Chapters "I don't understand," Twilight says, looking up into the changeling's emerald-green reptilian eyes.
The changeling drapes her insectoid wing over Twilight's withers, holds Twilight's head to her chitinous chest, and says, "I'm sorry you had to see me like this, my faithful student. I wish you wouldn't think any less of me."
Twilight pulls away. "You're a changeling, Celestia! What am I supposed to think?"
The changeling winces. "My outward appearance does not reflect what's in my heart. I'm still the same Celestia you've always known." The changeling raises Twilight's head with her perforated hoof. "I still love you, Twilight."
Twilight's eyes glisten. "How can a creature who feeds on emotion ever understand love?"
The changeling smiles down at Twilight, exposing the tips of her fangs and causing her ethereal mane to cascade over her right eye like bioluminescent seaweed. "Unlike normal ponies, who are born with that knowledge, my sister and I had to learn it for ourselves." Her smile fades. "Alas, our story spans centuries—it is far too long to tell."
Twilight rises to her hooves, stands on her hind legs with her hooves against the changeling's shoulders, and stares into the changeling's eyes. "Then show me."
After a moment's deliberation, the changeling touches her twisted horn to Twilight's forehead, closes her eyes, and sighs, "As you wish."
Twilight's eyes widen. Her pupils shrink to pinpricks as her world falls out from under her hooves for the second time today.
***
When Twilight awoke, her body wasn't her own and her vision lacked the red and blue spectrum, although that was probably the atmosphere. Beautiful mushrooms of a species she'd only seen in encyclopediae of prehistoric fungi grew out of every crack in the damp rock walls, floor, and ceiling, bathing the misty cave in brilliant green light. She heard gurgling echoes from a distant stream. By her side, the buzzing of translucent, filamentous wings caught her attention.
"We were lead to believe Mother had an important assignment for us," a scratchy, metallic distortion of Luna's voice asked. "Were we mistaken?"
"Be patient, sister," Twilight heard herself say in a similarly distorted version of Celestia's voice. "Mother gifted us with autonomy so we could better perform our duties, not so we could call her motives into question." She realized her lips weren't moving. Her head turned to give her a full-length view of Luna's body, which was indistinguishable from those of the changelings she'd seen at Cadence's wedding. She could only assume that Celestia was still an ordinary changeling as well. In all probability, they didn't even have names yet.
A third changeling appeared in their midst via the sort of fire portal Chrysalis had used to trap Twilight in the caves beneath Canterlot. The changeling's stature and features were similar to Chrysalis's, such as a seaweed-colored mane and tail, more developed wings, and a longer, gnarled horn. She wore a dainty black plant-like crown whose points terminated in turquoise bulbs, denoting her status as queen, but her tired eyes showed none of Chrysalis's malice.
She spoke aloud in a voice familiar, alien, and laced with familial love that eased Twilight's discomfort, "I apologize for my belated arrival, my children. Rather than waste time with the details, though, I'll cut right to the chase: the pony races have escaped our notice for as many centuries as I've been queen by virtue of their constantly being at each others' throats, but some of our scouts whose return home was delayed by a freak snowstorm have recently witnessed an unprecedented event—pegasus ponies, earth ponies, and unicorns alike have set aside their differences to form the united nation of Equestria. I'm assigning you two, my most trusted informants, to infiltrate this nation, learn everything you can about its government, military, and social structure, and report back once you've determined enough for us to begin harvesting."
The queen knelt between Twilight and Luna and pulled them into a group hug. "If all goes well, you two will forever be known in the hive as the heroes who ended the thousand year famine. Make me proud, my children."
"Yes, Mother," Twilight and Luna thought in unison instead of the vitriolic rebuttal that smoldered at the forefront of her mind. Twilight wasn't exactly sure what harvesting entailed, but she was fairly certain their success would send Equestria back into the dark ages.
On the other hoof, despite her belly being stuffed, she felt a different sort of hunger gnawing at her chest. She was starved for love, and the taste the queen had given her only exacerbated her hunger. With that in mind, infiltrating Equestria didn't seem like such a malicious idea. She would never fault a predator or parasite for its need to eat, and changelings were no different.
The queen pulled away, looked at Twilight and Luna, and blinked away the tears in her slitted eyes. Lighting her horn and conjuring a fire portal beneath their hooves, she said, "If I loved you anymore, I'd have none left for myself."
***
From the ambient magical energy in the air, a bubble of yellow-green fire coalesced on a cliff skirting the southern border of a farming village. The fire shrunk into the ground to reveal Twilight and Luna and leave a charred circle in the grass and soil around their hooves.
Once the disorientation of long-distance teleportation wore off, Twilight was struck with the jarring feeling of her body moving of its own accord. Her belly pressed against the dewy ground and crept to the edge of the cliff to peer down at the ponies below.
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, but the earth ponies were already up working the fields. Most wore wide-brimmed straw hats that limited their vertical field of view. Being farmers, the ponies had little reason to look up.
Being infiltrators, Twilight and Luna were adept at mimicking the forms of others, but to blend into such a small population, they would need to dispose of their doubles without anypony noticing, and the wide expanses of open grassland below provided tragic little cover.
Luna, who was likely coming to the same conclusion, thought, "Our best chance will be to create disguises from scratch."
Twilight nodded. She crept away from the edge and pulled herself up as Luna followed suit. Twilight didn't see the problem, but alien thoughts forming in her head assured her she was about to find out. "We've never had to disguise ourselves as ponies before, but how hard could it be? We share all their best features."
On cue, electric-green magic crackled around Luna's horn. Starting from her hooves, a change swept up her body. Her sleek black chitin became soft indigo fur, her withered gray tail became lush cobalt, her insectoid wings became shrouded in bone, muscle, skin, and feather, and her membranous Mohawk gave way to a shoulder-length mane of the same color as her tail. Upon reaching her curved rhinoceros-like horn, the change made it longer, straighter, and narrower with a spiraled groove from tip to base. Aside from her lack of a cutie mark, Luna looked exactly as she had the first time Twilight saw her. Luna spun on the spot like a puppy chasing its tail and looked herself over before turning her gleeful teal eyes on Twilight and smiling a fangless smile, "We make for a rather pretty pony, do we not?"
Twilight would have blushed were her body her own. Instead, she chuckled—the first vocalization she'd heard herself make. "Certainly, sister, but you seem to be forgetting a few key details. First, you're a full-grown pony without a cutie mark," Twilight said, gesturing to Luna's bare flank, "and second, you're not even a pony. Mother mentioned horned ponies, winged ponies, and those we see in the fields below, but she said nothing of whatever you're supposed to be."
"All right, sister, let's see you do better," Luna pouted.
Twilight mentally braced herself for the agony that was sure to accompany the body-warping transformation, but it never came. All she felt was the familiar tingle of magical energy envelop her horn and wash over her body before dissipating, leading her to believe that the transformation was purely a sensory illusion. Her eyes looked up through the strands of her pink mane to confirm that her horn was still present, though it had turned white and taken on an identical form to Luna's. Twilight's head twisted around to survey the rest of her body. Her angelic wings gave a testing flap as her eyes gazed at her flanks, which were bare save for her milky coat and pink tail.
"Checking yourself out, are you?" Luna teased.
Twilight's urge to curl up in a ball and hide her face under a pillow was rewarded with a faint blush. "We must admit this form is easier on the eyes."
"With luck, the ponies will be so taken with our appearances that they overlook the discrepancies. Shall we?"
"Indeed." Twilight's wings spread. Her hooves raced to the edge of the cliff before leaping off. Her wings flapped to steady her trajectory before easing into a glide toward one of the less-populated wheat fields below.
Luna fell in beside her as the ponies looked out from under their porches, hats, and scraggly manes to see the two strangers sailing into their midst.
Twilight paid them no mind. Having realized she wasn't going to fall to her death, all she could focus on was the blissful feeling of the crisp morning air blowing against the sensitive undersides of her wings, her neck, her chest, her belly, and between her thighs. She blushed internally, hoping the expression didn't manifest on her real body.
When she and Luna alighted on the ground, the crowd of earth ponies who had gathered in the field took a collective step back and whispered amongst one another. A young colt broke away from his mother, ran up to Twilight, and tugged at her foreleg. That his hoof didn't brush into one of the cavities was a testament to the veracity of her illusion. Having her attention, he asked, "Are you a goddess?"
Twilight turned from the colt to Luna, whose look said something to the effect of, "Who's laughing now?"
Looking back at the colt, Twilight felt her lips curl into a pleasant smile and form words for the first time. "I am," she said in a tone indistinguishable from the one Celestia had always used with her. Twilight looked up to the crowd. "My sister and I were brought into being by your collective decision to live in harmony with the other pony races. So long as it persists, so will we remain to serve and guide you."
"Clever," Luna thought.
"Thank you," Twilight replied, watching her message sink into the gathered ponies and feeling an immediate change among them. Where she had felt nothing before, she began to feel a faint warmth radiating off them. From the way it eased the gnawing discomfort in her chest, she could only assume it was some primitive form of love. Bodily aches she hadn't realized she had washed away. Feeling better than she had since before the memory started, she stood a little taller.
An elderly earth pony stepped forth from the back row and asked, "That explains your appearance, but why don't either of you have cutie marks?"
"Alas, we know why we came into being, but we can only assume our special talents correspond to our place in your society," Luna said aloud in her undistorted voice. "Perhaps your leaders can help us discover it."
The elderly pony bowed, turned, and shouted orders while herding the crowd off toward the village square.
Twilight and Luna followed close behind.
By the time they got there, a modestly furnished wooden carriage was already waiting for them. The elderly pony turned to them from an animated conversation with the two draft ponies harnessed to the carriage and said, "I've instructed these two to take you through the neighboring villages to Canterlot, a unicorn stronghold built into the side of a mountain before the unification, which now serves as our capital city."
"Thank you," Twilight said, stepping into the carriage after Luna. Poking her head out the window to meet his friendly, wrinkled eyes, she asked, "How long may we expect to be on the road?"
"With minimal stops, you should get there within three or four days. We all wish you the best of luck."
With that, the draft ponies set off down the well-traveled dirt road. They picked up speed as they left town and entered the beautiful Equestrian countryside.
Watching birds, flowers, and other travelers whisk past in a blur of sound, color, and warmth, Twilight and Luna couldn't believe their luck.
***
In the evening of the third day, after an afternoon of climbing winding cliff-side paths up the mountain, Twilight and Luna's carriage stopped outside the castle gates in Canterlot. While the city still bore vestiges of its military past, the castle looked much as it would a thousand years hence.
In contrast, the love Twilight and Luna had been showered with in the towns they passed through had already begun to morph their bodies into the stature and regality Twilight had always known. Both stood almost a head taller than they had when they left the hive, putting them at eye level with their draft pony drivers.
Twilight stepped off the carriage, thanked the drivers, receiving bowed heads in response, and set off toward the gold-plated castle gates, where a charcoal-coated unicorn night guard in polished silver armor met her and Luna. Twilight took deciphering his stoic visage as a personal challenge and found beneath it a flurry of emotions all fighting to manifest on his face or in his eyes. She could taste each one—salty anxiety, savory curiosity, and sour envy, but none of the sweet affection she'd grown accustomed to inspiring in ponies. Catching herself feeling affronted at that and noting how her identity had become blurred with Celestia's over the past few days, she began to wonder what long-term implications the memory would have for her mental health.
The unicorn's gruff voice derailed her train of thought, "What's your business here, strangers?"
"We are goddesses of harmony brought into existence by the unification of Equestria," Luna delivered the cover story in a deadpan tone that gave his a run for its bits. "We understand your leaders are expecting us." Seeing the unicorn's hesitance, she added with an edge, "You would not be wise to keep them waiting."
The unicorn bowed his head and opened the gate. "Of course, Ma'am. We'll show you the way."
With a unicorn mare flanking them, Twilight and Luna followed him up the bleached stone steps toward the castle door, where two more night guards joined their ranks as they went inside. Several winding corridors and high-ceilinged halls lined with stained-glass windows later, they arrived with their entourage at the foot of the red velvet carpet that stretched across the throne room's black-and-white checkered floor.
At the opposite end, in a gold-leafed mahogany nest of silk cushions, the white-coated, purple-maned unicorn known as Princess Platinum sat. Accompanying her on either side were a sandy-coated, magenta-maned earth pony and a cyan-coated, white-maned pegasus pony, Chancellor Puddinghead and Commander Hurricane, respectively. All three were mares, and all three wore regalia nearly identical to what Twilight and her friends had during the Hearth's Warming Eve Pageant.
