Information.

I needed more of it. I had come to that world, thinking I would be the source of it. I had been a fool. "Easy Breeze."

She looked up at me, the last paper of the guild documents falling to land on the pile of the others. "What's up, Boss?" She turned to face me with an easy smile, pun intended. "Are we going to chat with the general now? What makes you think they'll want to talk to you?"

"I'm known, and he's likely curious." I turned for the door, reaching for the handle. "If not, we'll have to be clever."

"That sounds like you." I heard her trotting after me. With the door opened, we advanced into the hallway.

I saw a guard just to the left of my door. Was he watching my room? He had the usual gold armor, but was a deep black in color instead of the usual white. He didn't respond to my presence, looking straight ahead as if frozen.

It was comforting, in a way. It meant I was familiar enough to not warrant special attention from the local law enforcement. I broke the silence between us, "Do you know where the general is?"

That seemed to surprise him, his ears twitching in that way the ponies had. "He should be in his study, sir. Do you require something?"

Easy slid out from behind me, going around my legs. "The boss wants to talk about this war and--"

I clapped a hand over her snout. "Get an update on the current affairs." Suddenly, there was pain. I had, apparently, gone over the limit of times I was allowed to silence Easy that way. She had bitten my fingers in a firm but brief nip.

The guard's eyes moved between us, not seeming to notice the momentary wince that I gave. "He is a very busy pony. If you don't have an appointment, I can't take you to him, sir, ma'am."

Easy nudged my stunned hand out of the way. "So how do we get an appointment?"

The guard's shoulders lifted slightly, his eyes following a noblemare wandering past a moment. "Only the head council is permitted to seek him out. All others must be approached by him. He is very important, and busy."

Head Council? "Like Celestia?"

"She is one member of the council, yes. All the ponies you saw this morning, on the stage."

I had two allies on the council then. Celestia, and Shadymane; just needed to reach one of them. "Is Celestia available?"

"Princess Celestia," sternly corrected the guard. "She is also a very busy pony. She will seek you out when she has business for you, or you can lobby either of them during court."

I heard Easy complaining, but the words were hazy. Other words were far more pressing. ~In trouble, already?~ I recognized it swiftly. It was Shadymane. Her telepathy worked over a distance? ~If I want it to. You'll forgive your granddam for keeping an eye on her curious grandcolt.~

I had been, and still was, being spied on. It was difficult being angry at Shadymane... which could have been part of her magic. ~You want to talk to that outrageous and unruly stallion? Why? He's a miserable lout that has no respect for the past. You'll find nothing but trouble there.~

A sharp prod of a hoof brought me out of my mental space. Easy was peering at me with something between rage and concern. "What has you distracted? You alright?" She waved at the guard who had returned to staring forward. "He's not helping."

He wouldn't. "I have a way, but I need to concentrate."

"You look anything but concentrated." She rolled her eyes mightily. "You could at least sit down when you do... whatever it is you're doing." She pointed to where the wall met the floor, then turned, watching the ponies that wandered past. "I'll keep watch."

~She means well,~ spoke the voice in my head. ~Now, really, you want to talk to him?~

Whatever kind of pony he was, he was the key. The war had to end for anything to get done.

~And you plan to help him win it?~

I had to know more. Not knowing was wasting time, possibly costing lives. Who was the war against? What was happening there, at the front line of the conflict? Who started it and who has what stakes in it?

~Slow down! That's a lot of questions you have. What makes you think I don't know all those answers, mmm? So eager, you forget your granddam is right here.~

I stopped even faintly seeing the hallway.

I was seated on a cushion in front of a low table. Across from me was Shadymane, watching me with a little smile. "Hello," she gestured to the ornate table that sat between us. Around us, blackness. We were literally floating in a void. On the table was a tray of cookies. "Just the kind you like."

Daring to reach for a cookie, I wondered why there weren't smaller plates for either of us, and there just was, as if I had just missed their presence. "Y-yeah..." I was not used to being summoned to mental planes, alright? "Nice to... see you again?"

She brought up both forehooves and rested her head where they met. "I'm sorry for alarming you. You wanted to talk, didn't you?" She gestured with a little wave of a hoof. "Go on."

The cookie? She meant the cookie. I took a bite out of it and remembered the good parts of most cookies I ever ate, running together into some kind of sum total of what made cookies great. Mind spaces... Having enjoyed the soft and yet crunchy sweet-tangy-sour... thing... I gently set it down. "That is more than a little strange." I felt the tension in my voice and tried to fight it. I had to stay calm. "Shadymane, what's going on? Start from the start."

"I do wish I could point a hoof at some... other." She moved her hoof in a slow circle. Where she pointed, other species appeared, each with great menace. A dragon breathing fire, a minotaur with a mace held high, a griffon in full armor, sword at their hip. "It would be so nice... But they are not it." The images were banished with a flick, fading into smoke, then into darkness.

