Everfree City was a gleaming jewel of civilization. Miles and miles of city sprung from the banks of two rivers that marked the spot like the cartographical ‘X’. Parts of the city had grown so quickly that its walls even enveloped a small forest and a number of sizeable farms. More importantly, even from high overhead, I could see ponies milling about in the streets, minding their day-to-day lives.

As we descended, I was treated to a wonderful view of the city’s skyline. Roofs of baked tiles and thatch and wooden shingles mingled together with stone guard towers, all set beneath a city of marble and clouds. Cloudsdale did not live up to its reputation for beauty; the mere sight of it left its reputation in the dust.

And beyond all those sights was the royal palace, whose architectural glory I lack a suitably topical thesaurus to properly honor. Painted plaster and gold and marble glittered in the evening sun, all sparkling with polished glass windows that looked out over miles of gardens and more fountains than I dared to count.

All my joy at the sight died when Typhoon pulled me back from the window with her frigid prosthetic. “When we land, you’re going to follow me to the dungeons, where you’ll wait pending a trial.”

“Great!” I told her with the most sarcastic grin I could muster. “That will complete the collection. And to think Celestia was worried nopony would arrest me here. Your brother's cells were really impressive, so I hope Everfree brought its A-game.”

Typhoon opened the door to the carriage and stepped out first. Though she turned around to wait for me, she didn’t offer me a hoof or a wing for support. At first, I spitefully told myself I didn’t want one anyway.

Then my hoof missed the step on the outside of the carriage. I landed face-first on the gravel path outside the palace.

“Are you alright?” Frostfall called from behind me. Her hooves crunched on the gravel as she leapt over me, and then bent to offer a hoof. “Let me help you, Morty.”

“No, stand back, Frostfall.” Typhoon paced two steps up to me, grabbed me by the shoulder, and hoisted me to my feet. My jacket gave another painful dying gasp as the stitching below her hoof tore open. “I’ll handle him. Jade said he’s clever at escaping. Somehow he got the ring off his horn in the middle of a hanging. We don’t want him getting any ideas.” Turning to me, she simply added “Do not try to run.”

I raised a brow. “Do you really think you need to say that? You’ve got wings.”

“Good.”

Though I honestly should have known better, I added “I’d just teleport away if I really wanted to leave.”

Typhoon raised a brow under her pitch black helmet, then stretched out her right wing to her side. “Look up the path. Do you see the fountain?”

The garden feature in question was hard to miss, and also hard to mistake even from a good hundred yards away. I could recognize Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie from having met both in real life, so it wasn’t hard to guess at the identity of the infamously cowardly Legionary Pansy. Water gushed from Clover’s horn, Pansy’s wings, and Cookie’s hind hooves as he bucked up at some unseen foe.

“If you’re about lecture me with some sort of story about owning up to your mistakes, you can save—”

The wing Typhoon had extended flicked forward, and five foot-long icicles of glowing blue launched through the air. A few distant ponies wandering the gardens shrieked at the sight, though concern faded quickly. All five icicles struck true. Ice spread to cover the tips of Pansy’s wings, of Clover’s horn, and of both Cookie’s raised hooves.

“That’s your warning,” Typhoon whispered. Then her wing flapped once, and the ice broke before it built up enough pressure to damage the fountain. “Keep walking.”

Our walk from there was fairly direct. We made our way past a number of officials, nobles, and general supplicants with business at the palace. Virtually all of them either ignored me or offered snobbish, raised-muzzle glares in my direction. As I followed Typhoon’s swift military gait, I had to wonder whether they were judging the tattered state of my signature jacket, or the fact that both other owners of similar jackets were serial killers.

I also decided I didn’t like them much. Gale’s distaste for high society was quickly growing on me.

At the doors into the interior of the palace, two unicorn guards with spears flanked a pair of tall doors. Rather than salute, the ponies nervously shuffled out of Typhoon’s way, leaving her to fling open the door herself. Despite its immense size, it took only a shove from her icy prosthetic to create an egress; I quietly filed away the thought that it was most likely enchanted to give her some measure of supernatural strength.

