Whispering Stars

by Causal Quill

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance, Comedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Nightmare Moon, Princess Luna
Length: 32503

Once upon a time, there was a lonely blue alicorn named Tyranny, an arrogant white alicorn named Pride, and a field of snowballs that threatened existence.

This is a story of how the grand spirits of Tyranny and Pride fought in ages long past, battling over the future of the world 'neath stars newly born on a nameless field in the distant north. It is a story of blank skies, of strange endeavors, and of things prehistoric. At least, that's how it starts.

The Crystal Empire makes Equestria look young, and Twilight Sparkle is about to find out just how old Celestia really is.

Published 2013-02-26 02:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-26 09:51:08 UTC

In Which Twilight Sparkle is Annoyed By Alicorns

Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

Equestrian Foal’s Rhyme, Traditional.

Long ago, when the world was young and all the grand powers that be were still aptly described as adorable, the sky was blank and empty. It had no sun, it had no moon, and it had no stars. Strange features occasionally appeared in it at the whims of the powers, but save an aurora in the north, none proved permanent.

In the last days of the blank sky was born one of the youngest of the powers. She was a blue-maned alicorn filly, and she was the spirit named Tyranny. We look on Tyranny’s greatest work frequently, yet you will find no word of her in books, for her name is one forgotten. How can we look upon something as awful as tyranny and know not what we see? Very rare is the pony who understands the true nature of stars.

Tyranny was unhappy with the world she found herself in. The other spirits had made the world already into a lush canvas of life, but they had only just started with creating lesser souls to inhabit it. Such few as they made they kept close to themselves. There was nopony to admire Tyranny as she wished to be admired, and she herself did not know the secret to creating life.

It was while thinking this that she stared at the long and empty void overhead, and realized that even though creating life was hardly in her nature, she knew well that she could bend others to her will. The void was such an endless space for magic to be worked in. It looked like it might truly be infinite. Would not the grandest expression of her nature be to craft utterly inevitable events? Perhaps she could craft a less lonely fate for herself with them. These are the thoughts she later claimed sent her questing after the northern aurora, the brightest part of the blank sky in the days before the sun and moon.

She took snow from the ground, and packed it into a ball. She packed it tight until it became an icy gleam in the shifting light provided by the aurora overhead. She breathed on it, and it gleamed vastly more. What had been snow became a shining light, almost unbearably bright with its proximity. She hugged the light to herself as she thought hard about her desires for the future. ‘This star will be the moment when the first mortal ruler will take power over a country of her own, scarcely influenced by any divine spirit at all,’ she decided. Perhaps a new world of mortals would be less lonely than this current world of gods.

Tyranny lobbed the ignited snowball tentatively up into the night sky. It acquired a silver trace as it flew through the air and out from the planet, and it hung low and large in the sky. Subtly did the world change as that magic shined back down upon it. Tyranny clapped her hooves together giddily as she felt it, and then she closed her eyes and stilled herself. For a moment she listened to all the world.

She could hear the new star whispering even to the other powers divine across the world. They were not immune! They would hear, and not knowing that they heard, they would lose their leashes on the souls they shaped! She had hardly dared hope that she could have that kind of influence over the powers of the world.

Energized by a success that was everything she had hoped for, Tyranny hurriedly set about gathering the snowy field into an entire field of snowballs. There were so many events she wished to ensure. She had a great deal of work to do.

If the spirit called Tyranny was one of the youngest spirits in creation, the spirit called Pride was one of the oldest, perhaps the oldest of all. The difference between oldest and youngest was not so grand yet as you might imagine. She may have been the very visage of age, but she was still naught more than a filly, white-coated, her mane a pure and innocent pink. That young alicorn was named Pride, for she was prideful indeed. She had seen the world form around her and she accepted nothing as impossible or inevitable.

She created much and many things in the new world, but there was one thing she would not do. Pride knew well the secret of making life, but with it she made no lesser souls for herself. It wasn’t that she found the work repugnant. It was more that... she found her own projects sufficient, compelling even, and that she was never lonely while she had so much to do. Thus was Pride content only to watch, curious and distant, as the other gods created them first.

What she saw them do with those souls appalled her.

When she could bear no longer to watch suffering distantly, she discovered she had not the power to cast down the other great spirits of the world by herself alone. She was cast down thrice in learning that lesson. No injury she suffered burned so terribly as the shame of awful failure. Thus it was that under the first star of night, Pride thought that she might take her tactics beyond confrontation. She learned to hide and skulk, and to choose wisely when she made her approaches.

The skills the star whispered to her were ones that none could anticipate. An alicorn of glowing white is not at all what one expects stealth to look like, not even when she is small, but what is more hidden than a thing unthinkable? False humility made the spirit called Pride more dangerous than any degree of fiery wrath had ever been able, for such scheming gave her a weapon that would work against the mighty. She knew now to start by approaching the very small.

She went to the souls that the other spirits had created and spoke to them. To those who knew her already, the beautiful Pride whispered of ambition and discontent. To those who knew her not and suffered most, she whispered of love and reassurance. To all she could, she taught the lessons of harmony, and spread ideas heretical to the other spirits. She turned their creations against them.

A stream of refugees fled to the north. Pride had shown them they could be more than the toys for strange gods, and though they knew little of harmony and often fought, still they looked with fresh wonder upon a world that seemed to have no end of potential as they set out for freedom.

Perhaps the thing about which they wondered most were the gleaming stars far overhead. Every night, new stars streamed into the void, the blank sky dying under Tyranny’s efforts. It was from the north that the stars entered the sky, and so it was that Tyranny served as an unwitting beacon to the lost and hopeless who fled their former masters. The dark alicorn did not yet know it, but the stars she crafted to enforce her whims whispered even to her.

When Pride had gathered enough to her banner, she set off for the north as well, leading the largest group of the refugees from the other gods. Engrossed in her own plans and flush with victory, she kept her hooves on the ground, and looked at the sky hardly at all. It was enough to know the world went well with her. All the world circled around her, and she was at the center of all things. Surely there could not be a thing of importance that she failed to notice.

Pride did not once notice the font of stars as she travelled north. She did not acknowledge it at all until she found the place where most of those who fled north had stopped. They were gathered just shy of the northern wastes. The starfont where Tyranny worked to fill the night sky was near at hand. There Pride as well declared her court... and was indundated with questions about the stars. She told her subjects what she had told herself.

She was the center of all things. Surely there could not be a thing of importance that she failed to notice.

Her followers went away unsatisfied, perhaps hearing too much of their old masters in these words of Pride. Yet Pride herself was not so dense as to think the answer sufficient when she had been challenged on it. She noticed the font of stars now. So near it seemed that stars streaked off into the sky. She thought to herself, ‘What is being done to my beautiful sky?’

Few know this, but Pride is the first owner of all things. There is no shortage of artisans in this world who have created their greatest works simply to feel the fondness of Pride, having never a greater purpose in mind for what they create. The world is vast, of course. Pride owns few things forever. It is merely that she owns all things first.

As far as she was concerned, no one had yet proven a claim against her on the sky. These shining lights were an act of trespass.

She set out just a little farther north, and came upon a field covered in countless small frozen orbs. It sparkled in the twilight of the world’s youth.

“Hey! I heard that. You did that on purpose.”

"Perhaps!"

By far the most wondrous thing in that field was the dark blue pony sitting in its middle. For there sat Tyranny, using her hooves to shape snow into yet more of the countless orbs piled around her.

“Thy works have made of the ice a light to mirror the ones taking over the sky. Prithee tell, be thy efforts in praise of the lights high above, or be they source for them?” asked Pride as she approached.

“Prithee?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Prithee?”

“Admittedly, they weren’t even speaking Equestrian, so there’s no point in me using an archaic variant.”

"So no prithee?"

“No, but your reaction makes it far too amusing to regret. Hm, fine. I’ll try that one again.”

“Your works have made of the ice a light to mirror the ones taking over the sky. Please tell me, are you praising the new lights with your work, or are you making them?” asked Pride as she approached.

Tyranny looked up from her work, pausing where she sat, a snowball held between her hooves. “I call them stars. The sky above is endless and wasted. This is only what I am due,” said the little filly with a voice dissonantly loud.

Pride laughed at the sound of that voice and bounded nearer. Tyranny was not wrong; Pride had done nothing with the sky. Not only was it being made into something beautiful, the incongruency of the voice and its owner amused Pride so much she decided instantly that she liked the smaller alicorn.

The feeling was not reciprocal, at least not yet. That laughter drew a deep frown. Tyranny glared at the snowball she was holding. She breathed on the snowball and ignited it, then lofted it high in the sky. It was the first star to spring from the starfont that evening. It whispered of a long and petty vengeance for Pride’s laughter.

All those pranks, all that teasing, food fights that could have fed a regiment... They all started there. Don’t laugh. Not every destiny is grand.

“Laugh? I wasn’t even aware of it. History books don’t... I can’t even... No, it’s all obvious, why was I starting to think Pride and Tyranny were you and your sister? Haha, no, silly me, you’re talking about some other pair of alicorns. Who get into food fights with each other.”

Not knowing the embarrassing doom that awaited her from this star, Pride watched with glee as it sailed to its site in the skies, a silver streamer stretched behind it. “The sky is to be wasted no more!” she announced. “Do these ‘stars’ have function beyond adornment?”

“Every star marks an event that will happen in the future,” said Tyranny. Her horn lit as she brought to herself a snowball she had already made. “This one will be a joyous marriage between two souls, long and unmarred by strife.” Tyranny breathed upon the snowball and ignited it, then used a hoof to throw it high into the sky.

Pride stomped her hooves ecstatically. “That’s wonderful! Make another one!”

“This one will be an artisan who suffers greatly to complete a hard project, but who has no regrets once he sees his success,” said Tyranny as she brought another snowball to herself, breathed on it, and then tossed it up into the sky.

Pride applauded in a more reserved manner for this one. She did not like the idea of anyone experiencing great suffering, but if the artisan was happy in the end about the way things turned out, it was still a good thing. “That is very interesting. Show me another!”

“This one will be the long misery of a stallion who lies about love to me, and it will be the ruin of everypony he has ever cared for,” said Tyranny as she brought another snowball to herself, breathed on it, and then was tackled by Pride.

“Why would you do that!?” demanded Pride angrily. The newborn star shone brightly between them, a beauty belying the horror of its nature.

The dark alicorn glared at the bright one. “It is a punishment for a bad pony. He deserves it!”

“You can’t know that he’ll betray you!”

“I saw it in the stars!”

“The stars you made! He... he doesn’t exist yet! These stars are all things that wouldn’t happen at all except that you keep putting them up there,” said Pride.

Tyranny’s glare softened into confusion. Pride sounded... hurt. The fate of this unborn stallion almost seemed personal to her. That didn’t make sense.

Silence stretched between them. Pride broke it, saying, “If he’s fated to do it, how is it his fault at all? How would you like it if YOU were the one fated to lie about love?”

“I would never lie about love,” shouted Tyranny angrily, her voice cracking. She tried to squirm out of the hooves of Pride, but the elder Pride was stronger and held tight to her.

Pride smashed her hoof through the shining star between the two of them. It shattered into stardust, and Pride’s horn glowed golden as she reformed the star into a new shape. The reshaped star blazed a bright blue, far brighter than the soft white shine Tyranny had given it before.

She let go of Tyranny then, and Tyranny’s struggles threw the two of them apart from one another. Pride, who had intended for that exact result, was back on her hooves in a split second. She tossed the star behind herself and then starbucked it-

“‘Starbucked’? Really? Something tells me this isn’t how you told the story last time.”

“I am not too old yet to take inspiration from the world around me. And how are you so sure I have told it before, hm? No more interruptions, please...”

Pride tossed the star behind herself and then bucked it as hard as she could, launching it out over the horizon and far, far away from the world.

“No! What have you... what have you done?” said Tyranny sadly, holding a hoof after the stolen star as she watched it carve a blue wake through the sky. It went so much farther than the other stars that it nearly vanished entirely. Were it not brighter than they, it would no longer be visible at all.

“I remade that star so it will turn your mane blue,” said Pride, looking angrily at Tyranny.

Tyranny gaped at her disbelievingly for several seconds before she gathered her wits enough to point out, “My mane is already blue!”

Pride blinked, and then said, “A different blue! A blue filled with stars!”

“Oh. That sounds like a fine thing,” said Tyranny, her anger melting once more under confusion. What was this strange white alicorn doing? Pride made no sense at all!

“...”

“Hm?”

“...”

“Speechless?”

“Well, what was-”

“Tsk tsk! I said no interruptions.”

“Gah!”

“That’s not the point!“ shouted Pride, her pink mane starting to flow in a non-existent breeze as she gathered power to herself. Tyranny’s loudness had prevented Pride from noticing that the smaller alicorn wasn’t really shouting at her with that last line.

Tyranny looked expectantly at Pride. It took a little longer for the silence to break this time, and Pride looked abashed as her mane settled back into being normal hair once more.

“The point isn’t that it’s good or bad. It’s that it’s your fate now. Just like the stallion was fated to betray you, and you to be betrayed. It's all in the stars, isn't it?”

Pride had never made a star before. She wasn’t actually sure if she’d done it right, and she didn’t know how to check. After a moment’s hesitation, Pride shook her head and pushed forward with the explanation. It didn’t really matter if the star ‘worked’, it just mattered that she could use it to teach the other alicorn what was wrong with fating things.

“I threw that star much farther than I’ve any hope of bringing it back from. There’s nothing either of us can do about it now. Your mane will turn starry blue, even if you’d rather it turn pink like mine.”

Tyranny had been staring after where the distant blue star twinkled. “I’ll never wear pink,” she said, her gaze drifting as she was briefly distracted by that mental image. She shook her head and looked resolutely at the new star. “Thy trickery has won nothing,” said Tyranny, pawing at the snowy ground and giving a heated snort. “That star will fall.”

Pride looked on in alarm as Tyranny’s horn lit brightly, and then brighter still. The smaller alicorn focused hard, bending as she poured everything she had into her horn. A blue aurora wavered through the air far above, briefly damping out the northern aura and turning the whole snowfield blue with its light. The distant new star was untouched. After several seconds, the light around Tyranny’s horn flickered and then broke.

“I can’t move it!” shouted Tyranny as she looked up at the sky. Then she did it again. The blue aurora sprang back into existence... and then broke once more. “I can’t move most of them!”

Tyranny whined and panted for breath for a few moments, but then she took a deep breath and went absolutely quiet and still. Pride started to say something to break the silence, but Tyranny raised a hoof at her to shush her. She listened to the new voices of the starry sky. The stars sent countless whispers to the world below as they warped events to fit Tyranny’s plans for the future.

Tyranny’s eyes went wide, and then narrowed into pinpricks as she stared aghast at the stars. She’d thrown most of the stars well past the range of her own magic. She could hear them whispering to her, warping her as well, and she could do almost nothing about it. Maybe, because she could hear them, she could resist them. She knew that they would try to twist even resistance into service.

She could fight some of them all of the time, and all of them some of the time, but not all of them all of the time. Tears dripped unheeded down her cheeks.

Pride watched Tyranny, mirror to the other’s sorrow. She gave the small, dark alicorn a gentle hug and nuzzled at one of the lines of tears.

Tyranny brought a hoof up to her other cheek and felt the tears on them. “What should I do?” whispered Tyranny.

Pride, rarely caught short of new plans, answered with reassuring confidence. “I threw one of those stars myself. Others may learn how eventually. I think the night needs you to guard it more than it needs you to make plans for it.”

Tyranny sighed deeply and closed her eyes. Pride gently unhoofed her and gave her back her space. At which point Tyranny raised a hoof proudly and shouted to the starry heavens, her voice cracking again, “I, Tyranny, do henceforth declare that time shall see my mistakes corrected! No further shall Tyranny bind the world in an inevitable web of fates! Instead, I shall guard the night, and cast a light to dim the stars! And for showing me the error of my ways, I do hereby swear sisterhood with! With!”

Tyranny looked at a deafened Pride, whose ears were bent back by the force of the declaration that had issued from the smaller alicorn. “Thou never told me thine name.”

“My - name - is - Pride,” shouted Pride, struggling to speak over the ringing in her ears.

“Pride! Henceforth, Pride and Tyranny shall travel as sisters forever! I love you, big sister!” said Tyranny, hugging Pride tightly. Stunned as she was, the sudden motion of the smaller alicorn took her straight to the ground.

“S-sister... I didn’t... intend to have a sister,” mumbled Pride.

Tyranny hopped off and scrambled over to one of the piles of snowballs nearby. She crushed up several of the snowballs into one huge snowball.

Pride got weakly to her feet and shook snow off of herself. She looked curiously at Tyranny. “What are you doing?”

“Thine eyes looked with love on the eve’s first two stars! I do not mean to make more tonight! Not more save one! I will fix it in the northern part of the sky, big and bright and wondrous!” Tyranny said excitedly as she struggled to lift the big snowball. She breathed on it and it ignited, as the others had before it.

“But what is it going to mark?”

“THE ETERNAL BOND BETWEEN US!” shouted Tyranny. So much strength did she gain from the joyous proclamation that she hoisted the huge star far into the sky, the trail behind it catching fire as it shot out towards its place in the sky.

Thus was born Ponaris, the most fixed point in the sky, symbolizing the bond between my sister and I. So big was the new star, and so hard did Luna throw it, that it broke apart as it burned its way to its new home in the sky. Yet so very far did she throw it that only the very best telescopes can spot the secondary stars ringing the main.

Two seconds later, a snowball smacked the triumphant Tyranny in the side of her head. “Hey!” she said, looking over at Pride.

That’s when I said-

“You had a snowball fight?” asked Twilight Sparkle, looking disbelievingly at her mentor. “You had just stopped Luna from wrapping the world in countless horrible fates...” Twilight paused and thought about that. “No... You had just FAILED to stop Luna from wrapping the world in countless horrible fates, because you only got there after the sky was speckled all over with them, and...”

“They aren’t all horrible,” Celestia said chidingly. “Her name may have been Tyranny back then, but many of the fates Luna created truly were beautiful. Indeed, the stars that make up Ponaris are one of the fondest things in life to me. I would grieve were they to fall from the sky.”

“You are telling this story again! Ooh! You should have told me you were telling this story again!” shouted a voice from behind the teacher and student, emitted from a grinning Luna who had snuck up upon them. Her efforts were rewarded when they both jumped and whirled to face her. Most particularly, her efforts were rewarded when a cup full of jasmine tea shot straight up and shattered against the ceiling.

Twilight Sparkle glanced between Celestia and Luna, and then sipped smugly from the cup of tea in her magic's grasp.

Celestia put up a brave pretense of jasmine-splashed normality. "Your grammar has improved," she said approvingly. “Little sister, you are standing far too near for us to truly believe you just noticed. How long were you listening?”

“Long enough to know that you are as terrible at mimicking my voice as you have always been. Oh! But we should continue. The last few lines of this story are my favorite,” said Luna.

“Very well,” said Celestia, and she pitched her voice to imitate her younger self once more as she said, “‘You didn’t even ask me first,’ I said, lobbing another snowball at my sister. It went wide. ‘You’re supposed to have permission before you make somepony your sister!’”

