep brown mane rapidly going grey. As he stood, he arrayed a few parchments on the low lectern in front of him.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” he began, his light, silky voice echoing off of the white stone walls of the committee chamber. “As this committee is aware, the plight of the citizens of our nation continues to worsen as each day passes and no rain falls. Our stores run shorter, food prices rise higher, and hope, though ever present, shrinks just a bit more each day.”

Despite the grave words spoken, Celestia tuned out the senator as he continued with his speech. It was going to be more about the suffering of the nation under the drought, and how the Senate really ought to help by doing what he and his cronies wanted. Celestia never regretted establishing the Senate; it was, as she had learned in her youth, the most effective way to ensure the government stayed accountable to the citizenry. It just meant a lot more work for her.

In addition to chairing this committee and several others, Celestia presided over the Senate when it was sitting, and served as the chamber’s legal adviser, since nopony knew the Equestrian legal system better than she.

Luna always wondered why she never found any time to take a break from the capital, but Equestria needed her, and Celestia wouldn’t have chosen another job in the world, even with all of this one’s annoyances.

Across the expansive chamber Celestia picked out a plump yellow earth pony, Senator Ink Stain of the Canterlot Foothills. Ink was doing her best to look busy shuffling the parchments about on her own lectern, but every once in a while she would steal a surreptitious glance at the chair’s hourglass. She wasn’t alone. Pensive’s long winded speeches were something of a legend about the chamber.

This time, the Canterlot senator was proposing the creatively named Food Act, a resolution to alleviate the tight food supply by having the government buy the upcoming harvest and then distribute it equitably to the citizenry.

It wasn’t a bad idea, and likely necessary given the state of things, but it would be another stack of parchment on Celestia’s desk this evening, waiting for legal amendments. It would join three other resolutions which had emerged from the Appropriations and Revenue committees this morning.

Finally, the sand ran out. Celestia offered Pensive a slightly irritated gesture to wrap things up. Even so, he still took a sweet minute getting around to his conclusion, and moving for a vote on the Act. It passed without any objections.

In the courtyard outside, the evening shadows were growing long. “The chair moves for adjournment,” Celestia said. With no objections, she cracked her gavel again. “The committee shall reconvene in three days.” With that, everypony in the room gathered up their parchments into their satchels and made their way hastily to the exits.

“I still don’t know how you do it,” came a voice from behind her.

“Luna?” Celestia turned and offered her sister a quizzical look. “You had a dinner scheduled for tonight. Did something go wrong?”

“Dust storm, and good evening, by the way.”

Celestia stretched out her forelegs high over her head, and was unable to stifle a long yawn. She heard distinct cracks from several of her joints. “It’s been a long day,” she said. “No longer than usual, mind you, but well, usual is still pretty long.”

In answer Luna only gave her a bemused roll of the eyes. Celestia found her sister a baffling enigma. While spending all of her days in committee was exhausting, surely it was nothing compared to the travel schedule that Luna had adopted. Almost every day had her out tackling public work in some other part of the country. And that was when she wasn’t up at her Academy, working all day training pegasi. At least when Celestia made her way up to her chambers at the end of the day, she only felt as if she had been run off of her hooves.

“We’ll have to take supper in my study, I’m afraid.” Normally the kitchen would prepare something more special whenever the two of them dined together, but since Luna had come back early they would only have Celestia’s usual working dinner prepared.

“I expected as much.” Luna got the door for her sister as the two of them exited the empty room. The rest of the senators really had cleared out quickly. “So, how goes the fight?”

“Oh, the usual grind,” she answered, feeling somehow a little more refreshed now that they were in the hallway and moving out of the Senate’s wing. “Sadly, it appears things are growing a bit tense with the harvest so close. Tell me, how’s everything in the west looking?”

Luna shook her head solemnly. “Not good. There are rare patches that look like they might yield something, but they are very few. Elsewhere, whole fields are bare. Without rain very soon, the whole crop looks to be a failure.”

“We don’t have the stores to last another winter,” Celestia noted, some of her previous tension returning. “How about the Academy? Any luck there?”

“I wish that I could say so. But there’s a problem with teaching a lost art, you have to figure it out first. We have no shortage of talented pegasi, and they’ll make excellent weatherponies once they graduate, but as for creating rain, we don’t even know where to start.”

According to the ancient histories, pegasi had once been able to do more than simply move clouds around, and had instead been able to use their magic to create clouds and rain out of literal thin air. Windcasting had been essential to the pony nation’s survival in pre-Equestrian times, but during Discord’s reign the art had been lost. Luna had founded her Academy in the hope of rediscovering it.

“Well, I don’t have to tell you to keep at it. I don’t want to say that you’re our only hope, but—”

“I’m not,” her sister answered, resolute despite the situation. “Rain can still come.”

Celestia nodded. Her sister’s stiff upper lip was always a welcome help, especially in such trying times. Up ahead of them, two silent guardponies stood in burnished armour around an ornamented set of double doors.

Celestia tipped them a weary smile, and received two silent nods in response. The guard on the right unlatched the door, and together the two sisters stepped into Celestia’s apartments.

The elder Princess had a three storey tower all to herself, clustered with Luna’s tower and a few other administrative offices in its own wing of the palace. The lowest floor was a stately sitting room and a grand dining room, both for entertaining senators and foreign dignitaries when necessary.

Celestia and Luna both stepped right to the stairs, though, climbing up to the second floor landing. Celestia’s study was a wide, semicircular room taking up the whole western half of the second floor. A huge window facing west looked out over all of Canterlot, including the foothills and out to the countryside beyond.

On the distant horizon, the Sun gleamed a golden red. The rest of the study was filled floor-to-ceiling with books and parchments on every subject imaginable, stacked and sorted with painstaking care, with not a speck of dust anywhere in sight. On the wide reading table in the centre of the room, a steaming tray and tea service sat alongside an ancient, worn map that Celestia had weighed down with a few paperweights. The scent of the food set Celestia’s stomach growling. Even so, she poured Luna’s tea first.

The younger Princess took a seat in one of the two chairs that faced each other across the table, taking a moment to study the map. “That’s not Equestria, is it?” she asked, taking a sip of her tea.

Sitting down across from her and adding two spoonfuls of sugar to her own mug, Celestia smiled coyly. “It’s a bit to the north, actually, though the scale is all wrong. Clover was a gifted pony in many ways, but it turns out that cartography wasn’t one of them.”

“Then this doesn’t have anything to do with the drought.”

Celestia's eyes jerked up in surprise, then she laughed. “Sorry, Luna. I suppose I started in the middle there, didn’t I? This is a little personal project of mine, for when I get a spare moment.”

intrigued, Luna picked up one of the spring rolls on the dinner tray and took a restrained bite. Her eyes wandered to the stack of legal documents that sat on the far side of the table, several inches high. “I imagine that isn’t very often,” she commented dryly.

“A moment here or there, whenever I can spare it,” Celestia answered. “It’s such a welcome respite to be able to take my mind off of governing whenever I can. I don’t suppose that you’ve ever heard of the mystery of Star Swirl the Bearded?”

To her credit, Luna thought for a moment about it. “Maybe once, long ago. Talented unicorn, right?”

“Oh, talented doesn’t do him justice!” she answered with a glow of excitement. “Magic theory advanced farther under his tenure as Court Mage than at any other time in history. He was one of the most celebrated stallions in the whole Unicorn Kingdom! He’s mentioned in every history book and chronicle of the time period, no matter the author. But then…” she paused for a dramatic moment, “he disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” Luna asked, another spring roll now in her hoof. “At some point he would have to have passed on.”

“See, that’s just it,” Celestia replied, smoothing out the parchment map on her desk. “It’s been centuries since then, but not a single chronicle mentions the death of one of the most important unicorns in pony history. In fact, nopony even mentions him retiring or growing old. One moment he’s the centre of everything magical in the kingdom, and then suddenly he's just gone, almost like he'd never been there in the first place.”

“And you think that you can find him?”

“Well, I certainly hope so.” With a hoof Celestia indicated a few of the markings that she had made on the map. “The pony tribes came south after the Sunless Summer, following this route, as near as Clover’s recollection holds.” A dashed line snaked down out of some of the mountains near to the parchment’s centre, meandering for a time before disappearing off of the map’s southern edge. “Star Swirl disappears from the chronicle around that time, give or take a year or two. I think that if we can retrace the tribes’ steps, we’ll very likely find a clue as to what happened to him, or maybe even his final resting place itself!” She looked up again at her sister, the excitement painting a wide grin on her face. Luna was smiling too, though there was something other than historical curiosity to it.

“Well, once the current situation has passed,” Luna said, “I think that we could do just that. Make an expedition out of it perhaps.”

Her smile was still earnest, which made Celestia pause for just a moment. While travel was certainly in Luna’s wheelhouse, archaeology usually wasn’t. “Have I made a historian out of you finally?” she asked, smirking deviously at the implication.

Luna guffawed. “Heck no! But this sounds like an opportunity to finally get you out of the palace for once, even if it will be for historical study. I could never let a chance like that pass me by.”

Celestia let her grin turn wry. “Well, it’s a plan then. Once things are settled down here in the kingdom, the two of us are taking a holiday up north.” She began delicately rolling up the parchment, and in the process grabbed a spring roll for herself before Luna could take them all. She knew that Luna wouldn’t exactly think of such an expedition as a holiday, but it would be time away from work if nothing else.

Reminded of her current task, she caught another glimpse of the stack of parchments on the other end of the table, bound together in red twine. Pensive’s flowery script marked the top one, which was nearly twice as thick as the others. Indeed, a holiday did sound pretty good right about now.

Chapter 2: Blessings of the Crown

“Ponies today forget that my sister and I were born into a world of darkness. But I can never forget it.”

- Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 3)

When the Sun dawned on Canterlot, Celestia was up to greet it. She was standing on the eastern balcony of her tower, right across from her office, enjoying the brief moments of solitude at the start of her day.

Sitting in the far east of the country as it did, Canterlot was the first city in Equestria to glimpse the morning light, rising clear and yellow over the boundless deserts that stretched away from the city to the east. Celestia prided herself on being one of the first to watch it crest that far horizon. Another day was set to begin.

Already it was growing warm, and that meant that the day promised to be another scorcher. Canterlot’s weather team would do its best to ensure that at least a pleasantly cool breeze would blow through the upper reaches of the city for most of the afternoon, but rain would of course be preferable.

With little hope Celestia took off and flew around the tower to look at the western horizon, but it was clear as crystal. Reports had already indicated that the sky would be clear for days at least, earning only a sad sigh from Celestia.

Out there on the western horizon were thousands of her citizens, her responsibility, and they all were looking to her and the rest of the government for hope. Equestria would survive, of that she was certain. The nation had outlasted centuries of Discord’s darkness, so surely it could weather a drought like this. But that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t do everything possible to alleviate the troubles.

Celestia set her thoughts on the rest of the day as she took a casual flight through the palace’s spires. The bright stone and gleaming tiles of the palace shone like jewels in that early morning light, each one of them a contrast against the building that Celestia knew used to occupy this spot.

Once upon a time Discord’s castle had sat atop this mountain as a twisted reminder of his dominance. In rebuilding Canterlot, she had vowed to make a work of architectural mastery that would outdo that old memory twofold.

Still, though, as she flew Celestia had to think about business. The vote on the Food Act would be taking place during the Senate’s sitting this afternoon. That was still more than seven hours away, but the vote was only the first part of her concerns. Three centuries of experience had been enough to teach her that things were never easy where the Senate was concerned, and as sure as the Sun had just risen, it would take all of her morning to address individual concerns and twist enough hooves to get the measure passed.

Alighting back on her balcony, Celestia spied one of those concerns already waiting by the door to her study. It was Ink, smartly dressed in the purple sash of her office.

The yellow earth pony was still a relative newcomer in the chamber, having been elected only this spring. But she had already shown herself to be a natural consensus-builder, and now sat at the head of a dependable bloc of mostly rural votes. To get the Food Act passed, those votes were going to be crucial.

“Good morning, your Highness,” Ink said cheerily.

“Always a pleasure, Ink,” Celestia replied, shaking out her mane in the vain hope of smoothing the tangles that had developed over the night. She had let it grow long, so much so that she required a clip over her neck to keep it in place.

Truly it was a mild concern since Luna was the one who had to worry about appearances, spending so much time in the public eye as she did. As long as Celestia could maintain a professional air, that would be enough.

The ice effectively broken, she opened up the door to the study and motioned for Ink to follow. Her breakfast was waiting on the desk, a pitcher of ice water and a small bowl of diced apples. She glanced at Ink, but the senator shook her head and pulled her own apple out of the burgeoning satchel she had draped across her back.

“Your sleep was well, I take it?” Ink’s voice was clear and precise, stuck in the middle between a shapely urban accent and rough farmer’s drawl. The Canterlot Foothills were something of a strange province like that, agricultural for the most part, but dominated by historic cider orchards that mostly served the city.

“As well as could be expected,” Celestia answered politely, pouring herself a glass of water. Today really was going to be hot. “How has your district been faring lately?”

Ink sighed, her previous cheer quickly drying up. “Things haven’t improved, if that’s what you’re asking. The cider crop this year looks to be mostly a loss, and it’s hitting the orchards hard. We’ve seen a lot of owners selling out to move into the city.” She withdrew a small bottle from her satchel and took a sip. Celestia caught the scent: tea, with plenty of ice and sugar. “None of them will be happy about this new bill either, necessary though it is.”

“So I have your support?” Celestia asked, keeping a mental tally of where the measure stood. Pensive and his cabal would get the bill most of the way to the finish line, but getting Ink and her faction on board would seal the passage for sure.

“It’s not my vote that you have to worry about, Princess,” Ink answered. “The writing is on the wall for this measure, and I think that anypony can see that. But there’s surely darkness in the details, and getting those ironed out will probably be important for most of the rural votes. There’s been a whole lot of pride-swallowing already, and some of them are itching for a fight with Pensive’s group.”

Celestia took a bite of one of her apple slices as she thought. Indeed she probably should have expected something like this. Pensive and the urban senators who followed him had been leading the charge in regulating the agricultural sector in order to fend off the worst of the food shortages. But earth ponies could be stubborn as mules when it came to their farms, and surely wouldn’t have appreciated seeing their senators bow to pressure from the urban elites again and again as the year had gone on. “What do we have to offer them, then?”

“Price will be the major point for movement,” Ink said. “So long as we can keep that reasonably generous, I can present it as a good deal to the farming districts. If you can get me a reasonable price, then I can surely get you the votes you need.”

“Well, you know who is going to be the obstacle in that discussion.” Ink nodded knowingly at the comment. Pensive knew that his group held the balance of power in the Senate, and so convincing him to give any ground was always a struggle. “It will probably take most of the morning for us to hammer out something workable. Are you free for lunch today?”

Ink took another drink from her bottle before capping it and returning it to her satchel. “That should do nicely, your Highness,” she said, gathering her things as she rose out of the chair. She extended one hoof for their usual shake, but this time she held it for just a moment instead of letting go. “Princess?” she said, “Let’s hope this is the last time we need to have this conversation for a very long while.”

“Let us hope that,” Celestia returned sincerely, sitting back down as Ink left the study, the sound of her steps echoing loudly off of the walls as she stepped down the tower’s stairs.

Ink really had been a lucky find in this legislative session. Celestia had in her time been forced to deal with Senates without allies, and often it had been like pulling teeth trying to get her projects through the system. With Ink, at least she had access to a reasonably-sized bloc of steady votes. The problem was that trying to keep Ink and Pensive’s groups equally satisfied was a very delicate balancing act.

In a way, having to negotiate with Pensive today was something of a blessing. Spread out on her desk was what remained of the senator’s draft of the Food Act, now covered with red marks where the Princess had identified sections that didn’t work within the current legal system. The two of them were scheduled to meet to iron out those differences anyway. There was probably a half hour or so left until then.

Celestia picked up the bowl of apple slices with her magic and walked across the hall and out onto her balcony once more.

While the window of her study looked west over Canterlot and the rest of Equestria, this view showed nothing but the golden dunes of the eastern desert, stretching on forever into the far horizon. Celestia took a deep breath as she strode up to the railing. She wasn’t entirely certain what it was about this view that calmed her nerves. Perhaps it was the clean emptiness of that horizon, reminding her of simpler times, or perhaps it was simply something about the golden light of that dawn. Despite looking at that sunrise for three hundred years now, every morning Celestia still felt like it was her first time. She still remembered what that had felt like, centuries ago now, when she and Luna had together destroyed the Chaos Magic that Discord had used to control day and night. Back then, it had been the first dawn that any pony alive had ever seen, and now Celestia and Luna were the only ones left alive who understood just what a blessing each new dawn was.

Eridian

Three Hundred Twelve Years Earlier

Celestia grunted as she hauled another barrel of cider off of the stack in the cellar. Normally, using her magic to lift things required hardly any effort, but these huge wooden barrels were another matter. It required all of Celestia’s concentration to set it gently onto the ground so that she could start rolling it up the ramp out of the cellar.

Outside, a dark twilight greeted her, the soft, blue ambience that held permanent sway over Discord’s capital of Eridian. A chilly breeze swept across her shoulders as she emerged aboveground, and Celestia glanced west to see a menacing swirl of grey clouds gathering over the horizon. Purple lightning flickered in that direction. That was going to be a wicked storm come evening.

Out on the broken cobbles of the street, four stallions were busy loading another barrel onto a wagon that was already nearly full of them.

“Easy up!” bellowed the one standing in the wagon’s bed, and the three earth ponies below cooperated to lift up another one. “That’s it, boys! Now you all three help Tia over there! We’ve got to be on the move soon or else we’re going to get soaked on our way out!”

Celestia smiled gratefully as the others came over to help. Wickerlock, the tallest of the three, gave her a knowing smirk as he came around to her side. “Not that you need any help, I’m sure,” he said in a low voice that only she could hear.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take all of the pay,” she replied, which Wickerlock merely shook off. Though she put up a stubborn front, Celestia could feel the exhaustion sapping her limbs. It had been a very demanding day.

With another grunt, Wickerlock and Capstan – an older, grizzled grey earth pony with a three-inch beard hanging off of his chin – hoisted the last barrel up onto the wagon. The stout pony up on top who received it was Raspberry, the owner of the establishment. His son Elderberry, already a head taller than his father, was the final member of the group. After checking that everything was properly settled once more, Raspberry let himself down off of the wagon with a huff.

“Well, my friends, it looks like this is the end for us.” He looked grim, and Elderberry beside him was not much better.

“If that’s the way that it’s got to be, then that’s that,” Capstan said, stepping forward to catch Raspberry’s hoof in an enveloping hoofshake. “Course you understand we’d appreciate it if you could stay on longer, but there’s no way we can make you stay.”

Raspberry returned the shake with force. “You three have been good workers, and surely I appreciate that. But there simply isn’t anything left for me in this city anymore. I’ll need help once I get out into the country too, you know.” He offered Capstan a grin.

For an instant, Celestia allowed herself to think about it, as she often did when she had a moment to spare. Out from underneath the darkness of the city, far away from here, she could find another life, perhaps. The few ponies who managed to straggle their way into Eridian always said that things were better out there, though not by much. Maybe away from Eridian, she could know what a normal life was supposed to feel like.

But she couldn’t go. Unlike Raspberry, she had deeper roots here in the city. Back home, Luna had just celebrated her sixth birthday a week ago. She wouldn’t dare risk a journey out through the wilds with her younger sister in tow. She wasn’t even really comfortable in letting Luna out of the house, as much as she knew that the young alicorn needed her exercise every now and then. So Celestia shook her head slightly, and Capstan took the hint.

“The offer is much appreciated, friend,” he said, giving up Raspberry’s hoof. “But we have our own reasons to stay. May your family stay happy and live long!” Wickerlock and Celestia each offered their own nods of agreement as Raspberry gave them their own looks. Behind him, Elderberry had already finished hitching himself up to the wagon. To the west, an arcing bolt of lightning lit up the sky, the flash making Raspberry start.

“Well, like I say, time is short. May we meet again in fairer times!” He trotted back to the front of the wagon, where Elderberry quickly helped him into his own harness. Within minutes, the two of them were trudging away down the gently sloping street, heading down the mountainside and into whatever life awaited them. That left just Celestia, Wickerlock, and Capstan standing on the curb.

Wickerlock turned away from the sight first. “He’s not wrong, you know. We’re going to have to hoof it back home if we don’t want to get caught in this downpour ourselves.”

He didn’t wait for any agreement, instead walking off into a nearby alley, the curls of his long brown mane bouncing over his shoulders with each step. Capstan gestured for her to go first, and Celestia wasted no time entering the darkness of the alley. After a single look around, Capstan followed.

“So what now?” she asked. “We have enough stores to last a few days, especially with the parting bonus that Raspberry gave us, but after that we're going to need another employer.” They had been organizing supplies for Raspberry’s tavern for several months now, making it the longest period of steady work that Celestia could remember having.

Besides stocking shelves, in prior times she had found work as a housekeeper, a courier, a waitress, and nearly every other position that she could care to name. Employment in Eridian never came easily, especially as more ponies made like Raspberry and sought their fortunes elsewhere.

Still, regardless of what there was, Celestia would do it. That was simply the way of life here. At least she had always had these two to share the rough times with.

“We’ll find something. We always do,” Capstan spoke up from behind, his gravelly voice echoing in the silence of the alley.

“So many ponies are leaving these days,” Celestia mused. “Soon there aren’t going to be any businesses left in need of a few hooves.”

“Like I said, we’ll find something,” Capstan returned once more. “If I don’t, then Rosy will have my hide for it!” He laughed at his half-joke, but Celestia didn’t feel her spirits rise. It was hard to smile under this grey sky, even as normal as seeing it had become over the course of her life. Even so, she agreed with him. They would find something else. They had to.

The clouds on the horizon edged nearer as they made their own way down the mountainside, avoiding the major avenues and keeping to the back streets. They had to watch each other’s backs to make sure that no ruffians could get the drop on them, as was all too common in these dark areas. But at least there was no danger back here of being run over by a noblepony’s speeding carriage.

By the time that they arrived at the building Celestia had called home for the last six years, the storm clouds were in the process of merging with the constant swirl of purple fog that permanently occupied the sky above the city: the unavoidable mark of the King’s presence. Indeed, the rain was probably only a few minutes away when Rosy got the door for them.

Aunt Rosy was a plump pink unicorn getting on into her elder years, and she was perpetually squinting in an attempt to better see whoever stood in front of her face. Even so, the remaining strands of her mane bounced gently as she bobbed a greeting to each of them.

“Thank heavens you three got here when you did. You’d best get in while you can; it’s sure to be horrid out there soon.” A silent shard of lightning lit up the horizon as she spoke, the wind starting to gust through the streets with an eerie moan. Celestia shivered, and quickly followed Wickerlock through the open doorway.

Once upon a time, the building had been a much larger residence, perhaps even belonging to a wealthy merchant or noblepony. However, by now much of the original structure had long since fallen in, leaving a bare handful of accessible rooms by the entrance.

The room she stood in had once been a great hall, with a vaulted ceiling overhead and tapestries adorning the walls. Those tapestries were now merely moth-eaten rags, and the open space of the room, surely once imposing, now served only to emphasize the emptiness of the place. In the near corner, they had built a rudimentary kitchen with an open fire pit, and the cellar was nothing but a hole in the ground where the floorboards had rotted away, now covered by some rags. Off in the far corners they had rigged up a shelter to sleep in, cozy enough to stay warm in the cold of night. Besides that, there was merely an open floor, strewn with dust and debris, and probably all half-rotten just as the cellar had been.

As soon as she was inside, Celestia scanned the room, a very small knot of anxiety bubbling up into her throat just as it did every time. This time, Luna stepped out from behind one of the canvases in the sleeping area, and the six year-old filly’s face lit up as soon as she saw them. “Tia! You’re back early!”

Luna trotted over, and Celestia caught her in a tight hug. “There was a storm coming in, Luna. But we got dinner at least, for a few days.” She kept on holding her sister until the anxiety went away.

Celestia had long accepted that it was an irrational fear, but she couldn’t keep it down, at least until she could come home and assure herself that her sister was safe. The two of them had been very lucky to find this refuge, after their mother and father had passed. Rosy wasn’t really their aunt, but she had been Celestia and Luna’s midwife, and she had found them on that dark, stormy night, with the King’s mad laughter in the air, when their father had left the room to secure the front door and had never returned.

By the door, Capstan gave Aunt Rosy a light kiss on the cheek. “Is everything already secured here? The roof?”

“To the degree possible, dear,” she returned. “We can get down into the cellar if we have to. How did things go with Raspberry?”

Capstan shrugged. “There was no way that he was going to stay, but at least he paid us double for today as a parting bonus. We’ll have enough to work with for a little while.” He took the sack of potatoes off of his back and lightly tossed it into the kitchen area. Whatever she could do with it would be their supper for the night. “As for tomorrow, we’ll be out looking again, I’d imagine.”

Rosy was already washing off a few of the potatoes, using her magic to hold individual pockets of water in the air for each one. Drinkable water was just as scarce in the city as any other commodity, even though it rained often enough. Something in the magical clouds overhead tainted the rain that fell, which meant that water for washing and drinking needed to be brought in from the countryside. Celestia had worked for a little while as a water carrier, even attempting to sell it herself when her boss had joined the exodus away from Eridian. But the established ponies already had all of the good selling spots.

In the corner of the room, Wickerlock was stretching his legs out on the floor. “I think that I’ve got an idea about that, actually. Something that might be a little more reliable than odd jobs around the city.”

Capstan was stacking wood in the fire pit that sat nestled in the floor. “I’m sure that we’re all ears to hear it, then.”

The young stallion got back to his hooves. “I was having a little chat with Elderberry over lunch today, and he mentioned that his dad’s supplier out in the foothills was always in need of extra labour. The way he put it, so long as you could lift a basket of apples, they’d take you on, and it was good, steady work too.”

Celestia stood up, letting Luna run over to help Rosy peel the potatoes. “The orchards are all far from the city, aren’t they? Far enough to get out from under the clouds. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to grow anything. That would be too far of a walk for us to get back here every night.”

Wickerlock smiled slyly. “Not this one, at least not the way that Elderberry told it. He didn’t know the details, only that this orchard was much closer to the city than all of the others. We could easily make it there and back on time.”

“That doesn’t make any sense though,” Celestia returned, thinking it over slowly. “Why would this one cider maker have any special right to sunlight?” Eridian’s darkness was the one constant of the city; no matter where a pony went they would always have the sky overhead to remind them of the King’s presence.

“Because he’s a traitor,” Capstan answered from the fire, which he had set alight with a match. He spat over his shoulder as he said the words. “Probably has a right to sunlight because he’s kissed the ground the King walks on or some such.”

“I don’t know about any of that,” Wickerlock returned, fairly less abrasively. “But I don’t think that it would matter too much. A steady job is a steady job, especially with things the way they are. Why take on another position that will last a couple of weeks when we could have solid pay for as far as we could tell?”

“It’s a matter of not supporting the cowards in control of this city,” Capstan said as he returned to the kitchen to collect the potatoes that Rosy had already peeled. “Honest work for good ponies will always be better than the alternative.”

“Well, we’ve got a day or two to spare, in terms of our supplies. We should at least take a look and see what we’d be getting into.” Capstan was pointedly concentrating on his potatoes, and so Wickerlock turned to Celestia instead, his expression earnest. “Some security for once. Wouldn’t that be worth it?”

While Capstan still looked less than convinced, Celestia considered it. There was still a lot about this proposition that didn’t add up, unless of course Capstan was right on his guess. But she couldn’t argue with the logic. “There wouldn’t be an issue with us at least heading down there once. Something steady would change things a lot for us.”

Capstan grunted from the fire, but he didn’t say anything more. He was a stubborn old stallion, but he could be reasonable when necessary. If this opportunity really was everything that Wickerlock said it would be, then Celestia was sure that even Capstan would have few objections.

Outside, there came a whistle of wind followed by a steady patter of raindrops as the storm broke. With luck, it would pass soon. Getting out of the city into a muddy bog tomorrow morning did not sound like a pleasing proposition at all. However, at this point, Celestia knew she had few options and taking one last glance at Luna, knew it was something she’d have to do.

Chapter 3: Cloudsdale

“I’ll still be here in the sky, where my voice will sing alongside the sweet whisper of the winds for evermore.”

- Last words of Atlas

The city of Canterlot was situated on the northern face of the third tallest mountain in Equestria, itself the northern vanguard of a long chain of mountains that covered nearly all the eastern border. The city’s foundations were situated about a quarter of the way up the mountainside, meaning that even the tallest towers of the palace could still witness the mountain’s misty peak, capped with snow even now in the midst of summer.

It was only recently that any construction had been attempted at that high reach, when Princess Luna had decided that the location was perfect for her Weather Academy. The isolation was crucial to ensure that her students could concentrate solely on their work, while providing a moderate amount of breathing room for weather experiments. The most important of these, of course, was finding some way to create rain.

This high up, the scorching heat of the Sun on the city down below was barely felt, and indeed Luna’s breath froze into a thick cloud of white fog as soon as she exhaled. Naturally, she had on a woolen scarf to ward off the worst of the chilly winds circling the mountaintop, though the exertion of her work alone kept her plenty warm.

Arrayed out in front of her today were four neat rows of five pegasi, each practicing the motions of wind control. They had been gathered up from every province of Equestria, having passed their qualification tests six months prior. Only the best got to study under Luna here in the capital.

As they worked, Luna kept a close watch, correcting miniscule mistakes from the curvature of a wing to the tilt of a hoof. Wind control was precise work, yet even so, her mind was elsewhere. As rewarding as fielding a squadron of weatherponies was, dealing in such pedestrian topics brought her no closer to her ultimate goal.

“Alright, that’s enough!” she shouted, using her wings to kick herself up to a higher altitude as the class came to rigid attention. “You’re all looking better. A bit of practice still, but overall we’re nearly there. Next week we’ll be moving on to cloud manipulation. For now, our time is up, so all of you can report to the mess.”

With a blow from her whistle the group dispersed, while Luna headed up to the administrative building, a squat hexagonal box of brown stone in the middle of the school complex.

When she landed on the balcony, Swift was there to greet her, clutching a steaming mug of cocoa for her. “Any good signs?” he asked.

Luna took a sip of the beverage, feeling the heat of the drink spread through her limbs like a potent elixir. “It’s always difficult to tell,” she responded with a sigh. “There’s some real talent in that batch, but how can I say if any of them has the Windcaster’s Spark? We won’t know what to look for until we find the first one.”

“Or we work it out ourselves,” he replied, latching the balcony door behind her and heading inside

Both ponies were met with a rush of warm air, courtesy of the roaring fire from the large hearth across from the door. In the center was a big table, all of sturdy oak, and on top of it was a giant map of Equestria. Small wooden tokens dotted it here and there, some for active dust storms, others for the faint wisps of clouds that were sometimes spotted in the sky. Each of those would be immediately pounced upon by a weatherpony team from the nearest settlement, and made to give up their moisture onto whatever was green in the vicinity.

“I’ve been thinking a fair amount about it lately,” Swift went on, walking over to his own little desk in the corner. “Theoretically, if a pony could create the right updrafts, and control the resulting cloud structure, it should be possible to generate a moderate shower.” He indicated his theory with a few sketches on his parchment.

Curious, Luna walked over and gave the drawings a study. It all looked reasonable enough. Even so, she doubted that much would come of it. She herself had considered roughly the same theory a number of months ago, though sadly to no avail. However,in their current situation it didn’t pay to turn down possible leads. Perhaps Swift would see something that she had overlooked.

“We’ll give it a try the next time that we have a chance.”

Before any further discussion could occur, there came a knock at the door, and Swift fluttered over to admit Captain Brow with Luna’s lunch. It was all comfortably hot, and as she ate Luna continued to think. In the past, when she had been first learning to control her pegasus magic, it had felt as though the world itself was at her hooves. Her mentor Atlas had taught her how to organize rain, how to take existing clouds and build them up into showers. But the step before that was something that even he hadn’t known.

Over the course of the last three hundred years Luna had often wished to be able to speak with him once again, to seek his counsel on such questions. He and Aqua, after becoming alicorns, had found their own spot in the sky, and built an abode of sorts up there, a town of clouds, using some innovation of Aqua’s to make it permanent. Several pegasi had joined them, mostly remnants of the old Order of Air, until they’d built a thriving settlement. Luna had even visited once or twice, taken aback by the bold architecture of clouds, the layered plazas and tall spires of the city. Unfortunately, it had now been two hundred years since she’d last seen or heard of the place.

Luna wasn’t quite sure what had been the cause of the city breaking its ties with Equestria. Pegasi had always been proud and free-spirited individuals, and she and Celestia had enough to deal with managing the rest of the country, so they hadn’t pushed Canterlot’s laws onto the pegasus city. At some point, they had simply stopped sending envoys to talk. Whether the city had dissolved or simply vanished into the skies, nopony could say. Regardless, more pegasi right now was something that Equestria sorely needed, and it would have been nice to have a whole city of them around.

Luna started as she reached out for another bun, and realized that her plate was empty. The meals had been slowly getting smaller, rationed as supplies had run short. Even though she dreaded thinking about it, Luna knew that time was running out. If somepony couldn’t think of the answer to this puzzle, it was not going to end well.

“You think you can catch me?” The mare’s sweet tinkle of a voice cut through the wind like a songbird’s call.

“Let’s find out,” Wind replied, finding the strength to beat his wings a little bit harder as the two raced through the sky, his snow-white mane and her fiery red one splaying out behind them. Beneath, the plazas and neighbourhoods of Cloudsdale raced by, blurring into an ocean of white and grey as they pulled even more speed out of the air.

“Last one to the Spire is a rotten bean!” she cried, taking off again into a steep dive. Wind followed, mimicking every action of her wings perfectly. The air beat up against his forelegs, trying to rip them out from in front of his face, but he kept his form, pulling in his wings to reduce the drag on his body even more. The Spire loomed up ahead, and Shine was almost there, pulling up out of her dive with bare feet to spare.

Wind held the manoeuvre as long as he could, the white clouds of the plaza underneath rushing up to greet him. If he could hold on for even a few inches more than Shine, the extra speed that he saved could be enough to slingshot past her. He pulled up at the last possible moment, clearing the eaves of a distillery by mere inches, and looked up.

Just in front of them, the four columns of the city’s Great Spire stood, white pillars reaching high up into the heavens, and maybe three or four feet in front of him was Shine, coasting on serenely to the nearest one. Wind gave the sprint all that he had, and the two of them ended up touching the smooth tower together, though Wind was sure that he had gotten there first. At least, as sure as he could be given that he had slammed into it at full speed.

When he opened his eyes, a brown pegasus stallion with eyes of a dull orange was hovering over him. “Gee, Wind, you’re lucky that nopony else saw that! Sure, you might have set an air-speed record on the pursuit, but we all know that nothing in the air matters if you can’t stick the landing.” The stallion chortled, then offered Wind a hoof. “Seriously though, you’re okay, right?”

“Thanks, Tin,” Wind replied, shaking his head in the hopes of getting his vision to line up properly. Slowly, the lines settled to reveal Morning Shine hovering just off to their right, a concerned look drawing down her crystalline blue eyes. “At least I got to the Spire first, didn’t I?”

“Maybe you did,” she said, “but I think that I would still take my own position compared to yours. You really should be more careful, especially if you ever want to compete.”

Wind hopped up onto his hooves, then took off into a light hover himself. “I had to make sure that I gave you a good run for your money, is all. Nopony in the race tomorrow is going to go easy on you just cuz’ you’re a mare, you know.”

“Well, of course not,” she laughed. “The title for our division has been won by a mare over a dozen times in the last decade alone. But I appreciate your concern all the same.”

“Perhaps you should take a thought for yourself, Wind,” Tin piped up from beside the two of them. “It would be hard enough to keep your eye on her from the stands even if you weren’t seeing two of everything.”

“I’ll try,” he replied dryly. He stole a look up at the Sun overhead, which was lazily making its way down the western horizon. They had half an hour left until dinner. “Did you want to practice any more, Shine?” he asked hopefully.

“You know what, I think that I’m ready,” she said, exaggeratedly stretching out her wings. “I’ve got to keep my strength up, after all. But we can have a look over the course as we head home.”

Wind and Tin both nodded in agreement, and they headed off on a westerly tangent. The Spire stood at the center of Cloudsdale, serving as the nexus point for the city’s foundations, which radiated out in all directions from it.

The view ahead was not unlike a rolling hillside, with puffs of cloud blooming up from the city’s base to support neighbourhood squares or market plazas, and deep valleys cutting between with apartment complexes built up out of the sides.

Up above all that, in the upper reaches of the Midcity, work crews were busy moving clouds into formation, marking out the loops, crests and dives of the course for the semiannual Open Championship. Each time the course was different, sometimes running the circumference of the Midcity in a lazy circle, others going vertically up into the Old Quarter and down into the Undercity beneath.

The race was in actuality a set of five, one for each age category, and Morning Shine was going to be competing in the first division, for the senior years at the city’s Academy. They were the youngest group able to race on the full course, and only a minute from the Spire, Wind caught sight of a group of workers setting up a wicked, looping hairpin. It would be a prime passing opportunity come race day.

Shine caught his eyes drifting over the marker clouds that delineated the turn. “Are you really sure that you don’t want to compete, Wind? Registration is still open.”

Wind just shook his head at the thought. “I’m fine, really. Tin and I will be cheering you on from the stands every lap.”

Tin shrugged his shoulders on hearing that, clearly just as confused as she was at Wind’s reluctance. Sure, he didn’t blame them for thinking that way. Competition was in every pegasus’s blood. From the moment they had entered the Academy they had heard legends of the champions of the city’s past. Naturally a title like that was something everypony coveted. However, as much as Wind liked to compete, it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life. Flying was a joy, a rush, a wonder. Not a job.

After another five minute’s flight the pair parted with Tin, who left for his family’s apartment in Featherreach.

Shine and Wind shared a neighbourhood square on the outskirts of the city, in the far reaches of the new developments of Pega’s Perch. Even though the edge of the city was always obscured by construction as the district continued to grow, from overhead they could see over the top of the cranes and cloud-layers to the green earth far below. This high up, there was no real definition to be seen of the surface, just a swatch of earthy hues at some inscrutable distance away. Nopony ever ventured down there though. Why would they when there was already everything they could want up here?

Shine and Wind landed in the middle of the round plaza. “See you tomorrow,” Shine said sweetly as they parted ways.

“See you,” Wind returned.

The houses in this development were eccentric structures, three stories tall if a bit narrow to compensate. Wind had learned just a little of classical architecture in class, and still marveled at the ingenuity that the founders of Cloudsdale had displayed in making the city work. Without having to care for the constraints of gravity, they had been able to discard the traditional boxes and columns of earthly structures, in favour of more lavish loops and plumes in even the simplest of dwellings. It was no mistake that most of the houses in the city had much more square footage on their upper floors than on the lower ones; perches for flying in and out were far more essential than street access.

As soon as Wind opened the door, the strong scent of his mother’s casserole hit his nose. His mother Sun Swept was a positive wizard in the kitchen, the winner of the neighbourhood Bean-Off four times running. It was truly remarkable what she managed to achieve with only the standard bean rations. Entranced, Wind let the aroma carry him right on into the dining room. Inside, his father Snow Swept was reclining lazily at the table, a copy of the day’s Times in his forelegs.

“Practice finished up already?” Snow asked, his voice a rumbling baritone. “I imagine that Shine will be looking to do well if she thinks she’s ready by now.”

“She’s confident,” Wind answered, sliding down onto one of the lumps of cloud that served as chairs. “And she’s fast too. Honestly, I had a hard time putting up much of a contest. If I were you, I’d put my money squarely on her.”

Snow settled the paper down, revealing a square face with a set of square spectacles straddling his nose. “Unfortunately, I’m officiating that race, so there won’t be any coins changing hooves over that one. The Council would have my wings if they ever caught wind of something like that!”

Wind nodded absently. Snow had recently been elected to the Council of Ten, the governing body of the city, as the representative for Pega’s Perch. He’d also been selected as an official for the race thanks to his own past experience with the Championship.

“And you’re absolutely sure that you don’t want in on the competition yourself, Wind?” Snow took his spectacles off of his nose and began polishing them on his shirt. “Even if Shine is going to blow out the division this year, it’s still valuable experience for years down the line. You know I didn’t win my first race either, nor even my first six!” he chuckled as he put his glasses back on. “All I’m saying is you’ve got to start somewhere.”

“And all you’re hearing is that racing isn’t the only place to start!” came a voice from the archway that led to the kitchen. Sun Swept followed, a stout white pegasus with a closely clipped auburn mane. In her hooves she was carrying a tray of her famous bean casserole, and the sight sent a light rumble through Wind’s stomach.

“Not everypony needs to get their start on the race course, dear. The Academy, or a craft and trade are all great places to start out too.” She sent Wind an encouraging smile as she laid the tray onto the table and then returned to the kitchen to fetch their drinks: distilled water for the three of them, but with a small glass of bean liqueur for Snow.

“Yeah, either way,” Snow continued, “what both of us are saying is that tomorrow is going to be a big opportunity for all of us. The fair up in the Old Quarter will be an excellent opportunity to apply for various positions, or try your hoof at the crafts that there are on offer. You know that there’s excellent pay in the cloud-making business, especially with all of the construction going on lately.”

“We’ll see what there is to see,” Wind replied noncommittally, taking a quick look through to the kitchen to see Sun Swept returning. As soon as she sat down, he reached for the tray of casserole.

“We just want this to work out for you, you know?” his mother said softly, clearly having heard the conversation from the kitchen. “You’re in your last year at the Academy and soon enough you’re going to have to pick a vocation of some sort.” She gave Snow a look. “Did you hear that Monsoon’s lad is going to be going into printing? There’s plenty of work in that field too if you have the hooves for it.”

“Your friend Tin’s Choosing is tomorrow, isn’t it?” Snow asked, giving Wind a short look. “Any idea what he’s going to choose?”

“He said he’s going to work in the fields,” Wind replied quickly, before passing the tray over to his mother and tucking into the food himself.

“Good for him,” Sun said matter of factly. “That’s an honourable vocation too.”

Wind did his best to eat quickly, trying to keep his mouth full so that he wouldn’t be called upon to offer any more comments. Every dinner these days was the same. You know that you have to pick a vocation eventually, dear. Why not consider distilling, or crop research, or service with the Marshals? And his dad was always on about racing, and his mom about higher study, especially becoming one of her philosophy students at the Academy. The sooner that he could be done with his meal, the sooner that he could be away from this chatter again.

It wasn’t that Wind didn’t know that his parents were right. Of course they were. Every pegasus in Cloudsdale had to choose a vocation once they came of age, and in Wind’s case that day was only two and a half months away. Almost everypony else in his class had picked out something by now. Shine, of course, was going into racing just like Snow had, while Tin had known he was headed to the fields months ago. But none of those occupations, nor anything that his parents had suggested, had really appealed to him. The sky was where Wind belonged, of that he was certain. But not to race. Just to live. If only there was some way to make a job out of that.

“Wind, would you look at me for a second?” His mother’s voice had a hard note of concern in it. Wind looked up from the last morsel of casserole that he had been fishing out of his plate, to see that both of his parents were leaning over the table in apparent concentration.

“Well, there I see it, now, then!” Snow declared, draining his glass of liqueur before standing up. “What did you get yourself into this time? Get him some ice, would you?” Sun had already left the room, presumably to do just that.

“What are you talking about?” Wind said, looking about him for a moment in a vain search for something incriminating. “I haven’t been up to anything.”

His father frowned, then fished about in one of his shirt pockets before pulling out a small hoof mirror and offering it. He tapped his right cheek with his other hoof.

Wind took the mirror gingerly, and sure enough there was an unmistakable dark ring forming around his right eye socket. He must have really hit the Spire hard. “I… uh… did go pretty hard in my practice with Shine today. I guess I must have hit my head somewhere. I’m fine though, really.” He looked up hopefully, but Snow was only shaking his head.

“You know that I always tell you to be careful whenever you’re flying around. Sometimes it looks to me like you’re never even paying any attention to what you’re doing.” He was interrupted as Sun re-entered, holding a cloth that had been filled with ice and tied up into a little bag. She applied it to Wind’s face without a word. “When your mother and I say that we’d like you to leave a mark on the city, you can guess that something like this isn’t quite what we have in mind.”

Wind did his best to hold on to the ice pack himself, and eventually his mom let him do it, retreating to stand solemnly beside her husband.

“I’m fine, really, it’s nothing. Thanks for the ice though, Mom. And of course I know that I shouldn’t be pushing myself so hard sometimes. But I’ll keep this on and tomorrow I’m sure that things will look just fine.”

He tentatively got out of the chair and rose onto his hooves, hoping for the signal that his parents had nothing more to say. Snow just shook his head lightly and turned back to his meal with a sigh, and that was all the signal that Wind needed, heading right upstairs and into his room.

Outside, through a wide open window, the sun was setting the distant horizon alight. A calm breeze whispered through, just enough to set the edge of his mane aflutter, and sting his eye a little when he was facing that direction.

With the ice, his face was already starting to go numb. Wind flew right on out of the window, settling down on the outer ledge and dangling his hind legs out over the city’s edge, to the dusky surface below.

He knew of course that his parents wanted well, that they only wanted him to be successful as they were, and that eventually he would have to follow after them. But if all of that were true, then why was it that he felt best, in the prime of life, in moments like these? Silent, contemplative, casual, with only the sky and the wind outside as his partners.

The breeze rose and fell in gusts and stillnesses, a rhythmic pattern that most ponies couldn’t even detect, or at least he didn’t think so. But Wind had already spent countless evenings just like this one, out here at the edge, with nothing else to pay attention to. Wind felt his pulse slow to match the beat of the atmosphere, a primal rhythm that suddenly seemed in time with the whole world around him, from the clang of tools in the construction sites as the day’s last shift wound down, to the distant hum of the distilleries, somewhere behind him in the city.

All Cloudsdale seemed to pulse with that rhythm, rising and falling in endless cadence. Wind knew that he wanted to be a part of it, but how? Tomorrow, maybe, he would find out.

Chapter 4: Rewards for the Worthy

“From each according to their ability; to each according to their worth.”

- Motto of Cloudsdale

Cloudsdale’s Old Quarter was a roughly square and flat patch of cloud at the peak of the city, supported by the four columns of the Spire underneath, and capped by a magnificent statue of the city’s two founders, a pair of alicorns named Atlas and Aqua, from an age gone by. These days nopony remembered precisely who they had been, but they’d built the city originally, and brought in the first batch of pegasi to live up in the clouds again.

At the base of the statue was an inscription: “Rewards for the worthy.” It was the principle upon which Cloudsdale had been founded, that each be rewarded in accordance with their worth, as the pegasi of old had done.

That statue stood in the center of a wide market square, which was ringed with all of the important administrative and academic buildings of the city. The Old Quarter had been the first part of Cloudsdale to be built, which was why its general architecture more closely resembled the city squares of the surface towns that Wind had seen in his studies.

The tallest structures on the square were the four granaries, standing on the western edge of the city square like a row of giant thimbles. The cylindrical silos held the entire store of the city’s food, as well as the harvest of the current field. Every week, citizens would travel up to the silos to receive their ration of beans, an equal share for all. For today’s Championships, a grandstand had also been set up near there, with an excellent view out over the Midcity below. The rest of the viewing spots were scattered out on the edges of the upper city, around the great fields of bean plants that stretched out in all directions from the Old Quarter. These beans, tended in pools of water and carefully managed, were all that the city had to eat, and so each field was kept in a different state of maturity, ensuring at least one was always being harvested.

Before the day’s races could begin, there was the Choosing ceremony. Technically, a pony was supposed to have their Choosing on their eighteenth birthday, the day that they came of age. But given the local importance of the race event, it was common practice to group together all of the Choosings that would have taken place in the race’s month.

This meant that Tin as well as a dozen other young pegasi were gathered together on a stage in the middle of the Old Quarter’s square, while their friends and families got privileged seats in a grandstand that had good views on both the race course and the stage.

The rest of the square was a hive of activity, with booths and displays set up by all of the major crafting guilds of the city. There were shoemakers and cloud-layers, bakers and bards, and of course impressive displays for the Marshals and the Flight Club. Wind knew that as soon as the race was over his mother and father were going to shepherd him through all of them, making him try everything until he found something that clicked. The thought made him shudder, but at least that was a few hours away for now.

Down below, the ceremony was being overseen by one of the other Councilors of the city, a portly old grey stallion who was the representative for Swifton. Each young pegasus in turn stepped forward, as a band played a song that they had chosen for the occasion, before bowing to the Master of Ceremonies and making their Choice. Each Choice was recognized and given its due applause.

Wind was sitting with his father on the stand’s second row. His mother was off getting her beans judged, and likely receiving all of the top prizes like she did every year. For his part, Wind gave his respectful applause for Tin’s Choice, but otherwise he was just waiting for the races to start.

Snow also didn’t look particularly interested. “Two months,” he muttered to himself, then turned to look over at Wind. “Do you at least know what music you’re going to want played?”

“That choice is an easy one,” Wind returned. “Raindrops on a Roof.”

Snow chuckled. “I can’t say that I was expecting that. Kind of a folksy choice.”

All of the music played at today’s Choosing had been modern pieces, of the sort most popular among the young ponies of the city. Raindrops on a Roof was anything but that, a song maybe as old as Cloudsdale itself, or even older possibly. “What can I say? I’ve just always liked the sound of it.”

“Well, I’ll let your mother know then, I guess.” Snow sat still for a few moments more, as the last Choice was being declared down below them. “You know that the next couple of months are going to be pretty busy, right, Wind? Preparing for a Choosing is a big deal, and your mother and I are going to be spending a lot of time on it. Today is probably the last chance we’re going to have to actively search for a vocation for you.”

“Yeah,” Wind replied, trying to sound as if the prospect excited him. “Once the races are done, we’ll see what there is to see.”

Snow’s eyebrows came up. “Not before? We have maybe twenty minutes before Shine’s race starts. Enough for a quick flyabout.”

“But don’t you need time to prepare if you’re going to be the race official?”

“Really, Wind? You’re that determined already to get rid of me?” Snow sat back into his seat and sighed. “You know, if it weren’t for your mother and I, you’d probably be spending today with your head in the clouds away from any responsibility. One of these days you’re going to have to take some, and I don’t want you suddenly alone and helpless when that happens. So we are going to find something here that tickles your fancy, or else maybe I will let your mother start tutoring you for the Academy’s entrance exam.”

Wind grimaced at such a prospect. Honestly, he wasn’t entirely certain which scenario sounded worse. Here in the upper city, the free sky beckoned above, clear and blue as far as the eye could see. Wind could imagine himself up there in those heavens, alone with the wind and the Sun, with not a soul to tell him how to live. It would be the perfect life, but it wasn’t a life at all, now was it?

“Snow!” A voice suddenly came from over Wind’s shoulder. When he turned, he saw that the speaker was a mahogany stallion with a small band of office around his neck. It was Trim Acorn, the current Master of the Calendar and chair of the Council. “A pleasure seeing you out here on this fine day!” he continued. “This would be your son Wind, if I recall? Why, he’s just about coming up to his age, isn’t he? You and Sun must be so proud.”

Wind’s father stood up immediately when he saw the Master, offering him a short hoofshake and a small bow. “Why, of course we are, Master Acorn. Wind here is going to leave a lasting legacy for Cloudsdale, mark my words. Some day, I hope that he might inherit my seat on the Council.”

“Now you know we don’t give out positions by heredity around here, right, Snow? We’re not unicorns, are we now?” Trim rolled his eyes as he said the term. “We pegasi believe in the proof of merit, that we all should honourably serve in the position where we’re most able. Why, that’s the reason we are all here today, of course. Do you have a favourite in this upcoming race?”

Snow wagged a hoof. “You know very well that I’m the official for this one, Master. No favourites allowed.”

“Ha, very true.” Trim said, nodding in approval. “In any event, I should think that you would head over to the starting area soon. The preparations for the first division should be getting started about now.”

An uncertain look passed over Snow’s face, and Wind willed it that his father would give in. After the race, it was just possible that he could slip away and find some other way to spend the afternoon. Finally, Snow nodded to his boss. “Of course, sir. Wind, you can stay here I suppose. We’ll meet up again once the race is over, right here, I think.”

With that, he set off for the starting line, which this year was on the southern axis of the city, about ninety feet or so above the field in that direction. Trim watched him go with an odd look on his face. “Such a dutiful fellow, your father is,” he said quietly, though well within Wind’s hearing. “A tremendous role model, I’m sure you’ll agree?”

Naturally, Wind couldn’t help but nod. This was the Master of the Calendar, after all, the leader of the whole tribe. “Some day perhaps I shall be able to carry his banner without feeling small beside it, sir.”

Trim favoured him with a light smile. “Something tells me that it won’t take long. Mind, you have no such stipulations upon you as your father does. I’ve heard from a mutual friend that you do have a small favourite in this upcoming race. A good investment, perhaps?”

“Perhaps,” Wind allowed. A check with the bookies this morning had shown Shine with reasonable two-point-five to one odds. In truth, the race favourite was actually the Master’s son, Spry. “Shine’s a fearsome competitor, and it takes a lot to beat her. I’ve got the marks to show that.” For once in the day he felt a little proud that his black eye was still standing out so prominently upon his face.

“Hmm. Well, the best pegasus of course shall win, as the tribe has always allowed. I hope that you’ll excuse me; there is some ceremony that needs to be attended to shortly, but I wish your friend the best of luck.” Trim departed with a quick bow, then flew off in a low glide, somehow managing a regal air even in flight.

When Tin made his way up to the stand, he was carrying a deep bag of candied beans, which he promptly offered to Wind. “Three weeks allowance for this,” he said brightly, “but worth every coin. Even your mother couldn’t shake together a treat like this, and from what the foreponies tell me, next year it should be even better!”

In addition to the large crop of beans, there was a very small patch of sugar beets that grew sporadically out in the confines of the east field. Tin had worked on it in his apprenticeship. The farmers had only just recently figured out the right conditions for them to grow, and hopes were high for a good harvest this time around. Of course, they only offered the sugar for events like this one.

“Is she down there yet?” Wind asked, taking a hoof-full of the sweets for himself.

“Lane number three,” Tin said, pointing out their friend. “There’s some real tough competition out there, or at least that’s what everypony else seems to be saying. But Shine will take ‘em on, no sweat!”

Despite the prior confidence, Wind hoped that he was right. Shine had been practicing for this race for months now, and her entrance into the Flight Club could hinge upon it. Performance in the Open races was one of the metrics that the Club used to judge its entrants. If she had been here, Shine would have told him all about the intimate details of their scoring system, and how high she would need to finish in order to guarantee herself a spot, but for now he would simply have to cheer her on to the win.

There came a sudden shout. “Racers ready!” The eyes of the crowd turned to find Snow now hovering over the start line, wearing a blazing orange uniform seemingly bright enough to challenge the Sun. If any racer was ignorant enough to fly into the official today, they would be wearing that jersey about town for a week.

“Remember that we want a clean race,” Snow called down to the competitors. “We’re here to celebrate the pegasus spirit, and the joy of free competition. In that vein, I’ll be keeping a close eye out for any skulduggery, and a swift disqualification will follow any violations caught. Is that clear?” After receiving nods all around, Snow withdrew a whistle from underneath his jersey. “On the third sounding, you shall go. Take your marks,” – he sounded the whistle once, bright and clear in the suddenly silent sky – “Get Set!” – Wind’s heart picked up by just a fraction of tempo, though it was probably nothing compared to what was going on for the competitors below – “GO!”

Shine took off from her starting spot like a stone fired from a sling, and her thirteen competitors followed in short order. The group of pegasi painted a brightly coloured blur against the white and blue backdrop of the city beneath, taking a steep dive first before the full-G one-eighty that Wind had seen the day before. Shine executed that turn with finesse, though a couple of her competitors were less able, losing their edge and falling head-on into a protective cushion of clouds that was waiting underneath.

Tin whistled as the two fallen pegasi got themselves sorted out and hurried to catch up. “That corner’s going to be a real fun one as the laps count down. Especially if things are close.”

Wind nodded in agreement beside him. Once the course reached the top of its climb, it twisted to the west like a snake, beginning a highly technical sequence of loops and dips that eventually took the racers out of view and around behind the rear of the city. When they emerged over the top of the Old Quarter, preparing to dive down for the second lap, Shine was still out in front, but not by much. A light green stallion with a soft blue mane was right on her wing-tips, and doing his best to make up the inches with each flap of his wings.

As the leading group passed in front of the stands, Wind and Tin yelled themselves hoarse, regardless of how well Shine was able to hear them for the moment.

Each of the laps progressed in much the same manner, with a hoof-biting climax always at the bottom of that dive, and every so often a few more racers eating the protective barrier on that section of the track. But Shine held her own, if only by a hair.

By the fourth lap of six, the race was virtually neck-and-neck, with Shine for the first time trailing her competitor but only by a nose. By this point the rest of the pack were noticeably lagging behind, leaving virtually all the focus on Shine and her remaining competitor.

“That would be Spry Acorn, right?” Wind asked Tin, reaching over and politely borrowing a brochure from one of the ponies on his left.

“Yeah, for sure,” Tin replied, a little difficult to hear with his mouth half-full of beans. “I can see why he had the short odds now. But Shine will take him on. She’s been saving herself for the end, I’m sure.”

Indeed, when the leading group passed in front of the stand again, starting off the second-to-last lap, Shine had gained herself a small lead once more, and it looked to Wind as though her competitor was finally feeling the strain of the effort. As they settled once more into the run-up to that corner, Wind could see the determination on Spry’s face, and he willed Shine to hang on.

Then, in an instant, just as the pair were slowing their descent to prepare for the hard turn at the bottom, he saw Spry dive hard down the inside, far too fast for the turn, and slam full-force into Shine as she was slowing up ahead of him. The impact sent them both careening off of the course, and elicited a gasp from the grandstand, Wind and Tin included.

Shine did her best to recover, but her speed was too great, and into the barrier she fell. Spry though did manage to get his wings back underneath him, and took off for the next corner with all of the speed that he could muster.

Wind cast a look around for his father, in the hopes of seeing him disqualifying the Master’s son right away. That had to have been an intentional interference, hadn’t it? It sure had looked to him as though it was. But Snow was nowhere to be seen, and so all Wind could do was join in his friend shouting for Shine to get up again and back on with the race.

It took several agonizing seconds, during which most of the other racers came and went, for Shine to recover, pulling herself out of the cloud bank still looking slightly dazed. With a start, she looked back up at the course, and took off once more, but now with plenty of time to make up if she wanted to break into the top five, let alone if she wanted to win.

“Did you see that, Tin?” Wind turned to his friend. “I could swear that Spry ran into Shine intentionally there to knock her off.”

Tin shrugged his shoulders in response. “Tough to say. He was clearly tired, after such a long and hard race, and stressed from being behind again. Sometimes mistakes happen, especially on that corner.”

“I swear that he did. Where’s Dad? He should at least have made a mention of it, or give Spry some kind of penalty.”

Wind finally spotted his father perched high up over the stands, watching as the main field made its way through the technical twists that took them around the back of the stands. On impulse, he took off himself, climbing rapidly up there. Perhaps Snow had had his eyes elsewhere, and had simply missed the infraction as it happened.

The atmosphere rippled Wind’s hair as he climbed, until eventually he was hovering aside his father up on the perch. “Dad, did you see Shine’s fall on the first turn? Spry cheated to trip her up, I saw it!”

Snow didn’t even turn to look at him. “What in Atlas’ name are you even doing up here, Wind? Do you want to get us both thrown out for interference? Come talk to me after the race if you have an objection, but right now I have no time to spare!”

Not giving his son a second look, he flew off a second after he had finished, with two more competitors trussed up in the protective barriers. Wind fluttered himself back down to the stands. Of course his father was right, but even so he had wanted to see action taken right away. As he came back down, Spry roared over the finish line to start his last lap, with no other ponies in sight to challenge him. The rest of the chase pack followed fifteen seconds or so later, with Shine at least in the mix among them.

“Gee, Wind, you really think that strongly that you saw that?” Tin looked incredulous, but his voice carried a note of real concern. “I mean, I’ll admit it looked a bit odd, but I can see the argument both ways. If Snow saw it and thought that it was all clean, then he is the official after all.”

Conflicted, Wind sat back down hard. He thought back over what he had seen. The expression on Spry’s face hadn’t been one of a pony exhausted and barely sure of where he was going. He had been tired, sure, as much as any other pegasus would be after such an intense race. But when he had dove down the inside it had been deliberate, just enough to knock Shine out while leaving himself enough space to regain control and take off with his lead.

“He cheated. I’m sure of it. Once things are done I’ll talk to Dad and get it all sorted out.” Since the race was going to finish, he didn’t really know what the compensation would be for Shine after an infraction like this. She probably wouldn’t be given the win, but something at least would be nice.

Tin nodded to himself. “Well, if you’re so sure of it then I believe you. I guess it would make sense in a way, doing it right there in a place where everypony had crashed a few times already, and so late in the race too. I guess I would like to know what Shine herself thought of it. She had the best view on it, after all.”

A rush of applause went up through the grandstand as Spry crossed the line to claim his victory. Wind caught sight of Trim nodding in approval as his son coasted over to the winner’s circle. Surely the Master would be disappointed when he found out his son had cheated, but that was simply the price that would need to be paid. A few seconds later, the chase group came over the back end of the city, and Wind spied the red streak of Shine’s mane in a tense battle for third. She edged her way onto the podium by a hair, and as soon as she was over the line Wind had taken off to see her, with Tin in hot pursuit, though he was still holding on to his bag of beans.

Shine was doing slow laps of the finish area to cool herself down, and though Wind could see the droop in her shoulders, she flashed him a bright smile as soon as their eyes met. “Third place will do!” she said. “It’s not a guaranteed placement, so it’ll come down to what the coaches think of my record this year, but at least I’ve done everything that I could.”

“Congratulations!” Wind returned, considering how best to broach this subject. “We were both so worried for you on the second-last lap there. What happened?”

“Oh, that,” Shine chuckled tiredly. “I knew that Spry was close up behind me, but I was focused on my descent the whole time. I didn’t see anything until suddenly I felt him hit and then I was into the barrier. Shame that something like that had to happen in such an important race, but at least I’m still all in one piece. At least I think I am, right?” She presented her left eye to Wind, a devious smile growing on her face. Her and Tin burst out laughing.

“Shine, I think that Spry—”

“Good race, by the way,” Wind felt a hoof at his shoulder as the race’s winner sidled himself into the group. Spry looked just as spent as the rest of the competition, though of course his grin was just a few degrees wider. The coif on his mane was still nicely intact too, which was really quite a miracle given what he had been through.

“You had me really doubting for a long time there. Congrats on third.” He offered Shine a hoofshake, which she took without hesitation. “At the end of the day, though, the better racer won, and that’s all that matters.”

Wind could have left it at that, perhaps should have given that he hadn’t spoken with Snow about it yet, but something in the tone of Spry’s voice got to him. Cheating was one thing. To do it and then have the audacity to say the better racer won was something else entirely.

“That’s a really bold thing to say,” Wind spoke up, getting the attention of both of the racers, “for a cheater.”

Spry’s eyebrows rose up a couple of inches, and then he laughed. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about, friend. Wasn’t it your dad running this show? If you think there’s been a problem, talk to him about it. As far as I could tell this was a clean race from start to finish.”

Wind turned back to Shine, who looked a mix of shocked and confused, doing his best to keep his voice level. “Shine, I saw him. He deliberately crashed into you to take you out in that turn. Never mind winning, he shouldn’t have finished the race at all.”

The smile on Spry’s face had vanished. “Is that it? Like I said, if you have a complaint, talk to your dad about it. But as far as we’re all concerned, I won this race, and that’s all that there is to say.”

“You rotten cheat!” Wind flew forward, right in front of the Master’s son. “You really think that you’re going to get away with this, don’t you? You see down there?” He pointed at the statue marking the entrance to the Quarter. “Rewards for the worthy. Does that not mean anything?”

Wind’s rant was cut off as he felt two pairs of hooves at his shoulders, and looked down to see that one of those hooves was also still clutching its bag of beans. Suddenly his anger all disappeared.

Spry looked triumphant. “Sorry if your friend’s jealous, Shine. Unfortunately we can’t all be the best. I’ll see you on the podium, though.” He turned around and flew off, quickly running into another group of mares surely eager to spend time with the city’s new Champion.

“Come on, Wind, really?” Shine’s voice at his side was concerned, though with a clear undertone of anger. “I don’t know what happened, but I’ve run into Spry around the town before. He’s not a cheater. And besides, he’s the Master’s son. If there was ever a pony who would want to play by the rules, it would be him.”

“Yeah, maybe just take it easy,” Tin said from beside her. “We’ll see what Snow has to say, but nopony got hurt at the end of this. It’s not the end of the world, no matter what happens. Maybe we can try to be happy anyway.” He tossed Shine a few candied beans, which she snagged and downed in a single bite.

Wind, though, could barely keep his thoughts straight. Sure, nopony had gotten hurt, and Shine would probably make the bar for the Flight Club anyway. But honour was everything in Cloudsdale. It was why the ponies who proved themselves the best were afforded the rewards. Spry’s win should mean nothing if he had gotten it through trickery. That was the kind of thing that you expected from a unicorn, but surely not a pegasus. And somehow he would make sure that this time justice was served.

“Okay, now that that’s all through, we can talk.” Snow did not look the least bit happy, although at least he had been able to remove his official’s jersey, and now had on his usual conservative councilor’s uniform.

“First of all, what were you thinking flying up to me while I was in the middle of officiating the race? Never mind that you were distracting me from my job, you were putting yourself in harm’s way! The grandstands are sectioned off for a reason, and if somepony had lost control around a corner, we could have all been hurt!”

They were standing in the square around the back of the grandstand, in their own open spot as the other ponies milling about were giving them a wide berth. Wind knew that there was nearly no way that he was going to be able to slip away for his own afternoon now, but what had happened with Spry and Shine was more important than avoiding a few more vocations. Of course, he was going to have to endure Snow’s anger for a little while more too.

“And what do you think would have happened if someone had tried to cheat while you had me distracted? If something like that ever came to light it would bring shame onto the both of us, and by extent onto your mother. I thought that I could leave you alone for half an hour without anything coming of it, but I guess I was wrong. You’d better believe I’ll be keeping a close eye on you for the rest of the day.” Snow’s tone had fallen just a bit by the end of that sentence, which Wind sensed meant that his rant was running short on steam. He took the opportunity to try changing the subject.

“Did you actually see the incident between Shine and Spry on that first corner?” he asked, doing his best to summon as forceful a tone as he could while still staying respectful. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about when I got up there, after all.”

Snow was hovering, as pegasi tended to do when they were agitated, just a few inches off of the ground, though he was working his wings a bit more than was necessary for maintaining his altitude. “Of course I saw it. It was my job to see it. Do you have an objection to the way that I called it?”

Now that they were on the right topic, Wind let his own fury off the leash a little. He had to make sure that Spry got his just desserts. There simply wasn’t any way that he could keep silent on it. “I do, in fact. Spry dove down on purpose, and crashed into Shine to take her out of competition. I was looking at him, and there was no way that what happened was an accident.”

Snow narrowed his eyes as he looked down at his son. “Are you accusing the Master’s son of cheating? When he clearly had the chance to win the race anyway? It was a risky move by him for sure, but it’s a tall order to assume malicious intent.”

“Spry was tired. He knew that he wasn’t going to win otherwise. And him being the Master’s son has nothing to do with this. All pegasi of Cloudsdale are held to the same standards of honour. It’s what holds our world together.” That last part was very nearly a quotation from the pledges that he had learned as a foal. He certainly shouldn’t have had to remind his own father of the principles upon which the city had been founded.

At least Snow’s eyebrows came back up. “Your own word isn’t much, son, though at least it feels like you’re telling the truth. Have you talked to Shine herself about what happened?”

Wind tried to avoid gritting his teeth. Everypony was asking him the same questions today. “She said that everything happened too quickly. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a good look at what was going on with Spry. But I think that if any cheating did happen, you’d want to get to the bottom of it, Dad, or else you could bring shame down onto the both of us.”

His eyebrows still down, Snow nodded in contemplation as he considered that point. “Okay, I’ll see what I can find out. Right now though it’s your word against Spry’s, and my own call too. I’ll admit it’s suspicious, but it could be nothing. I’ll have to see what everypony else saw.” He sighed. “I guess that means that I have to leave you be, for now. The eyewitness accounts will need to be caught fresh if we want to have any chance of succeeding. Is it too much to ask for you to try out a few of these displays while I’m gone?”

Wind took another look around. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected his father to see things his way, even if technically they weren’t any closer yet to stripping Spry of his unearned win. Perhaps he did owe his father a little bit for it. “I’ll try to see a few of them. And thank you for listening.”

Snow’s frown softened for the first time that afternoon. “Well, thank you for being a concerned citizen and letting me know of this potential infraction. I’ll see you at the Gala tonight, I think. You’ll be able to find your mother in the bean-judging tent. With any luck, by now she will have received all of the ribbons that she is due.” Snow gave Wind a firm nod, and then he turned around and headed back to the grandstand.

Overhead, the Division 2 race whistled past, with a real battle for position developing at its front. Each of the day’s winners were to be honoured at the celebratory Flight Club Gala tonight, and though Spry would certainly be in attendance as the Master’s son, Wind would appreciate seeing him recognized as the cheater he was. He tried to keep that image in his mind as he ambled over to the chandlers’ table and sniffed some soaps.

Chapter 5: Dust

“The world is what it is. It cares not if you call it unjust.”

- Skullhum the Far Seer

That evening, after the Sun had dipped down below the horizon, the important ponies of the day gathered at the Council building for the Flight Club’s Gala. It wasn’t the only celebration in the city. In truth, parties large and small dotted the Midcity and even the Undercity, each in celebration of the day’s events. But the Flight Club Gala was the largest and grandest, celebrating the winners of the day’s races, commemorating those ponies retiring, and welcoming the new class of inductees, all as decided by the committee after the final results were in.

Despite the rather extravagant gathering, Wind found himself somewhat distracted. His mother had stuffed him into a suit that was only slightly darker than the colour of his own coat, saying it made a beautiful contrast with his mane. After half an hour of work with a comb had failed to properly tame the knot of hair on the back of his neck, Sun had settled for a large hat that would hopefully distract any other guest who walked by. For her part, she had fancied up her traditional Gala dress with a somewhat unique accent: a row of dried beans across the neckline.

If there ever had been a dress that only she could have pulled off, this would be it.

Wind hadn’t seen any sign of Snow for the rest of the day, presumably since he had been pulling aside witnesses the whole time to interview. Hopefully he had gotten the story straight in reasonably short order. In any event, he was certainly going to be here for the Gala anyway, as the Council were mandatory attendees.

Right now he and Tin were standing by the food table, the trays of beans upon it all sliced and worked into various shapes, and cooked in all of the different manners imaginable. In the crowd of ponies milling about the floor around them, Wind could see Trim and his son standing about halfway across the floor. Trim was excitedly gesturing to the rest of his group, proudly retelling the tale of his son’s victory.

“Do you think that he would have known?” Wind said absently to himself.

“Bean?” came Tin’s voice from over his shoulder, and suddenly a plate of the hors d'oeuvres was thrust under his nose, the brown pony holding them following with an excited smile on his face.

“I can’t believe that you missed out on all of the other races, Wind! The old-timer’s run was one of the most ridiculous battles for position I’ve seen in a while. Right down to the wire, so much that it took a few minutes to figure out who even won. You really should have been there.” For his part, Tin’s parents had stuffed him into an equally uncomfortable-looking suit, but he was smiling in spite of it all.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said, pushing the plate aside. In truth he was actually feeling a little hungry at the moment, but at least right now he didn’t have a taste for more beans. And there would be an excellent supper starting soon anyway.

“Well, suit yourself,” Tin said, grabbing a few beans off of the plate for himself. “Don’t tell me that you’re still on about Spry? Your dad is on the case, right? If there is anything there, he’ll find it. Either way it’s no feathers off of your wings.”

“It’s not a question of if there was anything there, Tin,” Wind replied, before realizing how grave he had sounded. Even though he was sure of Spry’s guilt, at least Tin had been right that he’d done everything that he could for now. He took a deep breath, and tried to make a smile come up to his lips. Whatever expression materialized on his face, it must have been close enough, since Tin gave him a reassuring pat on the back.

“Of course, we all know that your dad won’t let anything get past him. But come on. Let’s enjoy ourselves a little. Now are you going to have a bean or not?”

His stomach winning out, Wind reached down and took one of the beans, and while he was sure that his mother could have made it better, there was at least a satisfying crispness to its skin and a density to its texture. Tin led him off toward the center of the floor, towards a group of a few mares about their age, until a figure stepped out of the crowd off to their right.

“Still no hard feelings, I hope?” Spry had an easy smile on, revealing a row of glistening white teeth that looked about ready to light up the room. He wore his suit with a surprising amount of poise for a pony so young; clearly he had learned well from his father. “I heard about your father’s inquiries. It’s good that any suspicions of the way that the race was conducted be brought to light right away.”

“I’m glad that you feel that way,” Wind replied, hoping that the smile on his face was genial, even if the feeling in the pit of his stomach was anything but. “So long as the prize goes to the pony most deserving of it, then I’ll be happy, as we all should.”

Spry nodded. “Then it would seem that you’ve come to your senses. There’s no reason for animosity between us, especially not tonight. We have a party to enjoy, do we not?” As he finished, he turned his own gaze over to the group of young mares that Tin had been heading for. His smile seemed almost to infect each one of them. Suddenly Wind felt an overwhelming desire for some fresh air. He left Tin in with the group, his friend characteristically offering his beans to each of them in turn.

Out on the balcony, things were quiet, except for a light rustle from the field of beans that swept out in front of him, this one in the middle stages of its maturity, and thus with quite a few green leaves to catch the wind. The night above was clear, the stars shining in crystal patterns to either side of a giant full Moon that dominated the sky just above the Council building.

It took Wind a few breaths to get his composure back. It was strange, really. He had known Spry for some time already, after all. Their class at the Academy was large enough that the two ponies had seldom met, but surely he would have known if the stallion really was the villain that he seemed now to be. But after this morning, Wind could barely stand to be in the same room as the Master’s son. At least that wouldn’t persist beyond tonight. So long as his dad showed up to deliver his verdict soon.

There came a rustling of the curtains behind him, and Wind looked to see his father emerge from the sounds of the party inside.

Snow was entirely looking the part of the councilor, with a black dinner jacket nicely falling back over his wings, and his mane conservatively styled off to the side. In all honesty, he looked a completely different stallion than he had on the track this afternoon, but the seriousness in his eyes was all the same.

“Wind, there you are. I’ve been searching all over the district for you. I wanted to let you know that I’ve reached a decision concerning Spry.”

A twinge of excitement appeared as Wind stood up from the railing. “You believe me finally?”

Snow nodded, though with far less certainty in his expression than Wind was expecting. “Taken together, the accounts do paint a fairly compelling picture. I suppose that I should apologize for not believing you earlier.”

The news lifted the weight off of Wind’s shoulders. “That’s not a problem, Dad. Thanks for putting in the work. Will Shine get some kind of compensation?”

Somehow his father seemed even more uncomfortable at this question. There was a moment’s pause before Snow took a deep breath and then stepped forward to the railing, gesturing for Wind to join him. “Son, I’m afraid that there won’t be any changes made to the race results.”

“What? But Spry cheated. Surely he can’t be allowed to win?”

His father was shaking his head. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“Yes it is!” Wind interjected. “You said it yourself as the race started: the best pegasus should win, and no cheating! We can go in there right now and tell everyone what happened, and Spry will be disqualified. Right?”

“And what do you think that will accomplish?” Snow snapped, a sudden flash of irritation in his eyes, though it disappeared after only a moment. “The Master need only flick his wing to absolve his son’s guilt, and you’d best believe that he wouldn’t let it get that far. You’ve got to let this one go. If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that Shine still made the cut.”

“That’s not important!” Wind shouted, unable to believe the words that he was hearing. “This isn’t even about compensation for Shine, this is about principles! What kind of life can Spry live if he won his station through lies! It’s the Master’s job to be an impartial judge, the root of our laws. He has to do the right thing!”

These were very nearly quotes from the principles that he had learned in school from his youngest age. The station of a citizen’s birth wasn’t supposed to matter. All that mattered was what they were capable of contributing to the tribe. Everything in Cloudsdale was built on that premise, that anypony, no matter the stature of their family, could rise to any position that they were merited. That was what made Cloudsdale different from the societies ponies had built before. It wasn’t built on hereditary rank like a unicorn aristocracy, nor was it entirely egalitarian like an earth pony commune. And yet, by his father’s words, it was all seemingly a lie.

Beside him, Snow was still serious. “No,” he said. “I know that’s what they teach you in school, but that just isn’t the way that the world works, son. The Master does as he pleases. And it will be better for us not to get in his way. I’m… sorry that you had to find out like this.”

Stunned, Wind found himself leaning against the railing again, suddenly disoriented. A wave of exhaustion swept over him, almost pushing him down to his knees. The thought of facing Spry now seemed impossible, knowing not only what the pony had done but also that he was going to get away with it. That even his incontrovertible guilt meant nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Snow said to him again, still standing by the railing. “It was initially a little difficult for me to understand as well, but you’ll get used to things eventually.” He seemed momentarily flummoxed, uncertain on how to continue. “The dinner will be starting soon. When you’ve collected yourself, you can meet with your mother and I at our usual table.”

After a moment’s more hesitation, Snow walked back to the curtain and headed into the building, a second of warmth and chatter leaking out as he did so. But then it was all silence once more.

In that moment of silence, the night sky called out to Wind again. He needed some time to think, and this time a quiet ledge wasn’t going to be good enough. The turmoil in his heart would only be calmed by the gentle summons of the winds themselves. After a moment, he tossed his hat to the side and took to the air. It would only be a short flight, enough to clear his head before he could return and rejoin the party. He would probably miss some of the supper, or perhaps all of it. If he could avoid seeing Spry get his unjust honours then that would be good enough. His mother would surely have some fine leftovers at home for his dinner anyway.

Wind cut back toward the square first, turning down through the peak of the Spire to come out over the Mid-city. Cloudsdale sparkled with lights beneath him, fireflies dancing in jars, from tiny neighbourhood gatherings to bigger parties that rivalled that of the Club above him. Hints and snatches of the revelry met his ears, but Wind turned away from them. Out south over the city he flew, past industrial quarters and apartment towers. He had his sights set plainly on the outskirts of the city. He needed that isolation, to be alone with nothing but the stars, the sky, and the winds, or else he was sure that the thoughts in his head were going to consume him. He needed to be alone.

The open sky enveloped him in seconds, the gentle and familiar cadence of the winds lifting his heart, slowing his breath, and eventually relaxing him enough for some contemplative thought.

How could anypony carry on with their lives knowing what he had just learned? Their focus on individual merit was what made the pegasi superior to the other tribes; it was the reason why they had all chosen to live up here in Cloudsdale, away from the deceptions and injustices of the surface. If even here the follies of the world had followed, then what sense was there in continuing?

Yet somehow everypony else seemed to have found a way. Did Shine and Tin know? Or would they have their own unfortunate nights just like he was now? Would it stop them? Would it stop him? What sort of future could he have in that shell of a world that he had once thought he knew? Even in the mundane life of a printer, a chandler, or a craftspony, he still wouldn’t be able to escape that knowledge. With all of his emotions from earlier in the evening calmed away by the soothing song of the breeze, Wind could feel an emptiness replacing them in the depths of his heart. What more could there be? Even the sky seemed darker out here in the night.

At that moment Wind jerked his head up at a sudden realization. It was impossible for the sky to be darker. Before he could gather his thoughts, a sudden gust of wind caught him fully in the side, hurling him off course, head over hooves. He fought to reclaim his balance, and only then realized that the mellow beat of the winds had dissolved into a tempest, a whirling chaos of peaks and troughs as the stars overhead winked out, consumed by billowing clouds of dust. The next blast of wind took him from in front, and carried with it an invisible grit, coating his eyes and mouth. The dust was everywhere around him, and Wind did his best to see, did his best to orient himself in the storm, but to no avail. Every breath felt like it would choke him.

Wind had never flown in a storm before. He had seen them from time to time on the edges of the sky around Cloudsdale, but every foal knew not to wander beyond the edges of the city, especially not at night.

Wind fought against the raging gale, hoping to spy Cloudsdale out on the horizon somewhere, to give himself a direction to move in, but the clouds and the dust were all around him. He seemed almost to be floating in a void, darkness everywhere save for the briefest flashes of moonlight, each illuminating only the next wave of grit that was coming towards him.

He bucked the currents, but to no benefit. Wind felt like a rag doll tossed about in the storm. For the first time, he felt afraid. What would happen to him? A fall from the sky would surely be death. Would he ever see Cloudsdale again? Tin, Shine, his parents?

Wind banished the thought. He was a pegasus! Pegasi were supposed to be the masters of the sky, making it bend to their will. He forced out his fear and his confusion, bundling it all away to a nook in the back of his mind, and in that moment of clarity, he heard the storm for the first time.

In a way, it was something like the gentle pattern of the breezes from before, but much more complicated, a whirling mass of sound and tempo, bass roars and tinkling buffets of air going this way and that. In his confusion earlier it had all sounded like nothing but a mess, but now Wind heard the pattern and the organization of the air. For a moment, Wind held off on trying to fight the wind, and experimentally tried a thrust of his wings in time with the seeming cadence of the storm.

It was a strange reaction that he got, somewhat like what a cork must feel like if it were bobbing along on the waves, but for the most part he was able to stay in control of himself. When the pulse came around again, Wind gave it another try, and this time he could feel that he was making progress, even though the world around him was still a dark, dusty gale. Something in him just knew that he was moving along. Up ahead, a current of wind rushed at him, and this time Wind dove, lining himself up to the rhythm perfectly. How had he even known that wind was coming? He didn’t care. Right now he had to keep on trusting his instincts.

Each rise and dip of the air Wind anticipated and followed, and suddenly he knew where he was, a picture of the storm coalescing around him from the evidence in his ears and his sight. Somehow he knew that a right turn here would take him lower, and an artful dive there would take him out of the storm’s central circulation, and down into the shoulders of its dust bank. It was almost as if he had become a living part of the air, and suddenly Wind saw the blackness part out in front of him, and he was free. The air was calm, the sky overhead was bright, and there was Cloudsdale off in the distance, far away, but not too far surely. He started heading for it, sighing loudly as he went. A quick look down revealed that his suit was absolutely ruined, but surely his mother would be happier just knowing that her son had come back.

Then, exhaustion drove into him like a sledgehammer, sucking all of the energy out of his limbs. Suddenly Cloudsdale seemed to be on the other side of the planet, especially as each stroke of his wings felt like an eternity. It felt as if his whole body had turned to lead, and Wind sensed that even though he had escaped the storm, he wasn’t home yet.

Belatedly, he realized that he was rapidly losing altitude, the soft grey floor of the ground below rushing up, his wings only slowing his descent if that. He searched for a spot to land, somewhere soft where he could rest for a little while before heading back up to the city, but then his eyes closed.

The silence in the kitchen was deafening, broken only by the occasional tapping of the door-knocker as the evening breeze picked it up from the door frame. There was just a little bit of noise from that breeze too, a light whistle every few minutes as it wormed its way through the unpatched holes in the house’s walls. It came down the chimney sometimes, just enough to move around the ashes on the hearth.

When Sycamore had been a filly, her parents had sometimes taken her aside on a festival evening to tell her and her brother stories about long ago. About the bright and happy times of Equestria’s founding, about the heroes that had forged the country out of the bare earth it had once been, and then of the dark ages that had followed. As a child, Sycamore couldn’t believe that ponies had been able to survive in such a grim environment. Now, living it every day, she knew what it must have been like. You just kept on doing what you could, since there was nothing else that you could do.

The pot hit the table firmly as her father set it down. Morosely, Sycamore passed him her bowl, and then took it back once it had a ladle of soup in it.

Truthfully, to call it soup was to be somewhat generous; the stock was as thin as she had ever tasted it, with perhaps enough flavor for a single bowl. But there wasn’t much left, after all. At least she had a reasonably-sized hunk of bread for dipping into this one.

Sycamore was a brown earth pony, sitting at about an average height where these parts were concerned. She was no stranger to the rougher years; that was simply the way that life went as a farmer.

Earth ponies were supposed to know everything that there was to know about growing food, and the few times that Sycamore had watched a unicorn or pegasus try it out had convinced her that it was likely true. But when the rain didn’t fall, there was only so much that even a master farmer could do. You lived with the lean years and celebrated the full ones, or so Pa had always said. But for all of the last year, and now all of this one, Pa really hadn’t had much to say.

With the soup distributed, the family took to their bowls in silence, the quiet in the room stretching tighter than a coiled spring. There were three of them in all. Sycamore sat with her back to the rear door, her brother Fern, only a year younger, off to her left. The last was their old Pa, well into the years when he should have left the farm behind. But Sycamore had never told him to go, even after Ma had passed. His help was always deeply appreciated.

The wind gusted harder behind her, and with a crack the latch holding the rear door shut gave way, unleashing a wave of dust into Sycamore’s hair before she even realized what had happened.

She whipped her head around to see the sky outside growing darker, the blackness above belying not the approach of nightfall, but instead the telltale feelers of an oncoming storm. Yet, despite the urgency, she left her chair calmly and turned to her brother.

“Fern, get the blinds. There’s a storm coming.” She didn’t need to say anything to Pa. He knew what to do by heart.

While her brother took care of the windows, Sycamore walked over to the door frame, giving the yard outside one last look before she closed the door. She could easily remember what the place was supposed to look like at this time of year: verdant green and gold as far as the eye could see, the fields full and ripe with the harvest, begging to be brought in before the birds could get at it. There was just a little bit of that out there now, what plants they had been able to coax forth from the ground which had somehow survived the incessant blowing of the dust. She hoped with all of her heart that they would find a way to survive this night too. Then she wrenched the door shut with her shoulder, and held it there until Pa had dragged the table over. Sometime tomorrow they would have to get that latch repaired again.

Fern was already heading down into the basement, the only place where they could be sure that nothing would get blown in on them. Sycamore paused to grab a lantern before joining him.

In the gloom of the altogether too empty cellar, the family waited. Fern was the first to speak, the crystal tones of his voice so unexpected in the dreary atmosphere that they made everypony else in the room jump. “We’ll be lucky if we’ve got a third of our crop left after this one, I expect.”

Pa was a short and stout old earth pony, though the wrinkles of his skin belied the strength still present in his limbs. “There’ll still be enough to live with, I think. In any event, what do you expect us to do about it?”

Fern blew a lock of his golden hair out of his eyes. “Cricket says that his folks are packing up. Heading somewhere up to the city. Canterlot, I think. Apparently there was at least good food up there still.”

Pa shook his head. “Gettin’ started with nothing in a big city like that? We’d be lucky to end up as well as we are here. Surely I wish him the best of luck, but this farm is ours. Ain’t nopony going to tell me otherwise.”

Fern didn’t have a retort, and Sycamore just sat in silence. Fern’s story wasn’t the only one that she had heard. The small towns were all disappearing, drying up as ponies moved on in search of new lives. Their little village of Southoofton had once been something approaching a town, but now there were only a few dozen families left. Those still behind were ones much like Pa, who would only leave if a storm picked them up and deposited them in Canterlot itself.

“Besides,” Pa continued with a light snort through his nostrils, “we shouldn’t be heading ourselves up to Canterlot. It’s them should be coming down here to help us. Once upon a time those city folk cared about us little ponies, or so my old Pa told me. Whatever happened to that?”

Again there was a silence as his words were digested. Sycamore didn’t really know what to say. All that they could do was pass the time, then climb out of the basement afterward to fix whatever needed fixing, and get on with the rest of the business. Almost like nothing had happened, though they would all know that whatever fixes they made would be undone whenever the next dust devil rode through.

Even so, passing the time was all that they could do, right now. Sycamore was just about to suggest a game of Twenty Questions when suddenly there was a deafening crash from above, almost right on top of the house by the sounds of it. There was a splintering of wood, then a more muted thud. The wind howled on. Sycamore exchanged a look with Pa.

“That sounded big,” she said, eying the ceiling in the hope it didn’t come down on them.

“Tree branch, maybe,” he mused. “Though I thought that I had cut all of those down. Even so, if I’ve got four hooves that was the roof I heard splintering. We’d better go check.”

Sycamore nodded, and she motioned Fern to follow. Upstairs, the house was still looking pretty clean, with all of the windows still sealed up, and the table still holding the rear door closed. It was dark, with the dusk outside swallowed up by the swirling clouds of black dust. She really should have brought the lantern.

Pa motioned toward the rear door, and they followed him slowly, wary of any possible danger. If something got blown into one of the windows, there could be glass shards everywhere in an instant.

Pa got to the door first, and hunkered down to brace it with his shoulder while Fern moved the table aside. It almost looked like somepony was outside pounding on the door with a battering ram, the way the wind crashed it forward into Pa’s shoulder every couple of seconds. But the old stallion held it firm, at least until Sycamore nodded to him to let it open. She stepped through quickly, getting a face full of dust herself of course, but hopefully sparing the kitchen.

Outside, it was clear to see that the crash really had been the roof, even in spite of the obscurement of the dust. Roofing tiles were scattered all across the yard, broken into shards and poking into the ground in cases. The ceiling of the house’s rear porch had an uncomfortable-looking sag to it now, undoubtedly the result of a timber or two being broken.

Whatever the storm had picked up and hurled into their roof, it certainly had been something big.

Shielding her eyes with one foreleg, Sycamore took a few wary steps forward. The debris from the roof was clustered around a small crater in the yard, and slowly as she came forward the dust gave way to reveal a most unexpected sight. A pegasus lay there, unmoving, the torn remains of what might have once been a nice jacket hanging from his shoulders. One of his wings was bent into a painful-looking angle, and it also looked like he had taken a knock to the face in the impact too, with a clear black eye marring his otherwise sky-blue coat. But it didn’t look like there was anything else broken, and only a little blood.

She trotted up the last few steps to where he lay, almost looking peaceful somehow in the midst of the carnage, at least if one ignored the wing. Sycamore bent down to check his pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief when she felt it, strong and regular. He would live, probably, provided that the rest of their house survived what the storm still held for it.

Sycamore ran back to the door and shouted for Fern and Pa to give her a hoof. Each of them started a little upon first sight of their visitor, but in the end they just shrugged and carried him inside. Strange, now that Sycamore got a chance to look at his face a little more, she realized that he was completely unfamiliar. She thought that she had known everypony around town, but maybe he wasn’t from around here? That dirty white mane, those clear eyes, the set of that jawline. She wracked her brain for a connection, but it just wasn’t coming. Well, if he was from somewhere else, they would have to wait until he was conscious to ask him about it anyway. With luck, they could have him back on his way come tomorrow morning.

Chapter 6: Bean Soup

“The Unicorns invented chess, the Pegasi invented buckball, and the Earth Ponies invented poker. And that fact alone says a lot about life in the Unicorn Kingdom.”

- Star Swirl the Bearded

Wind awoke to a searing pain in his right side, his mind trying to regain some semblance of focus. Though it only took a few seconds for everything to come flooding back to him.

The storm! Was he still caught out in it, battered against a mountain perhaps, or hanging from a tree wherever he had managed to set himself down? He tried to sit up, but the pain only got worse, shooting like an arrow into the back of his head. Colours swam in front of his eyes as he tried to focus, and then a hard voice came to him from his right.

“Sit down a moment, will ya? You’re not moving anywhere, not until the doc’s done with ya at least!”

Wind looked for the source of the voice, but with his eyes so full of tears all that he saw was a brown splash across a darker brown background. Reluctantly, he let himself relax. Well, at least wherever he had landed there were other ponies about. He would just need to ask them whereabouts he was, and hopefully get back on up to Cloudsdale soon. His parents were sure to be very worried about him by now.

“Well, Ms. Sycamore, I’ve done what I can,” came another voice from farther away, this one much cleaner and more professional. “His wing will heal up nicely given enough time, though if I were you I’d still stay vigilant. While his body seems to be in the prime of health, I certainly can’t say the same for his mind if he was really out flying last night. In any event, I should be moving along.” There came a squeaking sound somewhere in the distance, and then a muted bang, leaving behind silence. Wind decided to try opening up his eyes again.

This time, he was greeted by the sight of a modest room, with walls of sawed lumber and a ceiling just a few feet above. The room itself seemed to contain nearly everything that a family would need, from a hearth on the far right to a large black iron oven in the near corner. A big solid table filled up the middle of the space, and a set of rough steps slanted up the left wall, presumably to the bedchambers. The only other oddity was a hole in the floor about midway between the kitchen and the hearth, for now partly covered by a dull grey cloth.

The speaker to his right was revealed to be an aged earth pony stallion, clearly the survivor of many winters, and looking none too happy to see him awake. The only other pony in the room was standing by the door, a sandy yellow mane complementing her light brown coat. She looked to be about his age, maybe a little older, which made it all the more surprising the doctor had addressed her as if she was in charge. She turned away from the door, and fixed him with a serious glare, its effect somewhat muted by the liquid green of her large eyes.

“So, you’re awake then, are you?”

He wanted to sit up to come to her eye-level, but one flex of his back muscles and that pain in his wing came back with a vengeance. A hasty look down revealed that it had been set and bound tightly with bandages. He must have broken it in his fall. “It would seem that I am,” he replied cautiously, wary of the seeming animosity in the room. “Thank you for housing me.”

The elder stallion to his right grunted, whether to say a carefree “No problem,” or a sarcastic “You’re welcome,” Wind couldn’t tell. For the moment, the fellow turned and went into the kitchen to rummage about in a cupboard.

“Common courtesy,” Sycamore returned, taking a seat at the table on the side nearer to him. “I can’t say that I know what you thought that you were doing last night. I thought that everypony knew that with a storm in the air, there was no sense in sticking around outside, never mind taking a casual flight. Quite frankly, I think you’re very lucky to still be alive.”

Wind nodded his thanks again. “You’d best believe that I won’t be trying it again anytime soon. Though I would appreciate knowing exactly where here is.”

“I thought so,” Sycamore said. “I’m sure anypony I know wouldn’t have made your mistake. Well, here is a town called Southoofton, about half an hour west of Canterlot, as the pegasus flies. I’d guess that you’re from around there?”

Wind shook his head, perplexed. “Canterlot?” He searched his brain for a moment, suddenly wishing that he had paid more attention in history class. They had only covered the bare essentials of surface history in school, but dimly in his memories the name jumped out. “Oh, heavens, no. What could have given you that impression?”

She motioned meaningfully to the left side of his bed, and Wind looked down to see his shredded and soiled dinner jacket, barely recognizable after all that he had been through. Surely his mother was going to have stern words for him about that.

“My first guess would have been that you were coming home from a bachelor’s party, got lost, maybe a little drunk and somehow ended up out here,” Sycamore said, not accusing, simply explaining. “But if not, then perhaps I should let you speak for yourself. With any luck, we can have you on your way back home in a couple of hours.”

For an instant, a spark of hope blossomed in Wind’s heart. A couple of hours? That wouldn’t be so bad at all. But of course there was an issue with that plan.

“I hail from Cloudsdale,” he said, doing his best to say it proudly despite his recent revelation. “So I’m afraid that you probably won’t be able to help me after all. But perhaps you know a pegasus or two who could assist me instead?”

This time it was Sycamore who looked perplexed, suddenly unsure as if he had just declared that he was from the Moon. The silence dragged out for a few moments more, until the old stallion in the kitchen grunted again. “Sounds like the doc was right,” he muttered. “He really is missing some of his marbles.”

Sycamore turned back to him and brought a hoof up to her cheek. “You’re serious?”

“Yeee…s,” he said back slowly, trying to understand what was going on. “I flew out from there last night and got caught in the storm by accident. Luckily, it would seem that I landed nearby, and you were kind enough to take me in. But the sooner that I can get back home, the better. I have friends and family who will surely be very concerned about me.”

She gave the old fellow a quizzical look, but he just shrugged his shoulders. Wind could see that he had started a fire in the stove, and looked to be warming up a large pot of something. Back at the table, Sycamore shook her head, seemingly debating on what to say next.

“Well, I suppose you did land pretty hard. I do have some chores to get to, but perhaps after you’ve had some rest and something to eat your head will have cleared up some.”

She got up from the table, and started heading for the door, leaving Wind lying there agape. Had he said something wrong? Perhaps earth ponies were serious sticklers for etiquette, and he had committed some massive faux-pas without even realizing it.

“Wait!” he called after her, making Sycamore at least pause with her hoof on the door latch. “What did I do? Why don’t you believe me?”

Something nudged his shoulder, and Wind looked down to see that a bowl of some watery-looking soup had been placed in front of him. The old stallion gave him a withering look before heading off to join Sycamore. They exchanged a few muted whispers that he mostly couldn’t hear, except for snatches of “Let him be,” from him and “It’s fine,” from her. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and headed out the door himself. Meanwhile, Sycamore came back to his bedside, again regarding him coolly as if not entirely sure what she should be thinking.

Undaunted, Wind decided to try again. “You know about Cloudsdale, right?” She nodded, and he went on. “Well, that’s where I’m from. Born and raised since my foalhood there, I was. Is that hard to believe?”

After a moment Sycamore burst out laughing, tears coming to her eyes as she bent almost double. Wind could only look on in consternation. Sycamore had to wipe her eyes before answering. “Hard to believe?” she managed to get out in a gasp. “If you had told me that you were one of the Princesses I might have believed that!”

“But you've heard of Cloudsdale, right?” Wind cut in impatiently, not happy about being laughed at.

“Oh, of course I’ve heard of it! Everypony in the town has heard of it. My parents used to tell me all about it when I was a filly getting ready for bed. Some magical city up in the clouds where all the pegasi live in some sort of harmonious society. All of the houses are made of clouds and the streets are paved with rainbows and the towers are built of ice? That sound familiar to you?” She had settled down enough to give him another questioning look.

“Well, for the most part, yeah,” he answered, sifting through the description in his head. “The rainbows and the ice aren’t right, but the rest is pretty accurate. So why do you seem to find it so funny?”

She threw up her hooves, seemingly in exasperation. “Because it’s a bedtime story! It’s made up! Everypony knows that Cloudsdale isn’t real. You just hit your head real hard on the way down and now you’re thinking things that couldn’t be true. So I’ll come back a bit later once you’ve got everything sorted out and we can start over.”

She headed for the door again, this time at least offering a cute little smile as she did, though once again she was leaving Wind speechless, his jaw again completely slack. Once she got to the door, she grabbed a wide-brimmed hat off of the nearby rack and stuck it onto her head.

“You might want to consider eating that soup, by the way,” she called back. “It’s not much even as it is, but it sure is a lot worse when it’s cold!” And with that, Sycamore undid the latch and stepped out. Behind her, Wind spied a greenish-brown landscape that stretched as far as his eyes could see, crossing a few hills until rising up in the distance to a sharp and imposing set of mountains.

When the door shut, Wind blew out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. It seemed that finding his way back to Cloudsdale was going to be even harder than he first thought.

Still, if nothing else his wing would eventually heal and he’d be able to get back himself. How long would that take? A couple of weeks maybe, if he was lucky. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the whole time trussed up here in bed. It would take maybe a few days for him to be able to walk around, at least. The same had happened to Tin a while back, and he had been able to resume work in the fields after only three days at the hospital.

Confident he wasn’t going anywhere, Wind remembered the bowl of soup. The smell was pretty thin, but even so it was something totally foreign to him. There was nothing like a good shot of bean soup when you were ill. Hopefully whatever these ponies on the ground ate, it could at least replicate the feeling.

About four and a half hours later, Sycamore and Fern had just about finished moving the new timbers in for the roof repairs on the back porch. That pegasus sure had done a number on the structure, and it was a lucky thing that he had escaped as relatively unharmed as he had. For the timbers they had had to travel down to the Farbreeze Forest on the town’s edge, and haul the logs all of the way back. Pa was busy seeing to the rest of the yard. With them at least in position, they could start thinking about new tiles this afternoon.

Fern was still shaking his head after she had told him everything about Wind. Every few minutes he would let out a stifled chuckle at the whole situation. “That pegasus sure did take a hard knock, didn’t he?” he asked as he waited for her to climb back down to the porch.

“As hard as anypony I’ve ever known, that’s for sure. Do you think that by now he’ll have his head in order?”

Fern took off his straw hat to scratch the back of his mane with his other hoof. “Tough to say. Remember when ol’ Grenadine fell off his haystack a year or two back? He wasn’t right in the head for a week or two after that.”

“Well, he wasn’t right in the head to begin with, Fern,” Sycamore said, now holding the ladder steady while he came down. “Especially to be up on the haystack in the first place. What are we going to do with this guy if he’s still babbling about Cloudsdale a week from now?”

“We’ll keep on, I guess,” Fern replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe somepony will come looking for him at some point. You should ask about the town to see if anypony’s looking for a pegasus about his description.”

“Good idea, that. If nothing else, he could lend an extra hoof.”

Fern guffawed at the suggestion. “A pegasus? Helping on the farm? I dunno, maybe have him sweep the steps or something, but keep him far away from me if he says he’s going to help!”

Sycamore had to admit that it was more than a little bit funny. Last year, a group of pegasi from Canterlot had visited the town looking for prospective weatherponies, and one of them had somehow gotten himself into a wager with Sesame the wheelwright concerning the simplicity of fixing a wagon. That particular episode had been discussed around the watering hole for weeks. Masters of the sky the pegasi may be, but the work on the ground was always best left to the grounded ponies.

“I’m sure that we’ll find something that he can do without causing us too much trouble.” Fern gave her a challenging glare. “But only if it’s absolutely necessary,” she added.

Inside, Pa was busy warming up the soup again. It was a little unfortunate to have the same food a few days in a row, but they couldn’t afford to let any of it go to waste, so every last drop needed to be eaten, and every last scrap of flavour needed to be boiled out of the food.

Wind was still lying on his bed, though looking surprisingly chipper given his circumstances. Sycamore would have thought that a pony who’d gotten his head rearranged, on top of breaking his wing, would have been more forlorn about his situation. But maybe that meant that he had remembered everything?

“How’s it going?” she asked, sauntering up to the table and sitting down backwards so that she could look over the backrest at him. He really was quite the specimen, a firm muzzle and a strong jaw sitting underneath those simple, innocent eyes. Whatever life he had had before, it would be a shame if he never found his way back to it.

“Quite nice, actually,” he replied, catching a whiff of the soup with his nose. “Are we having more of that soup?”

Sycamore’s left eyebrow drew up of its own accord. “Well, yes, we are. Hopefully you don’t mind. We can usually pull together something with a bit more oomph to it, but things are rather tight at the moment.”

He shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no problem at all! Personally, I thought that it was some of the best soup that I’ve ever tasted, and that’s saying a lot. My mother Sun makes one of the best bean soups in the borough, and I don’t think that even she could have topped that.”

Fern’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “Bean soup? Well, so much for him having his head in order.”

Wind brought a hoof up to his forehead. “Are you still on about that? Listen, my home is Cloudsdale. What do I have to do to convince you that I’m telling the truth?”

Sycamore gave a look over to Fern, and then another for Pa. None of them offered any ideas, and in truth she didn’t know what to say either. It wasn’t every day that a pony walked in the door claiming to be from another world.

“We’ll have to see,” she offered reassuringly despite her own reservations. “Perhaps in the meantime you can tell us about your mother’s soup.”

Pa took a bowl over to Wind, and he accepted it with a gracious nod, before taking to it right away. “Well, the beans of course come from the Old Quarter. We have whole fields of them up there, growing around the year.”

“Fields?” Fern interjected, ignoring his own soup for the time-being. “How can there be fields without any soil?”

“Ah, yes, I forgot to mention that. It’s unfortunate that my friend Tin isn’t here. He could explain the whole operation to you better than I can. But essentially some time ago we discovered that beans could grow when submerged in water, if the conditions were just right that is. We keep four fields in rotation for planting and harvesting, so that we have a steady supply.”

“Beans and what else?” Sycamore asked, slightly intrigued by the idea. “It would be a difficult enough time growing just one crop and expecting it to work every year, let alone surviving having only one thing to eat.”

“Well, once again you’re sort of asking the wrong pony,” Wind said, absentmindedly scratching the back of his neck. “There’s a small experimental crop of sugar beets, I think, but besides that it’s all beans. You’d be surprised, though, at what can be done with just beans. We mash them, bake them, broil them, stew them, steam them, toast them, distill their juices of course—”

“Yeah, we get it,” Sycamore put up a hoof to cut him off. “But there’s only so much that can be done with a bean, especially without any seasoning, if what you’re saying is true. Don’t you get tired of eating the same thing all the time?”

Wind perked his head up from the soup, which he appeared to have almost finished, well ahead of the rest of the table. “Hmm, I suppose that I never thought about it like that before,” he said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “But it isn’t like we have any other choice. And besides, there’s plenty of ways to make a bean taste different. Why, you can saute it…”

“Thanks,” she said right away, already dreading the answer. “Still, I can’t say that I would be able to put up with something like that. Even this soup sounds pretty good compared to nothing but beans for the rest of my life, however you decide to cook them.”

“Well, that’s just it!” Wind paused for a moment to lick the bowl clean. “Why would you when you’ve got incredible food like this to eat all of the time? If I’d have known that the ponies on the surface ate like this, well, perhaps I would have dropped in to visit once or twice. You could make a fortune selling something like this up in Cloudsdale.”

For the briefest of moments, Sycamore let herself entertain that idea. Any source of money right now was something worth considering. It was a testament to how desperate the times were that she was entertaining the prospect of selling soup in a fictitious city as a way to churn up some funds. Though hearing Wind talk about it made it a lot harder to dismiss everything that he said as worthless babble. She did remember old Grenadine after he had fallen off of his haystack, and that stallion hadn’t been able to put two words together, let alone remember who he was. One morning he was a merchant from Manehattan, the next his own son’s brother. Wind, though, had a consistent story at least, as fantastical as it seemed to be.

“Well, alright Wind,” she said, finishing off her own soup now. “Let’s suppose for a moment that I decide to believe you, and we proceed on the assumption that you really are from Cloudsdale.”

“Excellent!” he said right away, excited enough that he almost tried to get out of the bed, though a quick wince clearly took that thought out of his head. “I’m glad that we could get through that so quickly.”

“How would you propose on getting back there?”

“Well, of course I could head back on my own once I was well enough. That doctor of yours seems to have done his job well, so that should only be a few weeks at the most. Or, we could find a couple of pegasi willing to take me instead. Of course I would tell them where to go. It probably isn’t even that far, really.” His smile had grown to ebullience. He really was serious about getting back there.

“I’ll… see if I can find anypony willing to take you up on that offer,” she said, deliberately ignoring Fern’s good luck with that look. “It’s going to be tough finding folks willing to make the journey though, I think. But we’ll definitely try. And if nothing else, we’ll take care of you until you’re healed enough to head out yourself.”

“That sounds excellent,” he said. “Feel free to send any of the doubters in here to see me. I’m sure that I can convince them of the worth of the journey. Cloudsdale really is an impressive place, after all. Something that all pegasi should see at some point in their lives, even if they’re not willing to take the leap into living up there permanently.”

“Right.” She silently motioned Fern over to the door, and Pa gave her a quick nod as he gathered up the dishes. As she and Fern walked out onto the porch Wind was beginning another story about Cloudsdale, this time about the Undercity, whatever that was.

“You sound like you’re starting to believe him,” Fern said as he shut the door. It wasn’t an accusation, but Fern didn’t sound particularly happy about it either. “If you want to ask around town for pegasi willing to fly to Cloudsdale then that’s your adventure to have. Meanwhile I’ll be getting us roofing tiles.”

“Well I don’t see that we have much of a choice, really,” she replied, leaning over the porch railing. “Even if he is still spouting nonsense, it’ll be a lot easier to live with him if we humour him for a while.”

“If he’s spouting nonsense?” Fern snorted. “Fields of water? Beans all day long? Heck, pegasi growing anything in the first place? I don’t know how you’re evaluating all of that, but for me, he sounds worse than Sarsaparilla on a Saturday morning.”

Sycamore chuckled at the comparison. Sarsaparilla was the patriarch of one of the larger clans to still be sticking around Southoofton. His penchant for drinks much harder than his namesake was well-known throughout the town, as much as he denied it on the rare afternoons when he was sober.

“I’m not saying that I would buy everything that he’s claiming, but it does kind of fit, given everything else. The idea of him flying here from Canterlot was always far-fetched, and that’s the best one that I can think of.”

“More far-fetched than Cloudsdale? Trust me, in a day or two, maybe a week tops, we’re going to have a little old mare rolling into town distraught over her missing nephew, and then we can send him on his way. In the meantime, well, try not to get too attached to him.” Fern stayed staring out at the field after he was finished talking, thinking perhaps about this latest flavour that had been thrown into what was already a strange year.

For her part, Sycamore decided that she was going to shop the story around town for a bit, just to see what everypony else thought. Sure, she would probably get a lot that were much like Fern and Pa, but just maybe Wind’s stories had a grain of truth in them, and she could find out enough to put her own doubts to rest on the topic.

Chapter 8: Counting Votes

“In Equestria, success is measured by one’s ability to predict and work around the whims of the Princesses.”

- Pensive Prose

A tap on the wall behind her caught Celestia’s attention, bringing her mind firmly back into the present. A servant was standing in the hall, his head bowed low in respect. “Senator Prose is here to see you, your Highness.”

The senator, of course. She hadn’t realized how much time had gone by while she stood here in recollection.

Calmly, Celestia walked back into her office, clearing a little bit of space on the desk, and set the marked up Food Act to one side there. Once she had properly situated herself, she nodded to the servant, who vanished, to be replaced by the senator only a moment later.

Pensive Prose was a middle-aged unicorn, with a coat that had already succumbed to the dullness of age, and a mane of deep brown that was rapidly going that way too. It was at least still full and healthy, parted off to the right in a style that had recently come into vogue here in Canterlot. Apparently it was meant to emphasize the horn in its little patch of the forehead, though to Celestia’s taste it looked like an awful lot of work for something of so little value. Her own mane was of course trailing on the floor behind her, but she had it sensibly clipped back over her neck. That took her all of two minutes every morning, and surely the effect was much the same. In addition to the usual senator’s sash, Pensive was also wearing a crisp, white collar, with a dark blue tie reaching down the front of his chest.

Pensive extended a hoof along with a confident grin as he came up to the table. Celestia rose to meet him, though for her part she stayed serious. “Thank you for meeting with me, Senator Prose.”

“Always a pleasure, your Highness,” he replied, his voice the usual oiled silk of Canterlot’s upper districts. “Have you been well?”

“Well enough,” she nodded, before pulling his stack of parchment into the middle of the table again. “We have a few things to discuss regarding the Food Act.”

“The usual legal concerns?” He leaned back in his chair, his smug confidence mixing with the minty smell of his cologne. “Whatever you think needs to change is probably fine. You know, the Senate really is lucky to have a clerk as diligent as we do. It makes a lot of our jobs much easier.”

Unfazed, Celestia shook her head, letting the flattery wash over her. “Legally, the bill is actually surprisingly sound.” Which was saying something. She had used a whole bottle of red ink on the markup, but a portion of that had simply been due to the Act’s sheer length. In terms of content, it had been mostly consistent with existing law. “My concerns are more about how you intend to get this past the Senate. I have no concern with assenting to it when it lands in front of the throne, but I have heard rumblings of discontent from the rest of the chamber.”