Inside the palace, the first room we entered was a long waiting hall. Virtually the entire space was defined by cushioned benches, alabaster pillars, and surplus of both tiny enchanted lights and gently trickling water features. Overhead, flowers in suspended troughs gave the air a light and floral fragrance that was at an utter mismatch with my current predicament. The ponies in the room would likely have stuck their noses up at me as well, had Typhoon given them the chance. However, within four strides of my first setting foot in the room, Typhoon led me out of it through a side door.

The attached chamber was a spiral staircase, and we followed it down until I found myself growing rather dizzy. I have no concept of how deep we traveled, but at last we came to a long hallway filled with iron-bar doors separated by heavy stone walls.

“C-Commander…”

“At ease, Gaol.” Despite the spelling, I will note this wasn’t pronounced the same as ‘Gale’.

The mare in question sat behind a stout wooden desk covered in reports. She wore banded leather armor that was in every conceivable way a counterpoint to Silhouette’s apparel. To be a touch more direct, Gaol’s armor fit like someone had wrapped a leather grip around an ostrich egg.

With no concern for the mare’s appearance, Typhoon extended a wing. “Keys.” The order was followed swiftly, and Typhoon’s tan wing caught the ringing metal deftly. She also didn’t bother to remind me to follow her, though given her demonstration with the distant fountain, I didn’t feel the need to ask for clarification.

The cell I was given was near the end of the hall farthest from the jailer’s desk, opposite an empty cell. Gruff ponies stared out at me from the intervening spaces, and judging from the myriad collection of scars, squints, and bared teeth I observed, I concluded that the ponies here weren’t likely the innocent, extorted variety I had been likely to find in the Crystal Union. On the one hoof, that seemed to imply that the Equestrians were more fair in their dispensation of justice. On the other hoof, it also made me nervous that the Butcher’s Daughter would be far more efficient, and thus far more difficult to survive, than the mad Queen Jade and her corrupt guard captain.

I walked into my cell without protest, and heard the iron door clank shut behind me. “You do not need to worry about being forgotten down here,” Typhoon told me. “Platinum, Puddinghead, and I will judge you tomorrow.”

“That’s a shame,” I muttered back, not really feeling the strength to emulate the sarcastic tone the line really called for. “The accommodations here seem so relaxing.”

Typhoon afforded me a grunt of irritation before she paced away.

With nothing better to do, I took note of the hay covered slat that would serve as my bed, jutting out of the side of the wall. Compared to the freezing floor of Burning Hearth, I had to imagine this would be more tolerable.

Only as I lay on my back, staring up through the slatted window, did I fully process the time. For how eventful my day had been, between leaving Platinum’s Landing, our battle with Wintershimmer in the Hollows, Typhoon’s accusations, and my arrest, I had assumed it would be nearly time to sleep. Alas, my fatigue stemmed from the spells I’d used against Wintershimmer and the ring on my horn draining my mana.

When I looked up out the barred window, which opened on a vertical shaft up to ground level several floors overhead, I hissed in pain. I’d stared straight up into the sun at high noon.

It’s hard to say exactly how much time passes in a cell, as the overhead sun fairly quickly vanished from direct view, cut off by the long shaft between the depths of the dungeons and the pleasant lights of the gardens high above. I reflected somewhat uselessly on how best I could argue my innocence, but the fact of the matter was that Wintershimmer had played his cards with the surgical precision that defined his every action in life. I simply had no evidence I could present of Wintershimmer’s wrongdoings which could not also be used to indict me. My best option, it seemed, was leaning on Celestia again for her support of my character, though the reliance on the goddesses’ support sat wrong against my sense of pride.

I was so lost in those thoughts that, though another pony approached my cell, I didn’t notice until a hoof rattled on the bars of my cell door.

“Morty, right?”