Platinum stood to greet the newcomers, "Welcome, travelers! We've been expecting you." She levitated a dainty ceramic cup to her lips and took a sip. "Won't you join us for some tea?"
"Is that not somewhat informal?" Luna thought.
Twilight had grown so accustomed to their telepathic communications that she replied without a second thought, "We admit we didn't expect them to be getting along this well, but who are we to reject their hospitality?"
Luna watched the guards standing around them bristle as she took a step forward before calling across the room, "We appreciate your hospitality, Princess, but we're hesitant to come any closer lest your guards misjudge our intentions."
Platinum covered her mouth with her hoof and giggled, "Oh, silly me." Regaining her regal composure, she addressed the guards, "Thank you for escorting our guests here, but you won't be needed further."
"With all due respect, Princess," the first guard began, "how do you know—"
"Dismissed," Platinum cut him off and stared him down until he relented. Once all the guards had filed out and closed the doors behind them, her expression softened. "As I was saying, we were just having some tea, and—"
"You were just having some tea," Hurricane groused.
Platinum rolled her eyes and spared a glance at her. "Yes, Commander, we know you value your masculinity too much to be caught performing an act so scandalously feminine as drinking tea in public."
"I thought you said you were a mare," Puddinghead chimed in. "Maybe I should double check." She got up to do just that, eliciting a blush from Hurricane.
Platinum stood in her way. "Please don't embarrass the Commander, Chancellor. There'll be plenty of time for that when you two retire for the evening."
"What's that supposed to—" Hurricane began but cut herself off when she saw Platinum's knowing smirk. She cleared her throat. "Hey, weren't we all about to sit down for some tea? Why don't we do that?"
Twilight managed to stifle a giggle, but Luna was less successful.
"That sounds like a wonderful idea, Commander," Platinum said. "Why don't you pour some for our guests?" She turned to them and sat back down. "What are you two still doing all the way over there, admiring the carpeting?"
Puddinghead piped up, "I know whose carpeting I'll be—"
"Please, Chancellor!" Platinum cried, startling Hurricane into dropping the teapot. Platinum caught it in her magic and set it back on the tray.
Meanwhile, Twilight and Luna had made their way to the cushions. They sat down beside each other and across from Hurricane and Puddinghead, between which Platinum settled in—for the former's safety, Twilight realized.
Despite her earlier objections, Hurricane had poured herself a cup of tea. It rested between her forelegs and held her undivided attention.
In response, Puddinghead had taken to intensely scrutinizing her own cup. Her expression implied she had yet to find anything deserving of fascination. She leaned across to peer into Hurricane's cup but found Platinum in her way.
"You two must be tired from your journey, so I'll make this brief," Platinum began before Puddinghead could protest. "Hurricane's scouts told us to to expect you, so I've already arranged for a room to which you can retire once we're done here. They also told us that you're goddesses representing Equestria's future of peace and harmony and that you came here in hopes of discovering your special talents. Is that correct?"
Twilight took a sip of hot chamomile tea, reveling in the taste as if for the first time before setting her cup down and confirming, "That's correct."
Platinum smiled. "In that case, I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we're happy to welcome you to Equestria, and while we'd like to put you to work immediately, we can't just hand out administrative duties to whomever walks through our doors claiming to be gods or goddesses no matter how convincing their appearances may be. Please don't think we doubt you. The trials you will face are really more of a formality than anything else."
"What are these trials of which you speak?" Luna asked.
"None of the ponies who've come to us claiming to be gods or goddesses in the past have ever been worthy of a second glance. In your case, we decided we would each propose a trial to test one of three godly qualities—strength, wisdom, and benevolence. If you pass all three trials, we'll place the future of Equestria in your capable hooves. Do you find these terms acceptable?"
"Please tell us we're not dreaming!" Luna thought.
"We're not," Twilight replied despite knowing she was, for all intents and purposes, dreaming. She said aloud, "That sounds reasonable. When may we begin?"
"Oh, do me!" Puddinghead exclaimed, waving her hoof in the air.
"Don't you want to get some rest first?" Platinum asked.
"Well, yes," Twilight said, "but so long as it doesn't take too long—"
"We'll be done lickety-split, I promise," Puddinghead said.
"Very well," Platinum sighed, waving her on.
"Your first trial is a test of wisdom." Puddinghead cast a sultry look at Hurricane before turning to Twilight. "To pass, all you have to do is guess what I'm thinking."
Twilight raised her eyebrow and reached into Puddinghead's mind with her telepathy. She wasn't keen on further exposing Puddinghead and Hurricane's affair, but if that's what proving her worth required, so be it.
The telepathic connection must have gone both ways, because Puddinghead's first thought was, "Don't worry, I'm just trying to make Hurricane nervous."
Twilight cast a glance at Hurricane, whose face hadn't quite turned as white as her mane, but not for lack of trying, and responded, "You're succeeding."
Puddinghead gasped, "You literally read my mind! I thought I was just reading your expression really well, but as I was about to respond, you responded to my response! You totally pass!"
Twilight hoped Puddinghead hadn't been rooting around in her mind while she was rooting around in Puddinghead's and chided herself for her carelessness.
Puddinghead grinned. "I wasn't, but now that you mention it..."
Her eyes widening, Twilight cut the connection.
"Aw, I was only kidding. I wouldn't invade your privacy like that even though you just invaded my privacy like that, but how else would you know what I was thinking? You'd have to be omniscient or something."
"Okay," Hurricane drawled, looking between Twilight and Puddinghead. "I'm not sure what just happened, but I got the part where she said you passed, which means my trial is next. As a test of your strength, we're getting up bright and early tomorrow morning to assist my soldiers in repelling an Ursa Major who's been attacking one of the settlements on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest. They've managed to draw him out of town, but you're going to help me make sure he never comes back." She smirked at their blank looks, stood, walked toward the door, and called back, "Sleep tight, ladies!"
Puddinghead got up and bounced out the door after her. "Hey, wait for me!"
"Please tell us we misheard her," Luna thought.
"Which one," Twilight asked, "the flamboyantly homosexual Chancellor or the suicidally insane Commander?"
Platinum looked between her and Luna, bit her lip, and said, "That won't be a problem, will it?"
"Of course not," Luna responded aloud. "Considering that getting here took us almost four days, we were just wondering how the Commander intends to get there in time to be of any assistance."
Twilight would have marveled at Luna's ability to lie on command, but she was too busy calculating how slim their chances of survival were against an Ursa Major. That Celestia had survived to pass the memory on to her was proof they would succeed, but only time would tell how.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Platinum said, sounding relieved. "The Everfree Forest is right near the base of the mountain. You three can probably glide there before noon if you leave early enough. Now if there are no further questions, why don't I show you two to your room?"
When Twilight, Luna, and Hurricane had begun gliding from Canterlot's perimeter, the Ursa Major had been visible as a translucent purple speck on the horizon, but only once they had gotten close enough to see the straw roofs of the clay buildings in the nearby village were they able to truly appreciate her colossal stature.
The star-coated Ursa Major was standing on her hind legs, roaring, and swiping her paws at passing pegasus ponies, who appeared no larger than horse flies in contrast. The surrounding trees which hadn't been toppled in the scuffle barely reached above her waist. A pegasus pony who flew too close to her mouth narrowly avoided a snap of her jaws, the stained saber-tooth fangs of which were equivalent in length to six ponies standing on each other's withers.
Another pegasus pony was less lucky. He caught a random flick of her lion-like tail and sailed into the branches of a nearby tree.
By the time two more noticed he was missing and broke away to assist, leaving only three to keep the Ursa Major occupied, Twilight, Luna, and Hurricane were struggling to stay airborne amidst the erratic air currents generated by her increasingly accurate swipes, one of which nearly clipped a pegasus pony's wing.
"What are those featherbrains doing?" Hurricane shouted over the gale-force winds.
"That's a good question," Twilight began, having noticed something very different about the spectacle. "Can't they see—"
"That they're going to get their wingponies killed?" Hurricane finished. "Apparently not! Come on, we've gotta get in there and draw the fire!" She entered a dive straight for the blue eight-pointed star on the Ursa Major's forehead.
Luna dived after her and thought to Twilight, "Forward unto battle, sister!"
Hurricane felt herself slow to a halt and watched a confused Luna swoop past her before flaring her wings and turning back to see her suspended in mid air in a shimmering golden aura. Hurricane's attempt to flip around resulted in her rolling lazily onto her back in the levitation field and staring irately at an upside down Twilight. "What are you doing?"
Twilight shouted her reply, but her words were lost to the wind. Thinking on her hooves, she opened a telepathic channel with her and the three pegasus ponies still strafing the Ursa Major and cried directly into their minds, "Retreat!"
"Are you insane?" Hurricane shouted back. "If we don't keep the pressure up, she'll go back to destroy the village." Her scratchy, high-pitched voice ricocheted around in their heads, momentarily breaking Twilight's concentration and distracting the pegasus ponies long enough for one to crash into the Ursa Major's belly at full speed.
The pegasus pony reoriented himself so he wouldn't snap his neck and impacted hooves first before bouncing off and barreling away like a drunken honeybee while the other two followed close behind.
The Ursa Major wobbled, fell to her haunches with a resounding crash that blew leaves off the surrounding trees in a shock wave of dust and splintered wood, and hunched over, clutching her paws to her distended stomach.
Hurricane, who had lunged at Twilight during the momentary lapse in the levitation field, lost control of her trajectory and would have tumbled into her were Hurricane not caught by a cerulean magical aura and gently lowered into a cluster of trees on the outskirts of the clearing.
The six pegasus ponies, including the one who had crashed into the tree, soon floated in after her in their own levitation fields. They all looked perplexed and disconcerted at the new development, but none attempted to escape. Judging from the way their legs gave out upon making contact with the ground, they had been keeping the Ursa Major occupied for quite some time.
Luna alighted next to them and looked toward the sky where Twilight was finally fluttering into their midst.
The moment Twilight's hooves touched soil, Hurricane was in Twilight's face—technically, she was glaring up from about a head below Twilight's face. "What was that all about?"
Twilight looked down at her, her ire barely buried beneath a barrier of stoicism. "I don't know, Commander." She poked her hoof into Hurricane's armor-plated chest, pushing her back to the ground and ignoring the bristling pegasus ponies circled around them. "What was that all about?"
"I briefed you on exactly that before we left, but since you must have been too busy plotting ways to get between the Princess's flanks to pay attention, I'll reiterate," Hurricane said and cast an acusatory hoof toward the clearing. "That monster out there stormed into one of our settlements early yesterday morning and started tearing the place apart. We came here to defend our territory. That's what we do, and we would have succeeded had you not interfered."
Twilight didn't respond. Instead, she gripped Hurricane's ear in her magic. Dragging her toward the tree line, Twilight heard the shuffling of shod hooves against dirt over Hurricane's wails and cast a withering look over her shoulder at the pegasus ponies before dropping her on the edge of the clearing and ordering, "Look out there, Commander, and tell me what you see."
Knowing she was outmatched, Hurricane swallowed her pride and said, "I see a monster bent on the death of innocent ponies and the destruction of their property, a threat to Equestria to be driven back into the forest from which it came."
Twilight sighed and sat beside her. "Your actions would be justified were your first impression correct, but all is not as it seems. Did you ever stop and wonder why an Ursa Major would storm out of its secluded forest home and attack one of your settlements?"
Hurricane wearily looked across at her. "Look, I get that you were literally born yesterday, but I've been a soldier for a long time, and I know a threat when I see one. I also know that asking stupid questions in the middle of a combat situation is the fastest way to get yourself and your wingponies killed."
"Contrary to what you may believe, I was paying attention to your briefing. You said the Ursa Major showed up in the middle of a festival celebrating the unification of Equestria, which is why there were no civilian casualties—the buildings she crushed were vacant."
"That's right."
"Now what if I told you that by asking stupid questions, we could end this conflict without any military casualties either?"
"I'd have no choice but to listen."
Twilight smiled and continued, "As of last night, I knew very little about Ursa Majors, so I missed a lot of sleep in favor of having the Princess direct me to the royal library. That's part of why I've been short with you." Moments like that further blurred the boundary between Twilight and Celestia's identities, as much the same scenario had unfolded after Trixie rode into Ponyville claiming to have vanquished a rampant Ursa Major. Notably, Twilight didn't remember reading about this particular incident. "There wasn't a lot of information because they're so rarely seen outside their natural habitats—places like the Everfree Forest—where most ponies are afraid to even set hoof. The only reported Ursa Majors who've gone out of their way to attack ponies are those who've felt threatened."
