/pj50kb/ Palm Trees and Regicide

 

Update 11/06/2021 -- Last place in the Pastejam50kb! Thanks to everyone that voted - probably shot myself in the foot by trying something so different, but I still had fun writing it.

 

---

 

The rhythmic hushing of the sun-speckled waves would ordinarily be relaxing, if their sudden appearance wasn’t so disconcerting.

Princess Celestia pursed her lips, narrowed eyes searching out over the featureless expanse of the open sea and beholding not a single landmark before her.

 

“This isn’t Canterlot.”

 

An astute observation, with Canterlot being a landlocked city stuck to the side of a mountain and nowhere near the sea. The place Celestia found herself was comparatively flat, with a fair bit more salt in the air and a generous arrangement of palm trees hanging over the fine white sands that stretched for a mile on either side of her. Behind her, a jungle beckoned, thick vegetation strangling gnarled trunks at their bases, but coming to an abrupt stop at the edge of the beach as though discriminatory towards sand, which wasn’t actually too far from the truth.

 

“Why am I not in Canterlot.”

 

It was a fair question, though really it was more of a statement given her lack of an inflection, and she could be forgiven for asking it considering the irregular circumstances that lead to her being there. It was perhaps unnecessary to say it openly with none around to answer for her, but speaking aloud gives words power. Turning simple thoughts into tangible sound, thus bringing the abstract into the real, was at times needed to jog one’s brain into more productive thoughts, which was something Celestia understandably felt she urgently needed.

 

Her mind, ancient beyond most ponies’ comprehension and a place of fathomless mystery, seemed to have hit a roadblock. She was by no means a slow mare, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate, especially as you read on, that she had every reason to be a bit befuddled at that moment, given the dramatic transition from carpets and candles to sand and sun she had just experienced.

 

She stared unblinkingly at the sun, frowning. It hung directly above her, the same height as it had been prior to her translocation, but a little bit too far to the left. She had clearly moved a great distance, and judging by the temperature and exotic flora behind her she must have been somewhere near the equator. A long way from home, of that she was certain; too long to fly and far too long to teleport, at least not through the usual methods, but she sadly didn’t have any supplies on her that could help fashion a ritual circle.

 

Celestia didn’t seem to have much of anything on her, now that she thought about it. Her regalia, which would ordinarily mark her as a regent – in case her towering height, pristine coat, and shimmering aurora mane didn’t clue an observer in, which you would be surprised to know happened a lot more than you’d expect – was absent. It felt strange to be naked; even her crown was gone. Good riddance, she thought. She’d always hated that crown; it made her head look small.

 

The pony turned on the spot and stared into the jungle. The jungle stared back. Celestia whinnied at the jungle. The jungle did the jungle-ish equivalent of putting up its hands and saying “easy, lady”, by which I mean it rustled a few leaves and a macaw stopped jeering at her. Her dominance over simple vegetation established, Celestia stepped forth.

 

She had been alive long enough to know that when one found herself in an unknown place it served to grasp the lay of the land. As such, she intended to poke around a bit and see what sort of trouble she had found herself in this time. It wasn’t her first bout of being unexpectedly transported somewhere, and she hoped it wouldn’t be the last, but previous escapades had dropped her into volcanoes, tornadoes, bordellos and fandangos, so a jungle didn’t measure highly on her well-attuned threat index.

 

Even so, she hadn’t lived to see her third millennium by being a push over, so her mind dusted off a few defensive spell patterns she’d sequestered away in her subconscious and brought them to the fore. She tested an old favourite on a nearby tree, blowing a smouldering hole straight through the trunk with a needle-thin stab of pure plasma. A nearby vine swatted her on the backside in response, drawing a yelp.

“Touché, shrub,” she conceded, rubbing her bottom.

 

She decided that the jungle could wait for a bit. The two of them had clearly gotten off on the wrong hoof and needed space to work out their differences, so Celestia retreated back to the sand (not without a few more whips on the flank that she had to admit she probably deserved) and set off in a brisk trot across the beach.

 

It was a pleasant trot made all the more enjoyable by the delicate sand beneath her hooves and the soothing hush of the sea. Celestia had seen many secret, untouched lands in her time, but the simple beauty of an untarnished tropical island was one of the more serene sights she had seen. It almost made up for being stranded there, and, ever the optimist, she supposed that if this was where she ended up spending the next few decades, if not the rest, of her extremely long natural life, there were worse fates. At least it would be a good excuse to flex her horribly rusty survival skills.

 

Perhaps she would make a spear. It had been so long since she’d made a spear.

 

*

 

A purple unicorn shrieked and flailed her legs about in a gibbering fit.

 

Don’t worry too much, this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened. It tended to occur whenever anything didn’t go ‘according to plan’, which, in the case of Twilight Sparkle, was a lot. As a consequence, she flailed around in gibbering fits far more than your average pony. Ordinarily that would land her in a psyche ward with a steady diet of morphine and soft food, but she happened to be Celestia’s favoured student, which gave her something akin to diplomatic, medical, and judicial immunity so long as she didn’t test Celestia’s patience, and truthfully that wasn’t often. Celestia was renowned for her patience.

 

Princess Luna, however, was not her sister.

 

“Where on the equator, Sparkle?” she demanded again.

 

“I don’t know! Maybe somewhere south, or even really far north, it’s all the same!” was the panicked response.

 

“You cast the spell, you must know where you sent her!”

 

“But I didn’t mean to cast that one! I only meant to change the colour of her mane!”

 

“How the bloody hell do you mix dying a pony’s mane up with intercontinental translocation?!”

