Records of Equestria: Elements of Power

by Gearcrow

Part I – Ch. VIII – A Conversation Long in Wait

Author's Note:

Caution: This chapter comes with a trigger warning for scenes containing violence, abuse, and attempted suicide.

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“Everypony always says they'll give you a second chance, but deep down, they never forget.”

– Trixie Lulamoon

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EoH 100

Twilight sat in her bed and watched a sparrow peck at a pile of seeds someone had left on her windowsill. The windows of her room had been left partially open, and beams of sunlight spilled onto the white silken sheets and gold embroidered curtains of her massive four-post bed. Everything in her bedroom was tall, and the canopy of her bed seemed to be in a desperate race with all the windows and doors to reach the lofty ceiling.

The abundance of natural light, a warm wooden floor, and the cream-colored walls with gilded filigree made the space feel breezy and luxurious, and Twilight had always felt she could relax here. Like her office, and despite the regal trappings, it was a bit of a messy place, with ottomans, footstools, and squat bookshelves covered in haphazard piles of books, scrolls, and contraptions.

At the moment, she didn’t feel relaxed so much as resigned and defeated. When she caught her reflection in the windows, she looked like a hospital patient, sickly, with a vacant stare and deep bags under her eyes. A cynical chuckle escaped her lips, and the sparrow stopped its labor to stare at her for a second or two to determine if Twilight was a source of danger. Deciding that she wasn’t, it returned to its food.

To her surprise, when she’d awoken from her injury-induced coma, she had found Captain Winter standing guard in her room. Apparently, though Fluttershy and Linden had both been confident that Twilight would recover soon, he was meant to keep an eye on her and report to them if the Princess suddenly took a turn for the worse and started dying.

Winter had reported all of this when Twilight groggily asked him what he was doing there but had said nothing else since. Not that she minded the silence. Letting the sun dance over her face between the towering evergreens outside her windows while doing nothing at all felt wonderful right then, and so she had let the quiet linger and enjoyed the cooling breeze while she tried to anchor herself to the here and now. But, unfortunately, the time for morning meditations had ended and there was plenty for a princess to do.

She sighed and looked over at Winter. She felt a flash of annoyance at the pained expression on his face, but she pushed it aside and consciously replaced it with gratitude for the concern he was showing her.

“How are you feeling?” she asked him. Her voice was thin and ragged, like parchment she’d tried to erase over too many times.

“As healthy as they come, Princess. I just had some bruises. Nothing Linden couldn’t fix in a jiffy.” He held up and flexed a foreleg to demonstrate. “No need to worry about me.”

The implication that she really should be worrying about herself instead–not a lowly guard–reignited her annoyance, but Winter didn’t seem to notice. He studied her with bright and worried eyes, and she found herself feeling exposed, like a puzzle for him to solve. She felt as if she needed to put on clothes for some reason.

“You do seem better, Princess, but not good. What can I do to help?”

Instead of answering, she looked back at the sparrow. She was a princess. If she needed something, she’d tell him. She didn’t need Winter prodding her as if she were a filly barely old enough to tell a scraped knee from a broken bone.

He took a cautious step forward, her silence seemingly fanning his worry.

“Princess?”

She felt a sudden urge to punish him for looking at her that way and for speaking to her out of turn, and the thought came to her so fiercely it made her gasp out loud. She felt horrified and defiled that such a thought would leap unbidden into her mind. Whatever vile fragment of herself had generated the idea, it wasn’t who she really was. That’s what she told herself, at least, pretending she didn’t recognize the sensation. Pretending she wasn’t intimately familiar with the desire to command and control.

Twilight wanted and tried so hard to be a kinder and better ruler than that. She forced the feeling aside, shoving it down into a make-belief strongbox in her mind that she locked with several padlocks and a whole mess of chains. But of course, Winter had noticed her gasp and assumed it was a matter of her condition deteriorating.

“I’ll fetch the Saint,” he said, halfway turning to leave, but Twilight raised her hoof to stall him.

“No,” she whispered, “just some water… please. And bring Lieutenants Linden and Cercus as well.”

Winter paused, clearly considering fetching Fluttershy despite what Twilight had said, and the little strongbox in her mind rattled violently. But then he nodded and saluted her. He turned to leave again, but for a second time, Twilight stopped him.

“Actually,” she said, “wait for just a moment.”

She groped around for her magic, feeling like a blind mare fumbling around in the dark for her cane, but eventually she found her reservoir. She wrestled with it for what felt like hours only to finally cast a small and simple spell. It was the same string spell she’d used to find Winter and the rest in the chaos bubble, only slightly modified.

With a chime like a dinner bell, two strings shot from her horn into the palace, and after a few seconds, they pulled taught and chimed again.

“Bring Asterope and Captain Skarn as well,” she said, this time genuinely gasping for air and drenched in sweat from the effort it had taken her to cast the spell.

Winter opened his mouth to say something, no doubt to suggest she refrain from practicing magic in her current state, but a sharp glance from Twilight was enough to make him close it again and hurry on his way.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Twilight felt her body shiver and release as if she’d been holding her breath, although the opposite was true. She’d been relatively fine–considering her condition–just a moment ago, but as soon as she started talking to Winter, she’d felt something ugly stir inside of her. It was small and weak, and she couldn’t quite define it, but it was there, and it was her.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked aloud, and if the sparrow on the windowsill had any answers for her, it preferred not to share.

Shortly after Winter departed–but too soon for him to have returned–someone knocked on the door. She entertained the possibility of ignoring the visitor, but decided she could only allow for so much petulance in one day. The sparrow turned its head to listen and must have decided it had eaten enough, because when the visitor knocked a second time, it spread its wings and flew off.

“Enter,” she tried to call, but it came out more like a frayed croak. The frogs in the royal pond would have been proud. She had hoped that perhaps the visitor was Spike, but that was foolish of her, as Spike wasn’t even in Equestria at the moment.

“Your Majesty,” Kerning said, gracefully bowing and closing the door behind himself in one fell swoop.

Good.

Stop.

Why? I’m his queen. This is right.

I’m a princess! Stop!

“I hope I’m not disturbing, Princess, but I took the liberty of sending to the kitchens for some food. Just soup, I’m afraid, until you’re spry and healthy again. But I’ve no doubt your chefs will produce something delicious, as always.”

“Hardly something you needed to come all the way up here to tell me. The food would have arrived either way.”

Kerning raised a surprised eyebrow at her but nodded. “True. I come bearing a report from Saint Fluttershy on your condition, but if it pleases Your Majesty, I could return at a later time.”