"How could a star spawn the size of a castle feel threatened?"
"She still has the same animal instincts we do, and I'll bet her reason for attacking wasn't so different from yours for retaliating—to defend her territory."
"How does that help us reach a peaceful resolution?"
"Leave that to me."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to find a way to talk to her." Twilight stood. "Stay with the others and tend to your wounded. If need be, my sister knows some medical magic." She spread her wings, and with a few powerful flaps, lifted into the sky.
She stopped and hovered a respectful distance from the Ursa Major, who was still clutching her stomach and paid her no notice. Twilight reached into the Ursa Major's mind. Finding no semblance of language to work with, she sent a wordless message conveying the meaning, "Hello."
The Ursa Major looked up, revealing its sunken tear-streaked eyes, each of which was bigger than Twilight's whole body and sparkled with lucidity. She emitting a low growl.
"What problem?" Twilight communicated. She had intended a more eloquent, nuanced question, but conveying complex meaning without words was either impossible or beyond her capability. When the time came to ask what had provoked the attack, she would have to find a more creative way.
The Ursa Major cocked her head and looked her over as if for the first time before closing her eyes, her face scrunching in concentration.
Twilight felt a foreign presence in her mind. Realizing what the Ursa Major was trying to do, Twilight closed her eyes and focused on the incoming mix of images and sensations. She saw herself from the Ursa Major's point of view when the pegasus pony had collided with the Ursa Major's stomach and felt a constricting pain in her abdomen more pronounced and drawn out than the minor impact should have inflicted. Focusing on the pain, she realized the impact hadn't been the cause so much as an exacerbating factor. She wasn't suffering internal damage; she was having a contraction.
Her sympathy must have crossed the telepathic connection, because when she opened her eyes, she found the Ursa Major giving her an imploring look. An idea struck Twilight. She closed her eyes, telepathically probed the Ursa Major's womb, found the unborn Ursa Minor's stable brain waves, and transmitted them to the Ursa Major. Whether or not the Ursa Major could understand exactly what she was experiencing, Twilight couldn't say, but it seemed to do the trick.
The Ursa Major lowered her paws from her stomach to the ground, raised her hind legs, putting herself on all fours and face to face with her—face to entire body, technically—and cast a meaningful glance toward the nearby village.
Twilight closed her eyes and scoured the Ursa Major's memory for anything related to the previous morning. She conjured up no image but distant echoes like unnatural thunder. She felt her body exit the dark cave as streams of light soared from the tree line into the sky and exploded in beautiful flashes of color and rolling cracks that outshined the rising sun and ignited a primal fear in her gut. She let out a blood-curdling roar and barreled toward the noise with wanton disregard for the trees and other obstacles. Hearing a warning growl that wasn't part of the Ursa Major's memory, she terminated the flashback, opened her eyes, and looked at her apologetically.
The Ursa Major's Ursa Minor and the village's firework display came together to paint a clear picture of why the Ursa Major attacked. The trick was finding a way to communicate the ponies' benign intent. Though Twilight had attended her share of firework displays and seen the many awestruck faces of the cheerful ponies in attendance, Celestia didn't have access to those memories. Fortunately, a highly developed imagination is a necessity for a changeling's illusion magic, so the blend of images and emotions Celestia improvised was remarkably close to the real thing and gave the Ursa Major a new perspective.
As the adrenalin clouding her thoughts and keeping her alert stopped flowing, the Ursa Major swayed slightly. Her eyelids grew heavy. She looked back in the direction of her cavern home, and before turning to go, sent one last wordless telepathic message, "Regret."
"Forgive," Twilight replied. She turned to fly back to Luna, Hurricane, and the others, but the Ursa Major's translucent purple foreleg obstructed her view and held her against the Ursa Major's chest. The Ursa Major's ethereal fur was soft and tingly like it existed midway between the physical and magical realms. Feeling the Ursa Major's snout nuzzling her as gently as could be and a toasty warmth that wasn't just the Ursa Major's body heat, she smiled and giggled.
***
When Twilight, Luna, and Hurricane returned to the castle, the sun had passed its apex and started its gradual decline back into the horizon.
Platinum met them on the front steps of the castle. As they came into view, she began to explain why Puddinghead wouldn't be joining them but lost her train of thought upon seeing Twilight's abrupt change in appearance.
Twilight had grown taller and more elegant still, putting her almost a head above Luna, who looked no different than she had earlier that morning. Rather than making her appear lanky, the change had given Twilight's body a shapely, athletic look. Even pressed against her sides, her wings betrayed their added broadness. Her coat looked a purer shade of white, rivaling Platinum's own, and her disheveled pink mane hung to her chest and fell coyly over one of her pale magenta eyes.
Hurricane nudged Twilight's ribs and whispered conspiratorily, "Look who's checking you out."
Twilight didn't need to be told. She had felt Platinum's heart palpitate, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. Worse still, she wasn't sure how Celestia felt about it. For all the minds Twilight could read, Celestia's wasn't one.
Having been within earshot, Platinum blushed, looked aside, gave a ladylike cough and paper-thin excuse, and led her, Luna, and Hurricane inside. As they walked, she explained what was keeping Puddinghead and found herself sneaking another glance at Twilight, who caught her and smiled noncommitally.
Thankfully, Hurricane was too busy recounting their triumph over the Ursa Major, if it could be called that, to call Platinum out.
By the time they reached the throne room, Platinum had enough information to draw a conclusion, "I can think of no way I'd rather that conflict have been resolved, but I'm afraid your diplomacy undermined the trial's purpose." She cast an admiring look at Twilight. "You proved your benevolence more than anything, so I'll have to come up with a new test of your strength."
Platinum began toward the nest of cushions but stopped after a few short steps and whirled around, her face glowing with inspiration like Rarity's would upon realizing the perfect dress to compliment a client's form and color palette. "I've got it!" She spoke with excitement rivalling Puddinghead's, "Moving the sun and moon across the sky is a task requiring the combined will of all my unicorn subjects, but if you two can accomplish it individually, you'll more than prove your fitness to be Equestria's new diarchs."
Luna processed the implications first and said, "Being the younger sister, I think raising the moon would be the fairest test of my ability."
Platinum turned to Twilight and said with a hint of sultriness, "I imagine raising the sun should be no trouble for a physical goddess like yourself."
"Of course," Twilight replied with false confidence.
Platinum looked unconvinced but continued, "It's settled, then. Your trials will begin at dusk and dawn, respectively. I'll inform my unicorns of the change but keep them on standby in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. You're free to do as you please in the meantime. I'll send for you when the time comes." As they turned to leave, she reached her hoof out to touch Twilight's withers and asked, "Might I have a word in private?"
Hurricane winked at Twilight and said to Luna, "I bet the Chancellor is almost done with whatever she's doing. Since you're going to be living here from now on, why don't we have her show you around?"
"That sounds delightful, Commander," Luna said. Casting a glance at Twilight, Luna thought, "Try not to pounce her the moment we close the door."
Twilight pretended she hadn't heard that.
Once the door closed behind Luna and Hurricane, Platinum began toward the nest of cushions, smiled back at Twilight, and asked, "Are you coming?"
Twilight had learned to ignore the jarring feeling of her body move of its own accord, but as she fell into step behind Platinum, it came back in full force.
"A lot has happened since you came here yesterday evening, and I wanted to give you a chance to tell me how you really feel about it. I could tell you were nervous about the prospect of raising the sun, and I wanted to help, but I knew we'd get nowhere with the others around. This way it's just you and me."
Covered as they were in Platinum's rich purple cloak, the swaying motion of the flanks Hurricane had accused Twilight of plotting to get between earlier hypnotized Twilight.
Platinum chose that moment to cast another glance back and ask, "Is that all right with you?"
Twilight looked up abruptly, a scarlet blush spreading across her cheeks and earning a demure smile from Platinum. Twilight was relieved at Platinum's apparently benign intention for the private conversation, but Celestia seemed to have other ideas. "Of course, Princess."
"You can call me Platinum." She stepped into the nest of cushions and made herself comfortable on the far side. "We're alone now, after all."
Twilight sat across from her.
Platinum tossed her amethyst-embedded-silver crown aside and shook out her curly purple mane before turning her azure eyes on her. "How do you really feel about your final trial?"
Words of assurance formed on her lips, but the look in Platinum's eyes told Twilight Platinum wouldn't buy them for a second. Instead, Twilight sighed and admitted, "I have no doubt raising the moon is within my sister's power, but raising the sun is a formidable task even for a goddess."
"Believe me, I know. The combined will of all my unicorn subjects is barely enough to make it budge, but I've been watching you grow in the short time we've known each other, and I have no doubt you'll make a great ruler if given the chance. Alas, though the trials are mostly a formality so we don't come off as giving the reigns of the nation over to just anypony, unless you pass, you'll never get the chance to genuinely prove your worth."
"I don't suppose you could teach me your method."
Platinum smiled. "I'm afraid that would be cheating, but I can think of one way I might be able to help you."
Marveling at the opportunity to learn how Celestia first raised the sun, Twilight's inner scholar ignored the many ways that sentence could be ineterpreted. "What do you have in mind?"
"As I've said, I've been watching you grow more beautiful with each passing day, and in so doing, I've noticed something: the changes are directly related to how much love you receive. I can only assume that just as my power is dependent on the will of my subjects, yours is dependent on the love you've received since you arrived in Equestria."
Twilight's heart and mind raced. Had Platinum discerned Celestia's true nature and understood Celestia's assignment, she would have had Twilight arrested, exiled, or worse. Rather, Platinum was leading up to something else entirely.
Confirming Twilight's fears, Platinum crawled over, sat up on her haunches in front of her, took Twilight's hoof, and pressed it to her chest.
Waves of warm, sweet love flowed through Twilight's leg and pooled around her heart, disrupting her thoughts like honey dripping into delicate clockwork.
Platinum traced Twilight's hoof down her belly, gazed into Twilights eyes, and whispered, "Take me that my love may give you strength, that you may earn your place as the ruler of Equestria, and that I may feel the touch of a goddess."
Twilight's heart thundered in her ears as Platinum's soft coat tickled her hoof. Love coursed through her veins and desire consumed her mind. Her last coherent thought before losing herself entirely was a prayer that her intense arousal wouldn't manifest in her real body. Her last coherent words were, "Believe me, Platinum, there's nothing I'd rather do, but isn't this rather sudden?"
Platinum draped her forelegs around Twilight's neck and gave all the convincing Twilight needed, "Your trial is less than a day away. We may not get another chance."
Twilight untied Platinum's cloak with her magic and tossed it over Platinum's crown. She wrapped her broad angelic wings around Platinum's upper back, pulled her against her chest, closed her eyes, and kissed her.
Platinum wrapped her hind legs around Twilight's lower back and sighed internally as Twilight's feathers brushed against her bare coat and Twilight's lips parted hers. Feeling Twilight's hoof nestle between her thighs, she shivered in pleasure and traced her hoof down from Twilight's neck to do the same.
The new sensations taking her to the height of euphoria, Twilight met Platinum's tongue with hers.
***
Despite Luna's efforts, dusk had persisted several minutes after night was scheduled to begin. Most ponies didn't notice. Those that did made up the sea of faces filling the castle courtyard below the balcony on which Luna stood and spilling out into the streets beyond. Hundreds had gathered from across the city to see their alleged goddess raise the moon. None doubted that she would, but the same couldn't be said for her.
Luna stood proudly on the edge of the balcony with her forelegs perched on the railing, her wings flared, her eyes clamped shut, and her horn burning in a brilliant cerulean aura. She looked for all Canterlot like the mare they needed her to be, but buried beneath her bastion of bravado was an ordinary changeling infiltrator a thousand miles from home and in way over her head. Worse still, her partner in crime was nowhere to be found.
"We would never abandon you in your time of need," a welcome voice she hadn't heard since leaving with Hurricane earlier in the afternoon spoke directly into her mind, interrupting her internal monologue of self-doubt.
Luna diverted some of her concentration from her fruitless casting to send a telepathic response, "We can't do this, sister. It's too much. It's too soon."
"You're wrong. You can do this. We can do this. They all believe in you, and I do too. Isn't that enough?"
"You need only look to the sky to find your answer."
"Then let me help you."
Luna's breath caught in her throat. Love flooded her veins, barely having time to coalesce around her heart before escaping through her horn, which flared with enough light to blind anypony looking at Luna instead of the night sky, where the moon was gradually beginning to move into view and casting its first beams across the gathered ponies, who stomped and whinnied their applause. Overcoming the moon's inertia was the hard part. With that done, that same inertia would keep the moon moving until it sunk beneath the opposite horizon to make way for the sun.
