“You’re overthinking it, in my opinion. What she said and your quest are likely not correlated at all, especially since it seems she has nothing to do with that power of yours. If Harmony was responsible for that power and for you being here then you could interpret her words that way, but those same words indicate she is just as clueless about your presence as everypony else.” Luna answers my question after the room fell into silence for a few seconds.

“I don’t think the two are directly correlated though. I think they are indicating the same thing. Two separate facts that individually point towards the same answer. Maybe this just isn’t worth stressing out over, though. I mean it’ll either happen or it won’t, right?”

Deception

16 + 1 = 17.

Seems like Luna and Celestia both saw through me, judging by the looks on their faces. Thankfully they seem to realize I just want to move on from the topic and stop thinking about it. Turning towards Force I fully pivot the conversation. “You finish writing your oath, yet?”

“Yeah it’s pretty much done. I might trim it down a bit, but that’s all.”

“Hopefully your ceremony is less eventful than mine, haha. I don’t wanna deal with another dragon in our territory. Are the elements going to be here for this one as well?”

Celestia chimes in with the answer for this one, “Not this time I’m afraid. They actually had quite an eventful week as well. Rainbow Dash won the young fliers competition in heroic fashion, Rarity was ponynapped by a pack of diamond dogs, and as we speak they are headed to Appleloosa to deliver an apple tree that should help kick start the settlement's own agriculture. Well the real reason is that they’re going to settle a land dispute we’ve been having with some buffalo in the area, but they don’t know that yet. Even if they settled that in a day the train ride is long enough that they still wouldn’t make it back here in time.”

“Wait so it was okay to postpone the ceremony until Luna and I could make it, but you won’t postpone it for the elements?”

Cadence takes over for this question. “If it were up to me I’d delay it for them too, but this ceremony is mostly an honor for the individual being knighted. Force doesn’t really know the element bearers and apparently isn’t too bothered by their absence.” The princess actually has a small pout as she huffs in indignation.

“I said I didn’t mind delaying it so Twilight could attend. You were the one that said it’s fine because we’d have to push the ceremony so far back that it’d be after the Gala. My Princess is right about my feelings on the matter, though. I’ve only briefly met the elements and it doesn’t really matter to me if they’re in attendance or not.” The future knight defends herself as she finishes her meal.

I’ve only got one more topic I want to bring up before I excuse myself from the table. “What’s the status of the changeling refugee’s we accepted right before Luna and I left the kingdom?”

“I ended up allowing them to establish the core of their hive in the depleted section of the crystal mines below us. However, I did give them 1 condition. They have to expand the hive into a cavern and share the space with the thestrals once they arrive. They’re allowed to come and go into the city as they please but must remain undisguised at all times, and with their burrowing capabilities I think they’ll be very useful to the thestrals once they arrive and establish a new colony.” Celestia gives me a pretty satisfactory answer.

“Wow that’s perfect, Luna and I decided that we’re going to recruit the changelings into the Night Guard. Having them cohabitate with the thestrals makes the idea even more viable.” I stand up from the table and start making my way out of the dining hall. “Nightmare Moon is attending the Gala, by the way. Figured I’d give you a heads up.”

Everyone looks a little stunned, but Force still slowly follows me into the hallway. As the door closes I think Celestia’s brain finally rebooted because I hear her shout, “WHAT?!” and just chuckle while walking away from the room.

“So where is Silver Lance? You know if he’s been doing okay?” I ask Force as she leads me down the hallway.

“He should be on patrol at the train station, making sure nopony is bringing in illegal goods to the city. I don’t really know him well enough to know how he’s been doing. I just happened to notice his name when I was looking at the duty roster today. If he’s still patrolling though then he must be doing pretty well.”

“So I gotta ask Force, do you normally get stares and side eyes like this when you’re in a patrol area? Or could it be because there’s two knights here, or, and what I suspect is most likely, is that it’s because of me?” We’re still a few minutes away from the actual train station but we entered the patrol area for the station around 3 minutes ago. Since then just about every single guard we’ve passed by has either side eyed us in an attempt to be subtle or just blatantly stared at us.

“Believe it or not I actually do get a few stares on my own nowadays. Ever since the Hydra incident there’s been murmurs around the city about the power of the two knights. At Least these stares are better than the ones you were getting your first week in town. Instead of just fear or disgust there’s now a decent number of stares that contain admiration and awe. It’s been so long since any of the princesses actually took on a personal knight that many didn’t know what to expect from us. Now that we’ve proven ourselves somewhat there’s actually a few ponies that are aspiring to join our ranks.”

“How many knights can each princess have? Back in my homeland there were thousands of knights at a time and on Earth it had kinda faded into just being a status thing.”

“There’s not really a limit as far as I know. Historically it’s only been 1 at a time, it sounds like your knights filled a different role than they do here. Equestrian Knights are the personal guard for the princess they are sworn too. They might have guard details outside their bed chambers during off time, but we will always be by their side during their official duties.” She has a point, I knew they had referred to me as Luna's personal guard but I thought that was just my specific title, not the title for all knights.

My last question on this topic makes me a bit flustered to ask, so I can’t help but to glance away from the pegasus and scratch my cheek while asking it. “And…is there any rules about relationships between a princess and her knight?”

“When I was doing my research to help write my oath I went through the old archives of knights and apparently Princess Celestia courted her own knight on 3 separate occasions. So, at the very least there’s precedent that falls in your favor. Technically though there is the fraternization policy between guards and their superiors and somepony could probably make the argument that you’ll be violating that.”

