Spotlight

Chapters

Prologue
1: Chapter Starlight 1868
2: Chapter Starlight 1869
3A: Chapter Starlight 1870, Part 1
3B. Chapter Starlight 1870, Part 2
4. Chapter Nightmare Moon 3
5. Chapter Starlight 1872
6. Chapter Pinkamena 1

Prologue

Prologue

(From the beginning, I have always assumed that others would someday read this journal, casual readers as well as future biographers and historians of my "noble quest to free Equestria of its cutie marks" [Journal Entry #1]. But the next entry begins a part of my life where I’m no longer sure I wish to share it with the rest of the world. Perhaps I will be the only one privy to this version of events.

(But just in case I change my mind, Dear Reader, know that this chapter is inserted at this location in my journal after the fact. It is my imagining of a scene I did not witness, with the begrudging assent of the main characters depicted therein. And also that it is out of sequence with the next two chapters that follow it.)

Monday, 21 June 1108

Run! Run away! Must get away! Must escape!

Cup Cake was awoken by the sudden slamming of her shop’s front door. Her husband Carrot shot up in bed. “Burglars!” he shouted.

Cup hushed him. Eventually she picked out the sounds of sobbing. “Pinkie,” she said in a shocked voice. She got out of bed and put on a robe. “I’ll talk to her. You get back to bed.”

Carrot looked like he was going to protest. “Dear?”

Cup looked towards the door of their bedroom. “She just destroyed a monster, Hubbins. A monster with a pony’s face. We might be awhile.”

“Well…alright. If you’re sure you’ve got this,” Carrot said, easing himself back under the covers, but still with a concerned expression.

“I am, Hubbins. Now get your rest. There’ll be a big victory party in the morning.”

Carrot, who was falling asleep, suddenly shot up. “The morning! There’s going to be a morning!”

Cup walked back to personally tuck Carrot back into bed. “Yes Dear, there’s going to be a morning. Now get some sleep.”

By the time Cup Cake descended the stairs, there was no longer any crying coming from the shop. Only heavy breathing, interrupted by the occasional gasp. The sound of a pony who had cried themselves out.

“It’s alright, Pinkie,” she said as she turned the corner to enter the shop floor. “I’m here for you.”

She spotted Pinkie slumped against the glass display case. A case that was currently empty. The light from the second floor hallway left most of the room in shadow, but starkly illuminated Pinkie’s reflection in the case glass. Her eyes were open, unfocused. She was unmoving; Pinkie Pie, the most animated pony in all of Equestria, was still. She was breathing, but at the same time looked like she was dead.

“Pinkie?” Cup Cake asked cautiously.

There was no response.

“Pinkie?” Cup Cake repeated, crossing the space between them with trepidation.

No response.

“Pinkie?” Cup asked, daring to reach out and touch the slouched mare on the shoulder.

Pinkie Pie suddenly shot to her hooves, forcing a startled shout out of Cup Cake. She turned her head, and pointed her head at Cup Cake. That was all that Cup could describe it as, “pointing her head”. There was no expression, no eyes directed at her. Instead Pinkie looked right through her.

“Pinkie, what…”

“I have wandered through this world,” Pinkie intoned in a hollow voice. “And as each moment has unfurled, I’ve been waiting to awaken from these dreams.”

Cup Cake reached forward, cautiously put a hoof on her shoulder again and, when there was no response, shook the shoulder gently.

Pinkie looked down at the offending hoof with her dead stare. Cup Cake quickly yanked it back.

Pinkie looked back up at her. There was expression now: yearning, loss, pain. “Doctor, my eyes!” she pleaded. “Cannot see the sky. Is this the prize for learning how not to cry?”

Cup Cake pushed forward, pulling Pinkie into a tight hug. Pinkie began to cry again, wailing and moaning in utter despair.

Finally she pushed herself away and took a few moments to regain her breath. “No pony should have seen what I have seen. This isn’t TV-Y, this isn’t TV-Y at all!”

Cup Cake brushed aside the nonsense words, as she often had to do with Pinkie, to get to the point. “But…but you defeated her, right? You defeated Nightmare Moon?”

“NO!” Pinkie screamed, shoving her adoptive mother away from her. “They’re gone. They’re all gone!”

“Gone?” Cup Cake asked in confusion. “Your friends? Twilight Sparkle and those other ponies? The ones who went into the Everfree and…?”

“Destroyed! Nightmare Moon destroyed them all!”

Cup Cake recoiled. She glanced out the window, at the sky where the sun surely should have risen by now. But the night still endured.

“The night will last forever, and it’s all my fault!” Pinkie wailed.

“Wait, what…?”

“It was me! It was all me! Twilight would have succeeded! We would have used the Elements of Harmony to fix everything—and then I blew it!”

She looked down incredulously at her own hooves. “How did I survive? How did I alone survive the slaughter?”

Cup Cake recoiled at the grisly word. A word that should not be uttered by any pony.

“I don’t deserve it! I…I must be punished!”

Cup Cake took on a fierce expression as she grabbed hold of Pinkie’s forehooves with her own. “No, absolutely not!” she declared. “I forbid it!”

“I must! I must be punished!” Pinkie declared, trying to fight her way out of Cup Cake’s grip.

Now normally, there would be no question of which of the two would win in a fight, considering who grew up in a bakery, and who grew up smashing boulders into gravel with her bare hooves. But Pinkie truly wasn’t in the mood for a fight.

“Well in that case, I’ve got to go away.”

(It turns out I cannot draw two ponies embracing particularly well while one of them is wrestling with her alter ego. Consider this as a thematic substitute.)

“No…” Cup Cake said fearfully.

Pinkie Pie head drooped. She shook for a moment, and then she changed. She seemed to shrink in on herself, and whatever dim light she was illuminated by seemed to go out, changing her fur from pink to magenta. With the sound of deflating balloons her mane and tail fell flat around her. The magenta pony looked up, with a tired and defeated expression. “Oh,” she said in dull despair. “Hello again, Mrs. Cake.”

Cup Cake looked down in horror at the pony she was currently holding in her hooves. She let go immediately and fled upstairs, screaming in terror. The bedroom door could be heard to open, slam shut, and then the deadbolt could be heard slamming home.

Pinkamena Diane Pie sighed. Looking inwards she asked, “What did you do, Pinkie? Why am I awake again?” She turned her head to take in her reflection. “How…how many years have you left me in there?”

“It’s yours,” a small voice in Pinkamena’s head replied. “Our body is yours. For…forever. My life has become a lie!”

With a tired roll of her eyes, Pinkamena turned to face her reflection in the case glass. Only instead of herself she saw the defeated expression of Pinkie Pie. “What did you do?” she repeated.

She was answered by the barest flash of a memory: a blue pegasus with rainbow mane striking an ornamented stone column…hard. She slid down afterwards, leaving a nasty red stain behind.

Pinkamena flinched from the image as if she had been struck.

“That,” the reflection replied. “I did that.”

Pinkamena looked at her reflection’s eyes, dumbstruck.

“And now we have to leave, Pinkamena. We have to leave before…”

“Ponies of Equestria! Heed my words!”

The pronouncement came from outside Sugarcube Corner. Pinkamena stumbled her way across a shop she could barely navigate in broad daylight, to look out the window.

There, incredibly, a gigantic disembodied head of a black-coated pony took up most of the night sky.

“It’s her!” the terrified voice of Pinkie inside Pinkamena’s head cried. “Run away! Get away! Escape!”

Pinkamena looked desperately around her. But there was nothing for her here. No safety. No refuge.

She threw open the door, and the voice of the pony head—of Nightmare Moon, as Pinkie informed her, was so much louder. Pinkamena didn’t listen to the words, tried to shut them out in case they had the power to block her escape. As other ponies came out of their homes to stare awestruck at the source of the voice in the sky, Pinkamena dodged between them, completely unnoticed. And what would anypony have noticed, under the circumstances? Pinkamena was practically a stranger to this town, whatever its name was.

After running in a random direction for a few minutes, Pinkamena crossed a stone bridge—which she would have spent some time studying the composition of under better circumstances—and continued out of town, into the countryside. By this time her initial bewilderment and fear had given way to a towering rage.

“I can’t believe you did it again!” she cried out in her mind to its other inhabitant. “It wasn’t enough turning my family against me, now you’ve…”

“I’ve destroyed the world, Pinkamena! I helped Nightmare Moon to conquer Equestria!” Pinkie sounded nearly hysterical.

“That is it!” Pinkamena shouted, stopping under some trees. “From the very beginning, there was this huge problem between you and I: the ‘and’ in ‘Pinkamena and Pinkie’. You never asked me for permission to share this body, to steal this body from me! Well I swear on all that is holy that I’m ending this ‘and’ problem, once and for all! I will find a way to get you out of me, Pinkie! I swear it!”

She was answered…by silence. A tacit agreement that the very idea of “Pinkie Pie” was a mistake.

Pinkie Pie had to go. Once and for all.

[Author’s Note: The next chapter takes place three days earlier and three hundred kilostrides to the northeast.]

Author's Note

Well, I think it should be obvious at this point how this is an Alternate Universe fic.

This story is currently half-finished. I am dissatisfied with where the second half is going, so I've decided to publish the prologue and first fifteen chapters on a weekly basis, in hopes that I can get my ideas reorganized before I run out of finished chapters.

1: Chapter Starlight 1868

Starlight Glimmer has spent most of her life chasing after the spotlight.
Soon, it would come to her.

1. Chapter Starlight 1868

Friday, 18 June, 1108

The Village of the Markless.

(Spell diagram for my Equalization spell.)

Today, Starlight Glimmer celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the founding of The Village. She had a lot to think about.

Starlight, modest and humble, woke up in midafternoon. As she prepared her appearance, she noticed a gray hair in her mane. With a huff, she first extracted it, then incinerated it.

Afterwards she surveyed The Village: no new recruits. Double Diamond had left the mail on the porch.

Double Diamond is a male earth pony with a white coat, light gray mane and tail and light cobalt blue eyes. He had a cutie mark of three blue snowflakes.

(I’ve unfortunately fallen into the habit of thinking of a pony only as a name and a collection of personality traits. I need to remind myself of appearances.)

It was a letter, a single letter…from Rosemary.

Rosemary, wonderful Rosemary, as I first knew her five years ago. Her form so fragile, her will so indomitable. I can see her standing on the Unmarking Pedestal in her white ceremonial gown. Tribe of earth, coat of lilac, mane of heliotrope, eyes of fuchsia. Eyes staring with hope at me, as I removed the hated mark of her namesake herb.

“You did it!” she proclaimed when the ceremony was complete. “You liberated me from my awful family! How can I ever repay you?”

“There is no need,” I told her. “I was merely carrying out my sacred duty.” I still only saw her as another Follower then.

Five years ago. Only five years! Not that much had changed in the Followers’ first fifteen years. We had grown from eight to fourteen…fifteen, with Rosemary. My research of cutie mark magic had begun, and I had developed my first new spell that didn’t come with my mark: Communion, which allowed me to speak with and see any pony whose mark was kept in my vault. With their permission, of course. I had to go out into the desert to find “The Rock of Communion”, so I could cast the spell without my true cutie mark being revealed. This spell meant that when the families of seven of the Followers dragged them back to their homes ten years ago, I was still able to keep in touch with them. That number was still seven in Rosemary’s time.

She saw those paltry numbers as a crime. “You are destined to be the savior of all ponykind,” she told me. “And everypony should know it. I spent years in misery with my old mark. I could have run away to The Village from the beginning, if I had only known about you. Well, I won’t stand for it!” And she pounded the dirt with her feeble hoof. “I will be your apostle, Starlight Glimmer, if you’ll let me. I will bring the world to this village!”

If only I had refused her…

(Spell diagram for my Communion spell.)

Not wanting to deal with the contents of Rosemary’s letter yet, Starlight put it in her saddlebags for later. With Double Diamond she swept the empty cottages. Starlight eschewed her magic, standing upright to wield the broom with her hooves.

She did it to make her feel more equal. She did it to make it harder to think, harder to remember.

She remembered anyway. She remembered a time when the cottages were all occupied. Before she and Double Diamond had become the only two Followers to still live in The Village.

Rosemary. Rosemary was responsible for both the full Village, as well as the empty one.

Four years ago I was up to twenty Followers. Those five additions in a single year were all Rosemary’s doing. She not only found new recruits but also spread the word of my good works in the villages where I bought the supplies The Village needed. Ponies now came to me for advice on cutie mark related problems. And I didn’t always tell those ponies that their only solution was for me to remove their marks.

That was Rosemary’s idea. “If they come to trust you, if they know your advice is good, then someday they will be ready to take the big step, to break away from their mark and the bad ponies around them.”

I remember the smile on her upturned face, the dreams she awoke in me. The world was new again. I was new again. I was going to do it, I was going to bring the dream of living without a mark to the whole world, with Rosemary by my side.

And then she brought me to Amber Durum.

(The June 18 communion, re-arranged so I can fit it in a two-dimensional painting. In the top row are Amethyst Gleam, Berry Preppy and Coral Shine. Middle row is Dane Tee Dove, Swan Song and Lyrica Lilac. Bottom row is Comet Tail and Double Diamond. DD is probably telling me something important.)

