Chapter Two

“Do you believe in something higher,” Celestia asked.  “Something more than us?”

Fehler cocked his head at her.  Celestia hadn't said anything for the last two months and had moved even less, barely drinking anything much less eating anything.  Fehler had been keeping an eye on her, trailing behind her whenever she did go somewhere.  Today she had wandered down into a copse of towering pine trees and was stepping aimlessly across the carpet of needles.

“I'm not sure I understand the question,” he conceded, finally.

The elegant, broken alicorn slumped down against root mound of a particularly massive tree almost as wide as she was.  “Where did we come from?  What created us?”

Fehler sat down next to her and said, “Well, I was created by you and Luna.”

Celestia snorted angrily.  Small tendrils of sickly light leaked from her horn and the plants around her began to wilt, though she seemed entirely unaware of it.  “Then what about me?  Where did I come from?”

“I don't know,” Fehler admitted.  “What is the first thing you remember?”

“I don't know,” Celestia screamed out, the trees creaking and groaning in dumb sympathy.  “I can't remember anything.  I've always just... I've always just been.  I've always just been an idea.  I'm not sure that I'm even real.”

“An idea?  How can somebody be an idea?”  Fehler was genuinely confused by the thought, and was taken off guard.  He had no answer to that.  He had always believed that a pony is a pony, not an abstract thing.

The one reaction Fehler hadn't expected to his question was for Celestia to spit.  The gob of phlegm landed at his feet, smoking slightly in the chill air.  “It's really very easy.  You were an idea before you were a pony.  Luna had an idea and then we created you.  Really, if you think about it, you are just a part of me.”

Slowly, carefully, Fehler lay his head down on the floor of needles.  He was just an idea.  What did that really mean to him, for him?  It meant, he realized, that he was not his own pony.  He was simply an extension of the two forces that created him, and his only saving grace was that he knew both the minds that he, as an idea, had come from.  Celestia, he realized, had no such luxury.

Surely, though, she couldn't have always existed.  With a pang of guilt Fehler realized he should know the answer to that question already.  He did have half her memories, after all.  He concentrated hard, desperately trying to dredge something up from that part of his mind that he never visited and usually studiously ignored.  Then there it was-

No body, no sound, no sight, no smell, no senses of any kind.  No time to mark the movement from one moment to the next.  Everything stretched on infinitely.  There was nothing for one to do but think and there was no way to keep from doing that.  Every moment the sensation hung about that thoughts and ideas and memories were slipping away so fast that one could have had them all a billion times over and not remember.  How could one possibly keep track of the beginning and the present and the future when the only thing that could perhaps mark a difference was the growing pressure that was filling up nowhere with nothing until suddenly nothing caved in on itself and-

Fehler vomited.  Celestia laughed bitterly at his reaction.  “Now you get it!  Oh, what's the matter, was it just too much for you?  Poor thing.”

There was nothing to say, Fehler realized.  How long had she been exposed to that sort of torment?  Who was she?  What was she?  For that matter, what was he?

“Really,” she mused, “The only way to be completely certain that there is time, and that I'm not glued into one moment of existence for forever is probably to burn myself up until there's nothing left.  Maybe then I'd stop thinking and I could finally know.”

“No,” Fehler gasped.  “Stop.  You can't do that.”

Celestia sneered at him.  “Can't I?  You're right, though, fire wouldn't leave anything behind to rot as proof that I beat it.  I have always thought that throats looked vulnerable, though.  Maybe if I were to take a very sharp rock and force it through until-”

“Stop it,” Fehler shouted.  “Are you so selfish that you'll just bring me into life and then go away?  You think you hurt not knowing what created you?  Imagine what it would feel like to know what created you and know that you weren't good enough to keep them around.”

Celestia visibly wilted at this outburst and the plants around her drooped doubly so.  “But it hurts.  It hurts so much.”

“I know that,” Fehler told her.  “After all, you are a part of me.  I know very well what it feels like.  You gave it to me.”

The white goddess looked dumbfounded, as if she had never considered that she might have passed on her own disease to Fehler.  “Oh, no, no, please no.  You're lying.  You have to be!”

“No.”  Fehler picked himself up off the carpet of needles.  “I don't have patience for this.  If you decide to stop being such a self-centered monster you'll be able to find me, I'm sure.”

He left and Celestia held her head in her forehooves crying, “No, no, no, no, no...”

Some things were better forgotten, Fehler decided.  Sometimes both parties acted selfishly, poorly, and it didn't behoove anybody to dwell on what happened because of it.  He thought this as he regarded the acre of twisted, blackened, dead growth in the Everfree forest.  It was remarkable in that the dead life it contained was vastly different from the life that now flourished locally all around it – it looked as if everything there had died some tens of thousands of years ago and never rotted or decayed or been replaced.  It was regarded as a cursed area by all the locals.

