Child of Equality

Pain.

It was pain that roused Starlight Glimmer. Not the sharp stabbing pain of a broken limb or the tender teasing pain of bruises, but the steady, throbbing soreness of an overtaxed horn. It ached with a pulsing burn like she'd been casting nonstop for hours.

Only she knew she hadn’t, which immediately put her on edge.

She didn't remember casting anything particularly strenuous. In fact, the last thing she remembered was following up on a rumor about a couple of students getting hoovsy in a broom closet and then…

And then…

Her eyes snapped open as a rush of clarity shot through her.

Starlight was not prone to panicking, though she could admit this had not always been the case. In her younger, badder days, she’d had a tendency to make rather… hasty, ill-thought-out decisions when things didn’t go exactly as planned. But after spending a few months trying to help wrangle a school of over a hundred teenagers (even only from an advisory position) she thought she’d developed a tolerance for the unexpected.

But there's very little that can prepare someone for waking up inside a magical containment bubble. And old habits died hard.

Her first hasty mistake was to try and overload it, but a surge of pain from her horn killed that plan in its infancy. But the pain helped her focus. It quelled the panic and forced her to really take in her situation.

She was trapped: suspended in a ward bubble quite some distance off the ground. Specifically, Iron Warden's Mage Cage, if her gut instinct was correct. A common choice of spell for this sort of confinement. She’d used it a few times herself when… necessary. They’d used the third variant as well; a lesser known version that folded in a levitation charm to prevent imprisoned earth ponies from getting any kind of leverage. Whoever cast it was experienced enough to cover all their bases.

The bubble pulsed slightly in time with another painful tug on her horn. They were also experienced enough to tune it to draw on her own magic to sustain itself. Though that only shouldn’t have been enough of a draw to explain her current level of pain. Not unless she’d been out of it for most of a day.

At least she was still in the school, much to her relief. The unique mix of brickwork and branching crystals in the walls confirmed that much. Probably one of the lower levels, if she had to guess. Twilight had planned the school with future expansions in mind, so there were a lot of rooms that were supposed to be sealed off until the student body grew large enough to require them.

Clearly, they hadn’t been locked well enough.

Still, that presented an opportunity. She knew Mage Cage inside and out; both its strengths and its weaknesses. Though popular for being robustly secure and magically impenetrable, it was rather infamously not soundproof.

Meaning escape might be a simple matter of shouting loud enough.

“Hello!” she yelled out, “Is anypony there?! Can anyone hear me?”

There weren't many people she could think of that that would do something like this. Only two came readily to mind, and Twilight was currently checking on one of them in Tartarus.

She spent a few minutes yelling, seemingly to no one. So either it was a weekend or she was much deeper in the school’s depths than she thought. But the time gave her a chance to inspect the large magic circle chalked out on the ground beneath her prison.

It was a beast of a spell. At least three rings of runes, a double-inverted trianglyph, and no less than six ancient artifacts powering it. But the pain made it hard to focus, and she couldn’t identify much of its purpose beyond the submatrix that was draining her magic (which seemed more an insult and a security measure than any sort of necessity). Whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t good.

“Helloooooooo!” she yelled again, though somewhat less enthusiastically than when she’d started.

“Hello, Miss Starlight.”

If she weren’t being levitated in place, Starlight would have tripped over herself. Finally, in her hour of need, out of all possible ponies who could have heard her and come to help, it was one of the ones she knew she could trust the most.

“Cozy Glow!” she cried as the filly stepped out from the shadow of a pillar. “Thank goodness you’re here!”

Cozy continued walking forward, oddly calm for the situation, only stopping once she reached the edge of the magic circle. “What's wrong, Miss Starlight?”

“I feel that should be pretty obvious at the moment.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Just because she was stressed didn’t mean she could take it out on her savior. “I need you to get— no, Twilight and her friends are still on the way to Tartarus. See if you can find some way to get me out of here. There should be a control rune or something nearby, maybe a-”

“Now why would I want to do that?”

Starlight wasn’t used to being interrupted, least of all by the politest filly she knew. But there was something unsettling about her voice. It was sweet as usual, but something about it rang hollow. Like a line delivered by a cut rate actor. It was so shocking that it took another moment for just what she said to register properly.