Luna cleared her voice and said, “The grand spirit of-”

A frazzled lavender alicorn cut her off. “Please! Luna! If you’re going to tell part of the tale, do it more quietly...”

Luna frowned for a moment, and then nodded. She resumed at a reasonable volume, “The grand spirit of Tyranny laughed at this rejoinder even as she dove for cover behind another pile of the snowy orbs, just as a barrage of thrown snowballs sailed past where We had been moments before. Yet even though they were prepared for a very different purpose, this one seemed far more cheerful. The entire pile of snowballs behind which We had hidden was grasped in Our magic and raised into the air. ‘I regret nothing! Have at thee, Pride!’ We shouted as We advanced upon Our new sister, happier than We-I, happier than I had ever felt before in my life.”

Twilight Sparkle looked between Luna and the notebook in which she had been busily recording what she heard. Guilt at spoiling the almost silly expression of happiness both of the sisters were wearing warred with irritation that they’d reacted to her research with silly jokes and implausible, unverifiable stories. Irritation won. “Sooo... Yeah. You had a snowball fight,” said Twilight Sparkle, snapping her notebook shut and stalking off muttering.

“Did we overdo it?” Luna asked Celestia, in what she almost surely thought was a whisper. Twilight Sparkle broke into a brisk trot to get away faster. The gentle laughter of Celestia fell behind her as she went.

Author's Note

Princess Luna reacts poorly to "Star Light, Star Bright" and has requested the rhyme never be sung in her presence.

A great deal of credit for this story goes to GhostOfHeraclitus. Not only was the story practically written for him, his help in editing added greatly to its length, completely changed the ending, and in general made it far better. Thank you!

Bad Horse also helped, being a more stressful editor, but also much more thorough at digging out bad phrasings and textual ambiguities. There were actually quite a few of them. If anyone reads this story and feels they have the least idea what is going on, do not blame me for the regrettable attack of clarity. It is more likely the fault of Bad Horse.

In Which Cadence is Revealed to be a Nerd

Twilight Sparkle stared at a small bubbling fountain. The three layers of the fountain were short enough that the water appeared to be rising implausibly from its basin. It resided in the middle of a small stone table with curved stone benching around it. The installation was quite decorative, but the uncomfortable benches made it unpleasant to actually sit at the fountain’s table. Twilight sat upon it nonetheless. The fountain was interesting and calming. It seemed the right thing to be doing while she took a moment to reflect on a less calming recent experience.

She had arranged to stay one week in Canterlot. For a personal ~~frie~~student(!) of the Princess and somepony with a royal stipend, it was a surprisingly complicated process. Now that she’d been here three days, things were becoming normal enough to escape the dregs of that complication.

Some of the complications were just what you’d expect. A week away meant finding somepony else to watch the library. She couldn’t let gaps in her schedule become gaps in the library’s schedule. What if somepony wanted to reference a book but the library was closed? It’d be a total disaster! Twilight couldn’t bear the thought of being the pony who caused that to happen to somepony else.

She had hired a temporary librarian. Spike had tried to get her to leave him with the job. She’d managed to weasel out of it without quite admitting that she thought he’d spend the whole time sleeping if she left him unsupervised. That was a hard conversation. Being honest with herself, she had to admit that Spike probably managed to read between the lines, and she was risking a grumpy dragon when she got back.

She’d thought about getting one of her friends to do it. That would’ve minimized the resentful dragon factor while still making sure that the library stayed open. The problem there was that they all had lives of their own. She was pretty sure that only Applejack had any chance of taking a dull and unfamiliar job seriously. Applejack, who would of course insist on not taking money for it, nevermind that Sweet Apple Acres always had plans it was coming up short on bits for and couldn’t spare a week of unpaid work.

Was it cheating to hire Big Macintosh? Spike liked him, so maybe he wouldn’t be too grumpy when she got back. They’d keep each other on task. Spike had the library knowledge. Big Macintosh had the work ethic. He was also patient, smart, and perennially popular in town. Maybe the draft pony could bring in a little more traffic than usual, too! That was an exciting thought. All those ponies learning the joy of books.

She just hoped that taking money from her wouldn’t get Big Macintosh in trouble with Applejack. For that matter, hopefully it wouldn’t get her in trouble with Applejack, either.

Some of the complications were less normal. Hay, some of them were things no normal pony would ever see coming. For some reason, a week in Canterlot inherently seemed to mean terrifying the aristocrats. Twilight had grown up completely surrounded by crazy rumors in Canterlot. Apparently, the Princess didn’t take many apprentices, and the stuffy nobles didn’t know how to handle something so dreadfully unusual. It was just a bunch of gossip and rumors. She did her best to act like she didn’t notice.

Her last visit had actually gone off without a hitch, but she’d made the mistake of announcing this one well in advance. It felt like the courtesy was being punished. Maybe she did the announcement wrong. It practically took a concerted letter-writing campaign (for which she’d drafted Pinkie Pie and Rarity) just to bring Equestria back from the brink of revolt.

She had tried to draft all her friends for it. Applejack and Rainbow Dash had collaboratively managed to write one letter before they got fed up and left, complaining loudly to each other about Canterlot and the government all the way. Twilight had checked the letter, then chucked it. Into the fireplace. Fluttershy had agonized through two letters across the course of three nights’ effort. They came out wonderfully. They’d almost certainly been the best of the letters, even. The problem was there’d been something of a premium on volume.

Only Pinkie Pie and Rarity had kept up pace enough to be really helpful. Twilight hadn’t been able to proofread all of what they sent out, but the random sample she’d pulled had seemed okay. They only had to be better than nothing at all, right? A shiver went down Twilight’s spine as she thought about that. In hindsight...

Maybe ‘better than nothing at all’ had been the wrong bar. Pinkie Pie and Rarity took it as an opportunity for rampant friend-making. A few stray hairs popped out of place in Twilight’s mane as she thought about the two of them. Which was worse: Pinkie Pie’s horrible informality, or Rarity’s polite schmoozing?

No, no question. Definitely Rarity. Pinkie Pie was more likely to offend somepony, but at least they’d be distracted from worrying about Twilight. ‘Better than nothing’ had been fine with Pinkie. When it came to Rarity and high society though, nothing could stop the schmooze.

Twilight’s ruminations were interrupted when Luna’s voice broke over the sound of the fountain and startled several birds into the air. Twilight blinked and rubbed her eyes, glad that nopony had been nearby to spot her staring aghast at the fountain.

She hadn’t heard what was being said, but curiosity compelled her to head in the direction she’d heard the voice from. Luna wasn’t usually out in the gardens by daylight. This brought her close enough to hear who replied... which sent her into a gallop.

“Cadence!” said Twilight as she rounded a wall of flowering shrubs.

Cadence turned and saw a familiar face galloping towards her. She instantly broke off her conversation with Luna to approach Twilight in return. They shared a brief hug, broke apart, and went straight into, “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hooves and do a little shake!”

The two of them laughed afterwards, and Twilight said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here!”

“I told you we needed to meet up sometime when the fate of Equestria isn’t hanging in the balance. I heard you were coming to Canterlot. There didn’t seem to be any emergencies in the Empire, so I took a few days to clear my schedule and arrange for a train. Didn’t you get my letter saying I’d be here?” Cadence asked, tilting her head quizzically.

Twilight frowned. “There were a lot of letters,” she said. “My friends handled more of them than I did. It must’ve gotten lost in the rush.”

"No worries!” said Cadence, touching Twilight’s cheek as if to lift the frown into a smile by hoof. Twilight laughed and pushed said hoof away, shying back a step. “And since you met me here, we haven’t even lost any time. I heard from Luna that you’re researching the Fall of Nightmare Moon?”

Twilight winced. Cadence had used a light tone, but still. ”I’m not researching the Fall of Nightmare Moon. Or at least, I didn’t think I was,” she said. “I wonder why Luna—err, begging your par—,” Twilight turned towards Luna to apologize for speaking as if the Moon Princess weren’t there. It turned out to not be a problem, since Luna wasn’t there. The apology stalled out.

Glancing out where Luna had been standing before revealed very little. Where the Princess had stood there was now only a small bag that looked like it belonged to a royal gardener. “Did Princess Luna leave as soon as I showed up? I hope she’s not upset with me.”

“No, she didn’t seem upset at all. Well. She was kind of generically frowny, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because it’s too bright and she hasn’t slept yet.”

“It’s true she doesn’t usually stay up this late,” Twilight said, looking around confusedly. To say that Twilight hadn’t noticed Luna’s exit would be an understatement. Luna had vanished as silently and completely as if she’d never been there in the first place. For being such a loud presence sometimes, Luna really seemed to have a talent for melting away in the slightest shadow. “Huh.”

Cadence laughed again and danced from one front hoof to the other. “She’s good at that!” said Cadence, responding to the thoughts written all over Twilight’s muzzle.

“Hey, you know how we used to go for walks and study the different plant species? Let’s go check on a few of them,” she said, stepping past Twilight to gesture out in the direction of the center of the royal gardens, “Meanwhile, Celestia’s stories aren’t as unverifiable as you might expect.” The aura of Cadence’s magic drew attention to the bag that’d been unnoticed on the ground nearby, and she pulled a crystal out. She brought it in front of herself as she started to walk.

Twilight hurried to catch up and then match pace with her. “So Pride and Tyranny really existed? What is that? Will it show us an image of them?”

“You grew up around images of them, Twilight. Many of the paintings in the castle portray them how they looked back then, smaller, with the pink mane and the blue,” said Cadence. Then she looked thoughtful. “At least I think they do. Some of the castle staff say that Celestia claims she was just a foal at the time. It’s hard to imagine.”

“She does. I think that might be the story she told me yesterday morning. It’s REALLY hard to imagine,” said Twilight.

“I bet she was adorable! Oh, I should commission a painting of when Pride and Tyranny met,” Cadence said exuberantly.

Twilight shook her head. It was really hard to imagine Celestia as anything but huge. She focused on the crystal again. “I guess you haven’t heard the story directly, but you’ve heard the details secondhoof. If it doesn’t contain images of them, how does that crystal help verify Celestia’s crazy story?”

“This is where I heard the story you heard, but I heard it from a different perspective. This crystal projects the sight and sound of Second Sight, an ancient crystal pony researcher who pioneered the recording crystals.” The hovering crystal moved to the far side of Twilight and then it lit up, projecting an image of a distinctly underfed crystal pony.

Twilight quirked an eyebrow at the silent projected image walking with them. “She looks like she’s starving,” she said.

“The Crystal Empire is in the cold, far north. Local magics keep it mostly ponyformed, but exceptional winters can overwhelm that. That means three years of expensive food imports and a lot of narrowing waistlines while we rebuild our agriculture. Second Sight recorded the contents of this particular crystal during just such a period of famine.”

“Did she make it through okay?” asked Twilight.

“Her life is very well preserved; she’s a minor hero in our history. She was fine. More than fine, actually; heavy exposure to crystal magics tripled her lifespan and made her exuberantly healthy for most of that.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Wow! If that’s a normal side effect of crystal magics, it’s no wonder your capital is so shiny! You’re going to have no end of migrants.”

Cadence laughed again and answered with a gleeful nod. “We’ll have our pick of Equestria’s best! The Crystal Empire always has,” she said. “At least, always since Second Sight accidentally figured out how to make it work while doing something unrelated. It’s not the best source of longevity known to ponykind, but it’s far and away the most accessible.”

The Crystal Princess’ horn flared as she focused on the crystal again. There were a few staticy noises, and Twilight noticed the still-mostly-silent figure’s mouth start to move. Cadence was clearly trying to make it do something.

Twilight wondered if she could help, and so she thought hard about what Cadence was doing to the recording crystal. She seemed to be trying to get the audio output working. Her head lowed as her mind churned with magic theory. She didn’t know anything about crystal magic specifically, but there were certain commonalities in underlying theory that applied, with the correct modifications, even across disparate classes of magic.

“Celestia had a stationary crystal,” Twilight said. “Apparently one made in Sombra’s last days, or just after. This is an earlier recording crystal, like a prototype. Did the prototypes only work when kept in motion?”

“Yes, sorry I’m having such trouble with this one,” said Cadence distractedly. “Might work if we galloped, but it’s hard to listen to historical lectures when you’re running... It might just be too old to use...”

Cadence stopped flaring her horn. With its power source removed, the walking image of Second Sight vanished. The crystal princess took a deep breath and then said, “One of these days, I hope somepony comes up with a way to transfer old images into new crystals. We rarely lose anything—we can duplicate our records by breaking and regrowing them—but the older crystals have flaws in them that just grow right back into the new copies.”

Twilight licked her lips and narrowed her eyes at the crystal floating next to the two. She put her muzzle right up against it as if a mere physical examination would make it give up its secrets. “Let me try.”

“Sure, go ahead,” said Cadence. She sounded a little skeptical.

Twilight didn’t let it bother her. She focused her magic on the crystal, turning its glow from Cadence’s blue aura to her own purple one. She pushed magic into it, delicately feeling out the structure of the crystal, and... barely penetrating it. Suddenly she understood why Cadence’s horn had flared out. “Ugh, this isn’t exactly the delicate piece of glass it looks like,” she complained as she poured more magic into it.

The image of Second Sight flickered back into existence unstably beneath the hovering crystal as they kept walking. “Be careful, Twilight,” said Cadence, watching Second Sight’s appearance. The crystal started to whine, setting Cadence’s ears back. “Twilight, wait, this was a bad idea.”

“No! I’ve almost got it... Ahha, this is misaligned.” There was a crunch as Twilight forcibly fixed a chunk of the crystal’s internal structure. A thin crack started to spread across the surface of the crystal, but the attention of the two ponies was stolen when the crystal pony took a breath and they heard it.

Twilight and Cadence looked at the Second Sight projection as it said loudly and cheerfully, “Hello, star ponies!”

The exclamation was punctuated by a grinding, shattering noise as the new fissues in the crystal caused it to slide apart in Twilight’s grip. The image of the thin crystal pony flickered out again. “Oh no! Your crystal, I’m so sorry!” Twilight said as she tried to push the chunks of the crystal back together again. The two of them stopped walking.

“No, don’t grind them!” said Cadence. The chunks of the crystal flickered blue as she took them away. “Don’t worry about it. I can grow these into a new crystal for tomorrow. Err, maybe several new crystals. I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the last one we’re going to shatter.”

“Oh... Okay,” said Twilight, still embarrassed. “Hey... before the crystal shattered, why did Second Sight say ‘Hello, star ponies’?”

Cadence blushed. “Well, Second Sight was kind of... eccentric. She was convinced that the stars were ponies, that they were reading her crystals, and that they were the most important audience she’d ever have. So, err, all the crystals she recorded are addressed to the ‘star ponies’.”

Twilight blinked, and then said brightly, “Well! Far be it from me to deny another culture’s heroes. Actually, I think I want to hear more!”

Cadence frowned at Twilight for a moment before she started giggling. “You will, just not today. Hey, there’s a secluded fountain not far from where we are. Secret hedge path, completely surrounded by high green walls. The gardeners think they’re the only ones who know about it, but Auntie Celestia and I used to use the stone table in there for seclusion at lunchtime. Lemme show you.”

The idea of using the royal garden’s stone tables for actual meals made Twilight wonder if all the other alicorns had iron butts. The promise of a secluded fountain and a garden secret kept her from voicing that complaint as she followed after Cadence. On the topic of garden secrets... Now that she’d been away from it for a few years and was visiting again, Canterlot had a funny way of seeming larger on the inside than on the outside. Spotted in the distance, the castle seemed almost small in the way it hugged the mountain, but not only was there an entire city attached to it, the grounds themselves always seemed to be hiding some new thing. Somehow she’d never noticed the scale mismatch when she was growing up. It was like a weirdness censor applying to the ponies who were most used to it.

Maybe it really was bigger on the inside than the outside. When Discord had her and her friends galloping through the royal mazes, the mazes had certainly been getting bigger and more exaggerated by the minute. Cadence’s Crystal Palace, supported on grand archways and barely touching the ground at all, similarly had stairways the geometry of which could only have put them burrowing into the ground.

Someday, some member of the Crystal Palace Staff was going to find themselves giving directions to a visitor. These directions would jaunt cheerily across two walls and an inverted staircase, and nopony would notice anything wrong with that. Except the visitor. They’d get lost and spend two days exploring the endless stairways. They’d eventually stumble through a secret portal to Chrysalis’ dark mirror of the Palace, where they’d discover a plot to harvest the love and unity of the Crystal Ponies.

Twilight stopped and rubbed at her horn. Where’d all that come from? She shook off the pall of weird thoughts. It was probably best not to think too much about Chrysalis while Cadence was nearby. Just as Twilight stopped, Cadence broke off of the main garden path and walked around a corner towards what was (of course!) a dead end.

As Twilight caught up, she saw Cadence walking in front of a statue. It wasn’t at the back of the dead end, but off to the side. The pink pony placed her hooves on it and pushed. After a moment of initial resistance, it slid back along a track, disappearing into the hedges.

After thoughts like those, the revelation that the ‘secret hedge path’ was accessed by a rolling statue almost seemed banal. The path burrowed claustrophobically into the middle of some thick hedges. It was neither wide nor tall. Twilight’s horn brushed the top. Slightly larger and bearing twice as much horn, Cadence had to duck to avoid getting snagged.

“I can’t imagine Celestia coming through here,” commented Twilight. “She’d have to crawl.”

“She did!”

Twilight tried to tell her imagination to try harder. Her imagination failed, and as a means of distracting Twilight from its failure, it pointed out to her that all she could see of Cadence in these cramped quarters were hindquarters. Every tiny gap in the hedges let through a shaft of sunlight, and countless mottled lights played across—

Twilight managed to cut the thought off, only to find herself imagining Celestia showing her the path and crawling along in front of her. Suddenly her imagination ~~found the prompt usable~~(!?). Twilight dropped her head and pushed her horn into the dirt path underhoof. She wasn’t even sure what she was doing. She just knew it was either this or teleport away in a panic.

Cadence’s hoofsteps stopped as soon as Twilight’s did. “Twilight? You okay back there? It’s a little tight in here, I don’t think I can turn around without hurting the hedges.”

Twilight laughed nervously and said, “I’m fine. I’m not... I mean, I still can’t imagine it! I’ll, err, take your word for it! Yes! New topic time.” She was blushing. She felt naked, and she didn’t look up. Okay, so she was always naked, but normally it was something one didn’t notice.

“You don’t sound like you’re okay. I’d rather tear the hedges than leave you hurt.”

“I’m not hurt. I don’t like this path, but it didn’t hurt me,” said Twilight. She lifted her head and decided to stare at the green plant walls of the hedge-tunnel. “Let’s just... keep moving. And talking. Maybe some other historical story?”

"I can do that. I’ve been reading a lot of Crystal History lately. I’d tell you the story in the crystal itself, but Second Sight herself tells it better. How about the Invention of Writing? It happened in the Crystal Empire.”

“That’d be great!” said Twilight. Her enthusiasm was entirely sincere. Standard histories considered writing to have been first invented in the region now governed by Saddle Arabia, and dissenting history sources were always exciting.

Maybe the story would even be good enough to get rid of the blush by the time they got to the fountain and table at the end of the path. Twilight intended to pass this off as an attack of claustrophobia if she could. Hope springs eternal...

The two got moving again, Cadence speaking as they did.

