Chapter 4: A pony's guide to peering into the rabbit hole, and climbing your way out.

Her disappearance wasn’t met with a shocking cry of disbelief, or the command to lock down the castle to search for the missing unicorn, instead Princess Celestia seemed relieved, and opted to continue her schedule as instructed with myself given permission to conduct a search.

“Mother likely decided to return home, wherever home is.”

With that statement my orders were now voided, but not rescinded, leaving me a limbo which by Guard Protocol defaulted to the command of the Guard Captain. Acting Captain Mockingbird’s schedule had been altered to help cover both guard shifts, creating a hybrid schedule with the thestrals reporting mid afternoon(after lunch) until past midnight when he was allowed to retire for rest. Now to cover the gap, I was given seniority over this domain with my schedule being opposite, starting around 3 in the morning until an hour after Mockingbird arrived, providing one hour of overlap.

Princess Celestia’s intent was hidden, but a well learned study. As acting authority of the day hours, that meant I was the acting authority granting myself the power to conduct my own search for the unicorn I believed still resided within Canterlot. My only reasoning for championing this belief was my quick talk with a grump Princess Luna that only confirmed she spoke with her Mother and then left to begin her Nightly Duties.

“Our buck field is barren Idol. If I could show you this pleasant field you would discover it barren, because I’m done worrying about my mother.”

She even spoke modern Equestrian instead of her usual theatrics. Yet she mentioned her mother carried on with her ‘walk’, and was last heading to the garden.

The Day Guard had finished changing with their Night Guard peers only two hours ago, and with Celestia’s subtle encouragement began looking for the unicorn. The halls were alive with activity as the maids and butlers began their chore list for the day, and it was these halls I took to avoid the more guard populated halls out of desperation, else I become bogged with desk work. My plan mostly worked. I’d made it into the gardens with only a few guards noticing me, and they only saluted with a quick slam of their forehoof into their chest plate. Word would spread I was seen here, and then it was only a matter of time before my work caught up with me.

Cersus could stay in the castle, and I found that unlikely because of her friends being awake. I would send a guard later to confirm this, but my time and lack of sleep were the enemy pushing me forward. Speaking to Topaz and the princesses about Harmony had further convinced me it was an omnipotent force, and I was finally believing that. Because my first choice of exploration solved the question of the missing Unicorn and her Deer Guards- the private gazebo. I found the deer standing in the same spot I first saw them yesterday, and like yesterday they neither spoke or stopped me entering the little maze.

Remembering the route to the center was easy enough, and following the path Luna showed me was simple, yet the difficulties started when one of the turns abruptly ended.

“Harmony and Order I couldn’t have made a mistake.” The path I remembered yesterday was different now, and retracing my steps further disoriented me when returning to the main path led me to another dead-end. “Unless this is her doing?”

I was lost, and at the mercy of the unicorn responsible for my current predicament.

Sometimes the path would be the same, but the next moment was newly fabricated, or was missing, often leading me to the very start of the maze. Seven times I greeted her Deer Escorts before making another attempt. With ever new venture into the shifting hedge maze, I began encountering certain hedges sculpted to resemble a pony, or creature I couldn’t properly identify. The further I progressed the path would reshape and loop me around until I was once again at the entrance.

I’d stopped counting by the fifteenth attempt when I made an unassuming right turn to find it lined with every hedge sculpture I’d seen till this very moment: 5 on the left, and 6 on the right. All were of ponies, primarily unicorns with the last three being the standouts. Two alicorns that clearly represented Celestia and Luna with the final nearly identical to their mother save a stockier build associated with stallions. Personal experience, and some critical thinking led me to the conclusion these were ponies their mother knew in some way, with each hedge likely serving as a tribute to their existence.

This thought made my entire reason for locating their mother complicated.

Unfortunately, I wasted too much time to abandon the mission now, so I continued forward, following the path as it began circling in on itself over and over until it ended. The glade I’d sought was now before me, but different. The missing unicorn was there standing in the clearing watching a bird species I'd never seen in the Royal Garden before, bobbing her head to its song. The avian eventually spun around in the air, and flew off toward the now missing castle wall that'd been replaced with a valley and body of water. She turned to peer my way and to my shock even smiled.

“Hello Idol.” The unicorn greeted me as I entered the new glade.

The gazebo and stone bench was missing, having been replaced with a large pond accompanied with a forest of long limbed oaks. Chirping birds imbued my ears with an unfamiliar song that suggested an entire culture lacking in the surrounding woods around Canterlot, a history perhaps older and more ancient than the Everfree or the Great Cottontail Woods. The smiling unicorn politely coughed, a signal for this idyllic glade to shift. The scene contorted itself in way that promoted a pleasant, calming feeling to bubble underneath my hooves while appearing unchanged.

