Lady Prismia and the Princess-Goddess
Lady Prismia and the Princess-Goddess
* * *
Lady Prismia and the Princess-Goddess
Jeffrey C. Wells
* * *
There is a serpent on my breast, and he is trying to eat my heart.
My eyes widen, and I frantically brush at my chest with my hooves, but it's no use. This is no ordinary serpent. He's green, yes, but it's the ghostly green of smoke, not the shiny green of scales. His eyes are the same shocking orange as the forge-coals in the Abbey's foundry, and just like with forge-coals, the air wavers before him as he breathes. He is a creature of fire and fury. He scares me.
The serpent hisses at me and plunges himself into my flesh, passing through my pink-coated hide as though it were water. He locks his jaws against the bright light that lives in my heart, the same light that dwells in the heart of every living pony, and yanks, hard; and with a sickening lurch I can feel my entire world begin to slip away.
I have been awake for roughly five seconds, and it has already been the worst day of my life.
The Sisters did not wake me this morning. They did not bring me my breakfast of milk over honey-sweetened hay biscuits with raisins (good for the digestion). They did not bathe me or clothe me or wipe the sleep from my violet eyes or brush the tangles out of my beautiful multicolored mane. They did not give me my lessons. The funny little physician-Sister, Sister Moly, did not take my temperature or listen to my breathing or give me a little pink lollipop for being such a good little patient. The Guild of Paigniomancers did not study the patterns in the toys I left scattered around the room after play last night, poring over the arrangements of dolls and blocks and trying to see in them omens and portents for the future. (I never have to put away my toys, because I am the Princess-Goddess, and everything I do has significance, even the messes I leave behind.)
These things have happened to me every morning for as long as I can remember. The Sisters tell me that I am over nine hundred years old; as far as I recall, this is the first time I have ever woken alone. I can see the sun high in the sky through the tall, pink stained glass windows of the half-circular chapel that also serves as my bedroom (the windows are pink because they are all pictures of me) and I realize that it must be midmorning already. What happened at the Dawn Chorus? I am never allowed to sleep through the Dawn Chorus, not even when I get the sniffles and would rather just stay in bed. The Sisters always see to it that I am up and on my hooves and at the head of the assembly, ready to greet the morning. What went on at the Blessing of the Tools? How will the workponies in the factory get by with their tools unblessed? This is shaping up to be an exceptionally distressing day, made even more distressing by the serpent on my chest trying to eat my heart. I can honestly not recall any one of these things ever having happened to me before.
I give a bright cry and roll from my sacred bed onto the floor of the chapel, tangling myself up in my silken sheets as I wrestle about trying to tear the serpent from my chest. Once free of my bedclothes I spread my wings and leap into the air, stirring up golden motes of dust as I bravely try to shake the thing loose. I immediately fall crooked (I always do) and crash headlong into a thankfully unlit candelabrum, bringing both of us tumbling once again to the hard flagstone floor. Nothing I attempt succeeds in dislodging the snake, and I soon realize that even when I am able to touch it, my hooves pass right through its wriggling form.
Magic, I conclude. This is a magic serpent. My horn crackles out erratically as I send a pulse of raw unicorn energy through my body, hoping that I can fight its magic with my own; but when this again fails, I am stuck, because the thing I just did is the only thing I know how to do with my horn other than stub it on things. Some of the books I read talk about things called "spells" which are when you take the energy of your horn and send it out into the world and make it do things for you, but I have never learned a spell and have not in fact ever met another unicorn, though I know they exist, just like pegasuses, excuse me, "pegasi", do. The earth ponies of the Abbey of Song busy themselves with the more boring magic of crystals and stones and the interconnectedness of things, and they would have no way of teaching me a spell even if they wanted to.
If I had a real mother instead of the Sisters, she would have taught me spells. She would have taught me to fly. She would have kept me safe from the snake.
I settle for the next best thing. "Sister Aeon!" I wail.
"Hold on, Princess!" comes Sister Aeon's voice from outside the heavy chapel door. The door's iron hardware shakes and rattles as Sister Aeon struggles against it. The Abbey's prioress is always so serene, so collected. Hearing her frightened, frightened for me, sends me into new levels of worry and despair.
"It's a snake!" I shriek. "It's trying to eat me!"
"Listen to me, Princess," says Sister Aeon, in stern and calming tones. "Sister Claviger neglected the Rite of the Keys this morning. Can you go over to the door and unlock it for me?"
"A snake!" I scream again, barely hearing her in my panic. "A snake a snake a snake! Get it off me Sister Aeon get it off me!"
There are a few hoofclops as Sister Aeon musters herself outside the door, and then, with a massive crash of splintering oak, the chapel doors buckle beneath the force of the prioress's powerful two-hoof kick. Even in this situation, I am startled to brief silence. I have never seen the Prioress do anything more physically taxing than lift a chalice. I did not know what she was capable of.
My silence does not last. "The snake!" I shriek again. "The snake the snake the snake!"
Sister Aeon rushes to my side. "Where, Princess?" she demands, her gaze darting about the chapel, her hooves bouncing against the floor, ready to leap and crush. "Where is the snake?"
"It's on me!" I cry.
Sister Aeon studies me, shaking her head. "Princess," she says, "I can't see it. What do you see that I can't? Describe this 'snake' to me. Please."
I breathe, squarely, as the Sisters have always taught me to do. Sister Aeon cannot see the snake. Suddenly, this has become something new. It is no longer an animal attack. It is a puzzle, and this paradigm shift drains the panic in me away like so much old bathwater.
I look at the serpent, still buried in me. It struggles against the ball of light in my heart, its jaws straining against the glow as it tries to wrench it away from the barrel of my chest. It is failing. It looks like a real snake who has selected too large of an egg to steal from a nest, and while it is unwilling to leave its prize, it also cannot manage it.