She must really have sounded as if she were dying for Kerning to suggest postponing a report of any kind, but she shook her head and waved for him to proceed.

He looked at her for a moment, uncertainty clear in his eyes, but then cleared his throat.

“The Saint wanted you to know that due to her ministrations your wing is healing rapidly, and you should be well on your way to full mobility in a couple of weeks. Though she does recommend you try not to fly for the next month or so.”

She was certain Fluttershy had in no way taken credit for how fast Twilight’s wing was healing, but Kerning always assigned praise and blame precisely where it was warranted. He held all creatures to the same account, and such things mattered greatly to him.

“In addition, she wanted you to know that though she at first thought you’d been poisoned in some matter, it seems that your blood turning gold actually has nothing to do with the creature you fought, but rather seems to be a natural progression of your own changing biology.” He shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he thought that was just as strange as it sounded, but who was he to question the greatest medical mind in Equestria. “Oh, and your concussion was swiftly dealt with on site, so there should be no lingering symptoms.”

Twilight chuckled, and even that sounded dry and week. “If that’s all true,” she said, looking down at her bed and not at Kerning, “then why do I look, sound, and feel like I’ve got two hooves in the grave already?”

When Kerning didn’t answer, she looked up only to be met with an expression full of pity and concern, and as with Winter and Fluttershy before him, that was more than she could take.

“Leave me,” she said, and her voice this time was strong and full of ice. “Now.” Her last word reverberated through the room despite not having raised her voice. Instead, the air around them seemed to ripple like transverse waves in a pond. Kerning went stiff for a moment, but then he bowed to her and wordlessly backed out of the room.

The question returned, itching at the back of her mind. What’s wrong with me? But she ignored it. She ignored how familiar all of this seemed to her. Just like with her previous violent urges, she shoved the thought into her mind’s strongbox for later. She had things to do and needed to focus, so it could wait.

Her food arrived a short time later, accompanied by an extra pitcher of water on Winter’s orders. Kerning had been correct. It was a pureed vegetable soup of some kind, and it might have tasted wonderful, but every spoonful fell to ash on her tongue, and her throat ached when she swallowed. The water, however, she devoured greedily, even spilling some on the bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so thirsty.

When she finished eating, she tried to read, but the book on her nightstand–a textbook on polar botanicals–failed to keep her attention for more than a few seconds at a time, so she tossed it aside and spent the rest of the hour until Winter returned staring at her wall. She felt she’d composed herself somewhat by the time the Captain finally returned with the others.

It did not surprise her that of the five creatures the spell had chosen, only one of them was a pony. Asterope being selected had been a bit of a shock though. She was a diminutive Ornithian with a chaotic mess of red and green plumage who had managed to join Twilight’s Guard at only eighteen. Twilight suspected some relation to Lix Spittle, perhaps a granddaughter, but had never bothered to look into it. Either way, she was a decent guard and an excellent cook–if a bit strange.

All of them except for Skarn bowed to her with somewhat anxious looks on their faces. The gargoyle, however, dropped to one knee and bowed so deeply her face almost touched the floor. This wasn’t uncommon for Skarn, but it seemed significant that while the guard’s behavior had once been a source of annoyance to Twilight, it now made the box in her mind rattle with satisfaction.

“Please,” she said, making an active effort to sound gentle and kind, “grab a chair and take a seat. My voice won’t carry, and I have a lot to tell you. If you’ll sit as close to my bed as you can, it’ll make things easier.”

They looked at each other with surprise in their eyes but did as she asked. Winter, Cercus, and Linden seemed most comfortable this close to Twilight, each pulling up seats near the head of her bed. Asterope was clearly ill at ease and unsure of what she was doing there, but once the first three had situated themselves, she grabbed a large pillow and placed it a little to the right and behind of the ottoman Linden was sitting on. Not quite hidden, but with the deer working as a clear buffer between her and Twilight.

Skarn, however, looked distressed. Despite years of protestations, neither Twilight nor anypony else had ever managed to convince the gargoyle of what seemed obvious to the rest of them; that alicorns were not gods. Simple observation was enough to dispel the notion that Twilight possessed either omniscience or omnipotence, and she had never been able to find any evidence that there was anything divine about either her or any of the other four Equestrian alicorns.

Wasn’t the fact that she sat there broken and useless on her bed enough to demonstrate how fallible she was? Never mind that apparently, except for the healing hole in her wing, there wasn’t anything physically wrong with her. Fluttershy had to be wrong about that. Twilight felt like she was dying slowly and possessed all the energy of a damp rag. But she waited patiently, keeping her expression neutral and her eyes locked on Skarn’s, and eventually, the trembling gargoyle knelt down at the foot of Twilight’s bed, which was better than nothing.

Twilight suppressed a sigh and turned her attention to Winter. “Thank you, Captain.”

Winter nodded. “Of course, Princess.” But then he looked at the other four sitting beside him with a candid and anxious look on his face. “If you’ll permit me,” he continued, “I think I understand why Linden, Cercus, and myself are here, but I had assumed you also wanted to speak to Sledge and Feather Weight. I’m not sure why you had me fetch Skarn and Asterope.”

Skarn said nothing, but Asterope nodded vigorously as if to confirm that she didn’t know why she was there either, didn’t want to cause any trouble, and should probably be anywhere else. This was frustrating. Winter wasn’t normally nervous around her, and neither were the others, but she guessed she only had her earlier aggressive behavior and currently unpleasant appearance to blame for that.

“Why would you assume that?” she asked.

“Well… uhm, they were the other two guards in the chaos bubble with us.”

She stared at Winter; surprise painted clearly on her tired face. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it. I hadn’t been made aware that there were others in the bubble.”

Linden nodded and shot an accusatory look at Winter. Likely, nobody had been sent to inform Twilight because everyone had assumed that Winter would tell her. The offending Captain looked suitably embarrassed, but Twilight still gritted her teeth and had to school her face to stillness.

“Discord sent us in five at a time,” Linden said. “When the bubble broke, Sledge and Feather Weight materialized farther afield than the rest of us. Strawberry Patch organized a quick search after you had been tended to, Princess. They are well if a bit confused. It seems no harm befell them in the bubble.”

“That’s good then,” she said. The relief that her oversight had caused no harm was plain in her voice, and she winced at how much she sounded like her younger self. From just behind Linden, she noticed that Asterope had raised her claw in the air like a school child, and Twilight couldn’t help but give a tired chuckle.

