The stag stood alone at the foot of Celestia's throne, the room's only light coming from the dagger that flashed in the silver glow of his antlers. "Please," he said in the gentle voice that had haunted Celestia's dreams for nine hundred and fifty years. "Spill my blood and end this."
For the first few centuries, they'd conversed quite pleasantly when he would appear to her like this in the pre-dawn darkness of the vernal equinox. Those discussions had slowly devolved into orations, however, Celestia spending months sometimes working on speeches to convince the stag he should abandon his position and support hers—she still sent him letters now and again when new points would occur to her.
Yet nothing she'd ever said or written had swayed him so much as an iota, and seated upon her throne, she realized with a start that it had been more than a dozen decades since she'd actually spoken to him. Of course, outside of those same seven words, he'd not really addressed her on these annual occasions in nearly twice that long.
She couldn't even shake her head any more for fear that the vibrations would spread through her entire body and tumble her down the steps to collapse in a twitching heap at his hoofs. So instead, she concentrated on the amulets floating around her, dredged up the strength to activate them once more, focused her wavering resolve through the tiara she wore in place of her crown, and let the power of the Elements of Harmony answer for her.
The rainbow beam spiraled hissing through the darkness to surround the stag, but he didn't so much as blink. The dagger puffed to smoke, however, as it always did, and the stag lowered his head, the supple grace of the motion making Celestia's heart speed up. Turning away in silence, then, he disappeared, gone as thoroughly as if he'd never been there.
A choked gasp echoed through the throne room, and Celestia wanted to look around, wanted to demand that whoever had violated her express command that she be left alone this morning show themselves. But she knew she was alone just as surely as she knew that the sob had come from her own throat. Bowing, she managed to say, "For you, Luna. Always for you..."
"Aunt Celestia?" asked a voice absolutely incongruous at this time and in this place; she snapped up to see Cadance standing one step down from the throne, concern on her face. "You can't go on like this."
Questions crackled through Celestia like fissures across a thawing river, but she didn't bother asking any of them. How could it really surprise her that Cadance had found out about this ghastly ritual? The girl always knew more than she let on. So shaking her head, Celestia simply said, "I must."
Cadance went perfectly still, a trait that continued to unnerve Celestia even after all these millennia. Taking a breath, she turned away and began setting the Elements into the case Princess Platinum had presented to the three of them just after they'd dispatched Discord.
The memory of that day jabbed her sharper than broken glass now, and she forced herself back to the present, not allowing herself any thought other than the disposition of the precious stones back into their places.
"You're losing control of them." Cadance spoke quietly, but the sound made Celestia jump. "You know that, don't you?"
It wasn't really a question, so Celestia didn't answer it.
"Less than a hundred years, I'd guess," her niece went on, "and the Elements won't respond to you at all. Fifty's more likely, though. That'll be the thousandth anniversary of Aunt Luna's banishment, after all."
"Enough, Cadance."
"No, Aunt Celestia." The hardness there made her look up from the tiara poised just above the case, Cadance's face clenched tighter than a dragon's fist. "The way you're dealing with this will fail in the next few decades, and when it does—"
Celestia slammed the case closed. "What would you have me do?? Plunge a dagger into the heart of the noblest being ever to walk the face of Equestria??"
"The Old Magic—"
"Is an abomination!" After centuries of having no one to yell at about this, Celestia didn't even try to stop herself. "That festering pulse has been at the root of every disaster to strike Ponykind since the beginning of history! Abolishing its foul precepts has been my goal since we first manifested here, and if you dare think that I will blindly give in to it even when it involves my own sister, then you're every bit as feckless and shallow as you so often pretend to be!"
Cadance gave a single blink. "This is all about you, then."
Celestia stomped a front hoof, thunder rolling through the darkened throne room. "This is about right and wrong! About love and hate! About good and evil!"
"No, Auntie." Cadance took a step closer. "It's about life and death. Granted, I don't get around much here in the realm of the living, but where I spend my time, we know that blood must have blood. The atrocities that Aunt Luna committed when she became Nightmare Moon must be atoned for with either her life or the life of another willing to—"
Crying out, Celestia reared back, an image spattering vividly across her mind's eye: herself striking Cadance with her full strength, her gold-shod hoofs pounding and pounding and pounding until the child became silent. Cadance again didn't move a muscle, her gaze fixed more resolutely than Celestia had ever known it to be, and Celestia couldn't look away, her whole body starting to shake once more.
