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In which the ambitious, angry, and undersocialized personal student of Princess Celestia, Sunset Shimmer, completely misunderstands how one ascends to divinity. One frustratingly difficult to decipher tome and related ritual later, and she's left with no wings, a (usually) pony-shaped primordial problem on her hooves, and a mothermentor figure who seems intent on giving Sunset not what she asked for, but what she wanted. It's clearly a method of trying to control Sunset and her new eldritch Visitor; sincerity and Celestia have never been on speaking terms. Sunset hates that it's working.
Meanwhile, Princess Celestia is trying to make up for past mistakes and avoid repeating even older ones, Princess Cadance hates being the only vaguely well-adjusted mare in this family, and the Voice of Imperceptible Dreams is quite happy to enjoy the utter disaster that is Her summoner's life.
EDITED AN: There is no hidden message in bolded letters.
AN: Enabled and beta-read by @ensou, and originally posted in my snippet thread. For once, this isn't a QA fic! ...Yes OK it still features an eldritch abomination but–
Sunset Shimmer
I was the most powerful unicorn of my generation, the personal student of Princess Celestia, and an increasingly frustrated young mare. Celestia had been the one to show me a mirror displaying my future fate as an alicorn princess, only to pivot and refuse to answer any questions about it whatsoever. I thought I knew this routine from repeated exposure: Celestia would show me something strange and urge me to seek out the answers, then do little more than provide pieces of cryptic advice now and again despite allegedly being my teacher. I would delve into research and, frankly, do more to teach myself than anything Celestia did.
I hadn't minded the occasional cryptic advice too much when I was younger; Celestia was Equestria's Princess! The absolute ruler whom everypony respected and bowed to! An immortal goddess with over a thousand years of wisdom! Except, the years went on and Celestia seemed — if anything — more disappointed in my efforts as time passed. Proper one-on-one lesson sessions became increasingly sparse, replaced by hints and independent research. She even insisted that I should go out and make friends when the only ponies around were self-absorbed, pompous, ignorant nobles who wouldn't know Avocado's Number from Carrot's Theorem of Arcanothermal Exchange — or almost worse, the underperforming foals at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Either way, spending time with them would only make me fall further behind whatever standard Celestia expected me to meet.
I literally stayed up reading by hornlight until my eyes hurt, and even that much wasn't enough to please Celestia. Princess Cadance's mere existence and prompt adoption had proved that much. At first, Cadance couldn't even pull off a foal's hornlight spell, and she was supposed to be better than me? It wasn't even remotely fair.
I huffed and blew my — admittedly slightly disheveled — mane away from my muzzle. Fairness played no role in the games that princesses played with ponies, it seemed. It certainly didn't seem fair that Celestia should show me the mirror, only to break routine by subsequently shutting down any further attempts at actually researching what I'd been shown. "You aren't ready," my plot! If I wasn't "ready," then why taunt me with a vision of myself as an alicorn princess? Why dangle the hope that I had finally managed to be good enough, only to yank away that hope with increasing harshness as time went on?
Still, despite attempts to yank it away, I clung to the withering hope that Celestia was trying to encourage me via adversity. It would be cruel and unlike the old mare, but if becoming an alicorn was an easy thing, there would be far more of them rather than Cadance and Celestia alone. I could live with a little necessary cruelty if it meant I could finally earn what Cadance had been so casually given.
The possibility of encouragement through adversity grew far stronger when I finally resorted to the forbidden section of the castle library — implicitly defying Celestia's past edicts, and in doing so, possibly going along with what Celestia had wanted all along. It certainly made sense. Princess Celestia wasn't perfect no matter how she presented herself. If I was going to become a real princess, one who could be trusted with responsibilities, then I should be ready to disagree with Celestia instead of simply becoming a doormat yes-mare like Cadance.
It took another few days of searching before I finally found what I needed. Unsurprisingly, it was tricky to find; the old tome was hidden away on a high shelf at the dustiest parts of the forbidden section, practically vibrating with power, and enchanted with the single most frustrating illusion spell that I had ever seen. The words seemed intent on shifting before my very eyes, changing the meaning of each sentence so that it was seldom the same twice. Included images could be trusted little more than that; rather than use projections for three-dimensional spell diagrams like a normal pony, the author seemed to have decided to have the diagrams constantly shift as though the reader was looking at but a single facet of a rolling dodecahedron.
It was the realization that the diagrams were three-dimensional spellforms that finally let me understand the rest of the book — although technically I turned out to be wrong there, and they were actually four-dimensional instead. Still! It wasn't that sentences would become lies if I looked at them too long. Instead, every variant of each sentence was simultaneously accurate even if it might seem contradictory.
Could the author have made matters easier for everypony by using multiple pages? Of course! But considering the subject matter, I couldn't get too angry. It could be disastrous if just anypony could understand the Tome/Book/Grimoire/Manual/Beacon/Guide/Codex of the Realms/Void/Primordial/Outsiders/Deathless/Gods/Trespassers — or Grimoire of the Gods, as I liked to interpret it. Tome of the Trespassers had suitably satisfying alliteration, too, but the connection to my goals would be weaker with that interpretation.
Even starting to decipher the Celestia-damned thing took most of a week cooped up in my room, emerging only for meals — and at those meals, Celestia seemed intent on twisting the knife at every opportunity. Or possibly trying for encouragement? It would be just like her to spend so much attention on Cadance in order to encourage me with what I could have as soon as I finished. Celestia's words said that I wasn't ready, but she wasn't overtly trying to get me ready anymore, was she?
Nopony is ever truly ready for an encounter with Trespassers, echoed the tome, strengthening my belief that Celestia's opposition was just for show. To show me the mirror only to then tell me that I wasn't ready? It was simply one more riddle, another test to go with all the rest.
Wisened elders have gone mad from Their attention alone. Arrogant Archmages find their wards crumbling and any attacks turned to stardust. Dreams distort to nightmares, with dreamers never reawakening to their true selves. The only safe recourse is for us to hide beneath Their notice, and the fabric of reality naturally provides such protection. One must deliberately pull back this protective cloak if one wishes to treat with Them, however briefly — and you would not be reading this if you wished for the cowering safety of day-dwellers.
Some say that Discord, God of Chaos, is Himself an Outsider — but it is our opinion that, if this is the case, He is but a small fragment of one. Even Discord fits in this world of ours; chaos is a concept that greater minds can grasp, albeit with some difficulty. No such thing can be said for true Trespassers, for whom 'domain' would be a charming conceit. They might have preferences in the ways They express Their power, even possess titles that They wish for mortals to use, but do not mistake this for the Special Talents simultaneously strengthened and affirmed by our Cutie Marks. That They use Their powers in such ways is a choice, not a limitation.
There is nothing that mortals can provide Them that Trespassers cannot grasp for Themselves. Nothing save that most important of treasures: entertainment. If They demand an errand, a boon, a sacrifice, it is for the sake of watching us do Their bidding rather than anything as quaint as empowerment. No, empowerment is what They use to reward us.
Getting through that first page and turning its variants into something coherent was the work of an entire day. And that was after grasping how every reading was simultaneously true! It was no wonder that Celestia made only halfhearted attempts to ask after my current subject of study; she probably knew damned well just how frustrating it was to decipher this thing, and was giving me enough space to work.
But when I'd finally managed that first milestone, I could feel my fur standing on end. Anticipation stirred my stomach, and it was all I could do to avoid happily prancing in circles for hours. I would have called the Royal Guard on anyone who claimed that deals with demons could ascend one to alicornhood, but these weren't anything of that ilk. They were the kinds of entities so dangerous that ponykind couldn't be allowed to know about them for their own safety — but ones that, if a wizard was skilled enough, could be convinced to share what was, by their standards, a drop of power from an ocean.
Nopony was ever truly ready. But I knew enough, and given how dangerous Trespassers apparently were, I could understand not waiting another decade. There was every chance I would die while attempting to ascend, and if Celestia had a thousand years of failures to harden her heart — well, I could no longer really blame her for pulling ever further away when it looked as though I might be close to the goal line.
…Actually, that was a lie. I was still bucking bitter and harbored bubbling resentment. But I could fight those feelings with understanding now that victory was in sight, and it would all be water under Cloudsdale when I succeeded.
These Trespassers even explained why Celestia kept pushing me to try out all that friendship garbage. Given Equestria's obsession with Harmony, the Trespasser who'd empowered Celestia probably liked that sort of thing. Celestia was totally missing the point there, though. I kept skipping friendships because of how hilariously far beneath me so many other ponies were. I wouldn't have any trouble making friends with something above me. If anything, habits from dealing with normal ponies would make bargaining with the Trespasser that much more difficult.
Ever more weeks passed as I continued to decipher the Tome of the Trespassers, and Celestia gradually eased up from the fake opposition. Now she came with enticing carrots to go with the stick: Weren't there any kinds of magic that I would like her to teach me? Any concepts that I needed help grasping? It had been quite a while since our last lesson.
I declined every offer, and hurried back to my rooms after each one. The unspoken implications were perfectly clear. I could stop trying for ascension at any time. I could seek the safe option and become just another court wizard in a long line of cowardly underperformers. I refused. I wasn't going to, would never, settle for second-best.
A month and a half after I'd found the Tome, and even Celestia's lingering strictness gave way to concern and worry. It might even have been genuine: a realization that I was getting close to attempting Ascension, and that this might be one of the last times she saw me alive. If she'd expressed that kind of concern before I'd found the Grimoire, I might have leapt at the opportunity. Indulging now would weaken the clarity of purpose I now possessed, though. As pushing me aside for Princess Cadance had proven, Celestia would inevitably lose interest if I stopped pursing Ascension, and the secrets of the Gods' Grimoire were not something to be pursued half-heartedly.
The annual Summer Sun Celebration was coming up in just a few days, and that would provide my best opportunity to complete the ritual. All those ponies intent on worship, celebration, happiness, and hope — it would be the best bait a mare could ask for should she, say, want to attract a Trespasser who wouldn't want to feed on my terror and pain as a snack. Hay, such cheerful celebrations might even have been Celestia's payment for her powers, at which point it would be beyond perfect. The focus of the Trespasser who'd empowered her would already be on our world, and their attention easily drawn to my own request.
I considered leaving a letter for Celestia in the event that I should fail, but I wasn't going to fail, now was I? And what would I even really say? Harsh words about how she'd used the ghosts of countless past ponies as an excuse to ignore me? Angry I may be, but I certainly wasn't cruel enough to leave harsh words in a contingency letter. Similarly, I wasn't a nice enough pony to leave kind lies.
But the point was moot, because I would ascend.
Even after deciphering the entire Tome of the Trespassers, customizing the concepts for my own use proved gratifyingly difficult. After all, if it was easy, there would be more alicorns running around than just Celestia and Cadance — the latter of whom, I was now convinced, had gotten lucky with a Trespasser's attention rather than truly earning it. Cadance could barely even manage the simplest of two-dimensional spell matrices; fourth-dimensional ones would be well beyond her.
The ritual I required, the Dirge of Dreams, could be done with just three dimensions. If I wanted to do it right, though, I would use all four shown by the example diagrams of the Grimoire. Arcane power could work for the necessary glyphs, but I wasn't willing to assume that an Outsider wouldn't sweep that power away by accident. The Grimoire's garbled descriptions certainly indicated that they could do far worse without even trying.
Blood would be safer — well, for a given value thereof. Okay, no. Less safe than likely to succeed, really. Using the blood of another could, in addition to being just plain gross, attract the attention of those who saw me as fair game for harming others — or, worse, assumed that they and I were the same entity. Storing, preserving, and utilizing my own blood showed that I wanted my goal more than some transient risks to my health while also indicating that said goal was related to my own body or soul. Blood would be harder to sweep away compared to arcane power alone, while still carrying my own magic.
And so it was, on the night of the Summer Sun Celebration, that I stood in front of the mirror that Celestia had shown me a season ago. Labeled containers and canisters full of ground gem dust, various minerals, spell-preserved blood, and distilled cloud had been clustered at the edges of the room — more for convenience than any direct ritual purpose. Although I sincerely doubted that I would need my notes, I left some of the more vital tidbits tucked in one corner of the room, too. After all, cognitive scrambling was apparently one of the most common symptoms of Trespasser exposure, and I would prefer to be overprepared than left wanting.
Even for a master wizard such as myself, I couldn't just complete the ritual all at once. I slowly started to manifest it in discrete stages, sending the relevant glyphs skittering to and from normal space. Shapes formed from my own blood floated through the air around me, picking up speed and vanishing through thin air and solid stone as they rotated to scrape against the immaterial cloak hiding our world from view.
Within two minutes, I was surrounded by a four-dimensional sphere — a glome, as it was known — of glowing, glittering glyphs formed of my own blood mixed with the other reagents I'd brought along. Although establishing the ritual was physically, mentally, and magically taxing, I couldn't truly say it was difficult. Which was, of course, as it should be. All my studies had brought me to this point, and what kind of a wizard would I be if I couldn't break a complicated problem into manageable steps?
The tricky part was simultaneously pouring my own power into all parts of the glome once I'd set up the base matrix. The entire experience of being a pony demanded that we think in terms of three dimensions, not four. I would be missing the vast majority of the runes if I tried to empower in only three dimensions at a time, though.
The solution to that issue was another good reason to use my own blood: I simply focused on the parts of my body that were not currently part of my body, and poured magic into those without regard to where they truly were in relation to myself. The dome flickered, the accelerating glyphs glowing ever brighter with every passing second, until I was surrounded by a blur of nearly-indecipherable shapes spinning and twisting around me.
It wasn't difficult to tell when I was approaching the appropriate level of power expenditure. The world around me started to, for want of a better term, blur. Colors started to stretch into their surroundings, expanding to recolor nearby objects and flickering to adjacent wavelengths as though forgetting where and what they were supposed to be. Phantom winds carrying no air blew through the room, and would have completely disrupted my ritual had I not reinforced it against exactly that. Distant songs and screeches played at the edges of my hearing and provided the faintest hints of entities far further away from me than even the Moon, yet still close enough to squish me if they felt so inclined. The ground beneath me seemed to vibrate even though I could only feel it in my hooves.
Despite the danger and apparent complexity of the ritual, it could be summarized fairly easily: I was temporarily pulling reality apart around me, and broadcasting my own ambitions and hopes as a beacon to attract the attention of those who might want to help. From here, whether I succeeded or failed was largely due to random chance, my own ability to maintain said ritual, and how convincing of a case I made. The wish itself, my "case," was largely outlined in the ritual; however, emotions remained one of the most powerful magics in any reality. Focusing on my desires could only help.
Please, I thought, staring the increasingly blurry reflection showing my fate as an alicorn. I don't need to be more powerful than anypony else. I just want enough to be an alicorn, like Princess Celestia. That's barely a drop for you, right?
I thought I would need to maintain the spell for quite a while — hours, even — before anything arrived to so much as barter terms. I thought wrong, as it turned out. I shivered as my own reflection blurred and distorted, one eye seemingly growing larger than my entire body — and then, in a far more pony-like gesture than I expected any Trespasser would know, the giant eye winked at me.
Almost immediately, the emptiness of a draining magical reservoir was rather forcibly overshadowed by the warmth of it refilling seemingly of its own accord.
Eh? I balked, my horn momentarily flickering as I almost failed to maintain the ritual.
It somehow felt wrong, even uncomfortable, to maintain a spell pushing out mana even while feeling my reserves fill back up. Celestia hadn't really taught me any magic for draining other ponies; draining others fell solidly in the realm of dark magic, and the applications approved for medical use were far and few between. Borrowing power was another story, but this was quite distinctively not that. The power filling me felt too much like my own. Intellectually, I knew it had to be the Trespasser's, but any differences were beyond my ability to perceive them.
I reflexively flinched as a door slammed open behind me. Honestly, it was more the real vibrations that tipped me off rather than the sound; with reality as distorted as it was, the sound was closer to a boom rather than a bang.
"Sunset," came Celestia's distorted voice, her eyes widened to instinctively horrifying levels by the warped mirror image. "What are you doing?"
I raised one hoof and experimentally shook it. No resonance. The warm power kept filling my body from the hooves up, as it was supposed to, and the Trespasser hadn't even demanded any services in return. Admittedly, there was nothing stopping Them from demanding services afterward, but just the fact that They were gradually feeding me rather than throwing a burst of raw power spoke well of Them.
I expected I would be perfectly fine to move so long as I stayed within the ritual glome. Fourth-dimensional shape or not, its boundaries were easily tracked by the two-dimensional ritual circle roughly indicating the edges of its circumference. Considering I didn't yet have wings or an earth pony's strength, "within the circle" was close enough. I couldn't yet jump that high if I tried.
Safety checks completed, I indulged in a prancing one-eighty turn away from the mirror to giddily grin at Celestia. The moment I finished the motion, I regretted it, stopping and swaying in place whilst blinking rapidly. Apparently, collecting so much of my own blood over a short period of time may not have been as safe as I'd expected. Still! I was otherwise fine so far! Celestia didn't seem half as calm, though, with eyes and wings both splayed as wide as they could go.
"I deciphered the Grimoire just like you wanted, Princess! Or–" I hesitated. "Er, actually, which name do you prefer for it? I stopped translating when I figured I'd gotten the general gist at seven synonyms–"
"Is that blood, Sunset?" Celestia interrupted, eyes trying ineffectually to follow different parts of the glome as parts of its rotating shape passed through the meagre three-dimensional space that we could easily perceive.
"Oh, it's all mine, don't worry," I reassured her. "I know that's technically supposed to be riskier, but it was one of the few ways the Tome mentioned that would improve my odds of attracting somepony—er, somebeing I guess, friendly. I mean, an apathetic Trespasser annoyed at me would kill me just as dead as any truly hostile predator, right? And I think it worked!"
"Sunset," Celestia said, voice strained. "Please tell me this is something you can still stop. I don't know just what you're doing, but few spells involving blood ever end well for anypony involved."
It was a good thing that the ritual was almost automatic at this point, because the jarring admission might have otherwise shattered my concentration. As it stood, all I had to do was keep feeding it a steady stream of power, and that didn't really require any concentration at all. No harder than standard telekinesis, honestly, and I could literally do that in my sleep.
"Princess?" I asked uncertainly, clarity of purpose wavering for the first time in months. "It doesn't need blood, I simply used that since it would be more stable than raw mana. It's just the, er — 'Dirge of the Dreaming?' 'Call of the Corporeal?' Again, I don't know how many translations you remember off the top of your head, I know it's probably literally been an age since you last had to read it–"
"Sunset," Celestia interrupted, finally turning her attention from the ritual to my own form. "You keep assuming I know anything about what you're doing. I honestly don't understand what you're talking about, and the last two times I saw anything like this, it was right before the pony inside exploded.Please stop. We can still talk about this."
I stared at her, uncomprehending, while my brain tried to grapple with her words. What did she mean, she didn't know? She should have seen this already!
"I'm—hopefully becoming an alicorn?"
The word alicorn reverberated oddly in the space around us, the term expanding in a way that had become strangely familiar to me through my studies of the Trespassers' Tome: A goddess, a symbol, trusted, loved, family, responsible, respected, powerful, worthy, known…
Too many emotions played across Celestia's features for me to decipher, especially with their surroundings frequently forgetting what they were supposed to be. For goodness sake, even Celestia herself looked strangely pink and I knew very well that wasn't right at all.
"Oh," came a voice akin to the cracking of breaking ice. "You don't just want to be stronger. You want to be like her. How adorable!"
Celestia's features settled back on alarm and horror as her dancing eyes finally fixed on something behind me.
"My dearest student, if you can still stop, do it right now."
My reflexive turning to follow her gaze felt slow and sluggish, like I was trying to push my way through a cloud mattress rather than thin air. By the time the Trespasser started speaking again, I'd only just barely glimpsed the edge of the mirror — and the parody of an orange hoof that stretched out from it, repeatedly tapping at the stone floor like it was having trouble with its balance. Except, in this case, it seemed to be more of an issue of acknowledging the stone as a solid object at all rather than just passing right through it.
A gradual sinking in my chest told me that I might have made a terrible mistake after all. To stop now, though, when I'd thought I was so close…
"Oh, I'm afraid it's much too late for that," said the Trespasser, its voice now akin to a combination between myself and Celestia if we were both merponies.
I finally finished turning, and beheld what could charitably be called my own form pulling itself out of the mirror. Except, the proportions were completely wrong in a way that couldn't just be explained by it being an alicorn, and kept changing with every passing second. Maybe It would start to resemble a real pony in a minute or two, but for the moment, It more closely resembled a macabre theater's prop monster built from cloth and sticks imitating flesh stretched over bone. Its eyes weren't even properly blinking or looking at us!
"I mean that literally. Hello there, my cute little summoner!" greeted the Trespasser, muzzle spreading wide in a parody of a smile. "And you're a quadruped, no less! I haven't been called by quadrupeds in eons!"
There was a distorted sound that might have been a call from Celestia. All I could make out was the desperate tone, though; everything else might have been said from the far side of an obnoxiously echoing cave system.
"Oh, calm down, I'm not going to harm her," said the Trespasser, and I did not like the choice of emphasis. "Permanently." Or that one. "You, however — I'm afraid I do need a template if she's going to survive having her wish granted. You should recover before too long, though! You seem sturdy enough."
Long, by a Trespasser's reckoning, was seldom the definition used by anypony else. I cut power to the spell, feeling as though my heart was being torn from my chest as I did so. Not because of ritual feedback, but simply because it felt like giving up. There wouldn't be any point in becoming an alicorn if it meant Celestia would be injured in the process, though. I might be mad at her, but this was not what I'd had in mind! I'd thought the cost of the ritual would be needing to complete a difficult quest for a Trespasser's petty entertainment every so often, not this!
Like the Trespasser had said, though, it seemed it truly was too late for that. The beacon of blood kept spinning around me, and the Trespasser finished pulling itself from the mirror without so much as acknowledging my attempt to halt the ritual. It still looked as though someone had combined a preying mantis and a me-shaped alicorn, but at least it was becoming more consistent with the proportions.
It reached out one long, spindly hoof toward my muzzle, the limb extending until it was longer than the entire rest of its body–
"Try to relax."
–and my world exploded with the burning pain of far, far more magic than my body was built to handle.
It had been a mistake for Princess Celestia to show Starswirl's Mirror to her personal student, Sunset Shimmer, but it took time for Celestia to fully grasp the sheer depths of her error. Celestia had thought that Sunset would see herself with friends or possibly even a coltfriend. After all, Celestia saw Luna returned to her in the mirror, and practically everypony else Celestia had shown it to had mentioned seeing family members who might not even be family yet. With Sunset an orphan, it seemed reasonable that the mirror would instead show her surrounded by friends who valued her for whom she was, rather than as a tool to attract Celestia's attention.
That the mirror instead apparently showed Sunset as an alicorn princess was a jarring revelation, and not one that Celestia enjoyed in the slightest. Celestia couldn't ascend other ponies even if she wanted to, and even coming close to the truth so often did more harm than good. A sufficient expression of their Special Talent and Harmony that aided both themselves and others, enhanced by suitable concentrations of magic and cresting emotions, was not something that could be forced. Trying to force ascension merely tore ponies apart as they held themselves to impossible standards in dangerous, high-magic environments or around volatile artifacts.
Sunset had not taken Celestia's refusal well, and her increasingly concerning temper and arrogance had flared brighter with every passing day. Sunset seemed to have fixated on the idea that the mirror showed her destiny, and Celestia could no longer definitively say that wasn't true. Not after the mirror defied Celestia's expectations so dramatically.