“Asterope, you don’t have to raise your hand. You can just speak up if you’d like to say something.”

She lowered her claw back down, and Twilight thought she might be blushing, though her red feathers made it hard to tell.

“If that’s not why you called us here, Princess, then why did you call us?”

Twilight grimaced and took a deep breath. Yesterday’s events had thrown so many things she’d been certain of into disarray. She had imagined herself in control, planning and preparing according to her own design, but of course that control had proven false. Instead, she’d been made to feel like a marionette, puppeteered by competing masters, neither of whom she could trust. One was clearly a monster, but the other–who claimed a nobler purpose–seemed scarcely less terrifying.

“I am going to tell you all a story,” she said, and though her voice was weak and wounded, she felt that once she began to tell it, she would not be able to stop. Though she cast no spell, the lights appeared to dim. As had been the case so many times before, Twilight seemed to almost glow, and she knew none of the guards by her bedside could look away or focus on anything but her.

“Several years ago, I began having dreams.”

-

EoH 88

Twilight Sparkle liked to think that she was above such things as scowling or being jealous. She was older now, wiser, more mature. It was unbecoming of a princess to scowl, so obviously, she wasn’t. Rarity, however, seemed to be of a different opinion. They were sitting together at a writing table in one of Twilight’s personal libraries, this one near the Shrine of Laugher in the north-east wing of the castle.

Rarity, normally the consummate lady and professional, was doing a terrible job of stifling a fit of nearly uncontrollable giggles, all the while shooting her taller companion a series of meaningful and sympathetic glances. Twilight ignored her, rising above the need to point out that schadenfreude was not a trait normally considered in line with the Principles of Harmony. Besides, she didn’t actually need to defend herself because she wasn’t jealous!

“Come on!” she cried as Pinkie Pie successfully transformed herself into an airborne candy cane, complete with propellers and wings. “How?!” She waived an agitated hoof at the transmogrified earth pony, face stricken with disbelief. “This is bullsh-”

“My goodness, Twilight!” Rarity interrupted. “Such language.” Though she placed a hoof on her chest to feign offense, the effect was more than a little ruined by a grin she wasn’t even trying to hide. Twilight shot her an unimpressed stare.

“Rarity, I’ve heard you say things that would make a griffon sailor blush.”

“Yes, well,” Rarity said, waving a dismissive hoof, “I’m not a princess now, am I?” The unicorn stuck her nose out, lowered her eyelids teasingly, and smiled that devious little smile she sometimes threw Twilight’s way, and which always made Twilight’s pulse race faster.

Her pulse quickening was a strange thing that sometimes happened around Rarity, but she hadn’t yet been able to figure out why. Rarity wasn’t particularly versed in spellcraft, but she possessed a vast reservoir of magic–though not as vast as Twilight’s own, of course–and Twilight thought that maybe the increased heartbeat was a byproduct of some kind of magical resonance between the two of them. It was a puzzle for another day though, since other more important things were currently demanding her full attention.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The point is, I’ve been studying chaos magic for years. I’m the literal embodiment of magic! Yet somehow, Pinkie Pie–who is an earth pony–has mastered this in… what’s it been now? Ten weeks? Ten weeks, Rarity! And I can’t even transform this marble,” she pointed to a small cat’s eye marble lying on the writing table, “into a slightly differently colored marble unless I cheat and resort to regular alicorn magic!”

“Twilight, darling, you’re shouting,” Rarity said, clearly much too calm to be fully grasping Twilight’s desperate plight. “Besides,” she continued, “Pinkie has hardly mastered anything. Most of the time, she’s unable to succeed at the thing she sets out to do, and it does wear her out terribly. Secondly, I thought you established that the Element of Laughter is primarily fueled by chaos magic. So, doesn’t this just make sense? We really should have figured it out much earlier. Remember when she took over Discord’s home, uh, realm, thingy. It seems rather obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Rarity,” Twilight said through gritted teeth. “Yes, it does.”

“Twilight! Look what I can do!” Pinkie shouted from the area they’d cleared in the middle of the library for her to practice. She dropped from the air, turned into a perfect sphere that violently bounced off the floor before exploding into a cloud of glitter and shimmering confetti. Discord, who was sitting on an upside-down chair off to the side oohed and aahed while applauding the effort with ten sets of hands.

“That’s very nice, Pinkie,” she said, only to hear a small crack as her marble shattered beneath her trembling hoof. She lifted it quickly, lest she accidentally crush the table as well, then stood up, face red, and marched right out of the library. She wasn’t jealous! Rarity’s peal of laughter followed her out into the hallway, making her turn around and yell at the infuriating unicorn.

“I’m not jealous!”

Rarity got up from the table and hurried after her. Twilight didn’t say anything, just let her legs carry her wherever they wanted, and though Rarity was still smiling, there was genuine concern in her eyes.

“Twilight, dearest. What’s bothering you? Really.”

Twilight looked away, grimacing, and focused her attention on the filigreed wainscot paneling that ran through this particular hallway. “It’s nothing,” she mumbled.

“It’s certainly something,” Rarity said, not meaning to allow for Twilight to be evasive.

“I’ve been having dreams,” Twilight said, hearing immediately how childish it sounded when she said it out loud. Rarity just shook her head dismissively.

“I thought you told me that isn’t possible, that you locked your mind away from that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m very vigilant about maintaining my own dream guards, but I always thought sealing your mind completely was a tad bit drastic.”

“I wake up, Rarity, and I know I’ve been dreaming, but I can’t remember exactly about what, just that it’s really important. It comes back every night, and I wake up feeling this sense of dread. It clings to me all day every day, and I can’t shake it. Like a fear of something I can’t see or hear, but that’s always just behind me.”

At hearing the worry in Twilight’s voice, Rarity’s expression faltered.

“When did it start?” she asked.

“I think a few months ago, when I, uh…” Twilight trailed off, embarrassed to continue. She knew it would upset Rarity if she told her what she’d been doing, but she’d come this far, so she might as well dive all the way in. “I had just reopened my research into our nature as Elements. I know you and the girls said to leave it alone, but I had some ideas, and I thought maybe…” she trailed off again.

Rarity sighed deeply, which was almost worse than if she’d just yelled at Twilight.

“Rarity, I need to know! I don’t understand why the rest of you don’t seem to care. We don’t know if we’re all actually immortal or not. We don’t know why we all go cuckoo bananas when we’re away from each other. We don’t even know what the Elements of Harmony actually are!”