She spun, flashed from the throne room to her living quarters, plunged herself into the warm and familiar comforts of her bed. "Won't!" she forced through clenched teeth, and knowing that she was acting like a spoiled child just made her press her face deeper into her pillows. "Didn't I banish Luna in the first place to save her?? And I will not kill this stag in her place however much he pleads for me to do so! There...there must be a way to bring her back and make her whole besides surrendering to the blood-soaked demands of the Old Magic!"
"I...that is—" Cadance cleared her throat somewhere behind Celestia. "There's a possibility." Celestia twisted on her blankets to see her niece standing half in shadow from the single lamp glowing above the dressing table. "I—" Cadance looked away. "I've been performing some experiments."
That brought Celestia leaping to her hoofs, the air cold against her, and this time, Cadance flinched. "Nothing bad!" she said quickly. "It's just...when I found out you were holding the Old Magic at bay using the Elements of Harmony, I...I started thinking."
Again, Celestia didn't ask how Cadance had learned the secret she thought she'd been keeping from the rest of the world for nearly a full millennium. There'd be time for that later. "Thinking what?" she prompted.
Cadance licked her lips. "The Elements are designed to be single-user items, so I thought they might be powerful enough to continue feeding the Old Magic if...if we made the perfect users for each one of them."
"Made?"
"It's nothing bad!" Cadance said again. "I just...I found ponies who already knew each other, mares and stallions who displayed certain traits that would make them worthy bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and I...I..." Baby-blue magic wavered around her horn. "I've been encouraging them to push their friendships to the next level."
The air got even colder around Celestia. "A breeding program?"
"No!" Cadance's gaze shifted sideways. "I mean, not really. If I hadn't stepped in, there's very good chances these ponies would've gotten together anyway. I just...just made sure."
Celestia couldn't move, couldn't think. Manipulating the mortal ponies of Equestria in so overt a fashion went against everything she believed about their place here, but—
But every year, the power she gave the stag, the payment she made in partial atonement for Luna's crimes, it grew weaker and weaker. If Cadance could truly find the perfect bearers for the Elements of the Harmony...
"I see a few problems," she said, surprised to hear herself speaking in such reasonable tones. "Breaking my connection to the Elements would free Luna, and I've felt no indication that her madness has lessened during her exile. And Discord, Sombra, the others we've dealt with, they—"
"Yes, but—" Cadance jumped the several steps that brought her to stand directly in front of Celestia. "These six ponies would be the truest bearers the Elements have ever had! They should have no difficulty overcoming any threat we managed to face down!"
Slowly, Celestia blew out a breath. "The fifty years you mentioned till the Elements no longer respond to me fits with my own thinking on the subject. Will your bearers be prepared by then?"
Cadance did some more throat clearing. "I, uhh, I'm actually in the fourth generation of the project right now. I made my final observations and selections yesterday and should have our candidates by the sixth generation." She brought her gaze back to meet Celestia's. "In fifty years, they'll be the perfect age: three out around that new settlement of Ponyville, two in Cloudsdale, and one right here in Canterlot." A smile touched her muzzle, something Celestia very seldom saw there. "And since their lives will be so firmly connected to the Elements, the six of them together should be able to provide enough life-force to pay Aunt Luna's debt to the Old Magic without anypony actually dying."
A tiny sprig of hope, sweet and green and gone for centuries, broke through the hard-packed dirt of Celestia's soul. "You...you honestly think so?"
At Cadance's nod, Celestia threw herself forward, wrapped her wings around her niece, and pressed her damp eyes into her neck. "Oh, thank you, Cadance. Thank you!"
***
Standing before her throne, the amulets arrayed in the air around her, Celestia watched Cadance tugging her lower lip with her teeth. Forcing a smile, Celestia touched a wing to her niece's, then went cold as she felt the tell-tale shimmer that always signaled the stag's arrival.