"It's green," I say, cocking my head at it.
"Unseelie," breathes Sister Aeon. "Changeling-magic."
"What's a 'changeling', Sister Aeon?
"Something you shouldn't know about," says the Prioress, determinedly. She gestures at her wide back. "Quickly, Princess-Goddess, hop on. The Abbey has fallen under a curse, and we need to get clear of—"
I never figure out what exactly it is we need to get clear of, because at that moment, the frustrated serpent leaps from my breast, abandoning its prize in favor of a lesser one that it can actually achieve. It darts from my body to Sister Aeon's, burrowing into her chest and devouring the light in her heart in one quick gulp. I scream out a warning in the split-second I have, but there is nothing that Sister Aeon or anypony can do. In a heartbeat, Sister Aeon's coat decays from its usual brilliant white to something resembling cold ash, and she slumps to the floor. The serpent hisses in triumph and wriggles out through the opening of a vented window with the speed of a lightning-stroke.
Stillness now rules the little chapel where I sleep. Sister Aeon sits where she has fallen, looking tired and broken. There is a deadness in her eyes. Outside, a cloud covers the sun.
"S... Sister Aeon?"
"What," she intones, dully.
"Sister Aeon, where should we go?" I say, tugging with my teeth at the corner of her crimson habit.
"Nowhere," she says, not looking up. "Anywhere. It doesn't matter. Go away."
"Go... away?"
Sister Aeon snarls at me. I have never seen such an expression cross that gentle face, and I recoil from it. "Go away!" she repeats, more forcefully. "Are you deaf, little spriggan? All my life I have contemplated the mysteries of Love, and Love's little hidden princess, keeping her ignorant of the world and climbing the ranks of this silly order, all the while believing it would bring me closer to some eternal understanding." She shakes her head. "Years of my life flushed away. Worthless time spent tending a worthless child who is older than me by centuries and still unable to eat oat-porridge without getting half of it all over her face."
Tears well up in my eyes. "Don't... don't you love me?"
"No," she says. "I don't love anything. Go away."
"B—but I don't know where t—"
"Stupid child!" barks Sister Aeon. "Go! Away!"
I stagger backward, stumbling over the wreckage of the doors. Then I take one last look at the pony who has, directly or indirectly, taken care of me for the past three decades of my long life. There have been many before her, but I always liked Sister Aeon the best.
"Sister—"
"Go!"
Sister Aeon is gone, now. In her place is a stranger.
I turn tail and run, the tears streaming out behind me.
* * *
My tiny filly hooves clatter against the hard flagstones beneath me as I work my way through the Abbey's warm, brown halls, choking away the last of my tears. I am searching for the doors leading out to the line of cloister-arches, which in turn mark the way out to the manicured formal gardens. I cannot quite remember the way. Most days I am not even allowed to leave these walls, for my own protection, I am told. Every so often, I hear the far-off scream of one of the Sisters—likely the sound of her heart being claimed by a serpent—and the distance changes it from a cry of bright fear to a hollow, impassive sort of wail, something like the call of the gulls nesting in the sea-cliffs into which my home is built.
It will not be my home for much longer, I think. The Abbey of Song is dying. If Sister Aeon has fallen, there is no hope for me here. Maybe, I think, sniffling a little and squaring my tiny jaw, I can find somepony who can help me in Reduit, the hidden little factory-town which supports the Abbey. Somepony who can tell me what's going on.
I can only hope there is somepony in Reduit who can help me, because it is as far as I have ever traveled, and never on my own. But though I am just a little filly, I also carry the weight of centuries, and this has granted me a degree of resourcefulness (and a vocabulary) that exceeds that of other young fillies I have met. I trust myself in a crisis, which, under present circumstances, is pretty fortunate.
I finally reach the sanctum doors, but they are shut and locked tight. So many locks in my home, all of them put there to keep me safe, to keep the world shut out and me shut in. I know from experience that these locks cannot be opened without the proper key, not even from the inside. This is why Sister Claviger's job is so important. I gallop off to find her.
It is not a long gallop. Sister Claviger is in the Keyminder's Parlor, as she usually is. The fire that normally warms this room is a mess of ice-cold cinders today, and Sister Claviger's beloved crossword puzzles sit untouched on the low table, her little chewed-up pencil lying discarded and forlorn nearby. The Keyminder's sky-blue coat looks rain-colored, now, and I can see with my special sight that the light in her heart is gone too. She stares woodenly at some point far below the floorboards.
"Sister Claviger," I say, "please unlock the front door."
"Oh, why bother?" replies Sister Claviger, kicking absently at the wooden leg of her little settee.
"Because," I reply, "I need to leave the Abbey."
"Very well, Princess," she says, yawning, not looking up at me. "In a minute."
Dutifully and patiently, I count to sixty. When the Keyminder still has not budged, I snatch the keys from her tasseled belt in my teeth and turn to go. Sister Claviger does not move to stop me. A second later, I return for the crossword puzzle and the pencil, tucking them up under my left wing. I am officially on an adventure now, and based on the stories Sister Thistle tells me, I know that when you're on an adventure you have to make good use of all the resources in your environment. Plus, it's not as though my wings are good for anything, so I may as well store stationery under them. I return to the door, retrieve my little golden hoofguards with the pearl studs from a nearby reliquary, slip them over my hooves, and I am off.
Fresh wind buffets my face as I push open the front gates of the Abbey of Song and cross the arch-lined path bordering the Abbey's gardens. The gardens are a springy green and filled to bursting with brilliant pink verticordia, my sacred flower; but that is the last happy thing about them today. I trot anxiously amidst the unmoving forms of my white-robed postulants, sitting there like so many garden statues, many of whom seem to have fallen right where they stood the moment their light was taken. Some wail, some grouse, some are merely eerily silent. Not one raises her head to smile at me, because they don't love me, or anything else, anymore. The fire that once drove them has been snuffed.
