“Bluey, old boy,” I said to myself, “You’ve really stuck your hoof in it now.”
By all rights, my Sunday should have consisted of lounging about my luxuriously appointed summer villa, kept company only by a carefully brushed and shampooed hair of the dog and the servant keeping it topped up without otherwise interrupting the valuable relaxation time of one of Equestria’s prime diplomats. Especially when he desperately needed the opportunity to recharge between hoof-biting negotiations with trading partners who felt Aunt Celly’s poor showing during recent global crises meant the nation as a whole was getting long in the tooth.
My current experiences were the opposite of that ideal in every conceivable way: I was not in my villa, which currently intersected with a very thoughtlessly placed lava flow. (Or possibly magma, but ponies like Twilight Sparkle can worry themselves with such minor trifles.) I hadn’t even a dram of Klugetown paint thinner in my system; indeed, I was painfully, horribly, unjustly sober, with all the horrors that that implied. I was sans servants, hangers-on, aides, or even flunkies. Loneliness is an unnatural state for ponykind, and yet here I was, facing down a genuine existential threat without a single other pony to hide behind. Even Sparkle has her five peasants.
And the hoof-biting negotiations? Believe me, were it not for the dignity expected of a stallion of my station, I’d be biting clean through the things. For Aunt Celly had apparently agreed with the likes of the sister-queens of Canina that her past performance was lacking, and in a decision most unbefitting of royalty, had actually decided to do something about it.
Honestly. We aren’t supposed to take action ourselves. We have ponies for that. We certainly aren’t supposed to burst into flame, declare ourselves God-Empress, and coax the Canterhorn into erupting for the sake of remodeling the capital in our new image. How can one expect the respect of the common pony with such graceless tactics?
Oh, and I imagine the magma—lava? Blast, now I can’t stop thinking about it—getting everywhere is even more unpleasant for ponies who don’t have charming chateaus waiting for them on several other continents.
And it is for those unfortunates that I, Prince Polaris Vladimir Blueblood, sixth of my name, Heir to the Royal House of Platinum, so on and so forth, find myself standing before the quietly softening brass doors to the Royal Audience Chamber, to petition Her Infernal Majesty, Queen Daybreaker the First and Only. Because somepony must, and damn her eyes to Tartarus, Sparkle had a rationale that even I couldn’t squirm my way around.
I suppose I have only myself to blame. I’m the one who decided she was the best first resort for this sort of situation.
I would like to say I arrived in Ponyville with all the grace and dignity appropriate to my station, and I’m sure some of my former paramours would agree I did. Screaming and weeping like a yearling just after his first bee sting wasn’t what I had in mind for such an entrance, but I was still happy to sacrifice my dignity to preserve the rest of me. This wasn’t my first hasty evacuation when negotiations had broken down—indeed, not even the first when they had broken down before even beginning—but that didn’t make getting ponyhandled like an express package any more pleasant. Indeed, we had been well away from the capital by the time I’d realized I was even on board my personal chariot, much less that the mountain’s peak had exploded.
By the time my conveyance screeched to a halt atop Sparkle’s unnamed eyesore of a castle, it was all I could do to not vomit into the fountain. Instead, I staggered my way across the eerie crystal, leaned against one of the planters she was using for her experiments in earth pony magic, and waited for the world to stop spinning. Not an unfamiliar sensation, but I didn’t even have a chance to enjoy myself beforehoof.
Shortly afterwards, the almost musical chime of hooves on that crystal approached me. “Prince Blueblood?” The blur before my eyes turned a familiar shade of wisteria. “What in Equestria are you doing here?”
I forced myself to my hooves and gave Sparkle the deep nod she was due. I didn’t like her personally—if Griffonstone still made dictionaries, her picture would be right next to “twerp”—but she was still my social superior and my best hope of saving the world besides. “To put it succinctly, Your Highness…” I made it that far before my wit failed me, so I simply pointed at the ruddy bruise on the sky behind her. “That.”
Sparkle turned, gasping and ears drooping as she took in the Canterhorn’s turn for the volcanic. I couldn’t say I was surprised that she had missed the brouhaha until now. As I knew from past experience, when given a sufficiently engrossing book, she could miss walking into the same wall for five minutes straight. “What the… What happened!?”