Celestia did know very well that Sunset wasn't anywhere close to being ready for alicornhood yet, though. Not when she viewed other ponies like they were wastes of her time. Trying to get that across to Sunset had proved to be an exercise in futility, however, and only made the problem worse as Sunset viewed Celestia as opponent rather than mentor.
For a few weeks, Celestia had been worried that she would need to draw the line by temporarily banishing Sunset from the castle. Celestia would not, could not, give Sunset what she sought, and Sunset's reputation with the general public was poor enough as it is. Let her dig much deeper in her self-entitled rage and the damage might well be irreversible. Removal would further damage that reputation in the short term, but should Sunset mend her behavior, public forgiveness would be easily provided. Certainly far more easily than the consequences of everypony thinking that Sunset could get away with anything by virtue of her position.
When one of the librarians reported Sunset sneaking into the forbidden section of Celestia's library, she had feared the worst. But the librarian had mentioned Sunset returning empty-hooved each time across a multiple day period, and after apparently verifying that even the forbidden section didn't contain what she wanted — well, the aftermath of that was almost worse than the rage and arrogance.
There was no better way to describe it than Sunset shutting down. She emerged from her chambers for meals, but always brought a book along and provided single-sentence answers to queries, if those queries were acknowledged at all. Initially the breakfast books were on illusion magic, but they rapidly transitioned to enchantments and magic in general. All subjects that she would normally happily show the results of to Celestia, usually destructively and without any regard for the effort that craftsponies had once put into creating her targets.
Celestia soon wondered if she had been too harsh in her alicorn-related rebukes. Speculation soon turned to certainty as Sunset grew worse, not better. If it weren't for quiet — and seemingly unnoticed — gifts of enchanted, automatic brushes from Cadance, then Sunset's mane and tail might well have acquired living residents before too long.
Sunset didn't try to brag about whatever new tricks she had learned, didn't practice her spells at the table to blatantly taunt Cadance, and didn't even notice when her favorite meals were placed before her. Food had become fuel, with Celestia and Cadance just shapes who occasionally spoke at her rather than ponies to be interacted with. For Harmony's sake, Sunset didn't even snub Cadance anymore! The Alicorn of Love had — however unhealthily — apparently started to view those jabs as oddly enjoyable openings to verbal sparring, with their absence something to be mourned.
For a while, Celestia almost hoped that Sunset had been cursed. The behavior was certainly eerily familiar to some of Discord's victims prior to his petrification: no joy, no friendship, and only completing the bare minimum necessary to keep herself alive and hygienic. No such luck. A discreet scan hadn't turned up any trace of dark or chaos magic to speak of, and without that, no easy fix.
Sunset didn't even accept offers of one-on-one tutoring from Celestia anymore, something she'd always jumped at in the past. In recent years, attempts at lessons often turned into bitter arguments, but those mishaps hadn't stopped Sunset from asking for more lessons than Celestia had the time to provide. The best Celestia could do — used to be able to do — was to ensure that Sunset was pointed in the right direction.
Celestia's niggling, uncharitable suspicion that Sunset's behavior might be a manipulative act came and went as the weeks dragged on with no signs of improvement. The subjects of the books that Sunset brought to the table grew ever more concerning, too. Techniques to harden spells against unforgiving conditions in hostile environments. Teleportation and magical transportation. Personal shielding. Basic first aid and healing spells. Wilderness survival.
Her chosen study materials screamed of a mare who thought that those around her had nothing left to offer, and who intended to flee from civilization altogether. Worse still, Sunset's entire allowance had apparently begun to go not toward new books and magical reagents for various projects, but toward gemstones and the occasional cheap rock. Excluding the rocks that were blatantly meant to deflect suspicion, Sunset was essentially stockpiling lightweight valuables worth more than gold bits on a per-pound basis, or perhaps even food that she might trade with dragons.
Every one of Celestia's attempts to reach out were rejected, and even Cadance's own tentative peace offerings were merely ignored. A few months ago, any attempt at interaction by Cadance would have provoked at the least petty sniping, if not a full-fledged tirade of verbal abuse. Both Celestia and Cadance agreed that the silence was worse. Sunset might no longer be a fire that burned everypony else around her, but was it truly better for that fire to have gone out altogether?
Something needed to be done. But what could they do, when every attempt at an outstretched hoof received the same blank gaze before Sunset fled back to her chambers?
Princess Celestia seldom felt the weight of her past mistakes so harshly as on the day of the annual Summer Sun Celebration, the longest day of any given year. On good years, the celebrations of her beloved subjects could distract her, however briefly, from the painful reminder of what Celestia had done to her own sister. A thousand years of exile, longer than any single civilization had lasted before Equestria, and Celestia was supposed to think that just? No. Celestia had misused the Elements of Harmony, and this punishment was as much as for her as Luna.
This was not one of the good years. Sunset's ongoing despair would, by itself, have been enough to ensure that Celestia's smiling mask remained a mask. Worse was the knowledge that Luna might have been able to delve into Sunset's nightmares and help better than Celestia could. Unfortunately, it would be another twelve years before Nightmare Moon's freedom and possible takeover of Equestria. The pony whom Celestia had hoped would marshal the Elements of Harmony appeared to have succumbed to despair, and even before then, had stubbornly refused to make any friends whatsoever. Celestia wasn't quite willing to give up on her plans for Sunset just yet, but the situation was quite dire.
Some of that was on Celestia, she would admit. Perhaps even all of it. Celestia had insisted that Sunset make friends, but those around Sunset were either technically subordinate to her, nobles who viewed her as a stepping stone, or Cadance. What Sunset's issue with Cadance was, Celestia still didn't understand, but there was certainly an issue there that would not simply mend itself. It couldn't be Cadance's relative inexperience with magic, as Sunset kept claiming; Sunset had tutored ponies at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, if not without complaint, then without any major issues. None of the students she tutored were verbally abused, at least; they were treated cooly, but not coldly.
Despite the ongoing reminders of her failures, Celestia kept her composure and continued greeting ponies throughout the longest day of the year and well into the night. Las Pegasus could have had the honor of hosting the Summer Sun Celebration this year, but the inhabitants would never know that fact; Canterlot was always a good fall-back option, and with Sunset in her current state, there was absolutely no way that Celestia would be bringing her to another city or leaving her alone in Canterlot. In either case, Sunset might very well disappear, never to be seen again.
Celestia still had a good four hours until sunrise when a ripple of magic set Celestia's body aching all the way from her hooves to her horn. Celestia's wide eyes immediately jerked up to the Mare in the Moon, but the symbol of Nightmare Moon's imprisonment was as present and intact as ever.
It had almost felt like Sunset's magic, but also — not. Like something was interfering.
Like something was wrong with Sunset.
"Please remain calm," was all the delay Celestia allowed herself before teleporting to the air above Canterlot Castle.
Were three words enough to prevent a crowd of ponies from panicking? Most likely not. But that pulse of mana promised a situation for which every second mattered, and frankly, Celestia sometimes felt that the newer generations could do with a bit more panic in their lives. Honestly, the centuries of peace had made the bulk of them a bit soft.
Celestia flicked her wings behind her to shove herself through the wards that simply prevented outsiders from popping inside, and once through, teleported the rest of the way to Sunset's chambers. Her empty chambers, as it turned out. The little stashes of gemstones Sunset thought Celestia didn't know about, the preserving water canisters that she'd quietly requisitioned, Sunset's saddlebags—they were, all of them, gone.
But that didn't explain the pulse, or the gradual rise of all the fur on her body. The sensation was somewhat similar to when Celestia had last been in Cloudsdale's Weather Factory during hurricane manufacturing, but this was so very much worse.
Celestia lit her horn and gathered the power for another teleport — and hesitated, letting the half-formed spell matrix harmlessly fizzle out. Her mind might scream that time was of the essence, but her magic screamed that teleporting would be a grave mistake.
Celestia compromised with personal enhancements of the kind she hadn't used in centuries, and tore her way out of Sunset's rooms in pursuit of a tracking spell left on Sunset's saddlebags. The shattered doors could be replaced later. Lives could not.
No matter how horrible the last few months had been, what Celestia soon found was so much worse. Sunset stood before Starswirl's awful mirror at the center of a cloud of ominous red letters, ones which flickered in and out of view like they were trying to avoid Celestia's notice. And Sunset was happy, even ecstatic, for the first time in months. There was no guilt at getting caught, no fear that Celestia might stop her — which, to be fair, Sunset wasn't wrong about. The last time she'd tried to forcibly stop such an alien ritual, it had led to the horrific death of the pony attempting it. The time before that, they'd died without any interference. There was no good answer.
No matter what Sunset seemed to think, Celestia neither knew what she was looking at, nor why Sunset thought she would approve. She certainly hadn't somehow wanted for her student to do anything with any ritual related to blood.
Hearing that all the blood had been Sunset's wasn't even remotely reassuring, and if Sunset had been in her right mind, she should have known that. Or perhaps not. Sunset had always been willing to recklessly throw herself at problems without regard for her own safety; it was one of the recurring reasons she argued with Celestia.
Either way, watching Sunset's expectant, ecstatic glee while the world itself screamed and an abomination dragged its way out of that wretched mirror? Celestia hadn't felt so horrified since the night that she'd been forced to fight and banish her own sister. Considering the level of magic on display here, this night might even join that one in Celestia's nightmares — pun not intended, and she loathed that one had been made at all.
That Sunset thought this was how she was supposed to become an alicorn, that she somehow thought Celestia was trying to encourage this ritual of hers? That, more than anything else, told Celestia that she had completely failed in her duties as a teacher. The otherworldly echoes of the word "alicorn" only added barbs to that arrow: loved, acknowledged, worthy, noticed, appreciated, family...
Seeing Sunset's ears flatten with fear when she finally saw the abomination was a small comfort, but at least it was a comfort. It meant Sunset wasn't so far gone as to think that its presence was a good thing.
"Get away frommy student," Celestia snarled, her words echoing so badly that she could barely even understand her own words. "Sunset, please! Get behind me!"
The thing gave her a false smile of missized teeth. It wasn't even a pony's smile — well, outside the 'bat-pony' thestrals, at least. Nopony else ate meat, and even thestrals largely confined themselves to unintelligent insects these days.
"Oh, calm down, I'm not going to harm her. Permanently." said the abomination, its pretend innocence grating at Celestia's last nerve. "You, however–"
This, despite the rest of the situation, was strangely familiar ground. Being threatened by monsters wasn't only old ground for her, but so old that it preceded Celestia's immortality.
"I'm afraid I do need a template if she's going to survive having her wish granted."
Celestia had to pause and reassess at that. Not a threat, then, exactly. Having her wish granted, it said. Like becoming an alicorn was something that this thing could grant, rather than the attempt being liable to kill Sunset altogether. Whatever this monster was, it was not aligned with Harmony by any stretch of the imagination. Becoming an alicorn wasn't just a matter of raw power, but of Harmony between all three major tribes of ponykind. It couldn't be done by any one pony alone, or even any one thing.
"You should recover before too long, though! You seem sturdy enough."
Despite the thing's words, feeling something unseen abruptly tear its way through Celestia's magic wasn't the truly painful part. As it said, Celestia was sturdy; the attack staggered her for a moment, but aside from brief disorientation and the disruption of her personal enhancement spells, Celestia honestly hadn't been properly injured by the attack. She hadn't even been magically drained, or if she had, then not by enough to notice.
No. The truly painful part was watching the mirror monster poke Sunset, and seeing her student promptly collapse into a trembling, glowing pile on the floor, her mouth open in a silent scream. Cyan light didn't only pour from Sunset's eyes, mouth, and horn like might be seen in a normal magical surge, but also the entire rest of her body.
As Celestia had expected and feared, what the thing had done wasn't an alicorn's ascension by any stretch of the imagination. An alicorn's ascension was not, could never be,painful.
With her student possibly burning up before her, Celestia lost the one reason not to simply start blasting. So, she did. A ray of fire burst from her horn and tore its way through the room, and although it curved and twisted rather than going in a straight line, that was only a setback. Adjusting her targeting to compensate was the work of a moment, and within two seconds, the white ray struck the mirror monster.
Struck, and brushed past without any sign of harm. Honestly, Celestia wasn't too surprised, but it was still infuriating. She needed this thing out of the way right now so that she could figure out how to safely dismantle the ritual and extract Sunset for medical care. Simply teleporting Sunset to safety felt like it would be a mistake, and given how space seemed to be misbehaving, Celestia was inclined to trust those instincts.
"I don't want to be insulting," the thing said with Sunset's voice, "but she's already done a great job making herself immune to fire. Also, you are well on your way to violating hospitality."
It took an effort of will not to release the follow-up bolts of ice and lightning now waiting at the tip of Celestia's horn. Hospitality was a charged word that meant different things to different cultures, but it almost universally at least meant mutually refraining from hostile actions. If the monster didn't yet consider its actions hostile, Celestia didn't want to give it an excuse to do worse.
"Explain."
"You're certainly a rude one," the thing huffed. "Still, she did want to be closer to you, so I suppose it would be cruel to issue a proper rebuke."
The now stably alicorn-shaped monster gestured at Sunset's glowing, trembling, and now winged form, still trapped within that horrible sphere of bloody runes. Perhaps the gesture was intended to be a standard hoof-wave, but given the way the monster's limb twisted bonelessly like the tentacle of a sea monster, nobody sane would truly believe the gesture had been performed properly.
"I have been invited, you see, and it is terribly impolite to rescind an invitation. I actually think it might hurt you if you keep trying even should I stay my hand—oh, hoof, stay my hoof! Violations of Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, and Generosity, all in one go? Much worse things than me will notice that, and I'm a fairly tiny grazer as far as we 'Outsiders' go. Believe me, you don't want their attention."
Celestia very, very reluctantly let her prepared attack fade. If Sunset's glow hadn't vastly dimmed and left her temporarily-winged form trembling on the floor, Celestia might not have managed to even halfway control her temper. With the immediate issue seemingly decreasing in intensity by the moment, however, she could acknowledge that blasting the monster might truly do more harm than good. Not necessarily because Celestia might somehow attract worse monsters, but because if the thing had tried to force an ascension, any further attempts at violence might only worsen Sunset's condition.
"In that case," Celestia forced through gritted teeth. "Please undo whatever you've done to my student. There is a proper way of fulfilling her 'wish,' and this attempt is almost certainly anathema to that. You cannot brute force an alicorn ascension, especially not if you're trying to copy me! Sunset's catalyst must be unique to her. Otherwise, she'll be nothing more than an unstable imitation that will revert to normal or die in short order."
The thing glanced between Celestia and Sunset, its stolen eyes unblinking.
"I want to say that I'm more skilled than that…"
The monster reached through the runes of blood, passing through every one without interaction, and tapped Sunset's head. Immediately, the lingering glow vanished and left Sunset merely trembling on the stone floor.
Celestia almost collapsed from mingled surprise and sheer relief. She hadn't at all expected asking nicely to work. Sunset was clearly still hurt, and still possessed temporary wings. However, without foreign magic killing her from the inside out, at least the problem wouldn't get worse.
"…but Harmony being integral to the process would explain why that was taking so long," the monster admitted. "Please do give me some credit, though."
It was going to say more, Celestia was sure, but she took the moment's pause between sentences as an excuse to interrupt.
"Thank you. Now, is there any way you can safely halt what she did so that I can take her for medical attention? I am worried you may have done more damage than you know."
The monster's muzzle twitched in what might have been annoyance or anger. This time, it even managed to blink. Seeing it imitate Sunset in such a way was never going to get less horrible, Celestia was sure.
"Oh, calm down, her body is malleable and her soul is fine. Better than when I started, even. I'm sure I could've permanently ascended her if we were friends!"
Celestia had to seriously consider that. Technically, the mirror monster might not even be wrong. Celestia's bonds with Luna, and vice-versa, had been enough to fulfill the necessary Harmonic requirements for their own ascensions. If Sunset had somehow become genuine, healthy, mutual best friends with this monster — well, it might actually have counted, certainly. Weirder things had happened.
Despite its words, the mirror monster did move to stand directly inside one edge of Sunset's ritual. Rather than the bloody letters passing through it as they did every time before, they instead vanished into the fake-Sunset's fur and did not emerge again.
"But that does mean her wish isn't fulfilled," said the monster, its features shifting into an imitation of Sunset's ecstatic smile from minutes before. "And now I have an even better excuse for leaving this part of me around. Service left uncompleted and uncompensated, you see."
Oh, absolutely not.
"An incomplete and accidental agreement confers no obligation on either party, and is therefore very much not an excuse for you to continue intruding on Sunset's life."
"…I applaud the attempt," the monster replied evenly, "but no. There was nothing accidental about her call. I did get her part of the way there, too; finishing the job will just take a while. And technically, the specifics of your contract law don't strictly bind me. Manners and agreements are a useful means of establishing expectations of behavior that will let me interact with corporeals without making you scream in hate or fear. They're not actually immutable."
The monster stepped to clear out another part of the rotating ritual, and waved at Sunset with one hoof. Already, Celestia could see the improvement in the room; colors still weren't acting quite right, but at least the room no longer seemed as though it was being viewed through a half-broken magnifying glass.
"Your little filly wanted to be like you so badly that she was willing to call out to the dark and hope the right monster gave her gifts. She's lucky I was around to hear — we aren't called Trespassers because we're aspects of Kindness, understand? I'm not quite the best thing she could have attracted the attention of, but I'm close to it. Unlike most of us, I happen to like corporeals."
Colors in the surrounding area gradually stopped bleeding into each other, and the monster moved to the next section of the odd globe.
The ruler in Celestia told her that whatever Sunset had gotten herself into, it was Sunset's own mess. Celestia involving herself beyond the minimum necessary for cleanup might well jeopardize the well-being of countless ponies by virtue of Celestia not being around to help. Celestia may have ensured that there were backup copies of the old rituals used by tribal-era unicorns to raise the Sun and Moon, so a theoretical absence wouldn't lead to the deaths of absolutely everypony, but leaving Equestria without its immortal ruler would still do tremendous damage.
The teacher side of Celestia said that this entire mess was Celestia's fault for not doing a better job. If she hadn't shown Sunset that mirror, had realized what her pupil was planning at any point, had more clearly communicated that this ritual was in no way what she wanted...
With Sunset left on the floor, trembling in pain even while unconscious, it wasn't hard for the teacher to win that particular internal argument.
"As her teacher, I am willing to negotiate terms and possibly accept the cost in her place."
The monster froze. A moment later, its eyes and mouth moved to the side of its head so that it could smile at Celestia even while continuing to absorb the ritual's bloody runes. If it weren't for Celestia's experience with Discord, she might have found the visible misshaping of the Sunset-like form to be horrific. Prior exposure converted it to easily hidden discomfort, and even then, Celestia's discomfort was primarily from unpleasant memories rather than from the sight itself.
"Aww, you do love her! Given how lonely she is, I had to wonder."
Celestia flinched. She had tried! Sunset only ever acknowledged other ponies as ponies when they had something she wanted, or when she'd been explicitly assigned to interact with them. Lately, even Celestia's offers of interaction had been dully rejected at every turn.
"I deciphered the Grimoire just like you wanted, Princess!" Celestia remembered, and shuddered.
How much of Sunset's recent 'despair' was actually despair, rather than believing she was doing what Celestia wanted by focusing on a single project to the exclusion of all else? Celestia had thought that her recent book choices were precursors to fleeing Equestria, but looking at what Sunset had done to the very world? She might have been researching how to survive the effects of her own spell.
"But you don't need to worry," the monster continued after a few seconds. "In this case, my cost is directly connected to the service I'm to provide. I enjoy stories, you see, and this one is shaping up to be delightful. My price is as follows: this part of me is to stay in your world until Sunset Shimmer, my summoner and anchor, dies permanently. I define permanent death as the demise of her mind or soul, not her body. That, I will restore to a prime state should it be destroyed or sufficiently damaged, including due to age."
Celestia hesitated. She had been thinking of this 'Trespasser' as a monster, and it certainly looked the part. If it simply wished to observe, however, then Celestia couldn't even say it was the only one. A fair number of Equestrian noblemares enjoyed peering at the lives of commoners from a distance, occasionally interfering for their own entertainment but otherwise keeping to themselves. Some charitable causes had even been founded for similar reasons. So long as they helped rather than harmed, Celestia saw no sufficient reason to tell anypony that their motives were less sincere than one might expect.
Similarly, if Celestia turned her nose up at friendship every time a creature appeared repulsive to her, then Equestria would never have reached its current heights of peace and prosperity. Just because somepony—someone looked different did not mean there was something wrong with them.
On a more selfish level, the creature was casually offering immortality to Sunset even should she fail to become a proper alicorn. Given its ability to warp flesh and reality's fabric to suit its whims, Celestia would not be outstandingly surprised if it could deliver. Having even one more friend around who would not die within two centuries would be a gift beyond measure.
"So long as you do not harm anypony during your stay, I do not find the general terms objectionable. Specifics will need to wait until after Sunset receives medical attention."
The abomin—the creature's eyes and mouth rolled back to their proper places on its imitation of Sunset's form.
"Again, her body is malleable," said the creature. "She doesn't need 'medical attention.' I'm also not negotiating with you, teacher or not. She's the one who summoned me."
"Forgive me for harboring doubts when you just tried to brute-force her into becoming an alicorn," Celestia said evenly. "And even if Sunset summoned you, you are asking to stay in my diarchy. I cannot trust that Sunset will be able to notice every loophole you might wish to leave in an agreement."
"…You really don't trust me at all, huh?" said the creature with Sunset's form, unknowingly stabbing Celestia in the heart by virtue of the shape saying it.
The last few glyphs vanished into the monster's body, and the world finished returning to normal. Celestia wasted no time before levitating Sunset atop her back and bolting from the room at speed. Strange mirror creatures with dubious motives could wait until after Celestia was certain that Sunset would recover.
Awareness arrived in fits and starts. It probably didn't help that my everything hurt, and every time I started to wake up just a little, the pain convinced me to try to go back to sleep. Magical exhaustion sucked.
Unfortunately for me, I could only sleep for so long before consciousness started pounding on my head and demanding rent. I wordlessly grumbled and tried to burrow deeper into the unusually warm blankets around me. Reality could wait until after I had recovered some more.
Or maybe not. Now that I could string more than a few thoughts together, it quickly became clear that I was far too warm, both inside and out, for me to truly be magically exhausted. If anything, I had more magic than was normal for me. If my symptoms didn't match the reality, then why...
The ritual!
If my eyes weren't currently heavier than the mountain Canterlot was built upon, they might have shot open. As it stood, I could only glimpse the briefest flickers of light before my fluttering eyes firmly pressed themselves shut again. The rest of my body was no easier to move.
Dismay struck moments later. If nothing else, I could confirm that there was too much warmth and pressure against one side for me to actually have wings now. Despite managing to call upon a surprisingly friendly Trespasser and possibly even getting Princess Celestia hurt, I still wasn't an alicorn, just a stronger unicorn. What was the point of having more unicorn magic? I had already been the most powerful unicorn alive, and that much wasn't enough for Celestia.
Except — winged or not, parts of my magical reservoir did feel rather strange. I warily stirred my own mana and flinched as even that much was enough to irritate practically the entirety of my thaumic nervous system.
Definitely no practicing magic for a while. Ugh. No-magic recovery periods are the worst.
Still, it did confirm that some of my magic was behaving differently from the rest. Some of it floated and skipped around, and some stubbornly stood its ground. I didn't have nearly as much of either as I did normal unicorn magic, but having any magic that I couldn't recognize was still a step up.