He stepped onto the throne room floor as if he'd always been there, solid and pure and as handsome as any male Celestia had ever met. She opened her mouth to bid him welcome for the first time in she didn't know how many centuries, but her throat went completely dry when the dagger appeared, suspended in the silver glow springing from his horns.
His mouth had opened as well—to deliver his regular seven words, she assumed—but when his gaze moved sideways to settle on Cadance, his eyebrows went up. "Well, now," he said, and all Celestia could think of suddenly was the sweet aroma of hot chocolate. "An audience, Celestia?" He cocked his head. "Surely you've not convinced this child to do your work for you?"
"My work?" It took a fair amount of effort for Celestia not to start shouting. "My work, sir," she said as pleasantly as she could, "is to maintain the peace and harmony of Equestria against all those who seek to disturb it."
"'Maintain,' you call it?" He shrugged. "I'd rather call it 'stagnation,' but, well, I'd hate to be accused of making puns."
A nervous titter beside her, and Celestia glanced over to see Cadance cover her mouth with a hoof. Scowling, Celestia looked back at the stag. "We have lived in a golden age these past thousand years," she told him.
"You have lived," he replied. "And that is all. Every dram of the power you have been able to summon has only kept your civilization balanced on the knife's edge." The dagger twirled before his horns. "You have neither plunged into the darkness Luna's actions should have brought about, nor have you blossomed to the heights you and your people should aim for." Those dark, liquid eyes met hers, and Celestia froze, his next words sounding and resounding in her ears and her memories: "Please. Spill my blood and end this."
"No..." This, she wanted to shout, but the word emerged as barely a whisper. She cleared her throat and raised her voice. "It's worse than madness! How can this Old Magic you claim to serve be so cruel and unforgiving??"
"Serve?" The stag blinked. "Celestia, I am the Old Magic. Your pleas on your sister's behalf a thousand years ago moved me in ways I had never been moved before, and I stepped into your world, took this form, offered myself to you that you might spill my blood in place of hers and satisfy my law."
"But—" Words failed her, and she fell back on the ones she used every time he told her this. "That's insane! Magic has no consciousness! It's a force, like gravity or magnetism! And even if you were somehow the embodiment of the Old Magic, why would you be going through this horrible rigmarole?? It would be your law, after all! You could just change it!" Swallowing her outrage—all these years, and he just kept spouting the same ridiculous claims over and over again!—Celestia smoothed her voice to match his. "So you're either impossible or nonsensical."
Smiling, he touched a hoof to his chest. "May I be both?"
She opened her mouth, but he was going on: "I owe you a great deal, Celestia, for allowing me to sojourn here this millennium. The life I've lived has been one I could never have dreamed of had I remained above the Arch of Time, and I've grown to love these ponies of yours, the dragons and the donkeys, the griffons and the zebras, the deer and the minotaurs and all who dwell within this mortal plane. But I shall say again as I have for every one of my years here—"
"No!" Gritting her teeth, she took a wider stance on the platform before the throne and strained to feel the Elements of Harmony, floating beside her as dead as autumn-swept leaves despite the magic she had wrapped around them. The silence stretched for several long seconds, then a sound like ice solidifying crackled through the room. The weight of the tiara vanished between her ears, and from the corner of her eye, she watched the amulets grow rocky shells, layers of stone accreting over them till five large gray spheres hovered in the ebb and flow of her power.
Silence descended again, the stag looking up at her, then stepping back. "The Old Magic runs deep, and actions—or in this case inactions—have consequences. We shall see one another, I think, before the next vernal equinox." Turning, he vanished, the room seeming emptier now than before he'd arrived.
A gasp from Cadance made Celestia wonder if the girl had remembered to breathe at all the last several minutes. "Aunt Celestia, he...I...he—"
"He is." Come to think of it, Celestia wasn't sure when she'd last taken a breath. "Very much so."
"I—" A loud swallow. "I believe every word he said."
"Yes, I imagine you do." Pointing her horn at the petrified Elements of Harmony, she settled them onto the cushion of her throne. "And so it begins. Three months from today, it will all up to your protégées." Celestia turned a smile toward Cadance. "Speaking of whom, have you had a chance to see Twilight since you've been in town?"