“I’m afraid Auntie Celestia is in a bit of a mood.” Even as Sparkle whirled to face me, I held up my hooves and added, “Which I had no hoof in, I assure you. My charioteers have standing orders to evacuate me here in the event of this sort of catastrophe.” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her familiar scuttling up to said pegasi. A well-trained whelp, that one. Servants looking after servants while their betters focused on higher matters.
“I… Okay. Okay.” Sparkle began pacing around the fountain, eyes wide and seeing nothing. “Okay. So. This is happening. This is happening. Okay.”
I let her witter on as I recovered my own composure. The planter boxes helped immensely; I needed a reassuring bit of green after the igneous desolation from which I’d narrowly escaped. Her familiar providing a refreshing—if disappointingly nonalcoholic—beverage was also much appreciated.
By Sparkle’s third repetition of her little mantra, I felt the need to break the cycle before she wore a groove into her palace. “I find it difficult to internalize myself, Your Highness—”
“Twilight is fine,” she said. An automatic response, yes, but at least it was something new.
“Twilight it is. Still, I had hoped that you might have some plan beyond grappling with the idea.” I took in the ruddy, rock-dripping nightmare that had become of our home and allowed, “Again, hard as that is. If you’d like, I can have my chariot make all haste to Cadey and her trophy colt once the team recovers.” I gave them a grateful nod, glad to see them getting their own well-earned, refreshment-supplemented lounging period.
As I thought, insulting her family was just what Sparkle needed to break out of her rut. The usual petulant glare did blend well with the newer flaring wings, enough to give a display that might intimidate a small rabbit. “That trophy colt is my brother.”
“And I would hope he could muster himself faster than you, being captain of the guard and all.” Really, if Sparkle didn’t want ponies to tease her, she shouldn’t make it so rewarding. “You’ve toppled maddened entities beyond equine comprehension before, Twilight. It’s practically a second cutie mark for you. What is the issue?”
“The issue is that this is Celestia we’re talking about! She’s…” Sparkle trailed off, waved a frantic hoof in the general direction of Canterlot—now obscured by billowing smoke that would no doubt lead to a great deal of complaining from the Cloudsdale weather worker union—and sputtered until she managed a “She’s Celestia!”
“Indeed.” For all my snark, I understood her disbelief. Aunt Celly has always been the bedrock of our fair nation, the trusted foundation on which Equestria rests. The problem comes when that foundation cracks without anypony noticing before it’s too late. Or explodes, I suppose. Ah well, every metaphor breaks down when overanalyzed. “And you are Twilight Sparkle. You are the next Celestia, the better Celestia.”
My attempt at flattery had the opposite effect, going by how Twilight had paled enough to resemble her pet warlock. “Wha…” And there was the thousand-yard stare she used to get when I’d suggest she put aside her books for an afternoon. Thought I’d seen the last of that.
I shrugged and tossed my mane as if to toss the idea aside (which made me realize just how badly my coiffure had been ruined by the evacuation, but that was neither here nor there.) “That’s how many of our esteemed trading partners seem to feel, in any case. Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis, Sombra, Discord again, Discord a third time featuring Tirek—”
“I get the point,” Sparkle grumbled.
I shook my head. “I don’t think you do.” I trotted over to one of her planters, one that conveniently had both a sunflower and an orchid that was a dead ringer for Sparkle herself. I shaded the sunflower with a hoof. “The world sees you as somewhere between Aunt Celly’s successor and her janitor, cleaning up all the messes she left lying around. And, well, you know how hard it is for Auntie to express her feelings.” I turned back to Twilight, seeing the understanding dawn on her. “Keeping these things bottled up may be politically necessary at times, but it isn’t healthy.”
Once the epiphany settled, she asked, “Is that why you’re always incredibly rude whenever we talk?”
To my credit, I held back the snort. “I prefer ‘genuine.’ But yes.”
“And Princess Celestia…” Sparkle looked to Canterlot once more. Bless her, she truly and sincerely looked sorry for Auntie. “She really feels that way about me? About herself?”
