Lost Sun

Everything that is done has a cost; an equal and opposite reaction to whatever action is performed.

What is the cost of running a nation?

As it turns out, when that nation is not run by an ancient alicorn with centuries of experience and access to hundreds of ancient cogitators and predictive tools made by mages long-dead, the bureaucracy becomes much more complex. Thousands of new administrators were required to be instated to just keep Nightmare Moon's government out of the fire. A veritable ant colony of administrative personnel who carried out small, individual tasks that all fed into the greater whole. A carefully designed nightmare-dumpster-fire that would keep everypony involved guessing as to what they were actually complicit in, and tons of money to keep them working like good little ants.

Few ponies understood exactly what was going on. He envied the ignorant. He really did envy them.

Prince Blueblood had once been a proud, broad-chested stallion of exceptional social and physical stature. He'd been a prominent member of noble society, a true paragon of all that nobility were expected to be. Larger than life, powerful, wealthy, rich. He was a socialite pas d'égal, a true scion of Princess Platinum's long, long lineage. He had everything he could want, and everypony desired him, to be like him, to be with him. He was at the top of the world.

He hated every second of it. He despised being hoofed out a meaningless title for something a long-dead mare had done. He hated playing dress-up and pretending to be interested in mares who only had their eye on his money, or the idea of him, or simply the status of being married to a Prince of Equestria. Most of all, however, he despised himself, a stallion of absolutely no talent who had been handed the world on a silver platter. If he wanted anything, all he had to do was to run to Princess Celestia and ask her nicely for anything. She'd always humor him, hide her annoyance, but ultimately she still loved him like a mother loved a son. A spoiled rotten son, but still a son nonetheless.

Maybe if he had asked for what he really, truly wanted, he wouldn't have been in the situation he was in. He couldn't know for sure. As much as he took advantage of what he'd been given, he never asked for any of it. It was selfish to think like that. Imagine what others could do with his situation! The lives they could change! The things they could do! And all he did with all that wealth, all that status, was throw parties where he pretended not to despise everyone present, including himself.

He was tired. His sunken eyes had deep dark circles around them, his long, untamed, greasy mane hanging around his face. He could feel his fur stretched taut over his ribs, he was frightfully thin and weak. His hooves shook as he lifted the cup of coffee and brought it to his muzzle, drinking back the long-cold half-full cup of dark stuff. He felt like he was going to puke- again. The third time today. Maybe he should see a physician. Did he even have time for that?

A thousand stacks of paper filled his office, the white pillars towering to the ceiling. He levitated a skirmish report from the South onto his desk and allowed the empty coffee cup to clatter back on the mahogany, leaving another dent in the once-perfect surface. He didn't care. Not out of a knowledge that he could simply have it replaced, but simply out of apathy. The battle report told him that two soldiers had died. Their records of service were paperclipped to the report. Two letters from the commanding officer that needed to be sent home to grieving mothers and fathers.

He stamped it with the royal seal, addressed it to the Field Marshal's office, and placed it in the outgoing pile. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to sit there and cry again, over ponies he didn't even know. He didn't have the energy or the time for that anymore.

There was, suddenly, without warning and completely out of the ordinary, a knock on his office's door. He put his quill and stamp down and rested his hooves on the desk, taking a moment to try and make himself look slightly more presentable. "Come in." He said, projecting what little authority his gravelly, dead voice could manage.

Swift Wing, the pegasus guardstallion he'd come to rely on for certain tasks, stepped into his office and saluted, the door closed behind him with a wing. "Prince Blueblood, sir. You've been at work for eighteen hours, sir. Respectfully, sir, you need to rest."

Blueblood scowled, growled, and opened his mouth to give a scathing remark... and then he stamped his hoof down on the table and sighed. "Speak freely, Swift Wing, without all the... decorum. And yes, you are right."

"You've been working yourself to death, sir." The pegasus stallion trotted forward, stepping over a short stack of papers. He was shorter than most guardsponies were really supposed to be, but Celestia had always made exceptions she really shouldn't have. The stallion was a dull, olive green with an impressively dull brown mane to match. The tips of his wings were also brown. Certainly some earth pony blood in there, with that sort of color scheme, although Blueblood hadn't ever asked about it. It didn't matter anyway.