Pensive didn’t even blink. “You really shouldn’t put as much stock in Ink and her group as you do, your Highness. I have ponies working on assembling the votes. I think that we can count on enough support to get this thing through.”

Celestia made a mental note of that. This confidence was new; perhaps his cabal had somehow managed to pull in a few more senators. “Even so, we can guarantee that the bill will pass if we can deliver the rural votes. And for a measure with this kind of impact on the agricultural market, I think that it would be very important to ensure that the farmers are on board.”

That finally seemed to put a dent in his confidence. Clearly, he had hoped to avoid the rough nature of negotiations in coming here this morning. Still he maintained his composure and let out a deep breath. “Alright, what does she want?”

With her magic, Celestia pulled out the particular slip of parchment where the program’s pricing structure was elaborated. “For the moment, the Act is creating a single market where the Crown buys the whole harvest, from every farmer in Equestria, and distributes the takings among the population. Ink tells me that the price you’ve put in here is too low. All that we need to do is deliver a fair deal, and the votes are secure.”

“I think that she and I have a different definition of fair, then.” Pensive was back to smiling. “I’m trying to deliver a fair deal for our citizens too. There’s no point in gathering up the food if we’re only going to sell it back to the population at a price that nopony can afford. We’re not in the business of providing hoof-outs to farmers.”

Celestia bit her tongue to hold back an icy response. Dealing with the Senate was trying at the best of times, but Pensive just had a way about him, more than any other senator. Somehow he always succeeded in getting on her nerves.

“The pricing in this Act is downright predatory, and we both know that well enough. For all of the hard work that our earth ponies put in, growing what they could in a year like this, they deserve proper compensation.”

“And if the market was in a better state then surely they’d get that compensation,” he replied, still slick as cooking oil. “But we’re in desperate times, your Highness. Some extreme measures are going to have to be taken, and that means that some ponies are going to come out on top, and some on the bottom. I don’t like it any more than you or Ink or anypony here in Canterlot. But that’s just the way that this cookie is crumbling.”

How convenient it was that the losing ponies never seemed to be the ones in his district, or those of any of his cronies. Yet, Celestia kept those thoughts to herself and maintained her professional demeanour.

“All that I’m asking for is something that’s just a little bit more progressive. Surely we can move things just a touch and still keep everything affordable for the rest of the country?”

Pensive let his eyelids droop as he considered it. It was situations like these that made Celestia wish she could have Luna around the office from time to time. If somepony could shout Pensive into submission once or twice a week it would certainly help her cause. But actually getting anything done in the Senate always required tact. Her sister had grown up in a world of definite goods and evils. Finding the middle ground in the unending grey area of the Senate was a job that Luna probably just wasn’t cut out for.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied after a moment, his smugness slipping just a tic. “I can make no guarantees now with regard to my voting bloc, but we might be able to give you a little bit of room to manoeuvre. I suppose that I shall be needing that then?” He dipped his horn down to the stack of red parchment in front of them.

“This one,” Celestia replied, hoisting a much cleaner, and significantly shorter, stack up onto the desk. Fully half of the reduction had come from rewriting it all in a less frilly script. “Ink will know which areas she’d like to go over.” She rose once more from the desk, prompting Pensive to do the same. Infuriating though he could be at times, he was at least a stickler for protocol. “With work, I do believe that we’ll be able to see this bill pass.”

“Agreed, your Highness,” he said, straightening up his necktie while also smoothing out his mane. “I’ll see you at the vote this afternoon.”

She gave him a shallow, curt nod, and Pensive turned about and casually walked out of the room. Celestia hoped that Ink would be able to work with him at least for now. The fact that he had given in meant that Pensive’s coalition clearly wasn’t airtight just yet. Even so, it would take work to make sure he didn’t achieve a clear majority. There would be an uproar from Ink’s seats if that happened.

Celestia had never really considered herself a negotiator, at least not before she had placed herself in charge of the Senate. Three hundred years of assuaging fears and doling out favours had at least taught her the basic ropes of the sport. But even so, there were ponies out there who knew it far better than she did, and more often than not, it was those ponies who troubled her sleep, even more than the ongoing drought or anything else. Somehow, someday, she was going to have to put a stop to that.

The Equestrian Senate was a square chamber with a high ceiling, its walls decorated with frescoes of various scenes from throughout the country, from the rising skylines of Manehattan to the sprawling hillsides of Fillydelphia, with new mining towers rising in the background. The ceiling had been painted with a recollection of the Chaos Storm that had taken Eridian on the day of Discord’s demise, three hundred years ago. Celestia had often felt that the roiling purple clouds and flashing, reality-destroying lightning was a fitting metaphor for the actions that often took place upon these seats.

Seventy-five seats filled the room in a few concentric rows, around a raised wooden rostrum at the chamber’s near side. That was where Celestia usually sat, the chair’s gavel hers to command, as the storm clouds of bitter dispute boiled and churned in front of her. Today, though, one of the chamber’s pages was occupying the chair. Because there was a vote going on, Celestia needed to occupy her official position, on one of the pair of thrones that were nestled against the wall behind. Technically, Luna’s presence was required as well for votes such as these, but her sister’s seat had gone empty for decades now. One Princess alone didn’t have the power to overrule the other and the Senate combined, so whenever Celestia agreed to the motions put before her, then Luna’s vote was unnecessary.

Out on the floor, the various senators were all still milling about, probably cutting last-minute deals in order to secure the various fragile allegiances and structures that kept the chamber in order. As usual, Celestia felt more than a little claustrophobic here on her throne. All around her were snatches of conversation, their meanings delivered in the occasional raised eyebrow or look of consternation from one senator to another. The fate of the nation could hang on those looks, as it all too often had, and Celestia had no power to intervene. Such was the sacrifice that she had made for this system, but overall she always felt that it had been worth it.

Outside, in the palace’s garden, a bell tolled three times, marking the onset of the hours. It was answered by a sharp crack of the gavel, as the call to order began, and the senators started filing into their assigned seats. Celestia caught sight of Ink still speaking frantically to a few more members of her group, though the two others were both shaking their heads. Across the floor, Pensive was already in his seat, looking as relaxed as ever. Celestia wouldn’t have been surprised to see his legs up on his lectern if he weren’t such a formal pony.

Once the roll had been called, the chair picked up the top page of the newly written act, this one the first of seventy-six copies which had been distributed to the chamber once Pensive and Ink had hammered out their final version. For the most part it was exactly the bill that had emerged from committee, with just a slight relaxation on pricing, as Ink had wanted. Hopefully it would be enough to carry it through.

“To the chamber is put the question,” the speaker began, his voice raspy and a little difficult for Celestia to hear. At least the chamber had been designed to amplify the speaker’s words onto the seats, so the rest of the room could probably hear fine.

“Where regards Senate Resolution #36, also to be known as the Food Act, shall it be approved or shall it be rejected? Those in approval shall say ‘Yea’.”

There was a modestly loud shout of Yea’s from the crowd, though not the whole chamber by a long shot. “Those in opposition shall say ‘Nay’.” An equally loud chorus of Nay’s answered that prompt. Ink and Pensive both immediately put their hooves up to call for a vote by roll.

This time, the votes were taken one by one, each senator standing either to submit a Yea or a Nay. Though the speaker made a notation on his parchment for each vote, it was left to the senators and Celestia to keep their own mental tallies.

One by one Pensive’s group rose in approval: all nine of the Canterlot senators, all seven from Manehattan, four more from Fillydelphia and three more from Baltimare. Celestia let out a little breath, though of course she hadn’t expected anypony from that group to break ranks. It was Ink’s supporters that really mattered. Ink herself and the rest of the Canterlot foothills rose, taking the measure to twenty-seven in favour. With thirty-eight votes required to guarantee the measure’s passage, and twelve more votes in the rural bloc, things were looking good.

The roll came then to Everfree North, a pot-bellied green stallion who was usually a reliable vote for Ink, yet this time he said Nay, eliciting a surprised whisper that went around the room. Pensive especially took note of that one, though the particulars of his reaction, whether he was heartened or disappointed, Celestia couldn’t quite say. From her place across the floor, though, Ink looked like she had been kicked in the gut.

From there, the votes fell like a chain of dominoes. Everfree West, Barrier South, Plains South, and Riverbend, all voting Nay in defiance of Ink’s wishes. The rest of her bloc followed along with her, but with that many defections, there was no salvaging the measure.

When the final tally was called, Ink’s face had taken on an ashen hue. Thirty-three for to forty-two against. Still, Pensive was an unreadable face across the aisle, which was equally strange given that he had called the vote in the first place. When the chair passed the motion to adjourn he and his cohorts headed right for the exits. That was alright, at least for now. Celestia had another mare in her sights.

“You told me that you could deliver the votes,” Celestia began, sliding down into the seat right next to Ink’s lectern. She could see that the yellow earth pony had a tally of marks on the parchment on her desk, with about a half dozen names circled for follow-ups. “You said yourself that anypony thinking straight would see that this motion needed to be passed.”

“Things have changed, your Highness,” Ink began, still taking down notes on her parchment, though her disappointment could be heard in her tone. “Some votes that I thought were secure have wandered on me instead. And Pensive barely gave me any room to move. There are ponies here who are really starting to dislike him.”

“Well, we still need to get a measure passed, regardless of any of that. It’s going to be another day or so until we can put this measure back onto the timetable, hopefully with additional provisions to help you out in your negotiations. I can cover for you a little too, if you’d like.”

Ink finished up with her list, then recapped her inkwell and passed it over. “Thank you, your Highness. Here are the names that we should be focusing on. If we can turn even two or three of these, the rest of my coalition might follow them. But honestly, I think that we might have bigger concerns than that.”

Confused, Celestia’s head came up. “More important than making sure that the country doesn’t starve? I can’t say that I follow.”

The normal colour had finally returned to Ink’s face, and she wore a calculating sternness now, her gaze fixed upon where Pensive had been sitting during the vote. By now most of the chamber had emptied out again, save for a few more clumps of ponies sitting about and discussing their own strategies.

“It’s Pensive. He surely knew that he didn’t have the votes to carry the measure on his own. I was expecting him to put up a hard front, naturally, but for him not to budge at all for me was ridiculous. If I didn’t know better I would say that he wanted this vote to fail.”

“You think so? Pensive is as slimy as a slug, but something like that is downright malevolent. He would have a lot to gain if the measure passed, after all.” If there was anything that could definitely be said about Pensive Prose, it was that he never shied away from the spotlight. A sizable chunk of the bills that passed the chamber bore markings of his work at least somewhere.

Ink furrowed her brow, perhaps finding the concept just as improbable as Celestia did. “He must know that this measure is going to pass eventually. There’s simply no way that the Senate can go on without addressing the pressing shortages of food in the country. But what does it matter if it passes now or later? The sooner the better, clearly.”

Unconvinced, Celestia got up from the desk. “I’m not buying it, Ink. It would seem to me that he’s just fallen victim to his own success, in that several of your senators think him so much of a dictator that they’re willing to stall this measure’s passage just to spite him. Our job now is to get this thing through however we can. But I will go talk to him again, I think. Perhaps now that he knows how stiff the resistance is, he’ll be willing to soften somewhat.”

“As you like it, your Highness,” Ink answered. “I’ll probably be in meetings over this for most of the afternoon. Let me know if I have anything else that I can promise.”

She gathered up her things in a hurry, and the two ponies parted ways in the hall. Ink headed off towards the north wing of offices, and Celestia walked slowly on into the south, her head still full of Ink’s accusations. Pensive was an uncooperative goat, that much was certain. But full obstructionism, especially for his own bill? And one so important too? It was simply too much to think.

The halls were at least pleasantly cool, the wind whispering through the palace’s open windows chill enough to stave off the feeling of what was certainly an oven outside. Some days, Celestia even felt a small amount of envy for Luna’s arrangements up on the top of the mountain.

Neither freezing one’s hooves off nor baking one’s wings was a pleasurable experience, but all that Luna had to do was hunker down in her office with a cozy hearth and a cup of cocoa, or perhaps something stronger if the day was particularly bad. The cool breeze, though a help, did only a little to keep things comfortable. And matters were usually heated enough without the weather getting in the way.

Pensive’s office suite was no different from that of any other senator, though for some reason it always felt like his door was just a little bit more grand, the air inside just a little bit more regal than the others.

Pensive’s staff kept a tight shift, and Celestia had only to walk in the door for a secretary to be off to warn the senator of her coming. When she got into the office proper, the unicorn was diligently writing away at his own stack of parchments, the quill wagging back and forth in elucidating the peculiar loops and curls of his script. Celestia sometimes wondered if unicorns simply wrote in complicated and floral lines to rub something in against earth ponies and pegasi. Though that wasn’t to say that she hadn’t seen virtuoso talents in quill manipulation from those who couldn’t use magic either.

“Your Highness,” Pensive said once she was inside the door. “I hope that you haven’t come here to go on talking about that vote. I’m sure you could see that I delivered everything that I promised to. Some of us, you see, can keep a firm hold upon where we stand in the chamber.”

“You agreed to work with Ink,” she retorted, the stiffness in the tone bringing his eyes up for once. “Her group is fragmented. They needed more concessions. Don’t think that I’m not disappointed with her, but some of the blame must fall on you too, Senator Prose.”

“Ink’s demands were as muddy as a Manehattan river, your Highness,” he said, waving his hoof abstractedly as he spoke. “I simply couldn’t give her everything that she wanted, not without sacrificing the core of what made the system work in the first place. I told you that we are not in the business of giving away handouts, especially not with things as they are right now.”

“Right, somepony needs to make concessions.” This time she brought a hoof squarely down upon his desk, commanding his full attention. The sharp contact echoed in the room for a second, meriting a jolt from the senator. “We’re going to have that bill on the timetable for another vote in three days, and this time I wholly expect it to pass. We cannot afford to wait any longer to take action on this.”

“I don’t need you telling me how serious the situation is!” Pensive snapped, getting up to his own hooves in a second. He stood about a foot and a half shorter than Celestia, yet the fire in his eyes was impressive. “I was the one who proposed this legislation in the first place! Do you think that I don’t want it to pass? When Ink can get a closer rein on her group, and give me some real requests to work with, then I’ll see what I can do, but until then you’d best believe that my wrath will be directed at the ponies responsible for this debacle, and I would expect that yours would be too, your Highness.”

Pensive gathered up the parchments he had been working on into a satchel of his own, which he draped quickly across his back. “I hope that you’ll be able to excuse me. I have negotiations of my own to pursue, in order to make sure that I can deliver these votes again when needed.”

He stood there for a moment more, until Celestia nodded her approval for him to leave. She wanted some time to think on her own anyway.

By and large, the outburst had been pretty much what she had been expecting. Pensive wouldn’t want his bill to die on the schedule after all, never mind the gravity of the proposal. There was simply no way that he had deliberately sabotaged its passage. And in a way he was right, too. She was probably going to be the center of these negotiations as the days ticked down to the next vote. Somehow, this measure was definitely going to get passed. The only question now was who was going to bend first in order to get there.

Chapter 9: The Orchard of Lord Fastidious

“We were not born into our positions or sent down from heaven to safeguard Equestria. Truly, the road was long, dark, and dangerous.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)

“He said what?” Luna almost choked on her bagel. Beside her, Celestia had the morning paper spread out on the table, a mug of tea held aloft over it. The far wall was decorated now with a new damp spot where the last mug had been sprayed.

“’The ponies of the rural districts need to take their heads out of the sand and realize the situation that is quickly bearing down on us,’ says Senator Pensive Prose of Canterlot’s Fifth District,” Celestia read, her eyes wide in disbelief. “’This is not the time to be playing politics, not while ponies’ very livelihoods, perhaps even the fate of our country, hangs in the balance. Without swift and decisive action from the Senate, this crisis is only going to get worse. Thus, I call on my colleagues to finally get their heads in order and get behind us on this legislation.’” She closed her eyes and settled back into her chair dejectedly as she finished reading.

“Well, clearly that’s going to enamour Ink’s senators to his cause,” Luna said, finishing off the bagel with another bite. “I’m a little surprised that he found the time to talk to the papers with all of the negotiations going on.”

“Never mind his timetable, he’s blown up the whole process! Nopony from across the aisle is going to want to even associate with him after this! We can say goodbye to a vote this week, that’s for sure,” Celestia practically shouted, having a hard time keeping her tea steady as she drank. “Of all the most ridiculous, arrogant unicorns, I’ve met minotaurs less bullheaded than him.”

“He does speak his mind, at least,” Luna put in, half-joking despite the one eyed glare her sister was giving her. “That puts him at least a cut or two above most of the other riffraff in that chamber.”

Celestia finally put her tea back down, the saucer rattling as the mug settled back into its spot. “This is not the time for jokes, Luna. I was counting on this bill getting through in time for the system to be set up for this year’s harvest. If crop is coming in off of the fields and we haven’t settled this yet, it will be even worse than it would have been without. We need to provide assurances, reliability, and strength. Getting there is going to be nearly impossible now.”

“Well, I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Luna answered, doing her best to speak softly. It wasn’t often that Celestia got into an irritable mood, but her younger sister knew well enough to stay out of her way when she did. “If you’d like the pegasi to shut off the breezes to his wing of the palace…”

“No, we need to be tactful, Luna,” Celestia said, quieter, though there was still enough anger in her eyes to light a candle. “Increasing the tension will only lead to more obstructions. What’s most important right now is bringing everypony to the negotiation table again, and crude interference won’t help with that at all. You just focus on the weather. It’s what you’re good at.”

“Understood.” Finished with her breakfast, Luna got up from the table. “Just so you know, if you need somepony put in their proper place, I’m always here for you. But if anypony can get this negotiation wrapped up, it’s surely you.” She waited a moment in the hope that she would see Celestia’s eyes perk up at the compliment, but instead her sister stayed transfixed on the newspaper, no doubt rereading the senator’s words and trying to decipher the motivations behind them. Luna knew well enough that Celestia needed peace and quiet in order to get something like this done. That meant that it was going to be another long day on the mountaintop for her.

Celestia watched her sister go out of the corner of her eye. Luna truly was a gem, unique in all of Equestria without a doubt. But politics really was not her strong suit. If the two of them had been forced to swap roles, the Senate would dissolve into petty squabbles in all of an hour. Even so, Celestia knew that she was going to have a hard time keeping Ink from having Pensive roughed up later today.

She simply couldn’t go back into the office wing and face them down just yet. Negotiations had to be done coolly, with a well-honed instinct and a clear head.

It was ironically during that frame of thought Celestia realized that her hooves were still shaking slightly, barely able to contain her frustration at the whole situation. She was loath to take breaks, particularly when there was such important work to be done, but right now it seemed that one would be necessary.

Celestia rose and turned the opposite direction from where Luna had gone, instead ascending the tower and emerging once again in her office. To the right were three small plinths, each holding a golden circlet with a shard of a colourful jewel at its center.

The Triumvir’s Circlets, symbols of a time long past. To the left was another pedestal, this one holding a golden disk, with six identical gemstones inset within it. The Elements of Harmony, from which the new country had been born.

Her and her sister were the link between the two worlds, of darkness before and light now, of chaos before and order now. So often it seemed as though the nation was determined only to tear itself apart, but Celestia would be damned if she would let that happen.

Her eyes returned to the center of the room, where the map of northern Equestria was still stretched out on her desk. The tribes had pulled themselves apart once before, and it hadn’t ended well for them. The ruins of the old Unicorn Kingdom, buried somewhere up north, bore sharp witness to that fact. The thought was an interesting one.

All of the legendary figures of that time: Star Swirl, Clover, King Solaris and Queen Argent, none of them had been able to hold their country together as it splintered and fragmented into the snows of winter. What hope did she and Luna have of taming a force like that, alone? Perhaps, if she could discover a little bit more of what had happened in that time, it would offer a clue of how to proceed with the current crisis.

If nothing else, a chance to work on something other than policy would calm her down enough to make talking to Pensive again a workable proposition.

Morning, such as it was, came grey and cloudy to Eridian. Breakfast was leftover potatoes from the night before, and then Celestia said good-bye to Luna before venturing out into the streets with Wickerlock and Capstan. Only this time, instead of heading further up the mountain to whatever employer awaited them, they were going down, beyond the old city walls and on into the foothills surrounding the city.

Curiously, they weren’t alone. A sizable crowd of other ponies were making the same commute. Celestia picked out a few of them with the narrow poles and big buckets of water carriers. They would be headed down to the headwaters of the Everfree River, which was far enough out from the city that it was at least drinkable. Most of the other ponies in the group kept to the same worn track that the three of them were traveling. This group looked much the same as the usual ponies that walked the streets of Eridian, dressed in naught but rags, eyes down, and not a smile to be seen in the bunch.

Celestia nudged Wickerlock in the shoulder as they walked. “It seems that we’re not the only ponies to have this idea.”

He nodded. “Word of an opportunity like this would spread fast. But the way that Elderberry told it, this orchard would hire everypony in Eridian if they were all able to lift a bucket.”

“Let’s hope so. I’m not the biggest fan of having to walk out all this way only to discover that the vacancies have all been filled.”

Undeterred by such an idea, Wicker’s eyes were focused on the road ahead. “We have a day to spare, and there are a couple of other opportunities that I can think of as well. Trust me, something like this is rare enough that it deserves to be checked out. It’s no surprise that everypony else reached the same conclusion.”

As close to the city as the orchard supposedly was, the trek out there still wasn’t a short one by any means. There was some traffic along it though, which was strange in and of itself. Once in a blue moon you might see a wagon passing by on the widest thoroughfares of Eridian, but two of them met the crowd of applicants this morning alone. Each one was lacquered a deep red, with the unmistakable outline of a cored apple on the side. The ponies pulling them were a cut above the usual workers, still grim, but with clean and well-mended cloaks, and a haughty air that made everypony else in the crowd shy away. Celestia took it as a good sign. The orchard was at least somewhat successful if even the transporters were living well.

Eventually, a light appeared on the horizon, rather like a large bonfire burning somewhere out there. An hour of progress revealed the light to be a break in the clouds, perhaps four square miles in all, completely localized and with neat, square edges on the surrounding clouds. The incongruity of the seemingly artificial light was striking enough, but of course underneath it was the endpoint of their trek.

Rows and rows of apple trees dotted the hillside underneath the column of light, green and full in the morning air. Specks of red and yellow could be seen hanging from the trees, and as the group grew closer they could see workers amongst the rows, plucking apples from the branches and tossing them into bulging baskets on the ground. The bright colours of the scene shone like torches amongst the dull grey of the rest of the countryside. Strangely enough, the colour almost made the estate seem unnatural and overly shiny.

The whole compound was surrounded by a low wall of chopped lumber, coming about twice Celestia’s height. She could see guard ponies doing their rounds upon the wall, each one in cloaks the same crimson colour as the wagons they’d passed. However, these ponies also carried bright spears, their sharp points glinting in the sunlight. Two more of these ponies were manning the gate.

“Stop!” one called as the crowd approached. He was a barrel-chested earth pony with a particularly elaborate cloak over his shoulders, which Celestia presumed denoted a higher rank than the other guards. As soon as the crowd had halted, he stepped forward. “We’ve got twenty spots to fill today,” he said in a gravelly voice. “So we aren’t taking any of the poor lot. Stand up straight and we’ll see who is worth it.”

Celestia didn’t have to look around again to see that their numbers were well in excess of twenty. She gave Wickerlock another nudge, with a withering glare prepared for when he turned, but he kept looking straight ahead. As the guards came closer, Celestia figured that she had better do the same.

The two gatekeepers slid their way through the group, each one holding a clipboard that he would occasionally consult while sizing up each applicant. A few strong earth ponies were pulled out right away, along with a couple of eager-looking pegasi who were each missing an ear. Up and down the rows of the crowd the two guards walked, and Celestia felt her pulse rising. In terms of physical strength she certainly wasn’t much compared to the other two, and as bad as it would be if they were all passed over, somehow she felt like it would be worse if one of them was picked and she wasn’t. Working an odd job up in Eridian was always bad enough. Doing it alone would probably be torture.

The lead guard stopped by Capstan and nodded his head, making a mark on his clipboard. The old earth pony spared the two of them a hopeful glance before he was ushered inside.

That made seventeen chosen already. She closed her eyes, not willing to see the gates closing in front of them as the last choices were made.

“Hey, you!” Celestia jerked open her eyes again, to find the stocky earth pony guard staring right back into them. He made another mark as he eyed her horn. “Magic is an excellent plus,” he muttered. “You’ll do just fine for a transport team.” He looked over and nodded at Wickerlock too. A quick glance at the crowd revealed that in actuality nearly all of the unicorns had been chosen. Clearly, one could count on them as more reliable carriers than even the strongest earth ponies.

As they walked up toward the gates, the guards stepped in behind them. “That’s it!” the leader called to the crowd. “Come back tomorrow if you want to. Harvest is still going on for a while.” As Celestia and Wickerlock walked through, the gates clicked shut decisively.

Celestia found her hooves crunching on gravel, and she looked down to find a well-maintained little drive, curving lazily off to the left, where a huge manor-house sat prominently atop a low hill. Right in front of its door, in the center of the circular driveway that serviced the entrance, a crimson coach could be seen, its lacquer the same colour as all of the rest. This time, though, a peculiar emblem was also painted on its side, an apple and a diamond together against the background. The ponies hitched up to the coach were dressed even finer than the ones from before, with embroidery on the fronts of their cloaks, and even red-painted helmets, though for the moment those were being carried in front of their chests.

“No standin’ around and gawkin’,” came a voice from behind them, accompanied by a rough shove to the neck. “The Lord doesn’t appreciate workers who spend all of their time admiring his fineries. You’re well aware that there are plenty of ponies out there willing to take your places.”

The two of them turned around to see another guard behind them, and he pointed off toward the rows of trees that began on the right-hand side of the path. “Just walk down to the end of the row, and you should meet one of the foreponies down there. And don’t even think about trying to pocket any produce! We watch the inside of the place just as closely as the outside.”

He kept on standing there with a mean look on his face until Celestia and Wickerlock set off down the row. With the trees growing close to each other on either side of the path, the outside world faded away, especially as the sounds of birds and the light rustle of the leaves replaced the barren silence of the rest of the countryside. It was almost peaceful in a strange way, a separate world from Eridian. Celestia could almost forget that the ruined city wasn’t any more than four or five miles up the hillside.

They passed the occasional tree with a pony up in its branches picking apples. Things appeared to be right in the thick of harvest, explaining why the orchard was so keen to take on new employees. The row of trees in front of them seemed endless, every one of them bowed low with rosy apples, until eventually everything blended into a green and red haze in the distant mist. And of course that was to say nothing of the smell. It was fresh, clean, and clear, somehow awakening a distant, primal memory for Celestia. The whole place just felt right, which was more than she had been able to say about nearly anywhere that she'd ever been. So far, at least, it was looking like a successful morning.

Eventually, they came to a spot where a cross-path cut through the rows, leading to a large rectangular building in the interior of the compound. At this intersection they found three stacks of upside-down baskets, and a lean orange unicorn watching over them. “More?” she said, turning around and noticing them. “Well, soon enough we might be able to finish up the whole harvest before the snows settle in. Each of you take a basket, then head off down that way.” She indicated the row in front of them. “Any tree will do, so long as nopony’s working on it right now. When your basket is full, take it to the press over there. Just be careful and make sure that you don’t bruise any.” She went back to inventorying her baskets, and with a glance Wickerlock took one of his own and set off once more to the row.

For her part, Celestia did the same. It was essentially what she had been expecting, and it didn’t take her long to find a tree in need. As an alicorn, she didn’t need to climb the trees like the earth ponies, which certainly made picking the apples a lot easier. Even so, it wasn’t really what she would call easy work, and this was a big basket as well. It took about ten minutes for her to accumulate her first full load. A glance up the path, though, revealed that Wickerlock’s basket was still only about half full. Neither of them had seen any sign of Capstan in that time. Presumably, he was working in some other section of the orchard.

In any event, with her full basket, Celestia trotted back out onto the path. The forepony out there watched her go by, the look she gave not really an impressed one, but she’d take that over disappointment anyday.

When she got to the big red building, Celestia found a line of other ponies waiting by the door, each with their own full baskets either clutched in their hooves or else held off of the ground with their magic. The line didn’t look like it was moving particularly quickly, so Celestia settled into her own spot at the end.

She could see that most of the other ponies in this line were more seasoned workers, or at least she didn’t recognize any of them from the group of twenty that had been picked out today. The experienced group all stood in drab silence, their eyes downcast and faces grim. But she could see that a few of them had nicely-tailored patches on their caps and shirts. A couple of them even had functional shoes on their hooves.

Minutes ticked by, and still the line didn’t move. A dozen more ponies had arrived in behind Celestia, meaning that the end of the line was nearly to the edge of the clearing that the building was placed in. Building up her nerve, Celestia lightly tapped the shoulder of the pony standing in front of her. “Excuse me, but I was wondering, is it normal for the wait to be so long here?”

The pony in front turned around to reveal herself as a thin, white, earth pony mare with a mended grey scarf tied around her neck. Notwithstanding her lengthy eyelashes, which spoke of a well-to-do upbringing, the look in her eyes was all business.

“Depends on what you mean by normal, I guess.” Her accent had a bit more of a blunt sound to it than that of most citizens of Eridian. Celestia had heard that sort of tone from the ponies that visited Raspberry’s tavern from out of town on occasion. “It means that something’s gone wrong on one of the presses. So not something that’s supposed to happen technically, but you get used to it around here.”

“Will they get it fixed soon?”

The mare grunted. “As soon as somepony up at the manor gets alerted to it, and sends a mechanic down with the necessary spare parts. But that can sometimes take an hour or more. Longer, if they’re busy dealing with something else. Until then, there’s nothing to do but wait.”

Looking ahead showed that the clearing in which the press building was situated was on top of a small hill in the complex, and Celestia could spy the manor out in the distance. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the spare parts stockpiled here at the presses, where they’re needed?”

The other mare gave her a half-grin, the first levity that she had seen in the whole morning. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Tell that to Fastidious though, not me. They’re his tricoins, after all.”

“Who?”

The earth pony drew her head up into a haughty posture, pulling it off remarkably well with her eyelashes extended. “The Honourable Lord Fastidious, High Seat of House Appleton. If you’re lucky, you might get a chance to see him one of these days. He likes to walk in the orchard from time to time. Be nice and he might tip you a sampler of his product.”

Celestia cocked an eyebrow at the idea. “Cider doesn’t exactly fill the stomach. I’m not sure how much I would want that.”

The earth pony’s half-grin broke out into a smile, with a little chuckle too. “Shows where his priorities are, I guess. In his world, cider buys all of the essentials, including ponies like you and I. Don’t worry, though,” she added, seeing Celestia considering the implications of that statement. “At the end of the day, your pay will be good, solid apples, perfect for trading in whatever citizen’s market you frequent.”

Celestia breathed a sigh of relief. Apples were a much nicer proposition, useful as food in their own right, and very serviceable as trading goods. In fact, if she remembered properly you could get a reasonably-sized sack of potatoes for a much more favourable exchange on the amount of apples given. Wickerlock was more of the trader in their group; she would have to find out from him later whether it would make more sense to hang onto their wages or trade them for even more.

“Thanks,” she said, offering the earth pony a smile of her own. The two of them held each other’s gaze for a moment, then Celestia couldn’t help but laugh herself. “Sorry, it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had another pony smile at me like that.”

“No problem,” the mare answered, giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “The name’s Trinity, by the way.”

“Celestia,” she returned, offering Trinity a hoof for an introductory shake. “How long have you been working here?”

“Just started this season,” Trinity answered. “About a month or so now. Long enough to get acquainted with how things tend to run around here. Ah!” she exclaimed, motioning off into the distance behind Celestia. “The support is finally here.”

Celestia turned around to see a light blue pegasus stallion fluttering toward them through the nearest row of trees. Two more pegasi followed along behind him, straining to hold up the weight of a long timber that looked to be about a foot thick between them. When the leader got within sight of the clearing, he pulled up short, causing his two assistants to nearly crash into him from behind.

“Broken for nearly an hour,” he muttered under his breath, though Celestia was close enough to hear. “Fastidious will have my head this time, for sure.” He darted into the open doorway, roughly pushing aside the workers standing there, then emerged a second later to wave frantically at his two helpers, who followed more slowly, everypony in the line giving them space to manoeuvre.

Shortly after the group had entered the mill, Celestia spied Capstan coming out, his mane dripping with sweat, and accompanied by a few other earth ponies, each one similarly exhausted. She gave Capstan a wave, and with a look of recognition he trotted over.

“Yeah, they put me to working the press,” he explained once Celestia had finished introducing Trinity. “Something jammed though, not long after I got on, and the main shaft splintered right in two. We were looking at it afterward, and it looked like one of the shoddiest repair jobs I’ve ever seen.”

Trinity nodded along as she heard it. “You might want to get used to that, friend. Even those three that went in there will get it done quickly for sure, but it’ll only be a couple of days before something else goes wrong.”

“You wonder how anything gets done around here if everything is always breaking down,” Capstan said, shaking his head toward the direction of the mill building.

“Fastidious has a lot of workers,” Trinity answered matter of factly, “and this isn’t the only press building. I’d say that there’s always at least one of them broken, but the others get worked pretty hard in the meantime. Enough product gets out to meet the quotas, and keep on paying everypony’s salary, so no one gets mad, at least not yet they haven’t.”

Celestia frowned. That had an ominous sound to it. “Not yet?”

Trinity nodded grimly. “Oh, Fastidious is always furious whenever he gets a chance to see it for himself, but nopony has been sacked just yet. He’s always pushing for more productivity though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if somepony got the boot eventually. Just keep your head down and do your job, and if you’re very lucky a position might open up somewhere above you.”

The blue pegasus emerged from the doorway again as she finished speaking. “Right!” he called out to the crowd of workers. “We’ve got it going again, so your break time is finally over! Pressers, I’ll be needing you first. And would you watch what you’re doing for once? I’m sick and tired of having to clean up after you seasonals and your mistakes!”

Capstan offered both of them a shrug before trotting along with the other workers into the door, and soon enough a light groan could be heard from inside the mill. The line moved one place forward, and all of the other workers got back into an orderly queue, their baskets again clutched close. The light overhead had grown brighter, the Sun clearly having risen a bit higher over the sky, though Celestia couldn’t see it as she looked up. Nearly an hour had been wasted out of the workday standing in the line. Even so, Celestia couldn’t argue that it hadn’t been a very successful morning indeed.

Chapter 10: Negotiations

“Sometimes I wonder what my life could be like if I did not have to worry about politics. Probably a lot simpler.”

- Star Swirl the Bearded

Eventually, Celestia had calmed down enough that she could make her way through the palace and back into the Senate’s wing. She felt like she was making good progress on tracing Star Swirl’s path, with corroborating documents revealing that Clover and her party had been hot on his hooves. That meant that the path she and the rest of the unicorns had followed was likely a good analogue for Star Swirl’s own. But whether he had stopped somewhere along the road, or gotten to Equestria before them, she still wasn’t sure. And of course, why he had left in the first place was still a complete mystery. Even so, pondering these unanswered questions was something she found infinitely more comforting than confronting the eminently addressable concerns of the country. Addressable, at least, so long as she could get the two ponies sitting at the table with her to agree on anything.

“And so what?” Pensive yelled, his normal composure gone. “We sell the whole farm to your voters? We don’t have nearly enough bits in the Treasury for that kind of entitlement. The package prices by the market rates, and those will have to be good enough!”

“You’re distorting the market though!” Ink yelled right back with equal force. “How can we expect prices to properly reflect demand when the government is just buying everything in sight? There need to be assurances that the rate paid will be fair.”

“Oh, sure, I’ll make a little allowance. And then what? You can’t even promise me that your ponies will vote for it!”

“They’d vote for it if you and your party would stop making this whole thing personal!”

“You think that I’m the one making this personal??”

“Alright, SHUT UP, both of you!” Celestia interrupted, angrily banging her hoof on the table. Any more of this and she would have to look into something a sight stronger than tea to go with her lunch. “We’re not getting anywhere if we just go back to a shouting match. We are going to get this measure passed, no matter if we have to stay up all night. Understood?”

Ink, who was sitting on the table’s left side, nodded in agreement, though the tinges of red in her cheeks still hadn’t subsided. Pensive, seated across from her, was showing signs of the strain himself, with that haircut of his now mostly in tangled disarray. Even so, he nodded along too. The width of the table between them had been intentionally chosen, and Celestia was very thankful for it now. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it had come to blows at some point.

Pensive found his voice first. “Rest assured, Your Highness, that at least one of us is committed to that effort, one hundred percent. If everypony would just get on board, we could be out of here in an hour.”

Celestia saw Ink gape at that statement, and wind herself up for another impassioned retort. She cut in herself before it could come.

“I don’t doubt the sincerity of either of you. It is understandable that tempers should run high in a situation like this. But surely it isn’t hard for us to talk this over calmly.”

It looked like perhaps they were ready to take another crack at it. “Now, Ink, it was your senators who bucked the last vote, so clearly you’re the one who wants things changed. What are your requests?”

“Well, just to be clear,” Ink answered, raising a judicious hoof, “I think that the bill is probably just fine. But the rest of the party does need some additional language to lessen the impression that the rural districts are being trodden over by Canterlot again.”

Pensive sneered. “If you can’t speak for the rest of your members, then perhaps you could bring us somepony who can. If your party doesn’t vote along with the measure as written, then clearly you’ve got some problem with it.”

Ink took a deep breath, and then went right on as if the comment hadn’t been made. “The structure of the reforms are extraordinary, and disruptive to the normal agricultural supply chains. Farmers cannot be expected to agree to such a radical system without some incentives. Now, it’s been a bad year. We wouldn’t have to break the bank for something like this. We just need a fair and reasonable pricing system so that nopony can claim that they’re being defrauded out of their honestly earned bits.”

“Thank you,” Celestia said, giving Ink a reassuring smile of thanks. Goodness, it was like training dogs trying to keep these two in line. “Pensive, how much leeway do you have on the language of that section?”

“Some,” he admitted. “You have to understand the nature of the situation in our cities though. Store shelves are going empty, and prices are rising. Ponies expect action, and they’re eager to find somepony else to blame when things go badly. I hear a lot of that anger directed toward the farmers these days, and it will not go over well if we give the impression that the producers are getting a sweet deal out of this.”

“Of course not,” Celestia agreed. Well, so far things were going smoothly at least. But it wasn’t as though this was the first time that they had agreed to the necessities in principle. The details were always the hard part. Ink had a draft parchment worked up, her fourth so far of the session. She slid it across the table to her opposite.

“Preposterous,” Pensive said, shaking his head wearily. “There’s no way that we can get something like this through. This is a handout, nothing more.”

Ink didn’t flinch. “Well, there are other considerations. After recent events, there are quite a few members of my party who need some extra encouragement before they’ll go along with you and yours on anything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pensive answered, summoning some of his usual haughty posture back. “And none of them should let their personal concerns get in the way of them doing their jobs.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you called us all a bunch of dullards in the morning post.” That rosy tinge was returning to Ink’s complexion. “You couldn’t have honestly thought that you were going to make this process any easier with that comment.”

“Some of us simply needed to be reminded of the stakes of the issue in play,” Pensive scoffed. “The necessity of this measure is unquestioned. If everypony was taking this as seriously as my party and I, we would have had a bill before the throne days ago.”

There was a screech as Celestia’s chair slid back, interrupting Ink before things could fall down into what Celestia was sure was going to be another verbal brawl. What was it going to take to get these two to agree on something? Right now, she wasn’t sure if either of them was being deliberately obstructive, or if the tensions now bubbling to the surface just so happened to be arriving at the most inopportune time possible. Even so, it was about time for lunch, and perhaps some contemplation alone would put some sense into them.

“Well, I feel like we’ve had some constructive dialog here, at least,” she lied. “We can take a meal now, and hopefully get down to the details in half an hour or so.”

Both of the other attendees nodded briskly at that sentiment, though surely both of them knew that it was going to take a lot more than some chilled water and dinner rolls to smooth things over. At least neither of them had stormed out over the course of talks. Not yet, at least.

Celestia was just about to head back up into her tower when the door to the meeting room banged open, a nervous-looking guard striding into the space. That in itself was unusual, never mind the sudden interruption. “Your Highness, we have a situation,” he said, his voice low and professional despite his expression.

Instinctively, Celestia looked about for a window to see the sky, but in this interior room there were only candles to light the space. “Are we safe?” she asked.

The guard nodded. “The palace is fine, Your Highness, but we’ve received reports of a riot developing in one of the city’s marketplaces. Our scouts have confirmed it, and we simply wanted to be absolutely certain that you were safe.”

A riot? In all honesty, she probably should have expected something like this. Over food, no doubt. “Thank you for your concern. I’ll need the Guard to get a squad together. I’ll be going down to the square in ten minutes to see if we can get things defused.”

He nodded right away and hurried off down the hall, the clinks of his armour audible in the room until he was further away. Celestia took a look at the other two ponies still here, and a sudden idea struck her.

“You understand that this is the sort of thing that’s going to happen without action, right?” Pensive said from his spot at the table, not looking the least bit concerned. “All you need to do is get your party together, and we’ll have something done.” He looked up at Celestia as he gathered his things from the table. “My hopes go with you, Princess, though please do be careful. We need you more than ever in this difficult time.”

“Precisely,” she answered, giving him what she hoped was an unnerving smile. “But you’re right that this sort of thing is a natural consequence of the Senate’s inaction. That’s why I’m not going down there alone.”

The Guard had put together a sizable detachment for them, which was a good thing given that Pensive and Ink were along for the ride. Neither one of them was pleased about it, of course.

“I simply can’t say that I understand what help you expect from either of us, Your Highness,” Pensive said, wincing as the coach that they were riding lurched over a bump in the road. They were traveling well above the usual safe speed, with a squad of palace guards in front of them to clear the way.

“None,” Celestia replied matter-of-factly. “But I think that it will be good for the two of you to see first-hoof the consequences if we can’t get this measure through. Perhaps then I’ll be able to impress upon you the seriousness of the situation.”

“It’s not a matter of our understanding, Your Highness,” Ink put in. “It’s a matter of one of us being an obstructionist goat, and the other getting far too tired of losing all of her carrots.”

Celestia was very pleased when the coach went over another bump just then, even though it jolted her a good inch or two out of her seat. It was bad enough sitting through one of their arguments in an airy meeting room. Outside, the bright buildings of Canterlot swept past in a blur, the wind whipping through the open windows and setting her mane aflutter. Up ahead, the sound of shouts and the thunder of hooves slowly became more apparent.

About a minute later, the coach came to a sudden, jarring halt. A guard immediately opened the door, signaling that at least the immediate area was safe. Celestia turned to her two guests before she left.

“I want the two of you to survey things, but try to keep back. As much as I want to make sure that you understand what’s going on, nopony will be served by either of you getting involved in any of this.”

By the looks that they gave each other, Celestia wasn’t entirely certain that they wouldn’t start a riot of their own if she left them alone for ten minutes. Even so, there was no point in her worrying about that right now. She had her own issues to deal with. She motioned to the guard outside. “Take me to a good survey spot.”

He nodded, and as soon as Celestia had stepped out of the coach the two of them took to the air, climbing rapidly up over the tops of the buildings in the street. In only a block or two the thoroughfare that they had been on opened up into a broad market square, and in that square Celestia could see precisely what the guard had been talking about.

The market square had the usual configuration of ones like it in Canterlot and indeed throughout the country, ringed by larger shops with a few smaller stands and carts in the middle where traveling merchants could set up. On a normal day the square would be bustling with consumers on their way through, some of them local residents going about their daily errands, and some of them tourists attempting to obtain some mementos of their time in the city. Today, though, that bright patter of hooves had been replaced by a cacophony of thunder, as looters stormed into the shops on the outskirts of the square and overran the peddlers in the center too. A few carts had even been set ablaze around the perimeter, spewing forth clouds of grey smoke that were beginning to climb up into the sky. The sight made Celestia’s heart sink to see such chaos and disorder in the normally peaceful city. And it was only going to get worse if nothing was done soon. Scenes like these would play out all across the nation, eventually tearing it apart just as surely as the Unicorn Kingdom before it.

Right now, though, she could take action to keep things calm. Looking back at the contingent of guards that had come with her, she picked out three, and sent the others back to keep watch over the two senators. Their group approached the square from the air, staying high in the hopes that they would be spotted by idle eyes on the ground. In this, Celestia was aided a great deal by her own physical size, plus a little bit of magic to manipulate the light of the Sun coming down onto the square. When she saw a few ponies down on the ground pointing, she gave the signal to her guards, and they dove toward the ground quickly, aiming for a relatively open spot on the east side.

The pegasi hit first, and quite hard themselves, each one moving the startled onlookers out of the way to make sure that the space was clear for her landing. That allowed Celestia to come in much slower, almost floating down from the heavens, wings outstretched and mane shining like the morning dawn. It wasn’t very often that she was forced to go for the shock and awe entrance, but this time it was a good tactic for bringing the tempest of the riot around her to a standstill.

When the dust had fully settled, Celestia addressed the crowd, using her magic to amplify her voice just slightly. “Citizens of Canterlot, is this any way for us to conduct ourselves? In times of need, is it not the Equestrian spirit that we bind ourselves closer together, in aid and in harmony, to ensure that all have their needs met? Tell me, who is responsible for this mess?”

It was a difficult thing to strike, the right tone of matronly benevolence with the solid iron of authority hiding just underneath it, but from the expressions of muted embarrassment that Celestia saw materialize on the ponies nearest to her, she sensed that she had at least gotten close enough. There was a parting of the crowd just in front of her, and a rough-looking unicorn was shoved out into the clearing, a couple of bruises in evidence upon his face. He offered Celestia a look of pained apology.

“Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but I am the proprietor of the shop just over there,” he said, gesturing behind to a narrow building that looked to be the focal point of the crowd. “My supplies ran out just this afternoon, so unfortunately I have nothing more to sell.”

Shouts arose from the crowd behind him as he spoke. “Liar! Thief! He’s just keeping it all for himself! Open up his storeroom, then you’ll see!” There was almost something of a gradient of enthusiasm in the crowd, with the accusations arising from the rear and shouts of approval coming from various directions, but the ponies around Celestia notably did not join in to any of the cries.

“There will be supplies offered,” Celestia said slowly, making sure that everypony present could hear every word. “If you came today to buy goods and there is nothing to be had, you can make your way up to the palace and we will see about getting you supplied.”

That would probably be enough to defuse the majority of the anger in the air. “But demonstrations and incitements such as these will not be tolerated,” she continued, putting quite a bit more of that iron into it this time. “The City Guard is authorized to ensure order on the streets of Canterlot, and they will not take kindly to rabble-rousers. If you have a problem, take it up through the usual channels.” The unicorn shopkeeper looked relieved to have heard that, and with the pronouncement made the crowd began to disperse. Even so, it would not take much for something like this to start itself up again. Perhaps this was the moment that she had been waiting for.

“In addition!” she cried, commanding the attention of the ponies in the square once again. “My sister and I are well aware of the situation that faces the country, not just the citizens of Canterlot here but also all of Equestria’s other cities as well as its smaller towns and villages. Make no mistake, we are in the midst of difficult times. Do not think that the leaders of our nation will react only with temporary solutions and wishful thinking. I want to let you all know that help is on the way.” She ended that pronouncement with a comforting smile, and it was good to see a few hopeful cheers spring up from within the crowd at that.

“In fact, I wanted to make sure that you know that Luna, your Senate, and I are one hundred percent together on this issue. As you’re all well aware, my sister is working hard on the problem of the weather, and I have the utmost confidence in her eventual success. Similarly, I have here today the intrepid leaders of our Senate, who are right now working hard on a relief package to ensure that a scene like what happened today need never repeat itself.”

She took a look over to the side street where her convoy had parked, and was relieved to see Pensive and Ink emerging from the crowd right on cue, each one basking in the adulation offered by the citizenry. Naturally they had overheard everything that she had said, and neither one could resist an opportunity to be seen by the public. Even the fact that they were taking the praise together didn’t seem to faze either of them one bit.

The two senators came across the marketplace with a squad of four guards around them, eventually uniting with Celestia’s group. Each one of them gave their own short little address to the crowd, for the most part hitting on the right themes of unity and hope, and most importantly assuring everypony that help was surely on the way.

As per usual, Pensive was quite a bit more long-winded than was absolutely necessary, which was even more impressive given the fact that he couldn’t possibly have had anything prepared, but soon enough they had wrapped it up, and the crowd began to disperse. Celestia and the two senators stuck around to shake a few hooves as the scene died down, but shortly enough the square was mostly empty, save for a few city workers that the Guard had brought in to get things cleaned up.

“Well, it would seem that I did get some use out of the two of you,” Celestia said, offering each of them a thankful nod. “I hope that you each understand the importance of what we’ve done here today.”

“Well, of course,” Ink replied, now even and relaxed, her shoulders down for nearly the first time all day. “Things will be peaceful for a while, and even more so once we get our measure passed.”

“I think so too,” Pensive agreed. Well, that was a start at least.

“Good,” Celestia said, letting all of the warmth drain out of her tone in an instant, and fixing the both of them with a steely glare. “Because I meant what I said about getting relief out to these ponies as soon as I could. And if I don’t have something on my desk to sign by the end of the week, you can bet that these ponies will know precisely who they should blame. Shall I repeat that?”

Their smiles wilted in an instant. “Perfectly clear, Your Highness,” Pensive said, coughing once into his hoof. “Ink, my friend, do you still have that draft recommendation for the changes you wanted in the pricing structure?”

“I’ll let you have it once we get back to the palace,” she said back, equally shaken, “though perhaps I can give you another one a touch more lenient, if you need it.”

Celestia left them talking there in the square. “Let them take the coach,” she told the guards, and they dutifully formed up into two squads once more, the pegasi around the Princess while the others stayed behind. Celestia took to the air at once, the warm summer sun feeling good on her wings. There was no doubt in her mind that those two fools would get themselves sorted out now. Even they knew that a Princess’ threat should never be taken lightly.

Chapter 11: Wind's Introduction

“As clouds inevitably rise from the land, so too must we Pegasi find our way above the earth. The surface is no place for us.”

Annals of Cloudsdale

The time passed achingly slowly at the farm. Each day passed as the Sun climbed over the eastern mountains before falling lazily down behind the horizon in the west. This was made all the more agonizing as Wind had nothing to do except sit in bed, try not to aggravate his fragile wing, watch the shadows lengthen and turn about the furniture, and think.

Most often he thought of Cloudsdale, wondering what his parents would be doing when they realized he really was gone. They would probably be searching now, high and low across the city and the sky, tearing every cloud apart to be sure that they checked every inch. They would survey the ground too, from a distance of course. They would see Southoofton, see the house that he now occupied, and maybe even be able to pick out the signs of his landing that Sycamore and her family hadn’t yet been able to fix.

Would they come to the right conclusion? There was no way that he would know unless one day his dad popped in the door. Otherwise, by the time that he was ready to go outside on his own, it would be too late to get himself spotted.

Every day, he would see Sycamore, Fern, and their father three times. Morning, noon, and dinner, with little breaks in between as they did their chores around the property. Even in the evening! His parents had never had any work to do after dinner, except for Snow occasionally reading articles on whatever issue the Council was currently considering. But certainly nothing outdoors.

Tonight Sycamore was still inside, working quietly in the corner with a candle on her desk and an assortment of quills and ledgers gathered around her. It had been three days since the crash, and it still seemed to Wind like most of the family couldn’t quite believe that Cloudsdale was a real place, let alone his hometown.

However, he felt like Sycamore was at least starting to believe him. Why exactly she would find it easier to believe, Wind couldn’t quite say. All that he knew was that it was a relief to have somepony not look at him like he was crazy whenever he explained the course of events that landed him here.

Sycamore set down her quill with an audible sigh, then leaned back in her chair. Wind had been busying himself tracing the contours of the bed’s wood grain with his hooves for the twentieth time, but the sound made him turn. Sycamore looked tired, more so than he had ever seen her.

“Hey, are you all right, Sycamore?”

“Fine,” she said with another sigh, bringing a foreleg up to her brow, doing a poor job hiding her exhaustion. “Just…just tired is all.”

Wind furrowed his own brow. “It doesn’t look like ‘just tired’ to me. You’ve been tired every night when I see you come in from working, but never quite so dejected about it as this.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she replied somewhat sternly, leaning in again and picking up the quill. “You’ve got enough to worry about where yourself is concerned. How does your wing feel?”

Deciding to put the matter on hold for the moment, Wind leaned forward on his bed, gingerly testing his wing, braced for the pain that usually accompanied him shifting about at all. This time it was much more muted, more of a dull throb than the bite of the past few days. He pulled himself up to the edge of the bed, and warily set his hooves down onto the floor. It would be good to be able to see the rest of the town at least, even if he wasn’t going to be able to fly for a couple of weeks or more.

“Well, that certainly looks better,” Sycamore said with a hint of a smile, and Wind brought his eyes up again to see her watching him over the ledgers. “If you’re good to walk then you can start helping us out a bit. We could always use an extra hoof.”

For a brief moment, the thought of wincing and getting back into the bed crossed his mind. But these ponies were being so generous already in housing and feeding him. It was the least that he could do to pitch in wherever he was needed.

“Sure,” he said amicably, taking a few slow strides across the floor to her. “Whatever you need.”

She gave a low chuckle on hearing that. “Hah, whatever we need… What we need right now is a miracle, if you have one to spare.”

He settled down into another chair alongside the desk. “Come on, can it really be that bad?”

“You bet it can,” she said, making another mark on the ledger. It was here Wind noticed for the first time that she actually had two quills and ink bottles on the desk, one an ebony black, and the other a dark red, rather like a vial of blood. One quick look over the ledger revealed that there were far more red marks than black. While he might not have understood the specifics, it was a fair guess red marks weren’t a good thing.

“But I guess that I shouldn’t expect you to know. You’ll be gone in a couple of weeks anyway, so it’s none of your concern.”

“Well, why can’t I make it my concern then?” The words came out of Wind’s mouth before he finished formulating the thought, but in a second he knew that it was what he had wanted to say. The sight of Sycamore so clearly distressed at the state of her accounts was a pitiable one. How could he stand by and let her problems continue to pile up without doing something about it? Again, it was the least that he could do to repay her generosity.

“I know enough to know that these are your finances. How bad are things?”

Effectively caught with her hoof in the cookie jar, Sycamore placed her quill down once again on the desk.

“Bad,” she said. “I was counting on this year’s harvest to shore things up, but this year things have been even worse than before. With the costs of these repairs, and the state of the fields right now, I just can’t see how we’re going to survive the winter.”

From the glimpses that he had gotten out the door each time somepony came in or out of the house, as well as from the conversations he had overheard, Wind had already been able to piece together the fact that this was looking to be a poor year for the harvest.

“Well, now, surely it can’t be that bad. You’re earth ponies after all. A bad harvest is probably still half decent on the grand scale of things, right?”

She offered him a warmer gaze for that, no smile, but a bit of brightness back in her eyes.

“Perhaps a pegasus would think it an impressive yield. But I’m beginning to think that Cloudsdale may have figured out a few things where bean production is considered.” She scraped her chair back. “Come on, if you can walk then I can show you the state of things.”

Outside, a gusty breeze was coming across the property roughly from west to east, bringing with it the occasional plume of dust. The cloud quickly settled over everything on the porch, leaving a grey film of grit on every exposed surface. One step out and Wind already felt dirty, even feeling the dust coating his teeth whenever he opened his mouth. Apart from that though, the night sky was at least clear overhead, the stars bright, and a mostly full Moon keeping the night reasonably well-lit.

In the distance, he could spy a few more farmhouses on the horizon, each one lit up just slightly by a candle or two that burned on its inside.

Sycamore led him down through the yard, over the small furrow that his landing had ploughed up, and then finally out into the fields themselves. Each one of their steps raised a little cloud of loose dirt from the ground, which was cracked and dry underfoot. What grass there was growing around was all brown, dry like tinder spread out over the ground.

Even to one as ignorant about agriculture as Wind, he could see the poor condition of the farm.

“Pretty bare, as you can see,” Sycamore said from up ahead. “On a good year, all of this would be up to our chins, maybe higher depending on what we chose to grow. But even an earth pony can’t raise any plants without rain.”

Wind couldn’t think of any reply to make. He had been jocular about the whole thing in the house, but now that he was outside it was a lot harder to summon any kind of levity.

The grasslands stretched away from them for miles in all directions, and nowhere could he find a single patch of green. On occasion they would pass a stand of hardy grasses or stunted stalks of grain, all small and barely clinging to life. In Cloudsdale, empty clouds were a good thing, since they would be newly laid down, ready to accept a fresh development to expand the city. Nothing was ever torn down or abandoned. Nowhere in Cloudsdale, not even in some of the seedier sections of the Undercity had he ever felt an emptiness quite like this one.

“So what will you do then?” he ventured, still somewhat stunned by the lifeless sight before him.

Sycamore had stopped walking at the end of the path. Up ahead, Wind could see what looked like it might have once been a pond, completely barren now. Somehow there were some bare trees still standing, though they were as lifeless as the rest of the countryside. Even so, Wind could imagine what the place must have looked like in a normal year, the moonlight glistening off of the surface of the water, and the trees filled with the sounds of nocturnal wildlife.

“Everypony else seems to think that we should go,” Sycamore answered, her voice far off and saddened. “Every week it seems like another family follows that road. To Canterlot, a few to Manehattan. Sometimes, I think that we should join them.”

She sat down onto the ground just in front of him, and Wind settled down himself right beside her.

“I used to come out to this spot all of the time when I was a filly,” Sycamore continued. “In the summer, the pond would be full, the Moon bright, and the air would be nice and warm. It was so peaceful, my own little hideaway. Ma would always tell me to be in bed by dark, but I’d always sneak out and come here just to enjoy the peace of the countryside.”

Wind couldn’t help but think of the window ledge at his own house. Granted, sitting out on his ledge wasn’t really the same thing as sneaking out to go sit by a pond, but every once in a while Wind had taken an evening flight too. That feeling of being alone, the warm evening breeze in your mane, the world completely at peace… he knew exactly what it meant to seek that feeling.

“Of course, I got caught eventually,” she went on, working her hoof idly in the dirt. “One night, after I squeezed out the window and shimmied down off of the porch roof, I came out here and found Ma waiting for me. I tried running, but she got me, of course. And she told me that when she was a filly she had always enjoyed coming out here too. And her Ma, and hers, so far as she told it. This land is ours, Wind. It’s in our blood, and it’s part of what makes us who we are. I could never leave it behind. It would mean… well, I guess that it would mean giving up a piece of who I was. Oh, but what am I saying?” she suddenly asked, a bit embarrassed for her apparent rambling. “How could you understand something like a connection to the land?”

She looked down again at the dirt, and it was silent between them, save for the breeze lightly shaking the branches of the trees overhead, leaving Wind to mull over what she said.

It was true that as a pegasus from Cloudsdale, he couldn’t know exactly how she felt when it came to her family’s connection to their land. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t help her anyway.

Instinctively, Wind reached out and placed one of his hooves on her shoulder. “Of course I understand, Sycamore. In Cloudsdale we may not have physical land to call our own, but we still have our loyalty, to family and to each other. If leaving to find something better is what circumstances force you to do, then that’s not the same thing as betraying your family’s past.”

Sycamore nodded, though it looked for a moment like she was having a hard time holding back tears. “I have to fight though,” she said, a little bit of hardness back in her tone. “If it comes down to it, we can go. But not before we’ve tried everything else first. I owe them all that much.”

Wind responded with another reassuring pat on the back, letting the gesture speak for itself. In truth, he felt like he was way out of his element doing this sort of thing, but it felt right to be here encouraging her. Surely he would have done the same thing for Shine had she been going through something similar. It was just a little strange having such an intimate discussion with a pony that he only met three days ago.

“Wind?” Sycamore asked suddenly, her voice fully even now.

“What is it?”

“Tell me about Cloudsdale,” she said, looking invested though clearly hoping for some kind of distraction.

“Don’t you think that we should go back inside before I tell the bedtime story?” he asked with a wink, then instantly regretted it. In spite of all of the seriousness that had come before, he had to choose now for the smart comment? But somehow, Sycamore just laughed, a beautiful, full laugh that hung in the night, over the waters that had once been.

“I don’t really think of them as bedtime stories anymore,” she replied, now fully smiling. “Though that will depend a little on what I hear tonight. But I want to hear about the fields, about the heights, about the towers and the streets.”

Wind gave her a serious look. “So you believe me then?”

“Of course I believe you! Why else do you think that I’m asking?” She leaned back against the tree, putting one leg up over the other. “I thought that you would be relieved to know that somepony in this town doesn’t think that you’re insane.”

A smile came onto Wind’s own features at that. “Well, now that you say so, that is quite a relief.” Now, he could maybe think about finding out where this place was with regards to Cloudsdale. But for some reason, that seemed like a low priority for the moment. Cloudsdale could wait until tomorrow morning. Sycamore was here now, and he did have lots of stories to tell. “Okay, where should I start?”

“Start with the ‘fields’,” she said, emphasizing that last word with her hooves. “Good luck convincing anypony else in town that pegasi are capable of growing anything, but I’d like to know how they work. How do you manage the seeds, for one?”

So Wind told her all that he could recall about how the seeds were managed, and then the irrigation and the harvests, all the while wishing that he had Tin here to double-check all of his facts with. After that, they talked about the Spire, the Academy, the Open races, and the Undercity. Sycamore always had a question on every topic, and eventually they both realized that their eyelids were drooping, and they were barely able to make it back to the house without falling asleep on the way.

The next day, Sycamore volunteered to show him around the town, once she was finished with her chores, of course. Wind wanted to help her out with those, if it meant getting out of the house any quicker, but for some reason they all just rolled their eyes when he suggested it. It took an hour that felt like an eternity before she came back in the door, took him by the hoof, and led him out again.

This time, rather than venturing off into the fields as they had the previous night, Sycamore took him around back of the house, and in the offing on the other horizon Wind could then see a collection of buildings, some small and some bigger. Overall, it looked like little more than two or three blocks, barely enough to be called a neighbourhood in Cloudsdale, but something, at least. All that Wind needed was some sort of recognizable landmark to navigate by, a mountain preferably. If there was a map of the larger country to be found then that would be even better.

“I hope that you don’t mind being the center of attention,” Sycamore whispered to him as they made their way over the rough earth that separated the town from her house. As with everything in the area, this dusty plain spoke of once perhaps being a vibrant meadow, perfect for foals to play in. Now every puff of wind across it merely brought stinging dust up into his eyes.

“Er, I guess that it doesn’t matter that much,” he replied. “But what difference does it make?”

“Well, we don’t get all that much news here in Southoofton,” she said, looking away in embarrassment. “Your arrival surely didn’t go unnoticed, unexpected and loud as it was. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve become something of a local celebrity by now.”

Momentarily, Wind felt excited. He’d never been anypony special up in Cloudsdale, at least not on his own. Sure, ponies all acted nice whenever he was out with Snow, but Wind knew that it was his father’s attention that they were after. Then, in an instant those hopes were dashed.

“Wait, will they all think that I’m crazy just like the rest of your folks?”

Sycamore sniggered. “Probably. If you’re lucky you might be able to convince a few of them otherwise, just like you did with me. But be prepared to get a lot of strange looks anyway.”

Wind could only nod grudgingly at that. They were coming up on the nearest of the buildings now, and Wind could see that most of them were really just larger houses than the one Sycamore’s family lived in. A few of them had fronts of faded paint, proclaiming one as a general store, another as a barber shop, and a third as a wheelwright’s shop. Sycamore picked out each of them in turn, explaining everything that she knew about the ponies that ran them.

As they walked through the village square, Wind became acutely aware of precisely what Sycamore had been talking about. There were a few other ponies out and about in the space, or seated on the patio out front of the tavern. Wind could tell that their eyes were following him as he passed through, but nopony said anything.

“And this is the local watering hole,” Sycamore was saying. “Coffee-shop, restaurant, and tavern all together depending on the occasion, but always the best place to swap gossip.” She placed a hoof on his shoulder with a light smile. “Come on, let’s make some introductions. I see Amber over there already.”

Allowing himself to be led, Wind gave the place a once-over. The tables outside were only about half-full, mostly with older earth ponies. The one that Sycamore had identified as Amber had her own small spot off in the corner, under the shade of the building’s awning. The white mane on her head spoke of many winters, but she was still sitting straight and confidently sipping at her tea.

“Amber!” Sycamore declared as they approached. “Wind here is ready to walk finally. Wind, Amber Waves.”

The old mare looked up with a warm smile. “Ah, Mr. Cloudsdale, at last!” She offered him a hoof, which he shook quite firmly. “Well, you really are quite the specimen aren’t you? Come on, take a seat!”

“Thank you,” he said, before joining her under the shade. The proprietor came around to ask for orders, and Sycamore ordered water for the two of them.

“So,” he began again. “I see that Sycamore has already let a few details about me slip.”

“Heh, the whole town knows that one already,” Amber confirmed. “But already I can tell that there’s enough sense in you that you can’t be out of your mind. So let’s leave off on that interrogation. How has she been treating you?”

“Perfectly fine,” Wind replied, giving Sycamore a gentle nod. “As well as anypony could ask for, in spite of the uniqueness of my situation.”

A twinkle came into her eye. “Good to hear. Don’t give her any trouble, I hope.” Wind could only answer that with a nod of acknowledgement.

The owner came around with the waters, clean and cold, but after he’d put them onto the table he coughed once. “That’ll, ah… That’ll be two bits.”

Sycamore looked up in irritation. “Really, Linseed? You’re charging for water now?”

“‘Fraid so,” he answered, sounding apologetic. “The river is running real low now, and the wells are running dry. That’s just the year we’re in.”

Sycamore was going to say something else, but then Amber tossed the coins onto the table. “Don’t worry, Sycamore,” she said. Then, under her breath to Linseed: “Get out of here, you crook.”

Linseed smiled as if he hadn’t heard. “Just making ends meet is all,” he said. “Holler if you need anything else.”

As he walked off, Amber leaned back in her chair. “I feel as though I should apologize.” She looked over at Wind. “Count yourself lucky that you landed with a decent family that still understands the meaning of hospitality. If you’d landed with one of them stinking Seeds, you’d be flying back to Cloudsdale with an itemized bill.”

“I’d say that Linseed has got a lot of nerve to be raising prices at a time like this,” Sycamore put in. “Everypony in town is hard on their luck. You’d think he could bend a little to help out.”

“Yeah,” Wind agreed, truthfully feeling once more out of his element, but willing to voice his opinion. “Earth ponies always stand together in the face of adversity right? It’s kind of your tribes’ whole thing.”

Sycamore and Amber both chuckled, the older mare enough that it was almost a proper laugh. “You really are something special, son. Like a pony from the olden days, when things were still bright. Sure, I tell Golden to keep his prices fair, but Linseed and Sesame? No siree. I dread to think what this town will come to once Cotton has finished taking all of the land from everypony he can.”

“We’ll stick with it,” Sycamore affirmed. “Even if it’s just your clan and ours. Something of Southoofton will still remain.”

The old mare finished her tea with one more sip. “I sure do hope so,” she said quietly. For a moment, she merely sat still, eyes down, perhaps ruminating on some happy memory.

It gave Wind a moment to think, and to process the new information the conversation had revealed.

They hadn’t covered much of surface history in school, not that he paid much attention anyway, but the innate nature of the tribes was something fundamental. Pegasi were loyal and brave, unicorns arrogant and sly, and earth ponies stubborn and diligent. Egalitarianism was supposed to be as firmly rooted in earth pony society as meritocracy was in Cloudsdale. In a way, perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that the simple version he’d been taught in school was as incorrect about the surface as it was about the sky.

After that moment passed though, Amber brightened up. “Okay, everypony!” she suddenly shouted into the square. “I know y’all are being polite. Come on over, have a look, ask your questions.”

For one second, Wind was confused, but then Amber gave him a wink, and suddenly it seemed as though a crowd materialized out of thin air in the space in front of the tavern. It looked like maybe thirty to forty earth ponies, of all shapes and sizes, young and old, and many different colours of coats and manes. They were all standing expectantly, looking him over like he was an exhibit in a museum. The sight was more than a little unnerving.

Sycamore leaned over to him. “I think that you should say something,” she whispered amidst the eager crowd. It looked like she found the whole situation quite amusing, but Wind figured that she was probably right.

Uncertainly, he got out of his chair. It was a real shame that he wouldn’t be able to fly over them with his wing still broken. He would just have to speak loudly.

“Uh, hey, everypony,” he said, giving the crowd an awkward wave.

He felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to see Sycamore walking off. “I think that I’ll head on back,” she said, doing her best to stifle a laugh and only partially succeeding. “This looks like it will take a while. See you.”

Wind couldn’t help but grin himself. Well, best to get this over with. If he could convince her, then maybe the same could be true for all of these ponies too.

“Sooo… Who wants to know about Cloudsdale?”

Chapter 13: An Interlude for Political Manipulation

“One of the first things I was asked when I started learning about government was whether Equestria could be better off with a Senate once more. Regrettably, the history is decidedly mixed on that question.”

“The Politics of Friendship”, by Twilight Sparkle

Celestia’s lunch had been lovely, if a touch on the warm side. Finding sufficient ice for the water was becoming increasingly difficult, and what made it into the glass melted in mere minutes. Canterlot could still get on, owing to the proximity of its mountain range, and for that Celestia was thankful. The ability to still enjoy a cold drink from time to time felt like the only thing keeping her sane at the moment.

That, and perhaps the chance to finally get a relief measure through the Senate. Ever since the riot, Pensive and Ink’s offices had been engaged in a frantic back-and-forth, proposing and amending draft proposals from sun-up to long after sundown. The knowledge of their own culpability for the measure’s success had at least convinced the two of them to work together, but that hadn’t stopped them from debating the details right down to the last minute.

With the vote a mere hour away, Celestia still hadn’t received the final draft text that would go before the chamber. As head of the largest party, it was Pensive’s job to get the text copied out for all of the senators. If things got any tighter, she would have to head to his office and help him copy out the bill herself.

She was just about making up her mind to do that when Ink came in through the door, two bundles of parchment clutched in one of her forelegs. She tossed one of them roughly onto Celestia’s desk, the flowing loops of her partner’s writing obvious.

“We have a big problem,” she said simply, the fury in her tone all too evident, along with the stress lines under her eyes.

Calmly, Celestia gave the document a quick perusal. There wasn’t much to see really; she must have looked over this text more than a hundred times as proposals had been exchanged between the two camps. “Big enough to jeopardize the vote?”

“Put it this way, Your Highness,” Ink replied flatly, still standing in front of the desk, her eyebrows down low over her eyes. “There is no way in a million years I could support that text, and I don’t think any reasonable pony would disagree with me. That counts you, your sister, and everypony else in the Senate, except perhaps for the snake who’s trying to put it before the chamber.”

“Ink,” Celestia said, wiping her own brow with a white handkerchief that she had taken to keeping by her side. “You and Pensive have been negotiating this text for days now. I had thought that you'd finally come to a workable agreement. We can’t afford dissension right now.”

“Certainly, but this is not the text that Pensive and I agreed to last night.” Ink set her own copy of the bill down on the desk and began flipping through it. “The original proposal sought a mass purchase of food from the farmers come harvest time. This one does away with that concept entirely. Instead, he’s just going to confiscate the harvest, backed up by force when necessary.”

Celestia’s breath caught when she heard that. “That’s impossible,” she said, her prior calm shattered. “He must know that a measure like that would never pass the chamber. By the stars, I would veto it even if it did!”

“Well, read it for yourself if you like.” Ink held up the relevant pages of the bill. It was all obtuse legal language, the sort of thing that nopony outside of Canterlot ever spent their time reading, but Celestia could cut through the wording right down to the meaning in an instant. No doubt about it, Ink’s suspicions were right on the money.

“I haven’t the faintest clue what he’s playing at,” Ink continued. “However, I think you’ll agree with me that when this bill goes before the chamber, it is not going to be passed. I’d be amazed if a full-scale fight doesn’t break out.”

Celestia eyed the hands on her clock. There was just shy of thirty minutes left before the vote, though it would be a wonder if any senators even showed up to this sitting if this was the text being delivered. There surely wasn’t enough time to get a new text in time for today’s sitting, but with luck she might be able to get to the bottom of things for an emergency session this evening.

Ink gave her a nod, clearly having come to the same conclusions herself.

“Let’s get over there,” Celestia said. “And find out what under the stars your colleague thinks he's doing.”

Pensive’s office suite was in chaos, with drafters and secretaries collating copies of the text and pages frantically running it off to the rest of the office wing. Up on the wall, a tally board had been set up to count votes, and as she went by Celestia noted quite a few more votes in the ‘Yea’ column than she would have guessed. Wishful thinking on Pensive’s part? Ink was right, after all. While the original proposal had been radical but necessary, this one was complete madness. No pony in their right mind would approve of something like this.

Celestia wasted no time on niceties as she barged into the office, Ink following close on her tail. In the inner suite, Pensive was seated calmly at his desk, going over what looked to be a memo from one of the other offices. He looked up as soon as the door banged open, and tucked the parchment hastily into a desk drawer.

“Your Highness,” he intoned, standing up to offer his usual greeting.

Celestia didn’t return the gesture, instead merely slamming the parchment bundle down onto his desk hard enough to make his inkwell bounce.

“What in the name of Equestria do you think you are doing? I trust you to bring a workable version of the text to the floor, I give you all of the incentive and time that you could want, and this is what I get instead. Somepony is going to get the blame for this you know, and right now I think that I’m looking at him!”

The senator didn’t blink, instead merely sitting back down into his seat calmly and picking up his quill again.

“It is good to see that my deliveries are going out promptly, Your Highness,” he replied, conversational as if they were discussing the weather over tea. “It was very hard work getting all of the language worked out in time for approval. Why, I think that it might even pass your high standards, Princess.”

Celestia was momentarily too shocked by the reply to muster an answer of her own. Ink, though, wasted no time stepping into the void.

“Pensive,” she said, “what happened to the version of the text that we agreed to last night? It was a flawed proposal, certainly, but it could pass. This version is completely unenforceable.”

Pensive only returned her a gentle smirk. “On the contrary, my colleague, I’m sure that you will find it is completely enforceable. That sad display in the marketplace the other day convinced me that what we were doing before simply wasn’t good enough. In order to make sure everypony fares equally well in the coming time of leanness, we need to completely level the playing field. Even the farmers themselves would need to be on the rationing system. That way nopony could claim that someone else was getting a better deal than them. In reality, it is the only way that we are going to make it through this crisis with the country intact.”

“Never mind the legalities!” Ink struck right back, the curls of her mane dancing as she shook in her anger. “I meant that it’s unenforceable because nopony is going to listen to it! I’ve lived in the farming country almost my whole life, and if you think that any farm family is going to give you their harvest and get nothing in return, then you’re completely mistaken. If you try to enforce a law like this, it will be defied! It could even lead to open rebellion!”

“I’ve added a section on the end authorizing force,” Pensive replied, still almost patronizingly calm. “If anypony objects, they will be met with the fullest force of the law. We are in desperate times after all, and desperate times will often call for desperate measures. Naturally it pains me to have to resort to such a step, but there simply is no other way for this issue to be satisfactorily resolved.”

Out of patience, Celestia brought a hoof down on his desk, instantly taking command of the conversation again. “All of this arguing is moot,” she said, stealing a glance at the big clock by Pensive’s door. There were mere minutes left to go before the floor sitting was to begin. “There’s no point in discussing the consequences of this law, because it’s never going to pass the chamber. Surely you know this, Pensive.”

He turned that cool expression of his to her. “Oh, but it will pass, Your Highness. I can guarantee that. And I hope you realize that unlike some of the ponies here, when I make you a promise, I always keep it.” He held her glare for a moment more, challenging her to say anything else, but Celestia was only perplexed. A predatory measure like this was insanity. How could he possibly imagine that he could get enough votes to see it pass? Certainly Ink’s rural bloc would shoot it down. Celestia wouldn’t even be surprised if he had a few turncoats in his own ranks over something like this.

“Well, as surely you can see, Your Highness, our time is growing short,” Pensive said, confident as ever. He got up out of his chair and strode purposefully on toward the door, holding it open with his magic. “We’ll likely have a lot more time to talk afterward, when we need to start hammering out the details of implementation. But with any luck, by this time next month this crisis will be well under control, and we can get back to the regular business of running this country.” He offered Celestia the usual trim bow as he waited for them to leave, the formality almost completely at odds with the hostility of the conversation.

Out in the hall, Ink looked dumbfounded. “I honestly can’t tell if he’s lost his mind or has some dirty trick up his sleeve,” she said as the two started heading to the Senate chamber. “I mean, he’s already pulled almost every dirty trick in the book in our negotiations this week. But I can’t see what he thinks he’s doing. No rural senator would take the risk of supporting a measure like this. If this vote somehow succeeds, then I’ll eat my shoes.”

On the basis of her own instincts, Celestia knew that Ink was right. But Pensive was no fool, that much was surely certain. “In any event, I can guarantee you a swift veto,” she said, though it did little to ease her. “I can’t imagine that I’ll need to end up using it, but if I must, then that is what I shall do.” Technically, of course, her vote alone wasn’t enough to overpower the will of the chamber; for that she needed Luna’s veto as well. That eventuality could be confronted when it was needed, though. Interrupting Luna’s work so that she could be brought to the chamber to deliver a summary Nay would certainly be an unfortunate use of time.

They emerged onto the floor of the Senate into the usual clutter of parchments draped over top of desks, and ponies of all sorts clumped in groups around the aisles and over the rings of desks that made up the majority of the floor space. Ink bade Celestia goodbye shortly afterward, and the yellow earth pony very quickly made her way over to her caucus, where she was greeted with a solemn sobriety. There were likely to be some very unhappy senators on the floor this afternoon, and the size of the bill’s text made it a convenient bludgeon when it was all bundled up, especially for a unicorn. At this rate Celestia would call it a success if Pensive somehow managed to escape the sitting with all of his teeth still in. Though after trying to pull a stunt like this, she suspected that his days as leader of his party were probably numbered.

Pensive and the rest of his inner circle came through the door only a few minutes later, just as the chair was preparing to call the roll. None of the other members of his cabal looked the least bit uncertain over what was about to transpire. Instead they were jovial, exchanging quite a number of back-slaps and congratulatory hoofshakes as they got to their seats. Naturally, the display only increased Celestia’s trepidation. What was it that Pensive had planned?

The Canterlot senator called the question right away once everypony was seated, and the usual shouts followed, a chorus of Yea’s followed by an answering barrage of Nay’s. Once again, Pensive and his deputy immediately called for a vote by the roll.

This time, the vote proceeded slowly, as seat by seat the members of his delegation stood to indicate their support. Again, all of Canterlot, then all of Manehattan, and so on around the chamber they went. Apparently he had managed to hold his caucus together on the issue, which was an achievement in and of itself. Then the roll got around to Everfree West, the first member of Ink’s delegation. And he stood.

The assent was called, the name was added to the tally, and the speaker moved on. Celestia took a hurried look across to where Ink was sitting, and the yellow earth pony’s expression was a strangled mix of disbelief and terror. To be fair, Celestia knew exactly what that felt like. Not all of her senators joined in with him, but perhaps one in every three did. Somehow, Pensive had convinced even these ponies to get on board with a nakedly unworkable proposal.

When the last vote was tallied, silence reigned in the hall: forty in favour, and thirty-five opposed. The presiding speaker’s hooves were shaking as he cleared his throat.

“The resolution is cleared to have passed the chamber. To the throne is put the question: Yea or Nay?”

He stood up and turned around from the podium when he had finished, his eyes joining those of every other pony in the room at being glued to where Celestia was sitting. Out on the floor, Ink still looked shell-shocked, and Pensive was still smug. He even raised one of his hooves in a mock toast to her.

Well, at least he wasn’t going to get the last laugh. Not while Celestia had anything to say about it. She took her time getting to her hooves, even pausing to admire the grandeur of the throne upon which she sat, with its back trimmed in gold and stretching nearly halfway up the wall behind her. Up above, the Chaos Storm swirled in purple malevolence. How unfortunate its significance was about to become.

“No mere question do you bring before the throne today,” she began, enunciating each word clearly, the very voice of reason, or at least so she hoped. “This proposal seeks the reduction of our republic to a mere shadow of its former self. No unity, no help will come from such a transparently tyrannical proposal, and thus it certainly cannot earn my support. The Senate is meant to be a unifying body, a place where all ponies can be represented and state their case for discussion. When my sister and I founded this institution, we imagined that it would bring ponykind into a new era of fellowship and harmony.

“But this proposal, this measure, if implemented would only serve to divide us: rural vs urban, unicorn vs earth pony, family against family. Surely it was not in the spirit of this chamber that such a measure came to be written, and surely it was not in this same spirit that any of you chose to support it. I would invite each and every senator who somehow signed their names to this abomination to reflect long and hard on whatever reasons might have brought them this far.”

Celestia paused as she brought her gaze over to Pensive once again, still serene at his desk. “And I would wonder first on the motivations of its framers, who surely understand just as well as I do that nothing good would come of enforcing this law. The throne denies the request,” she finished low and grave, then sat back down into her seat, never once taking her eyes off of that smug unicorn in the second row.

Pensive jumped to his hooves as soon as she had finished. “The first of the throne declining, the chamber requests that the second half of the throne deliver its verdict on the measure. With her not present, I move that the second Princess be found and compelled to attend, so that her verdict may be rendered.”

Despite how things had begun the rest of the process was straightforward legislative procedure. When the chair marked the motion as carried, Celestia stepped forward and volunteered to be the one carrying out the chamber’s wishes, and at least everypony agreed to that. Technically, the Senate was supposed to sit in expectation while Luna was located and brought to the floor, but of course everypony spilled out into the lobby to wait, forming up into the same excited clumps as before, eagerly discussing this latest development.

Celestia found Ink chagrined, and gingerly tapping her shoes on the marble floor as if wondering how they were going to taste.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” she said right away. “Somehow Pensive picked my coalition apart. I don’t know how he did it, especially since he spent so much of this past week negotiating with me, but somehow he must have gotten to each of them.”

“Well, I hope that you can find out what he’s offering them in exchange for their votes,” Celestia replied crossly. “Because if this majority of his holds, then we are in for a very rough session, and even more importantly, we won’t be able to get anything useful done.”

Rather than quail before that, Ink stood up a little straighter. “The thing that really burns me inside is that none of them even told me that they were going to betray the party. You can rest assured that I will get to the bottom of this, Princess. And they had better all have bloody good answers.”

“Right. You have an hour or so perhaps until I can get back here with Luna. In the meantime, I expect some action. Let’s not have to go through this process more than once.” Celestia turned on her heel at that and stalked off, leaving Ink looking properly determined at least. She certainly hoped that the young party leader would manage to get her coalition together in time to forestall another vote, but secretly she wasn’t so sure anymore. That now made twice that Pensive had outmanoeuvred her, and soundly each time too.

The thought suddenly cleared a little space for itself at the forefront of Celestia’s mind. Had it really been twice? Ink had suspected at the time of the first vote that Pensive had deliberately sabotaged the measure in the hopes of ensuring its failure. And then he had infuriated the other party even more with his ill-planned remarks in the paper. Had that all really been simply an arrogant unicorn doing his own thing, or had it all been leading up to this? If it was all some sort of conspiracy, Celestia still couldn’t see what Pensive would be gaining out of the government’s dysfunction. Tensions would run higher out in the streets, supplies would run shorter, and ponies would surely grow angrier as the government continued to do nothing. Without a fair relief package soon, only drastic action would prevent unrest. Drastic action like Pensive’s proposal? Ink was right, though. A mass confiscation of the harvest would create more problems than it solved.

Celestia shook her head as she passed by an open window large enough to admit her passage. She was going to need help to sort this one out, even on top of Ink’s assurances. At least that was one good thing of having to fetch Luna back into the city.

“And you’re telling me that they actually passed it?” Luna asked, incredulous. “Even knowing what it would surely lead to? Forget a veto, I’d like to see whoever was responsible in the stocks over this!”

For once, the inside of the Academy Tower felt a little too warm, this time surely due to the blood pumping through Luna’s head upon hearing her sister’s news. Surely she wasn’t alone, if the fact that Celestia had managed the frigid flight without any outerwear could be considered. Celestia had taken a large mug of cocoa as soon as she got in though, and now was occupying the seat behind Swift’s desk. Her fallen lieutenant was still being attended to in the medical cabin.

“Do I really have to go back, or can I perhaps just yell my ‘Nay!’ down the mountainside and keep on up here?”

“I will need you, unfortunately,” Celestia replied, looking a little cooler now that the cocoa was setting in. “With Pensive holding his majority, this won’t be the last time that we see this measure before the throne. I expect that he will continue bringing it up until one of us blinks first.”

“And that means that I won’t be able to escape the city until things are resolved.” Celestia nodded, and Luna stole a look back at Swift’s chalkboard. She had been in the middle of going over his figures again when her sister had come in, in the vain hope of finding some constant or modifier that they had overlooked, some minus that really should have been a plus. There was at least something of a silver lining in being forced away from the Academy. Perhaps some distractions could lead to a new insight into her predicament.

“Well, I’ll certainly go,” she said reluctantly. “But I’ll make sure that they all know what important work I’m missing by having to be back for this.”

“That… might possibly be unwise,” Celestia returned, touching her hooves together over top of the desk. “Putting even more pressure onto the chamber could be unpredictable, and things are on the verge of boiling over already. In public, all that you should provide is a simple ‘Nay’ when required, I think.”

Luna turned around and raised an eyebrow. “In public? What else do you have planned?”

Celestia had picked up Swift’s quill with her magic, and was casually working it over the parchment on the desk as she spoke. “Somehow, Pensive picked apart Ink’s coalition. Neither she nor I are sure how, but we need to know, and the sooner the better.” She blotted the ink quickly with a toss of sand, then passed it over to Luna. On it were a set of seven names. “When the chamber isn’t in session, I’d like you to see what you can find out about these senators, Luna. I don’t know if they’ve been bought, persuaded, or threatened, but somehow they’ve been convinced to vote against their own self-interest. Picking apart Pensive’s majority is likely to be the only way that this thing ends well.”

Curious, Luna studied the list for a moment. All of the names were unfamiliar; she had made it almost a point of pride to be involved with the Senate as little as possible over the course of her life. “This really seems like your purview, doesn’t it? What makes you think that I’ll be any help?”

“I am going to be occupied in blocking the measure procedurally, any way that I can.” Celestia finished off the last of her cocoa in one big gulp. “There’s more than enough obscure statutes on the books to forestall votes for a day or two, maybe more. I’ll do what I can to feel out the chamber, but after everything that has happened, I strongly suspect that Pensive isn’t really following any of the rules anymore. If we want to beat him, we need to try something new. Hopefully, you can slip under his sights, while he thinks that he has Ink and I occupied on the defensive.”

Luna turned her eyes back to the list. If things really were this serious, then she would pitch in to do what she had to. “And once that is done I can get back to thinking about the weather?”

Taking that as the affirmation that it was, Celestia headed back to the balcony. “In earnest, I hope. Now we really are needed back in the city, or else the Senate might send another party out to look for me.”

Luna quickly trotted over to join her sister at the ledge, and the two of them began a quick flight together back down toward the city. A stopover in Canterlot would certainly be a nice change of pace from how things had gone up in the mountains, but the sight from the mountaintop also let her see all of the countryside around the city, dull and brown in the dryness of late summer. An interlude for political manipulation was about the last thing that Equestria needed right now.

Chapter 14: The Pleasures of Accounting

“Not that it was impossible to live comfortably in Discord’s Equestria. It just required certain… sacrifices.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)

As Trinity had promised, work at the orchard progressed smoothly while everything was working properly, punctuated with stoppages whenever the press equipment decided not to cooperate. Also as promised, the outages were surprisingly common. On the one hoof, Celestia still got her pay regardless of how long she’d had to wait for the mechanic to show up, but at the same time it was frustrating to see so much time wasted. Even with all of the new workers that the orchard took in every morning, she had a sense that the harvest was going far too slowly.

“Well, what would you do to fix it?” Trinity asked. Celestia had taken to working alongside the white earth pony, who could be frighteningly quick at picking apples herself, quick enough to rival any unicorn for the job. She and Celestia could keep up the same cadence in taking their picks to the press, and so she naturally tended to leave Wickerlock behind in the trees. Capstan, of course, she only saw when she was dumping her apples into the press, and could only get in a quick wave and a smile before she was back on her way out to get another load.

“Personally,” Celestia said, nimbly picking her own apples off of the tree. “I think that the division of labour here is all wrong. Why should pegasi, earth ponies and unicorns all be tasked with picking the fruit? Why should they all operate the presses? If the tasks were divided up according to ability, things could move a lot quicker.”

“Well, you know that for all you claim, unicorns aren’t always the best pickers.” Trinity had finished off another full basket, and was standing alongside it proudly, a mote of sweat on her brow.

Celestia didn’t offer an immediate response, filling up her basket with two more apples. In truth, the heat was actually something that she was having a harder time getting used to. Under the clouds of Eridian, conditions always stayed chilly, except whenever it rained and things grew much colder. Under the Sun’s light, the orchard was always pleasantly warm in the morning, but after a shift’s worth of work things started to feel much more uncomfortable.

“Naturally, exceptions must exist to every rule,” she allowed. “What’s most important is to have the tasks divided according to merit. If you were better at picking apples than another unicorn, then certainly you could stay on the picking crew.”

The discussion was put on hold as the two of them picked up their full baskets and started the usual walk back toward the press. They didn’t work the same portion of the field every day, instead rotating around whichever section Celestia felt like trying out on the particular morning.

By now, Celestia had seen most of the estate, though that really wasn’t saying much. There was only so much that could change about a row of apple trees, except for the complex’s southern edge, where a wild marsh grew up out of the grasslands. Based on her knowledge of the area, Celestia had guessed that it must be the source of the Everfree River, and the orchard’s irrigation. This little patch of land had everything that it needed to survive, so long as a pony was happy with nothing but apples to eat and cider to drink. Small wonder then that it was so heavily fortified.

“You know a lot about managing labour for somepony so young,” Trinity said as they walked, eying her curiously. “Is that knowledge that’s easy to come by in Eridian?”

“Oh, heavens, no,” Celestia replied. Sometimes, she forgot that Trinity was an outsider, at least insofar as not having come from Eridian itself. “A pony is lucky to learn much of anything useful growing up in the city, except the important basics: which streets to avoid, when to be out, and where to find food and work. As for all of this, it just sort of makes sense to me. Doesn’t it?”

“Well, of course,” Trinity said matter of factly. “Apparently it’s beyond the range of Fastidious and his underlings, though.”

Fastidious. Despite what Trinity had said about him often strolling about in the orchard, Celestia had yet to catch a sight of the Lord of the manor.

“Perhaps somepony ought to let him know then.”

Trinity coughed. “He’s a noblepony. What makes you think that he’ll listen to you?”

“Nothing, not necessarily at least. But from what you’ve told me he’ll certainly be grateful to have his operational efficiency improved. If there’s a chance that that leads to increased compensation for me, then I think that it’s worth trying out. And the worst thing that can happen is that he just ignores me, right?”

“Well, whatever you say, sister,” Trinity had on something of a sly smile. “Let me know how it goes. But if you can somehow get this place running like clockwork, then I’ll be mightily impressed.”

Celestia didn’t answer, instead just going over everything that she’d thought of in her head. Dividing up the labour properly was only the first of the reforms that she’d thought of for improving the efficiency of the cider operation, though it was certainly the simplest to implement. Trinity was right about the need to convince Fastidious that she was worth listening to, though. Lords and Ladies were a whole different sort of pony to the ones that she was used to. They traveled through Eridian on occasion, in lacquered coaches much like the one that sat in Fastidious’s driveway. Every one of them was always surrounded by fearsome-looking guards, and the citizens of Eridian knew better than to get in their way. She had no reason to believe that when the Lord strolled in his orchard it would be any different. Even so, she had meant what she had said. Any chance to earn the Lord’s favour offered a high possibility of windfall for her. It was simply a matter of acting on it.

When they got to the press building, Celestia wasn’t surprised to see the squad of operators, all big tough earth ponies like Capstan, milling about in the clearing outside. A forepony greeted them on the edge of the clearing.

“Well, good going on the two of you for the baskets,” she said, making a mark on her clipboard. “Unfortunately, we’re having some difficulties with the press here. You can leave your take with the rest and get an early lunch, I guess.” She indicated a little row of other baskets that had been set next to the building on the near side.

Trinity set her basket down neatly in the row, and then gave Celestia a tap on the shoulder. “You go and get your lunch. I’ll catch up. I have a few things to take care of.”

Celestia gave her a quick nod and set off back through the trees. Each day at lunchtime, the workers would all go to one of a few pre-determined spots throughout the orchard, where some of Fastidious’s guards would have bread, barrels of apple juice, and occasionally something better set out. It was first come, first served, which was why it was always a good idea to get your picking done as quickly as possible. Finding a spot cleaned out and having to hoof it to another one was a huge waste of time. This time, the spot nearest to where she and Trinity had been working was the one nearest to the center of the estate, right across the lawn from the manor. Today, the Lord wasn’t in, and that meant that things were quiet at the house, though they were definitely lively in the lunch spot.

Celestia wasted no time in picking out her usual working lunch with a good-sized mug of juice. She didn’t see anypony that she recognized among those gathered, but it was a big orchard after all. Trinity would be along soon enough.

About ten minutes later, there was a scuffle of noise from the direction of the gates, and Celestia looked up to see the Lord’s coach on its way in. The workers having their lunch all stood up as the coach went by, and those who had already finished eating and had been taking a little break started off into the trees at once. Celestia, though, kept her eyes on the wagon as it passed by, pulled by two of the coach-drivers she had seen before, with another guard on its driver’s seat and three more running abreast of it. The curtains of the coach were drawn, and they were all the same scarlet red as the rest of the vehicle, giving the thing a striking similarity to an apple on wheels.

The drivers circled the driveway in front of the manor, pulling up to a gentle stop in front of the doors, where a number of servants from inside the house had already emerged to get the door for the Lord.

From her angle, Celestia couldn’t see much of the manor’s porch, but she kept watching anyway, hoping for at least a glimpse of her boss. She ended up with more than that, though, as Fastidious rounded the corner of his coach to give his estate a long look, a triumphant smile writ large across his face.

The Lord Fastidious was a handsome pony, no two ways about that, a light blue earth pony stallion with a coiffed mane of pale orange. His face was a smooth assortment of hard lines, wide-set eyes looking brightly down over a short muzzle. He had on a scarlet cape, matching the colour of the coach, the curtains and everything else in the estate, tied around his neck with a golden brooch. It was a little difficult to tell at this distance, but Celestia thought that the gold had been worked into the distinct shape of an apple.

What was most surprising about the Lord’s appearance though was undoubtedly his age. Celestia had been expecting a hard-bitten old stallion, perhaps around Capstan’s range. Instead, Fastidious looked only a decade or so older than her, still young by any standard. Things were probably different among the nobility, but even so, to be placed in charge of an operation like this at such a young age must have been a harrowing ordeal for him.

As Fastidious’s gaze eventually settled onto the group of workers having their lunch across his lawn, a scowl appeared on his face. He turned back to the house and gave a shout. Celestia couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but soon enough a familiar pegasus, the chief mechanic, appeared at his side, looking contrite. The two of them disappeared together behind the coach once more, with Fastidious clearly chastising his employee, and the pegasus only meekly nodding whenever there was a pause. Celestia honestly felt a little sorry for him. On the one hoof, he did a rather poor job of fixing up the presses whenever he got called out, but with so much to do and so much distance to travel it wasn’t really his fault that something was always broken.

“Ah, you finally got the chance to give him a look!” Trinity cantered up beside her, face flushed as if she had run over. “What do you think?”

“Hmm,” Celestia said, mentally going over what she’d seen. “Honestly, he looked just like a regular pony to me. Better dressed, better fed, and better attended to, of course, but in the end just somepony else here in this world. I’d even wager that he’s an approachable fellow.”

Trinity held a hoof up to her mouth, snickering. “You may think yourself a good judge of character, Celestia, but that’s a little much for thirty seconds over a distance of a hundred paces. Like I said, if you want to march over there and give him a piece of your mind, be my guest. But when he throws you out and tells you to get back to work, I’ll be happy to say that I told you so.” She started over to the juice barrel. “Why, I expect that I won’t even be finished with my lunch before you’re back here.”

Celestia didn’t respond, instead starting to pick her way across the lawn, casually, but still with a sense of purpose. There was nothing that she’d be able to hide behind for the walk across the space, so the guards on the outside walls would see her for sure. So long as she looked like she knew what she was doing, she hoped that they would assume she did.

Getting past the sentries that would surely be guarding the Manor’s front door was going to be another matter, but Celestia had a plan for them. Admittedly, it wasn’t really much of a plan, more a shot in the dark really, but Trinity had said that things were rather tense within the Lord’s staff. With a little luck, she could turn that uncertainty to her benefit. Once she was inside the Manor, then it would all be down to her persuasiveness where Fastidious was concerned.

Was it possible that the Lord’s youth played a part in his apparent mismanagement of the orchard? From the look of all of the trappings of his position, the stallion certainly held his place as an apple farmer to be something important, but every day on the job Celestia saw another way that she could run the place better than he had. Perhaps there was another angle there that she could use to get in his good graces.

She paused on the outward side of the coach, peering cautiously around it to get a look at precisely who was standing in her way. Two of the usual guards from the outside of the estate were flanking the doorway, bright metal spears clutched in their hooves and scarlet tabards hanging down over their chests. The two of them looked a little bored to be standing there minding the door, and as she watched the one on the left leaned his spear up against the doorway and sat back on his haunches, blowing a long breath out through his lips. His partner gave him a quick look, but didn’t reprimand him for the breach of decorum.

Celestia chose that moment to approach. She walked around the edge of the coach, with her head held up similar to the way that she had always seen the mechanic fly through the orchard. The nerves hiding within her she quickly banished with a stern frown, hoping that it would make her look a lot older than usual.

The guard still standing at attention saw her approach first. “Hold up,” he said, raising his other hoof. “What’s your business with the Lord?”

“I’m the new scrivener,” Celestia answered gruffly, only sparing him the barest of glances. “Here to replace the last one after his unceremonious departure.”

“Quill is out?” the relaxing guard on the left said to his partner. “I thought that I would have heard of something like that.”

His partner narrowed his eyes. “The Lord would have told us if he was expecting a new employee for the orchard.”

“Well, clearly he neglected to mention it this time,” Celestia returned, overall quite surprised that she was able to hold herself steady in spite of her racing heartbeat. “He told me that the accounts were in a state of disarray, in need of an urgent, nay, immediate reorganization. He was quite adamant that I join him as soon as possible. With the harvest coming on, it’s very important that we all be aware of precisely where we stand.”

The guard appeared to chew on that one for a moment, and Celestia realized that things were probably just as uncertain for these two as they would be for any of the workers out there, only their proximity to Fastidious meant that they understood it a little better. Everypony here depended on the Lord’s pay for their survival after all, and if he were to suddenly run out of money, no one would appreciate it. Even so, the stallion didn’t look like he was convinced.

“I’ll check inside,” he said, turning to go into the house. “Keep an eye on her!” he said to his partner, who reluctantly got back to his hooves and gave her a stern glare.

The other guard got no further than putting his hoof on the latch, though, before the door opened from the inside, and an aged earth pony with streaks of white in his green mane appeared there. “What’s all this?” he asked in a jovial tone, offering Celestia a quizzical look before turning his attention back to the guard.

“Merely a guest, Mister Gala,” the guard returned, coming to a stiff attention in this earth pony’s presence. “She claims that she’s Fastidious’s new scrivener.”

Gala gave Celestia a long look, and even though the bright smile on his face never departed, she still felt small under his eyes. “A bit young to be in the scrivener’s trade, aren’t you, my dear?”

Celestia offered him a confident smile. “Give me ten minutes with a ledger and I’ll show you otherwise.”

The guards’ eyebrows rose, but Gala merely chuckled. “Mm, perhaps so. Well, I can hardly say no to a challenge like that. Come in, let us see if you are up to the task.” He opened the door up wider to admit her, and after a moment’s look just to make sure that things were actually happening as she thought they were, and the guards weren’t about to take her into custody, Celestia stepped over the threshold.

The inside of the Manor was simultaneously a world apart from her humble abode in Eridian, and also eerily similar. The staircase leading up from the landing to the house’s second level was fancifully carved just as the stairs of her own home were, and there were the same ornamental hangings, only these were of course bright, clean, and completely intact. Gala led her calmly down the eastern hall away from the door, and as she passed Celestia studied each hanging for the second that she had as she walked by. Most of them looked to be woven pictures of the orchard outside, set in bright green hillsides that surely would have been from before Discord’s reign. The ceiling of the hall was high and paneled with wood everywhere, all in a bright stain that kept the place feeling lit in spite of the relative smallness of the windows.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised to be getting new applicants to this position,” Gala said as he continued walking ahead of her, his steps short but quick. “Quill is a dedicated pony, surely, but there have always been questions about his methods. I know that I wouldn’t be surprised to find a barrel or two to have leaked into the ledgers over the years.”

Celestia decided to keep up the superior act, even though Gala seemed like he might be a member of the household, and thus worthy of a little more respect. “The Lord told me that things were something of a mess in need of some cleaning.”

Despite the attempt at bravado, Gala chuckled again. “You’ll have to see them for yourself before you can make any conclusions in that regard.” He turned aside toward a nondescript door in the hallway, and removed a key from the inside of his shirt. When he had unlocked the door and swung it open, over the threshold Celestia could see a dim room, lit only by the light spilling in through the doorway. Nevertheless, the old pony waved her across.

As she stepped over, Celestia decided to take a little risk, and called up a bit of her magic, only enough to make her horn glow slightly.

The light was enough to reveal the space as about fifteen feet square, the outsides of the room lined with wooden bookshelves that were packed with monstrously thick, dusty tomes. The interior of the space was occupied with a very large and solid writing desk, ledgers strewn about it haphazardly, with a quill and over a dozen inkwells of varying colours stacked up beside it.

“It’s a nice enough appointment,” Gala said from outside the doorway, “if a little dark and lonely sometimes. But that’s why we always hire a unicorn.” He laughed for a moment, then turned to go. “Anyway, I’ll have the Lord check in on you in half an hour or so. You’d best have something to show for the time if you’d like to be hired on for good.” He swung the door closed again as he left, leaving Celestia standing in the relative darkness, save for the small globe of light that her horn was making.

She allowed herself to exhale, a surge of relief flowing through her mind. Somehow, she had gotten in seemingly without any suspicion. Trinity would have to take a very long lunch if she wanted to still be around when Celestia left the house now. And she even had her appointment with Fastidious set up, though not quite in the way that she had been expecting it. Uncertainly, she turned to the table and its mounds of ledgers.

Celestia certainly had never had any formal training in accounting, nor in anything else for that matter, so to say that she found the mess of notations within the pages of the books confusing was a dramatic understatement. The rows and columns of the ledgers were unlabeled, and each of the dozen or so colours of ink were strewn about the page seemingly at random. The fact that the markings had been made by a pony that everyone else seemed to think had been incompetent did not help her hope that she could figure things out in time. But the sand in her hourglass was running out anyway, so Celestia knew that she had no other option but to try.

At random, she pulled one of the books in from the edge of the desk, flipping through its pages in search of clues on its contents. A few of the entries she could see were marked with the tricoin symbol, indicating monetary amounts. Those were all in purple, and generally appeared next to scribbled quantities in red. Cider sales, perhaps? She would expect to see a lot of those somewhere in the accounting, and red was a reasonable colour for it. So this book was probably keeping track of the money earned from cider shipments going out to the rest of the nobility.

Celestia had to try out a few different books until she found another one matching, this time with the purple monetary numbers lined up alongside a grey column and interspersed with other values in green. A quick look at the math revealed the grey to be a running sum, the purple numbers adding and the green taking away. Already here Celestia saw a couple of mistakes in the arithmetic, which gave her some hope. It would be tough to correct the numbers inline, which meant that she would have to copy things over to a new ledger in order to clean it up, but even so it was something of value that she could show Fastidious when he came in. Of course, she still had eight more colours of ink to make sense of first.

The rest of the ledgers she dealt with in much the same way, cross-referencing new columns against things that she had already until it became clear which accounts were being added to or subtracted from. As she worked, the scale of Fastidious’s operation revealed itself in bits and pieces.

Not only were there cider sales to keep track of, but also investments in a variety of other noble enterprises, as well as payments to the royal court and a variety of other miscellaneous charges Celestia could hardly hope to understand. They were numbers though, which was all that mattered to her right now. The book with the grey column she eventually realized was the master account list, and so once she had at least a reasonable guess on everything else, she took to copying that one out right away, double-checking her math every step of the way to be sure that the new copy hadn’t made any mistakes. She was about halfway through the new copy when the door opened up again.

Fastidious came into the room in a rush of wind, the orange hair on his head ruffled, the brooch tying his cape together having shifted off-center. That coupled with his less than pleased expression made it all too clear she’d be caught.

“I don’t know who under the Sun you think you are,” he declared, in a voice that boomed off of the walls of the small room, altogether much deeper than Celestia would have expected from his slight frame, “but unless I get a good answer in fifteen seconds, you’ll be lucky to escape this estate with all of your hooves!” He glared insistently at Celestia.

“It looks like I’m your new scrivener, my Lord,” she answered softly, turning the half-completed ledger around so that he could see it. “Master Quill has left everything in a state of complete disarray. It’s going to be some time before I can even take adequate stock of your holdings, let alone process anything new. But you may appreciate the numbers as they come along.”

Based on her own reckoning, by catching the little mistakes that Quill had made, the ledger showed a few hundred more tricoins in Fastidious’s accounts right now than he would have known previously.

The Lord’s expression did not waver. “I didn’t ask for a new scrivener. Quill has been reliable so far, just as he was for my father. He’s an old friend of the family. Whereas I still don’t even have a clue who you are, why you’re here, and perhaps most importantly who let you in without getting my permission.” That last point seemed to strike him the hardest, enough that he turned around for a moment as if hoping to see the pony who had let her in standing in the doorway.

“The fellow’s name was Gala, I’ve gathered,” Celestia answered, cautiously taking a few steps out from behind the desk. Fastidious looked back at her right away, still filled with suspicion clearly. “I can understand the desire to trust a friend. Nevertheless, Quill’s work was shoddy at best, perhaps even criminal at worst.”

That got Fastidious’s attention. “He was stealing from me?”

Celestia nodded. Of course she didn’t have any evidence of it, but the scrivener for Raspberry’s pub had been fired for exactly the same reason, doctoring the books in order to siphon supplies off for himself. If that was how things worked in Eridian, then why shouldn’t it be the same among the nobility? From Fastidious’s reaction, clearly he didn’t think it too far-fetched of an idea either. Now all she needed was to convince him.

“This pattern of mistakes is simply too noticeable to be anything but.” She pulled the old account ledger up from the table, so that the Lord could view them side-by-side, supported by the real values in the physical account books.

As he processed the information, Celestia watched as the young stallion’s features relaxed, then grew hard again. “My father and I both. That snake! I’ll have his head for this! Thank you for your diligence, er…” He paused, trying to remember her name clearly.

“Celestia,” she finished for him, a sense of relief washing over her.

“Celestia, yes! Congratulations, you’re the new scrivener. Excellent work. I’ll give you the orientation later. Right now I have a former employee to interrogate.” He galloped off right away after finishing, slamming the door shut again on his way out, and leaving the room in silence once again.

Celestia allowed herself another sigh of relief. So far, things were going even better than she could have expected, even though she still hadn’t had the chance to suggest any improvements to the organizational structures of the orchard. True, convincing the Lord just now had almost been a bit too easy. It was almost like he had been looking for a reason to get rid of Quill, which perhaps wasn’t surprising given what everypony else had already said of the old scrivener.

Regardless, the sum of it now seemed to be that she was in, a full-time employee of the Lord’s household. She walked behind the writing desk and pulled the ledgers around so she could get back to copying them out. The enormity of the Manor surrounded her, silent and dark. Yet even so, Celestia felt a brightness in her heart and a growing hope for the future.

Chapter 15: Higher Living

“The thing I like best about the new Equestria? The fact that my sword is now a museum piece.”

Journal of Princess Luna

Several hours had passed by the time that Gala came around again. By this time, Celestia had managed to create fresh, clean copies of nearly all of the old account books. Naturally, the old pony had brought a whole new stack of invoices and receipts along with him this time, depositing them on a corner of the writing desk.

“Good sales today,” he commented, still just as happy as before. “But don’t worry about them now. They can be tomorrow morning’s effort.”

Though Celestia nodded and got down off of her chair, inwardly she was surprised. Perhaps it was due to the windowless room, but for her the time seemed to have flown by. She would have guessed that it was mid-afternoon, if that, but through the open door she could see that the shadows of the estate were growing longer. There was plenty of daylight left, but it was nearing time for dinner.

“Well, all that I can say is thank you for allowing me the opportunity. Really, I should thank Lord Fastidious just as well.”

Gala laughed. “Well, my son is currently busy dealing with your predecessor, I understand. You might want to avoid the cellar for the next week or so, you know how it is.”

Celestia most certainly did not know how it was, but before she could get a chance to ask, Gala ushered her out. “Normally of course, we’d expect you to work a little longer, but I couldn’t help but notice that you’re in need of a proper uniform if you’re going to be an agent of the household. We have a good seamstress in the east wing. I’ll show you that way before you go today, and hopefully we can have something presentable for you soon enough.”

“Oh, of course,” she answered, walking beside the old pony as he began making his way back through the hall again. He was a quick pony in spite of his age, and Celestia found that she had to put a little pace into her stride to keep up, even in spite of the height difference between them. “So you are the elder Lord then, Mister Gala?”

“Apologies for not introducing myself properly earlier,” he said, coughing into his hoof. “Lord Gala Appleton III. My son Fastidious has the seat right now, but I am still the stallion in charge of this household.”

“Ah, I see.” They re-emerged into the main hall of the house, the staircase to the right leading up to the second floor, and this time Celestia noticed a whole troupe of other ponies sprinkled throughout the space, one mare washing the floor far to the rear of the house, another dusting one of the wall hangings nearby, and a third shepherding a bucket of ice on wheels towards one of the other halls that departed the space. Had the place been this busy the first time she had come in? Celestia realized that she probably wouldn’t even have noticed if it was.

“The orchard has been long in the family then?”

“Why, the longest!” Gala proclaimed, puffing out his chest as he said the words. “The Rose et Blanc has been the seat of House Appleton for nearly eight hundred years, right back to the founding of Equestria. We never missed a harvest, not once in all of that time. My grandfather’s grandfather, Red Appleton, was the one who negotiated our current arrangement.” He indicated a bust in a wall niche as they passed, showing a stern-looking earth pony with a heavy chain around his neck. “He wasn’t about to let Discord’s rise get in the way of our tradition, and it was his manoeuvrings that guaranteed us our little patch of sunlight. It does of course require our unremitting fealty to the crown, but it meant that we got to hold on to the orchard, and we’ve been happy with that ever since.”

“Fealty? What exactly does that entail?”