In late afternoon, Starlight and Double Diamond took the mountain path up the steep hill to the Cutie Mark Vault. Starlight wanted to resume her cutie mark spell research, but the sun was setting, so it was time to begin the meeting. Starlight cast the Cutie Mark Communion spell upon seven of the eight marks in the Vault. Illusory heads of the seven absent Followers appeared in a circle in the center of the cave, with gaps for Starlight and Double Diamond to sit. In attendance tonight: Amethyst Gleam (female earth pony, greenish-gray coat, grayish-cyan mane, light azure eyes, former mark a shattered chalice), Berry Preppy (female earth pony, white coat, mulberry and grayish-azure mane, mulberry eyes, former mark a strawberry and a bunch of grapes), Comet Tail (male unicorn, light yellow coat, grayish-blue eyes and mane, former mark a pony’s hindquarters sticking out of a garbage can), Coral Shine (pale magenta coat, arctic blue mane and eyes, former mark a jumbled-up dance diagram), Dane Tee Dove (female earth pony, light gray coat, light green eyes, very light yellow mane done up in a loose bun, former mark a tippling glass of red wine), Lyrica Lilac (female earth pony, grayish violet coat, very light yellow curly mane, grayish-purple eyes, former mark a pair of crossed eyes), Swan Song (female unicorn, light amber coat, light raspberry mane, cornflower blue eyes, former mark a railroad tie), Double Diamond and Starlight Glimmer (female…I know what I look like!).

The absent Followers immediately began to use the opportunity of being in the same room together to gossip.

Idle rich ponies, every one of them. They all had the marks in their mind that they wanted to have, never mind what they told me. I removed their accidental marks, the marks they got from partying until they were blind drunk. Or I took off the marks they wanted to delay until they had gotten their parties in. That was why they didn’t live in The Village. I knew for a fact that Amethyst Gleam and Coral Shine lived together in a penthouse suite in Manehattan that their parents had forgotten about. Supported by Mark money. Dreaming of Mark exploitation.

I was a convenience for them, a service.

It didn’t used to be like this. My followers used to respect me, to devour my wisdom like manna from heaven.

It was Rosemary, Rosemary who ruined everything!

It started with Amber Durum, the largest village in the region. Rosemary told me about the sinkhole that was steadily consuming the village, that would swallow up the town center in less than a month. The villagers had appealed to the Princess, and she had promised aid…to rebuild the town in six months, when the necessary ponies would be available. Naturally, the villagers wanted Amber Durum saved instead of being demolished and only later rebuilt, and Rosemary volunteered my help.

You see, Amber Durum was ruled by two families, who bitterly hated each other: the Semolinas, and the Puddings. (The latter claimed to be descended from the character in the Hearthswarming Eve play.) Every pony in town had cutie marks related to one or the other town industry of pasta making or pudding making. And no Semolina would lift a hoof to save a Pudding, or vice versa.

I remember standing in Amber Duram’s town hall. It was carefully segregated between clans to avoid a fight breaking out, true, but it was an actual town hall! I had never addressed that many ponies and been allowed to finish my speech before! I was cheered instead of being run out on a rail, with tar and feathers not far behind.

To save Amber Durum, I promised something I had never been willing to do before: I would take everypony’s marks to unify the village, and after we had saved it with our ordinary pony strength in tandem, I would give all of the marks back.

Rosemary was the genius behind it all. She had done the research into sinkholes, and had developed the plan whereby one hundred ponies without cutie marks could relocate the buildings intact. My contribution was my charisma and leadership. …And the heavy lifting which was needed at the very end to save the town hall.

And the other part of her plan worked as well: a dozen villagers of both families realized that they liked each other’s company more than that of their own elders, so they renounced their marks permanently and moved to The Village, raising the Follower count to thirty-two.

It was the crest before the plunge, as DD would say.

As near as Starlight could tell, all seven of the absent Followers were communing from their rooms or other private spaces—Berry Preppy had apparently learned the lesson to not be in a public place on a Friday at sundown.

Double Diamond recited Homily 28 to the Followers. Then Starlight provided her updates, which were few. There were no new recruits in the past week.

“The Summer Sun Celebration is on Monday,” Starlight told the group, her head slightly elevated in her accustomed pose of moral and intellectual guidance. “The thousandth such celebration, I believe. I do not consider it a very important occasion, but the rest of you are living amongst marked ponies, so it will be best to conform to their preferences. How will you be celebrating it?”

“Where is the Princess going this year?” asked Coral, looking behind her through a window that only she could see. “She’s not going to be in Manehattan.”

“I don’t remember,” said Swan Song, scratching her head. “But it’s not Fillydelphia.”

“I think it’s some worthless village called Ponyville,” said Dane Tee Dove.

Starlight gave her a warning look.

“Not that all villages are worthless,” Dane Tee quickly back peddled. “Starlight Village is very nice!”

Starlight sighed. She did not like it when ponies named The Village after her—it sounded too egotistical.

Although on second thought, the name “Ponyville” seemed faintly ridiculous to her. Why would you give any town a name so generic?

“Who started the Summer Sun Celebrations?” asked Lyrica Lilac. She tended to be the most curious of the current group, if not necessarily the most learned.

“It was the Princess of the time, who was also named Celestia,” Starlight explained.

“Was it maybe the same Celestia as our current Princess?” asked Coral.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Starlight scoffed. “That would make Princess Celestia immortal, and a goddess. There are no divinities, Followers. Never doubt that. We ponies alone are responsible for making Equestria the wonderful land that it is.”

“And once all ponies have renounced their marks, we will be as wonderful as our land,” Double Diamond chimed in.

“Exactly,” said Starlight.

This got DD to thinking. (Something that was never easy for him, even before he renounced his mark.) “So, what exactly does Princess Celestia do, other than leading the country? What is her cutie mark for? Because if just means that she leads like the sun, then Starlight Glimmer here would be an excellent replacement.”

The absent Followers pounded their hooves with appreciation. (Starlight had learned to infer such things from the movements of their heads, as that was all that could be seen with the spell.)

“Princess Celestia raises and lowers the sun, moon and stars,” Comet Tail began to explain.

But Starlight was already thinking back on another time she had received such praise…

“All hail Starlight Glimmer, the Savior of Amber Durum!”

It was a month after the town had been saved. The new Followers had moved into The Village, and had built new cottages for themselves, and were throwing a celebration in honor of their beloved leader.

Rosemary was recounting all of my deeds in leading the villagers through the relocation process, while standing at the sink cleaning the dishes. “And then, as Town Hall was teetering on the brink of the sinkhole, Starlight took hold of it with her magic and single-hoofedly saved it from destruction!”

The other ponies cheered.

“Oh Rosemary, here you are surely exaggerating,” I told her. “Thirty other ponies were pulling on their ropes. My contribution was just the most-visible, not the most significant.”

“No,” Rosemary said, holding aloft her dishrag on one hoof, her brow furrowed in thought. “I remember the moment quite clearly. The edge of the building held by your magic was five pony-heights off the ground, a feat impossible for other ponies to achieve, given the attachment points of the ropes. That is an incredible feat of magic, more than any markless unicorn should be able to achieve.”

“Well, perhaps the upper limit of markless unicorn magic is higher than we thought,” I said with desperation.

“No,” Rosemary said grimly as she advanced upon me. “There is only one possible explanation…”

And before I could stop her, she had used the dishrag to expose my true cutie mark.

Despite her suspicion, she backed away in horror at what she had done.

“You have a cutie mark? You?” Night Glider asked in bewilderment as she reared up on her hind hooves.

“You said that cutie marks were evil!” exclaimed Sugar Belle, pointing. “You said that special talents led to pain and heartache!”

“They do!” I protested.

“Then why?” Rosemary whispered. “Why did you take ours and not give up your own?”

“I…I had to!” I cried. “How could I collect your cutie marks without my magic?”

Night Glider pointed out my deception with the staff.

And so it all came out: I wanted to remove all cutie marks so we could all be equal, but my own cutie mark magic was the only way to remove those marks. So I covered my mark.

I took Rosemary’s rag and exposed the mark on my other flank. “I didn’t want to be seen as better than you. I wanted us to be friends. I wanted harmony. I didn’t…I didn’t want to be seen as a god by you, like the other ponies see Princess Celestia.”

“But you lied, Starlight!” Sugar Belle exclaimed. “You can’t have a cutie mark. Either we’re all equal, or none of us are!” She looked around at the others. “I know how to release our individual cutie marks from the Vault. Let’s reclaim our equinity.”

I bowed my head in defeat.

“No wait!” Rosemary said, trying to stop the ponies who were about to head for the Vault. “Don’t you see? Her heart was in the right place! She didn’t want to make the Followers about her!”

“Then who else were we following, if not her?” Night Glider counted. “This whole thing has been a cult all along. I’m getting my cutie mark back.”

Double Diamond looked at me in utter confusion. Ultimately, he would decide to stay and believe in my confession, but at that moment he was speechless.

…And so my happy group of thirty-two fractured. Seventeen ponies went to the Vault, got their marks back, and left The Village forever. Leaving fifteen…no, make that fourteen.

“Leave? Why do you want me to leave?” Rosemary pleaded, after I had dragged her to the Vault the next day and forced her to put on the white gown of unmarking.

“You dare to ask me that question, after what you have done?!”

“I’m sorry! I was just following your teachings, to seek the truth above all!”

“The inner truth of your equality. I have always taught that the outer world of the senses is full of pitfalls. Such as the one you ruthlessly exposed today!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Why didn’t you confront me in private?” I demanded. “I would have told you the truth about my poor decision fifteen years ago, and together we would have found a way to reveal it without ruining all I have fought for.”

(The morning after the others left forever, ten of the remainder decided to retain their marklessness but, unable to look me in the face anymore, moved out of the Village. Only five of us were left.)

“I…it all happened so fast! I didn’t mean this! You must know that I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s too late,” I told her coldly. “You must leave my followers forever.” I prepared to return her mark.

“No!” Rosemary pleaded. “Whatever you think of me, I beg you not to force me back into the tartaric grip of my family. Take the equals mark! But leave me to find a new mark, my true mark!”

I considered.

“You…you said that you ‘found’ the Rock of Communion only six years ago,” Rosemary said with growing realization. “That means you developed the spell—you didn’t gain it with your cutie mark. I beg you, in memory of my previous goodwill, of all of the love I had and still have for you, that you find a way to destroy that mark!”

And I did remember all that she had done for me, and all that she was to me before her accidental betrayal. And in that moment, I discovered my third cutie mark spell, Liberation, and used it to destroy the rosemary mark once and for all.

“Go,” I told her, my head bowed, and my strength spent. “Leave my sight forever and discover who you really are.”

“Thank you,” Rosemary said between sniffles. “Now, what could I become?”

“GO!” I bellowed.

She removed her ceremonial gown and trudged out of the cave.

“Follow your family name,” I told her coldly as she walked out of my life. “You’re a Sage. Take the other meaning of that word—you’re very good at it.”

And so began the irreversible change of the Followers. The poor Followers, the ones who wanted an escape from an unfair life given them by their cutie marks, found that they could not accept me with my mark and eventually abandoned me, to be replaced by the temporary Followers I have today, the ones that depend on my eventual use of Liberation, so they can resume their cursed existence as rich marked ponies.

She never meant to do it, but Rosemary destroyed everything that the Followers of the Markless Manifesto ever stood for.

(Spell diagram for my Liberation spell.)

“…Isn’t there, Starlight?” Double Diamond asked, breaking Starlight’s reverie.

“What was that?” Starlight asked.

“The sun, moon and stars. Surely there’s an artifact that can move them instead?”

“Actually, a dozen unicorns did it before the first Celestia.”

“There, you see!” Double Diamond exclaimed. “We can definitely help her. You’re alright if I go help her, right?”

Starlight, not wanting to make it obvious that she hadn’t been listening, nodded absently. “Sure, you can go help her.”

“Then I’ll get started right now!” DD exclaimed, running out of the cave.

“Oh!” Starlight exclaimed. “Then I guess the meeting is adjourned. Unless anypony else has anything they want to say?”

She looked around to see that the others had already ended the spell.

Starlight walked outside the cave to the top of the hill, looking down at The Village illuminated by the light of the moon. She saw Double Diamond making his way into The Village and over to his home right next to Starlight’s cottage, going inside and lighting the lamp beside the window.

Starlight looked up at the moon, trying to decide if the Mare depicted on its face was sorrowful or wrathful tonight. Actually, she looked hopeful, a new expression.

She debated going to her own cottage to sleep. But then she looked back into the cave, at the bench with her papers and spell reagents. She was so close to finishing her fourth spell, the one that might just turn everything around. So back into the cave she went.

As she arranged her materials, her eyes settled upon the letter from Rosemary. She lifted it up in her magic, and then on second thought plucked it out of the air with her hooves, holding it between them for a moment.

I am a pony who is quick to anger—I will not deny that. But I do not hold a grudge forever. It was only a matter of six months or so before I forgave Rosemary. But by then of course it was too late. Where would I find her? Certainly not in the Sage Herbarium. If I could find the spot of Equestria as far as possible from that place…maybe there. And so I had to let her go.

Last year I lost the last of my true Followers, and it was only Double Diamond and I living in The Village. I started thinking back on how the Followers had started, and where it had gone wrong. I decided I was going to get some answers about Sunburst, the cause of everything. I wrote to the Canterlot Hall of Records, asking politely if there was anything I might be told about him, as we grew up in the same town together.

I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get a reply, but eight months ago, I did. A simple account, telling me that Sunburst of the Flare family did attend Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns twenty-two years ago (and two years before I founded The Village), but he dropped out between his second and third years. He died a year later.