The surge of power ended as abruptly as it had begun. Having lived underground most of her life, Luna had the good fortune to have never been struck by lightning, but she imagined that's what it would feel like. She knew such an outpouring of emotional energy could only come from one source. She opened her eyes, folded her wings, turned to Twilight with a smirk, and said, "I take it you and the Princess had quite the stimulating conversation."
"That's one way to put it," Twilight said with a grin, too ecstatic about not only watching her raise the moon for the first time but having helped her do so to care that Luna knew about the unconventional manner in which Twilight had lost her virginity. Platinum had given Twilight her love to help her succeed in the final trial, but Twilight would never get the chance if Luna didn't succeed first, which probably would have been the case had Twilight not intervened.
Platinum stepped onto the balcony, wearing her cloak but not her crown and looking only slightly disheveled as she gazed into the night sky with a serene smile. When her eyes fell on Luna, Platinum gasped, "Your cutie mark has appeared!"
Luna spun her head around to look at her flank where the white profile of a crescent moon to match the one in the sky had appeared on a splotched navy-blue background. Her eyes widened. She squealed with joy and threw her forelegs around Twilight's neck before flaring her wings and soaring into the sky, using her mastery of light manipulation to give herself a moonlit silver contrail as she swooped over the hundreds of cheering ponies.
***
Throughout the night of feasting, celebration, and loving adoration in the castle and courtyard, Twilight kept one wary eye on the moon's progress toward the opposite horizon. She wore a brave face for the ponies who came to admire her sister's new cutie mark and wish her luck in earning hers, as they had no doubt raising the sun would be her special talent, but as dawn came around, she excused herself from the festivities to agonize over the task ahead in the privacy of the room behind the balcony.
There she stood alone with her thoughts, knowing the peace wouldn't last long, for there was one pony from which she couldn't hide. Sensing that pony ascending the steps behind her, she turned to the door, waited for the knock, and said, "Unless you've come to aid in my escape, leave me to my thoughts."
The door opened. Luna stepped in looking every bit as radiant as a goddess given pony form should. In the short time since they'd parted, she had grown as tall as Twilight and her mane had given way to a flowing cloud of opaque cobalt interspersed with twinkling specks of light. Luna asked, "Weren't you the one who told me self-doubt was my biggest obstacle?"
"The sun is several orders of magnitude more massive and further away than the moon, making itself a decidedly bigger obstacle. I never studied divination, but I can predict what's going to happen in a few minutes. I'll expend so much magic trying to make the sun budge that my disguise will flicker out, our nature will be revealed, and an angry mob will rend our heads from our thoraxes to mount in the throne room as a warning to any other changeling who should get the idea in her head to try playing goddess." Twilight made for the door. "We should leave while we still have a chance."
Luna put her hoof to Twilight's chest and gave her a stern look. "Sister, you're being unreasonable. Besides, we can't return to the hive."
"We're in the capital now. We don't have to return empty hooved. We can take new identities and finish our assignment."
Luna's teal eyes glowed from within and bore into Twilight. "We can't return ever. Mother would understand that we got in over our heads, but she would never understand that I lost my connection to her."
Twilight's eyes widened and a sickening feeling wormed through her stomach. "What are you saying, sister?"
Luna lowered her hoof, made for an opulent couch on the far side of the dark room, and lay down. "I spoke with the Princess after you left. As she told me about her nation's history before the unification with the pegasus and earth ponies and explained their need for rulers who could remain impartial to the petty feuds that had kept them apart all these centuries, I decided my place was here.
"In that moment, my connection severed. I became the goddess Equestria needs me to be. Among other things, the connection is a failsafe to prevent more than one changeling queen from emerging at a time. Without it, the love I'd been showered with throughout the night manifested in full, transforming my body into that of a magical being like the Ursa Major. I no longer need material sustenance. I'll only die if my subjects retract their love.
"Luck has favored us the chance to make this new nation a paradise, but Mother, her predecessors, and her successors would rather bleed it dry to feed their drones. Perhaps someday there will be enough love to go around and we'll accept her into our ranks, but that day won't be for quite some time. As free-thinking creatures of love, our duty is to protect it and help it flourish, but I can't do that without your help, which means you need to raise the sun."
Twilight wanted to give Luna a big hug, but Celestia was more subdued. "I appreciate your philosophy, sister, but the most rousing speech won't make me any stronger."
"Your weakness is your unwillingness to turn your back on the hive. I can give you the strength necessary just as you did for me, but not unless you let me sever your connection."
After a moment's deliberation, Twilight walked over to kneel before Luna and said with a wry smile, "You say that like I have any other choice."
Luna touched her horn to Twilight's forehead, snaked her magic into Twilight's mind, and dispelled the inborn enchantment that connected her to the hive and stalled her metamorphosis.
Twilight would have collapsed were she standing. Her muscles spasmed, her mind raced, and before she could process what was happening, it was over. She looked the same, felt the same, and could only describe the sensation as a fog she'd never noticed suddenly lifting from her thoughts. When she stood, she stood taller despite being the same height. When she thought about the final trial, she realized exactly how she was going to raise the sun. The sun acted in harmony with the moon—they wanted to take turns. She didn't have to force the sun around like a giant boulder; all she had to do was reach out to it, wake it from its slumber, and coax it into motion.
Luna laughed, apparently still able to read Twilight's thoughts despite their lost connection to the wider network. "Had I thought of that, I might not have needed your assistance. From the looks of things, you may not need mine, but if you do, you need only ask. The Princess wants us to share our burdens once we're rulers, so it wouldn't be cheating." She stood and ushered her toward the glass door to the balcony, from which emanated the sound of hundreds of ponies shuffling into the courtyard below. "Now get out there. They're all waiting for you."
Twilight stepped out onto the balcony, winked at Platinum, and smiled fondly at her little ponies before spreading her wings, flapping into the sky, closing her eyes, and igniting her horn with a blinding golden aura. Without siphoning an ounce of Luna's strength, she felt the sun acknowledge her wordless request and saw its rays shine through the blood cells in her eyelids.
The gathered ponies couldn't stare directly at the sun long after it appeared on the horizon, so they were all watching Twilight when a yellow sun in an orange corona appeared on her flank.
Twilight's heart resonated with their cheers. The tingling that started with her cutie mark's appearance spread throughout her body, turning her coat pure white before alighting on her mane and tail, which became gradients of pastel blue, green, and their original pink and flowed like the aurora borealis. Twilight opened her eyes to a new morning—her morning.
"In light of their recent accomplishments, not least of which being their discovery of their cutie marks for raising the sun and moon, I, Princess Platinum, hereby relinquish my title, powers, and responsibilities to Equestria's new goddesses of harmony," Platinum announced from the cushioned platform to the gathered nobles in the throne room and turned to Twilight and Luna, who stood behind her and across from Hurricane and Puddinghead. "Do you accept?"
Stepping forth, Twilight and Luna said in unison, "We do."
Removing her crown, Platinum continued, "Then from this day forth, you will be known as Princesses Celestia and Luna, and Equestria's fate will rest in your capable hooves." As Hurricane and Puddinghead stepped forth to stand on either side of her, Platinum added in a voice too low for the crowd to hear, "Make me proud."
"My armies and I, Commander Hurricane, will serve you until our dying breaths, Princesses," Hurricane said, bowing.
Puddinghead radiated affection and admiration in an aura only Twilight and Luna could see as she wrapped them in an unabashed embrace, eliciting murmurs from those among the crowd who weren't accustomed to her eccentric mannerisms, and said, "I, Chancellor Puddinghead, just know you two will be the best diarchs Equestria has ever had! Technically you'll be the only diarchs Equestria has ever had, but if we'd ever had diarchs before you, you'd outshine them all." Hearing Platinum clear her throat behind her, Puddinghead let them go and added, "Oh, right, I'll also happily serve you as a royal adviser for as long as you'll have me, barring extraneous circumstances like death, disease, or dismemberment."
"Thank you both," Twilight said, looking to each of them in turn before resting her eyes on Platinum with the faintest smirk, "and thank you, Platinum." Twilight added in a voice too low for the crowd to hear, "My sister and I wouldn't be standing here if not for you."
Platinum blushed and cast a meaningful glance toward the crowd.
Twilight nodded and turned to face the nobles with Luna.
"We didn't have time to prepare an acceptance speech," Luna addressed them, "but perhaps that's for the best; what you're about to hear comes straight from our hearts. While my sister and I share many of the same thoughts, she's proven herself a better orator in the short time we've existed among you, so I'll let her do the talking."
Twilight took the floor, "As my sister explained, I speak for both of us when I say how honored we are that your leaders have deemed us worthy to nurture the future of your budding nation, and we have no doubt that with proper care and pruning, it will grow into a beacon of hope to the bleak corners of the world where love, tolerance, and harmony are still as scarce as water in a desert. You have already found the oasis, my little ponies, and so long as you will have us, my sister and I will guide you to the rain forest."
The crowd applauded, satiating her and Luna's growing appetites with respectful admiration but little of the loving adoration the general populace had offered earlier, before shuffling out the door.
Twilight turned to Platinum and asked, "How was that?"
Platinum kissed Twilight's cheek and gazed up at her lovingly.
Paralyzed by the fluttering in her chest as her heart swelled with Platinum's affection, Twilight wondered if Platinum hadn't relinquished so much power over her after all.
"Aww!" Puddinghead squealed.
"Called it," Hurricane said smugly, draping a wing over Puddinghead's withers and leading her away as the last few nobles trickled out. "Let's give these lovebirds some privacy."
Luna headed for the door as well—probably on her way to bed, as the dawn was ending—winked over her shoulder at Twilight, and thought, "Try not to pounce her until we close the door."
Twilight tore her eyes away long enough to watch them go. In the moment of reflection, she realized there was something unusual about Platinum's kiss—something that hadn't been there before. Once the door closed behind them, she hid her concern and turned to Platinum. Knowing only one way to get to the bottom of the matter, Twilight swept her into an open-mouthed kiss. Twilight's heart skipped a beat as something pricked her tongue. Twilight realized exactly what was out of place—Platinum had fangs.
***
"We are gathered here today," Puddinghead said, sniffling, "to mourn the passing of... of our former... our former princess, Pla—" The rest of the word was lost as she burst into tears, whirled to face the unlit funeral pyre, and threw her forelegs over the sealed wooden coffin housing Platinum's remains. Heaving sobs racked her body. "Why, Platinum? Why did you leave us? Why, why, why?" She punctuated each repetition by banging her hoof against the wood paneling.
Hurricane stepped forth from where she'd stood next to Twilight at the front of the modest gathering of nobles who looked like they had somewhere else to be, lead her back to the podium, and continued the eulogy herself, wearing a brave face despite the tears in her eyes.
Puddinghead avoided eye contact with the crowd as she clung to Hurricane's side and cried into Hurricane's mane.
Twilight's inner scholar struggled to concentrate on the eulogy, as no historical text transcribed it, but Twilight found the words blurring together. The pitiful spectacle coupled with the knowledge that Celestia was responsible made her stomach turn and her eyes sting. Twilight wanted to cry, but Celestia refused.
Having finished the eulogy, Hurricane grabbed a torch in her teeth and touched the lit end to the treated branches of the funeral pyre. The chemical reaction was swift and violent, wreathing the entire structure in glowing flames which twisted into a black column of smoke that carried Platinum's ashen remains into the heavens, where stars were just starting to appear in the fading light of the setting sun.
Twilight couldn't bear to watch. Her focus turned inward, but all she found to greet her was the sequence of memories that had brought her here just a week from her coronation.
Lying in the nest of cushions with Platinum curled up against her side after another passionate evening, Twilight had mentioned her earlier observation.
Platinum had run her tongue over her newly pointed teeth and gasped. Her eyes had widened, and without another word, she had fled to lock herself in her quarters, where she had stayed for several days.
Twilight had gone to check on her each day, and each day, Platinum had refused to let her or anypony else see her. On the fourth day, the only answer to Twilight's pleas had been muffled sobs, incoherent mumbling, a scream, and shattering glass. Twilight had forced the door open—a less intimidating feat than it sounds, as she had magically unscrewed the hinges first.
Upon stepping inside, she had recoiled at the sight of the hideously disfigured abomination quivering on the floor beside the broken mirror.