Gala offered her a scrutinizing look at the question, the white hair of his moustache drooping down over his mouth. “For you? Probably nothing, so long as you keep on working down here all of the time. The King wouldn’t ever visit a little operation like ours. It just means that you’ll want to keep your eyes out for anything suspicious. There are spies and saboteurs who occasionally try to come in with our seasonal workers. In fact, I’ve been talking to Screw and he’s got half a mind that we’ve got a few of them around the grounds right now.”

“Spies?” Celestia asked, imagining that an upper class pony would probably find the idea scandalous, and doing her best to get that idea across. “Spies from whom?”

“Hmm, you’re not from the upper reaches of Eridian then are you? A couple of fools who call themselves the ‘Resistance’, mainly.” Gala snorted as he said the word. “They probably imagine themselves to be on some noble quest to free the country, but all that they’ve ever done is make life harder for the rest of us. It would be just like them to sabotage our presses, that’s for sure. Occasionally, you also get an agent from a rival House, but that’s to be expected. We do that ourselves after all. You should see their salaries coming out of the accounts every so often.”

Celestia made a mental note of that. She already had a colour of ink that she had assumed corresponded to wages, but the expenditures for it didn’t quite match up with all of the pay that the labourers received. “Well, certainly I’ll be mindful of who I talk to,” she said.

“If you see anything amiss, you’ll want to alert either Fastidious or myself right away.” Gala stopped by another door, opening it to reveal what appeared almost like a shop from a market square up in Eridian. Bolts of cloth were arranged on shelves all throughout the space, and in the center a lanky beige pegasus fluttered around a drafting table, sketching up some new creation of hers.

“I’ll leave you to your things,” Gala declared, stepping back into the hall once more. “Once your measurements have been taken, you can report to the larder for your first day’s pay. It’s in the back of the house; any servant will be glad to direct you. Otherwise, I suppose that I shall see you tomorrow.”

Celestia watched the elder pony disappear down the hall before the seamstress noticed her standing in the doorway and bustled her inside for a marathon session of measuring and sizing of fabric.

Naturally the whole process was completely foreign to the alicorn; Celestia had passed the occasional seamstress in the market squares in Eridian, but they had been limited to patching hats or mending cloaks with what bare thread they had on hoof. Getting an outfit tailored from fabric was a luxury that nopony in Eridian could ever have dreamed of.

The same was likewise true for her pay when she collected it from the back of the house. The rough apples of the labourers outside were gone, replaced instead by olive oil, freshly ground flour, a few baked buns from the kitchens, and even a little cup full of sugar. They would be eating well at Rosy’s house tonight, and for a long time to come if this standard of pay kept up.

Outside, Celestia saw the usual file of workers trickling out of the estate’s front gates. The Sun had drifted far enough to the west that it was below the artificial horizon created by the clouds overhead, meaning darkness had set in. The opening in the clouds just didn’t let enough light through for a proper evening. Celestia found Trinity, Wickerlock and Capstan waiting by the gates. The white earth pony saw her coming first, and at the sight of Celestia’s bulging bag of food, Trinity’s jaw dropped.

She recovered herself in time to talk before Celestia could get all of the way over. “Well, I’ll be. It looks to me like she actually got the Lord’s ear.”

“Tia?” Wickerlock turned around to see her coming in, and his eyes opened as wide as saucers. “You actually got yourself into the house?”

“It wasn’t even that hard,” Celestia replied, skipping in the last couple of steps to land right in their group. “It was your help, Trinity, that I actually should thank most. As of today, the Lord Fastidious has a new scrivener. And we get all of the benefits associated with that.” She opened up her bag to show them all her haul.

“That’s a sight if I’ve ever seen one,” Capstan said, giving her a congratulatory slap on the back of the neck. “Not bad for a day’s work, not bad at all.”

“I guess you've proved me wrong,” Trinity agreed. “What exactly does that entail, doing all of his... scrivening, or whatever you call it?”

“Accounting work for the most part. How much goes in and how much comes out. Whose dues and salaries are ahead of schedule and whose are behind. And of course keeping track of the inventories for the harvest going on right now. In fact, I didn’t even need to tell Fastidious how to improve his operation. All I needed to do was fix up his books for him, and that was all he needed to see.”

Seeing the smiles that lit up on all of her friend’s faces as she detailed all that her day had entailed put a nice warmth into her heart too. They would all share in the riches that she’d brought back, after all.

“Wait until Rosy sees some of this!” Capstan said, excitedly holding up the sugar. “Why, we could have some proper baking for once. I’m sure that little Luna will enjoy that most.”

“Certainly she will,” Wickerlock replied, equally as jubilant. “Though let’s face it, none of us know what a proper dessert tastes like either. It may not be much, but it will be Moon’s Eve at the house tonight for sure.”

“Not just tonight.” Celestia offered the bag to him so that everything could be returned to its safe place. “It’s not like this is a signing bonus or anything. I’ll be bringing home food like this for the future as far as I can see.” Wickerlock looked about ready to faint at that news, and admittedly even Celestia could barely believe it as she said the words. So suddenly, everything had changed for them. There was hope in Discord’s Equestria, it seemed.

“Well, hopefully you all enjoy that,” Trinity said, sounding a little forlorn. They had walked out of the orchard, and had reached the fork in the road where she usually departed, heading off for wherever she made her home. “I suppose that I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

She split from the group with a little wave, and started walking off, but Celestia knew that she couldn’t let that stand. She had Trinity to thank for her new position as much as any other, and certainly it couldn’t be right to let her friend have only another night of apples in the cold.

“Wait, Trinity!” Celestia called, causing the earth pony to stop and turn around, still looking listless. “Would you like to come stay with us for the night?” Celestia asked, looking around at the others to make sure that they approved. Neither Wickerlock or Capstan voiced any objections.

Trinity shook her head right away. “Nah, you go on, I’ll be fine. I wouldn’t want to impose on what’s certainly going to be a special night.”

“Well, that’s just it, though,” Celestia said, trotting over to where Trinity was standing on the path. To be fair, Trinity had never told her precisely what her accommodations were like, but Celestia would bet her horn that it wasn’t anything close to what they were going to be having tonight. “You’re a friend, and I do appreciate what you’ve done to allow this to happen. It would put a damper on our celebration knowing that you were out there wishing to be a part of it.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you,” Trinity replied, offering Celestia a warm hug. “Of course I have to accept it if you won’t take no for an answer. I guess that I’ll finally get a chance to meet this Rosy pony that you’re always going on about. And little Luna too.”

Celestia offered her a conspiratorial look. “I think that Luna will get along just fine with you. She spends all day cooped up in the house after all. Just the chance to see an unfamiliar face will probably make her night all on its own.”

“Sounds fun. Let's be off then, I guess.” Trinity gave her a wink. “Unless you want to stand around trying to convince me until it’s time for work tomorrow?”

For an instant, Celestia could only give her a blank, confused look. Then Trinity started laughing, and all of them joined in. Finding work at the orchard had been great, and having some relative security in their survival was nice too. But even in spite of the treasure that she was carrying home with her tonight, somehow Celestia felt that knowing Trinity was the real reward of these past few days.

Rosy greeted them at the door as usual, a pot of water ready to go in the fire pit, with some more potatoes waiting beside it. While their pay was all in apples, Rosy and Luna went about to the market squares while they worked, trading around until they found some other food. A little variety went a long way. Even for that reason alone, tonight’s feast was going to taste even better.

“Aunt Rosy,” Celestia said as soon as the door was opened. “This is Trinity. Do you remember that I was talking about her a few days ago?”

“Why, of course, dear,” Rosy exclaimed, coming down the steps to pump Trinity’s hoof a couple of times. “I can’t say that we’ll have much to offer you, but the door is always open to a friend.”

“Well,” Trinity said, directing Rosy’s gaze over to the bulging sack that Celestia was still carrying. “Tonight you might have a little more than you thought.”

Rosy’s eyes lit up when she saw inside the bag. “Flour? Oil? And is this sugar? My, I feel like I’m about to faint!” From the sudden paleness in her face, Celestia felt like she really meant that. “Tell me that you didn’t knock over a merchant on the way back home?”

“Of course not, Rosy!” Capstan said. “What sort of villains do you think that we are? Celestia here earned herself a promotion, and the increase in pay that comes along with it. That said, we are starving just like normal. Let’s get this stuff on the fire, why don’t we?”

From the questioning way that Rosy was looking at her, Celestia knew that she would have to be telling the whole story after dinner was done. But at least Rosy was quick to take the sack and trot back inside, unloading everything right away in the kitchen area, and getting started on sorting things out. Celestia gestured Trinity inside.

“It’s an expansive place, at least,” her friend said once she was over the threshold. “It probably gets pretty cold in here at night.”

“That’s why we sleep over there.” Celestia indicated the cozy little arrangement of beds and covers that was sitting in the corner. Just as usual, as soon as she was inside the house and not seeing Luna, that little ball of anxiety formed in the pit of her stomach. Usually, if she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, Luna was hiding in the covers. She started walking that way.

“You’re pretty lucky to have found someplace safe,” Trinity said, following along behind her by about half a step.

Celestia tried to peer over the covers of the nearest bed, but Luna wasn’t in that one. Her anxiety crept up a bit. “Safe? I suppose. We still have to blockade the door every night, just in case brigands come by looking for something to steal.” She stepped in behind the first frame, to find her and Wickerlock’s empty sheets there. Still no sign of her sister.

“Well, you should count yourself lucky anyway.” Trinity ran a hoof over the blankets as she walked by, lingering for a moment on them. Rosy had made all of the quilts herself in her younger years, when sewing had been her trade. “I know a lot of ponies who would be jealous of living quarters like these.”

Celestia rounded the pair of bed frames to get into the back of the sleeping area, nestled into the deep recesses of the chamber’s corner. There were three final beds here: Capstan’s, Rosy’s, and Luna’s, smaller than all of the others but slowly getting larger as the years went on. Celestia could still remember the years of Luna’s crib, dark as they were. Tonight though, the ball of anxiety rose up into her throat as she came around the corner, and then dissipated all at once. Luna was safe in her bed, the cover tucked up under her chin, fast asleep. Rosy must have given her something to eat earlier, or else she surely would have been eager for their supper now.

Trinity saw her relax her shoulders. “This would be Luna then. My, she is quite the adorable little filly, isn’t she?”

Celestia sat down gently on the edge of her own resting spot, careful so as to not creak the wood and cause her sister to wake up. Luna looked so content as she lay there, the lids of her big eyes drawn down, the tufts of her dark blue mane curling around her horn. She looked peaceful, just as any filly her age should know every day.

“She’s perfect,” Celestia whispered, reaching out a hoof almost to stroke her sister’s hair, but then thinking better of it and only letting her leg rest on the frame. “Some day she will have to understand the way that the world works, just like all of us already do. However, the later that I can make that day, the better for her it will be.”

Trinity set herself down on the edge of Capstan’s bed, again very gently. There was a silence for a second, save for the very light sound of Luna’s breaths, before she spoke up again. “I never knew what it would be like to have a sibling. Mother and Father… well, I can barely remember them now. I was really young when we had to separate. For so long, all that I had to care about was myself.” She offered Celestia a look, her eyes open and curious, with just a hint of a smile. “It’s different when you have somepony else to care for, isn’t it?”

“Surely you have friends that you’ve made over the years?”

Trinity nodded. “A few, but never for long. We always have to go our separate ways, never staying around for more than a year at most. With this job, maybe things will be different, but I don’t know. You’ve got a whole group you can depend on though.”

Celestia turned her eyes back to her sister, though she didn’t really study Luna’s face. More so she was looking in that general direction, at nothing in particular. “Finding Rosy and the others was luck. But you’re right, Luna is different. She’s family, all that I have left. I couldn’t bear to lose her, not ever.”

Celestia felt a hoof on her shoulder, and looked up to see Trinity now standing there. “You won’t, Celestia. While you’re here to protect her, your sister has nothing to fear. Not a thing.” She had on a warm smile, and all at once the two of them came together in a soft hug.

“Thanks a lot,” Celestia said, feeling like she was on the verge of tears, for some reason. “Thanks for being a friend, Trinity.”

“Don’t mention it,” the white earth pony returned, letting go. “I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand the bond that you and Luna have, but I know enough to see that it’s something Equestria needs more of.”

As she came back onto her four hooves, Celestia offered Trinity a gentle laugh. Those tears seemed to have retreated, for the moment at least. “It’s stressful, but it’s absolutely worth it. And now, thanks to Fastidious, I can make sure that she will have the foalhood that every pony deserves.”

The two of them began their walk back out into the open space of the main hall. A delectable aroma was now wafting over from the kitchen, and one whiff set Celestia’s mouth watering. It was almost a shame that she was going to have to save some for Luna to enjoy afterward.

“About that,” Trinity said once they were safely away from Luna’s range of hearing. “You said before that the job was mostly a matter of organizing Fastidious’s accounts?”

“Yes, that’s about it. I imagine that I may have to copy out a memo or two for him now and then, but for the most part it’s all figures.”

“Did you happen to get an impression of how the orchard was faring?” Trinity continued, casual.

Celestia didn’t really want to be thinking about work right now, but even so the question wasn’t a difficult one.

“Well, I think that you were right about the tension at the top, if the ease with which I was able to secure the position meant anything. Fastidious’s previous scrivener was skimming off the accounts, and the mechanical failures about the place have been cutting into the production deliveries.” She tried to focus on what she remembered from the ledgers, but the smell of the warm buns toasting on the kitchen fire was blurring everything out. “Sorry, Trinity, but honestly I’m too hungry to think about any of that right now.”

“Of course,” Trinity said, a grin back on her face, though Celestia noticed a subtle wobble in her hooves, a sign that Trinity’s hunger was getting the best of her too. “I shouldn’t be so concerned about the security of that place, especially now with you in charge of the books. Now let’s celebrate!”

In the kitchen, Wickerlock pulled two of the buns off the fire, and Celestia took them both with her magic, along with a couple of boiled potatoes from their usual supply. The texture of the dough was crisp and fluffy, and oh-so deliciously warm. If this was to be every meal for the rest of her life, then Celestia would take them with pleasure.

Afterward, as she had known she would, Rosy made her recount every detail of the story, right down to the gritty details about the insides of the Lord’s Manor.

Full and contented, now Celestia had no issue in remembering, and indeed she had to answer questions from all four of them until long after the meal was done. Interestingly enough, Trinity’s questions were mostly in the same vein as before, focusing on details of what she’d seen in the account books, but clearly Trinity wanted to be sure that her pay was going to keep coming regularly. Well, if Celestia had any say about it, she would make sure that it did.

Chapter 16: Wilted Cabbage

“Every year winter comes and the green things all die. Why is it that we Earth Ponies allow ourselves to become so attached to things that we know we are going to lose?”

Terraria, Master of the Order of Earth

In the weeks that followed Wind’s speech in the square, he felt like things had improved at least a little bit. Ponies didn’t stare quite so much when he walked through town, though he still detected a distinct humour in many of the townsfolk whenever he was having a conversation with them. They may not yet believe everything that he had to say about Cloudsdale, but at least they were willing to accept that he wasn’t crazy, and that was a very livable first step.

He spent most of that time on Sycamore’s farm anyway, helping out wherever the family let him. The roof was the primary job that still needed work done, with batches of new tiles arriving every morning, and whole afternoons spent nailing them to the new timbers and boards that made up the structure. Naturally, since the damage was his fault in the first place, Wind wanted to be sure that it was repaired as well as possible.

“It’s a real shame that I still can’t fly right now,” he said, hefting another load of tiles off of the wagon and starting the trek back to the estate.

Sycamore lifted her own bundle of tiles beside him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t you flying what broke the roof to begin with?” The wind caught the strands of her flaxen mane and threw them over her shoulder, like grass blowing in the wind.

“I wasn’t really flying,” Wind said defensively. “Trust me, when I can take these bandages off, I’ll show you what a real pegasus of Cloudsdale can do. You know that we take flying ability very seriously up there.”

“Serious enough that you saw no problem with venturing out at night into the middle of a storm?” The question had a twist of challenge in it, but one look at Sycamore’s eyes revealed that she was anything but seriously asking. More playful ribbing.

“That’s different. There was quite a lot going on that influenced my decisions that night. Trust me that nopony in their right mind would have followed me if they knew what was going to happen.”

As they came around back of the house and into the yard, which was now mostly smoothed over again, the crater of Wind’s impact forgotten, Fern was there to meet them, sweat dripping from his brow.

“I’ll take those if you don’t mind,” he said cheerfully, extending a hoof over to Wind’s bundle.

Wind gave the tiles over. “You know you don’t have to come down for me, right? I can carry those up the ladder for you, and you could go right on with the roofing work.”

“You sure?” Fern called back, advancing up the ladder slowly as he grasped the bundle with one leg while pulling himself up with the other. To Wind it actually looked rather ridiculous, though he supposed that was just how earth ponies got things done. So many things became a lot harder when a pony wasn’t able to fly. “I’m trying to stay easy on you. After all, the doc said that you shouldn’t exert yourself too much while you heal up.”

“I can use a ladder, Fern,” Wind noted dryly.

“Have you ever used one before? How would you know?” the earth pony answered, laughing to himself after having said it. He picked up his hammer right away and went back to nailing on the roof tiles, the banging of the hammer cutting off any chance Wind had to retort. Grimacing, he started heading back to the wagon to pick up another bundle.

Having delivered her own stack, Sycamore trotted up behind him a second or so later. “Hey, I hope that you’re not letting him get to you. Fern’s just a little, well, set in his ways.”

“And what ways would those be, exactly?” Wind muttered, less than thrilled at the crack. “He acts like I’m the first pegasus that he’s ever met.”

It was hard to remember but there were other pegasi around the town, though not a whole lot of them. Most were weather workers on assignment here from Canterlot, and from them Wind had at least been able to learn the relative position of Southoofton in the general scope of the world. None of them had ever heard of Cloudsdale either, though.

“Well, in a way, you kind of are, Wind,” Sycamore said. “Yes, we’ve met pegasi before, but never anypony like you. To most farmers, pegasi are simply coworkers. They show up every so often with the rain, and then we don’t hear from them again for a while. Especially these past few years, that while can be a really long time. You’re the first one that we’ve ever had wake up with us in the morning and, well, help tile a roof. It’s a different experience. Frankly, I’m surprised that you’ve integrated so well to our way of living.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I imagine living in Cloudsdale is surely nothing like down here on the surface.” Sycamore let her gaze drift skyward, as if searching for the city somewhere off on the horizon. “For example, when you lived in Cloudsdale, when did you wake up in the morning?”

“With the sunrise, generally,” he replied as if it was obvious. “There’s not much of a nightlife in the city.” Not much in Pega’s Perch, at least. Once, he, Shine and Tin had ventured into the Undercity late one summer’s evening, and there had been plenty there to keep them entertained from dusk till dawn, if they had any money to spare at least.

Wind’s answer didn’t look like it had been what she had been hoping for. “Okay, well how about the work, then? I don’t think that you had ever said what your profession was back in the city.”

“Oh, well I didn’t have one yet. I was actually supposed to choose it in a month.” He decided to leave out the fact that waiting until you had to choose something to do was decidedly irregular. “I was still studying for the most part.”

“Well, there you go! I’m sure that a student’s life in the city must be completely different than the way that things are down here. I don’t mean to offend, but I’ll bet you haven’t been worked like we’ve done you for in years!” Having reached the wagon again, she picked up another bundle of tiles as if to emphasize her point. “And yet you haven’t even complained, not once.”

“How could you expect me to?” Wind asked, accepting another bundle as she passed it to him. “On top of everything else that you’re going through, especially when a good chunk of the work has been caused by me in the first place? I was raised better than to be ungrateful in a circumstance like this.”

Sycamore flashed him a sharp grin in response. “Well, it’s appreciated all the same. Things could get tense around here before, when we had nothing better to do than make-work and wish for rain. You’ve kept things light, and even Fern appreciates that, though he’d never tell you. I just hope that you can get over all of the… well, inconveniences that come from our current position.”

Wind put down his bundle by the side of the road so that he could take hold of Sycamore’s shoulder, turning her around to look her straight in the eyes. “Sycamore,” he said, completely serious. “My major inconvenience right now is not being able to fly. But if I was forced into that position, then having to endure with your family has been the best way that I could have done it. I can’t say that I don’t wish I was back in Cloudsdale, but I can say that I’m happy to be here with you.”

Despite the heartfelt speech, Sycamore simply rolled her eyes. “A simple thank you would have sufficed, alright?” She picked up her tiles again. “But I appreciate knowing that all the same.”

As she started walking back toward the house again, she left Wind standing still for a moment, wondering. What had he been trying to do just then? He wanted to be sure that Sycamore knew he was serious about how thankful he was for her help. But she was right, a simple thank you would have sufficed very well for that. For some reason he had wanted to look into her eyes as he said it, though. Those beautiful green eyes framed by her golden hair. Wind shook himself. He had just gotten through convincing everypony that he wasn’t crazy. That would have been bad enough if he didn’t start over again now.

He was just about to follow after Sycamore when he heard a rapid clopping of hooves approaching over his shoulder. When he turned, he could see a little cloud of dust rising over the meadow that led into town. At the front of the cloud, running as quick as his hooves could carry him, was a short white earth pony with a closely-clipped tan mane stretched out behind him as he ran.

It was Cattail, one of Sarsaparilla’s sons, and actually well into his middle years, though he was short enough that you could mistake him for a young adult. Wind studied him as he came in, but couldn’t quite tell what news was bringing the stallion over by the look on his face. Cattail just looked exhausted, like he had run all of the way to Canterlot and back in order to get his news.

“Oh, Wind,” Cattail exclaimed as he came to a sliding stop astride the wagon, his voice the sound of a tinkling stream. The plume of dust that had been following after him swept over the pair of them for a second before settling down again. “Sycamore and her family are still around right?”

“Yeah, they’re just out back,” he returned, gesturing to the house. “Is everything okay, Cattail?”

“You know what? I can’t say that I know anymore. But I’ve got some news that they’re definitely gonna’ want to hear.” Cattail leaned himself up against the wagon to get his breath back. “Would you mind fetching her if that’s not too much trouble?”

As if on cue, Sycamore stuck her head around the side of the house. “I see you, Cattail. What’s got you and yours all riled up like this? Has the old fella finally decided to go dry from now on?”

Cattail shook his head, forgoing the witty quip that members of his family usually saved for comments on their father’s habits. “This is a lot more important. The Old Lady is calling it quits.”

Sycamore put a hoof up to her mouth, prior snark gone. “Amber? And her whole clan with her?”

The white stallion nodded emphatically. “They’ve been packing their things up for the whole morning, and I expect that they’ll be taking their leave soon. In any event, Golden is selling off everything that they can’t take with them right now in the village square.”

Sycamore cast an anxious look back over toward the homestead, weighing her options, while Wind watched on, curious. He'd met Amber Waves on his first introductory trip through the town, and her impression was one that he wouldn’t soon forget. Her and the family underneath her must have made up something close to half of Southoofton’s remaining population. There wouldn’t even be much of a town left without them.

Sycamore set her chin. “Fern can deal with things for now. Thanks for the heads-up, Cattail.” She motioned for Wind to drop his tiles. “Come on. We need to see if we can stop this.”

“Stop it?” He fell in beside her as the three began a steady jog back the direction that Cattail had come. “Surely it’s the family’s right to sell the things that they’ve accrued over the years, especially if they’re moving on.”

Sycamore scowled. “Not the sale! We have to convince Amber to stay on! If her clan heads for Canterlot, it’s the nail in the coffin for the rest of Southoofton. There’s almost nothing left without her.” Her voice boomed with concern as they picked up the pace.

Up ahead, the village started to materialize over the dust of the meadow, and Wind could see a long line of carts and wagons stretching out of town to the north. Ponies were milling about the line, cinching harnesses and packing away the last few odds and ends that would fit on the carts. None of them looked particularly happy to be out doing it. As they grew closer, a fast-talking voice came to their ears, too.

“Forty-five to you sir, I hear fifty, do I hear fifty? Fifty, I hear fifty for this a’ beautiful set of crockery! Fifty, good! Can I get fifty-five?” Around a corner, and the crowd at the center of the square came into view, with Golden standing above them on a large wire spool, a wagon load of odds and ends behind him. It looked like the whole area had gathered, but Sycamore didn’t head that way. Instead she went straight to the head of the wagon train, there to find Amber wearing a black shawl and inspecting the wheels of her lead wagon with an exacting gravity.

The old mare saw them coming from a ways off. “A pleasant afternoon to you, Sycamore,” she said, offering them a very slight bow. “It’s good that I should be able to offer you farewell today.”

“Amber, why didn’t you tell me that you were planning on going?” Sycamore said, respectful but with an air of challenge.

“Apart from the fact that I knew you’d try to convince me to stay?” Amber went back to looking over the wheel, tapping the spokes with her hoof to be sure that there were no hidden cracks. “Honestly, I woke up this morning and something in me just knew that there wasn’t much point in going on anymore. I told my lads that we were done, and there weren’t any objections. We probably should have left weeks ago, if a pony with a lick of sense was in charge of things.”

“But what about your estate? What about your garden? Your family was the one that founded this town so many moons ago. Is that all just going to go away?”

“I’m plenty sorry to see it go,” Amber said wistfully. “Especially since I expect that Cotton will be the one to snap it up. But he can have it if he wants. See what he can do with it. I told Golden just last night, ‘I ain’t never seen such a sorry excuse for a farm.’ Sure, it ain’t our fault, but we’re swimming against the river’s current. I guess today I decided that I’m not going to fight it anymore.”

Sycamore raised her hoof to punctuate another point, but Amber cut her off. “Sorry, but after all this work, you sure ain’t convincing me to unpack it all again, Sycamore. I’ve always appreciated your spirit, but I know in my bones that this is what I’m doing. Ain’t no pony going to convince me otherwise.”

After giving the wheel one more tap, Amber turned around with a satisfied nod. “We still have a minute or two until Golden gets everything wrapped up in the square. Let’s talk about something happier.” She eyed Wind up and down. “Has she made a proper pony out of you yet, boy?”

Wind shook his head. “No, ma’am. Well, yes, I mean. Er, I think I’m a proper pony already, or at least I should hope so…”

Amber interrupted him with a throaty laugh. “I am going to regret not being able to see how things wrap up with the two of you. If you think that today is a heartfelt goodbye, well…” She wiped a tear out of her eye. Beside him, Wind could see Sycamore flushed with embarrassment. It had only been a momentary fluster from him, but Amber was an important pony after all. He would have to make it up to her later.

“Oh, there’s that as well, I guess.” Amber pointed to the northwestern horizon, at nothing in particular, or at least nothing visible. “That way-ish, Mr. Wind, unless you pegasi moved it in the last two hundred years. If my Old Mare’s memory holds, over that horizon you’ll find Cloudsdale.”

Elated by the news, Wind gave her a respectful bow. “Thank you very much.” He wanted to say something else that could perhaps convince her to stay, but could tell from the set of her jaw that it wouldn’t do much good. “All the best for your family’s future.”

There was a shout from the square behind them. “That about wraps us up here, folks! Thank you all for your hospitality and may we meet again in wetter times! Now the road to Canterlot is long, so we shall be away!”

Amber looked up when she heard, and Wind glanced in the same direction. He saw the crowd in the square dispersing, with Golden cantering quickly up the line of wagons. He flashed them a big grin, and Amber nodded in return.

“Don’t worry about us by the way,” Amber said, clambering up into the wagon’s front seat. Two of her grandsons were hitched to the front, and they each looked up at her waiting for the signal to head off. But the old earth pony leaned over the side, a scrap of parchment clutched in her hooves. “If you ever find yourself in the area around Canterlot, you can look us up here. Something tells me that we’ll be meeting again real soon, Sycamore. Until then, it’s been good to know you.”

Sycamore reached forward and took the note. “Farewell, Amber.” Wind said the same, and then Amber nodded down to her grandsons, and the wagon train lurched away, one after another down the dusty road that led away to the north.

It was flat as far as the eye could see, probably green and gold in previous years, but just dirty brown now. Each wagon team that passed by the two of them offered a wave, which Sycamore and Wind dutifully returned, but soon enough they had all gone by, becoming nothing but a rapidly dwindling dark line receding away into the horizon. Even so Sycamore stayed there looking after them for some minutes more, until the last visible cloud of dust had settled.

“Another one gone,” she whispered. “Another heart, another soul dried up under this weather.” She turned around and started walking back to the village, her slow and plodding steps dejected.

Wind settled in beside her, thinking hard on the predicament. Up ahead, he could see the square again, and could tell that it looked emptier, sparser than it had before. It wasn’t a particularly lively place even on the best of days now, but this was different. He’d been to funerals in his time up in Cloudsdale, but never had there been anything close to this level of dread in the air. Ponies were sad, sure, but they laughed and cried afterward, and did their best to get on with life. But nopony had passed away in Southoofton. Instead, he realized, it was their life itself that was dying. And that meant that there was nothing to get back to. Nothing to distract from the inevitability that they would all eventually take the same dusty road off into parts unknown.

It was a real shame, but could he do anything to fix it? There were already pegasi here on the surface doing everything that they could to make the rains come and there was little he could help with there. Yet, even so, one look at Sycamore’s face and Wind knew that he had to do something. Pegasi weren’t supposed to believe in destiny. Your life was what you made of it, in service to the tribe. Yet whether fate had somehow spun him into Sycamore’s life, or chance had decided his fall, none of that changed what he had to do today.

“Come on,” Wind said, trotting up in front of Sycamore, a bright smile on his face. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Sycamore’s eyes rose to meet his, but she didn’t match his grin. “Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere off on our own.” He tossed his mane in the air as he trotted along, letting it dance as it would if he were flying. “Somewhere we can get away for a while.”

She didn’t look convinced. “I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip, “Fern is going to need some help with the roof again soon.”

“Oh, I’m sure that he’ll be fine.” Wind spied a low hillock in the offing, set apart from the town and Sycamore’s homestead by a couple of miles or so. The path to get there crossed a low gully too.

“Come on, I’ll race you to that hill,” he said, pointing out the spot. Without waiting for a response, he took off running. One look back at the road revealed Sycamore standing for a moment, but eventually following, not nearly at a quick enough pace to catch him though. Wind was a flier by heart, of course, but pegasi still knew how to use their hooves.

Wind moderated his pace on the way to the hill, so that he only had to wait twenty seconds or so at the top before Sycamore trotted up. “Ohh,” he said, tapping his hoof impatiently as she arrived. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want this to be a race.”

“Wind, what are you talking about? Why would I want to race you?” Sycamore took a breath as she arrived on top of the hill, but she didn’t look winded in the slightest.

He scanned the horizon, searching for their next point of interest. “How about… because the loser has to feed the pigs tonight?”

Sycamore’s eyes perked up. “Seriously? You don’t know the first thing about feeding the pigs.”

That much was true, but Wind had heard both she and Fern complaining about it nearly every night that they had to do it, so he had figured it was something that Sycamore would want to get out of, if she could. “I told you that I would pitch in if I could. And besides, pegasi take races seriously, as I’ve let you know. I don’t expect that I’ll have to do it, especially if this race is anything like the last one.”

Sycamore lowered her eyebrows, looking motivated for the first time. “Those are fighting words, mister. You’re so sure of yourself in the earth pony’s domain? There’s no flying over the obstacles down here, you know.”

“How about the old pond?” he asked, indicating the spot that she had shown him those few nights ago. “Last one there is a rotten bean.”

One of her eyebrows cranked right back up at the expression. “We say wilted cabbage down here, but I think that I can understand where that one must come from. In any event, you’re on. And you’d better get ready to learn about the pigs too.”

“I’ll give you a fair start this time,” he said, bending his knees to get down into the starting position. “On your marks, get set, hey—!” Sycamore had taken off on the second notice, and this time it was clear that she wasn’t leaving anything behind at the starting line. Wind dashed off after the cloud of dust that was marking the earth pony’s progress.

As he ran, Wind got a much better memory of what it had been like to fly up in Cloudsdale, the wind free and clear in his face, rippling over his mane, and not a care in the world aside from the pony in front of him. He caught up pretty quickly, but as soon as Sycamore saw him she put on another burst of speed, and he had to give it his all just to catch up. She was quick, no doubt about it. Perhaps he would end up doing the chores after all.

They both made it to the pond in a flurried cloud of dust, and when things settled Wind was spread in the dirt, his front legs stretched out in front of him from his final leap to the finish. But in the absence of an official goal line, it was impossible to tell who had gotten there first. Far more important than that, though, was that when Wind looked up to find Sycamore standing over him, she was smiling again.

“Well, gee,” she said, eying him laying there, “I can’t make heads or tails of this finish! Do we need a rubber match?”

“Nah, it’s alright, I think that you got it.” He got up to his hooves slowly, catching his breath at the same time. “You sure can move for an earth pony, and in Cloudsdale we learn to be honourable in our defeats. A race well-run.”

Out of habit, he extended a hoof out to her for the traditional post-race tap, but of course Sycamore only gave him a puzzled look before taking hold of his hoof and shaking it instead.

She held that shake for a little while, looking into his face, the bright Sun overhead radiant in her mane, and that beautiful smile lighting up her face. “Thanks a lot, Wind,” she said as she let go, looking much happier than before. “For all of that. I know we’re probably not the most gracious of hosts that you’ve ever met, but well, I appreciate all that you’ve done.”

“Think nothing of it,” he replied, starting off on the walk back up to the house. Up ahead, he could make out Fern still hard at work on the roof. The Sun was almost right overhead, just about time for lunch. “I promised to pitch in didn’t I? And if all of you think that I’m not going to be any good at chores, then I guess that I’ve got to find something else to be good at.”

Sycamore nudged him in the shoulder as they walked. “Well, you’d better start learning about the chores soon. You are going to be going out in the pigpen tonight. Since we tied, I suppose that I can show you the ropes, but you’d best believe it’s your hooves that are going to be getting dirty.”

Wind exaggerated his grimace, but only slightly. That was one problem with dirt that he hadn’t really thought about while up in the clouds. But surely there was a good answer for that too.

Chapter 18: Just Politics

“History is written by the bold.”

Pensive Prose

Canterlot was peaceful at night, and also pleasantly cool, owing to the gentle breezes that Luna ensured were always blowing through the capital. Perhaps, if Celestia actually wanted to see any movement on this issue, she ought to seat the Senate during the night instead. Surely tempers wouldn’t run so hot if everypony wasn’t overheating in the first place. Of course, after working such a long day, expecting anypony to stay up for more Senate business was very much impossible. Tonight, at least, Luna was thankful that the halls of the palace were mostly deserted.

She had shadowed Pensive around the Senate’s wing for most of the afternoon, always staying back at a discreet distance as he walked in the halls with his colleagues, or sat in conference with them to write more meaningless amendments to his bill. She hadn’t seen anything that looked untoward over the course of that time, but the more that she had thought about Vermilion’s words, the more they had made sense to her. It was only natural that Pensive had to be up to his neck in something dirty, else why subject everypony else in the government to a scheme so clearly doomed to failure? Somehow, he was profiting off of the paralysis gripping the chamber, and if only Luna knew how, then she could end this miserable ordeal and get back to the work that mattered.

If there was any evidence to be found, Luna knew where she would keep it. Somewhere out of sight, yet still close by, and as closely guarded as possible. That was why she was now silently stalking the hallway of the Senate’s east wing, eying the big wooden door that marked the entrance to Pensive’s office suite.

A pair of palace guards rounded the hallway’s corner ahead, and Luna deftly ducked into a nook. A Princess she may be now, but once upon a time Luna had lived in the shadows, and lessons like those always stuck with a pony, no matter where their life ended up taking them. She tried not to think of Eridian whenever possible, filling her days with work and the inspiring sights of Equestria rising out of its former mire, but a three hundred year life had to include at least some downtime. Once upon a time, a dark nook or a sheltered alley had been her only defense from the dangers of the night. That and Celestia, always there to watch over her for as long as she could remember. The skills of a street urchin didn’t find much use in the place that Equestria had become, and for that Luna was proud. But they still came in handy on occasion.

The pair of guards passed by, whispering idly between each other, so close that Luna could hear the words passing between them. Naturally, they were discussing the protests outside. Those had only grown as the day had gone on, and even now a veritable crowd of citizens had claimed the square for the night, sure to take up their chants once more as soon as the Sun cleared the horizon. At least for now the scene remained peaceful, and Luna prayed that it would hold. The ponies out there had a right to expect some help with their situations, and above all Luna didn’t want the fervour Vermilion had shown her to spread.

But in order to get there, she needed to get the Senate another speaker. With the palace guards now safely out of sight, Luna took a few silent steps down the hallway, until she was standing just in front of the door to Pensive’s office suite. It was locked, naturally, but she had a way to deal with that. Drawing one of the pins that she used to hold her mane up, she set it to the lock. Another life lesson that Eridian had taught her. Locks in the palace couldn’t be opened with mere magic, and lock picking tools were firmly regulated. But sometimes such things were necessary. After a minute, she was in.

The office suite was large, with two desks for the speaker’s assistants at the back of a big room dotted about with decorative sculptures and tables piled up with legal parchments. On any given day, this room would be filled with activity, acting on its own as another security system against anypony trying to sneak into the back. Now, it was hanging in an eerie state of suspension, the tables still full and messy, as if the ponies in the room had simply vanished while at their jobs. Outside, the clip-clop of hooves going by announced another guard patrol, but they passed on too. So long as she was quiet, none of them should notice, but even so Luna wanted to be done with her business as soon as possible. Getting caught going through a senator’s files would throw another unwelcome spanner into the already fragile works.

The inner office was airy and dark, the blinds drawn down over the windows. The light of the stars put just a little bit of a halo under those blinds, providing enough light for Luna to see by without using her magic, but even so she would be unable to review any documents in this gloom. She could either strike up a light with her magic and hope nopony saw, or else open the blinds herself and hope again that nopony outside noticed. After a moment’s thought, she strode over to the window and opened the blind slightly, just about a foot and a half. That let in enough light for her to scan things, at least.

With that accomplished, she turned to the tall filing cabinet that stood like a sentinel in the room’s corner. A gentle tug on the top drawer revealed that it was unlocked. A dozen page dividers stuck up from the stack of documents inside, but the labels weren’t very helpful. She would just have to scan through each parchment herself. If there was any incriminating information here, it was entirely possible that Pensive would hide it with something benign, but reading through everything would take her until the morning. Instead, Luna picked out the first section of pages and walked over to the desk. She had always preferred to skim government documents anyway.

Jupiter was especially bright tonight, perched atop the five stars of Regia’s crown like a shining ruby in the night sky. Once oriented to it, Celestia gave the immediate area a quick scan with her telescope.

The constellation was just barely rising over the eastern horizon, still waiting to be joined by bright Antares when the month was finished. That star making itself visible would mark the beginning of the harvest season, and if Equestria hadn’t made itself ready by then, this year’s could very well be the last.

The telescope was a beautiful construction, a cylinder of brass filled with precisely ground mirrors and lenses, a gift that Luna had given her on her two hundredth birthday. From her perch on her balcony, the elder Princess could survey most of the night sky, only missing the low western horizon. Sometimes, she would look out at the ground around the city too, even up north to the beginnings of the North Range, or over the endless moonlit dunes of the east, always in the vain hope of spying something other than the windswept hills of sand. But most nights, Celestia kept the telescope pointed firmly skyward.

She might spend all of the rest of the day buried in paperwork, or deep in study, presiding over the Senate or mediating discussions, but no matter what Celestia always made time for her evening stargazing.

Looking out into the infinite depths of space had always brought her a sense of calm, perhaps in understanding that whatever difficulties were besetting her here in the city, they were ultimately nothing in the vastness of the cosmos.

Tonight, though, peaceful and cool as the evening was, that calm was proving elusive. After nearly an entire day lecturing the Senate on the infinitesimal details of the night sky, it wasn’t helping her to look at it more. Each glimpse only took her back to the floor again, and to feeling foolish for how she had spent her day.

With a sigh, Celestia set about packing up the telescope, removing it from its tripod and carefully nestling it back into its carrying case. Foolish was perhaps a strong word, especially given that everything she and Luna were doing was necessary to avoid the calamity that would surely result from Pensive’s measure becoming law. But it still felt wrong for her to be spending her time actively obstructing Senate business instead of working on a better solution for the thousands of ponies who were counting on her.

She had Luna to rely on, hopefully. Her mission to crack open the Senate was the only way that the logjam was going to be resolved. Yet still Celestia didn’t like it. If her sister had any free time, she would be up in the mountains again, hard at work on finding an answer. Right now, it was Celestia with all of the time in the world, but what was she doing with it? What was there to do? Her first instinct was to burrow into her library, find some inspiration somewhere in history, and craft a bill that could sweep through the Senate and avert the oncoming tragedy. But Pensive and his schemes were standing in the way of that. It was maddening, being unable to help when she could see the disaster of the future inching inexorably closer day by day.

At any rate, what she needed to do right now was find some way to relax, otherwise she would never get any sleep. Just through the arch and in the tower’s hall, she returned the telescope’s case to its spot on the wall. Without any hesitation, Celestia went straight across to her study, and pulled out her northern research. It would take time, but maybe if she filled her head with Star Swirl’s mysteries again, it would be enough of a distraction to let her forget about the Senate long enough to fall asleep.

To some extent, it was a torturous endeavour to go through that history again, to see the tale of the Unicorn Kingdom’s fall played out on the page. Gripped by the Sunless Summer, starving and distrustful, the tribes’ bonds of fellowship had disintegrated, and they had wandered south in search of any hope that they could find. As bad as Equestria’s situation was, Celestia still couldn’t envy Star Swirl’s position. Powerless, as his nation tore itself apart before his very eyes? Perhaps he had left simply to avoid having to live it any longer.

With a wry grimace, Celestia wondered how bad things would have to get before she would follow him down that road.

She wouldn’t, not ever, and yet for some reason the thought stuck with her. What was she actually accomplishing by being in Canterlot right now? Luna needed her to stall the Senate’s votes, and of course she needed to be there to deliver her own Nay’s too. If she were gone, the Senate would find her and compel her attendance, just as she had done with Luna only days previously.

She shook her head, trying to focus again on the page of faded script in front of her, but her mind kept on going. What if they couldn’t find her? The vote wouldn’t be able to proceed without her verdict, so in essence her absence would stall the agenda more effectively than any speech. More importantly, if Luna did crack the chamber and get some sane measure up for the vote, only one Princess’s assent would be required in order to get the measure passed.

Now Celestia had to sit up, watching the flames of the candles on her desk flicker in the breeze coming in from the window as the thoughts kept coming. She wouldn’t lose anything by leaving Canterlot, but what would she gain? Time away from the city, away from duties and pressing matters that stopped her from being able to really help. Time perhaps to do something that nopony else could do.

The wind suddenly gusted through the window, sending many book pages on her desk aflutter. Celestia raptly watched the flowing scripts of ink shuffle past as the pages flipped, and in a flash she knew what she had to do. Briefly, she considered going to Luna’s tower and letting her sister know everything that she had just decided, but just as quickly she realized that she couldn’t. Nopony could know where she had gone, or else Pensive might find her and force her back to Canterlot. For this, she needed solitude. Luna already knew what she needed to do, and when all of this was over the two of them would have plenty of time to talk.

In fifteen minutes, Celestia had gotten herself prepared, with a dark pegasus’s cloak to hide herself in the night, and a canteen full of water for the journey. Climbing up to the window of her tower, she gave Canterlot below her one more look. She knew that she wouldn’t see it again until Equestria’s problems had been fixed.

“Good luck, Luna,” she whispered into the wind, and then in a single motion she extended her wings and leaped off into the night.

As Luna had expected, the files were primarily legal gibberish, made all the more difficult to understand by Pensive’s flowery script. In the dark room, it was difficult to tell how time was passing, but by the way that her eyelids began to droop more and more, Luna thought that the time must have been wearing on towards midnight. Every minute that passed was another chance for somepony to perhaps notice her absence, or that the Speaker’s office door was mysteriously unlocked. And so far nothing of what she had seen had been the least bit useful.

Now at the end of the documents in the cabinet, Luna took a moment to sit down at the desk and think. Had Vermilion sent her into a dead end? She refused to believe that. Save for the lack of evidence so far, the pieces all pointed clearly to Pensive’s guilt. The evidence just had to be here! There was only one place that she hadn’t looked.

When Luna gently tugged on the desk drawer, she realized that this one was in fact locked, which was strange, but also a little encouraging. Why would whatever was in the desk be more secret and important than the files in the cabinet? She took the pin down out of her hair again, and then stopped when she saw the lock.

Pensive had a slightly larger office than most of the other senators because he was the speaker, but other than that, the furnishings were all very standard issue. In fact, Luna had been the pony in charge of furnishing the Senate’s wing when it had been added on to the palace three centuries ago. Some of those details were a bit murky in her memory now, but she remembered the locks on the desks specifically, since the original batch had had a defect and needed to be re-ordered. The locks were all of a mid-tier craftsponyship, just like the ones on the office doors. Hardened against magic, but easily picked with the right tools.

But the one she was looking at right now had a gleaming metal finish on it, certainly far newer than the three hundred year old locks in the other desks. It looked like Pensive had had it put in only about a year ago. She still worked her pin into position, but as expected she found no purchase on the inside.

Luna settled back into the desk’s chair to think for a bit. Getting a new lock installed without authorization was against the rules, though that was only a minor infraction at worst. Naturally it only heightened her suspicions about what could lay inside the drawer. But without more sophisticated tools there was no way that she could get inside and she certainly wasn’t going to get those tools tonight. While she regretted the delay, she could be back tomorrow properly equipped, so long as Pensive didn’t suspect anything in the meantime.

Rising up from the desk, Luna ran her eyes over everything that she had touched. The cabinet was back shut and full, the top of the desk still cluttered; with a single movement she had pulled the blind back down again to plunge the room into darkness. The senator may have beaten her tonight, but she would be back.

The sound of the suite’s outer door opening, and hoofbeats on the floor made Luna whirl. Somepony else was coming in at this hour? Perhaps a guard had somehow noticed that the door was unlocked. In any event she had to hide, and fast. Glancing around quickly, she darted over behind the big clock sitting next to the door, thanking the darkness of the room in the hopes that it would help in hiding her.

The sound of hooves outside stopped, then started again, coming closer. The steady, interspersed taps indicated that there was only one pony there. Palace guards always patrolled in pairs though.

Luna held her breath as the latch on the inner door was lifted, and a lantern cast its bright corona into the office. Holding the lantern aloft with his magic was Pensive himself, looking a little disheveled with his mane tossed up over his head, though he was carrying his usual work satchel. The senator advanced into his office slowly, warily almost, and gave the area around his desk and cabinet a quick scan. Briefly, Luna considered trying to slip out behind him while his back was turned, but in that millisecond the unicorn had turned around and closed the door.

There wasn’t really any chance that she could escape without being noticed now, yet even so, Luna kept quiet, huddled in what shadow remained. Pensive didn’t look in her direction, instead walking slowly up to his desk and putting the lantern down on top of it. He shuffled through the parchments littered over the wooden surface for a moment, eventually selecting one and tucking it away into his satchel. With a smile, he started to turn around, and Luna braced herself for the confrontation, but then the senator paused. After a second, his horn glowed again, this time retrieving a complex silver key. Then, just as Luna had hoped he would, he unlocked the drawer on his desk and lifted up the stack of documents held there.

Luna didn’t waste any time. “Hey, whatcha’ looking at?” she asked casually from her hiding spot. Pensive’s neck came up straight at the sound, and he reflexively moved to put the parchments back, but Luna was faster. In the blink of an eye she had reached out with her magic and snatched the pile away from him.

Pensive turned around, his eyes following the parchments the whole way. “Your Highness, what in Equestria are you doing here?” he asked in outrage. “Those documents are private, and none of your business! Give them over at once!”

“If I were you I’d be quiet for a moment, Senator,” Luna replied, serious in spite of the elation she was feeling. Not only had she gotten whatever he was trying to hide, she now had the opportunity to privately interrogate him on the spot. “The Crown reserves the right to conduct Senate investigations, and given that you found it necessary to install additional security without authorization to protect these documents, I think that I'd like to have a look at them regardless.” She gave the stack a little wave in front of him for emphasis.

“That’s ridiculous!” he countered, though his eyes kept following the parchments. “The Senate polices its own membership, without any interference from the Crown. You’re way out of order here, Princess.”

“Oh! Perhaps you should call for the guards so that I can be apprehended then?” She smiled, knowing she held all the cards. “No worries about anypony else seeing anything in here, right?” She watched him for a moment, but the senator only remained eying her hotly. “As I suspected. Let’s have a look, shall we?”

Setting the stack down on the desk’s corner, Luna swept the surface clean with her magic, unceremoniously dumping everything else on the floor behind Pensive’s office chair. Then, one by one, she spread the stack out, giving each piece of parchment its own place to lie flat.

At first, Luna wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at. The papers looked like they came from a diverse set of sources: newspaper clippings, handbills, lists of debate points, even a few that looked like scaled-down posters. Pensive’s distinct script was visible in all of them, though it didn’t look like he had been the original author of any of the pieces. Instead, the marks of his quill were scattered in the margins, marking out certain passages and noting suggestions for improvement. It didn’t make sense. What could be so important about what looked to be just a set of rough drafts?

Then Luna took a skim through the contents of the articles, and in a second it all flashed together. There were clippings here from all across Equestria, from Canterlot and Manehattan all the way west to Fillydelphia. And every single editorial was attacking farmers for holding back their harvests and hoarding food for themselves.

The handbills were the same, each one calling for unicorns to come together against the earth ponies who controlled the food production. The talking points included notes about protest slogans, and plans to rile up the crowds even more. With a heavy heart, Luna even saw that one of the clippings, from about a week ago, specifically called out the owners of Shady Acres, the farm that had burned in Vermilion’s district.

It all fit together into a narrative that Luna almost couldn’t comprehend: a concerted effort to exacerbate the rifts in the country, to pit the urban-dwelling unicorns against the farming country.

She raised her eyes up slowly, seeing the unicorn standing before her in his true light for the first time. “Why?” she asked, the word almost inaudible in her shock. “How?”

Somehow, Pensive seemed to have recovered his composure while she had read. “Just politics is all,” he replied calmly.

“Just politics?!” Luna erupted at him, pushing herself away from the desk. “Just politics? You’re pulling the country apart, creating a divide where there shouldn’t be one! This goes beyond politics, this is treason! Forget about being speaker, I’ll see you clapped up in the dungeons for this!”

Pensive sinuously moved behind the desk and sat down into his chair, now fully serious, even a little grave in spite of his situation. “While you are free to suggest courses of action, such a stroke would be wholly unwise, my Princess,” he said, now fully back into that oiled silk tone, as if he was the one in charge.

“I don’t have to take advice from you!” Luna snorted. “You’ll be lucky to see the Sun rise again once the Senate finds out what you’ve been up to!”

“And what then, Your Highness?”

“We’ll get a new Speaker, pass a sane aid bill, and get right on to your trial I should think.” There wasn’t really any point in her staying, yet even in spite of the triumph she was feeling, something in Pensive’s smooth demeanour was unsettling. How could he be so calm with his plan now out in the open?

The unicorn sat forward in his seat, the warm light of the lantern illuminating eyes that now shone, bright and confident. “Though of course I took every precaution in the hopes of keeping my party’s involvement in this matter secret, there was always still the risk of things getting out, especially as time wore on. You must believe me, Princess. I never imagined that the situation would advance this far.”

“You didn’t imagine?” Luna looked over the pile of evidence on the desk again, incredulous. “This sort of malice can only lead to conflict. What under the stars did you think was going to happen?”

“Great things, Your Highness,” he replied, almost patronizingly haughty. “Only after some crisis could the nation unite behind the necessary reforms. With a solid bloc of unicorn support behind us, we could remake Equestria into something better, something bolder, something great. None would stand in our way, and if any did, Equestria would be better off without them anyway.”

He scowled at the Princess’s now frigid glare. “Please don’t look at me like I’m some kind of monster, Your Highness. I did not create this crisis, no more than anypony did. I simply took advantage of an opportunity. If it weren’t for your insufferable sister, this whole affair could have been wrapped up long hence.”

Luna leaned across so that she could look him right in the eyes. She wasn’t as tall a pony as Celestia was, but a few extra centuries had still added a couple of feet to the height of her shoulders, well above an average pony at least. “If it weren’t for Celestia and I, Equestria would already be in the grips of a civil war, all brought on by your machinations. Every day I’m going to be thankful that we had the courage to stand up for what we knew was right, and the rest of Equestria is going to be thankful too.”

She kept up her pointed stare for a moment, hoping that he would get the message and let her get back to bed for the night. Celestia would surely be pleased by next morning’s progress report, and even better Luna would be able to get back to the Academy. By now Swift might have recovered enough to offer some counsel.

When Pensive stayed silent, reclining in his seat, she turned around and started heading for the door. Once she got into the hall, she would call for the guards to come in and arrest Pensive, but just as her magic was lifting the door’s latch, the Senate leader spoke again.

“Do you believe that removing me from my office will make your problems magically go away?” he asked, still as silky and smooth as any Manehattan salespony.

“No, but that’s not the point!” she shouted, not turning around. “The Senate will be in a much better place without you leading it. And then we will be able to start fixing things. By the way,” she added, turning around and sweeping up the contents of the drawer with her magic, “I should hold onto these. We wouldn’t want anything unfortunate to happen to them.”

“Ah yes,” he mused, still unfazed, “the sudden chaos of a scandal, and the inevitable bickering and rivalry that will come with choosing a new speaker. I’m sure that the ponies outside will very much enjoy sitting through that process.”

Luna had half a mind to call for the guards right now, yet even so there was still something about his unflappable calm that set her back on edge. “Well, perhaps I should give them some form of entertainment.” She sharpened her voice to a point. “Maybe the senator whose fault it is that they are still starving?”

He chuckled darkly at the suggestion. “It would seem you do have some political chops after all. But those ponies outside want bread, not blood. Even my head would only satisfy them for so long. And the movement I have built will not fall apart simply because I am no longer there to shepherd it.”

Pensive stood up out of his seat, all rigid and formal again, as if they had come to the end of a negotiation. “You see, Your Highness, you and your sister have but one path forward, and with or without me you will be forced to take it. Things would have been so much easier if you had seen that earlier. But even now it can still be easy, if you’re willing to let me guide you.”

He extended his hoof along with his offer, but Luna had had enough. She hadn’t had much of an expectation on what her interrogation would reveal, but getting a lecture about politics from a traitor had certainly not been high on the list. Of course, nothing of what Pensive said had mattered. Regardless of any of his backup plans, he would still be spending the night in the dungeon. She pulled open the office door without a thought, and out in the hall she was relieved to find a pair of guards right in the process of walking by. They both took a step back as soon as they saw her, but drew up to attention right away.

“Have the senator detained,” she said hotly, gesturing over her shoulder. “Down in the holding cells. We will have his trial later tomorrow.”

Dutifully they bustled past her after another salute, and once Luna was certain that Pensive wasn’t going to find some way to escape, she started making her way back up to her tower. It was far later than she usually stayed up, and with each step her eyelids fell a fraction of an inch further. She paused for a moment outside the door to Celestia’s chambers. Doubtless, her sister would be thrilled to hear everything that had happened, but Celestia would probably be fast asleep by now. That conversation could wait until the morning.

Chapter 19: Cherries

“Of course the stars draw the eye when the rest of the sky is black. But even their brilliance does not illuminate the night.”

Ancient Unicorn Proverb

Her new uniform was waiting in the scrivener’s room when Celestia came in the next morning. Admittedly, it was a plain thing compared to the embroidered coats that Gala and Fastidious wore, but it fit perfectly over her shoulders, and its bright red hue set a nice contrast to her white coat, or at least so Celestia thought. It was a clean, bright, new piece of clothing though, and that alone made it by far the most valuable thing that she had ever owned. With a little more work and determination, she hoped that it wouldn’t be the last.

For a few weeks more afterward, the time did continue to fly by. Every morning she would arrive with the rest of her group, leaving them behind while she went to the manor to get back to the books. There was always a new stack of invoices and receipts waiting to be catalogued, usually sales and purchases to keep the manor stocked but occasionally accumulated payrolls and inventory reports too. Even with just a look through the past years’ records, Celestia could get a sense as to why Fastidious wasn’t pleased with the operation. Especially once Quill’s creativity had been corrected, this year’s harvest was decidedly behind the average pace, and work stoppages were the main cause. In her current role she didn’t have much of an opportunity to help with that though. An opportunity to make her recommendations would present itself eventually, and Celestia knew that she would have to be ready.

About three weeks after she had first been hired on, there came a knock at her door in the late morning. Celestia was fully expecting it to be one of the kitchen-mares around to deliver the day’s lunch, but instead it was Gala’s waxed moustache that greeted her. The old earth pony had on an even fancier suit than normal today, the collar of his starched shirt coming right up to his chin.

“Good morning, Celestia,” he said cheerfully as soon as she opened the door. “We usually have a staff meeting each month, and this time it’s today. Don’t worry about lunch. We’ll have it together in the meeting room.”

“Naturally,” she agreed, joining him out in the hall. Gala led her on at his usual brisk trot.

“We do expect you to say a word or two about how things are faring,” Gala said as they walked. “Nothing too detailed, just a little overview of the month.”

Celestia nodded, going over the numbers in her head to make sure that she had them all straight. “I’m afraid that it’s going to be just about what everypony is expecting. Unless somepony else has some great news for us, that is.”

Gala grunted. “Screw is supposed to outline his plan to streamline repair operations today. With our luck, all of the presses will break down while he’s giving the presentation. Honestly, I’ve started to wonder if you’re not the only new staff member that we ought to be bringing on.”

“Well, I suppose that we’ll have to see what he has to say.”

In the time that they spent talking as they walked to and from the orchard each morning and evening, Trinity and Capstan had both said that they thought Screw was an incompetent mechanic at best, but Celestia wasn’t about to let herself get more embroiled in office politics than she already was. She was here to make things run smoother, not to make personal enemies.

To that, Gala just grunted again. Perhaps Trinity and Capstan weren’t alone in their assessment of the mechanic.

As the pair crossed through the lobby and were about to turn deeper into the house, a sudden shadow crossed over the light that was filtering through the big front windows, followed immediately by a sharp pounding on the front door. Gala paused, his eyebrows shooting up.

“Interesting,” he mused, glancing for a moment back at the door as if wondering if he should answer it himself. “Celestia, please wait here for a moment. I should see what this is.”

His request notwithstanding, Celestia couldn’t resist taking a few steps that way herself as the old pony made his way up to the entrance. When he opened the door, she recognized two of the senior guards standing there, their embroidered tabards rippling in the breeze. Between them though, they were holding a scared-looking green unicorn by the shoulders.

“Well, Curt?” Gala demanded, addressing the guard on the left, who bore an additional bar on the front of his tabard, and seemed to be the one in charge.

“We found him amongst Screw’s supplies,” Curt answered, his partner giving an affirmative nod. “He only came in two days ago, and didn’t have a good enough excuse. We think he might be Resistance.”

Gala took another step forward, studying the prisoner intently. From behind, Celestia couldn’t see the look on his face, but from the way the unicorn on the step averted his eyes, she could guess that Gala wasn’t being friendly.

“No,” the master of the estate said at length. “Too clean, and far too amateurish from the sounds of it. The Resistance does a better job of hiding. This one is a spy. House Carnelian, by the looks of him. He has his father’s eyes.”

With a hoof he beckoned the two guards into the house. “Take him down to the cellar. I have a meeting now, but I’ll get to him after that. We’ll find out what he has to say.”

The two of them gave him a quick salute, but before they could go, the prisoner spoke up. “You think I’ll talk?” he shouted, his voice rather shrill in the open space of the hall. “I’ve trained for this. House Carnelian answers to nopony!” The outburst earned him a cuff across the neck from Curt.

In answer, Gala grinned coolly. He reached over and cradled the unicorn’s chin in one of his hooves, forcing their eyes to meet. “I’m sure these two gentlecolts were nice enough to ask you civilly up to now,” he said, his voice much lower than usual, and its grandfatherly charm replaced with a coldness that even Celestia felt. “Rest assured, I don’t have their patience, and I can be very persuasive when I’m of a mind to be. I have cracked tougher nuts than you to put in my breakfast cereal.”

Stepping away, the old pony waved the two guards off. “Curt!” he called after them. “Light a fire on the hearth, and clean off the tools. I’ll get right into things after the meeting.” Once he had received nods of affirmation, he waited until the guards and their prisoner had disappeared down the hall before turning back to Celestia.

“Hmph! Sorry you had to see that,” he said. “But it is always good to catch one of them.”

“Indeed,” Celestia replied, a bit nervous. Once again she was unsure of exactly how she ought to be reacting, given the implication of what had been about to happen to that poor unicorn. But he was a representative of a rival House, and thus an enemy of Fastidious and Gala, so maybe she shouldn’t feel so sorry for him. “Perhaps things will improve with him gone.”

“I sincerely doubt it, though it is always nice to hope so.” Chuckling whimsically, Gala was right back to the genial tone and bright smile he had worn before the interruption. “You heard Curt. This one only came in a few days ago. But it’s good to know that our guards are diligent and watchful.”

Seeing how he was taking the whole thing in stride, Celestia tried to push the incident out of her mind. She did still have the staff meeting and her accounts to worry about after all. Curt and Gala could deal with prisoners and spies.

Only a dozen steps from the main hall they stopped by a large set of double doors, and behind them Celestia saw a very long room with a very long table down its centre. At the far end of the table, Fastidious was already seated, his mane combed neatly off to the side, and his usual gleaming apple brooch on prominent display across his chest. At the moment, he was looking over a whole array of parchments which were spread out in front of him on the table, seemingly so engrossed as to be unaware of the rest of the room.

The other point in the chamber that drew Celestia’s attention was another long table on the near wall, upon which a sumptuous buffet spread was laid out: a mound of steaming bread, a thick wheel of white cheese, little sheaves of hay stacked up into a pyramid, and of course several great pitchers of clear apple juice. There was even a basket of cherries for dessert.

By now Celestia had gotten somewhat used to the occasional sweet that Rosy was able to make with the sugar that she brought home, but this was on a completely different level. It was all that Celestia could do not to gather up a whole basket herself for everypony else back home. But that would be an unseemly display of course. She would have to content herself with hiding a few extra cherries for Luna later.

With her plate full Celestia scanned the table, wondering where to sit. Gala had taken a spot right next to his son, and for a moment she considered sitting on his other side, but then she saw a small metal stand that had been set up in front of one of the chairs. Engraved into it were the words “Celestia, Scrivener”. And so naturally she sat right there.

The seat was about halfway down the table, which meant that she couldn’t hear whatever Fastidious and Gala were discussing, but at least she had a good view of the doors as the rest of the staff started to arrive.

First in was a tall green unicorn who Celestia had never seen before, sporting a shiny monocle over his right eye and a blood-red cape to match the Lord’s, only not quite so richly embroidered. The seat that he took identified him as Pure Fruit, the family’s court liaison. Following him in a few minutes were Soft Touch, the earth pony head of the cleaning staff, Curt Words, the lead guard that she had seen earlier, and Heavy Heart, the head foremare of the orchard. There were also a dozen or so less important functionaries, each one ending up farther down the table than where Celestia sat.

Screw came in last, flying through the meeting room’s doors at a quick clip. The blue pegasus breathed a sigh of relief on seeing the whole group assembled there, then flicked a bead of sweat out of his eyes and headed over to the food table, which by now was mostly empty.

Once the mechanic had found his seat, sliding in one spot above Celestia’s own, Fastidious rose at the head of the table. Clearing his throat, the young Lord spoke up. “It’s good to see you all. Today we are finished with the first month of the harvest season, which means that we should be about a quarter of the way through the harvest. Of course, as I’m sure that we all realize, we are quite a bit behind that schedule.” He paused, leaving an uncomfortable silence for a few moments, then continued. “Hopefully, today we can have some constructive ideas on how to get things back on track. We still have three months left to work with after all.” With a small smile, Fastidious sat back down.

Beside him, Gala rustled his own stack of parchment. “We’ll start with the usual accounting report. Celestia?”

Every pony at the table swiveled their eyes in her direction as one, as if they were all just marionettes at the control of a single puppet master. With a deep breath, she got to her hooves. The room had been huge when Gala had led her in here, but suddenly under the effect of all of those stares, it seemed smaller even than her dark office. Even Screw, who was still wolfing down his lunch, managed to spare a dour glance in her direction. In spite of the glass of apple juice she had drank from only moments earlier, she suddenly found her throat bone-dry.

“Um… as the Lord has said, the estate is functioning about two weeks behind in terms of its operating income,” she began, thinking quickly of the details from the ledgers back in her study. Taking a few notes to future meetings seemed now like it would be a great idea. Gala did nod once and made a mark on his parchment at that one sentence, but everypony else was still looking at her expectantly.

“Our operating reserves currently stand at about thirty-two hundred tri-coins, which is enough to meet normal expenditures for about a month more. And the inventory of product is low, as thankfully we’ve been able to move most of our harvest quickly, thanks in no small part to Mister Fruit.” The unicorn across the table tipped his monocle appreciatively at her. Celestia felt like she should conclude with some nice wrap-up, but that seemed like everything of substance that she had to say. “That’s… ah, that’s about it,” she finished.

“Thank you,” Gala stated, making a few more marks. “Speaking of you, Mister Fruit, how does the outreach go?”

Celestia hurriedly returned to her seat as Fruit rose to deliver his own report. She reached for the glass of apple juice right away, and its divine wetness washed away the itch in her throat. She was going to have to get better at maintaining her poise if she wanted any respect in this assemblage. But at least for the time-being it seemed as though nothing more was required of her.

Fruit delivered his report with aplomb, and he was followed swiftly by Curt’s security report, and Heart’s labour update. Finally, Gala turned to Screw, who had finished up with his lunch and managed to surreptitiously work his mane back into a presentable order.

“Mister Screw,” Gala said, eying him carefully, “We are all well-aware that equipment failures have been the key cause of the delays in the harvest. As head mechanic, how do you propose that we address the issue?”

Screw rose from his seat, and indeed a few feet more than that as his wings fluttered him up into a gentle hover. “Honestly, my Lord, the thing that we really need to fix our troubles is more mechanical staff. It’s not reasonable for me to keep this whole place running all on my own.”

“With all due respect,” Fastidious cut in, “you’ve handled the responsibility well for the past three years, all on your own, as you said. What’s different now?”

“The equipment is aging,” Screw replied, quickly as if he had known the question was coming. “If a press gets fixed enough, it’s never as good as it was new. Things start to break down more often. I suppose that we could also fix the problem by getting brand-new equipment in, but not on short notice. Some fresh apprentices are the only way that we’ll improve things this season.”

“I hope that you’d be willing to help with that,” Heavy Heart put in. “It’s easy enough to find unskilled labour to pick the apples, but competent mechanics are another story.”

Despite this setback, Screw smiled. “I know a few ponies. As does Mister Fruit. It won’t be cheap to bring them in on short notice, but in the long run you’ll surely notice the difference.”

He gave Fastidious a look, and after a moment’s thought the Lord nodded. “How soon can your friends get in here?”

Celestia tapped her glass lightly on the table to get the room’s attention. “If I may?” Screw turned to offer her a cross glare, but Fastidious nodded. Once again she felt the weight of the room’s attention as she rose, but she also knew that this was the chance she’d been waiting for. “Taking on more skilled staff would be a considerable drain on our finances. If we could avoid it, that would be preferable.”

Screw crossed his forelegs in front of his chest, less than happy with the suggestion. “Well, I’d prefer it too, Miss Celestia, but I already said this is the only way things are going to get better. How does not finishing the harvest look on our balance sheets?”

“I beg to differ, actually,” she replied, respectfully, or at least so she hoped. This was her chance to get Fastidious’s attention and prove her worth, but if she could do it without stepping on Screw too much, she would prefer that too. “In fact, I think that with the proper rearrangement of our assets, we can reach the target productivity even without bringing in any extra staff.”

More than a few eyebrows rose around the table, Fastidious’s included, though Screw was still nonplussed. “I wasn’t aware that the Lord had so broadened your responsibilities, Miss Scrivener. Perhaps you should study the books a few more months before making any further suggestions, hm?”

“My salary is on the line just as much as yours, Mister Screw,” she returned, leveling a serious glare his way. “I know it perhaps better than any of you. We’re not in major trouble yet, but at this rate we won’t be making it through the winter. So the responsibility of averting that falls to all of us.”

“Screw,” Gala said firmly from the head of the table, cutting off the mechanic as he was about to retort again. “Let her speak.” The old earth pony had a curious look in his eyes, at least not hostile. The mood around the rest of the table was a bit more uncertain, some ponies perhaps sharing Screw’s skepticism. But nopony challenged her further. Screw, meanwhile, stayed aloft just over Celestia’s shoulder, stormily glaring at her from the side.

This time, Celestia’s voice came to her a bit easier, since these were after all the words that she had practiced saying in her time in the accounting room.

“I’ve watched the actions of the orchard each day as I come in,” she began. “The distribution of the cider-pressing facilities is our biggest inefficiency. With presses spread out in the orchard, news of a break takes too long to get back to us, and the time required to transport parts to the remote locations is more wasted effort. Instead, if we consolidate all of our equipment in one central location, Mister Screw can oversee everything at once, and much quicker make good on lost time. It will allow easier quality control and more efficient tracking of inventories too.”

Across the table, Heavy Heart cleared her throat. “What about the extra time required to transport the picked product? The trek from the orchard’s corners to its centre wouldn’t be short. The distributed system keeps the workers picking more of the time, and carrying less.”

“Not when they spend an hour waiting in line for a broken press,” Celestia countered. “But even so, we can do that better too, by splitting our workforce according to their respective abilities. We already have the strongest working the presses, but instead of having everypony else be a picker, why not have dedicated transport ponies, pegasi most likely, to keep the presses sustained? That will mean more apples picked in the same time.”

Heart cocked her head to the side as she thought. “We don’t have the staff for an overhaul of that size either. So we’re hiring extra ponies either way.”

Celestia didn’t even have to look to see the grin materialize on Screw’s face. But she had an answer for that, too. “Unskilled labour, though, Miss Heart. Much less detrimental on the balance sheet. I project that we’ll only need a few dozen more to fill out our labour force under the new system, plus a few more temporarily to handle construction. Mister Curt?”

The security chief sat up straighter. “Yes?”

“How long do you think that it will take for us to pull in three dozen or so able-bodied workers from the city?”

He answered right away. “At least a few days, maybe a week, Miss Celestia.”

“Excellent.” She turned back to the head of the table, where Fastidious and Gala still looked thoughtful, and gave them a small self-assured smile. “An on-time harvest, my Lord, and without breaking the balance sheet.”

Fastidious nodded. “I agree. Mister Screw and Miss Heart can help you with the plans as soon as we’re finished here. Father, was there anything else on the schedule?”

“No,” Gala returned, making a few more notes at the base of his parchment. “The meeting then is adjourned.”

There was a chorus of grating sounds as the chairs were slid back from the conference table. Celestia glimpsed down at her seat, and quickly brought her apple juice up to her mouth for another sip, using the glass to hide her sigh of relief. She may have imagined herself saying those words a dozen times before, but nothing could have quite prepared her for the real thing. Now, time would tell if the Lord had been suitably impressed. Beside her, Screw settled back down onto the floor, his expression unreadable.

“Congratulations,” he said simply, before gathering up his things and briskly trotting out the door. She hoped that he would take it well. It had been unavoidable to make him look a bit foolish. But in the end the reforms would be best for everypony at the orchard, including him.

Hopefully he would see that after a moment’s contemplation, especially since the two of them were going to be working together for the implementation.

The rest of the day passed in a rapidfire pace of meetings and exchanges with Screw and Heart. Thankfully, the chief mechanic seemed to have thought better of his earlier hostility, as he raised only a few objections when Celestia went over the details of her plans for the central pressing building. Most of the details were going to be his responsibility, and Celestia found his suggestions predominantly constructive, which was good to know. Heart too seemed ready to oblige with the process.

By the end of the day, Celestia almost wanted to skip her way down to the larder. Tonight was going to be another special night at home. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Trinity’s face.

When she came in to collect her daily pay, though, Gala was there to greet her, the jocular twinkle back in his eyes, and also back in a more casual uniform. When she stepped forward to claim her pay, Gala raised his own hoof, and the pony at the door nodded before disappearing inside. “Something extra for you today,” the old earth pony said. “A small bonus for a task well-performed.”

Celestia eagerly nodded her thanks. “Thank you for hearing me out, sir.”

“Our ears are always open to good ideas,” he returned, “and we’ve been far too short of those lately. I’ll admit that I was starting to worry about the future of the operation myself.”

“Things will still take some time to improve. We won’t see the new efficiency impact on the balance sheet until a month or two down the line. But we can certainly hold on at the present pace until then.”

Gala nodded. “As expected.” A moment later, the servant re-emerged with Celestia’s pay, this time augmented with a whole basket of cherries, just like the ones that had been served at lunch. It actually added up to a little more than she could comfortably carry, but Gala merely gestured to the kitchen staff, and soon enough the two of them were walking towards the front door, with Celestia’s baggage being carried by a servant in the rear.

“I really do want to thank you for all of the opportunities that you and your son have given me,” Celestia said, turning to Gala with an admiring smile. “Hope is so hard to find in this world sometimes.”

Gala just shook his head. “Nonsense. There was no generosity to it, simply honest pay for honest work.”

The two of them reached the front door of the estate, and Gala opened it to reveal the grounds bathed in the golden light of the autumn dusk. The apples out in the distance shone like nuggets of gold hanging on the trees, and a breeze was blowing from the south, carrying the light scent of the Everfree River.

Celestia took a step off towards the gate of the complex, where she knew that her friends would be waiting for her at the end of the day, but behind her Gala let out a sharp whistle. In only a moment the estate coach had rolled up the circular drive, and one of the guards was holding the door for her while another was packing her bags into the rear.

“Come along, my dear,” Gala said, bounding up the steps with all the agility of a young colt. “Let us enjoy a gentler ride back to the city, shall we? It can get so very chilly up on the mountain.”

Celestia hesitated, her eyes darting back to the gate. The others would perhaps see her go by, and head back to Rosy’s on their own. And there would be plenty of time to update them on things over the rest of the evening. Plus, since she would surely make it back first, she could help Rosy make something out of the cherries, and give them another magical supper to celebrate. Her mind made up, Celestia carefully picked her way up the steps and into the coach.

The inside was padded in warm fabric and lacquered wood, the upholstery the same vibrant red as everything else that Fastidious owned. The guards outside latched the door for them, and then the coach coasted smoothly away from the door, its big wheels and soft suspension easily absorbing every bump in the drive. In a way, it almost felt like flying to be so swiftly moving along, though obviously rather close to the ground. Celestia resolved to enjoy it while she could, though clearly Gala had something else that he wanted to discuss, now that they were alone.

Gala drew the curtains of the coach open as soon as they had cleared the orchard’s gate, revealing the soft bluish-grey of Eridian’s twilight blanketing the world around them. Even moving by so swiftly as it was, it was impossible to ignore the emptiness of it all.

“Such dreadful countryside,” he remarked with a hint of revulsion. “Things must have been so much nicer before.”

There was no need to ask before what. “It is at least still pleasant on your property. Your family has preserved some of the beauty of old Equestria, and that is commendable, my Lord.”

He shook his head. “I appreciate the sentiment, yet we cannot ignore the reality of the world around us. We may like to draw these curtains and pretend that everything is friendly, but that won’t change the world we look at when we arrive at our destination, now will it?”

There was a depth in Gala’s voice that seemed off from its usual jocularity. Looking out of the window herself, Celestia felt that she knew what the old earth pony was thinking. Despite the vast distance between their births, at the end of the day they were naught but two ponies surviving in a dying world. Traitors Gala and Fastidious may be, but a choice like that surely hadn’t been made lightly.

“The world is what it is, my Lord. We can only deal with it.”

The coach crested a hill, and on the horizon Eridian appeared, towering like a giant over the dark countryside, its rings of broken buildings clutching at the side of the mountain to which the city clung. Up on its very top, right beneath the castle that the King called his own, there was a little light, just a pinprick in the vastness of the darkness. But it was something. Hope, maybe, if Celestia could convince herself that it was in reach. A better life, for her, for Luna, for Trinity and Rosy and all of the others.

Gala cleared his throat, pulling Celestia’s eyes back to the inside of the coach. “On the subject of reality, my son and I have a special favour to ask of you, Celestia.”

She nodded expectantly, eager for any opportunity. Another chance to take a step up in their graces, perhaps?

“The persistence of our shortfalls at the Rose et Blanc is possibly just the result of mismanagement, but now both of us believe it is more likely that we have a saboteur among the workers. One of those fools from the Resistance, most likely.” He sat back into his seat, offering her a serious, level look. “These improvements that you’ve suggested we make offer us an opportunity to ferret out the culprit, and we would like you, Celestia, to be our lead investigator in that regard.”

Celestia started before she could recover herself. As much of an opportunity as this was, it certainly wasn’t what she had been expecting. “Me? I’m sorry, my Lord, but as much as I’d agree with your reasoning, investigation isn’t really in my job description.”

“Ah, but you’ve got the eye for details,” he answered, sitting up straighter and speaking with clear confidence. “And as overseer of the construction effort, you’ll have unfettered access to the whole operation. Nothing should escape your notice.”

“But, I thought that Screw was going to oversee the construction?”

The coach lurched as it came under the gate and into Eridian’s main thoroughfare. Underneath the shadows of the city, the darkness in the coach became so complete that Celestia struck up a light with her horn.

“Not anymore, he’s not,” Gala said matter of factly. “We’ll find another position for him, but you’re leading the effort. We’ll find a way to manage the accounting work. And naturally there will be a commensurate increase in your compensation.”

He looked at her shrewdly, waiting for a response. Celestia almost told him that she needed some time to think, but in reality what choice was there for her to make? Flour and cherries were only the beginning of what Fastidious and Gala could offer her, after all.

Sunlight, safety, comfort. All of that would be within her grasp. It was almost a dream come true, except that she hadn’t ever dared to even dream of this future. Hope, suddenly, had swooped down in front of her face, and all that she had to do was reach out and embrace it. So she reached out a hoof, and took hold of Gala’s, shaking it firmly.

“I won’t let you down, my Lord.”

Chapter 20: The Music of the Winds

“It’s hardly a coincidence that the Pegasi and Earth Ponies share so much of their musical tradition. Once upon a time, they would have practically lived together.”

“Pre-Equestrian Lore”, by Twilight Sparkle

For Wind, the weeks after his race with Sycamore seemed to fly by, even if by the time night fell each day he was only able to crawl exhausted into his bed. Sycamore had held him to his promise to help with the pigs, and it seemed like once Fern realized he wasn’t a total incompetent suddenly there was all kinds of work for him to do.

Once the roof was finished, there was a checklist a mile long to get ready for the upcoming harvest. Wishful thinking for the most part, as Sycamore had morosely admitted, but it certainly helped the family to be doing something with their hooves instead of waiting idly for time to go by. And anything that Wind could do to coax a grin out of them was his number one priority. He and Sycamore spent more than a few evenings down by the pond, too, talking more about Cloudsdale, even though Wind had to dig deep to satisfy Sycamore’s curiosity about the place. When he got better, he would simply have to bring Tin down here for an evening, so that all of Southoofton could get a crash course on pegasus agriculture.

Speaking of which, each day that went by Wind knew that his wing was healing up. By the first dawn of the fourth week after his accident, the doctor came around again to have a look at his progress.

“Should be getting close to airworthy by now,” he said as he carefully unwound the layers of bandages on the wing. “That’s going to be really stiff,” he cautioned as he undid the last one, “but give it a flex and the feeling should go away quickly.”

Lying on the bed, Wind well remembered the pain of having it broken, and for a second he hesitated, bracing for that rush to hit him. However, as he flexed the muscles, and gathered his feathers back into his side once more, he felt nothing, save the general aches that he knew would come from his stiff muscles. He tested it out a few more times, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

“Looks like you fixed him up great, doc!” Fern exclaimed from where he stood by the bedside, and he gave the doctor a firm hoofshake. The whole of the family was gathered around, having just finished their usual lunch.

“Well, stretching it out is one thing,” Sycamore said, a note of caution in her tone. “How long until he’ll be able to fly?”

The doctor hemmed for a second. “It should support his weight by now, enough for a gentle hover or a light cruise. No acrobatics though!” He gave Wind a pointed glare with that last admonition.

“Thanks, doc,” he replied, offering the stallion a gentle grin. “I’ll take it easy, don’t worry. My days of flying in storms started and ended a month ago. But you know that I can’t wait to fly again, so, if you wouldn’t mind?” He swung his legs down onto the floor, and Fern was even kind enough to get the door for him.

Outside, the afternoon was bright and clear, with but a hint of a gentle breeze coming from the fields. The wind carried a bite of dust on it, and not a hint of moisture, but even so it felt calming for Wind.

Stepping off of the porch, he warily extended his wings and gave them a few experimental flaps. There was still no sign of any discomfort, so with a grin Wind leaped up and caught the breeze.

He took it easy just like the doctor had said, but the feel of the air against his feathers made it hard. He may have been happy on the ground with his newfound family, but the sky was really where every pegasus belonged. He wanted to turn a few joyous loops in celebration, but that could wait for now. Just being in the air again was enough.

Swinging into a lazy u-turn over the old pond, Wind saw Sycamore and the rest of her family out on the back porch watching him. The doctor gave Sycamore’s old Pa one last word about something, and then trotted off on his own back into town. From up here, he could even see what was left of Southoofton out on the horizon. Somehow the place seemed even smaller from the air, barely the size of a neighbourhood square from Cloudsdale. If he had been out flying before the storm, he probably wouldn’t have even seen this place. Maybe that was why his parents had missed it in their search.

The thought of his parents brought with it its own realization. At least he wouldn’t have to say good-bye to Sycamore and Southoofton just yet. But soon. And as much as he missed Cloudsdale, it also didn’t feel right to just suddenly be done with his time down on the ground. He’d have to find some way to express his thanks before he left.

Wind took a lot of care with his landing, not even kicking up a single puff of dust as he settled down into the backyard. Sycamore and Pa had put a lot of work into landscaping the ground into something presentable, such that there wasn’t even the barest trace of the furrow that he had ploughed up on that night a month ago. Fern got to him first, offering a hearty slap on the back.

“Well, I guess you can fly,” he said dryly, walking on past right away to get back to his chores.

“Just as good as I’d expect from any other pegasus,” Sycamore said, right behind her brother, though with more enthusiasm. “Maybe we both agree that nopony mentions that past mistake to anypony else, huh?”

He chuckled. “Well, we all make mistakes. I assume I’ll catch enough heck from my parents as it stands already.”

Sycamore’s chuckle was a little more muted, and after a moment her eyes came down. “Your parents, right.” For a second she seemed unsure of how to continue, instead just idly scratching at the dirt with a free hoof. “I suppose that you’ll be headed back to Cloudsdale soon, then.”

He nodded and gave her a reassuring grin. “Soon, but not right away. You heard the doc. It’s a long flight back up there, and I wouldn’t want to try it until we’re sure that I’m one hundred percent ready. Besides,” he took a look over his shoulder to see Fern and Pa organizing sacks for holding the harvested grain. “I’m not so sure that your brother would want me to leave now that I’ve proven so useful.”

Her eyes came up again, full of their confidence once more. “Of course. Just… don’t think that you owe us anything, okay? Any earth ponies would have done the same that we did, and when it’s time to go, you can head right out on your way.”

Wind considered asking her where she had learned how to read minds so clearly, but thought better of it. She was right after all, but even so, now that their time together was drawing up, he knew that they had to make the most of what was left.

“Well, here’s an idea. How about the two of us go survey the outer fields this afternoon? See how things are coming along? Maybe take a little snack for the trip?”

She cocked her head to the side, digesting the words. Then a frown materialized on her face. “A picnic. During such a busy time of the year, you want to take me out for a picnic?”

He drew back from that glare. Why was it that his brain always seemed to stop working whenever he was alone with her? Well, he was going to need it to get himself out of the pot now.

“Not just lazing about, there would be some work to do!” A quick glance revealed that she hadn’t eased up on him yet. “Or maybe we can just forget that I asked and we’ll get on with the rest of our day?”

“Wind,” Sycamore said softly, stepping forward so that her face was just in front of his own. Strangely, now her lips were curled into a warm smile.

“That sounds like a lovely idea. In fact, I think that we both could use the break. I’ll see what we have in the kitchen and then we’ll go.” And with just a little giggle she turned around and trotted up the steps and into the farmhouse, leaving him to only scratch his mane in bewilderment. Well, they were going to have their afternoon off at least, by the sound of it.

Beyond the old pond, the family had a few more small patches of land, each one divided up into segments by earthen embankments that meandered subtly across the landscape. They looked straight enough when viewed from the ground, but now that Wind was able to get a sight of them from the sky, it was clear that no professional had marked off the boundaries in the first place. Of course, the fields out here were just as dry and barren as the ones close to the farmhouse, with not a drop of water even in the low spots. If he and Sycamore had actually been coming out here just to inspect the potential yields, they could have been back in a matter of minutes.

As good as it felt to be back in the air, the bird’s-eye view of the Southoofton farmland was enough to put a damper on Wind’s spirits again.

The dusty brown of Sycamore’s land carried on to the horizon as far as he could see in every direction, only falling away under the occasional dark cloud on the horizon. Wind had first thought that they might have been distant rain clouds, but it didn’t take him long to see that they were instead raging dust storms, just like the one that he had flown into. No reason to hope then. Reason to tie down everything and barricade the doors, hoping with all your will that they would pass. At least the storms didn’t look like they were heading this way.

The afternoon air around them was hot as an oven, and even the wind that flowed around him as he flew did little to help the feeling. Thankfully, Sycamore had brought along three canteens of water between them, and beneath him he could see that she was setting up a makeshift tent out of some stakes and old tarps. He had offered to help her with that, but Sycamore had only shook her head. Well, he would have to make sure that she got to drink most of the water if she was going to do all of the work.

Being alone up in the sky did bring another memory back to him, though. The sky was quiet here, save the thin whisper of the day’s tiny breeze, but he well-remembered the melody that he had heard in the storm. Something in that beat was what had allowed him to escape in the first place, and now that he was able to fly again, Wind wanted to feel it again, in a safer place now. The four winds had always sung their song to him whenever he had taken a moment to listen; today, Wind wanted to try singing back, in his own way.

The whisper of the breeze gave him somewhere to start. Flying slowly along with it, feeling the gentle push of the tailwind on the back edge of his wings, Wind tried to summon up the memories of that night a month ago.

Naturally, most of it had been chaos and disorientation, his thoughts a whirlwind of emotion and desperation as he tried in vain to judge a way out of the maelstrom. But then, right in his mind, he had heard the pattern of the storm, and fitted himself to it.

Almost without his bidding, on a barely conscious level, his wings now took a piece of that beat and injected it into the breeze. A dip down, a climb here and there, and then a little cut to the left and a little cut to the right. A light twirl on the spot where the song called for a trill, a dive to the left where a crescendo was needed, and then a long sweeping curve back to start the second verse over.

The music was a part of him. Somehow, deep in his heart he knew exactly what he needed to do in order to add another layer to it, even if his mind could only figure it out a second later. He could have flown this cycle with his eyes closed, so sure was he of every necessary twist and turn. Maybe he was flying with his eyes closed; Wind didn’t actually know. His whole world was the song of the wind, layer upon layer added into a sweet melody.

The wind was coming harder in at him now, colder, whipping his mane against his scalp, but Wind barely noticed it. All he knew was that it needed a little twist, and another beat down the middle to bring it properly into line.

A droplet of water hit him in the eye, blurring his vision and sending the whispers of the music flying from his mind. And in that instant, Wind realized that he was actually quite cold, even in spite of the warm sunlight that was bathing the backs of his wings. His mane was even drooping a little closer to his skin, damp in the cool breeze. Had he done that? Or was it just a random gust of moist air coming in from the distant mountains in the east?

Down on the ground, Sycamore had their tent set up by now, and Wind figured that he might as well join her. They hadn’t come out all this way just so that he could experiment with his wings, after all.

When he touched down, Sycamore pulled aside one of the tarps and stuck her head out. “Wind, did you feel a breeze pass over just now?” she asked contemplatively. “It was actually quite pleasant.”

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, looking back up at the sky. Down on the ground again, the oppressive heat of the Sun was back with a seeming vengeance, and the dusty ground under his hooves was a reminder that the moisture he had felt in the air was sorely needed.

“Did you see any clouds coming our way?” Sycamore demanded. “A breeze like that might easily be a harbinger of some coming rain.”

Wind shook his head. “No, it was all clear as far as I could see. Just a random comforting draught, I guess.”

Sycamore sighed and retreated from the opening, beckoning him to follow. In the shade inside the glare of the Sun was at least gone, even if things were still plenty warm. Sycamore was lying on a towel that she’d spread out over the ground, and there was another one right beside her for him.

“Sure would’ve been nice,” she said, leaning back and looking at the roof of the tent. “For all the good that it would do us to get it now. But if we did get a shower I imagine that ponies would be dancing in the streets.”

Wind stretched out on his towel, and tipped one of the canteens back for a sip. “I’d appreciate that, you know.”

“The rain?”

“The dance.” She gave him a sidelong look, which he returned with a wink. “I think that it’d be a great note to leave on.”

She sighed and settled her chin down onto her front hooves, and Wind berated himself again. He had hoped that maybe coming out here would allow them to forget for a moment that he was going to be leaving soon. But at least Sycamore didn’t look irritated that he had brought it up again. So instead he simply followed her lead, relaxing on the ground for a moment. There was at least a hint of a breeze coming through gaps in the tarpaulins, and in the shade the wind felt a lot more comforting than it did out in the sunlight.

When Wind’s chin met the front of his hooves he let his eyes close, and time slipped away from him. Sycamore’s voice jolted him awake, and he wondered how long he had been asleep, if at all even. The sunlight outside was still bright.

“Wind, do you think that you’ll ever come back?”

He sat up. “Well… I guess that I could. I hadn’t really given it much thought.”

What would his parents think of something like that? That he had found a friend in his time down on the surface, and wanted to take off to spend time with her every second week or so? His father wouldn’t like it, that he knew. Snow had a reputation to uphold, and so he needed a nice, normal family, a son holding down a regular job in a respectable trade, not making any waves. But that wasn’t the life that he wanted to lead, now was it?

“I could make time for it.”

Sycamore rolled over onto her side, her head propped up on a hoof as she regarded the dirt between them somberly. “If we’re even still living here a month from now, that is. Otherwise, how would you ever find us again?”

“I’d find a way,” he said, a sense of confidence returning. “Ask around town after you, or follow the trail to wherever you had ended up. Canterlot, probably, the way that everypony else has gone.” He tried catching her eyes, but they stayed down. “Besides, that’s still a big if, isn’t it? Something tells me that Southoofton will vanish off of the map before you and Fern decide to leave.”

“Maybe,” Sycamore admitted, knocking her other hoof on the ground to punctuate the word. “But I keep thinking about Amber, more and more. I never thought that I’d still be around to see her go, but, well, here we are.” She finally looked him in the eyes, and Wind could see a lot of thoughts deep within them. “Amber was the rock of Southoofton, the most stubborn pony I’d ever met, and all of a month ago even she knew that it was time to move on. Maybe I’m just fooling myself, thinking that there’s any future for us still in this soil.”

He shuffled himself a little closer to her, till her free hoof was within his reach, though he didn’t reach out for it yet. “I don’t think so,” he said, offering her a stout nod. “This place is all that you’ve got, you and Fern, and your Pa too. I know that us pegasi don’t have the connections that earth ponies do, but even so, I’ve got a few things I appreciate enough to know that in the end, I’d fight for them. Even in the face of impossible odds, I’d be there for them.”

Wind willed some of that fire that he knew so well to come back into her eyes, but it was slow going. “You really think so?” she replied, searching him as if convinced that he was joking and the punch line was just over the horizon. “We’ve fought for years now, and things haven’t gotten any better.”

Now he grabbed ahold of her hoof, holding it firmly. “Your brain will tell you that, Sycamore. But I think that you know your heart is saying something else. I know that mine is. That’s why I’m sure that come next year, or whenever I find the time to get away from Cloudsdale next, I’ll know right where to find you.”

They looked into each other’s faces for a while, Wind desperately serious for both of their sakes, until finally the tension broke, and Sycamore gave him a thin smile. “I guess that you’ll get your dance after all, then.”

“Huh?”

She giggled naughtily. “The next time that a storm comes around, I’ll just put out a basket filled with cushions on the back lawn. It’ll be a lot easier to dance with you if you don’t have a broken wing.”

Wind drew up indignantly. “Hey! I thought that maybe by now you’d seen that that was one day’s bad decision—”

“So is this.” And without waiting she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

He managed to put aside his surprise pretty quickly, but even so he clearly hadn’t recovered completely by the time that Sycamore was finished with him, since she burst out laughing with one look at his face.

“Maybe a little warning next time?” he said wryly as she recovered herself.

Sycamore took a long gulp from one of the canteens. “I did give you a warning. But anyway, time really has passed. I doubt that anyone thought we really were just going out to inspect the crops, but even so, we should be heading back in soon, or else somepony is going to get worried.”

“Sure,” he managed, and he slowly stood up to help her roll up the towels and get everything else packed away. But of course his mind was still all a blur. Had she really just out of the blue kissed him? Or maybe it hadn’t been out of the blue at all? He spared another glance behind him as Sycamore got to work on the tarpaulins, and she was all business again, not even giving him another look. But she had kissed him. They would need to have another talk along those lines as they made their way back to the farmhouse.

A rapid clip-clop of hooves approaching from outside the tent pushed those thoughts out of his mind, though. That beat sounded familiar, and indeed Wind wasn’t the least bit surprised when Cattail stuck his head through the opening, only to have Sycamore take down that tarpaulin and reveal the rest of him. Once again, the earth pony looked exhausted.

“Good to find you, Sycamore,” he said, his voice half an octave higher in excitement. “There’s something big going on in town that you’re going to want to see.”

Sycamore rolled her eyes, somehow managing to have it not come off as offensive. “Who’s leaving now? Don’t tell me it’s your old man?”

Cattail quickly shook his head. “No, it’s nothing like that this time. Like I said, you’re definitely going to want to see it though.”

Wind and Sycamore shared a surprised look. What could be this important besides someone else pulling up stakes and taking off? Wind caught just a hint of wildness in Cattail’s eyes. Fear? That was ridiculous. But even so, as he followed Sycamore out of the tent and fell into step on the way back to town, Wind had the distinct impression that whatever was going on was definitely not good.

Chapter 21: The Storm Gathers

“The peace of this age will not last long. I believe that the time may have come to start sharpening spears once more.”

King Solaris VII

From a distance, the buildings of Southoofton looked just as they always had, a cluster of isolated houses standing against the dust blowing through the town. Wind was expecting a crowd of ponies to be visible somewhere, just as it had been when Cattail had alerted them to Amber’s departure. Yet, to the eye at least, everything seemed peaceful. Cattail trotted briskly ahead of them, though, and it wasn’t long before a low din of overlapping voices reached Wind’s ears.

When they made it to the town square, one glimpse through the open doors of the hall revealed that the lamps of the place were all ablaze, and most of the benches inside were occupied.

The sound of course got a lot louder as soon as they ducked their heads inside, and it wasn’t a pleasant noise. Everypony was talking over each other, and no one sounded happy. A glance up at the head table revealed the shiny yellow mane of Golden, looking somewhere in between sombre and outraged. Sycamore went straight to him, and Wind was only a few steps behind.

Golden looked up at their entrance, and met them halfway, right in the centre of the aisle. “Sycamore,” he said, offering them both the usual tip of his head. “Did Cattail fill you in on anything?”

Sycamore shook her head. “We moved pretty quickly. What’s all this about, Golden? And what are you doing back from Canterlot for that matter?”

He motioned them off to the side, to a dim corner beside the head table. “Just visiting is all,” he continued, speaking about as low as possible without being drowned out. “Taking care of some loose ends that the family forgot about on our way out. But I had some news to deliver too. Rumours, right? You know how it is.”

Wind took a look behind him at the rows of benches. The crowd was a bit smaller than the one he had addressed on his first day out, but he had a feeling that most of the empty seats wouldn’t be filled even if the whole area was called in.

“You called the whole town together just to share some rumours?”

“Well, begging your pardon, Mr. Wind, but I didn’t call no meeting,” Golden returned. “I was making my way over to the General Store, and ran into Sesame in the square, right in front of this building. We struck up a conversation, but it turned out that he wasn’t the only one listening. And then it seemed like not ten minutes went by before the whole town was in here arguing.”

“Must be some rumour, then.” Sycamore gave the yellow earth pony a quick gesture, the flick of the hoof that universally said Let’s hear it.

He nodded right away. “Only a rumour mind you, but, well, the grapevine is something else over in Canterlot, let me tell you. Every street corner’s a different conversation to listen in on. You could spend a whole afternoon just trying to get your story straight.” He caught the expression of annoyance on both of their faces, making it clear he was rambling. “Right, sorry. As you might expect, everypony in the city is always talking about the drought, and all of the troubles it’s causing across the country. They say that the food reserves are running short, even in Manehattan, if you could believe that.

“Anyway, the biggest difference over there is that they all talk about what they expect the Senate to do about any of it. And there’s all sorts of opinions over exactly what that’s going to entail.”

Golden had gotten into the thrust of his account quickly, and most of the preceding sentences had come in a rapidfire drawl. Wind had at first suspected that it was excitement which drove the stallion’s tongue, but one look into Golden’s eyes as he paused here revealed that there was something else too.

“But two corners out of three, or maybe even more, I heard that the Senate’s gonna’ raise the Guard, march over here and take all the grain they find.” He stole an earnest look back over his shoulder at the crowd, and then the pieces clicked together in Wind’s mind. Never mind all of the angry ponies in the room — and now Wind had a good idea what had them ticked off — Golden was scared just of the words that he had said.

Sycamore, though, sounded only confused. “Taking it for what? To distribute?”

“Sure enough,” Golden replied. “But we all know what they’re gonna find when they come looking around these parts. I don’t expect much of anything has changed in the month since we all left.”

Sycamore looked down, and Golden took that as all of the answer that he needed. “We’ve barely got enough to support ourselves the way this year is going. Don’t think that we’re getting the first cut of the takings either.”

That brought her gaze back up again. “Oh, they’d better believe that we will,” she said hotly. “If the Senate wants the surplus, they can have it so far as I care. But we’ll take what we need first. That’s our right.”

Instinctively, Wind stepped in between them, putting one hoof onto Sycamore’s shoulder. “Now hang on a moment. Why would your Senate take such a drastic step? Don’t they have any idea how things are out here?”

“Them unicorns?” Sycamore snorted haughtily. “I wouldn’t bet on it. The only time we hear from Canterlot these days is when it’s tax-collecting season. But even so I wouldn’t have thought they could pull something like this on us.”

Golden simply shrugged. “Only a rumour, like I said. But there was more to it than that. Folks were saying that out west, in Fillydelphia and Manehattan, things were getting really heated. Riots for what food was left in the stores. City ponies raiding farms already, sometimes even torching them. Maybe Southoofton’s only been lucky that we haven’t seen anything like that yet.”

“Well, everypony around here knows what would happen if they were dumb enough to try stealing any of our harvest.” Sycamore looked like she had gotten a better hold on herself, but her eyes were still hard and intimidating. “And I reckon Canterlot would find that out soon enough too.”

Golden leaned up against the head table with a sigh. “I do hate to bring such bad news on my first time back in town, but, well, I’m sure that you could understand the urgency that I felt. I agree with you too, by the way,” he added hastily, perhaps having bore the brunt of a few too many heated responses already today. “But they sure had a different idea about it in Canterlot. Some ponies even said we country folk were being greedy, taking it all for ourselves when everypony else was starving.”

“No matter.” Sycamore didn’t even acknowledge that last sentence with a gesture. “If any of them Canterlot ponies want a piece of this year’s harvest, they can come down here and pay for it fair and square. Otherwise…” The word hung in the air for a few seconds, framed by the voices echoing around the hall. Wind did his best not to think about how that sentence ended, but luckily Sycamore spared him the details. “Well, we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.” The tone of her voice left little uncertainty on how the sentence would have ended, though.

One look over the room revealed a lot more of that same sentiment, even among the folk who weren’t properly farmers themselves. Everypony in town was related to somepony who was in the business after all.

Near the front of the room, Wind spied Linseed and Sesame huddled together at their own table, holding their conversation quite a bit quieter than the rest. Apparently Cottonseed hadn’t come in yet, but Wind imagined that he would be here soon enough. The big farmer would no doubt have an opinion or two on the situation, but hopefully he wouldn’t need to be around to hear it.

He gave Golden a light bow. “Well, we sure appreciate the news, Mr. Golden, but I imagine that we’ll be on our way. We’ve work to do, right, Sycamore?” He gave her a hopeful look, but Sycamore just shook her head sternly.

“Afraid not, Wind. We’ve all got work to do, but there’s a real issue to discuss here. Nopony might have called a meeting, but I expect that we’ll have a proper one as soon as Cotton gets here.” She started scanning the crowd herself. “Pa has probably already got us a table.”

“But why?” Wind went on, even as he spied Pa and Fern waving at them from the fourth row. “What is there to discuss? All that’s happened is that we heard a fresh rumour out of Canterlot! What more is there to do except chuckle for a moment at its absurdity and then get back to work?” He kept his tone conversational, but inside he was starting to understand the catch that he had heard in Golden’s voice earlier. It wasn’t chuckles of absurdity that were animating the room now after all.

Sycamore just gave him a tired look. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Wind. Sure, I can’t say what’s going to come out of this meeting, but I expect a lot’s going to be said that’s needed to be said for a long time. You think that any of us could just go back to work after hearing news like this? No. We’ll talk for a little, I think.”

Despite his wishes, Wind had to accept this, strange though he found the whole affair. It wasn’t news that they were discussing, after all, just a random tidbit of gossip. But perhaps he understood enough to figure out what was going on. Sycamore and the rest of the townsfolk were mad, angry at another undeserved injustice heaped upon a long list of others, and now these ponies wanted to do something, anything, to make it right. Wind knew where that path probably led, but what could he say? At least none of them could jump out into a storm.

No sooner had they found their seats than there came the sound of big hooves galloping up outside. A second later, Cottonseed crossed over the hall’s threshold. A small cloud of dust wafted into the room as the stallion stepped inside, likely the telltale sign of his hurry in from the field. Yet even so Cotton’s hat was still leaning nicely down over his eyebrows, and the fabric of his coveralls was clean.

“No need for explanation, I’ve already heard it all,” he said flatly as he slowly walked down the aisle, the clomps of his hooves on the wood floor echoing off of the walls. The voices in the hall were rapidly quieting themselves, not all at once of course, but pretty quickly all the same. Everypony who noticed Cotton’s entrance quickly nudged his neighbours to settle down. “Not saying I’m surprised, by the way,” he continued. “We haven’t heard any good news out of Canterlot in years now. Frankly, I was starting to think they had forgotten we little country-folk existed.”

Cotton didn’t stop to find his seat at his brothers’ table, instead continuing right on up to the front of the room. Golden met him there, but quickly stepped aside to let the big farmer have the floor. The hush that had followed his entrance had somehow instantly transformed into an expectant anticipation. One look at Cotton’s face revealed that he knew it, too. The energy in the room was coiled up like a spring, waiting for the right signal to be let loose. Would Cotton strike the spark to light the fire, or would he preach some reason?

“I thank you for your approval in allowing me to speak,” Cotton started, waiting for a moment to see if anypony would object. With silence again reigning, he continued. “Even less surprising do I find it that the first we heard of the Senate doing anything is when they realized that they needed something from us. When has THAT ever been a surprise? We little ponies put in the hours, day after day, in the worst years that Equestria has ever seen fit to give us, and nopony ever says thank-you. Yet of course we keep on, cause what else do we got to do?”

Nopony answered the question, yet even so Wind got the impression that the crowd agreed with the sentiment. Cotton started pacing slowly on the little platform, running a hoof back through his dark mane every so often. “I know it as well as any of you. We’ve stuck around in this place through thick and thin, because Southoofton is all that we have, all that we could ever want and could ever need.” Wind couldn’t be sure of it, but it looked like Cotton gave Golden a very quick sneer as he said that bit. “Meanwhile there’s been nothing from out east, not a word, not a single hoof lifted to give us any aid. Not that we asked for any. No, we’ve worked tirelessly for years on our little patches of earth, and even in the prior years of leanness, we never once held back what surplus we had. And yet still, the first time that Canterlot sends us any news, it’s to say ‘Give us everything that you got!’”

There was a rumble of agreement from the benches, not properly a resounding endorsement of the words, just ponies grumbling and muttering, a few voicing agreement. Wind’s table stayed silent, but he could see the same hardness in their eyes. Pa especially, but Sycamore and Fern too.

Hearing no objections, Cotton went on. “I apologize if I raise my voice, but surely you all understand how I’m feeling right now. There may not be any justice in this weather, but for sure I felt that it was right to expect some from the Senate. Was it not the idea that we little earth ponies would finally get our fair say in the workings of the land?” That got another rumble of approval, a bit more this time.

As the tension and energy in the room built, Cotton’s words took on a fevered pitch, and his gestures grew more animated. “Well, for all that things were supposed to have changed, for all that this new era was meant to be one of prosperity and harmony, I can only look now upon the sorry state of our affairs and wonder if anything has ever changed. I can forgive all of you for forgetting some of our history. I am myself a lucky pony in that regard, so I can tell you that it’s been over a thousand years since the time before Equestria, when the unicorn Kings and Queens ruled as tyrants over all ponies. In those days, the earth pony had not a single right, under the hoof of the unicorns and their government. Does this sound familiar to you, Southoofton? Have we gone nowhere in all of a thousand years?”

Finally a proper shout came from somewhere out in the back of the audience, and a few cries of “Hear, hear!” answered it. Cotton nodded stoutly, the fires of the lamps dancing in his fervent eyes. “That time was long ago, but I know that we all still remember what the answer of the earth pony was in those days, when it was the only way to make our voices heard, when we faced death by starvation at the hooves of a tyrant King! Do you hear me, ponies? We fought!”

The whole room erupted in a deafening roar of banging hooves and angry shouts, and this time even Wind’s table didn’t hold back, offering their own shouts of approval to Cotton’s speech. At the front, the big stallion roared right along with them, and Wind felt his heart sinking. Sure, they couldn’t fly off into a storm like he had, but there were plenty of other unfortunate things that could happen on the ground. Well, he had already learned that lesson, and somepony had to be the one to talk some sense here.

“Hold up! Hold up a minute!” Wind called out, but his voice was drowned out by the reverberations of the crowd. Pushing himself back from the table, he instead unfolded his wings and leaped into the air, climbing up to right in underneath the rafters, where surely everypony would be able to see him. “Hang on, will you? I’ve got something to say too!”

He saw a spark of confusion and annoyance light up on Cotton’s face, and indeed most of the townsfolk were only looking up at him in bewilderment too, but at least the room got quieter. Nothing close to the expectant silence that Cotton had got to speak to, but enough that they all could hear him, if he spoke up. “They teach us our history in Cloudsdale too, you know,” he said, shooting a burning gaze Cotton’s way. Unsurprisingly the big farmer just stared him down, still caught up in the reverie. “I know a bit about the way that the Unicorn Kingdom ended, and I can tell you that your story’s missing a part or two!”

Cotton exaggerated his eye roll. “Are we on to this again? When is somepony finally going to set you right, boy?”

“You know that we were there, too, right?” Wind went on, ignoring Cotton and speaking directly to the crowd instead. “In those days long ago, when the very world had turned against ponykind, the pegasi bore it just as any earth pony did, with honour and determination. And we were there on that fateful day too, when our kingdom came apart.”

“Yet not on our side!” Cotton interrupted from the stage, jabbing an accusatory hoof up at him. “When the push came to shove, do you remember on which side the pegasi fought, boy? With us little ponies, or with their masters, their lords? None of us have forgotten that either, I hope! What reason do you think we have for accepting the counsel of our enemies?”

“Well, who won?” Wind let the sentence echo in the room for one second before ploughing on. “When the dust settled, who came out victorious? Ponies died on all sides, and in the end none of us came out ahead. And it was talk like Cotton’s that got us there in the first place. We don’t have any enemies, not yet, not unless we make them.”

Wind didn’t give Cotton a chance to blurt out anything else, instead turning right back to the crowd. “You’ve got yourselves all worked up over this, for what?” he demanded. “A rumour. Nothing but idle chatter, and suddenly you’re all willing to throw caution to the wind, to get yourself into a fight over nothing? Who do you think wins in that fight? Nopony does.”

There was a silence, the ponies in the crowd looking at each other with a hint of sheepishness, perhaps broken out of the spell that Cotton seemed to have cast over them. “Well, what do you expect us to do?” came an angry voice from somewhere. Heads turned to reveal that it was Sesame, standing up at his table. “We can’t just let Canterlot have its way with us! Our harvest belongs to us first! Ain’t no way I’m letting a stinking unicorn get their hooves on my winter stores!” There were more than a few grumbles of agreement, echoing around the room.

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do in that situation,” Wind replied, as reasonably as he could. “But none of us even knows if that’s actually what’s going to happen yet. Right now we should be focused on our individual efforts, making ready for what harvest we have, to make sure that every grain and every blade of grass that we can get comes off of the fields. I may not know that much about the process, but I think that I’ve learned enough about you folk to know that despite how you’re all feeling right now, you know that’s what you ought to be doing. So let’s fix the problems we can solve right now, and worry about the things we can’t change once we can see them clearly.”

Sesame at last yielded the floor, and nopony else had a voice to speak up. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it looked like he had probably talked some sense into them, for now at least. Wind turned back to Cotton at the front of the room, only to find the big stallion looking a little rueful himself.

“There is some wisdom in what you say, Mr. Wind,” Cotton said, tucking his hat back down over his brow. “Even if you ain’t seeing fully straight yet.” Then his stare hardened again. “But I’ve got a feeling that a few weeks from now we’ll be back here having this conversation again. And it’s not going to be just rumours driving us then. Put a wager on it, I would.”

The rueful farmer held that stare for just a second more, before stepping off of the platform and joining his brothers for a quick walk out of the hall. The atmosphere in the room was letting up little by little, mostly with ponies making their goodbyes and joining Cotton on the way out. Nopony was leaving cheerful, but at least they were all going back to work and not plotting a rebellion.

Sycamore welcomed him back to their table with an apologetic shake of her head. “Sorry about all of that, Wind. I guess that you’ve seen us all at our worst today.”

He smiled back. “Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s going to come of it, right? You all were making a thunderstorm out of a cloud bank, so far as I could tell. Just needed somepony to talk some sense is all.” He took a look around the rest of the table, and noted that there were no frowns among the rest of her family, either, which was encouraging.

“Didn’t you say that your father was a politician of some sort?” Sycamore’s question brought his attention right back to her. “I’d say that I believe that a lot more all of a sudden.”

“Well, he didn’t pass anything on to me, not that I know of at least,” Wind ruffled his mane with a hoof. He might say that, but suddenly he did get the distinct impression that Snow would probably be pretty proud of him for what he had just done, speaking up on a contentious issue and making his opinion heard. “Things are usually a little more civilized on the Council anyway.”