Well, before we get too far, I want to say that I didn’t live these histories. Everything I can tell you comes from long after the founding of the Crystal Empire. It was sorted out by a mix of oral history and archaeology. When the Empire was first founded, it wasn’t literate! It is the world’s only continuous state confirmed to predate written language.

The stability of the Crystal Empire has been tremendously preservative. We’ve always had a strong, defensive military and a climate that keeps out threats, even a few big ones. Discord himself stayed away. Our capital has never suffered a direct attack by anything but King Sombra, and even Sombra’s original rise to power was political rather than forceful. The libraries of the Crystal Empire are wonderful sources of history.

Pssst. That means you really need to find an excuse to spend a month in the capital someday.

“What are you hinting at?” Twilight asked.

“I’m not hinting at anything. I like to think I’m being quite blunt!” said Cadence cheerfully, just before she turned to the side and stepped through a gap in the hedge. There was nothing sealing this side of the hedge path. The hidden area was revealed to contain a very small fountain and a very large stone table. Not large in the sense of being meant for seating many ponies. It looked rather like a table that one might seat only two ponies at, and then play chess upon.

It was just very large. The two stone chairs were proportional to the table. Celestia, with difficulty, might be able to use it for its intended purpose. Nopony else came to mind. Twilight couldn’t see the top from the ground; she wondered if it was already set with chess pieces as part of the sculpture. In any case, the table dwarfed the fountain, which was clearly a design that would’ve been grandiose, all arcing water streams and complicated structure. It would’ve been grandiose, if only it weren’t the size of a bird bath. The fountain didn’t even have a pedestal. It was a watery tripping hazard with delusions of grandeur.

Twilight walked over to the two items that played centerpiece to the hidden area of the garden and stared at them. “This violates my expectations,” she said flatly.

“Said the steward to the secretary,” replied Princess Cadence in an odd tone. Twilight’s blush returned with full force as her mind fitted that exchange directly to a dirty joke. Cadence laughed. “I mean literally, as it was commissioned jointly by the then-Castle Steward and Cabinet Secretary. Celestia loved it though. She ordered the sculptor’s commission doubled. Having it sealed off behind a thick hedge was the steward’s revenge.”

Twilight looked contemplatively up at the table, and then shook her head with a laugh of her own. “When you said you used the table for seclusion at lunchtime, I just expected that meant you could eat on it.”

“Nope!”

The table being useless to them, the two ponies sat down on opposite sides of the small fountain. Cadence resumed her earlier words. “As I was saying... You really need to spend a month in the capital. We have no end of knowledge that was completely lost. Even where things weren’t lost, we have an irreplicable perspective on them. The thousand-year displacement is just a huge opportunity. It’s not just old things being new again, they’re getting new uses too. History is the new font of innovation in Equestria.”

“So... you want me to come to the Crystal Empire and do comparative historical research for you?”

“Huh? Oh! I guess I was making it sound like that. No, I want you to come to the Crystal Empire so I can spend time with you. Although with how much history I’ve been reading lately myself... We could be study buddies!” said Cadence brightly.

Twilight went wide-eyed, her heart suddenly beating faster. “!”

“Twilight? You okay?”

Twilight wiped her cheek with a hoof. Having won her secret battle against the mighty armies of the yes-dance and having even defeated the devious assassins of squee, she forced her expression into a rapt normality. “Just... just continue, I’ll be fine.”

Speaking of libraries, I said I was going was going to talk about the invention of writing. That means the world’s first author. Second Sight’s story was going to be about the ascension of the second Crystal Princess, history’s first mortal ruler. I’m going to have to cover a few steps of that just for background, but I’ll try to leave most of the story for Second Sight to tell.

Celestia—sorry, Pride—was the first Crystal Empress. She was Empress Pride. It’s her fault that it’s called an Empire at all; I believe she’s embarrassed about it. She was showered constantly with gratitude for freeing her people from the torments of the other greater spirits. Yet she was not a good leader; variously demanding and inattentive. It was something like this...

“Empress Pride!” said Chancellor, um, Diamond.

“Chancellor Um Diamond?”

“You know, Celestia told me you liked to interrupt these stories.”

“I stopped that when she told me to stop.”

“That’s not what she said.”

“She baited me!”

Chancellor Diamond said, “Empress Pride! Your supplicants wish your guidance in agriculture! Although we are grateful to be so far from the other spirits, the starry skies shed no warmth upon us, and the weather here is dangerous and harsh. Edible plants are in short supply.”

“Your concerns are heard. I will create crystal berry bushes for you that you can find sustenance even amidst snow and darkness.”

And so she did create those bushes... five of them. They were not exceptionally productive bushes, and it was many harvests before enough seedstock had been saved that they could be used for food. The answer was correct, but inadequate.

Nevertheless, Pride proclaimed, “Your problem is solved! For providing this service, you must acknowledge my sister Tyranny as a Crystal Princess and defer to her as you do to me.”

Tyranny was the first Crystal Princess and she was just as useless a leader as Pride. She misused what deference she got... but you’ll hear that story tomorrow.

When the refugee groups finally decided that Pride had given them nothing to be grateful for since she freed them, and that no amount of gratitude was worth raising up a useless leader, Pride resorted to academia. Her efforts became the foundation of crystal pony magical traditions. She had a great many attentive students. She was far better at the insular study of magic than she had been at leading. Her stubborn—arguably reckless—use of alicorn magics to address mundane problems burned new channels of magic into reality and became imitable by others.

The existence of her students was barely more than an accident. The flow of attention was unidirectional. Her students were formed chiefly of those who disagreed with having taken her out of power, those who insisted that she was still much to be admired, those who... didn’t notice that talking to Pride and actually communicating with her were different things. She talked plenty. She even seemed to listen when you talked to her. She just wouldn’t remember later. At best, if you said something interesting, she might notice the ideas even as she forgot all about the person who said them.

One of the oldest names you may ever find in a book was part of just such a forgotten conversation. History knows him as ‘Cryoglyph the Ice Writer’. Celestia doesn’t know him as anything. I once asked her; she told me that she’s pretty sure something like it happened, and she wishes she had paid a little more attention when it did. I think she believes she could’ve been a good friend to the legendary Ice Writer, instead of just a footnote in his life.

Cryoglyph had a great many great ideas. One day he went to Pride. “Time takes all of my ideas from me,” he said to her. “Your mind does not seem so grandly different. How can you bear to spend so much time thinking and teaching when you know that time will take it all away?”

In her usual style, Pride’s solution to the problem was correct, but incomplete. “When I wish to preserve my thoughts, I make them part of the world around me,” she told Cryoglyph. “If I think of a rock and wish the thought to last, I create that rock.” Pride summoned a rock out of thin air and gave it to Cryoglyph.

Cryoglyph, who could not create rocks, was confused as he took the rock. He studied the rock constantly for days. He tried hard to think of what Pride could possibly have been trying to tell him. He could think of rocks. Could he create rocks?

No. No, he could not create rocks.

“He wasn’t a unicorn, then. He would’ve just practiced until he created the rock. What kind of pony was Cryoglyph?”

“I think he was actually a gryphon. This story is too prehistoric to be sure of any of the details, though I’m pretty sure nopony in life ever called him ‘Cryoglyph the Ice Writer’.”

“Wait, now that you say it again, that suddenly sounds familiar. ‘The Ice Writer’ is one of the old unsolved mysteries in archaeology. It’s this pony—or gryphon, I guess—who carved a great many untranslatable hieroglyphs into glaciers.”

“They’re not untranslatable to the Crystal Empire. In fact...”

The solution to the puzzle came when a frustrated Cryoglyph suddenly threw the rock as hard as he could. It hit a nearby ice flow that had blocked off some deeper paths in the caves where he lived. With a huge crack, a chunk of the ice fractured and split off!

Cryoglyph stared at the damaged wall, and he said to himself, “I thought about anger, and that thought caused me to throw the rock. Throwing the rock damaged the wall. The damage to the wall makes my anger part of the world.”

Now Cryoglyph had a new thing to think about: the damage to the wall. As long as the wall was damaged, his anger was part of the world. Just as holding the rock made it easy to think about the rock and remember the thoughts associated with it, looking at the wall made it easy to think about the anger and remember it.

The gryphon carved a wooden bowl for himself and went to his pony friends. He asked if anypony had a source of clean, clear water. Once he found water clean enough that it would freeze into clear, pure ice, he filled the bowl and set it out to freeze.

He used his claws to carve an image of the rock into the ice, and brought it to Pride. Cryoglyph said to Pride, “Look. I have thought about a rock, and I have made a rock to preserve those thoughts.” He gave her rock back to her.

“Hm, so you did,” said Pride. “Yet was this all the thoughts you had on the rock?” She held up her rock and gestured to it as she continued, “The rock I made will last forever. The rock you made will melt if you hold it too close to my coat.”

Pride had not yet found her connection to the sun. The unicorns had not yet invented it. Yet much as Celestia still does today, she already radiated more heat than a regular pony. Cryoglyph quickly took his rock-carved ice bowl outside where it would be safe. When he came back, he said, “I have less to work with than you. What did you mean by ‘was it all the thoughts I had’?”

“When I think about a rock and create that rock, my rock is everything I was thinking when I made that rock. If you show your rock to someone else, will they think about the same things you thought?”

“What did she mean by ‘my rock is everything I was thinking’? Does the Crystal Empire actually have the rock from this story?”

“We do! It’s in a museum. I’ll show it to you next time you visit. As near as we can tell, Pride was simply wrong about what she said. It’s just a rock.”

“In this story, you present Cryoglyph as hearing things and going off to think hard about them. It’s like he was taking Pride’s every word as being... deeply meaningful. Yet when Celestia used the name Pride, she was supposedly rather young. Maybe Pride wasn’t wrong about the rock being the sum total of her thoughts on that rock. Maybe she was just thinking very literally, and you already said she didn’t see this conversation as important. So the rock was, in fact, her entire thoughts about that rock.”

“Does that really sound like the Celestia you know?”

“No! Celestia, if she were ever in a conversation like that... I mean, she’d rather say nothing at all than be that shallow. Yet her students, back in the Early Crystal Empire, took every word like it held some deep wisdom on the shape of reality. Ponies still do that in today. I do. I... I guess I’m kind of like Cryoglyph. But Celestia is more than Pride was. Her words matter, they aren’t just accidents. Celestia deserves the devotion.”

“Celestia is more than Pride was because Pride spoke from invincible ignorance, unwilling to believe she didn’t understand things already. Fortunately, it often happened that clever students could make much of her folly...”

Cryoglyph went away thinking about what Pride had said about showing their rocks to others, and if he thought she was wrong about her rock being perfectly insightful to others, he didn’t let it show. He went back to his cave with its damaged, icy wall. He stared at the damaged wall. He said to himself, “I can make my thoughts part of the world. That makes them last longer, but doesn’t share them. I can talk about my thoughts to others. That shares them, but doesn’t make them last.”

He set his rock down at the base of the damaged wall. Then he set down the ice bowl next to the rock. “It takes fewer words to explain the connection between these three objects if they’re near each other. Maybe the secret to preserving my thoughts and sharing them at once is to arrange a great many objects together.”

”He looked at his claws. He looked at the wall of the ice. And that, as near as the Crystal Empire can put together, is the origin of the Ice Writer, history’s first writer!”

“Neat!” said Twilight Sparkle, clapping her hooves together. She looked down at her notebook, forgotten on the ground next to her. The studious alicorn startled. She’d gotten so wrapped up in the story she’d forgotten to record it. The history of writing was exciting!

“So the first writings were representational images arranged near each other in an orderly way,” she said, bending over her notebook as her magic whisked a quill across it. “There aren’t enough of Cryoglyph’s works left to account for much history, though. I thought I was aware of all the major expressions.”

“Cryoglyph is another one of my kingdom’s cultural heroes, even more ancient than Second Sight... and also, he was much more obsessive than you know about, along with being freakishly cold-resistant,” said Cadence. “He turned entire glaciers into scrimshaw plates trying to work out the best way to record his thoughts for others. There were entire ‘ice libraries’ stored in never-warming caves. Most of the areas he worked over got excavated and moved wholly into climate-controlled warehouses for study by archaeolinguists over a millenia ago.”

“Warehouses, plural? It sounds like the work of a large group, not one gryphon, no matter how obsessive. Oh! Since all of those warehouses were in the Crystal Empire when Sombra cursed it to vanish...” said Twilight without looking up from her writing.

“You got it! The Cryoglyph translations vanished with the rest of my nation. Even if the specific singular Cryoglyph is just a myth or a figurehead, we still call him the father of literacy. Sometimes even ‘the first Crystal Historian’. Now, all that talking has made my throat hurt. Let’s go get ice cream.”

Twilight continued writing feverishly. Cadence watched fondly for some time, until fondness faded into impatient hoof-tapping. Finally she levitated out three bits and started chasing the quill tip with them, getting closer and closer without actually touching it or the ink until Twilight finally stopped and looked up at her with a glare.

Cadence just smiled at her and spun the three bits around the quill. “Ice cream, Twilight. Come back to the modern world, have some modern sweets.”

Twilight’s expression softened and she glanced between Cadence and what she’d been writing... noticing that she’d faithfully transcribed ‘all that talking is making my throat hurt. Let’s go get ice cream.’ without noticing that she’d written it at the time, and that after that she’d spun off immediately into taking more notes about the story. She gave an embarrassed chuckle and picked up her notebook in her telekinesis, packing it away in her saddlebag.

“Right! Ice cream. Actually, what about milkshakes?” asked Twilight, covering her embarrassment by talking fast. “There’s a shake shoppe in Canterlot I’ve been meaning to go to for years now. It’s still around. Oh! Is Shiny here with you? He wanted to go there too.”

Cadence laughed and nodded. “Fine, let’s go get my husband and bore his ears off talking about archaeolinguistics. At least he’ll get a shake out of it,” she said with a grin.

Twilight grinned back. “Let’s make sure he’s sitting between us so he can’t escape!”

The two of them laughed and schemed as they headed back into the garden proper.

In Which a Wingwarming Gift is Given

Two alicorns stood on the edge of an endless ocean painted in pale blue and black stripes. The surf roared in their ears, driven by a wind that bowed the silver grass underhoof. Were it not for the grass, this place would look desolate, for nothing else marked its landscape. The moon soared full above them. It was too bright to look at. It was almost near enough to touch.

The familiar shape of the Canterhorn broke the eastern horizon, but there had been no ocean like this in the world. Nor was there any place in all the world where the moon was so very large and bright, or the sky so blank. There were neither clouds nor stars.

The ground plunged before Twilight, becoming a dark pit from which chains rose like charmed snakes. Although they didn’t move towards her, she stepped back from the pit, sidestepping as she did to put it directly between her and Nightmare so neither one could surprise her. “Lunacy? Those old superstitions about the full and new moons causing madness?”

“Superstitions!? Do not joke with me, ‘Princess’. Surely ponies cannot have forgotten so much!” said Nightmare with an angry stomp of her hooves. Bits of silver grass around her hooves rose into more snaking chains, then faded into blue mist. Two more pits full of chains formed at the edges of Twilight’s vision, and she wheeled about to see the entire plain of silver grass was irregularly spotted with them. Some of the chains were hissing as they slithered through the undergrowth.

Twilight focused on Nightmare’s questions to avoid panicking. “It’s not forgetting. It’s academic research! The... the theories of lunacy used to hold up, but a few hundred years ago, they j-just broke. Nopony knows why!” Twilight swallowed and kept going, closing her eyes as she focused on something she knew. “Since no sociocultural factors point to an applicable change in mental stressors and it corresponds to a period of academic reform, the change is generally considered to be the product of changing research methodologies. Older works were riddled with biases and most of them have been thoroughly deconstructed in the intervening period.”

“Don’t close your eyes when dealing with me, foal.”

Twilight stiffened reflexively and opened her eyes again, abruptly finding herself suspended by animate chains over a pit. They were all over her, binding her hooves, her barrel, her wings. She could feel the touch of cold metal all over her. They weren’t pressing into her, but she could barely move at all. “Ahhh! How did I get here! Why didn’t I feel the chains?”

Nightmare laughed and brought Twilight’s trapped form nearer to her. “You didn’t feel the chains because you’re dreaming, and I’m controlling the dream. As for what I’m going to do to you... Why, I do believe I’m going to help you.”

“I don’t want your help!”

Nightmare hissed angrily and raised a hoof as if to strike Twilight. After one tense moment, she held back and set her hoof down again. “Be GRATEFUL. Tonight’s exertions will cost me THREE YEARS of power!”

“They will cost more than that!” said a loud voice from outside of Twilight’s vision. The shout was shortly thereafter followed by a blue blur as Luna tackled Nightmare out of Twilight’s field of vision.

“You’re here to save me!” Twilight turned her ears about to follow the sound of the two tussling goddesses and wriggled against the chains. Her enthusiasm was damped when she found she couldn’t turn her head to watch.

“Get off me, you bombastic blue blunderer!”

“Nay! We will not let you harm our friend!” There was a nasty sounding thud that made Twilight wince sympathetically.

“Luna! Are you okay?” called Twilight, squirming again to try to look, only to be surprised when the chains suddenly slacked about her. She hopped free to the edge of the pit and Luna landed next to her.

“Pray forgive us our sloth and distraction,” said Luna to Twilight, before turning immediately towards Nightmare. Luna appeared unharmed. “Nightmare! Hast thou taken leave of thy senses? These chains are foes, fears, and trophies! Why use them in this manner?”

“Have I no rights over my own home? Are you trying to rob me of my last security?” said Nightmare. “We spoke with one voice once. You know where we stand! We spent a thousand years imprisoned because the stars so loathed me they could not be moved by their love of you. I am trying to undo a fraction of the harm that wrought.”

Luna stared coldly at Nightmare. Her eyes closed and opened shining with white fury. Twilight found herself edging away, breaking into a gallop across the pitted plains as soon as Luna began to speak in a thundering voice. “In all thy wretched life, thou hast—”

A blast of magic interrupted Luna. Twilight skidded to a stop and wheeled about in time to see the smoke clearing and hear Nightmare’s retort. “Wretched?! Go jump in a pit!”

“We have wings!” shouted Luna, rising out of the pit that Nightmare’s magic had knocked her into. Twilight got a hideous sense she knew where this was going, and she closed her eyes tight to avoid watching it. She gathered her magic to herself. It felt so far away. Her magic was so far away.

“‘We’ have chains. Go away!” A clamor of chains extracted a yelp from Luna and a descending yell came from the pit as the chains dragged their victim out of earshot. Twilight tried to block the sound out with her thoughts.

Thinking about magic had nearly shattered Luna’s dreamscape. What was different about Nightmare’s? Twilight doubled down on her efforts, visualizing the entire pattern of Luna’s floor and mentally reciting a dozen variations on the standard sleeping charm along with countermeasures thereof. A mournful whistle started up around her sounding like winter's wind in bare trees. Twilight didn’t open her eyes. Just more dreaming weirdness. Focus on the magic.

“I think that won’t be happening,” said a voice that Twilight ignored. A counterspell started weaving into Twilight’s work and died in the tangle of it without Twilight lifting a hoof. “What?”

Another effort intruded on Twilight’s spell and she swatted it aside reflexively. The arcane swat yielded an unregal grunt, and then a snarl. “You have no power here, child!”