I regard my sad pony faithful.
"This will not stand," I say, with firm filly resolve. I nip off a small conical spray of pink verticordia with my teeth and stow it under my other wing, adding it to my inventory. I conclude that I should be allowed to do this, because they are my sacred flowers, after all. That done, I wheel about, kick up my hocks, and start the long (to me) gallop down to Reduit.
The Princess-Goddess shall see for herself how far this scourge has spread.
* * *
Pretty darn far. Excuse my language.
I walk through the deserted streets of the tiny factory-town, gazing up at the buildings, my hoofguards kicking up clouds of dry dust as I pass. It turns out that Reduit has fared no better than the fortress that watches over it. The wood-fires that drive the place are all dead and silent, and the doors are locked and barred. Occasionally, I am able to catch a glimpse of a little pony family seated around a table inside one of the houses, staring forlornly into plates of long-cold breakfast, unable to work up the gumption even to eat. This reminds me again that the Sisters did not fix breakfast for me this morning, and my belly rumbles a little. I find myself wishing I had devoted some space in my under-wing inventory to an apple or a hoofful of black walnuts. I could eat the verticordia, I suppose, but it looks kind of prickly.
Mustering my princessiness, I walk up to one of the doors and give it a good knocking with my hoof. "Hello!" I call out. "It's Princess My Love! From the Abbey of Song! You may have seen me in the Sanctuary last Hearts and Hooves Day. Do you remember me?"
No answer. I press on. "I see through your window that you have toast bread! May I bother you for a slice?"
More silence passes as I grit my teeth together. Frustrated, I knock again, harder, and then harder, and then harder again until I am basically pounding with all my dubious filly might, shaking the door and squealing in frustration on the poor family's front step.
Then, I take a step back. I raise my hoof to my chest, breathing in deeply, and let it all go, just as the Sisters taught me. I am the Princess-Goddess. I am a good little child. I will not raise a fuss.
Just as I have finished centering myself, my ears prick up at a voice, carried to me on the wind. "Hello? Did I hear somepony out there?"
My eyes go wide. I call back. "Here!"
"Princess-Goddess!" replies the voice, echoing with exasperation and relief. "It's Sister Thistle! Are you safe? Can you make it to the town square?"
"I think so!" I shout, worriedly assessing the buildings around me. "I... I don't remember the way!"
"Follow my voice!" says Sister Thistle. With that she begins to sing one of the traditional morning-hymns (one glorifying me, actually). I follow her lilting, slightly atonal song to the small piazza at the center of Reduit, where I am greeted with a strange sight. The silly, worldly-wise novice with the frizzy ice-colored mane is among the youngest of the Order and has always been known for her odd behavior (like telling me stories of the world outside Reduit when she really shouldn't) but this takes the cake. Sister Thistle is standing in the basin of the seapony fountain in the middle of the piazza. Her habit, which has apparently been turned inside-out, is positively drenched with the sprays being spat out by the carved hippocampus statues, and she is busily shaking a harness of bells up and down with one hoof.
I don't care how silly she looks. My eyes tell me that the light in her heart is unclaimed, so I'll take it.
"Praise be that you're all right, Princess!" she says. "Quickly, come up here!"
I take a few steps forward, but stop as a half-seen flicker crosses my field of vision. Another follows the first, and then another, and another. I couldn't see them at first, but yes, here they are: heart-stealing serpents, wriggling like a loose carpet around the base of the fountain. With a brief sense of sickening dread, I realize that they are lying in wait for Sister Thistle, whom they somehow, for some reason, cannot reach.
On the bright hoof, they seem to have lost interest in me. I wonder if it is possible that the one that attacked me reported back to its fellows that my heart-light is too big to lift. Gingerly, I trot up to the lip of the fountain, stepping carefully between the ghostly forms of the snakes, and make one great flying leap into the basin of crystal-clear water. It is shockingly cold, and it immediately gets all inside my boots. Sister Thistle rushes to greet me.
"Good child," she says, continuing to shake the bells as she warily scans the piazza, apparently as blind to the presence of the serpents as sister Aeon was. "You must stay here with me. Running water and ringing bells are proof against the glamours of the enemy."
"The enemy?"
"I felt a faerie-spell descend over the town this morning while I was here for the early market," says Sister Thistle. "I managed to locate some bells and leap into the fountain just in time, and, well, here I am. Bone-cold, but safe." She gives a little shiver.
"Faeries?" I say. "Breezies and flutterponies?"
She shakes her head. "Those are good faeries, Princess-Goddess. This is dark, love-eating magic, and oh, but the Prioress would have my habit if she heard me talking to you about this. Desperate times and all. How fares the Abbey?"
I shake my head. "I think we're the only ones left," I say. "I'm scared," I add.
"There, there," she says. Sister Thistle takes a moment to lay her neck across my withers. I nicker, a bit forlornly, as the water streams down around us. It helps, a little.
"Who would do this to us?" I ask, once Sister Thistle has raised her head. "Sister Aeon said something about a 'changeling', before the spell... took her." My jaw trembles; I force it to stop.
"It's changeling magic, to be certain," says Sister Thistle. "But it's clumsy, inexpert. It doesn't come naturally to the caster." Her eyes narrow. "No, this is some mortal pony attempting to use changeling magic for her own ends, and I'd wager a plate of doughnuts I know who it is: the Lady Prismia."
"Prismia?"
"Lady Prismia is a hermit witch. She lives in the woods not far from here." Sister Thistle glances up at the broad thoroughfare leading from the piazza to the fortified front gates of Reduit. The massive doors hang lazily ajar, rocking gently in the sea-winds billowing up from the ocean below us. It seems that the gatekeepers have lost all love for their duty as well, because I have never seen those gates open. This really is the strangest of days.
"Where did she come from?"
"She is Equuish, an exile of Canterlot."