“What do you think, though?” Fern asked the group, leaning over the table with his chin resting on a hoof. “Is it just a rumour, or are we going to be back here a week from now talking about the real thing?”

This time it was Pa that answered. “Way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised. But I think that you’ve the right way of things, Mr. Wind.” He offered Wind a bare smile. “No sense in getting mad about it just yet. We can save that energy for the field.”

There were nods around the table, and then after a moment they all pushed their chairs back and rose to go, joining the rest of the room in leaving behind an empty hall. In truth, Wind was still pretty surprised that things had ended well, given how the meeting had started. If Cotton had gotten the upper hoof, he would have had to get back to Cloudsdale right away. No sense in allowing himself to get caught up in a war. But so long as things were peaceful, he could maybe stay on a few days more. Sycamore still had to explain herself for that kiss, after all.

Chapter 22: Pensive's Gambit

“Underestimate your enemy at your peril. Many a King has died while savouring what he thought was victory.”

Queen Vega the Terrible

They held Pensive’s trial out in the square the next morning, and for all of the unicorn’s haughty arrogance the night before, it didn’t help him when faced with the howling rage of the citizenry. If there had been any fresh tomatoes in the capital to throw, Luna was sure that Pensive would be getting a face full of them. And somehow she knew that that was all going to change with this traitor now out of the way. Without him scheming to block the Senate’s progress, they would get some solid relief out to the country, and everything would be peaceful again.

And yet, despite everything seemingly being resolved, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease growing inside her.

Why, even as she was pronouncing his sentence, she realized that the western horizon had grown dark and grey, and not ten seconds later there was a crackle of thunder, and a cool drizzle began to fall over the city.

Something was strange about the rain, though. Somehow it didn’t feel wet enough. Whenever a droplet fell on her wings or on the back of her neck, it didn’t come with the pleasant coolness of a morning shower, but instead an unpleasant feeling of filth, like grease or oil one would retch at the idea of drinking. That was when she realized that the sky wasn’t grey. It was purple. And that wasn’t water that was falling.

The wind rose in Luna’s ears. A cackle, an echo of madness reverberating through the sky, a howling torrent of horrendous Chaos magic, dredged up from the past and now back to torment Equestria in its darkest moment. Out in the square she heard a scream, then a chorus as the crowd broke, dashing every which way looking for cover. Luna felt her mane standing on end and knew what was coming. She readied her wings and leapt up into the air, seconds before a kaleidoscopic bolt of reality-destroying lightning struck just where she had been standing, vapourizing the ground and leaving behind a spider web of cracks around a hole that opened into a yawning abyss of infinite blackness.

She had to get to the palace. To the Elements. Only with her and Celestia’s magic combined could they hope to fight back. Her sister would be there, restoring order, and together the two of them would take back the city, just as they had three hundred years ago.

But no matter how fast she moved, the storm seemed to follow her as she flew, focusing its energy on barring her path, a rain of lightning falling down in front of her every time that she turned up the mountainside.

One of them clipped her on the shoulder. The pain was instant, a searing heat that took the whole of her left side. In the next instant Luna was in a cartwheeling dive, her wings not responding to her wishes, the ground rushing up to meet her as all around the wind roared mad laughter in her ears and the thick rain coated every inch of her skin.

Right before she hit the cobblestones, they erupted in another blast of lightning, leaving only the void to catch her fall. With her working hooves she scrambled to catch the ledge before her body went over, but in the next instant, there was nothing. No light, no water, but still that wind pushing its way through her skull, carrying Discord’s mirth with her forever. Each new gust of the wind sounded louder in her ears, until—

Luna woke up, her heart pounding in her ears.

It was still dark in her room, but it was in no way quiet. Outside, the wind howled across the mountainside, but it was nothing compared to the chaos that was unfolding around her.

There were six other ponies in the room, two standing alert in clanking chainmail on the floor, two more by her dressing table, and the final two standing guard just inside of the doorway. For an instant, Luna’s breath caught in her throat, until she recognized Captain Brow at the table. The rest of them were surely palace guards then, here to protect her from something. They must have just arrived, and from their wide-eyed looks, they had come here in a hurry.

None of them had noticed that she was awake yet, but with a second look she spied a familiar sandy yellow mane on one of the guards by the door. It was Swift, back on duty finally. He would likely have a tale to tell her about how things were progressing at the Academy, but for now there was business at hoof.

Now better aware of the situation, Luna cleared her throat. All around the room the guards turned and snapped her quick salutes. She addressed Brow first. “Captain? Has something happened?”

An uncertain glance passed between him and Lieutenant Heart, who was the one with him at the table. She realized suddenly that only the two she had noticed first were wearing chainmail under their uniforms, and only a few others were properly armed. Neither Brow nor Swift was among that company. In fact, another look revealed that Swift had his shirt on backwards. Thankfully for him, nopony else seemed to notice.

Finally Brow stepped forward, offering up another trim salute before answering. “We have multiple situations at the moment, Your Highness. My apologies, I know that you’re going to have a lot of questions, and I’m afraid that we don’t have very many good answers right now. However, here’s what we do know.”

With his magic, he lifted a map up off of the table and held it vertically against the room’s wall, offering everypony an excellent look at it as he delivered the briefing. “At approximately 0600 hours, Canterlot was struck by a large atmospheric disturbance. Not rain,” he cautioned, seeing the spark that had lit up Luna’s eyes. “Dust. In fact, it’s still going on, as you can see.”

Taking another look out the window, Luna realized that the darkness she was seeing wasn’t the crisp blackness of nighttime, but instead the billowing shadow of a dust storm. It was probably past dawn by now, but without being told it she wouldn’t have known. “Didn’t anypony see it coming? I thought we had scouts for this sort of thing.”

Swift answered from the doorway. “The city’s contingent has been drawn down to free up teams for the countryside. Apparently this one slipped past us.” He sounded like he took that as a personal affront.

“In any event, once the storm hit, there was no diverting it,” Brow continued. “About ten minutes later, it seems that the palace was stormed by the protesters who had been camping in the plaza outside. Perhaps they were only seeking shelter, but regardless they caught us totally unprepared. After that, I can’t say much of anything for sure. Most of us were still in the barracks when the alarm was raised, and we were quickly cut off. Guardspony Swift and I rallied this force to come here and protect you, Your Highness. Another group was to be looking after your sister, but I’m afraid that I can’t confirm their success.”

Luna’s first instinct on hearing that was to take a look out the window, since Celestia’s tower was, after all, only about a hundred feet away. But even that short distance was completely choked off by the gusting clouds of dust. That was probably the most frustrating part. Normally it would be impossible for the Guard to get cut off like this, since you could always rely on a pegasus to carry a message, from one end of the palace to the other if need be. But now they couldn’t even be sure of what was going on in the next room.

Getting out of the bed, Luna took a look at herself in the mirror on her dressing table. The usual morning routine was definitely going to have to wait today, but that was fine. Yesterday had required the professional air of a politician. Today, Equestria needed a whole different kind of Princess. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what came next. “What exactly are we facing out there?”

“Just civilians, I’m sure,” Swift answered. “But scared ones, and angry too. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them have started looting by now.”

“We won’t be able to send them out into that storm,” Brow added. “Once we’ve secured a few of the halls we can perhaps hold onto them there. Give them a breakfast maybe, and let them go once the sky clears up.”

Luna nodded. They wouldn’t end up letting all of them go, at least if Swift’s prediction about the looting turned out to be true. But there certainly wasn’t any sense in being heavy-hoofed in this situation. Things were tense enough in the capital already.

“Captain,” she said, turning back to the room and addressing Brow. “When we move out, we’re going to have three objectives. First, somepony needs to link up with that squad protecting Celestia. If we even have to, that is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she came and got us first.” Celestia was, after all, usually a very early riser. It was entirely possible that she was halfway to containing the situation already. “Second, we need to secure the barracks and the armoury, and set up a central command center to get the whole Guard organized. Third, we sweep the palace room by room, sending any civilians to the Great Hall. Once the storm is over we can get to work on processing them. Understood?” That last question was given to the room in general, and there were nods all around.

It was more than just nods though. As the Guard formed up around her door, they seemed almost to have grown taller just hearing her speak. There was a pride and professionalism in those steps that hadn’t been present in the confused and frightened squad huddled in her bedchambers previously. Knowing that somepony was in command could do that, and when Luna joined the group at the doorway, she felt at home among them, braced to march out and face whatever stood on the other side of that door.

Sure, there wouldn’t be any combat to be had in mopping up the civilians in the palace, but even so this was an invigorating way to start the morning. Perhaps she ought to schedule a few drills right around the time that she normally woke up.

With the group at the ready, the door opened, revealing a corridor that was eerily quiet given the situation. The wind of course could be heard moaning balefully overhead, though thankfully with not an ounce of glee. But besides that, the path down to the antechamber was still. Luna could have thought that it was just an ordinary morning, were it not so dark. Usually the few simple windows in this corridor would be bathing the whole hallway in the golden light of dawn, but instead it was black as midnight, and illuminated only sparingly by the light of Brow’s lantern, aided by what light Luna was able to produce with her horn.

A muffled shout echoed down the hall, along with a clang of metal. Luna led the group straight for the sound, trotting lightly on the stone floor.

As they swept around the corner and into the antechamber, Luna was prepared for anything.

Unsurprisingly, what they found was a collection of perhaps half a dozen civilians, armed with an assortment of iron implements, from short candelabras right up to one that looked like a proper spear. Hearing their entrance, the civilian with the spear wheeled around to face them.

“We know it!” he shouted, the locks of his long black mane drooping down over wide, desperate eyes. “We know you’ve hidden it here! You’ll show it to us!” He lowered the spear threateningly.

Swift had reacted before Luna could even open her mouth to speak. There was a flash of a yellow mane beside her, and then the civilian was flat on his back, the spear on the floor beside him.

“Drop your weapons!” Luna called out to the rest of the civilians, almost falling into her royal voice. “I promise you all, nopony is going to be harmed.” She could see a grain of uncertainty in their eyes, and then they complied. The rest of the squad enveloped them right away, picking up the weapons for themselves. Luna approached the one Swift still had held down.

“Guardspony,” she said. “On your hooves.” Swift gave her a quick look, then jumped up with a flick of his wings, taking the spear for himself.

That left the civilian with the black mane still on his back. She could have just left him to get rounded up with the rest, but perhaps she could get some quick information first. “What’s your name?”

He brought his eyes up to meet hers slowly. Draped over his shoulders were the tattered remains of what might have once been a nice coat. “Inkwell,” he said simply, though with a clear hint of anger in his eyes.

“And what is it that you wanted to find here, Inkwell?”

He was trembling. “Food, of course. Everypony knows that it’s stockpiled here in the palace. What’s left in the city, at least.”

Luna shot a glance over at Brow, and he nodded. “Rumours. They’ve been spreading like wildfire through the streets, and there’s just no use in trying to keep them down.”

It made sense. At least it meant that tracking down the intruders would probably be pretty simple. Most would be in the kitchens and pantries. She took another look at Inkwell. “Were you really going to use that weapon?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. But when the storm hit, I knew that I had to get somewhere. There were a few that went in right away, maybe a little organized, but for me I followed after. Please, Princess. I’ve just got to find something for my fillies back home. I’ve just got to find something…”

By now he was crying, with rivulets of tears snaking down from his eyes, but Luna was in another place entirely. In her mind she was in Pensive’s office again, the smug traitor looking coolly at her from across his desk. A little organized. Could it be? Nopony could have planned the dust storm, but if the senator did have co-conspirators out on the streets, they could have taken advantage of the situation. It seemed impossible that Pensive could have gotten a message out to them in the short time since he’d been imprisoned, but it was just possible. And in any event, somepony definitely had to check.

Brow was shouting, organizing the squad to get the civilians on their hooves and marching for the Great Hall. Luna snapped back to the scene right away, and instantly started issuing commands.

“Lieutenant Heart, take two others up to Celestia’s tower, and see if you can find that other squad. Captain Brow, I want you to keep making for the barracks with these civilians in tow. The Hall is in that direction anyway. I’m staying behind. Swift!” The pegasus swiveled his head to her. “You’re with me.”

There were crisp nods all around, but Luna didn’t stay to make sure that everything went smoothly. Instead, she took off out the antechamber’s western door, soaring along halfway between a gallop and a glide, only touching the floor whenever she needed to navigate a tight corner. With the darkness outside, the passages through the palace were still plenty dark, with only the occasional burning lamp flashing by as she flew. Luna knew all of these passages by heart though, such that she could have flown them blindfolded.

As the pair swooped tight around a corner, another squad of palace guards came into view, trotting back the other way with a bunch of civilians in tow. Luna didn’t have time to slow up for them, though. If Pensive had somehow managed to break out, they had precious little time before he vanished into the streets.

Without breaking the stride of her wings, she reached out with her magic and shoved them all to the sides of the corridor, creating enough of a gap for her and Swift to get through. She could hear him just behind her, but he was saving his breath, and probably doing his best to watch her back at the same time.

Finally the two of them arrived at the stairwell down into the dungeons, and Luna slowed herself to a stop, her hooves setting down on the cold stone floor with echoing taps. This was the only way into or out of the palace’s lower floors, so they could afford the moment’s rest. Outside, the wind was still howling, about the only sound to be heard in this wing of the building.

Swift stayed hovering beside her, the spear still ready to use at a moment’s notice. “The dungeons, Your Highness?” he asked calmly. “Do you think that we might have a breakout?”

“Maybe,” she whispered back, eying the stairwell carefully before taking any steps down.

There was light down below, the bare flickers of torches set upon the walls, but not a sound was coming up out of the gloom. Even so, she didn’t want to take any chances. Pensive wasn’t going to pose much of a threat to either of them, but the ponies that were helping him might be more willing to fight.

“I’m going first, but you follow right on my tail. There shouldn’t be any trouble, but, well, just in case…”

He nodded, and then Luna started her cautious steps down. They had put Pensive into the holding cells, which at least meant that they were only on the first level. Soon enough the senator would find his way down into the lower levels, where the spaces were reserved for the properly convicted criminals, but for now they could limit their search to just the holding area, which was one big antechamber where the guards would hold their post, with a handful of cells attached to it.

The silence ahead of her meant that the guards of course were gone, probably off in the rest of the palace. Unless maybe Pensive’s goons had taken them out of commission first? Luna had to force her muscles to relax, her breath to come slowly, as she took in the space ahead, step by step. In all likelihood, she had been imagining things, and she was going to find Pensive still locked safely in his cell, totally unaware of the chaos that was going on above him.

One more step off of the stairway, and Luna was in the middle of the room, with a clear line of sight into all of the cells. She wasn’t even slightly surprised to see that they were all empty.

Swift came up right behind her. “Are we missing somepony?”

Luna ground one of her hooves into the floor. “Yes. Somepony very important. We’ll have to hope that the search teams will find him as they’re combing the palace looking for the rest of the intruders.”

“Don’t you think they’ll be gone from the grounds by now?”

“Probably,” she admitted to her frustration. There was a chance that Pensive might have stuck around, if he didn’t want to go out into the storm and thought that he could get away with hiding until it passed. But even if that weren’t the case, they would just have to comb the streets, or the foothills, or anywhere else he might have gotten off to. For now, at least, Luna had the rest of this mess to deal with.

The Great Hall was packed full of ponies by the time that Luna and Swift got back there, though it was a pleasantly organized sight compared to the one that had greeted the Princess as she woke. What civilians had so far been found were milling about within their own space on the massive stone parquet floor, lit up only by the furtive pinpoints of torches and lamps spread throughout the room.

High on the wall, the decorative windows that would normally be lighting the space now showed only blowing clouds of blackness. The delicate stained glass figures of Celestia and Luna, usually resplendent in whatever light the room held, only stood out in a strange contrast against the dust that had caked into their crevices.

Brow had gotten his command set up on the room’s northern wall, and there was a constant stream of guards checking in at the post, organizing the search and recovery operations throughout the whole palace. The only pony still missing from the space was Celestia. Luna had assumed that she would find her sister here in full control of the situation.

A sudden nervous thought pushed its way into her mind. Had something happened? No, Celestia was probably out leading one of the search teams herself.

The ponies at the command post all offered the usual snapped salutes as soon as they saw her and Swift approaching. She waved them all off. “What reports, Captain?”

Brow licked his lips in apparent nervousness. “We’ve nearly completed securing the interior of the palace, Your Highness, but I’m afraid that we’ve found no signs of Princess Celestia.”

For a second Luna wasn’t sure what to say. “She wasn’t in her tower?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Nor in any of the rooms that we’ve checked. We had hoped that she might have rendezvoused with you at some point, but now we must presume she is missing.”

“Hmm, perhaps.” Luna considered it. It was inconceivable that her sister could have been overwhelmed or somehow incapacitated in the confusion. Celestia was an accomplished magic user after all, and no stranger to combat either, even if she was about three hundred years out of practice. Even whichever ponies had helped Pensive escape shouldn’t have been able to offer her any challenge.

“We’ll find her around somewhere,” Luna said, offering the guards a resolute nod despite her concern. “Perhaps coordinating similar matters elsewhere in the city. Once the storm breaks, everything will be sorted out.”

There weren’t any objections, but Brow didn’t look particularly convinced, and Luna didn’t blame him. It sounded improbable, but it was the only logical conclusion that she could come up with at the moment. “Captain? About the search, there’s something else.”

He listened intently as Luna filled him in on everything that they had discovered in the dungeon, and to the fact that there was probably an escaped prisoner around somewhere in the building. The good news was that with the storm still raging outside, it was possible that Pensive was trying to wait it out, holed up in the palace until some break in the winds offered him a chance to escape.

“If the search has found any locked doors, I’d suggest circling back to them,” she cautioned.

“Let us see.” On the command post’s table, floor plans for the whole palace had been laid out, with each room marked as cleared as soon as solid information came back. Luna could see that black X’s by now covered almost all of the palace’s outer wings, except the extremities of the Senate’s offices. There were still countless small offices and doors to check there. Plenty of places where Pensive might have decided to hide. Yet there was only one red mark on the map so far, placed over the wide open square of the Senate chamber. Brow looked up at her questioningly.

“Plenty of entrances and exits to that spot, but I suppose it could be barricaded. Not somewhere we’d normally look either.”

She nodded, feeling some measure of certainty creep into her bones. “Get a squad together for me. I’ll take care of him myself.”

The doors were in fact barricaded, probably with lecterns and seats piled against them from the inside. Enough to stop any casual investigation, but naturally Luna only had to give the obstruction two shots of destructive magic and the way was clear. On the other side, she would find Pensive and the rest of his conspirators, and she would arrest him once again, this time sending him all of the way down to the bottom of the dungeon, under constant guard until his trial in the afternoon. She had her triumphant grin all ready to go as soon as the smoke thinned out, but on the other side of the door instead something else was waiting.

Pensive was there, of course, his suit rumpled and his mane standing upon his head in tangled disarray. But rather than hiding under a desk in fear, he was standing tall at the chair’s lectern, the gavel held firmly within the brown aura of his magic. And the rest of the chamber wasn’t filled with his henchponies, but instead a rough assortment of several dozen other senators. They at least were looking properly fearful given the situation, and quite a few had taken cover behind their lecterns.

“Pensive Prose,” she declared, letting her voice echo back to her before continuing. “By the authority of the Crown, I arrest you for high treason against Equestria, inciting a riot, and escaping from public detention.” She didn’t have to make any gestures before Swift was at the senator’s side, his spear lending the point some extra authority. “Have him taken down to the dungeons and put under constant watch; I don’t want any chance of him leaving again. And keep looking in this wing,” she added, motioning to the rest of the squad. “His conspirators might still be hiding around somewhere.”

Pensive blinked, apparently confused. “My conspirators, Your Majesty?”

“The ponies that helped you escape, of course.” Luna was going to enjoy questioning this traitor in public this afternoon. The way that his eyes bulged when he realized there were no options left brought a warm feeling into her heart. “Unless you expect us to believe that you somehow managed to get out of your cell alone?”

He had no reply to that. Throughout the upper benches of the room, Luna could see some astonished expressions on the faces of the other senators gathered. The extent of Pensive’s schemes hadn’t yet been made public after all.

“Oh, Nay by the way,” she added, speaking to the room in general with a look of pure satisfaction on her face. “I assume that’s what you were doing just as we interrupted?”

Pensive gave her a wry grin, somehow able to summon his irritating smugness even as dirty, tousled, and under arrest as he was. “After a manner of speaking, Your Majesty. Though I’m afraid that this time neither you nor your sister has any say in the matter.”

“What are you talking about?” Celestia knew more of the procedure than she did, but Luna was sure that the two of them got a veto on every measure the Senate could pass. “Whatever devilry you think you can give us as a parting shot, it will only add to your sentence once things are over and done.”

Swift was by now leading Pensive out into the hallway, and Luna followed along with the rest of the guard. “Your Majesty,” Pensive continued once they were out into the hall. “I’m afraid that simply isn’t true. And while it is well within your prerogative to have me detained, I would advise that there are perhaps larger issues demanding your attention.”

Luna wheeled on him, the frustrations of the morning, and of the whole past week, suddenly boiling up into her brain like scalding hot steam. “You dare to lecture me about the severity of our situation? When fully half of it is your fault and you’ve done nothing but try to make the problem worse?” She sharpened her voice to a point. “As you say, those ponies outside might not be satisfied with your blood, but keep talking and maybe we’ll find out, hmm?”

Taking a step back, she gave Swift a firm glare, sure that her feelings were all too evident in it. “I need to go find Celestia. Try not to kill him on your way to the dungeon.”

Swift gave her a short nod, and so Luna turned right on her hooves and started making her way back toward the Great Hall. Maybe the Guard had heard from her sister in the meantime. That was the only loose end left to tie up for this forsaken morning.

But Pensive apparently wasn’t done yet. “Your Majesty, wait!” he called out behind her, finally showing some emotion other than arrogance.

“What under the Sun do you possibly think that you’re going to gain by persisting in this, Senator?” she answered, not breaking stride. Then, suddenly, a thought pushed through the haze of her rage, and it was enough to make her pause and give him another look. “And why are you calling me that?”

The oily grin that grew on his face was purely villainous. “I can explain everything, if only you would give me a moment.” He bowed his head to the floor. “My Queen.”

Chapter 23: Celestia's Plan

“They say that the long arc of history is invisible until many years after it has passed. In that sense, I suppose that I have an advantage.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 4)

“Okay, let’s take this from the start.”

Unfortunately, at least as far as Luna was concerned, the drought had so lowered the water table around Canterlot that the bottom levels of the palace dungeons, which were normally oppressively damp, now were just pleasantly cool. Still, seeing the iron bars that blocked the entrance to Pensive’s small cell was at least somewhat comforting. These lower levels were magically hardened, cut out of the solid rock of the mountainside, and the only way back up to the palace was now watched by a whole squad of dedicated guards. The search of the Senate’s wing had yet to turn up any of Pensive’s co-conspirators, but even if they did somehow escape there was no way that they were going to help him out this time.

Regrettably, the search hadn’t turned up any evidence of Celestia’s whereabouts either. As far as anypony could tell, the elder Princess had just vanished. Once the storm broke, they would have to make some discreet inquiries around Canterlot. It wouldn’t do for the citizenry to find out that she was missing, but it was also paramount that she be found. Never mind just knowing that she was safe, Luna was also now in sore need of some legal advice.

At least Pensive could probably help with that part. So long as she could trust what he had to tell her. Though the accounts of the other senators upstairs had all corroborated the main point: the Senate had voted to cede its power to the executive, and with Celestia apparently missing, that meant Luna was now Equestria’s first-ever queen.

The former senator was sitting with his back up against the cell’s rear wall, observing Luna keenly through the bars. That oily grin had at least left his face when he saw the confines that were to become his new home. Yet, even so, Luna had the distinct sense that he was very pleased with how his morning had gone.

“When the storm struck, there was a lot of confusion,” he began. “Down here, the guards didn’t know what was going on, and neither did I, but it was clear that it was something important. The first thing we heard was what sounded like a battle.”

“Your friends fighting their way to you?” Luna prompted. She’d had Swift bring down a seat so that she could at least be comfortable for this interrogation, as well as a pitcher of ice water just in case things went on longer than expected.

“I’ve told you already. There were none.” He sounded exasperated, something else that brought her a sense of enjoyment. “As much as I’ll admit that I did fan the flames of the city, that protest outside wasn’t organized by me. Those ponies just wanted some shelter and something to eat.”

“Then how did you escape?”

He shrugged. “One of the guards left to check on things upstairs. After a while, the other one was going to go too. His brother was on the wall this morning. I told him that my father had an early appointment to see me, and would have been here by now. I needed to make sure that he was safe.”

Luna made a mental note of that. “That was it?”

“Not in as many words, but I’ll skip the flowery parts. A silky tongue can be a wondrous asset in the political business. And it was worth the risk, if it meant that I might have the chance to escape your wrath.”

“If you were trying to escape, then why did we find you in the Senate chamber? That’s completely on the other end of the palace.” She was really going to have to drill the Guard on managing crises in the future. There were so many things which shouldn’t have been allowed to happen this morning, and an escaped prisoner making it to the Senate chamber was only the beginning.

Pensive paused for a moment, cocking his head to point an ear up toward the ceiling. This far underground, the sound of the storm, which was dying down by now, was completely inaudible. Even so, the meaning was clear. “Fate had apparently conspired against me taking that road. I thought perhaps that I could slip out in the confusion if there was ever a break in the weather. The Senate’s wing was a natural place to hide, with plenty of rooms to take shelter in.

“Getting into the chamber itself was actually not even my idea. A good number of the senators were already in the chamber, you see, prepping for what was sure to be another marathon session. A few of my fellows had spent the night, in fact, so that we could drag you out of bed at the earliest opportunity, and perhaps take a drowsily mumbled ‘Nay’ as a ‘Yea’ instead.” He chuckled at that last thought, though the sound echoed hollowly in the stone chamber. “They were in the process of barricading the doors when I joined them.”

Their interrogations of the other senators had already yielded much the same story, and surely Pensive had known that they would. Which meant it would be hard for him to lie about the next, most important question too.

“And how did hiding in the chamber suddenly turn into a motion for the abdication of the Senate’s powers?”

He leaned his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling for a time, perhaps thinking his way through his reasoning process. Then, he got to his hooves, and walked up to the front of the cell, until he was standing only about five feet or so from Luna, the only barrier being the bars. There was an unfamiliar openness in his eyes, an honest openness, in fact. “If I told you that I wanted to see this crisis over as much as you do, Your Majesty, would you believe me?”

This time it was Luna’s turn to smirk. “Over, maybe, but you and I want very different things, Pensive.”

“What you or I want is no longer material,” he answered. “We both went through the same chaos upstairs. Perhaps the only difference was that I saw it for what it was: the beginning of the end if action doesn’t come right away. There’s no time for debate anymore. There’s no time for politics. Either we find a solution right now, or let this country blow away like dust on the wind.”

“And what solution is that?”

Luna was waiting for that familiar grin to come to his face, but Pensive stayed serious. “We both know that we only have one option for dealing with this crisis. I’ve been telling you that for days now. Perhaps, now that you’ve seen what it looks like for the rest of the country, you understand that.”

She bit her tongue to stifle the outburst that came to her mind. “You made me Queen just so that you could coerce me into signing your law?”

“Obviously it was never my intention to make you Queen,” he replied, his natural haughtiness sneaking back into his tone. “Had your sister not disappeared I would have been much happier to see her in charge.”

“You actually believe that she would have signed it?”

“Yes,” he replied, simply and with surprising conviction. After a moment of looking at Luna’s surprised expression, his grin finally returned. “And you see, that is exactly why I think that she would make a much better Queen. Because you cannot imagine a situation where circumstance forces you to act against your ideals. But Celestia? She can step back. She can appreciate that sometimes the big picture outweighs the individual. In time, when she realized that she had no other choice, she absolutely would have signed it. You, however, are going to fight on pointlessly until the bitter end. And by then, who knows if you’ll still have a country left to save?”

More than a little insulted, Luna shook her head. “You’re wrong. Wrong on both counts actually. Celestia understands her responsibilities just as well as I, to do what is right, to guide Equestria through this time. You weren’t there to see what Equestria was like when we were young, but it suffered, and all as a result of ponies who thought like you. There is still hope, and my fight is not pointless so long as any still exists.”

Sighing, he turned away from the bars. “I try to be reasonable,” he said, exasperated again at the predicted back and forth. “And you refuse.”

Seeing they were going nowhere, Luna decided to try a different tack, in the hopes of steering the conversation away from more posturing. “Tell me something, Pensive,” she said, letting go of her hostility for the moment. If he wanted to be honest, then they could be honest. “When you sat in your study and decided on the course that you were going to follow, how did you see it ending?”

He sat down once more by the wall of the cell, gazing off into the distance. “Delicately, of course. Some resistance was only to be expected, but with the right application of pressure, the consequences of inaction would loom larger than the ideals that stood in our way. The winter would have been hard, but ultimately Equestria would be a better place.”

“What if the rains still did not come?”

“Your Majesty,” he said dryly, “if by then there was still no rain, then no decision by you or I would have changed this country’s fate. It would not be a pretty end no matter who was in charge.”

She took a sip from her water, eying him serenely. “So it was only greed that drove you then. No grander plan than ensuring you and your followers got the biggest slice of the pie.”

He shrugged again. “What is the Senate if not ponies fighting for their own? If what you wanted was a government of unity, then it would seem I have ultimately done you a great favour. Whatever the circumstances you’ll find upon the surface, at least you are now free to confront them in whichever manner best suits your conscience.”

And there they were again. Back once more at the solution, the obvious one, as he had been saying all along. This wasn’t going to go anywhere. There was no point in trying to win a debate down here, not with a real crisis to solve upstairs. Getting up off of her seat, she picked up the cushions with her magic. “I suppose I do agree with you there, traitor. In some sense you have given me a gift, and so perhaps I should give you something in return. In fact, I have something which I know is very dear to you.”

The confused glance that she got in return brought a cold mirth up into Luna’s heart. She pulled a thick stack of parchments out from under her seat. Even in the gloom of the torchlight, the flowery script that marked the first page was unmistakable. “We won’t be needing this upstairs, so perhaps you could find some use for it. Because I will never sign it, not while there is a breath left in my body.”

He again sighed and turned away from the bars. “Then I suppose you will have to make peace with the fact that in addition to being Equestria’s first Queen, you will also be its last Princess.”

She tossed the parchment into the cell, letting the pages flutter loosely in the air as she left, taking the stairs up to the rest of the dungeons two at a time. It was true that the senator had given up a lot for his conviction that a dramatic realignment was the only way to solve the issue. As much as she wouldn’t, or couldn’t believe that Pensive’s words held an ounce of sense, her encounter with Inkwell came back into her mind unbidden. Desperation had driven him on, to the point of stepping in front of her and threatening her with force. For three hundred years Luna had criss-crossed the country in her travels, and never once had she encountered such hostility, not even in the early years when she was still getting used to her position.

Reason told her there had to be a peaceful way to defuse the situation, but how could reason prevail in the face of such immovable forces? What reason could possibly protect the unicorns and the earth ponies from once again standing at each other’s throats, fighting over what there was left until nothing of Equestria remained?

She shook her head. Wrong thoughts. If she let herself get too far down that road, Pensive would end up being right. She would find a better solution. She had to. That was what Equestria needed from its Princess. That was what it needed from both of its Princesses. Wherever Celestia was right now, Luna hoped that she too was working on the solution.

The Sun’s light was just starting to glisten on the backs of Celestia’s wings when she saw her destination rising on the horizon.

Harmony Tower was the royal retreat, and though this was the first time in centuries that she’d made the trek out here, a retreat was certainly what she needed right now. A retreat not only from the tension in the capital, but away from prying eyes and responsibilities, so that she could dare try something extraordinary.

For a completely separate reason, Celestia also now needed the rest. Flying south, she had taken the long way from Canterlot, avoiding populated areas to be sure that nopony would catch even a glimpse of her in the night sky. That also meant flying dark, and navigating as best as possible by moonlight and by the stars overhead. When she’d reached the eastern edges of Everfree Forest and turned west over them, Celestia had already been nearly exhausted. Heavens, she had been exhausted when she had first set out, drained from a whole day of filibustering the Senate chamber. After a whole night’s flight, her eyelids were threatening to drop down of their own accord, in spite of the blazing sunlight that was illuminating the forest all around her now.

Everfree had, of course, seen better days, in the years when there had been rain to nourish it. Even the great Everfree River, which would usually have helped keep the forest vibrant, was little more than a trickle making its way west toward the falls that marked the entrance to the Griffon Kingdom. The trees underneath her were still struggling along, putting out what leaves they could muster, but all around even Everfree looked little better than the rest of Equestria. Barely holding on, and not for long either.

In the sea of decaying brown, Harmony Tower looked like a welcome respite, a slender spike of purple stone planted like a needle in amongst the boughs, banners fluttering proudly from its upper balconies, its roof made of sleek tiles that in the sunlight shone with the fire of the dawn itself. It was a reminder, Celestia thought, that there was pride in Equestria yet. In the midst of this dying land, there was power and magic still. And that meant that everything she was about to try would have some value.

Celestia knew that she needed to do something to defuse the crisis that was about to erupt in Equestria. Whether spurred by Pensive’s outrageous law, or by legislative gridlock bringing the food shortages to their head, all of the paths forward now led only to disaster. She had thought that her place was in the capital, negotiating a peaceful solution, but in fact she now realized that there was something even better she could do. Luna had her Academy up in the mountains, but Celestia wasn’t really all that skilled with the weather. She had always taken quicker to the arts of unicorn magic, the subtle manipulation of energies that twisted the fabric of reality into a new form.

Up until now, she hadn’t thought a magical solution could exist to deal with the drought, but something in Star Swirl’s story had blossomed into an interesting idea. A way that maybe, just maybe, she could create a spell that would solve this problem, not just now, but forever. And if she wanted to pull it off, she would need a private place to work.

Harmony Tower was staffed by its own dedicated detachment of the Royal Guard, tasked with keeping the complex in the proper condition and maintaining the grounds. Luna knew most about the operation, since she was after all the one who made use of the place most of the time, but in any event Celestia had known that even without warning she would find a warm welcome here. Indeed, three attendants were already waiting for her when she landed on the wide flight platform situated about midway up the tower’s length. The unexpected scent of freshly cut grass was the first thing that she noticed, and it brought with it a refreshing vigour. That alone could at least keep her on her hooves until she could settle down into bed.

“Your Highness,” intoned the captain of the detachment, a stocky unicorn in gleaming armor who stood at the front of the welcoming party. In spite of his regal appearance, Celestia could see that his face was mired in confusion. “This is an unforeseen visit.”

“There will be time for explanations later, Captain,” she replied, giving him an imperious glare, helped by the visible bags under her eyes. “I’ve traveled all through the night, and right now the thing that I need most is a safe place to rest. I trust that such an apartment has been maintained here.”

The formality did the trick. The captain nodded and stepped aside to let her pass. “Naturally. Though your suite has seen little use over the years, you will find that it still meets the standards that you deserve, Your Highness. Will you be wanting anything else?”

“I will call when I need something, don’t worry.” If what Luna always told her about the staff of the tower was true, that call might be a long time coming. Her sister claimed that the kitchen had an almost clairvoyant understanding of when their guests wished to take their meals. “Thank you of course for your service.” She took another sniff of the grounds, blooming green and vibrant even amongst the otherwise bone-dry forest. “And please tell the groundskeeper that he has my highest commendations. This place is a wonderful sight after everything else that I’ve been through.”

The whole group nodded back, and then the tower’s main doors opened before her, and Celestia started the trek up to the apartments. In truth, the fresh air here combined with the new light of dawn had given her a shot of energy, enough perhaps to let her do some rudimentary planning before settling into bed. She could still feel the crushing weight of exhaustion buried underneath, deep in her bones, but time was short. Every minute wasted was another minute in which the country edged closer to the abyss.

As she climbed higher, the branches and leaves that she could spy outside the windows grew thinner, until eventually she could look out over the forest once again.

It felt strange to be back here after so long, in the place where it really had all begun for her and Luna. Out on the horizon, a dollop of grey marked the ruins of the old Citadel of Everfree, once the last bastion of hope in Discord’s Equestria, now nothing but an abandoned, empty husk. But it was still full of memories for the pony who remembered everything that had happened there. In this forest, Celestia and Luna had destroyed Discord’s magic. They had created the Elements of Harmony, and in doing so they had brought reality to the hope that ponies could one day be free again.

If Celestia had her way, the forest would be playing host to another such momentous occasion in short order.

The problem, as she saw it, was rivalry. As far back as the records went, the pony nation had always been fractious. Unicorn versus pegasus versus earth pony, coming to blows every few centuries, no matter the reforms and promises of peace which had always followed. It had been the same in Star Swirl’s time, and it had been the same in Celestia’s youth, too, as the Orders of the Resistance had fought over the right to rule the new Equestria. Even if she somehow found a temporary solution which would patch things up for now, it would only be a matter of time until a new crisis heralded the next flare of conflict.

Magic couldn’t create food, but she hoped that it could solve that bigger underlying issue, if applied in the right way. What the pony tribes really needed was a system, a framework that would remove that competition that always rose up between them, and so keep everypony happy. Laws could create something like that, but laws could be worked around. Magic, though… magic was infallible.

Celestia already had a basic sketch of the spell in her head, but she would need stacks of parchment to map the whole thing out. For this to work, the magic would have to be adaptable, extensible, and above all extremely powerful. Pity that Luna had to be occupied keeping things in the capital under control. If the two of them combined their powers using the Elements, Celestia was sure that they would make short work of the casting. Alone, it was well beyond her abilities. But then, peace and quiet wasn’t the only reason that she had come to Everfree.

Cresting the stairway, Celestia found herself faced by two plain-looking wooden doors, identical save for brass nameplates that had been mounted upon them. Hers faced east, and inside a down mattress waited to take her in. Instead of settling down into it, though, Celestia strode up to the window.

There was a dry breeze wafting over the forest, enough to set her mane dancing over her shoulder, and also take the moisture right off of her lips. From this viewpoint, she could see out into the opposite direction from the Citadel, toward the hills that rose up dark and grim in the distance.

Centuries ago, her mentor Aqua had been the first one to show her those heights. Some primal force in this forest there amplified the power of all magic, and with it Celestia thought that she might be able to cast her spell without aid. Even from this distance she could feel the gentle thrum of the magic in her mind. Nopony knew where it came from, but with it she and Luna had once conquered evil, and she was sure that she could do it again.

First, though, she needed to know what exactly she was going to be trying.

Across from the bed, a large reading desk was nestled up against the wall, with a quill and ink bottle ready to go on it, and a stack of blank parchments there too.

Sitting down, Celestia banished the exhaustion from her mind’s eye and set to work, page upon page filling with constraints and quantities, invocations and equations. With each stroke of ink her eyelids would droop a little lower, but she paid her exhaustion no heed. Equestria needed her, and this time she was going to do whatever it took.

Chapter 24: Fire Rubies

“Certainly the gems that carpet our lands are a mark of the greed of the dragons that once ruled here. But what became of them? Another puzzle.”

Star Swirl the Bearded

To deal with all of the new supplies that Celestia had brought back to the house, Rosy and Capstan had been forced to expand their fire pit. The old one had done okay for boiling stews and vegetables, but after the flour and olive oil had come in, Rosy had gotten a chance to try her hoof at baking. It meant that in the morning, the rest of the house awoke to the intoxicating aroma of crisp breakfast buns, and this time they had the fresh cherries to go with them as well. Luna especially took a liking to the cherries, to the point where Capstan had to take the bowl off of the table to stop her from eating them all.

“Will riding in the coach be the new normal for you, then?” Wickerlock asked, eying Celestia coolly over his cup of water.

“For the time being, yes,” she replied, reading the meaning behind his tone. “Gala offered it, and I felt that it wouldn’t be right for me to turn him down. They’ll pick me up from a corner a couple of blocks from here.”

“Why make you walk even that far?”

“Well, he still doesn’t know that I’m not from the upper city. I wouldn’t want to give away that story by letting myself be seen around here.” Truthfully, Celestia wondered why getting picked up from a random street corner in the lower city was any better, but when she’d suggested it to Gala the old pony had taken the idea in stride, muttering something about her wanting to “maintain her privacy”. It meant that she wouldn’t be able to make the trek out to the estate with the rest of them every morning, but on the plus side the coach could carry a lot more supplies than she could alone.

Amidst the conversation, Rosy was over by the water barrel, getting onto the business of cleaning up her bakeware while it was still warm. “If things keep on like this, one of these days the rest of us won’t even need to work!” she chuckled. “My, what a thought that is!”

“That is the plan,” Celestia said, resting her chin onto her hoof as she thought about it. It would take some time still for sure, but after she found out who among the workers was sabotaging the orchard’s operations, surely there would be a significant reward for her. Perhaps something which could be traded for more than just the essentials.

Capstan finished off his water and set his cup down on the table hard. “Not for me, it’s not!” He sounded irritated. “At least one of us has to keep on with some honest work around here. Even picking apples for that traitor is bad enough, let alone putting yourself on the line for his interests.”

“I’m sorry, are you implying that my work is any less honest than yours?” Celestia put down her own cup, while trying to stay calm. “I may not have the sweat on my brow to prove it anymore, Capstan, but my job around the orchard is just as demanding as either of yours. At any rate it’s more important, and Gala clearly understands that.”

“It’s not your effort to watch for, but where it takes you. Gala and his son are followers of the King!”

“And do you think I’ll end up following along with them just because I’m doing their work?” she interrupted. “I can think for myself better than that. Don’t you think that all of this food is a worthy enough reward to chase after?”

Rather than answer directly, he stood up from the table, a gleam in his eye as he went to collect his coat from where it hung by the door. “The food is good, Celestia. Don’t think I’m not thankful for that.”

“Then what’s your problem with my work?”

“Just be aware of where it’s taking you. A noble uniform and a ticket on the Lord’s coach may not seem like much, but we’re not following you up the mountain.” He threw his coat over his shoulders roughly. “Come on now, Wickerlock. We ought to be off.”

The slender unicorn at the table shrunk back under his companion’s combined glares. “Sure, Capstan. See you tonight, Celestia.” He offered her a shaky smile on his way out of the door, but Capstan didn’t look back once.

“Don’t worry about him,” Rosy said from the water barrel, where she was starting the process of washing up. “You follow your own star. Wherever it leads you, dear, I’m sure it’ll lead you well.”

“Don’t worry, I will.” Even knowing that Capstan didn’t approve of Fastidious’s operation, she had still never expected such hostility from him. And especially now that her pay had almost subsumed both of theirs. “Surely you would follow me, Rosy, if a road opened up for us?”

The old mare bent over the plates, studying them intently. “Let’s wait to see if that day comes first. Neither of us should dwell on what may yet be.”

Celestia could only nod at that. They all could see the light at the top of the city as well as any other. Even Capstan, stubborn as he was, could only answer the question honestly once he realized that the dream was actually within reach. She had thought it all just fantasy too, until Gala had handed her the key.

“Are we going somewhere?” Celestia felt a brush of hair on her right shoulder, and realized that in the midst of the argument she’d forgotten about Luna. Now her sister was looking up at her, her big violet eyes grave and concerned.

“Why would you think that, Luna?”

“Everyone was talking about roads and following stars. You know that I don’t want to go anywhere, right? I like it here.” She did a quick pirouette in place, taking in all of the space with one look. “There’s so much room to play, and it’s quiet at night.” Her eyes lit up. “And especially now with such sweets to eat!”

Bending down, Celestia picked her sister up, using only a little magic to help herself along. It seemed like only yesterday she would have been able to hold Luna without any help, but now her sister seemed almost fully grown. “Of course we’re not going anywhere! Not today, and not tomorrow. We’ll have this place to play in for a long time yet.”

With one bounce of her forelegs, she held up Luna until their eyes met. Now that her sister’s face had its usual spark of excitement back, Celestia couldn’t help but break out in a grin seeing it. “But I could perhaps tell you a little secret, if you promise to keep it.”

Luna’s eyebrows came down. “You know I don’t like secrets, Tia. Why wouldn’t you tell the others, if you’d tell it to me?”

Celestia took one look over her shoulder, to where Rosy was still busy with the dishes, and started walking slowly across the floor, toward the bedding area. “This will be just something between you and me, that’s all. Because the truth is, one day we are going to go somewhere. Somewhere with plenty of space to play in, safety and warmth at night, and more sweets than you could ever dream of!”

The joy that spread across Luna’s face was infectious. “What? Where? When?”

Celestia chuckled. “Not so loud! Secret, remember? I can’t say exactly when, but someday soon, I think. I’m going to be away more often at the orchard now, which means that you might not see me every night, but it’s because I’m working for that journey now. When I’m done, there’ll be a place made for us there.”

She had expected that Luna would keep on peppering her with questions, but that assurance seemed enough to answer her curiosity for now. “Will there be cherries there, too?” Well, most of the curiosity, at any rate.

“Cherries and apples, blueberries and strawberries and every kind of fruit you could imagine!” They had reached the far side of the room, and now Celestia let her sister down gently onto the side of the filly’s bed. “So when night comes, and I’m not here to set you to sleep, just remember that for me, okay?”

Luna looked up with an eager smile. “Okay, Tia.”

Celestia could have stayed there talking with her sister for an hour more, but soon enough Fastidious’s coach would be waiting by the appointed street corner, and she still had to change into her uniform before making her way out to meet it. At least now Luna wouldn’t worry if she stayed away from the house later than usual. She would try to avoid that if possible, but something told her that the work of catching the saboteur would involve quite a few extra hours, especially if she was overseeing the construction during the day. But just like Luna, at least she had a light to look up at, a hope that one day, soon, she wouldn’t have to worry about leaving her sister alone ever again.

When the Lord’s coach emerged from the murky grey fog that was hanging that morning over Eridian, Celestia was doubly glad to see it. She certainly didn’t envy Capstan and Wickerlock for their commute this morning, as a chilly breeze was cutting through the damp air, and even in her well-tailored uniform it chilled her down to the bone. The inside of the coach would probably not be warm per se, but it would at least be out of that wind. When the attendant opened the door for her, she could hardly thank him through her chattering teeth.

The inside of the coach was lit by a small lantern burning on one of the interior walls, its flickering flame not doing much to stave off the all-encompassing darkness of the city, but it was casting enough light at least for Celestia to be able to identify the coach’s other occupant. Sitting straight as a post on the other seat was Fastidious, his orange mane coiffed and parted delicately to the side of his face. Somehow, in spite of the chilly morning, he was wearing a warm smile. The lined overcoat that he wore around his shoulders might have had something to do with that.

“G-good morning, my Lord,” she stammered out, rubbing the sides of her forelegs to maybe warm them up a little.

“As you, Celestia,” he returned brightly. “My father would have met you, but well, he is busy at the orchard now. Seeing after Screw I believe. Normally, of course, you won’t have anyone else to join you for this ride, but today our schedules happened to align. That, and we thought it prudent to give you a little more of a briefing as we start out on this project.”

She nodded quickly. Hopefully Fastidious would be doing most of the talking. Rubbing her forelegs was hardly helping.

Fastidious reached under his seat, pulling out a bundle of parchments several inches thick.

“Most of this you’ve seen already, as it was you who drafted the plans for us, after all. Nevertheless, it will be your job to make sure that everything is done according to that spec, so you should keep it with you.”

Accepting the bundle, Celestia clutched it close to her chest. “And w-what about my other responsibilities?”

Fastidious looked perplexed for a moment. “I’m sorry. Is something the matter?”

“My Lord?”

He reached across the inside of the coach, slowly, perhaps wary that a sudden bump would have them right up against each other’s chests. “You look so distraught, and you’re stammering, and my, your skin is ice cold!” He drew his hoof back quickly and gave her a questioning look.

If he hadn’t been her boss, Celestia would have considered shaking her head in disapproval. By the stars, she could see her breath turning to fog as soon as she exhaled. How could he not have noticed? “It’s nothing, my Lord, just the cold. By the time we get to the orchard I’ll have warmed up some.”

It looked like it took a few seconds for her words to get through to his mind, before finally he chuckled. “Of course. Forgive me. Sometimes I forget the troubles that some of us have to deal with. Please, take my coat. I’d have you back well sooner than the end of the ride.”

She almost refused, but then the cold was still biting underneath her skin. Fastidious undid the coat with ease, revealing his usual crimson cape underneath, and then settled the fabric around her shoulders.

Instantly, Celestia felt a gentle warmth against her wings and back, banishing the icy numbness of the cold from her extremities. She had expected the coat to still have some of his body heat on it, but this was something else entirely. After mere seconds, she wouldn’t have believed that it was cold outside either.

Fastidious saw her shock, and grinned widely. “One of the perks that comes with a little wealth. There are fire rubies sewn into the lining. Enough to keep a pony comfortable on even the coldest of days.”

“Thank you, my Lord,” she said, offering him a slight bow. “Though I suppose now you will be feeling the effects of the weather.”

“I can manage,” he said without a hint of care. “Once or twice we should all try to remember what the world actually looks like. Which does bring us back to the question that you asked.”

Celestia sat back into her seat, still marveling at the warmth coming off of the coat. Fire rubies were an exclusive commodity, mined from the noble estates in Fillydelphia. A prospector had once stopped by Raspberry’s tavern on his way through town, and he had shown her one of the glimmering red stones. The liquid centre of the rock would froth and bubble whenever he had turned the gem over, like it was filled with molten lava captured from a volcano, and all the while it had pulsated with the same gentle heat, just enough to be comfortable. But getting enough of them together to make a whole coat must have cost Fastidious a fortune.

“Concerning the matter of our saboteur,” Fastidious continued, “regrettably most of that work will need to be carried out after hours, since overseeing construction will obviously take up all of your time during the regular work day. My father has prepared a set of quarters for you at the orchard, should you ever need them. And I also should give you this.” This time, what emerged from underneath his seat was a gleaming red brooch, fine gold worked around a small ruby in its centre. The work looked similar to the apple jewelry that the Lord himself always wore, but with a much smaller gem. “Wear that on your collar, and none of our guards will ever stand in your way.”

She accepted the brooch gingerly, marveling at how the light of the lantern flickered in the stone’s centre. Fastidious couldn’t have provided her with a clearer reminder of why she was working for him. Every step she took now was toward a life where one day she and Luna could forget that the world was cold outside. Never mind what Capstan had to say. She would find that better life, and this was the way to get there.

“It’s an honour, my Lord,” she said, fastening the brooch onto the collar of her uniform.

Fastidious was grinning broadly. “I can only take heart in the knowledge that somepony I can properly trust will be spearheading this investigation. We’ve had a lot of trouble with matters like that lately, you know. First Quill, then Screw, and now this business as well.”

“Screw?” She was aware that the chief mechanic had been transferred into some other post, but not that there had been any doubt of his trustworthiness. “Has something happened to change your opinions of him?”

The Lord merely chuckled. “No, perhaps I exaggerated slightly. We’ve had our doubts about him for a while, though. If there’s anything you’ve taught us, Celestia, it’s that no amount of prior trust should blind us to the evidence in front of us.” The last word hung in the air between them for a moment. “But if you’re worried after Screw, don’t be. He is still with us, and still doing important work.”

Lurching over one last broken cobblestone, the coach cleared the final neighbourhoods of Eridian, and emerged into the empty countryside around the city. With an open road ahead, Celestia could feel the drivers picking up speed. They would likely be at the orchard in only a few minutes. Outside of the city, that chill breeze now had the space to blow more freely, and a few of the gusts even rocked the coach on its suspension. Walking through this would have been absolutely horrid. Celestia would have to be sure that Rosy made something especially hearty for Capstan and Wickerlock tonight.

“Now, as to the details of your assignment,” Fastidious said, “we expect that our saboteur will be none too pleased at this new construction. Once we do have all of the presses operating in one building, after all, it should be much more difficult to damage any of them without being noticed. So I would keep a very close eye on things if I were you. Accidents will happen, and some of them might actually be anything but.”

Celestia nodded. Tracking down the culprit out of the hundreds of ponies who worked in the orchard would be a tricky job, but luckily she already had three sets of trustworthy eyes and ears that she could rely on. Capstan she could almost certainly manoeuvre into a construction position, and with luck she could find a spot on the project for Wickerlock and Trinity too. It would be much harder for anypony to make mischief with all four of them on the watch.

“When you do find something suspicious,” Fastidious continued, “you are to report your findings to my father, or to me if he is occupied elsewhere. As the stallion in charge of the estate, it will be him who metes out the required consequences. And don’t bother yourself with the specifics of that by the way.” He leaned back into his seat for the first time in the whole ride. “My father has a lot of experience dealing with ponies who betray our trust. Once the culprit is found, your only responsibility will be to complete the construction.”

“Of course, my Lord.” She nodded again. On the horizon, the Rose et Blanc orchard appeared, shining in the halo of its reserved section of clear sky. The wind would be just as chilly blowing through the orchard, of course, but with the light of the Sun on her shoulders, Celestia knew that it would be a much easier thing to bear.

As the coach pulled up to the gate, Fastidious beckoned her forward once more. “I suppose I should be taking my coat back now,” he said.

Celestia undid the buttons wordlessly, and felt the cool bite of the air in the coach as soon as the jewel-lined fabric left her body. It was enough to make the feathers on her wings stand up, even though it really was nothing compared to how things had been in the city.

When the coach finally came to its smooth, rolling stop, and the driver had opened the door to allow Fastidious to exit, he gave her one last look.

“My father has drawn up a pool of workers from which you can form your initial construction teams. You’ll find them at the location called for in the plans. I’ll see you later, Celestia, okay?”

“Later indeed,” she answered confidently, sitting still on her seat until he was completely out of the door.

Outside, she could see that they were parked right in front of the manor’s entry, and through the house’s open doorway she once again spied the many servants of the house at work, polishing the vases and dusting off the recesses in the wooden walls. Stepping out, she turned around to see the orchard, all neat lines of apple trees, with its own crowd of workers swarming over them and picking every apple in sight. One of those workers was her target, and she was going to find them.

“Oh, Celestia!” Fastidious’s voice caught her just as she was about to set off. She looked back to see him standing on the step, a gust of wind tossing the delicate curls of his mane over his shoulder. “It does get cold enough here at night,” he continued. “I’ll have the seamstress make up a coat for you as well. Not like mine, of course,” he chuckled, “but warm enough all the same. Stay safe out there, alright?”

“Thank you, Lord Fastidious,” she said, giving him a deep bow. “I won’t let you down.”

Chapter 25: Leads

“Strength of arms? Status? Money? Nothing guaranteed safety in Discord’s Equestria, save distance from the King.”

Aqua, Master of the Order of Water

The first thing that Celestia had the teams do was build her an office of sorts, really just a large tent on the construction site where she could keep the building plans and organise the work. And where she could stew on the problem of who the saboteur was when she didn’t have anything better to do.

As expected, Capstan had been chosen for the work even without her input, and it had only required a couple of requests to Heavy Heart before Wickerlock and Trinity had ended up in the pool too. She had divided them up between each of the principal teams so that hopefully her eyes would be able to catch anything as soon as it happened. As it turned out, Fastidious had been very correct in his suspicion that accidents would happen, but telling the difference between the mistakes made by unskilled labour and the actual malice had so far been impossible.

In spite of that, though, progress was happening. In only a few weeks she’d got the site levelled off and the foundations almost all laid. The main support beams were going up now, and so Celestia hoped that the lord would be right on his other suspicion too. The closer that the project got to completion, the more desperate, and thus the more overt, the sabotage would have to become.

Regrettably, Fastidious’s predictions about her increasing work-hours had come to pass almost immediately as well. With extra meetings to take at the manor house to deal with supply manifests and negotiating with Fruit’s artisans, as well as the late shifts that were required to keep up to date with her own aggressive schedules, her apartment here at the estate had been seeing regular use. She had hoped that being able to wake up with the Sun in her eyes might have helped make it worthwhile, but every night she only found herself wondering how Luna had got on with her day. At least she still had conversations with the rest of the family to stay abreast of that situation.

Every few days, she’d have each of her friends come into the office for a debriefing, and today it was Trinity sitting across from her on one of the low crates that had to serve as seats in here. The cold winds had only gotten worse lately, but at least the fabric of the tent kept those out. She had a small hearth in here too, just enough to keep her hooves warm when she needed it. They had built her an office, not a luxury apartment. But at least it was enough to keep her mind focused on the work.

“How are you coping?” Trinity asked, relaxing on her crate while she held her hooves to the fire. The piles of parchments that were covering the desk were almost high enough to hide the earth pony’s face from Celestia’s view.

“Well enough,” Celestia answered, tapping her hooves idly on the desk. “We still have a fair amount of the project left to get through. Although I should be the one asking the questions. Have you seen anything?”

Trinity sat back on the crate. “Flashes of suspicion, here and there. I have my eye on a couple of the ponies in my group, but I can’t say anything for certain about them just yet.”

“Who?” Celestia immediately pulled out a list of all the ponies she had assigned to Trinity’s team. Whenever there had been a work accident, she’d been sure to take careful note of everypony involved. Already, the personnel records were awash in red marks. “I’ll keep my eye on them too.”

“Let me think. Hale was one, I believe, as well as Stiff. And Quinn too.”

Indeed, Celestia had already marked off all three of the names, having found them involved in accidents on Trinity’s watch before. “That’s another strike on those three. Worth asking them a question or two perhaps?”

Trinity shook her head. “We still don’t know enough. But maybe you could consider transferring them instead.”

Celestia blinked. “Transfer them? To another team? I wouldn’t want to start treating them differently from anypony else. Whoever the saboteur is, they’re sure to be watching personnel assignments closely. I don’t want them to suspect anything until the day that we catch them with the spanner in their hooves!”

“And they won’t,” Trinity cautioned firmly. “Personnel reassignments happen all of the time, especially on a project like this where there are many different jobs that need attending to. My group is going to be finishing up our segment of the beams soon, and so we need to start forming teams for laying in the floors.”

“Oh, of course, the floors,” Celestia sighed, turning away from Trinity to look at her desk again. Buried under the personnel records and all of her notes and suspicions were the inventories and schedules for the construction itself. “And that means I need to put in more orders with Fruit for supplies. Not to mention, get some more specialists down from Eridian too!”

She cradled her head in her hooves listlessly, her brain feeling like a lead brick. “Trinity,” she said, “I just don’t know how I’m going to get anywhere on this file. I’m buried up to my knees just keeping the construction straight, let alone following up on all of these leads! I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to wake up months down the line no closer to solving this mystery.”

Sympathetic, Trinity got to her hooves and started stacking the loose parchments that were covering the front of the desk. “Don’t worry, Celestia, we’ll get there.”

Taking a deep breath, Celestia felt the weariness fall away from her heart a little. Enough that she could help getting organised, at least. “How can you be so sure? We’ve been at this for three weeks, and we already have a list of leads a mile long.” She held up the record, with dappled red spots all over its surface. “Our saboteur could be any one of these names, or they could be none of them! Even with you three helping me, we can’t have eyes on everypony at once.”

With the parchment all stacked, Trinity sighed. Her brow was furrowed, an expression that Celestia didn’t see from her often. “I think that’s why we need to keep shaking up the teams. Move ponies around, and don’t let them get too settled.”

Curious, Celestia looked up, resting her head on her forehooves. “Explain.”

“Basically, we expect some random accidents to occur as construction progresses. Low-skilled workers, operating without much training, that sort of thing is expected. True to form, that’s what we’ve seen.” She indicated the parchment that Celestia was still holding up.

“Incidents all over the place,” Celestia agreed.

“Yes. Our saboteur will want to meld into that, so that even the accidents they’re causing are just a few out of many, lost in the background. What we’re looking for, on the other hoof, is a pattern.”

Celestia nodded. “So far, so good. We want to see the same names coming up a few times. But you sound like you’ve got something more in mind.”

“Indeed I do,” the earth pony continued, sounding a little excited now. “Imagine for a moment if you were the saboteur. Difficult I know, but just humour me here. Fastidious and his group aren’t stupid.” She paused, a smile lingering on her lips. “Well, at least they aren’t that stupid. They would have thought of everything I just mentioned. So whoever our saboteur is, they already know how to avoid leaving a pattern for their investigators to follow.”

“That’s not encouraging.” The thought that her quarry would be actively working to frustrate her investigation made sense, but of course that would only make the investigation that much harder. “But how does shuffling up the work groups help us with any of that?”

“By giving them just that extra thing to think about.” Trinity tapped a hoof on the desk to emphasise her point, the sound punctuating the air for a moment before dissipating in the wind. “We have more than enough to keep ourselves occupied, so we need to make it as hard for our friend as we can. Don’t give them the chance to get to know anypony, so that they can set their friends up to take the fall for them. If trouble follows one pony around no matter what team he’s on—”

“Then we’ll have them,” Celestia said, the pieces finally clicking into place for her. Indeed, she should have seen it sooner. It would have been hard enough for the saboteur to keep their story straight through the investigations that Gala would have made through the picking months. Why not make it as hard for her enemy as she could? “And with so many other factors to think about, our saboteur is even more likely to drop us something obvious whenever they do make a move.”

Trinity flashed her a grin, happy they were on the same page. “Exactly. So when each team finishes up their section of the foundations, we’ll split them up again for the flooring work, and again for anything else that needs to come up. Soon enough, we’ll see that pattern.”

It was a good plan, Celestia thought. “Thanks,” she said, feeling some semblance of relief. “Sorry for losing my cool there. You didn’t deserve that.”

Trinity gave her a sympathetic look. “Don’t worry about it. We can all see how much stress you’re under here. But you’re going to make it. You can trust me on that. Because you’ve got something that saboteur doesn’t have.” Trinity fished about in her pouch for a moment, eventually bringing out a small rock clutched in her teeth.

Taking it with her magic, Celestia gave the rock a quick examination. “Is there something special about this rock that you’re not telling me?”

“Not as far as I can tell, but your sister just said that it reminded her of you. Maybe that bit is like one of your ears?” Seeing the sudden quiver in Celestia’s lip, she reached across the desk to put a comforting hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “And that’s what I mean. You’ve got somepony else out there who believes in you. So I’d hate to be anypony who’d want to stand in your way.”

The sound of somepony banging a pot came into the tent, the signal for the next shift. “Anyway, that’s my cue. We can talk more about Luna when I get off tonight.”

“Sure,” Celestia replied, her eyes still fixed on the stone. Indeed, it took a bit of turning her head about to see the resemblance, but maybe there was just a little of her profile held in there, when viewed from the right perspective.

Her focus and confidence restored, she put the stone down in its own spot on the desk, and cleared all of the stacks of parchment away from it. Then, she got all of the personnel lists together. Trinity’s logic made a whole lot of sense, after all. She was going to need some dice.

Later that afternoon, just as Celestia was finishing off the new set of teams for the flooring project, there came a rustle of fabric at the front of the tent. She looked up to see one of the guards from the estate wall crouching down to get through the flap, a sharp spear slung from his shoulders. Gala, in a well-lined overcoat, followed by only a few steps. The old earth pony’s mane was completely tousled from his time in the wind, but he was still looking chipper in spite of it.

Celestia immediately got to her hooves when she saw the estate boss. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Mr. Gala,” she said, offering him a stately bow.

“Likewise,” he returned gruffly. He gave the guard a quick look, and the big pony shuffled out of the tent without a word. “Grim will keep an eye on things for us,” Gala said, stepping forward straight to the hearth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if our mutual friend thought to eavesdrop on us here.”

“Of course,” she said, throwing a new log onto the fire. “I’m afraid that I can’t offer you much of anything to sit on.”

He waved her off. “Not to worry, I won’t be here long. I’m only here for a little update on how things are progressing.” He offered her a wink with that. Celestia did of course send the household regular progress reports with regard to the construction project, but as with everything about the investigation, it would seem that the reporting for that would be done under wraps.

“Well, I’m afraid that there isn’t all that much to say just yet,” she said. “We have a list of ponies that we’re watching, but not enough information to form any conclusions just yet. I just had a little idea, though.” Celestia picked up the new team manifest from her desk, ready to tell the lord everything there was to know about the new assignments, then she hesitated for a moment. This whole thing had been Trinity’s idea, and she had been about to say as much. But Gala probably didn’t even know who Trinity was, and wouldn’t care regardless. All that he wanted was to know that things were progressing along.

“Something the matter?” the old earth pony asked.

Celestia coughed and shuffled the parchments together. “Nothing at all, my Lord. As I said, I had this little idea that could speed up our efforts. Essentially, I want to shuffle the teams up, to stop our mutual friend from being able to settle into any sort of rhythm.”

Gala leafed through the parchments quickly, muttering to himself as he did. “Staffing considerations are wholly under your purview, Miss Celestia, so naturally you may do with the workers as you please. Though notably there is something about that which you could perhaps explain.” He swept his eyes over the documents on the desk, marked all over with her ink now, and settled for a moment on Luna’s rock. For an instant Celestia wondered if he was going to ask about it, but then Gala blinked and carried on. “I do have Grim and some of the other guards keeping an eye on things as they make their rounds. While they haven’t seen anything that we believe would help you in your investigations, they have seen these little debriefing sessions that you’ve been getting from the workers.”

She nodded proudly. “Trusted eyes, sir. With them I can stay abreast of everything going on in the project at once.”

Outside, the wind gusted, whistling as it wound through the rows of trees. This late in the season, that had likely knocked a few dozen apples off of their branches. The fire on the hearth crackled as the new log fully caught. “I understand,” Gala said, sounding grave. “But allow me one word of advice, from a pony who’s learned what can happen if trust is given where it’s not due. Whether it was Quill, or Screw, or countless others before them: the worst are always the ones that you think you shouldn’t have to watch.”

No wonder they’d been watching her. Gala did have a point, and Celestia owed most of her fortitude here to the misfortunes of the ponies who had betrayed the lord’s trust. Still, the insinuation was hardly called-for.

“Mister Gala, if you have reason to suspect that Trinity, Wickerlock, or Capstan has anything to do with the sabotage, then I would like to hear your suspicions.”

He shook his head. “Rest assured that if I knew anything concrete, I would have had the perpetrator apprehended by now. We’re in the process of running down the backgrounds of everypony on staff as far as the manor is concerned. If I were you, I would make sure that you have done the same. Our foe is wily, Miss Celestia.”

“I understand that,” she replied evenly. “But this is my investigation, is it not?”

He nodded without a word.

“Then I would appreciate it if you allow me to conduct it properly.” Levelling a hoof at him, she took a step inward, for once appreciating the height difference between them. “And if you or the guards want to run some extra patrols around the work site, then you may, so long as I know what’s going on. I’ll run the staffing as I want to, and I’ll get this saboteur of ours, but if I’m to do that I have to know that I’m being given the latitude to do what I think is necessary. I do have that latitude, don’t I?”

Gala didn’t wilt under the force of her words. Instead he bore them as a rock would bear a rushing river. “To a point,” he returned calmly. He glanced over his shoulder at the tent entrance, before walking a few steps over to it. “But just remember what I’ve said,” he said over his shoulder. “We are keeping all of our employees on a tighter leash these days, and it would be a real shame if we found another traitor amongst the ranks of those we thought we could trust. Eliminating the threat is always so much harder in those cases.” At the entrance, the guard outside lifted the flap for the lord. “As always, let me know right away if you find anything solid.”

Celestia gave him another respectful bow as he left into the afternoon light. The implications of the conversation were relatively straightforward. First, that soon enough Gala would find out everything there was to know about her own background, if he was running all of the estate employees’ files. That wasn’t so concerning, even if she had originally applied under the guise of being a member of the upper city. Her work would speak for itself by now.

It was the second implication, though, that gave her pause. Pulling out the personnel records again, Celestia flipped through the stack until she reached the page that had Trinity’s entry on it. Even besides the fact that she knew Wickerlock and Capstan personally, the three of them had come in halfway into the season, and the sabotage had started long before then. Trinity, though, had been around long enough to fit the bill. In fact, the records showed that she had arrived just as the harvest was starting up.

She caught herself, halfway through scanning the stub of cursive that marked Trinity’s entry, and then roughly tossed the parchment back into its pile. What was she thinking? Not only had Trinity been her friend for all of her time here at the orchard, but the white earth pony had been her most valuable asset in gathering new leads about the workers. Surely she would never be so helpful if she was actually the saboteur herself.

Celestia shook her head. Whatever Gala said, there were some ponies that she just had to trust. Looking once more at the mess of suspects that she and Trinity had already identified, she knew that without her friend’s help, she would have been lost on this file. The lord would just have to get used to the fact that she had her methods. When she gave them the saboteur, they would have to accept that.

She was just getting into the heart of a memo to Fruit requesting another day of work for his stonemasons when suddenly from outside there came a shout and a crash of solid timber. Celestia was on her hooves and out into the blazing afternoon sunlight in seconds, and she saw the source of the sound immediately.

With the main support beams going up, all of the ponies working on the construction would normally be clustered around the three big cranes that had been brought in for doing the lifts. Each of them required four strong stallions working in concert, but together they could hoist the solid logs that would be the main posts into position.

Two of the cranes were idle at the moment, with posts on the ground ready to be lifted, but the third was commanding the attention of every pony on the site, and it wasn’t hard to imagine why that might be the case. Celestia didn’t bother trying to push her way through the crowd, instead letting her wings catch the breeze and taking a moment to survey the scene from the air.

This crane also had a post lying on the ground next to it, but at an awkward angle, out of the usual spot that it would have been lifted from. From the way that it was sitting, it was clear that the log was propped up on something, and as Celestia landed, she could see that the something was Mister Hale Stone, a unicorn from Trinity’s crew. His square features were screwed up in obvious pain, little surprise given that his right hind leg was caught under the log. The rest of the crew was all standing around him, looking about nervously.

Celestia landed next to Trinity. “What are we all waiting for?” she shouted. “Get that log off of him!”

A few of the ponies on the crew started making their way, but the others held them back. Trinity shook her head. “Sorry, Celestia, but we can’t. It’s unstable here. If we rocked it the wrong way, it might roll back on top of him, never mind the rest of us.”

“What about the crane then? If we can’t roll, then we’ll lift!” She glanced at the large wheel where the crane’s operators normally walked, and saw that Quinn and Stiff were in there, anxiously looking out at their fallen comrade. Mentally, Celestia checked off the three names that Trinity had given her before. Time enough for an investigation later, though. “Somepony get the ropes up! And we need two more on the wheel! Quickly now ponies, stop standing around and get on this!”

With the whole work crew there, Celestia expected there would be a little confusion as everypony tried to do their best in getting the ropes attached and the lift started. But maybe it was the crisis at hand that drove them to coordination. And maybe it was the sight of Hale clearly doing his best to hold back from screaming his head off. Capstan and another brute stallion joined the other two in the wheel, and very shortly they had the log lifted up just high enough for Trinity to get Hale out to safety. Trinity looked to his leg right away.

“Well, that one’s broken for sure,” she said. “Not surprising at all given the situation. We were in the middle of the lift when the log came down. Right down onto the three of us. Hale here just didn’t leap out of the way in time.” She gave him a gentle pat on the head. “I think his days here are probably done.”

Celestia nodded, though she couldn’t help but feel bad for him. His file said that he’d been a hard worker, if a little suspect, but now he’d be out of a job on top of having that nasty broken leg. The estate couldn’t afford charity work on top of everything else that was going on. At least that was one name that she could strike off of the list. “What went wrong?”

“Hard to know,” Trinity said, still unsettled by the grim sight. “We all heard something snap just before the log fell, though.” The rest of the team nodded at that.

Leaving them, Celestia flew up to the crane. Clearly the log itself hadn’t been damaged in all of that, and it was just the same as all of the others that had been brought in for the job, cut from the trunks of a few older native trees that had been growing at the south end of the orchard.

Grasping the length of rope that was dangling off of the crane’s pulley, she followed it down to its end. Sure enough, rather than the sturdy knot that should have been tied there, this one ended in a frayed twist, the ends of its braid splayed out like the strands of a mop. She called Trinity over.

“Well, there’s your snap,” Celestia said. “I can’t tell if this was cut or just worn out naturally, but you’d best have the rest of them checked, just in case.” She took a look over her shoulder, to see that the rest of the crew was still tending to Hale. For now, she and Trinity had a moment to themselves. “What do you think, Trinity? All three of your stallions were here for this one.”

The earth pony was startled for a moment. “Huh? Oh, that business. You’re quick to get back to that, aren’t you?”

“While the details are fresh!” Celestia snapped. “I told you to keep an eye on them, after all.”

“Sure, sure,” Trinity replied, waving a hoof apologetically. She took a glance back toward the crane, concentrating. “You saw that Stiff and Quinn were on the wheel, and they didn’t touch the ropes. Hale was actually the one who fastened them on.”

“Caught in his own trap, then?”

“Maybe,” Trinity admitted. “We’d certainly be lucky if that was the case.”

Celestia shook her head. “I don’t know. We know that our friend is smart. I don’t think he would have gotten this far if he wasn’t careful too. But I’ll tell the lord to keep an eye on old Hale just in case things do clear up on our end. Then the broken leg would be the least of his troubles.”

She gave Trinity a quick pat on the shoulder, and the earth pony returned it. Trinity looked shaken by the whole ordeal, but who could blame her? By the sounds of it that had almost been her leg under the log. And Celestia couldn’t think of how she’d fare on this project without Trinity’s help.

Chapter 26: The Saboteur

“The most valuable thing in those days was not gold, silver or water. The most valuable thing was trust.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)

The cold winds remained at the orchard for a couple of weeks more, and even then, a chill remained in the air. Here under the Sun, Celestia wondered if maybe the seasons were actually turning, in the way that books said they used to back before Discord had taken control over the country. It hadn’t started snowing yet, though, and thank goodness for it. There were still so many apples left to pick, and so much construction that would be much harder if the ground froze.

As it happened, Hale’s departure from the orchard had not stopped the spate of misfortune plaguing the work effort, in fact it had seemed almost to intensify it. Maybe the saboteur was becoming bolder, but Hale’s broken leg turned out to be only the start of things. One week after, another mishap had snapped the main beams on one of the cranes, and shortly after that one of Fruit’s masons was nearly crushed by a falling stone. Celestia had done her best to keep the schedule on track even if she had to deal with accidents, but even in spite of her instituting a third shift, inevitably the deadlines had started to slip.

Inside her office, Celestia had the personnel records strung up on the wall, names marked with ink whenever they were involved in something untoward. She had been over the list so many times that by now she could see the pages whenever she closed her eyes. Stiff, Quinn, Silky, Saline. Hew, Pine and Windlass. Names, every one of them with at least some suspicion on them, but never enough to make something conclusive. And every time that she thought she had one down, something would happen completely on the other side of the site.

Of course, Trinity, Wickerlock and Capstan were doing their best to help, dropping what tidbits they could, but even with three sets of eyes they couldn’t watch everything at once. And she couldn’t be out there scrutinizing things because she had to keep the project moving forward, ordering new parts to replace the ones that had been damaged, and all the while shuddering about the red ink that she knew would be piling up in the ledgers back in the manor.

Tonight, the whole group was in the tent, ready to receive new staffing arrangements that she had drawn up over the course of the day. So far, Trinity’s idea hadn’t offered any meaningful information, but the logic for it still held up, and Celestia knew that her quarry would slip up one day. She just hoped that day was soon.

“I’ve got the new teams drawn up,” she said, standing by the canvas wall where she had strung up her web of parchments. The three others were packed close together in the cramped space of the tent: Trinity seated on the crate, Capstan on the ground, and Wickerlock standing awkwardly by the flap. “I’ll get to them in a minute, but first we need to talk about a few things.”

“I don’t have anything new to report,” Wickerlock mumbled, scratching idly at the ground. “You only asked me two hours ago.”

“Nor me,” Capstan added.

She gave them a thin smile. “Appreciated, but that’s not what I meant. We’ve come up dry on everything that we’ve tried so far, so now I want to do something different, and it’s something that the three of you can help me with.” Celestia reached down behind her desk and held up a worn hammer, just like all the rest used by the work teams. “Yesterday, we discovered that the new joints had been bent out of shape, necessitating an entire new batch to be ordered. I found this by the supply.”

The realization came to Capstan first. “Somepony borrowed the hammer for their dirty work then, aye?”

“Indeed. Yesterday I counted up all of the tools and compared the numbers to the orders I had put in. This hammer wasn’t the only thing that had been ‘borrowed’. I suspect that we’ve been leaking tools for weeks now, and it would explain a lot of the incidents that we’ve seen.”

“So we’ve got to keep an eye on them,” Capstan said, sounding tired and not crazy about additional work.

“Precisely.” She held up a stack of clipboards. “As team leaders, at the end of every shift I’ll need you to take an inventory of all of the tools your team was assigned. If we find one missing, then that’s one more clue to look after.”

Frustrated, Wickerlock threw his hooves up. “You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “At the end of every shift? That’s time off of lunch, off of the afternoon break, even into the evening!”

“It’s bad enough we have to keep working ourselves while keeping one eye on everypony else!” Capstan chimed in. “Why can’t you have somepony else take care of the work like this?”

“Well, you’re the only three that I trust,” she replied, taken aback at the resistance. “And it won’t be that much of an extra bother. Besides, we have to do something! At this rate, the orchard will be bare by the time we get anything done, and every day that goes by with that saboteur out there is another day that somepony could get hurt!” She looked over at Trinity, who at least didn’t look openly hostile to the idea. “Trinity, surely you see the value in this?”

Her friend tapped her leg on the desk. “Yes and no,” she eventually said, looking guilty for her answer. “The closer we watch and the more things we keep track of, sure, we increase our chances of finding the saboteur. But Wicker and Capstan are right, and I know they’re not the only ponies who feel that way. It’s tense out there, okay?”

“Out there?” Celestia sighed in exasperation. “Maybe they should try being in here, responsible for the whole project! Maybe they should try going before Fastidious and explaining that the schedule is going to have to slip for another week, and we need another load of planks, and no, I still don’t have a clue who the saboteur is!”

“Don’t you think we all can feel it?” Wickerlock shouted from the door. “When everypony who drops a nail gets cross-examined for an hour about why they were five minutes late from lunch? When you’ve got to keep one eye over your shoulder in case someone drops a rock on you by accident? We’re all feeling it, Celestia, and another layer on top isn’t going to make your schedules line up any better!”

“Well, what do you want from me then?” she asked, searching the room for an answer, but seeing only hard eyes. “You know why I’ve got to push harder! This is it for us, our chance to get somewhere better! My chance to give Luna a better life, but only if I can give Fastidious this project on time! And I’ll give it to him, but I need your help for that.” Surely they would see that. The road here had been hard, just as life had always been for them, but the light was just over the horizon now, and all they had to do was endure just a little longer, and they’d be there.

There was a moment of silence in the room, as she looked at each of them in turn. Wickerlock looked pained, maybe caught in the middle of his resistance to the idea. Capstan too looked troubled, scratching in the dirt with his hoof. Trinity got to her hooves, though, and stepped forward, until she was right beside Celestia by the wall. “Celestia,” she said softly, “do you think maybe you should take a break from all of this? Come home, forget about this work for a while.”

She looked sincere, and all of the others nodded along, but Celestia could hardly believe what she had heard. “What? Take a break now? But we’re so close! Soon enough the saboteur will slip up, and we just have to stay on them.” Trinity’s face fell when she heard that, and so Celestia softened her tone a little. “Don’t worry about me. Trust me, I’ll be back when the job is done, and that day there will be a celebration like none we’ve ever had before. And then I’ll be able to give Luna everything that she could ever want.”

“Celestia, you’ve been here for weeks now,” Trinity said, looking her in the eyes, desperation and concern evident. “All that Luna wants right now is to see you again.”

Celestia opened her mouth to answer back, but Trinity was already walking away, tapping Capstan on the shoulder and gathering Wickerlock from the door. “Good night,” she said as she opened up the flap. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” Wickerlock offered a contrite look as he followed her out, and then there was silence. Silence except for Celestia’s heart beating in her ears.

For a moment she stood there, unable to move as her feelings crashed and thundered in her mind. Such nerve they had, walking out like that, without even taking the clipboards that she had ordered for them. She had intended them to take an inventory tonight, to get them ready for tomorrow. Now it looked like she was going to have to do that job herself. Well, so be it. At least the tools would all be stacked nicely in the supply area.

As she was reaching for the top board herself, though, her eyes found the stone that Trinity had brought in for her. It had been weeks now since she had seen Luna last, and of course she knew that her sister was doing okay, or else one of them would have told her about it. Yet still maybe there was an ounce of truth in what Trinity had said. Maybe one night spent back in Eridian wouldn’t matter as much. Luna would be overjoyed to see her again, and they could still tell each other stories and play in the open area of the house, even if she wasn’t done with her work just yet. She’d still count up the tools, but maybe tonight she could in fact spare the time.

Grabbing the top clipboard, Celestia walked to the tent entrance, bracing herself for the cold bite of the evening wind. By now, the Sun had long since gone down, and without its warmth the breeze acquired a whole new set of teeth. The coat Fastidious had made for her helped a little, but even so just one step outside and Celestia was already shivering. Best that she be done with this work quickly.

But just as she was turning the corner to head to the supply, she ran into Trinity coming back the other way, and moving at a solid clip herself. They managed to stop in time to avoid a collision, but just barely. “Trinity? What are you still doing here? Where are Wicker and Capstan?”

The earth pony looked on edge, but that was no surprise, especially given that she wasn’t wearing anything except her usual scarf. “I told them to go on ahead,” she replied quickly. “All that talk of hammers made me remember that I hadn’t put mine back yet either.” She ran a hoof back through her mane. “Anyway, I should be going if I want to catch up to them. Wouldn’t want to be out on the road alone now, would I?”

Celestia chuckled. “Well, that’s for sure. Hey, by the way, I’m sorry for blowing up on you all like that. I think maybe I will come home tonight, after I’m done taking the inventory. We’ll have our party, just not quite as grand as I imagined it.”

Trinity’s laugh sounded a bit nervous. “Sure, that should do. You might miss me though. I won’t be able to stay long at your place tonight. Anyway, like I said, I should be moving along.” She offered Celestia a quick nod of acknowledgment, then set off around her at a brisk canter, back toward the estate entrance.

Celestia watched her go, a puzzled expression on her face. Of course they all were eager to spend as little time as possible out in the cold, but Trinity definitely had been in a hurry, and that wasn’t her style at all. She was a careful worker, methodical. None of the accidents had involved her yet, and she was always painstaking with her tools. A model worker, which was only one reason why Celestia was happy to have her on the project. At least hers was one hammer that Celestia wasn’t going to have to worry about.

She started making her way back along the trail to the supply, but then she stopped. Where had Trinity kept her hammer? She only had the scarf on. Celestia looked over her shoulder, but her friend was already gone. Gala’s words came back to her, playing in her mind as if spoken by a ghost. “The worst are always the ones that you think you shouldn’t have to watch.” Could it really be? Maybe, maybe not. But maybe tonight, her count of the tools could wait.

The night was even colder once she got off of the ground, especially once the open skies of Fastidious’s estate were behind her. Whatever enchantment Discord had put upon the air underneath the canopy of his clouds, it had a way of worming itself into Celestia’s mind, an unseen, unexpected uncertainty that niggled at her no matter how much she tried to put it aside.

For what was she doing up here, really? Following after Trinity, sure, but why? If she was to put so much faith in her friend, then perhaps investigating her closely was precisely what she should be doing, exactly as Gala had said.

To be fair, Trinity had never told her exactly where or how she spent the nights when she wasn’t with them in Eridian, but Celestia had assumed that she simply had a place to herself around somewhere. Plus, the logic of why she might be the saboteur still made no sense. She had been the most sincere ally that Celestia could have asked for on this project. If she’d been given trust, she hadn’t squandered it. But then surely checking up on her could do no harm. Either Celestia would confirm that trusting Trinity had been the right call, or else she would see otherwise. That seemed like a good enough argument for carrying on, but even so the doubting whispers of the wind didn’t go away.

She turned north first, toward the dark outline of Eridian high up on the mountainside, flying high until she caught up with Wickerlock and Capstan. Seeing that the two of them were still on their own, and that Trinity wasn’t on her way to catch up to them, she returned to the orchard and flew an arc in the hope of finding her friend. Under the clouds the night was of course very dark, without starlight or moonlight to guide her way, but at least Trinity’s white coat offered her something to watch for.

It took about fifteen minutes, but eventually she caught sight of her friend picking her way quickly over a rough meadow. From this high up, it was difficult to tell much besides her direction of travel, but Celestia didn’t dare fly any lower, for fear that she’d be spotted or heard.

Thankfully, Trinity didn’t go all that far. After only about a mile, as the orchard was beginning to vanish over the horizon, the earth pony stopped at what appeared to be a nondescript mound of earth tufted with a few scraggly thickets, one of which Trinity promptly disappeared into. After a moment of holding her breath, Celestia decided to come down after her.

Stealth was another area that Celestia knew wasn’t exactly on her resume, though, as per usual, life on the streets of Eridian had at least taught her something.

This field in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly the same as a darkened back alley, but even so she was cautious to touch down lightly, and fold her wings back quickly to be sure that they didn’t catch on anything. On the ground, the small stand of stunted trees and bare shrubs looked no more incriminating than they had from the air, though having lost their leaves the branches of the trees did have an ominous appearance, like bare talons thrust up out of the earth, grasping at any who wandered near.

She took a moment to strain her ears for any sounds, for hooves on the ground or the crackle of somepony moving through the brush, but the night was still. The stand of trees wasn’t particularly big, so Celestia just picked a random spot and started making her way in. Here she knew it would be impossible to fully mask her approach; the low branches and brush underhoof was simply too close for that, but even so she kept listening hard. An owl’s hoot gave her pause, cutting through the night as easy as a piercing shriek, but in its fading echoes Celestia heard something else. A voice, or voices rather.

They weren’t clear, muffled by distance, but even so she could follow them, over the logs of trees that had fallen long ago, right up to the point where the slope of the hillside was starting to take hold. By now, the sound had gotten loud enough that she could start to make out words.

“Well, it turned out that there were guards, three of them in fact,” the voice was saying. It sounded like a stallion’s voice, though more than that she couldn’t tell. Definitely not Trinity though. “Not at all what I was expecting, but I did have my knife at least if it came to that.”

“I’ll need to have words with that source,” said a second voice, deeper and slower. “A misremembered detail perhaps, but continue, Quartz, please.”

“Right,” said the now identified Quartz. “I had to watch them for a bit to see if there was going to be a way through, or if I was going to have to take them on.”

“Or go back,” cut in a third voice, this time higher and more distinct. Celestia’s breath caught, as this one sounded much closer to Trinity. “You’re good, Quartz, but three on one is no joke.”

There was a pause, and then Quartz went on. “You can have a look if you want, but I kept my blade clean. Besides, I’d like to see either of you in my position and see what decision you'd make. A chance to hit a load of irons on their way to Eridian does not come often.”

“Everfree will likely be pleased,” the second voice answered, sounding contemplative. “We haven’t been able to disrupt that network for years. Good work, Quartz. And what of you, Trinity? How does the effort at the orchard go?”

Celestia’s heart sank, even before Trinity started going into the details of her exploits. Suddenly everything she thought she had known about her friend seemed cast in a new light. The model worker, always so eager to help out with the investigation. Not a blemish on her own record, and nothing pointing to her as worthy of any suspicion. Except of course for the fact that she had seen something suspect about nearly every other worker on the project. It was all so clear now. How she had manipulated the teams to make sure that she could cast the doubt as wide as possible, and keep Celestia’s eyes always someplace else. Well, at least Celestia had her answer now.

She was about to turn and go, when suddenly another thought came to her mind. If Trinity was the saboteur, then that meant she was probably a member of the “Resistance” that Gala had mentioned. That meant that the two other voices, Quartz and the unknown one, were probably also Resistance operatives. Gala and Fastidious would be happy enough to be given one enemy agent; how much more could she gain by giving them three? But names wouldn’t be good enough. She would have to put a face on those names, and in order to do that she was going to have to find where they were hiding.

The conversation was going on, with Trinity running through the recent events at the estate. Celestia guessed that they were probably underground, likely in a chamber dug out of the hillside, but that meant that the entrance had to be around here somewhere.

Following the voices, she eventually came to a pile of deadwood at the base of a large tree, its roots protruding up from the ground for several yards on either side of the trunk. Inside the deadwood pile, painted dark grey and cleverly disguised, was a small cellar door. Celestia surely would have missed it if not for the thin crack of glowing firelight that was showing from around its edge. Here the voices were much clearer.

“Things are getting tense,” Trinity was saying, bright and carefree now that she was safe at home. “The pony in charge of the construction is digging really deep, but I have her around my hoof. I don’t think that it will be long before she gets taken care of for us.”

“Typical Upper-folk,” Quartz answered. Now that she could hear him clearly, Celestia guessed that he was a younger stallion, perhaps about his mid-twenties, with the same outsider accent as Trinity’s. “They never trust anypony for more than two seconds.”

“So someone else will get brought on?” asked the mystery voice. “Someone you don’t have as much influence over?”

“Likely,” Trinity said, still sounding pleased with herself. “But by then it won’t matter. This project is bleeding Fastidious dry. By the time he decides to cut his losses, there won’t be enough left for him to recover. Score one for us,” she finished. A clink that might have been two cups colliding in a toast followed.

Celestia stood fuming on the other side of the door. So simple Trinity seemed to think it would be! So easily she had taken control over the pony Fastidious had appointed to stop her, just for long enough until the Lord decided to get rid of another poorly performing employee. Well, she would see that this time she had gotten the wrong pony around her hoof.

Celestia itched to throw open the door and confront her former friend with the end that she had brought upon herself, but she couldn’t. By the sounds of their voices the three of them were right on the other side, and Trinity’s admonition from earlier had been right on the money. Three on one was a risk she didn’t want to take, and she didn’t even have a knife. Getting faces on the other two would have been a bonus, but perhaps Gala and Fastidious could get the descriptions, if they knew to ask about them. The best thing that Celestia could do now was get back to the orchard before she was discovered.

Unfortunately, that hope was dashed right away when she heard a knock on the inside of the door. A hoof pushed it just a couple of degrees toward open, and from right behind it Celestia heard the mystery voice from earlier. “Right, that’s fair enough news. I’ll send out the pigeon. You two get things cleaned up. Maybe we can get in a quick game of dice before it’s too late.”

Celestia knew that she had bare seconds to hide, and so without thinking she swooped around to the far side of the tree with one great sweep of her wings, landing on a low bough about ten feet off of the ground. She held her breath as the door creaked open, landing with a crash on the ground.

“Hey! You want to wake up the whole countryside?” came Trinity’s voice from under the ground.

“There’s nopony around for miles,” the unknown pony said back. “Now, go on, friend, fly. Off to Everfree now.” With a rustle of feathers, Celestia knew that the carrier pigeon was gone. She let out her breath in relief. Now hopefully whoever this guy was would just go back in for his game of dice, and leave her be.

“Huh?” he said from the other side of the tree. “I thought I heard something. I’ll check.”

Before Celestia had a chance to curse herself for the mistake, the stallion behind the unknown voice finally made himself known, coming around the side of the trunk with a blazing lantern around his neck. He was a tall fellow, plenty older than her, with a dark mane that had been drawn back into a bunch, hanging over his neck. Exposed as she was up on the branch, Celestia knew that there was no hope in running now. Her only hope left was maybe to knock him out and take off when he was down. At least she had the advantage of height for that.

But even as she was readying herself for the strike, the twigs on the end of her branch brushed up on the top of the stallion’s head, and he looked up, right into her eyes.

Chapter 27: Friend or Foe

“Eventually I would have left Equestria. Already it was tearing itself apart even without my influence.”

Discord

“Intruder!” the stallion yelled, instantly bounding toward her and reaching up with a large hoof.

Celestia knew that all she could do now was fly, but she was too late. Barely had she managed to get her wings out than the stallion had her leg pinned. She reached out to kick him, but he easily shook off the blow, pulling her down onto the ground with pure brute strength. He looked down at her with furious eyes, and all Celestia could do was pull back from his face. His hot breath reeked of garlic.

“Who are you?” he bellowed, grabbing her by the cheek to force their eyes to meet. “A spy sent to find out all about us for your masters back in Eridian? Speak!”

She could only meet his gaze for a moment before tearing her face away. “Please,” she choked, “don’t hurt me, please. I didn’t mean anything…”

“Why were you sulking around then? What are you even doing here, huh? Pretty far from home to be out wandering! We oughta’ find out what you know, I think!” Still holding her down, he turned his head to look back at the door to their hidey-hole. “Someone get some rope! We’ve got a live one!”

“What?” came the voice of the one called Quartz, who came around the corner to reveal himself as a green stallion with soft lavender eyes. His mane was styled into a casual lick, hanging down over the right side of his face. The knife he had mentioned earlier was tucked into a sheath that hung across his neck, ready to be drawn at a moment’s notice. “Well, what do you know?” he said as he looked Celestia over appraisingly. “Guess we still have a fun night ahead.”

Trinity came last, armed with a metal pot that was still dripping. “Who?” she said from around the corner, before stopping when she saw Celestia’s face. The alicorn gave her a bare-toothed sneer, and Trinity lowered the pot, remorse clear in her eyes. “Relax, Merc,” she said. “I know her.”

The big stallion whipped his head around, the bunch of his tied mane sailing along behind. “She was spying on us, Trin. You might think you know her, but she hasn’t been real friendly.”

“You didn’t tell us you were bringing any guests,” Quartz chipped in, offering Celestia a sidelong grin that she didn’t like one bit. “And I’ve never seen her face before.”

“I didn’t say she was a friend,” Trinity replied. “Just that I know her.” She reached around the corner and then tossed Merc a length of rope. “Tie her up, but nothing more. She’s not one of us, but I can tell you that she’s not one of them either.”

Merc caught the rope with a free hoof, but didn’t take his eyes off of her. “You’re not making much sense, Trin. If she’s not with us, then she’s far from where she ought to be. Orders from Everfree are pretty solid. Our secrecy is number one.”

“You’ll see,” Trinity said calmly, giving Celestia a gentle nod, seemingly all the same friend as she had always been, though obviously now in a much different light. “She’ll talk.” She looked over at Quartz, and the earth pony just shrugged his shoulders. That only left Merc.

“Your call, Trin,” he said gruffly, before taking the rope and starting on Celestia’s front legs. “You better talk,” he said quietly to her. “And we all better like what you have to say.”

After binding all of her legs and wings, Merc carried Celestia around to the front of the tree and down into the little cellar that the three of them had been reveling in before. Celestia’s suspicions turned out to be just right, as the small door opened up into a moderately-sized space dug out of the hillside, cozy with its three original inhabitants, cramped with her on the floor as well. The chamber was roughly cylindrical, with three hammocks hung around its outside, and the middle cleared out enough for a small fire pit, the smoke leaving through a vent that had been dug in the roof.

A couple of blackened cooking pots were scattered on the floor of the chamber around the fire pit, and one of them held the leftovers of the night’s meal, a brown soup that had a touch of scent left to it. It was enough to make Celestia remember that she hadn’t had her supper yet. In all, the space was actually rather homely, especially since it was lit warmly, and was quite comfortable with the heat of the fire. Despite being bound wing-and-hoof, compared to the chill outside this place was quite pleasant.

The other three were sitting in their hammocks. Quartz had drawn his knife and was lazily running its back over his hooves, looking disinterested in the whole affair. Merc, meanwhile, was alternating stony glares between Celestia and Trinity. “Well?” he demanded as soon as the door swung shut again, the deep rumble of his voice even more pronounced in the small chamber. “Which of you is going to talk first?”

Celestia wanted to start, to scream in defiance that they’d get nothing from her. That their days were surely numbered and it wouldn’t be long until they all met the fate that they deserved. But she was the one bound in this arrangement, and even though these Resistance agents had held off on harming her so far, she knew that they still could. Merc especially had a rough and suppressed sense of violence about him, an anger that she could tell was still simmering under the skin. Even Quartz, laid back as he looked, clearly knew his way around that knife and likely was keen to use it.

“She’s the one I told you about,” Trinity began, swinging her hammock slowly with a hoof against the chamber wall. Her voice was even, neutral, and Celestia couldn’t tell if she was sorry or glad at the situation. “The one Fastidious hired to look for me.”

“The one you’ve got on the leash,” Quartz added, not looking up. “So much for that, I guess.”

“Then she works for Fastidious,” Merc said, his eyes and face hard as a block of granite. “A member of the Upper-folk, and a traitor after all.”

“No,” Trinity said back immediately. “It’s complicated, but I told you she’s not one of them. She works for him, yes, but she’s not a traitor.”

“How so?”

Trinity shrugged, trying to be as clear as possible. “She’d better explain that herself.” She looked down, and Celestia was surprised to see that she was still looking friendly, encouraging even despite her earlier words. “Go on,” she said. “They’re both ponies just like you and I. They just need to know that you’re not one like Fastidious and Gala.”

Celestia gulped, buying herself a couple of seconds before she had to start her tale. She didn’t see that she had much choice as far as what she said was concerned. Trinity already knew the whole story after all, and if she was too evasive her friend might still decide to let Merc and Quartz have the lead on dealing with her again. So she started from the beginning, talking about her mother and father, how they’d passed during the Chaos Storm, how Rosy had taken her in, and how she’d met Wickerlock, Capstan, and then eventually Trinity. She gave them the whole story on Fastidious, leaving out nothing there.

Again, she’d already told Trinity most of this already, so they’d know if she was lying. But she did leave out one important detail, hoping that Trinity would let it pass. Throughout the whole story, she didn’t mention Luna once.

Once she had finished, the room was silent, save for the crackle of the fire as it burned lower and dimmer in the pit. A quick look around the room revealed that the story hadn’t made much of an impression. Merc still sat as stone-faced as ever, and Quartz was still playing with his knife. Trinity was of course thoughtful, but she hadn’t mentioned Luna herself either.

“Complicated is right,” Merc eventually said. “Enough to make me say that maybe she isn’t one of them just yet. But I’m still not seeing why we can let her go.”

The sudden crystallization of the stakes in play sent a jolt of fear up Celestia’s spine, making the room feel cold even if it was still bathed in firelight. What would they do if they weren’t going to let her go?

Trinity answered back right away, though. “Think about it, Merc! Think about everything I’ve been able to accomplish! How much more could we do if we had an agent inside Fastidious’s inner circle? We could take all of Upper Eridian down from the inside out!”

“That’s fantasy,” Merc replied dismissively. “How under the stars can you think that you’d have that kind of loyalty from her? She knows all of us. She could give us up in a second, and we wouldn’t even know until the King’s hit squads showed up at our door.”

“She wouldn’t,” Trinity answered boldly, leaning forward in the hammock, her eyebrows drawn low. “That’s not what she wants. A better life, sure, but she’s not one of them. And I know that she’d never become one. Trust me on this, Merc.”

The big earth pony looked unmoved. “It’s too much of a risk. How do you know that Fastidious hasn’t compromised her? What if she’s actually a double agent in our ranks, and we’re the ones who get taken apart from the inside?”

“We can adapt,” Trinity said, refusing to back down. “We’ll keep her on a close leash. You and Quartz can move to new assignments, out of the spotlight, maybe back in Everfree. She doesn’t need to know anything more about our operation, only what we decide that Fastidious needs to know. I’ll set up somepony else to take the fall for the sabotage, and we’ll let the orchard shoulder on. And meanwhile we’ll have a mole inside the offices of a real Eridian Lord! And if it all goes south, I’ll be the only one that we lose.”

Merc seemed to consider that, for once not having a cold reply on the tip of his tongue. “You could get captured,” he said finally, the barest note of warmth in his tone for the first time all night. “What if they compromised you?”

With her chin up, Trinity shook her head. “I’ve been through the training. I wouldn’t give them anything. Trust me, this is worth it.”

Celestia could see Trinity willing the other pony to finally give in, and for her part she hoped that he would too. That resolution ended with her making it out of here in one piece after all, even if she wasn’t completely sure of everything else that her former friend had said.

Finally, Merc closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. “Okay, Trinity,” he said, sounding resigned. “You can have this one. But don’t you dare push it too far.”

“I won’t,” she replied, getting off of her hammock to give him a firm hoofshake, looking quite pleased with the outcome.

“We’ll need to agree on our communication,” the stallion said, before turning to look at Quartz, who was still idly sitting in his hammock. “Quartz, tear the place down. You and I are moving on tonight. Trinity, get your friend out of here, out of the trees. She doesn’t need to see or hear any of this.”

Trinity nodded, and then she picked Celestia up by the shoulders and carried her all of the way out of the little forest thicket, setting her down on the grass outside, still bound. “Wait here a moment,” she said quietly. “I promise that I’ll be back, but I can’t untie you until then. Holler if anything happens.”

“Are you sure about this?” Celestia asked.

“Very,” she replied, doing her best to sound comforting. “But we can talk about that later. Just give me one minute to say good-bye to those two.” She vanished back into the forest.

For several seconds, Celestia heard the sound of her friend moving back through the brush, but then it was replaced by silence. Merc and Quartz would disappear back to Everfree, wherever that was, and likely she was never going to see either of them again. The chances of Fastidious getting either of them were now effectively none. But what of Trinity? Celestia could of course still give the other pony up. If she understood the arrangement that they were about to form, then there would be nothing stopping her from doing that. But Trinity had stuck her neck out for her, far more than Celestia had expected. Did Trinity think that they were still friends somehow, even after all of this?

The sound of hooves once again approached her from behind, and in a second Trinity emerged into the night, her eyes downcast. She stood a moment in place, breathing deeply while looking out over the countryside, at nothing in particular as far as Celestia could see. Then, she shook herself as if clearing away a mist from her mind, and walked up to Celestia to begin untying the ropes. “I hope you understand that I bear you no ill will,” she said quietly, guilt evident in her voice.

Celestia knew that she had a range of possible tacks to take at this conversation, each one bringing a particular point up to the fore first. She chose indignation. “I understand that very well,” she bristled, her feeling of betrayal boiling to the surface. “I heard all of your revelry, Trinity, all of your celebration at how — what were the words? — soon enough Fastidious would take care of your problem for you? I really trusted you, Trinity. Don’t think for a second that any of that remains.” As the ropes came off of her hooves, Celestia pulled each one away from Trinity emphatically. She rolled over when the earth pony went to get her wings. “I can take care of those myself.”

“As you wish,” Trinity said, gathering up the ropes and hiding them under a bush. Presumably this area would still be her safe house in the region, the pigeon coop remaining her method of communicating with Everfree. “I do understand your bitterness, Celestia, but I was hoping that you might be able to see things from my perspective.”

“The perspective of a traitor?”

Trinity flinched, which was honestly a little surprising. She had weathered the glare of that pony Merc without batting an eye after all. “The perspective of a pony trying to do the right thing. You know what that means, I know you do.”

To that Celestia didn’t have a real answer. For of course she did, and Trinity didn’t have to explain any further for them both to know precisely what she was referring to.

Trinity started the walk back to the orchard, and Celestia followed along, walking right beside her. The countryside ahead was all rough and turned up, rocks dotting the plains and little gullies of streams that might have run through here once upon a time zig-zagging this way and that. A pony would be lucky to get through without injuring a leg, especially in the dark, but Trinity was navigating it with ease.

“I know that I used you, Celestia, and for that I’m truly sorry. When we first met, you seemed like a nice enough pony, so I picked you up as a friend, and you’ll have to believe me that right then, it wasn’t anything more than that. It was only when you started really working for Fastidious that things changed.

“We were still friends, though, you understand,” she continued. “I suppose you now realize that I was leaning on you for information on how the Lord was doing, how close I was to finally ruining him. Once I got Screw kicked off of the repair work and you were put in charge instead, well, that was when things got really serious.”

“You weren’t actually helping me at all, were you?”, Celestia asked, more calmly. It was hard to keep her anger up when Trinity was being so gentle about the whole thing.

The other mare chuckled at that. “I never told you to look closer into me, did I? What did eventually tip you off, anyway?”

“It was the hammer,” Celestia said, thinking back to the encounter that had started her off. It probably hadn’t been more than an hour ago, actually. A thought struck her. “You were doing something to the supply, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. I knew I was cutting it close with that one. The teams will be short a few tools tomorrow morning.” Trinity stopped on a low hill, over which the orchard had appeared again on the horizon. Even though it was still the middle of night over the estate, the moonlight coming in through the hole in the clouds made the whole orchard shine like a beacon. “But that’ll be the last time you have to worry about anything going wrong. Intentionally, anyway.”

Them having come this far, Celestia knew that she had to broach the subject now, or else face the question alone without any information. A part of her wanted to hold off, and let Trinity continue without realizing her mistake. Let Trinity be the one played for a change. But in reality she had to ask, because Celestia knew that the answer could turn out to be all that mattered.

“Why do you trust me to hold to the arrangement you proposed back there? I can still tell Fastidious all about you, and he’d have you in custody before you could figure out that I had done it.”

Trinity nodded, unfazed by the notion. “All true, and all things that Merc and Quartz told me when I went back into the bush to meet them.” She gave Celestia a serious look, a tiny touch of reflected light from the orchard twinkling in her eyes. “But I know that you won’t. Again, because I know why you’re here.”

“But why not?” Celestia said, shaking her head, unable to see the reasoning. “What are you offering to me that Fastidious can’t deliver? That life is safety, it’s security, it’s knowledge that every day you can wake up and know that you have enough to eat. It’s a future that I can rely on. Your hovel back in the hill was charming, but barely a taste of what I’ve already seen from the Lord.”

“It looks flashy, I’ll give you that,” Trinity replied, shivering in perhaps an exaggerated way. Celestia was, after all, still wearing the coat that Fastidious had given her, embroidered with the crest of the Rose et Blanc on each side. “From your perspective I’m sure that it has to look nice. But Fastidious and Gala are not good ponies, whatever you might think of them. A pony like you couldn’t enjoy life in the court. It’s not who you are.”

You know nothing of who I am, Celestia thought to herself. She wanted to interject, but wasn’t sure how far she could push it before Trinity started to really doubt. Luckily, Trinity seemed to have come to the same conclusion. “I know that’s going to sound ridiculous to you, but think about it for a second. You’ve seen the accounts, so think about all of the tricoins that Fastidious spends on his own espionage operations. All of the deceit and manipulation that to him is just an average day. Think for a second on what happened to your predecessor, Quill. Or Screw. When was the last time that you saw him?”

Celestia opened her mouth for a quick reply, but caught herself on the thought. When was the last time that she had seen the chief mechanic? Not since collaborating with him on the plans for the new press building. But what had Fastidious said? “He’s been assigned somewhere else. Probably still keeping the other presses going. It’s a big orchard, and I’ve been at the construction site day in and day out. I’m sure that I’ve just missed him.”

Taking her first step down the hillside, Trinity rolled her eyes. “Convincing, maybe. The next time that you see the Lord, maybe ask him about it. See if you like what he has to say on the matter.”

“I suppose I will,” she replied, joining up with the other pony a couple of steps down the hill. “But even then what does it matter? You still haven’t answered my question.”

Trinity held her gaze for a second, her eyes shrewdly probing, asking a question all on their own. “Take the night to think about it. I know that you want some safety and some security, but what kind of life do you really want for little Luna? What kind of world do you really want her to grow up in? I know that you’ll come to the right decision.”

The orchard was looming up ahead of them, only a few hundred feet now separating the two ponies from the estate’s southern wall. Torches burned here and there along its length, some of them moving around as they were carried by guards patrolling the perimeter.

Here now was Celestia’s first opportunity, to call one of them over and have Trinity apprehended. With that one stroke, this whole saga would be over. The project would come to its conclusion, back on schedule and perhaps even ahead with the extra shifts that Celestia had formed up. Soon enough, Fastidious and Gala would see the benefits of her approach, and she’d have a new place made for her in the household. She could say goodbye to Eridian then, and so could Luna. They would live here, the Sun overhead during the day and the Moon at night. There would be green grass, the scent of apples in the air when harvest came around again, maybe even a proper winter if such things could still exist.

Most importantly, there would be a future for them, steady, waiting, always there to work toward. They wouldn’t have to secure the doors at night; Celestia could even rest easily with her sister free to roam the grounds. They would be safe. And all that she had to do to guarantee that was call out right now.

“Hey!” a voice came from the wall ahead, accompanied by a scuffle and a few torches bobbing around. The caller was just a profile against the light. “I see somepony out there! Who are you?”

Trinity gave her a look. Celestia nodded to her. “It’s Celestia!” she called back, knowing that if nothing else her brooch would dispel any suspicions. “Out for a little investigation work.”

There was a moment of silence, followed by another shout. “And who’s the other one? Friend or foe?”

“Friend,” Celestia said back. “A trusted eye, accompanying me on the journey. You can look her over if you like, but she’ll be on her way home soon.”

Trinity nodded back, a knowing look clear in her eyes. Celestia offered her a small smile in return. She would take the night to think it over, just as Trinity had said. Maybe there was something to what her friend had said, and maybe there wasn’t. Either way, Celestia expected that she wouldn’t be getting much sleep.

Chapter 28: The Cottage on the Hill

“I knew very little of my father. He was always sitting with his advisors or else studying magic, things that I did not concern myself with. I had two older sisters, so no one thought to prepare me to rule.”

Princess Platinum

When Celestia awoke, night had fallen again over Harmony Tower. She hadn’t made it to her bed before sleep had taken her; indeed she awoke to find herself still slumped over the desk, the side of her face stained with ink that had smeared as she had collapsed into it.

Naturally she couldn’t remember any of what had happened over the course of the previous day. She had arrived at Harmony Tower, came up here and got right to work. Whatever happened after that was now a milky blur, but from the detailed diagrams and lists that were spread out on the desk before her, she must have at least gotten some work done.

It was a little difficult to tell with only starlight to read by though, so with a quick touch of magic Celestia lit up the candle that was lying fresh on her desk, apparently having materialized over the course of her rest. True to Luna’s predictions, the candle illuminated a stack of hot buns, still steaming as they sat on the desk, a bowl of honey next to them. They must have been delivered merely moments ago, as if somepony had just known when she was going to wake up. Hopefully they didn’t see her with the massive ink stain across her fur.

Since it had been more than a day since Celestia had last eaten, she grabbed the top one immediately.

In the dim light of the flame, she could also now see the full magnitude of everything that she had written down before falling asleep.

Unicorn magic was, and had always been, a scholar’s art, dissected and analyzed deeply by its practitioners. There was no feeling your way when grasping the strands of magic and weaving them into a useful form. Everything had to be planned and considered carefully, especially when starting from scratch.

Spread out before her now were lists of dozens of parameters outlined in neat tables, each corresponding to one of the six fundamental elements of magic: Earth, Water, Light, Mind, Life and Spirit. As each had both a positive and a negative form, that made twelve fundamental energies total. Spells were built from combining them in patterns, individual threads building into simple weaves, and more complex constructions woven from them.

Each one of the individual energies was marked with a distinct symbol, which then keyed into the second set of plans: the Swirl diagrams, named of course for the great wizard who had first used them, long in the past. Each of these diagrams featured a particular construction, a single step of weaving initial magical energies into intermediate products. As she progressed through them, the threads were pulled together into recognizable bundles, those built on each other into strips and ropes, and those further built upon, until it all came together to make up the spell. Celestia almost wished that the old wizard could see her now, as she put the final touches on this one.

The sight of the diagrams put a new flicker of attention back into her mind, helped along no doubt by the succulent bun. Celestia looked down and realized that she was already on her third. Perhaps it would be better to stop with that now. Though she could of course pack a few for her expedition into the forest.