Fortunately, my changeling anatomy was able to cycle this sudden influx of positivity to properly see that the unicorn was in fact not smiling. I coughed to mimic her, and possibly play the role being presented.

“Forgive my lack of manners, but this doesn’t appear to be Canterlot Castle, or anyplace I recognize.”

“I would be surprised if you did recognize this place, but you’re right, this isn’t Canterlot Castle. We’re relieving a memory of mine. A place that meant a great deal to me, but unfortunately is now lost to the seasons. This forest was the place of my birth, my death, and eventual rebirth. The exact place where I took on the original sin of the mortal race-regret. I might have succumbed to its pressures if it weren’t for my mate helping me cope. I think you call it the Frozen Wastes now.“

She was watching me now. Her eyes shined like silver bells under a moonlight that embellished her blood ties to Luna as they gleaned through my illusion, exposing me to the world around me, waiting for something. I trembled from the invasion of personal space.

“It.s..its not cold.” I managed to stutter out, earning what could be considered a laugh from the mare.

“The cold never lasted too long before spring broke the cycle. It was a sad day when Lir and I were forced to travel further south toward the lands you now call the Crystal Empire, but even then that didn’t last before the creeping cold followed. By this period a sizeable tribe of unicorns had gathered behind us who demonstrated an unusual affinity for the crystal. They remained while we fled once again, but they prospered without us.”

“By creeping cold, are you referring to the Wendigos?” I asked, confident her story was matching the timeline of the first Heartwarming. She paused her story, yet turned away from me to stare into the pool of water for a moment before she nodded.

“In my day they were called frost wraiths, but I imagine they are one in the same. We could do little then flee from their expansion back then. The old race of humanity had either adapted or died off long before this point, leaving the first pony tribes to fend for themselves. They were easy prey for the wraiths”

“Humans?”

“You don’t know about humanity?” She started but returned looking into the pool of water, this time her tone was more muted. More subdued . “Well it was so long ago that it doesn’t even matter.”

“That’s unusually cruel by pony standards, miss.”

“Amalthea. If you’re going to remain here, then please use my name for now on.”

“Noted.”

Amalthea found her resolve to leave shores of the small pond to approach, only stopping once she stood in the center of the clearing when her horn began to sparkle. The glade began acting like a dream, shimmering in and out of existence before rebuilding itself into a different shape. A different Image from the one before. Amalthea casted her gaze toward the image beyond, and watched as that expanse became a rolling plain of grasslands with several homesteads erected across vast swaths of worked land. As we watched it would periodically morph to show a sense of progression with the homesteads multiplying until the eventual foundations of a township were placed, erected, and expanded upon. It would shift again and we’ll find ourselves up in the clouds watching pegasi in various stages of motion and construction. Next we were watching unicorn’s coming together in mass to raise the sun…

“My mate and I kept our distance for a time, but one daughter of ours grew weary of our life and left to join the other disgruntled unicorns. Their magic by this time was too different from my own, and that bore certain ideas about us. They started referring to us as a King and Queen, so naturally they viewed our daughter as their Princess.”

“I can guess this wasn’t Celestia or Luna?”

“Correct. Celestia and Luna still follow this tradition to this very day. She was an older sister they’d never met, for we had many foals over our long life together. This one eventually forsaken her given name and took on the moniker of Princess Platinum, and ushered the unicorns into a period of depravity as they warred with the other tribes to establish their proclaimed superiority. Only the ancient wraiths from the now desolate north brought them down enough to work with the other tribes.”

“The Princess Platinum? The famed unicorn princess that established Equestria’s first and infamous Royal Bloodline?”

“Perhaps. I met a Blueblood here that claimed to hail from my daughter’s line. He shares our coat well enough, but nothing else. I never told my children of their former siblings before, yet its possible stories of their lineage could have persisted. Once we discovered their mortality, Lir and I agreed it was for the best to keep this secret to avoid burdening them with needless thoughts. Celestia and Luna were the only two to match our vitality.”

Motioning for me to follow, I trotted off of her right side as she began leading me toward the open plain. The openness was quickly replaced as we crossed the threshold with a mountain range puncturing through the earth trying to reach the floating clouds above; while the mountain continued growing, the ground beneath our hooves trembled with an excited glee as tree sprouts grew like grass after a rainstorm. All of this growth and transformation happening around us yielded no emotion from Amalthea.

She only stopped once the new forest springing up around us reached complete maturity, the northern spruces even swaying in the non-existent wind.