Cadance's face lit up. "We've had lunch together every day this week, and, oh, Aunt Celestia, I'd almost forgotten what a joy riding her train of thought can be!" She nodded. "She will be ready for this. I'm absolutely certain."
Celestia closed her eyes and saw in her mind the sprig of hope that Cadance had planted there fifty years ago now in full beautiful flower. Because Twilight Sparkle had exceeded Celestia's expectations so many times before, and if anypony could discover and unravel the clues Celestia and Cadance had set up over the past five decades, it was her. "Three months," Celestia said again. "Then either Twilight and the others will succeed, return Luna to us, and break the Old Magic's hold on her; or Nightmare Moon will destroy us all, and we won't have to worry about it anymore."
That got a cough that could almost have been a laugh from Cadance, her horn glowing to lift the five stone spheres. "I'll take these out to the old place, then."
"Thank you." Celestia brushed a wingtip against Cadance's. "Thank you for all of this, niece. Without you, I...I don't know what I would've done or what would've happened."
Cadance smiled, her attention on the floating rocks. "Thank you, Auntie, for listening to me. I'll see you later." Her eyes narrowing, Cadance became vapor thin and puffed away to nothing.
"Yes." She took a deep breath. "You will."
***
"Will you just listen to me??" The headache that never seemed far away from Celestia these days licked at her temples. "For once?? Just listen??"
Luna rolled her eyes and leaned against the wall of Celestia's room, the darkness of pre-dawn seeming to suck the light from the chamber through each window. "Have I done anything else these past months?" She cocked her head, the midnight-blue veil of her mane twinkling across half her face. "Perhaps I should take notes! Would you feel better then?"
Cadance's little sigh made Celestia's ears sag, and the slow, seductive smile that spread across Luna's muzzle made them fold completely. "Stop it," she tried not to hiss. "Just...stop it."
The shock that Luna aimed at her was as phony as anything Celestia had ever seen. "Really, Celestia! What a mind you have! To imagine that my thoughts toward our nubile little niece would be anything other than purely chaste!"
Celestia felt like the floor had spun out from under her, but then that wasn't unusual lately, either. Ever since Twilight and the revitalized Elements of Harmony had returned Luna to herself and to Equestria, in fact, it had seemed—
"You're right, Aunt Celestia." Cadance was looking at Luna the way she might look at an interesting sort of bug. "There is something different about Aunt Luna."
A twitch jerked through Luna's mane. "Perhaps, Cadance, dear, you'd care to treat yourself to the waters of our exclusive spa upon the moon for a thousand years and see how your creamy complexion responds?"
That got a blink from Cadance. "Waters?"
"Yes, well." Luna fixed a half-lidded look on Celestia. "The brochures are never as honest as one would like."
"Please, Luna." Celestia had invited Cadance here in the hope that her presence would make this easier, but that certainly hadn't been the case so far. "Surely you have to admit that things just...just aren't the same since you've been back."
"On the contrary." Waving a hoof, Luna let loose a smile that made her earlier phony expression seem the height of sincerity. "One big, happy family, aren't we? Same as always?"
Unable to stop herself, Celestia opened her mouth to start the list she'd begun compiling—Luna's attitude, her schedule, and her recent behavior toward Twilight Sparkle would do for a start—but a warm voice spoke up behind her: "Is it wrong that I'm tempted to just stand here and watch?"
She spun, the stag smiling slightly from just inside the balcony door, and her knees went weak to see him so much closer than she ever had before.
"Well!" Luna practically purred, her sinuous black shape suddenly at Celestia's side. "Your tastes have improved, sister! Aren't you going to introduce me?"
Her eyes frantically searching among his antlers for the dagger, Celestia couldn't come up with a single thing to say as the stag shook his head. "Oh, now, really, Luna! Has it been that long?"
With a blink, Luna's whole body began to shake, her mane fluttering like the aurora borealis. "You! How...how can you still—??" She froze, her voice barely of shadow of its usual self. "You're still here for me, aren't you? For...for my blood debt. That's why...why I'm...not...me..."