Out the window, the hill still loomed, menacing in its own way in the night. Everfree had always been a peaceful wood, watched over by Terraria and her Order in the days of Celestia’s youth. Yet, the raw, primal power that she could feel pulsing out from that hill was still enough to make her uneasy. Never mind how useful it was about to be for her, the question of what exactly created it in the first place was still an uncomfortable one. Old dragon magic was one possibility, left over from the time, ages ago by now, when their kind had held dominion over this part of the world. Or perhaps it was an artefact of pony magic, forgotten in the peaceful time before Discord’s rise? Either way, she knew that the source of the power wouldn’t matter. What she needed now was to get her hooves on it, to save the world once more, just as she and Luna had done so many years ago.

Under the trees, the forest was silent, save for the rare call of a nocturnal bird, or the occasional rustle of some animal moving through the undergrowth. Even though the forest was parched, the canopy overhead was still thick enough to blot out any light from the stars, which meant that Celestia had to light her own way. If it weren’t for the draw of the area’s magic pulling her along, she could’ve easily gotten lost out here. As it stood, though, each hoofstep forward brought with it a rising excitement, as she could feel her own magic calling out to the air up here, growing stronger in time with the beat of the world.

None of the guards in the Tower had questioned her departure, although at least this time she hadn’t come downstairs to find a bag of trail mix all ready to go. She wasn’t sure exactly how long this whole process was going to take, but it could be a while, certainly. For a complex spell like this, she was probably going to have to put it through several dry runs, just to make sure that all of the constituent pieces were working well together before she took a chance at casting the whole thing. All in all, it could mean a day or more of spellcasting, and naturally in all of that time it would be up to Luna to make sure that the rest of the country stayed on a straight course.

While a part of her lamented not knowing how things were going back in Canterlot, the greater part knew that if she were there, she wouldn’t be doing anything to help. All that Luna needed to do was make sure that by the time Celestia emerged from the forest, she still had a country left to save.

The area around the hill itself was for the most part unfamiliar terrain for Celestia, too deep into the forest to have been worth exploring during the days she had spent here before. But in a sense it was easy to find her way, especially once she felt the slope of the hill start to rise under her hooves. The sounds of the forest had fallen away into silence behind her now, or perhaps it was simply that the rumble of the power in her mind had overwhelmed all else.

Up ahead, in between the interspersed clumps of trunks and smaller bushes, she could see something starting to emerge. Not the open sky, though, which would have been only softly lit. Instead, whatever lay before her, higher up the hill, was casting a purplish light all of its own, and it wasn’t long until Celestia realized what it was that she was coming up on.

Snaking its way through the gaps in the forest like a cast-off tentacle of a great sea creature was a bank of low purple fog, billowing out of an unseen location somewhere farther up the hill. Even the sight of it dropped a stone of nerves deep into Celestia’s stomach.

At the edges of the fog the air shimmered, the otherworldly light bending upon itself as reality twisted inside out. Celestia had seen something like this only once before, and she had hoped to never see it again. It was a Chaos Storm, a remnant of Discord’s power, from the days when he had ruled the countryside.

She drew up to a halt in front of it, considering the situation. The Storm itself could not be the power that she was looking for. It was a fundamentally different force, a dissonant whisper of chaos that stood out against everything else that this place was. Her goal had to lie beyond it.

Yet still, she knew that venturing into a Chaos Storm was always a risky proposition. Only with a strong heart could she be assured of making it to the other side, and even then there were no guarantees that the Storm would deposit her anywhere near where she entered.

Chaos Storms were tears in the fabric of reality, and normal assumptions about the way the world worked simply wouldn’t hold inside of them. Her unicorn magic would desert her, uncontrollable without the understanding that its use required. But her pegasus magic could still hold true, so long as she was determined enough.

Without another thought, Celestia galloped into the fog.

Right away, the doubts began to circulate in her mind. Questions about the worthiness of her cause, about the inherent risks of what she was doing, about the possibilities that by being so brash she was giving up the chance of ever seeing Luna again. They buzzed about the back of her mind like an incessant swarm of hornets, but Celestia pressed on through the mist. They weren’t really her conscience advising her, after all. Just the chaos magic doing its best to make her resolve falter.

In the fog, there was nothing to see, the forest all around her having vanished completely, replaced only by endless expanses of purple blankness. The air against her skin was still in spite of how fast she was running, and even the sounds of her hooves striking the forest floor failed to reach her ears. The space before her stretched on for eternity, not a single tree or branch looming up in front of her, nor a single break in the atmosphere other than purple, dead purple everywhere. Still she ran on.

Then, in a flash, there was a tree. Celestia had to use her wings to stop herself in time, but a look to each side revealed that she was back in the forest. The air was full of nocturnal sound again, the grass underhoof felt alive and fresh, and there was even a bit of an opening in the trees overhead, letting some starlight in. A look behind her revealed a simple forest path, winding down the hillside around the occasional boulder or gnarled root, but looking well-traveled. It looked as though the storm had actually dropped her off in the right place.

Celestia drew in a deep breath, though she knew that barrier could be only the first that she would face on her way up the hillside. The beat of the magic was still there in her mind though, somehow still growing stronger with every step. So she turned herself back up the forest path. And that was when she saw it.

A single step ahead, the rough dirt under her hooves was replaced by a level paving stone, stretching across the breadth of the path neatly. More such stones followed it, turning the rough track suddenly into a well-defined trail, working its way up through what Celestia now realized were carefully tended flowerbeds, interspersed with the occasional pruned shrubbery. Even the grass on the forest floor was lively, growing thick and green, moist to the touch. Especially in a year like this, that couldn’t happen unless somepony was tending to it.

She took a couple of tentative steps up the trail, on guard for anything unexpected. The paving stones felt real enough, and the sounds that her hooves made when she touched them were authentic. Was it just possible that somepony lived up here, maintaining a sweet little existence away from the rest of the world? Nothing in the history Celestia had read had ever mentioned ponies living in this section of the forest, though. Such a settlement would have to be older than Equestria itself to escape being recorded.

Around a bend, she could spy a splash of white in amongst the trees, and sure enough when she came around the corner a small cottage came into view, nestled into the gap between a couple of spreading willows. It looked to be only a couple of rooms at most, but the sides of it were painted brightly, the windows were clean, and the grass around it had all been trimmed neatly to the perfect height. If Celestia allowed herself to forget about the storm on the hillside below, and the tremendous power that still awaited her further along, she could almost have believed that she was back in Canterlot, looking at a small vacation retreat that had been carved out of the mountainside. Then a light suddenly sprang up from inside the cottage’s windows.

For a second Celestia didn’t know whether to hide behind the nearest tree or else call out to whomever had just been roused from their sleep. Her business wasn’t with this pony, whoever they were, yet even so she had to admit that her curiosity was now burning bright as a star. If nothing else, maybe whoever lived here knew something about the magic that the hill housed, and could give her some advice about how best to use it. So she stood her ground out in front of the house, ready with a courteous greeting.

After a moment of flickering light, the front door opened with a jingle of bells. Not from the door, though, for standing in the doorway, holding a candle aloft with a shimmering haze of azure magic, was a wizened old unicorn dressed in a flowing robe, with a beard that stretched down almost to the top of his front step. And the sound of the bells had come, out of all places, from his hat. It was Star Swirl the Bearded.

The greeting that Celestia had prepared shriveled up in her throat, as she laid her eyes on a pony who had vanished from the pages of history centuries ago. Unless he had somehow lived to be over a thousand years old, Star Swirl must have passed away at some point, and yet here he was. For his part, the old unicorn was squinting in her general direction, the skin around his eyes drooping into a multitude of lines and wrinkles.

“Who’s there?” he asked, sounding surprisingly timid despite his fierce reputation. His voice was the thin croak of a very old stallion. “I know that I heard somepony rooting around out here.” His eyes wandered for a bit before snapping onto Celestia at last. “There you are! Come on in, why don’t you? It’s dangerous to be out here alone, especially after dark.”

“Why, why thank you, sir,” Celestia managed to say, stepping forward cautiously and never taking her eyes off of Star Swirl. In this place, with this magic in the air, she couldn’t take anything for granted, but every time that she looked at Star Swirl closer, she only saw another detail that pointed toward this actually being the legendary wizard in the flesh. The snow white strands of tousled hair that fell haphazardly from underneath his hat. The patches and darning on his great robe, signs of years and years of wear. And, once she stepped over the threshold of the house, the sight of a stack of dirty gardening tools piled up just inside the doorway.

When Star Swirl shut the door behind her, his lone candle lit up the inside of the small house easily, revealing a spare arrangement of a single table and a sturdy wooden chair. On the far wall was a bookshelf, the volumes upon it thick as planks of lumber. Celestia’s eyes were naturally drawn to those.

“I’m… sorry for having awoken you,” she haltingly began, tumbling over her words as Star Swirl laid the candle down on the table and looked sheepishly for another chair.

“Oh, never mind that!” the old unicorn chortled back, sounding rather chipper. “I’m up now, and there’s nothing that either of us can do about that, now is there? Let me get something else to sit on, shall I? And maybe I’ll put a pot of tea on too while I’m at it. Ponies do still drink tea, right?”

Celestia nodded her approval on that front, still unsure of exactly how to approach this encounter. Surely she must be the first pony that the old unicorn had met in centuries, and yet he did seem to be taking the whole thing in stride. He had disappeared into the cottage’s second room, presumably the location of his sleeping arrangements as well as the hearth on which he’d make the tea, and Celestia let her eyes wander back to the bookshelf. Unless the old unicorn had been out and about recently, these books would be another way of verifying that all of this wasn’t some sort of dream.

She chose one at random and pulled it down off of the shelf, holding the cover up to the candlelight.

The binding was very simple, just a clean white linen jacket, without even a title or an author’s name standing out anywhere. The pages were thin, the ink upon them faded to the point of being scarcely legible, and the corners were well-worn, several folded or torn. What writing she could make out was encouraging, if hard to understand. It was all written in old Unicornian, which Celestia at least understood at a passing level. While she couldn’t make out everything, the book appeared to be a treatise on warding magic, and in a couple of places she found scrawls of writing in the margins, in a peculiar looped script that could only have come from the book’s owner.

So engrossed was she in puzzling out his notes that when Star Swirl came back into the room she barely noticed before he cleared his throat from behind her.

She jerked her head up in surprise. “Oh! My apologies, sir.” Looking back, she saw that he was holding a rusty metal bucket, looking chagrined. “That will do for a seat. Tell me though, are these yours?” She held up the book.

“But of course,” he replied, sounding surprised. “Hardly riveting reading though, I expect. Surely the art has advanced significantly since my time.” He put the bucket down squarely on the floor, then promptly set himself down upon it, and indicated the chair across for his guest.

Celestia took the seat without question. The greatest unicorn in history was not only making tea for her, he was letting her have his seat? And it was a very well-made seat. “Star Swirl,” she began, looking at him levelly across the table. The name felt strange in her mouth, a word not meant to be used in casual conversation.

“Indeed,” he replied, offering a small nod. “At least we can dispense with that part of the conversation. It’s good to know that at least somepony thought I was worth writing about.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, unable to control her curiosity any longer. “You should be dead, long dead! It’s been more than a thousand years since that history was written.”

He held his hooves up between them, halting what would’ve been a long-winded series of questions. “I understand that. Perhaps you wonder about how I can take this whole thing so casually. The truth is that even though I hoped that I wouldn’t have to, I always knew I would be having this conversation one day, even if I didn’t know when or with whom. So what we’re about to have is a conversation rehearsed many times. Many times over… how long did you say it was?”

“A thousand years.”

His eyebrows came up, though not to the extent one would expect given the revelation. “That long, eh? I guess the years kind of passed me by somewhere in the middle there.” For a moment he was silent, grinning to himself, perhaps thinking of some memory from long ago. Celestia was about to ask another question when he snapped his eyes to her again.

“Ah! But you have many questions, and presumably you’ve already asked the most pertinent one. So now it’s time for me to tell you a story, and then we can get to business after that. It’s unfortunate given the circumstances, but I have to start by asking you a few questions myself. Number one, why have you come here?”

Celestia sat back in the chair, gesturing farther up the mountain. “The magic here, of course. Surely you can feel it too. I need it, to help save ponykind from its swiftly approaching end.”

That had been perhaps overly dramatic phrasing, but Star Swirl only nodded in apparent resignation. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “Question number two: What does the name ‘Solaris VII’ mean to you?”

“He was a king,” she answered calmly, pulling the memories out of the history lessons she had taken from her old mentor Aqua. “The last King of the Unicorns, right before the Fall, and right before Equestria was founded. In fact, he should have been a contemporary of yours.”

He nodded gravely. “That’s one way of putting it. Last question: what else do you know about the way that the Unicorn Kingdom ended?”

Celestia had to think a bit on that one. The details were there in her mind, but somewhat hazy. “There was a famine,” she said, continuing once she got an approving nod from him. “It lasted a couple of years, until finally there was a rebellion, the earth ponies rising up and fighting the unicorns and the pegasi. Many ponies died, including the king and two of his daughters. You disappeared, presumed dead by many. The kingdom broke apart soon after, the tribes migrating south in search of food. Eventually they found this country, and they called it Equestria.” She gave him a level look. “The story goes on a long time after that, and I could tell you a lot of it, but that answers your question.”

A wry grin spread across his face. “You’ve got most of the context, which is good. That’ll cut down on this story a good bit. The biggest thing you need to know is that what you’ve just told me is only partly true. For one thing, obviously I survived. But not just me.”

He sat up straight, and the tip of his horn started glowing, the blue shards of his magic starting to weave a picture in the centre of the table. “Solaris lived through it too, and he was the one who brought me here. Or, perhaps more truthfully, I followed him.”

The picture gradually solidified, focusing into a forest on a dark night, a younger Star Swirl in the middle of the table. “You called him a contemporary of mine, and that was at least somewhat right. We were friends once. Colleagues, fellow researchers. Half of my work I owed to him.” The picture grew as Celestia looked at it, flowing out from the table, until it had enveloped the room around them. The light of the candle was replaced by the soft glow of a half-moon overhead. The wooden seat she was sitting on was replaced by the brush of pine needles against her skin. Across the table, Star Swirl’s face vanished into the trees. Only his voice still made it to her ears. “I first came to these woods a thousand years ago. My heart was heavy, but I knew what I had to do…”

A strong wind from the north whipped through the trees behind Star Swirl as he made his way up the hill, threatening to pull his hat off of his brow and send it off deeper into the heart of this forsaken land. How far he had wandered he did not know. Whether there was anypony, anyone within a hundred miles who could offer him shelter, he did not know. Whether he would make it off of this hill alive, he did not know.

But still he pushed on, one hoof in front of the other. Each step brought with it a name, a memory of somepony who had brought him to this day. Clover, dear innocent Clover. Queen Argent, dead for years now. Wolfram, that stout-hearted fool. The young princesses, Platinum and Cuprum, far too young to understand. And Aurum, beautiful Princess Aurum. The names he’d carried with him for so long. Tonight, he would make sure that their names would mean something.

He was drawing near to the top of the hill, and the forest was thinning out, making way for a small clearing around the very top. His former friend was waiting for him there, and Star Swirl steeled himself before taking that final step.

“Solaris!” he called as he came out of the forest, the wind grabbing his words and ripping them away from him roughly. “It’s me!”

The unicorn standing in the middle of the clearing was tall, a foot taller than Star Swirl, and his face was almost hidden by the long cinnamon mane that swirled down from the top of his head. Despite having lived well-past a century, there wasn’t a hint of grey in that mane, nor the well-trimmed goatee that covered the lower half of his muzzle. The eyes above that mouth were a pale crimson, bright and fiery in the moonlight. As he turned around, the scarlet cape that was tied around his shoulders caught the wind, flaring out behind him. “Star Swirl!” he answered, his voice the sound of thunder. “You found your way here.”

“To talk, old friend!” he shouted back. “What drove you on? Why did I have to follow you for miles before getting a chance to speak with you? You must have known I was following!”

A bare hint of dark brown light at the tip of Solaris’s horn was the only warning that Star Swirl received, before a beam of pale orange energy erupted from the middle of the clearing and came straight for him. The old unicorn dove out of the way, rolling into a crouch.

“Talk!” Solaris roared from the centre of the clearing. “Spare me the diplomacy, old man! We could have talked for hours back then if you had wanted it! No, you mean to finish what the rest of our kind only started.”

Star Swirl kept low, knowing that as soon as he spoke the old King would know where he was. Still, the longer he could go without this turning into a full fight, the better. “I’m here to stop you from being so rash!” he said, ready with a shield spell as soon as the other pony turned. The King’s magic impacted hard on his shield, but flowed around him, demolishing a tree instead. “To make you see reason!”

“What reason is there to see?” Solaris cried, leaving the centre of the clearing as he began circling around, looking for a gap in Star Swirl’s defense. “I never even saw her, poor sweet Aurum, taken from me by those traitorous fools! Does she not deserve vengeance, Star Swirl? Does my daughter not deserve to see the world that stole her life realize its mistake?”

“What happened to Aurum was nopony’s fault!” Star Swirl answered. “Not yours, not mine, not anyone’s! Nothing you can do will make it right! Not with all of the magic in the world can you get her back!”

The King didn’t answer. Instead, with a guttural roar he conjured a whirling twister out of the wind, sending it across the clearing. Star Swirl saw the spell, and without hesitation he cast it himself, a blend of Water and Light, with the energies inverted to serve as a counter. The two twisters met and dissipated harmlessly in the middle of the clearing.

“I know,” Solaris admitted, choking as a tear fell from his eyes. “Nothing I can do will bring her back to me, nothing can undo the wrongs this world has wrought upon my family. I can only build her a legacy, and I intend to.” He clutched a hoof up to his forehead, shaking the tears out of his eyes. “She was to be my legacy, but now it is my task, to build a kingdom which will last forever!”

“No,” Star Swirl said firmly, stepping forward and claiming the top of the hill for his own. “I cannot let you do that.” He prepared his shield spell again.

“Then you will be the first to know that I cannot be stopped!” the King returned, trying again with a beam of pure light, again deflecting around Star Swirl’s shield. “Try as you will, but this is my legacy, and this time nopony is going to get in my way!”

This time Star Swirl stepped to the left and delivered his own salvo, a rush of white-hot light that the King had to dive out of the way of, making it only barely. “I don’t want to have to hurt you,” he said, “but I will if I must! Aurum was a peacemaker, a leader who would have bridged the gaps between us! Would it not be better to fulfill her dreams and set aside our hostilities?”

Solaris came out of his fall with a snarl on his face. “There will be no bridges built, only burnt,” he replied, a deep sneer in his voice. “There will be no forgiveness for the guilty. All will know the wrath that her death demands! And I will deliver it, until this pit of despair in my soul is filled by the suffering I shall give to the world.” He drew himself up for another attack, and Star Swirl braced again, but this time instead Solaris only winked out of existence.

There was a moment of silence in the clearing, Star Swirl’s heart pumping relentlessly in his ears, before he felt the magic in the air behind him. Tucking in his shoulder, he dove out of the way just in time, as Solaris materialized once again, jumping forward with a spear of fire, right where he had been standing. Star Swirl landed nimbly on his hooves though, and darted right back, taking the King in his side. The two of them tumbled down into the grass, locked in struggle as each one tried to gain the upper hoof.

Star Swirl ended up on top, pinning down his opponent’s shoulders. Solaris tried a teleportation spell again, but this time Star Swirl countered it right away, leaving the two of them only to glare into each other’s eyes. He desperately wanted it not to have to end this way, but up close he could see the madness that had taken his friend. If he let Solaris go, he would only be asking for a killing stroke in his own back. And then the rest of the world would follow. So he closed his eyes.

“I knew her,” he said, letting the memories of the former Princess flow over his senses. “That’s how I know that this is what she would have wanted.” Opening his eyes, he conjured a wickedly black orb at the tip of his horn. “Goodbye, my King.”

As the magic hit Solaris in the forehead, the unicorn jerked violently, his eyes losing their focus. Then, slowly, his body went limp, and he settled down into the grass. Star Swirl stood back up, looking at the body of the old King in sorrow. All at once, the layers of age magic Solaris had wrought upon himself fell away, revealing a coat that had subsided to a dull tan, a mane that was now but a few wisps of grey, and a face that was lined all over, the eyes cloudy, the skin marked.

“So passes the last King of the Unicorns,” he said, offering what eulogy Solaris deserved. “Find your daughters, old friend. Let them mend your spirit and quiet your rage, as I could not.”

The wind in the trees blew harder around him, pulling at his hat, almost dislodging it. Star Swirl had to grab it with his own magic to keep it on his head. The sound of the air whipping past his ears was deafening, almost to the point where he wondered why it didn’t pick him up bodily and throw him as far south as it would blow, over the boundless reaches of this forest and on to whatever lay on its other side. Then, he heard a voice.

“Not yet,” it said, before rising into a deep cackle, a swooning chorus of laughter that filled the clearing around him, layering with the wind and rising above it.

“NO!” Star Swirl cried, horror rising in his throat as he realized what was happening. “Impossible!”

“Impossible?” answered the voice on the wind. “It is your spell, and a very good one at that! Magic cannot be killed! Magic cannot be destroyed! My body may be gone, but my magic can live on. And if it can, so can I!” He dissolved into another cascade of laughter, echoing out over the whole forest, assaulting Star Swirl’s ears from all directions.

“I will stop you!” Star Swirl cried back, retreating out of the clearing step by step, holding his legs up in front of his face in the futile hope of shielding himself from the magical assault. “I will find a way!”

This time the King didn’t answer, instead only continuing to revel in his mirth, as Star Swirl ran down the side of the hill, the laughter taunting him at every step. The memories still whirled through his head. “Dear Princess,” he whispered, “what have I done?”

Chapter 29: The Mad King's Magic

“From what I now know, if I had gotten the chance to meet him I might have gotten along better with Star Swirl than I had anticipated.”

Journal of Princess Luna

Star Swirl’s sobs echoed in the cottage, and Celestia couldn’t bring herself to interrupt him. The memory had been so vivid that she had felt the wind upon her own face, seen the spark of life pass out of Solaris’s eyes, and she could still hear the King’s haunting laughter echoing through her own mind. Star Swirl had run away from the encounter, but clearly he hadn’t gone far. Celestia guessed that there was a bit more to the story yet, but the old unicorn could get to that once he had properly composed himself.

Eventually Star Swirl managed to choke back the last tear. “Sorry about that,” he said, shaking his head morosely. “I knew reliving that memory wasn’t going to go well, but it was the most expedient way of getting the point across, and of answering the most pertinent of your questions.

Celestia nodded. “He's still there then.”

“It is indeed his magic that we feel,” Star Swirl agreed. “Kept alive by a spell of my own devising, one that I had hoped would never be cast. Alas, that wasn’t even the last time it was used.”

Celestia sat upright at the revelation. “What? I’m sure I would have heard if somepony else had refused to die in the intervening time!”

Star Swirl gave her a sidelong look, and then she understood. At least that bit now made sense. “But I can see you. Surely a soul tied to magic shouldn’t be able to take physical form? And how did you build all of this, then?”

Star Swirl picked up the book with the white linen cover with his magic, floating it over the table to where he sat. With a deft flick, he swung the book down, and it passed easily through his neck, emerging out the other side without a single mark.

“Magic can do a lot of things, and while neither of us can take physical form, we can make use of the appearance that we desire. The one thing that we can’t do, thank goodness, is venture far from where we are anchored. Thus Solaris is bound to his hilltop, and I to my cottage, watching and turning away all passersby drawn to the area.” He offered her a smirk. “You must be somepony special, since you’re the first one to get this far.”

She could see that there was an upcoming conflict here, but maybe not. She would try to avoid it if possible. “Why keep ponies away, though?”

“Why?” he said back, flabbergasted at such a question. “Why? Solaris may be dead, but his magic is still very dangerous. There’s no telling what might happen to you if you venture up to that hilltop. Death might even be the best possible outcome, given what other fearsome tricks he might have come up with in the meantime.”

He drew himself back from the table, standing and giving her a firm look. “I know that you said you came here for the magic, and that you have some pressing concern to deal with yourself, but I am afraid that you will simply have to look for your answer elsewhere. Under no circumstances will I let you take another step up that path.” He put his chin up, and in silence he started rearranging the bookshelf.

Celestia sat still for a moment, unsure how to respond. Was there a chance that Star Swirl was right? But it didn’t matter, she had no time to find another source of magic for her spell, and certainly no time to think of another possible answer to the drought. Thus, she stood, despite part of her demanding she not.

“Star Swirl, I’m afraid that I must disagree with you. I need that magic, and there’s no other way that I can get it than to get to the top of that hill. Thank you for the warning, and for the story, but I really have no time to waste.” She realized belatedly that he’d never gotten the tea that he had promised. “Don’t worry about the tea. Perhaps I shall drink it on my way back.”

There was a flash of blue magic at the bookshelf, and then another as the old wizard appeared in front of her, still incredulous. “Did you not hear any of what I said?” he asked, looking a mixture of annoyed and baffled. “I am not going to let that pony deal any more harm than he already has. Even I was barely able to subdue him. What chance do you think you could have?”

“I don’t have time for this!” she snapped at him. “Out there, beyond your hill, the pony nation is starving again, and if I can’t fix it, there will be another war, just like the one you knew. With Solaris’s power though, I could stop that all from happening. So I am not going to let anypony, not even a legendary wizard from centuries past, get in the way of that.”

His eyebrows and his ears came down, and he settled into the dueling stance that he had used so well in the memory. “Impudent foal!” he replied, a crackling edge of power undeniable around his words. “I may not be the unicorn I once was, but my magic is just as potent, and if you will not heed my warnings, then I am afraid I’ll have to evict you from the premises myself!”

Celestia wished that it didn’t have to come to this, but her time was too short. “I’m sorry,” she said, apologetic but still with a bit of iron there. “But I don’t have a choice.”

There was a silence for a moment, Star Swirl standing in the doorway with his head lowered, watching her. Waiting. Celestia realized that he wasn’t going to act first. She was the one who wanted to get past, so she was going to have to be the aggressor.

Wanting to avoid a fight she tried the simple answer first, a teleportation spell that would take her out into the yard. Light and Water, with a hint of Spirit to bind them together.

But the old wizard was too quick. Barely had she started the invocation before he had cast the inverted form on her, and the two spells canceled each other out.

A confident grin tugged at one corner of Star Swirl’s mouth. “Maybe the art hasn’t advanced as much as I had thought.”

In answer, Celestia called up a flurry of spells, over a dozen incantations in direct sequence, as fast as she could cast them. Some teleportations, some stunning spells aimed at him, some shields for herself.

But Star Swirl matched her step for step, countering every one. The air between them was a kaleidoscope of pulsing lights, as spells impacted upon each other and winked into and out of existence. Yet the result was again the same: the two of them staring each other down from across the room. The other books had been knocked off the shelf in the storm of magic.

“Come on,” he said once again. “Relent. You are no match for me.”

“Maybe not,” Celestia replied, doing her best to hold her voice steady and not betray the frayed nerves she was feeling. “But that doesn’t change what I have to do.”

She only had the strength for one more flurry of spells. Casting was hard work, especially with multiple invocations chained together. Star Swirl didn’t have a physical body to worry about, so he could go on all day if he had to. All that meant was this time Celestia had to beat him.

Gritting her teeth, she started into another casting chain. Stunning ray. Teleport. Invisibility. Repeat. Both of them were drawing on the magic of the hill as fast as they could, each impact of spell and counterspell strong enough to lightly rattle the table and the bookshelf. Each of them was going on instinct, Celestia pulling each spell from her memory, and Star Swirl casting the inverted forms of whatever he saw.

As confident as he had been, Celestia saw a mote of uncertainty appear on his brow, and that was when she made her move. She pulled in the energy for a shield and a teleportation at the same time, weaving them in parallel, and casting them both at once. To Star Swirl it would look like one big spell, needing one single counter rather than two. She saw him draw the inverted energies, again without thought, acting on instinct.

This time, the counterspell ricocheted off of the shield as it locked into place around her, rebounding off of the table and dissipating on the ceiling just as Celestia winked out of existence. She appeared in a flash of light out in the yard, and nearly immediately fell to her knees. It required a minute of deep breaths before she could stand up straight again.

Once she had caught her breath, Celestia took a look around. The flowerbeds still sat neatly in their spots on the cottage’s front lawn, but she noted well that the paved path she had been following ended at Star Swirl’s door. Farther up the hillside, the old unicorn had constructed a charming little picket fence, and on the other side of it the forest grew wild, the thick undergrowth almost barring the way. Clearly he hadn’t wanted even to have to think about what lay beyond that barrier, but Celestia guessed that the top of the hill couldn’t be much farther now. Maybe only several hundred paces or so.

And on top of that hill she would find the spirit of a mad King, a unicorn equal or even greater in power than Star Swirl himself. Mercifully, she didn’t necessarily need to subdue him, just figure out how to use his magic and also get out unharmed. But there wasn’t really any way to know what to expect until she got there.

She turned back to give the cottage one last look, and was surprised to see Star Swirl out on the step once more.

“Wait up a moment!” he called. “I won’t try to stop you again, don’t worry.” He walked down the path to meet her, the bells on his hat jingling merrily with every step. Ethereal though he may be, the illusion was very convincing. “If I can’t stop you from seeking Solaris’s power, at least let me go with you,” he said.

Star Swirl looked like he had recovered a bit of his pride, and once more resembled the legendary wizard of the past. “I would love that, Star Swirl, but how? Your magic is bound to this place, isn’t it? The place where you originally died?”

He nodded. “Indeed. But there is still one way that I could accompany you, and indeed it might be the most useful way that I could protect you from Solaris’s wrath.”

“How?”

“Rebinding my spirit to you,” he replied simply. “My magic just needs something to hold onto if I am to stay alive, whether that be a location, an object, or a pony willing to accept it.” He shuffled his hooves, looking down. “It would appear that you have some skill in the magical arts, but I suspect having somepony to watch your back might prove useful, especially in the place where you’re about to go.”

“Sorry,” Celestia said, placing a hoof up on her head as she thought. “You’re going to have to give me a moment on this one.” The offer admittedly was tempting, to have Star Swirl’s magic added on to her own, in theory at least. She suspected that it would be somewhat similar to what happened when she and Luna used the Elements together: their consciousnesses joined, held in unity by their shared power. But right now she couldn’t even really wrap her head around it. “How is that even going to work?”

“It’s quite simple, actually,” he replied, even more of his composure back now. If Celestia hadn’t known better, she’d almost think that he was lecturing her. “Theory of Magic was one of my favourite areas to research. You would naturally still be you, just able to draw upon my magic when needed, or my counsel, if you desired that. And, in case it needed saying, you should know that it’s easily reversible, just in case we ever decide to end the arrangement. The truth is,” he continued, one hoof brought up to his chest, “in all my time of thinking, I never was able to figure out how I would finally destroy Solaris’s magic. But perhaps, together, we could do it. And if we could, then I could maybe find my own rest too, wherever that may be.”

The way he delivered that last sentence, bursting with melancholy, touched a chord in Celestia’s heart. She hadn’t been with him on that night centuries ago, but she’d lived it with him now, and knew what it would mean for him to be able to see this thing through. And indeed, nopony knew more about the evil she was about to encounter than Star Swirl. Put that way, she would be a fool not to take him up on the offer. “Okay,” she said. “Is there anything that you need me to do?”

Star Swirl chuckled. “Just don’t run away.” Then there was a stunning flash of white magic all around his form, bright enough that Celestia had to shield her eyes. When she looked again, Star Swirl was nowhere to be seen. But was his magic part of her now? How could she really know?

Well, all present and accounted for, said a voice in her ear. Of course, it was Star Swirl’s voice. I had experimented with this process once or twice before, but I had forgotten how cramped it all felt. At least there will be stimulating conversation, right?

Maybe, if Celestia could get over the idea of having a stimulating conversation with a voice in her head. Either way, that meant that the only thing left to do was move forward.

Getting over the fence required only a bare flick of her wings, though she did unfortunately knock over one of his planters that was perched up on the boards. Celestia winced. “Sorry about that,” she said.

None of it matters now, Star Swirl returned in her head. Maybe good for an exhibit someday, if this place is ever safe to come back to. Up ahead the forest was already thinning out, the break in the trees that signified the top of the hill somewhere out there on the horizon. You wouldn’t happen to have any smart ideas of what you intend to do with him, do you?

Celestia had to concentrate very hard to avoid answering him out loud. That voice right in her ear, as though he was crouched upon her shoulder, was disconcerting to say the least. She would have to practice this a lot if she didn’t want to blurt out random conversation in the middle of a Senate meeting.

Funnily enough, I do. In fact, I believe that I’ve got just the thing.

The clearing looked exactly as it had in Star Swirl’s memory, indeed right down to the trees that had been destroyed during the duel. None of them had grown back, and the area around their blackened stumps was bare, with not even a mushroom pushing its head up to clear away the dead wood. Whatever magic Solaris had used in those spells, it must have been foul. Besides those details, though, the peak of the hill was peaceful, the grass up here growing short and pale but still growing, and the air clean. From the perch, Celestia could turn around and look all of the way back through the forest, to where Harmony Tower’s banners fluttered proudly, and, farther off, where Everfree sat in ruined decay.

Star Swirl’s voice had fallen silent, and Celestia guessed that the old wizard was waiting, tense, for his old enemy to finally show his face again. The pulse of the magic in the air had reached a crescendo, a constant blaring rumble, deep in the earth and in Celestia’s bones. It lifted her up, buoyed her mind onto a new level, where she felt as if she could move mountains with only the barest effort, but now that she knew its cause, that power also frightened her. What had Solaris been up to in his thousand year exile? What new tricks might he have devised that even Star Swirl wouldn’t know about?

The first sign was a breeze that grew out of nowhere, blowing not in a single direction like winds normally did, but instead around the clearing clockwise, bending the branches of the trees in a circle. The net result was that inside the clearing Celestia couldn’t feel even the lightest breath of wind, though it steadily grew in intensity in the forest beyond.

She quickly became aware that the night was growing darker, the starlight fading as if shrouded behind a thick cloud, though looking up she could still see them twinkling away. The air grew close and cold, all of a sudden driving a pick of ice straight into her muscles. At the same time, that air seemed somehow thick, suddenly viscous like molasses. Every breath felt difficult, like breathing in tar, the air coating her lungs from the inside.

A spark of something jumped up from the back of her consciousness, and then suddenly she was surrounded by an orb of silver light, solid and smooth. All of the ill effects from the air vanished, and she could see the clearing outside the sphere as now inky black, oozing with some indescribable darkness. Concentrate! Star Swirl said angrily. You are indeed lucky to have me by your side, it would seem.

Well, a little warning would have been nice, she thought back. Yet still, she had to admit that he was right. Not ten seconds in, and on her own she would probably already have been overcome. Maybe the time for being passive had ended.

“Solaris!” she yelled, amplifying her voice with her own magic. “Stop toying with me and show yourself!”

The darkness outside flowed freely for a moment more, and then it pulled back, marshaling into a form of some sort, though still not quite the tall unicorn with the cinnamon mane that Celestia was expecting. The profile was right, but apparently the old King felt that cloaking himself in shadow was a more apt way to appear. Besides the twin orbs of his eyes, clear and bright crimson as ever, the rest of his form was dark as the night sky, and still rippling slightly, as if the profile were that of a cloak dancing in the breeze.

“So the little one knows my name,” a voice chuckled out of the darkness, the same voice that had chased Star Swirl from the clearing a thousand years ago. “And she knows enough to survive, at least a little. Tell me, what else do you think you know?”

“I know that I need your power,” Celestia answered, as calm as she could, in spite of the whirling tempest of wind outside the clearing. “Without my help, my nation will wither and die, or tear itself apart as I look on. I have devised a spell to prevent that, now and for evermore. But to cast it, I need power, more than I can get anywhere else. I need your strength, Your Majesty.”

Solaris threw back his head and laughed, a thunderous guffaw that drove the winds into a frenzy, and sent the shadows of his form erupting forth again, to cover the whole clearing as the laughter echoed in the sky overhead. “Somepony needs me? I am honoured, little one. But why should I ever help you?”

Celestia drew herself up, standing tall in the midst of the onslaught. “You’ll get something out of the bargain,” she answered. “You’ll get the chance to know that this time, you were able to avert the crisis instead of running from it. You’ll know that this time, instead of watching as civilization fell apart around you, you did something to make it right.” She stared right into the heart of the darkness, picking out the crimson orbs that were the King’s eyes. “You’ll be able to know that Aurum would have been proud of you.”

At once the billowing shadows around her solidified into a cloud of midnight blackness once more, encompassing the clearing as the winds outside blew wildly, his crimson eyes burning like angry coals. “You dare to speak her name?” Solaris screamed, an edge in his voice as wild as the winds. “Shut your mouth, child! You know nothing of what I want! NOTHING!”

In spite of the terror that rose unbidden into her mind, Celestia forced herself to stay calm. She had already faced one legendary wizard today.

She let her voice drop low, calling up the iron of rule that she saved for the moments in the Senate when calm negotiation wouldn’t fix anything. For the moments when a pony needed to be reminded of the power that rested within her authority. “That’s what I am giving you. Take it, or else I will be forced to take your magic without any compensation.”

The darkness around her swirled menacingly as the King’s mad laughter rocked the clearing, once more lucid and cold. “Such ferocity, and yet such arrogance. Do not delude yourself into believing that you have any chance against me. I have been practicing for centuries, and it has been a long time since I last had a chance to take on a real challenger. But if it is a duel that you are offering, then I might take it. I’ll even give you a target to aim at.”

The shadows once again drew themselves in, this time all of the way back, revealing the image of Solaris standing at the edge of the clearing, exactly as he had been in Star Swirl’s memory. The only difference now was those eyes, rimmed with ebony blackness that rippled in time to the pulse of the magic in the air all around her. Solaris offered her a bow, then assumed a ready stance.

Are you mad? Star Swirl yelled in her ear. I told you there is no way to destroy him! The best we could do is fight to a draw, as I did!

Trust me, she thought back. Don’t help me, even if it looks like I’m losing. I know what I’m doing. Or at least I hope so, she said to herself. It was a risky plan, certainly, but based on everything that she knew so far, it stood a reasonable chance of working. So long as the guesses she had made about Solaris’s intentions turned out to be accurate.

And if she was wrong? Well, it wasn’t as if Equestria getting destroyed in some other fashion was any worse than its current fate.

Seeing her resolve, Solaris wasted no time, getting right to the offensive. His style hadn’t changed much over the years, and thus Celestia was able to keep the centre for the start of the fight, deflecting the ranged attacks that he would throw at her from the outside. His magic, she noticed, had taken on a darker shade, tinged with onyx just like the rims around his eyes. But each one of his spells was still a measured, well-aimed bolt of energy, and each one required the full force of her will to deflect, shield, or counter, coming close to breaking her power as she stood in the midst of the torrent.

“Humph! So you can hold your ground! Perhaps you will make me sweat, little one,” he growled, before fading out of existence and reappearing on her left side. One attack from the left was followed by another from the right, faster than the eye could blink, and this time Celestia pushed off the ground with her legs, taking to the skies. She wouldn’t be able to flee, as the winds circling the hilltop had intensified into a howling gale, too strong for any pegasus to fly out of, but at least in the air she would be a more difficult target to hit.

Solaris didn’t slow down if he was surprised, and soon enough it was again everything that Celestia could do to keep herself out of harm, as bolt after bolt of dark magic lit up the sky, in front of her, behind her, above and below. She had to twist, roll and stretch out her turns, moving fast yet always keeping her edge, and always watching out for the encircling wall of winds.

She spared a look down at the clearing, to see Solaris casting up another surge of magic, but this time it wasn’t a direct shot. Instead she heard the howling of the winds outside the circle draw in around her, into a shrinking dome that covered the clearing. Her time was almost up. But at that moment, perhaps she had a chance.

Summoning all of her strength into the shield, Celestia dove, straight down with her wings tucked in, right at the King. He looked and saw her coming in, a wicked grin lighting up his face.

Solaris thrust his horn up at her and delivered another black bolt of energy. The impact on her shield spell was heavy, like suddenly she was diving down through syrup, and the force of it almost ripped the spell right out of her mind. She fought to keep control over it, seeing the ground rushing up, knowing she was almost there.

Get ready, she whispered to Star Swirl. Then, seeing maybe a glimmer of doubt in Solaris’s eyes as the incandescent ball of her magic closed in on him, she let go.

The wall of black magic crashed into her like a boulder, instantly freezing all of her muscles in place. Celestia didn’t feel any pain, not even as the King deftly stepped aside and her body impacted the ground at full speed. In truth, she didn’t feel anything at all, the sound of the winds and the lights of the stars overhead having been replaced by a black, soundless void. She could only feel something out there, seemingly just beyond the edge of her perception, yet hidden. And she could hear him.

“Hah! Hah hah!” The King’s laughter echoed coldly in her mind, like he was talking in a cavern. “As I expected. Nopony gets my magic for free, little one, though at least you’ve gotten the courtesy of learning that before your end.” A light flickered to life in the darkness, followed quickly by another. The deep, bloody red of the twin orbs left no doubt as to who was behind them.

“But maybe, indeed, I can let you live.” Somehow, even without being able to see anything except his eyes, Celestia got the sense of a wicked grin, wide and glistening with perfect, white teeth. “Maybe I’ve thought of something better that I can do with you.” Rather than the hail of laughter that would surely have rocked the outside world, here Celestia heard only a cold, hollow chuckle. “Such a strong will, and the powers of an alicorn, too. Maybe you are fit enough to be a servant.”

Around those eyes, Celestia saw a profile form, but not because any light had sprung up to illuminate Solaris. Instead she became aware of a silky motion in the shadow elsewhere, a shimmering not unlike the smoky shadows that the King had cloaked himself in before. Around those eyes was a silhouette that was entirely still, standing out even as black on black. “Come closer,” he said, beckoning with his horn. “I promise I won’t bite.”

She wasn’t sure whether she drifted closer to him or he came closer to her, but in that instant they were right next to each other, and she knew it because the air all around her had grown as cold as ice.

“Yes, a fitting vessel,” Solaris continued, the spots of red raking Celestia up and down. “This won’t take but a minute.”

And that was when Celestia felt it: a tendril of ice worming its way inside her mind, black as midnight and filled with malice. In an instant, it would snuff her out forever, and she would be but a pawn to the will of the King, servant to him just as Star Swirl was to her.

But it was also exactly what she had been waiting for. “Now, Star Swirl!” she cried, as his blue magic erupted forth from her, driving back the shadows into fleeting wisps of smoke, and revealing the clearing around her again in a brilliant flash of light.

Solaris was there, right beside her, a thin strand of his magic connecting their two horns, with his features twisted into a mess of shock and rage. The force of life flowed back into all of her limbs, and with a single pull Celestia shook herself free of his hold, then took off straight for the heavens.

The winds were still up there, but when Celestia drew on her magic, she could feel the chunk of Solaris’s power that she had taken with her, held in check by Star Swirl’s will. With it, she undid the charm that the King had placed on the weather, and in that instant she was free, soaring south over the forest, still shining like a star brought down from the heavens, lighting up the whole of the forest night, as if the Sun had risen early, and brought Equestria’s hope with it finally.

Over the horizon, she knew that Canterlot still slept, but Luna didn’t have to hold on much longer now. Hold fast, Sister, she thought to herself. I’m coming.

Chapter 30: Queen Luna's Reign

“The reward I got for saving Equestria? One thousand years of solitude to dwell on my mistakes.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 3)

The palace in Canterlot didn’t really have a throne room, per se; with the Senate being the originating point for law and the highest court of the land, the palace didn’t really need a place for the Princesses to sit in state. Their seats in the Senate were opulent enough to be called thrones, true, but the room wasn’t all that well-suited to private councils of the sort that Queen Luna really needed to take right now. Without any better options, she had commandeered one of the Senate’s empty committee rooms for her little conference.

Luna did at least get the chairpony’s seat, exactly the same in construction as all of the others, but at the head of the table if nothing else. Also around the table were Swift, Captain Brow, Senator Stain, and a few other senators from various areas of the country. They were all looking more than a little uncomfortable in the grand chamber, and Luna knew why. The tall windows of this room looked out onto the manicured lawn of the palace, surrounded on all sides by a tall, sculpted hedge. But the sound of the protesters from the nearby square was impossible to ignore. And while Luna didn’t think that things sounded particularly agitated at the moment, she had guards watching the mass of ponies out there now, just in case anything flared up.

“Reports!” Captain Brow barked from her right side, looking out over the various senators at the far end of the table. “How are things in the other reaches of the country?”

A few of the senators just shook their heads, clearly uncomfortable to be bearing their news. Ink stood up to deliver the summary. “We’ve got bad news from every quarter, Your Majesty,” she began.

Luna tapped her hoof on the table in irritation. Celestia had been fond of this young senator from the foothills, and while Luna had to admit that her eagerness had been helpful, she was still a politician at heart. “Ink, I told you not to call me that.”

The senator stumbled for a moment, visibly uncomfortable with the lack of formality. “Luna, as you wish. Obviously there’s been no help on the weather front, not that it even really matters at this point. The Day of Reaping is almost upon us, and the fields of the country are essentially bare. Even a torrent of rain now would only give us a flood to manage.”

Luna rubbed her forehead, alreadying feeling the stress that was to come. “What about foreign aid? Have we heard anything from the griffons?”

Swift shook his head. “Nothing. But from what I have heard, the griffons are having just as much trouble with their crops as us. I would not expect any real aid from them any time soon.”

“Indeed,” Ink affirmed, “there’s nothing we can do now except try to keep the peace over the course of this winter.” She picked up a sheet of parchment from the desk in front of her, one of a handout that every other member of the council had received as well. “Unfortunately — and understand that I am very sick of saying that word — our stores have almost run dry. Without a rationing system for the whole country, we’re likely not going to be able to make it.”

Luna gave the senator a glare. “I’m sorry. Are you proposing that the government take control over the harvest? Because I thought I had already made it clear that was not a workable solution. It will only lead to conflict.”

“My apologies, Your M–” Ink swallowed and started over. “Luna, if we are lucky, there will be enough of a harvest spread throughout the country to keep everypony fed, and that is if things are divided very sparingly. If the government does not step in and ensure that the food is divided evenly, then in all likelihood there will be losses over the course of this winter.”

“Losses?”

Ink opened her mouth, but couldn’t quite answer. It was Captain Brow who placed his hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “Deaths, my Princess,” he said quietly.

“And likely a significant number,” Ink affirmed. “I know that you want to avoid conflict, but the other options are simply unworkable.”

Luna stood up from her chair, so that she could look down on the whole room. “So you want me to start a war instead? Because trust me, that is where Pensive’s strategy will get us. If we send collectors into the farming country to administer the harvest, the ponies out there will resist. They will demand the right to keep hold of their own product, and to sell only the remainder, if there is any. If Canterlot decides to push the issue, I guarantee you there will be an armed rebellion! If ‘losses’ are what we’re concerned about, then we can all rest assured that path gives us at least as many as the other!” She gave the young senator another look. “You know this as well as anypony, Ink.”

The earth pony nodded back at her, looking more pale with each word. “I am well aware of it. And given the range of our options, I think it’s fair to say that none of us want you to do anything right now. There are no paths left that lead to a future we’d like to imagine. But clearly something has to be done.”

If Ink didn’t get any active agreement to her words, the rest of the room gave her a very tacit confirmation, which was to say that everypony else was intently staring into the table’s wood grain, clearly lacking any desire to talk about the situation. They needed some encouragement, a solid direction to look to.

“We are going to do something,” she said, with as much determination as she could muster, getting the attention of them all right away. “I may not have asked for this crown, but now that I have it I am going to tell you: we will not have a civil war during my rule. We shall deal with winter as it happens, and we will do what we can to keep everypony fed. We will not sow division within the country, and we will not ask anypony to surrender the rights they have every reason to expect. Am I clear?”

There was a long moment of silence, as the disconnected shouts and chants from the protest in the square echoed about the room, and Luna caught a couple of uncomfortable glances passing between the senators at the table’s far end. So help her, no matter what they said, she was not going to let anypony die in blood. Three hundred years ago, she had seen enough of that for any number of lifetimes.

Finally, Brow nodded. “As you wish. What then of the crowd outside? We shall have to disperse them, so that they can go back to their homes and prepare for winter themselves.”

His words precipitated more nervous glances, but at least for this Luna had an answer ready. “Leave that to me. Guardspony Swift, have our prisoner brought up.”

It was about midmorning by the time that Pensive could be brought up out of his holding cell. The former senator was fully shackled, and even the single night that he had spent down in the dungeons had not done him well. He still wore the remains of the suit he had been arrested in, though by now it was stained and heavily wrinkled. Luna had the notion that this may well be the dirtiest that Pensive Prose had ever appeared in public. Well, so the better. The crowd outside needed something to direct their anger at, and Pensive would surely make a fine target. All the better too, since he was actually guilty.

His mouth was still free to move though, and somehow he even managed to muster up enough confidence to give her a tired grin when Swift marched him over to the palace’s main doors. “Your Majesty! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Luna didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead, she signaled to the guards to open the doors. It took two stallions together to drag open the great oaken portal at the front of the palace, and as the door creaked open, Luna was greeted by the blistering heat of the Sun beating down on the morning, its light bright enough to make her put her hoof up to shield herself. Added to that, the sounds of the crowd were finally clear, now that they were right in front of her.

The palace grounds continued on for fifty paces or so, before opening up into the massive plaza. Normally the square was reserved for festivals, important ceremonies, and as a general gathering spot for the neighbourhood at the top of the city, but now it was simply packed with ponies, a sea of colours stretching right out to the government offices that lined the far ends of the square.

The Guard had formed a protective ring around the near end of the plaza, setting up barricades that kept the protestors about ten paces or so away from the entrance to the palace grounds, and it was in that space that Luna would present to the crowd their prize.

The air was filled with sound, as any space in the presence of so much life must necessarily be, but here the general buzz of the group was punctuated by the occasional yelled slogan:

“We won’t go home until we are fed!”

“No forgiveness for hoarders!”

“Unicorns deserve to eat!”

Even in just the front of the square Luna could see the tensions simmering. Scattered in amongst the group right up at the front of the barricade were a number of haggard-looking toughs, exchanging wily glances with each other and heckling the guards. There was a group of unicorns all standing together just off to the west side, in a loose ring, the stallions all on the outside and keeping their back to each other. The whole scene was a powder keg, and Luna could feel it. She needed to defuse that tension promptly, and that’s why she was here. But first she had to get their attention.

Leaving Pensive on the ground to be watched over by the guards, Luna flew up, only about thirty feet or so, but enough so that she had cleared the hedges that grew around the palace and everypony in the square should be able to get a good look at her. The rest she could let her voice do.

“CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA!” she began, letting her words echo long and loud over the square. It took a long time, perhaps thirty seconds or so before enough of the crowd looked to be paying attention, and the noise had dropped down enough that she could continue in a somewhat more restrained tone.

“As many of you may have heard, the Senate has declared a state of emergency, and has thus dissolved. As a result, I, Princess Luna, have assumed the temporary role of Queen until our current crisis has passed.”

Unsurprisingly, that little piece of administrative material didn’t make much of an impression on them, but it did have to be said. Rumours to that extent had been circulating for days anyway, and it would not hurt to stamp out as much doubt in the government now as she could.

“Rest assured that I, as ruler, fully understand the severity of the current situation, and that I will not rest until a workable solution to the drought and the food shortage has been found. In the meantime, I promise to also work to ensure that any and all malicious actors who would exacerbate this crisis for their own gain are fully brought to justice.”

As expected, there was a note of confusion that spread on that line.

“It has come to my attention,” she continued, “that one such malicious actor has been responsible for spreading vile rumours and vitriol throughout the country. We have him now on display at the front of the plaza. Pensive Prose stands before you charged with high treason against Equestria. His incitements divided our country at a time when it most needed unity, and would have ultimately sought to plunge us into a violent struggle, wherein he and his supporters would emerge as the winners. Those ponies who aided him are still out there, and we will continue to look for them. But this snake’s ability to turn us against each other is no more.”

Admittedly, that last part was a bit of a stretch given the facts, but certainly close enough to reality for Luna’s tastes. And it got the message across in a simple manner.

The reaction from the crowd was tough to judge, and Luna understood that it would take some time for the message to properly hit home. Pensive was a popular senator after all. But his crimes would speak for themselves, especially once they were able to have a proper trial. She was about to continue elaborating on the charges when she noticed a small disturbance in the front few rows of the crowd.

The ponies there were all milling about one particular individual, a tall unicorn with one of his ears missing and with a lop-sided hat holding onto his head. “Lies!” he cried, almost drowned out by the ambiance of the square before he remembered his own magic.

“I say, that is a bold lie!” he forcefully declared, looking right up at Luna with a derisive scowl. “Pensive Prose has been an honourable and dutiful senator, and he is on trial today not for plotting against Equestria, but for having the guts to speak the truth to those in power!” He turned around to look out over the crowd, climbing up onto a crate that someone seemed to have provided for him in order to get some extra height. “Was he not the one who originally proposed, nearly a moon ago, that we would have to take the food that we deserved from the greed of the earth ponies who wanted it for themselves? We were told then that such an idea was madness, but look where that has gotten us! We were told then to stand strong, but all that has done is make us live in ignorance of our problem, until now it is almost too late to stop it!”

His voice rose up into a raucous yell, hoarse but with enough power to still project out over the whole of the crowd. “Indeed, we’ve been lied to, Canterlot, but this pony before us is the only one who has spoken the truth!”

A loose mix of agreement answered him from the crowd, some simple shouts, others waving or stomping their hooves in support. Either way, Luna had to put a stop to that.

“Do not listen to the rumours that circulate daily!” she said with as much force as she could muster. “Part of the senator’s treachery was to plant subversive agents throughout the country, in newspapers, in local firebrands, in spirited talkers just like this one! But we must stand against those who would seek to divide us! Only together shall we be able to survive this coming struggle.”

They seemed good words, but the rabble-rouser down in the square was unbowed. “A subversive, am I?” he answered, lilting the words with sarcasm. “When it seems I am the only one willing to tell you the truth? When our markets and stores are empty, where has the food gone? Do you see any of those farmers here, starving with us today? I think not. Why should we suffer when they do not?” That got a more full-throated approval from the crowd.

Whoever this pony was, if he wanted a debate, Luna was sorry to have to disappoint him. This was no time for division. Gathering her wings in, she dove down to his spot amongst the crowd, stopping herself at a hover about fifteen feet off of the ground. Closer up, she could see that her opponent had a two-tone coat, dark and light green splitting his face roughly in two. Besides his large hat, he was otherwise unclothed.

“Cease your provocations, cur!” she shouted, her growing frustration and anger evident in her face. “Whether or not you really do stand with this traitor, you are helping his cause now! We have extra cells, if you’d like to join him.”

A couple of the ponies near the fellow shrank back, knocked off their balance by the rush of air that had accompanied Luna’s quick descent. But whoever this pony was, he stood his ground. “I may welcome that,” he said, chuckling dryly. “I understand that in the palace I may find something still to eat! Perhaps you should be willing to take us all then, if you’re going to be so generous.”

Luna whistled to Swift, who was still watching over Pensive at the palace gates. “You heard the pony! Take him, if that’s what he wants.” Swift nodded quickly in acknowledgment, then looked back up into the palace and gestured a few more guards forward.

The unicorn before her laughed. “Shall we like to see them try?” he called to the crowd. “There are hundreds of us, and only a dozen of your toughs! I stand with Canterlot behind me, and we will not be so easily bowed by your threats of force!” Another cheer went up from the crowd as some of his followers stepped forward again, locking legs with him. They joined him in offering her a defiant glare, one that set Luna’s blood to boiling.

As Swift and his squad of pegasus guards closed in, Luna saw uncertainty on a few of their faces. “Come, guards!” she said to them. “Do you expect us to tolerate such lies and malcontent within the population? We have cells to fill yet! Now get that stallion! I’ll even help you if I have to.”

Swift waved her off. “That won’t be necessary, Your Majesty,” he said, as professional as always. “You stay out of harm’s way.” He turned back to the crowd of protesters, the group by the leader still standing in boisterous defiance. “All right, you,” he said. “You’ve had your fun. Time now to come with us.”

The squad descended quickly, hitting the ground with enough force to clear themselves some space. The leader and his defenders were momentarily standing alone, outmatched by the five armoured pegasi. Then, the two-tone unicorn yelled out again, “Do we stand apart or together, Canterlot? They cannot take us all!”

There was a moment of almost serene silence as the words echoed around the square. Then, the tension broke, and all hell came with it.

With a shout of vigour, the crowd closed in on Swift and his squad. They barely had enough time to get their hooves to their scabbards before they were enveloped by the crowd, a mass of ponies pushing and shoving, grabbing at whatever their hooves could find purchase on, and stampeding over anypony that fell. The guards managed to hold their own against the initial onslaught, falling back into each other, but they were surrounded and held down. And all the while Two-Tone and the rest of the crowd in the vicinity was yelling encouragement and curses against them.

Luna knew what she had to do. To hell with staying safe herself. She called up her magic, and came down right in the middle of the squad with a wave of purple force, throwing everypony back from her, guards and civilians alike. Everypony went into the press of bodies and more than a few of the civilians disappeared under the hooves of the crowd, but at least it gave Swift and his fellow guards a chance to escape. Rather than let them come to their own senses, she hurled them all into the air with a burst of magic before the mob could regroup. That only left her staring down Two-Tone and his cadre of followers from the ground. She let another spark fall from her horn. “Will you come readily, or shall I pry you out myself?”

Even in the face of this he still remained unbowed. “You who told us to stand united, Queen Luna?” he said in a mocking tone. “If you intended to take me by force you would have done so yourself already. Or will this day still come to blood? Tell us, Your Majesty, have you come to feed us food, or only more lies to stop us from seeing the truth?”

“DO YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT I’VE COME TO DO?” Luna cried, her voice one of thunder, its own force pushing back on the ridiculous hat that was perched atop his head. “I did not rescue Equestria from Chaos so that I could see it torn apart by the likes of you! If it’s blood that you want, then you may have it yet!”

“Do your worst!” he called back, completely unflinching despite the superior force before him. “If you strike us down more will rise. We see the truth now, Queen! If you will not feed us, then we will go to the countryside and see to the matter ourselves! But let us see first, whether this fight will start today!”

Luna grit her teeth and summoned up her magic again. If a fight was what Two-Tone wanted, then that was what he would get. She had been trained as a fighter, and knew enough magic to take him down easily. Him and all those who stood with him. However many followers or supporters Pensive had, she would deal with them, the whole crowd if she had to.

Then, just as she was about ready to let go, Swift was in front of her. “Stop, Luna!” he cried. “Do you want the war to start here? You said that no matter what no pony was going to die in blood during your rule!”

“Step aside, Guardspony!” she answered, barely even hearing him. “I will show him blood, if that’s what he wants—”

The interruption came as a hard blow to the side of her head, solid enough to make the square in front of her swim lazily in her eyes for a few moments. And in that instant, the world became silent.

It took a few moments for Luna to register that Swift had just punched her. When her vision cleared, she was airborne, Swift carrying her back toward the palace doors.

“Guardspony!” she said, still angrily, struggling for a moment in his grip. “What is the meaning of this insubordination? Will I have you in the stocks too before today is done?”

“Your Majesty, stop,” he said firmly. “Did you want to see the civil war start today? If you had taken that stallion, the whole city would have been in arms by noon. Never mind the riot in the square that would have followed.”

She shook herself free. “Well, what else do you expect me to do? We cannot allow such subversion to exist in the population! How could we ever find a reasonable end to this crisis if we do?” Behind them, jeers were rising from the crowd as Two-tone lauded his apparent victory, and it was almost enough to make Luna turn around to go after him again.

Swift looked at her solemnly, his face ashen. “Your Majesty, I’m not sure if there are any reasonable ends to this crisis anymore. But if there are any, they don’t start with us battling civilians in the city square.”

Something in that last sentence finally got through to Luna’s mind, and she realized what she had almost done. Here in Canterlot, the very place where Equestria had come together after Discord’s rule, she had very nearly shattered that centuries-long peace, first by pitting the government against the population, with the fight between the cities and the farmers only shortly to follow. She hung her head.

“I’m sorry, Swift. I let that whole situation get away from me.”

As they passed through the gate and into the castle grounds, the rest of the detachment formed up behind them, a few staying behind to keep an eye on the rowdy protesters. At least they had managed to keep a hold of Pensive, and he was looking properly terrified at what had just happened, for once bereft of a smart remark.

Swift nodded in understanding. In the fight down on the square he had picked up a gash above his right eye. “I almost wanted you to do it myself. But you made a decision, and now we’re going to stand by it.”

The doors to the palace clanged shut behind them, finally muffling the sound of the crowd outside. The air in the palace was plenty cooler too, and that helped jolt Luna’s mind back to the matters at hand. “But what are we going to do, then? It sounds as though those ponies are willing to start Pensive’s war even without his law. And there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

Swift settled down onto the floor with her, and signaled the guard detachment to take their prisoner back down to the dungeons.

“I know that you hate to be reminded of it,” he said, “but I’m afraid that you are our Queen now. I don’t think that anypony can tell you what it is that we’re going to do. But say the word, and we will follow.” He snapped her a quick salute, and then turned on his hoof and marched off after the rest of the detachment, leaving Luna alone in the cavernous entrance hall.

He was right, of course. Nopony could figure out what Equestria’s future was going to be right now except for her. But there still had to be another way besides letting it come to war. She would not allow herself to let that come to pass. Maybe by tonight she would think of something else.

The Sun was setting over Canterlot, and Luna was watching it dejectedly through the square windows that illuminated the Senate chamber. The room was empty except for her and her thoughts, and with the chamber disbanded, most of its members either back out in the countryside or else in their dwellings in Canterlot, it was now one of the quietest places in the whole palace. She had thought that maybe something in the detailed frescoes and friezes depicting pony history would spark an idea in her mind. Instead, all they had done was serve as bitter reminders of how much was at stake.

Proud Manehattan at its confluence of rivers, industrious Fillydelphia where miners and prospectors found and lived their dreams, tall Canterlot resplendent in its finery, living reminder of three centuries of peace and prosperity. All of it she and Celestia had taken upon their shoulders, all of it they had vowed to protect, and all of it now was going to come crashing down, ground to dust by the relentless wind and the harsh Sun.

The painting of the Chaos Storm on the ceiling she found particularly distasteful, the purple maelstrom a reminder of the last time that Equestria’s fate had hung in the balance.

And yet, despite the bitter memories, there was a part of her that longed for those days. Things had been much simpler back then, when there was a well-defined evil to fight against. Discord, of course, but also Seraph and Terraria, each looking to hijack his defeat to their own benefit. On that day she and Celestia had won the victory, they had solved the problems, and they had embarked on their own three hundred year journey.

“Is this how that journey ends?” she mused to herself, looking out over the room. It couldn’t be, she wouldn’t let it be, and yet everything else that she knew kept pointing her to a conclusion that said it had to be. The worst part of it was that she didn’t even know whose fault it was that things had come out this way.

Pensive was of course still locked up in the dungeons, waiting for the proper punishment once things settled down, but as much as he had made the situation worse, Luna knew that he hadn’t created the drought. Even without his help, she still would have had to face this decision eventually.

As she came slowly down the stairs and into the centre of the room, her gaze found the two thrones that were set against the inner wall. They were identical golden seats, yet Celestia always sat on the right, and Luna on the left. All of her inquiries had still not turned up anything as far as her sister was concerned.

“Where did you go?” she asked Celestia’s seat absently. “And why? Why leave me with a decision like this, without even any guidance or advice? You know that I’m not as clever as you, that negotiations and subtleties aren’t what I’m for!” Her voice rose along with each word, tumbling up the register as she let them go. “By the stars, I almost killed a pony today, and I would have too, just for speaking up to me.”

She tried to imagine her sister sitting elegantly in that seat, mane fluttering smoothly in some imperceptible draught, eyes serenely surveying the problems that lay in front of her. What would Celestia say if she were here right now?

Don’t worry, Luna. I’ve got a plan. Thousands of years ago there used to be a spell to make rain, and with your help we should be able to cast it.

Only there had never been such a spell; the pegasus Windcasters had taken care of the weather. Rediscovering that art had been her job. It was the thing that she was supposed to have been good at, the chance that they had to end the crisis once and for all.

In her mind, Celestia’s eyes grew disappointed, and Luna hung her head. All that she had accomplished up in the mountains was only to almost get Swift killed. And all that she had accomplished down here was only to bring the crisis to its head. So much for that hope. So much for anything that she had done so far in trying to stave off this disaster.

The soft clip-clop of hooves outside caught her ears, and after a moment there was a click as one of the room’s doors was unlatched, and swung open to reveal Ink standing meekly on the far side. Unsurprisingly she looked haggard, but more importantly she wasn’t smiling.

“If it’s not good news, I don’t want to hear it, Ink,” Luna sighed, making no attempt to sound civil. The young senator took a step back upon hearing that, but Luna waved her in anyway. “What is it, then?”

The earth pony stopped at the first ring of lecterns, across the room but just barely out of the shadows. When she cleared her throat, the sound echoed throughout the space. “Our accounting of the nation’s stores is finished,” she said. “I’m afraid that the situation is worse than I feared. Even with proper rationing, we can expect to last little more than two months. Not long enough for anything new to grow.”

“So what then?” Luna answered, numb to this news. “Nothing good happens no matter which path we now choose.”

Ink remained silent at that, stealing a nervous glance back over her shoulder. Eventually, though, she found her voice. “Only you can decide that.”

“Of course only I can,” Luna muttered. “First Swift told me that and now you. I’m starting to understand why ponies got rid of their kings and queens; it’s honestly a pretty lousy job to have!” She gave Ink another look, and then another wave to come forward. “Come on. I know it’s my decision, but I want to hear from you. What do you think about this situation?”

The young senator looked startled at the question, but to her credit she turned it over a few times in her head before answering. “I learned about the history of the Unicorn Kingdom in school,” she started, measuring her words. “I assume you’re familiar too?”

Luna nodded. “My sister is the expert, but I’m familiar enough to know that it’s what we’re trying to avoid. The tribes broke apart, the government evaporated, and the nation pretty much ceased to exist.”

“Well, sort of,” Ink said, showing a little more confidence than before. “The nation fell apart, but ponies did recover, didn’t they? They came south, and they founded Equestria. And even that nation fell apart under Discord, but you and Celestia brought it back again.”

“Your point?”

“You’ve probably heard it already,” she continued, “and likely you’ve already thought about it yourself, but I think any attempt to stop this conflict isn’t going to work anymore. We are simply too far gone for that. But maybe that isn’t enough reason to give up hope. Because at least on the other side something of us will still remain. I think that maybe right now we should start thinking of how we intend to protect that something.”

Luna looked back at the thrones again, filling her head with the memories of three hundred years ago. “But we were supposed to be something different. We were supposed to be the end of all of that.” She let out a long breath. Again, so much for that. “Those are wise words coming from a senator. Maybe the wisest I’ve heard from anyone in Canterlot.”

Ink smiled and shook her head. “I’ve been a lousy senator. Pensive made me play his game, and he beat me every round. But he’s not going to get to decide what Equestria looks like when the dust settles. We can, if we act on it.”

Reaching behind her shoulders, Ink pulled out a roll of parchment, and set it down on the lectern next to where Luna was standing.

Seeing the looped script on the document’s first line, Luna looked away in disgust. “Pensive’s law? I thought I had every copy of that destroyed.” She looked back to see that Ink had now laid a quill down on the desk, and had opened the roll up to its last page. The former speaker’s own signature was already there on the bottom, meaning that this was one of the amended copies that had passed the chamber only to be vetoed. A blank line waited for either her signature or Celestia’s. She looked up at Ink in bewilderment. “You’re not actually suggesting that I–”

“Pensive was a villain, a coward, and undoubtedly a traitor,” Ink interrupted. “But somehow despite all of that he was no fool. From what I’ve heard in the square, soon enough a crowd of angry unicorns are going to march out into the country and torch any earth pony who stands in their way. With this, we can at least stand between the two sides, and hopefully keep things as calm as we can. It’s not good, but somehow it’s become the best option that we have.”

Luna could only grimace. As much sense as that made, she couldn’t bear to ever admit to Pensive that he had actually been right all along. But of course, it wasn’t just him. It was Ink, it was Swift, and it was even Celestia, even if she hadn’t said it, who were all right too. She was the one with the power to make the decisions, and if there was anything to be salvaged out of the current situation, then it started with them gathering up what remnants of the harvest they could.

With a heavy heart, she signed the parchment.

Chapter 31: Reaper's Rise

“Pegasus magic flows from the heart. I believe that this is why unicorns can never get their heads around it.”

Spry Acorn

On the eve of the Day of Reaping, the whole family had gotten together in the house. Pa had built a roaring fire over the hearth, and together Sycamore and Fern had cooked up the traditional grilled pears.

Normally, as Sycamore explained to Wind, there would be a pear tree in the town square, where each family would go to pick up their pears in preparation for the meal. Sadly for the town, the tree had died in the drought, and even the pears in the store were going at triple the normal price.

Naturally Wind was perplexed by the purchase, especially given the state of things.

“We’ve got to have them,” Sycamore had explained as she passed them out for dinner. “Reaping Pears are a tradition that goes back beyond Equestria, so far as I’m aware.”

Even though Wind had never even heard of pears, let alone the traditions on the Day of Reaping, he had dutifully followed along. Plus, the fruits tasted divine, so that was good enough for him.

Once the meal had been eaten, the family had gotten comfortable around the hearth, and Pa had gotten up to go through the other part of the tradition: the retelling of the story of the first Day of Reaping, brought in by King Jupiter the gardener, and his wife, Queen Antares. The tale was a sad one, altogether too sad for the occasion for Wind’s tastes, but he wasn’t one to question tradition when the family had been so gracious as to let him share in it. After that, they’d been off to bed early, so that they could get up a few hours before dawn, and head off to the town square for the Reaper’s Rise festivities.

The night was of course still plenty dark, a blanket of blackness falling across the countryside as far as the eye could see, but the sky was at least clear, and the stars were twinkling gaily up there. Low over the eastern horizon, Wind could even pick out the bright red spot that was Jupiter, waiting dutifully for his wife to come around for him. Out toward the town square there were a few lights, burning torches staked into the ground for what Sycamore had told him was one of the biggest celebrations of the year.

Of course he didn’t have anything really nice to wear, but none of the family seemed to mind. The only thing that Sycamore had insisted on was a small red ribbon that she’d tied into his mane, streaming down the side of his neck in a striking highlight to the rest of the cloud-white hairs in there. Fern and Pa had done the same, but Sycamore had dressed up instead. The young mare had put on a dazzling ripple of folded patterns, ruffles of multicoloured fabric that twisted in the wind, much like a standing field of grass. Driven through the hairs of her mane were a set of metal bands, each polished and gleaming in the night air, and tipped with little shards of red glass. Just as for the stallions, red was the main colour of the dress, a blazing scarlet that stood out like a fire in the darkness of the night.

It was no wonder really, Wind thought, that he should feel so inadequate walking beside her as the group made their way into the town square. As much as he had always resented his mother stuffing him into whatever clothing the Flight Club would find tasteful for any of its Galas, something like those dinner jackets seemed like the only logical accompaniment to the beautiful mare walking beside him.

Even though the actual viewing ceremony was going to be at Cotton’s the rest of the party was spread throughout the whole town, and so indeed when the family had finally made their way over the meadow and came within sight of the village square, the sight that greeted Wind was a gentle reminder of the Old Quarter on the day of the Open Championships. Somepony had dragged the speaker’s platform out of the old Hall, and up on it a collection of old and dented horns as well as a couple of fiddles were being warmed up. The area in the middle of the square had been cleared out to become a proper dance floor, and all around it, posts had been set up to hold lanterns and red streamers. Every building in the town had been hung with the crimson fabric, and the tavern looked to have moved its operations to the outside, with a whole stack of barrels standing by to service the operation.

In front of the General Store, meanwhile, there was a long table upon which all sorts of edible fineries had been arranged, including a big bucket of more grilled pears. Just the scent of them drifting across the square was enough to get Wind’s attention, even if he wasn’t hungry. A dance or two on the floor would change that soon enough, though.

Most of the square was still empty for now, with a couple of small knots of ponies gathered around each corner chatting, waiting patiently for the crowd to grow and the band to get warmed up. Wind didn’t want to wait though. This was his first and very likely his last Reaper’s Rise after all. Why not get right in and enjoy every minute of it? As soon as they got into the light of the town he offered Sycamore a gentlecoltly hoof.

Her face flushed when she realized his intent. With the droplets of red glass arranged all around her head, the spots of pink on her cheeks just completed the masterpiece of her face, as far as Wind was concerned.

“It’s a little early for that, Wind,” she commented, trying to hide her embarrassment. “It would probably be just the two of us out there, right now.”

“That’s more of the floor to ourselves,” he answered, taking her around the shoulder and steering her on toward the floor. “Besides, now is as good a time as any to get in that dance you promised me.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “What was that you said about one day’s mistake? Perhaps it’s time for us to make another.”

To that Sycamore only laughed, her prior apprehension gone. “Okay then, so long as I don’t end up in a haystack when we’re done.”

It only took one look around for Wind to confirm that nopony else was opting to join them for the night’s opening dance. Whatever. Perhaps a few more would arrive and decide to get started once they saw how much fun was being had.

He called out to one of the fiddlers as he and Sycamore made their way up to the stage. “Hello friends! How’s about something lively to get this party started off right? Do any of you folks know Lightning Strikes Twice?” There were shaken heads all around. “Hrm. How about Catch a Hailstone? A Square of Snow?” No such luck.

Sycamore put a hoof on his shoulder. “I think I can see where you’re going with this, Wind. Maybe we can instead start with an earth pony song? One that Firedrop and Spritz here might actually know?”

Wind gave her an earnest and humbled look. “But I wouldn’t know the steps to any of those, and I won’t be much good as a partner if I’m dancing blind.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to follow along,” she answered, a slick smile forming on her face. “Besides, it should be a lot easier on the ground than in the air. Or should Fern perhaps demonstrate for you first?”

Fern’s ears had perked up from across the square as soon as he’d heard his name, but Wind put his hoof down squarely. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll keep up just fine.”

“You’d better.” Sycamore flicked her skirt as she walked away, calling out to Firedrop casually. “You boys have Dance of the Reaper ready to go, I assume?”

Firedrop, who looked to be the lead fiddler, nodded once, but even he couldn’t resist leaning down into Wind’s ear for a final parting line. “Here’s hoping you’re a quick stepper, son. If I were you, I’d call it a victory as long as you don’t end up face down in the pear bucket.”

“Thanks,” Wind grumbled, surreptitiously checking over his shoulder to see the pear bucket sitting on the far end of the buffet table, more than twenty feet away. What kind of dance could this be if he was going to end up all of the way over there? But then the music started up, Firedrop already sizzling away on his fiddle, with the tempo on the tuba not far behind.

Wind quickly forgot about Firedrop’s words; indeed he quickly forgot about everything except doing his best to keep up with the quick steps his partner was laying down in front of him. Sycamore was almost a blur of colour in front of his eyes, transitioning from step to step with all of the grace of a fox, the grin on her face as wide as he’d ever seen it. Meanwhile, his whole world became a whirl of red fabric and the song of that fiddle, bright and high across the night sky as he lost himself in the music.

Thankfully, he wasn’t a total stranger to beats and harmonies, and so for a few of the early measures, he was able to see the music forming up before it got there, and follow along with the steps without losing his cool. Then suddenly Firedrop found a whole new gear on his fiddle, and from that point he was just barely hanging on.

When the dance ended, Wind found himself perched up on his front legs, looking intently down into the depths of the pear bucket. Not in it, though, and he supposed that was to be taken as a good enough start. Settling himself down after a moment’s deep breathing, he turned around to see Sycamore still in the centre of the square, dropping to her knees as she bowed to the crowd that had gathered over the course of their dance. It looked by now like what remained of Southoofton was all assembled there, filling up the space around the dance floor, though with plenty of emptiness behind them. They were giving her a subdued round of applause, with just a few whoops of adulation from somepony in the back. Once that had died down, Sycamore joined him once more by the edge of the square.

“Actually not too bad for the first time,” she admitted. “You didn’t end up in the pear bucket after all.”

He had to look back at the bucket again. “What is it with this pear bucket? Do you put it there every year so that somepony who loses their hooves will end up in it?” She only laughed at that, intensifying Wind’s impression that somepony was playing a joke on him that he wasn’t getting. “You were amazing though, Sycamore. I’ve never seen a dance like that in my life, and that’s including all of the pegasus tunes they play up in Cloudsdale.”

The dance floor was filling up this time, but for now it looked like a lot of the older folks going up in pairs. Jupiter’s Search was a much slower piece, requiring only Spritz, the shorter second fiddler, without his brass accompaniment. Sycamore led him over to the tavern instead, grabbing a table underneath a brightly blazing lantern. “Cloudsdale again,” she sighed. “One day you are going to be gone, right?”

“Not tonight,” he answered earnestly, flagging down Linseed and ordering two ciders on ice. “Someday, probably soon, but not tonight. I wanted to share this special season with you, especially since you’re letting me do it.”

Sitting back in her chair, Sycamore studied him intensely, her beautiful eyes taking him in. Eventually, she cocked one of her eyebrows. “Honestly though, why are you staying, Wind? From what you’ve told us, in Cloudsdale you have a family, you have friends, you have a life and a whole community that no doubt will be overjoyed to learn that you’re still alive. You’ve been ready to fly for days now, even putting aside getting yourself conditioned. Why stay for so long?”

Wind looked down at the table. “Well, of course you're right.” He stopped, wondering how exactly to proceed. What was the right thing to say here? How did he even want this conversation to end? He didn’t have any time to think, though. So he let out a long breath instead. “The truth is, Sycamore, that as much as all of that is true, I wouldn’t say that I have much of a life back in Cloudsdale. Sure, I’ve got Mother and Father, Tin and Morning Shine. And yeah, I’m sure that they would all be really happy to see me again. But…” He wasn’t sure how to phrase the idea in a way that would make sense for her. Besides, this wasn’t a night for such thoughts. It was supposed to be about celebrating. “Never mind,” he said, looking up brightly. “I don’t really think that you’d understand anyway.”

Leaning forward, Sycamore gave him a steady look. Not quite angry, just irritated maybe. “After all the work that you’ve put in trying to understand us, I’d think that I could return the favour a little bit. Come on, try me.”

Linseed brought in their drinks, two glasses of crystal-clear cider, with just a little slice of foam bubbling at the top. Even with the Sun down, the air around the town was still plenty warm, and so the cold wetness of the cider was very welcome in his throat, especially since he was likely about to do a lot of talking.

“Well, okay,” he said, setting the glass down. It was already only about three-quarters full. “The thing is, once a pony reaches a certain age in Cloudsdale, it’s expected that they’ll have figured out what it is that they want to do with their lives. In my case, that’s…” He thought about the dates for a minute. “Actually, that should be only a few days from now. Once you’ve chosen a vocation, then you’re considered officially an adult, and a full member of the tribe.”

“Well, that sounds great!” she said back, still holding her own glass without having drank yet. “Around here it’s just a general assumption that we follow after our parents, but being able to choose whatever you want would be nice too. So what are you going to choose?”

“That’s just it,” he said with a sour grimace. “I tried all kinds of things in the months leading up to my Choosing, but nothing fit. Nothing felt like something that I would love to wake up every morning and head out to do. Nothing except for flying, exploring the sky, letting the winds sing in my ears. And there’s no honour or career to be had in doing that.”

She nodded, maybe understanding. But then her eyes grew troubled. “So what you mean to say is that you don’t want to face that choice just yet? That you’re afraid of doing the wrong thing?”

“Well… no, not exactly!” he said defensively, again trying to properly explain his position. “I mean yes, after a manner of speaking I guess. It’s only the most important decision that any pegasus ever makes! From that day on, my worth to the tribe is how well I can do at the job I’ve chosen for myself! What kind of life would I end up with if I had to spend the next forty years doing something that I hated?”

“But after standing by me for so long,” she returned, “reminding me at every turn of my duty to see my family’s work through, to not give up until our last hopes had been extinguished, how can you then run away from your own duty, Wind?”

He rolled his lips together. “Well… I’m not sure if I can.” Suddenly some words came to his mind. They were a little cheeky maybe, but then again they were pretty much the truth. “Except that in my time down here with your family, I think that I did figure out what it was that I wanted to do with my life.”

“What?”

He gave her a warm grin. “I figured out that I want to spend my life down here with you.”

Sycamore sat up in her chair, blushing furiously, but Wind didn’t laugh. Not, at least, until it was she that laughed first, a glorious, beautiful tinkle that set his heart alight, and then he couldn’t stop himself from joining in. “I think that I could be okay with that,” she eventually said. “But what would your family think?”

“They’d never agree,” he said back right away, his grin turning somber. “My father wouldn’t like to have a son so unusual, and we are by and large pretty proud of our independence from the surface up there. No, the moment I head back to Cloudsdale, it will be the last time that we ever see each other. Before I’m stuck making soap or tilling the fields with Tin or pondering philosophy with my mother.”

She finished off her cider, then pulled her chair around the table, until they were sitting beside each other. In the night air, Wind realized that she had put on a fresh-smelling perfume too, its scent perfectly reminiscent of a morning mist. “As much as I know you wouldn’t like that,” she said tenderly, clasping his hoof firmly with her own, “and as much as I don’t like it myself, they’re your family, Wind. I couldn’t ever sleep well if I knew that you were avoiding them, especially with them thinking you’re dead. You have to go back to them, even if it means that we never get to see each other again.”

Reaching out with his wing, Wind pulled it around her shoulders, so that they were even a little closer in their seats. “You’d really be okay with that?”

“I’d hope that after spending this much time on the ground, you’d understand that.”

He did, and in a way it was a relief to have that mess of a decision finally off of his mind. Truthfully, even if it meant Sycamore would be gone, this was what he had to do. Sun and Snow would probably never let him out of their sights again, and Tin would pepper him with questions from dawn to dusk. It would be grand, and he’d just have to hope that it would be grand enough to fill the empty space in his heart that Sycamore would leave. “But can we at least have this night still? Tomorrow, I guess I’ll go, but let’s enjoy Reaper’s Rise at least while we can.”

She nodded at that, the spark from earlier in the night back in her eyes. “Maybe enough time has gone by for you to teach Firedrop and Spritz one of your pegasus tunes? And don’t worry, I’ll even let you move the pear bucket to wherever you think that I’ll be ending up.”

“And let you ruin that beautiful dress?” he answered, chuckling. “Besides, now that I think about it, you really can’t approximate a pegasus routine as an earth pony. Something tells me you couldn’t be quite so nimble in the air as a partner from Cloudsdale. But I feel like we do have to do something.”

He took a look once more out over the whole square. The party did seem to have kicked off a bit more while they were talking, with the band now tapping out a lively rhythm, and he could even spy Fern and Cattail strutting their stuff on the floor. But he didn’t really feel like getting schooled once more would be the right thing to do. The eastern horizon was just slowly beginning to grow lighter, and that drew his eyes up to the sky, to that distant red light that was Jupiter, the old King waiting for his love. And in that instant, he knew exactly what it was that he was going to do.

He sprang up out of his seat, flying slowly over to the dance floor as the current song was just winding down. “Hey, Firedrop!” he called out, getting the lead fiddler’s attention.

“Here to test yourself again, my friend?” the fiddler said back, wearing a satisfied smile. “Someone find some more pears for the bucket!”

“Not this time,” Wind returned, still wondering idly what it was about that bucket. “I’m going to try something special, as a little thank-you to everypony in this town.”

A quick look around the square revealed that he had the attention of most everypony there, except for Cotton and his brothers, who were back at the tavern idly sharing some story or other. But he didn’t feel like thanking the big farmer anyway. “Tomorrow, I’m heading back to Cloudsdale, and I’m going to tell all of my old friends many tales of the great times that I enjoyed down here on the surface with you.” There was a gentle murmur of thanks.

“But first, as a parting gift of sorts, I think that it might be best to let you all see the one side of me that I haven’t been able to show yet.” With a flick of his wings, he fluttered a little higher into the air. “I know that in Cloudsdale a one-pony airshow isn’t exactly enough to make the evening papers, but it’s all that I can do, so I hope that you’ll enjoy it. I will need one of these though,” he said, grabbing a lantern from its perch atop one of the posts and hanging it around his neck like a collar, “Need to make sure that you all can see me. And I promise you, it’ll be the best that you’ll ever get to see!”

There was a momentary pause as he finished, before Fern, calling from somewhere in the back, followed up with, “And if any of you need a new roof tomorrow, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered!” That generated a round of laughter from all throughout the square, but Wind could tell that it was good-natured. Even once he managed to pick out Fern in the back, the earth pony was just giving him a mock toast with a mug of mead, a sneaky grin stretched across his face. In any event, none of them would be laughing once they’d seen what he could do.

Wind turned back to Firedrop and the rest of the band. “I know that you fellows played Dance of the Reaper once already, to start the evening off, but do you think you could give it to me one more time? And loudly, mind. I’m going to need to hear it from all of the way up there after all!”

Firedrop just dropped his bow into position in answer. “We’ll give you a moment or two to climb, Mr. Wind,” he said. “Then you’ll hear it, you can trust me on that.”

Wind looked back into the square to give Sycamore one last wink. She gave him a wave back in return, and then he was up and away, already running what he remembered of the song’s rhythm through his head as he thought up the routine. Firedrop hadn’t been kidding about him needing to be a quick stepper in order to navigate this one, but of course in the air all of those considerations changed. What had been a staccato step could be replaced by a mere trill of the wings, and a beat that needed a stomp every now and then to hold on the ground could be represented in all manner of ways when you had three dimensions to work in.

He stopped his climb once he had got up to about a hundred-fifty feet or so, right up at the point where the lantern would be about all that they could see, and then he waited, stationary, for Firedrop’s fiddle to guide him into the first step. True to the earth pony’s word, the sound came crisp and clear, almost as if he was still down in the square, and Wind didn’t have time to consider how in Equestria Firedrop was doing that. He had to put on his show.

In spite of the dance’s quick tempo, he had to start at least moderately slow, laying out the pieces and building the picture of what his grand finale would look like. What mattered most was keeping the internal rhythms of the piece in his head, in his wings, in every piece of his body. The melody, florid trills and dramatic jumps of the scale, rose up within him, becoming a part of him as surely as the song of the winds would whenever they were blowing.

Up in the air, he heard that song too, steady on the breeze as ever, and it wasn’t long before it had molded itself into line with him, accentuating the hits and rests of the beat on every turn.

The wind blew in his hair and in his feathers, lifting him up whenever he caught it, and he would let it, as the song demanded. Firedrop’s fiddle from down in the square and the winds from the far reaches of the horizon were playing the same song, and he was but a conduit, melding the two together and directing their energies into a sight for the ponies down on the ground to behold.

By the time that the music swelled up into its second section, Wind was painting the light of the lantern in dizzying arcs across the twilight of the morning sky. And every step brought with it a new tempo, a new updraft to flick into existence to carry him up to the top of the next section, a new circulation to whip him about to where he had started. Just like in the field before, Wind was lost, his eyes closed, the positions of the square below and the roofs of Southoofton and the forest and the mountains lost to him. The music guided him on, and he could only follow as Firedrop below accelerated into the final chaotic crescendo. The howling winds that he had stirred into existence buffeted his form about, but the pegasus followed along with them, for he was one with them, and they were one with him.

At the final dizzying climax, Wind threw himself into a twirl, a mess of feathers and hooves, a shining halo for Jupiter, still waiting patiently there for Antares, who would come with the morning Sun. The dawn peeked over the horizon just as the band peaked into its last note, and Wind pulled himself to a perfect halt on that, opening his eyes to see the bright star rising in the east, here to welcome in another harvest. He could only hope that he had done the King and Queen proud enough.

With one last final heave of breath, he turned back to the ground, and began his descent. This may be the last time that he was ever going to fly over Southoofton, but hopefully nopony would needle him about not being able to fly anymore. And if this was the last memory that Sycamore would have of him, then he had thought that it would surely be one worth remembering. As the spots of colour on the ground materialized into recognizable forms, Wind cocked his ears, expecting a resounding applause.

But even as he came in over the town and could make out individual faces, the crowd was still silent. Wind could see Sycamore in the middle of the dance floor, her wide eyes turned skyward, an expression of wonder on her face. In fact everypony in the square was wearing the same slack-jawed expression. He gave her a little wave, but didn’t get a response. Nopony was even looking at him. Instead their eyes were still riveted on the patch of sky where the Sun was now rising. Turning to follow their gazes, Wind saw what had them dumbstruck, and it took his breath away for a moment too.

In the brilliant light of the new dawn, fuzzy and indistinct but undeniably real, a bright rainbow stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, peaking right where Wind had ended his dance.

Chapter 32: Wind's Return

“Anypony who thinks we created some kind of utopia when we made Cloudsdale clearly doesn’t understand the way that the world works, for politics are complex, and there’s no escaping them.”

Aqua, Master of the Order of Water

Somehow, it was seemingly only at that point that Wind’s body realized that he had only gotten half a night’s sleep, and that he had just flown the acrobatics routine of his life. He could only half-remember making it back to the ground safely, before the rest muddled into a sleepy blur in his memory.

When he woke up, he was once again resting on the same guest bed where he had healed up his wing for his first week on the ground. And Pa was once again in the kitchen, working on another pot of soup. At least this time, the old earth pony gave him an encouraging smile upon seeing that his guest was awake.

“Some show you put on this morning, son,” he said gruffly, looking up for only a moment from his pot.

Wind nodded several times. “I was only expecting to put on a nice little dance, something to remember for when I’m gone.”

“Well, we’ll all remember that! I can promise that much,” Pa exclaimed with a chuckle. “I don’t expect you’ll find anypony in town willing to rib you about your flying anymore. Except maybe Fern,” he added quickly. “But of course you understand that’s all in good fun.”

“Of course.” By now, Wind was plenty aware that not even a thunderbolt from the heavens was going to stop Fern from ribbing him. Honestly there was a certain charm to it.

Now fully awake, he sniffed the air eagerly, and the smell of that old broth got him out of bed in a heartbeat. “The same stuff from before? Really, you don’t have to make any extra effort just for me.”

Throwing another log onto the fire under the stove, Pa turned around and looked him over, head to hoof, seeming pleased. “You’ve been a big help around here, more than I think any of us thought a pegasus could offer. This whole morning there was a parade of townsfolk coming into our door to wish you well on your way back. True, most of them probably still don’t believe that you’re from up there,” he continued, eyes pointed upward as he resumed stirring the soup with the big wooden ladle. “But they all recognize that without you around there isn’t going to be anything to distract from the cold realities that are facing us out there in the fields, or whatever the next piece of bad news is out of Canterlot.”

Wind felt another pang of guilt in his heart as he heard those words. He remembered what the town had been like when he had first shown up. Southoofton had been on its last legs, as family after family took off for the road to Canterlot. Never could they have enjoyed such an amazing moment as they had this morning for Reaper’s Rise. He couldn’t believe that all of the new happiness had been his doing. He was just one pegasus, after all. But he sure had tried. Would it all fall back again as soon as he left? “Did any of them, uh, wonder about me maybe staying?” he offered.

Pa set down the ladle. “The way Sycamore tells me, you’re just about ready to be called a grown pegasus, is that right?” After seeing Wind’s nod, Pa passed him the bowls to start setting the table up. “Even if the townsfolk don’t know that whole detail, they’re aware of it as much as we are. You’re your own stallion, and wherever you choose to go is your own business. It’s none of our right to make that decision for you, but my understanding is that even if you’ve found a home down here, the surface just isn’t where you belong.” He said the last sentence with a touch of finality, and as surely as he had known it with Sycamore down in the square, Wind knew again that it was right.

“Thanks, Pa,” he said, finishing up the table just as he saw the rest of the family coming up the steps in from the field. He ran over to get the door for them.

There was so much dust settled on Fern’s hat that he made his own miniature cloud whenever he turned his head. In fact the whole of him was just as covered with grit, caked onto his face and run through his mane. Sycamore was behind him, equally dirty and with a scowl on her face. “Well, at least we won’t have to go through much more of that,” she commented wryly as Wind shut the door behind her.

“Problems?” Pa asked, ladling out the soup already.

“No. It’s easy going enough, save that every step kicks up enough dust to fill a bucket. There just isn’t all that much to do. I expect we’ll have everything in and ready to pack up by the end of the week.”

Surely Pa had seen the state of the fields as well as any of them, yet that number still made him look up. “A week? We’ll barely have ten sacks to work with after that long. Not nearly enough to last us through the winter, let alone turn any kind of profit.”

“Well, we’ll do some thinking on that once things have settled down enough to make it worthwhile,” she returned, sitting down at the table and offering Wind a small smile. “You’re up and about again, I see.”

“I’m almost wishing I weren’t,” he replied. “Last night was the time of my life, and at least when I’m asleep I can keep reliving it. But now that I’m up, well…” He didn’t want to finish, didn’t want to address the part they both knew came afterward. But Sycamore reached across the table and gave him a gentle shake.

“We know what’s gonna have to happen,” she said, looking unconcerned. “We’ve all known it ever since you got here. Probably after lunch we’ll send you off, so that you’ve got plenty of daylight left to work with.”

Fern offered them both a sly wink. “Good idea. We wouldn’t want you to get lost and have to go through this same story again at some other random town.” That got a laugh from the whole table, and even Wind was able to find it funny this time.

With that topic broached and left aside, Wind let it be as they had their lunch. The conversation drifted about to a variety of topics, including how everypony else was getting on with their own harvests. Normally it would take the full moon to get everything off the fields and taken care of, so that an accounting could be sent to Canterlot in time for the Harvest Festival, but the word around the watering hole was that nopony in town was going to be spending much more time on their work than Sycamore would.

The one pony able to avoid this issue was Cotton. He now had his own land in addition to Amber’s to scour through, and he also had the land fronting the river, so he actually had a real harvest to put on.

Naturally the morning gossip also included plenty of speculation about the rainbow that had come with Wind the previous night. He was a little chagrined that he wouldn’t be able to put down the rumours himself, but he didn’t have anything to say on the matter. It could be left as an old story that would surely morph into some sort of tale, if it lasted long enough for that. And of course Sycamore knew what he had been trying to do, and that was good enough for him.

Once the soup was eaten and the cookware had all been cleared away, there hadn’t been anything for it but to go. So just like that Wind found himself standing out in the backyard, likely right above the spot that had first received him those two moons ago. Fern and Pa were up on the porch, and Sycamore was right down there with him. She had washed up some, with what water there was to spare, but it didn’t matter: she looked great anyway.

In a perfect contrast to the afternoon that had gotten him here, the sky was blue and clear as far as the eye could see, with not a single puff of wind no matter which way one turned. The Sun was of course scorching the ground as bad as any other day, and Wind wondered for a moment if he wasn’t going to burn up on his way back into the sky. Sycamore had a full canteen for him, though.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” he said as she fastened it over his shoulder.

“You know I did,” she returned, sounding matronly. “As great as all this time has been, we all do want to know that you got back up to Cloudsdale safe and sound.” After tying it tightly, she stepped back so that the two of them were looking at each other face-to-face. “Well, I guess this is farewell then.”

He shuffled one of his hooves idly in the dirt. “I guess so. Thanks, of course. For everything.”

“Weren’t nothing but plain old hospitality,” Pa called from the porch. “Same as you’d get from any other family.”

Sycamore nodded along, and then with a quick look over each shoulder she stepped closer to him, so that she could lower her voice a bit. “Do you think that you could somehow let me know that you got back just fine? Not a visit of course,” she hastily added, a light blush forming, “just something that I could look up at the sky and see, to know that you’re okay.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he returned with a smirk and wink. Without thinking, he reached out and took her by the hoof. She looked at him expectantly, a small quiver in her face. “Someday,” he said, doing his best to make sure these words were the right ones, “someday maybe I will come back too. If I can find the time for one more silly mistake.”

“Oh, I’ve got you covered there,” Sycamore answered, and suddenly the two of them were kissing again. It was sweet, soft and heartfelt, and Wind let it last, knowing that this was the memory he would be taking back to Cloudsdale. When their lips parted, Sycamore gave a final grin. “See ya, Wind.”

He dipped his head. “Farewell, Sycamore.” He looked up to see the rest of them one last time, Pa giving him a solid nod while Fern’s expression he couldn’t quite place. In any event, he gave them a quick wave before turning around, skipping forward a couple of steps, then unfolding his wings and launching himself up into the air. He didn’t look back.

The sky welcomed him once more, a quiet place where he could be alone with his thoughts and with the four winds, though for once he didn’t take the time to listen to their song. He climbed for the first few minutes, until the features on the surface collapsed into blobs of colour. Here he circled for a couple of minutes, committing the whole area to his memory. One day, he thought to himself. No matter what eventually came to pass, no matter what life in Cloudsdale ended up looking like for him, one day he would find his way back.

Once that was done, he turned northwest, in the direction that Amber had pointed him. It wasn’t long before the landscapes underneath him started to look more familiar, and then all of a sudden on the horizon Cloudsdale appeared, shining white in the Sun’s brilliant afternoon light.

There were the fields and the Old Quarter up above, the towering Spire and the rings of developments down below in the Mid-City, and there even was the depths of the Undercity, hidden from view unless a pony ventured down there, but a part of the place all the same. On the far side of the city was Pega’s Perch, where Sun and Snow would be waiting, living out their lives under the weight of wondering what had happened to their son. There too he would find Morning Shine, probably deep into her training for professional racing by now, and somewhere else in the city he would find Tin, tending to his beans or else reading up on them.

Wind chuckled when the memory of Tin came to his mind. His friend would probably be the one who found his stories of the surface most interesting. Having lived with earth ponies for as long as he had, Wind probably knew more about agriculture now than any other pegasus in the city. Maybe he could convince them to plant some of the crops that Sycamore grew, hopefully so that there would be something to eat besides beans every day. How could he ever have thought that beans for every meal was okay?

As he coasted on into the outer rings of the Mid-city, he started passing by other pegasi on their way about their daily routines, some gathered in neighbourhood squares to sell their various wares, or others on their way home after taking an early day off of work. Here in the city, the sounds all came back to him too: the clanking of gears as the cloud-layers went about their business of expanding the city’s new boroughs, the cries from those marketplaces as merchants talked up their wares, and the gentle swish of feathers on the breeze, everywhere you turned. Cloudsdale was going about its business as it always had, just as he remembered it.

The Spire beckoned up ahead, the eight principal avenues of the Mid-city gathering up into it, every road converging for the great climb into the Old Quarter or the fall down into the Undercity. This plaza was always a hive of activity, but nopony noticed him as he made his turn into Pega’s Perch. Nopony except one, at least.

“Wind!” came a call behind him, a rolling drumbeat. He turned around, and there was his father, spectacles straddling his nose, eyes magnified as wide as saucers behind them.

“Dad!”

Snow was on him in a heartbeat, checking him out from head to toe, then grabbing him around the neck and pulling him into a long, tight embrace. “Oh, Wind, it is you,” he sobbed over his son’s shoulder, for a moment his composure completely gone. “We’ve missed you so much, we thought you were gone forever!”

Wind held him just as tightly. “Well, I’m here now, and happy to see you.”

“Of course you are. Come now, I have to take you to see your mother.” Snow let go of his son for a moment, but kept a firm grip on his shoulder as he climbed up into the thoroughfare that led to the Old Quarter. “She’s still at the Academy, and she’s been working so much more since you disappeared. Oh, she’s going to be absolutely over the cloud-tops to see you.”

Wind couldn’t remember ever seeing his father flying as fast as they were now, to the point where he could barely keep up. Sometimes he forgot that Snow had been a champion racer back in the day. He glanced over at his father’s face, and quickly noticed a new emerald sash of office slung across his shoulder. “Did you get a new promotion, Dad?”

“Master Acorn made me Chief Advisor for Construction,” his father said proudly, before throwing them both into a sharp turn as they came out the top of the Spire into the Old Quarter proper. The last time Wind had seen the place it had been Championship day, and naturally the square was less crowded now than it had been then. Instead, the more usual crowd of bureaucrats and businessponies were fluttering about, and all of them gave Snow a wide berth, to the degree that they saw him in time, at least.

“It’s been useful work,” Snow continued, weaving his way around the ponies that couldn’t vacate his path in time. “Good to keep my mind off of things, but that’s not important.” The two of them came to a halt on one of the Academy’s wide landing platforms, ringed with miniature statues of planets and snowflakes in detail. “The important thing now is that you’re here. Come, your mother’s office is the third one on the right.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgment Snow took off again, though this time at least walking instead of flying at top speed. The hallways of the Academy were empty and silent in a heavy and official sort of way. Wind didn’t think that he had ever actually seen the inside of this place, but he didn’t have much time to commit it to memory. It was only seconds before Snow had found Sun’s office, and no sooner had the door opened than he was wrapped up in a tight embrace again, to the point that Wind wondered if his mother was ever going to let go.

“I always knew you were still out there somewhere,” Sun Swept sobbed over her son’s shoulder, just as her husband had done. “Even after weeks, I always knew! You would never go, you couldn’t ever!”

Finally, after about a minute of tears, Sun eased up enough to be able to look her son in the eyes. “You must tell us everything, from the night of the Gala to this morning. Leave nothing out! And Snow!” she called over his shoulder, to her husband standing and beaming by one of her bookcases. “Call the Master, and the rest of the Council. We’re going to have a party tonight, and I want to make sure that everypony is there to see that our son has returned!”

So the rest of that afternoon became a whirlwind of activity, taking place at such a pace that Wind was barely even able to keep his mind straight. First his parents had taken him home, or rather, to his new home; he had stepped in the door by the time that he realized it was a newer, bigger house in an even newer neighbourhood, no doubt paid for by his father’s promotion. After assuring him that she had held on to all of his things, and that they were still packed up in his new room upstairs, Sun had set him down on the edge of the dining room table and again demanded to hear everything, from the top, without any details left out. Neither of them stopped moving to hear it, though, as his mother was constantly stepping in and out of the kitchen to prepare for the celebration, and Snow was busy writing up invitations to all of his colleagues on the Council.

Wind told them the most of it, though, in all of the broad strokes, and they gasped at each detail that they did hear. Snow shook his head at any mention of the Senate in Canterlot, and Sun brought her hoof up to her mouth during the whole tale of the dust storm. He left out the bare details, though, of Amber and Cotton and their dispute, of Reaper’s Rise and the impression he had made there, and of course of Sycamore and the relationship that they had. Somehow he knew that those parts of the story, true as they were, weren’t exactly what his parents were eager to hear.

Then his mother had been all “Look at the time!” and hustled him upstairs to get him dressed in another hastily-assembled suit, and his mane tucked under another tasteful hat. The dignitaries of the city had all arrived in their splendour, each one offering him a couple lovely words and his parents a similar platitude, before going off to join the others for cocktails. There was a dinner, in the grand dining hall of the new house, consisting of the finest beans that his mother had ever cooked, but in spite of all the work that she had put in, they all tasted the same to him.

A reception followed, held in the expansive backyard that came with the property, lit by several natural firefly lanterns strategically positioned throughout the space. Snow got up to the front several times to make speeches to the assembled members of the Council, and once Wind had to join him, to retell a piece of his tale to the same half-interested awe that his parents had given him before. An hour or so into the whole affair Wind slipped out, and made his way up to his new room.

Just like the old house, there was a window ledge here, if perhaps a bit smaller. Thankfully, it did not look down upon the backyard, and so Wind was able to settle himself out there and breathe in the warm night air once again. From his perch, facing inward to the neighbourhoods around the Spire, he could see almost the whole of the city, and it all came back to him, as familiar now as it always had been. And it brought with it the same feelings as always.

Of course he was happy to be back here in Cloudsdale. It was his home city, the place that he knew better than any. He had been happy to see his mother and father again, and especially to know that they had kept his things, and had even bought a new house with a room for him. Yet now, life looked about ready to go on as before. Doubtless, tomorrow night’s supper would be another discussion about whether anything had changed in his decision about his vocation, the ceremony for which was now only a few days away. Sycamore had told him that this was his life, that he was born into it and it was his duty to carry it on. He was a pegasus of Cloudsdale, and that was where he belonged, and he had known that she was right.

He sighed. If that were true, though, why was it that being back here now felt so wrong?

A rustle of feathers from somewhere out in the distance caught his attention, and then without any warning Spry Acorn, the Master’s son, appeared around the corner of the house, dressed in a simple yet fine white shirt and tie. It had been so long that it took Wind a moment to remember why seeing the green stallion turned his stomach. Then he remembered the race, and gave Spry a preemptive scowl.

“What are you doing here?”

Despite the hostility, Spry approached the sill, but held his distance about six feet off, in a gentle hover. “I noticed that you had left the reception,” he replied amiably. “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Wind grumbled, stepping in off of the sill. “Just getting some fresh air is all. Maybe I’ll be back down there soon enough.” He made to turn around and head back downstairs to the yard, but Spry apparently hadn’t taken the hint.

“Hey!” the Master’s son called after him, enough to make Wind pause and turn. “I can tell you’re not much into the parties that your dad or mine puts on,” he said, approaching the windowsill and leaning on it with a casual elbow. “This is your first day back in the city, so you should enjoy it, right? Maybe we can find some friends and take a little flight instead?”

Coming up to the window, Wind reached up for the blind. “Don’t worry about me, Spry. I said I’m fine,” he said. “Besides, what makes you think I would want to go anywhere with your friends?” He gave Spry a glower as he started pulling down the blind, only to be interrupted by a songbird’s voice, also from around the corner.

“Oh! That was actually pretty harsh!”

“Yeah, it’s definitely him all right!” came the answer, and after that both Shine and Tin flew into view, arriving on Spry’s flanks. “But I don’t know,” Tin continued, snacking, as always, on a bag of beans that he had gotten from somewhere. “I would say that his friends are pretty cool, though I may be biased.”

Wind blanched. “You two are friends with this jerk now?”

“Ah, come on, Wind,” Shine said in exaggerated exasperation, clapping herself on the forehead. “We don’t see you for two months and this is what we get? I would have thought that the absence might have mellowed you out a bit. But seriously, Spry’s cool. Maybe you just need to get to know him a bit better.”

“I think that I know him well enough already,” Wind replied, though he didn’t close the blind. “What have you two been up to, though?”

Tin opened his mouth to answer, but Shine cut him off. “Uh-uh! You don’t get to have your conversation leaning out of the window. We have to find somewhere better for that. No exceptions for you, mister.” She had on a cocky grin, and Spry was matching it, a tad uncannily in fact. Tin just took another hoofful of beans out of his bag.

Wind considered it. An evening with Spry was not at all what he had intended his first night in the city to look like, but could it possibly be worse than shaking more hooves at the party in the backyard? “Okay, fine,” he said, looking away for a moment as he said the words. He quickly took off his suit and hat, then joined them outside in the air.

Shine gave him a simple embrace. “I’m sure that you must have plenty of tales to tell from such a long absence. But like I said, let’s find somewhere private first.”

“Are you kidding, I want to hear now!” Tin answered, giving Wind a quick jostle with his shoulder. “Whatever stopped this flyer from getting back to Cloudsdale for a whole two months must have been a real whopper!”

Running a hoof back through his mane, Wind chuckled, letting a slim smile form on his lips. “Naw, it wasn’t that bad. But sure, maybe you guys will appreciate the story.”

So he told them, and this time kept all of the highs and lows, the drama and the fire from down on the ground, as Spry led the group on in search of a secluded spot where they could spend the evening. But he still didn’t mention Sycamore. Not while Spry was listening, at least.

Chapter 34: Of Logistics And Militias

“There’s a reason Earth Pony steel was prized in the old days. We had perfected it, while the other tribes had no reason to care. That attitude often changed when we met in combat.”

Seraph, Master of the Order of Fire

Once she’d signed Pensive’s Act into law, Luna had retired to her bed, and when she awoke the next day, it took her a moment to realize what was different. In the distance, the constant din of the crowd outside in the plaza had morphed instead into an empty silence, broken only by the occasional songbird from the depths of the palace gardens.

Parting the curtains of her window, Luna strode out onto the balcony, and indeed it was true. The city square, formerly packed with citizens from end-to-end, was now empty, save for the castle guards who were dutifully cleaning it up. To some extent, it was a good thing, all that tension and hysteria removed from public view. But indeed she only had to listen again to understand what had happened.

For the usual morning in Canterlot had at least some sound to it: the clop of hooves resonating through the various smaller market squares, the whoops and shouts of ponies going about their business. Today, Canterlot sounded as dead as a graveyard. The city wasn’t properly peaceful. Instead, it was waiting, like a coiled spring, standing by for the action that was now set to begin. Signing Pensive’s law hadn’t really solved anything, it had just moved the conflict further down the line.

Leaving her room, Luna found Ink and Swift waiting for her in the antechamber, the pegasus with his helmet packed away on his back. Both of them sprang to her side as soon as she came out of her tower.

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” said Swift, giving her a quick bow. With a free hoof, he indicated a hallway for them to start walking down.

Luna almost corrected him, then decided against it. Maybe Equestria really did need a Queen right now. “Thank you, Swift. I assume that the two of you have come to deliver me a report?”

Ever the organizer, Ink had her satchel of documents ready to go. She handed one over as they started walking. “Bills have been posted around the city, announcing the imminent seizure of the harvest,” she said, trying to hide her unease. “The crowd in the square dispersed soon after hearing that, though a few remained to continue demanding Pensive’s release.”

“Still?” Luna almost couldn’t believe it, but then why not? Nothing she had done as Queen had been easy, why would even that? “I don’t see them out there now.”

“We chased them out earlier today,” Swift answered from her other side, sounding proud. Someone from the infirmary had found a bandage for the gash over his eye, and Swift had arranged his mane to almost cover it. “They were far less confident when they only had a few other ponies standing behind them. Still, I doubt they’ve gone very far, and they’ll be back with a vengeance if we let too much time go by.”

Luna sighed. “No, we’ll give them what they want. I wouldn’t have signed that horrendous law if I didn’t mean to see it through. Speaking of which, we will need to consider how we intend to implement the strategy.”

“Precisely,” Ink agreed. “We have arranged a meeting for all of the Guard’s top brass, in addition to the harvesting accountants who will be accompanying us to take stock of the fields and the grains that have already been brought in. They gave their preliminary reports just as the Sun was coming up.”

The rapidity startled her. “Just like that? I always thought that Canterlot moved a bit slower. I was expecting it would take days to get things fully in motion.”

The senator shook her head with a smile. “The measure Pensive passed to cede the Senate’s power to you brought with it an automatic declaration of emergency. Monarchy does have some upsides.”

“The full mobilization of the Guard will take a few days, though,” Swift acknowledged from the other side. “Depending on what strategy we ultimately decide to follow. But I imagine that we’ll need several more regiments formed up than we currently have here in the capital.”

“We’ll come to that momentarily,” Luna answered, surprised at how good it felt to be moving forward on this file for once. The situation was still every bit as dire as it had been yesterday, but at least with these two on the case Luna felt as though they were making some measure of progress, and that could only happen if they were back in control.

Swift came up on the committee chamber door on the hall’s right side, and grasped it with a hoof, waiting for her nod. But first she stepped to the side just to have a look at them both together.