 

Twilight, a mare of many talents with a number of heroic feats under her belt, descended once more into hyperventilation and sobbing. Luna, a mare of many more talents and far broader number of feats both heroic and morally dubious, took stock of the situation, as a pony in her position was expected to do in times of unexpected crisis.

 

She closed her eyes and breathed deep, allowing the frustration of the moment to drain from her. Celestia was gone, which meant that Luna was the de facto ruler until her wayward sister returned. This was fine, it had happened before and Equestria hadn’t burnt to the ground, though a nagging thought arose in Luna’s mind, a murmur from ages past that attempted to inform of something dire. Luna squashed it; she had far more important things to focus on. As it would later turn out, doing so was a mistake.

 

“Sparkle, calm down.”

 

She didn’t, obviously, so Luna restrained her with magic. She was not gentle, though no one who knew Luna would expect her to be so. The smaller pony was shaken around like a stubborn bottle of ketchup, but to no avail, Twilight’s mouth continued blabbering on about regicide and summary execution. With a grunt, Luna sealed Twilight’s mouth as well. The unicorn’s eyes blinked erratically in what Luna first thought was a seizure until she realised that Twilight was blinking in Morse code, likely in an effort to continue explaining how badly she’d screwed the royal pooch.

 

“We shall visit the library and try to determine what went wrong; do you remember which book you read the spell in?” Luna asked.

 

Twilight nodded shakily, the mention of books calming her down better than forceful restraint ever could. What Celestia saw in the young mare Luna couldn’t fathom; in ages past the royal protégé was meant to be sound of mind, body, and character. These days, Celestia tended to pick whichever foal knew the most about Starswirl the Bearded, which on the one hoof meant that Twilight was an expert in that particular field – as well as an impressive array of magics that apparently included pan-global teleportation – but on the other her remaining faculties were desperately lacking, and her mind had all the structural integrity of a paper bridge.

 

Luna, carrying Twilight in a field of midnight-blue magic, strode from Celestia’s private chambers. She passed the guards posted in the hall, whom saluted after a moment of uncertain hesitation, likely at the loud bang they had heard earlier and the screaming from Twilight. A maid near the stairs curtsied with inquisitive look about her, eyes bouncing between the Princess and the room she had come from. Finally, Raven Inkwell latched onto the two of them like a limpet in the corridor leading to the library. She regarded the murmuring Twilight with vague interest, having seen sort of display a dozen times already.

 

“Hello Princess Luna, is everything alright with Twilight? Shall I inform Princess Celestia?”

 

“Celestia is currently away from the castle, she shall deal with Sparkle upon her return.” Twilight spasmed at Luna’s words.

 

In retrospect, it was perhaps unwise for Luna to be so dismissive, but in her defence, she had been away from Equestria for a very long time and had not yet grown accustomed to the lower classes – anything other than alicorns – as even being sapient creatures, let alone beings with opinions about current affairs. As far as she was concerned, Raven existed to scribble down Celestia’s every word in a sycophantic fervour, and turn the heads of any guards in the area with the flirtatious way she swayed her hips as she passed.

 

The Princess couldn’t really be blamed at all for what would happen as a consequence of these careless words, as it wasn’t something anyone could reasonably expect to have happened, but regardless of what fate had in store for her, the damage had been done.

 

Raven stopped dead in her tracks, eyes bulging. Luna continued on her way, pondering the possible military applications of Sparkle’s impressive teleportation prowess, oblivious to the look of abject shock on Raven’s face.

 

“Away?” it was a simple word loudly said and bluntly spoken, enough to drag Luna out of her ruminations.

 

“Yes, I trust you can see to the affairs of the palace in her absence?” she called over her shoulder, not bothering to look at the sweating mare in her wake. If she had, she might have seen the look of eager realisation in Raven’s eyes, as well as the flickering smile she was struggling to keep masked.

 

Again, please try to see things from Luna’s perspective. Her sister had just vanished to some unknown corner of the planet, and that meant the dual responsibilities of running a nation and figuring out a way to get her sister back now fell on her broad shoulders. Thrust to the forefront of a nation, already foreseeing the difficulties of navigating a world she barely understood, it was a lot to think about. She was a hard mare, but less prepared for the role than she otherwise would have admitted. She can’t be blamed for her lack of awareness of the house of cards Celestia’s absence had unwittingly toppled.

 

That being said, she did end up doing a sterling job keeping on top of matters when things did go, as the guards were known to say, “tits up”.

 

*

 

Things were looking up for Celestia.

 

Literally; she was staring at the sky again. The sun had shifted over a bit, which was her only indication of the passing of time. Living in a palace surrounded by clocks was convenient for timekeeping, but it did instil bad habits in a pony. Habits like not being able to gauge passing time properly. Being in her current predicament forced the Princess to fall back on the skills she had to rely on when she was still a filly living in the wilderness, something that many ponies might have been shocked to know, if they’d ever bothered to actually ask instead of just assuming otherwise.

 

Ponies seemed to think that, eons ago, she had emerged from the heavens bathed in sunlight and escorted by a cherubic choir. That she formed the nation of Equestria with her own two hooves and that Luna was also there at some point either providing moral support or brooding. Remarkably, they were bang on the money regarding the latter. Luna was the kind of filly that had ‘phases’, and insisted that said phases were not phases and were in fact “who she really was”. She went through a new phase once every four months. Foalhood was rough for Celestia.

 

All that is to say that Celestia didn’t remember where she came from. Her earliest memories were of her running through a damp forest clutching her baby sister and foraging as many berries as she could in the waning light of a sun she had yet to tame. It was all very sad and terribly dramatic and would surely make a thrilling novel if anyone could be bothered to write it all down, but to put it simply, Celestia knew how to live off the land. Or at least she had. It had been a very long time.