The voice in question, a creaking but firm masculine timbre, belonged to an ancient and sternly wrinkled pegasus stallion whose nearly black coat was graying considerably with age. He leaned heavily on a wooden cane strapped to his right foreleg near the shoulder, and even standing functionally still, there was a weariness to the motion of keeping his balance. One side of his body was massively scarred where a wing ought to have been, and behind the gouge out of his flesh and coat, I saw some stylistic spiral loop cutie mark whose meaning was lost on me. I didn’t give it much mind, as I was more focused in the keys he held raised on his other wing.

“That’s what my friends call me,” I answered him, sitting up.

“I know. You’ve got friends in high places.” He slid the keys into the lock of the door, and then pulled it open. “My friends call me ‘Cane’.”

As he stepped into the cell, leaning heavily on his namesake, I got a good look at the massive knot of stern wrinkles on his brow and the edges of his lips—signs of stress more than age that certainly matched his salt-and-pepper mane.

As he walked up to me, his feathers deftly flipped to another key on the ring. “Lean your head forward for a second and I’ll get that thing off you.”

“You’re just letting me go?” I asked him.

He chuckled. “Well, hopefully you don’t do something stupid and try to run away. Typhoon probably would kill you.”

“She didn’t leave much of that to the imagination.” I let Cane take the ring off my horn and he casually tossed it in the corner of the cell. “Forgive me for looking a gift pony in the mouth, but are you alright going behind her back like this?”

Cane chuckled and shook his head. “Typhoon is a lot less likely to give Gale the time of day than I am. She and Celestia both vouched for you.”

“Gale knows I’m here?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Cane warned, shaking his head. “She’s in a lot of trouble with her mother after running off to River Rock. She’ll be in court all day. I imagine you’ll see her tomorrow when you meet with the Triumvirate. But I’m actually here on Celestia’s behalf. She’s summoned you.”

The walk back up out of the dungeons was much more pleasant than the walk down, though Cane’s arthritic pace certainly made it slower. When we reached the waiting room again, Cane led me slowly over to a pair of open doors on the opposite side of the room, leading neither out into the gardens nor forward into what I could only assume was the throne room proper.

The next hallway was light and airy, with a ceiling high enough to support at least a dozen Celestias mounted atop one another’s shoulders. Wispy pillars of spiraled marble were capped and footed with floral patterns of gold leaf, and massive frames held hundreds of windows that showed off the military-maintained blue sky and its puffy white clouds.

The ponies milling about were equally beautiful in attire, though as I quickly learned, less so in personality. Pegasi in red and purple sashes over military uniforms watched me with raised brows, eyes sometimes darting to Cane with an obvious wariness for Celestia’s servant. Earth ponies in furs and epaulets whispered, glancing at me over their shoulders. My own race was the worst by far. Unicorns literally raised their noses, most still being forced to look up at me by virtue of my height, as they wandered in jeweled gowns and quilted tunics.

“Who is this peasant, coming in here in tattered clothes?” I heard somepony mutter without any particular decrease from a speaking volume.

Another scoffed. “Can a peasant even afford those dyes? Perhaps he comes from River Rock.”

“I’m more curious what he could possibly want.” This one actually dared to tap me on the shoulder, though he did so hesitantly as if worried about getting dirt on his hoof. “Excuse me, sir, can I trouble you for—”

“Celestia summoned me,” I interrupted. Glancing forward, I nodded. “Cane, I’ll be right with you. I can catch up.”

Ponies gasped.

“The goddess…?”

“He’s lying.”

“He calls her by her given name? Without title? Does he not fear the gods?”

“Not particularly,” I answered the last surprised pony, snobbishly looking down her muzzle at me. “A word of advice: I’d recommend a visit to an apothecary. Turmeric, olive oil, and mandrake root makes a potent treatment for a stiff neck. Failing that, I understand a stallion can also help.”

“Why, I never!” The unicorn mare picked up her dress in her magic and turned away, walking off in a huff.

I rose up on my hind hooves, placing one forehoof across my belly and extending the other to my right. A full minotaur bow is a rare treat, and I recommend saving it only for the most intense of sarcastic applications. As ponies whispered much more fervently (and much more quietly) around me, I glanced up the hall at where Cane was quietly watching me, and scurried up to meet him.

“Be careful making enemies, Morty,” the elderly stallion warned me.