I don’t know how many times I read that short letter, again and again, hoping against hope that it would end happily for once. No matter how much I resented Sunburst for abandoning me, I never wanted anything bad to happen to him. And in my gut, I just felt that the death was wrong.

It was this feeling of wrongness that inspired me to work on my next spell. There were many things in my life I had been lying to myself about. I wanted to finally know the truth, my inner truth.

And then one day, as I was clearing the tears from my eyes after yet another fruitless re-reading, I caught the signature of the clerk who had sent me the letter from the Hall of Records: Rosemary Sage. I had found her; I had finally found her. And it appeared that she had taken my advice of three years earlier to heart.

(Rosemary, as I imagine her today.)

Doubly motivated, I wrote Rosemary a reply. In the body of the letter, I asked for any permissible details on how Sunburst died, and whether his parents were alright. His father had been in poor health, and accidents do happen, so if it were the case that Sunburst had died an orphan, then I would travel to Canterlot to ensure that his remains got a proper burial in Sire’s Hollow.

In the postscript, I congratulated Rosemary on the new direction in her life and made sure that she knew that I forgave her. If she had forgiven me, she was welcome to visit any time.

I dreaded her response, the letter now in my hooves. It had been three months since I had sent my reply—the Celestial Bureaucracy was renowned for their one-week turn-around time on properly-worded requests. So she could only be delaying because of how much she didn’t want to talk to me again. After all, she had every reason to hate me for my over-reaction. I was the first positive relationship she had ever had in her difficult life, and I ended up treating her just as awfully as her family had.

But I couldn’t put it off forever, so I finally opened it.

First I read the postscript: “I accept your apology. However, I am very busy in Records, so do not expect a visit any time soon.”

So cold. I suppose it was the best I could hope for, under the circumstances.

I expected that would be my biggest emotional response to the letter. I was wrong.

In the body, I learned the official cause of death: Lighting strike as part of his weather duties. “This is absurd,” Rosemary reported, just as I was thinking those very words. “Sunburst was a unicorn, with no reported weather magic, so I decided on my own initiative to investigate further. I discovered the case of a pegasus on the Canterlot Weather Team, Sunover, with colors and cutie mark very similar to Sunburst’s. Sunover was the pony who died on May 28th, I am sure of it. I am also now sure that Sunburst faked his death, for reasons unknown. But they cannot be good.

“How well do you actually know this ex-friend of yours?”

This was exactly what the feeling in my gut had been telling me.

I am taking this short break to pen this entry, Journal, and to get something to eat. And then I will return to my work on Revelation. I will not rest until I know everything.

Author's Note

The spell diagrams are not supposed to be instantly understandable to the reader, more a case of Starlight showing off. Nevertheless, if you are interested in learning more about each one, just click them to be taken to the corresponding DeviantArt entry and check the description.

This is the most-heavily illustrated chapter of the story by far, so don't expect this sort of extravagance going forward.

2: Chapter Starlight 1869

2. Chapter Starlight 1869

Sunday, 20 June, 1108

(Spell diagram for my Revelation spell. Work in progress.)

The Summer Sun Celebration is tomorrow.

Today, Starlight finished her new spell.

Also Double Diamond has left The Village.

As soon as she discovered this fact, Starlight used Communion to speak with DD.

“Why did you go, Double Diamond?” she asked.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Double Diamond replied. “I’m going to Canterlot, to convince Princess Celestia to give up her cutie mark. She’s been working too hard, and she deserves to rest. The unicorns can take over moving the sun and stuff, like you said.”

“Oh,” Starlight said. She considered telling him to come back home. She didn’t see his chances of convincing the Princess as being very high. However, he had the right to try, and it was not like he was going to be thrown into the dungeon for suggesting it. “Very well,” she said.

“Would you like me to visit Rosemary while I’m in Canterlot?” Double Diamond had asked.

“No!” Starlight exclaimed. “I’ve already corresponded with her. I think she will be fine.”

Starlight had told Double Diamond of her attempted reconciliation with Rosemary…and nothing else.

“I will attempt to contact you nightly at sunset, to see if anything bad has happened to you,” Starlight told him. “You do not need to respond. Other than Fridays.”

“I’ll give you updates whenever I can,” DD told her.

“Very well. Have a pleasant journey.”

She ended the spell, fed and refreshed herself, and used a cart to move her things into the cave. It only made sense: from here, she could easily see the arrival of new potential Followers. And she could test and refine her new spell.

When she got to the cave, she put off her first test of Revelation, instead inspecting the marks in the Vault and recalling what she knew of each pony. But this was merely because she knew what to come would be painful.

Finally, she lay out a sleeping bag and curled herself prone upon it so her cutie mark was in her sight. And she cast the spell upon it…

(How I remembered it.)

Sunburst and I once did everything together. In fact, I don’t remember us ever being apart. Until that fateful day. I was trying to see how high I could stack all the books in my father’s private library. The tower grew too high for me to control, and it fell, right towards me. One book knocked me out, but Sunburst was able to catch all of the others, a bigger magical feat than he had ever been capable of before. He then sorted the dozens of books and re-filed them with his magic, without even a thought. A sudden glow signaled the arrival of his new cutie mark: the sun, so bright it blinded the intellect.

He went to show his new mark to his parents. And just like that, my friend was gone. His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again.

And do you know why? Because of his cutie mark! He got his, and I didn’t! He moved on…and I didn’t.

I never did move on from that moment. Instead, it all built up: The schoolponies teasing me for being a “blank flank”. Sunburst leaving me for the destiny his mark gave him. Mom leaving us for the big city, for the fame and glamor that her mark promised her. Dad being completely worthless, because of a mark that made him care more about books than ponies. All of my problems. They were all caused by cutie marks. Cutie marks were the cause of all misery in the world! All of it! And I alone could save equinity by removing them all!

In a hail of metaphorical lightning bolts—actually my first migraine—I gained my cutie mark, and my ability to take away the cutie marks of others.

With the Revelation spell, Starlight was able to see the two parts of her cutie mark origin story: Sunburst’s departure, and the moment she actually gained her mark.

Both of these moments had been obscured to her when they happened. She had only learned the story of how Sunburst got his mark from his mother after he had left Shire’s Hollow forever. And she had been so overwhelmed with emotion at the moment of markdom that her perception of reality had completely broken down. But now she could observe them from outside herself.

On the first pass, it all appeared to happen as she had experienced it. Including the lightning bolts.

This…was strange. She got up, walked over to the bench, and got to work on diagnostics. She wished that Double Diamond hadn’t left, so that she could use him as a second data point. But the spell’s effects were definitely 1.0 relative to Equestrian reality. The lightning bolts striking her noggin were real.

She laid back down again, summoned up the viewing window, and watched that part again. It was stormy that day, with both thunder and lightning very nearby. The other ponies had sensibly retreated to shelter, but young Starlight was too preoccupied to notice. Until the moment she was struck. There was a strange magic building at the tip of her horn…

With a shrug, the watching Starlight decided to accept it. Stranger things were known to happen. There was plenty of pegasus blood in her lineage. And pegasi were known to shrug off lightning strikes on a regular basis. No, the more-important part of Starlight’s cutie mark story was the first part, with Sunburst. So she went back to that.

(What actually happened.)

On this second viewing, Starlight no longer paid any attention to her filly self. No, her eyes were all on Sunburst. And what she saw shook her. When he saw that Starlight had been struck, he caught all the books by instinct. And then, when he saw that he was alone in the room, he changed. The emotion completely dropped out of his face, out of his eyes. Leaving absolutely nothing. He turned his attention to the cloud of floating books, and studied them with those cold, dead eyes. With an idle flick of his head, he sent them all to their allotted spaces on the shelves. He smirked in satisfaction. And then he got his cutie mark. He trotted out of my house to show his parents. And he didn’t even look at my unconscious body to see if I was dead or not. It was only later that Stellar Flare wandered into the room to look at the place where her son had gotten her mark, and saw filly me still lying there, for her to revive me and tell me what had happened. (And no, Father didn’t find me first, despite being in the next room working on one of his dissertations instead of caring for his possibly dying daughter! That stallion is worthless!)

~~I was~~ Starlight was appalled. Who was this pony? Was this who he was all along? Was being normal, was having emotions, was being my friend, were all of these a lie? Something he put on just to trick others into thinking that he was a normal, caring pony?

I went back to that frozen moment when the mask fell and I walked right up to his face, trying desperately to read this thing that I was seeing. Thanks to yesterday’s letter, I knew there was something wrong with him. I would have been ready for a sneer, a laugh of contempt. But what could I do with this?

But beyond that came the revelation: Sunburst didn’t leave me because of his cutie mark. He was always going to leave me someday. Just as he would later abandon Celestia’s school, his parents, and the rest of his life by faking his death.

Every time he cared about me was a lie. Every time he helped me, it was because my magic was better than his, and he needed me to use it for him. I was nothing more than a toy to him!

Just like I was nothing more than a fashion accessory for Mother, a miniature version of herself to walk in sync with her through the gardens of Sires Hollow, wearing a tiny version of the latest styles from Manhattan or Prance that she was wearing as well. Was she broken in the same way as Sunburst, in a way that had nothing to do with her mark, that predated it?

Was it possible that I got it all wrong? That my father, that Double Diamond, that everypony I ever helped, got their bad cutie marks not because of external forces, but as a manifestation of their own flaws?! My mark, my purpose, are worthless!!

…And that was when Starlight collapsed, struck low by another of her migraines. She was inside the cave, so this time she definitely had not been struck by a dozen lightning bolts, no matter how it had felt at the time.

Note to self: Fix first-person breaks at earliest convenience. This is a journal, not a self-indulgent diary.

3A: Chapter Starlight 1870, Part 1

Starlight did not remember waking up. She was suddenly awake. And devoid of the splitting headache that usually followed a migraine episode like she had just experienced.

Three jackals were between her and the cave entrance. Eying her warily. Seeing if it was worthwhile to attack.

She levitated herself into the air and was about to cast a boom spell to spook them when the ground shook to the sound of tartaric laughter. This caused the intruders to flee, whimpering.

It was only as Starlight returned to her hooves that she noticed that it was still nighttime outside the cave. That did not feel right. The tartaric laughter came from outside. That felt worse.

Cautiously, Starlight walked out of the cave, to see that the night sky was dominated by the enormous, faded head of a unicorn in a metal helm, her fur midnight-blue in color, with glowing cyan eyes that possessed slitted pupils, like a cat or a dragon. Her teeth were those of a predator. She was the one who was laughing, and her laughter echoed from horizon to horizon.

(A clear case of copyright infringement.)

The moon was also visible in the sky, somewhat larger than normal. But Starlight was a little too distracted at the moment to pay much attention to this fact.

When Starlight looked up at this threatening image of Evil Triumphant, her first thought was not to fear for her life or her liberty, or to wonder what horrible thing this being had just accomplished to justify that laugher. No, what she thought was this: ‘She stole my Communion spell!’

And indeed, the effect of the illusory head was clearly a variant of what Starlight had produced with her spell. She looked back at the Vault, and saw all of the cutie marks glowing, along with her own mark on her flank. This was exactly what Starlight could do with the spell, if she had a thousand times or more magical power to force into it.

“Ponies of Equestria…Heed my words!”

The pony head had stopped laughing and was now addressing her audience.

“I am Empress Nightmare Moon, your new ruler!” the disembodied head continued. “I have overthrown the former Princess Celestia and replaced her day with my eternal night!” She paused for effect.

Starlight pondered if the words of this being were entirely accurate. For one thing, that must mean that this “Nightmare Moon” was as strong, both magically and physically, as Princess Celestia—she did appear to have a semi-transparent mane like Princess Celestia, if that meant anything. And for another…

Starlight looked across the sky to gaze upon the “Mare in the Moon”. It was gone—the face on the moon had been wiped clean. So, this truly was Nightmare Moon.

She noticed that Nightmare Moon had continued speaking. “You might ask what has happened to ex-Princess Celestia. I will tell you that your Celestia is safe…for now.” The face in the sky smirked for a moment. “Her continued safety will depend on your good behavior.

“You might ask what you need to do in this new Equestrian world order that I am…have established. I will answer: very little. I do not require your worship. I just want you to stay in your homes. Continue your daily work…except it’s nightly now, so…It’s just the same, alright? Where was I…? Ah yes. Obey the laws. Pay your taxes. And don’t cause trouble.” This last sentence was growled more than spoken, her dragon eyes briefly glowing.

‘So…as powerful as Princess Celestia. But nowhere near as good at addressing crowds,’ Starlight thought to herself.

“There was a group of six ponies, led by Celestia’s personal student, who were sent by her to stop me as soon as I stepped hoof upon Equestria, bearing the most powerful and fearful artifacts known to ponykind…The Elements of Harmony. That assault failed…utterly.”

The bloodthirsty sneer upon the Empress’ lips on that last word “utterly” strongly implied to Starlight that…. But no, things like horribly unnatural deaths didn’t happen to the ponies in Celestia’s Equestria.

But then again, this wasn’t Celestia’s Equestria anymore.

“To the survivor of that attack, I have this to say: I bear no grudge towards you. Your attempt was doomed to fail. And you were all clearly manipulated into making a cowardly attack upon me with your beloved Princess hiding behind a rock while you did her dirty work.