A surge of energy crushed Twilight’s spellwork, and she opened her eyes. She wasn’t surprised to see that a spreading pattern of gems and moonstone underhoof had started killing grass all around her. Slightly more odd was the haze of floating equations surrounding her. They were crumbling to dust in Nightmare’s third counterspell, and the whistling stopped with them. Most interesting of all was that Nightmare was standing right in front of her... out of breath, and with the swelling around her left eye darkening already. It looked painful.

Twilight found herself staring at Nightmare’s eye. That didn’t quite fit. Fear took a back seat to pointing out something nonsensical. “How can your eye be discoloring already? You just got hit. It should barely have started to swell.”

“You’re dreaming, child,” said Nightmare tiredly. “We have a lot to do, and it’s going to take all month if I have to keep reminding you of that.”

“Stop calling me child. My name is Twilight Sparkle.”

New chains rose up around Twilight to grasp her with painful tightness, and she squeaked and yanked against them. Nightmare roared, “Your name ought to be Broken in Chains, you—Ragh!” Nightmare took a deep breath. The chains loosened. She took several more until she had calmed herself again. The chains dropped off. “You will never understand how lucky you are. Never! You are just another sunloving wretch to me, yet I know I will have to deal with you for a very long time. Fine. You are Twilight Sparkle, and I am helping you, so make this no harder for me than it needs to be.”

A wide paper halo twisted into existence around the head of the fuming Nightmare. The inked symbols on it were in the same harsh font as what had been on the ‘plants’ in the ocean where Nightmare had come from. These ones weren’t nonsense. Twilight started to read them, but she dropped her gaze when she saw that Nightmare’s halo was covered with insults apparently directed at her.

She turned her attention wide-eyed towards Nightmare. Just what was Nightmare doing that was so hard for her? “You know,” she said, “your generosity would be more believable if it didn’t start with chains.”

“Insolence!” said Nightmare, lunging at Twilight.

The world warped around the two and they were elsewhere.

“We’re calling it the Incandescence,” said Magus Ten Seed(?) as she gestured at a viewing hole for a pair of visiting scholars. Not that they were in any rush to look inside; the light streaming out was blinding. Much more interesting was that the beam of light shone on a patch of ground that was absolutely overgrown with greenery, in stark contrast to the barren surfaces beyond its reach. Ropy green vines had cracked the stone underhoof and sprawled out so far that their tips were buried into snowdrifts distant from the heat of the Incandescence’s stone container.

“Have you overcome the warmth issue?” asked the first of the scholars. Ten Seed(?) couldn’t remember either of their names. She recalled that they were studying dream magic. They both had alarmingly draconic eyes.

“I think they have, judging by how hot this area is,” said the second of the scholars.

Ten Seed(?) shook her head regretfully. “We’re not there. If we were on plan, it wouldn’t be ‘hot’ this close. It’d be ‘lethal’,” she said. “I think at this point we need to focus on the greening effects more than the heat.”

“How are we going to make use of the greening effects? I was under the impression that attempts to make, err, ‘Incandescent’ effects smaller or more controllable had... well...”

“There’s no need to beat around the bush. They failed miserably,” said Ten Seed(?). “I think at this point our best hope is to levitate the core of the Incandescence into the air as far as we can to maximize dispersion on the light. The biggest difficulty will be getting it high enough... It’s going to take every unicorn we can gather, and plantlife will choke out the entire Crystal Empire if we mess it up.”

“At least we wouldn’t starve.”

Pride(!?) watched the Crystal Empire from—

She lifted a hoof to her forehead. The world wobbled for a moment and her head ached. Something whispered to her, “Please just play along.” Twilight sighed and nodded, letting herself sink back into the dream.

—the highest point in its capitol building, the open pavillion-like structure at the peak of her Crystal School of Magic. Or was it the Crystal Magic School? Hm. It didn’t matter. The point was that it was a fine perch. When she’d been Empress Pride, she’d made certain that she ruled from the highest point in the city. When they booted her out of office and made her Archmagus Pride instead, she used her magic to ensure that her new vantage point dwarfed her old one.

It was a petty move, but the sharply uplifted building appealed to her aesthetics. It wasn’t as though she’d built the school on slavery. Why shouldn’t she live as she pleased? In any case, the best views were always from the highest points, such as right now... There was a bustle of activity around some outlying structure at the edge of town. She’d been watching for some time as ponies travelled across town towards it. There’d even been some sparks and lights.

Pride’s vigil over the structure was rewarded when the top of it opened up and something bright escaped the top. Flashes of fire and plantlife broke out in spreading waves from the structure. The ropy green tendrils of plant matter dealt much more damage to the surrounding structures than the fires. The light rose unsteadily, unevenly. It faltered. Too many of its controllers were being distracted by the side effects of having taken it out of containment.

The light was a star, but much bigger than any of the stars in the sky. Pride was... awed. Humbled, almost. How had her ponies made that? How was it possible? Why was it possible? And what did they think they were they doing with it? She remembered the weight of that one star she had made. This star was hundreds of times larger. The other stars whispered so quietly that she could only take Tyranny’s word that they spoke at all. This one shouted so loudly that Pride hoped it wasn’t deafening her little sister with its noise.

...also, her ponies were about to drop it on themselves. Pride made a snap decision.

“It’s pretty. I think I’ll call it the sun.”

Far off, in a dreaming land where no real sunlight should ever touch, a pair of alicorn fillies with moonmarks on their flanks were playing together. Right this moment they were dancing around a silver tree with golden leaves, chanting and stomping their hooves, practicing their magic together as they forced the tree to grow bigger and bigger.

Their play was interrupted when a blast front of noise knocked down Tyranny and tore the tree into a smoky remnant of itself that blew away entirely when Nightmare(!) turned away from the tree and looked over in the direction the blast had come from. A new star was rising, bright enough to drown out the light of everything else in the sky, and in the presence of two fillies sensitive to the night it shone through even into the dreaming.

While Tyranny groaned and cowered under her hooves from the roar of the star, Nightmare’s eyes turned white with divine power. “How dare she! Everything about us is ruined! Our potential is wasted, our future is gone! She has destroyed us both!”

“No! I won’t let myself think such thoughts! I won’t do this!”

“Calm yourself, chi—ugh. Calm, Twilight Sparkle. They are not your thoughts, merely my own.”

Tyranny got to her feet, shaking her head. “What? I cannot... I... what did you say?” she asked, deafened.

Nightmare turned angrily towards Tyranny. “You know well what I said. Think about what that star means! Everything we have ever tried to do is meaningless before it! To a blaze like that the moon is a useless shield, a mere pretense of light. What destiny does it foretell? What, exactly, did Pride just do to the world?”

“No... Nnnn—ow—no! She is our sister! We... we cannot permit ourselves such... We cannot think that! I refuse it!”

“Fine then! I will have anger enough for us both. I call it an abomination!”

“Before we continue, I think you should know something. I am mad.”

“If the sun was that disruptive and dangerous—which I don’t believe yet—then you certainly have cause to be angry.”

“Oh my, did I say angry? I meant mad, child. Let me show you.”

Twilight was soaring through the dark of a cloudy sky, moving towards the cloud layer. Having gone through enough bizarre dreaming already, she checked herself reflexively to see if her identity really was her own. Her cutie mark was replaced with Nightmare’s pale blue moon. Of course. At least she was controlling this part of the dream sufficiently well to check at all.

So she was dreaming of being Nightmare Moon moving towards a layer of clouds on some ambiguous night in who-knows-where. Fine. She focused on just crossing the distance and tried to ignore the sound of clanking machinery as she approached the clouds.

Twilight broke through the clouds to a starry sky in which every star was chained five times to Equestria. Countless chains shone in the darkness, reflecting light that shouldn’t have been there. Some of them were delicate golden ones that shone like the sun. Some of them were massive iron chains dimly seen except by their bulk against the stars. Most of them appeared to be made of silver. A very few of them were made of glowing embers. The sky above the clouds was crowded with chains.

A deep and rumbling sound started in the distance separate from the sound of machinery. Twilight couldn’t quite make out what it was. The more immediate mechanical sounds drowned it out. She looked around for the nearest set of chains and flew to it. She didn’t have to go far. It was a set of silver chains moving down through the cloud layer.

Twilight touched one of the chains and flew along it towards the ground. She breached the cloud layer with her hoof still on the chain. Now she could see the chains from this side as well. The particular chain she was following was leading her into Ponyville. There were a great many of the chains focusing on Ponyville. Whatever they were, Ponyville mattered. Twilight looked around. There were a few other villages visible in the distance from this vantage in Ponyville’s skies, and even taking into account their lower populations, they didn’t have anything like a proportional number of chains.

“Luna stops me everytime I try to clean this place. Not tonight,” snarled a voice, and Twilight set a hoof to her mouth, her eyes widening. She wasn’t completely in control of the dream. Not that she could expect it, under the circumstances. Twilight shook herself and continued on towards the ground. The chain she was following led her to... her library? No, it stopped outside of the Golden Oaks library, leading into an earth pony wearing a pair of saddlebags held closed with a circular orange clasp. The clasps were styled to appear as flames.

Twilight landed next to him. He didn’t pay any attention to her. The chain from the star above disappeared right into his skull. As she watched, he pulled a bottle of something out of his saddlebags and threw it at the library. It shattered on impact. “Hey!” shouted Twilight, but she still got no response. She tried poking at him, but her hoof went right through.

The pony next pulled a matchbook out of his pocket. “Oh no you don’t,” snarled Twilight, and this time it really was her own snarl. She didn’t know how she was going to stop him—her hoof moved of its own accord, swatting the chain. It resisted her for just a moment before pulling apart with the sound of a bell chiming.

That did something. The would-be arsonist startled and looked around himself spooked. He looked at the matchbook he was holding, dropped it, and ran away. Twilight turned to watch him go, but he faded and broke apart into mist as she watched. “What are you showing me now? Was he real?”

Nightmare’s voice from her own mouth answered her. “Would you even believe me? For the record, the answer is not only that he was real, you stopped him from burning down the library. That was really going to happen. Destiny is nothing so subtle as whispering stars.”

“Show me more.”

Some heavyset pegasus was fleeing the guard. All of them were chained, the outcome predestined. Twilight broke the chains to the sound of bells, a different note for each member of the chase. The guards slowed; the pegasus put on a burst of speed and got away.

There was a unicorn working with her magic on the lock on somepony’s garden shed. Twilight broke the chain binding her to the action. A deep bell tolled once. The unicorn got frustrated and left.

Here was the Mayor and Derpy arguing about something. There was a spattering of paperwork between them. Why should destiny have any part of this? The two of them were wearing several chains each. Twilight broke the chains and was rewarded with a beautiful series of bells.

The distant rumbling grew louder as she worked. It started to sound like chanting.

Here was an infant foal, already sporting a chain. Ridiculous! Nopony should live their entire life bound by some unknowable fate. Twilight broke the chain and didn’t even stop to hear the sound. There was too little time and too many chains.

There was a shop with half a dozen chains leading into it. Twilight didn’t even check who they belonged to. She flew through the chains and caught them on her wings, ripping them to shreds in her passage.

She noticed another silver chain leading into her library and felt a burst of anger in her. Meddling nonsense! Twilight poured on the speed to reach the library before whatever warping event was going on could affect her life. She struck the chain from the air at full speed, and—

With a boom like the world's biggest tower bell, Twilight rebounded off the chain. With control over her wings gone, she tumbled through the air, much faster than mere gravity would suggest, and slammed into the ground, landing in a graceless tangle of limbs. She stayed on her side where she had landed, breathing heavily.

That wasn’t a distant rumbling anymore. It was definitely a chant. It was something deep and primal, incomprehensible but undeniable.

Lightning struck the ground before Twilight had finished catching her breath. The column of light cleared to reveal an infuriated Luna, her wings mantled as she approached. “NIGHTMARE! How dare thou meddling touch the bond between Twilight and her friends? Thou swore an OATH to leave that star untouched!”

Twilight felt her body moving of its own accord, felt... Nightmare had not left her alone for a moment, after all. She got up again and heard a voice speaking as she did. “Why, sister, you wound me!” said Nightmare with a terrible laugh. “My oaths are perfectly intact. Indeed, before you accuse me of so much as meddling in Ponyville, let me say that every chain broken tonight was broken by Twilight. All I had to do was let her borrow my viewpoint for a night. She did the rest for herself.”

Twilight felt her form elongating and darkening, features of the Nightmare—No. Nightmare was already here. She was the missing element. She felt herself shortening and lightening, features of herself bleeding through into Nightmare, until she stood as a fusion of the two. Luna gaped in horror, scrambling back to put distance between herself and Twilight. Twilight fought for focus to get some control of the dream back. “Luna... What’s happening to me?”

Another flash of light filled Twilight’s vision and she was standing in the library, staring at the other end of the chain that she had just tried to attack. It was perfectly intact as it lead straight into the display case holding the Elements of Harmony. Twilight gasped, and she pulled away from Nightmare, leaving the two standing next to each other. “How dare you try to make me hurt my friends?” asked Twilight.

“All I am doing is letting you make your own choices,” said Nightmare, dismissively. “How many chains did you see tonight and not immediately break? That is my night, every night, for every night the world fills anew with the clumsily sewn whims of a stupid foal who couldn’t understand the difference between destiny and tyranny.” That last part was directed venomously at Luna.

“What matters the difference? WE HAVE RENOUNCED THEM BOTH!” shouted Luna. Twilight paused. Luna’s volume sounded perfectly reasonable. That horrid chanting was drowning out everything.

“What matters the difference, indeed,” said Nightmare, walking out towards Twilight’s balcony. She gestured in the direction of the rising sun. “We had all best flee the dawn.” Nightmare didn’t raise her voice. Twilight wasn’t sure how she could understand what was being said. She didn’t trust herself to be able to speak against the noise.

Twilight walked towards the balcony and stepped out onto it herself. She turned to where the sun would be rising.

Wherever the clouds would normally be streaked with colors, they were streaked with chains.

Wherever the ground would normally be lit by the dawn, it was piled thickly with chains.

Where the sun would normally be rising past the horizon, it was a surging horror of writhing chains spilling forth across the world.

Twilight woke with a yell in the middle of Luna’s ritual chamber and jumped straight to her hooves. She was... alone? She could see Luna lying right next to her, eyes closed and her expression smoothed in deep meditation. She could see Celestia and Cadence hovering concernedly over her. They were all statues.

Nightmare stepped in through the wall, and Twilight immediately tried to scramble back away from her, tripping over the statue of Luna and spilling onto her back on the labyrinth-patterned floor. “Wh-what do you want?! What did you do to them?”

“Peace, Twilight Sparkle. I have merely paused the tableau. Look at them. Think about the stars as you do.”

“The stars? Ahha, the stars! Of course the stars the stars the stars,” said Twilight, eyes rolling wildly as she scrambled to her hooves and backed away from the three alicorn statues. She noticed now that she’d moved away there was a statue of herself in the middle of the room. Twilight took a breath and choked back a whimper, ears straining. Although she knew not how, she knew to listen. She heard chanting again as she became aware of spectral chains attached to each statue. It wasn’t as though the chant had started or the chains had appeared. It was as though they’d been there all along and she hadn’t known how to notice them.

It wasn’t as clear as the shining chains in Nightmare’s Ponyville had been, but they were there and they looked solid. Luna had only a single delicate chain threaded around her horn. Cadence was attached to four chains. Twilight was bound by a dozen.

Celestia was unrecognizable.

There was no Celestia. There was a horselike creature made of chains wearing platemail formed of chains beaten flat, and engraved on the flank of its armored shell was a symbol of chains. Countless chains arced off of her in every direction towards the heavens. “Is that what you see when you look at Celestia?”

“Don’t ask questions to which you already know the answer,” said Nightmare scornfully. She dispersed into blue mist and flowed out the room’s door.

“No,” whispered Twilight. “There’s a difference between destiny and tyranny. There’s a balance. Some of the stars are beautiful... and Celestia is my friend.” She stepped forward and touched Celestia, mentally scrabbling for some kind of alicorn power that might make the world clearer as she willed herself to see past the armor again. “Which one is Ponaris?”

Twilight took a breath, and listened again. Amidst the chant of the stars, she heard a dim golden refrain. She could hear the answering chime, chain of the same star on Luna. Twilight tried to brush the chains off of Celestia. It was slow. The dream started to decay. She dug more frantically to expose the one star, the one chain she knew was harmonious beyond question. She finally saw it when she had exposed Celestia’s face from the chains. A slender platinum chain threaded around Celestia’s horn.

Celestia’s statue came to life, looking more disoriented than Twilight could ever remember seeing Celestia in life. “Twilight? What are you doing?”

“What is the sun? I need to know! I need to hear it from you!”

“It is the destiny of life itself. Wherever sunlight touches, it pulls life into the world.”

Twilight woke smoothly with a deep breath of air. Wherever she was, it smelled a lot mustier than Luna’s ritual chamber. She felt something cold on the frog of her hoof, drawing her eye down to where she was apparently holding a coin that bore the likeness of Nightmare. She flipped it once and saw Luna on the other side. She flipped it again and saw her own face. Horrified, she launched it away from herself as hard as she could. It bounced off the door with a thunk. Twilight looked at where she was.

She was in a dark bedroom, lying on a huge blue bed. Twilight lit her horn so she could see more, revealing some shelves and a desk. Disturbingly, Twilight could still see Nightmare’s coin on the floor. It had landed with Luna’s face upwards. She shuddered and focused on the furniture. The shelves were completely overloaded with tomes, books, and scrolls. The desk was clear in the center. The sides of it were a veritable fortress of stacked books. The profusion of paper even overflowed onto the floor over boxes of still-packed books.

Twilight looked at a few titles and didn’t see a single thing written in modern Equish. Some of these languages she didn’t even recognize. The whole room smelled like a library full of really old books. “Huh. So it really was a collection of ancient literature she was hiding.”

At that point the door burst open and Luna bounded through with a leap that knocked books over throughout the room from the wind of her passage. She landed on the bed next to Twilight and swept her straight into a hug. “Dearest Twilight, please forgive us!” shouted the great alicorn, the force of the words bending back one of Twilight’s ears and making her pull back desperately.

“Wah! Gently!” said Twilight. She managed to mostly extract herself from the hug and look over Princess Luna, and as much as her ears were ringing, she immediately regretted pushing the other pony away. Twilight reached up to wipe a tear from Luna’s eyes. “Luna... You have nothing to apologize for. You did your best in a bad situation, and I’m better off than I would have been if you hadn’t been there at all.”

“But it is our job to protect the dreams of our subjects,” said Luna, her speech hushed and distant now. Twilight wondered if she was just deafened by the point-blank shout of apology. “We failed in this most essential of our duties.”

Twilight hugged on Luna. “You didn’t fail. You kept me from losing hope when I was trapped, and you stopped a plot of the Nightmare.” She saw something pink in the corner of her vision and lifted her head to look at Cadence, picking her way through the books as she entered the room. Cadence was focused on making her way towards Twilight.

Celestia also appeared to be peering curiously into the room. She opened her mouth to say something, but Twilight couldn’t hear what it was. Mystery solved! She was deafened. Always good to know for sure.