I shrugged. “I’m not a politician. I’m a wizard. They can’t do anything to me.”

That earned another creaky chuckle from the elderly pegasus. “Just remember that tomorrow when you’re staring down Queen Platinum.”

As we started walking again, I couldn’t help but raise a brow. “What’s Platinum going to do, whine at me? Typhoon’s obviously the real threat, right?”

“Typhoon’s a fair mare who’s just trying to do her job,” Cane answered. “Convince her you aren’t Solemn Vow Jr. and she’ll probably stop suspecting you. Platinum, on the other hoof…” Cane shook his head as he walked. “As far as she is concerned, being a bad influence on Gale is more than worthy of a death sentence.”

Cane led me in limping quiet through more airy palace hallways, galleries of gorgeous portraits and stained glass windows, and huge empty ballrooms and dining chambers in a fairly direct facsimile of an upward diagonal that I frankly couldn’t have traced back at the time, had I even wanted to. Ultimately, our path ended in a rather large bath chamber attached to a similarly oversized walk-in closet. Waiting beside a large tub of steaming water was a stallion in a sleek gray uniform with a high black collar. His lavender face was notable foremost for how much of it was dominated by a curving, almost lyre-shaped moustache.

“Ah, sir, this must be the stallion Her Divinity mentioned,” the stallion noted to Cane, before bowing in my direction. “Can this servant be of assistance to the guest?” he asked.

I stared at the butler for a moment, then glanced back at Cane. “He’s for me?”

“So she wasn’t exaggerating your ego…” Cane muttered, before addressing me more directly. “Not indefinitely, Morty. But Celestia thought after a few months on the road, you might enjoy a chance to clean up.” He lifted his wing and patted it on my back. “Welcome to Everfree City, Morty.”

“Thank you, Cane,” I answered with a smile before the rather amicable old stallion limped out of the room.

A cough escaped the butler behind me, and I turned to find him patiently waiting, his posture upright and formal to the point that it was beginning to make me uncomfortable. “How may this servant be of assistance, sir?”

“Oh… well, I guess I should start with a bath. Could you help me trim my mane?”

The stallion gave me a nod. “Certainly. Shall I take…” He hesitated as his eyes swept up and down my torso. “Shall I take what remains of your coat?”

I nodded. “Thank you. I’d ask you to fix it, but that’s probably more than just an hour’s work, even with magic.” I started taking off the remnants of my signature garment, and only as I slid it off my back did I realize the butler was staring at me with slightly wide eyes. “Do you not like my jacket? I know it’s old, a bit torn up. Or did you know…” I hesitated for my part. “…somepony else who wore one of these?”

That question snapped the butler out of his stupor. “I’m sorry; I was caught off guard. Thank you, sir?”

I cocked my head. “Am I… not supposed to thank you?”

Urgently, the stallion waved a hoof in front of his face as if to ward off the idea. “No, sir, it is most appreciated. The guest merely confused this humble servant. If this servant may be blunt, most ponies one serves in the palace are not mindful of such offerings.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, cleanliness is next to godliness. You’ve drawn a bath for me, so at the moment, you’re something of a hero.” I grinned as I fished in the breast pocket of my jacket for Silhouette's void crystal, careful to hold it by the attached chain so that the hungry black stone would not devour my magic. I set it gently aside, though I nearly dropped it when the butler spoke up abruptly.

“Sir!” the butler exclaimed after his prolonged silence, and for a moment I feared I had genuinely offended him. Then, just as abruptly, he hugged me. The contact lasted a mere two seconds, at which time the butler produced a handkerchief and proceeded to dust off his apparel. “You, sir, are an absolute pleasure to encounter. It shall be this one’s privilege, neigh, his honor to assist the esteemed guest. This one understands you are planning to meet with Her Divinity when you are done here?”

I nodded.

“Then it will be this servant’s privilege to ensure you are properly attired and groomed, and to repair your garment in the meantime. Please, make yourself comfortable in the tub, and try to relax.”