Fehler had tracked Celestia here with ease, and there was a lot of proof of her having recently visited.  The dusty hoof-prints through the carpet of black ash, the alicorn-sized depression where she had probably slept for a few hours, the rain-like pattern her tears had made as she had lain there...

The real question wasn't whether or not she'd visited there.  Rather, where had she gone after that?  Fehler was adept at tracking but Celestia was unpredictable and could fly or teleport at will, making his job all the more difficult.  With a sigh he trotted around the perimeter of the dead space for the third time, looking for any clue as to where she might have gone next.

He found it on his sixth trip around, nearly four hours after having arrived – there, in the undergrowth, was a mess of broken branches and plant stalks.  More likely than not, he realized, Celestia had flown a short distance before taking off again through the cursed, warped forest.  If he had paid attention earlier rather than dwelling on unhealthy memories he probably would have noticed patterns in the ash consistent with a pony, albeit a large one, taking flight.

He mentally berated himself as he continued on.  The trail now led north, so he moved north in turn, wary of what he might find.  Already this trip had turned up two things that had disturbed Fehler:  The first was a basilisk lying in an open clearing, awake and alive but completely passive and unresponsive to outside stimuli.  It was breathing, and it had been aware of Fehler, but it hadn't seemed to care even when Fehler had looked it in the eyes.  The second had been a marked increase in the size of the dead zone – it was nearly fifteen feet wider now that it had been even a year ago, a change that appeared to be fairly recent – the newly dead matter was still green, if not wilted and decaying, rather than black and completely gone.

He tried to remember what he had done after he had left these woods.  It had not been that long ago, maybe twenty thousand years at the most, but the memory evaded him.  That wasn't surprising – events even a month past quickly became hazy before disappearing altogether, leaving only an impression of what had happened.  It was like throwing rocks and gems at soft clay: everything leaves a mark and some random few stick there permanently, regardless of value.

Fehler nickered at himself.  Getting lost in thought would never find the princess.

Mica was worried.  The 48-hour mark since Fehler's departure was drawing near and there were whispers among Canterlot's populace that Celestia had disappeared.  Being the fair ruler of Equestria and a common sight among the people her presence really was sorely missed.

For the past two days Mica had come back to the cafe and spent the days waiting, subsisting on tea and pastries from a nearby bakery.  The scroll had always sat with him, ominous, foreboding.  More than anything he wished he could just burn it and pretend he didn't have anything more significant to do than keep researching.  He was a research pony, not a diplomat, not royalty, not a stallion with social skills; the thought of having to show up at Luna's feet and say, “Oh, well, here you go, this should explain everything, apparently,” was enough to make Mica nervous to the point of nauseousness.

He shivered, his coat casting off the moisture of the morning's dew.  Canterlot was chilly today, and the sun seemed to lack the warmth to cast off the mist that was lingering over the streets, streets that were largely empty thanks to the early hour.  It was six in the morning.

The cafe owner arrived and nodded amiably to Mica.  “The same as usual, I take it,” he asked, yawning as he unlocked the storefront.

“Yes, please,” Mica replied.  The owner hadn't minded Mica's constant presence the last two days and, if anything, had been a good distraction during the slower hours of the day when he would sit with the stressed scientist and talk about simple nothings.

One more hour according to the clock-tower down the way, one more hour and he would have to go to Luna.  He hadn't told Fehler he would, but he knew that he didn't really have a choice.  Fehler was Mica's friend, and friends didn't let friends down.

The old cafe owner came back out levitating two cups of tea.  She was an unassuming old mare with a tea-leaf green mane and a gray body and, unsurprisingly, a tea bag for a cutie-mark.  She gave one cup to Mica and sat down across from him, sipping her own tea thoughtfully.  “Well, what will it be this morning?”

Mica gave her a look that suggested he thought she might be getting a bit too old for her own good.  “I have my tea already.  Unless there's nothing in my tea bag...?”

“No, silly.”  She chuckled to herself.  “I mean, would you like me to ramble on about things again, like I have been, or would you like to talk about what's been bothering you these last couple of days?”

“Bothering me?  Goodness, you must be mistaken.  I've just had nothing to do with myself.”  Mica glanced at the clock-tower again and licked his lips, worrying.

“Come now, don't lie to me,” the old mare berated.  “Fehler has been coming here as long as I've had a cafe, I know that he gets into trouble sometimes.  You're not the first pony he's had worked up over some thing or another.”

Mica looked at her in surprise.  He had never considered that Fehler might have used this place before they had started their research project together.  He looked down at his tea and let out a long sigh.  “He ran off two days ago.  Since he's not back I have to bring that scroll to Princess Luna because it means he hasn't found Princess Celestia yet.”

“Ah,” she said.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Mica frowned at her.  “Ah?”