“Come back to Canterlot. Come back to me. I will forgive you. I will find a place for you among my followers.”

Her Followers? How dare she! Oh, wait. She means followers, lower case.

There was an awkward silence as Nightmare Moon pondered what else she might want to say. She raised an ear as if hearing something that nopony else could. “Ah, yes. Farmers, I have not left you in the lurch. With my control of the moon, I can make it brighter for a few hours each night, long enough to keep your crops alive. We will call that period ‘evening’ and the true darkness ‘night’.

“There was…probably something else, but I’ve forgotten it. I’ll come back tomorrow when I remember it. Good night, and welcome to your new eternal…night.” With a disappointed scowl, the enormous face disappeared.

Starlight stood there for a while, waiting to see if anything else would happen. As she did, the moon brightened as promised, until the landscape was illuminated as much as an overcast day, despite the stars still being visible in a pitch-black sky. Then she walked back into the cave to ponder.

She noticed that her sleeping bag now had several burned holes, as if it had been struck by multiple lightning strikes. Unable to accept that conclusion, she looked up…to notice for the first time the bank of depleted mana crystals that were right overhead. They must have run right through the roof of the cave to the top side of the mountain, where they had been gathering electrical energy from every thunderstorm for the past hundred years.

Those crystals had always been there…right? Right?

3B. Chapter Starlight 1870, Part 2

3B. Chapter Starlight 1870, Part 2

Starlight thought it best to spend as little time outdoors as possible from now on, at least outdoors with nothing between her and the sky. Communion had a whole host of features that Starlight never used, because they made her feel uncomfortable. One of them was the ability to spy on any of the Followers whose cutie mark she had access to, without them ever knowing she was doing it. She could only do this if there was any feature she could focus on that was also visible to her victim, like a patch of sky.

She next cast a spell to check the time: It was two in the afternoon…if the sun had been operating on schedule. A quick peek confirmed that Empress Nightmare was keeping the moon in the same spot in the sky that was reserved for the sun.

Returning to a part of the cave complex that was definitely not observable by a sky spy, she then cast Communion on Double Diamond’s cutie mark. His head immediately appeared before her with a happy expression. “Starlight, you’re alright!”

“Of course I’m alright!” she said in a low voice calculated not to be audible outside the cave. “Is it safe for you to talk?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s safe,” he said in a mellow tone. “Nopony else here but my fellow prisoners. But hey, I was worried about you—you missed last night’s check-in, and you never miss those.”

“Never mind about that,” Starlight said with a quick shake of her head. “Why are you in prison?”

“Oh, it’s—hold on.” He turned to look to his side. “It’s Starlight. She’s checking up on me. … OK, I’ll ask her.” Looking back at Starlight, he asked, “Why are you late? Sonny wants to know.”

“Who?”

“Oh right. Smiling Sonny. He got into some legal trouble a few years ago and had to change his name. It used to be ‘Sunburst’.”

Starlight staggered back from Double Diamond’s head like she had been physically struck. “Sunburst is there with you? In prison?”

A little voice in the back of her head retorted, ‘Where else would you expect him to be, knowing what you now do about him?’

While she was composing herself, DD continued to speak. “We’ve been talking a lot about you, Sonny and I. And it turns out that you’re completely wrong about him. He told me why he couldn’t contact you after he was sent to Celestia’s School, and he told me that you will 100% believe what he has to say.”

(Smiling Sonny, as I imagine him today.)

‘Yeah,’ Starlight thought to herself in a cold panic, ‘I did believe 100% of everything he told me back then. I can’t tell him anything now.’

“He’s really interested in your equalizing spell,” Double Diamond continued. “Told me that with a little change you could use it to make anypony do whatever you wanted. Which I thought was kind of weird, but whatever.”

‘Double Diamond, what have you done?’ “Let’s…let’s reign in this conversation. You can say hello to ‘Sonny’ from me.”

“Starlight said hi. … Sonny asked—”

“Double Diamond,” Starlight interrupted with firmness. “One thing at a time. The prison—”

“But why couldn’t you call me last night?” Double Diamond interrupted, quite uncharacteristically. “Sonny really wants to know.”

‘Don’t tell him anything!’ That “anything” certainly included Revelation. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if ‘Smiling Sonny’ could use it to extract anypony’s secrets for blackmail purposes. Therefore, it was best to keep DD from even remembering that she was working on it. So instead, she said, “I have the whole Village to take care of by myself, DD. I overworked myself, and slept in.” She put on a false smile and added, “I’m sorry I didn’t contact you when I promised, but I’m here now.”

Double Diamond looked over to his side and frowned. “Sonny doesn’t seem to like that answer, but I don’t know why, it sounds just like you. Always working yourself to exhaustion for us Followers.”

Starlight quickly spoke up, before the invisible Sonny could derail the conversation again. “Where are you, Double Diamond?”

“In the royal dungeon,” he said simply.

“Did…Celestia throw you in the dungeon?” Starlight asked incredulously.

That pause was for her to think about what title to apply to Celestia. If she had been overthrown, then even calling her “princess” might be considered treason against the new ruler. And at this point Starlight didn’t know what she was up against with Empress Nightmare.

“Oh. No!” Double Diamond said with a laugh. “Can you imagine? No, it was all a misunderstanding. The throne room was filling up with the ponies that wanted to talk with Princess…” He was interrupted once again by the pony out of Starlight’s sight. “Err…ex-Princess Celestia. There was a guard and this clerk pony—white, brown mane and tail, both in a bun, black-framed glasses and a red cra…cra…that fluffy throat thingy. She—the clerk—asked me why I wanted to see the…then-Princess. And I said that I was there to end her rule.”

Starlight face-hoofed.

Double Diamond rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. “Yeah…not the best choice of words. A bunch of guards jumped me and the wrapped pineapple I was going to give her as a gift. ‘I just wanted to tell her that she never needs to rule Equestria again!’ I told them. …That didn’t go over well, either. So now I’m in the dungeon. But Sonny tells me that the new princess…empess…whatever, she doesn’t like Celestia much for some reason, and so she’ll probably be willing to listen to both of our stories.

“Yeah, Sonny was the victim of a misunderstanding as well. He was giving away these commemorative coins he had made with Celestia’s face on them and getting all kinds of stuff in return from the merchants who liked the coins so much. And he forgot to get permission to use her face first.” Once again, he looked off to the side. “What? I wasn’t supposed to tell her that? Why not? You’re just as innocent as I am!”

Starlight put up a hoof to rub the top of her muzzle and sighed deeply. “Double Diamond,” she said with enforced calmness. “I take it that you are being treated well in the dungeon?”

“Oh yes, I can’t really complain. And I’m learning so much about you from Sonny that you never told me. Like the time you snuck those records in the house from Little—”

“Double Diamond,” she repeated, trying to retain her calm. “That being the case, I will contact you on Friday afternoon…err, late evening, to see how you are doing.” That’s right, late evening. Not the standard meeting time, which would now be called moonset. She did not want to expose the rest of her Followers to Smiling Sonny, even indirectly. “Goodbye.” And she cut off the spell before he could say anything more.

She then thought things over. In considering the potential features of Communion that Starlight had not implemented, there was one that would be very useful in a suddenly uncertain new world, one that would be very useful for all of her Followers, just so long as they were nowhere near a no-good con artist like Smiling Sonny.

So, she got to work, trying to keep at bay thoughts about what the new Empress might be up to.

4. Chapter Nightmare Moon 3

Nightmare Moon had finally found the spotlight.
“And I’m never letting it go again.”

4. Chapter Nightmare Moon 3

Saturday, 26 June 1108

‘We are the masters of Equestria. We are the masters of Equestria.’

Those were the words that I whispered to Luna. Even nearing a week after our victory over the despised Celestia, she still had trouble believing it.

Having completed the subjugation of Canterlot, we were now in Manehattan. We traveled the streets in a carriage of state, and we could see the ponies outside, watching us as we passed.

Some of them were scared. More were nervous. None of them held us in contempt, like they did to Luna before she called me.

While Luna was dwelling on those memories I took over and turned to face the shadow-colored pegasus sitting uncomfortably opposite me. He was not a pony accustomed to working in anything approximating bright moonlight. His mane was black, his eyes dark blue, and his cutie mark an unlit torch dipped in bitumen.

(Portrait of Pitch, by N.M.E.)

“I appreciate what you have done for me, Pitch,” I addressed him, finally. “It would have taken a lot to have located the strikers without you.”

Pitch bowed his head as low as he could under the circumstances, spreading his wings in supplication. “Of course, Your Excellency,” he replied in his oily voice.

I wished to see him spread those wings into some mud. I laughed scornfully, causing him to tremble. “And now you expect some sort of reward, yes?”

Pitch twitched slightly but kept his head down. “I only wish to serve your cause, Your Excellency. As my father and his father did, back to the first of the Black Wings, the Black Horns and the Black Hooves.”

“Ah, you are a Noctiferian,” I said. I used my wing to lift his head. “Look upon me, Servant.” He rose to attention when he realized what the title meant. When I saw his eyes rest briefly upon my own, I lifted my left wing shoulder in the ancient signal.

Pitch noticed but failed to respond correctly.

So, yet another member of a delusional cult believing themselves to be my true Children of the Night. I sighed. “Other than hidey holes, do you know anything useful about this city?”

Pitch blinked. “The cause of the strike–”

I waved a hoof idly. “I already know that.”

“The interspecies tension—it goes beyond them.” He looked out the window, gesturing at the ponies on the streets. “Three fifths of them are pegasi and earth ponies, but unicorns own two-thirds of the businesses in the city, and the vast majority of the apartment buildings. It would be simple enough to incite rebellion.”

I laughed heartily, and within me Luna giggled.

Pitch tried to join in, and that’s when I cut him off with a glare. “We don’t want rebellion, dear Pitch. Look out that window once again, and you will see: We are in charge. We are the rule. We don’t want rebellion!” I touched his cheek with the tip of one wing, allowed him to feel a trace of my power.

He tried not to shiver in terror.

“I just gave you a measure of protection, against what is to come,” I told him. “Come to the rally tonight, and you will see. After that, you will find that my rule of this city has become neigh-absolute. You are tasked with finding those exceptions.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

I struck the roof of the carriage twice with one hoof, causing it to suddenly stop. “Get out,” I told him quietly, my eyes on the roof. “I have more respectable ponies to deal with tonight.”

I looked down to see that Luna and I were now alone.

“Excellent.”

My staff was waiting for me outside Maneway Station. They moved in, to crowd around us, but I held up a hoof to forestall them.

It was time to lower the Moon.

Once that task was complete, I pointed to the leader of a group of winded pegasi. “Lead Scout,” I addressed her.

She rushed forward, bowing low. “I bring news of the Dragon Lands,” she said in a low voice, her snout to the pavement.

“Rise,” I commanded.

She did so.

“Report.”

“They have fled, as you surmised. The entire kingdom is ready for occupation….Empress.”

“You see!” I declared loudly, looking around me. “Listen well, all those who thought a title of ‘Queen’ was sufficient for me. A queen merely rules a people. An empress rules the world! The day is drawing closer when all creatures of the world will acknowledge me as their mistress!”

My entourage applauded politely for me.

“Thank you, Lead Scout,” I said to the swift pegasus. “You fulfilled your orders in record time.”

“Do you have any further instructions for me?” she asked me, proud of her accomplishment.

“Not at present,” I told her. “Return to the home I have built for you. I will have need of your services in the future.”

The Lead Scout bowed once and turned, crouching low in preparation for launch.

“Wait!” I declared.

She stopped, turned back and faced me calmly.

I pointed to the medallion around her neck. “I will give you a choice: You may keep that and use it, knowing what that will mean. Or you can give it back to me and cherish your freedom.”

Without a thought she used a wing to remove the item and give it to me.

“Good choice,” I said with a nod. “You may go.”

Lead Scout turned and launched, flying swiftly to the east and out of sight.

“The rest of you, exchange your uniforms,” I said to the rest of the scouts. “You are to return to your old positions in Ponyville until I have further use for you.” I pointed at one of them at random, the one with an excessive mane. “Harry! You’re their captain now.”

Harry looked around him. “My name is not…” he tried to say.

I struck him down with lightning. (He’s a pegasus. I love striking pegasi down with lightning, because they always get up again afterwards.) “Don’t correct me.” I pointed to another of them. “Sandy!”

“Yes, Your Excellency!” She didn’t question her new name.

“You’re the captain now.” I sighed at the pitiful look on Harry’s face. “Give him something important to do. But you’re still in charge.”

“Yes, Your Excellency!”

They didn’t leave.

“Now get out of here!”

They did.

I turned to face the rest of my entourage, who desperately tried to look like they hadn’t been watching the show. With a roll of my eyes I pointed at my Steward, who rushed forward, bowing low. She was a white unicorn with brown mane and eyes, a pen-and-inkwell cutie mark, wearing a white collar and red cravat, and of course one of the special Moon Medallions that I had gifted to all of my functionaries. She had once been Celestia’s secretary, and now she had a similar position under me. This was because, regardless of her feelings for Celestia, she was a professional before all else. Whatever I asked of her, she delivered…eventually. Which was more than I could expect from some ponies in my administration. She stifled a yawn.

“Aw, am I keeping you up past your former mistress’ bedtime?” I teased. I began to walk down the abandoned street, and she was forced to do her best to keep up with Luna’s longer stride.