“I should thank you both by the way,” she said, offering them each a dipped horn. “For staying with me through all of this. I trust that you each have an assignment to get to right now?”

“To the walls to get the arms organized,” Swift said with a bow.

Ink however shook her head. “With respect, Luna, I’d like to stay with you. I think that you might appreciate having another ally with you in this meeting.”

After giving Swift a nod, Luna thought for a moment. It was true that the ponies at this meeting were in general not her kind of ponies, with the possible exception of some of the generals. These were all bureaucrats, individuals who had enjoyed power under the Senate, and were all too often willing to let inefficiencies slip by if it meant that they got to keep their own little fiefs. Celestia had been the one of them willing to navigate the maze of politics; it was one reason why Luna so enjoyed being out of Canterlot.

All of that was to say that Ink was probably right. “Much appreciated,” she stated. “After you.”

The unicorn shook her head though. “Queens first, always.”

Luna didn’t think that it was worth the effort pointing out that she didn’t care about the decorum. Instead, she walked through the door and up to the chair’s seat. The rest of the room, six grizzled generals and six bespectacled accountants, all rose from their seats on her entrance, only to sit down again as soon as she did. Ink took up a position behind her right shoulder.

“Alright, ponies,” Luna said abruptly, gruff since she knew no other way, “I want to get through this meeting as quickly as possible. The faster we can get this operation together, the more lives we can potentially save, and the more violence we can potentially stop. General Steel,” she said to the top general seated to her left, “what’s the status of the Guard?”

Steel was a grey pegasus with a white mane clipped about as close to the scalp as you could get. “The Canterlot regiment is all ready to go, Your Majesty,” he answered. “We have dispatched flyers to gather in the others stationed around the country. One each will be left to keep the peace in the major population centres: Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Baltimare. The remaining two will come here with all available speed. We estimate three days until these deployments are finalized.”

Luna nodded. That sounded almost exactly like what she had been about to ask for. “Who gave you that order?”

The officer didn’t blink, professional as to be expected. “Your stallion Swift suggested it to us, and none of us could think of anything better to do. Since, as we all know, time is of the essence, we made a judgment call. If Your Majesty wishes differently we can send a second communiqué to remand the order?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” she said, marking Swift for another good point in her head. Ever since the thunderstorm and his injury, the guardspony had been doing very well. And in this case, he had probably saved their whole effort considerable time. “And Miss Line?” she asked, turning to the right side of the room. “What of the logistical plans for the operation?”

Bottom Line was a late middle-aged unicorn, with a set of square reading glasses perched low on her nose and affixed behind her ears with silver chains. “We need to plot out our route through the country, Your Majesty,” she replied. “There are dozens of small farming communities that we will need to visit, and we will likely want to send convoys back to Manehattan periodically to drop off grain as we collect it. Since time is, as we know, of the essence, we’ll want to spend as little time as possible retracing our steps as we travel through the countryside.”

“Can we not have multiple groups working simultaneously? Like say one for the north, south and west?”

Line glanced down at the parchments she had arranged in front of her. “Depending on how thinly you are comfortable stretching our escort troops. And that depends on how much resistance you expect us to encounter.”

That question forced Luna to sit back for a moment, furrowing her brow. How much resistance would there actually be? If every town turned into a fight, it could take months to get everything collected. But they didn’t have enough troops to present an overwhelming force everywhere, and she didn’t dare pull any of the Guard out of the cities. Otherwise the crisis she had just managed to avert in Canterlot would repeat itself everywhere.

The answer ultimately came from Ink, stepping into the expectant silence of the room as Luna thought. “Let us see some maps,” she said, with only a slight nervous tremor in her tone. “I assume your ponies have already worked up some options for us?”

Line tapped a hoof on the table twice, the sound signaling one of her junior staffers to spread several maps of the country out in the middle of the table. Each one had been criss-crossed with snaking lines, dividing up the farming areas into zones and traversing them before cycling back to Manehattan and its warehouses.

“Detachments can take the major thoroughfares west,” Steel pointed out, leaning over and drawing a line from Canterlot all of the way to Manehattan. “We could get a wagon train formed up before our regiments even got there, and thus save some time.”

“While another group moves north,” Luna said, nodding along as she thought, “and a third takes the south branch. Las Pegasus, Southoofton and the like.”

“Take the road south and start in Southoofton,” Line agreed. “Then split up there so that one group can handle cider country and the other can keep marching down the river.”

“That’s old farming country though,” Steel said. “If you meet any resistance, it’ll be from those old homesteads. The Everfree River was still running a little this year, so they had at least some water to work with. Enough to give them a sufficient enough harvest that they’d be willing to fight for it.”

“Maybe we could send a few wagons out ahead?” Ink spoke up once again.

The rest of the room turned to her questioningly, and the senator wilted for a moment under their stares. But Luna gave her a quick nod to proceed.

“Our biggest issue is not knowing where the resistance will be,” she said, circling the farming areas of the map with a hoof. “Moving a big army through that country on small roads would be slow and laborious. But small groups can move quickly, and take any grain that isn’t going to be fought over. If any resistance is encountered, they can report it to us quickly and the Guard can respond.”

This time the silence of the room was filled with a few wondering hmm sounds from everypony present, before nods of understanding followed. “Not a bad idea at all,” Steel said. “Your Majesty?”

“I agree,” Luna replied, giving Ink a nod of approval and another good point herself. It seemed that she had found herself with two good advisors for facing this situation.

There came a knock at the door, subtle and yet unexpected enough to break up the conference. Luna got up out of her seat to get it, not noticing that everypony else also had to rise with her. Opening the door, she found a young pegasus guard, hovering gently in the hallway.

“Is there something wrong?” she said, the nerves at the back of her skull already telling her that something definitely was.

“We have, er, a situation at the walls, Your Majesty,” the guard said, his voice fluttering along with his wings.

“Has Swift gotten there yet?”

The guard gulped nervously. “He, er… actually he was the one who said we should get you.”

Luna nodded before turning back to the committee room. As important as this discussion was, it was still hard to keep herself from falling asleep as they hammered out details. In a way she was a bit thankful that this crisis, whatever it was, had arisen to take her away from the meeting.

“I have to go deal with this,” she said to them, “but keep working while I’m gone. By noon, I expect to have a full schedule worked out and brought to my desk. If possible, I want the whole harvest collected in two weeks, and manage the Guard deployments as necessary to get there. If we have to take a risk somewhere, then so be it. Ink, you take the chair.” Steel and the rest of the generals gave her a salute, while Line and the rest of her accountants offered only a solemn nod. As she turned to go, she caught sight of several new maps being laid out over the table.

The guard led her to an open window, and from there straight out into the morning sunlight. One look from this bird’s eye perch confirmed to Luna that her early morning suspicions had been correct. While the palace square was finally empty, that description could also be used for the whole of the city’s streets. She could only spy one or two ponies out and about in the various neighbourhoods, and that alone was enough to spark a wave of suspicion. They had to have gone somewhere.

“Do you have any further details on this situation, Guardspony?”

He shook his head. “No reason for me to say much, Your Majesty. You’re going to see it soon enough anyway.” He pointed down to where the edge of the city was now coming into view. Indeed, already Luna saw exactly what he was referring to, and it brought her earlier suspicions cleanly into focus.

Canterlot’s position on the side of its mountain lent it some natural defenses that were by and large very solid. There was only one winding mountain path to get up to the city’s proper gates, and though that would protect the city well in the event of an attack, it also made the capital vulnerable to a siege. In order to mitigate that, one of the first projects that Luna had undertaken as a Princess was to build a larger perimeter wall around that entrance, effectively widening that choke point to make it harder for an invading force to close it.

The extra inner space on the interior of the wall also gave the Guard somewhere to camp when it was properly assembled such as it was now. So when Luna looked down and saw the neat rows of tents on the interior of the wall’s perimeter, with four hundred or so guards milling about within it, it didn’t faze her. The tent city on the outside of the walls though, was another matter entirely.

Coming down with the messenger to land near the city’s main gate, Luna quickly spied Swift down amongst the tents out there, holding a heated discussion with — who else? — the two-toned pony that she had encountered in the square the previous day. Two-Tone had hung a ragged black coat around his shoulders, and even had what looked like a pair of gardening shears braced across his back. Even above the clamor of the military camp behind and the significantly less organized civilian camp in front, it still didn’t take long for her to pick out their voices and what they were saying.

“But this is a military operation!” Swift was shouting. “Under the authority of Her Majesty the Queen. You and your ‘militia’ have no authority to interfere!”

“But it is our food that you are marching off to get, sir, and thus we demand a say in that operation!” Two-Tone replied, sounding imperious. “The Guard is short-staffed, and we are ready to assist! We are armed and eager. That earth pony rabble will surely stand aside once faced with our superior number.”

“This is not an army marching off to war! This is an escort operation, to assist our collection agents in enacting the laws that you ponies so eagerly asked for. If you are an expert, then you can tell me if the law authorized a military campaign!”

“The use of force is authorized if necessary,” the unicorn said, sounding so much like Pensive himself that Luna involuntarily clenched her jaw. “And we, the ponies of Canterlot and of Equestria, are here to tell you that should it become necessary, we are ready to assist at the immediate opportunity! We will of course submit to the Guard’s authority,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “But we will march on. Simply send us where the action is, sir!”

Swift spared a look up at the wall, and when he saw Luna waiting there he took off, leaving Two-Tone only to salute him awkwardly before wandering back into the maze of civilian tents. “A curse on stubborn unicorns,” Swift muttered under his breath as he landed on the wall. “Sorry that you had to get involved in this, Your Majesty, but I think that you can see what our problem is.”

Luna took another look out over the whole of the impromptu civilian camp. Doing some rough numbers in her head, it looked to be nearly half of all the ponies who had gathered in the square yesterday. If they were all assembled together, it was maybe five or six hundred ponies. “I’m afraid I don’t see that at all. What under the stars is that fool doing now?”

“He says that he’s gathered up a ‘militia’ of concerned unicorns from the city, and they’re going to help us ‘liberate’ the stored food from those ‘thrice-accursed’ earth ponies,” Swift said, making no bones about which words he was appropriating. “They intend to follow us wherever we march, and probably start a fight with any earth pony that they see. I’ve told them to disperse and leave this job to us, but, well, you know how they deal with commands like that.”

Finally Luna managed to find Two-Tone again in the crowd of tents. After having retreated several yards into the camp, he was now strutting along a main avenue, awkward but no less proud. The unicorns that followed him may not all be such egregious examples, but surely they all thought the same way. “These fools are bound and determined to start a war,” she said under her breath. “No matter how much we try to stop them.”

“We can perhaps keep a group of the Guard back to watch over them,” Swift surmised. “We know that they’ll only answer to force, and somepony will need to be here to make sure that they don’t run off to a fight while we’re gone.”

“We don’t have the troops to spare for that,” Luna said, already feeling a headache coming on. “But it’s true that we have to do something about them.” Swift was right. A thousand curses on stubborn unicorns! Nothing that Steel or Line had worked out of their projections could possibly have accounted for this many ponies being eager enough to start a fight that they’d do whatever they could to get one. And now once again she was facing an impossible choice on how to deal with them: either take a chance that they wouldn’t set Canterlot aflame while she was gone, or else divide her forces even more so that a detachment could foal-sit this lot while there was more important work to do.

Again she found herself thinking of her sister. What would Celestia do? She’d no doubt find a creative solution of some sort, but Luna was coming up blank.

Down in the tents, Two-Tone had found his destination, disappearing presently into a large tent where several other unicorns could be seen waiting for him. From the banner hanging from a stake outside, Luna guessed that Two-Tone and his friends were now holding their war council.

Swift had been following her gaze. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I wouldn’t be comfortable leaving even a whole regiment here to oversee these ones anymore. Their weaponry may be crude, improvised for the most part, but they’re desperate and angry, and a pair of shears used well is just as capable of impaling a pony as a sharpened spear. They may not look like much now, but they’d likely be pretty intimidating if they were properly arrayed on the field.”

That was it! Or was it? It was an idea, if nothing else, and it would offer a better way out than any of her current options. “Swift,” she said with her usual authority, “I want you to organize this militia, and incorporate it into our forces as an irregular regiment.”

From the lack of a speedy reply, Luna guessed that he was finding it a difficult order to swallow, and she didn’t blame him. It was a risky course of action to take, but ultimately some risk was going to be required in any successful strategy.

Eventually Swift found his voice. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid that I must object to that order. With all due respect, you said yourself that these ponies are hellbent on starting a war, which is precisely what we are trying to prevent. What do we gain by enabling them further and bringing them along with us, to meet some earth ponies who are undoubtedly going to object to our plans?”

“We can’t leave them here,” she countered, still watching over the camp. “And it is precisely these ponies who will occupy our guardian forces within Canterlot. If they were gone, I would be confident in leaving only a skeleton crew to watch the city. That would bolster our escort forces significantly.”

“That won’t matter if those extra soldiers have to spend all of their time minding after this rabble,” Swift continued, still eyeing the aforementioned “rabble”. “Lest we allow them to leave a trail of destruction in our wake. We won’t be able to take our eyes off of them for a second.”

“Yes, well, look behind us,” she countered. “How many soldiers do you count? Three, four hundred maybe? Even with our reinforcements we might barely reach a thousand, and that force will be spread thin. That idiot you were arguing with is right about one thing: we are short-staffed. If we can use his ‘militia’ to pad out our numbers somewhat, it could help to avert some violence. Maybe a large enough force will cow a few towns that would have fought us otherwise.”

There was another break in the responses, followed by Swift’s audible, defeated sigh. He saw the logic, but he didn’t like it, and neither did Luna. “That all does make sense, Your Majesty,” he said, “but I still believe that it is a risk not worth taking. If all of Equestria is dry tinder, we are taking our torches with us into it, and trusting ourselves to be careful that we don’t let any stray sparks drop. Because if any of them do, suddenly we’ll find the whole countryside alight around us.”

Luna brought her eyes up to look at him. “I never took you for a poet, Swift.”

He reached behind his neck to pull out his helmet, its burnished silver surface reflecting a glowing halo onto the battlements behind him. “I had to do something while I was held up in the infirmary,” he said with a very small hint of levity in his voice, even if his face didn’t show it. Donning the helmet, he kicked himself up into a hover. “I’ll let the Captain know of your wishes.”

“No, Lieutenant,” she answered firmly. “You’ll let him know of your wishes. This is your operation to handle.”

He accepted the field promotion with not a blink. “Understood.” Offering a formal salute, he flew back down into the military camp behind them. Luna, meanwhile, went back to studying the horizon.

The promotion had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, but she knew that Swift deserved it. Once this whole ordeal had been dealt with, she would arrange a ceremony for him so that the stars could be properly affixed to his uniform. Until then, though, he was going to have his work cut out for him managing the mess that had unfolded in front of Canterlot’s walls, and somehow keeping it organized enough to serve a useful purpose without allowing the unicorns to start any fights. It was a treacherous path that they were all going to have to walk, but it was the path forward now.

Chapter 35: A Sharpened Scythe

“What changes in a pony when they become willing to fight? Nothing. And thinking otherwise is a mistake far too many have made and paid for.”

Dr. Szill Tosak

As the Sun rose and fell over Southoofton, the town had gotten back into its normal harvest-time rhythm. The farmers and hired hooves headed out into the fields each morning, returned to the threshing floors by mid-afternoon with what they had been able to cut down, and then retired back to their houses for dinner once the Sun went down. Everypony saw each other in the morning, as the townsfolk gathered at Linseed’s tavern to exchange various gossip, get caught up with each other, and enjoy a cup of fine sweet tea and some pears left over from Reaper’s Rise.

These gatherings were by and large rather subdued affairs; as it had been for the whole year, the usual small talk was worn out by the second day. The only thing after that was the persistent rumours that any day now the Senate was going to go through with its threats and confiscate the harvest. Nopony really liked discussing that either, though, so more often than not they would eat their pears and drink their tea in awkward silence, before heading out to scour the fields once again in search of any growing thing that they had somehow missed.

Two days after Wind’s departure, Sycamore and Fern were sitting at their usual table, each gingerly sipping from their sweet teas in the hopes of putting off another depressing day in the fields for as long as possible. The tea didn’t even have all that much taste to it. There hadn’t been a new shipment of leaves for weeks now, and Linseed had taken to brewing with the old leaves over again to save his supplies. Naturally he hadn’t lowered the prices at all in spite of this.

The establishment was about half-full, many of the tables empty now that their occupants had run out of pretenses and departed for their work. Linseed himself was engaged in a hushed conversation at his brother’s table. As Cotton didn’t do much of his own harvesting anymore, he was free to hang around the tavern all day and drown his sorrows in as much weak tea as he wanted to.

After two days of working in the fields, Fern’s hat was now so dusty that it had completely changed its colour to an ashen dull grey that might not even come out in the wash. The rest of his coat was only marginally better.

“Hey Sycamore,” he said, leaning over the low table to give his sister a look of concern. “What’s up, huh? I know this whole season has been bad for everypony, but you’re not even close to yourself anymore. Are you really that hung up over Wind going back to Cloudsdale?”

Sycamore didn’t give him an answer, instead only staying slouched over her forelegs, staring into the depths of the clear sweet tea. Linseed had run out of ice weeks ago, so it was more or less just a glass of warm water. And rumour had it that he was starting to run short on that, too.

“Ah, heck,” Fern said, annoyed by the silence. “You really were attached to that stallion, weren’t you? I seem to recall specifically telling you not to let that happen.”

“But why?” Sycamore said back absently. “He was a great stallion, and I was much happier having known him, or at least so it felt.”

“Well of course he was! We all appreciated knowing him, as surely as you did. Heck, even I warmed up to the fella.” Fern sat back into his chair and scratched his mane for a moment, working at a consistent itchy spot somewhere around the back of his head. “I just don’t know what to tell you, though. He’s gone, back to Cloudsdale, and we’re never going to see him again. We’ve got our own problems to worry about for now.”

That at least got her to sit up. “Do you honestly want to talk about our yields and our stores right now? Because I can quote you the numbers if you want. Or maybe you’d prefer if I counted them out with hooves? I wouldn’t need that many volunteers.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” he said. “Still, I can’t stand seeing you like this. There’s got to be something we can do to get your mind onto something happier.”

“Like what?” she replied, stern all of a sudden. “Name me one thing that’s happy about our lives right now, Fern! We’ve got a front-row seat to watch this town die. We’re either going to admit defeat, and pack up like the others, or we’re going to suffer through another hard winter, and be out of food before spring! And hanging over that, you and I both know that it’s only a matter of time before the Royal Guard shows up to take away even what we do have. And that only ends in either a fight that nopony wants, or another uncertain future where we don’t even know what we’re going to eat. And yes, add on top of all of that that the first stallion I ever loved is now gone forever, back to Cloudsdale where I’ll never see him again!”

As she finished there was a silence in the tavern, the few ponies present shocked by the ferocity of her outburst. Even Cotton and Linseed looked up for a moment from whatever they had been talking about.

Fern opened his mouth to make a retort, but he closed it again almost immediately. What was there to say to any of that? He knew that she was right about every single point. They were darned if they stayed and darned if they left. Everypony in Southoofton knew it. But nopony had had the courage to say it so bluntly until now.

Draining the rest of her glass in three quick gulps, Sycamore got up to leave. “Come on,” she said, her previous anger returned to a dull monotone. “We’ve wasted enough time.” Fern had to scramble in his pockets to find the coins for their tea and then run after her.

He caught up just as she was getting to the edge of town. The family home was visible out in the distance, like always nearly obscured by the swirls of dust borne on the wind. From the meadow, there was a good view over the hill on the far side of the house, out to the barren plains that awaited them for their work. After two whole days, Fern felt like the two of them had been over the fields three times already. But to stop would mean admitting that the harvest they had was all that they were going to get, and realizing that there was nothing left to think about except what was going to come next.

“Well, at least we still have each other, right?” he said, offering her a tip of his hat as they walked.

“That we do,” she replied, eyes still straight ahead. “And we will, no matter what comes. But there’s a storm out there on the horizon I think, and if there’s anything useful for us to be thinking about, then that would be it.”

Fern scanned the horizon anxiously. “A storm? Really? Ah, heck! That’s exactly what we need right now, isn’t it?”

“No, not a storm like that,” she said, shaking her head solemnly. “Though it’s true that I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean a storm just like the one that Cotton almost stirred up when the rumour of the Senate taking our crop first came in. Everypony knows that we’re in trouble, and I reckon everypony wants to do something about it, anything, just to feel like there’s some hope out there for us. Things are still okay right now, but it’s coming to a head soon enough. We’re all just talking around the issue right now, doing anything we can to avoid having to think about it, but we all know that one of these days we’re going to have to do something.”

Her words had been detached, clear and lucid, spoken in dry prose with no emotion at all. The sound of them, and the realization of their truth, sent a spike of nervousness down Fern’s spine. “Are you reckoning that there is going to be a fight?”

Arriving in their backyard, Sycamore picked up a nearby scythe by its handle and passed it over to him. “One way or the other, it’s got to happen. Honestly, it would almost be a blessing if the Guard did show up. Then at least we’d have a common enemy, rather than having to fight each other for what scraps we can get like a bunch of dogs.”

That image was too ridiculous for Fern to imagine. “Now that’s too far,” he said, stopping short. “There’s almost nothing of Southoofton left! And we all know that the only way we’re making it through this winter is together. Nopony’s going to turn on each other in this town.” He gave her a resolute glare, but the emptiness hadn’t left her eyes.

“Keep that blade sharp,” she said, not even acknowledging his claim. “One way or another, it’s bound to find some use.”

When the Sun reached its high point around noon, it became too hot even to stand around in the fields pretending to look for something growing. Fern and Sycamore had to retreat to the shade of the back porch, where Pa had set out a jug of water and some cold soup for lunch. Fern reckoned that today was probably going to be their last one trying; there was only so much worth to be found in deluding themselves further. And at least in the momentary respite they could have some more serious discussion.

“So where do we stand then?” he asked, sweat still dripping from his brow. Pa had taken the chair on the porch, which meant that the two of them could only sit up against the house wall. Fern had pulled his hat as far down over his eyes as it would go in an attempt to shade his face more, but it really was no use. The air felt like the exhaust from a furnace, and even outside of the Sun’s scorching rays, it was still exhausting even to be sitting down. The water and soup only helped so much.

“I think we’re at about half a dozen sacks,” his sister said, equally beaten down by the heat. “Enough to last us about a month and a half, two if we’re very careful about it. But you know we’re not going to find any more out there. And there isn’t a bit left in the account book to go out and purchase the remainder.” She sighed, leaning her head back to where she was staring at the ceiling. “We’re stuck.”

Neither one of them spoke for about a minute. The silence was more than a little uncomfortable, and to distract himself, Fern let his mind wander. With the light wind whispering over the boards of the porch and gently creaking the doors to the sheds, he tried to imagine the possible endings that this winter might hold in store. In one, the ponies left in Southoofton pooled their resources and found they had enough to get by, if only they worked together. It was a tough, cold winter, but in the spring the Sun rose and the rains returned. In another, though, the town evaporated, everypony going their own way, scavenging what they could from the countryside, leaving abandoned buildings to be slowly ravaged by the elements. And when they couldn’t find anything else to eat? He shuddered rather than think about it further.

Fortunately for him, Pa then spoke up. “I reckon the only thing we’ve got left to do is join up with Cotton and the rest of his clan. He’ll be the only one with a surplus, if only because now he owns almost all the town.”

Sycamore sat up, a bit of life coming to her eyes. “But why would that old coot share anything that he’s got with us? There’s no generosity left in his heart, and like I said, we don’t have anything to pay him with.”

“As long as we’re alive we’ve got something he might want,” Pa said, shaking his head as he leaned back in the chair. “Me maybe less so, but both of you are young and strong, and Cotton’s got a big household to manage now. He’ll be needing help, and if we're with him then he’ll keep us alive at least. To the degree that he can.”

Sycamore sat up in surprise. “Servitude? To that jerk? I’m sorry, Pa, but that just ain’t right.”

“Sure as shoot it’s not!” Fern added from beside her. “If there’s any hope, it ought to be in working together, everypony in the same boat, not kowtowing to him just because he’s the one with the food. That ain’t the earth pony way!”

“Didn’t say it was right,” Pa replied, still sounding sorrowful, yet with a note of hardness too, enough to underline that he knew what he was talking about. “Didn’t say that it was dignified. Only as we know Cotton isn’t going to jump in and help anypony out of the goodness of his heart, and without whatever he’s got there’s no way the town has enough to go around.” He looked at each one of them, and a grin cracked out on his face. “We’ve fought about as hard as we had any right to fight, and of course I’m proud of both of you for not giving up. But the fight is over now. Now we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.”

Fern exchanged a look with his sister. Sycamore’s brows were still down, her ears still set back. She didn’t like the plan anymore than he did, but she didn’t say anything more. Neither did he.

It was still a couple of hours before they set out, in the hope that after the crest of midday the afternoon would at least be bearable to walk in. It wasn’t.

Cotton’s estate was on the far side of Southoofton from theirs, tucked away in a tiny valley where the river ran steeply down over a set of rocks. Just like Amber’s it was set back from the main road at the end of a long, twisting drive, and at the end of that drive was the house, ringed all of the way around with a wooden veranda, interrupted only by a tall stone chimney that worked its way up the house’s east side. A line of brightly painted grain bins completed the property on the other side, and as the two of them crested the hill, they could see a handful of workers piling sacks into one of them. Unlike Amber’s estate, Cotton’s also included a low curtain wall of stone, just tall enough to keep out any casual trespassers.

The grass around the house had at least a note of refreshing greenness to it, that being the result of intermittent watering from the still-flowing Everfree River. Even Cotton had used it only sparingly over the course of the year, but it was one reason why he had a surplus harvest to work with.

From the hill, they could see Cotton sitting in the shade under the eave of his front porch, and Sycamore didn’t waste any time on formalities, leading Fern right up to him. As they got closer, they could see that he wasn’t alone. Sesame was there with him, a spare quill tucked behind one of his ears as the two brothers went over some figures. But the big earth pony looked up in time to see them as they crossed over into his front yard.

“Ms. Sycamore!” he called out, raising his hat just about an inch as he stood up, “And your brother Mr. Fern of course! Is it business or leisure that brings you to my property today?” He was smiling warmly, but something in his tone told Fern that he already knew the answer to the question, and that he was relishing that fact.

Sycamore took a deep breath, swallowing a fair amount of pride, before pulling her eyes up to meet him. “It’s business. Fern and I were wondering if you might have room to accept us as workers.”

As expected, his eyes lit up. “Sesame, mark two more,” he said over his shoulder, before motioning the two of them to come up onto the porch with him. “No need to sound so grave, Ms. Sycamore. You're not the first nor do I suspect you shall be the last to be making that request of me, and I’ll see what I can do to oblige. But of course the year is tight, and so we shall have to see what Sesame can make of the numbers. Brother?”

Sesame was checking over the columns and scrawling some illegible numbers down near the bottom of the page. “We can spare the grain,” he said quietly, “for three on the usual living wage.”

“Three?” Cotton’s eyebrows rose for a moment.

“Well, there’s the old stallion, I’m sure,” Sesame said gently, offering Fern and Sycamore a somewhat reassuring glance. “It’s even possible that he might be able to contribute a little.”

“He’ll do what he can for sure,” Fern put in. “Old Pa would never let us hear the end of it if we didn’t give him a chance to earn his own way.”

A deep laugh grew out of Cotton’s throat, and he gave Fern a solid slap on the back. “Ha! I know the sort. Well, if Sesame says that we can spare the food, then I guess we can. The harvest is just about done up already, but there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done in preparing the place for this upcoming winter. Tell me, can either of you cook half-decent?”

Fern did his best not to grind his teeth at the question. Working the fields for Cotton would have been one thing. Waiting on him and doing his housework was quite another. But Sycamore seemed to swallow her pride easier. “We’ve been out of practice for quite a while, but I can bake a loaf as well as any farming mare in the town. And funnily enough that’s an area that Pa almost certainly should be able to contribute to.”

“Outstanding,” Cotton returned. “I won’t ask you to do everything, as we have a number of other applicants with similar skills. But some bread and sweets every now and then will likely be yours to do. And you, son,” he said, turning to Fern. His voice had dropped quite a bit with the new sentence. “Just as an off-question, have you ever had to fight a bear or a wolf?”

The question was wholly unexpected, and Fern noticed that even Sesame looked up on hearing it. “For what it’s worth, Cotton, no, I haven’t. But what are you expecting that’s going to mean?”

Cotton sat back into his chair, shaking his head slowly. “It’s going to be a rough autumn, a rougher winter, and spring is going to be the worst, especially if things keep up as they are. What animals there are left in this area are going to be looking everywhere they can for something to eat. We’ll have to be vigilant. Plus, there is always the matter of these persistent rumours about the Senate and their absurd pretenses.”

The thought made both Fern and Sycamore shudder, but he had to nod at such a possibility. “I see what you mean. If push ever does come to shove, well…” He had a hard time saying the next bit, but he knew that he didn’t have a choice. No more choice than either of them had ever had. “I’ll do what I can for you, sir.”

“That’s all I ask,” Cotton replied. “Sesame here can give you the rundown of the place, and figure out what you’ll be doing to start. Of course I can’t offer you lodging around here, but your family’s house should be perfect for that anyway. And come the end of the harvest, we’re going to be having a party here too. You’ll want to get your old Pa up here at least for that.”

Sesame cleared his throat as he worked over the numbers one last time. He looked like he was just about to open his mouth when a sudden rumble became audible at the top of the valley from the direction of the lane. It sounded like maybe eight sets of hooves, moving slowly with a couple of wagons to their credit too, and it wasn’t long before the caravan crested the valley edge.

The first thing that the Sun caught coming over the hill was a silver flash of polished metal, bright enough to make Fern squint even from this far away. After a moment, the light went down and the pony was revealed as a stocky earth pony dressed head to hoof in burnished armour with a sharp spear laid across his back. Behind him came a taller fellow, a unicorn without any armour, instead a shock of red hair tied back across his neck with a silver band. He had wisely decided to take the journey without any further clothing, which was a surprisingly pragmatic decision for a unicorn, but even from here Fern could see the usual haughtiness in the newcomer’s eyes. The six other ponies that followed him were in teams of two, each group pulling an empty wagon. The others were armed just like the first, and the jangle of their armour as well as the clomping of their shoes as they walked soon swelled to fill the whole valley, drawing the attention of everypony there.

Cotton got to his hooves right away, walking down off of his steps to the front of his yard to meet the group. Fern saw a kind of satisfaction on his face, and why not? The old pony had been right, after all. There was no other reason this group would be here other than to lay claim to the harvest.

A slight breeze blew some dust through the valley as the unicorn and his escort came to a stop about twenty yards in front of where Cotton was standing. Now that he had come closer, a sad sort of expression could be seen on his face, as if he didn’t really want to be here. Yet, even so, as soon as the caravan stopped the unicorn unfurled a parchment and spoke up, his voice echoing off of the valley’s walls to repeat everything he said.

“Mister Cotton Seed!” the messenger began. “It is my duty to announce to you that by order of Her Majesty Queen Luna of Equestria, the harvests of your fields are to fall under the property of the Crown, for subsequent distribution among the citizens of the realm. All grain and hay is to be turned over to this caravan at once, or if you refuse it will be taken from you. This has been so ordered, the twenty-seventh day of Reaper’s Moon, in the three hundredth year of the reign of Celestia and Luna in Canterlot.” He paused for a moment after finishing, as his final words echoed about the valley, then rolled up the parchment again and fixed Cotton with an imperious glare.

“No negotiations, no sale, no respect,” Cotton shouted, loud enough for the whole valley to hear. “I’ve no time to waste with words and arguments. You can take your order back to your Queen, and serve her dinner on it for all I care. And as to your threat of force… Mister Linseed, show these ponies what they’d be getting into!”

From right behind him Fern heard a tromp of quickly stepping hooves, just before the front doors of the house burst open to reveal Linseed and six other stallions, each hefting a weapon. Three of them had sharpened sickles, three more axes broad enough to decapitate a pony. And Linseed had somehow found a rusty old crossbow, now drawn and with a bolt ready to fire as he rested it on the veranda’s railing. The other six took up positions on Cotton’s flanks.

Fern could see a few of the armed guards shifting behind the messenger, reaching around their backs to unhitch from the wagons and ready weapons of their own. Their leader drew his spear outright, aiming the point directly at Cotton’s heart.

A bead of sweat fell from Fern’s brow as the wind gusted harder, plumes of dust whipping through the valley and settling onto the ponies standing there at odds. Then, just as Fern wondered if it could last any longer, the messenger nodded and turned to the guard beside him. “Stand down,” he said. “We’ll not spill blood today.” The guard nodded, and he gave a signal to the other soldiers. On a dime, they each turned around and began marching back the way they had come, the metallic sounds of their steps again filling an uneasy silence.

“Just like that?” Fern wondered aloud.

“They’ll be back,” Cotton answered, turning around to look at them again. “Back with more, and that’s when we’ll have to be ready. Linseed, it’s time to start fortifying. Sesame, I need a count of our blades. And everypony!” he shouted, addressing all of the other workers. “If you’ve got anything sharp at home I suggest that you bring it! And hole up here with the rest of us!”

Fern took an uneasy look over at Sycamore, and she was nodding knowingly. “Best get up quick and get that scythe,” she said.

Chapter 36: The Traitors

“Discord’s great triumph was to create a world where there was no victory for us without defeat. Unfortunately, it took me far too long to understand that.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 1)

By the time that Trinity and Celestia made it back to the estate, it had been far too late to even consider the journey back to Eridian, and so instead Celestia had retired to the quarters that Gala had provided for her in the manor. But in spite of the exhaustion that was resting heavy in her limbs, sleep proved elusive. The revelations of the past night were still running through her head, begging for a resolution. But there were still too many questions that she needed answers for.

Naturally, she did now know the identity of the saboteur that Gala and Fastidious were searching for. Come the morning, she could go straight to the lord’s office, turn Trinity in, and collect the rewards that she had been promised. That was all that would have to happen, and she’d be able to put the whole business behind her.

But Trinity had left just enough questions with her too. Why had her friend been so insistent that she ask about Quill and Screw? Was there something else there that Trinity knew while she didn’t? A secret that Gala was holding to his own? It shouldn’t take long to ask around the manor and find the answers.

And then there was the deeper question. For even though she now knew that Trinity was an enemy of her employer, there seemed no doubt that the earth pony was most certainly still her friend. Without her intervention, the encounter with those Resistance agents would have ended very differently, of that Celestia was sure. That mercy was something that she was almost certain Gala and Fastidious lacked. Even what she knew of the prior record of their employees assured her of that. But what future did the course of cooperation with Trinity offer? More of the same, uncertainty and doubt made even more manifest since Trinity and the Resistance would control her fate.

Yet even to counterbalance that was another question. For if Trinity truly was her friend after all, then why had she only revealed her true allegiance right at the last moment? Maybe at first their relationship had been purely platonic, but it didn’t take much thought to see how the details fit. How once Celestia had gotten a look at the estate’s finances, Trinity had often asked how they were doing. How she had occasionally disappeared to see to her private business at odd times. And of course how she had led Celestia on through her investigations, creating all manner of false leads and stopping her from ever seeing the truth.

Trinity had used her to strike at Fastidious, and if it hadn’t been for their encounter in the bush, Celestia probably would never have known until her friend suddenly disappeared, off to another assignment somewhere else in the country.

The logic always said that she should stick with her original plans, and finish the job that Gala had appointed her to. But at the same time Celestia was not the sort of pony to let a question go unanswered. Her boss could wait one more day before finding out the truth. Time enough to figure out what Trinity was trying to tell her.

That resolved, Celestia did her best to snuggle into her bed and get some rest. It should have been easy; the bed was big and soft, warm with a wool blanket and a down mattress underneath. It was heaven compared to her arrangements back in Eridian. But tonight it may as well have been made of stones for all the good that it did.

When the Sun finally rose the next morning, Celestia wearily got to her hooves and saw to freshening herself up for the new day. Naturally, after her night out in the wild, she hadn’t had time to clean her uniform or even fold it up properly, so it took a little doing even to get it remotely presentable this morning. Perhaps when he saw the state of the rest of her Fastidious would understand.

Out in the halls, the manor was already coming to life, with the maids setting to the day’s cleaning with gusto, and Celestia didn’t have to go far to sniff the delicious aroma of breakfast being cooked in the kitchens. She made her way over there, and was delighted to find Fastidious alone in the dining room, wearing a scarlet robe with a grey cravat tucked neatly around his neck. The young lord looked to be just in the process of finishing up his own meal, but there was still a large pitcher of orange juice on the table in front of him. He looked up as soon as she came in, and wiped his muzzle off with a napkin.

“Ah, good morning, Celestia! I hope that you slept well?” The question was cheerful, yet the lord’s face fell as soon as he saw her approaching the table. “I see. Burning the midnight oil then. In search of our mutual friend though, right?”

“Of course, sir,” Celestia mumbled, still having a hard time navigating the fog in her mind. “It was a very long night.”

A servant came in to clear the lord’s plate, and bobbed a quick nod as soon as her gaze fell upon Celestia. Fastidious started to pour out a glass of the orange juice, then thought better of it midway through. “Actually, I think you’ll need something a touch stronger this morning. Do we still have any coffee?”

The servant gave him a nod before disappearing into the kitchen with the dirty dishes. After a moment Fastidious picked up the pitcher again. “Still, I suppose some juice is a fine place to start. We can’t talk about any business until I see that you’ve got your wits about you.”

Indeed the juice didn’t do all that much to wake her up, but Celestia offered him the best smile she could muster anyway. “Thank you so much, my lord. What business did you have in mind?”

“Everything, of course!” Fastidious replied, eager as always. “Beginning with the work that you’ve been doing out in the orchard. I’m sure that you’ve heard about it in the staff meetings, but we have a lot riding on this project of yours getting finished up. Hopefully everything is going well?”

“Quite well, indeed,” she said, realizing that it was true. Either way things with Trinity worked out, the sabotage was about to stop soon. “I know that the schedules have slipped somewhat, but things are back in hoof now. We’ll be able to process much of the harvest through the new presses, I’m sure.”

“Well, that is splendid. And I have to assume that your confidence in this regard means that our other enterprise is nearing completion?”

In spite of herself Celestia couldn’t hold back a yawn that suddenly billowed up out of her chest. “Excuse me, my lord. Yes, as you surely know my adventures last night were in pursuit of that goal. I expect to have the perpetrator behind bars within the week.”

Fastidious sat upright, his glass halfway up to his lips. “So soon? Forgive me, but your most recent report was not half so rosy as all that. We’ve had a major breakthrough then?”

“I would certainly call it that,” she said, nodding. The conversation was starting to pull back the curtains behind her eyes, and the emergence of the servant carrying her mug of coffee and the plate of her breakfast helped a great deal. With one dainty sip, the strong beverage vanquished the last threads of her sleep. “If you don’t mind my asking, my lord, what sort of punishment do you intend on exacting upon our saboteur?”

The young lord smiled knowingly. “That matter really is the purview of my father, but I can understand the curiosity. Naturally the first thing that we’ll want to do is interrogate them fully. A single agent is a reward itself, but if we can uncover more from them, we can strike an even harder blow against whatever network they represent.”

Simple enough. Trinity naturally knew that already. “And what then?”

“Well, it depends on the nature of the pony you bring in. If they are an agent of one of the other Houses, there are any number of things we might do, depending on how strong their loyalty is to their original employer.” The spark was lit in Fastidious’s eyes, even greater than his usual energy. Clearly this part of the lord’s life was the part he found most fascinating. “They could become double agents for us, or simply defect to us and spy on somepony else. Or, if they’re the obstinate sort, we hold them for ransom.”

Celestia paused between bites. “Ransom? And the other Houses would pay?”

“That’s where things really get fun,” he replied, rubbing his hooves together almost in anticipation. “Because then it’s all about how we talk when in amongst the court. Perhaps our enemies can be made to believe that their asset is on the verge of breaking, or actively hemorrhaging information. Or we might find out that the nameless pony in our cellar is actually somepony’s niece or nephew. That’s when the tricoins change hooves. But if we can’t find a buyer for them and we can’t get their loyalty ourselves, then we just have to kill them, unfortunately.”

That word made Celestia choke for a moment, before she could recover herself and swallow. “Kill them, really? So simple as that?”

The morbid subject didn’t seem to faze him for a second. “Not that we enjoy having to do it, but what option do we really have? We wouldn’t want to keep feeding them and trying to make something of them for too long, and clearly it would pose an enormous liability to let them go free. These risks are things that all of the agents understand. Even ours. We’ve had our fair share of untimely deaths over the years, but such things are just a part of life.”

A part of life. Well, that was at least one thing that Trinity had told her confirmed. Buying a moment to think, she took another sip of the coffee. That was a fair trade-off to have to think about, but surely neither she nor Luna would ever end up in the spying business were they to reach into this life. Clearly there were other ways of getting by. “And pardon me, my lord, but is there anything different if our saboteur turns out to be a member of the Resistance?”

He leaned back in his chair, stretching his forehooves up behind his head. “The Resistance. Is that what you are suspecting?”

“Not as such, no,” she replied, settling back herself with the breakfast now done. “But it is one possibility. Gala mentioned that you’ve had run-ins with them before. I suppose there wouldn’t be any chance of ransom for them, would there?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head resolutely. “Even if those scum were willing to pay, well, we’d take their money obviously, but we’d report whoever we had contacted all of the way up the chain. And that is the usual practice,” he added. “If our saboteur is a Resistance agent, we’ll pump them for all of the info we can, but then we’ll give them over to Eridian. Let the King do as he will with his own enemies.”

A tap on the floor near the room’s exit drew both of their gazes. Pure Fruit was standing there expectantly, his monocle freshly polished to a shining gleam, though it was a servant standing meekly next to him who had done the tapping. “A report, my lord,” said Fruit, “if you are finished with your breakfast.”

“Naturally,” Fastidious returned. “In a moment I will be with you.” He began gathering up his things from the side of the table. “I hope that you’re not worrying too much about the fate of the scoundrel that we’re about to bring in,” he said earnestly, a warm smile showing off a flash of bright white teeth despite the prior grim discussion. “There’s no room for benevolence in our world, certainly not where our enemies are concerned. But once this project is finished, we’ll have to talk some more about your compensation. Maybe we will find a permanent place for you here, just like Mister Fruit.”

Shaken slightly but still in control, Celestia smiled back. “I would appreciate that very much, my lord.”

“Good luck, then,” he said, taking one last look around the table before trotting off down the hallway.

Watching him go, Celestia savoured the last few sips of her coffee, thinking about the conversation. So if she did turn Trinity in, she wasn’t necessarily sending her friend to the gallows, depending on what exactly the King did with the Resistance agents that he received. Though if a pony like Fastidious could speak so casually of execution, surely Discord could hardly be more merciful. Then again with him it was impossible to tell.

All in all, she still didn’t have much of an idea what to do. But now the morning was a little further on, and she had work to do. A day’s worth of personnel records and manifests would at least give her more time to think the matter through.

Leaving the plates and cups still on the table, Celestia started making her way back through the house. Through a small window in the hallway, she could see that the Sun was well and truly risen by now, and the orchard outside was getting lit up in a golden hue. The dew on the leaves caught the light and gave each tree a perfect wreath of silver, and the sight was enough to take her breath away. So much so that she didn’t notice Gala turn the corner in front of her until he had cleared his throat.

“Celestia?” The chipper voice of the old earth pony cut through the still air of the house easily. “Good to see you up. It looks to be a marvelous day, I think.”

She gave him a quick bow. “I think so too, Mister Gala. I was just on my way out to the site.”

“Marvelous,” he replied. “Perhaps I shall join you then. The fresh air will likely do me some good.”

Of course, she could hardly refuse. As he fell into step with her, Celestia noticed that uncharacteristically there were a couple of buttons undone at the top of his shirt. “You’re fresh out of bed, sir?” she asked.

“Hmm? Hardly,” he said, sounding distracted. “As always, I was up with the Sun. I’ve been down in the cellar, seeing after the business of Mister Screw. Naturally you understand then why I’d appreciate the fresh air.”

Screw. Another name that Trinity had brought up last night. While she hadn’t seen the old mechanic around lately, she’d assumed that he was hard at work keeping the old presses active, as he’d always been before. Yet her friend had seemed to know that something else was afoot. “My apologies, but what business are you referring to?”

They had come to the front door, and a servant opened it for them as they approached. The outside air was tinged with a crisp moisture, the result of that dew on the breeze, and it had a distinct note of chill to it, even though Celestia knew it would be plenty warm by midday.

“Well, it’s a bit of a shame, really,” Gala said as they crossed out onto the drive. “We recently found out that he has been acting as an informant for another House.” He looked over at her. “I know that there was no love lost between the two of you, but I knew him for quite a few years, and thought him a friend.”

“So what of him now?”

He sighed, but instead of sounding sorrowful, Celestia noted more than a hint of betrayed anger simmering in his words. “Last night, we spoke for a long while about why he did it, who he met, how. That sort of thing.”

It didn’t go past Celestia that they were exactly the sorts of questions Trinity would be getting asked very soon, if she were captured. And Gala would probably be the pony asking those questions. “Was he cooperative?” she asked, doing her best to sound nonchalant and keep the unease she was feeling out of her voice.

“No,” he said. “But I can be very… persuasive, when I need to be.”

After a moment of uncomfortable silence between them he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. “But we should not talk of such things on a fine morning like this. Tell me, how are things progressing on the project?”

Over the tops of the trees, Celestia could see the big timber beams jutting up proudly, with the first few of them now being prepped to have the roof put on. It was easier to slip back into professionalism when she could talk about her work. “We’re still on schedule, which means I expect to have the new presses operational within the month. That means we’ll be on line with about a third of the harvest left to go.”

Gala nodded. “Outstanding. It really is going to be a sight by the time that it’s done, isn’t it? Why, we’ll have to think about getting a plaque made up to commemorate all of the effort that you’ve put into making it a reality.”

“Oh, that’s hardly necessary,” she said. “You and your son have been too kind to me already.”

“Nonsense!” he declared. “As you well understand, we were in rough shape before you came along, and for a moment things were looking bad indeed. If we do manage to make it through this harvest, the Appleton family is going to have you to thank. Only name your price, and I’ll do my best to see it granted.”

There it was. More than just a hope. A future for her, and for Luna, as well as for Wicker, Capstan and Rosy, all of them. Not aspirational, not an interpretation of words read between the lines. Gala had said it, right out. And all she would have to do was reach out and take it. Well, that and send Trinity off to whatever fate awaited her in Eridian.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, giving him a quick, but deep bow. “From the bottom of my heart, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of the generosity your family has shown me. But again, we can worry about rewards once the project is finished.”

“Of course,” he said. “Remember to let me know as soon as you get a lead on our mutual friend. Come tomorrow, once my business with Screw has been properly terminated, I’ll be ready to receive them.”

Celestia gave him a quick nod, and then with a last deep breath, Gala turned around and headed back into the house, leaving her with her thoughts. It had been another revealing conversation, if not necessarily definitive. But something in the way that Gala had said it told her that his methods of persuasion were probably more than just verbal. Trinity didn’t deserve to go through something like that.

But too, he had removed all doubt as to the reward she was being offered.

A creak from the direction of the gates announced the first arrivals of the day’s shift, Trinity and the rest of her family among them. She locked eyes with her friend from across the yard, and Trinity simply beckoned her over with a casual wave, a bright smile on her face.

Wickerlock and Capstan were looking less upbeat, though each one offered at least a small smile as she came over. It took Celestia a moment to remember that the last time they had spoken would have been the argument last night.

“Hey, Capstan, Wicker,” she said, as sincere as she could muster. “Listen, about last night, I’m really sorry for getting mad like I did. You guys were right; I have been going too hard on this investigation.”

The two of them exchanged what seemed a meaningful look, and then Capstan gave her a square slap on the back. “Hah! Good to see that you’ve come to your senses again. Rosy was beginning to think that you weren’t coming back!”

“Well, she needn’t worry. Tonight I’ll be joining the three of you back in Eridian. And we’ll have that celebration, with whatever Rosy can work out.”

Wickerlock gave her a gentle hug. “I’m sure that Luna will be happy to hear that too. But what about the investigation? I thought that the lord was getting impatient to have things ironed out?”

Celestia knew that Trinity was walking behind them, and could almost feel the intensity in her friend’s stare. “It’s still coming along,” she said, making sure to choose her words carefully. “Maybe we’ll have some answers soon, but like I said you guys were right. I was just taking the whole thing way too seriously.”

“Okay then,” he said, sounding uncertain and giving her an earnest look. “So long as you think this is all right. As much as we want to see you home, you know that we’d never want to jeopardize your position here for that.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, “and I appreciate the thought. But I think we can all agree that I could use a little rest on this file.”

“Darn right,” Capstan affirmed. “It’s bad enough that you’re working for these traitors in the first place. It’s even worse if you’re going to work yourself to death over it. Let’s not look this gift horse in the mouth, Wicker!”

The younger stallion nodded at that, and as the group came up on the build site, Wickerlock and Capstan waved again before moving off to find their teams and get to work. Trinity, though, stayed behind. She didn’t say anything, but only motioned for Celestia to keep walking, on into her private tent. The earth pony pulled the flap closed behind them.

“Good morning, Celestia,” she said, setting herself down on the crate. “I’m willing to bet that you probably didn’t sleep very well. I suppose I’m sorry for that.”

Celestia busied herself setting the kindling and lighting the fire on her hearth. Maybe if she didn’t look at Trinity much, her friend wouldn’t notice how uncertain she was. Once it was done, she sat down at her desk. The clipboards from last night were still arrayed there, sheets of parchment with the inventory lists of all the tools ready to go. “You’re right, I am tired. But I don’t blame you for that. I had a lot to think about, that's all.”

“I understand,” Trinity replied, holding her hooves to the fire as soon as it had properly caught. “You’re not the first pony I’ve met in your position. On my last assignment I was working an asset who was a lord’s grandson, if you can believe that.”

“An asset?” Celestia let her ears drop back, already not liking the possible implications. “I had hoped that maybe we could keep using the word ‘friend’.”

“Sorry. That’s Resistance-speak. I hope you realize that we’re still close, though. Here, let’s get that first business off of your chest right away.”

Trinity got up and walked to the desk. She pulled out a fresh sheet of parchment, then wrote a name down across the top. “Good old Quinn. We’ve had eyes on him off and on over the course of the whole project anyway. It shouldn’t be too surprising to the estate when you turn him in.”

Seeing the name written out suddenly brought the gravity of what was going to happen directly to her. All she would have to do was slip this paper under Gala’s office door, maybe with some evidence written on it. The next day, Quinn would be hauled off for questioning, dealt with by Gala or Fastidious, made to answer if he could. However, since he obviously couldn’t, there was only one thing that could happen. “They’ll kill him,” she whispered, her throat suddenly dry.

Trinity nodded knowingly. “Yes. But it’s better him than us. You can pick another name if you’d prefer.”

“Another? No!” Celestia sputtered, for a moment unable to put a sentence together, as if her brain had disconnected itself from her mouth. “Are- Are we seriously just going to condemn an innocent pony to die?”

“Yes we are,” her friend replied, stone-faced. “What else did you think would happen?”

“I don’t know!” She couldn’t believe that she was the only one seemingly with any doubt over this. “We’re both going to have to live with this on our conscience. Do you not care about that?”

“I do!” Trinity replied, a bit louder but still without much emotion. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the only way that this can end, and when you’re in the Resistance, things like this are just a part of life.”

A part of life. An echo of a phrase separated by maybe only half an hour, yet a world apart. Maybe it didn’t matter which side she was on. The war would still be a part of it. Maybe Trinity was still her friend, but she was just as much the Resistance operative she had been last night.

Taking a deep breath, Trinity crossed behind the desk, bent down, and took Celestia around the shoulders with a forehoof. “Hey,” she said, forcefully but not as a command. “Celestia, look at me.”

A part of her wanted to turn away, to deny that she was in this horrible position and refuse to take part in it. But obviously Celestia had to comply. In Trinity’s face, she at first saw only a reflection of Gala: the same impossible hardness, as if only ice ran in her veins. Yet, deep in her friend’s eyes, she did see a hint of something else.

“I’m very sorry that I put you in this position,” Trinity began. “This sort of thing should never have to happen, and if there were any way to prevent it, I would.” She paused, glancing down for a moment before continuing. “But we’re fighting a war. I’ve been a part of it long enough, and said good-bye to enough friends, that the thought of more death doesn’t move me the way that I know it should. I hope that you won’t be in this with me long enough for you to lose that. But we’re in an impossible situation, and there’s no way out that doesn’t end in somepony getting turned over to the lord. You understand?”

She understood, even if it was hard to accept. Because she could tell that Trinity really did mean it. And that threw another complication into her mind just as she’d thought that the decision had become obvious. “I see, Trinity. I see.”

“Good,” her friend said, standing up once again. “Like I said before, you’ve got a good heart in you, and I envy you for still knowing what that feels like. In their world, death is cheap, and while in ours it’s sometimes necessary, it’s never something to be taken lightly. Now, do you know what you have to do?”

She didn’t know, no more than when she had gotten up this morning. Even so she nodded, knowing at least that she couldn’t let Trinity see her wavering any more.

Deliberately, Trinity arranged the parchment and ink well on the desk, with a fresh quill laid beside them. “Take the parchment out to the manor at the end of the day, then come back to Eridian with us. Like you said, tonight will be a great night to celebrate.” She offered a thin smile, which Celestia couldn’t quite return. Then she stepped out.

The ink that marked Quinn’s name burned at the top of the parchment, seeming two feet tall to Celestia, taking up the whole of her desk. Hurriedly she shuffled it under something else. She could at least draft some memos for now, and deal with that business later.

Celestia had the envelope tucked into one of her cloak’s inner pockets when she finally left the tent that evening. The Sun was well on its way down now, casting long shadows over the orchard, and that cold wind was back, rustling in the leaves of the trees. Those leaves were by now well on their way to turning red, orange, and yellow, the colours standing out boldly in the fading light of the day.

In front of the tent, the building site was taking shape nicely, the paving stones that would make up the floor now mostly laid in, the support beams all up, the first beginnings of rafters forming in their assembly area nearby. The last shift was just now getting off the site, and Celestia saw Trinity in the distance. The earth pony gave her a grinning wink, but she only turned away, and started the long walk up to the manor.

As the shadows grew longer, the detail of that great old building leapt out to her. The sharp spires of its roof, where the wings of the building came together, jutted up like pointed spears in the sky. The crimson siding looked darker in the fading evening light, like dried blood caked all over. Yet too, warm light spilled out from some of the windows, inviting, peaceful, and calm. The guards at the door gave her gentle nods, and over the threshold the world was bright again, full of life. Each of the servants gave her a bow as she passed them, and they even made way for her in the hall.

Finally she came to the door to Gala’s office, and pulled the envelope out. Celestia took a deep breath, and slid it under the door. Heaven help her, but maybe someday she’d be able to live with her decision.

Chapter 37: Last Hope

“The calm before the storm. Even now, centuries later, the impression made by those days has not diminished.”

Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 3)

Celestia could maybe have returned to Harmony Tower after her encounter with Solaris on the hilltop. Given the magnitude and complexity of the spell that she was about to cast, a full night’s rest would have done some good. But at the same time she could feel the minutes and seconds as they ticked by now, each one edging Equestria closer to its end. There would be time for sleep once the country was safe. Every hour that she wasted could potentially be a life unnecessarily lost, and Celestia refused to have that on her conscience.

So rather than returning to the warm kitchens and soft beds of the Tower, Celestia instead flew to her other familiar point in the forest.

The ruined Citadel of Everfree may not have looked anything like it did when she had last been here, but at least she knew that it was in a safe part of the forest. With luck, it would remain quiet and private over the course of the days that she would need. Plus, what remained of the old towers would offer a good vantage point over the surrounding area.

With the darkness of the Hill behind her, she touched down on the roof of the old Unicorn Tower. Once upon a time, the tower had been capped at its four corners by tall spires, each one adorned with a sculpture of a different celestial body. Two of those had long since fallen, their twisted metal laying treacherously about the open roof. But there was plenty of space to work in, and from up here Celestia could even spy the open plains to the forest’s north.

The night was quiet here, and that was a relief, a stark contrast against the tempest that she had escaped after her encounter with Solaris. Even then, Celestia knew that after tonight, no matter how far she flew, she would never be free of that storm. There was a dark corner in her mind now, the place where she kept the magic that she had stolen from the old King. If she didn’t dwell on it, she could almost forget that it was there, but when she focused her attention inward it was unmistakable. A shadow, billowing just out of the range of her vision, cold as ice and yet still hot as a flaming ember. Whenever she drew on her magic it was there, a raging inferno and a blinding blizzard, battering against its restraints, seeking to be let loose upon the world. Luckily Star Swirl was still there to keep an eye on it.

For what it was worth, she could feel the old wizard’s magic just as well, an invigorating chill like a crisp breeze on a winter morning. And his presence didn’t intrude on her perception unless she allowed it to. In this case, this proved to be something she needed, as there were still questions left unanswered.

What happened to him?

Solaris? he replied. A great many things. Some the results of his own schemes, some the usual dangers that used to follow the King in those days, and some plain old bad luck. He was a brilliant stallion once, a cunning leader and a stalwart friend. But when Aurum died all of that changed.

Aurum. The name she remembered from Star Swirl’s memories, and even as he said it now Celestia could feel some warmth come through his magical presence. Who was she?

His daughter, Star Swirl replied, the eldest of three. But she was the only one he loved. A radiant beauty, a gifted sorceress, and more than a worthy Queen. His words hitched there, interrupted by a sudden shock of melancholy. If she could have seen his face, Celestia knew that there would be tears gathering in his eyes. Here, he finally said again, it will be easier if I just show you.

There was a bright flash in her vision, and suddenly Celestia realized that she now had access to all of his memories, like books lined up on an endless shelf. Some were rimmed with gold, their covers animated in starry patterns mirroring his cloak, and somehow Celestia knew that these held spells. They sat alongside mundane memories of simple times, in plain linen jackets. For an instant Celestia wondered about the golden tomes, knowing that just like the books on the shelves of his cottage, these very likely held untold magical secrets, but there could perhaps be time for that later. Instead she searched down the shelf, until she found the book she was looking for, shining with a light as bright as its namesake.

Flipping through the pages, an image quickly formed of the old Princess.

A tall, slender unicorn. A china-white coat and a golden mane, deliberately arranged in long tresses that swept down to her shoulders. Bright, curious eyes and a kind, gentle smile. A note of firmness about the brow, the beginnings of the rapid aging that Celestia knew came with responsibility, and hours of conversation, mostly about untold political topics that Celestia could never hope to grasp.

Then, abruptly, the pictures stopped, and the next page felt very cold. She could feel the sadness radiating off of it like a fine mist that made the paper damp, and so she put it back on the shelf and let Star Swirl have his mental space back again. What happened to her?

Star Swirl sighed. Aurum died in a tragic accident while traveling with a friend. Solaris believed that she had been assassinated, and blamed everypony else for it. It broke him, obviously. After that he was never the same. I had hoped that it was only a process of grief that he would eventually get over, but as you now know, his is a spirit shattered beyond repair.

The malevolent magic in the back of Celestia’s mind swirled in her vision, maybe reacting to Star Swirl’s thoughts. Then she felt a coolness on her forehead, and the shadow disappeared.

I can hold him with a little effort, Star Swirl said. I’d imagine you’re going to want your mind to be clear for what’s coming next.

The spell, yes. Unclasping the satchel at her side, Celestia withdrew the stack of parchment that she had drawn up the night before. Each page detailed a particular weaving, one set of prior elements that would be bound together to create something else.

In order to get a sense for the spell’s structure, she would first have to arrange them all out to form the full Swirl diagram.

The old wizard whistled in her ear once she had finished up the first row, with fifty pages across in total. My, what a sight that is! How many ranks?

Six, Celestia thought back. A spell’s rank was the number of intermediate stages in the casting process, from the initial magical energies all of the way down to the finished product. More ranks meant more different energies could be combined together, but more power was needed at the start so that the threads would be strong enough to hold together in such a complex weave. Five ranks was generally considered to be the highest number that a single unicorn could manage, and even that number was only attainable by a legendary few. Celestia personally had never tried anything higher than four.

Somehow she got the sensation that the old unicorn was nodding in understanding. That explains a lot, then. And what’s the purpose?

Celestia paused in arranging the pages. As each rank progressed, they got narrower, the energies combining together with each other until only a few were left. What that meant was that arrayed on the roof was now a triangle of parchment, ending in a point where the final spell would come together.

The purpose is to break the cycle of pony history, she thought. The animosity of pegasus versus earth pony versus unicorn is the only constant across centuries of different governments, countries, and rulers. Whether it was the Unicorn Kingdom, Discord’s age, or this one, it always ends the same way. The three tribes at each other’s throats, ready to destroy the others as soon as things start to fall apart.

This spell will put an end to that. It will give everypony a part to play in the system of the nation, a part that they can’t help but honour. It will create a stable society, without the rifts of tribalism. When I came onto the throne, I thought that I had healed the divisions in the country. No doubt the Kings and Queens of your time felt the same. Indeed I had only applied a bandage the same way any unifying ruler had done before. This spell will be the thread that binds the country together permanently, once and for all.

There was a silence from Star Swirl’s corner of her mind, and so Celestia got back to work arranging the pages. She would have to start by dry-running each individual construction to be sure that she had them down. Once she started the full spell, she would have to cast the whole thing without pause or else be forced to start over again from the beginning. Equestria didn’t have time for her to make any mistakes.

Then she felt Star Swirl’s spirit rouse itself again. Ambitious, the old unicorn mused, and audacious. Even as my kingdom came to its end, I doubt that I would have tried something like this.

There was a waver in his voice, maybe a note of admiration, maybe a note of trepidation. Celestia couldn’t quite tell. But she had gone through too much to do anything now except press on. Your kingdom ended in fire and blood, Star Swirl. I will not let the same fate befall Equestria.

The march from Canterlot had been tense, but Luna had expected nothing less. She had instructed Swift to keep the ‘militia’ in the middle of the formation, as tight and organized as he could, in the hope that anypony they encountered on the road would have to deal with a vanguard of regular Guards first. More importantly, it also meant that she could have the maximum number of eyes watching the irregulars while still doing their own jobs. She even kept one of the pegasus scouts in the air to watch over them at all times, but so far at least Swift had managed to keep them in line.

That was all well and good as they’d passed through the Canterlot foothills, but now that they were out on the open plain, she could only guess at what would happen.

In the end the strategy that had come out of the meeting between Steel and Line had been a hybrid of their two priorities, hopefully striking the right balance between dividing up the work for speed, while also keeping the wagon trains as well-guarded as possible.

What that meant was that Luna was now at the head of two regiments currently joined up, and heading south to the little town of Southoofton. Once there, one of the Captains would take half of the force back east, through the cider country around Las Pegasus. Her detachment would continue west, through the old farming country along the Everfree River. The irregulars would hopefully stay with her, providing an extra shock factor for what was sure to be tough country.

With all of her heart Luna wished that the farmers would comply without incident, but she had strapped on her sword as she left the palace anyway. It had been three hundred years since she had last taken the ornately stitched scabbard out of storage, but somehow the blade was still as bright and keen as it had been when she’d received it so long ago.

Luna too still remembered the forms that she had been taught, three centuries ago when the Order of Fire had forged this sword with the intent of drawing Discord’s blood. She had managed to avoid using it then, and would do everything in her power to avoid using it now. Yet still she knew the chances of that happening were miniscule.

In the end, it had only taken two days for the regiments from the rest of the country to get to Canterlot and get assembled. General Steel had taken the northern prong of the operations, and another one of his generals the central one to Manehattan. With haste, Steel had assured her that the whole operation could be completed in time for Harvest Moon, slightly more than three weeks away. Then the accountants would take a full inventory, and with any luck the supply would stretch out long enough to get something else into the ground next year.

What countryside the army had passed already wasn’t giving her any hope, though. Naturally she hadn’t been expecting lush grasses and crops bent over from the heavy weight of their grain, but she had certainly been hoping to see at least something growing along the shoulders of the road that came out of the mountains. There was the odd clump of grass here or there, barely enough to support a single pony’s light snack on a day trip, but so far that had been about the extent of it.

She wasn’t quite sure what upset her more: the paucity of the harvest, or the very real chance that blood would be spilled over what little there was.

The maps suggested that the army should have been able to reach Southoofton by dusk, and indeed it was as the Sun was dipping down to the horizon and casting the countryside into a bright shade of orange that Luna spied one of the advance teams on the far horizon. The guards’ armour was lacking its polished sheen, no doubt the work of the constantly blowing dust out here in the plains, but more importantly, the wagons they were pulling were still completely empty. Luna called a halt to the advance before trotting out to meet them. Swift flew up and stuck to her side like glue.

She gave him a puzzled look. “What of your command, Lieutenant?”

“Heart can handle them. We are in dangerous territory, Your Majesty. I would not have you go alone anywhere in these parts.”

“I can handle myself,” she replied, fully prepared for anything that came. “We have scouts to let us know if any threats are around.” One look revealed that he wasn’t about to go back, and so Luna let the matter go. He was still one of her personal guards after all.

The advance team all stopped as they approached. None of them looked injured, nor as if they had seen any fighting. It was difficult for Luna to read their expressions, but the fact that they hadn’t gotten anything could only mean one thing.

As they approached, the magistrate leading the team drew himself up straight. “Hail, Your Majesty Queen Luna,” he intoned, sounding tired but still putting in the proper respect.

“At ease,” she replied. “I see you have met with little success. Is it resistance, or is there simply nothing to find?”

“Resistance,” he said, grim but not overbearing. “Southoofton’s harvest is not much, but it is not nothing either. Unfortunately, the townsfolk have pooled their reserves, and were determined not to give up a single seed. Come, up ahead one can get a very good view.”

Luna followed him, and indeed only a few yards on the countryside fell away a bit. A mile distant, the road passed over a small wooden bridge, originally built for the Everfree River, but hardly necessary this year. The water was so low that the river could be forded essentially anywhere along its length.

On the far side of the bridge was a tiny collection of wooden buildings, maybe only a dozen, arranged in a rough square around what would normally be the village green. The place was completely deserted.

Separated from the town by a few hundred feet on all sides she could see isolated farmhouses, most in poor states of repair, with shutters hanging loosely from the windows and paint peeling to reveal the bare wood underneath. Each of them appeared deserted too. The scene was eerie, as if the whole countryside had been abandoned days ago.

She turned to the magistrate again. “Resistance, you say? Where are all of these ponies if they intend to put up a fight?”

He produced a brass spyglass from a belt across his shoulders. “Take a look over to the west,” he said, pointing in the mentioned direction. “Along the curve of the river’s bank. There’s a large farmhouse that way, and it’s the only one that isn’t deserted.”

Looking west was difficult with the Sun just now falling over that horizon, but it didn’t take Luna long to find the estate. The sunlight even helped, as the first thing that jumped out to her were the many glints off of the sharpened tools that the ponies down there were carrying. Shovels, pick-axes, hoes, anything that could take an edge, and it looked like everypony down there was carrying one.

The estate she could see was circled by a low curtain wall, made higher with an improvised barricade, and manned even now by a dozen sentries. Inside the compound were maybe seventy more. None of them had the look of professionals, but the rabble of unicorns behind her was proof enough that when it came to fighting it was the thought that counted more than anything else. “How did they take the order?”

“There’s a big fellow down there,” the magistrate answered, his detached and professional tone adding to the disquiet in her mind as Luna continued to survey the estate. “He’s probably the stallion that owns the land, and in any event he’s the one rallying the defense. We took no chances. They’re just farmers, of course, but they felt like cornered animals to me. Unpredictable.”

Luna sighed. This was the first town, and already things weren’t looking good. Still, she had an opportunity yet to forestall the need for any fighting. “Get back to the army and have them set up camp,” she told the magistrate. “On this hilltop here, in full view of the town. In fact, light a few extra fires once night falls.” She waited for the salute of affirmation, then turned to Swift. “I’m going down to see if we can negotiate.”

Swift nodded, perhaps having anticipated such an action. “This is exactly why you need a personal guard. The ponies down there are ready to fight, and any one of them could try for you if they felt they had the advantage.”

The sword felt heavy in its loop across her shoulders, bouncing gently as the two cantered together over the rough earth. “They’re just farmers. Even ten of them wouldn’t have an advantage against me. But would you prefer that we hang back and attack en masse at dawn?”

“Do you honestly believe that’s not how this is going to end?”

While Luna couldn’t honestly say that she didn’t think so, she gave him a reassuring nod anyway. “I have to try. If they will not give in, then we will have to fight. But I will do everything I can to avoid that.”

Crossing the bridge, the two continued through the town, following the rough track that took them down into the valley where the estate was located. The air seemed closer now as they neared their destination, even the light whisper of the breeze overhead carrying a note of caution. With nothing else to say for the moment, Swift fell into stride beside her, the sandy hairs of his mane flowing out gently as they ran.

When they passed by a few more fields, he spoke up again. “See the stubble? These ones at least had something taken off of them.”

He was right. The fields here were just as bare as all of the others, but they also bore the telltale sharp stalks of grain that had been cut with a scythe only days before. All of the harvest had been cleared off of them, though, beaten out on the threshing floors and presumably stored in a bin on the estate. “There may be value in this expedition after all,” she said hopefully.

“It also means these ponies have something real to fight for,” he said back. “Especially if the whole town is going to try living off of it.”

Around a gentle curve, the estate appeared in front of them. The curtain wall was made of stone, only reaching up five feet or so, so clearly more for decorative purposes than defense. The rough wooden barricade on top added five feet more though, enough to look imposing and give an earth pony with a long weapon a good advantage.

There were three sentries up on the wall already, clearly expecting them. The one in the middle was even holding a crossbow that looked to have been dredged up from Discord’s reign, though Luna didn’t doubt that it could still put a bolt through her heart if aimed well. The other two each carried broad axes, slung over their shoulders and sharpened to a silver shine. They unslung their weapons as she approached.

“Away with you, Canterlot scum!” the one in the middle cried, leveling his bow on the outside of the wall. “This property is closed to your kind. Tell your Queen that if she wants any of our grain, she can damn well come here and get it herself!”

Despite knowing that she needed to keep things calm, Luna couldn’t stop her temper from lighting itself at his words. Obviously she shouldn’t have expected respect from any pony willing to defy the rule of law, but still she hadn’t anticipated such viciousness.

She took a step inward and declared, “You speak to Queen Luna, sir!” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Swift tense up, and immediately she forced herself to take a deep breath and drop into a humble bow. “I have come to negotiate,” she offered in a quieter voice. “In the hope of avoiding any unnecessary conflict. Tell me, are you the pony in charge of this estate?”

The two ponies with the axes had jumped a little at her declaration, but the one in the middle was only silent for a moment before raising his bow. “No, but I can take you to him. So long as you surrender your weapons here.”

The two other guards gave Luna and Swift a quick once-over, and they made no attempt to disguise their wonder as they took the ornate scabbard that held her sword. At least she didn’t have to worry about it being used against her; the sword was balanced for a pegasus and would be useless to either of them. Then the leader led them inside, and Luna got her chance to take a better look at the grounds.

She had seen most of it already in the spyglass, but up close she could at least get a feel for the ponies milling about the compound. They wore their improvised weaponry awkwardly, like the honest workers that they were, yet even so the faces that she saw were hard, the glares determined.

The estate was a large one, with two stories that she could see were in the process of fortification, the windows boarded up and improvised firing positions being constructed on the balconies. Their guide led them up to the wide veranda, where a big pony with a wide-brimmed hat was waiting, relaxing in a cushioned rocking chair. He rose to meet them, and Luna saw that same determination in his eyes, though there was an undeniable satisfaction there too.

The sentry stepped aside, offering a deferential bow to the one in charge. “Cotton, this is Queen Luna. Here to negotiate.”

Unfazed by her title, Cotton sized her up for a moment, his big eyes taking in the entirety of her form. Then he motioned to the side, where a few more chairs were clustered around his own. “Come, sit, my dear. If you’re here to talk, then let’s talk.” The rural twang in his voice grated in Luna’s head, but she stayed quiet and took a seat. Swift apparently decided to remain standing.

“It is my understanding that you dealt with some of my guards just recently, Mr. Cotton?” she asked to start.

Despite the rather tense situation, Cotton remained rocking his chair, investigating some caked dust on his hooves. “Yes, ma’am, I did. You then should have heard from them what we had to say.”

“The same as I believe I just heard from your sentries. That our ‘kind’ are not welcome around here. That my declaration, necessary to ensure the survival of this nation, will be openly defied here in Southoofton.”

A negotiation like this would work on a sliding scale, from entreaties to threats. Obviously as soon as things started getting heated, there was the chance that Cotton would just throw them out, but at the same time she also had to make it clear just who he was dealing with. “Such defiance carries a certain amount of risk, you know.”

He let out a big sigh, letting the air flap his lips loudly. “Listen here, Ms. Luna,” he said irritably, “I didn’t ask you to the Harvest Dance, so maybe we can talk straight and avoid all your political mumbo-jumbo. You’re going to talk a lot of nonsense in the hopes that us country-folk get lost in your fancy words, but here are the facts. You’re here to say that me and everypony else in this town are treasonous fools for daring to disobey your orders. That we ought to surrender the produce of our land to your collection agents, trusting in your assurances that we’ll get any of it back, let alone enough to last the winter. And, finally, you will tell us that there is an army of Royal Guard camped somewhere over the hill, and if we decide to persist in our defiance, they will come in here and take it all by force. Now, did I save you some time?”

Luna took a subdued breath. That he already understood so much of the situation explained his sense of satisfaction, and clearly he had some canned response ready to go, so why not let him keep talking? “Enough that I only need to ask you what you wish to say to those demands.”

“Look around you, friend,” he said grandly, though with a clearly bitter tone. “I ain’t the only pony in this town that’s done the math, and it’s a simple problem to solve. We barely got enough for ourselves when we throw it all together, and even that’s doing a very conservative estimate. I imagine it’s much the same all over. And yet you expect that if you throw the whole pot together suddenly all of them freeloaders in Canterlot and Manehattan will have enough to eat too? It just ain’t going to work. But guess who’s going to get the first ladles of soup when it’s time to start handing them out? Not the poor farmer that worked to make it, I say to you. So like I said, the math is very simple. If we follow along, we starve. If we fight, either we win or we fall, but that’s just the same thing. And I’m willing to take my chances. So too, it seems, is everypony else.”

Luna’s heart sank lower as she heard every word. She already knew that further discussion would be pointless, but she had to try. “You can’t believe that we’d prioritize anypony when it came time to distribute the harvest! I would ensure that everything was divided equitably. I understand why you would distrust the Senate, but I’m the pony in charge now, and you have my word that this process will be fair!”

He only smirked. “Who appointed you, my dear? As soon as that grain has left our sight, it may as well have been thrown off the edge of a cliff for all we know. And if those filthy unicorns in the Senate are okay with you in charge, then I’m afraid we can’t be.”

Well, so much for the entreaties. It was time to try the threats. She leaned forward in her seat. “I see, Mr. Cotton. Then perhaps I ought to explain the other side of the math problem that you mentioned. The side where we compare your bare hundred ill-equipped farmers against the thousand professional soldiers that are indeed camped ‘over the hill’, as you put it. You may be willing to take your chances in that fight, but I know which side I will be betting on, and it isn’t yours.”

She could only hope that the starkness of the numbers would knock some sense into him, but in fact Cotton just shrugged. “Like I said, if we do what you say, we’re done for regardless. The chance may be slim, impossible even, but it’s always been slim, this whole year since the day the crops first went into the field. We never stopped fighting then, so why should we stop fighting now?”

“Then fight with us!” she implored him, her magic unconsciously amplifying her words a bit. A few of the farmers in the yard turned their heads to look her way. “Only together do we have any hope of surviving this winter!”

Seeing that Cotton wasn’t going to budge, Luna decided to try one more tactic. “Maybe let’s look into the future a bit then, Mr. Cotton. Say you have enough to make it through this winter on your own, what then? It would still be months before any of your fields could yield something even if it did rain! What will you do then?”

She let the question hang for a moment, then came at him again, frustration building with each sentence. “You already have your weapons gathered, perhaps you will look at the next town over. They may still have some surplus, but they won’t be sharing. Another fight. When their supplies run out? Another. Don’t you see? In that world you will be no better than animals, scrambling every day for your next meal! Does that sound like the future you want?”

“But there is a chance that we’ll still be alive!” Cotton yelled back at her, shooting up onto his hooves and glaring down. “Much better of a chance than you’re giving us! And I will take that chance if I must!”

“Why?” Luna couldn’t keep her voice down anymore. She got up from her chair and turned around, addressing the ponies standing around the estate grounds, who were all listening in to the exchange by now. “Don’t you see? You’re not clinging to hope, you’ve given up! You’ve decided to throw your lives away on some empty promise rather than trust that we will make this work!” Somepony out in the crowd had to see some sense, had to understand that the only way forward was together. “I will find a way through this! You only have to trust me.”

There were tears in her eyes, tears for the horror of the situation, for her desperate hope that this nightmare could be over. Yet none of the ponies in the yard offered any solace. They only propped their weapons on their backs and carried on, putting up more boards on the barricades, sharpening weapons, stacking spears and stakes by the walls.

Cotton walked up to her side and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Nah, see we’ve all thought of the situation the same. I’m afraid you’re not going to accomplish anything here today, my dear. Come back with your goons and we’ll settle things, at first light tomorrow, or whenever you like.” He motioned to the stallion with the crossbow. “Mister Linseed! Show our guests out.”

When Luna and Swift were back on the other side of the wall, their weapons returned, the pegasus shrugged. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out, Your Majesty.”

“So am I,” she said morosely back, her tears drying under the heat of the Sun. “So am I.”

Chapter 38: A New Dawn

“Much was underestimated in those weeks, and much was paid because of it.”

Journal of Princess Luna

When Luna got back to the hilltop, the Sun had nearly set, and the extra cook fires she had ordered were lighting up the hillside for nearly a mile on either side of the road. The effect, she hoped, would be quite intimidating for the ponies holed up in Cotton’s estate. They had stood resolute so far, but surely a few of them would get more nervous as the hour of the battle drew nearer. With any luck, there might be some deserters come the next dawn, and any pony who surrendered was one less who might have to die.

Lieutenant Heart met them at the camp’s edge, and wordlessly led Luna on into the heart of the encampment, where her command tent had been set up. Inside, a thin supper of stew had been prepared, and her officers had come together for a last council.

The officers all arose and snapped her quick salutes as she entered, which was enough to bring a little comfort into Luna’s heart. That was, at least, until she noticed that Two-Tone was in among them, at a seat all his own. The unkempt unicorn had offered his own awkward salute, and now settled back into his seat to begin shuffling some papers around as if he deserved to be there.

“Captain Brow!” she said, glowering at him from the tent flap. “What is this civilian doing in our council? Was he not able to find rations in his own area of the camp?”

The captain shook his head, a gesture of defeat. “I told him that this meeting was for officers only, but he insisted that as the leader of the militia, he deserved a seat at the table. Would you have us escort him out by force?”

Luna did consider it, but why make a scene? And perhaps it would come in handy for her to be able to give him the orders directly. The long and short of it of course was that she wanted the militia as far away from the fight as she could get them, and Two-Tone would just have to be fine with that. She waved Brow back to his position, then walked over to her seat at the head of the tent, just in behind the fire pit.

“The negotiations were a failure,” she announced to the group, doing her best not to look defeated. “This means that tomorrow morning we will be advancing on Southoofton and executing the decree forcibly. During this meeting we will draw up the assignment for each of the units.”

The officers all had their quills out, ready to take notes. On a wooden frame that stood by her seat, Captain Brow unfolded a newly-drawn map of the area, incorporating everything that their scouts had seen over the course of the day. On the table in front of her rested her bowl of stew, but Luna wanted to get the briefing done first.

“The Cottonseed estate is the town’s only strongpoint,” she said, indicating the rough square on the map. “It is lightly fortified, but is in a narrow valley with poor sightlines. The river to the north is passable, but its banks do still present some obstacles. Nonetheless, given our numbers we should have no problem surrounding the estate.”

“Like a nut in a vise,” Two-Tone murmured from his table. “I like the way that you think, Your Majesty. We will grind them to dust between our advances, yes?”

“No,” she said sternly. “We are not going to attack.”

The unicorn sat up straight, his eyes wide. “What? But how do you intend to wipe out their resistance without an attack? What are our spears and blades for if not to impress upon that rabble the urgency of our cause?”

“We are not here to put them all to the blade, civilian,” she said, hoping the emphasis would wipe the eager grin off of his face. “We are here to execute the order that all of the harvest is to be turned over to my authority. If any of the townsfolk wish to fight back, then we will have to respond. But we will not be drawing first on any of them. I want these farmers to know that if this fight starts, it was them that started it.”

The words hung in the air in the tent. The officers were all nodding along in agreement. None of them wanted to be here either, but they would do what they had to do. If any fight started it would not be by their hooves.

Eventually, it was Captain Brow that spoke next. “So what is your plan then, my queen?”

“You, Captain, are going to lead the collection agents. You’ll have our best stallions along with you, but no more than a dozen. You will, after all, be right in the thick of things if it does get hot. Weapons sheathed and tempers cool, though. You’re only there to take the grain, not to hurt anypony. The rest of us encircle the property, but only in support. Not a single one of us draws a weapon until I say so. Understood?”

Of course it was all understood, easy as pie. All except for the civilian among them.

“With respect, my queen, I must strenuously object,” he said, rising from his seat and tugging on his coat to straighten its ragged lapels across his shoulders in an attempt to look more professional. “You wish to send Captain Brow and his hoof-picked elites into the heart of these rebels’ trap. When they arrive, weapons sheathed, do you honestly believe that these earth pony cretins will not leap at the opportunity to cut them down at once?”

He sauntered up to her desk, indicating the map with a free hoof. “Why take the risk at all? Instead, we can strike by surprise during the night, when the rebels will be asleep awaiting combat on the morrow. My unicorns can sneak under the cover of darkness, and take out their commanders. These rebels’ paltry resistance will surely dissolve without them. It is all done in a matter of hours, with no risk to any of our forces. We can be on the road to the next town by noon.”

There was a fresh silence in the tent. Luna guessed that the officers were wondering what her response to this insubordination would be, so she left them no time to wonder. She calmly walked to the map and put her face right up to his self-satisfied muzzle.

“May I remind you we are here to collect grain, civilian, and not to assassinate anypony who stands in our way? They will have sentries. If your infiltration is detected, you will have touched off a full-scale battle!” She wanted to grab a log from the fire pit and knock some sense into him with it, but at least the chagrin that appeared on his face was something.

“True,” he said ruefully. “But I still believe that you are giving this rebel group far too much credit. At least let my unicorns stand ready at the gates. We’ll not hesitate to come to the Captain’s aid should the battle commence.”

“You’ll stand where I tell you to,” she said, at the end of her rope. “And keep your weapons stowed until ordered otherwise. Now get out of my sight! Lieutenant Swift will be around later tonight with the battle plans.”

It looked for a moment as if he wanted to say more, and if he had then Luna would indeed have found something to clobber him with. But finally it seemed like he got the message.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he said, offering a contrite bow. After a second he made his way to the exit, and as soon as he was gone it seemed as though the whole room let out a collective sigh.

“Those fools will be the death of us all yet,” Brow said from the tent flap, shaking his head. “You realize that this is only the first town? Are we really willing to have this same conversation at every stop along the road?”

“Maybe we ought to let them stand at the front,” Heart said. “If they got themselves killed it would save us a lot of trouble.”

Luna immediately waved off the suggestion. “As much as I wish they were gone, they are still civilians, just like the townsfolk. I will not let them fall, even if I must watch over them myself. Now, I assume the rest of it is fairly self-explanatory?” There were nods all around. “Good. Swift, I want the irregulars in the rear. As far from the action as we can get them. Are you prepared to have the same argument I just did?”

He chuckled. “You kid, but that’s been my whole trip so far. If I’d known that this was what being an officer was going to be like, I’d have stayed up in the mountains.” That was actually enough to get a grin out of the whole assembled group.

Luna gave them all a resolute nod. “I know that a situation like this isn’t what any of you were expecting when you joined the Guard. And I’m fully aware that none of you will relish what we’ll have to do tomorrow, especially if it really does come down to a fight. But know that whatever does wind up happening, I’ll stand with you. We commence at dawn. Everypony get some rest.”

As evening turned to night over Cotton’s estate, the temperature dropped, just enough to remind those present that summer was long gone, and now even autumn was on its way out. It wouldn’t be long now until frost started nipping the grass at night, accompanied by, hopefully, a little snow. That obviously wouldn’t help anything right now, but come the spring it would at least provide some water.

Sycamore was up on the wall, doing her best to feel confident with the sickle that hung from a loop in her belt. To the north, she could see the fires of the Guard encampment spread out on the hillside, like fireflies scattered across the night. She could barely fathom the number of ponies that must be out there, nor of course could she begin to imagine what would happen come morning, when the queen’s forces began their assault.

She had been working in one of the bins when the dark purple alicorn had visited Cotton up at the house, and had only caught a glimpse of her and her bodyguard as they were making their way out through the gate. Even so, she had been able to sense the tension that was filling the grounds in the queen’s wake, and knew that whatever conversation had been had, it couldn’t have gone well. The fact that Linseed had ordered the perimeter guard doubled only reinforced that feeling. He was situated up on the estate’s front balcony, sitting with a spyglass scanning the horizon, his crossbow at the ready.

Now that the wall had been built up a bit, by the light of the lanterns Sycamore could see a fair distance over the banks of the river, on into the barren countryside. At this time of year, that countryside should have been dotted with piles of straw, lit up by the festivities of the harvest season drawing to its close. Seeing it all she couldn’t help but sigh.

Fern was on guard next to her, the scythe from their barn propped up on the barricade. He came over and put a leg across her shoulders, the warmth of his body helping to ward off the night’s chill a bit.

“Can you believe that it’s come to this?” he asked, speaking more to the night than to her. “If an army comes over the hill tomorrow morning, are we actually going to draw these blades and fight them?”

The sickle hanging from her belt loop felt like a lead weight, too heavy for her to lift. She had used it for its intended purpose often enough, and it cut grain and grass easily, with barely an effort. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it would take to use it on somepony else.

“I don’t know,” she said, the weight of the situation pressing down on her. “This whole season has been one unbelievable circumstance after another. Would you have believed two years ago that we’d still have no rain now? Would you have believed that somehow the whole town would wind up joined around Cotton’s hoof in the end? Every time we wondered how things could get any worse, and now here we are, looking the worst square in the eye.”

“I know I wouldn’t have believed that you would meet and fall in love with a pony who had stepped out of a fairy tale,” Fern said, whistling a low note as he gazed up at the sky.

Unexpectedly, the thought of Wind brought a smile to Sycamore’s face. For the past few days she had tried to avoid thinking of the pegasus if at all possible, because every time she remembered him it made tears gather in her eyes. But now, thinking of the life that he had returned to, school and adulthood, calm and peaceful, was enough to almost make her laugh.

“It’s hard to say, but I think it was probably a good thing Wind left when he did,” she said, though her tone betrayed her words. “He would never have understood any of this anyway, and I would have hated for him to get caught up in this fight.”

“Things might have been a little brighter at least.”

“Even Wind couldn’t have brightened up times like this.” She didn’t know where Cloudsdale was in the sky exactly, but she had a spot to look at: the spot where two nights ago she had seen Wind’s rainbow, eerily hanging in the night sky, illuminated only by the Moon and the stars. “He has a future up in Cloudsdale, a life to fit into, and a family that needed him. We’ll just have to settle for the brightness that he gave us in his time.”

Fern didn’t answer that, and so she kept on gazing up at the heavens. It was a clear night, though with the lights of the estate behind her the stars were hard to see. But Sycamore wasn’t afraid. The lights of the fires on the hillside had been stationary, and the night was quiet too, save for the light whisper of the breeze and the occasional owl’s hoot.

“So,” Fern said again, “what are we going to do? It’s not a matter of if the army shows up anymore. It’s when. And I think we ought to have a good idea of what we intend to do when it does happen.”

She shifted her body out from underneath his leg, taking a step off to the side so that she could look him in the eyes. “Fern, we ain’t never had a real choice this whole year. Every day, we did what we had to do. Because there was nothing else to do. Nothing else that didn’t end with us in a worse position than where we were already. This is no different. We didn’t ask for any of this, we’ve just had to deal with it. And come tomorrow, we’ll deal with whatever we have to again, and the same the day after. And on, until we finally find a way out of this mess.”

“Sure,” he replied, dipping his head down in agreement. “But don’t you think this is different? I’ll tell you I don’t want to stand on this wall and slice open another pony standing on the other side. That’s not what we’re here for; that’s not who we are. I don’t doubt that Cotton and Linseed would relish the opportunity, but I won’t.” His voice cracked as he finished up that sentence, and suddenly to Sycamore he seemed much more the young stallion that he was, barely into maturity, fear plain in his eyes. “I won’t,” he said again, softly.

She came back over and caressed him, supporting his shoulder against her ribs while stroking his mane. In truth, she almost wanted to join in with him, at least for a moment, but the situation demanded they stay resolute. “Come on, Fern. I know that feeling too. But this is what we’ve got, and it’s all we’ve got now. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but whatever it is, we’re still going to be doing it together, and we just have to believe that as long as we can hold to that we’ll get through this just fine. Can you at least do that for me?”

He sniffed for a moment, collecting himself, then drew a deep breath and stood up straight again. “Thanks. We’ll look after Pa too. Come on, let’s do a sweep of the wall to see how everypony else is faring.”

She was just turning to go with him when something small and fast-moving whistled past her ear, coming so close that she could feel the wake of its passage. She turned to look after it, and was able to see it embed itself in the wall of the house with a light twang. The arrow looked crude, but it only took Sycamore a second to realize what it meant, and only another second for a stone to hit the bottom of her gut.

Linseed had also been paying attention, and he wasted no time. “TO THE WALLS!” he shouted into the night, instantly rousing every pony on guard. “SOUND THE ALARMS! THE ESTATE IS UNDER ATTACK!”

From the blackness beyond the riverbed, Sycamore heard them coming, what sounded like a whole mob of attackers with their hooves thundering in the dirt. She barely had time to grab her sickle and crouch low before another pair of arrows whistled by, both missing.

Fern had the scythe ready now too. His eyes were wide, his breath coming in quick gasps, but Sycamore had no time to give him another pep talk, as in that instant the mob of unicorns finally came into the light of the lanterns, screaming bloody murder and waving their weapons before them. The battle was on.

Luna’s sleep was troubled, bits and pieces of dreams flowing through her mind whenever she closed her eyes. Canterlot being swallowed by billowing clouds of dust. Herself flying in a great storm that was all lightning and wind but no rain. Celestia standing encircled by fire, the tip of her horn blazing as hot and as bright as the Sun itself. And over all of them Pensive and Two-Tone were laughing at her, but with Discord’s laugh instead of their own. When something shook her awake, she had her sword out in an instant, ready and willing to use it on whatever was out there.

Swift, who was the only other pony standing in the tent, drew back in alarm, his hooves reflexively reaching for his own spear. “It’s just me,” he said earnestly. “Sorry to have woken you.”

It took a moment for her vision to settle, then everything became clear, and she realized what was going on. With a sigh, she slid the sword back into its scabbard. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little on edge. What news is there to report?”

She saw him take a deep breath, and right away she knew that it had something to do with the irregulars. It had to be something important for him to have woken her, and with those unicorns it would never be good news. She steeled herself, but nowhere near enough to deal with what his reply was.

“The irregulars have attacked the estate,” he said, shame clear in his voice. “I would normally have had somepony keep watch over them, but we all needed to rest in preparation for the battle tomorrow, and I thought that surely sentry duty was one thing I could trust them to do. Instead, they managed to sneak away. One of the other companies just alerted us to it.”

Any dimness from her lack of sleep parted from Luna’s eyes right away, replaced by the clarity that only a boiling rage could bring. “Those fools!” she cried, her voice echoing like a thunderclap. “Those blind, stubborn, idiot fools! They’ll only get themselves killed, but first they’ll destroy everything that we came here to save!”

Jumping up off of the ground, Luna quickly grabbed her scabbard with her magic and ran out into the night.

It was still dark, very early in the morning likely, but right away she could hear the sounds of the battle drifting in over the breeze. It was too far away to be much except for a general din, but the sounds of metal-on-metal collisions and war cries echoing through the night were very distinctive. The Guard camp too was in a state of chaos, everypony rousing themselves and running about, all aware that they should be doing something, but for the moment only grabbing weapons and getting into their armour.

Luna took to the skies right away, lighting up her horn as a beacon that everypony in the camp would see. “Pegasi, to me!” she bellowed, in a voice magically amplified to carry over the whole plain. “Companies to your muster points, then march to the river!”

From up in the sky she could see out to where the estate sat in its valley, and it was blazing with light. Enough so that she could see the ponies scrambling about, grappling on the walls, taking cover behind anything they could find. If Two-Tone had tried for his sneak attack, it clearly hadn’t worked.

It took an agonizing minute for her pegasus scouts and officers to assemble. They were lightly armed, but they were professionals, and most importantly they could move fast. As soon as they were together, she took off for the battle, leading them all in a tight V-formation. There wasn’t any wind to contend with, so they were free to make the most of their speed, and it was only a few minutes before the full battle was laid out before them.

The unicorns had attacked across the river, and were now at the wall, grappling with the defenders. It was mostly up-close fighting; only a few of the attackers had ranged weapons and it was just the one pony in the estate with his crossbow.

Seeing everything up close only made Luna angrier. All of her preparation, all of her caution, all of her effort to avoid just this outcome. It had all been squandered, and now down below ponies were dying, fighting each other in this senseless battle for the meager pickings of the harvest.

“We’re going in hot,” she said, making preparations for their dive. “Self-defence only, and nonlethal if possible. If we have to, side with the earth ponies. Two-Tone and his thugs are the rebels as far as I’m concerned.” There were no objections, and so Luna led the charge, coming down with speed on the outside of the estate’s fortifications.

They landed with a great rush of wind, caught in their wings as they came down, enough to push the next rank of the irregulars back from the wall, and also to stun the defenders behind them for a moment. Luna had her sword out, the silver sheen of its edge reflecting the electric crackle of the magic in her eyes. “Cease this attack at once!” she yelled to the assembled crowd.

For an instant, it looked like maybe she had intimidated them, but then Two-Tone appeared at the front, his frayed coat hanging loosely from his shoulders. A streak of dried blood ran down his neck.

“Your Majesty,” he said, looking confused. “See what I told you before? The rebels are disorganized and ill-prepared. We need only to press the attack and overwhelm them with ease.” There was a shout of support from the front rank that stood alongside him, their haphazard equipment looking almost comical if not for their bloodthirsty expressions.

“I will not tolerate insubordination,” she answered, summoning enough magic to burn an electric arc into the ground, a blackened ring about ten feet in front of the irregulars. “If you do not cease this provocation, then you shall be the true rebels, and it shall be you that is put to the blade!”

There was another moment of uncertainty, and then Two-Tone nodded. “You never understood,” he said, the confusion in his voice switching over to loathing and certainty. “You never realized what needed to happen to set things right.” With a sneer he levelled a hoof at her. “It is you who must stand aside, Queen Luna! Stand with us, stand with Equestria, or else stand with these rebel scum and die with them.”

Even though the pegasus was hovering just to her left, this time Luna knew that Swift wasn’t going to stop her. Luna could end this stallion’s miserable existence with enough magic to stop his heart, burn his hair, and leave nothing behind but a smoking pile of bones. And she knew that whatever her duties to Equestria, this pony deserved it. Swift was even giving her a nod, and motioning for the other pegasi to get ready to fight.

But in that instant a crimson rose blossomed from the base of Swift’s skull, the spot where a bolt fired from inside the estate had found its mark. He had time to turn to her, eyes filled with surprise, before collapsing face-first into the dust.

A silence settled over the wall. Then Two-Tone broke it.

“FOR EQUESTRIA!” he yelled, and the unicorns surged forward again, plunging the ground in front of the walls into a furious melee.

When Celestia released her hold on the magic, darkness once again reigned over the old citadel. For her, time had blended into a continuous stream over the course of the past few days, the Sun and the Moon racing each other across the sky, their comings and goings marking the time, but passing by the old alicorn unheeded. Celestia had eyes only for the diagrams in front of her, as she methodically worked through the dozens of weavings required for her spell to function. Her only sleep came as the darkness fully overtook her vision, and she could no longer think clearly. Then, she settled down on the roof for a few hours, before rising once again and getting right back into her practice. As to food and drink, there would be plenty of time for that once Equestria’s fate no longer hung in the balance.

Now, with the last form complete, she was finally ready to handle the real thing. A spell this complex would likely take more than four hours from start to finish, and in that time she could tolerate no distractions. Given the fragility of the magic she would be working with, even an unexpected breeze ruffling the feathers on her wings would be enough to shatter her concentration. Starting all over again would be an hour or two more that she could ill afford.

To the north, far away on the edge of the horizon, she could see a dense collection of lights. She could almost have mistaken them for stars, given how they twinkled. But of course she knew that these lights were far too low on the horizon, and in a second she realized what it must be. Luna had formed an army, and come south. Maybe Pensive had somehow managed to get his law passed, or maybe her sister had had no choice but to press for the harvest to be taken somehow. Regardless, it meant that conflict would be coming soon. Maybe as soon as the next dawn. With luck, she could still be done in time to prevent it.

Celestia focused within herself, steadying her breathing and closing her eyes. First she blocked out the light outside, then by concentrating on her breathing she forgot about the sounds. This was an old trick that she had first learned here in the forest, near to this very spot, and it would prove essential in this moment.

As she continued to count her breaths, she willed her magic into her mind, this time allowing Star Swirl’s and Solaris’s magic too. The whirling tempest that was the King’s might almost shattered her concentration, but Star Swirl held it fast. Subconsciously, Celestia’s magic lifted her up off of the tower’s roof, then formed a bright yellow shell all around her. The magic protected her from all light and sound, and even the touch of the air, so that now she was floating in a dark void, alone with her thoughts, her power, and the two consciousnesses she had taken from the forest.

She called up a memory of the Swirl diagram, lines and loops crossing over themselves in myriad complexity, and focused for now on the first rank. The magic that she would need was out there, like shimmering pools of raw power floating alongside her. She could pull threads of it out, weaving them together into the first intermediate products and then leaving them aside as she moved on to the next step.

Thankfully, Star Swirl needed no instructions on how to help. His azure magic was striped with black where it mixed with Solaris’s, but every time that she reached out into the darkness to form a new thread, his magic was there to support her, wrapping each thread in a protective coating to prevent it from unraveling. It freed up Celestia to focus on the weaving itself, which was plenty enough complexity to occupy all of her attention. Even so, thread by thread, the spell started coming together.

As soon as the unicorns attacked, Luna’s world became a whirling mass of confusion, flying bolts and blades from inside the estate at her back, and the charge of Two-Tone’s unicorns pressing hard from the front. Two more of her pegasi were cut down almost immediately, their bodies trampled in the dust as the attackers ploughed forward without regard, focusing as much on the walls as they did on the Guard.

Luna had her sword out already and with it and her magic she was able to hold her ground, stunning some of her opponents with spells, or else incapacitating them with deft pommel-blows to the skull. Her blade might not have been seeing any use, yet even so every blow was a cut to her own heart. Each fallen pony was another one of her subjects that she had failed.

She had to get out. She could maybe hold her own down at the base of the wall, clearing the attackers out until only Two-Tone stood before her, if that fool would even stand against her all on his own, but she realized it would be a pointless exercise. Right now she needed to get out of this senseless slaughter, find someplace safe and take stock of the situation.

In a spare moment, she flicked her eyes to either side, and realized that in the press of the attack the rest of her guards had been cut off. She couldn’t even catch a glimpse of them to either side. Her heart shuddered to think of what might have happened to them, after they had followed her into this death trap, but she knew that she had no time to fight her way over. They were professionals after all, and could hopefully find the time to withdraw safely and rendezvous with the rest of the army. From here she was going to be on her own.

Luna wrenched a hammer away from the unicorn in front of her with a light twist of her magic, before knocking him off his hooves with a swift kick to the chest. Having bought some space she took off, into the air and over the wall, out of the reach of the ponies that held it now.

Getting her bearings, she could see that any semblance of order in the fight had completely evaporated. Having overcome the wall in several places, the unicorns were now pouring into the estate, and the defenders were falling back into Cotton’s fields in ragged bands. The empty fields of the property were dotted with dozens of running skirmishes, as the attackers fanned out in pursuit, chasing individual earth ponies into the small hills and gullies that covered the landscape.

The only organized defense appeared to be at the estate house. There Cotton had barricaded the doors and stood in front of them wielding a massive ax and bellowing out curses like an enraged bear, and the earth ponies were rallying to him. The pony with the crossbow was still up on the balcony, firing indiscriminately at a variety of targets. Including, it seemed, at her.

He was a decent shot, too, and Luna had to take a quick dive to avoid one of his quarrels. Spying a steep-sided gully that ran between two hills, she dove into it, pressing herself against its side as soon as she got down. It was actually a little quiet here, and that gave Luna an opportunity to steady her racing heart. But it also gave an opportunity for the first pangs of grief to hit home.

For Swift and all the rest of her pegasi, dead or in danger because they had followed her reckless charge. For all of the ponies up above, fighting and dying because she hadn’t found a way to settle their dispute in time. And, she realized, for all Equestria. This was only the first town, only the first instance of what would be the entire autumn, as protests turned to riots, blades were drawn and fires lit, and everything dissolved into the madness that had clearly taken Two-Tone and Cotton both.

It had been her and Celestia’s jobs to make sure that didn’t happen. But wherever her sister was, she hadn’t done anything to help, and all of Luna’s efforts had only made the problem worse.

Her heart ached inside her, but the soldier part of her mind demanded that she stand up and keep going. The battle had been joined, there was no stopping it now. No point trying to save any lives now that both sides of the fight considered her their enemy. But there was always something worth doing. What was the main objective now?

The emptiness in Swift’s eyes as he died was still in her vision, but Luna forced it away, achieving mental clarity with an effort. The objective hadn’t changed, it was the stored grain in the bins on the estate’s far side. Nopony was minding after it right now, and there was still the chance that Two-Tone decided to try fire. If she could secure the grain until the rest of the army arrived, then they would at least be able to load it up and move on.

She took a deep breath, then peeked up over the gully’s edge to get her bearings. She couldn’t see much over the hills, but luckily the bins were in sight, a long row of stooped wooden sheds, dark and deserted. The distance from her hiding spot to them was several hundred yards, and the ground was mostly flat, dotted only by the occasional tool shed or thicket of gnarled, bone-dry trees. Luckily for her, though, it was also dark, so if she moved quietly she would be virtually undetectable. Her childhood experiences back in Eridian were again going to prove useful here. Picking one of the small sheds, maybe fifty yards away, she made her move.

With her wings to aid her, Luna barely even kicked up any dirt, and in thirty seconds she was pressed up against the side of the little building, scanning ahead for threats and picking out her next destination.

Here, the sounds of the battle were closer, but still far enough away to be mostly indistinct. And the countryside in front of her was still empty.

Luna was about to move again when she heard something. It might have been a sneeze or a cough or just a loud exhalation, but it had been somepony, and it had come from behind the door at her back. Instantly she lifted the latch with her magic and stepped over the threshold, sword extended and at the ready.

The space inside the shed was tiny, crowded with fence posts, spools of wire, and other farming implements. Yet wedged in among all of that were two earth ponies, a mare and a stallion, both right on the cusp of maturity. It looked like it had been him who had coughed, and now his eyes were wide and quivering, fixated on the point of her sword. The mare too looked terrified, but she did also have a sharp sickle on her belt.

“Please put down the weapon, child,” she said, doing her best not to sound cold and knowing that she was failing miserably. Neither of them looked particularly dangerous, and were probably hiding in here rather than waiting in ambush. Maybe she had actually found two ponies on this estate who weren’t trying to kill her. And that meant that maybe she could avoid having to harm them as well.

The young mare undid the sickle from its loop, moving deliberately, never taking her eyes off of Luna. When she tossed it into one of the room’s far corners, Luna let her own blade drop.

“Peace,” the Queen said with a small sense of relief. “I have no quarrel with you if you have none with me. Who are you children, and what are you doing in this wretched fight?”

Though there was no longer a sword between them, the fear in the young stallion’s eyes had only relaxed a little bit. “I’m Fern,” he said in a trembling voice, “and this here is Sycamore, my sister. We were, uh, up on the wall when this whole thing started.”

Sycamore picked up the narrative right away. “We were going to fight, alongside the rest of the town. There was nothing else to do. But when the attack came…it was all so fast.” There was almost a quiver in her eyes, in her whole body really. When Sycamore started again, her voice was shaking. “There was so much blood, flying arrows all around. Ponies left and right dropping. We couldn’t stand it. So we ran to find some shelter.”

Fern shuddered. “It must be over, though, right? You’re just here to clean up the stragglers? To take us prisoner, probably.” It didn’t look like he thought that would be a bad thing to have happen.

Kneeling down as best as she could in the cramped space, Luna reached out a hoof, gently placing it on Fern’s shoulder. He recoiled for a second, then settled down. “I’m sorry,” Luna said. “This ordeal isn’t over yet. But as long as the two of you are with me, I promise that nothing will happen to either of you.”

“Wait, you’re the Queen, aren’t you?” Sycamore blurted out, and she jerked back as if from a poisonous spider. “I saw you this afternoon. Shouldn’t you be commanding the attack? What are you doing here?”

Luna had to sigh. It was a question with a lot of weight behind it, much more than young Sycamore could have guessed. She had been asking it of herself for nearly a week now, ever since Celestia had disappeared and left her to deal with this crisis on her own. And even now she truly had no answer for it.

“I’m trying to stop this situation from getting any worse,” she said, as resolute as she could. “This attack had nothing to do with me, and it happened against my orders. But I still want to do my best to try putting things right. And if the two of you want to survive, then your best bet is to come with me. This is a fine shelter, but it’s no guarantee that you’ll make it through.”

Fern gulped, and pushed himself unsteadily up onto his knees. “Please,” he said, voice cracking as he spoke. “I just want to see the Sun rise again. I never knew that it was going to be anything like this. We’ll surely come with you, if it means we make it through this in one piece.” He looked over at Sycamore, and his sister voiced no objection to that.

Luna nodded once. “Then Sycamore, you can pick up that sickle again. I hope you won’t have to use it, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’m heading for the bins on the far side of the estate. We’ll secure them, and when the Guard arrives, which should happen in half an hour or so, they’ll be able to quell the situation. And don’t worry,” she said, seeing the worry in their expressions as soon as she mentioned the Guard. “I promise that nothing will happen to either of you. You are my subjects just as much as they are, and it’s my duty to make sure that nothing can hurt you. Now come on. It’s only a few hundred yards more.”

A wavering look passed between them, but Fern and Sycamore seemed to agree with the course of action, and they both got to their hooves. Now that they were standing, Luna could see that Fern had a streak of dried blood across the left side of his body, the product of a light nick from earlier in the night. It looked like it had healed, but maybe that accounted for some of his unsteadiness. “Are you doing okay, son?”

He flashed her an unsteady grin. “I don’t believe that I’ve had a single worse day in my whole life. But I can stand, don’t worry.” He was doing an admirable job of putting up a bold front, so Luna gave him an affirming pat on the shoulder.

“Okay, I hope that the two of you can move silent and quick,” she said, listening on the inside of the door to be sure that nopony was on the other side waiting to ambush them. “Follow after me, keep quiet, and don’t miss a step.” Getting a single nod from each of them, Luna silently opened the door and ran off into the night. Unfortunately now she couldn’t use her wings to assist her, or else she would leave Fern and Sycamore far behind.

A quick look back revealed that the two of them were keeping the pace just fine, though. Fern stumbled once over a bump in the ground, but righted himself quickly. As she had planned, the group made quick dashes between the small points of cover on their way over to the bins, and the structures loomed larger in front of them every time that they stopped.

There was a row of twelve of them, each as big as a large shed, several hundred square feet, and enough to hold more than a hundred sacks of seed. Luna wondered if maybe Cotton had stationed guards inside some of them, to ambush any attackers, but Sycamore told her that wasn’t the case.

“We barely had enough ponies to keep the walls protected,” the young earth pony said at their last stop. “Plus that strategy sounds a little advanced for Cotton to have come up with. He’s not really the tactical type.”

Taking a look back the other way, Luna could see that the fight in front of the estate house seemed to have died down, though it was far enough away now that she couldn’t tell which side had come out on top. By the time that the rest of the Guard did show up, it might just be a matter of mopping up the survivors and securing the grain. Yet even so she knew that they had to be careful. Letting her guard down was what had gotten her into this mess to start with.

“Stay behind me,” she told the others cautiously, “and if you do see anything then give me a shout. Sycamore, do you know if all of the bins are full?”

“Hardly,” the young mare replied. “At most half-full. But I think those two,” she indicated the end of the row that was nearest to the estate house, “are completely empty. So long as nothing got moved after this afternoon, and I can’t imagine how anypony would have had the time.”

Luna still gave the structures a quick look. With the chaos of the battle behind them, and now mostly quiet, the silence in this area of the estate was a little unnerving. A few of the bins had their doors open, probably left there hastily as preparations for the fight had started, and now they swayed slowly in the almost imperceptible breeze. Beyond them, the doorways were only rectangles of sheer blackness, danger potentially lurking therein. Yet Luna had to know that the grain was safe.

“Wait here,” she said to the others, motioning them to lie low. “Stay quiet, unless something happens. Then yell. I’ll only be gone a moment.” She drew her sword again, and started warily making her way over. She still couldn’t risk any light, so would have to rely on quick instincts if anypony did try to get the drop on her. Inside the bin ahead, everything seemed still, and for the first time the dusty smell of the grain made it to her nostrils. Another step, over the threshold, and Luna decided that she could risk some light now.

In a single second, she lit up her horn and took the final few steps through the doorway, taking in the whole interior at once. A pile of sacks peculiarly leaning against a wall in the far corner made her momentarily start, but otherwise there was nopony else in the bin. Just about sixty sacks of harvested grain, enough to feed a few families for the winter, maybe. Not much, but more than she had getting into the town. If all of the other bins had this much, then at least that would be something.

Then she heard Sycamore shout, and Luna was back outside in an instant. She left her light on, the better to assess whatever new danger this was, so the area outside of the bins was lit up in a soft purple brilliance as soon as she stepped outside, enough to make Sycamore, Fern, and the single newcomer squint. But Luna’s heart dropped as soon as she took in the scene. Fern was standing only a couple of paces to her left, alone but terrified once again. And Sycamore was in front of him, with Two-Tone standing behind her, a devilish grin upon his face and a knife held tight to the earth pony’s throat.

“Not a step more, Luna!” he cried, pressing the metal up against the young mare’s skin. “And none of the fancy business either. If I see a single spark, this young lady here gets what’s coming to her first.”

“Why are you doing this?” Fern asked in a quivering shout. “If you want our grain, it’s over there. But let my sister go!”