“Huh?”

Cozy shook her head. “I mean, after all the trouble I went through to lock you up…” The sweet smile dropped from her face and something cutting and cruel took its place. “Why would I let you out?” She laughed, a high and mocking sound, nothing like the sweet giggles she was so known for.

Starlight froze as the pieces clicked into place. She knew that tone. That mocking air of superiority. That snide smile that promised only ruin. There was only one person who was both obsessed enough with her to do something like this and had the necessary skills to infiltrate the school.

“You’re not Cozy.”

The laughter stopped. “Oh boo. You caught on quick. There goes my big reveal.” Cozy sighed. “And I had a whole speech planned and everything. Oh well, best laid plans. I guess there’s no need for this disguise then.”

Starlight could only watch as the filly reached up and… removed the ribbons from her mane?

She’d been expecting fire. Instead, Cozy cheerily grabbed her ringlets and bound them up into a pair of tight braids. “There. I think it looks much nicer this way, don't you?”

Was that supposed to signify something? She wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the reveal she’d been expecting. But Starlight knew her schemes: the best move was to refuse to play.

“Stop messing around!” she demanded. “I don’t know what your plan is, Chrysalis, but you won’t get away with it!”

The smile dropped off her captor’s face, and for a moment she looked almost… hurt? But it quickly vanished behind a smiling mask. “Chrysalis?” She laughed. “Golly gee, you're thick! I mean, I had low expectations but now you're just being mean.” Her laugh sounded more plastic and fake the longer it continued before trailing off entirely. “But if you wanna play dumb, fine. Let me make it as obvious as I can.”

She picked up one of her discarded ribbons off the ground and brought it to her flank. Ice ran through Starlight’s veins as the rust red of her chess piece cutie mark began to smear and wipe off. A little more rubbing revealed something underneath: two painfully familiar gray lines that sent a stab through Starlight’s core worse than the pain in her horn.

With her false mark removed, she patted down her mane, stood a little straighter, and fixed Starlight with a painfully wide smile. “Well? Recognize me now, Mayor Starlight?”

It was impossible not to, though it’d been years since she’d seen that face. She’d been half a head shorter and a fair bit more underfed, but between her mark and her mane and that cursed smile there was no mistaking her any longer.

Still, some part of her seemed to resist saying her name. As if saying it would somehow make it real. She made herself do it anyway.

“...Truly?”

The filly she’d known as Cozy broke into applause. “Somepony give her a gold star! You do remember me!”

“Remember you?” she gasped, “Truly, no one ever stopped looking!” The words seemed to tumble out without any control. “What happened?! When I reconnected with everyone at Our Town they said you’d just vanished one night and nopony knew where you went! Your parents even reached out to see if I knew something but I hadn’t heard anything since I fled and how do you still have that mark and…” She continued rambling, so many things she’d wanted to say all spilling out in a breathless stream of pleading questions and excuses and apologies. But slowly her words began to slow as she noticed a change that had come over the filly.

Cozy had stopped smiling.

She was scowling.

“Oh, don't let me interrupt,” she said tersely as Starlight trailed off. “Keep going. I think there's a couple of bits of my life that you ruined that you haven't mentioned yet.”

Remorse flooded through Starlight. She didn’t know what the filly’s plan had been, or why she’d arrived under a fake name and a disguise, but none of that was important. Out of all the lives she’d touched, all the ones she’d ruined, there were none she could think of that she regretted more. And none that more greatly deserved an apology.

“Truly, I… there aren’t words to tell you how sorry I am.” She lowered her head, unable to meet the filly’s gaze. “Everything I did back in Our Town and… after… I can’t imagine how that must have been to a child as young as you were then. I was wrong. So wrong about everything. I’ve done my best to learn from my mistakes and mend my ways, but there are some things that no amount of reparations can make up for. I don’t expect you to forgive me, and I won’t ask you to, but from the bottom of my heart, I am truly sorry.”

She looked up, not expecting to see understanding or forgiveness but… something.

Instead, she saw rage.

Cozy was all but snarling at her, teeth grit and bared. Her nostrils flared as she pawed at the ground like an angry bull.

“I can’t believe I used to look up to you,” she spat. “You weak, spineless, convictionlessold mare!”