I wasn't an alicorn yet, I knew that much. But being able to practice with both pegasus and earth pony magic, if indeed that was what I felt, would still place me head and shoulders above any court mage Celestia had harbored in the past. That finally had to be good enough to fulfill Celestia's expectations, didn't it? It might have brought me closer to a real ascension, too.
"Please stop. We can still talk about this," came my memories of Celestia's voice, and I shuddered.
Or maybe I failed again, chasing an idea that wasn't what she wanted at all, and risked my life for no good reason.
I had been so sure, too! Was still more than half sure! Maybe Celestia's first Outsider exposure had scoured the knowledge of her ritual from her brain, and my own take on it was too different for her to recognize it offhoof. All the cryptic hints matched up, even the weakest Trespassers were more than powerful enough to ascend somepony, Celestia's shifting behavior was the perfect reinforcement to keep me going, and–
My speculation was interrupted by pressure and motion, and I suddenly had much more urgent things to think about. My warm blanket was not, in fact, imbued with a self-heating enchantment like I had expected. Feeling giant wings drag me closer to their owner wasn't exactly a sensation I could mistake for anything else.
The last time Celestia had let me use her wings as blankets was when I was still a preteen. First I'd had a ridiculous phase where I decided that I was too old for cuddling even after nightmares, not realizing that out of sight was the same thing as being forgotten. Less non-lesson time spent together meant less of an inclination to provide new lessons at all. By the time I'd made the association and realized what I'd passed up, Cadance had come along and rendered the point moot. After all, Celestia had somepony allegedly better than me to dote on by then.
…Please don't tell me the Trespasser de-aged me.
No, no, I was being ridiculous. I felt confident that I remained the same size as I had always been — which was, in fact, part of the problem. Celestia had simply — I didn't know. Finally decided I was worth acknowledging again? I had assumed that alicornhood would be necessary for that, but ripping aside the fabric of reality to call a Trespasser had to be plenty impressive all on its own, right?
Or maybe I was an alicorn now, just one in the early stages. It wasn't as though the physiology of alicorns was well-studied or understood; for all I knew, I might be in some sort of fledgling state where all I had to do was sufficiently exercise my new magic to complete the process. Only Celestia knew, and she wasn't likely to tell me even if I asked directly.
"Should she not have awakened by now?" came my own bucking voice, and I stiffened.
Celestia's wing once again pressed me further into her bulk, but given her following words, I suspected it was more of a reflex than anything conscious.
"Perhaps she would have," Celestia said with false sweetness, "if she was not anesthetized. Or recovering from both magical overload and blood loss."
"Hey. She was missing parts when I got here, okay? And I wasn't wrong, she didn't really need medical attention."
"Voice."
"…I will acknowledge you are being fair," the Trespasser grudgingly admitted. "I did make a mistake by assuming her state upon my arrival was how she was supposed to be."
"Thank you. Now, is there something wrong with the books I offered you? I would have expected you to grow bored of watching Sunset by now."
Well, that took a sudden swerve for the creepy. No wonder Celestia was finally willing to cuddle again; if there was one thing that got Celestia's hackles up, it was possible threats to her ponies. Sheltering me under her wing was a rather blunt statement, but if the Trespasser was truly watching me sleep, it might be necessary.
I couldn't help but feel disappointed that issuing that statement might be the only reason she was bothering to acknowledge me again. The Trespasser wouldn't be here forever, and I did not want all my efforts to be for nothing. I still had so much left to learn when Celestia bothered to let me.
"You're expecting me to look at dead matter when I have perfectly good living corporeals to keep me occupied? I'm actually quite enjoying myself. Sleeping or not, she isn't exactly static. Neither are you! There are all these little muscles you ponies use all the time just to keep yourselves alive, and those muscles are comprised of smaller parts, and there are even smaller components of them. Really, it's fascinating to watch corporeal components all work in concert. Doesn't it bother you that you're filled with smaller organisms and so many semi-independent systems that you don't consciously control?"
I couldn't decide if that was less creepy than simply waiting for me to do something interesting. At least I seemed to have attracted one of the more easily entertained Trespassers out there, if something as simple as breathing could keep her — keep Them happy.
Strangely enough, the realization that the Trespasser was present and safely entertained was enough to make it hard to think all over again. I barely even caught Celestia's next words rather than lapsing into sleep.
"I—no, I cannot say that is something I ever dedicated much thought to," Celestia said slowly, possibly echoing my own thoughts. "I will keep your interests in mind. In the long term, should I assume that pets would be more entertaining to you than books?"
"Oh, good thought! Novel creatures would keep me entertained for at least a little while, it's true — except maybe worms. There's only so many ways to arrange organisms made mostly from simple axons before they get boring, and I doubt your world's take on them is going to be much different."
"Removing worms from the list would not be a hardship."
My grip on consciousness slipped, sabotaged by an increasingly inane topic, and I slowly sank back into the oblivion of sedative-assisted slumber.
By the time I next awoke, my alicorn-sized pillow had vanished and left me to the tender mercy of ordinary hospital blankets. As I'd thought, it was more important for Celestia to deliver a warning to the Trespasser than to actually be present when I awoke. I supposed it was nice while it lasted, but I couldn't help but feel bitter about the departure. Celestia's reign had lasted for over a thousand years at this point, and she was still this busy? Somepony really needed to step back and force her subjects to learn how to clean up their own messes.
Every part of my body still ached, but it at least it was much reduced compared to last time. My new earth pony magic might be responsible for some of that; I could vaguely remember it originally being in a clump rather than distributed throughout my body. Still, if I had to guess based on similar experience with magical exhaustion, it might be a whole week before I was able to safely use magic again. Probably far longer until I'd regained my previous level of control, too. Months? Most of a year?
My eyes slowly inched open and left me inside the familiar, warded royal room at the Royal Canterlot Hospital of the Two Sisters. Light and birdsong streamed in from the outside, but no intrusive pegasus reporters lurked in wait; I'd long since put up privacy wards to obfuscate the interior of what was, by virtue of Celestia never getting sick or injured, effectively my room. Reporters had still tried to poke their muzzles in, because some ponies really couldn't take a hint, so I'd warded the rest of the floor for good measure. They'd stopped trying after that.
Seeing my own smiling, albeit winged, form observe my sleeping self from a nearby cushion was a bit of a shock, and I might have jumped out of bed if I could move anything beyond my neck. I would have expected the Trespasser to assume a different shape by now. I certainly hoped They hadn't trotted over like that; Canterlot's rumor mill would have burst into flames the moment they saw an apparent alicorn-me. I'd rather they refrain until rumors of my ascension were actually right.
Still, I couldn't say the Outsider was unwelcome. I had, after all, been the one to invite Them, and They had yet to deliver what I'd asked for. Maybe They were waiting for me to wake so we could complete a proper bargain. The concept of 'half on order, half on completion' was not one that I expected Outsiders to be aware of, but They might have learned an eccentric patchwork of mostly-dated knowledge from prior summonings.
No, the unwelcome pony sat at the foot of my hospital bed. Cadance had her muzzle buried in what, going by the cover, I had to guess was some form of third-rate romance book. Focused on worthless, fleeting entertainment instead of self-improvement, as usual.
Unfortunately for the both of us, Cadance seemed to realize that I was awake at almost the same time as I realized she was present. Her reaction was baffling, though. For a moment, she almost looked happy I was awake? That had to be a mask. Celestia should have begun teaching Cadance about those by now.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
I glanced at the Trespasser the instant I finished asking the question. I thought I was starting to get Their measure, but the Grimoire always cautioned that to believe in understanding was to invite disaster. Still, Their smile seemed to widen as I asked the question, which was a good sign. Not one of the Outsiders who needed to be the center of attention at all times, then.
Cadance flinched, fake smile dropping, and almost looked away. At the last minute, she managed to grow a spine and glared right back at me. The Trespasser seemed, if anything, even happier about this.
Probably safe to ignore Them for now, then.
I would still need to glance at Them now and again to make sure that They weren't getting bored, but for the time being, our troubles seemed to be entertainment enough.
"Did you really think we would leave you alone with a shape-stealing stranger?" Cadance snapped. "You should be happy. Aunt Celestia cancelled Day Court for two whole days just to stay with you."
I snorted derisively. To make a point to the Trespasser, you mean. I shouldn't be surprised that even such a blunt message as sheltering me under Celestia's wing went over Cadance's head. Still, the signs of her ineptitude never ceased to be infuriating. This was the mare whom I'd been ignored in favor of? Elevated to the highest level of government just because she was given a horn that she barely even used, while I'd been trained for years and was never assigned to arrange even a garden party?
"No," Cadance said with uncharacteristic venom. "I'm not letting you brush that off. Do you have even the slightest idea of what's happening out there? You interrupted the Summer Sun Celebration, Sunset! There was nearly a riot when Aunt Celestia vanished to go after you! To then give evasive answers in order to protect you from the consequences of your own actions, and clear her schedule for two whole days? Nopony outside the castle knows what's going on, and they're panicking!"
Ponies will panic when the market runs out of apples, I was tempted to tell her. If she hadn't noticed that for herself by now, though, then she would probably get indignant on their behalf even though I was right.
"Well, excuse me for being smart enough to minimize my chances of getting eaten," I snapped back. "Ponies worrying about matters they can neither understand nor change are neither my problem nor my responsibility. You and Celestia have been more than happy to rub that in."
Cadance raised one hoof as though to object. A moment later, her eyes narrowed.
"Go back. What was that part about getting eaten?"
I snorted and deliberately turned away from her. She'd distracted me from the Trespasser for long enough. Anger and hatred were deliberately shoved aside for the moment in favor of respect. I didn't know what capabilities were still possessed by the smiling Trespasser, but it was best not to show even the slightest hints of possible hostility toward Their person. Given its choice in form, a properly trained alicorn's full capabilities were the absolute minimum boundary of what They could accomplish.
"Sunset Shimmer, unicorn archwizard and personal student of Princess Celestia, greets the visitor from Outside," I said formally, paraphrasing a standard greeting from the Grimoire. "I thank the Visitor for answering my call, and hope They will forgive my inability to bow."
I did still incline my head. No reason not to show what respect I could even if a full bow was currently beyond me.
I expected Cadance to quietly seethe at being ignored. Having her instead stare at me like I'd grown a second head didn't quite match that prediction, but the underlying reason was still obvious enough.
Surprised I can actually be polite when a pony deserves it, huh? I went through years of etiquette lessons before Celestia knew you existed.
"As you would be willing to show every respect were you not injured, no insult has been issued," the Trespasser said with my form and voice. A moment later, Their smile widened. "Good afternoon, Sunset! You can call me 'Voice,' a shorter form of 'Voice of Imperceptible Dreams.' I thought Void would work as a suitable shorter version, but your Princess Celestia convinced me to accept Voice instead. You are welcome to apply to me any pronouns and terms that would be appropriate for a familiar mare of your own species."
I did not at all care for the revelation that Celestia had been speaking with my Trespasser long enough to convince Them Her of anything. Hopefully, the princess hadn't outright convinced Her to deny me an ascension. Interference from Celestia would explain why She had seemed to want to turn me into an Alicorn before I fell unconscious, only for me to wake up as a unicorn. However, I liked to think that even Celestia wasn't that petty, and most Trespassers seemed to prefer to give their summoners the right of first refusal. Part of that was from self-interest, I was sure; if they let peripheral ponies benefit from summonings, no sensible wizard would perform such a ritual themselves rather than making an underling do it.
"A moment," Voice instructed me, and turned Her attention to Cadance. "Suffice to say that Sunset took a very big risk in issuing her summons, and as she suspects, I likely would not have been the one to answer had happy festivities not drawn my attention. In most realms, she would have had something like a eight in nine chance of being eaten, casually slaughtered, or otherwise tormented by the first Trespasser that decided to respond to her beacon."
Cadance jerked her head to stare at me with eyes the sizes of plates and an open mouth. I glowered back at her. So some of us had to actually take a risk on our Ascension rather than having it given to us. So what? It had worked, hadn't it?
"This portion of your particular world, being absolutely dripping in Harmony, is a fair bit safer. Still, on most days, those environmental factors would only have improved her odds to around a two in six chance of immediate death, two in six of being assigned incredible labors for the boon, one in six of labors followed by ironic fulfillment that wouldn't actually grant what she wanted, and the last sixth of attracting something properly friendly."
'Two in six' translates to a third, in case your math tutoring is failing you again, I refrained from saying to Cadance. Not just because interrupting a Trespasser would be a bad idea, but also because Cadance looked horrified enough as it stood. Distracting her would be a kindness she hadn't earned.
Admittedly, I was finding myself somewhat uncomfortable as well. I hadn't realized the odds were quite that bad, even with all my preparations.
"I'm including sufficient damage to the mind under 'instant death,'" the Trespasser added, "but I believe you get the idea. To summarize, Sunset was right to take advantage of the 'Summer Sun Celebration' to obtain the results she wanted. The odds still weren't particularly favorable to her, but they were at least improved."
Cadance closed her eyes, raised one hoof to her chest, and took a deep breath. I recognized one of Celestia's favored relaxation exercises — and one of the more useless ones, at that. Lifting a hoof just made it obvious when our circumstances were stressing us. It wouldn't even surprise me if that was why Celestia taught it: she just had to know every time there was something wrong with her little ponies. Easier to pull our strings that way.
When Cadance opened her eyes a few seconds later, she didn't look much improved. She still looked horrified, and even rather upset.
"Voice, could we have a couple minutes?" Cadance asked, somehow not grasping what an incredibly bad idea it was to leave a Trespasser unsupervised without an agreement restricting its behavior.
"If you are intending to lecture her about recklessness," Voice said mildly, "then I'm afraid I must refuse. That is neither what she wants nor needs right now."
The Trespasser turned Her attention back to me, and I was gratified to see her mentally dismiss Cadance out of hoof. The snub seemed to make Cadance even more upset. Perfect.
"Sunset Shimmer, be warned that agreements I make are not properly binding, and are instead intended to outline acceptable standards of behavior. I generally adhere to them to the best of my ability, but if you try to hide extra-constrictive 'loopholes' in the agreement, be aware that they will not accomplish what you'd hoped. My adherence is, after all, based on my own understanding."
"Um," Cadance balked. "Aunt Celestia wanted to be here to mediate when you started negotiating, remember? If that's an issue, I'm supposed to remind you that she does still rule Equestria."
A surge of resentment shot through me at her words. Celestia didn't even trust me to negotiate my own ascension, was that it? How long had it been since she had looked at the Grimoire? I was willing to bet she'd forgotten all of it by now, if she couldn't even recognize a modified variant of the Dirge of Dreams.
"Celestia," said Voice, waving one hoof at Cadance in either acknowledgement or dismissal, "requested that I not harm anypony during my stay. Sunset, I assume you can already see the problems with this request?"
Be wary of figures of speech and inexact language when bargaining with Trespassers, I remembered from the Grimoire. What you assume is common knowledge is not common for them, even should they be the sort to adhere to the spirit of an agreement rather than the letter.
"It would not include minotaurs, dragons, yaks, deer, griffons, or any other being that did not qualify as a 'pony," I promptly replied. "There would also be no clauses for self-defense or defense of another, which may lead to injustices that are antithetical to your nature. One part of an agreement is not inherently prioritized over another, and if forced to break an agreement, you might prioritize violating as few clauses as possible. This can easily mean violating one vital clause, such as against murder, in order to preserve two clauses that simply don't matter as much to us."
Voice nodded approvingly, and I basked in having a teacher who actually noticed when I got something right. Cadance crouched in place, eyes flicking between us and the hospital window. At a guess, she was divided between tearing out of the room to fetch Celestia before negotiations could occur, or optimistically hoping that we were simply discussing scholarly background rather than laying groundwork. After all, if she interrupted Celestia's precious daily time for hearing the petty problems of petty ponies, well — that would be bad, wouldn't it?
Idiot.
Of course negotiations with an Outsider were more important than two farmers arguing over two inches of farmland after a stream slightly changed location, or whatever the absurd issue of the hour was. Still, I wouldn't complain if Cadance failed to do the one important task she was expected to complete, and in so doing, leave me to negotiate without Celestia interfering.
"Correct. Now, I am not one of the Outsiders who are heavily aligned with traits you might recognize, and as such, I do not believe circumstances can easily force me to break part of an agreement. I enjoy adhering to them, but I do not suffer should they be violated. However, Princess Celestia might be surprised by how many cultures would have preferred that I take her 'anypony' entirely literally, and therein lies the danger. Just because this isn't my first summoning does not mean I learned lessons that you ponies would like."
The advice was far more than most Trespassers might have given, and I would be a foal to ignore it.
"Thank you kindly for the warning," I acknowledged. "If you are attempting to use the agreement as a guide to 'acceptable behavior,' then are you amenable to ongoing amendments?"
"As long as I understand what changes you would like to make, yes. This brings us to 'malicious compliance': if I am sufficiently irked by a clause, or simply believe it is inappropriate to have included it, I am not above demonstrating my displeasure without ever breaking our agreement. Just because I will allow unilateral changes does not mean such changes would not have consequences."
Don't take Her amiability and apparent generosity as an excuse to turn the reality-breaking Outsider into a servant. Understood.
Cadance, not willing to let more important ponies do things that didn't involve her for even five minutes, decided then would be a good idea to force her unwelcome plot into the conversation.
"I'm very sorry to ask this," Cadance said, clearly not sorry by virtue of still asking, "and I mean no offense, but are you — well, a demon? This isn't at all what I thought Celestia meant when she said there might be negotiations, but the sorts of things you're outlining certainly sound similar enough to certain legends."
The Trespasser giggled, but not with my voice. It had borrowed Celestia's for that one. Seeing my form produce a sound I'd associated with Celestia was even more jarring than I'd expected. I really had been spoiled by the unusually pony-like Outsider; alien behaviors were supposed to be expected, not exceptions.
"Some entities from my 'home' might have been mistaken for demons, certainly, but I am not one of them. Sunset, would you like to explain?"
"…Is that a sincere question," I had to ask, "or a prompt suggesting I do so?"
Voice's smile widened at my request for elaboration.
"It is a sincere question."
"Then not particularly."
I'd fought to decipher the Grimoire, and like hay would I let Cadance benefit from my hard-earned knowledge. If she couldn't recognize another like the entity that had Ascended her, then that was not my problem.
"You truly are a delightful little furball of resentment and spite, aren't you?" Voice asked, seemingly thrilled by my refusal.
Despite having Her apparently agree with me, Her words were still jarring. After all the signs of the Trespasser being a benevolent one, having Her seem happy about my resentment was akin to being dumped directly into a bathtub filled with cold water. 'Furball' wasn't particularly complimentary, either.
No matter how She acts, She still isn't actually a pony. Don't fall into the trap of assuming She has a pony's values.
"Just toward Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," I deflected, concealing my discomfort beneath mockery.
"Okay, seriously, what in the hoof is your problem with me?" Cadance exploded. "Celestia and I worried about you for months! She shut herself away to cry after meals more than once, all because she was worried about you, and now you're right back to being a jerk! We thought you were preparing to flee Equestria altogether, not this! Did you care at all, or were you too busy laughing at us?"
After months of needing to refrain from sniping back at Cadance, it felt good to be able to get back into the swing of things. Admittedly, it usually took more than this to get her to the point of yelling. Was that a sign of the prissy pink princess finally growing a spine, or that she'd developed an even thinner skin?
"Yeah, right," I scoffed. "The Princess probably went to go bury her muzzle in cakes where nopony could see her, not cry, and don't try to pretend you cared when we both know you hate me. Did you notice when she ignored me just for the sake of motivation? I've been doing just what she wanted. Unlike some ponies, most of us need to actually earn our ascensions!"
"How's that w–" Cadance started, then visibly bit back her own words. "...I dislike you, not hate you, but you make it very easy to be cruel."
The lack of a barbed rebuttal left me momentarily off-balance. Still, I rallied quickly enough.
"Easy to be honest, more like. What, so used to having ponies throw themselves at your hooves that you can't recognize when somepony has a legitimate grievance with you?"
Cadance's attempt at composure shattered, frustration rising to the surface.
That's better, I thought smugly.
"Maybe not!" Cadance shouted. "Because I still don't know what your problem is, and not for lack of me trying my utmost to understand! So please, miss I'm-so-justified Sunset Shimmer, do tell me what you hate so much!"
I spared a quick glance at Voice of Imperceptible Dreams. As expected, She seemed utterly delighted by our argument. No worries there, then; it was safe to ignore Her for the time being. I turned my head back to glare at Cadance with all the hatred and anger I could muster on short notice.
Which, as it turns out, might have been just a bit too much. Magic flowed toward the surface of my body, tail and mane included, in the moments before I burst into flame. It hurt, too. Not from the fire itself; I'd long since used a combination of magic and alchemy to render myself effectively immune to fire. However, having my magic misbehave further irritated the pathways of my thaumic system, and I soon felt as though I actually was burning from the inside out.
I gritted my teeth and forced back a scream, refusing to show weakness before this cloud-headed brat. Somepony had the foresight to fireproof my bedding, evidently, so I could focus on regaining control of my magic rather than needing to dive for the tile flooring. Fortunately, it didn't look as though Cadance realized that she was seeing a humiliating loss of control. If anything, she looked genuinely terrified of me for the first time since her arrival at the castle.
Her fear only managed to make me angrier. This was what finally got her to take me seriously? Not any of the numerous very complicated spells I'd shown off in front of her, not any of the incredible feats of magical control I'd displayed, but losing control? What a joke. She truly didn't deserve that horn at all, not when she'd had more than enough time to learn what an emotions-based elemental discharge looked like.
And then, because she had an uncanny sense for arriving just when it would put me in the worst possible light, Princess Celestia chose right then to open the door to my hospital room.
Cadance and I both froze and stared back at the stunned Princess Celestia, who seemed to need a few seconds to understand just what she'd walked in on. The whole time, I wanted to burn away on the spot from sheer humiliation. Unlike Cadance, Celestia definitely knew what my current state signified. My magical reserves may have been expanded and would require me to reacclimatize before I could guarantee it wouldn't happen again, but did I expect Celestia to understand that? No. All she would see was one more reason that I wasn't meeting her standards.
Eyes widening ever so slightly indicated that Celestia had finally grasped the situation. An instant later, the alicorn charged across the room, the door slamming shut behind her. Only her horn being held high kept me from being terrified by the charge. She'd never been violent toward me before, but I'd also never potentially endangered other ponies by summoning a Trespasser.
I certainly felt a flicker of fear when she reached my side and her glowing horn descended. My fleeting fears soon turned out to be unjustified. Soothing cold wiped away the bulk of my pain, unburnt mana returning to my body's circulation, and I could have cried with relief. I blinked rapidly and forced the tears back, too. I was not going to compound my mistake by crying in front of the two ponies to whom I should never show weakness.
Celestia started to turn toward Voice of Imperceptible Dreams, stopped, and redirected her full attention to me. There had been the flickers of something negative directed at Voice, I was sure, but I couldn't see the exact emotion before it was wiped away.
"Sunset," started Celestia, that wretched fake mask of kindness in full force. "How are you feeling?"
On a better day, I might be able to mirror her fake smile and tell her that I was doing perfectly fine. Lingering pain rather neatly nixed the temptation to put on an act that she would approve of.
"Like I was just burning from the inside out, obviously," I bit out. "I'm not looking forward to needing to spend even longer without using magic."
Celestia's mask wavered. I internally cheered at managing even that small slip.
Go on. Lecture me for answering your fake concern with my real anger. I can tell you want to.