“Woah I’m not violating anything, I was just asking out of idle curiosity.” Before Force can call out my blatant lie we almost run into a guard, but I stop right before hitting him and glance down only to realize this is the stallion I was looking for. Some of his fur is still singed with patches of it completely empty. Once the pony realizes who I am he staggers backwards a few steps and holds one of his forelegs in the air as his ears pin back and his eyes widen in fear.

“S-S-Sir, apologies I…. I sho… I’m sorry for almost bumping into you.” His breathing has quickened a lot but he’s not hyperventilating…yet. He slowly takes a few more steps backwards.

I slowly squat down so we’re eye level. “Are you Sargeant Silver Lance?”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

I reach into my bag and pull out a tiny pouch filled with diamond dust before looking at the unicorn with the most gentle face I can muster. “I’m so sorry for what happened in that colosseum, Sergeant. I know there’s likely very little I can do to make up for what I did to you, but I came out here today to find you and try to at least… make things better. Even if it’s only slight.”

I wasn’t actually sure if he had been traumatized from the fireball incident, but judging by how hard he reacted just from seeing me I think it’s safe to say he’s suffering on some level. Hopefully he’s in therapy…

I place my hand against my chest and cast Guidance. Next I take the diamond dust I grabbed on the way here and start to channel a 5th level spell slot into the Mizzium Apparatus. I reach out my hand as slowly as I can and his ears pin back again. “SIR, I’M SORRY SIR, I DON’T WANT TO BURN!”

“I will never burn you again, Silver Lance. On my oath to Princess Luna I swear it, you will never come to harm under my hand. I’m only trying to help. This spell will heal your scars and help with all the blemishes to your fur. It’s a very powerful healing spell. Please trust me.”

His whole body starts to shake but he somehow manages to stop leaning away from me. He squeezes his eyes shut as tight as he can and flinches as he braces himself for a pain that will never come.

Arcana Check (Mizzium DC: 20.)

20 + 13 = 33.

33 + 2 = 35.

Words of power flow out of my mouth as all of the diamond dust in the small pouch starts to float into the air and quickly orbit around the guards body. His entire body is covered in a green aura and with a bright flash of light I finish casting Greater Restoration. Technically no spell in the game says it treats scars like this, but several DMs I’ve played with have let us use either Greater Restoration or Cure Wounds on a target as long as they are already at full HP. There was one bastard that made us use the Heal spell, but hopefully that’s not the case here because Paladins can’t cast that so I’d be fucked.

Thankfully after the light fades away the guard looks like he was never even burned. He slowly opens his eyes and looks down at his foreleg where they used to be bare skin showing with patches of blackened fur to see his body has been restored to pristine condition. He actually cracks a smile which of course causes me to smile with him. “Hopefully everything has been okay since you came back, Sgt?”

“I-I’ve had my m-m-moments, but most days I can get through w-w-with no problem. Usually it’s stuff like fireworks or loud crashing sou… sounds. If it means anything Sir I never held it against you. I know you didn’t go through our training so you didn’t get drilled everyday on only using precise magic to minimize collateral d-d-damage. It’s just th-that seeing you just now….brought me back to that night. The roaring in my ears followed by the constant ringing, the smell of my own flesh being roasted. I was right back there.”

When he mentions precise magic training my mind flashes back to when I was getting assessed by Shining Armor during my first couple of days here in Canterlot. He specifically told me that they’re trained to fire spells with the exact intent to hit only the target they are aiming at. If there’s any collateral damage that’s considered a failure. I just laughed at him and jumped at the opportunity to say the Fireball line. “If I had just taken another half a second to properly scan the surroundings… You should hold this against me. This was an entirely preventable incident and a complete failure on my part, Sgt. After the gala I’m going to personally receive the same battle mage training you all go through in basic, so this doesn’t happen again. I’m sorry again, Silver Lance.”

We talked for a few more minutes and he actually gave me the name and office location of his therapist, but he had to get back out on patrol and I needed to sleep. Badly. Everything after that was an uneventful blur as I got back into the swing of standing guard at night court and escorting Luna around. Now it’s Friday and it’s time for the knighting ceremony.

Author's Note

This chapter felt like a bit of a grind, but I'll chalk that up to me STILL being sick. I didn't want to go any longer without uploading so I went ahead and cranked this one out today.

Pacing is still a bit slow at the moment but next chapter should cover entire ceremony and a little bit of the after-party. Chapter after that will be Nightmare Moon summoning experimentation, and then we'll start the gala which... will probably be less chapters than Journey to the West arc, but I'm guessing it's probably going to be like 8 or 9 chapters. So that's like 11 more chapters till Season 1 end and my short break starts. Hopefully I can get over this illness soon... I've tested negative for a bunch of shit but they gave up on trying to diagnose me and gave me generic antibiotics that so far don't really feel like they've done anything.

But that's ok. Now that I've done it once I think I can still write while near delirious, one problem I'm noticing is that all of the characters are slowly sliding into this problem where they're losing their unique speech patterns and words and to me it feels like it's the same character talking everytime. I'm not really sure how I lost that ability but I'm atleast aware of the problem and am working on trying to make the characters speak a bit more uniquely. At the moment it feels like everyone talks all stiff and proper like Celestia and I gotta work on getting some of them back to more casual and basic speech.

Anyways, thanks for reading!