“Twilight, we do care, and we do want to know, but not at the expense of your health. Remember last time? You spent years trying to figure this out, and it consumed you. You stayed awake for weeks on end and locked yourself in the dungeon like some mad scientist doing Celestia knows what kind of experiments. You weren’t even eating.”

Twilight felt sullen about it, but Rarity was right. All she could offer was a weak assurance that she was in fact eating this time around.

“Anyway,” she said, wanting to steer the conversation in a different direction, “that’s when the dreams started, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

Rarity said nothing at first, then nodded slowly. “Well, what do you plan on doing about it? I assume you’ve already thought of something.”

Rarity was right that Twilight had in fact already thought of something, sort of. “I need some way to access either my dreams or to access the information in them indirectly. I won’t lower the protections on my mind, it’s too risky, but I think I might have found a different way.”

“And what, pray tell, is this other way?”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile, excited about her fledgling plan. If she was right, it would be the solution to almost all of her problems.

“Have you ever heard of an orbuculum?” she asked.

-

EoH 100

Twilight paused. Her throat was burning, and not just because she was thirsty. Speaking the events that had brought her to this point out loud was turning out to be more difficult that she’d expected. She needed the guards by her side to continue to see her as a competent and powerful princess, but in revealing her own missteps and the threats they were all facing, she was making herself seem, well, mortal. And weak.

“Skarn,” she said, and the gargoyle, who was still kneeling but was staring at her now with large attentive eyes, leapt to her feet.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I’m going to need some more water.” She gestured to the empty pitcher on her nightstand. “Could you run to the kitchen down the hall and fill this up. And please hurry back.”

Skarn bowed, hesitantly grabbed the pitcher, and then hurried from the room. The others used the break to adjust themselves and get more comfortable.

“Princess…” Asterope ventured. Twilight nodded at her. “Is it really true that the Prelate can use chaos magic?”

Twilight began to chuckle, but it turned into a cough. Linden was on her in a flash, trying to ensure her health, but Twilight waved her down.

“I’m fine,” she said, though it apparently did little to mollify the deer or any of the others, as they all looked at her with deep concern in their eyes. Twilight ignored them and addressed Asterope.

“It is true. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

“Incredible.” It was Cercus who spoke up. “I mean, we’ve all of course seen her do inexplicable things, and there are all those rumors, but to think she can actually wield the forces of creation in such a way. Remarkable.”

“I think you’re both getting caught up on the wrong part of the story,” Winter said, frowning at Cercus and Asterope. Twilight silently agreed. None of them seemed visibly worried about the fact that Twilight had been having ominous and potentially prophetic dreams despite caging her mind, but perhaps they were just waiting to voice their concerns until she had finished her tale.

Winter turned his eyes back to Twilight. “I… do you really not know if you’ll live forever, Princess?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. Well, it’s true that I’m almost certainly immortal, or at least as much as Celestia and Luna are, but we’re not sure if the other Elements are immortal or just really long lived. We’re in the dark about many things, Captain. More than you’d expect.” They all sat in silence for a moment, waiting for Skarn, but then Twilight felt a wry smile settle on her face.

“Besides, Captain. It might be that a timberwolf, a curse, or just a regular old assassin gets me long before I need to worry about dying of old age. In fact, it seems much more likely.”

Winter seemed displeased with her joke, as did Linden, but Asterope smiled–no doubt used to gallows humor from growing up around pirates–, and Cercus actually laughed.

“If you truly can live forever, Princess, it’s virtually a guarantee.”

The other three stared at him with various degrees of shock and judgement. Skarn also chose that precise time to knock and re-enter the room. The gargoyle shot the other guards a confused glance, unsure of why they had all turned on Cercus, but she prioritized the needs of her princess and hurriedly brought the pitcher over to Twilight’s nightstand. She then resumed her seat at the foot of Twilight’s bed.

Cercus seemed undaunted by the tension in the air though. “It’s just simple math,” he said to the others as much as to Twilight. “If one is burdened by an eternal lifespan, then then the odds of dying in an accident, from murder, or just simply getting stuck in some way that only allows for escape through death becomes almost a hundred percent.”

“Although,” he continued, turning fully to Twilight, “your constitution is somewhat robust, Princess. I suspect it would take more than a timberwolf to bring you down. Even a terror such as we faced yesterday was not able to do more than confine you to bed for what I expect will be no time at all.”

“I’m glad you have such faith in me,” Twilight said, grabbing the pitcher and drinking from it straight. She finished half of it in one go and felt mildly better.

“To continue,” she said, forestalling a retort to Cercus from any of the others, “my dreams drove me to seek an answer, and I believed the answer would come in the form of the orbuculum. You’ve all seen it before.” She gestured towards her bedroom door and the study beyond where the orbuculum currently sat on its tripod and chimed.

“It’s a kind of scrying orb meant for discerning truths about the nature of things, and though it’s esoteric and difficult to use, it does just that. It reveals things. To Cercus point, I almost died procuring the ingredients and casting the various spells necessary to make it, but once I had it in my possession, it did precisely what I wanted, and I foolishly thought the whole experiment a great success.”

Her memories, the visions shown to her by the Echo of Eternity, were still fresh in her mind, and remembering how callously she’d treated her own safety and the disregard she’d shown for the others’ concern made her already grim mood sour even further. Not until Winter gently cleared his throat did she realize she’d been staring quietly at her hooves for several long seconds.

“What happened, Princess?” Asterope asked. “The orb works, so what went wrong?”

Twilight looked into the eyes of the little chef. She seemed like a child to her, small and frail, with no experience to speak of, and Twilight was about to thrust her into harm’s way. Instead of using her own great power to protect Asterope, she would use Asterope to protect others.

“It is difficult, sometimes, to know what to do with the knowledge you think you have,” Twilight said. “It turned out my dreams were portents of danger. I was having visions at night of a coming end to Equestria and all life. There were voices in the dreams that explained the visions to me and instructed me on what actions to take, and I assumed the voices were born from the orbuculum to guide me to truth and to safety.”

Cercus nodded. “But you speak now as if you know they were not.”

Twilight nodded. “The events I’m about to recount to you I have never told to anyone before. They’re known by only a handful of creatures and will fundamentally change the way you think of me.”

Skarn opened her mouth to protest, but Twilight cut her off.

“No, Skarn, they will. And if they don’t, they certainly should. I’m responsible for many terrible things, and this might very well be the worst of them all.”