 

Despite her situation, she found the flexing of her ancient skill set rather exciting. She passed trees and scrutinised their fruits. If she was to live here long-term she would need to know what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. She would need to find a fresh water source, especially as she hadn’t had anything to drink all morning and was already parched. Perhaps she would even fashion a hut! What sort of hut? She couldn’t rightly say, as the sort of dwellings she used to throw together were more glorified heaps of branches than passable structures. Perhaps she could base her design off the hut she was staring at just then?

 

Oh, yes, that’s right. Celestia was staring at a hut. It was dilapidated, with gaping holes in its thatched roof, and most of the wooden foundation had rotted away from the baking sun and sea salt, but it was still definitely a hut. It didn’t match any of the architecture Celestia could recognise; there was a minimal ponish influence, with deep, shallow steps made for hooves and a low door reflecting a pony’s short stature, but she couldn’t assign an origin to the embellishments and carvings above the doorframe. They were of a culture she had never encountered.

 

She was, to put it bluntly, delighted by this. An unknown culture! And she would be the one to discover it! Celestia prided herself on keeping up to date with the goings on of the world, and was at least aware of just about every civilisation that had existed in the last three millennia. The specifics of each culture differed, with Yaks, Dragons and Changelings being notoriously difficult to learn about, but she would still wager bits on being able to pick out a Yak hut from a drawing, or a draconic rune on a wall, or a changeling tunnel in a cliff.

 

But this? This was something new. The flowing curves spoke of the ocean, with thick, deliberate straight lines denoting what must have been trees, with a meandering swirl capping the lines that implied a canopy. The carving was dominated by a single large circle that hung above the worn etchings, jagged spikes that spoke of violence and pain jutted from it towards the smaller depictions. The sun, no doubt. The day was getting better and better.

 

She set off again with a spring to her step, firmly deciding that today was a blessing. She would find the ponies that created that hut and learn all about them, and then she would think about how she was going to get home. Although, if the new ponies were welcoming, perhaps she could just stay there and rule them instead? Luna needed to catch up on ruling after her thousand-year ‘time-out session’, and Celestia quite liked the emphasis those carvings had put on the sun.

 

Yes, she set off into the jungle with earnest, her earlier idea of mapping out the coastline blissfully disregarded. The jungle wasn’t quite sure what to make of Celestia bounding into it again so soon, as it was still recovering from their previous encounter and didn’t think it was ready to have another go at their relationship. It couldn’t fault her enthusiasm though, so it made only a passing attempt at stopping her by slapping her in the face with a vine. If anything that only emboldened her, and the jungle decided that it would instead wait to see what would happen. So long as she didn’t break anything.

 

It wouldn’t be waiting for long.

 

*

 

A mountain of books dropped onto the table next to Twilight, doing wonders for calming her down.

 

Luna had since relinquished the lesser pony, and set her to work in finding out exactly what spell she had somehow mistaken for mane-dyeing. Twilight threw herself into the task with a characteristic gusto not unlike a baby being given a milk bottle. Luna smirked at the parallel. Though the books didn’t stop Twilight from alternating between studious research and the occasional bout of maniacal cackling as her overactive imagination teased her with images of her own public execution.

 

Execution hadn’t been a legal method of state punishment for some time, but given how Twilight’s nervous blubbering was grating on her nerves, Luna was fully prepared to review those laws. Still, she endured. The fate of Equestria depended on it, and that’s no hyperbole.

 

As Twilight worked under Luna’s dictate, a shrivelled stallion wearing spectacles older than most of the books in the vicinity shuffled from a dark corner of the royal archives. He bowed reverently before addressing his superior.

 

“Ah, P-Princess Luna, you b-bless this archive with your p-presence.” Luna steeled herself for the conversation ahead. If Celestia could tolerate the peasantry, then by Faust she would too.

 

“If you wouldn’t mind elucidating on a m-matter of regency and p-perhaps succession, I would be most g-grateful.”

 

Luna glanced back at Twilight, who was muzzle-deep in a tome feverishly taking notes and doing her best not to have another panic attack, before turning back to the archivist. “I have little time. What is it you wish to know?”

 

“Well, I’ve heard through the g-grapevine that her v-venerable highness P-Princess Celestia is currently, ah, absent?”

 

Word travelled fast, it seemed. “She is away from the castle, yes. It is of no concern to you or anyone else, archivist, she will return in due time and anything you wish to discuss with her can be raised upon her arrival.”

 

“Quite so, quite so...” He wore a wry smile; one that Luna suspected meant he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

 

“Is there a problem, archivist?” Luna intoned.

 

“Well I heard, again through the g-grapevine, that the g-guards heard a loud b-bang and yelling from Celestia’s p-personal chambers. When they investigated they found n-no trace of her Highness.”

 

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “Your point being?”

 

“I just think it’s rather odd that P-Princess Celestia, whom was seen this very morning about the p-palace, should so suddenly vanish when her d-departure was not on the d-daily agenda according to Miss Inkwell, and now you have the P-Princess’ p-personal p-protégé d-doing... what, exactly?”

 

Luna was a mare of tradition. She was used to fortress walls, murky battlefields, stone-faced guards, and servants that would sooner hurl themselves from the castle walls than dare to even breathe near unless asked to. Some four-eyed nerd in a library implying that she’d done in her sister may at one time in the past have been correct in his assumptions, but Luna liked to think she was over her sororicdal impulses. It had just been a phase.