Just like Lead Scout, I knew my Steward’s name, but I chose not to use it. I felt that by giving my staff new names, that encouraged them to think only of me, instead of their former identity and loyalties.

“You’ve kept me up for the past three days,” she said curtly. “But if you won’t sleep, neither will I.”

I smiled with admiration. “That’s the spirit!” I exclaimed, bowling her over with a hearty slap of the back. “You may sleep after the rally. Now, do you have both of my speeches?”

The Steward rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t easy, summoning up two texts so incredibly at odds with each other.” Reaching back in her saddlebags, she produced the two staple-bound piles of paper.

I held the two items aloft with my magic, allowing Luna to read the rally speech while I read the strikers speech. The displeasure increased the further I read. Luna didn’t seem much happier.

“You’re missing my prompts, Steward,” I warned her with a growl.

“They were rather hard to get in. Not to mention nonsensical.”

Now I should note that the Steward and I were out of the earshot of any other pony during this conversation. She would not still be standing with her snide attitude otherwise. “I know,” I said with a smirk. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I need them.”

“Who was that?” the Steward said suddenly, looking over her shoulder. She removed a couple more packets of paper from her saddlebags. “Who put these here?”

I had in fact seen a figure slipping the packets in place, a pony I had noticed skulking around the edge of my entourage for a few days now. I took the packets out of the Steward’s grip to examine myself.

They were replacement speeches. And they precisely met our needs for this night.

The Steward walked around to look them over, and I held them low enough for her to see. “You can’t use those!” she exclaimed after a few moments of perusal.

“Why not?” I challenged her lightly. “They’re brilliant.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Too brilliant.”

“Which is exactly what I asked for. They needed to attract attention in precisely the way I instructed you. I’m using them.” Luna eagerly agreed with me for the speech she had reviewed. I flipped both packets to the last pages, which each bore the same illegible signature. I raised my voice. “Thank you, Smudge, for these excellent speeches. You may consider yourself my official speechwriter from now on.” I winged over Lead Steward’s former Moon Medallion. “Get this to her at your earliest convenience.”

The Steward pinched her lips shut, biting back an almost-certainly offensive remark.

“There, there,” I said, patting her withers patronizingly.

“This is payback for not having your victory speech ready on time, isn’t it?” she asked.

I nodded. “That, and I realized that our mystery Smudge needed a job. Now you’ll have more time to water the lavender in the palace.”

The Steward bowed her head in defeat. “Yes, Your Excellency.”

I dismissed her and summoned a hoofkerchief to clear my sinuses. The weather of this city did not agree with us.

I then summoned up my Vizier, another unicorn. She could best be described as perpetually nervous. I lifted up her Medallion with my hoof. “You’ve used this today,” I said. I then cast the spell to read the Medallion and had a brief vision of her using it to convince a trouble-making young earth pony to leave the area just before I arrived. “This is acceptable,” I said, causing the glow to disappear. “Now the Lead Scout—I saw you staring at her out of the corner of my eye. Do you know her?”

The Vizier thought for a moment. “No,” she said in complete sincerity. “I heard you speaking of her a couple of days ago, and I was curious what she looked like. That was all. Should I have recognized her?”

“No,” I said. “Now let’s get this over with.”

The Vizier merely nodded. She produced a wooden box from her saddlebags but stopped before she opened it. “Are you sure about this?” she asked. Nervously.

“Don’t make me lose my patience,” I warned her as I removed our regalia. “The strikers hate all unicorns. They will never listen to me unless I do this. I promise I won’t smite you…tonight.”

The Vizier opened the foil-lined box, and we both had to blink back tears from the sudden effect.

For a moment I saw her foolishly try to lift the thing inside with her magic, before using a mouth grabber to pick up the ring. It was the same color as Pitch’s mane, with a jagged outer circumference pierced through with small holes that nevertheless did nothing to diminish the object’s imperviousness.

I bowed down before her, presenting my horn, and giving her a bemused look.

Quickly, she shoved the ring down my horn, stopping a third of the way down. I felt the magic of my horn flicker and die out.

I looked my Vizier in the eye, my neck outstretched before her. At that moment, with the spells I knew that she knew, she could have ended my reign in an instant, and we both knew it.

She trembled and turned away. Coward.

I stood up as she started to walk away. “Halt,” I ordered her.

“Yes?” she asked, turning her head.

I gestured to Smudge’s strike speech on the ground. “Hold that up,” I told her. “I still need to memorize it.”

With a resigned sigh, she took up her new job as my book stand.

We—Luna and I—made our way through the empty maneway station and down a level to the boarding platform for the F line to Bronklyn. We then hopped straight down onto the tracks. The level of desertion was due to the strikers turning off the magical charge to the third rail. (That was how the Vizier explained it to us.) We followed Pitch’s directions, walking a couple of kilostrides down the tracks, before entering a service tunnel.

We nearly fell over on one of the turns. The horn ring, perhaps? But no, our health has been steadily declining ever since our triumph in Canterlot, and neither of us know the reason why. The Steward has heard of a healer zebra living in the Everfree…perhaps we should seek her out.

Luna entertained me with some singing in our head. She is quite good…a pity that she never sang in public.

We were being watched the whole way, of course.

As soon as we turned into the service tunnel, our trackers suddenly showed themselves.

“I am unarmed,” I told them simply.

One of the earth ponies scoffed. “No pony with a horn is unarmed,” Scoffer told me.

“Do you feel any magic?” I asked them. “This deep underground, surrounded only by fellow earth ponies, pegasi…” My eye caught a scurrying shape. “…And rats, you’d be able to feel any unicorn’s resting magic. Yet you feel nothing.” I pointed at the ring. “Do you know what this is?”

A pegasus with glasses leaned forward to take a look, touching it gingerly with a wingtip and recoiling at the sudden drain he felt. “Meteoric iron,” he told the others. “They use them on Rycken’s Island to keep the unicorns from breaking out. Once you’ve got one of those on, there’s no way you can use your magic to take it off.”

“You know who I am,” I told them. “I want to help you settle with Management.”

Scoffer barked out a laugh. “Whose side are you on?”

“If I was with Management,” I told them coldly, “I would have tossed down enough smoke bombs to force you out, then sent you all to Ryckens.”

They could not refute my logic.

After allowing myself to be blindfolded (for all the good it would do), I allowed the scouting party to lead me straight to their headquarters, the abandoned station in Whinnyamsburg.

The blindfold was removed, and I found myself facing the entire crowd of strikers, all two hundred of them.

“The Empress! In our power!”

It was One-Eyed Pete, the leader of the Underground Strike.

“She says she wants to settle with Management!” Scoffer cried.

“Settle?” Pete exclaimed incredulously. “After what they did to us?”

“Indeed!” I exclaimed, segueing into the speech. “After what they did to you! They gave their word to look after you all and then held back your pay unless you agreed to a lower salary.”

“Yeah!” the strikers cried in unison, already falling under a spell that had nothing to do with my horn.

“You know what the ponies are saying on the surface?” I asked them. “Nothing! Because the pony who was truly in charge told the papers to keep this story buried. And do you know who that pony was?”

“Who?” the strikers replied.

“Celestia! Celestia loved nothing more than bits and would do anything to make the rich pony richer, and the poor pony poorer. Celestia owns the world, but she doesn’t own us!

Celestia may crack the whip, but she won’t whip us!
And the world will know
And the world will learn
And the world will wonder how we made the tables turn.
And the world will see
That we had to choose
That the things we do today will be tomorrow’s news.”

The strikers took up the song, as if they already knew the words.

“Who is our enemy?” I asked after a couple more verses.

“Celestia!” they cried.

“And who have I vanquished?”

“Celestia!”

“So now you are free! Return to your work, and your raises will follow!”

“Hurrah!” they all cried. They rushed around me, removed the ring, and led me laughing and singing all the way back to Maneway Station.

The Steward watched incredulously as the strikers emerged from the double doors, making their way to the nearest bar.

They would gather at the spot I told them of, in a half-hour’s time.

“The strike is over,” I told her.

“That speech worked?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Of course,” I told her. “It was written by a genius.”

“Yes,” she said absently. “It belongs on Bridleway. Both of them.”

My Vizier helped me into a smart business suit as the carriage crossed town, to Madison Mare Garden. There was the venue for my second speech, and my audience for this one was made up of every single fat-cat unicorn business pony that the strikers hated with a passion.

I stood in the wings, dabbing at my running nose with my hoofkerchief. Eventually I saw blood upon it and had to cast a spell upon myself to staunch the flow of blood.

What was happening to me?

“Mares and Gentlestallions,” the owner of the Garden said as she introduced me, “when the new ruler of Equestria asked for the opportunity to address the ruling class of Manehattan, how was I to say no? So here she is to inform us of our place in her new Equestrian order: the one, the only, Empress Nightmare Moon!”

Having gathered myself and put on a mask of utmost poise, I stepped up the stage with Smudge’s next speech prepared. After using my wings to fade the sycophantic applause, I began. “Madame Cromulent, I appreciate the opportunity to address the better class of ponies in this fine city. You may all call me Nightmare. Empress Nightmare. Now, I could speak of an airy future, but I won’t pull the wool over your eyes.” I began to stride back and forth on the stage, punctuating my points with wing points. “I am not here to indulge in fantasy but in political and economic reality. You all know that I am a pony of the past. And I have to say that, compared to the Equestria I remember, the Equestria of today is a second-rate power!”

“Yeah!” the crowd of executives cried, as my spell once again began to take hold.

“In my day, Equestria didn’t bow down to some lousy dragon lord because one of his dragons set fire to one of our buildings! Equestria used to be a top military power. And a top economic power. The other nations bought our goods, at premium prices, because if they didn’t they would get a visit from our elite royal guard! What are the royal guard today? A bunch of ceremonial ornaments! Celestia had run this country into the ground, following the law of survival of the unfittest. Well in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated!”

“Yeah!” Talk of firings. That always roused Management up.

“The ponies out there,” and I pointed down, at the Underground, “they all think that I’m here to gobble them up, like the lies Celestia spread about me through Nightmare Night.” I put a hoof humbly to my chest. “I am not a gobbler of ponies,” I told them. “I am a liberator of them!

“The point is, mares and gentlestallions, that greed, for lack of a better term, is good.”

The businessponies nearly fell over themselves in delight at hearing their deepest sin raised up as a virtue.

“Greed is right, greed works. Greed, in all its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge has marked the upward surge of ponykind. Not the miserable ‘friendship’ of Celestia. There is no gain in friendship, no profit. No greed. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Manehattan from the strikers, but that other malfunctioning corporation called Equestria. Thank you.”

“Hail Empress Nightmare! Hail Empress Nightmare!”

With a humble bow, I walked down from the stage and down the aisle, ponies applauding me on either side.

Seeing the owner of the Underground Maneway sitting in the back row, I gestured for him to join me in the mezzanine. “Mister Pullet.”

“Yes, Empress?” he asked as he reached my side.

“This strike really needs to end now, Mister Pullet,” I told him. “It’s interfering with intercivic commerce, and as you know that gives me the legal authority to take Manehattan Maneway away from you, with no compensation required.”

“No!”

“Do not worry. I’ve been speaking with the strikers, and I got them to agree to a five percent pay increase. They are waiting outside the doors right now, Mister Pullet. Go out there and give them this concession, and in one month’s time I will provide you with enough magical artifacts to put them out on the street.”

“You…you’d do that for me?”

“I’m a fellow businesspony, Mister Pullet. Plus, it will be good for my magical contractors. My Steward over there will be supplying you with all of the necessary paperwork.”

“Thank you, thank you Empress Nightmare. Both for this, and for delivering us from that awful Celestia.”

“You’re welcome,” I told him graciously. And then directed him towards the doors, where my Steward was waiting. And where the mob might just tear him limb from limb if he failed to placate him.

Either way, it was no longer my problem.

What was our problem, however, was Prince Blueblood. He was blocking our way out of the arena, practically vibrating in place with excitement. “Aunty Nightmare! Your speech was so good! Yet another triumph of persuasion!”

We stood there, saying nothing and hoping he would take the hint and leave.

He didn’t. “I wanted to show you something. Look!” He turned aside to reveal the jumpsuit he was wearing, decorated with large loops of reinforced fabric running from shoulders to haunches, and a parachute on his back. Huge versions of his cutie mark were across his chest and on the back of the parachute pack.

“Have you taken up skydiving, Nephew?” we asked.

“No, better. I’m an air commando!”

“…A what?”

“It’s something I’ve always dreamed about. But Aunt Celestia kept standing in my way. Blabbering on about endangering pony lives. Like that matters compared to the call to adventure!” He gestured dramatically into the air with one hoof.

Then he looked around him in annoyance and gestured to two muscular white pegasi royal guards that were standing behind him. “Bruno! Kirby!” he hissed, arm still outstretched. “That’s your cue!”

With matching bored expressions, the two pegasi stepped forwards and spread their wings, completing the dramatic tableau. “That’s not our names,” the one on the left told him.

“I don’t care!” he said in a sing-song voice.

How rude.

We sighed deeply. “That’s nice, Dear. Now could you go off and be heroic somewhere else? Aunty’s still got work to do.”

“Will do,” Blueblood said enthusiastically. Pointing upwards, he cried, “Carriers, to the skies!”

The two pegasi looked up and saw the skylight. They grabbed ahold of his two straps, and launched themselves right through that skylight, causing glass to fall down everywhere.