Patches of the creature's white coat had been torn out to reveal sleek black chitin. Her once-purple mane and tail had hung limp, lifeless, and drained of color. The creature had turned to look at her with a face that had been unmistakably Platinum's but split diagonally from her hairline across her snout to her neck. One half had had the cold, emotionless features and solid-blue eye of a changeling. The other half's natural azure eye had streamed enough tears to make up for her inability to control the other one's tear ducts, matting the fur on her cheek. She had asked in a discordant distortion of her once-melodious voice, "What's happening to me, Celestia?"
"I'm sorry, Platinum," Twilight had whispered, falling to her knees and pulling her into a tight embrace with her wings and forelegs. "I'm so sorry."
"They won't let me sleep," Platinum had rasped, clinging to her like a foal caught in a thunderstorm. "They won't let me think. They just keep screeching in my head. I keep asking them to leave, but my voice is just one among thousands." She had pressed her crumbling, cadaverous hooves into Twilight's chest, stared into Twilight's eyes, and begged, "Please, Celestia. Please help me."
Twilight had reached into Platinum's mind, but the infernal din within had shattered her concentration and forced her out. Then she had done something she hadn't anticipated. She had leaned in and kissed Platinum, feeling Platinum's fangs poke her bottom lip and watching the anguish drain from Platinum's eye. They had stayed like that for some time as the novel feeling of experiencing love as only a changeling can pacified Platinum.
Platinum had been the one to break the kiss. She had smiled the saddest smile Twilight had ever seen, hung her neck over Twilight's shoulder, wrapped her forelegs around Twilight's back against Twilight's wing joints, and said on the edge of audibility, "Thank you, Celestia. Having known the taste of your lips one last time, I can die happily."
Twilight hadn't processed the last few words at the time, but she had seen the glint of broken glass out of the corner of her eye. Realization had dawned on her too late for her to do anything but look on in horror as a long, jagged shard of Platinum's mirror, encased in a faint green aura, thrust into the soft flesh at the base of Platinum's—
"Sister?" Luna asked, jarring Twilight from the flashback.
"Yes?" Twilight asked, feeling the warmth of Luna's wing around her as she stared vacantly at the smoldering embers clearly visible in the soft moonlight under the heap of ashes before her.
"I'm sorry I couldn't attend, but ever since my cutie mark appeared, I've found staying up during the daylight hours impossible."
"I don't blame you."
"You shouldn't blame yourself either. You couldn't have known our... condition... could be spread in such a way."
"I should have."
Luna was silent for awhile. "She gave me an idea, you know." Receiving no response, she continued, "I stole it, technically." She pretended not to notice Twilight's ear perking. "I wanted a backup plan in case I couldn't raise the moon on my own, so I scanned her mind for the means by which she harnessed the will of her subjects. Having succeeded without it, I wondered what else it might be good for. That's how I came up with my latest project—the Elements of Harmony."
Celestia looked skeptically curious at best, but Twilight was on the edge of her seat at the prospect of learning how the Elements came to be—another subject suspiciously absent from historical texts.
Luna seemed to forget the world around her as she spoke, reminding Twilight of herself lecturing about a recent experiment or discovery, "Imagine a set of six enchanted artifacts that would allow ordinary ponies embodying the cardinal virtues of harmony to harness the will of everypony in Equestria. Should trouble ever find our little ponies while we're unable to come to their aid—"
"They need only band together, and any threat they face will be powerless before their love for one another," Twilight finished Luna's sentence. Even in Celestia's morose state, Luna's passion was infectious, and she could think of no more beautiful way to honor Platinum's unwitting sacrifice. "I assume this has something to do with your being absent from court these past few days."
"Indeed. I checked the Canterlot Archives and found an abandoned stronghold deep enough in the Everfree Forest that the wild magic released in the enchanting process will only pose a negligible threat to civilized areas."
"You'll want to warn the Ursa Major."
"Of course."
***
For the second time since her cutie mark appeared, Twilight awoke to find the moon still in the sky. The first time had been when a surge of untamed magical energy radiated from the Everfree a few hours ago and woke her in the middle of the night. Luna had warned her to expect as much before seeing her to bed and setting off to collect the items they had selected for enchanting—six gold-set gems equal in dimensions but unique in color—so Twilight had promptly returned to bed. Not that she had much choice. Like Luna, Twilight had developed a special connection to her change and encountered great difficulty staying awake while it wasn't in the sky. That Twilight had no such trouble at the moment meant the time had come for her to raise the sun. Luna must have known that, yet she hadn't lowered the moon.
Leaving on her nightstand the gold-and-amethyst jewelry she had commissioned as a symbol of her rule from the same jeweler who crafted the Elements, Twilight threw her bedroom window open with a flourish of magic, leaped into the sky, and soared over Canterlot in the direction she had followed Hurricane two weeks prior.
Her wings had grown far stronger since her last long-distance flight, so Twilight was watching the dense tree line disappear under her a few short hours later. To her dismay, the moon was still frozen at its apex, and the sky was still locked in perpetual dawn.
Assuming the stronghold was what would come to be known as the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters by the time she and her friends confronted Nightmare Moon, Twilight could have gotten there far quicker were she in control of her body, but since Celestia had never been there before, they had to rely on sweeping telepathic scans of the forest. Approaching the precariously balanced stone structure that looked to be in only slightly better repair than when she would return a thousand years hence, Twilight expected to pick up on some kind of signal if Luna was still alive and present. Twilight didn't expect to be forced into a hard landing just beyond the tree line by the mental assault of a legion of metallic voices like what she had heard in Platinum's mind.
Twilight immediately severed the connection and galloped across the not-yet-rickety bridge toward the first structure, through the entrance, up the winding stairs, down the musty corridors, out the back door, up the path to the second structure, and into the main room.
In the center was a raised dais, on which sat the Elements in their original, unbound form. The air around them shimmered from the raw magical energy they still emitted. Ordinary enchantments often took several hours to stabilize enough to safely use, and the Elements were no ordinary enchantments, so they could be unstable for days.
A changeling that looked much like Celestia's natural form lay propped against the side wall beneath a broken window with her hind legs crossed in front of her, her hooves pressed against her head, and her eyes clenched shut. She took no notice of Twilight's entering the room.
Twilight stood stock still and looked on in abject horror, for she saw far more than Luna's mentally and physically violated form. The image triggered a flashback that wasn't her own. Through Luna's eyes, she saw the events of the previous night unfold.
After notifying the Ursa Major, who was nursing a newborn Ursa Minor and took the news amicably, Luna had returned to the stronghold with the mundane Elements in tow. The intense magical expenditure involved in enchanting them had left Luna weak and vulnerable. Reasoning that she wouldn't be disturbed within the walls of the secluded ruin and she had several hours before the moon needed to be lowered, she had elected to rest by the base of the dais and bask in the warmth of her creation.
That plan had gone straight to Tartarus barely an hour later when a fire portal had appeared, from which emerged the form of a changeling queen, but not the one Luna and Twilight had seen on their last day in the hive. From the twisted grin on her face, the menacing look in her eyes, and the dried ichor still staining her fangs, this one had taken the old one's position by force. She had stalked toward Luna, who had managed to raise herself into a fighting stance, and said, "Mother was a fool to trust you. She should have known you'd turn your back on the hive the moment you had a taste of power."
"You say that like you didn't do the same, impostor," Luna had said, her voice frailer than intended. She had lacked the strength to fly or teleport away, and they had both known it. Talking had been her best bet to delay whatever the queen had in mind.
The queen's sickening grin had split her face. "What I did to her was a mercy compared to what the hive would have had she deprived them of sustenance any longer. Now she can know the starvation we have for the last thousand years."
"What did you do to her?" Luna had demanded, lowering her horn and lighting it with an impressive cerulean aura that illuminated the entire room and fizzled out seconds later.
"Nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you, traitor."
Luna had been powerless to stop herself from being levitated in an unnatural green aura and hurled against the wall, where she collided with a window, shattering it. Her wings flaring at the last second had saved her from falling into the chasm below, but not without being speared with fragments of glass. Her magical body had mended the damage that would have grounded a pegasus pony for life, but the pain had distracted her long enough for the queen to magically bind her in place without resistance. Not that Luna had been in a position to pose any.
"Show me that smiling face of yours," the queen had said, standing over her and penetrating Luna's mind with all the subtlety of a lobotomy.
Her disguise dispelled and her body bound to the wall by ethereal chains, Luna had never felt so vulnerable. She was at the mercy of a queen who probably didn't know the meaning of mercy. Luna had only been able to bite her lip and wait for the queen to finish her off. In what sense of the term, she hadn't known, but she had had a feeling she wouldn't have to wait long to find out.
On cue, the queen had splayed Luna's hind legs, crawled over her, turned Luna's head to steal a forceful, venomous kiss on which Luna tasted the old queen's blood, pulled herself closer so their chitin-skinned bellies, among other things, rubbed together in a way that was both electrifying and terrifying, and whispered in Luna's ear, "By the way, Luna, my name is—"
"Celestia," Luna begged, jarring Twilight from the flashback. "Please help me."
Twilight was speechless. The act that had brought her and Platinum such pleasure had been corrupted for the express purpose of bringing about its unintended consequence of reverting Luna into a mindless drone. It was unthinkable, but it had happened. That the mental effects had manifested so quickly could only be explained by the dormant neural network already being in place on account of Luna's already being a changeling. Twilight wondered if a changeling queen could ever truly be reintegrated or if the process would merely drive Luna insane. History implied the latter, but she'd come to distrust history.
"I don't want to die," Luna whimpered, drawing Twilight's attention back to the matter at hoof.
"I won't let you," Twilight said, sitting beside her and pulling her into a hug with her wing as Luna had done for her at Platinum's funeral. Twilight assumed Luna wouldn't be able to call back her disguise with such a cacophony in her head, which meant Luna couldn't appear in public again until Twilight found some way to cure her. Knowing from her experience with Platinum that the surgical precision necessary to do so directly would be impossible under the conditions, Twilight cast a depressant spell instead. "How's that?"
Luna removed her hooves from her head, looked across at her with reptilian emerald-green eyes that had long since run out of tears, and said, "Thank you, Celestia. It's... better. I can still hear them in the background, but I can think a little clearer. The new queen, Chrysalis, she—"
"I know, and I'm sorry, Luna. I should have been here to protect you."
"You'd have been too exhausted to fight. Had you tried, you'd be in no better condition than I am. You've done all you can. Now let me see what I can do." Luna closed her eyes. A faint green aura flickered around her horn and grew brighter before bursting, making her release an anguished cry and press her hooves into her forehead.
A brief telepathic scan revealed what had happened. In attempting to use even the minor amount of magic necessary to call back her disguise, Luna had overtaxed herself and undone the depressant spell, but the voices hadn't just come back. They had come back worse than before.
Twilight recast the spell, wrapped her forelegs around Luna, and rocked her gently back and forth. "Shh... It's okay. Everything's going to be okay. We can fix this. I don't know how, but we'll find a way."
"What about the sun and moon? With Platinum gone, you and me are the only ones who know how to move them. Tartarus will break loose if we don't maintain the cycle."
"You're in no condition to lower the moon, and the energy I'd expend trying could be better spent helping you get better and protecting you should Chrysalis return. A few extra hours of twilight won't kill our subjects or their crops. Besides, who knows when we'll be able to spend this much time together again?"
Luna laughed mirthlessly. "To think that we've already spent more time with each other than we have since our coronation, and this is how we're spending it."
Twilight held her tighter.
***
"Celestia," Luna began.
"No," Twilight cut her off.
Meditation, complete cessation of magical expenditure, and Twilight's constant vigilance keeping her mind at rest, Luna spoke without difficulty, "What do you propose, then?"
Twilight gazed mournfully through the hole in the crumbling ceiling at the ghostly visage of the full moon, which hadn't moved an inch in what her biological clock was telling her had been days. "I..."
"What will our subjects think?"
"That you're a madmare bent on bringing about nighttime eternal, we've been locked in battle for the past several days, and Equestria's survival hinges on my victory," was what Twilight would have said were her lips her own despite the last few days having made clear that the old ponies' tale she'd grown up with was as far from the truth as everything else she'd thought she'd known about Celestia and Luna. The tragedy that would soon follow was one thing Twilight knew was inevitable, though, and it filled her with apathy as she watched herself go through the motions. "There has to be another way. We could—"
"No," Luna cut her off. "I realize they haven't been tested, I realize they may not be entirely stable, and I realize they could as easily kill me as cure me, but I also realize they're our only chance."