“I didn’t exactly have a chance to talk to her before the Royal Canterlot Voice shook the mountain with her pronouncement that…” I frowned. “Oh, how did it go again? That close, it was more like being at one of those ‘rolling rock’ concerts the foals love so much than anything intelligible.” Yes, it made me sound old, but it’s the principle of the thing. Duchess of the Southern Marches though she may be, Vinyl Scratch is a disgrace to her lineage.
There was also the knee-shaking terror; that may have been a factor as well.
“‘My reign shall be as the sun,’” quoted Brisk Pace, my lead charioteer, “‘brilliant and eternal.’”
I nodded. “That was it, yes. Thank you, Brisk.”
“We need to reassure her that she matters, that she’s still Equestria’s guiding star without having to, well…” Sparkle gestured vaguely in the direction of the molten devastation. “That.”
“Ah.” Her sincerity will never cease to amaze me, not least how she can say that kind of thing with a straight face. “I was hoping you’d have a more expedient solution involving magical rainbows that would solve the problem with more certainty.”
That got a shake of her head. “The Elements are still in the Tree, and need to be for the foreseeable future. We could lose both otherwise.”
“Drat.” I heaved a sigh and noted another planter, holding in familiar colors in the context of Sparkle. “Very well then, I suppose you’ll need to get your usual suspects together. Possibly Starlight Shimmer as well.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You mean Starlight Glimmer?”
“I suppose. I tend to mix up my upstart criminals.” I scowled at the unwelcome memory. “Sunset Shimmer would probably make this even worse. At least she fell off the map years ago.”
That prompted an unreadable expression from Sparkle for a moment. I might have asked were there no risk of the Parliament building getting crushed by falling ejecta. As it was, the moment passed with a shake of her head. “I don’t think my usual approach will work here.”
“Whyever not? You do have an excellent track record.” I was edging towards bald-faced flattery, but I had expected her to sally forth and save the day by this point. At this rate, she might actually expect me to do something beyond point her at the problem. If it was good enough for Auntie, it should have been good enough for me.
“Yes, and Celestia knows it.” Sparkle looked around. “Where’s Luna?”
“Looked like obsidian was crawling up her tower in the palace,” answered Desperate Push, who refused to so much unhitch herself from the chariot, the poor dear.
Sparkle nodded. Apparently that confirmed her suspicions. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire city had been warded against Discord.”
“You would be correct.” Speak of the draconequus and he appeared. The noisome wyrm smirked at me as though he’d heard the thought, butting in on our conversation with nary a care by popping out from beneath Sparkle’s bangs. “As much as I can appreciate a good bout of madness, I imagine most creatures are less enthusiastic about the whole affair.”
“Rather, yes," I grumbled. "Though is that really going to stop you?”
“If I really put some effort into it, I could tweak Tia’s nose, but that level of chaos would…” Something that might pass for concern on another creature crossed Discord’s snaggletoothed muzzle. “Well, level is an appropriate word, given what would happen to Canterlot in the process.”
“Wonderful. The mare who knows Equestria’s defenses best has made preparations for every conceivable means of stopping her. And now that I say that aloud, I’m not sure why I’m even remotely surprised.” I permitted myself a sigh. “I suppose this will go well enough for the local vineyards. I’m told volcanic soil is quite fertile, though one would think it has to cool first." Only then did I note the contemplative looks on both Sparkle and Discord, and felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. "What?”
“Every conceivable means of stopping her.” Discord grinned, no two teeth alike.
Sweat prickled my brow. Given the state of the chariot team, I handled my own monogrammed hoofkerchief to blot it. “That is what I said, yes.”
“Suppose we had an inconceivable one,” said Sparkle.
Discord nodded. “Or at least one that would seem so unlikely that the princess wouldn’t be prepared for it.”
“Yes, lovely,” I snapped, their dramatic setup be damned. “Let us also suppose none of this is happening and the country can enjoy a period of stability longer than three weeks.”
Sparkle flinched back, ears lowering at the chastisement. “I meant—”
“I know what you meant, Sparkle, and I’m going to go along with it. Duty demands no less. But I’m not going to like it.”