Canterlot! Sister Thistle's told me tales of the distant unicorn city in the far-off Heartland, but I've never met anypony from there. My heart skips a beat. "Is she... wicked?"
"Extremely," says Sister Thistle, nodding. "I believe she is the one who has visited this calamity upon us."
"Why?"
"Who can understand the ways of wicked witches?" says Sister Thistle. "The important thing is that we need to figure out how to stop her. Perhaps if I could find more bells, some really loud ones, then I could make it to her cottage before—"
"No," I say, shaking my head and gazing deeply at her. "They're here, Sister Thistle. They're waiting."
Color drains a bit from the Sister's face. "Where?"
"Everywhere," I say, gesturing all about us, at serpents only I can see.
Sister Thistle curses in a very unladylike fashion, her eyes darting back and forth. "No," she says. "No, no, no. This is bad. This is very, very—"
"Sister Thistle?" I interrupt.
"Yes, Princess-Goddess?" I can see white all around her eyes.
"Sister Thistle, I don't think the serpents can hurt me. One tried to eat the love out of my heart when I first woke up, but it couldn't. I walked right through a crowd of them to get to you just now."
Sister Thistle breathes heavily for a moment. "Of course the spell would have already tried to seek you out," she murmurs, her mind obviously racing. "After all, you're Love's paragon. But perhaps that fact also makes you immune, somehow?"
"If I'm immune, I can go for help!"
"No, Princess!" yells Sister Thistle, a bit too loudly, if you ask me. "You must be kept away from the world! So says the Scripture!"
"Well, we can't just stand here forever!" I protest. "What if nopony comes to help us? We'll starve! Or freeze! What's the nearest town after Reduit?"
"Nothing," says Sister Thistle, sagging. "Nothing a filly can reach, at least. We are isolated for a reason, Princess-Goddess."
"Right," I say. "The reason is me." I kick a little at the water of the fountain. Sometimes being a Hidden Princess is no fun at all.
I snort a little, making up my mind. "Well, I am going to go find Lady Prismia. If she's not responsible, I'll get her to come use her unicorn magic to help us all."
"Please, no," says Sister Thistle, but there is a sad tone in her voice which means she knows I'm right and will have to give in soon.
"If she is responsible," I press on, raising my chin, "I'll stop her. I have a crossword puzzle and a pencil and a flower already."
Sister Thistle squeezes her eyes shut.
"Well?"
"All right, I have faith in you," she says. "I suppose that's actually part of my job, when you think about it. I realize you've never been outside the city before, Princess, but Lady Prismia's cottage is simple to find. Once you leave the gates, take the left fork leading up into the bluffs. A mile into the dark forest, you will see a cottage of rough stone. That is where the Lady dwells. You must somehow convince her to stop this madness." The Sister shakes her head, helplessly. "Just... please be safe. Sister Aeon would never forgive me."
"Don't worry, Sister," I say, patting her shoulder. "Everypony here has worshiped me for their entire lives. Today, I am finally going to earn it."
Sister Thistle looks like she's about to cry. She stops ringing her bells for just long enough to lay her hoof upon my head, just below the horn. "Brave child," she says. "May, er, may You bless you."
I smile up at her. "Done," I say. With a little splash, I trip lightly out of the fountain and work my way past the serpents still lying in wait for Sister Thistle. With a braveness I do not entirely feel, I trot briskly down the main street of Reduit toward the city gates. From her tiny haven in the middle of the fountain, I can see Sister Thistle raise her hoof in farewell, a gesture I return in kind. Then I turn back and give my attention to the great doors. The gatehouse towers loom up huge before me.
I prepare, for a moment, to travel farther than I ever have in nine centuries of life.
I step across the threshold.
* * *
The wood beyond the walls is deep, and green, and wet, its trees twisted and gnarled as if by the salty air drifting in from the western ocean. I am frightened, a little, and I begin to realize that there has never been a point in my life where there was not a wall of some description somewhere in my field of vision. Reduit is behind me now, and the supposed cottage is not yet before me, and all I can see is the wild.
It is exciting, do not misunderstand me. But it is also terrifying. I wish my first trip outside could have been made in the company of Sister Aeon, or Sister Thistle, or somepony, at least. But I am alone today, and that is all right, because when you think about it I am actually older than any of them, even though I am not yet a grown-up. I am, I wager, even older than the wicked witch who dwells in these woods. "I am your elder!" I decide that will I say to the wicked witch. "Sit down on your chair! Do not slouch! Eat your peas!"
I giggle at the thought of the witch-mare cowering before me, which helps the dark shadows to either side of the path recede a bit, but all my fancy imaginings cease the moment that the cottage comes into view, and more importantly, the cottage's mistress.
Lady Prismia—who else could it possibly be?—stands in a tiny wood-yard before a rough and tumbledown fieldstone hovel. She is tall to me. Most everypony is, of course, but she seems particularly so. Her coat is the shade of iron and storm, her cutie mark concealed by a ragged, flowing cloak of tattered velvet. Her mane is a wild tangle of color, possessing hues I have only ever seen before in rainbows, and it flows madly about the sharp point of her steely horn—a horn, just like mine!—which itself glows a startling green as she bends the currents of magic to her will. She is an impressive, fascinating, terrifying sight, and yet, for all her eerie splendor, the thing that draws my eye more than anything is the talisman around her thin, bony neck.
Prismia's amulet consists of a chain of rough black jet supporting a breathtaking heart-shaped jewel of a thousand facets, a jewel that glows green in time with the witch-mare's magic. It sings, and although the song it sings is frightening and grim, its raw beauty nonetheless sends ice up and down the length of my spine. It is, I think, the most precious thing I have ever laid eyes upon.