 

“Listen to me very carefully, whelp,” Luna’s magic coiled around the scruff of his neck and lifted him off the ground, bringing him eye level with her. Again, at the time it probably seemed like the thing to do considering the accusations, but it really wasn’t helping her image at all, not that she could have grasped the scope of what was to come next. “I don’t care what odious little fantasy you and the other servants have conjured between yourselves, but my sister is alive and well. Currently, Sparkle and I are attempting to find a way to bring her home, so you can scurry back to your colleagues and tell them that if they think they can pin a coup on me, they’ll have to answer to Celestia herself upon her return. And know this; you have made a deadly enemy this day by daring to accuse me of such foulness. Do I make myself clear?”

 

The nerd – archivist, sorry – to his credit, wasn’t shaken quite as much as she’d hoped, and even managed a grim smile of his own.

 

“P-Princess, I assure you, our fantasies are perfectly in line with the g-greater g-good, nor d-do we suspect you of overt wrong d-doing,” she narrowed her eyes at ‘overt’, but let him continue, “we simply think there has been an unfortunate accident that you might be trying to... c-cover up.”

 

She had to admit, the withered prune of a stallion had gonads. There weren’t many ponies in Equestria that could look into the eyes of the mare that suffocated the sun and stand firm in the face of a good dressing down. Still, she had to correct his errant way of thinking if she was to maintain order. She released him from her arcane grip, and he stumbled to the ground, pawing the front of his collar to straighten it back out.

“Very well. I will concede that there has been an accident, and that Celestia is currently absent as a consequence, but I swear on my honour as a regent of Equestria that we are doing what we can to return her to her rightful place.”

 

The stallion nodded, seeming to accept that answer.

 

“I think I can agree with that; the rest of the staff and I all want to see her in her rightful place too.”

 

Another low bow, and he hurried back into the shadows of the archive and vanished. Luna watched him go with a cocked eyebrow, but strange little pony out of her mind for now. She had other, more important things to worry about than smear campaigns directed at her. She had lived through such things before, and was determined not to let this distract her from her task.

 

Looking back, she probably should have done.

 

*

 

Celestia didn’t make a spear in the end.

 

She had initially wanted to, and even thought about pulling off a bit of that hut from earlier to fashion herself one, but never let it be said that there isn’t a romantic, primitive utilitarianism to a big rock, and Celestia was a sucker for romance. As such, a big rock orbited her like a mossy, natural satellite.

 

The Princess bounded through the jungle on her merry way to whom-knew where. Her prior concerns were irrelevant, all that mattered was to discover who or what built that hut. How many years had it been since she had last done a bit discovering herself? Hundreds? Thousands? Whatever it was, it had been too long, and she refused to give up a chance that had been presented on a sandy platter. Would they be an established population? Perhaps there was a fully-fledged township on this island. She didn’t know how large the island was and honestly didn’t want to find out. The mystery of the place had captured her, and she stubbornly refused to use even her wings to fly up and scout the island from on high.

 

No, she would delve into this objectionable jungle with just her wits and a big rock to see her task to the end. Luna would be most jealous, as if the circumstances weren’t already motivation enough. Perhaps she would find a handsome, native stallion that would sweep her off her hooves. Perhaps he would be an alicorn. Perhaps they would all be alicorns. Her bounding became a frantic gallop. There was no direction in particular she was going, only forward, her instincts still took note of important marks as she passed – a freshwater stream here, a sheltered hollow in the outcropping there, but she forewent rest and a much, much needed drink in pursuit of her goal. Yes. This was going to be an excellent adventure indeed.

 

After thirty solid minutes of galloping – and a great deal of sweating amidst vindictive vines slapping against her body – she burst into a clearing, and the breath caught in her rasping throat.

 

Before her, clear as day, was a village. Huts abound, all dressed in the same style as the one on the beach, spread out across the wide circular clearing, but these huts had no gaping holes and bore no rot; they were whole and well-looked after. More importantly, they were lived in. Earth ponies, somewhat shorter and stockier than native Equestrians, milled about with baskets of fruit and jugs of water. Most of them were dark-coated, and each wore ribbons of many colours in their manes. The older ponies had dozens of ribbons, some of them dressed in pearls and other shiny stones, whereas the colts and fillies had only a few unadorned ribbons fastened to their braided hair. Every pony, regardless of age, wore a wide-brimmed hat that kept the harsh sun off their faces.

 

Celestia looked upon them with tears in her eyes, which given her situation was a grievous waste of moisture. She ignored the developing headache she was now burdened with and strolled into the village, her chin held high and wings extended. All around her, the ponies’ jaws dropped, as did quite a few baskets and jugs of water. All activity ground to a standstill as the Princess made herself known among this hitherto undiscovered people. She had such stories to tell them of the outside world, of lands far beyond their humble village. Her wisdom would become theirs. She would lead them from the shade and into the sun. She always did have a flair for the dramatic, sometimes more-so than Luna, though Celestia never went so far as to dye her hair black and call herself Ebony Ravenmane.

 

She came to the approximate centre of the village, where a towering pillar of polished tree trunks had been shackled together with rope. All over the pillar were similar carvings to those she had seen before, but with more space to work with the artists had spread out their story. Depictions of ponies danced under the canopies of the trees, or delved into the water. But when under neither shade nor surf, they walked with heads bowed under their hats. At the very top of the pillar, caved into all sides, were grand, detailed depictions of the sun. Celestia nodded in pride as she beheld the monument to her charge’s glory.