As my weary body sunk into the sudsy hot water, knots of tension dissolved into bliss. My earlier statement was proven to be a lie, if only by a small degree. Godliness, at least in that moment, played second fiddle to cleanliness. As my eyes rolled back in my head in delight, the butler worked at a breakneck pace, washing my filthy coat and mane, and then to my surprise but not discomfort, braiding the latter into a fashionable backswept style that clung closely to my neck.

When I emerged from the bath, the butler’s magic dried me swiftly. Once my loosened legs found the strength to stand, I looked up to find my helper standing beside a ponyquin. “If it pleases the guest, this servant taken the liberty of preparing a garment suitable for a meeting with Her Divinity.”

“It does,” I replied, looking carefully over the garment he presented. The base was a simple white shirt of an airy fabric, with long sleeves for the forelegs and a fitted edge just above the cutie mark. Resting atop its chest was a navy blue doublet, quilted with a white-gold thread. “Did you do this while you were working on me in the bath?”

The butler nodded. “This servant is quite gifted at multitasking with his horn.”

I nodded. “Clearly. I’m impressed. Do you think it might be too much blue and white on me?”

“If this humble servant may be so bold, the matter is less about color, and far more about shade. The esteemed guest is a very pale blue, so the richness of the doublet and the absolute white of the shirt should serve to create suitable contrast.”

I nodded. “That certainly makes sense…” I tore my gaze away from the moment to focus on the butler. “I’m not sure if I ever caught your name,”

“This humble servant’s name is ‘Humble Servant’,” Humble announced. “And that is why he refrains from using it in tandem with his title. May I ask the esteemed guest how he refers to himself.”

“Morty,” I answered.

Humble arched a brow. “Praytell, is that a donkey’s name?”

“A nickname. Actually, you might find it funny, but Gale—that is, the Princess gave it to me.”

Humble offered a tasteful chuckle, especially given how obvious it was that he didn’t find the humor I did in the thought. “It is not for this one’s benefit that—”

“I won’t be mad at you for using the first person,” I interrupted.

“Oh, thank the Divine. I cannot stand those western earth pony customs. Where was I? Ah, yes. I do not ask your name for my benefit; I will need to know how you wish to be addressed by the Herald of Arms come tomorrow’s audience with the Triumvirate, Morty.”

“I see. Well, Humble, do you have a quill? You’ll want to take dictation.”

As I slipped into my new garment and tucked Silhouette's void crystal into its waist pocket, Humble approached with a quill held aloft in his magic. I smiled, and took a very deep breath.

After my grooming was finished, Humble led me to a chamber he referred to as the solarium. The enormous chamber was defined almost in entirety by its emptiness and openness. The solarium sat atop one of the smaller towers of the palace, but one with an uninterrupted view both to the east and the west. The north and south were not particularly blocked either; each consisted merely of a series of pillars holding up nearly half a domed glass roof, with just enough space between them that somepony standing in the exact center of the room would always be guaranteed a view of the sun, no matter the time of day. That particular evening, the sun was fading from orange to a rich red on the western horizon, already near to kissing the distant edge of the world.

In case the poetry is lost on any of you, that wasn’t a literal edge of the world. While our world is a disk, contrary to the claims of those round earth conspiracists, the slight curvature of the disk’s surface (not unlike the lens of a telescope) makes it difficult to see the actual edge from long distances such as the heart of Everfree.

In the exact center of the solarium, marked by a sun of solid gold inlaid in the floor, sat Celestia. Her horn glowed as the heavens quite literally heeded her will. Around her, a dozen nobleponies in gilded finery watched in reverence as the sun kissed the horizon, and then slipped below it. I let my eyes slip east, and watched as the moon rose in perfect tandem with its celestial partner.

This feat of unimaginable magic, beyond even my arcane grasp, was met with what I can most accurately describe as a golf clop. Some ponies are truly beyond saving.

Once the ‘tasteful’ applause had stopped, the nobles started to walk toward Celestia. Their approach was stopped, however, when Humble cleared his throat beside me.