Looking on in horror, I see Lady Prismia raise a hoof in an occult gesture. Her horn flares a brilliant emerald, and out of the forest, the snakes come to her. One by one, they twitch and spasm and then vomit up their cargo of heart-light. The light dissipates into mist as soon as it is out of their mouths, and I can see Prismia desperately sucking in great gulps of breath, frantically eager to taste even a little bit of each bundle of light before it vanishes into the air and is gone. Even the small amount that she manages to breathe in never reaches her heart, which remains cold and black and lifeless; not fresh-wounded and empty, like the ponies of the fortress, but scarred so shrunken and tight that there is no room left in it for any light at all. Time and time again she repeats this, her frustration and rage growing with every attempt, until the present crowd of serpents is entirely exhausted. At last, snarling in rage, she sends them away again, to hunt more hearts.
In the new quiet of the clearing, Lady Prismia sinks to the ground, utterly unfulfilled by her efforts. She sobs, once, and the noise is that of somepony dropping a bag of nails onto a stone.
I understand that she is a wicked witch, but in that instant, I cannot help but feel sorry for her. Somewhere behind that tangled mane and that thin-stretched hide is quite a beautiful mare. And she looks so frustrated, so sad. Never mind that the task she is apparently failing at involves somehow consuming the stolen love of all the faithful ponies of Reduit and the Abbey of Song. In that moment, all I can see and understand is that she is trying vainly to find a little bit of joy in her life, and how much it must hurt to be her.
I will make her feel better.
"Hello," I say, quietly.
Lady Prismia's head snaps up, all trace of vulnerability gone. She howls at me like an animal. "Who? Who disturbs? Who dares set hoof into the domain of Prismia?"
"Me," I say. I step into the wood-yard, directly into an errant ray of light from above.
Lady Prismia's jaw falls open, her mad grey eyes going wide. "An alicorn," she says, eventually. Now that she is not shrieking at me, I can hear the strong, strange accent which plays at the edge of the Pegasopolian in which she addresses me. Her voice is unlike anything I have ever heard before, the voice of a native speaker of Equuish. The language of Canterlot.
I am not sure I quite understand the word "alicorn". Is it right? I think it sounds right. I am very confused right now, because on top of all the other language difficulties, I am very distracted by the amulet around the witch-mare's neck and am not thinking quite straight.
Prismia does not wait for me to sift through my confusion. "So," she says, rising to her hooves and crossing the yard toward me. "You are the secret treasure of Reduit. I must say, I've long pondered what must be hiding down in that fortress, and yet this still comes as something of a surprise. What is your name, little thing?"
"I am Princess My Love of the Abbey of Song," I reply.
"Principessa Mi Amore di Abbazia Cadenza," she repeats, for those are in fact the exact words that I just used. "Your name is... 'Princess Cadence'?"
"Maybe," I say, again puzzled by the Equuish words. "Cadence" is a nice-sounding name, and I suppose I do not mind if she calls me that. "I have never met a unicorn before. I've never met anypony else like me."
Prismia sneers and barks a laugh. "You're not like me, little one," she says. "Do you see wings on this ancient body?"
She's not really that old, but I do not bring it up right now. "No," I admit.
"No," she sneers, mocking my tone. "No, you do not. There is only one pony like you in the entire world, little Cadence. She is the Sun-Nag, sitting atop her golden throne, and wouldn't she be shocked to learn of you, hrm?"
More words I do not entirely understand. Once again, Prismia takes advantage of my silence and rolls over any chance I might have had to speak. "What brings you here, little Cadence?"
"I was going to tell you to stop what it is you're doing," I say. "You are making everypony in town distraught and sad with your magic. I thought it wasn't right, and I was going to tell you to quit it. But now that I'm here, I want to know something different."
"That being?"
"Why?"
Prismia looms over me, huge and dark and scary. "'Why,' she asks."
"Yes," I reply, standing my ground even though I desperately want to flee for the safety of the woods right now. "I want to know why you're doing this. Why you're stealing all the love from the hearts of my ponies."
"Because they denied me it!" she shrieks, again. "Everywhere I look in your little town there is love, and caring! The craftsponies love their work, love their little village, love their happy little families; and the families breed daughters, some of whom are sent to the fortress on the cliff-side to engage in some sort of overwhelming, secret love that I've never comprehended. All this with none left over for the poor grey mare on the hill. I suppose it was you they were loving all along, eh, little one?"
"It sounds like it," I reply.
There is silence as Prismia glares at me. After a time, she breaks it. "Well?" she demands. "Aren't you going to argue with me, little Cadence?"
"No," I say. "I would feel just as bad as you if nopony ever showed me that she loved me. The Sisters never let me go outside the walls. I wish I had known before today that there was somepony up in the woods as lonely and sad as you."
As I speak, I begin to hear a bright note in the back of my mind. It is just like the sound of Prismia's amulet from before, but this time the music is full of hope and promise. I suddenly realize that the amulet is speaking to me now, reaching out for the light in my heart, but not in an attempt to claim it like the serpents did. It wants to glow in time with me, and this realization fills my heart with yet more joy, so much so that I am overwhelmed with the urge to let it loose into the world.
"I can bring you some of my toys, if that would help," I say, suddenly desperate to fill the black void in Prismia's heart. "I have more than enough. Or, maybe, I can ask the Sisters to come up and to play games with you, if you like?"
"The Sisters!" she snarls. "Wretched clerics! They'd steal my amulet to bolster their own spiritual powers, see if they wouldn't!"
"It is a beautiful amulet," I say, feeling woozy and breathless in its aura.
"Don't touch it!" snaps Prismia.
"I wasn't going to touch it," I say, honestly. "It's yours, and it's wrong to touch something that belongs to somepony else. I just think that you own a beautiful gemstone."