 

She then noticed the silence. She turned to face the assembled crowd that had formed, centred on her and the pillar. Faces old and young stared at the sun carvings on the pillar, and then on gleaming replica proudly displayed on Celestia’s flank. She panned her gaze, her prior excitement fading with each darkened grimace she surveyed. If the villagers were happy to see her, they had an odd way of showing it.

 

Celestia swallowed, her arid throat making it difficult. She took stock of the situation and put into practice a lesson she had gone to great pains to hammer into Twilight: put yourself in the other pony’s hooves. She looked again at the pillar. The hats, the images of toil, the relish of shade, and, when she turned back, the looks of deepening horror overcoming the villagers. The coin dropped – these villagers did not worship the sun, they were terrified of it.

 

Her subconscious regurgitated the defensive spells she had prepared earlier, but Celestia pushed them aside and forced a smile.

 

“Good afternoon, fair villagers! My name is Princess Celestia of Equestria. Do any of you speak Ponish?”

 

When abroad, it’s usually a smart idea to check to see if anyone nearby speaks the same language as you. It makes purchasing knick-knacks or asking for directions to the beach much easier. This wasn’t exactly a foreign country in the usual sense of the term though; it was an undiscovered tribe of proto-ponies that had been sequestered on an island for thousands of years. Celestia couldn’t be blamed for trying though. After all, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.

 

Thankfully, you also tend to miss the majority of the shots you do take, something for which Celestia was incredibly thankful as a spear plunged into the pillar next to her head.

 

*

 

Luna didn’t like the look of the guards.

 

She didn’t like the look of them in general, really. They were undisciplined, their armour wasn’t polished to the mirror sheen it ought to be, and the old rule where only stallions over a certain height were allowed to be royal guard seemed to have been thrown out the window in her absence. If Sparkle truly had evaporated Celestia, the first thing Luna would do as sole monarch of the realm would be to whip the guard into something approaching respectable.

 

Well, not quite; the first thing she would do is liquefy Sparkle’s skeleton for killing her sister, then she would whip the guard into shape.

 

Plans for retribution aside, she still didn’t like the look of the guards. It wasn’t just their appearance, it was the way they kept looking at her askance as she passed and clenched the grips on their weapons a bit tighter. It put her on edge, and she had visions of swift movements as her back was turned. Memories of much darker times, of shadows creeping through her bedroom window and wine laced with death bubbled to the surface. Luna shook her head, dismissing them. Such paranoia was behind her now.

 

Sparkle floated alongside Luna, curled up in the foetal position apparently not minding her new mode of transport, and using it as an excuse to carry on stuffing her nose as far into the pages of a book on writing wills that Luna had scrounged for her. She had determined how to trace her spell, and the two of them were now heading back to Celestia’s chambers. All said and done, though her sister had disappeared and she’d declared some geriatric sod in the archives her nemesis, Luna thought it hadn’t been too bad of an afternoon so far.

 

She passed a maid on her way down the hall, and vaguely recognised her as the same maid from earlier, but thought nothing of it.

 

She did, however, think something of the dagger that was thrust at her neck.

 

“Death to the oppressors!” shrieked the maid, or she would have done, had she finished.

 

Luna was no slouch. She was the sort of mare that could probably bench-press a dragon if you asked her to. I could go into greater detail about the specifics of her fitness routine and how hardcore she is, but in essence all you need to know is that Luna crushed the dagger with several kilotons of arcane might and bucked the maid clear through a door within a second of her abrupt warcry.

 

The maid lay in an unconscious mess atop a bed of shredded wood, and Luna huffed.

 

“Sloppy. I expect better from you next time.”

 

There wouldn’t be a next time; the maid was down for the count, as I’m sure you can imagine, but the guards posted along the hallway behind her were definitely eager to pick up where she left off.

 

“Suck Simper Tire Of This!” bellowed one of them.

 

Luna was, honestly, more livid at the stallion’s linguistic butchery of ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ than she was at the attempt on her life. The still-reading Sparkle swung behind Luna, the Princess putting herself between the oblivious bookworm and the oncoming combatants. A centuries-old stone bust of some important noble shattered against the helmet of the first guard in a flash of magic, and Luna pounced ahead to meet the second. His strikes with his spear were clumsy and uncoordinated, further vindicating the Princess’ disgust at the appallingly low standards the royal guard had fallen to.

 

If this had been happening a thousand years ago, she’d have been peppered with poisoned crossbow bolts from six different directions and set upon by pegasi hoplites that had been trained from birth to kill her. Ponies used to have standards. They used to actually care about the things they did. As far as assassination attempts went, this was an absolute shambles, and Luna roared as much, a single blurred hoof to the face rendering the second (briefly confused) stallion comatose.

 

The third guard was more wary, and thrust at her with his spear from a distance. She sidestepped the first two jabs, attempted a feint, and growled through gritted teeth when the third bit into her shoulder. She cursed her hesitation to use magic in close quarters and promptly snapped the spear in half with a rush of midnight power. She took the disarmed stallion by the throat in her aura and held him close, relishing the opportunity to do a bit of field-interrogation. It all reminded her of her first Grand Galloping Gala.

 

“Speak, and perhaps your death will be quick,”

 

“E-Equestria is destined to be ruled by her people! The f-false-gods must be overthrown!” He was trying to sound brave, but as I’ve already mentioned, few ponies can look Luna in the eye and not lose their nerve.

 

“Toppling the diarchy, are you? Very impressive.”

 

“F-for decades we’ve waited, but now our chance has come. Y-you’ll regret your brutal dictatorship soon enough.”

 

“Oh? And where was this bravado when my sister walked these halls?” Luna could not hide her smirk.

 

“She’s no longer a threat, Twilight Sparkle killed her this morning!”