With a bored expression, we used a shield spell to keep anypony from getting hurt.

“Don’t worry, everypony! I’m perfectly fine!” the distant voice of Blueblood could be heard, before he was whisked out of sight.

On exiting Madison Mare Garden, I saw Pitch waiting for me in a nearby alley. So, I cast a Don’t Notice Me spell upon myself and joined him.

“I’m sorry if you saw that business with my nephew. He’s an idiot,” I explained. I took off my tacky business suit and donned my regalia.

“He’s nobility,” Pitch remarked. “Of course he’s an idiot.”

“So, did you see the show?”

“Yeah, I saw it and let me say this: That was insane. It didn’t even look like a spell. Did you brainwash them?”

“I merely re-wrote their memories to make them hate Celestia.”

“So, they’re not your slaves now?”

“Oh, I wish!” I exclaimed. “No, I can only do that with individuals. And even then, it has some unpleasant side effects.”

“Like what?” Pitch asked.

“Like Prince Blueblood. He was the first time I cast the spell in the modern era, and in breaking his will I apparently also removed his inhibitions. There…there was a perfect version of the spell, but unfortunately its creator was driven mad before I could get it out of her.”

“Still…Making everypony hate the ex-Princess will be enough to get you everything you want, right?”

“Life is but a dream,” I told him with a smile. “It’s good to be the dreamer. Now tell me: what do you think of my rule so far?”

“Well,” said Pitch, thinking. “Most ponies are wary of you.”

“I will accept that,” I said, conveying Luna’s thought. She would have preferred to be loved, but she could accept wariness.

“And you use that memory-altering power of yours on the movers and shakers during your rallies. Like the rally in Canterlot. You plan to do those for every city?”

I nodded indulgently. “And some of the more influential towns as well.”

“And then there’s those medallions your inner circle wears.”

I smiled, seeing that Pitch was clearly interested. “The Moon Medallion,” I said. “Do you know what they do?”

“Well, I kept my distance when I saw one of your ponies using it, but it seemed to change ponies' minds.”

“Exactly,” I said with a sinister smile. “My followers can use them to make any pony in earshot think whatever they want them to think.” I didn’t tell him of the limitations: that the implanted thoughts couldn’t lead to physical harm of either the victim or anypony else. And that those thoughts only last as long as the victim is in earshot of the wearer of the medallion, afterwards fading away so the victim doesn’t realize that she was manipulated.

Pitch stroked his chin appreciatively. “Can I get one of those?” he asked cautiously.

“I don’t know,” I said with a smirk. “Each Medallion stores a complete record of every time it is used. A record that I can then review. Do you think you could stop yourself from using it for your own personal gain?”

Pitch blanched. His entire lifestyle revolved around getting away with any- and everything.

I laughed. “I didn’t think so. No Moon Medallion for you.”

“That…that’s alright. So…the rallies. The Medallions. The ‘personal treatment’. It’s an entire government based on brainwashing.” He shook his head incredulously.

“Do you have a problem with that?” I asked.

I knew that Luna didn’t have a problem. Her misery had come from ponies turning against her, siding with her sister. If she could not convince ponies to love her, then she was fine with manipulatingthem into loving her.

“No, it’s brilliant,” said Pitch. And then he had a new thought, one that read my own mind. “And picking that one lie to put into their heads at the rally, that Celestia was an awful pony. It’s perfect. Everypony already thought of her as all-powerful. So she could easily be responsible for every single misery in their lives. You don’t have to force ponies to love you after they buy that lie, because it comes automatically: You toppled the evil Celestia. Therefore, you are their messiah.”

“You left out one last part,” I prompted him.

“Ah yes, the ‘personal touch’. The only tool where you can force your victim to do absolutely anything, no matter how abhorrent. You save that for the ponies who fall through the net: the ones who aren’t happy letting things be, who aren’t affected by the rallies, and who catch the lies told by your followers. They have a strong will, perhaps? Would…if I wasn’t under your protection, would I…?”

“You’d believe my lies instantly,” I told him coldly. Then comforted him with some wisdom: “I can’t allow any strong-willed ponies in my administration, Pitch. There is only one pony running Equestria. There can be no question of this. I value you for many qualities, Pitch. But that is not among them.

“Having divined my master plan, where do you think you are best able to serve me?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, pulling out a notepad. “Right now, my job is to help you identify which ponies fell through the net. At the rally just now, I noticed that there were some ponies who weren’t affected.”

“I counted five,” I replied.

“Yes, five,” Pitch said, consulting his notes before winging them over to me. “Here are their coloration and cutie marks. Except for the one blank flank. A yellow earth pony filly who was there with her aunt and uncle. But she’s got a distinctive pink bow in her mane, so she shouldn’t be any trouble to track down.”

“Don’t bother with the filly,” I told him. “There’s always at least one at each of my rallies who’s immune. Nopony listens to foals—not in my time, and not now.” I looked over the list. “Very good!” I exclaimed, both for this and his earlier analysis. “I think I’ll convince a couple of executives that they owe their lives to you. Do with them as you will.”

“Really? Thank you, Your Excellency.”

Pitch had a really good abject bow. We found it to be one of his best traits.

Then I took a look at those notes and saw something I really didn’t like.

A few minutes later I was showing Pitch’s list to my Vizier. “You see these two marks?”

“The gray equals signs?” she asked.

“Both ponies had the same mark, and they were identical. Do you recognize it?”

“No. Should I?”

I shook my head in disappointment, causing her to wilt. Typical.

“That mark is illegal,” I told her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Let’s just say that these two ponies are going to be graced by a personal appearance by the Empress.”

5. Chapter Starlight 1872

Friday, July 2, 1108

The jackals from a week and a half earlier had only been the beginning. More and more creatures could be spotted roaming the countryside during the nighttime hours, forcing Starlight to improvise traps and startle mechanisms to keep them at bay while she slept.

Double Diamond’s skiing mark had compelled him to roam the snowy wastes of the north, seeking the ultimate hill. He had had to fend for himself back then, so he was very good at dealing with wild animals and monsters. In his earliest days with Starlight, before she removed his mark, he was the monster wrangler for the pair, keeping Starlight safe while they built The Village, while they were fleeing from angry mobs who rejected her doctrine, and while they slowly recruited those first few Followers. He had done such a good job that after Starlight had removed his mark, and his ability to protect the village, there was very little that Starlight had to do to keep The Village safe. So little that she could do it late at night under the Mare in the Moon, with her Followers completely unaware of the magic that she wielded to keep them safe. But all of those protections had become undone.

On Tuesday she had discovered a half-dozen giant lizards living in one of the cottages that she had to chase out. She had been cornered by eight giant spitting cobras on Wednesday. And only just managed to deal with a cockatrice on Thursday.

Nightmare Moon had put her head out in the sky a few more times, but it was never to address the actual problems the ponies were facing under her. She told the ponies an obvious fable about being Celestia’s best friend a thousand years ago, and being “betrayed for friendship”—whatever that meant—to be banished to the Moon. She would be visiting more cities after Manehattan, “to solve their problems”. And she would not tolerate anypony harming her “creatures of the night”.

Equestria under Empress Nightmare Moon was going to pot. And it wasn’t just the creatures. On Thursday evening’s trip to Trottingham, Starlight caught up on the news out of Manehattan: the city had managed to become just as insanely anti-Celestia as Canterlot had become the week before.

Starlight had never heard stories about the former princess like she was hearing now. Stories of corruption and betrayal on an unimaginable scale: the fall of Hollow Shades was now being laid squarely at her hooves.

Starlight had never been unreservedly enthusiastic about Celestia’s rule. She saw her as being a part of an entire system that kept ponies from thinking there was an alternative to cutie marks.

Well…that was back when cutie marks mattered. Starlight had still not completely decided who she was now that she knew the truth about her own mark. So, she had even less reason to think badly of the ex-princess.

Starlight’s Communion call with Double Diamond was quick. She determined that his situation was unchanged, and she disconnected when Smiling Sonny started prodding him to ask her more and more revealing questions.

This was followed a couple of hours later with the Friday night call with the rest of the Followers. Only they weren’t all there.

“Where are Amethyst Gleam and Coral Shine?” Starlight asked.

“I tried to meet up with them for a lunch date today,” said Dane Tee Dove, “but I saw the Night Guard searching their place, so I got out of there before I was spotted.” Dane Tee looked worried—a rare state for her.

“You haven’t received your paging stone yet?” Starlight asked.

“No,” said Dane Tee.

“Paging stone? What’s that?” asked Berry Preppy. “Was that in last week’s meeting?”

“Starlight’s found a way for us to magically tell her that we want her to Commune with us,” explained Lyrica Lilac. “She sent them as fake souvenirs from the Manehattan Maneway, so nopony will suspect anything. Each stone is magically attuned to our cutie mark in the vault. That’s how they work.”

“Oh, that thing?” Berry asked. “It felt funny when I picked it up, so I threw it away. Let me go dig it out of the trash.” And then her head started moving around in disorienting directions, so Starlight disconnected her.

“Has anypony else gotten their stone yet?” Starlight asked.

Nopony else had. Eventually Berry used her stone to get re-connected again, thereby proving that they worked.

“With that settled, I’m going to try to contact Amethyst and Coral again,” Starlight said cautiously. She focused all of her magical energy into the spell…

“Starlight!”

It was Coral. She looked awful, with mascara running down her face and her coat matted with sweat.

“She’s after me! The Empress herself is leading all of these really scary ponies, looking for Amethyst and me. We had to split up—they might have gotten her, I don’t know. What do I do, Starlight? What do I do?”

“Dane Tee!” Starlight exclaimed. “Are you still in Manehattan?”

“Yeah,” said Dane Tee. She was shaken, like all of the others, at seeing what their friend had been reduced to. “But I’m no hero.”

The other Followers were meanwhile trying to calm the hysterical Coral Shine in low voices.

“I can’t possibly get to her in time,” Starlight told Dane Tee. “It will have to be you. Coral, tell us where the nearest Maneway station is.”

“Bridleway,” Coral said, already considerably calmed at seeing Starlight take control of the situation.

“OK. Dane Tee, when do the shows on Bridleway typically end?”

“Around 8?”

“Great.” Starlight smiled reassuringly. “Coral, you’ll be able to blend into the crowds entering the station. Dane Tee, you’ll be waiting for her at the entrance, and then—”

Coral suddenly screamed, looking behind her. The sound became distorted, and then the stucco wall behind her became visible, and she was shoved out of frame.

Which should be impossible, because the Commune spell was centered on the subject, not any one point in space.

And into that space strode Empress Nightmare Moon.

The Followers screamed in unison. Several of them tried to terminate the call but were horrified to discover that they could not.

(A rather nasty surprise.)

“Ah, Starlight Glimmer,” Nightmare Moon said with a victorious purr. “We meet at last. You don’t look as good as your picture.” She floated into view a small portrait of Starlight, one that Starlight knew that several of her followers kept on their nightstands, to her mild disapproval.

Starlight’s eyes sparked with barely suppressed outrage. “Your Excellency,” she said, bowing as required by protocol. “It is an honor to be in your presence. May I ask what you have done with my friends Amethyst Gleam and Coral Shine?”

“Oh, they’re fine! See?” She used her magic around Coral’s mane to yank her violently into view. “I just wanted to befriend them, and they ran from me for no reason. Isn’t that right?!” She roared the question into Coral’s face.

Coral, now being held floating by Nightmare Moon’s magic, sometimes in view, sometimes not, was too frozen with fear to respond.

Nightmare then used her magic to nod Coral’s head for her.

“See?” the Nightmare asked with false cheer. “Just a misunderstanding. I wanted to discuss cutie marks with her. That’s how ponies introduce each other in the Twelfth Century, yes? By comparing cutie mark stories?” She hovered Coral’s flank into view, pointedly tapping on her cutie mark a few times with a hoof.

Coral raised her head back into frame, begging Starlight with her eyes not to tell her the truth.

Starlight sighed, considering it useless to lie at this point. “I gave her that mark,” she said.

“Did you?” the Nightmare asked. It was clear from her demeanor that she did indeed already know that Coral’s mark was artificial. “How interesting! You used a spell, yes?”

Starlight tried desperately to figure out a way she could sell the lie of using an artifact, but with Coral right there in front of her, there was no way that the Empress wouldn’t be able to rip that information right out of her head. “…Yes, it’s a spell of mine. The Equalization Spell.”

The Nightmare nodded agreeably. “Well, you see, there’s only one problem—that spell belongs to me.” Her mood soured on that last phrase. “It’s my ‘personal treatment’ spell. It was developed a thousand years ago for my personal use. Not yours. Mine.

“Now according to what Amethyst told me you haven’t even been using that spell to its full potential. You do know what ‘Equalization’ is actually for, don’t you?” The Nightmare turned and looked around at all of the other Followers. “Do any of you in the class know? Hmm?”

The other Followers looked back and forth at each other in confusion, then over at Starlight, who stared impassively at the Empress.

“None of you? It’s meant for mind control. I mean, it should be glaringly obvious: Cutie marks are engines of destiny. Change a cutie mark, and you change a pony’s destiny. Become a happy Follower of Miss Starlight Glimmer. Or become a part of my slave army. It really doesn’t make any difference. Whatever the caster wants, that’s what she gets. And making them your slaves is ever so much easier to maintain. It’s the lowest common denominator command, after all. Now are you sure that she’s never taken over your minds? Even once?”