-

EoH 89

Months had passed since Twilight completed the orbuculum and not a night had gone by since from which she hadn’t woken up screaming and covered in sweat. At first, the orbuculum had clarified her nightly visions, revealing to her the coming death of Equestria, but as time passed, the voices in her dreams began to warn her of other things.

She saw herself grow hard like stone, unmovable and without care. She saw her friends begin to slowly wither like flowers dying and scattering in the wind. Their deaths lasted for decades, and Twilight could only stand by and watch as their bodies decayed until nothing but wraiths remained, echoes of Rarity and Pinkie and all the others that wailed in horrified pain and persisted without purpose or sense of self.

Every night their ghosts begged and chastised and screamed and cried, and in her dreams, Twilight was powerless to help in any way. Sometimes the ghosts would attack her and kill her too, making her one of them. Other times, Twilight lived for millennia in a state of permanent torment, haunted by the same ghosts every second of every day.

Either way, Equestria crumbled and died, and so did the world beyond, followed by all the light in the skies until the very idea of life had been scrubbed from the universe. Only Twilight persisted, a cursed observer, trapped eternally in the cold and hostile void that remained. And so it went, night after night.

But Twilight was Twilight, and she intended to stop her dreams from ever materializing in the real world. She sequestered herself for days on end in her libraries and laboratories, more desperate than ever to figure out if the Elements were actually immortal. And if they weren’t, she needed to find some way to make them so.

She was sure her visions were telling her that the Elements had to survive for Equestria to survive, which made perfect sense to her. The Elements were meant to protect harmony, and surely that entailed keeping the world from ending. But still the fear gnawed at her, blunting her thoughts, making her more sloppy and more panicked as the months went by. More obsessed.

And then, one night in early spring, Trixie Lulamoon fell sick. She was old, and it was not uncommon for unicorns to develop chronic respiratory illnesses in their later years; the kinds from which one seldom recovered.

Because she had lived a long and good life filled with friends and loved ones, Trixie took it all in stride, resigned to her eventual fate. And though Starlight, Sunburst, Luster, and all the other ponies of her extended family and friend group were sad, they too understood that it was probably time, and so they set to spending the last few weeks of Trixie’s life in her presence.

Twilight, however–in her current delirious state–, saw this as an opportunity. If she could save Trixie now from what others considered a certain end, then all was not lost. If she could only stop death for a moment, then surely all would be well. Like a pony possessed, she got to work.

She had just returned to her basement laboratory after another extended visit with Trixie. Her twenty-sixth such visit, to be precise. The old showboat had mocked Twilight’s concern and laughed at her attempts to cure her, but she’d obliged the princess when she requested another vial of blood and had smiled patiently when Twilight cast her fifth delving spell in a row.

Twilight grimaced as she stared at the blood under the enchanted microscope. Useless. Trixie’s illness was one of age and of the lungs. Staring at her blood wasn’t going to help, especially since she already knew what was wrong with the unicorn. Age. Entropy. Decay. All things living deteriorated eventually… well, almost all things living. If Twilight could live forever–if Celestia, Luna, and Discord could all live forever–then there had to be a way to stop it. There had to be.

The voices from the orbuculum echoed in her skull, admonishing and warning and never shutting up! They followed her constantly now, whether she slept or not, whether she was in communion with the orbuculum or not. They fed her obsession and anxieties, urging her on, telling her to try harder and to do more. To never stop. But she was trying. She spent every day trying, and it wasn’t helping. She couldn’t figure this out.

Her vision grew cloudy, and she quickly scrubbed away the tears of frustration that were pooling in her eyes. She couldn’t let her weakness drop onto the exposed microscope slide and contaminate the sample.

“I’m trying,” she told the voices. “Please, I’m doing my best.” But the voices just grew louder, especially the harsher one.

No, it said. There are more things you can do. Other things you can try. Stop being weak. Stop being scared. You, of all creatures, should be better. Then the voice, for the first time ever, chuckled, and a tone of mockery crept into it. You, Twilight Sparkle, should be smarter.

Twilight cried out and threw the microscope at the wall so hard it shattered and chipped the stone.

“I’m trying!” she screamed, spit flying from her mouth and tears now flowing freely. She felt a desperate need to laugh and cry and run away, all at the same time, but she was already crying, and she couldn’t run away, so laughter it was. What a joke Princess Twilight was, arguing alone with the voices in her head. She needed to think clearly, but the voices continued to whisper at her fiercely, and it was just so hard to string two coherent thoughts together. She needed air, someplace quiet.

You are someplace quiet. There’s nopony else here but us.

“Just us,” she said to no one.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Enter.”

The valet who had been dispatched to tell Twilight Sparkle that Trixie Lulamoon was finally dying stepped into the cavernous laboratory. It was dark and gloomy, but he could see the far wall was chipped, and on the ground beneath the damage lay some kind of scientific equipment that had been shattered. In the middle of the room stood an alicorn. Not Twilight Sparkle, though. The valet had seen the Princess many times. This was someone different.

This alicorn seemed darker somehow, almost smudged, like an ink stain. Her hair hung to the floor in a straight and tangled mess, and her cold tear-streaked face was illuminated by a pair of eyes that seemed to burn, flickering cyan flames fighting weakly against the shadows all around them. Her wings were longer–spindlier–and seemed set at just the wrong angle, and her horn was longer too and looked sharp like a needle.

“Yes,” said the thing that almost wasn’t Twilight.

“It’s Madame Lulamoon. She is passing.”

She stared at him for a moment, then felt her stomach fall out of her, leaving a clawing sucking hole behind.

“Get Fluttershy,” she growled.

The valet took an involuntary step backwards, away from the terrifying alicorn. “The Saint has already been notified…” he stammered, but whatever else he had meant to say was interrupted by a roar from Twilight Sparkle that rattled the very foundations of her castle.

“NOW!”

The valet scrambled to flee the room. Twilight watched him go for an eternal second, blood pumping loudly in her ears, then–instead of teleporting–she simply stepped out from her laboratory and into Trixie’s private room in the castle’s hospital wing. At the time, she’d paid it no attention, but in all the years since, she had often tried and failed to replicate the feat.

She saw Trixie lying still on her bed, her eyes closed and her breath slow and shallow. Starlight held her hoof. They both looked so small and fragile. Trixie in particular looked as if a strong breeze could pick her up and carry her out of the window that had been thrown open to let in the warm nighttime air. Others were there too, but to Twilight they all seemed vague and amorphous, shapes that sort of looked like Kerning and Luster and other ponies who at the moment didn’t matter at all.