 

Twilight, whom up until then had been blissfully unaware of the melee around her, looked up from her book in shock.

 

“What?” she hissed, her voice gaining a familiar edge of panic.

 

“Celestia,” the guard continued, speaking past Luna, “you annihilated her, I heard it from her personal maid! I didn’t know you were part of the cause Twilight, but we stand with you!”

 

Twilight stared at him for a few seconds, processing his words. Then, to everyone’s surprise, she scoffed. The mare then tore his pathetic ambitions apart in a display of oratory magnificence and vicious wit that nearly brought Luna to tears; full of profound sentiment and passion the likes of which she had never heard in all her long life. I’m joking, of course. She actually screamed at the top of her lungs and began punching herself in the head yelling “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”

 

Luna scowled at the guard.

 

“Thank you, dog,” she spat, “I had just managed to pacify her and you go and ruin it.” Without waiting for a response she hurled him through a stained glass window of some hero or another and continued her trot down the hall, more annoyed by Twilight’s refusal to stay sane than her openly bleeding shoulder or the fact that the palace staff were now actively trying to kill her.

 

*

 

Celestia liked to think of herself as polite.

 

Unlike her sister, who had always been prone to emotional outbursts and thought-patterns that verged on the genocidal, she prided herself on her restraint and ability to negotiate.

 

Sadly, the tribal folk didn’t, but that didn’t stop Celestia from apologising profusely whenever she hit one with her floating rock.

 

“Terribly sorry, really!”

 

It only took one spear to be hurled at her for the situation to completely degenerate, and every member of the charming little community she had stumbled into had quickly demonstrated their keen martial prowess, pulling all manner of stashed weaponry from every crevice in the village. Celestia was sure that Luna would love to visit, but the idea of introducing her sister to an isolated population of sun-hating warrior-folk was honestly just tempting fate, and fate was best kept at arm’s length when it came to matters to life and death, or Luna and potential private armies.

 

The children were well-educated in the former, as evidenced by one of them hurling a throwing axe with an impressive spin that mangled one of her wings on impact. The pain didn’t bother the Princess that much, she was made of sterner stuff than that, but it did mean that she wasn’t going to fly out of there any time soon. The axe was torn out with a grunt, and she span in time to meet a muscular, disarmingly attractive stallion with a shield spell to deflect his bola, and a telekinetic slap that sent him barrelling through the wall of a hut. She lamented what could have been between her and the handsome colt before vanishing from beneath the pillar in a golden flash.

 

She reappeared towards the edge of the village, something that didn’t go unnoticed since she did so inside a stockpile of gourd-like vegetables which turned them to a lime-green mush. A wail of dismay alerted her to a mare, who had come running from a hut clutching a wicked blade between her teeth. Her keening drew the attention of the mob, and she rushed at the Princess of the Sun with no real concern for her own well-being.

 

Celestia wasn’t one to turn down an easy target, and her rock clonked the mare on the noggin with a customary apology from the Princess. Clonked is a nice way of putting it; I’m sure you’re smart enough to understand what a rock travelling at velocity will do to a skull, no matter how thickly inbred it might have been.

 

She leapt from the gourd-goo and cantered for the tree line, the bellows of the tribesfolk a wall of furious noise behind her. More spears soared past to strike trees on either side, and she cast a shield spell at her back just in time for several more projectiles, improvised and otherwise, to splinter against it, further enraging the galvanised mob and intensifying the worrisome throbbing behind her eyes.

 

The jungle – yes, it’s still a character in this story – was beside itself. Who did this pony think she was? She arrived on his island, cast him a frightful glare, shot him in the trunk, and now had the gall to stir up trouble with the brown midgets he fondly regarded as pets. Well, it was time to put his foot down. His lack of feet glaringly obvious, he settled for the next best thing and a dense vine came down on Celestia’s back with a wallop that forced the breath from her.

 

The Princess was flattened against the ground, legs splayed at her sides. She rolled over and another vine crushed the mossy surface where she’d just been. Another came, and she scrambled to her hooves in time to avoid it and yet one more.

 

Vines struck out at her from all sides, and her efforts to deflect them with a mix of shielding and whips of searing plasma did little to stop them. Too many snuck past her defences and lashes of stinging pain punctuated each one splitting her skin in a different place. A jungle wasn’t quite the same as living ponies however, and her compassion didn’t extend to simple plants, no matter how ornery they were.

 

She snarled through gritted teeth and a blinding corona enveloped her horn. With frustrated roar a blistering torrent of sunlight washed through the undergrowth, disintegrating a dozen trees in a cone before her, vines that had been swooping from the undergrowth to strike her reduced to dancing ashes in the spell’s wake. White hot pain seared the backs of her eyes, and the headache became a migraine. The rest of the vines faltered in their assault, the jungle reassessing the threat.

 

The mob behind her screeched to a halt, terrified faces gawking both at the destruction Celestia had wrought, and at each other. Seconds passed in silence, the air charged with emotion and magic. The Princess restrained her panting and straightened up, directing an imperial look at the massed tribesfolk, who were whispering in hurried tones to one another and jabbing hooves in every direction. It seemed as though she had gotten through to them.

 

“Now, I hope we can come to an agreement—“

 

The mob scattered, each pony spreading out as wide as possible. Celestia opened her mouth to speak again but was cut off by the shriek of an unseen warrior. The tension snapped, and they again surged towards her as one, keeping apart to minimise the risk of several ponies being caught in a blast of magic. She would have to make sure that Luna never found this place – they put the royal guard to shame.