Celestia's mask survived, albeit while pivoting to a small frown of fake sympathy. Even after expecting it, I still wanted to scream. Would it kill the mare to show some genuine emotion once in a while?
"I am very sorry to hear that," she said by rote. "Would you like for me to apologize now, or after you have negotiated with Voice of Inadvisable Dreams?"
My thoughts hiccuped. Not because of the slightly different name; having multiple names was normal for Outsiders. Offering me an apology, though? That was not how this conversation was supposed to go. Not knowing how to respond to that part, I fixated on the portion I was more certain of.
"Until after you've negotiated, you mean? Cadance already said you weren't willing to trust that I could do it on my own."
"That isn't what I said at all!" Cadance promptly protested.
"It's what you meant," I snorted. "Read a history book instead of all those dumb romances, would you?"
"Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they're dumb–"
"The Princess," I continued, "doesn't just 'mediate' an agreement; when she mediates for quarreling parties, they always step away with terms that she wanted for them in the first place. Voice of Imperceptible Dreams and I aren't quarreling, and we definitely don't need a mediator. Especially not when She is open to ongoing unilateral amendments so long as I'm not dumb enough to abuse that right."
This, finally, was enough to break Celestia's damned mask. The timeless mare's gaze jerked to look at Voice in wide-eyed surprise.
"I… had not realized she was willing to be that generous," Celestia admitted. "I had truly intended to let you negotiate your 'agreement' and only suggest changes if absolutely necessary. You may be pleased to learn that she was unwilling to discuss terms with me at all, in fact."
I wanted to scoff at that, but decided to hold back my reaction for the moment. She would almost certainly have found something 'wrong,' if only to rub in how much I still had to learn. That Celestia had tried to negotiate in my place at all said a lot, really.
"She offered to pay your price herself, too," Voice cheerfully chimed in, apparently having saved her first insertion into a conversation for where it would cause the most chaos.
My resentful train of thought crashed straight into the side of a mountain. Voice might as well have dropped a block of ice directly into a hot tub, complete with water splashing elsewhere and making me want to reel back as though scalded.
Had Celestia taken leave of her senses? After all those times where she placed random, unimportant ponies above me, she was willing to risk leaving Equestria without a competent ruler — Cadance didn't count — while she completed petty tasks or worse for an Outsider?
"She what?" I asked incredulously.
This had to be a case where she assumed she would be allowed to delegate to subjects, didn't it? Celestia certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice any of them, but she might think other responsibilities could be fobbed off. Still, even if Celestia was the closest thing to unkillable, 'closest thing to' wasn't quite the same thing as 'completely.' There had to be a reason that the only other alicorns had been condemned to the mists of mythology and history.
"Did you completely forget how dangerous that is?" I demanded.
"Contrary to what you seem to believe, I did not ascend via Outsider. Nonetheless, I did have some idea, yes," Celestia wryly agreed.
Quite frankly, I couldn't believe that at all. I could believe that she believed it, sure; Celestia's refusal to answer my questions would make a lot more sense if she simply couldn't remember how to ascend, and was too prideful to admit it.
"Before you go and rationalize what she just said," Voice started, "you should know that she really is right about her means of ascension. I already made it so you permanently fit about half, maybe two-thirds of the criteria, but I couldn't force everything."
If I was capable of moving more, I would have reeled back. Practically everything I thought I'd figured out over the past several months was suddenly thrown into doubt. Celestia really hadn't simply been empowered by an Outsider? Then how the hay had she managed it? Absolutely no other magic I'd been taught was powerful enough for an ascension! I'd checked! Extensively!
I wasn't dumb enough to ask, then what good are you? I was tempted, though. Even if Voice had made certain eligibility aspects 'permanent,' I was willing to bet that I had already matched them part of the time.
"Wait. Sunset is like this–" Cadance gestured at my bedbound form. "Because Voice, what, tried to turn her into an alicorn? Everypony knows that never works, and ponies only get hurt when they try!"
I was inordinately pleased to see that I wasn't the only pony whom Celestia was keeping in the dark. If it was anypony other than Cadance, I might even have felt sympathetic.
"From what I understand, yes," Celestia admitted now that she had already been caught.
"I don't like how 'tried' makes it sound like failing was on me," Voice complained, even though it absolutely was."It's certainly not a matter of skill. Yours is the only world I've been to that has a Harmonic requirement for your local divinity equivalent. Everywhere else just required some tuning, not a prerequisite that can't be skipped at all."
Voice paused for effect.
"That being said, if you change your mind and want to turn into an unstoppable demon goddess, I'm your mare."
Celestia twitched and promptly leveled an unimpressed gaze on Voice. Judging by the lack of true anger, I was guessing she thought it was a tasteless joke rather than a completely sincere offer. I wasn't going to be the one to enlighten her.
"You stand here, knowing what you do about Equestria, and truly claim she would be 'unstoppable'? I was under the impression you were inclined toward Honesty."
"Yeah, okay," Voice easily admitted. "Harmonic concentrations of this level do tend to be the bane of such threats."
And that was yet another excellent reason for why I would never take Voice up on such an offer. Equestria wasn't only the most powerful nation known to ponykind because Celestia could, and occasionally had, dropped an aspect of the sun on a battlefield. When provoked, we could pull any number of numerous obscure artifacts out of storage, too. Still, it was surprising to hear that Equestria's Celestia-assisted obsession with 'Harmony' might have actual military benefits. I'd tried to research it in the past, but could only find blatant propaganda about the 'unstoppable magic of friendship.' Obviously ponies did better when they had a support network to rely on; that went without saying. The lengths Equestria went to to glorify it were just plain ridiculous.
"You have, however, reminded me that I never did dictate my initial terms to Sunset," said Voice of Imperceptible Dreams.
The entirety of my attention snapped to Her, and I wished that I had a quill and paper to take notes with. I supposed that I would need to be fully recovered before I could use telekinesis to write, too. Even longer for my magical control to recover enough for my hornwriting not to be embarrassing. Really, I might be better off using my hooves or mouth for a while, but I hadn't needed to use either in years. My hoofwriting might be even more embarrassing than slightly shaky telekinesis.
In an absolutely shocking level of foresight, by her standards, Cadance was the one to rush to produce a quill and parchment while using the back of that awful romance book as a solid surface. She still insisted on using her wings for writing, but even if they wouldn't be the neatest, at least her notes would be legible.
"My offer is as follows: In addition to the aid I have already provided, I will make reasonable, ongoing efforts to assist you in your ascension to alicornhood. This will not be 'to the best of my ability,' as the expectations inherent to that would rapidly grow frustrating for us both and may even impede the process. Given my knowledge of the requirements, I expect this to take less than a decade, and I will honestly be quite surprised if it takes longer."
Considering that the number of ponies who became alicorns were a population that I could count on my hooves, I should be thrilled that She thought we could ascend me within a decade. It was definitely foalish, but I still didn't want to wait that long. I consoled myself with the hope that it should be much faster than that if Cadance could do it, right? Voice was just trying to lay down reasonable expectations.
At the same time, I couldn't help but feel a bit smug about how shocked Cadance looked by Voice's words. What, surprised that I can finally catch up to you?
"The necessary components for fulfilling my price can also be considered an additional boon. My price is as follows: This part of me is to stay in your world until you, as my summoner and anchor, die permanently. I define permanent death as the demise of your mind or soul, not your body. That, I will restore to a prime state should it be destroyed or sufficiently damaged, including due to age."
I blinked rapidly and rather neatly squashed my disappointment. Part of why I'd wanted to become an alicorn in the first place was for the sake of immortality. Half of Celestia's likely reasons for ignoring me would vanish in an instant if she knew I wouldn't just up and die on her; any lessons she taught me would be ones with centuries of impact, and compared favorably to the fleeting impacts of petty ponies. Full-fledged alicornhood could indeed wait if I had true immortality as a guaranteed benefit.
"In order to avoid you simply imprisoning me in a deep, dark pit for the duration — I tried that once, centuries of boredom weren't at all worth the payoff — I will be allowed access to the same areas as you, with reasonable exceptions instituted for the sake of personal privacy. You are a herd species, not ambush predators or burrowers, so I expect there to be very few such privacy exceptions. 'Private conversations,' for example, are something I would definitely expect to be allowed to observe; if you are entering the quarters of another, I no longer consider that to be a sufficiently private place to deny me unless you are also banned from those quarters once more."
Cadance suddenly started coughing for whatever reason. She didn't even notice when I shot her a glare, keeping her own eyes firmly fixed on her notes.
What, did a fly crawl down your throat?
"I am here primarily out of an interest in your story, Sunset Shimmer, and although I can stay quiet and behave, I will not be stopped from watching it. This does not mean I will not focus on other targets when other entities interest me, and this will likely occur reasonably often, but I will not expect to be allowed access to the same places as them. Your freedoms are the basis of my own."
Still creepy, but strangely flattering as well. I had definitely hit the jackpot in terms of what Outsider I'd managed to attract. Being allowed to continue my life with an extra observer was far preferable to regularly going on dangerous quests or completing a never-ending list of petty errands.
"Aside from that general freedom of movement, I am quite permissible in what restrictions can be placed on my actions; they are one of the primary means through which I can learn what your society, or even just you personally, consider to be acceptable behavior. You may make unilateral amendments to my restrictions after the initial institution, and I will usually adhere to them should I understand the reasons that changes were made. Fail to explain, or simply include clauses that I believe are unacceptable, and I am very likely to make you regret it. I am not a weapon, and if there is something 'antithetical to my nature,' it is being expected to extinguish stories."
I blinked in befuddlement. That had not been anywhere on the list of things I would need to avoid asking of Her. I thought the whole part about 'malicious compliance' had been because petty ponies had tried turning Her into a hoofmaiden or something similar. Equestria didn't really have enemies, and anypony foalish enough to weaponize an Outsider deserved being caught in the inevitable collateral damage.
"Do you have any questions?"
I wished I had a feather and parchment available. At least Celestia would probably make Cadance share her notes.
"Of course!"
Voice mirrored my smile, complete with using my form.
"Good answer."
Alien Outsider or not, I could already tell that we were going to get along just fine.
Surprisingly, Celestia stuck to her word and didn't interfere with the negotiations, not even for a last-minute addition. Admittedly, I did ask for my notes on negotiating with Outsiders to be retrieved so that she would have something to distract her, but I still expected at least some meddling. Not this time, it seemed; for the time being, it appeared as though the Princess would be content to sit down and let me take care of an important task. It was both gratifying and highly suspicious. I supposed that she couldn't find an excuse to plot in given a combination of my preparations, and the existence of the unilateral amendments clause.
Even when Cadance interfered, I couldn't blame Celestia for that; it didn't seem like Cadance was being used as a patsy. The clause Cadance focused on was not only juvenile, but also one of the only ones that Voice had explicitly said She would fight over. Of all the clauses for somepony to take issue with, Cadance chose some details of the privacy part? I didn't care if Voice eavesdropped on my conversations! I was certain She would be willing to make Herself unnoticeable one way or another, and it wasn't as though She would gossip about anypony's secrets. If She wanted to wreak havoc, all She would need to do would be to drift, unseen and unknowable, into the homes of the rich and powerful, and I was certain She could acquire copious amounts of blackmail material in short order.
Cadance didn't explain herself very well at all, either. The Princess of Love constantly stumbled on her own words, tapped her hooves together nervously, and generally refused to make eye contact with anypony. She broke practically every single rule of negotiations all at once, which somehow surprised me more than it should have.
Less expected was how Voice, rather than being irked by the intervention, actually seemed entertained by Cadance's fumbling. Voice even agreed to leave me alone if I was "in what ponies consider to be a private area or situation, and romantically entangled with a special somepony." As if. Cadance was the princess of useless emotional entanglements, not me, which I expected was why Voice had yielded so easily. She wouldn't actually be sacrificing anything.
Admittedly, Celestia seeming relieved when Voice agreed did make me feel as though I had missed something important. As always, nopony bothered to explain what I'd missed, and I wasn't in the mood to try to figure it out from whatever cryptic hints had likely been left scattered through the conversation. If Cadance and Celestia felt like I should know something, they should actually tell me.
The Grimoire didn't recommend anything like organizing contracts by which tiers should be prioritized should a break become necessary. Considering the unknown authors were no longer around, I considered that an incredible oversight on their part and implemented such tiers at every opportunity.
Even with the need for such organization and Cadance's interference, we had all the different parts of the agreement worked out well before Celestia would need to go lower the sun. Cadance gathered up her haphazardly scattered notes, quills, and pencils, seeming unusually subdued. For a moment, I actually thought she would leave without ruining everything for once.
That moment soon passed. Of course Cadance couldn't let me bask in the satisfaction of completing perhaps the most important negotiation of my life. After all, we'd gone hours without her being the center of attention, and she couldn't have that.
"Listen," Cadance started, then hesitated for an annoyingly long time.
Listen to your silence? Absolutely riveting.
"Never mind," she sighed, hanging her head. "No matter what you might believe, I really do hope you feel better soon."
The unfairly glorified pegasus all-but fled the room before I could think up a suitable response to that one. Really, what was that all about? Trying to pretend to be civil in front of Celestia? It might have worked, too, judging by how Celestia was frowning as she watched Cadance depart. I, in turn, watched Celestia and pondered my options.
Celestia had mentioned something about apologizing to me before we laid out expectations for Voice, and I did want to find out whether Celestia actually regretted refusing to help me. I fully expected that whatever she had to say wouldn't change anything, though. She might regret refusing me, but only because I'd found another way to manage an ascension without her.
I also knew very well just how hard it was for Celestia to actually step aside and let other ponies handle matters for a change. If I understood the timetable correctly, Celestia had cancelled almost three days of meetings in order to deal with the whole Outsider problem. Any minute now, one of the Royal Guard could burst in with 'urgent' news that would occupy Celestia's schedule for the next week. Admittedly, it usually wasn't so dramatic, but messengers and staff had interrupted my time with Celestia more times than I bothered counting.
Celestia's time wasn't quite 'first come, first served' — more than half the time, she would be perfectly happy to put other ponies above me — but half a chance of having her available was better than none at all. She certainly wouldn't cancel her appointments with other ponies for my benefit. Not unless she could reap other benefits at the same time, such as when supervising my negotiations with Voice. Besides, if she truly felt as though she needed to apologize rather than just going through the motions, she could always do it later.
"Princess Celestia?" I started, and waited to continue until she turned toward me. "Even if She couldn't make me a full alicorn just yet, I think Voice did manage to give me a fair amount of earth pony and pegasus magic. Once I recover enough to start using magic again, could you teach me how to use them?"
I had to fight to keep my jaw from dropping. Celestia never agreed that fast to anything ever. There was always at least some hesitation as she mentally consulted her schedule and decided whether or not the proposed change was truly worth her time. There hadn't been any of that; what little delay existed was likely related to comprehending my request at all.
I'd known that making an alicorn would induce a vast difference in how she treated me, and I supposed multi-tribal magic lessons were almost that. Still, even though I'd expected at least an improvement after Voice offered me guaranteed immortality, I didn't think it would be to this degree.
"We could begin on some of the basic mechanics of pegasus magic after you get something solid to eat, if you wished," she offered.
Oh, that's why. She'd already resorted to clearing her schedule for the day to make sure that Voice had been safely dealt with. I fought to keep my disappointment from showing. For a few hopeful seconds, I'd honestly thought that she might've thought of me as important for once.
"We could just skip real food?" I proposed, not wanting to waste any time. "I can't use magic right now, or move my body from the neck down."
That earned a raised eyebrow. I had to admit I didn't think that one would fly; Celestia always got on my case when I tried to skip meals, even when there were impending deadlines. It was somewhat surprising that she hadn't interrupted negotiations with Voice, actually, given as I'd apparently been unconscious for multiple days.
"Should you be unwilling to let a nurse assist you, I would be happy to do so myself," said the immortal god-princess of Equestria. A moment later, she seemed to rethink her own words. "I misspoke. If you would even prefer that I assist, then I would be happy to."
And now I was confused all over again. Not only was shifting her phrasing like that practically unheard of, but Celestia didn't really do basic caretaking — not toward me, at least. I remembered her acting similar when Cadance was last bedridden with the feather-flu, but never for me. Not since I was a filly. In the rare case where a disease survived me manually and magically self-inducing a high fever, Celestia might check on me between meetings, but she would never help. That was left to servants. Despite some lingering bitterness on occasion, I couldn't even blame her for it; she ruled Equestria, and her skillset was not required just to help a sick pony.
Was it a matter of me being shifted to an immortal lifespan rather than that of a normal pony? Some longer-lived races, such as dragons, could take significantly longer to reach adulthood. Voice hadn't said anything about slowing my aging, only undoing it should I progress too far, but Celestia might have missed that part. She might have decided to mentally slot me back under "filly" rather than "teenage mare."
…Actually, that was disturbingly plausible. It would certainly explain a great deal of Celestia's behavior toward Cadance. If Celestia viewed the Princess of Love as a filly rather than the lazy young mare Cadance actually was, it might explain much of why her standards were so much more lenient for Cadance than they were for me. After all, one didn't expect a filly to be good at anything.
I dismissed that thought as incorrect moments after it formed. Celestia had harbored unreasonably high expectations of me even back when I was a filly. The only thing that Cadance had that I didn't was her status as an alicorn.
I was tempted to just plain refuse lest Celestia mentally allocate any time spent helping me with basics against some imaginary budget for 'time spent on Sunset'. The last time I'd thought something similar, though, I'd managed to inadvertently shuffle myself out of sight and mind. The last thing I wanted to do was to repeat my mistake of believing I had grown too old for post-nightmare comfort cuddling.
The whimsical way Princess Celestia allocated her time never made perfect sense, but remained relatively consistent with spending more time on ponies that she valued and were attached to. The ideal move would be to just let Princess Celestia indulge in whatever whims struck her. It wasn't as though I needed to oppose Celestia anymore, not with me on track to catch up to Cadance. Judging by Celestia's altered behavior, I might have finally proven that I was at least worthy of some of her time, too.
It felt beyond weird to have somehow acquired Celestia's approval even after failing at my goal of becoming an alicorn. Objectively speaking, successfully summoning Voice was the most impressive thing I'd ever done, but I'd done plenty of impressive things in the past. It made it hard for me to tell whether I'd finally met Celestia's standards, whether being some kind of half-alicorn counted, or if immortality was the most important part. Perhaps it was a combination of the above.
If I didn't know for sure, though, then I couldn't be certain that Celestia's current mood would persist. She might again push me aside to prioritize Cadance and the petty problems of petty ponies. The only safe method of acquiring and keeping Celestia's attention, as Cadance had proven, was by becoming an alicorn.
"I would much prefer that you do it rather than a complete stranger," I hedged.
As I'd suspected, agreeing seemed to be the right answer. Celestia's smile widened, and for once, I actually thought it might be genuine. There was no actual reason for her to pretend to be happy about something such as this. Not when she was doing me a favor rather than trying to shape my behavior.
"I believe I smelled baked apples and some manner of corn dish from the hospital's mess hall," Princess Celestia noted. "But if that does not appeal, I am perfectly willing to jaunt over and have the castle staff prepare something else, or fetch food from a favored restaurant."
For a moment, I was forced to wonder if I was dreaming. But no, my body still hurt too much for that. So the Princess of the Sun was really offering to, if I understood her correctly, detour to Canterlot Castle for something as petty as me not liking hospital food? Not to send a messenger, which I could actually understand, but to go personally?
Smiling visage or not, it had to be a test. Probably something about valuing the time of others or something.
"You don't need to go to so much trouble. I'm sure the hospital food will be fine," I lied.
Celestia's smile became just a bit thinner, transitioning to that mask I'd come to know and loathe so badly.
"Sunset Shimmer," Celestia said oddly. "At no point have you shown any particular concern for the time or effort of other ponies, even mine. Would you like to try again with, perhaps, a touch more honesty?"
Ah, there was the unfair disapproval that I knew so well. I should have expected it, but somehow, it still managed to hurt worse than the aftermath of the Dirge. I knew that there wouldn't, couldn't, be such a huge change in Celestia's behavior without a trap being included.
"Well, what else am I supposed to say?" I asked defensively, while Celestia's eyes widened. "If I say yes, you'll lecture me about valuing other pony's time. If I say no, apparently that's the wrong answer, too! There's never a right answer to these stupid tests of yours!"
On a normal day, this would be the part where Celestia lectured me out for calling her out. Frustration would overtake both of us until we got into yet another shouting match, and whatever activity we were supposed to be doing would often be concluded early. If it wasn't, we would spend much the remainder of the session quietly seething and trying not to snap at each other.
This did not seem to be a normal day. Although we had momentarily returned to familiar ground, it seemed as though Celestia was intent on flying far away from it; rather than shifting to frustration as usual, Celestia actually looked hurt.
"I–" Celestia started, and closed her eyes. "I am sorry. I was trying for lighthearted teasing, and I believe I fell rather horribly short. It was not supposed to be any sort of a rebuke, and the fact that you took it as one says rather unfortunate things about my own habits."
I could only blink and stare. What was I supposed to say to that? 'Oh, but you couldn't stop yourself from making it a test?' 'Finally realizing that you've made being unfair a habit?' If Celestia was actually going to admit that she'd done something wrong for once in her life, the last thing I wanted to do was discourage her! Plus, if I didn't bite her mane off now, I could point to this — probably fleeting — incident the next time she was being horribly unreasonable.
But if she wanted honesty? I could give her honesty.
"The only responses that come to mind are caustic ones," I bluntly told her. "I'm not going to lie and say you're wrong. You make everything into a test, and I can never–"
I cut off my own words before I could launch into a full-fledged tirade against all the ways she'd been unfair, and would almost certainly continue to be unfair. I'd let myself think that she would change her behavior in response to the Dirge, and look where that got me. Not even five minutes passed before she was back to her old habits. Admittedly, the regret and apology were both new, but I was fairly confident that those were going to remain an anomaly.
Celestia's head hung further, descending until it was almost touching the ground. Her mane continued to defy gravity and floated beside her in an invisible wind, but if she were a normal mare — or even a halfhearted Alicorn like Cadance — then it would definitely have dragged on the floor.
Without my privacy wards to interfere, a photographer might have been able to get a photo of the year award for seeing the Solar Princess humble herself so. I wasn't quite so impressed. Excluding the Outsider, who didn't count, we had no audience; showing regret here, although exceedingly unusual and bewildering, cost her little.
"I am truly sorry, Sunset, and am aware that making amends will take time," Celestia said quietly. "But rest assured that I do intend to try."
The Princess of the Sun gradually straightened, but still did not meet my gaze.
"I will be back with fare from a Prance-style bakery down the street," she said in that same subdued tone. "You quite enjoyed their jam-filled pastries in the past. Unless you would prefer something else? I promise you, I am trying to help you feel better, not turn this into a 'test.'"
On cue, my stomach gurgled and I winced. Even if I couldn't feel any proper hunger pangs, I was willing to bet that was more from the anesthesia than anything else.
"Pastries sound delicious," I admitted. "…Thank you?"
It was the right thing to say; a happy Celestia was a magnanimous one. The entire room brightened as Celestia's mood rose, if not quite to the point of normality, then at least to the point where she could hide it for the benefit of any onlookers.
"You are welcome. Please do not hesitate to inform me if you feel I am once again being unfair. I cannot promise that I will always agree, but I will not rebuke you for informing me."