Without the tell-tale pop of teleportation, nopony there seemed to notice her, but then Starlight looked up, and whatever she saw in Twilight’s face she must not have liked, because without letting go of Trixie’s hoof, she shifted her position so that she was sitting directly between Twilight and their dying friend.

“Twilight,” she said, voice an urgent whisper. “You leave her alone. It’s her time.”

The muscles in Twilight’s face felt slack to her. In fact, her whole body felt light and distant. Starlight spoke more words, but they came to her as a buzzing sound, like the wingbeats of so many honeybees, and the world seemed to warp around her until all Twilight could see was the now withering but once great and powerful magician.

“All things die…” she heard herself say, and even through her tunnel vision, she made note of the suddenly frightened look on Starlight’s face. Twilight wasn’t really talking to Starlight though, nor to anyone else there, but the words left her lips regardless. “But not we. We remain. I will remain.”

You are strong enough to heal the unicorn, to make her young once more. Command her to live, and she will live. By your will, make it so.

“Princess, please have a seat.” It was Kerning who spoke, and he looked at her with a face much softer than she’d ever seen on him before, as if he was coaxing a child. “Let us simply be here with Madame Lulamoon in her final hour. Let us make it one of comfort for her and her family.”

“No,” Twilight began to say, but before she could finish her thought, the door opened to admit Fluttershy, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and a very young mare following close behind Fluttershy that Twilight didn’t recognize. Fluttershy glanced quickly at Twilight but hurried past her to Trixie. Rarity and Pinkie both let their eyes linger on Twilight, and she felt for a moment embarrassed and judged, but it was a brief and quickly disposed of sensation. Pinkie’s eyes were harsh, but Rarity just looked sad, though Twilight couldn’t say why.

Starlight had moved a little out of the way to allow Fluttershy to look over Trixie, but Fluttershy just placed her hoof on Trixie’s and smiled. A faint shimmer–a barely noticeable transfer of magic–passed from the pegasus to the bedridden unicorn.

“She only has a few moments left,” she said, “but I made sure they’ll be painless.”

“Thank you,” Starlight said, smiling as well, though tears were forming in her eyes.

Twilight stared at them, and her brain refused to accept what she saw. Why was everypony so calm about this? How could they all be smiling? Didn’t they understand that if Twilight couldn’t stop Trixie from dying, then what hope did she have of keeping the Elements alive? Some small part of her mind screamed at her that she was being a fool, that her train of thought was illogical and panic induced, that she was spiraling hard. But the orbuculum had been made to speak truths, and it whispered louder that she needed to save Trixie now.

“Save her,” she said. She took a step forward, and all the haze in her mind seemed to disappear. She saw clearly all those gathered, and how they turned their heads from Trixie to her, how their expressions went from calm sadness and resignation to annoyance, fear, and even anger. But Twilight ignored them. Fluttershy was the healer. She had told the valet to fetch her, and she would use her to do what was necessary.

“Twilight,” Fluttershy said firmly, “I can’t heal age. No one can.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Twilight said, and her voice sounded strange to her own ears, resonant and unusually deep. “You will do as I say, Fluttershy. Save her.”

She heard several gasps from the gathered ponies, and she felt somepony place a hoof on her shoulder and whisper her name, but she brushed it off and took another step towards Fluttershy. The pegasus in question stared her down like a confident mother staring down a misbehaving child.

“Maybe you should leave,” she said, and Twilight had never before heard Fluttershy sound as cold as she did in that moment. Something inside Twilight flickered and snapped.

Her wings flared open in a crackling blast of magic, and she stomped her hooves onto the floor hard enough to shatter the tiles. “No!” she yelled, and when others attempted to grab her and pull her away, she cast force fields to push the offending parties–Rarity, Pinkie, and Luster–away from her and against the wall. None of the others in the room had strength enough or courage to stand against her.

Ignoring the shouted pleas for her to stop, she grabbed Fluttershy, who now looked terrified, in her magic and slammed her against Trixie’s bed. Kerning, of all ponies, leapt in front of her and placed his hooves against her chest.

“Please, Your Majesty! This is madness!” He sounded desperate, but as with the others, Twilight simply swept him away.

She walked up and placed her face right next to Fluttershy’s.

“Save her,” she said again, and this time Fluttershy shuddered for a moment, and her horrified eyes seemed to glace over briefly.

“O… okay…” she whimpered, and Twilight let her go.

“Twilight! Stop it!” It was Rarity yelling at her. Others were too, but Rarity’s high-pitched plea cut through the rest of the noise.

Ignore her! You must do this. You must!

She shook her head as if trying to shake away a gnat that was buzzing in her ear. They needed peace for this, so she cast a spell and teleported everypony but herself, Fluttershy, and Trixie out of the room. Vaguely she thought she might have deposited them in the throne room, but it didn’t really matter right now.

Fluttershy was visibly shaking as she placed her hooves on Trixie’s body. Her jaw kept tensing, and her eyes seemed to have a hard time focusing. She was moving too slowly.

“Faster,” Twilight growled, forcing Fluttershy’s face closer to Trixie with her magic. Her voice sounded even more grotesque and distorted than it had before. It didn’t matter. Whatever Twilight said, Fluttershy would obey. She could feel it deep in her chest. Her commands were law and could not be ignored.

Fluttershy began to openly weep as the magic of restoration flowed from her hooves into Trixie. Trixie’s body spasmed horribly as she took a too deep gurgling breath, and Fluttershy’s teeth rattled, her eyes rolling back in her head.

Twilight thought she heard someone screaming at her to stop, begging her to let Fluttershy go. She was hurting her! Couldn’t she see that? And she was hurting Trixie! What she was doing was wrong, and she had to stop!

Save her, Twilight. If you don’t, they will all die!

Again and again, Fluttershy forced her magic into an unresponsive Trixie. Her face had become terribly distorted, and a whistling whining noise was making its way up her throat. A repressed wail of pain held at bay by Twilight’s presence.

“Twilight….” Fluttershy eventually managed to stutter out. The muscles in her neck bulged from the terrible effort it took, but she turned her face and looked into Twilight’s eyes, and Twilight looked back into her friend’s broken, bloodshot, and desperate face. “Why…?” she whispered weakly. “Y… you’re… hurting… me…”

The other voice kept screaming loudly in her ears, and she could hear that it was crying. Was it the orbuculum? No, it was still whispering at her to save Trixie. Suddenly, something felt tight in her chest, something felt… wrong? A pressure built in her, and for a brief quiet moment the world shifted out of existence, and she found herself standing on dark water in a black and empty space.