I still didn’t, even as I stood awaiting a royal audience with Auntie’s newly molten persona. The realm is imperiled, and when I am the only one who can answer the call to serve, I cannot say no. Platinum herself would do no less, and likely whine more in the process.
Finally, as if detecting that my life had finished flashing before my eyes, the doors swung open. The Audience Chamber was largely unchanged, aside from the ash clouds outside spoiling the usual effect of the stained-glass windows. Rather more open flames than before and steam wafting off the throne’s fountain, but Auntie clearly hadn’t had much time to redecorate between going mad and consolidating power against credible threats to it.
Speaking of whom, I had to admit, if anypony could make golden, spiked barding work to any degree, it was my esteemed aunt. The eyes full of flame and madness were a bit much, but from what my more educated dalliances have told me, proper fashion sense is one of the first things to go when one embraces dark magic. (For my part, I’d forgone my usual bowtie for an orange one to match her new palette. The lavender-sprig boutonniere was a calculated insult I doubted she had any mind to process; Auntie had always hated math.) But perhaps the most distressing change was how she looked at me.
The wonderful thing about Aunt Celly is that no matter who you are, be you her distant nephew by marriage into the unicorn nobility or a dirt-scraping peasant whose idea of preparing for a royal audience is scraping off the outermost layer of filth, she always looked at you with respect and attention. Eyes forward, ears perked, she visibly cared about whatever affairs were brought to her. Celestia on her throne, heeding the concerns of her ponies, was practically synonymous with Equestria itself.
Daybreaker offered me none of that. She lounged across the arms of the throne, looking up at the ceiling and kicking her hind legs like a bored teenager. Even as I approached the throne—without a heraldic announcement; nopony else was in the stifling chamber—she spat a fireball that left the latest in a series of scorch marks on the chamber’s ceiling. “What is it, Blueblood?” she droned.
I was struck with a sudden epiphany. So this was how it felt on the other side of things when some random pony accosted me. I might owe a few dozen apologies if I survived.
I shook off the errant thought, along with several drops of sweat. “Your Highness, I—”
Daybreaker’s mane flared white-hot. Her gaze turned to me and I took an involuntary step back from the throne. It took all my composure not to simply flee. “Your Majesty.”
“Of course.” The proper address for a queen, a title my aunt had always abhorred. Intellectually, I knew she’d expected it, but force of habit is a terrible thing sometimes. “Your Majesty, I have come as representative of the noble lineages of unicorns to express my concerns about your latest actions as sovereign.”
“Seriously?” Her mane flared again. I stood my ground. Her perplexed frown gave way to a painfully familiar laugh. “Seriously? Look around you, Blueblood. Do you honestly think I care what you pathetic remnants of an outdated system think of me?”
That stung more than I cared to admit. Enough that, combined with the discomfort of being slow-roasted, my restraint slipped a bit more than I intended. “You certainly seem to care what the outdated systems of other lands think of you.” I pressed on regardless. “Which brings me to my concerns in my role as ambassador—”
The only reason I got that far before Daybreaker’s gold-shod hoof slammed the chamber floor hard enough to crack it was because she had to roll herself into a sitting position. “You dare mock me in my own castle!?”
I shrugged. “I am merely observing probable cause and effect, Your Majesty. Just yesterday, my report of the rumors swirling around you in Saddle Arabia had you looking most distressed.”
She narrowed her eyes. The throne’s fountain began audibly bubbling. “Listen very carefully, Blueblood. Now that I have embraced the true power due to me, I have far less patience for your impertinent quips. But I remain a merciful leader, and will leave you with a warning this final time. You and all the other nobles may fritter your lives away if you wish, but disrespect me again and I will dismantle that entire pointless system and literally toss the lot of you out of my city.” Her fanged sneer was a gruesome parody of the sly grin Auntie rarely shared with even her most trusted confidantes. “Try to avoid the lava on your way down.”
My own triumphant stomp broke the oppressive mood. “It is lava! Thank you, Auntie, that’s been bothering me like an itch I didn’t have a servant on hoof to scratch.”