Twilight wanted to quip, "They wouldn't kill you directly. That's not their way, but a thousand years on the moon is a guarantee of slow, agonizing death by starvation." She was curious how that logical conclusion would be averted, but she knew she wouldn't find out until the drama blew over. Instead, she was resigned to sighing, leaving Luna's side to trudge sullenly to the dais where the Elements rested and still emitted traces of magical radiation, and saying at length and entirely too theatrically, "I guess there's nothing left to say."
Luna drew herself up, wobbled over to her, draped her surprisingly dexterous insectoid wing over Twilight's back, nuzzled Twilight's furry neck with her fanged, chitin-skinned snout, and said, "You're the only one who can know what really happened here and the only one who will be able to come to my aid, so I need you to be strong if something goes wrong. Promise me you'll do that."
"I promise," Twilight whispered, staring at the Elements as if they were coiled snakes. She closed her eyes and channeled her magic into the Elements. The Elements levitated into the air of their own accord and circled around her and Luna in a rainbow of colors. Her eyes opened, but all she saw was blinding white light, which is all an outside observer would see upon looking into her eyes. The rainbow tightened its orbit, shrouding Luna and covering every inch of her body like a mummy before flashing out of existence with her in it.
When the light faded from the Elements, gravity remembered its job, and they clattered to the cold stone floor. Twilight collapsed amidst them. She had always found the Elements' magic rejuvenating, but this time, they left her feeling as if she were coated inside and out with putrid slime.
Looking through the ceiling, she saw a unicorn's profile imprinted into the moon as it sunk toward the opposite horizon. The level of ambient light increased as the sun eagerly moved into position, forgetting to ask her permission. The stars faded. Her vision blurred. Tears dampened the fur around her eyes. Despite her outward appearance, Twilight only felt hollow.
In her peripheral vision, she watched with cautious interest as the Elements lost their luster and transmuted before her eyes into smooth spheres of stone embossed with their original shapes, presumably as a show of defiance to being harnessed again until ponies properly attuned to the Elements' virtues appeared.
Twilight was wrapping up her umpteenth reiteration of the cover story for Luna's disappearance, each word tasting like bile as it left her mouth, when a swirling, expanding black vortex tore the fabric of reality asunder and bathed the throne room in ultraviolet light and magical radiation, making the paint peel off the walls and the tiles of the checkered marble floor melt together like squares of chocolate left out in the sun.
She was unaffected, but her subjects, who were frozen with terror as they beheld the profile of the draconic figure taking shape before them, would surely be reduced to crumpled skeletons in puddles of fleshy slag if they stood around much longer. No more than two seconds had elapsed since the vortex appeared and she made her observations, and in no more than three, she had rose to her hooves, teleported all in attendance into the hallway, and sealed the room with a powerful ward, assuring that neither light, sound, nor magic would escape. If the thing before her proved to be hostile, which she had little doubt it would, she needn't hold anything back.
The vortex evaporated as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the air so thick with ozone that the flaking paint was starting to brown and bubble around its edges. The figure the vortex had brought into existence hunched over on his eagle claw, lion paw, green-scaled foot, and goat-like knee as if bowing. His tiny wings, one indigo and leathery, the other that of a turquoise pegasus, twitched, unfurled, and gave a few testing, unsynchronized flaps. The white deer's antler and cyan goat's horn that jutted out of his grayish-tan wildebeest head were flanked by a slick black Mohawk that ran down his neck like a fin and abruptly cut off above his lithe brown-furred torso much like the ruby-scaled tail tipped with a prehensile tuft of white hair that snaked out behind him. The overall effect was what might be derived from a blind foal taking the leftover scraps from a doll maker's shop, stitching them together, and cursing the resultant abomination with life.
"What are you?" Twilight asked, though she knew all too well from the moment the perception-skewing effect of the vortex had waned that the creature before her was Discord.
Discord raised his head like a cobra, his posture and long neck making him look almost equine if she blurred her vision enough. He looked at her with his disproportionate yellow eyes and red, pupil-less irises, raised his extraordinarily bushy white eyebrows, and stroked his goatee with his claw before grinning, snapping his talons, back flipping, landing upright on his hind legs, striking a pose like a tap dancer, and asking, "Who, me? Why, I'm a draconequus—a patchwork amalgam of all manner of unsightly creatures and the physical manifestation of Equestria's former chaos and disharmony, brought into existence, appropriately enough, by the cessation of those conditions." He paused. "Now that I think about it, that seems a little long winded, so you can just call me Discord—it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Don't answer that. The real question is," he said, snapping his talons, disappearing in a flash of light, and appearing beside Twilight with his lion arm wreathing her withers before her brain could process what had happened, "who are you?"
Twilight ducked out of his reach, stood with her legs braced and her head lowered in a fighting stance, and said, "I am Princess Celestia of Equestria, bringer of the sun and physical manifestation of Equestria's newfound—"
"Ooh!" Discord cooed, squishing his cheeks between his paw and claw before pointing a talon out the towering window behind him toward the late afternoon sun as it burned its way through the sky and saying, "You mean you're in charge of moving that thing? That sounds like fun!" In another flash, he had his back to her, his paw on the windowsill, and his claw in the air. He snapped his talons, and in an instant, the sun dropped vertically below the horizon and was replaced by the moon as if hoisted to its apex by a pulley. "Haha!" He snapped his talons again, and the sun was back in the sky. He repeated the action several times, announcing each repetition, "Night, day, night, day, night..."
Twilight seethed in silence, her teeth gritted, her eye twitching, and her temple throbbing as she watched him juggle the celestial bodies with blatant disregard for her ward as if doing so were as simple as flipping a switch.
"...Day." Discord twisted his neck away from the window, his body lazily following as he looked at her with a manic glint in his larger eye. "Hey Celestia, what do you think would happen if I—" A bolt of golden magic splashed across his abdomen. He looked down at the petrification magic spreading out from his belly, rolled his eyes, snapped his talons, slowing its progress to a crawl, and sighed, "Really now, Celestia. If you're going to turn me into statuary, you ought to at least give me a chance to pose." He snapped his talons again, materializing a marble pedestal out of thin air, stepped onto the vacant platform, his movements awkward on account of many of his vital organs being petrified, wrapped his tail around the pillar, struck a pose like he was just waking from a nap or perhaps giving an impassioned speech, snapped his talons once again, and yawned just before the wave of magic washed over his face.
While opposed to conflict on principle, Twilight couldn't help feeling cheated by how unceremoniously Celestia had terminated what should have been a very climactic and memorable battle. Twilight sighed internally, canceled the ineffective ward, and called to her unicorn servants, who cautiously stepped back into the room from the windowless hallway and looked around.
The first one froze when her eyes fell on Discord's statue. The second absently stumbled into her, knocking her off balance and eliciting a yelp as they fell to the carpeted floor in a heap. The third sighed, shaking his head, and as the other two pulled themselves to their hooves, asked, "You called, your majesty?"
Twilight nodded to the statue and said, "I've incapacitated the intruder. Put him on display in the castle gardens and have somepony alert me immediately if he shows any signs of autonomous movement. Let the nobles know that I'll be retiring to my quarters for the evening."
"Yes, your majesty," the servants said.
Twilight closed the throne room door behind her and took the long way to the secluded tower that served as her quarters to avoid having to explain what had happened before she had time to fabricate a sufficiently impressive cover story. By the time she arrived, her biological clock told her the time to raise the moon had arrived despite Discord's antics having set the sun back several hours. The sun took its cue and rushed to make up for lost progress as she reached out to the moon and found once again that she couldn't coax it into movement as Luna could. Twilight had to rely on the brute-force method and still have enough energy left to establish a telepathic connection to send the love Luna would need to survive during her thousand-year imprisonment. The connection wasn't strong enough for conscious communication, thus circumventing the issue of the voices, but it allowed them to see fleeting glimpses of each other's memories and mental state.
Through such glimpses, Luna had garnered the knowledge of how the events surrounding her disappearance had come to be misconstrued and how Twilight couldn't afford to challenge the popular conception that Luna had gone mad lest Twilight risk being dethroned and being unable to serve as Luna's lifeline.
Through such glimpses, Twilight knew Luna understood that their predicament was nopony's fault, but the centuries she would spend with only the hive as company would invariably twist her into the monster Equestria thought she was. That was Chrysalis's endgame, Twilight realized. Chrysalis couldn't have Equestria, so she would make it tear itself apart instead.
***
Twilight gazed out the window of her quarters at the gold-and-marble spires of the castle below and the city beyond. She had wondered how her brain would handle a thousand years' worth of memory, but save for a few notable incidents, everything just blurred together. Despite already knowing the future identities of the Element bearers, she had spent the last few decades studying divination magic to discern them and corralling them toward Ponyville, where she sent the Apple family two centuries ago to create a base of operations in close proximity to the Everfree Forest ruins. That Applejack herself would be a bearer was a fortunate coincidence, and though she was currently residing in Manehattan, both Twilight and Celestia knew how that would end.
With the date of Luna's return approaching and the pony to fill the salient role of bearing the Element of Magic having thus far eluded her, however, Celestia feared she would have to either retract her love from her sister and let her starve after having kept her alive for the past thousand years or watch Equestria burn. The choice was simple, but she doubted she'd be able to make it when the time came.
Fortunately, the rainbow explosion that Twilight knew heralded her discovery and induction of herself into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, her decision to take herself on as her personal protege and train herself to become the mare Equestria needed her to be, and the appearance of her and her friends' cutie marks chose that moment to tear across the sky, followed in short order by a flash of lavender magic and a green-spined purple dragon's upper body punching a hole in the roof of the spire where she was taking her entrance exam. Of all the strange experiences Twilight had been privy to during her stay in Celestia's body, meeting herself was one to which not even Celestia could lay claim, but Twilight would have as many years as the memory persisted to grow accustomed to it.
***
Twilight relaxed on a couch in her drawing room, nursed a steaming cup of imported Zebrican rooibos tea, and contemplated the dusty aftertaste while awaiting the arrival of Shining, whom she had invited to introduce his fiance. She heard the aged mahogany doors creak on their brass hinges and looked up, but instead of the white-coated blue-maned unicorn stallion she had expected, a frazzled Luna stood in the doorway. "Greetings, sister," Twilight said pleasantly. "It's a bit past your bedtime, isn't it? Are you here to meet with Cadence as well?"
"You could say that," Luna said, stepping into the room with a stack of official documents floating behind her in a cerulean aura. She closed the doors and tossed the documents onto the coffee table so they spun and slid to a dramatic halt in front of Twilight. "Have a look at what I found in the Canterlot Archives."
Twilight gave her a skeptical glance before lowering her gaze to the documents. The first was a perfectly ordinary report dated from the previous year's census, featuring a color photo of a pink unicorn mare followed by a list of details such as her name, race, sex, cutie mark, mane color, coat color, eye color, birth date, marital status, and residence. Other than the birth date, which was left blank, the report was entirely unremarkable. Twilight looked to Luna questioningly.
"Read the next one," Luna said.
Twilight flipped the page and read the next document. It was another report. This one had a black-and-white picture of the same mare followed by the same list of details. Even the blank birth date was the same. The only differences were the crumbling edges of the yellowed parchment and the census date. This report was filed at the turn of the last century.
Twilight flipped to the next page, and the next, and so on. The ones taken before photography became widespread featured only hasty sketches, but the details that followed confirmed that they were all the same mare. There were ten reports in all. The oldest dated back to a few years after Luna's banishment. Twilight was speechless. Celestia wasn't, "What could it mean?"
"I should think it's obvious," Luna said. "Cadence is—"
A knock on the doors cut her off.
"Come in," Twilight said, stashing the documents beneath the couch.
The doors opened wide to reveal Shining standing beside the same ageless mare from the reports. Bowing, he said, "Greetings, Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna, we're honored you decided to join us." He draped a foreleg over the mare, who leaned into him and smiled respectfully at Twilight and Luna. "This is my fiance—"
"Cadence," Luna finished. "Might we have a word with you in private?"
Shining exchanged a glance with Cadence, his face running the gamut from surprise to confusion, caution, and concern.
"It's okay, Shining," Cadence said, her voice betraying her real thoughts on the matter. "I think I know what they want to talk to me about."
Shining went to say something, thought better of it, and backed into the hallway as she stepped into the room.
Cadence smiled reassuringly and waited for him to close the door before turning to Twilight and Luna, who were taken aback first at the unrestrained glee on her face, then at the feeling of her forelegs pulling them both into a hug, and finally at her crying into their manes and saying in a metallic voice they hadn't heard in over a thousand years, "I missed you two so much after you left. When your connections severed, I thought you'd been killed and I'd never see you again, but here you are!"