The words were stilted, but not in the manner that came from saying something a thousand times. I wasn't sure that she had ever said anything like it at all. Fortunately for both of us, she at least didn't seem to expect an answer from me, and turned to trot away. She did glance back at me on her way out the door, but it was a fleeting look rather than one of expectation.
The door gently swung shut behind her, leaving me alone with an Outsider for likely the first time since She had been summoned. She didn't seem in any hurry to strike up a conversation, and indeed, it took me well over a minute before I could manage to say anything at all.
"What in the hay was that supposed to be?" I asked Voice.
The abominable mare met my gaze with all the emotion of an on-duty Royal Guard. She still borrowed my voice, however, and seemed to have decided that 'cheerful' would be appropriate.
"The results of realizing that her personal student resorted to a life-threatening ritual that summoned a terrifyingly powerful primordial monster into the world in the belief that it would please her after she made harsh judgments and rash decisions based on a misunderstanding of the situation, and indeed, that she has been making errors of judgment almost since she met you."
My expression did not become any less baffled. I'd expected Her to say something along the lines of, 'quality entertainment,' not an attempt at a helpful response. I didn't even know where to begin untangling said run-on response, but at least She had tried.
"Did everypony meet up and collectively decide to be confusing all at once?"
"I'll tell you a secret," Voice conspiratorially confided. "Corporeals are always confusing. It's what makes you so entertaining."
"Thanks," I sarcastically drawled, Her 'secret' not having helped in the slightest.
"You are welcome," She said in perfect imitation of Celestia's subdued tone, and I shuddered.
Well, at least She remains consistently creepy.
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Chapter 5: Unhealthy solutions for unhealthy problems
The next several minutes were wasted on little more than a confused jumble of thoughts and self-recrimination. I'd previously resolved to let Celestia pursue whatever moods struck her, and then lashed out within mere minutes. Now she was all-but guaranteed to avoid me for at least a few days, probably longer, and it was all my own foalish fault. All I'd had to do was weather with a fake smile what she claimed she hadn't intended to be a test for once, and she would have been happy to spend the rest of today teaching me. Now her mood would be tainted by my outburst, and tonight might be the only 'time she could spare' for weeks.
Apparently, Voice did not find my brooding to be sufficiently entertaining.
"To start off, you should know that becoming an alicorn is not going to be immediate, even with me helping," She began unceremoniously, leaving me mentally scrambling as I adapted to being spoken to out of the blue. "In many cases, I will recommend preparatory actions that will support your position once you are an alicorn. Additionally, ascension to alicornhood is a process that effectively changes its requirements should a given pony know about the original criteria. This is one of the primary reasons that Princess Celestia refused to tell you about them, and although I disagree with her execution — you resorting to Outsiders really does say a great many unkind things about said methods — I do support her underlying reasoning."
I faintly frowned as this new information wriggled its way into my worldview. Voice was absolutely right; Her words did make a horrible sort of sense, and at the same time, Celestia's methods were awful. Would it have killed her to tell me that she couldn't properly explain without jeopardizing the process? Saying that she couldn't tell me just wasn't enough, not when Cadance was around to reveal that as a lie.
Ignorance also explained how even weak-willed Cadance had managed to avoid crumpling any of the times I'd tried to pressure her into telling me how she'd ascended. Her half-incoherent story about a love-stealing witch certainly wasn't the most important part; concentrated love could provide a magical catalyst, certainly, but it wasn't enough on its own. I'd checked with similar concentrations of stockpiled magic.
"However," Voice stressed. "I can say that one requirement is related to your 'Special Talent–' and have I mentioned how wonderful it is that you ponies have that included as part of your magical physiology? Because it is simply adorable. Absolute cutest and most benevolent piece of specialization-enforcing magic I have ever seen."
"Considering their physical manifestation is called 'Cutie Marks,' I suspect someone might have agreed with you," I said, fighting back the urge to tell Her to hurry up.
It was a good thing I kept my mouth shut, because She got to the point a moment later. Rushing Her would only have induced alienation and slowed the lesson further.
"At any rate, you already fulfilled that part of the criteria via the very ritual that summoned me. The other requirements were not fulfilled, and under ordinary circumstances, every step would need to be completed at the same time. Luckily for you, I was able to 'affix' the feat so that you can complete the other requirements whenever, rather than needing to complete every prerequisite all at once."
My nostrils flared as I resisted the urge to growl.
"That would be a lot easier if I knew what they were."
"It absolutely would not," Voice disagreed. "Refer to previous about the requirements changing to be more difficult if you know about them. I would be surprised if Celestia hadn't tried to tell other ponies how she ascended, and as you can see by the lack of other alicorns, informing others hasn't exactly worked out for her."
I huffed and dropped the point. Voice had already told me more than Celestia, I would give Her that, and She had to know that I was smart enough to extrapolate.
For that matter, what She did say turned out to be more than expected. "Related to your Special Talent," while the ritual had been the single most involved piece of magecraft I had ever performed. Logically, then, ascension would require that a pony manage a feat nearing the pinnacle of what their Special Talent could possibly accomplish, or at least something exceptionally impressive.
Perhaps most importantly of all, telling me this much finally answered why Cadance had been able to become an alicorn. If her special talent was 'love' or matchmaking or something, she had probably just gotten lucky enough to fulfill these mysterious criteria while foiling the witch, restoring emotions to the ponies they were stolen from, and coincidentally assisting with 'True Love.' Pony populations were certainly much higher than they were a thousand years ago; it stood to reason that somepony would eventually stumble over the requirements through sheer chance, even if all of them had to be fulfilled at once.
"Did you know you always assume the same scowl when you're thinking about Princess Cadance?" Voice asked, breaking me out of my fuming.
"I do not!" I reflexively denied.
"You do," Voice confirmed. "I would, quite frankly, classify your relationship with her as a problem. Not for any reasons of empathy, which I'm sure Princess Celestia has told to you at length only for you to find those reasons insufficient."
I nodded, still seething. I wasn't going to be nice to the pony who'd stolen my spot. Frankly, my life would have been much better if she'd never forced her way into it. Celestia would still have expected me to meet high standards, I was sure, but at least she would have been around to help me with those rather than expecting so much self-study. Or, worse still, group lessons at her School for Gifted Unicorns. When those instructors proved themselves incapable of containing the products of my spells, they only confirmed that they didn't deserve to be my instructors at all.
"Ignore ascension for a moment," Voice ordered, casually demanding the impossible and expecting me to bend like reality so often did for Her. "Thanks to my assistance alone, you are already guaranteed to be sharing at least a few thousand years with Cadance. Believe me, no matter what you think of her, immortality does strange things to people. Competence is a matter of time."
"Cadance," I said flatly.
"'Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,'" Voice agreed, perfectly imitating the last time I'd said Cadance's full name.
The mockery inherent to my last use of Cadance's full name did somewhat dampen my anger. Only somewhat, though. Every time ascension ever came up, Cadance was there, taunting me without even trying.
"…Did Celestia put you up to this?"
This much was enough to earn another giggle in Celestia's voice.
"No. I bring this up because I know you are going to require convincing to agree to my next proposal, and even more to take it seriously. You are offended by what you perceive as Cadance's incompetence, correct?"
"And her absolute refusal to correct it," I agreed. "She would rather bury her muzzle in a romance book than a foal's primer on the magic she remains terrible at. So even if 'competence is a matter of time,' which I'm still not convinced of, it's going to take a long time in her case."
"I understand."
Do you? I wanted to demand. You are, by our standards, an absurdly powerful Outsider. You were born with more power than possibly an entire city of ponies combined.
Then again, there was that comment about being buried at the bottom of a dark pit for a few centuries. If She considered that to be an annoying detour that she went along with solely for the sake of a 'payoff,' it would definitely be best for me to assume that She really did have Her own share of experience and hard work to back up Her claims.
"However," Voice continued, "I would like to note that Cadance's environment has proven actively hostile to self-improvement. She has to catch up on a great deal that you already know. As she is a beginner at an age where experience is expected, her early steps are liable to be the subject of relentless mockery. Princess Celestia is one of the few tutors who would not subject her to negative feedback in response to self-improvement, and Celestia is obviously overworking herself to avoid thinking about painful mistakes."
Wait, what?
I could have hit myself. Fleeing from her problems would explain so much about Celestia; despite all her vaunted wisdom, it seemed she still fell into the same traps as so many other ponies. Still, if she really was overworking herself on purpose, that only made me more furious at how she never had time for me. I didn't care if it had simply turned into ingrained habits at this point. She should know better.
"Cadance has had more than enough time with Celestia to remedy that," I said bitterly.
"Any time Princess Cadance spends with Celestia would be split among multiple subjects, and in many cases, likely the art of pretending to be competent rather than true proficiency."
I'd had enough. Frankly, I didn't care if it might be harder for Cadance to catch up than it had been for me to learn in the first place. Celestia treated her as though she'd already earned far more than me simply because she was an alicorn.
"Are you trying to get me to forgive Cadance's incompetence and ignorance?" I demanded. "Because that's not going to work."
Celestia would have dithered about for another ten minutes rather than say 'yes,' including a lecture on not being rude to your teachers. Voice jumped straight to the point.
"I am trying to get you to understand it as a precursor to encouraging you to tutor her in unicorn magic."
I stared blankly at her. Anything I could possibly say to that was far too rude to be pointed at a powerful Outsider, prior benevolence or not. Celestia had originally tried to get me to teach her, and the resulting explosive argument had convinced all parties involved that it was not worth the trouble of trying.
Eventually, I settled on a safe, "I am not convinced, and feel very underwhelmed."
Voice once again borrowed Celestia's giggle. I suddenly had to wonder if that was the only example she had to work with. It wasn't as though I giggled very often at all, and Voice's idea of pony-watching was apparently 'watch Sunset sleep.'
"Tutoring Princess Cadance, if you can refrain from making the experience miserable for her, is the sort of formative experience that she would remember for centuries. Every time she cast a spell, she would remember that you taught her what she needed to do so. It is the ideal method of mending bridges between you two and instilling lingering gratitude at the same time. You are both immortal. Some minor efforts on your part now will reap benefits in the coming millennia, provided that you can avoid ruining your efforts via a subsequent return to hostility."
I didn't know what was worse: that Voice actually had a pretty good point, or that I couldn't think of any counterarguments that didn't make me sound like a petty brat. Having a good point didn't make me want to do it any more, though.
"Also," Voice added, "I would like to teach you some magics I can guarantee you do not know and for which the criteria would be fulfilled by this. The Chain of Knowledge is a school of magic that requires teaching lower-level magics to a peer before you are magically eligible to use the higher levels. You don't need to go as far as an apprenticeship, but I can already say that whatever you have done to date is not enough to fulfill the criteria. Successfully teaching Cadance would be."
I gave up on trying to conjure a counterargument and tried to scowl at the Outsider. It was far harder than it normally was. I'd known She would help me with my ascension, but that apparently meant teaching me exotic magics, too? I had no intention of complaining about that. Otherworldly knowledge was one of the primary benefits ponies tried to bargain for, and Voice would be providing it as a side effect.
"You could have led with that," I halfheartedly groused.
"You would still spend half of every lesson sniping at her if I had," Voice disagreed. "You would fulfill the magical requirements, and completely miss out on the opportunity to make her grateful as well."
My nostrils flared. Again, she was right. Damn it. At least she was a much better teacher than Celestia, providing logical reasons rather than 'it's the right thing to do!' Still, actually helping Cadance? The last time I'd been left alone with her, I had suffered a humiliating elemental discharge from sheer hatred and anger.
…Which, come to think of it, was probably yet another reason that Voice was pushing this asinine plan rather than just having me become a temporary teacher at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Possibly the primary reason even if She hadn't brought it up. Emotions had powerful effects on magic, and negative emotions strong enough to make me lose control, albeit with compounding factors, were a major weakness.
"Fine," I sighed, dismay still losing the fight against the prospect of learning novel magics. "I'll try, at least. If she isn't willing to learn, though, I'm not wasting my life on trying to cure her laziness."
"The first few lessons are effectively guaranteed to be slow, as she will be more focused on protecting herself from expected attacks than on actually learning," Voice cautioned. "Demonstrate that you are now safe to be around, and I expect you will be pleasantly surprised. Not to the point of matching someone with a Talent for magic such as yourself, but still better than you are fearing."
Definitely not. If nothing else, at least the inevitable failure of this plan would finally make Voice share my opinion of Cadance's work ethic. Maybe my opinions of Cadance in general, too — although that might be a bit much to expect from an alien Outsider.
...Okay, for that matter, I suddenly hoped it was too much. Voice feeling hatred for anypony could rapidly become problematic. I hated Cadance and wished Celestia had never found her, but I didn't want her dead. That Voice shared a modern pony's aversion to "extinguishing stories" was only a small comfort in that regard.
"You're doing your Cadance scowl again."
Oh, come on! I was actually concerned for her well-being this time!
"Considering the subject of our conversation, I think I'm allowed to!"
Over the next several minutes of silence, it did gradually occur to me that Celestia would probably be thrilled to hear that I was willing to try tutoring Cadance. I wasn't sure that I should actually try to bring it up, though. Doing so might provide short-term benefits and alleviate the damage from my snapping at her, but when Cadance inevitably refused to take her studies seriously and drove me away again, I would be the one to take the blame. No, it was probably better to just go directly to Cadance.
Roughly twenty or thirty minutes after Celestia first departed, a brief knock sounded at the door, but I didn't bother telling the pony outside to come in. They wouldn't be able to hear me on the other side of the wards, and I was certain that they would open the door momentarily no matter who it was.
Sure enough, the door swung open some ten seconds later. For a moment, I thought that the pegasus-sized white form in the doorway had to belong to a nurse. The next moment, I noticed the nine boxes she carried — three on her back, and three on each wing — and assumed that Celestia had been called away after all. That she had decided to send food and an apology via messenger, once again placing other ponies above me even after she'd promised me lessons on my new magic.
That flash of disappointment died when I noticed the pink mane of the 'messenger,' combined it with a Cutie Mark of a sun peeking out from behind black clouds, and connected the dots. Admittedly, I only connected them because of the way reality had blurred a few days ago and made Celestia appear pink, but it still fit.
"Princess?" I incredulously burst out.
The pegasus giggled, a light little tinkling that was far different than Celestia's and momentarily made me doubt my own suspicion.
"Correct. Hello, Sunset! How do you like Spring Hail?" Celestia asked — playfully?
The disguised princess performed a quick, bouncy circle turn without dropping or even especially jostling any of her cargo. The already impressive feat was made even moreso by its seemingly weightless nature. When a pony temporarily transformed into another being, they either needed to convert magic into false mass, shunt it elsewhere, compress, or expand. This requirement was one of the primary reasons that, say, sensible unicorn mares never tried to turn into earth pony stallions. Barring a level of magical expenditure beyond most ponies, we would become weaker by increasing our size, not stronger. Similarly, unicorns trying to transform themselves into alicorns would lack any tribal magic that they had not already been born with; their wings would be vestigial, and their hooves utterly devoid of the gifts granted to earth ponies.
Either Celestia was using pegasus magic to effectively reduce her compressed weight and make her appear as light as a normal pegasus, or unicorn magic to manage a perfect transformation. Either way, it was an incredible feat of magical expertise presumably performed on the fly. This, despite all the grief she caused me, was one of the main reasons that I had never tried to look for another teacher. Celestia seldom ever felt the need to show off even a small fraction of what she could do; she accomplished marvels of magic as easily as other ponies breathed, and almost as casually.
"I thought Spring might help me get into the right mindset for our lesson," Celestia said cheerfully, "and I found her to be quite helpful in helping me avoid being mobbed."
The pegasus-shaped princess nudged the door shut with one hoof, once again without jostling her cargo. If somepony had told me that Spring Hail was a mailmare entrusted with fragile, important packages, I would have believed them.
I tried to to find something familiar in Princess Celestia's body language, tone, anything. Beyond the easily-dismissed similarities in appearance, there was nothing. Princess Celestia was all calm, serene grace, the unattainable standard by which most unicorns, and a great many other ponies, defined beauty. This pegasus form of hers displayed none of that. There was undeniable skill and confidence in her movements, but it was the casual fitness of a high-level athlete or physically active showmare.
"What do you think?" Celestia asked, trotting toward me as she started to slide the various bakery boxes atop the cushions surrounding my bed.
One package, with an effortless flick of a wing, even arced directly onto the small unoccupied space of Voice's cushion. The Outsider seemed to be as impressed as I was. If nothing else, I didn't think I'd ever seen her quite so happy, the fake mare stretching her lips as far as they would go without her outright breaking pony anatomy. It was a strange expression to see on my own features, made moreso because she couldn't have imitated me to manage it.
I barely needed to think about my answer. Which was good, because I could barely think at all, still stunned by Celestia's appearance.
"If you're trying to break my brain," I told Spring Celestia seriously, "it's working."
Just—how? This was not one of her extensively rehearsed masks honed by over a thousand years of governing. I couldn't even say this was a similar act. Even Celestia's masks had their cracks, and Spring had none. If I hadn't been given a pile of context clues to help, Spring could have shown up to tutor me for a day and I would have had no idea.
I didn't know what to think of it. If I went solely by the difference in behavior, I would have said her new behavior had to be fake. But Celestia didn't, couldn't, act like this.
Spring giggled once again, the sound remaining consistent with the last time but still different from that of Celestia. Moments later, she seemed to catch sight of my expression and realized that I wasn't joking. The humor soon evaporated over several seconds.
"Would you like for me to change back?" Celestia asked solemnly.
This was more familiar ground, but at the same time, not. She was clearly making a deliberate attempt to assume her normal behavior on a far different pony. That she had to make an effort rather than it being effortless was telling. That the switch wasn't instantaneous and instead took several seconds, even moreso.
It seemed increasingly likely that Celestia was diving so far into her persona that she might as well be Spring for the duration. I had no idea what to think of that. If she'd been doing the same thing with a 'princess' persona, shouldn't her masks have had fewer cracks? Until she'd deliberately dragged herself back out of character, Spring was perfect. But if Celestia could do away with masks altogether, and in so doing, become the perfect pony princess that she wanted everypony to believe she was — why didn't she do that all the time?
"I promise you," Celestia added, "my asking is not a 'test.' It would defeat the purpose if this form makes you uncomfortable."
I barely even needed to consider her offer before shaking my head. If she thought being in the form of a pegasus would help me learn that type of magic, I utterly lacked the necessary experience to disagree. I could get over the cognitive dissonance induced by her appearance and behavior.
"No, it's fine. It was just surprising, that's all."
Celestia nodded, then paused. Now that I was watching for it, I could see the rapid shift in body language as Celestia again submerged herself into the persona of Spring Hail. Calm gave way to enthusiasm, the slow inevitability of ages traded for the barely contained movement of a weather factory. Even watching it happen, the shift didn't become any less bewildering.
"The first thing to keep in mind when dealing with pegasus magic," Spring began, "is that freedom is its natural state of being. I hesitate to say that it wants to do anything, for to do so is to attribute foreign emotions to magic that is yours. It is, however, most easily used to help ponies follow their hearts."
As she spoke, the pegasus neatly pulled a package open with her wings, cut the fruit-filled cake inside into bite-sized pieces, and impaled a piece upon a fork, all within the space of five seconds. Lifting that piece up to the level of my head was done as smoothly as any other motion, and without any pause in Spring's lecture. I was glad that she wasn't making a big deal out of needing to help me eat, but at the same time…
I want to be able to do that.
For once, the thought didn't provoke a stab of jealousy or resentment. I was so often upset in part because Cadance refused to properly make use of the gifts she'd been given. Spring most certainly did with every motion. If Cadance could manage such feats of dexterity and finesse, I would never have gotten on her case about refusing to learn how to eat and write via telekinesis.
"The pegasus legions of pre-Equestria antiquity demonstrated what pegasus magic could do if tempered by discipline and wielded by ponies working in concert. They were the first to break the backs of hurricanes, a feat that ponies had previously decried as completely impossible. Commander Hurricane's name was not mere posturing. That they were eventually overwhelmed by Windigos should not be considered a sign of weakness, but an indicator of just how terrible relations between the tribes had become, and by extension, how much the Windigos had been empowered.
"Whether you choose to focus on personal discipline, freedom, or a combination of the two is a personal decision, but not one that sets your path in stone — an inescapable path, too, goes against the nature of pegasus magic. A combination is often best, I've found. I tended toward freedom in my younger years, and as that type of magic is easier, it is what we will begin with. Your current lack of wings is less of a concern than you might believe; every pony is capable of emitting magic from any part of our bodies, and lacking the crutch of wings may help you establish habits that will help you once you have them."
It took me a moment to realize what Spring had so casually dropped into the middle of her lecture. It was a good thing I wasn't the one holding the fork, because if I had been using my hooves, I might have dropped food straight onto the floor. Though her behavior might be vastly different, this was still Princess Celestia, and she'd just — casually spoken as though my ascension was a certainty. No you aren't ready, no refusal to even help me take steps toward that route, just implicitly agreeing that it was inevitable and acting accordingly.
"Admittedly, we will need to avoid you using your hooves or horn as crutches, but those would be easier to overcome later. As a unicorn, your first instinct will be to send the magic to your horn. Please remember not to manipulate any of your magic until you are recovered. Once you are, we could indeed focus on the inevitable lightning production should you wish to go that route. Mobility, however, will be the focus of our first lessons…"
Forget the princess mask. Why didn't she spend her time like this instead? Spring seemed far more genuine than Celestia ever was.
Apparently, Princess Cadence's name was spelled as "Cadance" in the vast majority of later material. I'm a bit disgruntled by that, honestly, but I've changed the text accordingly.
(Next chapter will be up tomorrow, because I cannot be stopped.)
My positive early impressions of Spring Hail only intensified as the lesson on pegasus magic continued. Celestia's near-limitless knowledge of a variety of subjects, ability to elucidate the pros and cons of different approaches, and unique perspective on cultural and historical trends all survived the transition. Spring was almost as kind to me as Celestia pretended to be for the benefit of the masses, and no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find any sign that Spring's emotions were feigned. Certainly, there were flashes of emotion that she didn't follow up on, signs that there was a working brain behind the wellsprings of positivity. But even when she ignored them, they weren't subsequently crushed and hidden by a mask. They persisted and only faded due to other factors, not because Celestia decided to hide them.
Spring even made forays into dark jokes! Celestia never said things that could potentially hurt a pony if they overheard, and she usually chided me for making them myself! That, more than anything else, convinced me that Spring's behavior could not be feigned. There would have been a significant tell somewhere, some crack through which harsh judgment peered.
Admittedly, her dark jokes were at the expense of ponies who had died centuries ago, but those figures were often still venerated. A fair number of ponies would be upset by, say, learning that a certain popular Manehattan architect had been implicated in mass fraud, and only escaped (publicly known) punishment by turning in his co-conspirators. At least, I thought that was what Spring was implying.
At the same time, Celestia's worst traits were suppressed. There were no hidden tests interspersed throughout the lesson, and even when we disagreed, it didn't prompt any underlying disappointment. The lessons continued instead of pivoting to focus on how wrong I was.
It had been rather a long time since I'd exited a lesson feeling like I hadn't failed Celestia, and it was wonderful. Ironically, the mare with a Cutie Mark of the Sun peeking from behind a cloud was just plain warmer than the Princess of the Sun with her unobstructed view.
Still, it wasn't entirely perfect. The experience was overshadowed by looming and intensifying dread; I knew that she would, inevitably, return to form — pun fully intended — before too long. It wasn't as though she could teach me like this once we were back at the castle. Pegasus magic lessons may continue, but it would be in her original form; even if she was technically the same mare, prior experience told me that we would be soon return to a thousand years of cruel habits, false masks, and unfair tests.