I couldn’t say if it was the comment or the familiarity that drove Daybreaker over the edge, but drive her it did. Her eyes glowed with power before she stepped off her throne, reared up, and lit her horn with enough terrible power to obliterate on me on the spot.
At which point my bowtie reverted to its true form of Discord, and the sprig of lavender Twilight Sparkle. Well, Sparkle and what she’d insisted on grabbing from her rooftop garden before we returned to the capital.
“What!?” Daybreaker shrieked, eyes darting between the three of us, unable to decide which of us to blast first. All three of us then grabbed the fast-wilting clipping of something not unlike rosemary in our magic and shoved it down her gaping maw.
For all that Auntie was an avatar of flame and destruction, she still had centuries of the indelicate consumption of culinary delicacies behind her. She swallowed on reflex.
The effect was subtle, but immediate. Her mane stilled, the flames settling into something like her usual aurora, albeit still yellow-orange. She went stock still, the spell sputtering to nothing on her horn. But her eyes, her eyes were the most dramatic change. They immediately went back to her usual pink, pupils contracting immediately as she took stock of herself.
Before Auntie could move a muscle, Sparkle made her next move, a devastating blow that would be unthinkable from anypony else, that the princess of the sun could never hope to counter.
She gave her mentor a hug. “Thank you, Princess,” Sparkle said with every ounce of sincerity that I could never claim. “None of us would be here without you.”
Slowly, like a drop of wine in water, the cool hues flowed back into Auntie’s mane from roots to tip. Her wings wrapped around Twilight even as she divested herself of the ostentatious armor, and the room cooled to a temperature much friendlier to equinity. Out of respect for my aunt, I shall not say how long she wept, but Discord and I exchanged more than one uncomfortable glance in that duration.
At last, Auntie managed to compose herself to pull away from Sparkle, wiped at her eyes, and said, “Thank you. All of you. Fresh nepenthe, I take it?”
Sparkle nodded. “Perfect for banishing grief and regret from the mind. Thanks again for the recommendations for magical plants to cultivate.”
“As ever, Twilight, you exceeded my expectations.” Auny Celly’s fond gaze turned on me. “As did you, Blueblood. Overwhelmingly so.”
“I merely had to be myself,” I demurred. “Enough that you would suspect nothing was amiss beyond some believably misplaced priorities.”
“And I didn’t. Not through my own.” She looked outside, where the ash still billowed over Canterlot. “And on that note… Discord, if you would?”
He smirked as he wound himself around the throne. “I reserve the right to lord this over you for the next century at minimum.”
Auntie gave a tired sigh. “I didn’t have that in mind, but it’s no less than I deserve.”
To his credit, Discord restored the city without any embellishments. At least, none that I could see from the Audience Chamber. “You’ll all be relieved to know that the evacuation drills worked like a charm,” he said with insufferable, if not unearned smugness. “Though I can’t guarantee the press will be so merciful.”
A burst of darkness heralded the arrival of my other aunt. “This has certainly been an eventful wake-up call.”
Celly slumped back into the throne. After her day, I could hardly blame her for putting royal dignity aside for a tad. “Good afternoon, sister. I imagine you have a number of questions. Comments. Demands for recompense.”
“In truth, I have only been awake for ten minutes. Though I have my suspicions about what happened.” Luna scanned the room, halting once she found me. “Blueblood. Yours is a most unexpected presence here. Dare I ask how you became involved?”
I grinned and tried not to think about the sweat still trickling through my fur. “Well, Aunt Lulu, by all rights, my Sunday should have consisted of lounging about my luxuriously appointed summer villa…”
Author's Note
Much credit for this interpretation of Prince Blueblood goes to Raleigh’s take on him, beginning with Blueblood: Hero of Equestria.
I did briefly consider a G5-era story of harvesting symbiotic plants from a dormant, mountain-sized Crackle, but using the unicorn aristocracy as a figurative vestige seemed like more fun.
Nepenthe (literally "anti-sorrow") first appears in the fourth book of the Odyssey. Like unicorns, it was seen as less fantastical than simply foreign, believed to grow in Egypt.
And for all that she has a poor showing against major threats, Celestia did guide Equestria through more than a thousand years of prosperity. That should count for something.