"'Beautiful', yes," says the witch-mare, mocking again. "This jewel is cut from a lump of pure asterite, known as 'cosmic spectrum'. It doesn't grow naturally in the earth, like other stones do. Cosmic spectrum comes to us only in fragments of fallen stars, and it carries with it the power to amplify a pony's emotion and will, hence, her power." She smiles, grim and humorless. "A piece this size could buy your precious Abbey and every Sister therein. So, are you finished badgering me, little Princess Cadence? Will you leave me to my work?"
"No," I say, the song of the amulet growing louder and louder in my mind. "If you won't let me love you with presents or games, then I guess I'll just have to love you with myself."
"Foolish child," sneers Prismia. "What do you know of love, you who have never felt its lack?"
Aha! Finally, a chance to use my inventory! I remove the crossword puzzle from underneath my left wing, place it upside-down on a nearby chopping block, and then take the pencil in my mouth and begin drawing.
"Idiot," says Prismia. "Why not use your horn to do that?"
"Use my horn to do what?" I say, looking up.
"You're telling me you can't use your magic to pick up a simple pencil?"
"I can't use my magic for anything at all," I admit. "Nopony's ever taught me how."
Prismia is silent as I continue to draw. She is silent for a long time, which is good, because I am not a very good drawer, and it takes me a while. Finally, I'm done. I point at the rough picture of a unicorn I have produced. Somehow I have managed to give him one more than the customary number of legs. I told you I'm not very good.
"There," I say, spitting the pencil out. "That is my knight in shining armor. Some day he will come to the Abbey and get the Sisters' permission to take me away from there and we will go to Canterlot and have a big wedding with cake and lots of happy friends and then we will have babies because we are married." I tap at the stallion's head. "The knight is wearing a hat because he is also a cowpony," I explain.
"Very nice," says the witch. "And now, I will tell you what happens next. You spend years of happy marriage together, attending high-society balls and grand galas, and everything seems like a piece of heaven."
"Yes," I agree.
"I'm not finished," she snaps. "But then, slowly, he begins to grow bitter and resentful of you. He starts wanting to spend time with his other friends, his other marefriends. And eventually, he tells an enormous lie about you, in front of the law and the Guard and everypony, and it gets you banished from the Hegemony. So you make your way to the dock-end of the world, hoping all the while to find someone there who will love you like he did. But it was never true. He never loved you, not even from the start. And that is the meaning of love, little Cadence. Love is illusion."
"You're wrong," I insist.
The witch's face becomes a nightmare. "'Wrong', am I?" Prismia screams, as both her horn and the cosmic spectrum amulet flare an inky black. Dark clouds mask the sun as a sparse, cold rain begins to fall, spattering against the naked dirt of the wood-yard. Even as she uses the amulet to call the storm, I can still hear it singing in my mind and in my heart, and it is a feeling so pure and true that I know that I must be right in feeling it, righter than the witch-mare at least.
"Yes!" I say again, emboldened by the song of the amulet. "You're wrong!"
"Then tell me, Princess!" shouts Prismia. "You, who are so wise to the ways of the world, despite never having set hoof out of your home! Tell me what you think is the meaning of love!"
"I... I can't really put it in words." The wind rises to a moan around us.
"Useless," says the witch. "Liar. What good is a love that's only inside your head?"
"Okay, so I'll make it not be inside my head," I say. "I'll show you it." With that, I march firmly over to the enchantress and wrap my forehooves around her leg.
There is thunder, and lightning. The wind rises again, now to a howl, and it whips my tricolored mane in all sorts of crazy directions. I look up at the witch, my eyes clear.
"I'm not letting go," I say.
"You will let go," rasps Prismia. "I will make you let go."
"No," I say. "You won't."
There is a bright stroke of lightning. Prismia's horn shines a bloody red and my body is wracked with agony. I clench my teeth together, but I hold her leg all the tighter.
"Hurts, yes?" says Prismia, looking down at me. "This is just my first trick, child. This is merely pain. Wait until you begin to perceive damage."
I whimper.
"What's that?" says Prismia, flicking her longish ears. "Can't quite hear you, little miss expert?"
"You... need somepony to hold you," I gasp. "It is going to be me."
Prismia's horn flares out orange, and streaks of fire lick across my skin, shriveling the pink hair of my coat to black. "Give up, child," she sneers. "Spare yourself. Let go, and the hurt goes away."
"You need this," I say, tears forming in my eyes, "more than I need to stop hurting."
The witch's face contorts with rage. She barely looks like a pony anymore. Sickly yellow energy now draws the life from my form, causing my eyes to hollow and my skin to sag. I begin to look like the witch herself, wasted and broken, but there are two differences between us: I have light in my heart and I can hear the song of the amulet, and these two things mean that I will win in the end. Here, in this moment, I love Prismia more than anything. It is not because she is hurting me, or even in spite of the fact that she is hurting me. There is something between us now, something that I can not quite manage to find the words for. It is so frustratingly close, right at the tip of my tongue...
"Let go," growls the beast wearing Prismia's skin.
"No," I say, feebly. "Because I think I know what happened to you."
Vicious green poison fills my veins, weakening my wasted body further. I cough, hard, choking on my own diseased phlegm. "I know... what happened," I say again, wrapping my hooves ever-tighter around Prismia's leg. "You found an amulet. And it was so beautiful and so powerful that you loved it more than anything or anypony you'd ever seen. But it also made you afraid and suspicious of other ponies, and when you started feeling this way, the amulet made it worse, because whatever you feel, your amulet makes you feel it more. So when your husband did a terrible thing to you, you didn't find anypony else to help you. You tried to deal with it all by yourself."
Prismia slams my body with a sheet of hard blue lightning, and electricity crackles down my limbs, grounding out between my teeth. "You said the Sisters didn't have any love to spare!" I shout, the wind almost drowning out my voice, now. "I bet that was a lie! I bet they did come to you in your cottage! They tried to give you food and clothes and everything you needed! But you sent them away!"
The witch's face glowers down at me, black as the night.