That time arrived much, much too quickly, and I felt my ears flatten as Spring straightened in a reflex that I recognized and irrationally disliked. There was one responsibility that could not be put off, and even I couldn't blame her for: the lowering of the sun and raising of the Moon, and from there, bedrest so that she might be able to do the opposite in the morning. I never could figure out whether her consistent timing was some sort of feedback from the Sun, a thousand years of habit, or the product of a spell, but I'd learned to recognize when nighttime was only a few minutes away.
"I think that's a good place for us to leave off," Spring said, acting as though I wouldn't be forced to learn far more on my own before she was next willing to make time for me. "This mare needs her beauty sleep, and you need to rest up if you're to feel better."
Celestia would have followed it up with a disparaging comment about how she'd noticed my yawning near the tail end of the lesson, and I would never do as well if I was exhausted. Spring said nothing of the sort. I did not want this to be the last time I saw 'her.'
"It's not like I won't have all the time ever while I'm in the hospital," I tried. "No levitation or hooves, remember? I can afford to stay up for a little while."
I braced myself for disapproval, ears flattening once more as I looked away. With nighttime imminent, Celestia would likely be dragging herself back out of the Spring persona right about now. That meant crushing disapproval was back on the table.
With me looking away, the sudden tussling of my mane came as a complete surprise. I jerked my head back to stare at Spring, wide-eyed.
"I believe that the paralysis spell–"
Oh, so that's what this is. That would explain why I could still only barely move my body even after multiple hours without a nurse directly checking on us. There was still plenty of magical monitoring with built-in wards exemptions, of course, but it was best to accompany magical monitoring with frequent check-ins when medicines were used instead of spells.
"–will be lifted tomorrow morning, provided that you agree to stay in bed. Your body is still adapting to having earth pony magic, and any significant exertion risks setting the process back."
There was no emphasis placed on stay in bed, no implied expectation that I would disobey basic medical instructions and jeopardize my own recovery in the process.
Spring stood up, stretched, and went still for several seconds. A spherical flash of yellow light soon enveloped Spring, leaving behind the ever-regal Princess of the Sun. I thought I caught a glimpse of some unusual emotion — regret? Distress? Regardless, she soon proved how different she was from Spring by crushing the emotion under a mask of false kindness.
"I'm afraid I will need to spend tomorrow rearranging my schedule. Two and a half days of ignoring my appointments without warning has left a bit of a mess."
I meant to keep my muzzle shut. I intended to keep Celestia in a good mood and cajole her into continuing our lessons as soon as possible, preferably while I was still in the hospital and could learn from Spring Hail instead of Princess Celestia.
"That tends to happen when you make a habit of overworking yourself," slipped out, and I winced.
Well, there goes my chance of ever seeing Spring for another year.
Although, if I was immortal now — no, that was the worst idea. Voice's assistance was a safety net, not something to rely upon and certainly not something I used to excuse self-destructive behavior.
I'd expected a flinch, and I got that much. Next would come guilt that wasn't acted on, apologies that meant nothing, and no change in her behavior or plans.
"I am long overdue for a vacation," Celestia acknowledged.
But?
Rather than continue immediately, the Princess of the Sun held up a hoof and trotted over to the hospital window. Her horn soon lit with a yellow glow of increasing luminescence as she connected to the sun and prepared to move it across the sky. She could, when so inclined — such as at the Summer Sun Celebration, or when there were witnesses around in general — make a big deal out of the action. Floating in the air, turning into a miniature sun herself, the works.
Most of the time, though, it was a far more somber affair. Moving the sun was easy for her. The Moon was where she sometimes seemed to have trouble, with the occasional display of tensing muscles and gritted teeth. At a guess based on the times I'd observed and extrapolating relative rates based on that, I'd say the Moon "fought" her twice a month or so. For whatever reason, those incidents always seemed to upset her even if she was excellent at hiding it.
Tonight was not one of the harder days. The Moon and night sky did take longer to raise compared to the sun, certainly, but Celestia didn't seem as though she was overly struggling. The sun often seemed effortless for her, and the night only gave her its normal amount of grief.
Not for the first time, I wondered if she would want me to help with the Moon once I became an alicorn. Certainly, my own Cutie Mark was of a stylized sun in the same colors as my mane, but the Special Talent it reflected was for magic in general rather than Celestia's overwhelming solar affinity. Celestia hadn't asked for Cadance to help, I knew, but Cadance couldn't magic her way out of a wet paper bag.
The Solar Princess finished flipping the day/night cycle within five minutes and soon trotted back to my bedside table, visibly tired by wresting the Moon and night sky into place.
"I am not pleased that my duties keep me from simply staying by your side until you are well," Celestia admitted.
My urge to say something cruel about her time management fought with my own dawning comprehension of what she had just said. Did — did I finally count as somepony important now, or was she just saying that to get me back under her hoof after I was straying? It wasn't as though she'd stopped with her cruel tests, and pretty words ultimately changed nothing. I'd let myself think that a few hours ago, and it had taken her pretending to be a completely different pony before she could show genuine emotion.
"However, I cannot simply order the whole world to halt," Celestia sighed, bowing her head with alleged regret. "Even should I delegate Day Court cases to lower judges, there are simply too many projects explicitly requiring my approval before they can go forward. It will take time to amend regulations and rules so that they no longer require my oversight."
And halfway through the process, ponies will object, or there will be some minor emergency, and you'll back down. I knew how this went. Celestia had attempted reforms in centuries past, but ponies almost always found a way to pile responsibilities back onto her. Or perhaps it was that she looked for more responsibilities the moment she started to have free time again? After all, she was apparently trying to run from memories via overwork.
Something shifted in Celestia's expression as I watched her, and she, in turn, watched me. It—almost looked like desperation? It was twitchy, though, like she was torn between hiding it behind a calm mask and actually showing the emotion. To my surprise, the mask actually lost.
That instantly made me suspicious of what I was looking at, and I was forced to wonder if this was simply a less practiced mask.
"I am trying to do better, Sunset, but I simply cannot drop everything for your benefit. I want to, but–"
The Solar Diarch paused as a thought occurred to her, her supposed desperation winking out as though it had never been. Or perhaps it had been her plan all along, and she was only pretending to have had a sudden thought.
"Sunset," she said oddly. "I have long remembered your disdain for the 'petty affairs of petty ponies,' and felt as though I was acceding to your wishes by keeping you well away from politics. However, recent events have demonstrated that I do not know your mind as well as I thought I did — and considering how frequently we fought, my confidence seems to have been baseless in the first place. As such, I must ask: do you want to help me with the governance of Equestria? I may not always agree with you, but I at least trust you, something I cannot say of a great many other ponies."
My eyes widened. Was this a trick question? Another stupid test? Oh, I can't give you any more magical lessons for a while, but if you really want to then we can do something I believe you hate! You'd much rather just study on your own, right?
"The need to teach you will almost certainly slow our pace, especially at the beginning. However, I believe you would pick it up as quickly as you do everything else, and would soon be of great benefit. It is something I always intended for you to learn after you became less…"
Celestia hesitated, and I already knew that she was once more judging me.
"Fiery," she settled on. "There are times where a verbal castigation would, perhaps, be useful. There is a time and place for that, however, and they are not 'always, at all times, for absolutely every noblemare I interact with.'"
Yup, there was the judgment. Was that seriously what she thought of me? Yes, I'd been rude when she tried to introduce me to Canterlot's nobility, but that was because they all wanted something from me. Snapping at the first few had done an excellent job of demonstrating that I was not a pony to be trifled with. But here Celestia was, implying that my refusal to ignore their arrogant attempts to exploit me meant that I was in the wrong.
"Unlike you," I snapped, "I'm not going to just smile and ignore it when somepony tries to use me. I don't know how you can just — sit there and let them get away with it all the time! They're not ever going to stop unless their hooves actually get burned from trying to push the literal Goddess of the Sun!"
Celestia's expression pivoted from slightly pained to what might, for once, be genuine surprise. She stared at me as though I'd claimed all unicorns were born with wings before a secret cabal of pegasi came along to steal them.
"I am many things, Sunset, but I am afraid a goddess is not one of them," said the immortal ruler of Equestria and primary reason we barely needed to bother maintaining a standing military. "I am as fallible as any other pony. I am aware that ponies worship me, certainly, but attempting to dissuade such worship long since proved to be more trouble than it was worth — and yes, truthfully, it has proven useful many a time."
I stared at her, aghast. She was serious, wasn't she? How?
"I wasn't talking about fallibility. You can raise the Sun and Moon on your own when it used to require rotating shifts encompassing the entirety of the Unicorn Kingdom. The greatest works of the most respected 'experts' in Equestria pale in comparison to what you can do without even trying. Case in point: you just spent several hours transformed into…"
I stared at her calm visage and felt my irritation gradually crumple. Everything I said was just going to go in one ear and straight out the other. Celestia had long since made up her mind.
"Never mind," I grumbled. "Point is, I know what answer you expected, but I actually would like to be given some real responsibilities for a change. Just don't expect me to smile and let ponies walk all over me."
As expected, Celestia did not appear thrilled with my answer. Her mouth opened, disappointment writ large upon her features, and — she stopped. The Princess of the Sun closed her eyes and sighed.
"Very well. I do not believe this stance will do your reputation any favors, but if you are intent on this path, I will not stop you."
I was torn between laughing and screaming. Even when Celestia thought she was being permissive, she still couldn't stop herself from expressing how much of a huge disappointment I was. An argument would have been better; at least that way I could defend myself, rather than this horrible, "Oh, you're wrong, but I'm going to let you do it anyway and you can just suffer the consequences until you realize I'm right."
Spring had only existed for a few hours, but I already wanted her back. On a whim, I adopted one of Celestia's masks, well aware that she would know that it was even faker than she was.
"Good night, Princess," I said with false serenity. "You need your beauty rest, and I apparently need to spend the night pretending to sleep while actually condensing pure hatred for all living ponies into something that I might throw at the perfectly gentle, undeserving noblemares of Canterlot, who surely aren't going to try to exploit the inexperienced personal student of Princess Celestia for personal gain."
As I'd hoped, Princess Celestia's mask of calm was a bit less calm by the time I'd finished. She could be pained by my words all she wanted, though. If she wasn't going to change her behavior, why should I care?
"Sunset–" she tried.
"It would probably take the form of some sort of fire," I added. "You know, based on how I blew up at Cadance earlier today. Don't worry, though: I remember your lectures on how I'm not supposed to set other ponies on fire even a little bit, including when it's just a few short-lived embers to singe manes, and I'll do my best to make sure all this hatred is–"
My rant was interrupted by Celestia crouching down and pulling my paralyzed form into a hug. I would have frozen if I wasn't already perpetually confined to that state. Why was she hugging me? With her hooves, no less! I couldn't remember the last time — had she ever hugged me straight on, rather than using her wings for that purpose? I couldn't be certain, but thought she might not. Why was she fully embracing me for perhaps the first time after I had just been sniping at her?
"I am sorry, Sunset. I–"
Celestia stuttered to a halt. She was close enough for me to hear her swallow, and certainly close enough to break my brain through sheer proximity. She might not know what to say, but I didn't even know how to feel. You weren't supposed to give positive feedback to ponies when they'd just been doing something you disliked!
All too soon, the Solar Diarch pulled away. My muscles twitched as I instinctively tried to follow, and found myself suddenly grateful that I had been magically paralyzed. I wasn't, had never been, some weak little filly who would dissolve into a blubbering mess if she didn't get a daily dose of affection. Acting like I needed comfort would just make me look pathetic.
"Good night, Sunset," Celestia sighed. "I will try to do better."
For an instant, I was tempted to point out that she could just stay with me overnight. She was, after all, returning to the castle specifically so that she could sleep.
The moment passed. Just because she'd decided to hug me out of the blue didn't equate to it meant anything. In fact, it seemed quite appropriate that she should turn and trot away so soon after performing such an uncharacteristic act, as though embarrassed that she had done so at all. The Sun's warmth was available to all, but only from a distance.
The door swung shut behind her, and I was left somehow feeling even more unhappy than when Celestia had changed from Spring in the first place.
"I arrived with expectations," Voice announced, jerking my attention back to her.
I had forgotten she was there altogether, actually. Whether that was enforced via Outsider, or simply because Celestia was acting weird enough to occupy my entire brain and then some, I couldn't say. Either way, I pounced on the distraction and focused my full attention on Voice, banishing any fleeting feelings to the corner where they belonged.
"You ponies somehow not only exceeded them, but by such a massive margin that I do believe she isn't allowed to die for at least a decade, either. You are both calamities."
I blinked rapidly and promptly decided to ignore both the slightly disturbing phrasing, and whatever She had whispered at the end. I supposed it was good that She didn't feel as though She had wasted Her boons? I was uncomfortable with the very idea that something might manage to kill Celestia, though. Almost impossible or not, it was a scary thought.
"I, u-uh–"
Oh, I sound pathetic. Ugh.
I swallowed, took a deep breath, and made good use of Celestia's example to force my tone back into normalcy. Celestia's behavior shouldn't bother me even more than when she stuck to harsh strictness all the time. Hay, maybe she was sprinkling in other acts specifically to unbalance me. If so, her attempts were working far too well and I couldn't let them.
"I am sure the Princess will be happy to hear that? Or—actually, do you mind if we not tell her? I'm afraid of how she might literally overwork herself to death if she finds out that she could get away with it."
For a moment, I felt oddly triumphant that Celestia and I were now truly undying — if only temporarily in Celestia's case — while Cadance was presumably just left with being exceptionally difficult to kill. Guilt struck an instant later. I might hate Cadance, but I didn't want her dead. Celestia would be devastated should Cadance be killed, too.
The very possibility was absurd, of course. No mundane accident could do enough damage to an alicorn to kill them; even a building collapsing upon them could be overcome by telekinetic levitation. Hostile action was out, too. Equestria had been at peace for centuries, and even brief periods of would-be war were rather decisively settled the day that Celestia took the field. We didn't live in Griffonstone; no matter how cutthroat equestrian politics might get, they never reached the point of being literal. Cadance was in no danger.
But now that I'd had the thought, there was an ever-present, niggling concern that I might be wrong. Celestia and Cadance were the only alicorns, yet Voice had confirmed that Celestia knew how they were made. That implied a larger sample size than just the two, and mythology agreed. So where were all the others? Could I truly assume that any and every threat had been dealt with long before I was born?
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pushed away the burning hatred that insisted I never do anything nice for Cadance. The fact that my hatred had turned from metaphorical burning to literal burning proved that the emotion had gotten out of hoof. Knowing that didn't make it much easier for me to ignore, though.
Just think of it as for Celestia's benefit, not Cadance's.
"Could I bargain for the same to be extended to Cadance, please?" I reluctantly requested. "Celestia would be devastated if she died, and it doesn't — even if I hate her, it feels wrong for her to be excluded when the two of us are safe. I know that you're already being exceedingly generous, but…"
I trailed off, wincing. There was no but there, if I was going to be honest. Even just extending the guarantee to Celestia was an incredible boon. Asking for anything more was risking offense.
Thankfully, Voice didn't seem offended by my request. On the contrary, she was smiling oddly at me. Not the stolen smile that usually meant I am entertained, so… I approve of you asking this, perhaps? Not the reaction I'd expected, honestly.
"I will raise the subject with her," Voice announced. "You do not need to worry about further services, Sunset. It shall be handled, or not."
And with that proclamation, the world blurred. Not half as badly as the night of the Dirge, but still enough to distort colors and space for what seemed like several seconds, but could have been even less time.
I blinked at the empty cushion where Voice had once sat, then glanced around the empty room. A few books had been left on the side table, but I couldn't exactly move to read any of them.
"I didn't mean you had to go right now," I halfheartedly complained.
It seemed as though I would be getting mandatory bedrest after all, if only from sheer boredom. That my stomach was full and I had been staving off sleepiness for hours was beside the point.
Princess Cadance
Princess Mi Amore Cadenza — or Princess Cadance, as she much preferred to be called — crumbled a ball of parchment in her hooves and flicked it off her desk with one wing. Unfortunately, the wastebasket she was aiming for seemed to have reached maximum capacity, and she couldn't be bothered to summon a servant to empty it. She would clean up after herself later.
Why in Equestria was Cadance the one who had to do this? Aunt Celestia should have explained matters ages ago! Cadance didn't even like Sunset, and Sunset literally burned with hate when Cadance tried to ask what her problem was!
Unfortunately for Cadance, she actually possessed empathy. Sunset's bewildered confusion during the negotiations had said a lot. Celestia refusing to meet Cadance's increasingly incredulous gaze said more. So, given as Celestia seemed to think Sunset's behavior was Celestia's own fault and she was trying desperately to make amends, it fell to Cadance to handle the ugly bits. Or the actually rather wonderful bits, as the case may be, but still very embarrassing ones.
Sunset was already well into the stage where stallions — and any other appropriately inclined ponies — would start noticing her, and possibly vice-versa. Sunset's complete obliviousness to the implications was simply unacceptable. What if Sunset found a special somepony, and was too bewildered by what she felt to know that those feelings should be nurtured instead of avoided? Cadance would be betraying her status as the Alicorn of Love if she declined to intervene! For the sake of Sunset's eventual love life, something needed to be done!
But I really really wish I didn't have to be the one to do it!
It would be so much easier if Cadance didn't know Sunset. Ask her to give a guest presentation on puberty, plus healthy romantic relationships and their possible results to a classroom full of initially starry-eyed, then increasingly disgusted foals? She could do so without any trouble. Had done so, even, and she would forever treasure her memories of their adorable dismay.
Explain matters to somepony she actually knew? Somepony who loathed her?So much harder, especially given Sunset's expressed disdain for "crippling emotional attachments." Trying to explain anything relevant ran the risk of having Sunset simply scoff and trot away, believing Cadance's entire attempt at explaining to be a waste of time.
Cadance stared at the newest blank piece of parchment on her polished wood desk, sighed, and decided to temporarily rest her head upon the hard surface.
"Auntie, why?" she whined.
Resting her head on the desk soon proved to be a mistake. The surface vibrated beneath her, jarring her jaw and sending her shooting straight up. Her wings flared wide with alarm and she looked around frantically, wondering if an earthquake had struck. As far as she knew, Canterlot had never suffered from an earthquake that hadn't been magically induced by some calamity — and for that matter, most of Equestria tended to be geologically stable, too.
In the time it took her to glance at a spot, look away, and return her gaze to that part of the room, a rather familiar orange, yellow, and red mare had appeared. The 'earthquake' vanished at the same time, leaving Cadance alone with an alicorn Sunset — or more accurately, Voice of Imperceptible Dreams. The pony-shaped entity was watching Cadance with, frankly, an exceptionally disturbing level of interest. It was even worse than when she watched Sunset sleep.
Cadance closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried her utmost not to show how incredibly off-putting Voice was. All those restrictions Sunset worked out, the bits and pieces that essentially said, 'don't commit crimes–' Voice claimed that they were means through which she might understand acceptable boundaries. But at the same time, she'd effectively said that if they set too many boundaries, she would start ignoring them. Cadance felt that Sunset had done the best job that anyone could ask for.
"The Princess of Love and former weathermare, Mi Amore Cadenza, greets the visitor from Outside," she recited from memory.
Voice's lips stretched in a smile that Sunset wouldn't be caught dead directing at Cadance. Not unless it was part of some cruel trick, at least.
"Oh, good, you were paying attention. However, that is for initial meetings, and we have already been acquainted."
Despite her words, the shapestealer did seem pleased by Cadance's repeat of the greeting. Cadance relaxed just a tiny bit. She hadn't forgotten — didn't think she ever would forget — that Voice came from a place apparently full of potential pony-eaters. Voice didn't seem like she was one of them, but Cadance also hadn't thought that Voice would care to speak to anyone other than Sunset any time soon.
"I, um — don't really think I would let Sunset in here…?" Cadance said hesitantly.
Voice froze in place, halting her scan of Cadance's rooms. 'Froze' seemed to be the right word for it, too; no parts of her body moved, not even her eyes. Hay, she wasn't even breathing.
"Would you like me to leave?" Voice asked, the sounds escaping her without any movement of her muzzle whatsoever.
Cadance swallowed and suppressed a shudder. She didn't know how Sunset could stand being around Voice — and as soon as Cadance had that thought, she felt ashamed to have produced it. It was wrong to think poorly of somepony just because they seemed strange and different.
"You're here for a reason, right?" Cadance ventured. "So it's fine this time, but please don't do it again unless it's an emergency?"
Voice resumed normal motion, and Cadance breathed a quiet sigh of relief. That relief was short-lived. The Outsider's horn soon lit, floating one of Cadance's discarded drafts from the floor to a visibly curious Voice. Cadance suddenly felt terrified for a completely different reason.
"Um, please don't read that, it's really not — I mean–"
The creature wearing Sunset's form completely ignored her request and unfolded the parchment containing one of Cadance's failed drafts. She immediately regretted not tearing every single failed attempt into tiny pieces before she disposed of them. They probably would have taken up less space in the trash that way, and nopony would need to see her humiliating attempts at discussing a certain topic.
Regret compounded on itself as Voice's features slowly stretched into a too-familiar smile: that of Sunset when she was about to do something cruel, and amuse herself at the expense of another. Cadance wanted to melt into a puddle on the spot. Sunset was bad enough on her own, and if there were two ponies that were going to do their utmost to make Cadance's life miserable? She might just decide to flee the castle altogether. She loved Aunt Celestia, she truly did, but Auntie could not for the life of her rein in Sunset.
Maybe she could run and request asylum over at Shiny's house. Cadance was sure his parents would be, if not exactly fine with it, at least too intimidated by her status as a princess to refuse her, and she could ensure they were compensated. Better still, Sunset probably didn't know that Shining Armor and Twilight Sparkle existed. Even if Sunset knew, she wasn't so cruel as to bully an absolutely adorable little filly who would immediately ride to Cadance's defense with weakly thrown pillows and indignant protests.
"You aren't going to die for at least a decade, either," Voice declared, before bursting into (Celestia's) giggles.
Cadance squeaked out an, "Um?"
"Oh, don't worry about it," Voice said, still smiling. "I am merely assuaging one of Sunset's fears. She truly is a remarkably sweet filly once you get past the prickly exterior. And interior. And middle layers. And emergency backup ablative spike layers. And automatic spike manufacturing glands."
Cadance could only stare incredulously at that claim.
Are we talking about the same Sunset? Cadance wanted to ask. Yellow and red mane, arrogant, obsessed with magic, offended if you don't share her obsession? I think there are only spikes all the way down.
As it turned out, Cadance had stared for perhaps a bit too long. Cadance soon blinked and found herself completely alone in her room without ever seeing Voice depart. There hadn't even been a (fake?) earthquake this time.
At least Voice left the failed draft behind. Cadance didn't know what she would have done if Voice decided to show it to Sunset.
"…I'm going to choose to slot whatever that was under 'Sunset's fault,'" Cadance said aloud, well aware that she was being unfair but not feeling particularly charitable after Voice's brief home invasion.
AN: Enabled and beta-read by @ensou. This is non-canon. I'm going to be switching to updating a story every other day at the fastest (and 1k words/day at minimum) rather than daily. This pace has been fun but it's not exactly sustainable with my RL obligations, and doesn't allow a long enough "wait, is this a good idea?" period. Or, well, it did allow long enough, but only just barely.
(Yes, the font is supposed to be like that.)
Again, this is a non-canon what-if. Seriously.