“Your Divinity, should it please you—”

Celestia turned, and then promptly cut off the stallion. “Morty?! I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to get here.” Her gentle smile turned to the approaching nobles briefly. “If all of you can forgive me, I would like a moment to speak privately with my friend. You are all welcome to join me tomorrow night.”

For all the poor first impressions I have ever made in my life, I have never felt such a strength of anonymous (and frankly undeserved) hatred as I experienced from those nobleponies who walked back past me to return to the lower parts of the palace. Humble spared the moment it took to pat me on the shoulder before he too vanished, glorious lyre-moustache and all.

That left me standing with Celestia as a the gentle chill of an evening breeze swept through my newly trimmed mane. She smiled and walked over to me before sitting down—not that the motion made it any easier to comfortably look her in the eye, as I’m sure some readers can understand.

“Hello, Morty. How was your trip?”

“Where do I even begin?”

“Normally I would suggest the beginning, but you are a wizard, so I’ll trust your judgement.”

I’d only spoken to the goddess before that one time in River Rock, yet I was already learning to watch her for that little hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll skip to the important parts. Since you sent Cane to get me out of the dungeons, you probably know Typhoon accused me of making up the whole Wintershimmer… thing.”

“I’ve heard,” Celestia nodded. Then she wrapped a wing over my shoulders. “I can’t blame you for not knowing, but seancing Solemn Vow in front of Tempest was a mistake. I doubt most Equestrians out in the city know much about him, but here in the palace, his scars still run rather deep.”

“Yeah, I figured that out right about the time Typhoon set up a stop on our way here just for the sake of proving I was behind the attack on Platinum’s Landing.”

Celestia’s brow rose, and I set about explaining to Celestia the narrative I have already offered you. Using her frankly legendary powers of attentive listening, she only nodded as I spoke, refraining from even so much as a question until I had summarized my ‘depositing’ in the palace dungeons.

Finally, at the end, she closed her eyes and breathed slowly. I waited for some thought, some word, but she said nothing for long enough that I started to get uncomfortable. When she did open her eyes, her mouth was tightened and her eyes focused with a solid determination. What she ultimately said stunned me.

“You haven’t eaten since you left Platinum’s Landing, have you?”

Celestia proved to have a good motive for her interruption, though I did not recognize it until well after we had maneuvered our way through the palace’s halls and found a small balcony with a table set for three. In the center, a bottle of some red wine, a large bowl of fruit, and the remains of a cooked fish covered in lemons, descaled save its head and tail. I braced my stomach for the revelation that Celestia might be a carnivore, and focused on the more pleasant topic of the third empty seat.

“Is Gale coming?” I asked, as I served myself from a hearty bowl of salad.

Celestia chuckled. “No, I’m afraid her time is rather… well-monitored, at the moment. I did try, if that’s any consolation. Unfortunately, Queen Platinum was very firm that Gale would only be leaving their home to attend court and learn how a princess ‘ought to’ behave.”

“Their home? This is a palace, right?”

Again, I got a little laugh out of Celestia. “Gale has threatened to burn this building down on more than one occasion when Queen Platinum suggested they move in. She spends most nights with her father; he owns a rather beautiful villa on Silver Hill.” Her enormous wing gestured off the balcony to the skyline of Everfree, though I could hardly tell the land apart well enough to recognize the hill in question, much less the home.

I was about to ask about whether or not Gale’s father was actually dead, as she had claimed, when I heard the sound of wingbeats overhead. Before I could track down the source, a blur of deep indigo swept in from the sky and landed on the balcony beside our table.

“What is this, Sister? You summon me with such urgent magic, and yet I find you dining with some… courtesan?”

“Necromancer,” I corrected. “Though I’ll take that as a compliment, Luna. I’m sure I would be successful.”

The divine Luna turned to look at me fully and glared. “Ah. The petitioner. You would address me so casually? Without title or—”

“Luna. We are not gods.”

“We are absolutely gods, and if anypony ever needed the reminder, it is this one. This… ‘Morty’. He is a walking ego.” Luna waited for no further introduction, pulling the third chair out from the table and dropping into it with a grace that seemed to run counter to her lack of actual care about appearing graceful. “What could he possibly need now? He already owes me part of his free will.”