“Are we along the borders of Northern Equestria?” I asked even though the mountain range was Mnt. Canterhorn, where Canterlot was built upon. She confirmed my suspicions with a soft shake of her head.

“No. I believe this is the forest you call the Everfree. It’s where I currently call home with the company of the wonderful Deer Herd. My mate and I dwelled here for a time after Platinum’s roguish ambitions, deciding it would be better to stay away from the bickering tribes. I was expecting Celestia and Luna by then when that monster appeared…”

“Discord.” I muttered. Amalthea tensed at his name, and for that split second I believed she might have attacked me.

Instead the world around us became a discorded mess with the sky turning pink supporting yellow cotton candy clouds: the ground became a bouncy quilt with square shape patterns, trees pulling themselves out of the ground before lifting their tops made of leaves announcing their farewells before taking flight with the next gust of wind coming from the giant fan blowing in the distance. During his initial return, I was stationed in Canterlot and while his antics at the time were considered annoying, this view coincided with how Princess Luna described their first encounter with the draconequus- disruptive.

“That monster destroyed everything. Took everything from me. First my mate and eventually my daughters.”

“But Celestia and Luna are back in Canterlot, my lady?” I was more worried I’d missed something important, but Amalthea quickly confirmed my assumption.

“Lir confronted the beast before Celestia and Luna could speak, and when they grew powerful enough to defeat him, they chose to keep him sealed!!! THAT MONSTER WAS ALLOWED TO LIVE WHILE LIR PERISHED FOR NOT! NOW IT’S FREE A FOURTH TIME AFTER BETRAYING THEM A SECOND TIME! TELL ME HOW MY OWN DAUGHTERS COULD DO THAT KNOWING THEIR FATHER WAS TAKEN BY THAT MONSTER!?”

I was at a loss for words, and even more when the world deteriorated from the discordified ground and air into a world of red. The quilted terrain became firmer until its laced designs became the chiseled patterns of the new stone floor, while the trees became stone columns and arches of keeping the world together. A thunderous anger whipped and cried outside behind the newly constructed windows of this castle that eerily resembled the Everfree Castle.

Some steps away was the Lady Amalthea, taller than any pony by nearly thrice the size of Celestia with a horn double the length of a standard guard’s spear; the horn split near the top where it extended equally to each side before curving up, mimicking a minotaur’s horn. The rich red coat with complementary black mane and tail enhancing the image of this possibly becoming a nightmare moment for old unicorn. I took an involuntary step backwards.

“Lady Amalthea, please. Please let us be civil about this…”

The response only earned myself a feral grunt that reverberated off the stone walls with a force strong enough to rattle anything not fastened down. Transformed into this nightmarish example of herself, Amalthea restlessly pawed the stone beneath us while throwing her head aggressively over her shoulders; another step back on my volition earned the transformed unicorn’s unbridled wrath, and I was quickly assaulted by everything she could do short of stomping me flat.

And I mean everything.

Every emotion I've ever tasted: experienced, felt, seen, and smelt. All of it mixed into a single flavor that left me physically ill, and delirious to the happenings around myself. There were moments I felt each step taken, and others I was left wallowing in that emotional concoction recalling every second of my life till this very moment.

Starting with repressed memories of the hive during a particular devastating tunnel collapse costing the lives of a dozen drones, and the immediate halt of all excavation in that area. Another time when we exposed the hive to a nasty cave spider infestation requiring the Queen herself to lead reclamation efforts, and of course the fateful day I asked that life changing question. Next were my earlier years in Canterlot, and of the many ponies, and experiences that sculpted me into the changeling I am today, with some of the more noteworthy being recounted in the Guard till this very day as living examples for the new recruits.

Acquaintances. Friendships. Random encounters. Inspirations. Vendettas. Family.

My memories blurred together with the sensations of each one fighting for dominance. I was angry: hungry, bloated, depressed, happy, relieved, worried, proud, ashamed, miserable, and finally content. I was all of that at once unable to decipher where, or what I was doing during those long minutes until a stallion's voice I didn’t recognize shattered it all like a mirror…

“I would enter your sleep if I could… but I cannot come in unless you dream of me.”

That was the last moment of Amalthea’s vision I vividly remembered with everything from before leaving me drained, nauseous, and a headache bigger than Celestia’s Sun. By the time I finally woke from this experience, and pulled myself off the ground, Luna’s moon was high in the sky, and I was the sole occupant of the princesses’ private glade.

Once more Amalthea was missing, whether or not I’ll find her once more didn’t matter. It was late, and a strong urge to hug Cersus overcame me quicker than a cave full of mites.