A purple unicorn lay on the water before her, weeping violently. She was so small and weak that Twilight immediately felt the need to go to her aid. But when the unicorn looked up and saw Twilight approaching, she cried out in fear and began to quickly crawl away from her using legs that no longer seemed to work.

“You don’t… you don’t need to run from me,” Twilight said. “I’m here to hel…” but the word died on her tongue and blew away like a failing cinder. The unicorn ignored her, continuing her mad shrieking, all the while clawing at the water with her hooves in a desperate attempt to get away from Twilight.

The well shattered around her, forcing her back into the nightmare that was Trixie’s hospital room. There was Fluttershy, still bound and violated by Twilight’s will, and there was Trixie, her dead body forced rigid by healing magic now corrupted by a profane purpose. For an eternal unbearable moment, Twilight couldn’t find her breath. Then it returned to her like a lightning bolt, and she screamed at the insane horror of what she’d done. The sudden awareness of her actions made her sick, and she retched violently, vomiting all over her front legs and onto the floor.

She wasn’t sure what it was she let go of–what it was she’d been holding–but Fluttershy collapsed to the floor immediately, pulling in deep and ragged breaths as if her life depended on it, and not two seconds later the door to the room exploded inwards with enough force to knock Twilight to her knees, revealing a terrible and furious monster that Twilight vaguely recognized as Discord.

Instead of killing her on the spot though, which is what her addled mind was sure he would do and what she was certain she deserved, he simply glanced at her, scorn burning in his eyes, before hurrying to Fluttershy’s side. He was followed by a crowd of others.

Starlight rushed past Twilight on her old unsteady legs and flung herself over Trixie’s body, weeping loudly. Pinkie followed Discord to Fluttershy’s side and looked just as furious, staring down Twilight as she passed her. She said nothing to the alicorn though, instead exchanging whispered words with Discord and gently ministering to Fluttershy.

Twilight wasn’t sure what had happened to the others. Neither Luster nor Sunburst returned, but Kerning was there. He kept a wide berth of Twilight and busied himself trying to comfort the seemingly inconsolable Starlight. The only other ponies that had returned were Rarity and the young mare that had initially accompanied Fluttershy.

The mare stood in the door next to Rarity for a moment, then hurried past Twilight to join Kerning and not Fluttershy, which would have surprised Twilight if she’d had the presence of mind to consider it at all. Rarity remained in the door. She just stood there, staring at Twilight with grief in her eyes and her mouth slightly open in disbelief.

Twilight gingerly raised a hoof towards her, an involuntary whimper escaping her lips, and Rarity flinched, taking a step back. Twilight immediately lowered her hoof and looked away. Then she heard Rarity walk towards her, and though a small and foolish part of Twilight silently wished that she would stop and sit with Twilight, checking on her to see if she would be ok, she knew she didn’t deserve it, and was hardly surprised when Rarity’s steps carried her past Twilight and towards Fluttershy.

She stumbled to her hooves, barely able to stand, and made her wobbly way out of the room and into the hallway. No one ran after her. Even the orbuculum was silent. Only the shame of her sin came with her. Her body wandered through the castle like something already dead, her mind a numb buzzing absence in her skull. But her hooves knew where to take her, so she fled from awareness and hid in the dark.

When she finally stopped, she was standing in her private apothecary. She stared, jaw slack and eyes unfocused, at the rows of tiny drawers covering the wall.

“He… hemlock,” she mumbled, pulling out drawers haphazardly. Yes, hemlock, or maybe castor beans or rosary peas. How much would she need for an alicorn? She had no idea. She quickly lost track of how long she was in there, pulling herbs from tiny wooden boxes and stuffing them in glass vials to boil over red and angry flames, but when she was done, she held in her magic a large beaker filled to the brim with a shimmering clear liquid.

“Okay,” was all she said as she began to drink.

She had barely swallowed two mouthfuls before something crashed into her from the side like a boulder tumbling down a mountain. The orange mass pinned her to the ground, and Twilight was so startled and surprised she tried to fight it off using just her hooves and wings, entirely forgetting about her magic. She snarled and bucked and tried to reach the pool of liquid on the floor next to the shattered beaker, but her assailant refused to let her go.

“Hurry up!” the thing yelled with Applejacks voice, and then Twilight felt something grab hold of her muzzle and pry her jaw apart before ramming a claw down her throat. For the second time that night, Twilight was sick. This time it was brief, since her stomach was mostly empty, but when she was done, she felt so weak she was sure she’d never move again.

Applejack climbed off her with a deep sigh of relief, but Spike, who was almost twice Twilight’s size, just sat down with a loud thud and stared at Twilight. He didn’t look angry at all or relieved like Applejack, just confused and worried. Worried about her.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered, and the tears that began to flow then burned her like fire. “I’m so sorry.”

Spike just shook his head and ran a claw through her mane but remained silent.

“You should have let me drink it,” she whispered. “I’m a monster. It’s what’s best for everyone.”

Applejack snorted angrily. “You can take that up with Fluttershy and Starlight,” she said. “They’re the ones who sent us to find you. Fluttershy had Discord fetch Spike, so…” she trailed off, then shook her head and turned her back to Twilight. “They wouldn’t say what you did, but I’ve seen the state Fluttershy is in. I reckon there’s been enough pain and sorrow for one night, but if you ever hurt her again…” She left it at that and walked out of the room.

Spike sat with her until the sun came up.

-

EoH 100

The sparrow returned to the windowsill. Why, she couldn’t say. It had already eaten most of the seeds and the rest had been blown off the ledge by the breeze onto the sun-dappled grass below. She said nothing, letting the facts and implications of the story she’d just relayed to her guards sink in. For ten years, she had never once shared the events of that night with anyone.

Explanations had been made to those who mattered, which was mostly the other princesses and Rainbow Dash, who had been in Canterlot that night, but Twilight had said very little, and during the first few months following the event, she had mostly locked herself in her room and shunned all contact with others. Not once had Fluttershy and Twilight spoken to each other since. For ten years they had generally avoided each other, and when that wasn’t possible, they’d simply not spoken to each other. Except that wasn’t true anymore, was it?

Twilight felt like a monster for it. It made perfect sense that Fluttershy would avoid her attacker, but Twilight should have tried to make restitution somehow… But there wasn’t an apology or act of charity in the universe that could make up for her crime. Not for the first time did she secretly wish that Applejack and Spike had failed to find her that night.