"No!" Cadance appeared on Celestia's other side. "We solved this! The Elements of Harmony did, I mean!"
The stag shook his head more slowly this time, and Celestia saw that his gaze was fixed on Luna's. "They made another annual payment the same as your sister's been doing for the past thousand years. But the balance is still owed. And next week is the equinox."
In the silence, Celestia didn't allow herself to think. Stepping forward, she said, "Take me."
Gasps from each side of her, but the stag just sighed. "Celestia,—"
"Sister?" Luna suddenly sounded so much like the pony Celestia remembered that tears started at the corners of her eyes.
"Aunt Celestia." Cadance had that hard note in her voice again. "You don't—"
"I must." Celestia nodded to the stag. "Had I been less of a coward all these years, I would've done this long ago."
"Please." The silver light sprang up among the tines of the stag's antlers, and the dagger spun into existence just above his forehead. "Spill my blood and end this."
"No." Reaching the folds of her magic into the warm embrace of his, she turned the dagger's handle toward him. "Spill mine."
A snort from behind her, and Luna flashed all black and shining between her and the stag. "Idiots! The pair of you!" As rudely as a body check, Celestia felt her magic shoved aside, Luna's wrapping around the dagger. "Are you honestly telling me that you two have been dancing around like this for a thousand years?? Well, since it's my life and my death, I hope you'll forgive me if I cut in!"
The dagger flicked toward the stag, and Celestia almost screamed. But the point stopped well short of striking anything, the stag not flinching at all. "Sir?" Luna went on. "I invite you to a Bacchanalia to be held with all the proper rites and customs one week from now on the vernal equinox."
Staring in horror, Celestia watched the stag bow his head. "I shall be honored to attend."
"You can't!" Celestia wanted to pound some sense into the both of them, but she couldn't seem to do more than raise a front hoof. "Luna, please! There...there has to be another way!"
Luna just rolled her eyes, but the look that came over the stag's face—sweeter and more wistful even than usual—made Celestia shiver. "Ah, Celestia," he said. "For a thousand years, you have struggled with every ounce of your power, your charm, and your intellect to hold back the inevitable. And I feel absolutely certain that you would struggle for a thousand years more if given the chance. You have my profound respect, and always...always, you have my love."
"Really?" Luna lowered her eyelids. "Sounds as if I should issue you an invitation to next week's festivities, then, sister."
Celestia couldn't answer, not with the stag's gaze still fixed on hers. But then he was looking away, and Luna was going on: "At least, my own, I will see you at the death of winter."
"At least, my own," the stag replied. "I will see you at the birth of spring." And he was gone, his absence again leaving such a vacuum, it drew Celestia forward another step.
It was Cadance who broke the silence. "Then... Aunt Luna, will you be wielding the knife yourself?"
The dagger still floated in the flex of Luna's power, and when she turned a withering glare at Celestia and said, "I must," the words sliced into Celestia more sharply than any blade.
Red burst into the corners of her vision. "How...dare...you?" she whispered, power rushing into her that she hadn't touched in centuries.
She felt more than saw Cadance shrink back against the wall, fear surrounding her niece like a cloud. But Luna merely showed her teeth, her lips parting in something that nopony could've mistaken for a smile. "Use your words, sister. I'm listening."
For another half a heartbeat, she considered hurtling herself off the precipice, considered doing her utmost to collect those teeth of her sister's one by painful one. But instead, she took a breath and let the power flow out of her. "I have nothing to say."
Lightning crackled from Luna's eyes, and she crashed the dagger point-first into Celestia's dressing table. "Do you think I want this?? But you know as well as I do that I haven't been right since I got back! After all, that's why you called this little family meeting, isn't it??" She stomped a hoof, the whole building shaking. "The things I've done, the things I've said, the way I—" Her eyes wavered. "The way I treated Twilight Sparkle..."
Celestia's throat went dry, Luna's voice getting quieter. "I blamed myself for my weakness, blamed you for your self-righteousness, blamed Equestria for being too small to contain me and too large for me to truly embrace. I didn't...didn't feel anything anymore, and I had no idea why!" She drew herself up, her starfield mane flowing. "If only I'd been informed that my ransom to the Old Magic had yet to be totally paid, how much simpler a transition I would have had! Now, however..." Her horn sparkled, and the dagger rose from Celestia's dressing table with a tiny pop.