Her words stung, but she deserved them. After everything she did? She deserved all that and worse. “I know. I was wrong. Twilight showed me that—”

“DON’T YOU SAY HER NAME!” Cozy screamed, suddenly furious and nearly sending Starlight spinning as she reared back. There was hatred in her eyes. The same naked hatred she saw when Chrysalis glared at her. “She's just as much to blame as you are! No, worse! She was the one who broke you! If she'd never come to Our Town, everything would still be perfect!”

Today had been a perfect day. A perfectly equal day!

The weather was not too hot or too cold, the wind not too strong or too weak, and everything was just perfect!

And today had been a special day, because today was the day she and her mom and her dad got to travel to the next village! Though Our Town was perfect and equal, it was still pretty small and sometimes they had to buy vegetables from the non-believer village at the base of the mountain. It was a dangerous job, but that was why Mayor Starlight only sent her most trusted and loyal followers to do it! And this week her family had been picked!

At the start, she’d been extra excited because it meant she got a chance to spread the good word of Equality to the nonbelievers. She’d met a few foals in the village who’d seemed nice and didn't have their ugly marks yet, but when she’d tried to talk to them about Equality they just gave her funny looks and ran away.

Whatever. She didn't need those nonbelievers anyway. Let them rot in their unequal lives and let their friendships fall apart from jealousy and envy. She had everything she needed at home with Mayor Starlight and her mom and her dad.

Speaking of, she turned back to make sure they hadn’t fallen behind. Sometimes it felt like they were really dragging their hooves walking back to the village. “Gee, Dad, if you go much slower we’re not going to make it back before dinner!”

“Yes. That sure would be… terrible,” he said as a not-smile crossed his face!

She gasped. “Dad! You’re not smiling! It’s important to always smile! Right, Mom?”

Her mom smiled, but it wasn’t as big as it was supposed to be. “Well, we’re outside the village, so I think it’s probably okay.”

She didn't understand. Smiling was important. Equality Tenet #2: A smile lets everyone know you don't feel less than anypony else. If it wasn’t important, why would it be the second Tenet? She resolved to let Mayor Starlight know the minute they returned home.

It was a long walk up the mountain, and after a while they stopped for a break. Her mother offered her a cupcake (another rule broken: she’d bought that with Our Town’s money!) but she turned it down. She’d tried one once and it was… weird. Wrong. All squishy and sweet. Instead she enjoyed some bread that she brought from home. Gnawing on one piece of that could last hours!

Her parents shared a concerned look while she ate, obviously disappointed in each other for not thinking ahead like she had.

“Truly,” her Dad said after a while with one of those not-quite-a-smiles on his face. “Your mother and I have been thinking recently.”

“Mayor Starlight says doing that too much can be bad for you,” she said around a mouthful of bread.

Her dad winced. “Yes. Of course. Still, how would you feel about maybe… potentially… leav—”

But before he could finish, the top of the mountain suddenly exploded. Colors burst from it like fireworks, a rainbow meteor shower that soared through the sky bright enough to see despite the daylight. Both she and her parents watched in shocked awe at the lights danced through the sky, each one eventually arcing and falling back to earth.

Except for two.

Two of the lights pulled away from the rest and fell down the mountain like comets, getting closer at breakneck speed.

Before anyone could even think to move, a peach colored light collided with her mom and knocked her off her hooves.

“Cozy Chorus!” her dad cried, only to himself get struck with a bolt of green.

“Mom! Dad!” She rushed to her parents’ side, but hesitated to touch them. Something was wrong. Their normal greyish coats were glowing. The light pulsed and grew as they both became… more. The color of their coats turned deeper and her mom's mane burst out of its pretty braids into a mess of ringlets. The light settled into a solid vibrancy as they both stumbled to their hooves.

“Ugh… Cozy?” her dad said.

“Emerald?” said her mom.

“I-!”

“Your-!”

“It’s back!”

“Yours too!”

She bit back a scream of horror as her parents turned and she saw the hideous fate that had befallen them. Marks. Ugly marks on either side of their hips where once there’d been perfect even equal signs. It was terrible! The kind of thing that only happened in nightmares. The world grew dim around the edges as her limbs felt locked in place and she started to breathe harder. She tried to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t work. She just shook.