S̶u̵n̷s̵e̴t̴ ̵S̶h̵i̶m̶m̶e̷r̴?̵
Celestia stared up at the night sky with resignation and regret foremost amongst her features. Alone as she was, no mask hid or suppressed either. Her obvious heartbreak was enough to prompt sympathetic pangs all on its own.
There was something wrong with the Moon, though. Something that should be beyond obvious, but it was so difficult for me to think–
It was an approaching, barely-perceptible figure that finally let me realize what was wrong with it. The famous symbol of the Mare in the Moon, the symbol that so many pony supremacists used to argue in favor of us being the chosen entities of Equis, was gone. Not merely waning as part of what some scholars called the secondary lunar cycle, but simply missing altogether.
Before long, a black alicorn adorned with silver regalia set down in front of Celestia, glaring at her with all the hatred an immortal could possibly muster. If a pony could wield the paralyzing glare of a cockatrice, this would be how. An unusually large Cutie Mark of a Moon over a black sky occupied much of her flank, and even left little spots of darkness on the surrounding area. Her billowing mane and tail seemed to have been torn from the night sky itself, stars twinkling all across their dark blue backdrop, while her slitted eyes looked disturbingly menacing on a pony's form.
"I surrender," Celestia said simply.
Whatever the other alicorn had been expecting to hear, this clearly wasn't it. She stiffened, mingled confusion and suspicion joining her rage.
"Excuse Us?" the dark alicorn demanded.
"The Elements are petrified, Luna," Celestia said, not bothering to conceal her exhaustion.
Rage flickered across the face of 'Luna,' but she did not interrupt. Unlike with Celestia, the emotion was not crushed altogether, only held back for the moment by keen interest. I had little doubt that she would act on whatever angered her before long.
"Try as I might," Celestia continued, "I have not been able to restore them in a thousand years of attempts by more ponies than I wish to count. After my abuse of the Elements, the Tree of Harmony was offended by my mere presence. Centuries have passed since I could not solve any large-scale martial problem via manifestation of the Sun's reflection, and as a result, I am out of practice in peer-to-peer combat. Put quite simply, I am fully aware that this is a fight I cannot win, and do not intend to hurt us both by trying."
Wisps of darkness and blue starlight wafted off the dark alicorn, the enraged Luna obviously restraining herself from simply attacking outright.
"And thou expect Us to accept thy surrender?" Luna sneered. "Thou hath only weakened thy position by telling Us of thy weakness. Surely, thou cannot think thee will escape the consequences of imprisoning Us for a thousand years!"
The last was said in a roar that shook the cracked stones of the dilapidated chapel they stood within. Celestia weathered it without the slightest change in expression. Similarly, she didn't seem keen to comment on the combination and resultant butchering of modern and classical Equish.
"You are many things, Luna. But even like this, a monster is not one of them."
Once again, fury flickered across Luna's features. This time, I could identify the cause as Celestia calling her Luna. Still, she restrained herself and slowly sat back on her haunches, implicitly agreeing with her.
"State thy proposed terms, Sister."
Sister? But–
Celestia nodded regally and sat back down an eerie mirror of Luna's pose.
"I have already informed certain members of my staff to prepare for a peaceful transfer of power, contingent on a signal from myself. The nobility cannot be trusted–"
"Ah," Luna interrupted wryly, "We see that has yet to change even after a thousand years beneath thy hoof."
Despite the grim situation, the two alicorns shared fleeting smiles. That the darker of the two possessed pointed teeth seemed somehow natural in that brief moment of peace. A second later, the two seemed to remember themselves, and their prior emotions reinstated themselves once more: exhaustion and grief from Celestia, and burning hatred from Luna.
"Regardless, the majority of nobles remain unaware, and some of them may give you some trouble. There are, however, quite a few indiscretions that I have previously overlooked in exchange for concessions. The details of those will be made available to you, as well as those I have yet to act upon."
"Useful," Luna noted, "but not worth Our mercy."
"And I do not expect it," Celestia acknowledged. "I have prepared a ritual, to be performed by the two of us — or myself alone, if absolutely necessary — to seal myself in the Sun until such a time as you feel like releasing me."
The dark alicorn snorted, but seemed interested nonetheless.
"Thou didst not need to concern yourself with that component."
"I had thought of it as a sort of 'temporarily break seal in case of invasion or sufficient civil unrest,'" Celestia disagreed. "You are unparalleled in single and small-group combat, Luna, but I have always been the better of us at breaking armies or calming ponies. I would be willing to be re-sealed immediately thereafter; if I cannot defeat you now, why should I assume that would change after being imprisoned for untold years?
"More importantly, the ritual would prevent the world from freezing during your 'Eternal Night.' A second set of spells and techniques, available for mass distribution the moment you give the word, would allow agriculture to persist even without direct sunlight. Yields will dramatically drop, but the years have been kind. Though ponies may no longer be able to choose whatever food they might crave at any time, they will at least not starve."
Luna waved a hoof dismissively.
"We are certain We can improve whatever paltry packet thou assembled, assuming thou didst not sabotage it outright to provoke that 'civil unres–'"
Something changed in the dark alicorn, and she stopped speaking mid-sentence, blinking in apparent surprise. For that matter, everything seemed somehow different, although I couldn't quite put my hoof on how. Not until she glanced around the interior of the chapel and Celestia failed to react.
A moment later, Luna's eyes landed directly on me, and I suddenly became aware of a body that may not have existed moments before.
"A Seer?" Luna breathed, pivoting away from the frozen Celestia to focus her full attention on me. "This dream — thou art very powerful, indeed. How hath thee escaped Our sight for so long?"
Terror was slow to form, as though the emotion needed to be dredged up from a well before it could affect me. Luna's mention of this being a dream certainly explained why everything felt weird, I would admit. Still, safety of a dream or not, I did find myself instinctively backing away as Luna trotted toward me with obvious interest.
The alicorn, apparently noticing my rising fear, soon slowed to a stop with dismay flashing across her features. She slowly sat down with legs folded neatly beneath her, reducing her apparent size as though to say she wasn't so scary after all. It was more effective than I cared to admit, even after knowing that Celestia did the same thing with young foals.
"Ah, do not be afraid, little one," she crooned. "We were once the staunchest defender of your kind, and shall be again. Tell Us, what is your name, little Seer?"
Her demand for my name was said with all the confidence and authority of one of Celestia's royal degrees. It was just as difficult for me to ignore, and I found the answer spilling from my lips without ever asking my brain for permission.
"Sunset Shimmer."
The alicorn blinked.
"Sunset–" she started, eyes widening. It didn't seem to be as an address.
A dark blue magical aura enveloped me, and I yelped as I was rather sharply rotated to one side. The alicorn released her telekinetic grip a moment later, and I scrambled to face her again. She seemed distracted, glancing between me and the Cutie Mark on dream-Celestia's own flank, but instinct told me that taking my eyes off her to flee would be a mistake.
Still, I didn't stop backing away until my flank hit the wall of the chapel. Luna, too, had risen to her hooves, dispensing with any feigned gentleness in favor of all-encompassing rage as she stalked toward me.
"She dares mother a foal this close to Our release?" Luna roared, dark blue mists spilling from the furious alicorn to repeatedly form and dispel black spikes all around her. "Didst she believe We would forgive her sins for the sake of a filly?"
Despite the terrifying alicorn screaming at and approaching me, I couldn't help but snort. Dark humor bubbled up, and for once, I didn't need to even consider the benefits of suppressing it. If anything, expressing my displeasure might win me this dream-alicorn's favor. It wasn't as though I would be spilling any secrets; I was certain she could learn whatever I said just by reading the right tabloids.
"I wish," I said bitterly, and Luna stopped as suddenly as if she'd walked into a wall. "No, I'm just a little orphan filly who can't seem to gain her approval no matter what I do. I literally peeled reality apart a few days ago and she still can't go ten minutes without implying that I'm not up to her impossible standards."
Not without assuming her Spring persona, at least, I didn't say aloud.
Luna's rage dwindled into embers, and the alicorn transferred her glare from me to Dream-Celestia.
"Ah," Luna said darkly. "That does sound more like her."
Luna turned back to face me, and once again settled down on the floor across from me. Dream or not, I could feel myself relax at the implied ceasefire.
"We would apologize for Our outburst, but if thou hath been exposed to her for long enough, We assume you understand how infuriating she can be."
Even in my dreams, alicorns refuse to sincerely apologize. Do they just plain forget how to after ascension?
I couldn't dismiss the possibility that Luna was real, though. The magics of dreams and prophecy gradually died out as Equestria slowly became more peaceful. Ponies no longer felt as though they needed more protection from dreams than could be offered by an enchanted dreamcatcher, and the future ceased to be so scary as to require prophetic warnings. Plus, I had been granted immense power by an otherworldly being just a few days ago. Of the various methods of breaking time into pliable pieces, an Outsider's intervention had to be one of the easiest.
For that matter, if this dream truly had been a vision of the future before Luna's interruption? I would need to escape this conversation with as much information as possible with which to warn Celestia.
"I'm not going to lie and say it's okay, but I also can't cast stones when it comes to losing my temper when she gets involved, so." I shrugged. "Even if it's not okay, you're still forgiven."
My words were as much to test the waters as anything else. If she was offended, I would need to start exploring possible ways to break out of this lucid dream and wake up. If not, though — and yes, it did seem as though Luna was going to settle on an amused smirk rather than anger.
"Well, at least she has not twisted your honesty. We can respect that."
"Not for lack of trying," I complained, seizing the opportunity to curry further favor through aired grievances. "She would rather I smile and let other ponies trot all over me rather than igniting a few noblemare manes for shamelessly pushing their luck and thinking their barely-veiled insults weren't noticed. I put a timer on the cantrip every time, so it's not like they were actually hurt!"
Luna blinked, taken aback.
"Ignite their–" the alicorn started, a delighted, sharp-toothed smile spreading across regal features.
Luna interrupted her own recitation by bursting into peals of wicked laughter. It was not the restrained, polite laugh of Celestia, but something more akin to full-fledged villainous cackling.
It took the better part of a minute for her laughter to subside, and even then, sporadic chuckles still escaped her.
"Ah, We needed that," Luna sighed, still smiling. "Though Our sister may disagree, thou hath — snrk — thou hath Our leave to ignite as many noble manes as thou wish, little Sunset. Use thine privileges wisely."
I wondered what would happen if I told Celestia that I had been given permission in a dream. Probably nothing good, I would admit, but at the same time…
"So — I'm guessing this isn't just a dream," I ventured.
"On the contrary, it is 'just' a dream,'" Luna countered, smirking despite her disagreement. "Do not make the mistake of dismissing dreams as powerless figments, little Sunset. In the hooves of an expert, a nightmare can be turned into inspiration sufficient to let an artist craft a masterpiece, once-peaceful meadows used to communicate warnings of an upcoming invasion, a comforting memory retrieved as balm against grief, and so much more. Yet, We are no mere expert."
The alicorn rose to her hooves and full height, but this time, there was nothing threatening about the move. Threatening and imposing were two different traits, however, and Luna possessed the latter in spades. The closest comparison I possessed was when a particularly displeased Celestia had ordered a noblemare stripped of her holdings and imprisoned for callous, willful, and in one case, almost fatal exploitation of the railroad workers in her employ.
"We are the Goddess of the Night, Sovereign of Dreams, and Alicorn of the Moon, Queen Nightmare Moon." Nightmare regally claimed. "Know that you look upon royalty, my sweet Sunset, and be honored."
I look upon royalty almost every day. You're not special, and I'm not yours, I wasn't nearly reckless enough to say. Objectively speaking, she was special just by virtue of apparent competence and being an alicorn.
"What, like the holiday?" instead slipped from me. Which, admittedly, might be worse.
Nightmare's regal visage faltered, her imposing aura winking out like it had never been. The alicorn slumped with resignation.
"Yes, like 'Nightmare Night,'" she sighed. "Laugh if thou must. A particularly cruel piece of propaganda, that. We do not eat foals, and though We will admit to a sweettooth, Our favor cannot be purchased with something as meagre as candy."
The alicorn paused momentarily before giving me a wicked smirk.
"Pranks, on the other hand…" Nightmare said leadingly.
I held up a hoof.
"First of all, Celestia and I get into shouting matches on a regular basis. Second, though I may allegedly be her 'personal student,' she's long since replaced me in all but name, barring some anomalous and almost certainly short-lived behavior that I won't go into. Third — with all due respect, Your Majesty, I'm already a disappointment to her. I'm not sure that 'acting out' with pranks is something she would view as at all surprising, and I'm not exactly going to tell her that I received permission from a goddess in in my dreams."
Despite my denial, Nightmare's features lit up with unrestrained delight.
"Oh, no, please do," Nightmare said eagerly. "We would consider it a boon if thou were to inform her of Our permission, Sunset."
I was honestly tempted for a moment. Dream magics were exceedingly difficult to learn these days, and if Nightmare Moon wasn't just a particularly verbose fragment of my imagination, I would love to leverage a favor into lessons. Even with the sluggishness induced by the dream, though, I could see how telling Celestia would go.
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're supposed to be safely sealed somewhere — probably the Moon, if I can trust the events of this 'dream' and the absence of the Mare in the Moon. Do you really want her knowing that you can peek outside your seal?"
Nightmare Moon snorted, delight fading into reluctant acceptance.
"We would have long since gone utterly mad if We could not, and she cannot stop Us from dream-walking in general. However, you are correct in that the 'Mare in the Moon' is a symbol of our imprisonment in Our Moon, and she could stop Us from contacting you."
I winced and opted for full disclosure. I knew danged well how it felt to have somepony you liked and respected vanish from your life without warning.
"In the interests of maintaining the honesty you seemed to appreciate, I am going to be telling her about this conversation. I mean, I'm not happy with Celestia, but she's a known factor and, you know–"
I gestured at Celestia's frozen form.
"Being forced into handing over rule of Equestria seems like something she should be warned about."
Assuming that I wasn't simply seeing this because it was no longer a possibility, anyway. Depending on when Nightmare Moon's seal broke, Celestia's Voice-enforced undying state might rather decisively change any battle in her favor. I strongly suspected that Voice wouldn't guarantee Celestia's immortality past its current decade should She learn that Nightmare Moon would return afterward, though — and, for that matter, was she observing my dream right now?
I tried to discreetly scan the room to check for Voice's presence. Nightmare Moon seemed to misinterpret my scan, however; all the windows and doors rippled before the surrounding wooden walls expanded and sealed them off.
"While we applaud your loyalty and honesty," Nightmare said dryly, "perhaps a little less of the latter? Thou hath proven to be an unexpected delight thus far, and We would prefer for Thou to still be alive upon Our triumphant return to Equestria."
"Yeah, well," I started. "You really don't need to worry about that."
I hesitated for barely a moment before deciding to take the plunge. One more alicorn knowing that I wouldn't vanish into the mists of history was one more alicorn who might be willing to view me as worthwhile.
"The thing I said about peeling reality apart the other day? One of the things I indirectly broke was 'my own mortality.' Despite my best attempt—or at least, my best for now, I refuse to stagnate — I'm still not an alicorn, and there are still ways of killing me that I'm obviously not going to go into. But aside from those exceptions, I'm actually immortal and undying now."
Destruction of my mind being one of them, and considering you're named 'Nightmare' and hold dominion over dreams, I'm never telling you that part.
Surprise dominated Nightmare Moon's features before unease took its place. The self-proclaimed Alicorn of took an instinctive step backward, ears flattening with wariness.
"Thou hath treated with a Trespasser, hath thee not?"
"…and you would not be reading this if you wished for the cowering safety of day-dwellers," I remembered.
"Wait, did you write the Tome of the Trespassers?" I asked, wondering if somepony else had ascended via Outsider after all.
Nightmare closed her eyes, appearing pained. When she opened them again, her eyes held little of the visible affection that had been growing over the course of our conversation. I already regretted telling her.
"No. We know the tome of which you speak, and We took it off the Outsider-warped bodies of its authors. Whatever thou hath read, Sunset Shimmer, know it to be the delusions of madmares. We expect that becoming 'immortal and undying' is this Trespasser's means of ensuring that They might torture thee until they lose interest, not a true boon. Recant thine agreement and banish them as soon as thee can, Sunset, or live to regret it."
Despite her stern words, Nightmare Moon seemed more worried than anything else — and this, I was sure, was not akin to Celestia's masks. Not when Nightmare Moon hadn't hidden any other emotion, and instead seemed to hold them for when they would be most useful. Still, I felt a stab of guilt for not leading with the most important part.
"I genuinely appreciate the vote of concern, but Voice of–"
"Do not say Their name!" Nightmare roared, and I slammed back into the chapel wall, wide-eyed and instinctively trying to get away from the sharp-toothed, possibly pony-eating entity screaming at me.
I immediately found out that another popular claim was false: it turned out that you could feel pain in a dream, if extremely faintly. Terror was less faint, and having an angry alicorn looming over me was not something I would recommend to anypony.
"You should know better if thou hath truly been meddling with the Outside!" Nightmare continued furiously. "Nothing thou could have said or done reveals Celestia's dereliction of duty as desperately as this! Our world, even with all its dangers, is a gentle one in comparison to others, and certainly in comparison to Outside!"
I cringed under Nightmare Moon's disapproval, and suddenly felt glad that Celestia had never resorted to physical intimidation like this. At the same time, though, I couldn't even blame Nightmare Moon for it. Outsiders were literally unimaginably dangerous.
"Y-Your–" I swallowed and pulled upon Celestia's example for calm. "Your Majesty, I truly thank you for your concern, but She is truly the closest thing to harmless. I performed the Di—my ritual during the Summer Sun Celebration to maximize my odds of summoning something friendly, and I succeeded. My ritual worked better than I could have reasonably expected, though since I'm still not an alicorn, not as well as I'd hoped. And, well, my Visitor confirms that it was rather reckless, so I don't think I'll be doing it again.
"All She wants to do is to be allowed to wander around Equestria and observe the 'stories' of ponies within, especially my own — including, uh, a keen and admittedly disquieting interest in watching my breathing as I sleep. She says 'Corporeal' bodies are messy and fascinating, and I've basically given up privacy now. S-Still, it isn't even the boon I wanted! My new undying state is a necessary component of maintaining Her anchor, and therefore, Her cost. The actual boon is Her assistance in helping me become an alicorn."
It took a few seconds for me to realize that, in my attempts to salvage what Nightmare Moon thought of me, I had delved well out of publicly available information and into the realm of secrets. Really, really problematic ones, too.
"If it helps, She refused to be weaponized and mentioned that 'snuffing out stories' is anathema to Her nature," I added quickly, figuring it was too late to back out now. "She even explicitly allows unilateral amendments to the restrictions on Her, which She uses as standards for acceptable behavior, so long as I explain why they're being made — and yes, if I don't explain, She'll make me regret it, etcetera. But really, She's perhaps the most benevolent Outsider I could have asked for. Even Celestia was willing to accept Her!"
I wasn't sure why I was telling Nightmare Moon all of this, honestly. It was like I needed the possibly-a-dream-figment to approve of my actions. Which was ridiculous; although I wasn't going to go out and ask her, I was fairly confident that somepony named 'Nightmare Moon' had been sealed for, presumably, good reasons. Possibly something about needing spells to enable agriculture that dream-Celestia had mentioned? Back when Nightmare Moon had first been sealed, farming techniques might not have been nearly good enough to compensate for the decreased yields, assuming that the spellcraft existed at all.
"We are not certain Celestia even knows what an Outsider is, as it was Our duty to handle their wicked cultists," Nightmare Moon grumbled. "Forgive Us for harboring doubts still. Nonetheless, if thou art correct, know that thou may be perhaps the single luckiest filly in all of Equestrian history. Thou hath claimed that thou now know better than to repeat the feat, but to remove temptation, We will make it into a royal decree: beyond those interactions integral to keeping your current Visitor safely entertained, thou art to never again meddle with the Outside upon pain of being hunted down. Even our wretched sister would agree with Us on this. Understand?"
I swallowed and nodded. Again, not something I could blame her for. Even with Celestia's usual aversion to burning books, it might be better if we make an exception this one time — or, barring that, hide the Tome behind every spell I could think of.
"Y-Yes, your highn—er, Majesty."
Queen Nightmare Moon continued looming over me for several seconds more before finally relenting. The alicorn took several steps back, features softening until she was practically a completely different pony, and once again sat with folded legs.
"Good. Then, with that unpleasant business dealt with, We would like to convince thee to become slightly less loyal and honest."
A startled snort escaped me.
"Still don't know why you were sealed, and presumably still a threat to Equestria," I reminded her. "If you do want to rule Equestria, you wouldn't be happy if I was willing to sell out to the first amiable villain out there, right?"
Nightmare Moon readily nodded in agreement.
"Thou art correct, little Sunset, though we would then ask that thou perform proper research before revealing Our visitation to Our sister. Thou hath already borne witness to Our sister's future surrender — and We must say, that is a pleasant surprise. Still, as she said, We are not a monster, and the relics she utilized sealed Us for a thousand years. An excessive punishment, yes? Thou bear witness to her penance, not her doom."
"We would have long since gone utterly mad if we could not, and she cannot stop Us from dream-walking in general," I remembered.
"Er. Okay, I'll admit that does sound extremely excessive," I agreed, wide-eyed. "She didn't know they would do that, right?"
Even the worst ponies were only imprisoned for a couple decades. A thousand years of what would be solitary confinement were it not for Nightmare's dream-walking? For Celestia's own sister? That wasn't a punishment, it was an atrocity!
Suddenly, I had an answer for why wrestling with the moon always upset Princess Celestia. Knowing that she was dragging the unjust prison of her own sister through the sky, and being reminded of that fact every last morning and night? I was sure that even centuries of routine would only numb that pain, not remove it altogether.
…Assuming this wasn't all just a figment of my imagination, anyway. I was going to be the most embarrassed mare ever if it turned out to be nothing more than a drea–a delusion.
"She did not," Nightmare Moon confirmed, and I sighed in relief. "We believe that she even sought ways to break Our imprisonment early, especially upon realizing that Our cause was just. We had been systematically undermined by the nobility, you see, our subjects turned against Us through wretched whispers and propaganda. Though our sister turned a blind eye to their campaigns, she did not approve of them."
"And she complains when I set them on fire," I grumbled, easily believing that the ponies of a thousand years past would do such a thing. Modern nobility was bad enough, and this was after Celestia had a millennium to work on them, however halfhearted I found her methods.
"...Still. Even if she's wronged you, and I can believe that she has, I still don't want to betray her through my silence," I admitted. "Prophecies are so often made to be prevented, and I don't…"
My ears flattened against my head. We disagreed on a daily basis, I couldn't count the number of times I'd suffered from her cruel manipulations or "tests," and she seldom ever had time for me. But...
"She's still my teacher," I finished weakly.
Despite my wary watching of Nightmare, she did not seem particularly unhappy about my refusal. Unlike her sister, it seemed Nightmare truly wasn't a hypocrite when it came to the support or disapproval of consistent character traits, rather than Celestia's selective approval depending on whether those traits aligned with what she wanted.
"Thou art a better pony than Our sister deserves," Nightmare Moon said fondly.
I winced, guilt striking, and decided to do a little preemptive damage control. If Nightmare Moon started going through the dreams of, say, Cadance, she might become rather thoroughly disillusioned with me in short order.
"You would be the only pony on Equis to think so, except you're not even on Equis. You're just the only pony, period."
"I set ponies on fire," I pointed out. "I still don't regret it, but it did have consequences."