"You didn't want their love! You wanted to be alone! Alone with your thing! And you told them so, so sternly that they had no choice but to believe you!"
"And what do you believe?" screams Prismia. "What is the truth, then? Do I or do I not want to be alone?"
"The truth is," I say, pressing my hooves together, my eyes not wavering from hers, "it doesn't matter whether you want to be alone or not. The truth is that you aren't, and you never will be. Not so long as I love you."
Prismia shudders. Her horn glows a deep and killing purple, and I know in my heart that her next act will be the end of me. The storm rises to a hurricane. My sad little drawing from just a few short minutes ago is battered against my side, staying in place by some miracle I do not entirely understand, but it doesn't matter. Nothing does. I can no longer even hear my own voice over the roar of the wind and the divine exultation of Prismia's amulet, keeping perfect time with the unearthly and unbelievable joy in my heart.
As she looses her final spell, the unicorn witch screams out one last time: "What is the meaning of love, little Princess?"
In a flash, it comes to me at last. A few simple words, burned into my brain by the ecstasy of the cosmic spectrum, the single, perfect answer to her question. I form them with my tongue, then close my eyes. My entire world turns to violet. And even as the killing energy washes over me, I find that I am so very happy, because I finally understand what love is.
I vanish.
* * *
When sense returns to me, I am in a realm of blue-teal stars. There is ground beneath my body, something solid, at least, but I cannot see it. Everywhere I look is a celestial infinity, even below.
I rise to my hooves, expecting pain, but there is none. I am whole. I am not certain how this is possible, but I remember the Sisters speaking from time to time of the Origin of All, the place where the Creators live and the same place where ponies go home to when they are done living. I find myself wondering if this might be it. I don't really want to be dead yet, and it feels like I should maybe be crying about it, but surprisingly, the tears do not come. This place is far too serene.
Instead, I merely look around in wonderment, as it is all there is to do.
After a time, I sense a vague, blurry motion in the corner of my eye, which quickly resolves itself into a huge white figure coming toward me at full gallop. My heart climbs to my throat at the sight of her. She is tall and beautiful and regal and wears a golden crown and she has great white wings and a horn like mine. Her cutie mark is the image of a blazing sun, and the sight of this sparks a memory from my talk with Lady Prismia. This must be the Sun-Nag, the one pony in this world who is like me.
I smile at her, my face aglow. She stares back at me in unabashed shock.
"Mom!" I cry, galloping over to her and nuzzling up to her shoulder.
The white mare stammers something in what I assume must be the Equuish tongue before switching to Pegasopolian. "No," she says, eventually. "No. Not your mother."
"Aunty!" I try again, still nuzzling. Second-best is good enough.
"Yes," she says. "That will do for now. I am your Aunty Celestia. What is your name, little alicorn? How did you find this place?"
"Cadence," I say, already having grown fond of the name. "At first, I thought I was here because I died. But now I think I'm here because I got so happy that I discovered the secret of what love really is, and I haven't died at all." I frown. "I wish I could remember it, now."
Concern washes over the white mare's face. "Are you in danger right now?"
I try to recall. "I don't think so," I say.
"Good," she says, breathing a small sigh. "Good. Listen to me, Cadence, because this is important. Can you tell me where you are? In the world, I mean?"
"Reduit," I answer.
The pony who calls herself Aunty Celestia shakes her head. "I... do not know this place you speak of," she says.
"It's a secret place. It's meant to keep me hidden."
"Can you tell me where it is located?" she asks, and I can hear desperation in her voice. "I must find you. I would like to talk about you, what you mean to the world, and to me."
I realize from firsthoof experience that it's not a very good secret if you spill it to every stranger you come in contact with, but there is something so trustworthy about Aunty Celestia that I am about to just tell her anyway. For better or for worse, however, I cannot, because there is a lurch in my gut and I feel myself slipping away from this mysterious place as fast as I came to it.
"Don't go!" says Aunty Celestia, trying to grab on to my vanishing form with her hooves. "Tell me where you are!"
I am unable to produce anything more than a single, dreamy groan in reply. As from a great distance, I hear Celestia calling to me. "Cadence!" she says. "Don't worry! Stay where you are! I'll find you!"
I groan again, but in a contented way. Being found sounds... nice.
The stars fade to blackness around me. I sleep.
* * *
When I wake once more, I find myself tucked warmly into a rude little bed, pushed up against a rough wall of undressed fieldstone. This must be the inside of Lady Prismia's cottage. I panic for a moment, finally remembering my ordeal; but the storm outside has passed, my wounds remain healed as though they never were, and the figure who shares the room with me has none of the lurching, angry behaviors of the unicorn witch who nearly killed me before. The figure busies herself with clusters of raw herbs suspended on tiny hooks from the low ceiling, humming quietly to herself. On a small table beside the bed lies the heart-stone, glowing serenely like the meteor it reportedly is. The black chain that once suspended it lies in pieces from our struggle, but the gem itself is unbroken.
I groan away the last of my sleep. The figure turns at the sound of my voice, and while there is no mistaking that this must be Lady Prismia, I find at the same time that I can barely recognize her. Her face is red with tears but is nonetheless peaceful and open, nothing like the monster I faced in the wood-yard outside.
Her eyes light up when she sees me awake and she rushes to my side. "Little Princess," she says. "I'm so, so sorry."
"It's all right," I murmur. I nuzzle around with my teeth for a moment under my right wing and find the verticordia stored there, then withdraw it and present it to the Lady.
"Thif if for you," I say, around the flower.
Prismia's jaw quivers, and suddenly she is crying again, great clean gasps and floods of wet tears. She buries her face in my chest and sobs, and sobs, and sobs. I pat her mane with my hooves, running the tips of my shoes through her tangles. I don't know what to do with the flower, so I put it in her hair. I think that it looks nice there.