It had taken years, but eventually things between Twilight and her friends had settled into its current strained status quo. There was a distance between them now. Well, at least a distance between Twilight and the others. They still worked together, and aside from Fluttershy, they even spent time together as “friends”, but now they all knew who Twilight really was and what she was capable of. The effortless affection between them had been scrubbed out like a spelling error on a chalkboard, and it really was all Twilight’s fault.

There had been one tiny, terrible, and shameful comfort to Twilight throughout that decade of self-flagellation. Although things had gone awry and Twilight had behaved in the most despicable way, although she had permanently hurt Fluttershy, at least it had been in the service of a necessary cause. Hadn’t the orbuculum urged her on? And didn’t the orbuculum reveal the truth? Even thinking it now, she was disgusted with herself.

She had tried to do what was right. That’s what she had secretly told herself when she lay awake in her bed during the many long and lonely nights that followed. It was a despicable justification, but she had no other balm to seek, and she clung to it desperately.

But now, that too had been stripped from her. As it turned out, it was not the orbuculum that had spoken to her. The orbuculum did show her the truth, but only images, and those images had been manipulated by both the Echo of Eternity as well as the very entity of death and destruction the orbuculum had warned her about. She had been tricked as easily as a foal. Why? Because of arrogance? A desperate need for solutions? Either way, her weakness had been her downfall.

She looked from the sparrow to her guards, and if they had been surprised before, now they were stunned. Each one of them sat in silent shock staring at her, but what they thought about the revelation that their princess had committed assault against one of her closest friends, that she could only guess. Except for in Skarn’s case. The gargoyle looked as if someone had rammed a spear through her stomach, but the silence dragged on, thick and heavy.

Linden finally broke it. “You, uhm, you have more to tell us?” she asked.

Cercus seemed equally desperate to fill the silence now that Linden had led the way.

“Right,” he said, and it was the shakiest she’d ever heard his voice. “You haven’t really explained what happened yesterday, nor why we five have been specifically summoned… though I am beginning to have my suspicions.”

Twilight nodded and set her jaw, then told them what had transpired the day before, of her meeting with the Echo of Eternity and what it had told her about the orbuculum and the voices.

“It’s important that you understand all this because everything I’ve done in the last ten years–hurting Fluttershy, yes, but also creating the Twilight guard, and many other things–has been at the bidding of the orbuculum. Or as I now understand, the two entities communicating with me through the orbuculum. This Everdeath successfully fooled me into listening to and following his advise, and while I’m certain of his malignancy, I can’t be sure the Echo of Eternity is acting in our best interest either.”

Admitting it all out loud made her stomach and throat burn, but it was the truth. She’d been played. The Echo claimed benevolence, but Twilight found that her trust was in short supply.

“Your Majesty,” Skarn said, and Twilight wasn’t the only one surprised to hear the gargoyle speak up. “All you’ve done, you’ve done to preserve the world. The Everdeath’s treachery only further proves the need for taking precautions.”

“What I’ve done, Skarn, is despicable,” Twilight said, unable to keep the venom from her voice, “and there is no excuse or rationalization that will ever make it okay.” Skarn drew back and lowered her head, and Twilight sighed, frustrated with her unstable and fluctuating emotions. The locked chest in her mind was still there, rattling away at her.

“The point of all this,” she continued, closing her eyes and steadying her voice, “is that you cannot trust my decisions. Two years ago, the orbuculum granted me a vision that five of the six Elements of Harmony would need protectors, guards. The voice that I now know belongs to the Echo of Eternity provided me with a spell to cast and a time to cast it. It advised that the spell would select five individuals, each of whom would be assigned to one of the Elements. As always, the advise was vague and fragmentary, but I was led to believe that all of this was crucial for the battles that are yet to come.”

The guards all exchanged surprised looks. Even Skarn seemed caught off guard. Asterope looked like someone had just dumped a bucket of water over her head, and Linden’s face had taken on a suddenly sickly hue. Winter chuckled, but she thought it was more from disbelief than any actual humor.

“Your Majesty, what could any of us hope to do for any of you? You’re the Elements of Harmony, and we’re just regular guards.”

“Besides,” Asterope chimed in, sounding slightly panicked, “you said the voices can’t be trusted, Princess. Right? So maybe this is all just a trick too.” She looked at the others for support, and though none of them said so outright, they seemed to agree.

Twilight was about to respond, when somepony knocked on the door. The fact that they didn’t wait for Twilight to invite them in meant it was either Spike, Starlight, or one of the Elements. As it turned out, it was Applejack. She clearly wasn’t paying attention, because she had her mouth half open to speak before noticing the guards gathered around Twilight’s bed.

“Uh, am I interrupting something?” she asked. Twilight shook her head.

“You’re not interrupting, Applejack. We were just about finished anyway.”

“We were?” Winter asked, clearly too surprised to stop himself, which made the corner of Applejack’s mouth twitch up.

“Well, that’s all good then. I just wanted to check in with you about going after Rarity and Pinkie Pie. With everything that happened yesterday and you being bedridden, I wasn’t sure it was such a good idea.”

“Fluttershy says I’m healing and should be fine to move around in a day or two. I plan on heading out as soon as I’m out of bed.”

Applejack looked Twilight up and down, doubt clear on her face. “I think Fluttershy might need to check again. Just ‘cause she’s never been wrong before doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. You look like somepony dug your corpse up from a not so fresh grave and propped it up using pillows.”

“I’ll be fine,” Twilight said, feeling nothing of the sort.

“Alright,” Applejack said, turning to leave. “If you say so. I’ll let the others know to get ready.”

As soon as the earth pony had closed the door behind her, Twilight turned her attention back to the guards.

“Whether or not the Echo was lying,” she said, pinning each of them down with an earnest and–she hoped–slightly intimidating look, “I am not at liberty to take chances. We will act with care under the assumption that what the Echo said is true.

“Until I can assign you correctly, you will stay in a group and stick with me, which means that you all need to get ready to be on the road sometime in the next couple of days. Winter, Skarn, assign new temporary captains to your companies. Winter, you’ll need to replace your lieutenants as well. For the moment, you will all act as a personal and mostly ceremonial bodyguard. At least that’ll be the official announcement.”

Not one of them looked thrilled about the announcement, and Twilight could see they were all still clearly in shock over her revelations, filled with both questions and doubt. But they were also her guards, well trained and loyal to a fault, so they all nodded and prepared to follow their Princess’ commands wherever they might lead.