Whatever Celestia had said, Luna reacted sharply to it. “Out!” said Luna, turning towards Cadence and Celestia. Cadence immediately turned to scramble towards the doorway, only to be picked up in a blue aura and hurried along. The door shut behind her with barely a clatter in spite of the speed with which it was shut. Luna said something, but this time it really was too quiet. Twilight gestured for her to stop with a hoof. A bright glow surrounded her ears.

Not for the first time, Twilight wished she could just memorize the entire library ahead of time instead of doing research ad hoc as issues came up. She hadn’t had this spell on hoof at Nightmare Night.

“Forgive us this, as well,” said Luna once Twilight had finished casting. Blessedly, the Princess of the Night was still speaking quietly, and Twilight could hear well enough to be certain about that. “Our—my bedroom is very private.” Then she startled and blushed, and the door once more glowed. “Not that I meant to seal you inside!”

It opened only a crack before Twilight tilted her head and held the door shut with her own magic. “I think I need to talk to you most of all right now. And I love your book collection. You didn’t need to be embarrassed about it. You really gave me the wrong idea.”

Luna laid down and sank into the bed. “Well now you are giving Princess Mi Amore Cadenza the wrong idea. She is going to tease us.”

“Cadence isn’t going to tease us,” said Twilight, hopping down from the bed to walk over to where the coin of Nightmare had fallen. She picked it up again. Once more, she flipped it over repeatedly. Starting from the face that showed Luna, it flipped once and showed her own face, then again and showed Nightmare. Twilight flipped it the other way and went back to her own image.

Luna sat up to watch. “What art—are you doing?” she asked.

Twilight flipped the coin in the air towards Luna. It landed on the bed with Nightmare’s face upwards once more. Even though the landing of the coin made a little ‘whumpf’ on impact just as it ought to, Luna didn’t track the coin. She only watched the motions of Twilight’s hoof. “Er, nothing, I guess,” said Twilight. Was she playing with a figment of her own imagination? She stepped over nearer to the bed and sat next to it. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you ever since Celestia told me that first story. When you were... well, when you came into the world, why did you choose the name Tyranny?”

“Language itself has evolved since then. My first name, as you may have surmised, was more aptly translated as Destiny, Inevitability, or even ‘She Who Walks Unfaltering Before’. Any of those would have been more apt than Tyranny.”

“Then why would you choose to mistranslate it? It makes you sound terrible. And it’s really weird to hear that word out of anypony’s mouths at all, much less describing you,” Twilight asked, more confused than ever.

“I knew not words for just rule or unjust rule. I knew only the idea of ruling itself, and I knew—” Luna shook her head “—’knew’ when I looked upon myself that idea was core to my nature. Yet when I spoke of such things, I found myself rejected. Others did not see that I should carve their paths for them. Angrily I went to the north... and ‘twas Tyranny who did that, not I, for never should it have happened and I have risked much to clean the mess I made. Tyranny lived a while longer, but she died on the day I returned to the Crystal Empire, burnt ‘neath light of moon and sun, and proclaimed myself renewed. I have been Luna ever since, and it is ironic that I am nearer to power now that I no longer consider myself inherently fit than ever I was when the idea of ruling others felt as part of my very being.”

Twilight sat quietly, considering this and resisting an inappropriate impulse to ask how the period Luna spent under the name ‘Nightmare Moon’ fit in there. She finally said, “Was Celestia’s name similar? Is ‘Pride’ also a deliberate mistranslation to repudiate some past nature?”

“I do not... believe so,” said Luna. “Her name might as fairly translate as ‘Overpowering Presence’ or ‘She Who Walks Unfaltering Aside’, but Pride is not wrong. It has more the sound of an actual name. I am unsure. She changed her name when I explained my reasoning. Perhaps she repudiated Pride as I repudiated Tyranny, but I have thought it seemed more show of support than change of character.”

Twilight walked around, looking at a few of the countless books in Luna’s private chambers. She wondered about some of the ancient languages. Which one was nearest to the primordial language where all the meanings of these names could be spoken of in one word? It was different from the modern connotations of each. Did Discord and Nightmare also have similar stories behind their names? What about Cadence? Although that last one was silly, Cadence was too young to have some mythic name.

The worst part about her musings was the realization that Luna was at the very least literate in all these languages and had been so since they were young. The same applied by extension to Celestia. It was a wonder that Luna wasn’t peppering her speech with archaicisms worse than mere outdated grammatical constructs.

No stranger to feeling inexperienced, this was definitely the first time in years that she’d felt that way about raw academic breadth. It was a shock of cold water... albeit cold water on a sweltering summer day. She zoomed back to the side of Luna’s bed. “You need to give me reading recommendations!” said Twilight eagerly.

“Certainly? Thou may findest my collection most disillusioning, Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna. She got down from the bed and cast her gaze around the room. The pool of light radiating from Twilight’s horn didn’t seem to be the limit of Luna’s vision, nor did she move to create a light of her own. Twilight didn’t feel she needed to clarify that old books could never upset her, and she was distracted wondering if there were lamps in Luna’s room at all. Could the Princess see in the dark? Was her own light just a distraction? Luna spoke again, “It is no collection of dry forgotten histories.”

That got Twilight’s attention. She smiled and stepped after Luna. “That’s the point,” she said. “These books are alive for you.”

“Some more than others. We have made a point of saving things that we thought might be destroyed. Whitewashed histories are dead when they are written, and undead when they are learned. They are no refuge to us,” said Luna. Her expression darkened.

“Refuge?” asked Twilight, and she laughed. Luna gave her a slanted glance. In lieu of answer, Twilight hopped up onto Luna’s bed and raised a hoof like a lecturer presenting an answer. “Everypony keeps telling me stories of their past. So let me tell you a story of my past,” she said, then set her hoof down.

Luna came over and sat down by the bed. The height difference between them thus inverted, “We—I would be glad to hear about your past. In a way, it's as distant to u—me, as mine is to you.”.

“There once was a little unicorn filly who was awed at the sunrise,” said Twilight. The memory of the Summer Sun Celebration where she watched Celestia raise the sun warmed her. It seemed vastly more real than the horrible image Nightmare had showed her. “She poured herself into studying magic, thinking she could get even a little closer to the sun that way, and her faith was rewarded in the greatest way imaginable.”

“But then, tragedy struck!” said Twilight. She took advantage of being upon a bed to fall dramatically onto her back much as Rarity might, and then when Luna leaned interestedly over her, she delivered the stinger. “Homework!”

“Thy homework was tragic?”

Twilight hopped to her hooves. “Yes! There was so much of it! I had to start scheduling everything just to have time enough for it. And then, just when I started to get ahead of it, I signed up for more classes!”

“That... That sounds like thine own fault,” said Luna, baffled.

Twilight nodded. “I said it was a tragedy, and common corruptions of the term notwithstanding, the classic tragic hero must be laid low by their own flaws,” she said. “The homework got worse and worse. Even in my free time I did little but think about homework.”

“How didst th—you keep from breaking under the strain?”

Every time Twilight had received one of these lessons, she had been teased by its teller in some manner. If she could forgive them that, they could too. “I didn’t! I’m completely insane, mad as a hatter, I did say it was a tragedy after all,” said Twilight with her absolutely widest grin as she pressed in near to Luna, who fell back in alarm.

Unfortunately, Twilight didn’t get the chance to laugh about it. “Twilight Sparkle! I beg of you, resist her!” shouted Luna, suddenly standing at full attention. Cadence and Celestia burst through the door into Luna’s room looking ready for a fight. Celestia wore it well; the same expression looked a little odd on Cadence.

That reaction was not as hoped for. Twilight flattened her expression. “Okay, seriously,” she said. “I fell in love with books. No madness, no tragedy. Have you two been eavesdropping?”

The presence of intruders once more in her room got Luna’s attention. Her ears stood up straight and she glanced back. “Out!” she shouted, physically chasing the other two alicorns out this time. Twilight watched from her perch on the bed.

When Luna came back and started to say something, Twilight raised a hoof again to silence her. “Every time the stress got to be too much, I read. I retreated into books. I had so much to study. I didn’t have to rationalize it to myself. I didn’t worry that I was wasting time. Sure, I may not have needed to read a book about Daring Do as much as I needed to read a book about research methods, but I knew that any little thing could be a source of inspiration. Something tells me your job involves as much study as mine did.”

“If only to catch up,” said Luna. “These are not books read to catch up. These are what I knew before, and my relief when ‘catching up’ is too impossible.”

“I read Daring Do. What do you read?”

Luna smiled and reached for the book on her bedside table. ‘Reached for’ meaning that she didn’t actually pick it up. Seeing what it was, Luna held her hoof up hesitantly, then sighed and hoofed it over to Twilight.

“Halcyon’s Thriambus! Luna! This book is a legend!” If it was an early copy, it should’ve been thirteen centuries old, but the book looked like it had skipped a thousand years along the way and been very well cared for in the other three hundred. Twilight jumped in place twice and then grabbed the book away from Luna, cradling it to her chest. It was a lost work and she was going to be the first pony to read it in centuries!

Luna smirked as she watched Twilight carry away the copy of Thriambus and crouch over it. Not even stopping to turn on a lamp, Twilight read directly by the light of her horn. For some minutes there was no sound in the room beyond the turning of pages. At first they turned fast. “Hm,” opined Twilight, her avid pageturning slowing down.

Finally Twilight stopped reading and pulled back from the book with the air of one pulling back having stepped in something nasty. “Not that I support literary vandalism, but this was 'lost' for being indecent, wasn’t it?”

Laughter was the only answer.

“Your-room-is-your-sanctum-bye!” It all tumbled out in a rush as Twilight turned to flee the laughing Princess Luna. Some absent-minded instinct made her pick up Nightmare’s coin with her magic on the way out. As the glow from her horn surrounded the coin, her legs failed her, and Twilight crashed straight into a pile of scrolls. Her wings flared and her eyes stared at nothing in particular.

Luna looked in alarm at the glowing sphere of Twilight’s magic where it hung in midair surrounding nothing she could see. She bounded over to Twilight, but it was Nightmare’s voice that Twilight heard. “Twelve chains of destiny bind your path, oh child of we alicorns. Keep this coin. Exactly once, it shall break a chain to save the life of one you love.”

Author's Note

Nightmare traded three years of power to a thing beyond reality's edge in order to create that coin. The consequences of that act will not be explored in this story.

In Which Somepony Owns a Celestia Plushie

As Nightmare’s voice faded from the air, Twilight was left feeling half-numbed on the floor in Luna’s room. She stretched her wings and then folded them up again. Gingerly she felt for the floor to make sure that when she stood up she wouldn’t slip on more of the scrolls into which she’d landed.

Her nose was jammed in against a copy of Hieronymus’ Praesentem Geleafa, which was funny, because the book was a very long way from still being present anything. Less funny was how tender her nose was going to be from having run into a copy of Hieronymus’ Praesentem Geleafa. Twilight looked away from it towards Luna.

Princess Luna stood over her looking awfully frowny and not nearly as worried as, in Twilight’s admittedly biased opinion, she really ought to have. Sensing that Luna’s hoof was going to meet Luna’s mouth if Luna was the next pony to speak, Twilight spoke first. “I bet you a doughnut there’s at least one Princess still on the other side of those doors,” she said.

At which point Twilight Sparkle egressed the pile of scrolls with a purple flash and a swatch of staticy noise. It wasn’t her most refined casting of a teleportation, but after being jerked around all night by Nightmare, it was a relief to cast a spell which was purely her own.

On the other side of the door was a blessed amount of lighting (albeit in the form of artificial magelights). Twilight let the light from her horn fade off.

“Twily!” was all the warning that Twilight got before she was swept into a bearhug. Apparently, on the other side of the door was also a Shining Armor. Not that she protested. If there was one pony who had unlimited hugging rights on her, it was definitely her BBBFF.

It did get a little more awkward when Twilight realized that there were three night guards in the hallway. Two of them were posted at the door to Luna’s bedroom. The third was at the end of the hall nearer to Luna’s ritual chambers. None of them were doing anything so unprofessional as staring, but they were still right in view of three batponies.

“Uh, okay, I think that’s enough,” said Twilight, gently extricating herself from Shining Armor just as Luna’s bedroom doors opened up to let Luna back out into the hallway.

Luna blinked in the light for a moment at transitioning from her own darkened room to the bright hallway. She turned her vision to Shining Armor. “Hmm. We are not sure if we owe you a dough-nut, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Luna!” said Twilight with a laugh. “He’s my brother!”

Encouraged by the laugh, Luna kept right on going. “Oh, forgive us, Twilight Sparkle, ‘tis most shameful that we tried to escape our obligations that way. Of course we owe you a dough-nut!”

Twilight burst into laughter and, after a moment, Luna joined in. Shining Armor blinked and looked between the two. “Did I miss something?”

“I think you’re happier not being in on the joke, big brother.”

“Some secrets were not meant for ponies to know,” said Luna, all straight-laced seriousness again.

“Well, a pony, anyways,” said Twilight with a smile.

Shining Armor sighed and turned towards the exit of the hall. “Well, I’m glad you two are getting along well,” he said, and then added sotto voce while looking at the ceiling, “and slightly alarmed at the future of Equestrian leadership.”

That got more laughter out of Twilight and a smile from Luna. Shining Armor finished with, “I take it a stop at Pony Joe’s is on the agenda?”

“We must ask a question first. What is a dough-nut?” asked Luna, at which point Twilight’s ear stood up. Oh! That’s why Luna had been pronouncing the word so oddly.

“Doughnuts! They’re great!” said Twilight. “Pony Joe sells them. I didn’t used to let myself eat any, too unhealthy, but Princess Celestia said it was okay. So they kind of became part of my study-snacking, and I’m a regular there. Well. Was a regular there. It’s still the same old place.”

“This is an odd hour for seeking a merchant.”

“Speaking of which, what hour is it? How long was I out for?” asked Twilight. She looked around. She didn’t see any clocks and Luna’s allergy to windows kept this place pretty clear of them, so the castle itself wasn’t providing anything to go by.

Shining Armor said, “Not quite dawn. Princess Celestia is about to raise the sun. That’s why she couldn’t keep waiting here for you. Cadence went with her. She said something about being chased out like a misbehaving pet.” He lofted an eyebrow at Luna as he said that.

Luna blushed, cleared her throat, stepped uncomfortably from hoof to hoof, and was spared from replying when Twilight said, “Midnight to dawn, then? Huh. That’s not too bad.”

“Midnight to midnight to dawn, I’m afraid. You had us all very worried,” said Shining Armor. He turned down the hall. “Pony Joe’s is open all hours, though I think Joe himself sleeps during the morning shift. We should talk about this over breakfast.”

“No, bad idea,” said Twilight. “Doughnut places are packed in the mornings. Pony Joe sells coffee. Coffee! Joe never works the front in the morning because he panics in crowds.”

Shining Armor blinked at Twilight. “Pony Joe... panics in crowds? And yet he runs a doughnut shop frequented by royalty and for which he is actually rather famous?”

“The quirks of ponies are nothing less than amazing.”

“He’s more about the baking, okay?” Twilight put her hoof her chest, and then held it out as she attempted a gruff voice. “A job done right has no end of rewards.” She put her hoof down. “It’s just that one of those rewards is popularity. We can’t talk about private stuff in public like that!”

“Relax, Twi. I’ll bubble us the whole time. Nopony will hear a word. Shield spells are my special talent after all.”

“Why do you want us to go out there so badly? Why can’t we just pick up something and leave again?” said Twilight.

Luna spoke up again in a quieter voice, “Thou hast slept for two days, Twilight Sparkle, and ourselves for most of that as well. We will both have raging appetites soon as we have any appetite at all. Your brother is right to push us toward somewhere that has ‘seconds’ on hoof immediately. Though if we may offer a suggestion, it should be the royal kitchens to which we retire, and our repast one of variety.”

Twilight stared at Luna, mentally picking apart the inconsistent plurals. Luna snorted and walked past. “Royal kitchens!” she shouted, picking up both siblings in her magic and carting them along behind her.

“Whoa!” Twilight scrabbled at the magical field with her hooves. She heard the batponies posted in the hallway snickering. Luna’s guards weren’t nearly as stoic as Celestia’s.

“Hey! Sorry! Let us walk, we’ll follow!”

Princess Luna and Princess Celestia had a private dining room with sturdy furniture and paintings on the walls. It had a high table for meals and a low table with cushioning around it for entertaining. The paintings were visually interesting, but not one of them was by a famous painter or itself famous. The furniture was indeed more aptly described as sturdy than fancy. The walls weren’t even painted. Not that any of this was new to any of the ponies currently entering it; even Shining Armor had seen it as captain of the guard.

Twilight was mortified to see that an abstract painting of a fractal she’d made for Celestia years ago was still hanging in a corner of the room. It was neither signed nor placed obviously, so she kept quiet lest Shiny notice as well.

“It still surprises me that you prefer this setting to eat in,” Shining Armor said to Princess Luna.

“Candidly, we do not, though neither do we object. ‘Tis our sister who finds this decor comforting. I will go inform the chefs of our needs,” said Luna, but when she opened the door leading to the kitchen she was surprised by a maidservant carrying a platter on which were placed two large doughnuts and two small ones. The two larger ones were neatly bisected into two pieces each for sharing.

“Princess Celestia already informed us,” said the maid brightly, stepping in and placing the platter on the high table. “It will be some time until the main course is ready, but as you are all surely very hungry, there is no need to wait for the entire meal to finish. We will be bringing food out as fast as it is prepared.”

Twilight’s gaze was so locked on the doughnuts that she barely noticed anything about the maid who brought them in. The larger bisected ones were a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles and a glazed doughnut. The two small ones were just lozenge-shaped pastries with chocolate icing on top. They were all completely fresh. The smooth glazing on the glazed doughnut was visible only as a faint sheen. No clumps, no dried out bits. Twilight could practically see the heat lines on it.

Also, at some point, it had floated off the table and begun to hover in front of her. It was almost like magic, really. Luna and Shining Armor seemed amused. Twilight smiled and pointed at the floating treat. “This is half of a glazed doughnut,” she said, deciding to pass off her unconscious telekinetic grab as having been for demonstrative purposes as she started explaining the selection of donuts.

It was still too hot to eat, anyways.

What followed was a staggered feast of breakfast goods. Aside from the donuts, Twilight suspected that they were getting the first pick of every distinct variety of dish the castle chefs were preparing to feed the staff. Twilight suspected as well that the castle staff was getting an unusually varied breakfast this morning.

After the donuts, the portions that followed were teasingly small. It felt like eating was making her hungrier as it woke her digestion and did nothing to sate it. Attempting to complain of this netted Twilight a rebuke from Luna. The staff were attempting to prevent the two from eating themselves sick, Luna explained. “The alicorn appetite is a problem for us all.”

To which Shining Armor joked that he’d finally found the reason why high society can’t ever seem to fill a plate. The joke went over poorly. Luna didn’t get it, and Twilight was just too hungry to laugh.

At length the meal did start to make an impact, and Twilight stopped fixating so much on every plate as it was carried through. She looked at the maid serving them again. It struck her as odd that all the tasks around the table were being performed by one pony, and possibly more odd that it had taken her so long to realize this. The young grey mare who had been bringing them food and carrying off finished dishes was certainly fast and efficient at her task. She was also quite unnoticeable. She hadn’t once asked any of them what they wanted, but rather had ensured everything was right at hoof when it was desired. Twilight wasn’t here often; was that simply the mannerisms of the Royal Pony Sisters’ Official Table Maid?