 

She turned tail and ran. Her damaged wing unfurled as she galloped, and a stubborn throb told her that her wing was still out of commission. Her horn ignited and she vanished again, reappearing a short distance ahead and gasping as she did so. Using magic whilst dehydrated was a mistake, and Celestia groaned in self-depreciation as she passed the very same stream she had picked out before. No use to her now, not with the tribe coming ever closer. Celestia’s unfamiliarity with the jungle environment was acting against her at every turn, vines and creepers re-emerging to swat her in the face, all the while the perimeter of shouting closed in.

 

The beach was her best bet; at least there she could fight in the open and have a bit more breathing room. A thorn of regret snagged at her. She hadn’t wanted to hurt any of them, though there was no going back now. She was the avatar of everything they hated. Peace wasn’t an option.

 

The treeline broke, and the sun doused the Princess. Sand kicked up around her as she stormed in a straight line towards the water’s edge. Her hooves splashed into the sea, the cool salt water nurturing her aching hooves. She stared out at the aquatic void before her, and mirages of home played on the horizon of her vision. The shouting had stopped. The waves were all she could hear.

 

Celestia turned. Spread out all along the treeline the tribals lurked, spears, bolas and crude axes clutched in firm hooves and between fanged teeth. As a single body they crept forwards. Her back was against the sea now, and she had nowhere else to go. She could teleport again, but with each spell she cast she only pushed herself closer to the breaking point, the persistent thrumming already a taxing both her attention and strength.

 

The Princess lowered her head, hackles raised. She pawed at the sand, and her undamaged wing unfurled, her presence made that much more imposing. It did little to dissuade the hardy folk, the denizens of the island having already demonstrated their bravery or recklessness. How many threats had they overcome together, she wondered. Regardless, she would not be the next.

 

The stallion closest to her charged.

 

*

 

Celestia’s bedroom door burst off its hinges, the slab of aged oak crashing into a dresser and making a complete mess of whatever was inside.

Luna cared little, not that she would have done in any other situation either. She lobbed Twilight into the middle of the room, the unicorn squeaking with each bounce to come to a stop by the ritual circle she had drawn that only that morning. Luna followed her in and spared only a glance at the little mare to make sure she was still functional, her magic retrieving the door and jamming it back into place. No amount of magic was going to fix the damage she’d done to it, so she resigned to tossing it aside and filling the doorway herself. She looked back at Twilight over her shoulder, her expression grim.

 

“Sparkle. Complete the ritual and retrieve Celestia. I shall see to the traitors and heretics.”

 

Said traitors and heretics were coming up the stairs. By this point the entire palace was hunting them, and delightful chants echoed up the stairwell from below, including everyone’s favourite hits, “Death to the False Gods”, “Behead the Hated Ones”, and “Sick Centre Tyrone Is”. It was all getting rather tiresome, if Luna was to be perfectly honest. She had hoped that the turncoat staff would have had a more elaborate plan beyond leaping out at her and shouting slogans, but apparently not.

 

Twilight, not one to let a good bout of anarchy distract her from the important matters of life, caught sight of a framed picture of Celestia hanging on the wall and promptly burst into tears again. Luna briskly came to her side, slapped her across the face so hard she dislodged a tooth, and returned to the door. You might think that was an overly blunt thing to do to a clearly distraught pony, but you’ve never spent an afternoon listening to Twilight Sparkle screaming and crying in your ear, so perhaps you should cut Luna a bit of slack before you go judging her.

 

The first of unknown dozens of traitorous staff emerged at the top of the stairs, and Luna grinned.

 

“Ah, I was hoping you would show your face, archivist.”

 

The prune-like pony sniffed, and directed a level gaze at the Princess. “The time for monarchy has ended, Luna. Stand down, and let the people of Equestria manifest their own destiny. Do the right thing, and history will remember you as a mare of principle.”

 

“And allow mere peasantry to enact decisions of taxation and foreign policy? I would sooner break my own horn.”

 

“Should you refuse to go willingly, it may just come to that.”

 

“Then come forward, my good stallion. Let us test the sword of liberalism against the aegis of tradition.”

 

It was all very dramatic, and the ponies just behind the archivist were enjoying their front-row seats to an epic bantering between two titans of wit. A pair of them were even sharing a bag of popcorn that they had swiped from the kitchens on the way up. It was like something out of a movie, there were even 3D elements, the sort you see when you wear the funny glasses. That old stallion really did look like he was hurtling airborne towards them screaming. Oh shit—

 

*

 

Celestia wasn’t having a great day, she had decided.

 

She grabbed another tribal by the shoulders and smashed her skull against his, the pony tumbling back and lying still on the churned sands. She spat an exhausted apology.

 

Chaos had come to the shores of that quiet island, and the folk of the jungle had found themselves a worthy opponent in the Princess. Even without her wings or her magic, Celestia, being part Earth-Pony by heritage, more than made up for her other handicaps with a brute strength that none could match. A wailing mare launched herself at the alicorn, an axe between her teeth, swinging it at the froth-covered neck of the sweaty regent. Celestia met the blade of the axe with the hard of her hoof, fracturing the flint blade into pieces with barely a dent in the keratin.

 

An ordinary solider might balk at the shattering of her weapon, but with each strike against them, and each setback delivered at the hooves of the celestial interloper, the ponies of the island tribe only fought harder. Celestia was their judgement, foretold by prophecy. A harbinger of their most hated adversary made flesh, and the ancient heritage of their forefathers roared at them to act. They would not relent in the face of this; they would persist until their last. Their honour would allow nothing less. On this beach, a god would die, or they would.