"Mother?" Luna asked, her voice quavering.
"Yes, my children," Cadence said, dispelling her illusion to reveal her insectoid form, which looked exactly as it had more than a thousand years prior save for the chitin over her neck, which bore two adjacent cavities lined with scar tissue resembling a vicious snake bite. Changeling queens may be unkillable, but some wounds never heal. "After a thousand years apart, we're finally together again, and I couldn't be prouder of how far you and your sister have come."
"Aren't you angry?" Twilight asked. "We turned our backs on the hive."
"Perhaps I would be were I still the queen, but I lost that title to Chrysalis long ago," Cadence said, spitting the name as if it left a vile taste in her mouth. "She severed my connection and sent me into exile, intending for me to die of starvation. I would have had I not realized, as you have, how much more powerful love freely given was. Of course, I still had to learn to earn it."
"Your census reports say you've never been married, but you must have taken on lovers to have survived this long. What makes Shining any different?"
"Well, that's a long story. I actually took this name and appearance from my first lover as a homage of sorts after she died. She lived in solitude far from pony civilization, trying to prove that unicorns could learn to manipulate nature magic better than earth ponies. She had never heard of changelings before, much less seen them before she found me curled up in the roots of a tree that had been upended in a thunderstorm near her cottage. She gave me food and a place to stay, I gave her company, and one thing lead to another. I would have married her, but like I said, she died. I'm not sure what makes Shining different from the others. He's not the first with whom I've wanted to spend my life, but I hope he'll be the last. I guess... I'm just tired of starting over."
"Are you going to turn him into a changeling?"
Cadence's eyes fell, and her ears drooped. "No, not unless he wants. I'll be happy if he does, but if he doesn't, I've lived a long life, and I'll be just as happy to join him in death's embrace. I'd never force the transformation on him. I killed my first lover that way."
"As did I," Twilight said, sniffling. A thousand years had passed, but her last few moments with Platinum were among the few memories still fresh in her mind.
Cadence looked up, her eyes widening in realization. "Oh, my. You poor, poor thing. How have you survived this long without taking on lovers?"
"How do you know I haven't?"
Cadence hazarded a smile. "You're not the only one who reads minds, dear."
"I couldn't live with more blood on my hooves, so what choice did I have?"
"You had more choice than I. Abstaining wasn't an option. I could either take on lovers or starve. Fortunately, with minimal loss of life, I learned to control whether or not I passed on my condition."
Twilight strained a humorless, painful chuckle. "That would have been nice to know a thousand years ago. Maybe you could teach me."
"It's never too late to learn," Cadence said, telepathically imparting the knowledge to Twilight and Luna as Celestia had the memory.
"Thank you, Mother," Luna said. "Perhaps we can return the favor. Call back your disguise, if you would."
Cadence pulled away, closed her eyes, lit her horn, and once again wore the body of a pink unicorn mare. She opened her eyes to find Luna's horn aglow and felt Luna's magic wrap around her like a winter breeze. Whatever Luna had done was over in seconds. Cadence asked, "What did you do?"
"See for yourself, Princess Cadence," Luna said, smiling and gesturing to Cadence's back.
Cadence gave her a funny look before twisting her head around and gasping. Where there had been nothing but her bare coat a moment ago, two pink wings were folded against her back. She extended and flapped them, too busy marveling at how the sensation differed from using her natural wings to be embarrassed that she hadn't noticed such a dramatic change until Luna pointed it out, although that did beg a certain question, "What am I going to tell everypony?"
After a moment's deliberation, Twilight cast another spell on her and said, "From now on, anypony who looks at you and who would remember your old appearance will have their memories altered to believe that you've always looked as you do now. Altering a thousand years of historical records would be too much hassle, but nopony has bothered to check since Luna, so there shouldn't be any issue. Shining will be the test of how well the spell works and whether it needs adjustment, but before we let him back in, there are two more matters we need to discuss. First, since you're royalty now, tradition dictates your wedding and reception will be hosted here at the castle. Is that acceptable?"
"As long as you two can attend, I couldn't care less where they're hosted. What's the second matter?"
"As you know, my sister and I preside over the sun and moon. You'll need to fill a similar niche for ponies to accept you as the third princess."
"Well, I never picked up my first lover's talent for nature magic, but I've had the last thousand years to perfect my inborn love magic."
"From this day forth, Equestria will know you as Princess Mi Amore Cadenza."
***
"Twilight?"
"Mmm," Twilight murmurs, snuggling against the speaker's warm, smooth body.
"It's time to wake up, Twilight."
Twilight reluctantly lifts her head, yawns, and cracks open her eyes to find herself lying atop the pristine white sheets of Celestia's bed and curled up against the chitinous skin of Celestia's side. She blearily looks up into Celestia's dark face and caring eyes and asks, "How long was I out?"
Celestia glances out the window to see the sun dipping below the horizon and says, "A few hours. You lost consciousness when I cast the memory spell, and I thought you'd be more comfortable up here."
Twilight makes no effort to leave Celestia's side. "How can that be?"
"You weren't reliving my past so much as remembering it as if the memory had always been there. A thousand years may have passed from your perspective, but the experience only lasted an instant. The rest of the time was your mind recovering from the shock. I'm sorry you had to see some of the things you did, but perhaps now you'll understand how a creature who feeds on emotion can understand love."
"The rumor that you intend to make me a princess certainly seems a lot more grounded in reality now."
"That's actually why I called you here today."
Twilight blushes scarlet, her tail swishing involuntarily and Celestia's skin against her side suddenly inspiring a very different feeling. Trying in vain to make eye contact, she asks, "It's not a rumor, is it?"
Celestia caresses Twilight's back with her filamentous wing in an attempt to soothe her but stops when it has the opposite effect. "It's a rumor in that I would never force the transformation on you, though I think you're strong enough to handle it, especially since I'd be by your side every step of the way.
"Platinum's suicide is a tragedy I never want to see again. The decision is entirely yours, and even if you were to accept, I presume you wouldn't want to change your friends' memories of you, so significant planning would have to go into framing your transformation in a manner that blurred the connection to its true cause. I merely wish to discuss the possibility. Chrysalis's magic during our confrontation at the royal wedding damaged my ability to maintain my disguise for extended periods of time, so I need to find an heir in case my condition worsens lest I give Equestria's presumptive populace cause to fall into chaos."
"Discord may have reformed," Twilight adds, having regained some of her composure, "but I doubt he'd be able to resist the opportunity."
Celestia nods and continues, "The thousand years of memories we now share coupled with your innate talent for all types of magic makes you an ideal candidate for running the nation, and in time, taking over the cycles of the sun and moon." She lowers her head to eye level with her. "More importantly, I can think of nopony I'd rather take on as my first lover in a thousand years than you, Twilight."
Twilight finds herself unable to look away from Celestia's radiant emerald eyes even as her cheeks burn, her blush returning in full. The complete sincerity in Celestia's expression makes her wonder why she's so embarrassed—perhaps because she never said anything to hint at her feelings for her, always having dismissed them as too unrealistic to be worth pursuing.
"My telepathy and attunement to love, while nothing compared to Cadence's, have made your affection hard to miss," Celestia says as if to answer Twilight's unspoken question. She lifts her head and looks back out the window. "That said, I understand if upon seeing me for what I truly am, you don't feel the same anymore."
Despite reliving a thousand years of Celestia's memories, Twilight will need considerable time to reflect before she's sure of her thoughts. Fortunately, her feelings aren't so complicated. Before she realizes what she's doing, she rises to her hooves, putting herself once again at eye level with her, and leans in to touch her lips to Celestia's cheek in a feather-light kiss.
Vividly remembering how overwhelm the simplest displays of affection could be for Celestia and realizing Celestia must be even more affected than her, Twilight suppresses a giggle at the fluttering in her chest and says, "I'll admit I was uneasy when I first saw you for what you are, as you put it, but now that I can put things in perspective, I can't help finding a certain exotic attractiveness about your natural form, and I'm honored you trusted me enough to expose yourself to me like this."
Twilight traces her hoof down Celestia's neck, eliciting a delightful shiver. She'd normally be too timid to be so sensual, but after all she went through with Celestia, Twilight can't imagine anypony with whom she'd be more comfortable. Twilight whispers, "Beneath your smooth, chitinous exoskeleton, you're still the same Celestia I know and love, and while saying that I wouldn't mind being your lover and possible successor would be an understatement, I won't have my feelings cheapened by a sense of obligation to maintain the masquerade. Other ponies will love you regardless of your outward appearance once they hear your side of the story. Tomorrow morning, you should leave your disguise at the door and hold court as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Ponies will be shocked, confused, and probably afraid, but once they realize you're still you, they'll have questions, and you can answer them."
"I'd worry that they'd reject me outright," Celestia says. "Without their love, I'd wither and die."
"I wouldn't let you," Twilight says.
"Neither would we," Luna says, emerging from the shadows with Cadence.
Cadence takes a moment to settle herself after the unsettling experience of being completely immaterial before continuing, "The question is not whether they'll come around but how much time they'll need."
Luna finishes, "You kept me alive until everypony was ready to accept me again, so I can do the same for you."
Celestia smiles a small, fanged smile as tears well in her reptilian eyes and says, "I love you all so much."
"If you loved us anymore, you'd have none left for yourself," Twilight says, nuzzles Celestia's neck, closes her eyes, and smiles into Celestia's bioluminescent mane as the warmth of Luna and Cadence's wings and forelegs wraps around them.
Celestia glared defiantly through the crumbling ceiling at her distant sun, which glared defiantly back through the unnatural blizzard. The same bitter snow that pelted her face and melted against her chitinous skin blanketed the raised dais that once bore the Elements, and if she strained her ears, she could hear the neighing of windigos.
The windigos were invisible against the frosty, lifeless sky, but they were there, galloping on the biting wind like ethereal vultures waiting for her to die so they could feast on the now-rotting corpse of Equestria's harmony that she'd struggled to protect for the past thousand years.
Celestia was a fool to believe her subjects would accept her, and a greater fool to believe they wouldn't realize her mother and sister were changelings and reject them as well. Her subjects, it seemed, were smarter than she'd given them credit for. In the inhospitable hell of a world they'd brought upon themselves, they'd need to be.
Cadence and Luna lay curled up on either side of her to conserve warmth, but chitin provided little insulation, and they'd succumbed to hypothermia hours ago. It wouldn't kill them, of course. They'd slowly starve just like her, but death would take them gently and peacefully in their sleep. She envied them.
Celestia grimaced as another pang of hunger reminded her how empty her heart was. She had taken to swallowing mouthfuls of snow to trick her body, and if that didn't work, freeze herself from the inside out. While it accomplished the latter admirably, she was still awake and aware. She cursed her sun for protecting her from the cold. She wanted to believe there was still hope, that even without her, the Elements would be enough to fight back the advancing tide of darkness. Alas, she knew all too well that without her love and care, the transformation would kill Twilight just like it did Platinum.
***
Twilight knew too, but she wasn't one to go down without a fight. She had barricaded herself in Platinum's old quarters, which had remained untouched since Platinum's death and contained many a grimoire of forgotten magic that Celestia hadn't had the heart to lock away in the Canterlot Archives. Twilight was thankful for small blessings like that, for a heavy crashing had just joined the rising crescendo outside her door as the mob scouring the castle gathered in hopes of manifesting its collective desire to see her lynched over the battlements. She'd sooner melt the flesh from their bones than give them the pleasure, but she only had so much magic, and she had to conserve it. The ancient ritual she was attempting would be taxing.
She had been spared the infernal voices Luna and Platinum had experienced, so she had little trouble focusing on the archaic description of the preparations for a hexagram of amplification. Twilight had to resort to holding the chalk and drawing the lines by telekinesis, however, as the insectoid mutations being forced upon her mammalian body were slowly tearing it apart.
She finished the sixth and final glyph between the two concentric circles bordering the central hexagram and shambled inside on her atrophied legs and crumbling hooves just as several slivers of light pierced the straining wooden door where the mob's persistent battering had splintered the wood.
She ignored the mob's shouts of horror and disgust at the cadaverous half-changeling abomination she'd become, closed her one good eye, and concentrated on laying the framework of her teleportation spell as she had a hundred times before. The difference was that the ambient magic absorbed through her pores and concentrated around her horn was amplified a hundredfold into a blinding lavender corona that sent the mob falling over itself as it fled in terror.