"You can't," was all Celestia found to say.
"Oh, I know it'll be horrible." Luna swallowed, her eyes focused on the dagger drifting closer to her. "More horrible than I can begin to imagine. I'll doubtless be unable to function for a week afterwards." Her attention flickered over to Celestia. "Since your virtue will be remaining unstained, be a dear and see to my night during that time, won't you?"
"What??" Celestia felt like she'd been kicked in the chest.
Luna flinched, clenched her eyes, continued through gritted teeth. "But it'll be so very worth it if I can stop saying stupid, terrible things like that, if I can stop skating over the tops of my emotions, can finally be...finally be myself again. I'll be able to confront what I did a thousand years ago, will truly be able to delve into the nightmare that I became, will at last be able to begin healing." Her eyelids came open as tentatively, Celestia thought, as if she were facing too bright a light. "You can see that, can't you, sister? Can't you?"
And Celestia could. It made her want to gouge her eyes out with her hoofs, but see could indeed see it. So she said, "You will invite Twilight Sparkle to your Bacchanal."
That made Luna stand up straight. "I will what?"
"I'll be appointing her archmage of Equestria very soon now." Celestia swallowed at the thought, but seeing Luna with that dagger opened only one possible future to her sight. "She will be dealing with the effects of this dark age we're plunging into, so she deserves to be there at the bloody beginning of it."
"Dark age?" Luna's jaw dropped. "Sister, we're leaving the dark age! With the Old Magic exploiting a loophole in its own rules in order to bring the three of us back to our full potential again, how can we not be headed for a truly golden age??"
Celestia looked at her, then turned to Cadance, still pressed to the wall. "And what say you, niece?"
Cadance licked her lips. "Blood will have blood," she said, "and all debts will be paid. It seems to me that what we do after that will rest once again entirely on our own hoofs, hearts, and heads."
"Exactly!" Luna nearly crowed. "We will move ahead from this moment to—"
"To your Bacchanal." Celestia gazed over her shoulder at Luna with as much weight as she could muster. "And you will invite Twilight Sparkle."
Luna's face hardened. "I will not." But her eyes flickered, and a smile pulled at her snout. "I will invite that lovely schoolteacher she keeps company with these days. Yes. She'll appreciate the poetry of it at least." The laugh Luna gave then made the hair rise on the back of Celestia's neck. "In a week, I'll be myself again and would no doubt sooner die than inflict the pain that I'm about to, but we three really should start a club: the Association of Those who will Pine Forever for Twilight Sparkle." She nodded to Cadance. "You already have your consolation, of course, niece, with the next best thing and all, but you and I, sister?"
Celestia's blood had turned to ice water, and she felt as if she was peering through a fog bank as she watched Luna twirl the dagger. "Perhaps this will be our consolation in the end, the final nightmare that will let us at last awaken and lead Equestria into a new and brighter day." She spread her wings and rose into a hover. "Well, I should have just enough time before dawn to get some invitations out. I think I've even got a bit of stationery somewhere I can use for Twilight's—I mean, for Cheerilee's, of course." And with a flick of her tail, she vanished in a puff of darkness.
Again, Cadance broke the silence that followed. "I...uhh, I'd better be going, too." Celestia heard her hesitant hoofsteps and felt the gentle brush of her wing. "I'll stop by after the equinox to help however I can."
Clearing her throat didn't make Celestia feel more able to speak, but she forced the words out anyway. "Thank you, Cadance. You will be most welcome."
"It...it's all about balance, Aunt Celestia, and Aunt Luna, she...she means well. You know that."
"Yes." She sighed. "That's one thing I do know." She returned the touch of Cadance's wing and found a smile somewhere to show her.
Opening the balcony door, she watched her niece swoop away into the darkness before dawn, then she stepped back inside, seized her quill pen and a scroll, and wrote those three words down. Before she could argue herself out of it, she summoned her message transport spell, sealed the scroll, and let the green fire consume it.
Because she knew it, of course. If only she could get herself to believe it...