 

For Celestia, this was the worst holiday she’d ever had, and it wasn’t even a holiday to begin with. The mare with the broken axe was bodily thrown, and crashed into the onrushing bodies of another couple of villagers, the pair faltering under the weight of their neighbour but never relenting. Celestia moved with supernatural speed, weaving around each vicious strike and hurled projectile like water, only to crash into each body with the irresistible force of the ocean itself.

 

She screamed. The jagged edge of a stone knife tore into her rear leg and she bucked from instinct, catching the offending stallion in the jaw and sending him reeling. She whirled around, adrenaline numbing her already breathtaking pain. More yet came, still coming from the trees and hollering as they surged towards her. The bodies of a dozen ponies surrounded the Princess but it wasn’t enough. Fire raged behind her eyes, the migraine from her magical exertion mixing with her dehydration into an agony like molten rods pressing into her skull.

 

If this was the end, she would give the superstitious folk something real to fear. The Princess of the Sun howled, and charged to meet her fate.

 

*

 

Ponies littered the wide corridor leading to Celestia’s chambers. The head chef crashed against the ceiling, then crumbled to the ground. A sergeant of the guard leapt over the body without slowing, aiming his spear at the heart of his Princess. She turned the point with a flick of magic and crushed his jaw with a left hook. His spear caught in her magic before it could touch the floor and she snapped it in two, each piece of wood wielded then as clubs, with which she bludgeoned two more ponies that she vaguely recognised as gardeners into submission.

 

“Sparkle! Where is my sister?!” she screamed back through the open doorway.

 

Twilight’s horn crackled, the pony’s face screwed up and tongue between her teeth. Luna had to break off from the confused melee every now and then to slap the unicorn just to keep her from getting distracted. Truthfully, it wasn’t always necessary, but Luna had grown fond of slapping Twilight and endeavoured to do it wherever possible as penance for ruining her Saturday. Her questionable methods had paid off, and Twilight shouted.

 

“I-I’ve got it! I can see her!”

 

“Marvellous!” Luna caught a flailing guard, broke his leg at the socket, and hurled him back down the stairs. “Where is she?”

 

“I have no idea, but she’s covered in blood and sand!”

 

“Sparkle, so help me Faust if you don’t bring her back to me—“

 

“I’ve got a hold of her. Alright, here we go!”

 

Twilight’s horn ignited. A tremulous shockwave erupted from the unicorn, and Luna was briefly blinded.

 

*

 

Celestia held the mane of a limp mare in her teeth.

 

She jerked her head to the side, sending the body to join her brothers and sisters with a primal growl that was probably meant to be an apology, and glowered at the rest of the tribe. Dozens yet remained, and with zealous determination they advanced, but the fire in their eyes paled in comparison to Celestia’s.

 

She unfurled her wings fully, ignoring the screaming nerves in her damaged appendage and drew herself up to her full height. Her horn glowed a radiant gold, and though every inch of her body burned as though immersed in boiling oil, and the corners of her vision were spotted and darkening, she called forth her magic. Sand arose in a halo about her, and the mare lifted herself off the ground through sheer force of will. When she spoke, her voice boomed, distorted by the reverberations of magic emanating from her.

 

“See how I have broken your kin. See how I still stand. Send unto me your champions, your heroes, they too shall be broken! Your fury burns bright, but I am the sun Herself. Look upon me and despair, heathens, for I, am, Celestia!”

 

And then Celestia vanished in an anticlimactic ‘poof’.

 

The eldest shaman of the tribe blinked, and stared blankly at the space where Celestia had been floating. The mare beside him scratched her head and shrugged. A colt somewhere at the back coughed into his hoof.

 

"Bloody foreigners," the shaman said in perfect Equish.

 

*

 

Celestia collapsed in a heap on the carpet of her bedroom floor, her form framed by a white chalk ritual circle.

 

A sobbing creature latched itself onto her and was getting rather covered in alicorn blood as it rubbed its face against her coat burbling incomprehensible platitudes. She paid it no mind and rose, gazing blearily at her sister. She swayed on the spot, her exertion taking its toll.

 

“Is it over?”

 

Luna looked back at the corridor, and the dozens of palace staff members that choked it. Raven Inkwell galloped up the stairwell and into the wake of the bedlam.

 

“Death to the—oh. She’s back.” She looked very put off by this, and shuffled her hooves, suddenly not keen to lock eyes with either of her regents. “I’ll, uh, I’ll get the others to the medical bay.” She prodded the nearest body and sighed, then hoisted a stallion larger than she was onto her back and began the arduous journey downstairs, grumbling as she went.

 

Celestia surveyed the scene; her sweaty, dishevelled sister, the carnage outside her bedroom, and the purple limpet still stuck to her side.

 

“You’ve been busy,” she remarked.

 

Luna pursed her lips and took in the sight of her sister. The older alicorn was utterly coated in sweat, blood, sand, a weird-smelling green goo that reminded her of pumpkin guts. Several ragged holes were openly bleeding, though Celestia didn’t seem to notice them.

 

“I could say the same.”

 

“Am I to assume that this was all Twilight’s fault again?”

 

Luna gave a curt nod.

 

“Did the castle staff use my supposed death as an excuse to revolt again?”

 

“Is this standard practice?” Luna said with a cocked brow.

 

“About once a century, give or take a decade. Was it the archivist?”

 

Another curt nod.

 

“I see.” Celestia glanced down at the quivering lavender blob vibrating against her. “So would you like to try dyeing my mane again, Twilight? Properly this time, if you don’t mind?”

 

 

*

 

 

So anyway, all that was a round-about way of explaining how Twilight Sparkle ended up spending nine months in therapy.

 

The End.