"Hush," I say to the witch. "Hush, now. It'll be all right." And I know that it will. Because I can see, even though she cannot, that a light lives in her again. It is small, and faint, because it has so little room to grow. But like any fire, it will become bright when given fuel and air, and I decide that I will stay with her to provide her with both. I am the Princess of Love, and I have finally found a heart who needs me.
She cries. I rock her as best I can, given how old and big she is. We breathe together as the minutes slip by.
"Thank you for healing me," I say, eventually.
"You never were injured," Prismia says. She brushes aside her ragged cloak to reveal her cutie mark, a sharp stone splitting some water into a spray of rainbows. "My special talent is illusion," she continues. "My power can make you believe things are happening to you that aren't. That doesn't make it any less dangerous, though. At its worst, it can make you so afraid that it stops your heart."
"Is that what you were trying to do to me at the end?" I ask, quietly.
Prismia nods. "I fully intended to," she says. "But then you said something, and it made me realize what I was about to do. I tried to stop my spell, but I couldn't in time, and then... you simply vanished. I thought I had lost you."
"No," I say.
Prismia nods, thinking. "Do you... can you remember what you said to me? When I asked you what love is?"
I think hard, searching my memory. It had seemed so clear in the middle of the rapture brought on by the amulet, but I still can't call it up. "No," I admit.
"Hah," she says, shaking a little. "Hah. It is no matter, I suppose." Prismia turns and retrieves my rumpled crossword puzzle, setting it on the table next to me with the drawing side up. "Do you know what I think?" she says. "I think that someday you will meet a stallion, and you'll ask him the same question I asked you. When he gives you the same answer you gave to me this morning, you will remember. That is when you will know you've found your knight in shining armor."
"Okay," I say. "I'll remember that."
Prismia bends down and clutches me tight in her hooves. "Until then," she says, "I'm glad you're back."
"I think I went to where the Sun-Nag is," I volunteer.
The enchantress sniffles a little. "Celestia," she says. "It was on her order that I was banished, once upon a time."
"Because she got lied to," I say.
"Yes. But she ought to have seen it happening."
"Well, when she finds me, I'll tell her the truth. She told me that she's going to find me."
"Does she know where you are?"
"I don't think so."
"She'll send out her legions, then," muses Prismia. "We may remain hidden for a time here, but eventually, she will find you. The Sun-Nag gets what the Sun-Nag wants."
"Is she... bad?" I ask, a bit nervous at the scary picture Prismia is painting with her words. "She didn't look bad, but Sister Thistle says looks can fool you sometimes. Is she going to hurt me?"
"Worse," says Prismia. "She'll make you ordinary. All things fade before the Sun-Nag, child, like one's upholstery if one leaves the curtains drawn. She turns goddesses into nobles, nobles into slaves. In fifty years, you'll be just another vacant-eyed Canterlot courtier, same as I was."
"I would like to see Canterlot some day."
Prismia smiles, wanly. "I know," she says. "But watch the city as you would a candle, or a poison frog. Admire what makes it beautiful, and do not let it touch you."
"I'll try," I say, starting to get a little confused by all these metaphors. "If you don't mind, Lady Prismia, I should let the Sisters know that I'm all right. I left Sister Thistle in an awfully cold fountain, and the others are probably wondering where I am if they're back to caring about me again."
"Yes, yes, of course," she says, rising to her hooves. "My charms are all broken. Their hearts are their own once more."
"Good," I say, struggling against the covers as I try to get out of bed. "I'm going back to Reduit. We should go together."
Prismia startles. I see fear in her eyes. "Leave... my house?" she says.
"Only if you want to," I say. "But I think that you do. You want to be friends with the Sisters. You just need courage."
She scoffs, one last ghost of the old witch-mare rearing her ugly head. "And where, pray tell, will I find that in myself?"
"You won't," I say, gazing up at her and shaking off the last of the sheets. "It's in me."
We gaze at each other for a moment, and then the ghost vanishes and is no more. "There is something different about you," says Prismia, squinting at me. Her eyes drift to my flank, and she gestures with a hoof. "Was that always there?"
As soon as I follow her gaze, an excited squeal bursts forth from my throat. Written on my pink flank is a glyph of fine teal and gold hairs, in the shape of a filigreed crystal heart. "My cutie mark!" I shout. "You helped me find my special talent!" Eagerly, I study the symbol that will be a part of me for the rest of my life. It's so beautiful. I couldn't be happier with it. "Maybe it wasn't enough for me to be love. Maybe I've got to spread love to ponies who need it! Miss Prismia, I bet I finally get to grow up, now!"
"Congratulations on finding yourself, little one," says Prismia. "I seem to recall that gifts are traditional at a time like this." She bites her lip and glances over at the little table. With a bloom of magic—pure white now, I notice—she lifts the piece of cosmic spectrum out from her shattered talisman and holds it before me.
"This is yours now," she says.
"Thank you very much!" I say, properly, because it is a very nice gift. I store it under my wing, adding it to my inventory. "Hey, do you think that when we're done talking to the Sisters and getting some lunch you can start showing me how to do that?"
"Do what, child?"
"How to lift things, like you do! How to use my horn to do magic!"
"Oh," she says. Then she nuzzles me a little. "Yes. Yes, I most certainly will."
"Great!" I say, as we turn toward the door. This really is turning out to be the best day of my life. "You know, I've never had a proper teacher before today."
"Neither, before today, have I," says Lady Prismia.
We walk, together, into the sunlight.
Author's Note
Thanks to Ghost of Heraclitus and Ponydora Prancypants for the beta, and to AndreaMelody for the cover-art vector. Y'all rock. Also consider checking out this awesome depiction of the opening scene by DeviantArt user LocksTO. If you enjoyed this work and would like to be notified of future stories as they are posted, consider joining the "Cadance of Cloudsdale" story group! The cycle continues with "A Princess by Any Other Name".