When the magic building inside her, coursing through her veins, and struggling for release reached critical mass, she knew the spell was ready. All she had to do was give it a destination. Thinking back to the very first memory Celestia had imparted on her, Twilight vanished in a burst of light, heat, and magic that anypony unfortunate enough to be watching would only perceive through the agony of his eyes popping and gushing from their sockets like the yolks of poached eggs.
Hexagrams of amplification had fallen out of favor in the past few centuries for their contraindication with already-powerful magic, which manifested when the excess teleportation magic vaporized a spherical chunk of Canterlot Castle a hundred yards across, splitting all matter within into its individual atoms and scattered them over the city as magical fallout.
***
Discord sat in the throne room with a wine of glass clutched in his claw as he looked out across Equestria, for he had lifted what remained of the castle into the sky adjacent to its former resting place on the mountainside and turned it into an exact replica painstakingly molded from rainbow-colored gelatin so it wouldn't obstruct his view of the world beyond.
Contemplating how best to antagonize his newly inherited nation full of playthings once they washed the lactose out of their fur—for he had transformed the localized blizzard into a hail of ice cream scoops in a variety of flavors, whose impacts with his gelatin fortress made the entire structure jiggle—he became vaguely aware of a yellow pegasus pony whose hooves made impressions in the floor as she politely tried to get his attention. Absently, he asked, "Can I help you?"
"Well, yes, actually. My friends and I..." Fluttershy trailed off as he turned to face her fully with a faraway look as if he wasn't focusing on her so much as the distant scenery directly behind her. She turned to see that he was actually locked in a staring contest with Pinkie, who stood alongside Applejack, Dash, and Rarity.
"How did you get up here?" Discord asked in bemusement.
"Take a guess," Pinkie deadpanned, ruffling her pink, feathery wings.
"Ah, yes," Discord said, vaguely remembering turning all of Twilight's friends into what alicorns would be if such things existed so they wouldn't have to feel alienated once Twilight became one. In retrospect, he couldn't fathom why he'd cared. Still, he figured it'd be worth it to see their mortal friends, family, and lovers die around them. "Well, whatever you want, make it quick. I'm kind of busy."
"As I was saying," Fluttershy continued, forcing a weak smile as he turned his impatient gaze back on her, "my friends and I were hoping... Well, you see, Equestria has been in a bad place since it realized its princesses had been abducted by a group of changeling queens who had the audacity to show their true forms in public. We understand chaos is your thing and all, but we really don't think it's what Equestria needs right now, so we were just wondering if maybe you'd be so kind as to step down from the throne and give us the reigns of government so we could restore order to the land. That's all."
Throughout her needlessly wordy speech, an insane smirk had crept across Discord's face. "Really? You thought you could just fly into my castle and ask me to step down? Well, I suppose you've demonstrated your ability to do just that, but I'm afraid I have to decline. Now, off with you!"
"What about our friendship?" Fluttershy pleaded. "Don't you care what happens to Equestria, to me?"
"Let me ask you this, Fluttershy," Discord said, finally remembering their names. "Would you ever make Rainbow Dash choose between you and her dream of joining the Wonderbolts? Would you ever make Pinkie Pie choose between you and her need to throw parties? Don't answer that. I know you wouldn't, which begs the question: why would you make me choose between you and my need to sow discord and reap chaos? What kind of friend would that make you?"
"Buck this!" Dash shouted, her wings flaring. "We're alicorns now. Why don't we just kick his flank like Celestia and Luna did?"
Discord took a sip of glass from his wine, set it down on his armrest, and snapped his talons.
"My wings!" Dash cried as her wings disappeared in a poof of sparkling sky-blue dust, though her shock soon gave way to indignation at his lack of creativity as she remembered him pulling the same trick the first time he took over Equestria.
"That's why. I'm the one who made you alicorns, but the change is far from permanent. If you want to stop me and save Equestria, you won't do it with magical rainbows. You'll do it by proving that harmony is what truly lies in ponies' hearts. For your information, pony, Luna had no part in my defeat, and just like you, Celestia only succeeded by striking me while my guard was down—a cheap trick for an allegedly reformed changeling. Yes, you heard correctly. Your princesses haven't been abducted by changelings. They are changelings. They always have been, and as we speak, they're starving in the Everfree ruins because you ponies were too bigoted and intolerant to accept that, so I ask you, my little ponies, who's the real monster here?"
"We don't have to listen to this," Dash said, drew back her hoof, leveled her horn, and charged.
"Some ponies never learn," Discord sighed, snapped his talons again, and frowned when her screaming as she plummeted through the opening he'd created in the gelatin beneath her hooves brought him far less amusement than he'd expected.
"You seem to have answered your own question," Rarity said before diving through the hole after Dash, followed by Applejack, who must have realized Rarity wasn't nearly strong enough to catch Dash by herself.
Discord watched with mild interest as they swooped down and rescued Dash a scant few hundred yards above the ground. He had considered taking away their wings too and narrowing the annoying dissidents he'd have to deal with in the coming days down to Pinkie and Fluttershy but reasoned that that would be much less fun. He made a mental note to restore Dash's wings when he got around to it.
"Hey!" Fluttershy shouted, flitting over to hover in his face and stare him down in one of her rare moments of assertiveness. "Just who do you think you are?"
Discord replied in a bored monotone, "Discord, physical manifestation of the pony races' thousand years of infighting prior to their unification and Celestia and Luna's arrival from the changeling hive. That's not who I think I am, by the way, it's who I know I am. We spirits know exactly who we are and what we're meant to do, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm meant to expedite Equestria's descent into a new dark age."
He stood erect and raised his long, snake-like neck to its full height so that he towered over Fluttershy, who wilted to the floor under the predatory ferocity of his glare and further still at the cutting tone with which he asked, "The real question, Fluttershy, is what makes you think you have the right to order around a god? Just who do you think you are?"
"I..." Fluttershy looked to be on the verge of tears, but seemed to recover when she felt Pinkie's presence beside her. "I'm sorry, Discord. God or not, I never meant to order you around. I just thought... I thought our friendship meant something to you... I can see now that I was wrong."
"I think I understand."
"You do?" Fluttershy asked with cautious hope in her glistening cyan eyes.
"Oh yes, I understand perfectly. When asking nicely doesn't get your way, you try throwing your weight around, and when you meet someone who's sensible enough to realize how much stronger he is, you declare all bets off and roll out the crocodile tears in hopes of guilt tripping him into submission. You're a manipulator, plain and simple."
"I'm not manipulating you!"
"You're not doing a very good job," Discord said, slumped back into his throne, finished his glass, and tossed the wine aside. Predictably, it exploded on contact and flung bits of gelatin everywhere, including on him and Pinkie, whose body shielded Fluttershy. The defiant seriousness in Pinkie's expression as bits of gelatin slid down her face should have had him in stitches, but it failed to draw so much as a smile.
"I grow tired of this game, Fluttershy," he continued. "You never liked me for being me. You always wanted to change me. We were never friends, and we never will be. I can accept that. I can accept that nopony would ever want to be friends with the physical manifestation of everything ponies hate about themselves. I could even accept, even respect your unscrupulous methods of pursuing your agenda, but there's one thing I just can't accept."
"What's that?"
"You don't have your own agenda! All your life has been spent tending to others, helping others achieve their dreams. That's all you want in life, and it makes me sick. You have no dreams of your own. You might as well be a pep-talking puppet that other ponies can use and discard as they please without worrying about retribution. In fact..." Discord trailed off and snapped his talons once more. Where Fluttershy had knelt a moment before, a simple pink-and-yellow sock puppet pegasus pony with big cyan buttons for eyes lay limply against the floor.
Then came the screaming, followed by the sobbing and muttering as Pinkie passed swiftly through the stages of grief in no particular order. She looked up at him, all defiance gone, and asked meekly, "Why, Discord? Why would you do that? Friend or not, you don't just turn ponies into sock puppets! That's not like you! You manipulate them, turn them against each other, and even make them wish they were dead, but you don't kill them!"
Discord stepped down from his throne, knelt before her, picked up the sock puppet, and slid it over his paw. He moved its mouth instead of his as he spoke in a resonant mockery of Fluttershy's voice, "Ponies who've studied biology know conflict is written on their genes, but they willfully preserve a sanctuary of ignorance in which they can believe the past thousand years marked ponykind's transcendence over its base instincts when all they really accomplished was bottling up all their hatred and intolerance. They repressed it and repressed it, and like a powder keg that's no longer want for a spark, they've found their excuse to let it all out. From now on, you and your friends will be living in a world where 'survival of the fittest' is the rule, so you'd better adapt quick."
Visibly struggling not to throw up, Pinkie said in a quavering voice, "I don't believe that. Equestria may have killed its princesses, and you may have disbanded the Elements, but harmony will never die unless we stop fighting for it. Conflict may be in our nature, but only animals are bound by their nature."
After watching her turn tail and run out the door, presumably to regroup with her friends, Discord fell on his haunches, the floor jiggling under him like a water bed. Tears welling in his eyes, he held the sock puppet up, stared into its artificial, unblinking eyes, and sobbed, "I wish you were right."
***
Chrysalis sees all this and more as she expends the last of her energy on a remote-viewing spell. Gazing over the world she destroyed, she smiles. She wants to think harmony is dead and she killed it herself, but neither is completely true. She orchestrated its assassination, but she wasn't the one who plunged the dagger into its heart. She didn't need to be. Equestria did that all by itself.
In truth, harmony was never alive in the first place. If it were, Equestria wouldn't be freezing over, her mother and sister wouldn't be dying in exile, and most importantly, her hive wouldn't have starved. The changelings she besieged Canterlot with were already artifacts of an extinct race. The long-dead chitinous husks scattered throughout the hive are all that remains of the rest. She's no one's queen anymore. She's just an embittered old changeling waiting on death's doorstep to be let in.
The sprawling tunnels around her are as silent as a catacomb, and the glowing fungi that flourished in her mother's time have all but gone dark, so the nearby flash and pop of teleportation magic catches her attention immediately. It's about time, she thinks to herself, trying to lift her head to greet the newcomer and predictably failing. Her vestigial magic is still strong for a changeling, but her body gave out days ago, and she's been lying on the floor ever since. Whatever vengeance the newcomer has planned will be a mercy.
Exhausted from the journey, Twilight collapses on arrival, but she doesn't have far to go. The last iota of life she can detect in the entire hive is coming from the next chamber. She can only assume Chrysalis anticipated her arrival, and for whatever reason, wanted to make herself easily found. Inch by inch, she drags her limp body forward on the crumbled, bony remains of her front hooves, each yard feeling like a mile.
Facing the other way, Chrysalis doesn't see the newcomer's face but hears the chipping of hooves, recognizes the dwindling life force entering the chamber as Twilight's, and says, "Welcome home, Twilight Sparkle. I wondered when you'd finally arrive. To think that this is how it ends—with you dragging a body that's hardly yours across the cold bedrock so you can know the pleasure of taking my life before my curse takes yours and me laying here completely powerless to stop you from doing me that mercy—is all too amusing, and that's not even the punchline."
Twilight doesn't respond. Having crossed the floor during Chrysalis's reminiscing, she rolls her onto her back and straddles her chitinous belly under the sickly-green ambient light.
Despite the hatred in Twilight's glowing green eyes and red irises manifesting in the familiar purple miasma of black magic, conjuring a black crystalline stiletto out of thin air, and aiming the long, slender blade at her exposed throat, Chrysalis continues unabated, "The punchline, my dear Twilight, is that none of this would have been possible without you."
Twilight raises the stiletto into the air before plunging it through the chitinous skin of Chrysalis's neck, piercing Chrysalis's trachea with a cartilaginous crunch. She watches dispassionately as the malevolent blade greedily sucks the the magical essence from Chrysalis's body.
Chrysalis coughs up greenish-black ichor, her struggling breaths ceasing and the haunting emerald light fading from her reptilian eyes.
"I know," Twilight whispers, unsheathing the blade from Chrysalis's neck, wiping the ichor off in her faded mane, and turning the stiletto on herself. She gasps, her pupils becoming pinpricks as the point penetrates the tender skin below her sternum and slides smoothly through the various chambers of her spasming heart.
Her vision blurring and the searing pain of her magical essence being sundered from her body numbing her thoughts, she lowers her gaze to see bright crimson blood matting her fur against her skin, dripping down the length of the stiletto, trickling over Chrysalis's pale body, and pooling on the cavern floor around them. Her balance wavering, she falls onto Chrysalis's chest, her head laid across Chrysalis's neck. As silence fills the hive, the world turns to black.