If it wasn't some other...

"Yes." Shadymane smiled, but it was a pained expression. "Ponies are the enemy of ponies." With a soft sigh, images of them appeared, with their big eyes and smiles. "Just us... with different points of view. They fight for what is right, in their eyes. We fight for what is right, in ours. Between us..." She brought her hooves together, but when they touched, there was no clop, a silent meeting. "Celestia is the root, and it tears her apart. She never wanted her people to... be this way, but she is the cause."

My thoughts gave rise to Celestia. She was seated at the same table, smiling at either of us in a sad way. She said nothing as a tear spilled from her eyes, lost in her off-white fur.

Shadymane glanced at the image I had made. "You like her, that's good... She is a good pony, but this is her fault, like it or no. When she ruled with her sister, they were seen with awe, and fear. When she attacked her sister, deposing her... That was the tipping point."

Shadymane closed her eyes and the darkness faded away, as did the table, and the Celestia. It all ceased to be. How did a literal void go away? I couldn't exactly explain it, but it was gone, replaced with a rapidly sketched scene as if an artist were busily painting it before my eyes.

I saw a literally picturesque little pony town. Shadymane's voice spoke over it all, "It started slowly, in distant places." There were two ponies close together, whispering. "Rumors spread of Celestia's attacking, and killing, her sister. Most ignored it." One of the two held up a hoof at the other and turned away. "But not all..." Another pony came up to hear what the first was saying. "It took time." The sun rose and fell visibly, and began to hasten. "An entire generation passed."

The scene was painted over in wide swathes of black and rapidly redone, showing an outdoor stage. An earth pony stood behind a podium, speaking to a crowd that grew larger as the invisible painter drew more and more other ponies. I could hear... her? It was a her. She was giving a speech, an impassioned one. "She rose to power on this bed of suspicion and fear," spoke the unseen Shadymane. "She urged ponies return to leading their own way, away from the 'false gods' that were Celestia and her already removed sister."

The scene rolled like a scroll, showing the council on side of a field, golden guards spread out in front of them. On the other was that mare with a wide field of normal ponies with makeshift weapons. "She became too large for us to ignore. She became too large for us to intimidate. We urged her to lay down her weapons."

A spear flew with crystal clarity across the field, striking a guard standing beside the painted, and considerably younger, Shadymane. The guard collapsed. "He was a darling colt... The first, but far from the last. The war began in earnest."

We were seated at that table. Celestia had returned, weeping silently. Shadymane was looking at me directly. "The longer it persists, the more things decay. The decay becomes a reason to join the rebellion. It is a cycle."

A very negative one... "I hate to ask this." I set my hands on the table. "Has letting them win been considered?"

Shadymane quirked her lips in a half smirk. "They have a few requirements to their victory." She waved a hoof towards the Celestia image and she fell forward suddenly, head smashing into the cookies and sending them scattering out across the void. The tears stopped. She was still. "That is the first of them."

Jesus Christ on a stick... "And it gets worse or better from there?"

Shadymane lowered her head, horn pointed towards me. "Oh, they want the council as a whole, of course. I don't mind that too much. I've had a very full life." She cracked a smile. "If it meant peace, I'd already have walked out and offered my head. What kind of granddam would I be if I valued my own hide over so many of my precious children?"

I felt rising disgust, but no nausea. It wasn't my actual belly where I thought it was. I couldn't 'feel' things like that. "What do they want? Celestia's dead, you're all dead, then what? What's the end game?"

Shadymane lowered her hooves to the table, counter to my hands. Her eyes burrowed into mine. "They want us to go back to the old ways, when unicorns sacrificed themselves keeping the sun coming up, and putting the moon to rest. 'Only when we all sacrifice do we all know the value of what we have', or so they say." She leaned back a little, sighing. "It's quite a mess. So."

She came forward, suddenly her nose an inch from mine despite the table between us. "What do you plan to do? Make us better at slaying our kin? Will we litter the field with more mother's sons and daughters? Will we burn their rebelling towns to the ground, hoping to build something from the ashes?" She sat back heavily. I could feel the ache of fatigue in her in our shared mental space.

"Will we become the monsters they already assume we are? Perhaps we should just march Celestia to the front, let her magic rain finality on the entire thing. Would that be good?" She never stopped staring at me. "Tell me."

I felt my plans coming unhinged. My plans were all to make the ponies rise triumphant over some exterior foe. Giving them a single new weapon to turn against their own kind...

I thought information would set me free.

Maybe not.

Author's Notes:

The details of the war become clear, and the path forward becomes muddled in equal parts. What would you do?

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