Her parents pulled her into a hug, and she failed to flinch away. Even their coats felt slightly wrong.

Something dripped onto her head. They were crying. Of course. They had to be just as shocked and scared as she was. She was the only one unaffected, so she had to be a big filly and step up.

“W-we need to get back,” she managed to say, “Mayor Starlight will know what to do.” Their hug seemed to stiffen around her. “If we hurry, she can probably fix you before you turn impure and start fighting and hating each other.”

Her parents broke the hug and gave her a strange look (they were already smiling even less!) then looked to each other.

“We should head back,” her mom hedged, “if all those lights were…”

“Yes,” agreed her dad. “Something has definitely happened.”

Then, much to her shock, her mom took off into the sky. Before she could react, her dad picked her up and took off as well. It was so fast, but also terrifying. They’d never flown like this before! There were no tenets that forbid it, there’d just never been a reason.

But then the moment was ruined when her mom started singing. She’d heard her mom sing before, but now it was… different. Instead of just the same one note over and over, it was a whole bunch of them: going up and down and sliding into each other.

It was beautiful.

And wrong.

Worse, she was singing alone. A solo. Solos weren't even allowed when they did heartsongs so nobody stood out from the rest! But there she went anyway: bragging to the whole world about how she could sing better than they could. A violation of at least three Tenets of Equality! She would have to spend the weekend in the Alone House when Mayor Starlight found out. Maybe longer.

Before she could dwell on it too much, her father suddenly let out a whoop and pulled into a loop-de-loop, laughing all the while. Instead of joy, she felt sick to her stomach in a way that had nothing to do with the spinning.

She didn't understand what, but she knew deep inside that something terrible had happened.

Starlight remembered that day.

She remembered her vault erupting. She remembered her panicked escape. She remembered everything she’d built come crashing down as the cutie marks returned.

She used to think about it often.

But she realized she’d never once thought about one resident in the village who never had a cutie mark to begin with.

“Everything changed after that. My parents were… they were different. Everyone was different.” Cozy looked up at Starlight with a rare mote of vulnerability in her eyes. “And you were gone.” She shook her head and the weakness vanished. “But I held out hope that you'd fight your way back to save us again. Save them. Fix them.”

“Cozy… Truly. There was nothing to fix. That is who they really were. Their original personalities without any of my magic suppressing them. Even if I had come back, it wouldn’t be fixing, it’d be changing your parents into something else.”

“But they weren't my parents!” Cozy yelled, voice raw with anger, for once seeming like the child she appeared to be. Through the haze of the bubble, Starlight could make out the beginnings of tears. “You can't imagine what it's like! To try and live with, with things that look like the ponies you know, and act like them, and talk like them, but at their core they’re completely wrong and different!”

Starlight winced as the accidental dagger struck true. A poorly compartmentalized memory—one that only reared up in bad dreams these days—rose to the forefront of her mind: a memory of the time when Chrysalis replaced all her friends with changelings. Poisonous feelings she’d tried hard to forget bubbled up with it. That uncanny sensation of talking with a friend who was slightly off. The self-doubt that maybe she was the crazy one. The paranoia that had lingered even weeks later and surged whenever anyone did or said anything even slightly out of character. “Maybe I can relate more than you think.”

Cozy merely scoffed and rolled her eyes, the tears gone, wiped or forced away. “Oh please. Don't try to turn counselor on me now. I've had plenty of those. Even as I waited for you to return, my 'parents' weren't happy with my refusal to renounce Equality.”

It was 9:00 PM. Two hours past bedtime and yet she was awake. It was a violation of the rules, but a necessary one. Did it even matter that she was breaking one of the little rules when her parents seemed set on breaking all the big ones?

She didn’t know and she had no one to ask.

But there was something else she wanted to know, and tonight was her chance to learn it.

Slipping out of bed was easy. They never checked on her, and she’d been getting a lot of practice these past few months.

She hid herself at the top of the stairs, out of sight, but close enough to hear anything said in the dining room.

Just like she’d expected, they were still up talking. Talking and drinking wine. There weren’t any Equality Tenets about wine, but it was one of the New Things they’d brought into the house after the disaster, so it had to be bad.