Two-Tone spat over Sycamore’s shoulder, a lump of blood and spittle. Though most of his body wasn’t visible, Luna could spy a deep gash beneath his left ear, not bleeding but not looking healthy either. “There’s still an enemy here to deal with,” Two-Tone sneered, a look of madness in his eyes, “and she’s already tried to kill me twice. I think that I’ll appreciate this insurance. Once the rest of my force arrives, we’ll secure the grain, so that the Guard can inventory it in the morning.”

Luna almost gasped. Even now, this fool still thought that he was doing what was right for Equestria. He probably assumed that there would be a medal waiting for him once the Guard got back to Canterlot.

“It’s over,” she said, keeping her voice even. Sycamore’s wide-open eyes were on her, but she kept her gaze firmly on Two-Tone. “You and your unicorns have killed innocents, against my direct orders. The Guard is on its way, and when they get here your force will be arrested, and you will be thrown into the dungeons, to join Senator Prose and everypony else who worked to start this pointless fight.”

His grin didn’t waver. “You’re wrong. We are the only ones willing to do what is necessary to protect innocent unicorn lives. When they make it through this winter, they’ll know who to thank. We only need to wait for the rest of my force to get here.”

He was interrupted then by a stout, gravelly twang that came from over the hilltop. “How much of a force do you have left, you stinking city slicker?” With a tromp from his big hooves, Cotton strode into the light, with Linseed tight by his side and perhaps a dozen other earth ponies behind him. Not one of them hadn’t sustained some sort of injury, but in Cotton’s case the cuts and bruises seemed relatively minor, and he was still hefting his broad ax. Even Linseed still had a bolt loaded and ready in his crossbow, and of course he had it aimed right at Two-Tone’s head.

“Face it, you ragged vermin,” the farmer said. “This fight is over. Your kind are all either dead or beating for the hills. And you’ll be next if you don’t give up your hold on that poor young mare.”

“And you’ll definitely let me live then?” Two-Tone replied, a frantic edge in his voice as he backed away, keeping all of them in his vision. “Not a step more, I said!” A drop of blood oozed out from Sycamore’s skin, drawn forth from a whisper-cut of the blade. “Don’t think I won’t do it!”

Luna quickly scanned the scene, hoping to find a way out. There were maybe thirty paces of separation between Two-Tone and the rest of the group, more than enough distance for his knife to hit home before any attack could get to him, unless maybe Linseed risked taking the shot.

Sycamore’s pleading eyes were on her, full of fear, but also a damnation that stung Luna to her core. Not even twenty minutes ago she had promised that no harm would come to her two charges, yet now, once again, she was faced with the possibility of breaking that promise, and there seemed to be no way out.

Then, without any warning, the Sun peeked over the far horizon, and the estate was suddenly lit up in brilliant golden light.

In the midst of that sunlight a single pony was framed, wings stretched wide as if to catch the light behind her, and horn radiant as the dawn itself. Indeed, it was a fair question whether it was Celestia or the Sun which was providing more of the illumination for this dawn. The alicorn’s entire body was lit up as with radiant flame, a halo of pure magic that lifted her heart and her mind far into the sky, beyond mortality and into the great expanse of the space beyond.

Surveying the scene that the light brought to her eyes, though, Celestia’s heart couldn’t help but sink back to Earth at least a little. Bodies were littered around the estate, many fallen in the fields, by the house, and on the walls. Their blood still ran fresh, bright as fire in the sunlight, all the more pronounced against the dead brown of the ground. They were the ones that she had been too late to save, but she would make sure that they were properly remembered. Now was the time to stop the slaughter, and bring her plan to its final fruition.

“Equestria!” she shouted out into the sky, feeling the attention not just of the ponies on the field below, with their faces upturned and their forelegs shielding their eyes from her glare, but also the attention of the whole land. For every unicorn, pegasus and earth pony in Equestria was bound to her through her spell now, so they would all hear her, even if most of them could only see a bright flare in the eastern sky.

“The Sun is rising!” she declared. “Hope comes again. Though yesterday our fellowship was splintered, today our nation is reborn in a new form, a stronger union, an unbreakable harmony. No longer shall we fight each other for the simple necessities of life, today we shall work together as one nation, so that tomorrow we can all arise with reassurance that we will indeed see tomorrow again!

“Three hundred years ago, the return of the Sun’s light brought hope and determination to end Discord’s darkness. In that time, our divisions almost ended Equestria before it had a chance to start again. But it was together that we saw the way to that bright dawn. Today, I have brought a new unity, a bond to remind us that we are all sealed to each other, surviving and thriving, not as earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi, but together! As Equestrians! And on this morning, you may look upon yourselves, and indeed even upon me, and see the marks that serve as reminders of this seal. We all have our part to play, if we wish to see the next dawn. I bid thee come with me, into a new Equestria, better and bolder than ever was before!”

Her heart soared into that final declaration, and on the field before her she could see the signs of her magic doing its work, as the new cutie marks appeared on each of the ponies there. Even Luna, who had a lovely crescent Moon to match her own rising Sun. The ponies down in the fields were looking about with wonder, processing what they had heard with what they were seeing, and Celestia willed the sombre setting to lift, and for the magic to bring them all together.

Instead, though, she found it growing dark, the very Sun behind her suddenly occluded in swirling mists. For an instant, confusion was replaced by rage. Had she lost control of Solaris’s magic? Then she realized what was happening, and the first raindrop that struck her head brought with it a peal of laughter, pent-up emotions all erupting forth. All at once the sky over Southoofton was filled with rain clouds, and a gentle shower began to fall. The drought was over.

Chapter 39: Wind's Choice

“I suppose there comes a time in our lives where we all must make a choice, and from that day on our course is set. The issue is that we never know which choice that is.”

Spry Acorn

That previous afternoon, as Sycamore and Fern had made their walk over to Cotton’s, and Luna had marched out of Canterlot with her army, Wind was once again flying in the storm, answering its every prompt, stepping and turning along with its music. It was still a wondrous experience even after some practice, but this time Wind was thinking too, trying to keep his mind clear. For he knew this song well, and though it was joyous and frenetic in its pace, it ended with the rainbow, which was not what he wanted. The ponies down below needed rain, a gentle shower without the lightning and thunder that this song brought with it. So obviously he just needed a different song.

As he moved, Wind once again ran the phrases of the melody through his head, wondering where he could introduce new motifs that could change the purpose of the magic. A rainbow required moisture to appear anyway, so it stood to reason that the music for rain on its own was probably pretty close.

At the top of one of the bars, he tried ducking left when he knew that the song called for him to go right. The winds followed along agreeably enough, taking the diversion in stride and pushing him on into the melody anyway. When he tried diverting again, this time he could feel them pushing back. He knew that if he pressed on, he would find himself back in the storm just as he had been a month ago, unmoored and tossed about by the atmosphere’s power, unable to control them as the magic dissipated around him.

The winds could deal with a little improvisation, and he had already discovered that the occasional flourish or changed note could result in minor differences in the end result, like a double rainbow instead of a single. But always just a rainbow, and if he tried to buck the winds too hard, they would cast him aside like a toy.

He took the song through to its completion, ending up with a faint arch that glistened only subtly in the afternoon sky.

On the cloud bank just beneath him, Spry and Shine were laid out. Tin had stuck around all night to offer suggestions, but had left at dawn to report at the fields. The Master’s son was sitting next to a stack of scrolls, history that he had discreetly borrowed from the Academy library. Shine had one unfurled in front of her too, but instead of looking at it she was gazing up into the sky, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“It’s no use,” Wind said tiredly as he landed in between them. His eyes almost closed on him right there, and he swayed for a moment before righting himself again.

“Hey, hey, watch yourself!” Shine cried, getting up to catch him on the shoulder and hold him steady. “You’ve been at this for hours, last night and today. We all want to figure this out, but maybe you should take a rest now. We can keep reading while you sleep.”

Taking a look over at her, Wind saw that her eyelids were drooping down just as much and shook his head. “We’ve all been up all night, so I’m sure that you’d be joining me soon enough. But I’m not stopping now.” He gave his head a shake, the unkempt curls of his mane ruffling with the motion. “This should be so easy! We’d got the hard part taken care of, right? I mean it’s rain, this shouldn’t be complicated.”

Spry furled his scroll. “I would have thought so too,” he said, stifling a yawn for his own part. “But I guess not. Maybe it isn’t just a variation. Maybe you actually do need something totally different.”

“It can’t be,” Wind replied, still struggling to keep his eyes open. “I can feel the moisture in the air when I’m up there flying. Even if it’s not a minor variation, it’s got to be at least close to what we’re doing now. What do the scrolls say?”

“Nothing,” Spry said back, holding the scroll up to illustrate his point. “It’s almost a little bizarre. Windcasting was one of the most esteemed vocations a pegasus could aspire to, yet if they kept any records of how it worked, I haven’t been able to find them. Everything must have been an oral tradition.”

“An oral tradition that got lost in the years of Discord’s reign,” Wind mused, feeling his hopes hit a proverbial wall. “What’s in all those papers if it isn’t spell-casting instructions anyway?”

“Mostly calendars,” Spry admitted. “Going back quite a while in fact. Would you like to know the day winter started in the twenty-third year of Master Cumulus II’s time atop the Council? There’s considerations of all sorts in here about when to create different kinds of weather, but absolutely nothing about how. It seems like it might have been just a stroke of luck that you happened to find the rainbow spell.”

Wind’s eyes almost closed again, before he gave his tongue a quick bite to jolt himself awake. “Well, where’s my luck now? We can’t afford to lose time on this. Every day that goes by increases the chance that I’ll come back only to find Southoofton a burned-out husk of a town, and everypony there either dead or gone.”

“Maybe just take a shot in the dark?” Shine offered drowsily from beside them. She had settled down to rest her head on her forelegs, only barely still awake. “You can hardly be less successful than you’ve been so far…”

Spry shrugged his shoulders. “Honestly, I can’t think of anything better to do. Maybe just listen and the winds should tell you.”

“May as well, I guess,” he said idly. Wind didn’t think so, but he got himself up into the air anyway. The winds had a natural beat to them, for sure, but that was only a foundation. If all that he did was follow along, he could maybe turn it into a nice breeze, but nothing more. It was mixing those elements with something he put in himself that got the spells started, of that he was sure.

As soon as he got above the clouds, the whispers of the winds were there to meet him, simple and light. Most days he would have found it relaxing, but today he almost wanted to yell at them. What was he missing? He closed his eyes to try examining the rhythm even deeper, but still all that he heard was the gentle, smooth pulse of each gust, one over top of the other, in and out, in and out, carrying him away…

“WIND!”

The shout jolted him awake, and immediately Wind realized that somepony had caught him just as he had fallen. “Uh, thanks, Spry,” he started to say, but when he opened his eyes it wasn’t his friend’s face on the other side. It was his father’s. But he couldn’t stay awake any longer.

When Wind woke up, he found himself in darkness. For the briefest of moments, he was reminded of Sycamore’s house down on the plains, but the sight of his old things, stacked and boxed around the periphery of the cloud-walls, made the truth clear. The window to his room was open, and through it he could see the Moon bright in the sky. It was waning now, but plenty full enough to provide some light. He had lost some precious hours, but at least he had his thoughts in order now. Getting out of bed, he made his way over to the window, but then the door opened behind him.

“He’s awake, dear,” Snow said from the doorway, and Wind could hear what sounded like cutlery being arranged on the lower floor, presumably by his mother. Snow’s expression was hard to read, somewhere between relief and irritation. The older stallion took a step into the room. “Would you mind having a seat please, son?”

Wind considered jumping out of the window anyway, but something told him that wouldn’t go well. Instead he just nodded and settled back down onto the bed.

Indeed it was his father who sat down onto the windowsill. Snow took off his spectacles and polished them for a moment, and the silence between them was palpable. Then, once the glasses were clean, he raised his head again. “I don’t want to be cross with you, Wind,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Despite the words, Wind knew that his father was plenty mad. The undertone in his voice said it all.

“It’s only your second day back in the city,” Snow continued, “and so your mother and I are still very relieved just at the sight of you. But taking off like that, without a word, without any notice…” There was a moment of silence, and then he took a breath and let it out slowly. “It was very irresponsible, son. This morning, your mother and I were right back where we had started, thinking that we had lost you all over again. We looked all over the city, all over again. And then we find you, out in the middle of nowhere, about to drop from exhaustion, all of the way to the surface again. I don’t think you would have been lucky enough to survive it a second time, either. What under the stars did you think you were doing?”

Wind knew that he had no choice except to tell them the whole story now. He wasn’t sure exactly how his parents would take it. Maybe they would understand, just as his friends had, and then they would all be supportive of him and even know a thing or two about how to solve the puzzle of making rain. Or, maybe they would pay about as much attention this time as they had the first time he had told it to them, before moving on to thinking about his upcoming Choosing and the next item on their own agendas. But they had a right to know, and there was nothing to do now except tell them.

“It’s kind of a long story, Dad,” he started, somewhat cautiously. His father looked ready to listen, but just then there came a bustle at the doorway.

“Well, then I’m afraid it’s going to have to wait!” his mother said insistently, leaning over the threshold to give him a discerning look-over. “Tomorrow afternoon is your Choosing, and it’s midnight already! We have so much planning to do still, with colours and music, who’s going to sit where at the reception, my, who we even invite to the reception! We’re still disappointed in you for running off,” she said, turning to give Snow a quick nod, “but for now that will all have to wait. Why, it’s going to be a rush job like you wouldn’t believe getting this all together in time.”

Snow nodded, looking a tad less angry. “There is that to consider also. Though we’d both love to hear the whole story later, we’ve got to pick out shirts and ties now.”

He had eased himself up off of the windowsill and nodded to Sun when Wind cleared his throat. “I… I can’t,” he said, quietly but still resolute. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t right now.”

His father took one more step and then stopped. “Excuse me?” Snow asked.

“I said I can’t,” Wind said once more. He wondered if maybe now his father would let the anger out, but he was willing to bear it if so. He didn’t have time for anything else right now except getting back to the surface and saving Sycamore.

In fact it was his mother who answered first. “I’m sorry it had to be so quick, Wind,” she said, the gentle concern clear in her eyes. “You’ve only been back two days and now all of a sudden the biggest day of your life is happening? It’s not surprising to be a bit overwhelmed.”

“We asked the Council if the ceremony could maybe be delayed to give you some more time to adjust,” Snow added. “But I’m afraid that they can't change anything. Your eighteenth birthday is the day that you Choose, and it’s been that way for centuries. It was for me, and it was for your mother, and it will be for all of your friends too. Now, we’ll be here for you the whole way—”

“No, that’s not what I meant!” Wind interrupted. “I- I wish that I could explain this better for you but I don’t have time!" Snow looked like he was about to cut in again, so Wind went on right away, as earnestly as he could. "Dad, I'm a Windcaster. Now, I don't know everything that means, but I do know that it means there are ponies on the ground that only I can help, and that if I don't act fast, they're going to die!”

He turned to his mother. “I wish that I could be there, I swear,” he said, and it looked to him like Sun maybe understood. “But I just can't. This is more important.”

“More important!?” Snow finally snapped, the edge in his voice breaking to reveal the frothing anger underneath. “Tomorrow is literally the most important day of your life! You don't get the choice to avoid it! There is no flying away from it this time! This is about your duty, your duty to our traditions and our way of life as a tribe! This is the day you finally get your head out of the clouds, come back down to us, and accept that you need to be an adult!”

“That’s not what’s happening!” Wind yelled, now up off of the bed. “If you would just listen to me for a moment-”

“I don’t care what you have to say!” Snow thundered, a vein pulsing in his neck. “I don't want to hear about the damn surface! You are a pegasus, and you have a duty to this city, before anything else! Do you have any idea the effort that your mother and I have put into this? Not just your Choosing today, but your whole life, we have tried to prepare you to be a proper adult in this tribe! Because that was our duty. Eighteen years of that thankless effort culminates today, and forgive me for expecting that by now you would understand what that means!”

His ears drawn back, Wind stepped right up to his father’s face. “Well I’m sorry then, Dad! I’m sorry that I’m not going to be able to live up to those duties. I’m sorry that I’m not going to be able to be a proper member of the tribe. I’m sorry that I’m not going to be able to have a nice, respectable, normal profession, and sit with you and Mom for nice family portraits on Festival Day. I’m sorry, but that’s not who I am! I can’t be the son you want me to be.”

His father’s ears were drawn back too, and from the wild look in his eyes, Wind wondered for a moment if Snow was about to strike him. But then his mother cut in from the doorway, her voice so unexpectedly calm in the tension that she instantly drew both of their gazes.

“Snow,” she said simply, the word a clear rebuke. On hearing it, the older stallion drew back suddenly as if the word had struck him forcefully on the cheek. Sun came into the room and took Wind around the shoulder with her wing. “You seriously mean all of that?” she asked, her eyes pleading for him to say no.

Wind nodded, letting out a deep breath. He’d said it all in the passion of the moment, the words coming out before he’d had a chance to think, but he knew that he had meant all of them.

“Yeah,” he said, still tense. “I guess I’ve known for a while.” He looked back over at his father, still standing by the windowsill. “I really am sorry, but I do understand duty. Because out there, down on the surface, there’s a whole town that needs me. Because without my help they might all die. And I can’t let that happen. So if I have to make a choice today, then that’s what I’m going to choose.”

There was a long silence in the house, as Wind and Snow held each other’s stares and Sun stood between them. Outside, the stars twinkled and Cloudsdale slumbered, blissfully unaware.

Finally, his father took a deep breath, and let it out in a big sigh. His eyebrows came back up, his ears came back upright, and he was once again back to himself. “I’m sorry too then,” he said. “I wish we could have had a better day together. I wish we could have had a nice afternoon, and a soiree after with your friends and your favourite music.”

“There will be one,” Wind replied, fully letting go of his own anger now that the tension had passed. “When I get back, we’ll have the grandest party Cloudsdale has ever seen. Mom can put me in whatever uncomfortable hat she wants, and I’ll even sit still the whole evening. And we’ll sing Raindrops On A Roof until the Sun shines again in the morning. It won’t be today, but trust me, that day will come.”

His Dad nodded, and then all of a sudden he stepped forward to catch Wind in a big hug, which his mother joined immediately. Wind had meant everything that he had said, but none of it meant that either of his parents were bad ponies. They just wanted what they thought was best for him, and in time they would understand, even if they didn’t right now.

His father held him tight for a moment, then released the embrace. “I know, son, I know,” he said. “But we can still have the one ceremony at least. Dear, can you give us a moment?”

His mother stepped away, leaving the two of them standing face-to-face. “Happy birthday, Wind,” Snow said, his voice filled with pride. Then he flexed his forelegs and jumped into a low hover, stretching his wings out to their full extent and catching the breeze from the open window, the downdraft strong enough to ruffle Wind’s feathers.

Wind took a step back in confusion, and then suddenly he realized what was happening, and even in spite of everything, he couldn’t resist a wide grin breaking out across his features.

“Wind Swept,” Snow declared, his voice now crisp and authoritative, the voice of a Councilor of Cloudsdale addressing a public gathering. “As a Councilor of Cloudsdale, on behalf of the tribe of the pegasi I accept your Choice. May the title you have Chosen forever be affixed to your name, and may you wear it with pride! Today you are a pegasus, as full as any other.”

Sun applauded briskly from the doorway, though the sound of hooves on cloud was quite a muted one. Still, the pride in her smile was clear. “Go on, then,” she said. “I’m sure that whatever you do you’ll make us proud.”

He nodded to her, then gave his father one last look, and Snow nodded back, maybe with a little touch of silver at the corner of his eyes. So Wind leaped through the open window and back out into the night, feeling a weight off of his heart that he hadn’t even known was there. Suddenly even the puzzle of the song for rain seemed like only a trifling thing, compared to the renewed fire at his core, especially now that he’d had a proper sleep. In fact…

The realization hit him so hard that he felt as if he had flown into a cloud-brick wall. It couldn’t be so simple. Yet Wind instinctively knew that it was. He turned around and raced back to his window, getting there just as his father was in the process of shutting the door.

“Dad!” he cried out. “I know that this is going to sound ridiculous, but could you sing me Raindrops On A Roof right now?”

The speed at which Snow’s eyebrows shot up said he definitely thought it sounded ridiculous. “I thought you didn’t have time for frivolities and ceremony?”

“This is different,” he said, excitement making it hard not to trip over the words. “I need you to sing it loud, so that I can hear it out in the sky.”

“Loud? But it’s the middle of the night! The whole neighbourhood will hear.”

Waving his father over to the window, Wind lifted himself back up into the sky. He knew a bit of the song by heart, but having accompanying music would make the whole thing a lot easier. Below, Snow was at the window now, but he still looked uncertain.

“Come on, Dad!” Wind yelled, not caring one bit about his volume. “I’ll apologize later if I have to but trust me! Loud is what I need right now.”

That seemed to make his father’s mind up. Snow planted his hooves and straightened his neck, and it was only a moment before he was into the first verse, the smooth bass tone of his voice drawing out the song’s hypnotic, pulsing rhythm. Raindrops had nowhere near the tempo as Dance of the Reaper, but Wind could still feel the music and the winds working together, the steps to the dance coming together in his mind, and as soon as he started he knew that he was right.

They’d looked through the scrolls searching for arcane notation and cryptic verses like a unicorn spell. But why would the Windcasters write down a dance in math or in words? No wonder he’d found the rainbow spell in a folk tune on the surface, the magic had been all around them from the start, encoded into the musical traditions of the tribes that had made the most use of the weather.

Snow must have been able to see the moisture that was radiating out from Wind’s wings, and the cloud-bank that was now forming out of nowhere over the centre of the city, because he found a new level of volume and harmony for the song. This time there was no lightning or thunder for Wind to manage, just a simple bank of rain, its contours outlined in the steady up and down of the pulse of the music.

When it ended, he was soaked right to the scalp by the water in the air, and probably should have been freezing cold, but the elation he was feeling made all of that amount to nothing.

Spread out over this section of the city was now a wide swath of clouds, grey and packed with rain, but stable, and ready for transport to the destination that needed them. And he knew what that destination was. All of this would be a little much for him to move alone, though. Then he heard a songbird’s voice from just over his shoulder.

“Wind, you did it!” Shine cried out, before grabbing him by the midsection and scooping him up into an embrace.

“Wait,” he said, elation replaced with confusion. “What are you doing here, Shine?”

She just laughed. “The whole city probably heard that song just now, and even if they didn’t, the sight of a rainstorm suddenly forming out of nowhere is hard to miss. Now come on! I brought you some wing-ponies.” She turned, and right behind them Wind saw Tin and Spry also hovering there, wonderment writ large across their eyes.

“Looks like you got it,” Spry said, offering him a simple nod.

“And how!” Tin affirmed. “Now let’s go! These clouds have someplace to be, right?”

Wind remembered Sycamore, out there in the world and still in danger. They couldn’t be late, not now, not after all of this. There still wasn’t a moment to lose.

“You’re right they do,” he said, determined once again. “Before dawn, if we can make it.”

The sky was dark out over Southoofton, but Wind remembered the way, and his group took it as fast as they could while keeping the rain clouds all together. The sounds of the battle reached them first, a chorus of shouts and cries borne by the wind, the clash of steel and the wails of those drawing their last breath. It was the worst possible sound to hear, but Wind knew that he couldn’t be too late. He’d never be able to live with himself if he was. One look from his friends told him that they understood. They could handle the rain from here; he had to go after Sycamore.

So Wind broke away from them and got himself up to top speed, over the hillocks and clutches of dying trees that dotted the countryside. He instinctively headed for the house that he knew, but drew up short when he saw that the lights and the action were all clustered around Cotton’s estate.

The sight was sickening. Bodies littered the wall; earth ponies and unicorns alike lay discarded like rag dolls all over the place, and the blood was still running fresh. He tried to pay them no mind as he flew over, searching for signs of life. But it was hard not to recognize the ponies that he had known in amongst the carnage, each one a life unnecessarily lost, and another reminder that his story could still have a sad ending if he didn’t move fast.

“Sycamore!” he called out desperately, his voice carrying over the estate, but there was no answer. “Fern! Sycamore!” His cries dissipated in the empty air, hanging over a battle that he now realized was finished up for the night, its hostilities concluded and the dead all fallen. But the night was too dark for him to see the whole estate, so he would have to search it. He’d scour every inch if he had to.

Then, suddenly, the eastern horizon lit up with the fire of dawn, bathing the entire scene in golden light. Wind heard an angelic voice in his head, but he wasn’t paying attention.

With the whole property illuminated, he could make out a group of ponies near the far wall, next to the long row of bins that Cotton kept there. There were maybe a dozen of them in total, a few bunched together, and four others off on their own. They were all standing, rapt by the dawn, but in the middle of them Wind saw her: Sycamore, blood on her mane and a knife to her throat, her mouth agape and her eyes searching everywhere for a way out.

He wasted no time, dropping into a sharp dive and pulling his wings back to increase his speed. The unicorn holding the knife wasn’t looking in his direction, and Wind wasn’t about to give him any warning. Overhead, the light dissipated into a soft grey twilight, and dimly Wind realized that his friends had gotten the clouds into position.

He arrived at the same time as the rain, and hit square in the back of his target, knocking both Sycamore and the knife free. The two of them tumbled down into the dust, rolling a few revolutions, until Wind found himself looking up into a fearsome muzzle, a pair of wild eyes set over a deep gash that was caked with dried blood.

The sudden blow to the back seemingly hadn’t knocked the unicorn out of his senses, and Wind wondered if he was about to be gored on a horn for his trouble. But then, in a flash, his adversary was enveloped in a shroud of purple magic and lifted up into the air, his hooves clawing for purchase while the rain soaked the inky black of his mane to his scalp.

Allowing himself one deep breath, Wind took in the scene. The gaggle of earth ponies he had seen on approach was Cotton and the rest of his clan, and they were all now looking up at the sky as if it had started raining apple juice, the big droplets drenching their manes and their coveralls.

His saviour was a purple alicorn that he’d never seen before, an ornate scabbard at her side and a fine sword held aloft with her magic. She was keeping the mad unicorn well in hoof, but for her own part seemed equally amazed at the turn of events. That only left Fern, also gasping in wonderment and relief, and Sycamore, who was still on the ground, her mane spread out around her like a shining halo.

At once he was by her side, one hoof reflexively to her shoulder. Her eyes were closed and for one heart-wrenching instant Wind assumed the worst. But with the impact of one gentle raindrop upon her eyelids they came open, unfocused at first before instantly snapping onto him.

“W… Wind?” she whispered.

“Sycamore,” he said back, offering her a gentle smile, brightness rising in his heart as he saw her get her bearings and push herself up onto her knees.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He winked. “What can I say? I guess I had one more stupid mistake left in me.”

Her laugh finally was too much for him, and he had to join her, the two of them coming together for a tender embrace as the rain fell all around them, settling the dust for the first time in years. Wind might not have been in Cloudsdale anymore, but with her here, in this moment, he knew that he was home, and that he never wanted to leave again.

Finally, Sycamore released her hold on him. Looking around, they took in the entirety of the estate, the destruction of the night’s battle, of course, but now the peace of the morning. Cotton and the rest of the farmers had broken out of their trance now, and were excitedly clapping each other on the back, shaking hooves and whooping for joy.

“I guess you got us the rain,” Sycamore said, turning back to him with a knowing smile. “Just like a pegasus is supposed to.”

“Too late for this year’s crop,” he returned, smiling just as brightly. “But still just in time, I think.”

“I guess I owe you then.”

He wrapped one of his wings around her shoulders, hugging her tight once more. “There is nothing to be paid. Being here is good enough.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” she whispered into his ear. “Because I believe I promised you a dance.”

Wind had forgotten all about that. But he let her guide him up onto his hooves, as the rain fell all around them and spread its mirth over the estate, the fear and anger of the night replaced with laughter and song.

It wasn’t a frenetic dance like the Dance of the Reaper, nor a sorrowful one like Jupiter’s Search. The dance for rain was gentle and flowing, easy steps across open ground, with just a light flutter of wind to keep things interesting. And it wasn’t surprising at all to Wind that they both knew all of the steps by heart.

Chapter 40: The Cutie Mark Spell

“On that day in Southoofton, our blades were turned upon each other. If ever it happens again, it will be because I have failed as your ruler.”

High Princess Celestia, upon her accession

The rain lasted for the whole morning in Southoofton, only clearing when the Sun reached its zenith, and revealing a brilliant rainbow stretching far across the horizon.

The sight of it redoubled the sudden good cheer that had swept through the town, as soldiers and farmers alike revelled in the countryside. Ponies that only hours ago would have fought each other to the bitter end now welcomed each other into their homes, and joined in ebullient song and harmonious dance. It wasn’t exactly a party, as everyone knew that the stores were still short, but it was probably the closest Equestria had gotten to one in months.

For Princess Luna, though, it was not a morning for celebration. The work of clearing the dead from Cotton’s estate, identifying them and giving them proper burials was going slowly. She’d been able to find the remains of her guardsponies relatively easily, as they were clustered along the wall.

In addition to Swift, six others had met their end last night, for a total of seven of the twenty-or-so who had followed her. All of them had families back in Canterlot, but there was neither the time nor the spare horsepower to transport them back to the city for a proper funeral. Today may be a day for celebration, but soon enough the column would still be moving on to the next town.

So Luna had got together the rest of the company which had fought with her last night, and together they had transported the remains of their comrades to a secluded spot in the countryside around the town, under the branches of a spreading oak tree, gnarled and parched for now but likely to survive now that rain had returned.

With some effort, she’d had the graves dug and bodies interred, and marked the spot on the maps so that someday, when there were less pressing items to take care of, she could return and build them a proper memorial.

After that, the soldiers had stayed on for a silent few minutes, before Luna had relieved them and sent them back to the town. She had stayed, though, letting the last droplets of the shower run down her mane as she stood in silence. Her sword was still strapped to her side, and though she’d kept it clean, Luna doubted now if that would remain true for long. There were still weeks of collection ahead, and it could easily have been bloodied here in Southoofton if things had gone only a little differently.

The soft tip-tap of hooves on the dirt approached her from behind, pausing for a brief moment before continuing. Luna didn’t look up until her sister’s mane blocked the sunlight, and then she saw Celestia standing there, head also bowed low in reverence.

Despite the reunion with her sister, this was no time for joy as Luna took a deep breath. “How many?” she asked simply.

“About thirty at the moment,” Celestia replied, looking equally grim. “Maybe a dozen still severely wounded, but I think they’ll pull through.” She fell silent again, and in the calm after the rain the whole countryside seemed to stand still. The wind was silent, not a puff of breeze to rustle the leaves of the oak tree, and only the mournful cawing of a crow somewhere in the distance to be heard.

“Thirty-seven after just one night,” Luna said, eyes still held downward, her expression utterly hollow. “Thirty-seven too many, and even still nowhere near the start.”

“It’s over now, Luna,” her sister said back. “They’ll be the last ones. We’ll make sure they’re remembered forever, but nopony else will die as they did while either of us still reign.”

Looking over, Luna saw that Celestia, despite her sorrowful expression, didn’t have any of the somberness about her that she had been expecting. “How can you be sure? While the rain is nice, winter will be upon us shortly, and we haven’t the stores to last through it. Tomorrow we will still be off to the next town, and who knows what the farmers there will think? This may be only the first of many such memorials.”

Her sister shook her head. “No. Not ever again I said, and you can hold me to that. Come, let’s talk about it.” She turned and indicated a path back to the town, about half a mile distant on the horizon. The Guard encampment could be seen beyond it, somewhat disorganized as the revelry had spread through it this morning.

It was true that there was a lot that needed to be talked about. Luna started on the trek back, and Celestia followed at her side, their two manes streaming out in parallel over the meadow. “How about you take it from the top then?” she asked.

Celestia nodded. “I had a discussion with our new Windcaster this morning over breakfast. How much do you remember about Cloudsdale?”

“Aqua and Atlas’s retreat.” The memories of their former Masters were more than a little hazy after so long. “We haven’t seen or heard of it in two hundred years. I had thought it just faded away.”

“Apparently not. The way that Mr. Wind tells it, they figured out how to grow their own food and kept on.” Her sister must have seen the realization dawning on her face, as Celestia allowed herself a small smile. “Yes, and they do have stores. Not a lot, but paired with what harvest we do have here on the ground, it just might be enough.”

Luna ran through the sums quickly in her head. From what memories she did have, Cloudsdale had been a modest settlement. While the extra reserves would be something, it still didn’t quite add up. “Surely not enough to last the whole winter and the next growing season though?”

“Ah, that’s just the thing!” Celestia crooned, breaking out in a triumphant grin at last. “We have a Windcaster now, and a whole lot more pegasi at our disposal up in Cloudsdale. We don’t need to have a winter, we can start a new growing season right now! I’ve gone through the numbers, and while it might not be comfortable, it will work out.”

She held her smile for a second, waiting expectantly, but when Luna didn’t join in her mirth she went right on. “Come now, Luna, don’t you see? We’ve done it! The crisis is over, the country is safe again! And now that we’ve got control over the weather, we won’t have to worry about this happening ever again! There won’t be any more fights, or any more division. Equestria is safe and back on the road to prosperity.” She leaned over conspiratorially before adding, “It means you and I might finally be able to take our holiday.”

Her sister’s ebullience was finding no purchase in Luna’s heart. Sure, in some sense she was right about all of that, but Luna wasn’t satisfied yet. Not at all, in fact.

The buildings of the town were rising before them now, and in the square between them she could see the remains of a party that had gone on the whole morning. The refreshments had been sparse, but the song and dance had been lively, with only a trace of remorse for the lives lost. Everyone around her was celebrating, and Luna knew that on some level she should be too, but it still didn’t feel right.

“Is there a place where we can speak privately?” she asked. The questions that she needed to ask really shouldn’t be aired in public.

Celestia’s grin slipped, her eyebrows rising in slight confusion. “Er, sure. Right this way.” She led Luna toward the building that should have been the local tavern, its tables and benches all spread out in the square right now. Standing by the entrance was a pony that Luna recognized instantly, even without the crossbow he had been holding the last time that they had met.

Today, Linseed had on a brightly coloured shirt and flat-brimmed hat, and nodded politely to each of them as they approached. “Morning, Your Highnesses,” he said with considerably more grace than during their initial encounter. “Wanting privacy, I assume?”

Celestia just nodded, and the earth pony reached over and unlocked the door, letting them both in and clicking it shut behind them. The interior of the building was empty, looking strange with all of the table space bare now that everything had been moved outside. In a back corner, though, somepony had dragged in a low table and a small stool, and it appeared that Celestia had made it her office, with stacks of parchment covered in ink already arranged neatly over the space.

The tall alicorn sat down onto the stool as easily as her throne back in Canterlot, then indicated a couple of nearby crates with a small apology. Luna, though, preferred to stand.

“When you left, you weren’t going to Cloudsdale to negotiate for rain, were you?” When Celestia shook her head, Luna continued on, breathless with questions she’d wanted to ask for days now. “Then where did you go? And why not tell me? Why leave me to manage a crisis that I had no business being in charge of? Do you have any idea how bad things were before you came back? Pensive manoeuvred me into signing his law! I had to call up the Guard to fight a war that should never have started! Thirty-seven ponies are now dead that shouldn’t have been, and they’re all my fault!”

The words brought the memories of last night back, and Luna could hold her voice steady no longer. She looked up at her sister, pleading, hoping for some clarity, for an understanding of how it all could possibly have been necessary.

Celestia came around the desk in an instant, and took Luna by the shoulders, holding her tightly. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “I wish that I could have told you, but I didn’t want the Senate to know where I had gone. I didn’t expect Pensive to declare an emergency like he did. I had hoped that you would only have to keep stonewalling his law until I was done with my plans. I never expected that it would come out this way.”

Releasing her grasp, Celestia pulled back to look her sister now in the eyes. Her gaze was clear and resolute, deep with surety and determination. “But none of this was your fault. You did well to keep as much of a lid on things as you did. They could have been much, much worse. And remember, the battle is over now, and there won’t be another one.”

The steadiness in her words did help bring Luna a little back to herself. “Then what was your plan? Why did you have to leave Canterlot? Where did you go?”

Celestia stood up and stepped back behind her desk, moving a few parchments around for a moment, perhaps to gather her thoughts. “I went south,” she then said. “Into the heart of the Everfree Forest, to the Hill of Shadows, looking for the magic there. You probably won’t believe this, but well, I actually found Star Swirl.”

For a moment the name was unfamiliar to the younger princess, a memory as it was from a simpler time, when either of them could bother with questions that weren’t vital to the survival of the nation. “He made it all of the way down there?”

Celestia nodded. “Indeed, though it wasn’t his magic that animated that section of the forest. That belonged to an old Unicorn King, Solaris VII.”

As she spoke Celestia summoned a couple of sparks from her horn, a few her usual yellow-gold, then some of an unfamiliar soft azure, and another of a dark ebony. “I needed that magic to cast a spell that I had devised, and it was in casting that spell that I spent most of my time down there, only finishing last night.”

She gestured past Luna’s shoulder, down to her rear flank, now adorned by a splotch of darkness and a white crescent Moon. Celestia’s own now bore a brilliant golden Sun. “Everypony in Equestria has one now, and they all will, until the end of time.”

Luna took a moment to study the mark, which appeared to have grown from discoloured hairs of her own coat. It was an impressive thing to look at certainly, but she hoped that there would be more to the story than just that. “Okay. So what does your spell do, exactly?”

“Well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but you can think of it almost like a social organization system. Every pony gets one when they come of age, and it provides a gentle nudge into a particular choice of life path. A destiny for the future that will lead to a happy and fulfilling life. And, when taken as a whole, will lead to a well-balanced and functioning society. No more petty squabbling over what each pony does and doesn’t deserve. No more of the barely-concealed animosity that always leads earth ponies to take up arms against unicorns. Now, everypony will have their proper place, and they’ll fit within it.”

The words were difficult for Luna to process, not that they were particularly technical, it simply wasn’t at all what she had been expecting to hear. A system for meting out destinies to keep society functioning? It all sounded too ridiculous to be true.

“Sorry, so what you’re saying is that everypony now has a place picked out for them in life, and your spell lets them know what that place is, what life they ought to be leading if they want to be happy?”

Celestia’s eyebrows rose up a little as she shook her head noncommittally. “Well er, kind of? The details are difficult to grasp; I could probably spend a whole year going through all of them, but that sounds close enough to the truth of it. But just think of the implications! Of how things could have been different if this had always been in place! You’d have had no issues finding weatherponies from out in the population, and could tailor their education as necessary. Our new Windcaster would have known much sooner about his special talent, maybe even averting the drought entirely. There’d have been no issue with short staff on the Guard, as we’d necessarily have enough ponies marked to fill out our regiments. There would have been no class war, no strife of an urban elite resenting a rural class that in turn resented them. Everything would have been-”

“Hold it.” Luna said, stopping her sister in mid-sentence. She had hardly listened to the latter half of Celestia’s ramblings anyway. “Do you not see the problem with all of this?”

There was silence between them for a second, Celestia’s excited smile knocked down a notch in confusion. “Problem? No. As I was saying, I believe that it’s a win-win for pretty much everyone.”

Luna could hardly believe that the words had been spoken. How could her sister not see the grave mistake that she was making? “And what gives you the right to say what kinds of lives our subjects ought to be living?”

“If the system is followed, the system will work,” her sister answered. “Everypony will be happy, society will function, and the nation will be safe. What’s the matter with that?”

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?! The matter is that with your spell ponies aren’t given a choice! Their lives are picked out for them by a system that they don’t know about and cannot control. You’ve reduced them to mere… mere numbers in an equation! But they are ponies just like you and I, perfectly capable of choosing their own paths.”

Sitting back down, Celestia waved at her dismissively. “Sister, please. You talk like I have reached into their heads and now control their every thought! When all my spell does is nudge ponies along into a choice that benefits everyone. It’s very subtle, and as mentioned nopony is going to dislike it.”

“That’s not the point.” Luna shook her head, suddenly reminded of her interrogation of Pensive down in the castle dungeons. Not only because of how stubborn he had been, but also something he had said…

“Do you know what Pensive told me?” she said, sharpening her voice just a bit. “He said that you would have eventually signed his law, even if you weren’t forced into it like I was. He said that you could see the bigger picture, while I was too focused on my individual ideals.”

Celestia’s eyes were back in her parchments, her smile totally gone. “I really don’t see how this is relevant.”

“It’s relevant,” she continued, trying to avoid yelling further, “because even though I told him that he was wrong, I realize now that he was right. In fact, you’ve spent so long fixated on the big picture, that you’ve forgotten the individual entirely.”

One of the parchments stopped its journey across the desk halfway. In a shimmer of golden magic, its edge started to quiver, and then to crumple, folding inward as though it were being clenched in a dragon’s claws. Celestia brought her eyes up to meet Luna’s gaze, and when she spoke, her words came terse, growled around a tense jaw.

“For three hundred years, I have toiled with you in the service of the ponies of this kingdom. All of my effort has been toward securing their safety, their prosperity, and their happiness. That is the ideal I hold, and I will stand by it until my death. The system I have built is toward that ideal, and when it works, ponies will be happy.”

Celestia held her stare for a few seconds, a tiny sparkle of brilliant magic in her eyes. “Now, do you care to make any further objections?”

A part of Luna’s mind wanted to back down. This had clearly touched a nerve for her sister and it was always better to resolve such disputes with level heads. But at the same time, she was not about to let her own ideals get trampled without objection. So she said the only thing back that she could think of.

“Discord’s system worked.”

That was enough to get Celestia up off of her stool. “That is uncalled-for, Luna!” That steady calmness in her eyes was gone, replaced with a note of fire. “Discord’s only goals were chaos and power, he didn’t want his subjects to be happy and safe. What I’ve created is nothing like the society that he ruled over.”

Luna stepped forward, meeting her sister’s gaze. “Well, what a brilliant society you have built then! Shall I go outside and tell the young foals of Equestria what future lays in store for them now? That if they live good lives they might one day grow up to be obedient cogs in the grand clockwork of society? That they’ll be allowed to be happy to the extent that they follow along with the choices and paths that you’ve so diligently laid out for them? I’m sure they’ll be happy to learn that this is the bright future that was hard-won for them by their brilliant Princess!”

“And perhaps you would prefer the world that you encountered on the fields of Cotton’s estate last night?” her sister shot back, now fully livid. It was a wonder that the parchments on the desk weren’t smoldering from the heat in her glare.

“Lucky enough that it was only thirty-seven; easily hundreds or thousands more. And whatever peace we could build only a brief patch until the next crisis comes around and everypony is at each other’s throats again! When I found you out in the field standing over Swift’s grave it didn’t look like you wanted more of that!”

“There are better ways!”

“Ponies have tried and failed for centuries!” Celestia answered, standing her ground and looking down at Luna. “But I found the solution!” In time with her words, the magic of her horn pulsed, still holding on to the parchment in front of her. But it was no longer yellow. Indeed with each word the magic grew darker, through tan and brown until it was almost midnight black. “Our kingdom is the one that will last,” she continued, the look in her eyes hard as granite, “for I have made it so.”

Even in spite of her anger Luna drew back. What was this change that had overtaken her sister? Yet, even in a moment, she blinked and everything was back to normal. Celestia was still eying her hotly, but her magic was yellow again.

“I’m sorry,” Luna said, sad but resolute. “But some prices must be paid if we are to rule in a just manner. If last night was that price…” Luna hesitated for a moment, wondering before she said the words that were going to follow. Those deaths were still fresh in her memory, lives that would never come back, Swift especially. Only a brief moment ago, as she’d stood thinking about the mistakes that had brought about last night’s senseless battle, she’d thought that she would have given up anything to have them back. Now, though, she had realized that it wasn’t true. Some things were more important.

She saw an instant of triumph on Celestia’s face, as her sister assumed that she had finally come around. “If last night was that price,” she said again, the words heavy on her tongue but right in her heart. “Then it must be. I cannot abide by what you have done, Sister.”

She stood silent a moment longer, hoping in vain that whatever insanity had clearly taken Celestia would abate, but as her sister remained defiant and was about to reply, Luna turned and walked out, back into the bright sunlight of the afternoon. Celestia apparently didn’t try to follow, as Linseed let her out of the tavern and wished her a good day.

Out here, the celebrations were winding down, and the townsfolk were getting back to their lives, now gearing up for a very early planting season. Every one of them was marked, most in variations on agricultural themes: sheaves of wheat, flowers in bloom, sickles and scythes on a few. Apples, pears, and oranges. For most of them, the impact of the magic would surely be minimal, as they would return to the lives that they had already been living, more sure than ever that they were where they ought to be.

The young ones among them, though, their flanks for now empty, were the ones who would suffer. They had no way of knowing that their lives would be chosen for them by the balance of an equation on a scale that they had no say on.

Without a direction in mind, she began picking her way through the town, her thoughts a maelstrom with no sign of resolution. She couldn’t imagine that Celestia could be so thoughtless, so cruel in her acts even if she truly believed that what she was doing was right. There would be no undoing of the spell unless she could convince her sister that it had to be done.

Well, that wasn’t strictly true, she supposed. Such a thing could be done by force, if Celestia refused to see right. But how could she not? She was the thoughtful one, the one best at grasping the bigger picture, the one who could think through the hard problems and find the creative solutions. Why, even in the pursuit of the solution to an unrelated problem, she had accomplished her goal of locating Star Swirl, and if her apparent new power was anything to go by, had probably learned something from the experience too.

The thought gave her pause though. The Celestia that she knew would never have believed that a scheme like this could be the right thing to do. Surely she had set off on her journey with a better idea in mind, like rediscovering the Windcasting magic, or something similar.

Over a hill in the distance, Luna could see the beginning of the Everfree Forest forming on the horizon, and it brought with it a torrent of memories from an earlier life, some three hundred years ago. She well remembered the Hill of Shadows, and the awesome power of whatever force lived there. Star Swirl’s magic? That of King Solaris? Whatever it had been, Celestia had gone there, and the pony who had returned was now one that Luna didn’t recognize.

A newfound determination settled in her heart. To save Equestria, she was going to have to make Celestia see reason. But first, she would have to understand what had happened to her sister upon that hill.

Back in the tent, Celestia had to take several deep breaths to recover her composure after Luna had stepped out. Her sister had clearly been through a lot in her time as temporary queen, but Celestia had never expected to be met with such hostility. She expected that she would come to regret a lot of the things that she had said in the passion of her anger, but the determination in her heart was hard. She had done the right thing.

And then there was the matter of her magic. At the height of the argument, she had felt the shadow closing on her mind. Solaris had almost taken her.

What happened? she asked Star Swirl. You’re supposed to keep him contained.

This spell is a two-way street, the old wizard answered. We are not sealed off from your mind; that is how you can access our magic. But we can also take from you, especially if your focus is elsewhere. Your emotions: fear, anger, and doubt, they are like sustenance to him.

There was a momentary pause, filled with the subconscious chittering of Solaris’s magic swirling in the back of her mind. If she had pushed it any further, he might have gotten complete control. I’m sorry, she thought.

It’s not your fault, I should have said something. Just understand that in the future you will need to keep better control over your emotions.

Celestia nodded to herself. Yet another thing to think about. But so long as Luna came around, she didn’t see any more big arguments in her future. Coming back behind the desk, she paused for a moment.

Star Swirl, Luna’s wrong, right?

But he did not answer.

Chapter 41: Night's Fall

“Oh, Luna! You bore the punishment for my mistakes.”

- Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 4)

Luna had been able to make her way to Harmony Tower without any incident. Perhaps her sister had assumed that she needed some time alone to organize her thoughts, and so hadn’t worried about where she might be going. Or perhaps Celestia had decided it was better off that they be separate for the moment while they mulled over everything.

Once they had become Equestria’s rulers, it hadn’t been uncommon for the two of them to be apart for a few days at a time, seeing to business in different areas of the country. But even so Luna had never felt alone, as she would only have to return to Canterlot to get any help that was needed to defuse a thorny issue. Now, though, as she came out from the Tower’s grounds and turned to head deeper into the forest, Luna knew things were different.

They had separated acrimoniously once before, after the old Orders of the Resistance had insisted that only one of them could be one of Equestria’s leaders. That time it had been Luna’s mistake to run off, and in her foolishness she had almost helped Seraph usurp the revolution and plunge the country into another war. It was only by Celestia’s quick thinking that disaster had been averted.

This time though, it seemed that her sister was the one making the grave mistake, and it would be Luna’s responsibility to rescue the situation.

The thought made her shiver even in the late autumn heat, but it also gave her purpose. For once, it was her turn to be the one of them watching out for the other.

But first she had to know what had happened upon the Hill. What had convinced Celestia that such a transparently foolish plan was the only way to save the country?

Luna well-knew why her sister had come here. Only a few minutes’ walk into the forest she could already feel the steady thrum of the magic in her mind, heightening her own powers. Celestia would have needed that magic, and even though she hadn’t come here planning to cast that spell, she could certainly have used it for that purpose.

A short way up the hill Luna came upon her first obstacle: a lazy tendril of purple fog that wound its way through the trees, barring the path ahead. She had seen Chaos Storms before, and while it was surprising that any of Discord’s magic had survived his end three hundred years ago, she knew that she could get through it. It would only require a calm head and a determined heart.

A single step into the fog and the world outside vanished. Uncharacteristically though, she did not hear the immediate whispers of doubt that she had been expecting, even though she could feel the magic running along her skin like faint brushes of hair. Was it still probing her, trying to figure out the best avenues of attack? No matter. She only needed to think about making it out the other side.

Indeed, it wasn’t very long before Luna began to see recognizable shapes forming out of the wisps of fog around her. Though they didn’t look much like the forest she had left. Instead, the clouds to her sides arranged themselves into vertical sheets like walls, slowly morphing from purple through lavender and pink until they were white stone.

One more step took her over a threshold, and Luna was suddenly back in the Senate chamber in Canterlot, in the middle of the floor, the rings of empty lecterns surrounding her. Brilliant daylight slanted through the chamber’s windows to illuminate the image of a stylized golden Sun which had been inlaid on the chamber’s floor.

It exactly matched Celestia’s new mark, and indeed looking around the room Luna saw that mark everywhere, sewn into standards hanging on the walls, even outlined in brilliant stained glass in the room’s rear window.

Before her, where there should have been the two identical thrones there was only one, tall and regal, seemingly formed from solid gold, and with that same Sun emblazoned upon its back. It was empty at the moment.

Obviously none of this was real. It was merely a trick of the Chaos Magic, and Luna had to find the way out. Yet even as she was casting about her gaze searching for that exit, she heard a voice.

“Took you long enough,” Discord’s voice said, an imperceptible titter in it as his crooked face materialized above the top of the throne. The rest of his serpentine body followed, slithering into existence as if he had merely been hiding behind the chair.

“Such a specimen you are,” he continued, reaching down and plunking himself casually onto the cushion of the seat. “Truly, I’m always surprised that of all the possible threats in this world, it was the two of you that defeated me.”

Luna was doing her best not to pay attention to the spectre. Even though what she saw looked and sounded like Equestria’s old enemy, she knew that it could only be her subconscious mind animating an avatar of her doubts. Thus, she focused on looking down the halls between the seats to where the doors to the room would normally be, but saw them all closed and locked.

Discord gave her a moment more before speaking up again. “Princess, I’m sure you understand that I am not some external force here to try influencing you. I am a part of your mind, animated by the Chaos Magic. Thus, you’re all too free to ignore me, but you do so at your own peril.”

Seeing little choice, she turned to look him in the eye. “You are only here to attempt to turn me from my purpose,” she answered, as serious as she could muster. But the draconequus-shaped illusion only laughed again.

“Ah yes, your glorious purpose. Tell me, what exactly is that again?” he cackled, momentarily adorned in an odd green and gold outfit with a horned helmet.

With the snap of a talon he pulled a book out of thin air, its cover bearing the crescent moon of her own cutie mark, and with two dark blue wings sprouting from its spine. Leafing through it, he grinned. “Honestly I think that you would benefit from a chance to work that out, because I’m seeing a lot of mixed signals in here.”

“I shall venture to the Hill, and when I get there I shall determine what evil has caused Celestia to embark upon this foolish endeavour of hers,” she replied evenly, already tired at this encounter.

“Sure,” he nodded along. “That part is simple enough. But what then?”

Hesitant, Luna took a deep breath. This was the part that she hadn’t fully thought through yet. “I shall destroy that evil, and all will be well.”

There was silence between them for several seconds, before Discord broke it with a hearty guffaw. With tears in his eyes he doubled over and laughed for a solid minute. “My,” he said back eventually, “I don’t even know where I’m supposed to begin with that. Did nopony ever tell you the problem with making assumptions?”

She let him carry on for a second more. “Are you quite finished?”

“No, I’m not finished!” he returned, suddenly annoyed. “I haven’t even started. Let’s take the big one head-on, shall we? What will you do if this ‘evil’ that has supposedly taken root in your sister’s mind is nothing at all? What if this was all her intention from the start? Then what’s your plan, Your Highness?”

Shaking her head, Luna stepped back. It was indeed a legitimate possibility, but not one she was willing to consider. “That’s not possible. She knows better than that.”

Unconvinced, Discord sat back in the throne, still looking amused. “Does she? Neither one of you is perfect, no matter how much either of you might believe you are. You both make mistakes.”

“Sometimes, yes,” Luna agreed despite how wrong it felt. “But not like this. We’ve disagreed in the past. But there are some lines that simply cannot be crossed, and she knows this as well as I.”

“But you are so very different,” he continued, a pair of reading glasses appearing on his nose as he continued to peruse the pages of the book. “You focus on the little ponies and she focuses on the big picture. Isn’t that right?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “Yet still all of this is beyond the pale.”

Frowning, he shut the book with a firm clap. “Is that so? I think that you should think long and hard about that statement.” With another snap, an image appeared between them: the cold empty eyes of Swift, lying dead at her hooves. The image of all of them, at the wall and spread through the fields. The blood, the carnage, the despair.

Discord’s eyes were pale disks seen through the image. “What would you do to prevent all of this from happening ever again?” he asked, his voice echoing throughout the void.

Indeed Luna found that she couldn’t answer right away. Thirty-seven had been the number that day, each and every one gone, never to return. Their numbers added to a tally stretching back centuries, doomed to carry forward. How many more would die in the next crisis?

Yet, Celestia was preventing all of that. Wasn’t she?

How many lives would be altered by her spell? How many more would lose the freedom to choose how to lead their life because her magic said that the country needed more soldiers, or more lawyers, or more lumberjacks or accountants?

She shook her head slowly. “No,” she said, trying to push down her doubts. “Even if they had to die again, it would be worth it to prevent this.”

“Ah,” he crooned, raising a talon as if to punctuate a point. “So apparently death is a price worth paying.”

There was a silence for a moment, as Luna thought about what she had just said. Then she turned back to him with a scowl. “Agh! You are leading me in circles! If there is something that you are trying to tell me then say it!”

“I AM YOU!” Discord roared back at her, suddenly flying out of his seat and up into the lofty ceiling of the room. The painting of the Chaos Storm above him seemed to come to life, crackling with lightning as it had when he had been alive. “I know nothing that you do not! What I am trying to tell you is a conclusion that you should have reached hours ago! Will you admit it to yourself? What will you do if Celestia is not willing to relent?”

Luna could not hold his gaze, in spite of the fire in her heart that wanted to scream in defiance with all of the air in her lungs. She knew what he meant, but she refused to accept it. She had known Celestia her whole life, and the two of them had always been there for each other. This could not be the end. No matter what transpired.

Instead she shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the tears welling there.

“I am finished with this,” she said, far less forcefully than she had started.

“Sorry, I’m afraid you don’t get to say no here,” he replied with a click.

In answer, the roof of the chamber above them irised open with a crackle of thunder, revealing real storm clouds above. The floor tiles upon which Luna stood suddenly launched skyward, building into a pillar of rapidly rising stone that carried her up through the open roof to join Discord amongst the clouds.

But as she came up through the roof the sky around Luna cleared, and beyond the clouds she could see Equestria, spread out in its verdant brilliance, as if she were looking down from Canterlot’s mountain top.

It was with this view she saw the land was not dry and brown, but instead green and bright, as it should always be. Canterlot spread out before her, a shining jewel of white stone and coloured tiles. On the horizon Manehattan sprawled across its rivers in a confused mass of stone and metal, the great rush of its commerce a constant thunder in Luna’s ears. The countryside all around was a patchwork of fields and pastures, heavy with grain or filled with orchards of ripe fruit. Birds sang in the treetops and the rivers spread tinkling streams of crystal-clear water. And the ponies that filled the scene were happy, going about their work with smiles on their faces.

The view lifted Luna’s heart. It was Equestria as it should be, as it deserved to be. It was everything that she had spent three hundred years working toward.

“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” Discord whispered in her ear, floating just behind her back. “Much better than it was before.”

Suddenly before her eyes the scene morphed, warping into a memory that Luna recognized instantly. The sky was darkened to a murky brown, the cities and towns below replaced by ruins. The vegetation all dried up, the orchards barren, the fields all gone. The storm clouds swirled around Canterlot’s peak again, purple and menacing, with silent lightning flickering between them.

This was Discord’s world, and his magic was all around them, infecting every part of the landscape. Rivers of the rainbow hues of Chaos Magic ran through the sky and along the flickers of the lightning. Motes of his magic were in the air everywhere, clustered around the broken ruins where the ponies still dwelt, poisoning the water, darkening the skies, tainting the soils. And finally, deep in the southern forest and rising over the whole scene was the great tower of Chaos Magic that held the Sun and Moon in his sway.

It was a sickening sight, but also a relieving one. Yes, this was how Equestria had looked before, when Celestia and Luna had been able to see the magic with the power of the Elements. But it was gone now. And soon enough the drought would be over and the idyllic first vision would return.

She looked over at Discord curiously. “Yes, I remember all of this. Your point?”

A wicked grin on his crooked face, he gestured out over the scene once more. “Look again. See what Equestria shall become.”

This time what Luna saw seemed like a hybrid of the two. The country was back to its green and gold beauty, the cities were once again intact and bustling, and the ponies out and about were once again happy and carefree. Yet the magic was still there too, all around them in the sky and over the ground. And then Luna realized what it was that she was being shown.

As before, the magic clustered around each of the ponies as they carried on with their days. But it wasn’t the rainbow hues of Discord’s magic. Instead it was predominantly yellow-gold, with a little bit of soft blue and a little bit of midnight-black. Celestia’s magic was everywhere, touching every pony in the country, directing the action of everything according to her wishes.

“No,” Luna breathed, unable to tear her eyes from the scene even as her heart welled up into her throat. “No, no, no…”

Discord snapped his talon, and everything went black.

She awoke, lying flat on the hillside, the peace of the forest around her once more. Looking back, Luna saw nothing, save for trees growing close together and maybe just a little patch of something white down below. Up ahead, through a gap in the foliage, the hilltop beckoned.

Propping herself up onto her front knees, Luna took a moment for a few deep breaths. The vision she had seen in the storm refused to leave her. It had not been truly a vision of the future, simply a nightmare conjured up by her own subconscious mind. But it was a possibility, and if it was what the future held, then it needed to be stopped.

So she had to stand up and keep going. Luna dreaded the answers that she was about to get, and still didn’t know exactly what she would do with them. She still hoped that Celestia had merely been twisted by a dark purpose, and her actions thus could all be explained. But she needed to know for sure.

There was a light breeze stirring in the trees when Luna emerged into the clearing at the top of the hill. From this peak, she could see out to most of the forest, including the slender spike of purple that was Harmony Tower to the north, and the overgrown ruins of the Citadel to the west. All around the trees were brightly lit in oranges, yellows, and reds, as the seasons continued to change and fall sped on into what normally would have been winter. The wind caught in her mane and beat it back across her neck, strands blowing into her eyes, and the Sun’s warm light illuminated a small patch of open ground here at the top of the hill. The only strange thing was that the grass around the hilltop was blackened as if it had been burned in a fire, but nowhere else was there ash or dust to indicate the recent burn.

And then there was the magic, a primordial thunder in her mind now, a deep beat that echoed and resonated through her bones, almost jarring her teeth in their places, seeming to shake the ground upon which she walked.

But now, here, everything was peaceful. The forest was serene all around. Parched, perhaps, still very much brown and dry despite the rain slowly coming down in Equestria. The wind was blowing a little harder, but there was still no sign of anypony except her.

All of a sudden, a shadow crossed in front of the Sun, and Luna turned. Descending on leathery wings that seemed to fill the sky was a great dragon, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere, as she hadn’t heard it approach.

The massive beast was covered in shiny green scales from a narrow, sharply pointed head down a sinuous body and finally to a long, whip-like tail. As it came in to land on the hilltop its wings extended to gather in the wind, and for a moment Luna wondered if she was about to be crushed. But then in an instant it had settled down, and the creature sat facing her. Its face was only about thirty feet away, and the rest of its body curled around the circumference of the clearing so that the tip of its tail wound up resting across its front shoulders.

Luna wasn’t quite sure whether she ought to run, but supposed it was a little late for that now that the dragon had encircled her with its own body. She could try to fly perhaps, but the beasts could be nimble in the air, too. At least this one didn’t look quite agitated at the moment, though she was clearly in its domain. On top of what had happened further down the hillside this was certainly another unexpected turn. A part of her wondered how it was that Celestia had dealt with this creature, and why she hadn’t mentioned it.

But then, quite surprisingly, the dragon spoke. “Do not be alarmed, my friend,” it said, its voice a flowing harmony of many tones, a deep rumble of energy lined with a warble of metallic vibration. “I have come to you to speak, not to threaten. You understand, correct?”

Luna nodded hesitantly. “Who are you?” she asked, ready to flee if needed. “You do not have the look of the dragons that I have seen before.”

It was true, the few dragons that she and Celestia had dealt with as rulers were usually even larger than this one, with bulkier frames more akin to lizards with wings than the thinner and more serpent-like form that this one had.

The dragon’s nostrils flared, thin wisps of smoke emerging from either one. “Is that so? Well, all things do change. Even a race as ancient as we dragons take on different forms as the circumstances of the world require. But you may know me as Skullhum.”

That name… Skullhum. Luna was sure that she had heard it before, but it took a moment to register. It had been three hundred years ago, when she and Celestia had first come to the Citadel here in the forest.

“Skullhum, as in Skullhum the Far Seer?” The memories were coming back to her. Skullhum, upon whose lair the Citadel of Everfree had been built. Skullhum, whose ancient prophecy had almost plunged Equestria into another war as soon as Discord had been defeated.

He nodded slowly. “One and the same. You are familiar then?”

“Absolutely. Though I am puzzled as to how you could possibly still be alive.”

Skullhum’s lair had been long-abandoned even when she had been a filly. While it was known dragons could live for centuries, if Skullum was still alive, then that meant that he was likely several thousand years old. Even dragons didn’t live that long.

The scales around his mouth pulled back into something approaching a grin. “We dragons have a magic of our own, older even than yours. I have watched over this forest for centuries, ever since I first came to live here all that time ago.”

Things were starting to make sense. “So the magic of this place, it’s yours then?”

Skullhum nodded again.

“Interesting.” The scholars of Everfree had always theorized that the power of the hill was old dragon magic, and now Luna had confirmation. But it got her no closer to the answers that she was looking for. Still, if Skullhum had been watching the forest for centuries, he surely would have noticed when Celestia had come around.

“Begging your pardon, but I’ve come looking for the answers to some questions, and I think that you could be that help, or at least I hope so. Several days ago, my sister visited this hill. She’s a white alicorn, a little taller than me, with a regal bearing?”

The dragon’s face lit up with recognition instantly. “Yes, Celestia, right?”

“Yes. You spoke with her?”

Skullhum was silent for a moment, as the lids of his great eyes slowly came down and the breeze rustled the leaves of the forest all around. “I’m afraid that I was only aware of her passing,” he answered, “and we did not get the chance to meet. Instead, upon this hill she found something far more dangerous.”

“Solaris,” Luna whispered. The name meant little to her; Celestia was the historian, she preferred to focus on the future. But of the two figures her sister had supposedly met along her journey, she couldn’t imagine that Star Swirl had been the dangerous one.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know exactly who he is, aside from once being a Unicorn King, and thus probably long dead.”

That last realization struck her just as she was saying it. There were so many things she still didn’t know about what had happened to Celestia, but hopefully Skullhum would know the answers. “Please, I’m here to try to help her. Something awful happened to her when she came to this hill, and it must have been Solaris’s doing! Please tell me everything that you can.”

His shoulders drooped as he closed his eyes again, the apparent smile disappearing from his face. Skullhum pulled himself forward with his claws, his long body curling around the clearing, until his face was only about a dozen feet away, and Luna could feel the heat of his breath, and smell the scent of ash and burning sulfur from the depths of his lungs.

“I am very sorry,” he said, the words sounding soft and gentle in his melodious voice. “I wish that I could have done something, but by the time that I became aware of her presence, she and Solaris had already met. He is a powerful sorcerer, such that even I could not interfere with his wishes without serious risk. I could only listen in on their conversation from a safe place before she left.”

“Yes, okay,” Luna said, her hopes rising. This was starting to make sense. “She came here, needing help with her plans, and Solaris gave her that help, but in the process twisted her intentions into something evil.” She looked up into Skullhum’s eyes expectantly. “Right?”

Skullhum let out a sigh, the air rasping along the inside of his throat and coming out flecked with sparks. “Not entirely,” he said, a look of regret forming. “That Solaris gave her aid, yes. But her intentions were her own, and he did not interfere with them. That I know for sure.”

“What?” Luna clenched her eyes shut again, shaking her head to dispel the fear. “That’s impossible!” she shouted, emotion tightening her voice into a shrill shriek. “YOU’RE LYING!”

Raising a claw, the dragon worked his digits into a complex gesture, and slowly an image formed between them, materializing out of pitch-black magic. Luna recognized the same clearing where she now stood, in the dark of night. Celestia was standing there, her horn shining with silver light.

“I know that I need your power,” Celestia was saying. “Without my help, my nation will wither and die, or tear itself apart as I look on. I have devised a spell to prevent that, now and for evermore. But to cast it, I need power, more than I can get anywhere else. I need your strength, Your Majesty.”

“Celestia! NO!” It was finally too much for Luna to take. Her knees gave way and she fell to the ground, streams of tears running from her eyes. “What have you done?” she whispered weakly. “How?”

It all came back to her now. Celestia had set the country on a course that was to be even worse than what Discord had done. It would be bright and beautiful on the surface, but underneath it would all be a horror, a vast mechanism where the gears were individual lives, ordered to create a functioning society. Equestria would be peaceful and ponies would be happy, but only due to ignorance of the freedom they’d be denied.

Skullhum’s voice came to her, seemingly drifting in from far away. “I apologize for having to tell you this. But it is the truth.”

It was. She couldn’t deny it any longer. Action needed to be taken. Equestria needed to be saved.

Slowly, Luna lifted her head up and opened her eyes. Skullhum was still there, looking contrite and sympathetic. “Thank you,” she said to him. Her heart ached inside her, and urged her not to say the next sentence. But she had to.

“I know what I must do now.”

Skullhum nodded, but then frowned. “If you are to challenge her, then I am afraid that you will fail. With Solaris’s magic added to her own, even you will not be able to overpower her.”

Luna didn’t like to think about it, but he was right. “But you have magic. Would you stand by my side in this?”

His great eyes came slowly down once more as he thought. Then they opened as he fixed her with a keen glare. “Are you willing to do what you know may be necessary?”

Luna’s breath came in a shaky burst of emotion. “No,” she replied honestly. “I doubt that anypony could ever be willing to do it.”

In three hundred years, the two of them had always been there for each other. Now, all of a sudden, she had to say her good-byes. Luna took another deep breath, then brought a hard stare up to meet Skullhum’s. Her heart still said no, but her head had to disagree.

She blinked away the last of her tears. “But if this is the price that must be paid, then it must be.”

“Then come,” he said with a slight nod. “Take hold of my claw, and together we shall do it.”

Luna reached out to grasp Skullhum’s claw, but the moment that they touched her world went dark.

There was a flash upon the hilltop, not of bright light but instead of swiftly billowing darkness, thick waves of inky smoke quickly enveloping the forms of Princess Luna and Skullhum. The smoke grew as a sphere of dark purple, blotting out the Sun and leaving an ebony darkness behind. It grew with the force of a torrential wind, the whole of the forest bent over by the gusting air, leaves and branches picked up and broken free. As the nova of darkness passed, however, those same trees were left still and silent, hanging in a suddenly cool evening with no Sun overhead, and no stars even to provide illumination. There was only the silver light of an enormous full Moon, hanging in the sky over the top of the hill.

As the storm passed on and the woods once again fell into quiet, a shape arose upon the hilltop, once again a dark alicorn, but not the same as the one that had come originally. Her coat was now an extremely dark purple, the same colour as the infinite sky overhead, her narrow eyes the same silver as the bright Moon. And in them shone a malice that had lain dormant for centuries.

Chapter 42: The Price of Safety

“Making it to the top always requires sacrifices. Through a thousand years of Unicorn Kings and Queens that hasn’t changed.”

- King Solaris VII

That first night, after Celestia had slipped the letter under Gala’s door and made her way to Eridian, had been a difficult one. On the one hoof, it indeed should have been a night to celebrate. The long ordeal with her investigation into the saboteur was over, and that meant that once the construction project was finished a place would be made for her at the orchard. Soon enough Luna and the rest of the family could follow, and then they would truly be safe. Never mind that tonight was also the first time that she’d seen Luna in weeks. The young alicorn was bursting with questions the whole night, and her joy indeed should have been infectious. The food was all excellent too, of course.

But at the same time, Trinity was there through it all. And knowing which name she had written on the letter made it hard to celebrate with her friend. For Trinity didn’t know, and indeed couldn’t be allowed to know, that come the next morning when she arrived at the estate, she would be greeted by Gala and a half dozen of his guards, ready to enact the justice that they felt she deserved. It still made Celestia sick to her stomach. At least that meant her excuse for going to bed early had been convincing.

The next morning Celestia had as usual ridden down to the estate in the coach at an early hour, arriving well before the others. She had made her way straight to her office-tent, and had lost herself in the construction orders, even going so far as to hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign over the flap. She didn’t know when it had happened, but the general noise of the work outside had been unusually quiet today, and there were no callers at the tent flap. All the better for her to sit and think, as much as she wanted to avoid the subject.

She had gone back and forth for a long time on which name she would give to Gala and Fastidious to be their saboteur. Which pony she would consign to an uncertain but probably quite short future. An innocent, in furtherance of the greater good that Trinity believed in, or the truly guilty party, in furtherance of her own standing with the Lord, and ensuring future safety for both she and Luna.

She had known that she would regret either option, but in the end had decided that Gala’s offer was the better one. Safety and hope, with no strings attached. None of the uncertainty of working for this amorphous “Resistance” without knowing who was truly pulling on her strings. Instead she would have the chance to live her own life, and so would Luna and the rest. Every time that she looked back over her reasoning it seemed sound, likely the decision any pony would make, yet she hadn’t wanted to be there for the moment that Trinity was detained. She’d known that she wouldn’t be able to bear seeing her friend get taken away.

It wasn’t until the Sun had dipped behind the clouds that there came a rustling by her tent flap, followed by the sound of the young Lord Fastidious clearing his throat. “Are you in there, Miss Celestia?” he called out.

Putting away her parchments, she stepped up to the entrance and pulled it aside, revealing the young stallion standing in the darkened orchard, illuminated by a lantern carried by one of the estate guards just behind him. As usual, his mane was impeccably styled and his cape trim, and despite the evening chill he was looking chipper.

“Indeed, my Lord,” she said, offering a small bow. “Please, come in and make yourself comfortable.”

Fastidious nodded to the guard before ducking inside, standing in the open space as Celestia threw another log onto the hearth. The extra heat was hardly necessary as he was naturally wearing his ruby-lined coat, but he didn’t make any mention of it. He did wait until she was back behind her desk before speaking though. “First of all, on behalf of myself, my father and the rest of the estate, I wanted to congratulate you on finding our saboteur. You’ve succeeded where the both of us had already failed.”

Celestia found that she could only smile thinly. “Thank you.”

“As I understand, Trinity was one of your ‘trusted’ informants.” After a moment he chuckled. “I suppose that we’ve all learned lessons in that regard recently, haven’t we?”

This time Celestia just nodded.

“In any event,” he went on, “I’m here to tell you that the Appleton family honours our debts. You have done a great service to us, and thus you shall be compensated. I’m here to give you this.” He stepped forward, and drew a silver key out of one of his coat pockets. From the way that it shone in the light of the fire it looked new, but was otherwise quite plain, without particular ornament aside from an apple subtly engraved in its head.

“This key will unlock a new chamber at the estate house, which is yours to use as you like. I’ve had it furnished as a bedroom, with enough space for perhaps a small studio, and you can even use it tonight, if you wish.”

As he placed the key onto her desktop, there was a small glimmer in his eyes. “Quite the step up for a citizen of the lower city, I’m sure you agree?”

Her eyes snapped up just as she had been reaching for the key, but Fastidious only laughed. “Yes, we found out about your little subterfuge. But don’t worry. The status of your birth counts for nothing here. Your service to the family dictates that you deserve this. From this day on, for all intents and purposes you are an Appleton, as if you had been born so.”

This time the smile that came to Celestia was true and genuine, and she could not help but scoop up the key with her magic and grasp Fastidious’s hoof for a strong shake.

“Thank you so much, my Lord Fastidious,” she said, giving him another deep bow to go with it. “I’m sure that you don’t understand how much this means to me, but it’s the world. Thank you, thank you ever so much.” She wanted to reach out and catch him in an embrace, but that was probably a little too much. Even so, she had finally done it. She had a home in a bright and safe place, and now all that was required was to prepare it for the others.

Fastidious grinned back earnestly. “I’ve instructed the kitchen to prepare a celebratory meal tonight, and naturally if you will be staying the night then you would be welcome to join us. It is again quite chilly out, which will likely be none-too-comfortable in whatever shelter you have back in the city.”

The offer sounded extremely tempting, but Celestia had to shake her head. “Of course I appreciate the offer, but I am afraid that I must decline, my Lord. There are many things that I must prepare now. And while my lodgings may not be grand, they will be quite comfortable enough knowing that I will soon be joining you here.”

Knowing that she no longer had to keep her secrets took a big weight off of her shoulders as well. Her world would now be simple, safe and carefree. That alone was much better than the double life of being a Resistance agent that she would have gotten if she had stuck with Trinity.

The young Lord nodded and took a step back, none the least bit offended by the rejection. “As you wish, I suppose. If you change your mind, I’m sure that there will be leftovers for you. Oh, and one more thing.” He had a bit of a twinkle in his eyes, at once just a youthful stallion around Celestia’s age, and not a Lord of the upper city. “I am not your Lord any longer, so I would ask that you please use a more familiar form of address. Just Fastidious will do from now on. The same goes for my father.”

“Thank you, um…” It took her a moment to adjust the phrasing. “Thank you, Fastidious.”

With one more nod, he walked over to the tent flap. “Otherwise I suppose I will see you in the morning, Celestia,” he said with another smile and wave. “Have a good night.”

After she had answered he left, the sound of his hooves fading away toward the estate house as Celestia waited silently in the tent. A part of her wanted to dance for joy, but the tent was still a cramped workspace, not well-suited to that sort of thing. She could tell the others, and then they could have another celebration at home. A real celebration this time, that she could join in with a full heart. So for now she just quickly gathered up her things before going outside.

With the Sun down, the night air was indeed chilly, but thankfully there was a warm breeze coming up from the south, which made the whole property quite pleasant, really. Here in the orchard, the sky overhead was clear, and in between the rows of trees Celestia could spy the twinkling lights of stars overhead, their silver light giving just a slight gleam to the leaves and apples around her.

The smell was just as sweet and ripe as she remembered on the first day that she had come here, and now it was something she’d quickly need to adjust to.

Seeing the warm lights spilling out of the windows of the manor made her somewhat regret that she couldn’t be in there, enjoying the heavenly food prepared for the occasion, and sharing the story of her work with Fastidious and Gala. But she did have a home to get back to, and quite satisfactory company to share it with.

She saw Wickerlock and Capstan waiting for her by the gates, their gazes a bit downtrodden, which perhaps was to be expected. It would have been a tough day of work for them as usual, but they had yet to hear the good news. Celestia ran up to them, eager to share everything, but each of them only gave her a quiet greeting before turning to start the trek back into the city. She couldn’t wait to start her tale, though.

“Wicker, Capstan, I just had a chat with Fastidious,” she began, knowing fully well that her excitement was coming out in the tone of her voice. “As of today, I’ve officially become a member of their household!” Celestia raised up one of her hooves expecting a congratulatory tap, but there was none coming. Wickerlock did offer her a restrained smile, but Capstan didn’t react at all. Perhaps they hadn’t seen the implications yet.

“Don’t you guys see? This means that I am now in. This isn’t just a temporary job anymore, it is going to be our new life! Right now there’s only space there for me, but soon enough I’ll be able to get Luna as well, and the rest of you too. We’re going to have to have a bigger party tonight even than yesterday’s!”

That she was sure would get an excited whoop from both of them, but instead the uncomfortable silence only stretched out farther. In fact, judging from the set of his jaw Celestia guessed that Capstan was actually gritting his teeth.

They were heading down the hill away from the estate now, and Eridian was already looming up on the mountainside, a formless darkness ahead, all except for the pinprick of light that marked the upper city. The wind out here was a bit more gusty, and Celestia sensed moisture on it. In the south, a familiar flash of purple lightning lit up the horizon. “Uh, guys? Is there something wrong?”

For another dozen paces or so, there was still no answer. Wickerlock was avoiding her eyes, looking straight ahead at the road, nerves clear in the set of his brow. Finally, it was Capstan who spoke up.

“You weren’t there to see them take away Trinity,” he said, the deepness of his voice showing his own tension.

Celestia felt her happiness die away a bit. Of course they would want to know what had happened there. “Yes, she was the saboteur. I found out a couple of days ago.”

“Good for you,” Wickerlock answered woodenly from beside her.

“It doesn’t seem like you guys think so. I know, it came as a surprise to me too, but it made a lot of sense the more that I thought about it. It explains why she was always so curious about what was going on in Fastidious’s household, and why all of her advice to me on how to catch the saboteur ended up coming to nothing.”

Celestia was hoping to see at least something of a smile from either of them, but it didn’t look like she was getting anywhere. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell either of you before, even during the party last night. I couldn’t take the risk that she would get away.”

Capstan stopped in the road, so suddenly that Celestia nearly ran into him from behind. He turned around, and when Celestia saw his face all of her joyful mirth left her. The old pony was actually scowling at her, his ears laid fully back across his scalp. “You couldn’t take the risk that she would get away,” he said, the words dripping with hostility. “You had to make certain that our friend would be consigned to almost certain death at the hooves of those traitors.”

“N-not certain,” she stammered. “Trinity was a Resistance agent, which means that she will be turned over to the King.”

“Right,” he said, “because that somehow makes it better.” He snorted. “I can’t believe you. You knew she was Resistance, one of the few ponies in this world brave enough to be fighting back against the tyrant, and still you were willing to sign her death warrant?”

“It wasn’t so simple as that. Trinity was using me to get at Fastidious, and that wouldn’t have stopped. Besides, somepony had to take the fall for the sabotage. If not Trinity, it would have been another innocent soul. I wasn’t about to live with something like that on my conscience.”

Wickerlock cut in from beside her. “And yet you are willing to live with this? I’m sorry, Celestia, but I have to agree with Capstan here. Trinity was a friend, and an honest, courageous pony. She didn’t deserve this.”

“Nopony deserves what she’s about to go through,” Capstan added.

“Then what would you have had me do then?” she snapped, glaring at both of them. “I had to give the Lord somepony’s name, or else they would have grown suspicious of me.”

Capstan shook his head. “Then you should have just walked away. Returned to Eridian, found another job, and forgot all about Fastidious and the rest of them. Gone back to the way that things were. Before we got wrapped up in relations with traitors and the Resistance.”

“ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO YOURSELF!” Celestia roared angrily . “You make it sound so easy, that I can just drop everything because the way we were living before was preferable. If it weren’t for the Lords we would still be scraping by on boiled potatoes and rationed water, still living day to day on whatever work we could find. Are you honestly suggesting I simply go back to that, that Luna go back to that? What happens if we don’t find work, then what? I’m just supposed to accept that my baby sister and Rosy slowly starve to death simply to support some resistance that none of us even know for sure is what they say they are?”

Celestia could feel her blood boiling as she stared the two ponies down, both of whom seemed to lose a fair amount of their prior bravado when reminded of Luna. For a moment, Celestia thought she’d finally managed to get through to them.

Sadly, Capstan took a step in toward her, his eyebrows drawing down. Despite being years her elder, he was a bit shorter than her, but Celestia still took a step back against the intensity in his glare. “I knew it!” he said. “You’ve fallen in with them. You’ve started to believe their lies, to believe that somehow, in spite of their support for our tyrant King, and in spite of what they’re going to do to Trinity, that they deserve our respect. Maybe even our fealty, like the noble lords of old! You think that it’s okay to step on the heads of the smaller ponies around you, if it means that you get to enjoy the allure of the bright light at the top of the mountain?”

She found her resolve and drew up to meet him, a few teeth bared as a snarl appeared on her lips. “This was never all about me! I’m going to make a place there for all of us, and Luna and Rosy too! And yes, I’m willing to do what it takes to get by in this world, the same way that we did before, and the same way that Gala and Fastidious do. Trinity was the one who made her choice and decided her cause was worth endangering the livelihoods of not just Gala and Fastidious, but every pony who relies on the work provided to stay alive!”

“And so she deserves to die?” Capstan yelled, just inches away from her face now. “For having the courage to do the right thing in a world that seems to have forgotten what that means?”

By now Celestia was truly beyond angry and fed up with listening to this. “Do I want her to die? No of course not, I never wanted that. But I won’t sacrifice a chance for my sister to have a happy, prosperous life, nor those of all the other staff.”

Celestia stayed staring at him for a moment, her breath coming short and quick and her pulse pounding in her ears, until it was Capstan that pulled back. His ears were still down, but he took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself. Gesturing to Wickerlock, he turned around and took another step toward Eridian.

“I’ve heard enough,” he said, loud enough that she could hear. “You ought to head back, Celestia. Back to your friends, the traitors. There is no place under our roof for allies of the King.”

“Is that so?” she retorted, her confidence remaining strong. “Then I suppose when I come around with the invitations for you all to stay with me at the orchard then you’ll be saying no as well?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice quieter but still hard as granite. “You may take Luna as you like, but none of us will follow. We prefer to make our living honestly. Come along, Wicker,” he added, turning to the other stallion and waving him on again. “There’s a storm blowing in.”

Wickerlock hesitated for a moment beside her, his eyes darting between her and Capstan’s receding back. Celestia leveled her glare at him, and he sighed. “I’m sorry, Celestia,” he said, his disappointment clear. “I hope that things work out for you and Luna.” Then with a turn he broke into a canter to catch up with Capstan, whose form was already receding into the darkness ahead.

“You’re both making a mistake,” she called after them, the fire of her anger still burning in her, nearly as bright as her joy had been as they had started out. “I won’t spare a look back for either of you!” The wind gusted from behind her, snatching her words away and blowing them toward the horizon. Wickerlock and Capstan were gone, swallowed up by a suddenly dark night as more lightning flickered in the south. They would probably both get drenched in the storm long before they had a chance to reach Eridian. Meanwhile, Celestia had only a short walk back to the estate, where she would be welcomed to a warm dining hall, a sumptuous meal, and a relaxing evening.

She couldn’t believe their foolishness. What would happen to Trinity was a tragedy, but it was a justifiable and unavoidable one. They couldn’t honestly expect her to turn down the chance for a better life, not when she had worked so hard for it, and come this close. And for what exactly? For a group of ponies perfectly willing to destroy the lives of others for some vague cause? She sniffed into the darkness. It was their loss if they didn’t want to come with her. It would mean more of the good food for her and Luna.

By the time that Celestia made it back to the estate’s front gates, the wind had intensified, and the first droplets of rain were tapping against the palisade. The guards opened the gate immediately upon seeing her brooch, and so too did the ones on the manor’s front door.

Over the threshold, the world was indeed bright and cheery again. The servants by now knew her by name, and they gave her cheerful greetings as she passed. It was enough to wash the tension and the anger from Celestia’s heart, and in the warmth of the house she allowed herself to smile again.

In the big dining room, the whole of the staff was assembled, and they were already quite dug in to the feast that had been laid out before them. Yet there was a place made for her, marked by her nameplate, with a glass of sparkling apple juice and a big plate ready to be heaped with food.

“Ah, Celestia!” Fastidious called from the head of the table, the first to notice her entrance. The rest of the staff turned to give her a look, yet this time it was not the dour glares of her first staff meeting, but a selection of warm faces that she saw. The only one missing was Gala, who would usually have the right-hoof place beside his son. “You have changed your mind, I suppose?”

She offered him a small bow and a grin. “The weather outside has taken a turn, indeed. I thought it best to accept your gracious offer after all, my—,” she stopped herself. “Fastidious.”

“Superb,” the young Lord called, and then got to his hooves, hoisting aloft his glass. “Friends and family, ladies and gentle-colts, a toast please to the mare of the hour! With Celestia’s help the orchard is at last free of that wretched Resistance, and back to full operation. To the Appletons, to the King, and to Celestia!”

“And to Celestia!” came the answering call from around the table, as the glasses were clinked together and several long draughts of sparkling juice were taken. Indeed, it was only an instant before Celestia was taken in by the celebratory atmosphere. The drink flowed freely, and the conversation turned to her at once. Everyone at the table wanted to hear the story of how she had managed to find and root out the saboteur, and Celestia found herself telling all of it, including her encounters on the hillside with Trinity’s collaborators, and even how Trinity had tried to turn her in the end.

They all scoffed and sneered at every development, and drank her health and the health of their host at the end. By the time that it was done, and most of the household had taken their leave to take their coaches back to the upper city, Celestia was contentedly sipping some tea when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Turning around, she found Gala standing there, as trim and proper as usual, the starched wings of his collar standing at attention like soldiers, and the tips of his mustache curled neatly at either side of his nose.

“Good evening, Mister Gala,” she said, bowing to him as usual.

“And you, Miss Celestia,” the old stallion returned. “My sincerest apologies that I could not join in your celebration, but I am afraid that I had some business of my own to attend to. Tying up the last loose ends.” He gave her a knowing grin, and Celestia guessed what he was talking about. The thought still brought a flutter of nerves into her stomach, much as she tried to keep them down.

“Has she been cooperative?” she asked.

Gala shook his head. “I am afraid not. Our mutual friend is one tough customer, but I was hoping that with your meal done you might perhaps be able to provide some help in that regard.”

Celestia was taken aback. He was asking for her help with an interrogation? “Mister Gala, I’m not sure how much help I would really be in something like that. As I understand, it’s your area of expertise.”

“Quite right,” he affirmed, sounding proud. “But you have proved yourself most capable at every task we’ve seen you do so far, and I don’t believe that you’ll need to get your hooves dirty, as it were. I was thinking of maybe a softer touch. You and Trinity were close, correct?” He took a step back and gestured off down one of the hallways.

“Hm. Once upon a time, I suppose.” Celestia wasn’t quite sure how Trinity would react if they were to meet again, but her friend surely knew that she was the one who had turned her in. “I doubt that I’d get a particularly warm greeting now.”

The old earth pony chortled in spite of the morbid subject. “Very true, yet still a familiar face can do wonders, and it’s not very often that we get the chance to make use of it. My specialty has always been in the somewhat more coercive means of interrogation, but on occasion we get prisoners who are quite resistant to my methods. Much better to just have a friendly face offer a way out than to have to break a pretty face, eh?”

They had come into a portion of the manor that Celestia had never visited before, tucked away in a corner of the western wing. The hall was lit by a couple of lamps high on the walls, casting dark shadows across the wooden floor, and occasionally lit up in flickers of purple whenever the lightning struck outside.

Gala came to a slim doorway and withdrew a silver key from around his belt. The doorway opened up to a set of narrow stairs leading down into an inky blackness. The cellar. Where Gala had concluded his business with Quill, and with Screw. And now with Trinity. Celestia knew that she didn’t want to see what lay at the bottom of these stairs, but the elder Lord was looking at her expectantly, so she picked up a lamp with her magic and started making her way down.

Chapter 43: What Matters Most

“The Unicorn Kingdom, being built on the supposed superiority of one tribe, was doomed to failure. For the opposite reason, Equestria will survive.”

- Journals of High Princess Celestia (Vol. 2)

The edge of the lantern’s light quickly revealed a different world down here. The wooden finish on the walls was replaced by arches of bare brick, running between closely spaced columns of stone. The air was chill and musty, filled with aromas of preserved fruit and aging cider. On the far wall Celestia saw a stack of casks, somehow reminding her of Raspberry’s tavern, a memory from what felt like a lifetime ago. Elsewhere in the cellar were other preserves, loops of garlic and sacks of vegetables, shelf upon shelf of canned and jarred goods, and even a small well with a crank and bucket sitting next to it.

The one thing that immediately caught her gaze though was the large wooden cage that was sitting to the right of the staircase. It was big enough to be called a cell, really, sturdy wooden posts several inches thick, running up and down and secured into boards that formed the floor and ceiling. There was a door locked with a sturdy padlock. And inside it, just barely visible at the edge of the lantern’s light, was Trinity. The sight of her involuntarily brought Celestia’s hoof up to her mouth.

The earth pony was tied to a chair, her fore-hooves drawn tightly to the sides and her rear legs to the front. There was a bag over her head hiding her face, and indeed it was probably a good thing that Celestia didn’t get a chance to see it. For the rest of Trinity’s body was marked with welts all over, her white coat marred by bruises, and a few dried streaks from what must have been trickles of blood across her shoulders. Celestia fought a sudden torrent of nausea, finally forced to turn away.

Gala had removed his shirt, and was affixing an iron horseshoe over his right front leg. “Best if you stay out of sight for now,” he cautioned, completely unfazed by the brutal sight. “I’ll give her the hard routine first, and then when I step out you’ll have your turn. I’ll give you five to ten minutes before I come back.”

The old stallion had an entirely different look in the gloom of the lamplight down here, especially with that heavy shoe adorning his hoof. The tufts of his mustache cast shadows across his cheeks, and his eyes reflected the glow of the lantern as twin pinpricks of fire. The still genial tone of his voice now seemed horrifically ironic.

Celestia sat back against a pillar and nodded, unable to bring herself to speak.

When Gala walked past and out of her line of sight, Celestia allowed herself to exhale. She’d known that she wasn’t going to like what she found down here. She’d consciously avoided it, in spite of the things Trinity had said, and the clues evident from how Gala conducted his affairs. How Screw had suddenly disappeared and virtually no pony mentioned him since. Yet the truth of it all still shocked her. To either side of her were racks of equipment, long-handled pincers and shears, whips and knotted cords. She spied one that still had a few tufts of blood-covered white hair dried upon it, and recoiled, the nausea returning.

But this wasn’t what her life would become, she desperately thought to herself. She would be handling the accounts upstairs, and Luna would find whatever position best suited her when she came of age. This part of it all could remain a secret, something barely thought about. Never mind that it was happening here, and probably all over the upper city, or in whatever strongholds the noble houses kept to themselves around the country. How many had suffered, just as Trinity was now?

Gala’s voice came to her then, echoing across the cellar. “Now again, who was your contact? Where did you meet them?” A loud slam! of heavy iron against wood. “You’ve got a pretty face, Miss Trinity. I wish I didn’t have to mess it up! Last chance, who was your contact?”

There was a moment of silence as Celestia held her breath. Then came the distinctive thunk of that iron hitting something else. And a yelp of pain in a familiar voice. Yet she heard no fear, no tears, and no confessions. Indeed, as Gala continued to lash Trinity with questions and beat her, it was Celestia who found herself weeping. Every blow that she heard was another unanswerable shock, another thing that Trinity had never said, and that Celestia had tried to avoid.

Thunk! This world was the one that she had fought so hard to enter and the one that she had defended to her friends.

Thunk! This world was the one that she had desired, for herself and for Luna.

Thunk! This world was the one that she had earned her place in, and celebrated above. The manor upstairs was warm and bright, but the cellar was a part of it too. There was no taking one without the other.

Finally she heard the clomp of Gala’s hoofsteps. “Haven’t had enough yet, have you?” he was saying. “Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more. And some that will leave a more permanent mark. Let me just go and warm up the hearth. I’ll be but a moment.”

Celestia took a few deep breaths in the hope of composing herself. With a nearby rag she wiped the tears out of her eyes and off of her uniform. It probably wouldn’t do for Gala to see how upset she was. She got back to her hooves as the old earth pony emerged once more into the light. Once again he was back to his usual self, that bright and cheerful smile on his face. But that image was tainted by the few drops of fine red spatter on the leg that had the shoe.

“Okay, time for you now,” he said, offering Celestia a quick nod. “She’s a resilient one certainly, but I’m going to heat up the branding irons, and she knows it. All you’ve got to do is offer her a way out. If she doesn’t bite, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He reached out to put an encouraging hoof on her shoulder, and Celestia had to fight the urge to recoil from him. At least it wasn’t the bloody hoof. “Don’t worry if you can’t crack her. No matter what happens, the important thing is that she’s not going to hurt anyone anymore.”

As if to play at the irony of that statement, Gala scanned over his equipment rack for a second, before picking out a long wood-handled branding iron with an apple design at its end. He gave Celestia one last wink before leaving for the far end of the cellar, loudly whistling a light and bouncy tune.

Alone once more, Celestia thought for a moment. She could perhaps just run away here and now, up the stairs and away from the estate, never looking back, in a way just like Capstan had said. That was probably how this would all end eventually. But in that world Trinity would die just the same. She would still have sealed her friend to this fate, even if she hadn’t come face-to-face with it herself. Those cries of pain and Gala’s cheerful whistling would haunt her dreams until the end of her days. Every moment of happiness, even earned honestly, would be tainted by this memory. No. She had to put this right, somehow. And that started with turning around and facing her old friend again.

She peeked her head around the column. Trinity’s cell was still just at the edge of the lantern’s light, cast in deep shadows. But she could see Trinity, hunched over in her seat, eyes closed as if asleep. Her head was just as bruised as the rest of her, with blood running from her left eyebrow. As Celestia stepped closer she could see that Trinity’s breaths were shallow, but as soon as she entered the cell that breath caught.

“Forget something?” Trinity asked, amazingly still with a note of confidence, though with an undeniable quiver in there too. But when she cracked open her eyes and saw Celestia standing there, she sat up straight. “Celestia? What are you doing here?”

A horrid thought came to her then, that Trinity might think she was only here to twist the knife some more. It was almost enough to convince her to turn around right there. Even if that wasn’t what Trinity thought, she would still probably be bitter over her betrayal. Celestia let her gaze fall to the floor. “I’m, uh… I’m here to apologize, Trinity. For everything. I should have believed you from the start. It shouldn’t have taken me seeing you like this to make me appreciate the truth.”

Her friend nodded slowly on hearing the words. Celestia expected a lash of justified anger, and was ready to accept it, but instead Trinity stayed calm and offered a friendly smile. “I always knew that you would come around eventually. It is quite the pity that it took this long though. But don’t worry, I’m not dead yet.”

“Wait, what?” Celestia jerked her head up to look Trinity in the eyes. Her friend’s expression was calm and open, seemingly honest. “You’re… you’re not still mad at me?”

“Mad? Hmm, no. Disappointed mostly.”

If Trinity had been able to lean back in the chair, Celestia guessed that she would have done so, even in spite of all of the pain that she was probably feeling right now. But she seemed relaxed at that moment.

“If I’m being honest, I have myself to blame as much as you for that. I trusted you just a bit too much, and underestimated how tempting the Lord’s offer would be to you. Plus it was a lot to just drop on you right there and we didn’t exactly leave a very positive first impression. Still, there’s time to make it up once you get me out of here. I assume that’s what you’re here for?”

“Assuredly so,” Celestia nodded. “Though I’m still not sure how. Gala will be back any minute, and he’ll surely hear us if we try to make a break for it.”

“Don’t worry. I think I know.” Trinity flashed her a crooked grin, revealing that she was now missing a few teeth. Yet, even on her broken face, it was still full of energy and life, and seemed almost to bring some light back into the room. “Untie my front hooves here, but leave the ropes on so it looks like I’m still restrained. When Gala comes back, I’ll take him by surprise, and you’ll take him from behind.”

It seemed like a good plan. As Celestia came forward to see to the ropes, she couldn’t help but get a whiff of Trinity’s smell. Not just the grime and muck of being kept in a dirty cell all day, but also the blood, sweat and tears. It almost made Celestia want to throw up again, but she took a deep breath and kept on. “How have you been able to deal with all of this?”

“It sure does look bad,” Trinity admitted with a flinch, “and I’ll assure you that it is pretty bad too. But everyone in the Resistance knows that this is what happens if you get captured. I went through some pretty rough training to prepare. Ultimately, it’s all about remembering that the cause is bigger than me, no matter what I have to face.”

With the knots untied, Celestia did her best to arrange the ropes to look like they were still tight. To her eyes it wasn’t a particularly convincing job, but hopefully Gala would have his mind elsewhere. The disturbingly cheery notes of his whistling were still echoing through the cellar, though she figured that her five minutes must be nearly up by now. In the time that they still had though, she leaned down and caught Trinity in an embrace, holding her tightly. “Thanks for understanding,” she said.

“You came around,” Trinity said back. “I knew you would. It means that you really do have a good heart in you. Now, stand back and ask me a few questions. I think that Gala is coming back.”

Standing up straight, Celestia gave her a nod and then quickly straightened out her uniform. Indeed, she could hear the sound of Gala’s steps approaching them once again. “Trinity, I’m just trying to help you,” she said, much louder than necessary, almost desperately. “There’s no need for this to go on. All that you have to do is tell us who you were meeting with, and where, then this will all be over.” Trinity, for her part, had clammed up, back to the stoic posture and deep breaths.

“Nothing?” came Gala’s voice once again from outside of the cell. When Celestia turned he was standing only a few steps away, holding the apple brand, only now the end of it was glowing bright orange and smoking slightly. “Don’t worry about it. She’s chosen the hard way, and that’s none of your concern.” He stepped aside to clear her a path back to the stairs, even lowering the brand and giving her a bow as a gentlecolt might. “You should head back up and get some rest then. You won’t want to be around for the part that comes next.”

She sighed as she passed him by. “Whatever needs to be done, I suppose. I hope that you won’t waste too much time on her. You do need your own sleep too.”

“Never mind about me,” Gala chuckled. “I have a good sense by now of how much a prisoner can be pressed before anything further truly is a waste of effort.”

He stepped past her and into the cell, raising the brand once more. The light coming off of its tip was enough to bring a warm glow into the tiny space, akin to an ember of fire. In its light, Celestia could see a bit of Trinity’s face, her eyes wide and fearful. But then, just as Gala stepped forward, she gave Celestia a wink.

Trinity moved like lightning, her hooves coming up and catching a hold of the brand just as Gala was about to drive it home. Celestia didn’t get a chance to see the look on his face, but he didn’t fall over or step back. Instead it looked as though he was holding his ground, and perhaps even winning the struggle. That was when Celestia jumped him from the back, locking her legs around his neck and toppling them both over onto the grimy floor.

There was a muffled grunt from Gala as they came down, but at once he was trying to shake himself free from Celestia’s grip. He was much stronger than she had expected, and in spite of her efforts it was only an instant before he had overpowered the strength in her legs and fought his way to his knees. Gala turned to look down at her and spat a wad of spittle right into her face.

“Another traitor,” he grunted, sounding almost disappointed. “I should have known. But there will be room in the cell soon enough.” Then there came a scraping sound behind him, and Gala turned, just in time to see Trinity bring the red-hot branding iron down onto the back of his neck.

Gala’s scream echoed in the cellar, deep into the back recesses of Celestia’s mind, as Trinity held the iron in place, and smoke curled up from the stallion’s neck. After a long moment that seemed to freeze in time Trinity pulled back, only to then swing the brand into Gala’s face, catching him on the side of the skull with a decisive thunk. She brought it back up behind her shoulder again, ready for another blow, but the elder Lord had collapsed to the ground, unconscious. The seared flesh on the back of his neck was still smoking, the stench acrid in Celestia’s nostrils, but for the moment he was out.

Trinity though was not taking a second to catch her breath. She was already leaning over to work on the ropes binding her rear legs. “We’re going to need to move,” she said briskly. “Someone will have heard that scream, and will be down to check on him soon.”

Celestia nodded, and hurried to help with the knots. With the storm outside, it was possible that nopony had overheard the struggle, but it wasn’t a chance that they should take. There was no explaining away this one. They needed to get out of the orchard, and never come back.

When the last ropes were undone, Trinity fell off of the chair and onto the floor. She was slow getting to her hooves, and Celestia could see a scowl of pain on her features. “Are you okay to walk?” she asked.

Trinity nodded, though Celestia could see that it was taking an effort for her not to cry out. “Just stiff is all,” she said. “It’ll come out in no time. Come on, we need to move.”

That much was true, but Trinity looked like she could barely walk. Gala’s interrogation must have left a more permanent mark than just cuts and bruises. Through the floorboards above, she could hear the urgent tapping of hooves as the servants congregated, and some were sent to investigate. Time was running out.

Celestia made an executive decision, picking up Trinity’s body and draping it across her back, before unfolding her wings and dashing up toward the stairs. With her wings to guide her she turned the corner to head up the stairway without losing any speed, and the two of them emerged into the darkened hallways above. The Sun had fully gone down by now, and the storm had broken, with the windows getting pelted by sheets of rain as lightning danced along the horizon.

Celestia turned back toward the front door only to find the hallway blocked by a pair of servants who were looking at her in confusion. One immediately turned and began shouting for Fastidious, though, and the other was standing firm. Celestia could maybe get past her, but the front entrance would surely be blocked by guards before she could get there.

“The other way!” Trinity shouted from her back. “There’s a servant’s entrance around the side of the estate! Down that hall!”

Celestia took off in the direction that Trinity had pointed, through hallways lit by burning lamps in their niches, past the dour glares of the Appleton family ancestors that stared out at her from the nooks.

Twice more she encountered other ponies attempting to block her way, guards this time, with sharp spears held level, but each time Trinity knew of another way out. Celestia by now had no idea where they were going, after so many turns in the maze-like halls of the manor.

Finally she saw the servant’s entrance, and hurling open the door she took off into the night sky, far up and not caring at all which direction she was going. So long as they left the Rose et Blanc behind them.

They had flown for maybe fifteen minutes when Celestia turned around to look back. The countryside behind them was empty, filled only with falling rain and the occasional bluff of trees. Lightning lit up the horizon occasionally, its far-off flickers revealing Eridian high on its peak, several miles further off than Celestia was used to seeing it. But they had left the orchard behind, and probably wouldn’t be followed. Not in the storm, at least.

Celestia set down in a stand of small trees, though it was late enough in the year that they had lost their leaves, and so provided no cover from the pouring rain overhead. She and Trinity were both drenched to the skin anyway, but even so as she laid her friend down into the grass Celestia held out her wing to make something approaching a canopy. “I think we’re far enough away,” she said, letting out a sigh.

Trinity laid herself down flat on the grass, taking a deep breath herself. “Probably,” she said, still wincing from the pain. “Though they will search for us once the storm lets up.”

“As soon as I’ve got you somewhere safe I’ll head back to the city, and lay low. Fastidious and Gala don’t know exactly where I live, and thank goodness for it.”

With the quiet of the rain settling on her now after the chaos of their escape, Celestia’s brain was finally catching up on what this all meant. Her dream of a secure life had just evaporated, and things were going to be even harder now. But just looking at Trinity’s battered form beneath her brought back her confidence. She would do it again in a heartbeat.

On the ground, Trinity’s breath suddenly caught. “Oh no.” She turned her face up, eyes filled with anxiety. “Celestia, you need to go back to Eridian right now.”

Celestia frowned. “I can’t leave you here in your current state.” On her own, Trinity could barely walk, and would probably fare even worse in the rain without any shelter. Still, the look on her friend’s face brought a flutter of nerves into Celestia’s heart too. “But what is the matter?”

“Celestia, forgive me but I… I-” For an instant, and astoundingly for the first time tonight, Trinity looked to be on the verge of tears. She sat up and caught her breath, but it was still trembling as she went on. “When they took me, of course I knew that you were the one who had turned me in. I wasn’t going to tell them anything about the Resistance, but I thought that there wasn’t much point in keeping your secrets anymore. I told them… everything. Who you were, where you lived.” She hung her head, and went on in a whisper. “I told them about Luna.”

The flutter of nerves turned into a stone that dropped right to the bottom of Celestia’s stomach. Fastidious wouldn’t search after her in the storm, but could send guards to her home, and would have done so right away. Rosy, Capstan, Wickerlock and Luna would all be blissfully unaware, perhaps huddled by the fire to ride out the storm, until Fastidious’s goons kicked down their door looking for her. Trinity was right. She had to get to them. But still she couldn’t take her gaze away from her friend, and the clear injuries all over her body.

“What about you, though, Trinity? I can’t just leave you. Not after all of this.”

Trinity coughed a couple of times before turning over onto her knees. Soaked by the rain, the welts and bruises across her flanks were even more obvious, yet she had the strength to stand. “We have hideouts spread all over. Like the one that you saw,” she said. “I can find one, and hunker down until I’m well enough to travel. And then find my way to Everfree.” Her eyes hardened, and she brought a hoof up to Celestia’s shoulder. “But you don’t have time. If Fastidious sent a pegasus right away, they might have reached the city already.”

That all made sense, yet still Celestia couldn’t agree. “What if I took you along?” she asked, voicing the first idea that came to her head. “You could find someplace safe in the city to recover.”

“No!” Trinity replied sharply, the word cutting through the rain like an arrow. Once again she was the Resistance agent, giving an order. “Celestia, we don’t have time to argue! I would just slow you down. You have to leave me and get to your sister!”

Hesitantly, Celestia nodded, and gathered her wings back to her side. Trinity was right, even though it still felt wrong to be leaving her.

Eridian was a good distance away, but she could see it on the horizon. She wasn’t the fastest flyer, but could make good time when necessary. Gala’s guards would need time to organize, and to navigate through the warrens of the lower city. She could still get the family to safety, but Trinity was right. She couldn’t afford to wait.

She gave Trinity one more look. It felt strange to be leaving her friend here and now, when she had just broken her out of captivity, and would never have the time to make up for her betrayal. “I guess that this is goodbye then, isn’t it? There’s no way that we’ll ever see each other again?”

Her friend gave her a thin smile. Somehow, in spite of everything, she was able to find the bright side. Celestia would have to put some practice into that herself. “Never say never, I suppose, but you and Luna will have to be in hiding for a long time, and I will have to make myself scarce as well. But if you ever do get out of Eridian, maybe we will meet again someday. Until then, just keep a hold of your hope, okay?”

“Got it,” she said, then gave her friend one last little hug. “Thanks for everything.”

“Go on, Celestia.” Trinity shook her head fervently. “You don’t have any more time.”

And so she took off, up to clear the trees and on into the driving rain. Celestia took one look back, to see Trinity standing unevenly for a moment, before taking her own first step off into the darkness. Celestia hoped that she would find her way to safety. Heaven knew that she deserved it, after all that she had been through. But now her own gaze had to be forward.

The rain was coming down before her in sheets, the weight of the water on her feathers and the swirling winds making flight near impossible, but hopefully the same would have slowed down the Lord’s messenger just as much. Every flicker of lightning illuminated the horizon in front of her though, so at least there was no danger of her getting lost.

With every flash Eridian loomed larger before her on the horizon, the tiny fire of light at its peak still there, once a warm reminder, now seeming to taunt her, looming high and unreachable above. But Celestia knew what it meant. She would find peace and safety yet, she swore to herself, but not there. Somehow, somewhere else.

Beneath that light the countless ruins of the lower city tumbled down the mountainside, dark and empty in the storm. There were no lights to be found in those collapsed buildings and roads choked with fallen debris, even though probably hundreds of ponies did live there. All of them would be surviving this storm just as her family was, huddled around fire pits far away from the windows, clutching their blankets for warmth. Those old enough to remember would be hoping that this was only regular rain, and not the tempest of a coming Chaos Storm. That the winds overhead would stay simply howling in gusts, and not cackling in mirth.

Celestia picked out the family’s building quickly, and dove in toward the city streets. From the outside everything looked fine, and there were no signs of movement. When she landed in the street all was quiet, save for the pounding of the rain against the broken cobblestones of the street in front of her. She could see that the door was open though, and immediately knew that she was too late. Beyond the threshold, she took in what was left of her home.

The kitchen looked as though a twister had gone through, their supplies now scattered all through the space, potatoes and sugar sprinkled down into the fire pit, which was still smoldering weakly. The remains of their beds were piled up around the perimeter of the room, turned upside-down or standing up on their ends, the mattresses bent over and torn. The wind coming in the open doorway occasionally blew one of the sheets off of its spot, billowing it out into the silent, empty space.

There was no sign of anypony. She was too late. They were all gone.

Listlessly Celestia sat down on the edge of the fire pit, running her gaze over the ruin once again. She’d been holding it together for most of the night, ever since she and Trinity’s escape from the orchard, but for the flight back to the city she’d been running on hope. Because of course she would make it in time. The alternative was simply too grim to imagine. Living it now though, there was nothing left to hold the emotions back.

Celestia wept, for all that had been lost in her ambition and her pride. She had wanted safety for all of her family, but now she had lost them all. Even if they had made it out okay, they were still lost, away somewhere in the vastness of Eridian. Capstan and Wicker wouldn’t come back to look for her; they thought that she was safe at the orchard. They might even believe that it was her who had sent the marauders after them. She had to hope that at least Luna was with them. Her sister was the one who still deserved a happy life, and as long as she was out there and okay, maybe she could still have one.

Celestia knew that she ought to move on too, but couldn’t think of what to do or where to go next. What was the point anymore? She didn’t have anything left now. No resources or contacts or influence. Not even another pony to lean on. She was alone. Alone in a dark world without any hope.

Celestia could have sat by that pit for a long time, as the wind gusted around her and the rain of her tears fell inside, had not a dark purple hoof then appeared up from out of the cellar. She hardly dared to hope for what it might be, but then Luna’s face emerged as well. The filly looked haggard, her mane tousled and dirty, her eyes wide and fearful. But when the two sisters’ eyes met, they both smiled widely.

“Tia!”

“Luna!” She ran over to the cellar, lifting her sister up with her magic. “You’re safe, oh thank heavens!” She locked her forelegs around her sister, and held her tight. “I didn’t know, I thought that you were gone!”

“Tia, what’s happening?” Luna still sounded fearful, and she was holding on to the embrace just as tight as Celestia was. When she went on, her voice came quickly, emotions spilling out as fast as her mouth could form the words. “Capstan and Wickerlock came home angry. They said that you were ‘lost’. And then these stallions showed up, and I think that they were looking for you? But it all happened so fast. Rosy told me to hide in the cellar, and the others…” Her breath caught. “I- I don’t know. There was a lot of noise, it sounded like maybe a fight. I stayed quiet until things had died down. Are they okay?”

Celestia held her sister up so that she could look into her eyes again. In the middle of the ruined space, she tried her best to be a point of comfort, though of course the tears in her own eyes would hinder that. “I don’t know either. We have to hope that they got out okay.”

In that moment, she wanted to just stay here, and enjoy the feel of Luna’s skin on her hooves, the warmth of having her sister this close. She could tell by the look in Luna’s eyes that this was what her sister wanted too. But they were still in danger. “We have to move. I’m sorry but it’s not safe for us to stay here anymore.”