The Followers looked uncomfortably around themselves.

“I…I never!” Starlight protested.

“Well, you do like forcing Berry to shut up after she’s been going on for too long,” Lyrica said with reluctance.

“Actually, she’s done that to all of us,” Dane Tee added. “She really likes shutting ponies up.”

Starlight was left speechless.

The Nightmare opened her mouth to say something smug, but at that moment there was a great crash behind her, crumbling the wall she was standing against.

A pony that Starlight recognized as Prince Blueblood rose to his hooves in the rubble, a couple of half-conscious pegasi falling off of his back as he stood. “Don’t worry, everypony,” she said in a jovial voice. “I am unharmed!”

The Nightmare stared coldly at him. The levitating Coral in contrast was dumbfounded.

“…What?” Blueblood asked. “Are you busy?” He looked around. “You appear to be standing in a room talking to…ghost heads! You’re being haunted by ghost heads! I’ll save you, Aunty!” And then he proceeded to leap through the illusory heads, bumping Coral several times in the process.

“Ow! Ow! Quit that!” Coral cried.

The Nightmare rolled her eyes. “Nephew. Nephew. NEPHEW!”

“Yes, Aunty?”

“I have the matter well in hoof, Nephew,” she said quietly. “Please see to the wellbeing of your carriers.”

“Who?” He then looked down at the two pegasi. “Oh. Them.” He lifted them up with his magic and began carrying them out of the room, smacking Coral one last time in the process. “I’ve almost got landing down, Aunty,” his voice could be heard fading into the distance. “Three or four more tries, and I’m sure I’ll have it.”

The Nightmare waited, her face completely impassive. First she stared back through the hole in the wall, until the guards who were loitering back there caught wind of her and stepped out of view. And then at Starlight and her Followers (including Coral), who were all stifling their laughter. “Are we finished?” she asked them coldly.

“Yes. Yes,” said Starlight finally. “Now, where were we?”

“Where we were was me being the only adult in the room. Starlight Glimmer, you are tampering with very dangerous magic. Magic that I cannot just entrust to anypony.

“Therefore, I will be coming out to your ‘hippy commune’ to perform a personal inspection. All of your Followers are required to attend. I’ll be out there…” She looked back in the direction of a back room, where a distant crash could be heard. “Another skylight,” she remarked to herself. “Let’s make it in two or three days—As you can see, I have other priorities to attend to.”

The Empress looked back at Starlight. “Now, you could decide to run.” She put on a most-wicked smile. “I honestly hope you do. I haven’t had a good hunt in ages.” She bared her fangs for a moment. “And the best part will be this: when I come for you, the hounds that will be baying for your blood will be your own Followers.”

The Nightmare glanced at Coral’s levitating flank, and a cloud of blue magic briefly covered it. When the cloud cleared, the former gray equals sign had been replaced with a gray crescent moon.

“Who is it?” Coral asked eagerly, swirls in her eyes. “Who do you want me to hunt?”

The other Followers screamed again.

The Nightmare restored the former equals mark.

“Wh…what was that?” Coral asked in a shaking voice. “What were those thoughts you put in my head?”

“See?” the Nightmare asked with a disappointed shake of her head. “This spell of yours can definitely be used for bad things in the wrong hooves.” She looked Starlight in the eye as Coral was dropped out of frame with a crash and an “ow…”. “Three days. Three days before I evaluate how you’re running your little group. Three days before I start checking for criminal records. And after that, I’ll decide if you can keep running your Village, or if I will rip that spell out of your brain…along with most of your memories and personality.” She tossed off that last part like she was describing a meal that had disappointed her. And then she was back to being cheerful. “See you then!”

And that was that.

Several of the Followers began crying.

“Mares!” Starlight addressed them.

Comet Tail pouted.

“And Stallion!”

Comet Tail nodded in satisfaction.

“I know this is all horrible. But you don’t need to worry. I can break your mark plaques right now, and give you your cutie marks back.” She gestured at the Vault behind her. “Or I can destroy the marks within, making you blank flanks again. Either way, you will no longer be in danger.”

“But…but you will still be in danger, right?” asked Swan Song.

“I think it would look suspicious if you let us all go,” said Lyrica. “Make you look guilty.” She spent a moment steeling herself before she spoke again. “I’m going out there. The Empress already knows about me. If she wanted, she could hunt me down like she did Amethyst and Coral, with or without this equals mark. Prepare my cabin.”

“Y…yeah!” exclaimed Dane Tee. “I’m going too! I was really going to carry out that plan of yours to save Coral, so I’m absolutely going to head out there and save you!”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Comet. “I’m packing right now.”

“I’ll be on the train tonight!” said Swan Song. “Only my dad’s trains don’t run at night—they’re still not used to having no moon to see by yet. So…I’ll take the first train tomorrow evening!”

Berry sighed. “Fine…” she whined. “It looks like we have no choice. Starlight, could you make up my cabin, too? Um…and should I bring my rock?”

Once the Communion spell had ended, Starlight collapsed to the floor, and all of her emotions flooded through her.

How could I know it was a mind control spell? Was that what I wanted when I got my mark: to make ponies stop hurting me by forcing them to do what I want? What does that say about me?

…Wow, that was incredibly narcissistic. I just saw poor Coral being tortured, and who knows what the Empress did to Amethyst to learn everything she knew about me, and I’m focused on how all this reflects on my character?

I’ve got to get a hold of myself.

Now, what do I do? How do I possibly prepare for a confrontation with the being who overthrew Celestia and her hoof-chosen band of champions?

And then Starlight remembered Nightmare Moon’s words from that first speech: She said there was a survivor. As in “one”. What did she do to the rest of them?

Starlight walked out of the cave and surveyed The Village in the fading light. She realized that there really wasn’t anything she could do at that moment, except tell Double Diamond what was going on.

He has a criminal record. As much as he would hate it, I have to destroy his plaque. Tonight.

She went back into the cave and re-cast the Communion spell on his cutie mark plaque.

She couldn’t find him.

Her blood went cold. What had Nightmare Moon done to him?

She broke his plaque. The glass fractured, but the mark remained floating in the air. She tried to destroy the mark, but something was keeping it from being affected—something that had never happened before. Fearfully, she grabbed the mark with her magic and placed it inside another pane of glass.

What did that mean? He wasn’t dead. But what he actually was, Starlight didn’t know. Knowing Nightmare Moon, he was probably being tortured.

Starlight stumbled out of the cave in a daze. She realized that she had failed to protect three of her Followers tonight, including her oldest friend.

Was he her friend? He annoyed her a lot. He wasn’t very bright. But he had always been there for her. Right from the beginning. And right through to the end. And he certainly didn’t deserve whatever horror the Empress was subjecting him to at that very moment.

It seemed insane to think it, but she hoped that Smiling Sonny would avenge Double Diamond.

She sat down on the edge of the cliff. The moon had definitely set, leaving the landscape in pitch blackness. She was still illuminated, however, by the light emitted by the Vault behind her. After a few moments, she got back up. Instinctually, she pulled a lantern to her side and lit it. A few minutes later she had loaded her belongings onto the cart and prepared to pull everything back to her cabin.

That’s when she saw it, a lone light making its way towards The Village from the road leading into the countryside.

It was a pony, probably coming to have their cutie mark removed.

Starlight groaned in emotional agony. She no longer believed in her former mission. And Equalization under Nightmare Moon had just become worse than a death sentence. At all costs she had to convince this pony to turn around and return to civilization, before it was too late.

So, she picked up her lantern and—

(The entry abruptly terminates at this point.)

6. Chapter Pinkamena 1

She was running from the spotlight. Running from herself.
“And I can never escape.”

Hi, Alan the Human here, with the long-awaited next chapter of my fanfic “Pinkie Pie”, complete with illustrations by my usual collaborator. I know, it’s been six months. A long time to wait. But I really wrote myself into a corner last chapter, and it took this long for my muse to come back to me. It’s…a strange chapter, even stranger than the earlier ones. Normally I’d have my editor “de-strange” it like she usually does, but a number of you were really enthusiastic with the rough draft I linked last time around, so I guess I’ll let you all read this one as it came to me, at least until next week when Straddy comes back from vacation. So, um…don’t be too rough on it.

6. Chapter Pinkie Pie Pinkamena 1

Friday Night, July 2, 1108

On a barren rocky salt flat more than a hundred miles northeast of Ponyville, a narrow path twisted its way through the darkness, illuminated only by the light of a small lantern resting on the back of a pink earth pony. This pony trudged her way along the path in sullen silence. With every step forward, she seemed to get more and more tense.

The source of her tension must have been the large wooden sign she was approaching, supported on two posts, located on the side of the path. The traveler stopped when there was enough light to read it. “STARLIGHT,” the sign proclaimed, “Village of the Markless.”

The pink pony stopped before the sign. But this was not the bright pink party pony with the cotton candy mane and tail that we know and love, although she bore a cutie mark of three balloons. The pony looked like that pony if the lantern utterly failed to illuminate her, like she was a pony of the shadows. And her mane and tail were flat.

“I am not her,” the pony proclaimed to the sign in a low voice. “I am Pinkamena Diane Pie, and I think you know why I am here.”

“Well, I think I can make a pretty good guess,” said the tired voice of an older pony as she emerged from behind the sign.

Pinkamena squeaked in shock. She looked around for somewhere to hide, ending up on the other side of the sign.

I don’t know why she was shocked. The newcomer had a lantern on her own back and had been walking this way for several minutes.

Pinkamena growled at the sign in annoyance, then put a hoof over her mouth to try and be quiet. She then cautiously peeked around the sign at the other pony.

“Huh,” that pony said to herself. She had assumed that the pink pony was aware of her approach. Because otherwise she was talking to the… She looked suspiciously at the sign. She then gave an appraising look into the eyes peeking at her, causing another squeak as the pony ducked back behind the sign. In that brief moment of eye contact, she had noticed a complete lack of recognition in Pinkamena’s eyes, despite the fact that the visitor was here to see her.

“Hm?” asked Pinkamena, taking another peak at the other pony.

She was a unicorn, with a pinkish-purple coat with a purple mane and tail with a cyan stripe down the middle. The mane was cut straight in front, parted around the horn, and curled away from her head like the curve of a question mark, the tail curving in the exact same way. She had a similarly curving cutie mark, of a purple and white star descending along a turquoise and cyan trail. This was Starlight Glimmer, the mayor of The Village.

‘Is that “Miss”, “Mrs.”, or “Ms.”?’ Pinkamena wondered to herself as she peeked out.

Ms.

“M…Ms. Glimmer. I…I’m glad to have finally met you,” Pinkamena stammered, bowing her head slightly at the end.

That was too much eye contact for her, because she ducked back behind the sign. A moment later she had gathered the nerve to speak to Starlight without the eye contact. “I am here for you to remove my cutie mark. That’s what you do, right?” She put on a secret smile at the sign as she said this.

Wait, she’s removing her cutie mark? You can do that?

‘She can. And I am.’

“Yes,” answered Starlight in a resigned tone, “I suppose that is what I do.” She then resumed her attempt to figure out who the visitor was actually talking to at the beginning of their encounter. Unable to figure this mystery out, she finally put on a friendly smile and held out a hoof in welcome, half expecting that the gesture would never be reciprocated. “Welcome to my village. What’s your name?”

She heard a bout of heavy breathing. “Calm down, calm down,” Starlight heard the pink pony say to herself. “She’s not going to eat you. She’s not going to eat you.”

Starlight idly reached a hoof up to her mouth to check if she had grown fangs in the last few hours. She had a couple of brilliant witticisms she could have delivered at that moment but decided instead to remain silent as she put her hoof back down.

The younger pony slowly edged herself around the sign. “Pinkamena,” she said finally. “Pinkamena Diane Pie.”

Starlight looked her over, seeing that she was a teenage filly. (Since when?) The top of her head was level with Starlight’s eyeline, and she was rather on the wiry side in her physique.

Pinkamena Diane Pie. It was a curious name, Starlight reflected. Other than “Pie”, neither “Pinkamena” nor “Diane” appeared to have an obvious meaning, like the majority of pony names. She couldn’t picture a “pinkamena diane pie” like she could picture a “starlight glimmer” or a “double diamond” (ski course).

That last thought made her sad, for reasons of backstory that I’ll reveal if I ever write a solo story about this original character.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Starlight finally said.

Pinkamena sighed in relief at not getting chewed out, either literally or metaphorically. She idly glanced over at the sign, and then curiously over at Starlight. “Um…did…did you actually name the village after yourself?” she asked. She immediately regretted asking something so provocative and ducked back behind the sign.

Starlight looked over at her name on the sign with a frown. “No,” she said.

Pinkamena’s knees shook from the tone alone.

“No, wait—I’m not mad at you. You see, I originally had no name for this village, as I thought it was unnecessary. However, the ponies of Amber Durum thought differently and made that sign for us.”

“And you’ve never thought of replacing it with one made by your villagers?”

Followers.

‘Nope, too creepy. I’m sticking to “villagers”.’

It was another provocative question, asked from the safety of the other side of the sign.

Starlight thought of the kind of sign that her Followers could make. “It’s fine,” she said with a shrug. She carefully peeked her head around to Pinkamena’s side of the sign and was gratified to not be given a startled squeak. “Now please follow me, and I’ll show you The Village.” She walked past the filly and began to descend the side of a hill towards a village made up of several parallel straight rows of identical houses, all of them apparently deserted.