She strained her ears to pick up every word of the truths they’d say in private but not to her face.

“Her therapist quit.” That was her dad’s voice. “She said she couldn't take our money in good conscience with how little effect her sessions were having.”

The sound of a glass clinking, then the voice of her mom sighing. “That’s the third one.”

“Fourth. Guiding Light only lasted one visit, but we paid him so it counts.”

She was quietly glad to hear it. All the ponies they made her sit with were stupid and wrong and kept trying to trick her into agreeing with them. They just couldn’t grasp what it meant to be really Equal. It helped that her eavesdropping sessions sometimes provided forewarning of their tricks.

“It's our own fault. What were we thinking, bringing up a child in that place?”

“Don't blame yourself Cor, we weren't in our right minds. She suckered us in. Like so many others.”

“And she still has her hooks in our daughter.”

Silence. Neither spoke for a long time. Long enough for her to wonder if staying up so late to eavesdrop tonight had been worth it. But it was the only way she knew to stay safe. How else was she supposed to keep herself pure and Equal until Mayor Starlight returned if she didn’t stay one step ahead of their unequal schemes?

Sometimes some little rules had to be broken to preserve the big ones.

“About that,” her dad’s voice came again, slow and unsure. “I've been thinking. It may be time for… drastic measures.”

All thoughts of going back to bed vanished immediately. She leaned in as far as she dared and hung on every word.

“Drastic?”

“Well, you know what they say about ponies’ names lining up with their future talents or careers?”

“What? That's just a silly old superstition.”

“Still, it's a constant reminder of what we're trying to put behind us.”

The squeak of the old chair being pushed back, like one of them had stood up suddenly. “Emerald, you can't be serious. We can't just change our daughter’s name!”

The blood froze her veins. Change… her name? No. That was ridiculous. It was impossible. They wouldn't. Couldn’t. For the first time in weeks she agreed with something her mother said.

“Why not? We’re her parents. A couple of forms mailed to Canterlot and a few words to the neighbors and we can finally take the first steps to help her move on.”

He was crazy. It was the only possible thing. Despite everyone else going crazy he'd somehow gone super double crazy. This was exactly what Mayor Starlight had always preached about. The evil of the cutie mark had seeped into his brain. At least she knew her mom would set him straight. Definitely.

It was a long minute of silence before her mom said anything. It felt like hours.

“She won't like it.”

“She's a foal. She doesn't like homework or brussel sprouts. She might throw a tantrum but eventually she’ll accept it and one day she'll look back and realize it was all for the best.”

“...I suppose you’re right. Did you have any ideas?”

“I've always been fond of ‘Royal Gambit’ after my grandmother on my mother’s side…”

She didn't stick around to hear the rest.

She’d heard enough already.

She returned to her room in a daze. She’d been holding out hope that they might come back to their senses, or at least that they wouldn’t get too corrupted before Mayor Starlight could return and show them the light again. But this was too much.

She’d weathered their changes for months. Ignored their flagrant shows of unequal talent. Resisted their attempts to sway her from the path with sweet words and promises. Suffered punishments when she refused to obey them and break the Equality Tenets. But now… Now they wanted to change her name. To erase her identity, make her forget who she was so they could remake her into a filly that thought like them and didn’t care about Equality.

There was no denying it. A line had been crossed that she’d never even imagined existing.

They weren't her parents anymore. They’d changed into something weird and different: strangers in familiar fur.

And she could no longer wait for Mayor Starlight to come back; she needed to save herself. Escape before the things that replaced her parents could do to her whatever was done to them. Before she forgot who she was or, worse, had an ugly mark foisted upon her.

She had to leave. Tonight.

She didn't have a lot of personal possessions—a few toys, a shawl, and a framed photo of Mayor Starlight—so most of what she packed was food. The last of Sugar Belle’s good muffins from before she ruined her recipe. That would last her for at least a couple of days. Long enough to reach some village that didn’t know her where she could get a map. After that… she didn’t have a plan for after that. Maybe if Mayor Starlight wouldn't come back, she'd seek her out first. Yes, that sounded good. And together they’d make a new Our Town better and more equal than the first.

She snuck out of the window and left without a second glance to the only home she’d ever known.