"I would hope you have something other than the obvious to state, Corporal." He sighed, steepling his hooves. "Any news from the North?"

Swift Wing nodded, unfurling his wing and taking the folder held under it into his teeth. He delicately placed it on Blueblood's desk. "I've been keeping an eye out for anything that crosses the Field Marshal's office's desks that we could use. I managed to snatch this report before anypony filed it, so everything in here's fresh intelligence. It mentions a skilled pyromancer defending a caravan against one of the Queen's pet necromancers."

"I see." Blueblood said, levitating over the folder and opening it up. As he leafed through the pages, his eyes widened. "This is impossible... Sunset Shimmer, here? Auntie had the mirror moved by SMILE to a secure location over a decade ago. The fact she isn't in the Queen's clutches is a miracle..."

"Sunset Shimmer, sir?" Swift Wing asked, uninformed on the topic.

"An arrogant, ambitious foal who was once Auntie's student, before she took in Sparkle. She was unbelievably talented with all sorts of magic, but one day she injured several guardsponies and entered some sort of magic mirror. All indications led SMILE to believe she had been held in some sort of stasis on the other side- wherever the other side was." He spoke thoughtfully, but it wasn't hard to tell he was troubled.

"What should we do?" He asked, trying to get Blueblood to think on a more constructive train of thought than whatever he was no doubt mulling over at the moment.

He thought hard. "Auntie had SMILE deliver several important artifacts to my estate on the Day of the Longest Night. Most of those were seized by the Queen, but there were a few I managed to hide in time. A set of journals that linked to one another so the two owners could communicate were one such artifact. As I understand it, Shimmer used it as a study journal, but we could use it to get into contact with her."

"If we can get the journal to her." Swift Wing said, nodding. "I can have a courier deliver it. No questions asked. Still got a few buddies from my time on the weather team who I'd rely on for anything."

Blueblood mulled it over for a moment. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Thinking. Making decisions. "No, I want you to hoof-deliver it and then return to me. I'll have somepony pack your saddlebags for the trip. If things go as planned, we can leave Canterlot for good. With Fancy."

"I can do that, sir, but we still don't have any idea how to get him out of the dungeons. It won't be much longer before they hold the trial..."

Blueblood turned around in his swivel chair and flung open the curtains to look out onto the gothic streets of Nightmare Moon's Canterlot. What had once been a shining white beacon of Equestria's purity, love, and wealth, was now a dark reminder of the demon that had infested it to the very core. The streets below were still and quiet, with most ponies choosing not to even go outside these days unless they had to. Roaring parties still carried on; everypony wanted to ignore how far things had gone. They wanted to pretend like the war effort was a normal cause to hold a function for. That sending the soldiers overseas care packages with fundraiser money was just the way it had always been.

"I will burn this city to ashes before I let that demonic bitch harm a hair on his head." He growled, standing to his hooves in spite of the dizziness and nausea that fought to overwhelm him when he did so. "Inform the digging team that the time-table has moved forward. They'll be rewarded accordingly."

"I will. And sir? Get a shower and some rest. You really need it." With that, Swift Wing stepped out of the office, leaving Blueblood to his devices.

Blueblood pressed his face to the glass, leaning on the window. He sighed and let the tears fall.

Maybe he didn't have any right to feel the way he did, but Equestria was falling apart, and so was he in trying to keep it together. It would've been easy to let the apathy take him and do whatever the Nightmare Queen wanted, but then she'd had Fancy Pants arrested for conspiracy to commit treason. The only pony, perhaps other than Swift Wing, he considered a true friend. A friend who he'd had long fireside chats with. A friend who he'd been beside since childhood. He remembered playing in the gardens together. A friend he'd taken for granted; somepony who he should've let himself get closer to. A friend who understood the way he felt.

Perhaps the only pony in the world he felt he could really, truly trust.

He was hedging all his bets on a mare who probably just wanted to continue her own ambitions and didn't really care anything about anypony else. What else did he have to put his hopes on? Sparkle hadn't been seen since the Day of the Longest Night. There was nopony else to stand up to the Night Mare with even half the magical talent that Shimmer and Sparkle possessed, and all the most powerful sorcerers in the land other than that wayward pyromancer worked for the Night Mare herself.

The cost of running a nation was everything he could give, and more.