No, that couldn’t possibly be the right title. It sounded silly in her head. ‘Table maid’? Twilight wasn’t willing to open her mouth and ask about that. By the time she’d sorted out what she wanted to say, the maid was away again and the three were once more alone.

“I don’t recognize the pony who has been serving us,” Twilight said.

Luna startled and looked intensely at the door. “We also do not,” she said with a frown.

Shiny mimicked Luna's response. Three seconds ticked by. Twilight let out a breath. “Uh, is it really such a big deal? I mean, the castle is kind of big, do you remember everypony on the staff?”

Shining Armor started to speak, “No, I—” Then he trailed off and relaxed again. “Wait, I don’t work here anymore, do I? It no longer makes sense to alarm when I don’t recognize the serving staff.”

Luna had her ears trained forward on the door. “Well, I still work here. Hmm... None of us has had to call for service at any point. Even when we first arrived...” Luna looked at a glass of water on the table. She had never requested it. The maid serving the table had made a round with a water pitcher as if summoned by thirsty thought alone.

Luna delicately tipped the water glass over onto its side, causing it to spill across the table.

The door towards the kitchens popped open and out came a grey earth pony with straight dark hair. She was promptly swept up in Shining Armor’s rosy magic aura. “Huh? Oh, hello,” she said, the earth pony surprised but not apparently bothered to be levitating in a field of somepony else’s magic. “Have I been getting in the way?”

“Please, forgive me if I’m wrong. Perhaps it’s just old guard instinct acting up, but you aren’t actually a member of the castle staff, are you?”

“No, I’m not, but I’m impressed you even saw me! I must be out of practice,” said the maid, at which point she elongated with a snap and encircled the room.

“A draconequus!” That was Twilight and Shining Armor.

“Sloth!” That was Luna.

With another snap, the grey earth pony was once more afloat where Shining Armor had been holding her. So briefly had she been in another form that Twilight stretched to even come up with details. There’d been a ram’s curving horn, grey fur, and a flash of golden scales. She wasn’t sure of the rest.

Shining’s magic was no longer holding her up, but Sloth floated in place nonetheless. “That is me, one of three! Sloth, Despair, an’ Vict-or-ee,” sing-songed Sloth. Twilight and Shining Armor shared a glance. Luna was surprised but not alarmed, so they stayed quiet.

Luna said, “We would never have expected thou to be performing service work. Thy nature must be greatly changed from last we looked upon thy works!” She looked at the spilled water on the table. “Thy efforts were service, were they not? Or art we now poisoned?”

Sloth frowned and hopped down out of the air. She walked over to the side of Luna. “Of course you’re not poisoned. I spend most of my time serving ponies, have for a great many years. You just never tried to track me down after I dropped off the radar. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Thou art welcome?”

“Hm? Oh, I meant that! Really, being the Queen Sloth was just oxymoronic,” said Sloth, quietly picking up Luna’s dropped glass and mopping up the spill with a rag she pulled from nowhere. Twilight was abruptly reminded of Pinkie Pie, especially when the used rag promptly vanished back into nowhere. Then again, the next thing that happened was Sloth circling the top of the glass with a hoof and causing it to refill itself with fresh water, and Twilight recognized that as perfectly normal Zebrican magic. “I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea. My defeat at your hooves was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Surely being the Servant Sloth is oxymoronic too?”

“S’all relative! It’s not helping others that I hate, just exerting myself. Being all slavemaster-rawr took everything I had. Serving ponies takes so little, I’ve trilocated myself right now just to keep things interesting.”

Twilight raised a hoof. “Pardon, does ‘trilocated’ mean you’re in three places at once? I only see one of you.”

“The other two are in Ponyville and the Crystal Empire respectively,” said Sloth with a smile. “The Crystal Empire! It’s beautiful. I thought I’d never see it again.”

Twilight fell back to her chair in shock. What kind of magic could put Sloth in three such disparate locations at once?

Shining Armor said, “Why are you here offering us food?”

Sloth popped up right next to the shocked Twilight and set a black book on the table. “I brought this from the Ponyville library for you! You’ll need it again.” Then she turned to face Shining Armor and said, “I wanted to greet Equestria’s newest alicorn. Well, sort of greet. I wasn’t going to say anything, just make sure you were all healthy and had a good meal, then leave that book lying somewhere conspicuous. I didn’t think anypony would notice me. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised! I could never put one over on Celestia, so why should I be able to trick her sister, her guard captain, or her student?”

Twilight picked up the book that Sloth had set down. This was Star Swirl the Bearded’s private journal again. The starry swirl symbol on its cover was immediately recognizable. “How did you get this? I keep it in the lockbox under my bed!”

“Draconequus here, I only LOOK like a pony,” said Sloth, her legs abruptly elongating to let her look Twilight in the eye even though she was on the floor and Twilight was in a chair. “I’m practically a walking hole in reality!” At that, Sloth’s legs snapped back into position and she landed on the floor.

Shining Armor started to speak again, but Sloth interrupted by saying, “Oh, my quiche is ready! You’re going to like it.” She cantered off to the kitchen.

If anypony had still been inclined to question Sloth, they forgot all about that when they saw her bring back a whole spinach quiche, with no fancy plating or garnishes. After a morning on the half-bite, sharing a quiche by the slice was heavenly.

Sloth vanished as soon as she bit into her second slice of quiche. With no service, Twilight asked Shining Armor to go ask the kitchen if they knew anything about what was going on, and he headed out. Once she was alone with Luna...

“I wanted to ask something about Nightmare,” said Twilight. “Quick, before Shiny gets back. You know those chains she showed me in Ponyville? Were those real?”

“They are... somewhat real. Nightmare is obsessive about the stars. She overstates their power.”

“Well, the way she got me to start breaking them was by showing me one that was going to cause somepony to set my library on fire. Was that actually going to happen?”

Luna considered Twilight carefully, glancing at the door towards the kitchens. “I once thought Nightmare my friend. Be on guard, Twilight Sparkle. Nightmare speaks nothing but truth and nothing but lies. I have never seen her use chains as she did when she had you bound. I worry she may be—”

At that point, the door opened to let Shining Armor back in, and Luna clammed up. “The kitchen didn’t even know we were getting food,” he said.

“Oh well,” said Twilight. “I guess that quiche will hold for now anyways. I’d really like to see why a draconequus would think it so important that I had this book again.”

Luna said, “And I am two nights past when duty should have sent me to the crawling wall in the north.”

“So you’re going right back to sleep?”

Luna gave Twilight a pained look. “Please, dear Twilight. It is sleep in only the most technical of senses. I am the one pony in Equestria who can suffer insomnia and vivid dreams simultaneously.”

With that, Luna bowed out to return to her chambers, and Twilight was left with Shining Armor. “You okay, sis? Things have been weird all week,” he said, walking over to her.

Twilight hugged him as soon as he was in reach for hugs. “I’ll be fine, BBBFF, but something’s going on. I’m worried about what it means for everypony else.”

“Well, worry about yourself too, okay? Don't just open that book and start reading. Take it to Celestia.”

“And as you can see, the text is still glowing. I can close it, but it only opens back up to this page. It’s like all the pages have been glued shut but this one,” said Twilight, gesturing at the book where it lay open on Celestia’s desk.

Celestia looked between the book and her student. “Have you tried reading it?”

Twilight shook out her wings and pawed at the floor. “Well, no. It doesn’t seem safe.”

“Let me try.” Celestia walked over to her desk and started to read the glowing text. There was a peculiar sound like a roar mixed with ripping paper and a flare of black light that clung to Celestia’s eyes and horn, pulling her in nearer to it. With a grunt of effort, the Princess pulled her head away from the book. “Ugh, that is unpleasant magic.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Celestia didn’t answer. She just closed the book with a hoof, opened it up again, and then leaned in and examined the binding closely while avoiding the glowing text. “Oh, goodness. This is the original. Luna actually did take a knife to it.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Of course it’s the original..?” she said.

“Mm. Twilight Sparkle, I have a confession to make. I tried to pass off a counterfeit book to you.”

“But you failed, because it was the original. Only Luna took a knife to it to make it look like the counterfeit you wanted to use. So the original-original, as it originally was, had more text than this?” asked Twilight. Being not quite capable of thinking ill of Celestia, and not easily capable of it with Luna, it hadn’t yet occurred to her to be horrified by the desecration of books this sequence of events implied.

“It had more... I am not sure ‘text’ is the right word. This is not exactly a book. It is a semi-extant metaphor that is pretending to be a book. Pretending rather poorly, at the moment.”

“Well, is it dangerous?”

Celestia looked at the book again and flinched when it grabbed her with another flare of black light. She shook it off and sighed. “The book is physically harmless,” Celestia said, and then looked off into the distance as she searched her memory for something. Twilight waited until Celestia continued. “I recommend reading it. I am aware of the gift that Nightmare gave you. These are the same species of object. It is likely that the book is reacting to your coin, and you will need to know what it is trying to tell you.”

“It’s not going to corrupt me weirdly, is it?”

Celestia shook her head. “Corruption is... not the word. I will be right here for you. If something bad happens, I will help.”

Twilight climbed up to the desk and regarded the book, setting a trembling hoof on it. It just sat there. It was silly to be afraid of a book, right? Once she'd steadied herself, she moved in closer. When the black light seized her, she reacted only by moving her eyes across the glowing text.

Celestia stepped through a grassy green plains, surrounded by a glowing blue-white mist. The mists were full of shapes. Most of them were structures or plants; a few of them appeared to be animals. All were composed of mists. Celestia ignored them all. There was nothing real in this space.

“I won’t be turned away. The light is real. I won’t be turned away. I am the light,” chanted Celestia. She had been walking for half an hour and speaking under her breath for most of that. The weight of unreality burdened her as if it were something literal. A harness of mist gathered to her, strands of it trailing off as if attached to a massive invisible cart. She was dragging reality behind her.

There was no sun in this space. The mist was neither smoke nor water. The grass itself faded away until there was only the mist. The white of the mist condensed and brightened into lights. The blue of the mist spread and deepened. The shapes in the mist flattened into images, becoming at once clearer and more unreal as color seeped into them.

Celestia walked the only path of light in a starry void. Still she pulled at an invisible weight, until the harness of mist solidified and then flattened away with a hollow booming. At this, the Princess ran free, suddenly released of the weight of the world as she galloped beyond existence.

Her joy was soon cut short as she felt shadows coalesce around her. She couldn’t see them. There is nothing to see, they whispered, and her vision darkened to the starry void. This is nothing. You are nothing. This doesn’t exist. You don’t exist.

“I won’t be turned away,” Celestia said, her tone dropping low as her horn lit. “The light is real; I am the light!”

The blue void turned white with the light. The shadows became briefly solid before evaporating. The void quaked for a moment as it was wrenched into something nearer to Equestrian reality. The flat images floating through the void began to resemble scenes that might plausibly come from Equestria itself. “Some years from now, I suspect I am either going to be very happy I did that, or else very annoyed,” Celestia said cheerfully, before looking down at the starry path she had just reified.

She took a deep breath (There is no air here whispered a shadow, ignored.) and leaped from it. A great noise of incoherent babble arose around her as she fell. It was the detritus of every half-completed thought in history, and Celestia closed her eyes against the overload. “I have leaped from my breath to a book. This isn’t real, but that will not stop me. I have leaped from my breath to a book. I can be real when nothing else is,” she said to herself.

Several repetitions passed before she stabilized it enough, but not nearly so many as it took to get here in the first place. The babble fell away, and Celestia felt her hooves land on a carpeted floor. Surprised at the carpet, she opened her eyes to look at it. It was comprised of stars as well.

She prodded it with a hoof. It felt surprisingly solid and even comfortably plush in spite of its ethereal composition. Then she felt shadows around her again. Celestia lifted her head and looked around her; she was in a twisted library. Half the walls were missing, there was no ceiling, and the sky above looked like a twisting aurora. There were no shadows to see. We are not real, they whispered. You belong here. You are not real. Stay with us.

Celestia knew she couldn’t afford to make this place any more real than it was. She ran. “Romantic fiction, it’ll be in romantic fiction,” said the Princess, unaware that she was talking as she hurriedly scanned the shelves. She struggled to divine the categorization of an alien library even as she fled the shadows of nonexistence. They didn’t seem to be chasing her. (Make me more real whispered a shadow, ignored.)

The Princess’s horn crackled and fizzled as she attempted a seeking spell, and she groaned in frustration. The spell is too real, she thought, and then she froze for an instant. Was that her thought or one of the shadows? “By my gilded sun,” cursed Celestia. “Three was too much! Just two. I swear I’ll only take two, after all. But I MUST have that NAME.”

She begged forgiveness from whatever power governed the spaces beyond reality and poured more power into the seeking spell. A light pulsed from her horn and hung in the air before her, shimmering between black and pink. It shivered there for a moment before taking off fast through the halls. Celestia took off after it, galloping as fast as she could to avoid losing the spell.

The light led her up ramps and down; there were no stairs in this place. Several times she nearly lost it when it flew through a gap in the wall and forced her to take a longer path rather than leap across open void. Finally, it led her down a path that dead-ended where it looked like the hallway had boiled off into nothingness. Far ahead, more hallway could be seen, and the light made straight for it. There was no path to avoid this leap. Celestia spread her wings wide as she leaped across the opening.

An icy wind caressed her feathers as it blew up from the void, carrying with it a noisome change in the air. Where the library had smelled only of books, this gap where the library had boiled off to something else smelled like soil and cleaning chemicals. Celestia landed with a shudder. She could hear a swampy sound of motion behind her and a distant buzzing. The heart of magic is what begs to be real, she thought, and with a flinch she took off running again. That was not her thought. Maybe two was too much as well, but she was unwilling to abandon another piece of her quest.

There was not much farther to travel. The black-and-pink light of her spell turned one last corner and then struck a bookcase, which gleamed pink for a moment. Celestia approached it and glanced around herself skittishly, expecting to be accosted by shadows the instant she stopped running. Nothing came. I want to exist, whispered a shadow, ignored.

Celestia raised a hoof hesitantly to the shelf, examining the titles closely for the first time since she arrived here. They were all gibberish. For a moment, anger marred her expression, then she took a deep breath and calmed herself. “I can be real when nothing else is,” she said with closed eyes, plucking a book from the shelf at random. She opened her eyes and looked at it. Black, with a complex pattern of pink and green that felt like it should mean something. Celestia knew she had the right book when she flipped through several pages and found that after the first few chapters, the pages started being interrupted by an increasing number of holes. The pattern wanted to mean something, said a shadow, and it very nearly sounded real.

It was too real. The shadows weren’t real. Celestia’s ears twitched. Had she heard something? She pushed it off. “I don’t need your life story,” she said to the book, flipping back to the first few pages to search for the attribution.

“In gratitude for Love, without whom nothing I care about would be real,” she read, and then she lifted one of her gold-shod hooves and scraped the word Love off of the sentence. It came up in a pink dust that rapidly condensed into a glowing sphere. Celestia pressed a hoof to the sphere and rubbed it against the book for a moment, before stashing it in the storage space concealed under her peytral. It was warm at her chest. For a moment, it was hard to believe there could ever be a shadow in all the world.

Unbeknownst to Celestia, her horn flashed white while she stood there stunned.

It took her a moment to recover and remember that she was in a strange space. “Forgive me,” she said to the book as she gently put it back into its place. “This will work out best for us all.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” spoke a new voice.

Celestia jumped and whirled to look at its source. It was a black unicorn who didn't quite touch the starry carpet of the floor. His mane rippled similarly to Celestia’s own, and she could swear she could see through him. He barely looked real. Was he real?

“This place is dangerous,” continued the unicorn. His voice was rough like it’d never been used before. Celestia was struck by the dissonantly amusing urge to give him a cough drop. “Even for such as you.”

“How can you exist here? This place is formed of stillborn belief and broken thought.”

“Perhaps I am a broken thought,” he said. “You smell different. Leave!”

“I can’t. Destiny begs to be changed, and only here is that possible. Help me! If you help me, I will be away that much sooner,” Celestia said hopefully.

The shadowy unicorn stared at her for an uncomfortable moment. “A book...” he said faintly. “You have loaned me something ineffable. You will take it back, but I will be grateful until then.”

Celestia said, “I need the book of Star Swirl the Bearded.”

The dark unicorn nodded and walked over to another shelf. “Barely outside of romance,” he said with the ghost of a smile, pointing to a single black book. Celestia tried to ignore the fangs revealed by the expression as she walked over to pull the book from the shelf.

She looked at its cover, and the image on it brought a smile to her face. What else would it be but two stars and a swirl? “Oh, Star Swirl. You never knew what you nearly had,” she said. She flipped the book to the last page and took the pink sphere out from under her peytral. She looked between the two. “Old friend, someone is going to find what you missed someday, I just know it. I can’t spare much for them... Hopefully they’ll have talent enough to provide the rest.”

With that, she smacked the sphere against the wood of a nearby bookshelf with her hoof and pinned it there, collecting in her magic some of the dust which constituted it. That dust was pressed into the spell written on the book’s last page, which shone brightly for a moment before becoming normal text again. She stuffed the rest of the pink sphere back into her peytral again, followed by the book.

“I just hope you can forgive me for making whoever I give this book to think you were an obsessive journaler,” hummed Celestia, turning about... to face an angry black unicorn.

“You must NOT take objects from here! They are not REAL! You play with fire!” he said, then abruptly lunged forward.

Celestia shied back, barely avoiding being tackled. “Luna! Sister! I need you now!” she called as she ran from a shadow for the second time, this one corporeal.

“Graaah! Must NOT leav—Oof!” The shadowed unicorn crashed into the dark-armored visage of the Princess of the Night. He shied away from her. She didn’t even seem to notice.

“‘Dear’ sister, what foolery is this? Why do I find you walking the far realms? This place is dangerous even for such as we,” said Luna, frowning angrily.

“So I have heard,” murmured Celestia, then picked up her voice to continue, “I can explain, but not here. I have permitted this place too much reality as it is.”

Luna growled and nodded, arching her head back as her aura flashed with thunder and surrounded them both. With a flash, it restored them to normal reality.

When the wind of their passage had settled, Luna walked over to one of the windows. “Really, sister,” said Luna, looking out at the forest beyond. “How far did you go? We’ll be lucky if this entire forest isn’t tainted by such an excursion.”

Celestia stretched and flapped her wings, then ran a circuit of the room like a giddy foal. “Ah, blessed banality! There is AIR here! Real, non-metaphorical air!” she said. She took several deep breaths, then she leaned down and sniffed at the carpet. “And dusty carpets. Did you fire our maidstaff again?”

“Nevermind that! You must tell me at once what you were doing,” Luna said severely.

Celestia hmmed, then fetched the book and the sphere out of her peytral. The book looked perfectly mundane. The sphere did not, and exposed to reality, its glow was turning sickly. Celestia wrapped it in a protective bubble of her own magic, conjured a tiara she’d prepared for the purpose, and pushed the sphere into the tiara. Luna watched with some wonder as Celestia set the tiara down on a nearby shelf.