It was just a house with strangers in it.

“It's kind of funny, in a way.” Cozy gave a rueful chuckle. “I ended up changing my name anyway to make it harder for anyone to find me.” Her laughter died along with her smile. “But I did it on my terms. Cozy Glow. Nice, isn’t it? A little piece of both of them to help me remember who they were before they weren't.”

She started to slowly walk along the edge of the magic circle, forcing Starlight to twist to keep watching her.

“I learned a lot those next two years. About magic. About Equestria. About the deep-seated rot of inequality that infests it. But no matter where I went, no matter what I went through, I kept the faith. I believed that you had a plan. Some grand plan that would fix everything. Then I came across a newspaper article about Princess Twilight ‘redeeming’ some villain and taking her on as her student.” She turned her scowl on Starlight. “Imagine my surprise when I saw your picture next to it.”

Starlight felt the need to say something. To justify herself or defend Twilight or make another plea for understanding. But the words wouldn’t come. The most she could do was to hang her head and ask the one question that plagued her.

“What do you want, Truly? Why come here? Why do all this?” ‘Just to rub my failure in my face’ went thought, but unstated.

“Why?” The filly asked, suddenly back in her peppy Cozy persona. “Well that’s very simple. I’m here to finish what you started. When I saw that newspaper, I knew it was up to me to complete your great work.”

A cold chill ran down Starlight’s spine, completely separate from despair she’d already been plagued with. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, did my story distract you? I thought you’d have figured that out by now.” She tapped her hoof on the edge of the magic circle. “You're a talented sorceress. I'm sure it's easy enough to decipher from the circle’s runes.”

Growing panic gave her the strength she needed to push through the headache of her pulsing horn and really focus on the chalked-out spellwork. Much of it was unfamiliar, but all spells had a few common elements. She didn’t need to understand all of it if she could rule out what she recognized and work backwards on the rest. But Cozy didn’t stay idle while she thought.

“I sure hope I drew it right. So many little swirls and squiggles to learn, and it didn’t help that I had to learn them by a correspondence course.”

A pulse of pain spiked down her horn, breaking her attention but also drawing it to a part of the spell that hadn’t activated in response to the pain. A part she’d dismissed as being part of the subspell trapping her.

A siphon spell.

It wasn’t targeting her at all. In fact, the targeting array was incomplete. She followed the line of runes that should have led to a range limiter and found it missing.

“From the look on your face, I guess you figured it out,” Cozy interrupted. “Pretty smart, right? I knew I didn’t have the skill to prune out the infection, so all I can do is amputate the limb.”

There was a reason she didn’t recognize the spell. No one in history had ever made a spell like this.

“You're the one who's been draining magic from Equestria? Not Tirek?”

“That’s right! Pulling it out, root and stem!” She was the most pleased Starlight had heard her since she’d woken up. “No more magic, no more cutie marks! It’s the obvious next step. Your vault was a good first try, but it clearly had its weaknesses. I like to think my idea’s a bit more… permanent. There won't be any going back once I dump all the cutie marks into the void between realms!”

Starlight tried to wrap her mind around the idea but she could barely fathom it. At least when Tirek had drained Equestria’s magic it’d been out of greed and primal hunger. This was… She didn’t have a word for what this was. And yet Cozy was still looking up at her with that same approval-seeking smile like she was turning in a finished quiz.

“What about all the other magic?” she protested, desperately seeking any flaw in the plan to pressure. “Unicorn spells. Earth pony’s nature affinity. What about your wings, Truly?!”

Cozy shrugged indifferently. “Acceptable losses. Small sacrifices in pursuit of a greater goal. Besides, the earth ponies seem to get along just fine without flight. But can you even imagine it? Equality not just among the tribes, but between them too. No more earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, or even alicorns. Without tribal magics, we’ll all just be ponies. Complete and total equality, even greater than you accomplished.”

“You can’t do this!”

“That’s the best part, I already am! You can feel it in your horn, can’t you? That drain? It’s cause we’re so close to the center. I sure can feel it in my wings. I know it hurts a little now but that’ll pass. Besides, who will stop me? Twilight and her lackeys are trapped in Tartarus where they belong, and all the students upstairs love and adore me as much as Our Town loved you.” She giggled, suddenly sweet again. “See? I learned so much from you.”

