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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.