"Pah." Nightmare Moon waved a hoof dismissively. "A little fright is good for the soul, and you were careful to ensure thou didst no true damage. Still, We suppose your loyalty is to be commended, not discouraged. Know this, Sunset Shimmer, loyal pupil of Our sister: We hath prepared for Our return for a thousand years, and as thou hath witnessed, the surrender of Our sister is inevitable. Telling her would merely deprive Us of the pleasure of your company rather than providing any true warning. More than one prophecy has foretold of Our return and victory; thou art merely the latest in a long line of Seers."
Nightmare Moon's tone changed to that of a pony reciting from memory.
"'On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about nighttime eternal.'"
I'm willing to bet those prophecies didn't predict Voice helping me, I didn't say. Two alicorns against one is much better odds. Or maybe three if Cadance is a bit less useless by then, but that's probably too much to ask.
"However," Nightmare continued. "As a reward for thy loyalty, we could be convinced to show mercy after Our sister has served some years of her sentence. We are intimately aware of what disproportionate punishment looks like."
My thoughtful frown transitioned to an unimpressed one.
"You know, trying to bribe me by saying that you'll show mercy to the sister you reportedly utterly loathe just tells me that my warning might actually make a difference."
That earned a startled bark of laughter from the alicorn, and a sardonic smile. Really, aside from the Outsider thing, which she was totally justified in, had Nightmare disapproved of me when I'd disagreed with her? There was roaring at me when she thought I was Celestia's daughter — I pushed that painful thought away and refocused on the Goddess of the Night.
"Thou art perhaps the most stubborn young mare we hath interacted with in over a century, and thou art not lacking competition from thy teenage peers."
Ah, now this was more familiar ground. I grinned unrepentantly.
"You aren't the first pony to say that," I cheerfully agreed, "and you certainly won't be the last!"
"The next 'bribe,' then," Nightmare decided. "Though We intended to offer it to thee regardless to compensate for Our sister's neglect. Truthfully, it is why We are trying to stop thee at all. Be warned: Our seal only weakens enough for Us to find the dreams of specific ponies during certain parts of Our Moon's cycle. When We can, however, We would take thee as Our pupil and teach thee secrets of magic long forgotten by the masses — and We shan't consider it a betrayal should thou choose to stand by Celestia's side and turn these lessons against Us, when the time comes."
I froze, wide-eyed with a wavering will. If Celestia truly had been long forewarned of her sister's return — though I'd check the library just to be sure — and my warning wouldn't tell her anything she wouldn't already know… well. It would be better to pursue knowledge that I explicitly wouldn't have been granted were it not for the prophecy drawing Nightmare Moon's attention, right?
Now that I thought about it, Nightmare Moon had been willing to treat pranking Celestia with her existence as worthy of a boon. It wasn't until I brought up the consequences that she recanted. I could believe that somepony banished to the Moon just wanted to keep speaking with the one competent mare who seemed to like her.
Nightmare Moon was right. It was a great bribe.
"I'm listening."
Again, this is non-canon.
I did have Plans for that subplot, and I'm still certain that I could have made it work. Symbolic of terrible influences in the life of a family member continuing to introduce toxicity even when you're trying to do your best by them, Sunset latching on to NMM like the severely touch-starved filly she is, NMM being only too happy to wrap Celestia's unsupervised pupil around her hoof via copious amounts of emotional manipulation, and so on.
However, ultimately, it made the story too crowded. "Sunset Shimmer, pupil of Nightmare Moon" is an idea worthy of being its own story (that I would love to read), and indeed, that's what it would have turned into: a secondary plotline that slowed down the main plot of Illuminating Invitation to a glacial pace. About as importantly, Sunset really doesn't need any help in messing up her life, she does just fine on her own.
Normally, I would wake up with the rise of Celestia's Sun and go about my morning routine. Instead, I ended up sleeping all the way until a pair of doctors and a nurse came in and started fussing over me. Or, no, fussing would be preferable. They essentially ignored me in favor of acting like I wouldn't understand a single word they said to each other. It was true that I didn't know all the vocabulary they tossed around, but I knew most and it was humiliating to be treated like a brainless, ignorant filly.
Lifting the paralysis spell, albeit with strict orders for bedrest and to trigger an alert cantrip if I needed anything, earned them some degree of forgiveness. Some. I still made a mental note to delve deeper into healing spells when I got home. I had learned all the basic first aid and stabilization spells as part of my preparations for summoning Voice, but at this point, proving that I could do better than underperforming 'experts' had become something of a game for me. Spite was an excellent motivator.
Then again, it's not as though I'll ever need a healing spell. Or, actually–
I blinked and realized that Voice had been in the room with me all along, yet nopony had acknowledged the presence of an alicorn version of me. Even I had barely thought of Her until we were alone again. The casual display of power might be unsettling if it wouldn't make my life far simpler in the future; I couldn't exactly violate a pony's trust by declining to tell them about Her spying if I couldn't think about Her presence, now could I? I mean, I hadn't intended to tell them anyway since they wouldn't understand and Her presence didn't matter, but it felt nice to have an excuse, too.
"Good morning!" chirped Voice.
I stared blankly at her and wondered how anypony could possibly be this cheerful so early in the morning. The obvious answer would be that Voice wasn't a pony, of course, but she wasn't the only morning pony out there. They were truly a baffling sub-species.
"You're in a good mood."
"I am! Did you know that there's an entire district of 'bat-ponies' living beneath Canterlot?" Voice asked.
Despite Her excitement, the question didn't sound rhetorical. I rubbed at my eyes with both forehooves and tried to dredge up old lessons on Canterlot's layout.
"If you're asking about whether thestrals are a literal underclass, the answer is–" I paused to yawn. "The answer is 'kind of.' They tend to take all the night shift jobs that other ponies won't, but that also means the only ponies who cater to them are services that charge extra by virtue of staying open into the night. Or, well, the occasional thestral-owned business, but those are far and few between in Canterlot. It's supposed to be better in Manehattan."
"Indeed! So many little stories of struggles for acceptance among ponies who seemingly accept everything but them. And how are they supposed to visit Day Court to air their grievances when they're nocturnal?"
Voice released a contented sigh presumably borrowed from somepony I didn't recognize. Still, She was smiling even as she discussed the suffering of an entire sub-tribe of ponies. The reminder that She didn't particularly care about ponies as anything more than living stories was not a particularly comfortable one.
You could have summoned so much worse, I reminded myself. At least She wasn't trying to add to their suffering.
There wasn't really anything I could do about it, either, except maybe try to tell Celestia about issues she already knew of. The three major tribes might be a bit xenophobic toward thestrals, but they disliked and distrusted us right back. I doubted anypony would outright attack me if I visited Canterlot's undercity, yet I certainly wouldn't have anything approaching a warm welcome.
Really, this was a bit of an uncomfortable subject in general. I forcibly dragged my thoughts back to something I could change: improving my abilities with healing spells.
"I know practicing spells right now is a terrible idea," I told the trespasser. "But could you teach me some of the theory behind how you heal?"
The Outsider did not appear particularly unhappy about the change in subject. If anything, she seemed amused by my attempt to avoid an uncomfortable topic.
"I could," Voice acknowledged. "But not immediately, and my methods are of dubious usefulness for anything who is not an alicorn or my anchor. I am less 'healing' than 'convincing the world that you are supposed to be healthy.' This is easy for even young alicorns, as they become a staple of the world that is 'expected' to live for quite a long time. Meanwhile, the increased cost of reviving you is compensated for by virtue of your status as my anchor to this world. Your death is, essentially, more trouble than it is worth when reality is faced with the weight of an Outsider pushing from the other end."
I doubted that I would be healing many other ponies than myself, Celestia, and Cadance. Still, I supposed that it would be better to start with more broadly applicable healing spells, especially since the overall goal was to prove that I could do the jobs of hospital doctors better than they could.
"Should I rephrase and ask if there are any types of healing spells that would help me become an alicorn?"
"I don't know. Should you?"
I snorted. Well, okay then. Be that way.
"Are there any types of healing spells that would help me become an alicorn?"
"Not necessarily, but they would certainly prove helpful once you have ascended!" Voice cheerfully told me. "And as I have already done the 'imprecise language' joke once in this conversation, I will answer your unasked follow-up as well: yes, I can teach you some helpful healing spells that will work for ponies. Eventually. As I said, I cannot teach you immediately. I am not good at teaching with words alone, and I would reflexively attempt to manipulate your magic to help you learn. That could set back your recovery significantly. I will be willing to provide instruction when you are recovered, but not just yet."
My ears flattened. Having my magic move around without me being the one to use it? Although I never wasted time by reading them, it wouldn't surprise me if some horror stories went that way. For that matter, Voice's description sounded eerily similar to the possession inflicted upon helpless ponies by some monsters. I didn't think Voice would need to resort to something so crude, but it still sounded extremely uncomfortable.
"I could help you with the anatomy, though!"
Voice's form rippled, and the moment I started to see red in her form, I slammed my eyes shut. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ewwwww!
"Nope!" I squeaked. "No. Absolutely not. I'm okay, I'm perfectly happy with seeing representations in books!"
Voice borrowed Celestia's giggle, and I heard flesh shifting back into place.
"It's safe to open your eyes again; I'm back to 'normal.'"
I suspiciously cracked one eye, confirmed that She was back to her normal condition of looking like an alicorn-me, and opened both eyes.
"Not funny," I grumbled.
"No, it was a little funny," Voice disagreed. "Would you like me to pass you a book?"
"Yes, please. I hate how they put the bedside tables so far out of the way when it means stretching to reach anything."
Voice obligingly grabbed the book at the top of the pile and hoofed it to me. Honestly, I was a bit surprised by the book in question: one on explosive spells. Really? Celestia usually hated it when I practiced the more advanced ones even though I was very good at it.
"And still so much politer to me than to real ponies! We should work on that."
I froze halfway to opening up the book, a stab of pain biting at the inside of my barrel. I looked back up at Voice with betrayal in my gaze. I had trusted that Celestia hadn't managed to use Voice as her puppet, but first Voice had convinced me to tutor Cadance, and now this? That was two suspicious acts too many.
"Seriously? You too?"
Voice smiled and waved a hoof dismissively.
"Oh, not everypony," she elaborated. "Be as rude to Equestria's nobility as you want. No, I refer to being kind to 'the help.'"
Oh. Maybe She's not being used as a proxy after all.
At this point, I was starting to get used to being left in a state of perpetual confusion. Still, being confused was better than feeling betrayed.
"…I think you might actually give half of Equestria's nobility heart attacks with that view. It's basically the exact opposite of what they say. But more importantly — why should I bother, exactly? I can understand being kind to volunteers if it ever comes up, but anypony else is getting paid for it."
"Interesting exception," Voice noted, before obligingly elaborating. "You view their payment as the sole reason that they complete their duties, correct? But that isn't true for most ponies at all. As with most civilized herbivorous herd species, a majority of the 'payment' is actually from your interactions with each other. This is much of why a great many isolated, but high-paying jobs are often passed over in favor of those that will allow frequent interaction with other ponies — or, when viewing the opposite side of that coin, why servants of rude nobles are paid so highly compared to, say, the cleaning services catering to commoners. The increased payment is necessary to compensate for the rudeness of their employers, and even then, they socialize with other servants.
"For example, take the curt doctors and nurse who seem to have induced you to learn healing spells through an honestly impressive level of spite. From what I overheard, your prior interactions with the staff have ensured that nopony wanted to volunteer to handle your case, and so it was subtly hooved off to some newcomers whom nopony particularly likes."
Anger flared. They had decided to be that petty simply because I was a bit short with them? It wasn't as though I'd ever outright attacked hospital staff, just ignored their pointless attempts at small-talk in favor of either analyzing what they were doing, or focusing on my studies.
"When you view most ponies as being 'beneath you' and powerless to affect your life, they reasonably decide that don't want to be a part of it at all."
"So, what, I'm supposed to suck up to ponies just because they might slight me in the future?" I snapped. "No. Absolutely not. I'm not Celestia, I'm not going to pretend to be some perfect pony just so that everypony likes me!"
As usual, Voice seemed more entertained by my anger than anything else. It made it very difficult to stay angry, I would admit. Why bother when my displeasure just made Her even happier rather than acting as any sort of deterrent?
"You don't need to go out of your way to get them gifts or anything, although such thoughtfulness would certainly earn you quite a bit of favor. No, just basic politeness like saying like 'please' and 'thank you' costs you not even a moment of your time, and makes you seem far less dismissive of them and their efforts. If you start being polite instead of so blatantly taking them for granted, they're more likely to be willing to actually spend time explaining things rather than treating you as an object. Servants will be more willing to complete tasks that aren't necessarily part of their 'job description,' and do you small favors in general."
"…But I am dismissive of them," I pointed out. "I mean, I don't believe they're worse than anypony else out there, but that's because everypony is underperforming. You say it takes 'not even a moment,' but that time adds up."
"It might, but only to a small number. If they're willing to save you significantly more time by being quick to run errands for you later, or improve the quality of their work in general, is that not still a net benefit?"
I grumbled under my breath, but didn't really have a rebuttal for that one. After all, I could confirm that Celestia's treatment of me certainly affected the quality of my work.
"Whatever. Fine, I'll start being polite to 'the help.' I'm still setting noble manes on fire if I can figure out a way to do it without getting caught."
"Oh, by all means!"
Okay, definitely not put up to this by Celestia. I felt a bit bad about suspecting Her of betraying me, actually. Voice had been nothing but generous toward me so far.
Now that her unsolicited piece of advice had been taken care of, Voice let me return to my book.
I didn't understand how most earth ponies could stand barely having control over their magic. Oh, they were rewarded with better health and vitality than the rest of the tribes, but the bulk of their benefits were passive — or, worse, self-opposing. What was the point of a farmer being able to grow a tree in seconds, if doing so exhausted the soil around that tree and rendered it barren? I wasn't a unicorn supremacist or anything, but still, I didn't know any unicorn who would give up their magic for the stubborn version of earth ponies.
Periods of being unable to use magic were absolute torture. It took me longer to flip pages, I was forced to actually look at my barely-legible notes while I was writing them, and I had to repeatedly stop myself from practicing spells as I went along.
As awful as it might be, though, I didn't regret it. Every time I started to get too annoyed and wanted to throw something, I focused on my reservoir and admired how much more magic I had now in comparison to before. I was already an incredibly powerful unicorn before Voice had intervened. Now I had perhaps half again as much unicorn magic as I used to, and magic from the other tribes on top of that.
It wasn't as good as being an alicorn, at which point I expected that my power would be multiplied many times over. But it was still a vast improvement.
Still, the more time that went by while I had trouble doing something as simple as taking notes, the more frustrated I felt. I wished Celestia had been able to take a few measly days off now, even if it meant she subsequently wouldn't have any time for me for the next month or two. Spring's lesson had been wonderful.
Two hours after the delivery of my lunch by the most dour-faced nurse I had ever met, another knock sounded at my door. I instantly perked up. I hadn't done anything unusual, so it wasn't time for a wellness checkup. Had Celestia managed to make time between appointments to visit? If one ended early, I knew she could squeeze in a quick visit if she teleported and rushed.
The door opened a few seconds later. This time, though, the partially pink figure wasn't due to the mane of Spring Hail.
"Oh. It's you," I growled at Princess Cadance.
The former pegasus rolled her eyes and trotted into my room, nudging the door shut behind her with one hoof.
"A lot of ponies dream about having the Princess of Love visit them in the hospital, you know."
A moment later, something about her own words made Cadance color with embarrassment. I wished I knew why, but whatever reference had been made flew right over my head.
"A lot of ponies also harbor pathetic dreams like 'eat a cake as big as they are,'" I scoffed.
The fleeting embarrassment faded, and Cadance shook her head.
"Yes, yes, we all know how disdainful you are of everypony who isn't you," Cadance sighed, lifting a small box of her saddlebags as she trotted toward my bed. "I'm just here to drop off a diction quill and page-turner. I'll be out of your mane in a minute, alright?"
I could have slumped in relief. Those alone would make my hospital stay so much more pleasant, and I could have hit myself for not thinking to ask for them earlier.
Still, as Cadance let the box slide off her wing and onto my bedside table, I was forced to make a decision. Even with the tools she brought, being stuck in the hospital was still going to be mind-numbingly boring.
Even while knowing that, habitual hatred was difficult to overcome. Cadance was halfway to the door before I managed to overcome the blockage in my throat and force a few vital words free.
"No. Sit down."
Cadance stumbled and whipped around to stare at me with wide eyes.
"Excuse me?"
I rolled my eyes.
"Please have a seat, Princess Cadance?" I said with false sweetness. After a moment, I batted my eyelashes at her for good measure.
The results were even better than attacking her would have been. Cadance looked delightfully horrified, her eyes flicking between my bed and the nearest window as though she might escape from it.
"Please tell me she didn't tell you about last night," Cadance begged.
This time, it was my turn to blink in confusion.
"Tell me what?"
A moment later, I remembered Voice's nocturnal visit to Cadance and realized what she had to be talking about. Voice hadn't told me whether or not Cadance had successfully bartered for temporary undying status, but presumably, Voice had made Cadance do something humiliating in exchange for the boon. I could approve. It was probably best not to ask for details, though — if She decided that meant it was acceptable to discuss subjects with other petitioners, She might end up telling Cadance about my business, too. I would content myself with speculating during downtime.
"Oh, thank Celestia," Cadance sighed, grabbing a pair cushion and moving to sit close to my bed, but still outside of hoof range. "Nothing. Anyway, what do you want? I'm not Auntie, I can't stabilize you if you turn into a fiery rage monster again."
I remained silent for several seconds more, fully embracing the excuse provided by her settling down. After the stab of pain from her calling Princess Celestia "Auntie," once again reminding me of everything Cadance had been granted without earning it, I needed that extra time. Eventually, though, that brief reprieve ran out, and I was stuck with the expectant gaze of the mare I most hated.
"That's — exactly the issue," I slowly admitted, needing to drag the words out one by one. "My hatred of you is — well, it's out of hoof."
Cadance's eyebrows shot up, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she simply stared at me as though I was a complete stranger — and just kept staring in silence like she was trying to imitate Voice.
"What?" I asked defensively.
Cadance flinched, but aside from that brief reaction, didn't seem outstandingly bothered by my outburst.
"I'm trying to be considerate and not interrupt you when it seems like this is already really difficult?"
I gritted my teeth, exhaled out through my nostrils, and let it go. I was sure that wasn't all she was doing, but calling her out would just make me look even pettier.
"Well, you're not wrong. Anyway. My hatred for you is, frankly, a potentially crippling weakness that I need to get over. Voice proposed tutoring you in unicorn magic as a method of 'mending bridges,' and I loathe the very idea. Luckily for you, I'm used to doing petty tasks that I hate."
Cadance's jaw dropped. Truthfully, seeing her wide-eyed shock wasn't nearly as good as being darkly satisfied by her pain, but it would suffice as a consolation prize. I reveled in her shock for as long as she could, waiting for her to just give me an excuse.
"…Is this what it looks–" Cadance eventually managed, then stopped, wincing.
"No, go ahead. Say it," I urged her.
Give me an excuse to end this pointless endeavor early.
Cadance sighed and hung her head.
"'Is this what it looks like when you try to be nice?'"
Cadance tensed as though expecting an outburst. Despite my flare of irritation, Voice's prior advice stayed at the forefront of my thoughts. There wouldn't be any point if I wasn't at least civil enough for Cadance to be grateful.
"Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed. "I can be nice."
Despite her show of pretend regret a few seconds later, my disagreement with her promptly led to a raised head and visible disbelief.
"Name one time," she demanded. "And no, simply refraining from cruel behavior doesn't count."
I didn't even have to think about that one.
"I'm nice to Voice. You were there."
Cadance rolled her eyes.
"Nice to somepony who is not offering you ultimate cosmic power."
"Well," I scoffed. "I see Celestia has already taught you the art of 'shifting requirements until nopony can meet them.'"
Certainly, she wasn't exactly wrong, but she made it sound like a bad thing. Why would I bother being nice to anypony who couldn't help me meet Celestia's expectations?
"Ugh," Cadance grumbled. "No, you're right, you're extending an olive branch and I'm making it harder for you. Sorry. If you're just going to humiliate me like the last few tutors Celestia brought, though, that bridge isn't going to last long."
I seized the opening.
"Oh, I don't expect it to," I admitted with half-faked cheer. "This is Voice's idea. I think your lazy tendencies are going to express themselves within a few weeks, and I'm not going to bother dragging you around by the hoof when they do. At that point, nopony can say I didn't try."
Cadance's eyebrows shot up, the young mare straightening while her wings flared wide with offense. The fact that her wings remained a tell at all was perhaps the perfect support for my point. She should have been trained out of that reflex by now.
"Excuse me? 'Lazy tendencies?'"
Oooh, and there was a chance to attack her without her being able to reasonably criticize me for it! Perfect. Still, I took several deep breaths and restrained myself to a white-hot core of rage rather than letting it spread everywhere.
"You asked yesterday why I hate you. The answer is that you did, and continue to do, nothing to earn that horn of yours," I hissed, and Cadance reeled away from the sudden vitriol. "Better ponies than you have done more to help Equestria, whether that be through charitable ventures, constructing communities in hostile environments, advancing the state of their art, or inspiring others for generations to come. But because you got lucky and happened to fulfill some nebulous criteria all at once rather than one by one, you get to be blessed where they weren't.
"Worse, you aren't even taking it seriously. You talked about your magic tutors 'humiliating' you? That's nothing! Do you have any idea how many of Celestia's tutors and schoolteachers disparaged me for being a 'gutter-trash charity case?' So many I didn't even bother to keep count! But the moment the pwetty pink Pwincess Cadance's feewings are just a teensie bit hurt, she runs away and refuses to learn how to actually use any of the gifts she's been given. You are an utter disgrace to the title of princess, and you don't deserve even a minute of Princess Celestia's time, let alone becoming analicorn!"
I was beyond satisfied to see my blows land. Cadance had gone from wide-winged offense, to crouching with a hung head, ears laid flat, and wings held at just the right angle to help her with an emergency liftoff to flee from her problems. Maybe she was aware of her failures, and simply tried to ignore them like so many other ponies often did.
Or, more likely, she was just running away from people saying mean things just like she'd fled from her previous tutors.
"I… don't think I can start on magic today," Cadance said shakily, sounding as though she was holding back tears. "And not because of any 'lazy tendencies,' either. I just—I need to think about this."
For whatever reason, hearing Cadance's audible misery somehow messed up the signals in my brain. Rather than pure, undiluted dark satisfaction, something in my stupid instincts seemed to have decided that I should be feeling guilty! Why? Cadance was awful! If she'd decided to feel even a fraction of the pain that her presence caused me, that was good!
I took a page from Celestia's book, and refused to let any of my mixed feelings rise to the surface.
"Oh, by all means," I allowed, waving a hoof toward the door to my hospital room. "Come back when you've decided it doesn't change anything, and you're ready to pretend to be–"
I blinked as the Princess of Love outright galloped toward the door to my hospital room, using her wings to pull it open and slam it shut behind her. Judging by how she was still moving at speed even as the door shut, I would be surprised if she stopped her flight before she was all the way back at the castle.
Well. That's going in the tabloids tomorrow, I thought darkly.
Really, it wouldn't matter how polite I was to ponies if they'd already met up their minds by the time they met me. I would still go along with Voice's whims, if only to show Her that they didn't match whatever models She'd constructed based on experience with the corporeals of other worlds.
And shut up, guilt glands! This doesn't concern you! Stop misfiring!