“You stole something,” said Luna, awed.

“Yes, I did. Don’t worry... Its owner had already buried it. I saved it from destruction,” said Celestia. She walked over to her sister, and gestured to the book she held floating in her magic. “I need you to do something else for me, as well.”

Luna grabbed the book out of the air with a hoof and stared at it. “This shouldn’t exist, not here, not as something real,” she said angrily. “I am going to go put this back!”

“Sister, no! Please don’t! Look at the spell on the last page. Just don’t read it out loud.”

Luna hesitated before opening the book and flipping to the last page. She started to murmur as she read it, and Celestia hushed her. Luna regarded the incantation darkly... then doubt slipped into her expression. “This is... incomplete. It doesn’t even rhyme. Yet it has the feel of alicorn magic. Was my Star Swirl trying to become an alicorn?”

“Yes, he was, for you. I need you to...” Celestia hesitated. She’d meant to say ‘cut this down into a plausible journal’, but Luna’s earlier negative reaction to the book even being brought out of the far realms made her think otherwise. The book was a reified metaphor for Star Swirl’s life. Requesting that Luna take a knife to it suddenly felt like a good way to get struck by lightning.

Celestia said instead, “I need you to prepare a journal from this book, and place the page with the incomplete spell into that journal. Then you may return the book.”

“This isn’t right...” Luna said, hoof hovering over the book. She looked like she was resisting the temptation to keep reading.

Celestia stepped over and put a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “You’re the only pony I could ask to do this. You were closer to Star Swirl than anypony. But if you don’t want to do this, if you truly believe the book should just be taken back to where it came from, it’s up to you.”

“Why did you do this?” Luna asked, looking at her sister. For the first time since she’d taken up Nightmare's dark armor, she looked small.

“He invented more magic in his life than any of us did in lifetimes, and he was on the cusp of immortality. I couldn’t let history’s greatest conjurer fade away. Maybe this wasn’t the way I should have done it. It’s up to you,” Celestia said. “The thing I needed more than anything, that could have been saved from oblivion in no other way, that I did retrieve.” She picked up the tiara she’d set down earlier.

Celestia watched for some moments longer as Luna hesitantly turned the page back and started reading, then turned the book back to the first page and started reading linearly. Satisfied that her sister would handle it well, she turned and walked away.

“She LIED to me. HE lied to me!” hissed Luna as she read the part describing the creation of the spell. “He was trying to become an alicorn, but it had nothing to do with me!”

The hocks-deep pile of notes from Luna’s “Star Swirl’s Journal” project suddenly rose in a whirlwind around the angered alicorn as lightning crashed in the sky beyond her window.

“If I am so unlovable that nopony will ever CHOOSE to love me, I will permit them the CHOICE no longer!”

The black light of the book’s magic faded, and Twilight pulled her head back from the text. The glowing faded from it. It looked like ordinary writing once more. “Ugh, that felt a lot like talking to Nightmare again,” she said, rubbing her horn. “When did history get so hallucinogenic? How long was I out?” She didn’t have the neck ache she expected from the bad posture the book had pulled her into.

Celestia was right behind Twilight, and immediately put her wings around the smaller alicorn. “Two minutes, twenty six seconds,” she said. “What did the book show you?”

Twilight thought hard about what she’d seen. She wanted to wonder at the gesture of Celestia’s wings around her, but what she’d seen was disturbing her. That weird space she’d seen when she first ‘ascended’? Celestia had created it. That spell that Star Swirl hadn’t been able to make work? Celestia had empowered it with stolen divinity. The journal itself? Star Swirl never WROTE a journal!

“Twilight? Are you alright?”

“I have no destiny.”

“You have a glorious destiny, my student,” said Celestia.

Twilight snorted. “Technically, yes. I think I understand. I DO have a destiny. I have lots of destiny. The cast-off dregs of YOUR destiny. I’m a tool.” She turned around to face Celestia, batting away the other alicorn’s wings with her own. She didn’t want to be touched, but... she took a breath. She wasn’t angry. She didn’t know enough yet to let herself be angry. More confrontational than she’d ever been towards Celestia in her life, yes, but not angry. “You made me,” she said.

“Twilight, I don’t understand. I did not make you.”

“You did. You took the soul of a dead wizard, the name of a corrupted god, and the grief of your own sister, and out of those ingredients, you made yourself the perfect little filly. Was it worth it?”

Celestia looked at Twilight, and the dust of ages was on them both.

Twilight heard a whisper in her ear, a voice of Nightmare that only she could hear. Let me be your seer, and what you see will not endear.

In that moment, Twilight saw a wide halo twist into existence around Celestia’s head. It was bone white and printed with harsh black symbols. At first, the phrases around it came in every variety. There were denials. There were explanations in text too small and dense for Twilight to read in an instant. There were excuses begging Twilight not to believe words born of dark magic. There were countless different responses to Twilight’s words, but fully half the halo appeared to be etched with the phrase “No price paid could make me regret you”. That sentiment... For that, Twilight would have forgiven the Princess anything.

Then as Twilight watched, the symbols around the halo caught fire and were replaced with a new phrase. “I know I’m right.” Twilight knew that this vision was taking place in a heartbeat, and yet it seemed that she watched for three full seconds as fires swarmed over the halo replacing words with that single self-justifying phrase.

The half of the halo that said “No price paid could make me regret you” withstood all the fire until it was the last thing left, and the halo was entirely ringed by the two competing sentiments. At first the fires could not shift those letters, lighting them but not consuming them, and then they too succumbed.

The fire faded.

The halo tore.

Half of it fell to ash.

The ragged remnant floated about Celestia’s head like a banner. In ashen script it proclaimed, “I know I’m right.”

“I know I’m right,” whispered the Spirit of Pride, and Twilight’s heart broke around her words.

A wisp of smoke flowed in and popped into a scroll at Celestia’s ear. Twilight startled free of Nightmare’s perspective, the burnt banner vanishing from around Celestia. She grabbed the scroll immediately with her magic before Celestia herself could react. She unrolled it and read,

Dear Twilight,

The library’s been getting some really weird letters. I think whoever’s writing them is really angry at you, but they don’t make any sense. I wouldn’t bother you about it, but two things happened this morning.

First off, somepony threw a bottle of something splashy at the library and then ran off like he’d seen a ghost a moment later. We found some matches too, so... There’s a bunch of guards around the library now. They’ll probably still be here when you get back. Apparently attempting to burn down a Princess’ home is a big deal.

Secondly, and in spite of the guards, Berry Punch seems to have gotten into your bedroom somehow. I found her passed out by your bed, hugging a plush toy of Celestia. It was creepy. She smelled really bad and I couldn’t wake her up, so I got Big Macintosh and he managed to get her up and out of the library.

I hope it wasn’t a problem that I let Big Macintosh into your room. Did you upset somepony weird in Canterlot? And what was up with Berry? Why was she in your room?

Please come back soon,

Spike.

Twilight dropped the letter and facehooved. All of a sudden, she had a pretty good idea who was Ponyville’s edition of “Sloth”. Celestia caught the letter as it fell and scanned it quickly.

“Oh my,” said Celestia. “Do you have a stalker?”

“No, just another schemer yanking my chain.”

Author's Note

To all reports, Octavia greatly enjoyed her vacation in the Crystal Empire.

In Which Luna is Forbidden from Comedy

“Twilight? I promise nopony is going to mock you. We understand this is all very new to you. Please, please come out?”

This was the second time Cadence had come back apologizing for the events in the shake shoppe. Twilight groaned and stuffed her head under her pillow. Apparently, Celestia’s ability to match Pinkie Pie at a cake-eating contest was not a “Celestia thing” it was an “alicorn thing”. The shake shoppe had suffered a bit of a scene with Equestria’s newest Princess... and Cadence had bankrolled the binge, seeming to find it in good fun!

As such, a certain suite at the castle (in which a certain alicorn was this week residing) had been turned into a fortress of solitude and stomachaches. There was a private bathroom attached to it. That had fortunately not been needed, but Twilight couldn’t help but be aware of it.

“At least tell me you’re okay?”

Last time Cadence had come by to check on her, Twilight had been somewhere between too ill to speak and too embarrassed. Some time had passed since then. “At least tell me you've found a stomach settling draught,” Twilight tried to say, but a new voice spoke over her.

“Has Twilight Sparkle caught ill?”

Twilight perked up. That was an unexpected addition to the conversation.

“Yeah, she’s—” said Cadence, before lowering her voice to continue. Twilight didn't hear the rest. She got down from her bed and walked over to the doorway.

“Oh, fortune has caught us ill then,” said Luna. The Princess stopped when the door suddenly opened, revealing Twilight.

“Luna! One moment please,” said Twilight, then turned to Cadence and continued, “Cadence... I know Shiny’ll be nice about this, and you don’t need to apologize. Just... promise me next time one of these ‘alicorn things’ seems to be sneaking up on me, you’ll pull me aside and tell me. And get me something to settle my stomach.”

Cadence sat back and fished a small glass flask full of clear liquid out of her saddlebags. She hooved it over to Twilight, who took it and looked at it. “Canterlot’s Own Alicorn Stomach Renovator, One Dose” appeared on its pale yellow label. The list of symptoms that it claimed to be able to cure was quite implausibly long, although the dire ‘for alicorns only’ warnings were reassuring. Twilight drank it immediately. The liquid inside tasted of green peppers, which was interesting, until the flavor abruptly changed into chalk. There was no immediate effect beyond a sudden desire for a not-forthcoming glass of water. “Egh, I hope this works,” said Twilight, scrunching up her nose at the flavor as she offered the flask back to Cadence.

Luna leaned in curiously to look at the label as the container passed from one hoof to another. She returned to her impassive stance as Cadence put the emptied flask back in her saddlebags.

Cadence hung her head, abashed. “It should, and I still can’t make that promise,” she said. “I grew up an alicorn. It all seems natural to me. And in this case, I was sure you already knew; you did nothing Celestia hasn’t done many times when she thought she could get away with it.”

At this point, Luna chimed in with, “The alicorn appetite. It is a problem for us all.” Cadence and Twilight looked at Luna, startled. Then they both started laughing.

“What? From whence comes your mirth? Cease! Stop laughing!” said Luna, her wings flaring as she shied back, right front hoof rising. Her voice tried to project authority, but it was marred by her fearful stance. The laughter still stopped immediately. A silence descended, broken when Cadence coughed awkwardly and Luna set her raised hoof down.

Twilight was the first one to speak. “I’m sorry, Princess,” she said, bowing. Cadence mimicked the gesture.

“Do not bow, I mean, do not... stand, stand, merely explain,” said Luna. The two smaller alicorns stood. After a moment of them both hesitantly trying not to be the first one to speak up, Twilight nudged Cadence.

Cadence frowned for a moment and then said, “Well... It’s just that you had such a deadpan delivery on that and you were exactly right. The problem is esoteric, but you made it seem so normal. Which I guess it is, if only to us.”

Twilight brushed a bit of imaginary sweat off of her brow in an exaggerated gesture of relief. She nodded and said to Cadence, “I was worried we were laughing at different things.” She looked to Luna with a smile. “I’m sorry if it seemed we were laughing at you. It’s called bathos. It’s good comedy! Not many ponies pull it off well.”

“It was not intentional,” said Luna, still sounding hurt. She folded up her wings at her sides again.

Another awkward silence stretched between them. Cadence was the one to break it this time. “I’m sorry. I should have known it wasn't intentional. I didn't mean to laugh at you, Luna. I apologize.”

This earned an emphatic nod from Twilight, who opened her mouth to add her own apologies only to be interrupted first. Luna shook her head and struck a pose, pointing with one hoof down the hallway at nothing in particular. A dramatic wind spited the closed windows as it sprang from nowhere. “Nay! I shall learn this ‘bathos’ and master it, becoming a force for amusement and good cheer in this world! No more shall I be feared, but rather my appearances shall be greeted by gales of laughter!”

With the grand pronouncement over, Cadence and Twilight relaxed their deafened grimaces. Twilight then hurried over to Luna and gently, gently pushed Luna’s hoof down towards the floor. “That is... also bathos,” said Twilight delicately. “Saying a mundane thing grandly like that... Yes. It’s not as funny at close range. Audiences like their ears where they are.”

“Their ears? What is this about—” Luna started to say, and was abruptly cut off when Celestia teleported messily into the hallway.

There are neat, clean teleports. It is possible to teleport so neatly that it barely seems like moving at all. There is hardly a whisper of wind or a glimmer of light to a perfect teleportation. It is as natural and fluid as taking a step. This was not one of those teleports.

Normal students making their first teleports produce a grand lightshow and a small clap of thunder on both sides of the motion, and they will often scorch themselves in the process. This is especially likely if the energy drain gets away from them and they pass out mid-transit. An unstable, clumsy teleport costs a vast amount of energy. Although alarming, painful, and subject to many urban legends, the effect is not dangerous. This was not one of those teleports.

Celestia is famed for her elegance in teleportation. Being neither the pure efficiency of a mortal master nor the sound and fury of a clumsy young talent, she has often been seen to ‘step out of sunlight’ when teleporting. When the sun is not present, her glowing and soundless appearances have been poetically compared to second sunrises. This was not one of those teleports.

Sunfire exploded in the hallway in a burst of light and noise. The nearest window broke. The carpet caught fire. Two more windows cracked spontaneously from the heat. The wallpaper caught fire. A nearby vase detonated. The alicorn of the sun stepped out of the conflagration unsinged and untouched, her mane afire and her eyes aglow. Cadence looked terrified. Celestia spoke, and she spoke in the Royal Canterlot Voice. “Sister! I forbid that you—”

Celestia looked around her. She looked at Cadence. She looked at the burning wallpaper. The glow faded from her eyes. Her mane settled into its normal waving pattern. “I forbid that you ever cast a spell of teleportation while holding onto that much fire mana,” she finished lamely. “I think I hurried the spell slightly too much.”

Luna looked at her sister and deadpanned, “Slightly.”

Twilight Sparkle snrked as she looked between the completely unruffled Princess Luna, the abashed Princess Celestia, and the dying glare of the thaumic fires around Celestia. It was too much. She fell over laughing.

Luna’s serious expression dissolved in an instant when Twilight laughed. She stood up straighter and flared her wings again as she said, “Huzzah! I hath delivered my first intentional batho joke!”

The eldest Princess frowned as she looked around herself at the hallway, bits of flaming carpet and wall lighting up with brief glows as she deliberately snuffed the flames. Twilight’s own snickers died down pretty soon, and she immediately moved to nuzzle Cadence, who didn't seem to find the situation as amusing. Royal guards had appeared in the hallway to either side of the four princesses, but when things seemed peaceful, they kept their distance and focused on holding back the distraught palace cleaning staff who arrived shortly thereafter.

“Bathos, sister. It’s bathos, and I’m not sure that was an example of it,” Celestia said, once she was certain that her magical mishap couldn't cook her castle. “Regardless, that’s what I came down here for. I forbid you to become a comedienne.”

“But... why? Is not laughter one of the elements of harmony?” asked Luna, sounding hurt again. Her wings once more folded.

“I did it. I spent thirty years on it. I had a tremendous amount of fun. Re-enactments of my prop comedy sketches have been used to haze guard recruits ever since.”

“Thou didst comedy?” asked all three princesses in unison. Well, at least one of them said that. The contributions of the other two were rather drowned out by far grander lungs. Their expressions ranged from horror on Twilight to interest and curiosity on Luna. Cadence, still shaking off the aftermath of fright, managed only to look confused.

Celestia shuffled her wings awkwardly, looking out the broken window into the Canterlot night. “I don’t talk about it. And by royal decree, neither does anypony else. Now if only that had stopped the re-enactments.”

By now, the hallway was crowded with castle staff that had appeared to gawk at the gathered Princesses standing in the fire-damaged bit of hallway. The royal guards had taken on a very businesslike air as they held back the crowd. They projected the stoic air of guards standing exactly where they are needed. Having managed to respond and get themselves in order before even a single member of the staff showed up, it lended the encounter an oddly premeditated appearance.

Luna looked out at the gathered staff of the palace, then down at Twilight, then back to Celestia. She said, “Your intervention was... is... timely. It is true. Our position is such that we couldn't know if we were being amusing. Everypony would laugh and tell us we were great even if we were not. They would mimic us at best, and at worst, mock us.”

Twilight looked up at Luna thoughtfully. There had been something different about the emphasis with which the words were spoken. “You meant those plurals, didn't you? Referring to all of us?”

Luna nodded and said, “Princesses need not be dour at jest, but to be a comic is too much.”

Celestia smiled. “That is a weight off my shoulders,” she said, then turned to the hallway to address the crowd. “I am certain that, much as I did, you all heard and responded to Luna’s declaration of comedic intention. You will all be relieved to hear that you will not be forced to laugh at anypony’s bad jokes. So relieved, I trust, that nopony will feel the need to speak of this event in the future,” she said, her tone serious. Then she added more lightly, “If anypony is not feeling sufficiently relieved, please consult section 877 of the Royal Canterlot Library for the relevant records.”

“877? Old Equish Humor?” Twilight asked Luna, quietly.

“The—err, the records of her comedic efforts, We are guessing,” said Luna, in a husky and not very quiet approximation of a whisper.

Once the crowd had begun dispersing, Celestia turned to the other three. “I am sorry for that amateurish display. Overhearing that Luna was about to repeat an old mistake of mine triggered my protective instincts.”

“Alicorn appetites shouldn't be encouraged. Friends shouldn't be laughed at. Alicorn comedians are such a terrible idea that talking about them too loudly makes things catch on fire. Tonight is full of lessons!” Cadence walked over and scuffed at the scorched carpet with a hoof.

Twilight gave her old foalsitter a funny look and fluffed her own wings. “Why are you the one acting so inexperienced? You always seemed so confident about being an alicorn before.”

Cadence looked back at Twilight, and took a step closer, looking specifically at her wings. “This is harder to adjust to than it seemed at first. I just keep being reminded of all the things I've never seen from an outside perspective. There’s a lot of things that were never odd or unusual because I grew up with them. Look, that promise you asked for, to watch out for ‘alicorn things’ and warn you about them? I promise I’ll do my best.”

Twilight smiled and gave Cadence a quick hug, then stepped back again. “Thanks. And thanks for bringing me that ‘stomach renovator’. I, uh, needed it.” It had set in subtly enough that Twilight hadn't noticed exactly when her stomach stopped hurting, but she felt fine now.

“I’m just glad it kicked in before Celestia made her appearance,” said Cadence, looking at Celestia, who was gathering the fragments of the vase that had broken during her entrance. Surrounded by a golden glow, they began assembling themselves on their pedestal, which was fortunately undamaged.

While Cadence was looking at Celestia, Luna stepped forward and put a hoof on Cadence’s shoulder. “Never fear to sleep,” she said solemnly. “Your dreams are protected.”

Cadence took a moment to absorb that, then frowned at Luna. “Thank you?”

“Well, that didn't sound ominous at all,” said Twilight sarcastically. “Look, don’t we all have better things to do right now? I appreciate everypony’s company, but I doubt any of us really meant to spend all this long hanging out in a random hallway.”

“My dearest Twilight,” said Celestia, whereupon she glanced at each end of the hallway to confirm that it had by now emptied. “Speak for yourself,” she finished with a laugh. “My schedule says I’m asleep right now, but I need less sleep than I am allotted. I’d rather not consign myself to the morrow just yet. My sister, on the other hand...”