For once, Luna didn’t ask her why. She would have many questions later, but for now she took a deep breath and gave a short nod. Celestia set her down, and then gathered up one of the sheets and tied it to make something of a crude satchel. “Here, can you gather up supplies? We’re going to be on our own for a little while, and we’ll need as much as we can.”

Luna bent down, letting Celestia slip the bag around her neck. “Tia?” she asked, softly now. “Will we ever see the others again?”

Seeing her sister there, her big eyes full of emotion that she wasn’t letting come out to her face, Celestia tried to muster up a reassuring smile. “I… I don’t know. I can’t say much of anything about our future now.”

Ten minutes later, both she and Luna had a bag full of what supplies they had been able to scavenge from the ruins of their old home. Outside, the wind was still howling and the rain was still coming down, but Celestia didn’t want to wait. They needed to move on, and find shelter somewhere else in the city. And then she needed to think about how they were going to survive. Standing by the door, she bent down to Luna’s level once again.

“Ready to go?” she asked, trying to look as comforting as possible.

“No,” Luna replied. “But I guess we don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Not really. But I’ll make you a deal, okay?” She took one of Luna’s hooves in her own, holding it up. “Things are going to be very hard for us for the next little bit. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I promise you that I’ll stick with you through it all. See this? I’m never letting go.”

“Never,” her sister affirmed, giving her a hoofshake to seal the deal. “Don’t worry, Tia,” she offered after, a hopeful glimmer in her eyes. “We’ll make it through just fine.”

Celestia could only nod. She got back to her hooves and took one last look at their old home. This place had been safe, or at least as safe as she’d ever known. The world beyond that doorway was dark and dangerous, filled with the horror of the fight between the Resistance and the upper city, the uncertainty of the daily struggle for the necessities, and the hazards of Discord’s magic besides. She was walking out into a thunderstorm with no shelter and no idea where she was headed. But she had Luna beside her, and that was all that mattered.

Chapter 44: A Crown Divided

“Is it really possible for a pony with a good heart to have done the things that I’ve done?”

- Journals of High Princess Celestia, (Vol. 3)

It was still hot and dry in Canterlot, but rain was coming. The new Windcaster had confirmed to Celestia that he would have showers made up for the whole country over the next couple of weeks, and more would be made available as necessary. The Senate would have to agree to a weather schedule and an arrangement with Cloudsdale for due compensation, but these were all practical matters, solvable with delicate negotiation and compromise. Exactly the sort of problem that Celestia was good at solving.

She was back in her office, another stack of new legislation ready for its markup, another lunch ready at the table side. To her tastes, these beans from Cloudsdale were lacking in almost every aspect that made food worth eating, but they were sustenance, and they would be the national ration for a few months yet. It wouldn’t do for the citizenry to have nothing but beans while their Princesses got to enjoy what good food there was left, so Celestia would just have to grin and bear it. But compared to what had almost happened without them, she thought she could get by on eating rocks if that’s what it would take.

In front of her was Ink, and between them were several sheaves of documents, the working matters that the Senate would have to consider in its next session. The senator pulled another sheet out. “There is the matter of Pensive,” Ink spoke, eyeing the document carefully. “Locked up in the dungeons, but we still need to put him on trial.”

“He’s not a priority,” Celestia replied, barely paying the document any mind. “Though he will have to answer for his crimes sooner or later. Perhaps in a couple of weeks once things have settled down somewhat.”

“And what of his seat? Not only is Canterlot’s Fifth District without a senator, but the chamber now needs a new speaker.”

Celestia gave her a level look. Ink’s new cutie mark was a gavel after all.

But Ink shook her head. “Oh, heavens no. I’ve got so much left to learn before I could feel comfortable with that kind of responsibility. We’ll need to find someone else within the chamber, one of the more senior senators.”

“Fair enough. But please don’t sell yourself short. From what I’ve heard, you performed very well for my sister while I was gone. When this is all behind us, I might see about giving you some sort of award.” Her and several others. Based on the reports, many of Luna’s guards deserved posthumous Silver Shoes for their conduct during the recent battle. But again, all of that could wait until things had settled down.

“Whatever you think is best, Your Highness.” After a moment’s silence, Ink shuffled the parchments aside. “Actually, concerning Luna,” she began again, somewhat haltingly. “How is she holding up with everything?”

Celestia’s eyebrows came down into a frown. She hadn’t spoken with Luna in two days, not since their confrontation in Southoofton. A report had reached Canterlot that she had come to Harmony Tower the day before, so Celestia was hopeful that her sister was merely taking a break to work through everything that had happened.

“I’m afraid that I’m not sure,” she said, her concern clear. “We haven’t spoken in some time.”

Ink nodded along, her eyes saying that she understood. “She was put through a lot, and I could tell how much it weighed on her. Did everything that she could, but…” She didn’t need to finish that sentence.

Celestia turned to look out her windows, down over Canterlot and into the countryside beyond. The city was back to normal, ponies going about their routines once more, and to a large degree the same was true across the country. It was almost normal now, but it had come so very close to ruin.

“I wish that things could have gone differently,” she said, half to herself and half to Ink. “I left her to manage the worst of it, without any instruction or guidance. It’s understandable that she would need time after all of this. But she did an outstanding job to limit the damage to what there was.”

“You both did a good job,” Ink affirmed. “Better than any of us could have hoped for.”

Turning back to face her, Celestia stood up. “Thank you for saying so. I’ll see you in the chamber this afternoon.” Ink gave her a small bow before leaving, down to the cafeteria to get her own ration of beans most likely.

Celestia got up from the desk and paced about the space, her gaze falling equally on the Triumvirs’ Circlets and the Elements of Harmony, each on their own small plinths, polished to a regal shine by the servants. Three hundred years ago, when she’d faced down the last existential crisis for Equestria, the aftermath had been joyous, simple and pure happiness. Sure, a lot of hard work had been necessary to get Equestria back into shape after Discord had been defeated, but it was made simple by the lustre of the moment. The crisis had passed, and the future looked bright.

It should have been the same today, but something was wrong, and she knew what it was. Without Luna here by her side to share in the celebration, the picture was incomplete. She could only hope that her sister would work through her difficulties soon.

The sight of the Elements stirred Star Swirl’s consciousness at the back of her mind. Powerful magic, the old wizard thought. I should have liked to have something like these to study when I could still do research!

Maybe you still can, she thought idly. I am going to need a new side project now that I’ve found you. Perhaps we could spare a few idle moments here or there to look into them.

Speaking of, he continued, much more grave now, There is the matter of the Hill. I can’t watch over it anymore, so something needs to be done to prevent other ponies from venturing there. In seeming answer, Solaris’s magic stirred as well, in what came across as a low, discordant humming sound that Celestia pushed away.

It was a fair point, but Celestia didn’t have to think about it very long to see a possible answer. Indeed. I shall bring it up in the Senate this afternoon. We can make that part of the forest a National Historic Site, and then restrict all access to the Hill.

There was silence from Star Swirl, but Celestia got the sense that he was giving her a prudent nod. The question of Solaris was yet another matter for her to attend to. Getting his magic out of her mind was going to be no easy task, but could prove to be another worthwhile puzzle to work at in the years ahead.

Something passed in front of the Sun’s light, casting a sudden shadow through the room. A passing cloud, or so she thought. But instead of returning, the light only waned further, through a dim twilight, then finally into the black of night. Without candles lit, the room was plunged into darkness, and Celestia turned once more to the window. What she saw took her breath away.

The Sun had not merely been dimmed: it was gone entirely. It was suddenly the middle of the night, as it would have been during Discord’s reign, and the only illumination was an enormous, silver, full Moon, seeming to hang directly over the city. Down through the streets there was now chaos, ponies running everywhere as they attempted to adapt to the sudden darkness, and everypony looking skyward.

Opening the window, Celestia let herself out and into the air. The sudden change of day made Discord her first thought, but it only required a single look to see that he was still calcified in the palace garden. Then, she saw something in the distance. A black silhouette against the shining brilliance of that Moon. The profile looked familiar, and with the wings and the horn there was only one pony that it could be.

Celestia felt her anxious heart settle. Whatever was going on, if Luna was here to help then it would be a lot easier to solve.

But something was still strange as she approached. Firstly in that Luna did not immediately call out and rush to join her. Second, in that Luna’s coat appeared much darker than usual, almost as black as the night sky overhead. And third, that as soon as their gazes met Luna lowered her horn and fired a white-hot bolt of magic her way. Celestia barely had time to dodge, but the shot hit the palace wall behind her with a boom like thunder.

“Luna!” she called out, in shock and anger. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Putting a bit more pace into her wings, Celestia tried to rapidly close the gap between them. That had to be Luna in front of her, right? There was only one other alicorn in Equestria, so far as she was aware. But Luna would never try to hurt her. Even then, she found herself having to guard against another blast, this one thankfully sailing off into the sky behind her and not threatening the city.

“Heh, Luna?” her sister’s body answered, though it was not in her voice. Instead Celestia heard a deep undertone of hatred crackling like a fire. An undeniable voice, heralding an unbelievable truth.

“Not anymore,” Solaris continued. “She came to me, desperate and afraid, a perfect pawn. She’s gone now. Now it’s just me and you.”

Luna’s magic crackled with a black energy layered on top of its usual purple, as with it Solaris cut a scythe across the sky. Celestia’s shield held, but underneath her she heard screams. The magic sliced through buildings and streets, sending masonry falling and the citizens running for cover.

“Then you will give her up.” Celestia let her voice drop low, and lowered her own horn into a fighting posture. “And leave this place forever.” Don’t hold back, Star Swirl, she said to him inwardly. I’m going to need your power here.

With pleasure, he thought back. Solaris’s magic roared along too, desperate to be unleashed, seeming to sense the presence of its master, but Celestia kept it on a tight leash.

Solaris threw his head back and cackled, the sound reverberating against Canterlot’s mountainside to fill the air. “We get a fair fight at last, usurper. No dirty tricks here, just a duel to the death. Like the old days.”

“Not to the death,” Celestia whispered, but then Solaris was upon her. Unlike their earlier battle up on the hilltop, this time they were both in the air, and with lots of room to manoeuvre.

Solaris kept on the attack, offering lances of power from all directions, free to teleport around the battlefield and pepper her with strikes. Celestia countered those that she could, and tried her best to block the others. Solaris kept to the higher sky, surely knowing fully well that every missed shot would hit the city below.

She answered back on occasion, giving him bolts of golden light that cut through the darkness of the sky like shooting stars. But Solaris easily checked them. Celestia’s spells were always non-lethal, and consequently less powerful. For all that Solaris claimed Luna was no more, she couldn’t believe that was the case.

“You will have to come for me eventually!” Solaris shouted down at her, watching her circle in the distance. He bore down with another salvo, and this time Celestia met him in the middle, their beams colliding over the city, a shower of golden dawn and midnight black. Celestia set her teeth and concentrated, pouring everything that she had into the spell. Her magic had the hint of azure on it, marks of the aid that Star Swirl was giving her.

But Solaris’s magic had tinges of Luna’s purple on it too, and Celestia could see a grim smile on her sister’s face. Slowly, the black beam advanced, cutting through the gold in spite of all the strength that Celestia could bring to bear on it. Finally she had no recourse but to dodge out of the way, Solaris’s bolt cutting through a bridge behind her and triggering an avalanche of stone debris.

How? She thought desperately. We should be evenly matched. A unicorn and an alicorn each.

Somehow, Star Swirl’s thoughts sounded out of breath. I’m afraid that I have to keep some in reserve. I have to keep a lid on the dark magic in your own mind.

Of course that dark magic was still there, frothing and buzzing merrily as it strove to be let off the leash. For an instant, just as a test, Celestia let off her control. The darkness closed in at once, billowing out to fill her vision. It felt just like she was back up on the hilltop, losing herself to the icy cold of the mad King’s grip. She fought it off again.

Never, Star Swirl cautioned. With his magic you are strong, but if you let it in it will consume you, just as it has your sister.

Above, Solaris had seen her effort. “Yes!” he called excitedly. “You know what you must do to beat me. Embrace it! And even then I will win!” His laughter again echoed over the city, harmonizing hellishly with the screams below.

She dove down once more, avoiding a crackle of lightning that arced across the sky and set trees ablaze below. Then what am I supposed to do? she demanded of Star Swirl. If we cannot overpower him then how can we win?

Trust me that I would be telling you if I knew. I spent centuries trying to figure out how to destroy him. If his spirit can be unbound from its anchor, then it will dissipate. Not possible while it was bound to the Hill, though I suppose now that if you did kill her…

Not an option, Celestia cut in before he could finish that thought.

Are you sure? Star Swirl sounded cautious. You told me that you wouldn’t allow Equestria to end in fire and death, as my kingdom did. How else will this end?

She physically shook her head to rid herself of his thoughts. Trying to buy some time, she cut back up the mountainside, hoping to lure Solaris away from the populated lower city and up to the palace, which was probably fully evacuated by now. Plus the closely-spaced towers and ornate bridges offered more hiding spots.

As she turned back to look, Celestia once again saw her sister’s form silhouetted against the full Moon behind her. Despite her vastly different appearance, Luna was still there, of that she was sure. Her magic was still alive, added to Solaris’s own, and that meant that her spirit had to be in there too. Consumed by the dark magic, but alive still.

The thought gave her a moment’s pause. Star Swirl, is there any other way for a binding to be undone?

The old wizard was silent for a moment, which was well enough as Celestia had to throw herself into a hard right-hoof turn around one of the palace’s towers, the acceleration rippling the feathers on her wings. Solaris’s magic crashed into a buttress behind her, throwing masonry and coloured tiles everywhere as he laughed on.

In theory, yes. Star Swirl finally said. I don’t know how you expect this to help, but the resident spirit can leave voluntarily, the same way that I rebound my spirit from the cottage to you. Or, in principle, if the host can overpower the resident, he can be forced out. But we would need your sister’s help with that, and right now she is gone from our influence.

Celestia didn’t reply. Instead she pulled up, arresting her forward momentum with her wings and climbing to the sky, stopping at the top of the tower. It was her own tower, and so from this vantage point, she could see out to the city again, to the fires and ruin below, and hear the cries and shouts. Another arc of magic announced Solaris’s arrival, but this time Celestia held her ground with a shield.

Seeing that she had stopped, Solaris approached slowly, circling, looking for his opening. When Celestia only held her ground, he laughed again, but not the mad cackle of before, instead the cold chuckle that she remembered from the inside of his mind.

“Finally!” Solaris declared, twisting Luna’s features into a smug grin. “You’ve come to your senses.” Dramatically he swept Luna’s hooves over the horizon, as plumes of smoke from the city below cut dark gashes across the pale silver of the Moon. “There is no need for this destruction to continue. Give me back my throne, or give in to my magic and rule with me. Either way, this will all be over.”

Celestia glanced back over her shoulder, seeing the top of her tower near at hoof, the vast empty expanse of the desert far behind to the east. “That’s all that you want?”

He nodded, a moment of lucidity cutting through the madness in Luna’s eyes. “Yes. Just what was taken from me and my family.”

Celestia shook her head resolutely. “You expect that we can negotiate after all of the things that you’ve done? No. You’ve had your fun, Solaris, but I will not let you destroy any more of this city, this country, or of my sister! It ends here!”

I sure hope that you’ve got a plan, Star Swirl whispered.

“Fine!” Solaris roared back, a snarl once again twisting Luna’s features. “We will dispense with the games and settle this horn to horn. Embrace my power and win, or stand and die!”

She lowered herself into the dueling stance. No matter what, it was ending here. Her evasion had only succeeded in allowing Solaris to wreak destruction on the city. She would not embrace his magic, though. She had a different end in mind.

Solaris wasted no time on his spell, leveling Luna’s horn and giving her a bolt of the same black and purple magic as before, its darkness drinking in the light of the city around it. Celestia met it once again with her own golden ray, and once again she was pushed back, without the strength to prevail.

“Yes! YES!” Solaris yelled as Celestia’s magic waned. “You will join her with me, and together the three of us will rule, unchallenged, forever!”

“No,” Celestia whispered through gritted teeth. But she did not have the strength to stand any longer. With a shower of sparks her magic fell away, and Solaris’s spell took her full in the chest, driving the breath from her lungs and hurling her backward, through the great window at the top of her tower, down into her office in a torrent of shattered glass.

Celestia held her wings out behind her, trying to protect herself, but felt more than one shard slice through her back. Her impact bowled over the desk and chairs in the room, and overturned the bookcases sending parchments flying.

The magic stayed on her, pushing her down like heavy chains around her shoulders and hooves. Yet still, with an effort she struggled to one knee, grabbing hold of the plinth where the Elements sat and pulling herself up to it. Just in time to see Solaris fly in and set down on the wooden floor.

He folded Luna’s wings up to her sides delicately, and took a step in toward her. “A good fight,” he acknowledged, “but a doomed one. Now come. Give in to me and end this struggle.” The wicked black orb of his spell appeared on Luna’s horn, swirling in the silver light of the Moon. In a second, it would all be over.

But Celestia had one card left to play. With one hoof she grabbed the Elements, and with the other she grabbed onto Luna’s body. With a crackle, the Elements came to life, and Celestia felt herself taken inward as the magic joined their minds together. She was pulled along the link between her sister’s body and the magic of the stones, to a place where the world was black.

Waking as if from a slumber, Celestia found herself floating in an inky void, chill as the depths of winter. She felt a blast of warmth, and in a moment Star Swirl had materialized beside her, dressed just as he had been when they had first met, only without the many patches on his old robe. The blue of his own magic cut through the blackness like a knife through butter, leaving only tattered remnants and a dark blue background behind.

Solaris’s magic left her too, freed from her mind to join with the rest of him here in Luna’s mind. Celestia was all herself again, and once they could find Luna’s spirit, she could do the same for her sister.

“A splendid idea,” Star Swirl said from beside her, tired but resolute. “Though I doubt that we’ll have much time.”

The darkness around them gathered into itself, rolling up like a loose bit of cloth, until it had morphed into a recognizable silhouette. Solaris once again stood with his long mane waving behind him, a scowl on his muzzle and his eyes flaming crimson. He towered over both of them, three times as tall as in reality.

“Hmmph,” he grunted, barely fazed. “More tricks. But our situation still has not changed. This will only end when I have you as my own!”

“Deal with him, please, Star Swirl,” she said. Solaris would get his horn to horn duel, and against his oldest enemy, no less.

Star Swirl needed no further instruction. He was off in a blaze of azure, a storm of sparks and a torrent of lightning, as the two wizards traded blows that shook the foundations of the space.

Celestia was left to herself, and cast about at once to find her sister. Luna’s spirit shouldn’t have been far, and indeed it only required a moment to find her, curled up as if asleep, perhaps twenty metres away. In here she looked normal, her coat the usual purple and the silver and black of her cutie mark in perfect evidence upon her flank. Yet Luna’s head was cradled in darkness, wisps of ebony magic that came together around the base of her neck like a hood tied around her shoulders.

Celestia rushed up as torrents of black and blue magic fell from above, the fallout of Solaris and Star Swirl’s duel.

“LUNA!” she cried out as she approached. “Luna, I’m here! Luna!” She saw her sister’s head stir, as if only hearing the words through a fog of sleep. Landing, she took her sister by the shoulders. “Luna, please wake up! I’m here! I’m here to help.”

It took an agonizing moment, as her sister shook the bonds of sleep from her eyes, but then they opened and settled drowsily upon her. “Celestia?” she said softly.

Seeing the normal dark purple of her sister’s eyes put a surge of hope into Celestia’s heart. “It’s me, Luna. I need your strength. You’re under the influence of a dark power, but I can help you fight it off.”

Suddenly Luna’s eyes snapped open, sharpening into clear focus, and she stood up. Celestia’s heart soared, but when Luna spoke, her voice was low and distant, as though her mind was still elsewhere. “I couldn’t bear to watch,” she said, shaking her head. “All of the chaos, the fear. I didn’t think that it would happen this way.”

They weren’t the words that Celestia had been expecting, not by far. “What are you talking about?”

Gesturing up at the flashes of light and darkness above, Luna cocked her head. “Him,” she said. “I probably wouldn’t have done this the same way that he has. It would be better if so many didn’t need to be put in danger.”

“No,” Celestia said back, a bit more sure of herself now. “Come on, that’s not you. He has a hold of you, Sister, and I need you to fight him!”

But Luna simply turned to face her once again. Her big eyes were clear, her eyebrows up. “Do I not sound like myself? In here, Solaris and I are separate. In time I will have to fight him, but for now it’s probably best that he stays in charge.”

Celestia couldn’t believe it. Her sister really had said those words, honestly, and so far as she could tell without any subconscious influence behind them. For an instant Celestia wasn’t sure what to say.

“You can’t really mean that?” she finally managed.

Her sister nodded, closing her eyes and perhaps thinking over the point. “What difference does it make?” she mused. “Whether he or I is the one that challenges you? Some pain was always going to be necessary either way.”

“This is about me?”

“Yes, of course this is about you!” Luna erupted, anger filling her tone as a flash of darkness swept through the whole space. “You’re wrong! You’re so wrong and you refuse to understand why! You’ve put Equestria onto a path darker than any other! Worse than Discord! Worse than Solaris!”

Luna held her glare for a second, so intense that Celestia had to shrink away, before she let out a deep breath, and hung her head, suddenly gone from rage to seeming shame. “Somepony had to do something,” she continued, a tear in her eye. “He, well, he is at least willing to do what may be necessary.”

Once again Celestia didn’t know how to respond. She was torn between a multitude of emotions. Urgency, to shout some sense into her sister as their time surely ran short. Anger of her own, at having her plans and intentions once again attacked. A desire to console Luna and help her with her obvious pain. Fear, as she wondered if Solaris might come out victorious after all. And, buried at the bottom but bubbling up, a growing despair and anguish, as she realized what this all meant, even before Luna said it out loud.

Luna clenched her eyes shut, then turned away. “I’m afraid that this has to be the end for us,” she said, the quiver in the words betraying the emotions behind them. “Goodbye, my sister.”

Solaris’s mad laughter echoed back through the space. Above, Star Swirl’s magic was only a burning blue star now, a pinpoint of light against the infinite darkness all around him.

“No!” Celestia cried. “No, that can’t be it! After everything, we can figure this out! We have to! It’s been you and me together for three hundred years. You can’t… you can’t just decide to throw that all away!”

“I am not throwing it all away!” Luna shouted back. “You are! I remember the oath that we took. I’m doing what’s necessary, to protect Equestria from one who would do it harm.”

“But you’ve got it all wrong! Please, just talk to me. Let us work through this.”

Her sister only shook her head, as a wind now grew behind her, billowing her mane over her shoulder and grabbing the tears that fell from both of their eyes. “No,” Luna said. “That’s it! It’s over! I said GOODBYE!”

Overhead, the darkness once more became absolute.

Star Swirl’s voice boomed out, shouted as from a distant mountaintop. “Celestia!” he called. “He’s too strong! You have to get out, before he takes you too!”

“I’m not leaving her!” she cried back. Desperately she lunged forward and grabbed hold of her sister’s hoof, holding it tightly. “You must remember this, Luna! I’m here for you, do you hear me? I’m never letting go! Never!”

Her sister looked down at her, and with all her heart Celestia willed her to see the light. Luna frowned. “But I am,” she said, before roughly tearing her hoof free.

“NO!” Celestia collapsed down, awash in the cries of her anguish. She didn’t see Star Swirl come down, as the tendrils of Solaris’s magic wormed their way over Luna and once again up to her. She didn’t see the old wizard’s final act, throwing her back along the pathway of the Elements as he too was consumed.

“Luna,” she whispered, so soft that she could barely hear it herself. “Luna, please.”

She awoke once more in her office, winds ripping through the space, tearing parchments from her books and hurling them about in a tempest of broken glass and splintered wood. Solaris was still in front of her, eyes cloudy but for a moment. Her head was all a blur, her heart broken.

Yet still through the window Celestia could see Canterlot below. She wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and weep, yet at the same time she knew: if she didn’t act now, Equestria was doomed.

Frantically she ran her eyes over the space, scanning for anything that might be of use. Books of law were scattered all about. Her forgotten lunch of beans was splattered against the far wall. Seeing the map of Star Swirl’s journey, however, she knew it.

Star Swirl’s spell. Just as Solaris had been bound to the hilltop, and Star Swirl to her, she could bind Luna’s spirit somewhere else. Somewhere safe, and somewhere Solaris couldn’t hurt anyone. Through the window, hanging over the city, the giant full Moon beckoned.

So she called forth her magic once again, the last strength that she had, and built it quickly into a kaleidoscopic weave of colour and power, a ball of shimmering magic that engulfed Luna’s form. She grabbed her sister’s hoof again just as she finished, feeling its warmth once more.

“I will get you back,” she said, the words a mess with the quiver in her voice. “I will, Luna.” As the spell ran its course Luna faded away, her hoof suddenly disappearing from Celestia’s own. Celestia held on tightly as long as she could, until she was left grasping at thin air.

Her strength gone, Celestia fell to the floor, as out over the burning city the Sun shone once more.

End Act II

Epilogue

Dr. Szill Tosak frowned at his computer screen. The tests had come back negative, which wasn’t exactly surprising. His team was searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, so it only followed that there would be a lot of false leads before they found what they were after. The lab would move on to the next batch of candidates, but that test would take another two days. He swiftly dashed off an email to Dr. Hartleby thanking him for the update and promising that the whole team was eagerly awaiting a positive result.

Outside, the Sun was setting, casting long shadows from the tall spires of Argyla City. From his perch at the top of one of those spires, he could see all of the way down to the streets far below, where traffic still hummed along and the nightlife was only just beginning. Once upon a time, the bright lights of the late night had been a comforting sight for him, but that was a long time ago now. Tosak was by far too old to be out carousing with the young folk these days. Instead, he would end his evening by making his way down to the commissary for a light snack, before maybe sliding into bed with a good book.

In the halls outside of the office he passed several photographs framed and hung on the wall. The first was of him with the rest of the research staff: twenty men and thirteen women, all among the finest in their fields, and from quite a diverse set of fields as well. Biology, genetics, theoretical physics, organic chemistry. Back then he had been just a student still earning his doctorate.

In the next picture, Director Primrose posing with their research subject, back when they had both still been alive. Tosak found that he always had to stop and examine this one, the dour seriousness of the middle-aged academic Primrose standing at odds with the natural rugged handsomeness of the earth pony who had called himself Seraph. Such a wonderful conversation partner the pony had been, when he was still around anyway. Now, he was kept preserved in a freezer by the biology lab, while his cells were cultured for the tests.

Third, himself, now as Director of the project, and his first research student Inara Felt, standing outside the team’s then newly-built particle accelerator. This one he also liked to admire, just to remember what his hair had looked like while he still had some.

Through the next door, in the central atrium of the spire, a man was waiting for him. Though short, the peak of his officer’s cap made up for it somewhat. “Dr. Tosak,” he said, the clean and well-drilled accent of imperial service identifying him even before he showed his credentials. “Stan Reynolds, from the Imperial Science Office.”

Tosak motioned toward the elevators. “Hello, Mr. Reynolds, what can I do for you today?”

“His Excellency would like an update,” Reynolds replied simply.

“An update? Did he not find our most recent official report illuminating enough?”

The elevator dinged ahead of them, and Reynolds joined him in the empty car. Silently it began to head down through the floors. “Quite so,” he said. “But as I’m sure you’re aware the official reports are being scrubbed quite liberally now, after the recent leaks.” He shook his head as he said those words, and Tosak didn’t blink. Leaks were a part of the business, but those responsible had been dealt with, and nothing of the project’s purpose had made it to the press, at least not as he was aware.

Reynolds continued. “His Excellency is instituting a change. From now on, briefings are to be delivered verbally, and today that means you and I.”

“Ah, I see,” Tosak nodded. Working on secret projects could be such a bother sometimes. For not the first time, he wished that his team could be freed from the military and intelligence bureaucracy and just do their science in peace. “Well, I’m afraid that progress remains slow. Our understanding of magic has changed little from last year.”

The military man didn’t react. “Regrettable, but understandable. Please, tell me all of the details.”

Prologue

Present Day
Canterlot Castle

With a sigh, Twilight set down her stylus. The mountainous stack of notes beside her had now dwindled to a few loose papers, and most of their contents had been transferred into the data recorder in front of her, as piece by piece the story had come together. It was still far from finished, but she felt that at least now she’d given it a respectable start. In truth, this was about as far as she could go based on the public records she had access to. The next section was going to require additional research, but she could afford at least a small break before then.

Outside, the Sun was setting, ending the latest of several days to have passed, something lost on Twilight. In truth, she had only noticed the passage of that time in a perfunctory manner: when somepony brought a meal she had eaten, and when it got dark she had slept. Other than that, she had utterly focused on her writing.

Twilight took the stairs down through the tower slowly, not out of fatigue, but instead to marvel like she always did at the grandeur of the space. The Tower of the Sun was all airy halls, three stories of hoof-cut stone, trimmed with gold and silver. Astronomical motifs decorated the walls and ceilings, and busts of the tower’s former resident still stared serenely out of niches in the stairwells.

The whole place had been built and furnished to meet the requirements of an exact plan, and Twilight appreciated the precision of its geometry. She couldn’t have asked for anything more when it came to building a home. But even so, after nearly two years, the place still seemed as unfamiliar as ever.

As she descended the spiralling stairs, her hoofbeats echoed long and loud in the empty space. It was a home worthy of a monarch, built for a ruler who had guided her nation through centuries, unaided and ever-steadfast.

Again Twilight sighed. No matter how successful her reign would be, she couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel comfortable with all of this as her own. Truthfully, she still longed for the simple and rustic charm of her old library home.

The tower’s base opened up into the Royal Antechamber, an expansive rectangular hall that joined together the Tower of the Sun with the Tower of the Moon, and connected both to the central palace complex. In ages past, her appearance here would have been greeted by a crowd of secretaries and courtiers, each of them eager to fill her in on the latest events in the kingdom. Today though, the glittering stone parquet before her was empty, save for two seats drawn around an elaborate chess board in the far corner.

Rarity sat in one of the chairs, her eyebrows knit together in deep thought over the White pieces. Across from her was a youthful purple dragon who towered over her even while seated, easily seven feet tall. With lengthy fangs growing out over his lower lip, he would have made an intimidating sight if not for the tan jacket and dark green bowler that he wore. Spike reached out a claw festooned with golden rings and clicked his Black princess three squares forward.

“Checkmate,” he said, in a voice that had rapidly grown deeper over the last few years. “That’s four for me now. Best of nine, perhaps, my lady?”

Rarity shook her head, glancing over in Twilight’s direction. “No thank you, Spike. You’ve made your point, and now I have work to do.” As she stood, the white unicorn magically smoothed out the folds in her uniform. “Have you finished, Twilight?”

The Princess chuckled. “Not even close. But I’m far enough along that I felt I could do with a little break.” She turned to Spike. “What are you still doing here?”

The dragon looked sheepish. “Well, I got here just when you started writing, and since Rarity didn’t have anything better to do, I stuck around.”

“What about your business?”

He shook his head. “My only business now is collecting royalties. Dr. Tosak licensed everything from me, so now his people take care of running the company. All I have to do is let the gold roll in.”

There was a distinct note of melancholy in his voice, which would certainly have sounded out of place from any other dragon in the position that Spike had just described. But Twilight knew that in spite of his heritage, gold had never been what Spike lived for. So many things had changed, but all that he wanted was still somepony to spend time with.

At that moment, an idea sprang into her mind. “Well, since you’re here, I do have a lot of research that I still need to do for the book. An assistant would make things go a lot faster.”

She saw his eyes perk up immediately. “Say no more, Twilight!” He stood and delivered her a deep bow, accented even more by his exceptional height. “Just like old times, I guess.”

“Sure,” she replied, enjoying the moment of nostalgia. “But please, no more bows. We’re partners, even if now I’m the Princess.”

He straightened up. “Of course. Lead on.”

“Will the two of you again be wanting privacy?” Rarity asked.

“No. Have the kitchen whip up a light dinner, then bring it to us. We’ll be in the library. Thanks.” Rarity gave her a quick nod before trotting off into the palace. Twilight too turned around and began making her way back into the tower, now with Spike at her side.

“So, Rarity said that you were working on some big writing project?” Spike asked, looking down at her. “A complete history of Equestria, start to finish?”

“Well, the modern era at least,” Twilight nodded. It was still a little disconcerting having to tilt her head back to look the dragon in the eyes, having spent so much of her life literally looking down at him. But there was also something adorably childlike in the enthusiastic spring in his step as the two walked on. “The era of the Triumvirs that preceded Discord’s reign isn’t part of it, but covering Celestia and Luna is still nearly fifteen hundred years. There’s so much confusion and mystery surrounding the two Princesses. Somepony has to set the record straight.”

“So that’s where you’ve been for the last week, then,” the dragon smirked knowingly.

The number struck Twilight dumb for a moment. She tried mentally counting out the days, but found that everything was blurred together. “I guess so,” she said after a moment. “Like I said, it’s a really long story.”

Once back in the tower, Twilight led Spike up the stairs, past the grandiose state dining and reception rooms that she’d put to so little use. Even when she’d had guests to entertain, those huge rooms of polished stone and crystal chandeliers had felt empty and cavernous. There were plenty of other smaller chambers throughout the palace complex that she found more comfortable and served her needs just as well.

The pair turned a corner, and at the far end of the wall, an imposing set of golden double doors came into view, twin Suns on their front reaching out their rays to cover nearly the entire end of the hallway. It was one of the few rooms in the tower that Twilight hadn’t explored yet, but she knew exactly what was behind them. The spell to open these doors was one of the things that she had received on her coronation day, now that its former owner no longer needed it.

“Whoa,” Spike gasped beside her when he saw where they were headed. “Now this is something I haven’t seen before. Something you need for your research is in there?”

By the look on his face, Twilight could tell that he was thinking the room was a local repository for the Treasury.

“Of course,” she said, stopping just in front of the doors. “I’ve trawled through all of the records that I can find, interviewed subjects where possible, and examined what evidence there is available, but even with all of that the historical record is incomplete. I’ve finished all that I can at this point, but in order to go further, I need the information in here.” She took a deep breath. “In Princess Celestia’s personal library.”

One of Spike’s eyebrows rose about an inch when he heard, but it just as quickly came back down. “I’ve never heard you that concerned about entering a library before. There’s nothing, like, dangerous in there, is there?”

The remark brought a smile to Twilight’s face, but it wasn’t enough to dispel her trepidation. “No, it’s safe, Spike. It’s just…” She sighed, suddenly realizing how absurd this was going to sound. She had lived in this castle for more than two years, and every so often had considered entering the room. She had stood right as she did now, on the threshold, and every time had turned aside. It had never felt right then, and it didn’t feel right this time either.

The new Princess gazed intently at the twin suns. “For more than a thousand years, only one pony has opened these doors, and seen what lies beyond them. I’ve worn her crown for two years, and now that she’s gone it’s technically mine, but more than anything else in the tower, I feel like this place still belongs to Celestia.”

Spike placed a comforting claw on her shoulder. “Well, just going in won’t change that. Nopony is going to gild your cutie mark over top of hers. This will always be the Tower of the Sun, and this will always be Celestia’s Library.”

“Still,” she answered, “I’m writing this history to establish once and for all Celestia and Luna’s places in our past. That truth has to be made public, but I don’t want to tear down their legacy just to uncover it. But you’re right, Spike. It has to be done.”

With another deep breath, Twilight called the spell to her mind. There came two clangs of solid metal bars being withdrawn from their housings, and then the doors slowly swung inwards.

By this point in her life, Twilight had seen a great many libraries, from humble and cozy ones like her old home in Ponyville, to massive and grand ones like the official archives here in Canterlot. Yet, somehow, Celestia’s private library managed to capture a little bit of both feelings.

It was small as far as libraries went, and though most of the floorspace was taken up with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, it didn’t feel cramped. The room was semicircular, the shelves around the outside encircling a massive wooden writing desk in the middle. Seeing it there, Twilight could almost imagine her former mentor seated behind it, her mane shimmering in the afternoon light, a steaming mug of tea to one side and a stack of legal documents in front of her. She blinked and the image was gone.

The light that suffused the room came from an enormous window that stretched over most of the far wall, bathing the space in the golden light of the late afternoon sun. From this vantage point, there was an excellent view out over the whole city, the weathered towers of Old Canterlot dug into the mountainside and the rings of gleaming new developments on the plains around it. All of the steel and glass out there caught the setting Sun’s light to look like hundreds of burning candles out on the horizon.

Stopping behind the desk, Twilight let her senses drink it all in. Every detail of the space had been crafted lovingly, the geometry and symmetry calculated precisely, and each piece laid into place perfectly. For a moment, her anxiety at entering the private place evaporated. So far, this was the most homely room that she had encountered in Canterlot.

Beside her, Spike’s eyes were wide with awe. “Well, this should make a fine place for your research,” he said, though it was obvious that his thoughts were far from their work.

But his words did jolt Twilight’s mind back to the task at hoof. For everything up to Celestia and Luna’s accession to the throne, there had been enough archaeological evidence and public records to piece together the story. After that, though, many of the important documents had come to rest here: copies of ancient books that needed to be preserved, diplomatic texts and treaties, and, most valuable of all, Celestia and Luna’s private journals. With all of that, Twilight hoped to be able to put together the entire story. She strode up to the writing desk and pulled the heavy chair out.

“Right you are, Spike!” she announced. “Ready to look for some books?”

The dragon drew himself up to attention and snapped a salute. “What do you need?”

“The Second Age,” she said to him. “Earliest material first.” With another salute, Spike turned on his heel and marched off to the shelves.

As she waited for him to return, Twilight studied the carpet here in the middle of the room. It was patterned with the design of the Equestrian flag: Celestia and Luna circling their respective celestial bodies, a symbol of the harmony that had given birth to a nation, and had ultimately held it together for nearly two millennia. But the actual history, she knew, had never been so peaceful. And now she was about to unravel the rift that had very nearly torn the country apart just as it was getting started.

Chapter 7: The Old Lady

“History so often fails to record the grit of the little ponies on whose backs it was written. I’m trying to change that.”

- “Memoirs of the Equestrian Silver Age”, by Carnelian

Even when it had been a bustling country town, you couldn’t have called Southoofton truly busy even on the best of days.

On the morning of Harvest Moon, or the eve of Hearth’s Warming, you almost could have called the town crowded, but even then it didn’t come close to an average day at the markets in Manehattan.

Once, years ago, Pa had taken her down to the city after the harvest had been finished, to the government offices so that their stores of grain could be properly counted. Everything was just so big in the city, from the vast market squares to the towers that lined the streets. Everypony was always in a hurry, too, a rush that echoed on the cobbles of the streets like a continuous rumble of thunder.

She much preferred the quiet of the little country town, made all the more little as the months of this year had dragged on. There were only a handful of structures around Southoofton’s single square, and while Sycamore had always felt the place was merely cozy, today forlorn was increasingly becoming the right word.

Standing now on the low hill that separated her family’s estate from the town square proper, Sycamore considered where she ought to go to get some answers to her questions. At this time of day, there would probably be a small crowd at Linseed’s little eatery. Mostly the elder ponies who had retired from the fields and had nothing better to do than gossip. But Sycamore decided to try the General Store first. Nearly everypony in town went through there at least a few times a week, in addition to the traveling traders that came around to restock the shelves. Golden, the pony in charge of the place, always kept one ear to the ground, so it was a safe bet that he would at least have something to say on the matter.

A rusty bell jangled as she pushed open the thin door into the Store, and again as she hurriedly closed it. The day was mostly calm outside, but gusts of wind came on unexpectedly these days, and Golden certainly wouldn’t appreciate getting a blast of dust on his products. The stallion himself was busy stacking crates behind his counter, the sunlight coming in through the shop window making the mane that was his namesake gleam like a mirror. He looked up right away when he heard the bell, and ambled back to the counter in time to meet her there. “Ms. Sycamore!” he exclaimed with a hint of excitement. “What a pleasure to see you this afternoon. What can I get for you?”

“The same pleasure, Mr. Golden,” she returned, giving him a smile. “We’re doing just fine at the farm, though perhaps before I go I’ll think of something we could use. Any news?”

Golden chuckled. He was only barely into his middle years, his face still smooth and handsome and his mane still full. “The wind keeps on blowing, the Sun keeps on shining, and ponies do keep on talking at that. For the last day or so, though, the talk around has been that I should be the one asking you the questions.”

That wasn’t particularly surprising. Wind’s entrance hadn’t exactly been discreet. “So soon?”

He shrugged. “There’s no keeping any secrets in a town this small, is there? So, who is he?”

Sycamore paused, formulating an answer that didn’t give too much away. “No idea, actually. It seems like he might have knocked his head around a little bit.”

“Understandable.” Golden looked disappointed. “How long until he’ll be off on his way?”

She tapped her hoof on the counter a few times before answering, to think. “That depends on a few things, actually. Probably around a month, though, if I had to guess.”

“A month? It’ll be that long before he’s got himself sorted out? How do you figure?”

Sycamore gritted her teeth. She had been hoping to come at the topic of her questions in a more subtle way, somehow, though how exactly was something that she hadn’t really considered yet. In any case, she knew that she had to ask now. “You ever heard of Cloudsdale, Golden?”

“Well, of course,” he replied, puzzled. “The Old Lady used to ramble about it every night before we went to sleep. Magical city in the sky where the pegasi come from or some such. I’ve heard the legend, but what does that have to do with anything?”

She took a look over her shoulder, to confirm that they were alone in the shop, then went on as quietly as possible. “Have you ever heard anypony who believed that the place was actually real? Honest, now.”

The stallion was silent for a moment, looking at her blankly, then he nodded a couple of times. “He really did have quite a fall, didn’t he?”

“Sure did. But for real, I know you talk to whoever comes traveling through. Have you ever heard even an inkling, or a rumour about something similar?”

Golden leaned on the counter with one of his forelegs. “Give me a moment to think on that. On first instinct, I’d say it’s all a load of hooey, but you know there was one time, now that you mention it…”

“Who?” Sycamore tried not to sound overly excited. If Wind was actually telling the truth, it would make dealing with him simultaneously a lot easier and a lot more complicated. But she really did want to believe that he did have his senses about him.

“It was some months ago,” Golden continued, staring off out of his shop window as he thought. “That’s right! The Old Lady herself found her way to my door! Here to buy, uh, what was she on after? Honey, I think.”

She gave him a perplexed look. There were several elder mares around Southoofton, but there was only one Old Lady.

Amber Waves was as old as the hills, and local legend said that it was her clan that first settled in the area. But she was also the matron of Golden’s family, so the fact that she had come in to see her grandson’s business didn’t seem particularly unusual. And Sycamore wasn’t exactly keen on being played with.

“What are you on about, Golden? This had better get somewhere useful.”

He brushed her hoof off of the counter quickly. “Just give me a moment to think, will you? She said something. She said ‘I’m going to find us rain even if I have to climb up to Cloudsdale myself and haul the Master down here by the tail!’” He gave her a triumphant look. “That’s the last I ever heard anypony talk about it.”

“Inspiring,” she noted, utterly devoid of amusement. “So as far as you can tell me, it’s all a load of hooey?”

“Far as I go, yeah. But if you’re really interested on the subject, maybe make the trek up to the Old Lady’s place yourself. I’m sure that she’ll appreciate having you, and detain you for an hour or two to spin her tale.” He took another glance out of the window, and then started. “Boy, I didn’t think that it had gotten that late. I hope you won’t mind if I ignore you for a moment. Unless you’ve thought of something to buy for yourself, that is?”

She let him go with a flick of her hoof. “We just need a new roof is all. But I imagine that Fern will have already found his way to Sassafras by now.” Sassafras was one of Golden’s dozen siblings, the operator of a modest kiln on his own estate. “But I expect that I’ll be back around for news sooner rather than later, right?”

Golden was already at work shifting around a few pallets of equipment in the rear of the store. “Sooner, I hope!” he called back. “I don’t expect anypony to be placated by what little news you’ve given me concerning your guest. Soon enough they’ll be banging on your door just to get a look at him.” He was drowned out on the end by a clatter of what sounded like falling metal.

Sycamore instinctively considered jumping back there and offering him a hoof, but it was his store, after all, and she had more business to see to now. The Old Lady’s estate was about a twenty minute trot from the other side of Southoofton, and Golden was right. There was no such thing as a short storytelling session once she got to reminiscing.

It was almost enough to make her think that maybe she ought to be heading back to the farmhouse instead. Sassafras wouldn’t be able to get them a new batch of tiles today, but even then there was more cleanup work to be done in the yard, especially with regard to the furrow that Wind had ploughed up, and Pa would definitely want some help with that.

Ultimately, Amber wasn’t going anywhere, but then Wind wasn’t either. And something about that innocent, earnest look in those bright eyes of his told her that this was not a stallion who had lost his marbles. Fern and Pa could get by, and surely they’d appreciate knowing what to do with their guest. With that decided, Sycamore took one last look about the Store to make sure that she wasn’t forgetting something they sorely needed, and then set off south, along the rough, dusty trail that led over the hill to the Old Lady’s place.

By now the Sun had risen to its peak in the sky, and even sun-hardened as Sycamore was, it was still a relentless weight upon her as she walked. In the few stands of trees that she passed she could hear the occasional birds’ songs, but not a single one flew overhead. Besides them the only sound of the afternoon was the occasional whisper of the dry wind.

Here in the thick of pasture and field, with harvest just around the corner, the air should have been filled with sound: the sound of hired hooves sharpening scythes or cleaning up the threshing floors in excited anticipation. By the time that she got to the corner of Amber’s lane and first heard the echoes of angry voices from the estate, it was a relief to have the silence broken.

The trail ended right here, at the mouth of Amber’s estate, capped by a pleasant arch of stained lumber. On the other side of it, the path continued, bisecting a garden big enough to almost be considered a field in its own right, with the main exception this year being that there were actually things growing in it. Not exactly prize produce of course, but Amber had managed to coax at least a few stunted tomato vines and some withered carrots out of the soil. There were even the beginnings of some small pumpkins growing there.

On through the garden, the path climbed up a low hill as it approached the estate house, a grand two-storey structure that once upon a time had housed Golden and all of the rest of his generation. Nowadays, the Old Lady had it all to herself, but even so she kept it in good condition. It even looked like she’d managed to put on a whole new coat of paint this summer. Over the top of the hill, a few bright strips of red wood marked the tops of the livestock pens, as well as the sheds that held all of the rest of the estate’s equipment.

The shouting was coming from in front of the house, where Sycamore could see Amber standing up on her front porch, the full locks of her white mane tied up into a tight bun behind her head. She was staring down a grey stallion wearing a trim straw hat, his sideburns growing out from under it down to his neck. Even from the road, Sycamore had no problem identifying him, and the realization sent a flutter of nerves into her stomach.

Cottonseed was the other big farmer around town, and with his brother Linseed in charge of the tavern and Sesame running the wheelwright’s shop, Cotton’s was a respected face, the only other pony in the area with anywhere near the clout that Amber held. It was also known that he and Amber didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye, and that was putting it mildly. Rumour had it that this spring they had nearly come to blows over a well that she said he had dug on her land. If these two were having a heated discussion, then Sycamore wanted no part in it. But she couldn’t really stand at the end of the lane just hoping that she wouldn’t get noticed, so instead she tried to take as much time as she could on the approach. Just as she was getting to the inside edge of the garden, their voices got clear enough to be discernible.

“By the stars, woman, somepony ought to remind you that you don’t own this whole town even if your great-great-grand-pappy had a hoof in laying it down!” Cotton’s voice was a gravelly twang that cut through the dry air like a whip. “One of these days you’re going to realize that you need the little folk, and we ain’t going to be around to help.”

“Pardon my intrusion, then!” Amber answered, her anger accentuating the lilt of her own accent. “I’ve made no secret of my intentions to gather what hay I can from the meadows, and if I have any extra I will gladly sell it on to ye.”

“Extortion, then, is it? That feed shouldn’t be costing me anything, save the work I would have put in gathering it up. That meadow belongs to me, and so should everything growing on it!”

Amber snorted at the stallion's retort. “If ye wanted it, ye could have gotten it first. I told ye last month that I intended on taking that feed.”

“And I told you that if you did, this would be the result!” He took a measured step forward, and Sycamore saw Amber tense up a little herself. “I thought I had made it clear to you that no matter what you may desire, I am making it through this winter, Amber. If there is going to be any solace in this Light-forsaken weather, I would hope that it’d be you finally deciding to call it quits.”

“So ye can snap up all of my land and have the whole town to ye’self?” She gave him a triumphant grin as he grit his teeth in anger. “Don’t think I don’t know the way that ye think. Ye wouldn’t even be the first stallion to try it. But this farm tended my Old Mare, and her Old Mare too, and it’s going to be one of my kin that gets it next, once my time here is done. So see to your own stock, why don’t ye, Mr. Cotton?”

Sycamore had reached the foot of the hill that rose up to support the house, and couldn’t really get any closer without intruding on the conversation. Thankfully, Cotton seemed to have run out of things to say, and so after another moment or so of tension, within which he was probably giving Amber the evil eye, the stallion pulled his hat down and turned around to leave.

Seeing Sycamore, who by this point was standing only about ten feet behind him, he scowled. “Thought you’d take a listen, Ms. Sycamore?” he growled. “Way I hear it, you ought to be minding after your own stock, too.” Without giving her a chance to reply, he trotted past down the lane.

“That old coot and his clan will be the death of me, one of these days,” Amber muttered quietly, stepping lightly down onto the ground and waving Sycamore over. “Nice to see you, Missy. What brings ye to my doorstep?”

Sycamore briefly considered finding out a bit more about what had Cotton in such a huff, but Amber clearly saw it on her face. “I surely hope that ye pay no mind to that clown. Often enough these days it seems like Cotton’s got nothing better to do than find somepony to be mad at. And more often than not that’s me. But I’ve had enough of thinking of what he’s on about.” She shielded her eyes with a hoof and looked up at the sky. “It’s about time for a spot of tea, I’d say. Perhaps ye’d join me for that, and we can talk out from under this heat.”

Not wanting to push the issue, Sycamore nodded eagerly. “That would do just fine. Thank you.” The walk from the town wouldn’t usually have been strenuous at all, but the Sun in the sky seemed to have sapped all of the energy out of her limbs.

The ceilings of Amber’s house were high and airy, clean white boards held up by sturdy posts every few yards. The house had been built up over the years, once being not much bigger than Sycamore’s own little cottage. Somewhere, under the kitchen, the original root cellar was still accessible by a trapdoor just like every other house, but Sycamore still felt small standing in the entrance hall. The feeling was helped a bit by the towering stacks of odds and ends that dominated the floor space.

There were big buckets for carrying water and mixing soaps, boxes filled with boots of all sizes and descriptions, and trunks of saws, hammers, and other carpentry tools all standing beside each other. When Amber led her on through the hall, it felt a lot like walking through a tall cornfield, each turn hidden by the piles of miscellany.

“I know I really ought to get to cleaning up the place,” Amber muttered over her shoulder as she shoved a few metal basins out of the way to create some room. “But I know that as soon as I file something away or throw something out, I’ll be in want of it the very next afternoon!”

She pulled open a door at the far end of the hall, or at least she pulled it as far as it would go, which was enough to squeeze through if Sycamore held her breath, and then the two of them were into the kitchen. The windows here looked out onto the back of the estate, but their blinds were drawn down tight right now, making the room actually somewhat dim.

Amber indicated a couple of finely carved rockers that sat near the big stone hearth. “Settle ye’self right over there if ye please, Ms. Sycamore. I’ll have that tea in a heartbeat.”

“Thanks again,” Sycamore returned. Notwithstanding the darkness, the air in the room was comfortably cool, and a chance to get off of her hooves really did strike her as a good idea at the moment. Once she had sat down, Sycamore breathed a sigh of relief. “That produce of yours looks mighty fine, Amber.”

The old earth pony was rummaging in the cupboard. “Don’t flatter me now,” she said. “It’s a sorry excuse for a garden is what it is. If my Old Mare had been here to see it, she’d have me mucking the pens on my own all winter.” She pulled out a couple of pewter mugs, and then to Sycamore’s delight she scooped a chunk of ice each from up out of the icebox. A jar of sweet tea followed, until finally Amber pulled up her own chair in front of the hearth and offered Sycamore the ice-cold mug.

“I would say that there ain’t nothing like a glass of sweet tea to relax the soul after time spent out in this weather,” Amber said, taking a deep drink out of her mug, “but the truth is that I ain’t never seen any summer as bad as this one, so I couldn’t tell ye how useful this drink will be. But I think that it does me just fine.”

“Just fine, I think,” Sycamore agreed. Just one sip of the tea had already taken away the fog from the front of her mind, though the ice was melting quickly. Normally, she’d make some small talk here, asking about how the crop was progressing, but that conversation had already been had dozens of times. Everypony in Southoofton knew the words by heart. “I was at Golden’s shop just before I came over here, you know.”

Taking another sip of her tea, Amber leaned back in her chair. “Bartering information? Everypony that’s stopped by has been asking about you non-stop, you know.” She left it there, without asking the natural question. Even so, it hung in the air between them anyway, just as it had with Golden earlier. The difference was that this time Sycamore knew that she was here to share.

“Well, to be honest, Amber, we’ve got ourselves a little bit of a problem with this fellow,” she began, mentally laying out what she was going to say. “He calls himself Wind, which I suppose is a proper name for a pegasus, all things considered. But he swears up and down that he’s actually from Cloudsdale of all places. Won’t take no for an answer on that one.” She kept her eyes steady on Amber’s, watchful for the old mare’s reaction. Her eyebrows went up at the mention of the mythical city, but no more than that.

“Is that right?” Amber asked absently, taking another sip of her tea. “And I suppose that Golden let you know that I might have something to say on the matter.”

“Well, rightly, he said that he thought it was all a load of hooey. And everypony else surely agrees with him, as I would too.” And she would, at that. Sycamore realized that a very good-sized chunk of her heart was hoping Amber would say the same thing, even if that would mean coming out here wouldn’t have accomplished anything. But even so, she had to know. “But this Wind doesn’t strike me as not knowing what he’s talking about and he’s sticking to his story no matter what. So if you do have any input on the subject, I’d very much appreciate hearing about it.”

Amber finished off her mug in one big gulp and thought for a moment. “Huh. Well, I hope you didn’t come here expecting a long story, because there actually isn’t that much to this one. In any event, this comes straight from the mouth of my Old Mare, back when I wasn’t even much older than you are now. And I don’t think I have to tell you that times were a little different that long ago. There was actually rain falling for one thing.

“My Old Mare was living around the same spot, heck, she might even have been sitting in the same chair as you, listening to her Old Mare tell the story right where I’m sitting now.”

“Hold up,” Sycamore tapped a hoof skeptically against her mug. “Your grandmother’s grandmother told this story off of the start?”

For an instant Amber lost her place, then turned back to face Sycamore. “Well, we are talking about centuries here, Ms. Sycamore. Now, don’t interrupt me, please. Even she hadn’t been around for the time when Cloudsdale was a place anypony could get to, but she knew it was a real place. And without all that drivel about the ice and the rainbows and such. An honest-to-goodness city, up in the sky, where some pegasi dwelt. Not where they came from, mind you,” she pointed almost accusingly at Sycamore, “just a few living up there cause they chose to. And it sure does sound like a nice spot to live in, then, doesn’t it?”

“Hm, maybe,” Sycamore admitted, mulling over such an idea. “But then why did it disappear from all of our memories?”

“I’m getting to that. See, back in those days there was a fair amount of trade between farmers like us and those fellows up in the sky. Those pegasi couldn’t grow their own food after all. They bought everything they needed from us, and they helped us out with our weather in the meantime too. Though, I don’t think even some of them would have been able to deal with the matter we’re looking at right now.

“Those were friendly times for the most part, see. Like how they was supposed to be, as my Old Mare liked to say. Anyway, the way she told it, there wasn’t much of a story to it at all. One year, them Cloudsdale ponies stopped showing up to buy their way, and nopony’s heard from them since. Oh, we looked after them for a while, mind you.” Again with the pointed hoof. “After all, without any of our food, how were they going to survive? But nopony could find hide nor feather of them. It was almost as if they had just up and disappeared. And that’s really all that there is to it. Not very surprising that folks stopped believing, is it?”

Sycamore leaned back into the chair, thinking for a moment as Amber got up to see about her next mug of tea. How much of that story was history, and how much was a proper old mare’s tale, distorted by generations worth of retelling? It wasn’t that hard to believe, really, although that ending was a real mystery. Not surprising at all that anypony thought it was nothing but fantasy. But then again, now she had evidence that it wasn’t.

“Wind said that they figured it out.”

“Hmmm?” Amber spilled a couple drops from the jar as her head came up. “Figured out what, now?”

Sycamore got up to retrieve a rag from the sink. “How to grow their own food. Apparently, they’ve got fields of beans up there now, or so goes the way he tells it.”

“Beans, eh?” Sycamore recognized the look on her face. It was the very same one that she had gotten from Fern earlier. “Now that is just plain nonsense. The only good that a pegasus can ever do for a field is offer it some water every now and then, and if beans could grow out of the river then we’d be off to the riverbank like that then wouldn’t we?” She chuckled to herself after taking a sip from her new mug. “Even so, maybe I’d like to meet this fellow of yours some time. Eventually he’ll be around the town, right?”

“I’d expect so.” Wind wouldn’t be able to fly for a long time yet, but it wouldn’t be long before he could walk at least. Provided he was still around and not sent home with his Equestrian family by then. “I’ll be sure to let him know that.”

Sycamore glanced over at the window, and while she couldn’t see outside at all, the light on the blind was still plenty bright. Even so, Pa would definitely be wanting her back at the farm soon. She eyed the half-full jar of tea that was sitting on the table, wondering if it would be right to take some for the road.

“Ah, heavens, girl, take it if you want,” Amber said, ambling back over to the hearth to sit down again. “My preserves ain’t quite what they used to be, but it’s a real scorcher out there for sure. I wouldn’t want you burning up on the way back to your own place.”

Sycamore bobbed her an earnest thanks, not just for the tea, of course, but for everything. As she made her way back out the front door and started down the lane, she let the story run through her head again. At the end of the day, it still came down to how far she wanted to trust Wind, and that was the part that she was still unsure on.

In one world, he was right, and that meant there was a whole city of pegasi up there somewhere, and a healthy crop of beans too. In another, Fern was the right one, and sooner or later Wind would get himself in order and they’d go back to the usual life of the past year. She didn’t have any idea which one she actually thought was true, but at least there was no doubt in Sycamore’s mind which one she wanted to believe in.

Chapter 12: A Fine Day for a Thunderstorm

“Maybe it is all the same magic on some level, but even so the ways of the Pegasi are as indecipherable to me as these words would be to a pig.”

King Solaris VII

Luna took a look over Swift’s calculations again, the shadow of her head dancing across the chalkboard as the flames on the hearth flickered.

“This evaporation coefficient seems optimistic,” she said finally, indicating one particularly complicated squiggle of chalk. “Perhaps we can try running this again with a margin for error and see if it still comes out looking good.”

Swift looked a little chagrined, but he settled back down to his desk quickly, and got right back into the calculations with his slide rule.

The two of them were back up in the Academy Tower, going over the agent’s theories concerning how a group of pegasi working together might be able to get a snowstorm going. If everything worked out to plan, they could try it this afternoon. It was far too hot in Canterlot for any snow to fall, but Luna was sure that her sister would appreciate any kind of precipitation at this point.

She went back to studying the model on the chalkboard. In theory, the process of starting up a weather system was pretty straightforward. Weather was really just the movement of air after all, and pegasi could achieve that with relative simplicity. When an air mass was already properly in motion most pegasi had an innate sense of how to make it grow, pare it down, or direct it to a particular location. It was rather like how a baker instinctively knew how to knead his dough in order to end up with the perfect strawberry tarts. The problem was the starting point. Swift’s model approached the situation from the logical perspective, where a coordinated group of pegasi started the convection flow using simple guided currents. It was all very basic stuff, but Luna had already thought of it all before, and it hadn’t worked when she had tried it. Even so, another shot was almost certainly worth it.

“Try this,” Swift said, coming up from behind her with a fresh sheet of parchment, now covered in ink marks where he had made his calculations. With one look, Luna grabbed a piece of chalk and began modifying the model on the board appropriately. There was no mention in any of the histories of pegasi using math to sort out their methods, but it had been Swift’s idea to try formalizing what up to then had been only guesswork. While it hadn’t led to any concrete successes, somehow the model gave Luna at least a sense that a sort of progress was being made.

“There!” Swift said as she made the final adjustment. “Still perfectly reasonable, if a little bit more intensive. We can pull in the second class as well, and then we’ll have more than enough pegasi, just to be on the safe side.” He had a beaming smile on his face. “Your Highness, I think that we might just have cracked it.”

“Leave the congratulations for the rainbow, Swift,” she answered warily, though not without a note of pride. “Every additional pegasus that we have to bring in is another layer of complexity. Without proper coordination, a plan like this can easily go awry, especially at this scale. We might want to practice a bit more before we go for the whole thing.”

“I can take care of the coordination,” Swift answered, trotting back to his desk to begin sketching out operational designs. “The models predict a windy period moving in, which means that it will only be a couple of days before we’re all occupied trying to keep Canterlot nice and cool. And by the sounds of things, your sister needs enough help with that as it is.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Yet even so, looking at Swift hunched over his desk, Luna couldn’t help but feel concerned.

“You’ve been working at this for days now, Swift. Maybe you should take a break while the rest of us do the experiment.”

Swift’s quill snapped off as he finished up another line of text. “Don’t worry about me, Your Highness,” he said, confident still. “We’re all stretched a little thin, but that’s because we believe in this project. Besides, this isn’t going to be easy, and I’m one of the best you’ve got. I’m not sitting this one out for anything.”

Luna knew all too well the gleam of fire in his eyes. Swift had been one of her first graduates, and indeed had been with her through a lot.

“True enough, guardspony. Just make sure that you’re careful out there. What’s most important is that all of us make it back to the base in one piece.”

“Understood, Your Highness,” Swift acknowledged, having already made up four separate sheets of operational briefs, one for each of the major companies that would be involved in the experiment. One each would be led by herself and Swift, respectively, with two of the other class leaders heading up the other companies.

“I’ll get these distributed right away, and we can have a meeting about it over lunch. Come the afternoon, we’ll be ready to get started.” He waited until Luna had given him the nod of dismissal, before darting out the curtain and into the frigid winds outside, only pausing for a moment to grab a scarf and hat from the rack.

Watching him, Luna could almost believe that today luck was going to be on their side. But something about this whole enterprise still felt wrong to her. The main reason why there was so little written down about how pegasus magic worked was because it wasn’t a mathematical discipline. Entire libraries had been compiled concerning the intricacies of unicorn magic, but for centuries pegasi had been less concerned with the details and more concerned with getting out into the air and letting their powers flow. Part of that was probably just a question of personality, but if there was anything that Luna knew about pegasus magic, it was that there was a degree of emotion to it. Pegasus magic wasn’t something that you willed into being, it was something that you felt, just on the edge of your awareness. You caressed it gently, and let it guide you onward to the goal that you wished for.

There wasn’t anything wrong with any of the marks on the chalkboard, of that Luna was certain. From a theoretical perspective, the result should inevitably be a strong convection current and a nice, gentle summer shower to go with it. But somehow she just knew that there was something they were missing.

The Academy had its own covered reservoir up in the mountains, kept secret in a valley where it was warm enough to stop the water from freezing. For most of the time, the surface of the lake was protected by large white tarpaulins that hopefully kept as much of the Sun’s warmth off of the water as they could. Anything lost to evaporation couldn’t really be replenished after all. The existence of the lake was kept as a secret since it was imperative that it be available for weather tests much like this one.

In all, the experiment called for no fewer than fifty pegasi, and this time they had sixty, just to be on the safe side, split up into teams of fifteen. Forming and maintaining the convection current was the biggest concern, calling for three of the teams’ full efforts. The other fifteen would pitch in where necessary and hopefully keep a handle on the resulting clouds, when and if they managed to create any.

Luna was the head of that last team, which meant that she had oversight over the whole project and right now she was perched over top of the mountains overlooking the lake. Swift’s crew was handling the upper level circulation which meant that he was situated right across the valley from her, at the head of a column of students of his own.

It was in situations like these that Luna was very thankful for her sister’s voice amplification spell, though the valley’s acoustics also helped. Everypony had already been briefed on the specifics of what was about to occur, but it still paid to make sure.

“You all have your assignments,” she began, her voice echoing through the valley and coming back to her own ears after a second. “What I want to do is make sure that nopony here thinks of the implications or possible consequences of anything that we are about to do today. This is possibly a momentous occasion, certainly. But what we are doing will be difficult enough without any distractions to cloud your judgment. In order to do this, we’re going to need perfect timing and coordination. Naturally, all of you have been chosen today because you are the best that the Academy has. No matter what happens today, nothing is going to change about that.

“That being said, we should be careful not to take any of this lightly. I expect concentration and coordination from all of you, just as you would give for any other task.” From her post, Luna could make out all of the other pegasi arrayed in their formations over the lake. She dropped her chin down square and determined to reassure them. “Let us begin.”

The first step was straightforward. Flight A had to create an updraft, a column of rising, moist air. Normally, it would have to be warm for a real evaporative cycle to start, but a skilled pegasus could make it work even in chilly conditions like these. Flight A was so well practiced they could have done it with their hooves tied, and soon enough Luna could feel the moisture coming up off of the surface in the water change the feeling of the atmosphere around her.

The next step was cloud organization for Flight B. The rising water naturally condensed as soon as it got to the colder air above, and it was their job to organize the resulting clouds into a steadily building thunderhead.

Now, both of those two steps were relatively simple; indeed the theory required to accomplish them had already mostly been known when Luna had started working on the weather file. A storm was easily created in such a manner, enough to dump plenty of rain on the local area. The issue was that such a storm would do little to solve the issues currently facing Equestria. In order to alleviate the drought, they needed to be able to transport the system to where the rain was needed, and quick clouds like these weren’t stable enough to make the journey. That was where Swift and Flight C took over. Their job was to create a spiraling flow of air around the core of the storm that Flight B was building, and along the way, manage all of the smaller currents required to make the storm self-sustaining.

Luna basically already knew that her group was to be needed here, and as the clouds began to form and Swift gave his signal, she steeled herself for jumping in. Establishing the circulation was the most complicated and dangerous part of the process, and skilled though Swift’s team were, nopony had been able to make it work yet, and that was counting Luna herself. Yet, hopefully that wouldn’t be the case this time.

Flight C was arranged in a circle ringing the core of the updraft, and at the signal they each began their own circle. Slowly at first they moved, keeping their distance precisely and watching each other in the hopes of compensating for any mistakes.

At first it seemed to be going well, the first few clouds being fed into the cyclone at about Luna’s eye level. Swift and his flight were circling the column, and Luna flew up to level with them, watching out for perturbations in the airflow. They were professionals of course, but all that it would take was one little slip to destabilize the cyclone, and with the updraft and the shear winds coming across—

An unexpected gust of wind caught her from behind, reflected off of the face of the mountain, and as she righted herself, Luna did the math in her head to understand where in the spiral the error must have occurred. She and Swift had dissected this whole area, breaking it all down into angles and reliefs, and so she quickly knew that the rogue wind must have come from the far side of the valley.

Luna left the rest of her Flight to deal with issues as they presented, and flew over that way herself, taking the top route over the cyclone. It was intensifying as the circulation developed, rising high into the atmosphere now, and Luna couldn’t even fly completely over it. Cutting through the core was unnerving, as the air around her noticeably warmed within the clouds, but on the other side she found Swift already doing his best to recover.

“I’ve got things covered, Your Highness!” he called out as he made his way back into the line.

Unconvinced, Luna opted to join up with him anyway. It was uncharacteristic for him to be the first to fall out of line, and it was possible that she could help him out if he faltered again.

“Are you sure that you’re alright?” she shouted back as she fell in line right behind him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered. “This time it has to work, if we want there to be any hope for this year’s harvest. I’ve got this part of the storm covered. You need to be elsewhere.” Around them, the building thunderhead crackled menacingly, sheets of lightning racing through it every so often as the winds grew. It was getting close, but the last part was always the hardest.

“There’s no time to reposition now,” she said, though she could only hope that Swift had heard her, the winds howling so strongly that she was sure they would swallow up her words and splatter them soundlessly against the walls of the valley. She thought of reprimanding him further, but Swift really was right after all. There wasn’t any going back now, and if this time there was any chance of the experiment working, then it was a chance that they were going to have to take.

“We need to think about sealing off this circulation!”

Swift shook his head. Every signal that they sent each other had to be exaggerated so that they would know the other had been able to discern it.

“We don’t have enough energy yet! If we try to close off the circulation now, the core will collapse back into the lake!”

Luna had more to give, so she beat her wings even harder to put more power into the storm. The signal to increase the cadence passed around the spiral in both directions, quickly for a good reason. If anypony fell behind now, it would imbalance the whole structure. The whole roof of the valley now was crowded with dark storm clouds, which made visibility a lot harder to find. Luna could barely spy Swift in her front view, and looking back she could just make out the pony behind.

Naturally, they had planned for this as a way to ensure that the Flight stayed in contact even in the thick of the storm. However, despite this precaution it was hard not to be disturbed in the midst of the tempest of icy winds, swirling downdrafts, and dense clouds.

The other thing that the storm enveloping Flight C meant was that the other two Flights would be breaking off soon, shutting off their assisted inflows in the hopes that the storm would sustain itself now that it had been properly built. Luna could feel it when it happened, like a slow tapering of one of the crosswinds coming at her tail.

It would be hard to say that there was a tense silence in the midst of the maelstrom, but even so Luna was mentally holding her breath as she waited to see what would happen. Her body was still doing its utmost to help the circulation, but she wasn’t thinking about that right now. The cyclonic pull of the storm had to sustain itself. It just had to. Sadly, despite her desire Luna felt it falling away, slowly, not gone yet, but just dropping a little, and she went on hoping that this time it would work.

“NO!” Swift’s agonized cry came to her from the front, and her view of him vanished. It looked perhaps like he had cut to the inside, in the hope of increasing his effective wingpower by decreasing the radius of his arc. Falling out of line would destabilize the current, but even so Luna wasted no time in diving in after him.

The cyclonic air current helped to guide her through the storm, so long as she kept in mind that the center would be off to her left. At this speed, losing one’s orientation could be worse than just falling out of order, as the unforgiving face of a cliff wall could rear itself up suddenly out of the clouds.

Luna felt the roots of her mane grow rigid as a pool of static electricity built itself up above her. With nary a moment to think, she nimbly dodged away just as a bolt of lightning sliced through the clouds around her.

Finding Swift could have been all but impossible in the midst of the clouds, so Luna thanked her stars when she emerged through a dense dome of clouds to finally see him again, straining against the winds, hoping to hold up the storm’s flow. It was still there to be felt, in fact it was somewhat stronger now that they had worked their way into the storm’s center.

“Swift!” she cried out, and was relieved to see him turn his head back and acknowledge her. “We’re done! We’ve done everything that we can now. Staying is just taking too much of a risk.”

“We’re right on the cusp!” he shouted back, his mane streaming out behind him on an odd angle as the swirling winds took hold of it. “I have to hold it together for just a little bit longer. Think about it, Princess! Think about the lives that we’ll save if we make this work! We have to do everything that we can.”

With renewed fire, he turned himself back into the wind, giving it his all, but Luna could see that it wasn’t going to be enough. She was exhausted from the work of keeping the storm together, so it was probably even worse for him.

Coming in behind him, Luna felt that hair-standing-up sensation again. “Lightning!” she called, dodging out of the way with a quick roll again.

But Swift wasn’t so quick. The bolt took him in the left shoulder, spinning him around like a top. “Aaughh!” he cried, doing his best to get himself back into line.

Each flap of his wings was weaker than the last though, and before her eyes Luna saw him fall, just at the moment when she felt the circulation stop entirely. The storm was going to fail, and Swift surely would be saddened by that afterward. Now she needed to make sure that he survived to figure out what had gone wrong. Without hesitation, Luna dove after him.

Up above her, Luna heard the whisper of the storm’s core collapsing, and the ripple out through the cloud layer as the collected moisture of the lake fell freely back down along with her. Luna had to dodge around remnants of ice in the air that had only started to fall, but for the most part it was her racing against the rain, down through the sky as fast as she could muster herself to travel.

In seconds, she had broken out of the underside of the storm, and the valley was revealed again, all of the rocks now lashed by rain, and a few scorched by stray strokes of lightning. The rest of the pegasi had all pulled back out of sight, probably up to the peaks of the nearby mountains. They would be able to see her as the clouds dissipated, but none of them would be able to make it down to help in time.

Swift was up ahead, free-falling, tumbling through the air with the lake mere seconds away. He was still conscious, as Luna could tell from the look in his eyes whenever she caught sight of them, but clearly he didn’t even have the energy to right himself, let alone pull out of the dive.

Luna pulled back her wings, extending a hoof out in front of her to cut the wind. If she had looked off to her side, she would have seen that she'd drawn level with the raindrops that were falling around her, and even outpaced them just a little. But she only had eyes for her guard. She was gaining on him, but would she have enough time? Not only to grab ahold of him, but also to pull out of the dive without crashing into either the surface of the lake or the sides of the valley.

Each second came and went like a minute as she reached forward, closing the distance heartbeat by heartbeat. Twenty feet, ten, five. Then she was finally able to get her legs around his midsection. She caught a hint of a smile on Swift’s face, and it looked like perhaps he wanted to say something, but there was no time for that now. Luna stretched her wings forward, and extended them out in an attempt to grab the wind.

The sudden deceleration felt like it would rip them off of her back, and Luna knew that she would have to stretch them out for a week in order to not be sore whenever she flew, but the two of them had just enough space to curve out of their dive. Swift’s ears dragged in the water as they zoomed over the edge of the lake, throwing up twin sprays of foam that felt like icy needles wherever they hit her. But then they were away, level again.

Finally out of danger, Luna flew over to the edge of the lake and set him down, as all around them the torrent of rain that had been raised from the lake kept crashing down.

Luna looked up and saw the Sun, peeking its way through the clouds overhead, as the last of the storm washed itself out. This water wouldn’t be making it out of the mountains, not unless they carried it in buckets. Briefly she considered the possibility, but even with everypony in Equestria helping, there wouldn’t have been enough time. Besides, right now, she had Swift to take care of. That lightning had caught him in the left shoulder, so there was no telling how much damage it had done. She knelt down next to him and felt for a pulse, and there was one, fast, but still fine.

In front of her, Swift cracked open one of his eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry, Princess,” he croaked, taking a deep breath after each word. “We couldn’t finish the job.”

Luna bent down over him. “You’d better be sorry, Swift. You dropped out of line at the most crucial moment in the exercise. You took an insane risk, and if I hadn’t been around to save you, you wouldn’t be alive right now.”

Embarrassed and humbled, Swift bowed his head on hearing that, but then she gave him a warmer smile. “This country needs you, Swift, as do I. There’s no way we would have gotten as close as we have without you.”

Swift returned the smile, and then he winced, gritting his teeth before his head fell back against the rock underneath. Not dead, of course, merely unconscious, probably from the pain in his shoulder. He was going to need recuperation at the Academy for days before he was able to fly again, and naturally Luna was going to keep him out of the unit for even longer, lest he ever think that he could get away with such a ridiculous stunt again.

The breaking of the clouds overhead was accompanied by a rustle of feathers from right beside her. Looking up, Luna saw Fit and Flick, the leaders of Flights A and B, with the rest of their flights hovering nearby up above.

“That was incredible, Princess,” Fit started, gasping as if she still couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed. “We saw it all from the top of the gorge. Did you manage to save him?”

Luna nodded solemnly. “Swift will be alright. Alas, his recklessness is something that I could never save him from. Did everypony else make it out okay?”

“We checked,” Flick replied. “All of us broke off as soon as the circle was complete, with C and D following shortly afterward. It was only you and Swift who were unaccounted for. We were all watching for you, but we didn’t see that Swift had fallen until it was too late.” Her head dipped, embarrassed.

“You all did fine,” Luna said, making sure that everypony above her heard it as well. “We might not have finished up a storm today, but we were closer than we ever have been before. Some day, perhaps even next time, we’ll get it. Now, somepony get Swift back up to the Academy. He’s going to need a few days of rest before I ever let him fly again.”

Fit and Flick both snapped off quick salutes as they directed their Flights in to collect Swift, and then organized themselves into columns for the flight back to base. For Luna’s part, she almost felt as though she would fall asleep right where she was standing if she allowed herself to, but determinedly she hoisted herself into the air too. Swift may have believed that without this storm Equestria’s fate was sealed, but for her it only meant that they would have to try even harder the next time.

Chapter 17: No More False Promises

“In those days even the Senate was little more than an exceptionally well-organized barroom brawl. In that light, a lot of what Celestia did starts to make more sense.”

“The Politics of Friendship”, by Twilight Sparkle

It was sunlight that greeted Princess Luna and roused her from her fitful sleep, a slanting golden ray of brightness which gently illuminated the small quarters that she kept to herself in Canterlot. Unlike her sister, Luna spent a great deal of her time out of the city, which meant there was little sense for her to have opulent apartments here. They were of course still kept freshly clean and polished, as bright as new every time that Luna settled down for the night, something that she greatly appreciated. If she ever found herself short on gratefulness, all that it took was one memory of Eridian to remind her how lucky she and Celestia really were.

For a second, Luna considered drawing the blinds and trying to go back to sleep. Yesterday had been torturous, sitting stiffly in the Senate chamber for hour upon hour as the floor brought Pensive’s proposal up again and again, with only slight textual modifications each time. About half of them Celestia had defused by pointing out procedural errors, and taking all of her time in doing so as well, but for a few Luna still needed to be present to deliver her solid ‘Nay’. The Moon had been well up into the sky by the time that she had trudged up the steps to her tower, and she knew that today was going to be even more of the same. Hopefully, Celestia and Ink would find some larger snafu in the process that would give her time to interrogate some senators. But even so, some extra sleep was something that she sorely desired.

But it was not the brightness of the light alone that she became aware of as she opened her eyes this morning. There was a sound too, a sound of rhythmic voices from somewhere far off. Somepony singing? No, the harmonies weren’t really there. It was more of a chant, but an insistent one. The chanting wasn’t particularly loud, but still loud enough that it would keep her from her rest. And in any event, Luna was curious enough to stretch her legs out and venture out onto her balcony.

Celestia’s tower stood only a hundred paces or so away, the vibrant blue cone of its peak fluttering with banners in the morning wind. Unsurprisingly, the balcony was empty. Luna might have gotten up with the sunlight, but doubtless Celestia had been awake for hours already. Somewhere she always found the time to get her proper sleep, but precisely when it was Luna didn’t know.

The sound of voices grew louder when Luna stepped outside, and the source became evident right away too. The Princesses’ towers were among the palace’s tallest, offering impressive views overlooking the entire city. In this case, that meant that Luna had an excellent vista on the plaza in front of the palace, and more importantly on the crowd of ponies that now inhabited it. A fair number of them were holding brightly coloured signs, though the writing Luna couldn’t quite make out. Even so, the reason for their presence was clear. Now the chanting was loud enough that she could decipher words.

“Unicorns deserve to eat too!”

“Equal opportunity, equal rights, food for all!”

“No more false promises!”

Word of the Senate’s debate had clearly filtered out into the city, and Luna could hardly blame ponies for being agitated. Never mind that most of them were probably finding it hard to fill their tables every night. Pensive’s bill was political poison, though she was surprised at how many ponies seemed to have shown up in support of it. Of course, it had its fair share of opponents too, and their opposition added a little tension to the whole demonstration. With any luck the sound of the protesters outside might at least put some sense into the reluctant members of the Senate.

Luna took her time getting her mane together in front of the apartment’s mirror. It was a mere force of habit, even though she realized that most of it was probably unnecessary for today’s business. Celestia would have teased her over all of the time that she spent with comb and hairbrush, taming every loose strand until her mane was a picture-perfect splash of colour that fell down to the floor just in front of her right shoulder. But then, Celestia hadn’t made an official public appearance in months, and hadn’t been out of Canterlot longer than that.

When ponies saw you as the face of the government, it paid to project as regal an appearance as possible.

Even so, Luna did take care to comb her mane just a touch farther back than usual this morning, keeping her eyes and forehead completely clear. Something a touch more businesslike was probably called for when her day was going to consist of backroom conversations and weeding out the clues in subtle wording. It was going to be an exercise, but three hundred years ago Luna had pledged to do whatever it took to keep Equestria safe. She gave herself one last look in the mirror, double-checking everything to make sure that not one hair on her head was out of place. If Equestria today required her to be a politician, then so be it.

She found Celestia already down in the Senate’s wing of the palace, standing in front of the door to the chamber with several thick bundles of parchment sticking out of a satchel that was on her back.

“Good morning, Luna,” she said cheerily when she saw the younger Princess approaching.

“Good morning yourself,” Luna answered with far less cheer. Celestia was putting up a good front, but Luna could tell that her sister was plainly exhausted, no doubt from a late night of legal research. The subtle droop in her eyelids said it all. “You had a fruitful night, I trust?”

Celestia pulled out one of the parchment rolls with her magic. “Speeches,” she said, yawning into a hoof. “In between votes, I can say whatever I want to express opinions on the measures being debated.” She unrolled just the first few inches of the document, enough for Luna to see the title, and a cramped script that began just below it.

“Discourses on the Movement of the Planets?” The smallness of the writing coupled with the thickness of the roll hit home. “It will take you hours to read through that.”

She nodded in affirmation. “Hopefully Pensive will appreciate the astronomy lesson. If not, he’ll be free to wander the halls until the clerk calls him back, as will the rest of the chamber. That, I think, will be when you should be working on them.”

The reminder of what would constitute the bulk of her day brought a quick grimace up onto Luna’s features. Celestia could give her time to work with, but the rest was up to her.

“Do you really think that this plan is going to work?” A thought struck her. “Why can’t I read the speech and you work the chamber?”

Celestia shook her head though. “Remember what I said earlier. If Pensive knew that I was out and about on the floor, he would stick to his senators like glue, never giving me a chance to speak to any of them privately. So long as he knows that I am occupied in the chamber, he’ll hopefully let his guard down. Besides,” she added, offering Luna an encouraging tap on the shoulder, “you’re a Princess, and one of the most adaptable ponies that I’ve ever known. We’ve faced demented tyrants, legions of soldiers, and mad kings. Could a day of negotiations really be so bad?”

Put that way, of course Luna couldn’t really object. Yet even so, as Celestia pushed the doors to the Senate chamber open, and the concentric rings of lecterns, about half full at the moment, were revealed, a lump rose up in her throat.

The thrones at the room’s near side were pristine, freshly cleaned just this morning, two identical golden seats. Perhaps one day, when this whole crisis had been averted, she would get Celestia to fly into a thunderstorm’s core, and then ask her afterward if she’d like to reconsider her sentiments.

As the chair was making ready his tally for another vote, Celestia put her hoof up. “If it pleases the chamber, the throne will use this opportunity to make a statement for the record.” As she stood up, she offered Luna a conspiratorial wink, pulling the first of her rolls of parchment out of her bag as she approached the speaker’s lectern. “There are a few things that I’d like to make the chamber aware of before we proceed to the vote on this measure.”

Several of the senators out on the benches leaned forward in anticipation, perhaps not expecting the dull monologue that was to come. Luna noted that both Ink and Pensive though, were already packing up their things, ready to head out into the halls as soon as Celestia began her speech.

With the keen eyes that she had developed from working crowds in Eridian, she picked out her mark from the chamber’s front bench: Everfree West, a pot-bellied stallion with a protruding chin and small, hazel eyes. Until recently, he had been a dependable member of Ink’s coalition, and so clearly whatever method Pensive was using to persuade votes to his side, this stallion would have received the full force of it.

As Celestia started out into the lengthy preamble before the speech, with ample pauses for effect inserted wherever she could, Luna stood up from her own seat and cautiously made her way around the chamber’s perimeter. Pensive, she could see, had already slipped out, taking his cadre of urban senators along with him, perhaps to wile away the time in the palace’s cafeteria, or more likely to craft a few more minor amended versions of the bill that they could bring to the vote later. In any event, it meant that he wasn’t around to see what Luna was up to. She walked right up to the front of the Everfree senator’s lectern.

“Mister Vermilion?” she asked, softly so as not to be heard from across the room.

The senator stood up hurriedly. “Your Highness!” There was a distinct rural twang to his voice, indicative of the nation’s southwest corner. “Is there something that you’d like to discuss?”

Luna nodded. “Of course. Privately, though.” She gave a look back to her sister, who was now illustrating the concepts of the lesson with a magical projection of the cosmos in the center of the room. “It looks like Celestia is going to be at it the whole morning, by the rate that this is going. We could retire to your office in the meantime.”

“Naturally.” Vermilion got out of his desk right away, taking only a small folder of notes along with him. “Who would have thought that such stressful times could come upon us so quickly? It seems just yesterday we were debating infrastructure and military spending.”

We could get back to that pretty quickly if you could vote on something sane. The thought arrived immediately at the forefront of Luna’s consciousness, but she pushed it aside. She was going to need to be subtle if she wanted to get anything done on this front. A confrontation would only serve to put Vermilion’s defenses up.

“Absolutely. But such is the nature of government, I suppose. With any luck, I’ll be able to deliver a solution that works for everypony sooner rather than later.”

“We would surely appreciate that,” Vermilion answered, a bit louder now that they had exited the chamber and were making their way through the lobby. The Senate’s executive offices wing beckoned on the room’s far side. Being out of the chamber though did bring the renewed sound of the protests to Luna’s ears. Apparently the group outside had grown larger as morning had progressed, if the sounds were anything to go by. Vermilion clearly had heard it too. “Things have become rather tense around here, wouldn’t you agree, Your Highness?”

Luna decided to get on into the core of the discussion. “We both want a resolution to the conflict, Senator. But I think we both know that the measure currently being debated is not going to get us there. You were a solid Nay on Pensive’s original proposal, what changed your mind about this version?”

Vermilion shrugged his shoulders. “Things have gotten more desperate. Those ponies outside want us to do something, and this measure is what we currently have to work with. Sure, it’s not perfect, but nopony should want to be an obstructionist right now.”

“If you think that it’s bad right now, Senator, it’ll be ten times worse if Pensive’s bill becomes law. You’re from a mostly rural district, aren’t you? Surely you can see that farmers will never stand for something like this.”

Vermilion grasped the handle to his office suite and pulled it open, gesturing Luna inside curtly. Vermilion’s office was exactly the same as that of every other senator in the building, with a little antechamber for his secretary and an inner study for meetings. In this case, Vermilion had chosen to fill the empty corners with potted shrubs, giving the place a nicely green look, along with a fresh scent. The plants were watered daily by the cleaning staff, which meant that they were probably some of the healthiest vegetation in the city.

Vermilion pushed open the door to his study with only a cursory glance to his secretary, and then he went around behind his desk and sat down heavily. “You haven’t been out and about lately, have you, Princess?”

Seeing the two guest chairs in front of the desk, Luna hesitated for a moment before taking a seat. This was still a discussion, not a confrontation. “I’ve been in the mountains for the last week or so, but what does that have to do with anything?”

Vermilion sighed. “What’s going on out in the plaza isn’t an isolated event. I’ve talked to the other senators. Seems like almost every city in the country is dealing with demonstrations by now. And that’s only going to get worse with every passing day of no help.”

The impassioned retort stuck on Luna’s tongue before she could say it. A protest just like this one in every city? That did suddenly sound serious. “As I said, Senator, whatever is going on now will pale in comparison to the firestorm that will be unleashed if the government confiscates the harvest. Forget political consequences. We could be talking about outright violence.”

Seemingly unfazed, Vermilion leaned back in his chair, quiet, perhaps thinking over the consequences. It was madness, surely, to continue down this road. Anypony could see that. But then the senator pulled open one of the drawers on his desk, and from it placed a newspaper clipping onto the table. “I’m afraid that we’re already talking about violence, Your Highness.”

Mob Descends on Shady Acres, read the headline, spread wide over the whole top of the article. “Sunday, 21st Reaper’s Moon — A peaceful Sunday afternoon came to a disastrous end this past week at Shady Acres farm, as a crowd of angry townsfolk overran the property, searching for food that rumours had said was being hoarded there.” It went on to discuss the circumstances that had overtaken the town, and how the shortage had turned the townsfolk against the farmers, each group convinced that the other was the one to blame for the situation. As she read, Luna felt her heart sinking, not just out of sympathy for the ponies involved in the tragedy, but also for the situation that Equestria had found itself in.

On the other side of the desk, Vermilion nodded. “It’s already getting worse, Princess. I don’t need to think about political consequences. I need to think about my hide if I ever have to go back to that district and tell them that Canterlot isn’t doing anything to help.”

“Then work with us on a compromise plan,” Luna said, as serious as she could muster. “We can bring up the draft of the original proposal, modified as needed. Pensive’s bill is just turning away from one cliff to leap off of another. You can’t let him use this crisis as a pretext to pass such a horrific plan!”

“It’ll never make it to the floor.” Vermilion shook his head wearily. “I could draft a million better proposals, but I don’t hold the key to the schedule. The Senate votes on the plans that Pensive lets through. Otherwise we would have passed something else weeks ago.”

Luna could have slapped herself. Of course that was the way that things were. “Well, can you at least promise to withhold support from this measure until we can think of something better?”

“I’m afraid not, Your Highness,” he said decisively. “Unfortunate though it may seem, that unicorn has the whole chamber by the tail. If there were any way that you could guarantee me a vote on something a little more fair, I would promise right here that you would have my vote every day of the week. But the thing is that you’re right, Princess.” He leaned forward in his chair, fixing Luna with a thoughtful gaze. There was a touch of sorrow buried there in his eyes, and some sympathy too. Nopony wanted what was happening to Equestria right now, and at least Luna knew that he could see that. “There’s nothing but cliffs all around us now, and no way we can turn away from one without finding ourselves on the edge of another. It’s only a matter of time until somepony has to fall. And though I hate to say it, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that it’s not me.”

Luna took a deep breath, and then stood up. “Well, I appreciate your candor, Senator. And one day, when all of this is behind us, I’m sure that the world will appreciate knowing that in our most desperate hour, the Senate was full of nothing but cowards, too afraid for their own hides to stand together and do what was right.”

She gave him a single nod of good-bye, and turned for the door. “That is, if we all survive long enough for there to be any posterity on this,” she said over her shoulder as she walked. She was putting up a bold front, but inside Luna only felt sadness. What if all of the senators were just the same? There wasn’t much reason to believe that they wouldn’t be. As satisfying as it was to see Vermilion’s shame, it didn’t get her any closer to fixing the core issue. She still had a dozen more names to get to, at least. No sense in getting pessimistic already.

But as she lifted the door’s latch with her magic, Luna suddenly heard the sound of hooves behind her. “Wait!” Vermilion shouted, trotting up to her from behind the desk. “Politics requires many things from a senator, but I’ll be darned if anypony back home thinks I'm a coward. That’s just not right.”

Though her heart soared at the words, Luna kept her face dispassionate. “Does that mean that we can count on your Nay?”

The question brought a nervous look up into his eyes, which just made Luna want to shake her head. Coward Vermilion may not be, but only just. “If we can get something better onto the floor, then you’ll have my Yea for it.”

“You just said that there’s no way we can get something alternative to the floor, though. A promise like that gets us nowhere.”

“There is one way,” he said, raising up a single hoof for punctuation. “If you can somehow get Pensive removed as the chamber’s leader, then somepony else can control the docket. You can certainly count on my vote for that, in addition to everypony else in Ink’s coalition.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You can make me a promise like that?”

“Pensive Prose is a bastard.” The words came with a solid conviction, straight and serious as if Vermilion had been affirming that the sky was blue. “My mother used to tell me not to talk that way, but it’s the only correct word I can think of. To use this kind of crisis on whatever agenda he’s playing at is just low, and if it weren’t for everything else going on, we would have him hauled to the stocks for something like this. Personally, I think that everypony in the Senate would agree with that, except maybe for the few in his closest inner circle, but they’re likely just as low as him.”

Luna considered the idea for a moment. “Well, if that’s what you’d like to do, then can’t you just do it?” She had a feeling what the answer was going to be, but it paid to at least try.

“Procedural,” Vermilion replied bitterly. “We’d need a supermajority, and his cronies would stand by him no matter what. In order to force him out, we’d need a scandal. Something that would make sure that nopony could stand beside him.”

“And you can give us one?”

“Well, no,” Vermilion admitted.

Luna was seized by a sudden urge to bash her head against the wall. “Then what was the point of you telling me any of this?”

“I’m telling you so that you know what you’re looking for,” he explained, remarkably still calm in spite of the heat of Luna’s stare. “Don’t waste your time plying the chamber. Nopony’s going to budge. It’s dirt on Pensive that you want. And I’ll be a griffon if there isn’t any out there to find. Whatever he’s got planned with this bill of his, I can only see it working if he’s up to his shoulders in something shady. You find something there, and we can work with that.”

Luna looked away, back at the door that would take her into the hallway again. It wasn’t exactly a path forward, but it was something at least. And investigating something dark like this appealed to her a lot more than interrogating the remaining senators on her list.

“I’ll see what I can dig up,” she said. “You can guarantee the votes to depose him?”

He nodded. “The whole rural bloc for sure, and we need just a few from his cabal. We just need some good, solid evidence.”

“I suppose that will have to be good enough.” Luna finally lifted the latch, which she had still been holding all of this time. Technically, she wasn’t any closer to resolving the stalemate in the chamber, and even this new lead was essentially the same as she and Celestia already knew. But it was still a far more familiar piece of ground for her. She had a clear, well-defined enemy to manoeuvre against. It meant that her afternoon would at least be a little more enjoyable.

Chapter 33: Windcaster

“Pegasus magic isn’t about memorizing incantations and formulas. It’s about feeling. The atmosphere and you are but pieces of a whole.”

Ancient pegasus proverb

All three of Spry, Shine and Tin were looking skeptical, but the brown stallion most of all. “I hate to tell you, Wind,” he said, voice muffled by the beans that he was holding in his cheek, “but I don’t buy it. If those ponies on the ground had ever tried candied beans, I’m sure they’d appreciate them just as much as we do.”

“Well… ugh, it’s hard to explain, okay?” Wind replied. The group had found their secluded spot, about a half hour’s flight beyond the city limits, on the perch of a small cloud bank with the lights of Cloudsdale only a small twinkle on the distant horizon. It was quiet out here, save for the whisper of the winds in his ears.

“The same way, if you had been able to taste this soup, you would agree that it was the best thing you’d ever tasted!”

Tin just shook his head and swallowed, resolute in his convictions. Meanwhile Shine, who was lying back on the cloud-top along with Spry, was looking more thoughtful. “How much do you remember of that earth pony tune? It sounds like it might be a fine thing to have for your Choosing.”

Wind was hovering in place in front of them, the excitement of the story essentially preventing him from being able to sit still. Though the mention of his upcoming Choosing ceremony took his smile down a notch. “I could probably keep on the basic tune, but trust me, that’s the last thing that I want to be thinking about. That’s all my parents ever want to discuss, and we’re here to get away from them.”

The words stung as soon as they came out of his mouth. He had been away from Sun and Snow for weeks already, and he had only gotten back this afternoon. Yet it was true, that was exactly what he was doing out here.

“But you’ve only got a couple of days left,” Shine continued. “Your Choosing is pretty much the biggest event of your life! Of course my parents are obsessed with mine; they want it to be perfect, and so do I. Don’t you?”

Wind looked away from her, out into the open sky, down to the darkened surface below. There was nothing much to see down there, save the occasional spots of dark brown that marked out the larger stands of trees.

“It’s not that,” he admitted quietly. For a moment he considered telling her the truth, but then he remembered Spry. “I’m sure that things will go just fine. I don’t need to stress about it like everypony else does.”

“What are you stressing about then?” Spry asked, sitting up. His left eyebrow was drawn down, not quite enough to form a squint. “I can tell that something is on your mind, man. Ever since we left the city you’ve been thinking about something, something that you’re not telling us.”

Wind was glad to have somewhere else to turn the conversation. “Maybe what has me stressed is the fact that you’re still here?” he said, giving Spry the harshest glare that he could muster. “And please don’t tell me about how great of a guy he really is, Shine. He showed me his true colours the last time that I saw him, and somehow convinced all of you of his innocence.”

Shine kicked herself up into a hover on hearing that, a classic sign of agitation from a pegasus. “That’s not even close to fair, Wind! You don’t know anything about him. You met for like, five minutes! And ever since then he’s been a great friend. Why would he do that if he was such a villain like you think?”

Back on the cloud, Spry was looking uncomfortable at the outburst, and Wind zeroed in on him again. “I don’t know. Maybe he felt guilty after ending your chances in the race. Either way, his friendship is only going to last until the two of you are competing again. Then you can expect another knife in the back.”

She looked stunned. “Never! Aren’t you at least willing to give him a chance?” She stopped for a second, thoughtful, before continuing. “Those ponies on the ground were wrong about you in their first impressions, but after enough time you proved to them that you really did know what you were talking about and they accepted their mistake. Well, most of them at least by the sound of it. Are you not going to be any better than that lousy Cottonseed?”

Wind gritted his teeth at Shine’s valid argument. Did he maybe owe Spry at least a second chance? What could he possibly say or do that would erase the evidence of his nature? Then again, he didn’t want to risk possibly destroying his friendship with Shine without at least trying.

“Okay, one minute, Spry. Convince me I’m wrong. Otherwise, one of us is going back to Cloudsdale.”

They all turned to give the Master’s son a look: grim from Wind, apologetic from Shine and Tin. Spry took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before getting to his hooves. “One minute?” he said, sounding resigned. “Then I guess that I should get right to the point. Number one is that you were absolutely right, Wind. During the race, I knocked Shine out, so that I could claim the victory and guarantee myself a spot in the Flight Club. So yeah, you’re right about at least that much.”

Wind absolutely hadn’t expected that to start things off. He looked at Shine right away. “See? I knew he was as rotten as a week-old bean! Now that we’ve got that cleared up we can leave off with this farce and send him back to the city.”

Shine was nonplussed, however. “Do you think I didn’t know? He told me that weeks ago. Maybe let him finish?”

“Yeah,” Spry continued, drawing Wind’s gaze again. “Everypony in the city had heard about you after only a couple of days. And of course I knew that you had been ticked off at me before it all happened. Once we all realized that you really seemed to be gone for good, these two took it really hard. Meanwhile, all that I could wonder was if what I had done was part of the reason why you left.”

The thought of what Shine and Tin would have gone through over the course of the past months put a damper on Wind’s anger. Naturally, he’d thought about it before, but seeing the melancholy on their faces now brought it all closer to home. “So you did feel guilty then?” he said, drawing back his glare a touch.

“Of course!” Spry exclaimed, now looking offended at the implication. “You had every right to be on my case, after all, but Shine didn’t know it. I had to try to help her through this thing, but I also had to keep my secret, and that turned out to be just impossible. So yeah, maybe a week after you left I told these two everything.”

This time Shine broke in before Wind could say anything. “And yeah, right then I was pretty peeved for your information. On top of what I was going through, wondering if I was ever going to see you again. It took me a couple of days to cool off, but eventually I did realize that I couldn’t blame Spry for what he did.”

“Really?” Wind couldn’t hide his surprise, unable to understand the logic. “After throwing away his honour like that? Any life that he earned by dishonesty would have been nothing in the end.”

She nodded. “Yeah, really. Cause, if I was honest, and put myself in his position, I would probably consider the same thing. Heck, a few times in the past I even have.”

Sighing, she took a look over at Tin. “You and Tin are lucky in a way. They’ll always take more pegasi up in the fields, and whatever you choose, Wind, your family will get you set up right. But the Flight Club is only for the best. The thought of knowing, deep down, that flying is what you want to do, but not making the cut? Then spending every day doing something else, knowing that it was wrong? It would be a nightmare, and I’ve sometimes wondered what I would do to avoid it. Lucky for me I never had to face that decision.”

She turned to give Spry a smile after finishing, and this time Wind had no snappy retort. There had been something very familiar in the story that she had told after all. The sense of dread at ending up with a destiny different than the one he truly wanted was something he understood very well. He’d approached the problem in a different way than had Shine or Spry, but then they both had an answer to the question that still stumped him.

“Plus,” Spry added, “I hope that by now you’ve realized that even life up here isn’t as simple as they tell us in school. Honour and honesty are important, but they won’t get you that far in life. After I confessed to Shine, of course I told the story to the Flight Club too. They appreciated the honesty, but they kicked me out just the same. When I got home, my dad was pretty mad at me for the whole thing. But eventually I realized that he actually didn’t care about the cheating.” He gave them a wry grin. “What actually set him off was that I had let the truth out afterward.”

At that Wind had to chuckle. For of course he had to wonder how Snow would have taken the story, and he couldn’t help but think that his father might have reacted the same way. A son who had kept his heart pure was one thing, but a champion flyer in the Flight Club would present all kinds of opportunities for more parties and luncheons like the one going on at their house right now. And maybe, just like Spry’s father, Snow could have made his problem go away with only a few words if he had really wanted to.

“That’s probably all for my minute,” Spry said, looking relieved to finally settle the matter. “But that’s basically all that I can say. It was good enough for these two, how do you see it?”

Wind had to think about it for a moment. On the one hoof, he had been right all along, and everything he had thought he’d known back then had turned out to be true. But how much did any of it really matter? If Shine could be okay with knowing the truth, then maybe he could too, knowing that in reality the society he had thought he knew was a totally different place than he had been brought up to believe. The way they had been taught, in Cloudsdale, everypony was measured solely by their worth to the tribe, and a cheat wasn’t worth anything.

As it turned out, that life wasn’t so simple, and he did have to admit that after the incident with the race Spry had been a nice enough pony. He really owed Spry a lot for consoling his friends in his absence. And looking at him now, the easy, endearing smile on his otherwise high and noble features, Wind could imagine that maybe it would be okay to call him a friend. “Sure,” he said, looking down for a moment. “I, uh, I guess I owe you an apology then.”

Spry shook his head solidly. “Absolutely not. You were right after all. And even if you still want to apologize, surely mine and yours will cancel each other out. So we’re square.” He offered a hoof to shake, and Wind took it. “Now come on. I tend to pay more attention when my father is talking business, and I can tell when a pony isn’t telling the whole truth. Now that we’re all friends, is there anything else that you’d like to share about your time on the surface?”

Wind felt himself flush, but he shook his head and did his best to sound nonchalant. “No, I think that was about it.”

The endearing smile transitioned smoothly into a knowing grin. “No, it wasn’t. You were leaving out parts.”

“Whoa, he really is good!” Tin exclaimed, “That’s something they sure didn’t teach us in school.” He sat up on the cloud, a fresh eagerness in his eyes. “Now you’ve got to tell us! And you know that he’ll be able to tell if you try to hide anything.”

Shine sat up too. “I’ll betcha’ it’s something really juicy. Come on, Wind, let’s hear it.”

There really wasn’t anything for it now. Maybe if Wind had known that the Master’s son was so good at detecting lies, he wouldn’t have said anything with him around in the first place. But of course he couldn’t have known. So he flew a little higher, till he was maybe ten feet above the group, and started filling in all of the pieces of the narrative that he had left out.

Of course it felt right to tell the whole thing, leaving nothing out, all of the conversations that he had had with Sycamore about Cloudsdale, and all of the grim moments as she had wrestled with her family’s finances and the questions of what they were going to do. His heart bloomed as he went over the time they had spent working together on the farm, all of the evenings by the dried-up lake, and of course Reaper’s Rise, and his last good bye to her, just this morning.

When he had finished, he opened his eyes to find Southoofton down there on the surface, only a collection of shadows in the moonlight, with a few stray lights that may have been candles or torches or whatever. Somewhere, Sycamore was down there, and hopefully she was looking up at the sky, watching and wondering what he was going to show her.

When he looked back to his friends, it was difficult for him to identify exactly what emotions he was seeing on their faces. In the twinkle of the stars, he thought for a second he could see the bright sparkle of a teardrop in one of Shine’s eyes, but she blinked and immediately it was gone. He knew that none of them could possibly understand exactly what his feelings were toward Sycamore; maybe no pegasus had ever been in exactly his position before. But he had hoped that they could at least sympathize, and in any event even if Spry hadn’t been here to insist on the truth, he realized that now it felt great to say it all, perhaps to admit to himself just how much all of that experience had meant.

Shine was the first to say anything. “Oh, that’s so nice to hear,” she said, a softness clear in her tone. “Though obviously that whole situation is still a sad story. It wasn’t looking good for them when you left, was it?”

He nodded once. “I can’t say for sure exactly what’s going to happen, but I know that it’s not going to get any better. Not without rain, and even then it might not help. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Maybe at least we can look at each other each night and know there’s somepony else out there who cares.”

“I almost can’t believe that you were able to leave,” she continued. “Knowing all of that…there had to be something you could do.”

“It wasn’t my fight,” he said. He knew that the words sounded cold, but they were the truth, and he didn’t have to like that. “I am a pegasus of Cloudsdale, and she's an earth pony of the surface. If I could have done anything to help them, of course I would have, but otherwise my life is up here, and hers is down there.” He could see that Spry understood, though the Master’s son wasn’t too happy about it either. So he did his best to put on a grin. “But it is out of my hooves now. Sycamore will find a way. I know she will. And one day in the future I will find her again. In the meantime, now that that’s all told, I want to show you guys something.”

“You mean what you did to make that rainbow at Reaper’s Rise?” Spry asked, the eager glimmer back in his eyes. “I’d absolutely love to see it myself, but it won’t look like much without sunlight.”

“The Moon is full,” Tin remarked, propping his shoulder up on the cloud and reaching for another hoofful of beans. “It’s plenty bright. And I’ve never heard of a pegasus capable of making something like that happen. Moving clouds around sure, but making a rainbow out of a clear sky is just impossible.” He settled back down to watch, and the other two followed suit.

Taking a deep breath, Wind flew on his own out into the sky, until there was a bit of separation between him and their perch on the cloud. If Sycamore was looking in the right place, she would have no problem picking out his form against the light of the Moon and the stars. He wouldn’t have Firedrop’s fiddle to go by up here, but the general tune of Dance of the Reaper still trilled along in his head, and in the sky he could hear the voices of the winds even stronger than he ever had on the surface. He knew that he had to give this everything. In spite of whatever he said to keep his spirits up, deep down he knew that this was going to be the last of him that Sycamore ever saw.

The familiar beat of the winds served as the foundation of the music. It was slower than the fiery tempo he’d kept to on the ground, but still plenty good enough to work with, and Wind was free to work within it, using the forms that now came to him almost without thinking. A dip and a dive around, a flutter and a spin, and soon enough a well of spinning wind was wrapped around him, reacting to his every move. Wind picked it up into the second verse, his eyes again closed, alone in the sky except for the music and the winds around him.

In his mind, he held onto the image of Sycamore, strands of her golden mane waving in the breeze across her beautiful, clear face, her wide and deep eyes sparkling in the sunlight, her jaw slackened with wonder as she had seen his rainbow for the first time. If nothing else, it could be a sign that there was still somepony up here watching out for her.

As Wind went back into the song’s chorus, the air around him grew colder and more humid as moisture materialized around his wings, growing out of the music, growing out of the winds. Drops of water floated from the tips of his feathers, leaving his skin cold, the feeling jolting his heart into the accents of the song.

The raindrops built themselves up into cloud banks, mists at first but soon the telltale swirl of a building thunderhead, exactly like the one that had first thrown him to the surface those weeks ago. But this was different, because this time Wind was the storm, its every gust or breeze a part of him. Where the song called for a crash of thunder, the atmosphere answered, lightning arcing like a flash of silver, and the rumble of the sky’s basso voice following. Him and the atmosphere were playing out a duet, a melody and a counterpoint, each one supporting the other, the air an invisible partner for his dance. Only this time he was keeping up just fine, answering every stab of the music with another billowing cloud, another shiver of cool mist, another torrent of icy wind. And when the music reached its frenzied peak everything cleared, opening the space once again for the brilliant rainbow that followed, bright and clear even in the night.

Wind was left gazing peacefully down at Southoofton once more, his heart still aflame with wonder at what might have been. He blew a soft kiss down Sycamore’s way, then closed his eyes. “Goodbye, Sycamore,” he whispered softly into the night.

When he turned around Wind saw that for once, Tin’s mouth was empty. In fact all three of them were sitting awestruck, the wonder writ large across their faces exactly as it had been for the earth ponies down on the ground. He flew lazily over to the cloud bank and came down next to them. “Sure is something, isn’t it?” he said sheepishly.

Shine was the first to find her voice. “Something? That was incredible! I’ve never seen a pegasus who could do anything like that! All of that from that song you learned on the ground?”

“I don’t know,” he said, leaning back into the fluffy comfort of the cloud bank. “There was always something about the winds for me. It was just that song that made the rainbow, but I’ve heard similar things before. It all started with the storm that got me two months ago.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s awesome,” she affirmed, eyes still glowing with awe. “It’s too bad that you couldn’t do that for the rest of your life. But I guess it means your Choosing will be a real sight to see.”

Beside her, Spry looked like he was just now getting his bearings, shaking his head as if to clear a fog. “You don’t even know,” he said quietly. Then he lifted himself up into an excited hover. “Don’t you understand, Wind?” he asked. “The showers, the thunder, the rainbow out of nowhere? You’re a Windcaster! Don’t you know what that means?”

Spry looked excited, but it wasn’t registering for Wind. Maybe he should have paid more attention in history class. “Sorry, I can’t say that I do, Spry. Though it sounds like a good thing?” Beside him, Shine and Tin looked equally perplexed.

Spry sighed. “I guess it is pretty old history, so it’s lucky that my father made me learn it.” He flew up to Wind, who could see something that almost looked like admiration in his eyes. “There hasn’t been a Windcaster born in Equestria in centuries,” he continued breathlessly. “No one remembers how their magic worked. But we do remember what they could do. They could create weather, out of nowhere! Rain, snow, lightning, whatever! And you’ve got the gift.”

“I do?” Wind asked, starting to understand a bit. “So what you’re saying is that music was somehow related to Windcasting magic?”

“It must be,” the Master’s son replied, his excitement only growing. “Again, no one knows how the Windcasting magic works. But still, I think you’re missing the bigger picture here!” He looked at Wind expectantly, clearly hoping that the bit would drop soon.

And then it did drop, and it felt to Wind as if the Sun had just risen and blasted its light through every synapse of his brain. If he could create rain, then there could be hope for Sycamore and all of Southoofton yet. The excitement broke out on his face in the widest smile he’d ever made, accompanied by a light peal of laughter and tears of joy.

“By the winds,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now. But how? I only know how to make a rainbow.”

“Then you’ll have to learn,” Spry answered, giving him a reassuring tap on the shoulder. “And we’ll all be here to help. Right, guys?”

Clearly Shine and Tin had figured it out too, as they both whooped in approval, before coming forward to offer Wind a big heartfelt hug. “We’ll do whatever we can,” Shine said. “You’ll get to her.”

Wind almost couldn’t move with them all on him, but he didn’t care. His thoughts were back on the ground, wondering how much time they had. It didn’t matter. He was going back, and this time he was bringing the storm with him.