“Luna, consider being just a touch less callous? You remember the effect you had on Hurricane?”

“He turned out fine,” Luna answered dismissively, waving a wing. “Now sit, Sister. And… colt. I’m famished.”

“I’m seventeen,” I insisted as I took my seat. “And a journeymage. I’m not some foal.”

Luna aggressively rolled her eyes. “And I am nearly eight thousand, so you will forgive me if your measly decade doesn’t mean much to me. Now be silent, while my sister explains why I am so urgently required.”

“We need your insight into magic,” Celestia replied, horn igniting. “Would you care for some wine?”

“You forget, Sister, but my stewardship has just begun, not ended. It would ill befit me to be so handicapped.” As she spoke, not so much as glancing in my direction, Luna flicked her wing over the table. Shards of ice dropped somewhat gently into her goblet, and a moment later, melted into chilled water. After a long sip, Luna lifted the fish from the table in her magic, and lacking any sort of restraint, bit off its entire head. I winced and forced back bile as her teeth crunched straight through its spine. “Delectable.”

I leaned toward Celestia. “Do all pegasi…?”

“No, Morty. Just my dearest sister.” I noticed Celestia’s eye twitch as she tried to force a gentle smile.

Luna was grinning when she finally pulled her attention away from the elder alicorn to look in my direction. “Morty, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“You aren’t even going to hear him out?” Celestia asked. "I had hoped you might argue on his behalf that because he wasn't directly controlling the candlecorns from within Typhoon's wagon, we can prove it had to be Wintershimmer..."

Luna shook her head. “Sister, I have every intention of hearing his defense come the morrow. But I’ve already pledged my services elsewhere. As for your theory, Jade was quite explicit in noting that Coil already has one golem capable of following him through a magical bond. He is more than capable of giving instructions in advance. Frankly, even as pathetic as your skills with necromancy are, Celestia, you ought to have seen the hole in that argument.”

I should have probably been scared by the way Celestia’s eyes widened ever so subtly; I did notice them. Having only known her for a few days at the time, however, I didn’t realize the massive threshold it took to really surprise the mare of the sun. So instead, I leaned forward. “I don’t exactly have a lot of time, Luna. I’m facing the Triumvirate tomorrow. Can whoever else you're helping wait?”

“That isn’t what she means, Morty,” Celestia warned.

Luna actually had the gall to grin at me before she gave me a straight answer. “I don’t mean that I’m busy, ‘Morty’. I mean that it would be unethical of me to help you now. You see, Typhoon and Platinum and Puddinghead know very little about necromancy, or unicorn magic in general. Star Swirl has formally recused himself from getting involved in this trial, given his extensive history with Wintershimmer. As the sole remaining necromancer of any notable skill here in Everfree City, I will be serving as the advocate for the crown.”

“Luna!” Celestia demanded, and I heard a crackle of fire in the firmness of her voice. At once, color flooded back into the world where it had been stolen by the ice of Luna’s condemnation, and I gasped for breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. “You’re going to stand against him? After everything Gale told us—”

“Gale is a foal, Celestia, easily entranced by romance and adventure.”

“She’s smarter than you give her credit for, Luna.”

“Your inclinations blind you, Sister. But is this a conversation you honestly wish to pursue in present company?”

Celestia reacted as if Luna had struck her across the face, shaking her head and pulling back from the table. Luna did not hesitate in pressing her advantage. “The colt is clever, the way you used to be, when we were warriors. Either he will prove his innocence by that cunning, or it will be the noose with which he is hung. He ought to thank me. If he does prove his innocence against me, nopony will doubt it in years to come. Your work to pardon him on trust alone would hang over his head like a shadow for the rest of his life... however short it might be.”

With those words, Luna calmly stepped over the balcony railing and disappeared into the night sky.

As I finally caught my breath, I found a broad white wing wrapped around my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Morty.”

“I’ll prove it,” I told her. “Somehow.”

But as Celestia led me to a bedroom and I lay on my back staring at the patterned ceiling, nothing came.