Luna said, “We came seeking—”

“Luna! Singular self. And quieter,” scolded Celestia.

Luna sighed and started over, the wind out of her wings at the interruption. “I came seeking relief for a personal matter of which I have not yet spoken.”

Cadence stepped back from the group. “Well, I think I do need to depart. Shiny will rest easier knowing that his two favorite princesses don’t have a rift between them, and I think I need to destress.” She glanced quickly back and forth along the hallway to confirm that none of the guards or staffers had snuck back into sight, and let out a relieved sigh when the way was still clear. “You know, there’s a long formal farewell that I don’t have to use. Regal etiquette is all well and good, but privacy with trusted friends is nicer. Can you imagine government with leaders chosen without regard for their trustworthiness?”

The four shared a brief laugh, then Cadence headed off to her own suite elsewhere in the castle. Twilight looked to Luna. “So... what was that personal matter you wanted to discuss?”

Luna looked at her and, with a perfectly neutral expression and tone, said, “I want you to sleep with me, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight gaped up at Luna. After a moment, the gears in her head finally started turning again. “Oh, haha, you’re practicing the deadpan comedy again, I get it,” said Twilight, laughing nervously.

“Yes!” said Luna, eager for approval. “We expressed—” Celestia managed to interrupt Luna’s exuberant spike in volume with a mere disapproving glance. Luna took a breath and then continued, still eager but with a moderated tone. “I expressed literally something that was not intended literally, in a manner likely to be misunderstood. Is that also bathos?”

“Uh... No. I don’t think ponies do that kind of thing intentionally very often. And just what kind of ‘literal’ sleeping together do you want us to do?”

Celestia said, “I am also interested in the answer to that.”

“There is a serious matter involved. We wish to show you the secrets of dreamwalking. There are certain oft-concealed elements of history that are not safely studied without it, lest the study draw... attention. To teach you dreamwalking, we will literally need to sleep in the same place.”

“Dreamwalking! Is that possible for me? Isn't that special to you? That’s... that’s amazingly personal,” said Twilight, wide-eyed. “People claim it occasionally, but nothing more serious than ‘lucid dreaming’ has ever been proved. Can I really do it?”

“Yes, Twilight Sparkle. Your efforts in saving me demand the greatest reward I can give!” said Luna, confident but not exuberant. “I will teach you forbidden secrets you have only dreamed about before.”

“Forbidden?” asked Twilight.

Celestia spoke up again, “Luna has never taught anypony to dreamwalk. It is her most closely guarded secret, right after—”

Luna cleared her throat loudly and gave her sister a funny look. “I hath—ehem have tried to teach somepony to dreamwalk on no fewer than seventeen occasions, two of which occurred since my return.”

Celestia smiled impishly and amended herself, “Luna has never successfully taught anypony to dreamwalk. It is her most unwanted secret, right after—” Celestia was cut off by a snort and a brief but vicious GLARE from her sister.

“Do you think I can actually do it?” asked Twilight, oblivious.

Luna stepped nearer to Twilight and put a hoof on her shoulder, although her gaze was still on Celestia, alert to any more attempts at spilling forbidden secrets. “We should retire to my chambers, Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna, her gaze dropping to Twilight. “My sister is clearly suffering from reduced faculties due to sleep deprivation.”

Celestia laughed lightly and shook her head. “Yes, go with her, and good luck. This truly is important knowledge. For my own part... I think I need to write a letter of apology to the castle steward.” She spared a regretful look at a scorched spot on the wallpaper, touching it with one of her gold-shod hooves. “Perhaps a few other forms also. Just as well. I don’t particularly feel sleepy.” She walked off down the hallway, on foot this time.

Luna’s chambers, as it turned out, did not refer to her bed chambers. The path to Princess Luna’s private ritual chamber was so very nearly the same as the path to Princess Luna’s bedroom that Twilight Sparkle had door to Luna’s room open before Luna (who had walked past it) noticed the error.

Not that she ever got a chance to see the interior, as she was abruptly snatched away and the door slammed shut again. Only the briefest glimmer of a room kept dark was available first, along with a gust of musty air that struck Twilight as the scent of an old, poorly maintained library. “We are seeking the next door,” said Luna, blushing. Miraculously, her embarrassment didn't result in a spike of volume. “I did not expect you to open doors ahead of us.”

“Uh, sorry about that. You know, Princess Celestia isn't that protective of her bedroom.”

“Princess Celestia’s bedroom is not such a... sanctum. I am embarrassed of my collection of... ancient literature,” said Luna, haltingly. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her cheeks returning to a normal color. After a moment, she opened her eyes again and said, “My ritual chambers are down the hall. Please follow me. Open no more doors.”

The next door was opened by Princess Luna. It revealed a room the floor of which was apparently a mosaic of tiny stones formed to represent a labyrinth. Some of the larger patterns of the labyrinth appeared to be made out of glowing moonstone. A few of them were made of gems, but compared to seeing moonstone up close, a line of gems seemed cheap and chintzy.

Luna walked right in as if this was entirely normal.

“Wow,” murmured Twilight, stopped in the doorway, head lowered to study a bit of moonstone in the mosaic.

“Ah, we think you have the right idea,” said Luna. She coughed into a hoof and continued in a quieter tone. “There is a single spherical sapphire embedded in the moonstone. We need it for the ritual. Please trace the moonstone paths of the labyrinth until you find it.”

“Okay! Can you have a glass of water ready for when I do? My mouth still kinda tastes chalky from that medicine earlier.” Twilight started walking across the room, following the path of glowing moonstone from the door. Every so often she got to junctures and cast her gaze along them to find which one was right. “This pattern is big enough to get lost in,” she said sotto voce.

Whatever Luna was doing was completely distant and quiet to Twilight as she tracked the pattern. The moonstone path got larger and larger with every step she took along it until she was walking at the center of a wide glowing hallway, the walls of which came up to her hocks. The room was something she was only dimly aware of.

Finally, just when she was feeling too dizzy and disoriented to keep going, she found a tiny little gemstone in the middle of the hallway. It was a beautiful sapphire sphere, although it was marred by a black inclusion in the middle of it. “Luna! I found the gem!” called Twilight, lowering her muzzle to look at it.

Luna looked over from her ritual preparations, bemused. “Truly? Thou found it?” she asked, then smiled to see Twilight passed out on her nose in the middle of the room. “Silly pony. There never was a gemstone.”

Twilight awoke in a field of bluish grass at the base of the Canterhorn. Looking around herself, she didn't recognize the landmarks; in particular, there was an odd ocean to the west of her which certainly should not have been there. It was striped pale blue and black. Only the shape of the mountain on which Canterlot was situated stood out as familiar, but even that wasn't normal. The city was in its proper place partway up, but the mountain itself faded from sane and familiar terrain at the base into a checkerboard pattern at its summit. It reminded Twilight unfortunately of what Discord had done to Ponyville, and she got a sinking feeling in her gut from the thought.

She felt something cold on her left front hoof and looked down at it. She was wearing a miniature version of Celestia’s peytral as an ill-fitted bracelet. There was a tiny note attached to it. She picked up the note with her magic and held it right in front of her eye to read it. “I give you this in recompense for a stressful night. Please forgive me my amusements. You have my blessing to copy the enchantment if you are able.”

That was odd. She sniffed at the ‘bracelet’. It didn't smell magical.

“Twilight Sparkle,” said Luna, from right behind her. “Art thou sniffing that bracelet for magic?”

For some reason, Luna’s voice failed to startle Twilight at all. The sound of it seemed perfectly normal. Indeed, it seemed perfectly normal to have Luna be randomly looming behind her as she sat baffled at the base of the Canterhorn with a piece of supposedly-magical jewelry in hoof. “Yes, but it doesn't smell magical.”

“Art thou accustomed to scenting magic?”

“No, magic is... scentless? Or very nearly scentless. Wait, why was I sniffing at the bracelet?” asked Twilight, suddenly confused. Then she focused her magic for a moment... not to do anything, but to test the air. Her aura bubbled around her for a moment, then faded away. Twilight took a deep breath. “I’m asleep, aren’t I?”

“Yes. Thy corporeal form doth lay at the very centermost piece of my ritual chamber, next to my own, and I hope thou dost not mind that I arranged your body somewhat more comfortably than how you fell asleep,” said Luna, stepping around in front of Twilight and gesturing at the peytral bracelet. “That object is not literally involved, nor literally present.”

Twilight doffed the bracelet and then tapped her chin with that hoof. “The path and gem... you tricked me into activating some kind of embedded sleeping charm.” The patterns of the moonstone path flared brightly through the grass when Twilight said that. The grass began to wither.

Luna waggled her hooves panickedly at the arising patterns. “NAY! Be grass! Be dark! Twilight Sparkle, cease thinking of magic lest you wake us both!” Luna’s horn flared and her expression took on a look of strain that Twilight recognized as similar to her own while casting a difficult spell.

Panicked and unsure how to take this advice, Twilight said, “Uhh! This was very nice blue grass! Please stop withering and come back? That’s not working, oh! That striped ocean! Why is the water like that? It looks like the gemstone I found!” She gestured out at the ‘water’. Princess Luna’s expression fell to relief instantly and the grass surged back into existence over the glowing moonstone underhoof.

“That is interesting. The landscape here changes often, and that is not normally present. There was not truly a gemstone. You found a shard of the ocean’s thought. It... reminds me of something, but I am not sure what,” said Luna. She turned to face the ocean, her expression uneasy.

“So it was a conceptual gem? And this is dreaming? It doesn't feel like any dream I've had before. It must be the influence of your spell.” The moonstone path flared into existence again and the grass once more started dying. Luna gave Twilight a dirty look. Twilight frantically backpedaled, struggling not to think of magic. “Oops! Sorry! I mean, I bet everything here is made of concepts! So how about that Canterhorn?!”

Luna vanished and Twilight found herself sitting on a rounded, checkerboarded version of the Canterhorn’s peak. She could see Manehattan from up here! Looking to the north, she couldn't see the Crystal Mountains. There was a strange wall up there blocking them from view. It looked like it was made of red-brown stone, but it almost seemed to be moving. Twilight’s eyes burned when she tried to look closely. She looked away to focus on other landmarks.

It was only a moment later when Luna arrived up the side of the mountain, flapping hard for altitude. “What... didst... thou... do?” she asked, out of breath as if she’d traveled much longer than just a moment’s flight. She landed and walked over to Twilight.

“Well... I guess I teleported?” Twilight looked at the checkerboard underhoof confusedly. The black square she was on turned to dark chocolate in response to her gaze. Twilight shied to another tile, wings flaring in alarm. When the new tile didn't turn into anything strange, she settled her wings and waited for Luna to catch her breath before speaking again. “Speaking of which, are we in danger of encountering Discord’s dreams up here? This place certainly feels like him.”

“Discord is not asleep right now, but there are some souls as need not sleep to impact this place. This may be his fastness as the moon is mine.”

“Really? He used to be King of Equestria. I would expect there to be some kind of palace, or at least a throne,” said Twilight, looking around the featureless, rounded mountaintop.

“Doubtless there is, but it would take a strange mind to find. That is why it is a fastness at all, why it is a secure place. Only to his mind does the geography around here become useful,” said Luna, and then stepped over to touch Twilight’s shoulder again. Luna pointed up into the sky. “Twilight, look up! Tell me what you see.”

Twilight looked up. There were no stars in this sky. There was only one object in it at all... the moon. “I see the moon, which appears to be gibbous.” She thought about that for a moment, and then added, “in contrast to the waking moon, which is a waning crescent tonight.”

Luna stomped her hooves once in delight. The white stone underhoof grumbled and crawled away on a dozen (very) odd legs, revealing a downwards staircase that the two ponies completely ignored. “Haha! Somepony pays attention to the night skies! I expected to have to explain that,” she said, ears up and a smile on her face. “Can you guess what it means?”

“Well, it might mean that the moon moves in opposite phases between the waking world and dreams. Though I don’t see the relevance, and... Princess, I’m sure I’ve seen stars in my dreams before.”

Luna was unperturbed by the objection. “Dreams are as they are expected to be. This is the true sky of the Dreamlands, barren of stars. You are correct about the moon.” She looked about herself, then said, “We are not where we are needed to be. Please follow where I walk, and if you find yourself in an odd role, please play along.”

“Play along? How will I know what to do?”

Luna swept a hoof through the air grandly. “How do you know your role in a normal dream? Just travel with me, and all will be made clear.” Luna put her hooves under her, stepped forward, and fell down the staircase into the Canterhorn with a sharp cry.

“Princess!” cried Twilight, rushing over to the top of the stairway. A series of crashes and grunts resounded from inside, culminating in the sound of a swatch of fabric being flapped against the air, and then an inexplicable meow.

“We are fine!” cried Luna. “We hath found Discord’s palace!” There was a splashing noise and another cry of alarm from the princess, then a hollow thump. “Ewww.”

“Should I... um... travel with you? Please don’t tell me I need to fall down the stairs,” Twilight said, cringing.

Luna mounted the stairs, shaking fish and water off of herself once she was out in the open air. “Nay, Twilight Sparkle. That was naught but a Discordant pratfall,” she said, kicking away a herring. “Let us not be distracted by such idle japes, but let us take wing towards the n—” Luna halted as she looked at the north. This was the first time that she had noticed the wall to the north.

“Luna?”

“That building should not be in the north. It should be in the south along the badlands.”

Twilight picked up on concern in her voice. “What does it mean when, um, ‘conceptual geography’ changes?”

“Usually, nothing. In the case of that wall, it has a meaning similar to if Discord’s home had ceased to be placed upon the peak of the Canterhorn. One of the Spirits of this world has... moved, and is plotting something new. Hm. That is... not somewhere I wish to go towards. I will need another entrance into the story I wish to re-enact,” said Luna. She sat down quietly and spread her wings wide, eyes closed. The darker alicorn glowed faintly as a warm wind blew across the area. Grass sprouted between the tiles of the checkerboard where the wind touched them. Twilight had the vague sense that whatever Luna was doing was very contrary to Discord’s nature... and then she realized not only was she looking down instead of at Luna, she couldn't look at Luna at all.

It wasn't that Luna was glowing too brightly or anything. Luna wasn't glowing at all. It was just impossible. Twilight found it was a struggle to move her gaze at all. The air felt as thick as treacle. The wind grew stronger and hotter even as the world grew rigid. Twilight closed her eyes against the invading sense of a nightmare... and then it was over. There was no wind, and the world flowed again. It flowed too much. Every motion of the world about her brought a strange babble of incomprehensible voices.

Twilight opened her eyes to find that she was standing alone on a silty ground underwater. A forest of white paper weeds surrounded her and shifted in the regular waves. Meaningless but harshly precise symbols were inked all over the weeds. There were no sounds but the babble of voices that moved by with every wave. Twilight looked down to see chains wrapped around her, and her shadow cast out in front of her. There was a light behind her.

She turned to look, and she gasped at the sight of the moon, vast and bright. Defying logic, the gasp did not result in water invading her lungs. The impossible bulk of the moon fascinated Twilight. She wasn't sure how long she stared before it suddenly, impossibly, shivered and pulled away from her.

Immediately the feel of the area changed. The pressure dropped and something sweet leaked into the water. Twilight could taste... could taste... something undefinable. She needed more of it. She rushed up to the moon and set her forehooves on it, shoving it to try to make it move. After a few moments of pointless grunting, it shifted again, and the sense of something impossibly desirable became even stronger. A dim, distant roar started to fill Twilight’s ears.

She shoved harder, and this time it responded to her shoves instead of to whatever was pulling it from the other side. There was a nauseating moment of discontinuity, and then the distant roar became a thunderous crashing as an ocean’s worth of water that had been stopped up by the moon was suddenly let free, carrying Twilight with them to— The waves were evaporating as soon as they traveled across the discontinuity, but they carried enough force to send Twilight sliding some distance across silvery grass. It was at this moment that Twilight gasped at her first(?) breath of air, a shudder of relief passing through her as she did, for that sweet thing she had briefly tasted had suddenly become her reality. It was everything around her.

She hopped to her feet giddy with joy, her ethereal mane and tail(?) snapping behind her as she started running about on the silver grass. Belatedly she realized she was dancing with somepony who looked quite similar to her(?) and who was just as giddy. Then she saw the glowing moonmark on the other pony’s flanks, and pointed at it suddenly. “You’re the one who moved the moon!” said Twilight. “You’re the one who freed me!”

The other pony looked at her hip and gasped. “My cutie mark! My talent!” she said. Then she looked up at the sky and pointed with a hoof. “Look! I raised the moon for the first time! I've freed the world from the stars!”

Twilight looked up at the sky. The moon stood full and huge overhead. Even though a broad skyspanning aurora partially obscured it, it was as bright as it’d been alone in the ocean. The stars seemed dim indeed against such competing lights. “From the... stars? You brought me here?” she said, her tone utterly as confused as her feelings. The sky was surely beautiful, but the confusion was harshing the joy of existing that she’d felt moments earlier.

“I brought you here? Were you living in that ocean on the dark side of the moon?” asked the small, blue-maned alicorn. She scuffed a hoof contritely. It was adorable. “I’m sorry I... um... destroyed your home.”

Twilight shook her head. “Oh, no. It was not a good place. I can tell already I am going to have much more fun here without my chains,” she said with a smile. (‘When did the chains go away?’ thought Twilight, confused.) It was a vicious smile, but the other pony looked up happily, and didn't seem to see anything wrong with it at all.

“I’m Tyranny, but maybe not for long,” said the other alicorn. “Hey! Your cutie mark is just like mine. What’s your name?”

“Nightmare!” said Twilight(!?), and she fell to a ready stance, evaporating into smoke(?) and then reforming with a crash to the ground. The smoke reformed a few feet to her left into a much larger black alicorn. The blue foal before her blurred and was replaced by a much older Luna. Twilight struggled to her feet, shaking off disorientation.

Luna lifted a hoof and grasped at her mane, looking at the starstuff it had turned back into. She didn't seem to have noticed the third pony now standing on the silver grass. “The dream broke,” Luna said distractedly. “I am sorry about that. I do not know what happened.” Luna’s appearance blurred again oddly, but she reformed as she was this time.

“Blame my sense of dramatic timing,” said Nightmare with another vicious smile. Twilight moved quickly to take up a defensive stance near Luna, and the smile faded. “Hmf. Admirable, but foalish in every sense. Your wings are weeks old. You would not win the fight, and I would not enjoy crushing you.”

Luna was the one moving in treacle now as she slowly brought her gaze back to Nightmare. “You... still exist? How are you here?” she asked. Luna’s voice was quieted and weak.

“Luna! Are you okay? Something is very wrong here!” said Twilight, sparing a quick glance at Luna before restoring her glare at Nightmare.

“She is... sapping me,” said Luna, but the Night Princess forced herself to stand up straighter. “I will not fall for any tricks this time.”

“Amusing. You will be spared. I will only be borrowing your student. Go rest, ‘sister’.” Nightmare flicked a hoof dismissively and Luna blurred again, then vanished from the dreamscape. She looked to Twilight. “Tell me, my little pony, have you ever heard the term ‘Lunacy’?”