Removing your cutie mark. I wonder what that would do to Pinkie?

Pinkamena waited for a few moments, then began to follow. As she saw that Starlight was not looking back at her, she put a serene smile on her face. She neither said nor thought a word the entire way to The Village.

(Yes, that’s what it’s called, with the capital letters. I really liked The Prisoner, OK?)

Inside The Village, Starlight Glimmer led Pinkamena to her house, the big one at the end of the centermost double row of houses. Taking some supplies out of a cart parked outside, she set to work, first providing illumination and then making a simple dinner for the two of them. It was a comfortable looking home, and the furnishings did much to calm Pinkamena’s nervousness towards her host.

“Go ahead and clean up,” Starlight instructed her. “The bathroom’s on the second floor.”

Pinkamena went upstairs, but instead of heading straight for the bathroom, she looked around until she found a full-length mirror in what must have been Starlight’s bedroom, then used it to get a good look at herself. She scowled at her cutie mark, then paid particular attention to her height and her face. “Too old…” she muttered to herself. Then, seeing something unusual in the reflection, she turned her head to note the extensive collection of kites hanging from hooks on the back wall. Only then did she go into the bathroom to clean up her appearance, afterwards returning to the living area.

Pinkamena looked around her, noting the paintings depicting several ponies waving towards the viewer, each of them signed by the pony depicted. All of the ponies were somewhat faded in color, rather like Pinkamena, and rather unlike the brightly coated Starlight. She also saw that all of the ponies in the portraits not only lacked normal cutie marks but instead possessed the same special mark: an equal sign, painted in dark gray. Again, Starlight was the exception with her distinct mark.

Starlight sat down at the small square dinner table, putting their food in the center. Pinkamena after a moment chose a spot next to Starlight rather than across from her. That way she could minimize the dreaded eye contact.

“I’ve made myself an expert in cutie mark problems,” Starlight told Pinkamena over the course of the meal. “In my experience, the most common problem…is…the empty striving…” She stopped herself with a sigh. “Look, I used to have a one-size-fits-all solution to cutie mark problems. My equalization process would remove the drive to be better than everypony else, the feeling of misery that came from finding that you can’t beat everypony, and the loneliness that came to those few ponies that could in fact beat everypony else and found that nopony wanted to be around them once that happened.

“But I’ve had a change of perspective. Losing your mark takes away something fundamental that makes a pony, a pony. I’m sure you have a problem. And I’m sure you think that removing your mark will fix it. But I assure you, it won’t.”

“Oh,” said Pinkamena, a spoon of lentils held in one hoof. “Is that the only reason why ponies wanted to remove their marks before?”

Starlight paused for a moment, before shrugging. “Well nowadays the most common reason is that the circumstances of the marking were so embarrassing that they wanted a second chance to get a good mark. But those are rather simple transactions for me. What would your case be like? What is troubling you?”

Pinkamena looked down at her bowl and sighed. “I’ll…I’ll tell you after dinner.” She shrunk a little as she considered how rude Starlight might see her statement. “Please?” she added.

“As you wish.” Starlight took a few more bites in silence before trying to start up the conversation again. “So, what do you do for a living?”

Pinkamena growled. A moment later she squeaked. “I…that’s part of my cutie mark problem, so I’d rather not…”

“Oh, right. Of course,” Starlight said. She waited for her guest to suggest a safe topic of conversation.

She didn’t. So, the rest of the meal was conducted in silence.

Afterwards, Pinkamena showed her appreciation by expertly cleaning the dishes.

“Alright, follow me,” Starlight said, leading Pinkamena out of her house and taking an immediate left turn to walk up to the unlocked door of the nearest house. She opened the door and gestured for the pink earth pony to enter.

Pinkamena spent a moment glancing over at the cottage opposite hers, the one that would be on the right side from the point of view of Starlight’s cottage. It had what was once a nice little herb garden in front, long since withered to the barest remains.

As for Pinkamena’s new residence, it was a rather small, one room thatched cottage, but it did the job, especially for a pony who brought so little baggage with her. She walked around the narrow space, looking out the window into the darkness for a moment before pulling a curtain to cover it. On the nightstand she placed her only possession, a framed faded photograph of her family, showing signs of ten to thirty years of aging.

Starlight had only a moment to get a look at it. There was a conservatively dressed father and three filly daughters, none of whom were Pinkamena. And, rather disconcertingly, there was a Nightmare Night symbol hanging on the wall behind them. Starlight was well familiar with the iconography of family photographs. Photography was a new technology, especially for rural families. They tended to pose rather stiffly, as they had for the portrait painters, with the parents on each side facing each other, and the children arranged in a row from oldest on the two ends to youngest in the middle, cutie marks—if any—proudly on display. And there was always a devotional symbol in the middle, most commonly a silhouette of Princess Celestia or “Celestia Bless This Home” or some favorite homily.

Pinkamena’s family choice of symbol expressed a wish for their home to be blessed by Nightmare Moon...a decade or perhaps two before she returned to Equestria.

Starlight took this all in in the time it took Pinkamena to climb up on the bed and settle herself down, sphinxlike, looking right at her. Any calm that might be assumed from the pose was belied by the nervousness of Pinkamena’s expression. Or maybe she was looking at herself in the mirror—one was mounted on the back of the door they had entered through.

Starlight shut that door behind her. “Would you like to tell me about your problems?” she asked after a pregnant pause.

“I, um…” Pinkamena looked at the family portrait, gathering her nerves. “This isn’t going to be easy for me. I always get so self-conscious wherever He…um.” She cast her eyes around her for a moment, seeming to gesture at the whole world. (Starlight had expected “he” to be a reference to the father in the portrait.) “Anyway…”

Starlight waited patiently.

“Getting my mark…changed me,” Pinkamena finally admitted.

“Well, that was kind of what I was saying earlier,” Starlight countered. “With the striving to be better than everypony else.”

“No!” Pinkamena cried, then put her hooves over her mouth in shock. “I’m sorry for that. I just mean that I changed. Into a completely different pony.” She sighed as she saw that Starlight was taking her words metaphorically rather than literally. “How old am I?” she asked Starlight. “Scan me and tell me how old I am.”

Starlight was rather taken aback. Usually, the last thing an earth pony or pegasus would allow was for a strange unicorn to cast strange spells upon them. “Alright…” Starlight asked cautiously. She started the routine spell, expecting Pinkamena to panic when she felt the beam briefly penetrate her. But Pinkamena sat patiently and waited expectantly.

“You’re twenty-four years, one month and twenty-nine days old,” Starlight said quickly, and then blinked in shock. The filly before her definitely looked younger than that. “Are you secretly a dragon?”

Pinkamena (rightly) looked at her like she had lost her mind.

“No, that’s stupid. Let me try again.” Starlight cast her spell a second time, sweeping it up and down Pinkamena’s entire body. “Your body’s that old, your cutie mark is eleven years, eleven months and ten days old, and your magic is…twelve years, two months and nineteen days old.

“But that’s impossible! A pony’s magic is born with their body—they can’t exist without it! How can you be out of sync?” She stepped forward and pulled Pinkamena’s head into a hug. “Who did this to you?”

Pinkamena trembled at the sudden contact. She pulled out of the embrace, saying, “Never mind about that—there’s nothing you can do about Him.”

Starlight caught the use of the capital “H”. “You think it was a god? There’s no such thing.”

Now it was Pinkamena who had Starlight in an embrace, wrapping her arms around one of Starlight’s. “You’re so lucky to think that,” she said. And then she realized how close she was to Starlight and suddenly scooted to the back of the bed.

With a sigh, Starlight returned to her former place. She waited for Pinkamena to return to her former pose sitting on the bed before continuing. “So, what did happen to you?”

Pinkie gestured at her mark. “Pinkie Pie happened to me.” Perhaps because she was no longer looking at Starlight, the words started to pour out of her. “If you don’t like the god explanation then it’s…I’m supposed to be a rock farmer. My whole family has been rock farmers. For generations. And I had no problem with that. It was my dream to become a rock farmer. And then I slipped up. For one tiny moment I saw a pretty light in the sky and thought of something silly…and then suddenly that’s what I became.” She looked at Starlight and was gratified that to see that this time her story was being believed.

“I, um…I became a clown,” Pinkamena said. Once again addressing her mark, she built up again. “A clown, in a family of desperate workers. We had no place for frivolity, for parties.” She spat out that last word. Literally spat it out, a few inches from Starlight’s hoof. “I was banished; my hoped-for life torn to shreds. But I couldn’t stop myself. Because Pinkie was in charge now, not me.” She pointed at the balloon mark when referring to herself in the third person. She looked up again and saw Starlight looking down at the spittle. “I’m sorry!” she cried out, jumping down from the bed. She used a fetlock to try and wipe away the stain. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sor–”

“Pinkamena!” Starlight exclaimed, pulling the other pony back up. “Get a hold of yourself.”

Pinkamena’s pupils shrank into dots. “Yes, ma’am,” she squeaked, shaking her head like a rag doll.

Starlight led Pinkamena back upon the bed. It seemed that she was most vocal in that position, and Starlight would rather hear the end of her story before midnight. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about Pinkie Pie? The pony you became when you got your cutie mark? Like what that cutie mark was for?”

Pinkamena sighed. “It was for parties. But not just for throwing them, but for knowing when to throw them. Which was all the time. She made it her life’s work to make every pony happy with parties. Whether they wanted it or not. More often than not, Pinkie just made everypony miserable.”

I…did she really think that?

“Absolutely. And now I…I have had enough. I don’t like…confrontations. But I have no choice. I may never receive the love of my family again—” a desperate glance at the photo “—but at least without this curséd mark I can finally have control over my life again.”

“Well!” Starlight proclaimed, at a loss for words. It took her a few minutes to collect herself. “First, I want you to know that I agree with you: that cutie mark has to go, and as soon as possible. It’s…unnatural. I can remove your mark, but not to give you an equals mark in exchange. I’m done with that. What I can do is to destroy your mark. Make you a blank flank again, so you can find a new destiny.”

“Yes. That is what we…what I want.”

Starlight frowned in thought. “I can’t do it until sunrise…err, moonrise tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow! But you said–”

Starlight stopped her with a raised hoof. “I need to do some research.” She looked down, tapping a hoof against her chin as she thought. “I’ll just need to pull an all-nighter, which isn’t a problem for me, as I don’t really sleep.”

Starlight failed to notice Pinkamena’s eyes go wide at this casual revelation.

Meanwhile Starlight continued her rambling. “I just need to make sure that mark removal is the best way to handle this, and to make sure that it won’t hurt you.” She then looked up at Pinkamena. “In the meantime, spend tonight thinking this through. I’d ask you to get a good night’s sleep, except that I know that there’s no chance of that.

“Make your peace with, um, Pinkie Pie. And then consider what you are going to do with your life after I remove your mark. You said you can’t go home. You could choose to live here. I do not charge rent; I only ask that you do what you can to help me and anypony else who could come to visit. Or you could leave, to seek your destiny. All…most of my markless ponies will be here in the Village in another day or two. They would all be willing to help you start over. It’s your choice to stay or to leave.”

The thought of staying in the village caused Pinkamena to glance nervously up at the ceiling, and to imagine the night sky above it. “I…I really shouldn’t stay here too long,” she admitted. “It could be dangerous…for both of us.”

Starlight scoffed. “Pinkamena, you underestimate me,” she said with a smile. “I’m more than capable of handling any problems my Followers bring with them.” ‘Even gods,’ she thought to herself with a smirk.

“Well…I suppose we might be safe for one night.”

“Excellent,” said Starlight. She used her magic to slide open the window, and then she freshened up the bedsheets. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“Goodnight, Ms. Glimmer.”

“Goodnight, Pinkamena.” And then Starlight let herself out.

…And this is where my editor will probably end the chapter.

But Starlight did not walk away. She wanted to see if Pinkamena might start monologuing again, so she stayed standing in front of the door. She wasn’t pressing her ear against that door, but she wasn’t exactly closing her ears to anything she might overhear, either.

After a few moments, she was rewarded with the angry voice of Pinkamena talking to herself drifting out of the window: “There. It’s done. Pinkie says goodbye first thing tomorrow. Your story is over.

“I want this. She wants this. And you know that she wants this. You saw everything go down at that old castle. The Elements of Harmony failed, because of her.”

OK, now Starlight’s ear was pressed tight against the door.

“Those other ponies were…you saw what Nightmare Moon did to them! Because of her idiotic prank! Nightmare Moon won…because of Pinkie Pie! Tell him, Pinkie. Tell him I’m right.”

“A…Alan? Pinkamena was right. I made a terrible mistake. Everypony is in terrible trouble, because of me. I need to go away. For good. Please…please stop writing about me.”

Starlight quickly stepped back from the door, confusion written across her face. That second voice…it could have been Pinkamena pretending to be somepony else. But it sounded…different. It sounded…magical.

This…this was big. This was the pony that Nightmare Moon was looking for. She did indeed need to leave The Village as soon as possible, considering that the Empress herself was scheduled to show up for a personal inspection of The Village in only three ~~days~~ ~~nights~~ evenings. (Ugh.)

But at the same time Pinkamena was a young mare who needed her far more than any of her Followers had for years. A pony in trouble because of her cutie mark. And nopony in Equestria understood cutie marks better than Starlight Glimmer. She had to help this strange, confused pony. Because nopony else possibly could.