It was her worst fears realized. No, that was a lie. This was beyond anything she’d ever thought to fear. Her past mistakes come back to not only haunt her, but to bring unimaginable devastation to everyone everywhere. And it was all directly, unequivocally, undeniably her own fault.

In her pride and arrogance, she’d created a monster that embodied everything she’d been at her worst point, and managed to do it better.

She made a last, desperate plea to whatever goodness might be left in her, whatever scraps of the filly she’d once known. “You don't have to do this. Everyone has a choice, Truly. You don't have to be a villain.”

“I'm not a villain!” Cozy yelled as the pendulum of her emotions swung back to anger. “Don't you get it? I'm the hero! With this spell I'll be saving everyone. And not just from the monsters and the tyrants and the magical horrors, but from themselves! I'm bringing true Equality for every pony! Every creature! You really have lost your way if you can't even understand that.”

“And what’s going to happen to you after it's finished?” Starlight pressed, “I suppose you'll rule over them all as some kind of princess of equality?”

“Don't be silly; I'll be as equal as everybody else. Although…” She stopped as the anger and fire seemed to drain out of her. “All those poor ponies will need someone to guide them through the chaos of change. We won't have princesses anymore after all.” She turned her eyes to Starlight as she spoke in a voice that was equal parts hopeful and hesitant, “but maybe Equestria could use a good mayor.”

The words hit Starlight like a slap to the face. “You… want me to join you?”

“It's all I've ever wanted.” The words came out half whispered, half wished. The sweet, giggly mask of Cozy seemed to melt away, taking the confidence and angry posturing with it. In moments all that was left was Truly, looking as desperate and uncertain as any ordinary foal, hurt and clinging to a lifeline.

“Just… tell me you don’t really believe all of Twilight’s friendship nonsense. That this whole thing was a plan to get close to her and win her over from the inside and install the Tenets of Equality in a position of power. Just… just please tell me I’m right and I’ll let you down and- and we can finish this. Together.”

The offer caught her completely off guard. There was… the possibility of a plan there. She could agree. Tell Truly what she wanted to hear, say she was proud of her, and go along with her plan just long enough until she was in a position to call for help or get Twilight or somehow subdue her herself without magic.

But it’d be a lie. A bold-faced lie to a child who was baring her heart to her, warped though it was.

And she couldn’t do that. She wasn’t that kind of pony anymore.

“Truly,” Starlight sighed as she knew that her words might be signing Equestria’s death warrant. “If you’ve learned anything from your time here at the school, you should know why I can’t do that.”

Truly didn’t move. Not even to breathe.

“I know you don’t believe it, but I was wrong. Equality isn’t the answer, friendship is, and I’m sorry that I hurt you so badly that you can’t see that.”

The expression dropped from her face. There was no anger, no crushed hope. Just a still, cold neutrality. “I see.” Her voice echoed the emotionlessness of her expression.

“I know you must hate me now.”

Cozy jolted for a second, before she sighed and slipped the confident mask back on. “I don’t hate you, Starlight. I could never hate you.”

Was there still a chance to get through to her? “I-”

“I pity you.” Her words were still cold, but there was an odd tenderness to them. Almost like Starlight was the child being talked down to. “You lost your way. Lost your faith. When the shepherd wanders off from the flock, it's up to her most loyal lamb to take up the crook and finish what she started.”

“Truly, you don—”

Cozy rapped her hoof against one of the hovering artifacts and Starlight gasped as it sent a fresh spike of pain down her horn.

“Quiet. I don’t have to listen to you anymore. You may have been gifted with a grand vision but you lacked the conviction to see it through to the end.”

Cozy turned and began to walk back into the shadows as Starlight struggled to form a coherent thought amidst the ringing headache.

“Don't worry. Even though you failed, your most faithful student will finally complete your great work.”

The shadows seemed to curl around her, as if welcoming her away from the light.

“And when it’s done, everyone will be Truly Equal. Just like me.”

And then Starlight was alone. Alone with the pain in her horn and in her heart and the uncomfortable knowledge that some deep, forgotten part of her was still proud of her youngest follower’s achievement.