“Oh, I'm sorry, dear.  It's nothing I haven't heard before.  Celestia has always been a handful for the poor stallion.”  She paused.  “Are you nervous about having to meet one of the princesses?”

“Well, to be honest, yes.”  Mica tried his tea and found it wasn't too hot.  “Which is just ludicrous.”

“Well, royalty usually is ludicrous, isn't it?  Don't worry, Luna's a kind mare, even if she does have a temper.  If Fehler trusts her to meet little old me then I'm sure you will be fine.”  She watched Mica look over at the clock-tower again.  “Best you don't put it off any longer, don't you think?  The world isn't going to wait for you to act.”

Mica downed the rest of his tea in a single gulp, prompting a smile from the curious old owner.  “I suppose you're right.  Well, I guess I'd best be off.  Places to go, Princesses to cavort with...”

“That Fehler,” the mare said to herself as Mica trotted off, “is always getting mixed up in the most curious of things with the most curious of people.”

This was a bad situation.  Fehler knew it was bad as soon as he saw the lake and the city beneath it.  The lake was called The Graveyard because of a great winter battle that had been fought on it many centuries ago when a small town had lived on its shore.  The town had been burned down, but not before the lake had swallowed the attacking force.  Popular legend had it that if a pony went swimming there the dead would grab them and keep them forever.

In reality any ponies who had drowned had gotten caught on the thick plant growth that blanketed the shallows of the lakebed, and the darkest parts of the lake were well over six hundred feet deep and home to all manners of alien life.  The battle had been fought by a contingent of ponies who didn't believe in the divinity of the two sisters.  They were remnants of the old times and the conflicts from the dark winter and felt that ponies had gotten through the conflict on their own by way of friendship and needed no divine ruling;  Ironically the rebels had decided the best way to assert this was to try and kill the sisters at their summer home on the shores of the lake.  Celestia had killed every rebellious pony by opening the frozen lake beneath them; truth reputation had been smoothed over by making up a legend to distract from historical details.

The city beneath the forgotten piece of history was Detrot, a haven for new the new industry that was blossoming in Equestria.  With advances in science came advances with technology, and with advances in technology came ponies to Detrot looking to make a bit or two off of the next big thing.  There were jobs a-plenty, and that brought in even more ponies.  As it was the jobs paid poorly and were grueling and long, and many ponies became too beaten down to muster the energy to leave or kill themselves.  The city was eclectic to say the least, a mix of shanties and mis-matched concrete high-rises and factories, and all the immigrants tended to cluster in different sections of town together.

If Fehler's fears were right it was also going to be the test subject for Celestia's new knowledge and whatever she might attempt to do with it.  After all, the sort of transient workers and poorer ponies that made up the bulk of Detrot were prone to conflict, a situation only worsened by stressful working conditions and relatively large populations of zebras and griffins that refused to get along well with the native ponies or each other.  It was the perfect place to try out any sort of new pacification techniques.

Fehler was on the northern edge of the Everfree Forest.  There were roughly nine miles of cleared forest, brush, fields, and shanties between him and the outer edge of the dirty city, and the lake was beyond it at the top of a thousand feet of hills.  At some point the industrious ponies of Detrot had blown out a ravine two hundred feet wide and three hundred tall at the edge of the lake and put in a dam to generate electricity for constant manufacturing.  It gleamed white, tall, foreign.  

Chances were Celestia wasn't in the city.  She would be swamped by attention and pleas, and her ability to focus would have been greatly hampered.  More than likely Celestia had gone to what had once been her favorite home, on the shore of the lake.  Fehler wasn't Celestia, however, and decided to save time by cutting through the city to the lake.

He was about to start moving again when a voice startled him:  “What's a young stallion like you doing out here?  I would think you'd be in the city working like all the rest.”  The speaker was a wizened old stallion with a gray mane, a gray coat, and a drooping old cutie-mark of a cockroach.  He had come up behind Fehler nearly silently, though that was no surprise considering how slowly he was moving.

“Yes-sirree,” the old pony went on, “old Roach sees a lot of youngsters coming in from all parts these days to work, work, work.  Used to be a quiet place before then.  Just a quiet little old village, no trouble at all.”

“You've lived her all your life, then?” Fehler asked as he fell into step next to him.  The old pony was headed toward the city in relatively the same direction.

“Yes sir, old Roach has watched this whooole valley grow up.  I don't have my farm any more, but I still have my house.  I said to myself, 'You know, Roach, this here's a nice spot, and it might be fun to get their goat by staying put.'  So there I stayed in my little cottage as the city grew up around me.  I don't need to eat a whole lot any more, and I don't sleep very much either.  I come out here occasionally and find some things to eat.”  The sides of Roach's gummy mouth turned up into a grin.  “Yep, old Roach knows old secrets to living life.”

It was quite apparent that Roach's ability and willingness to talk hadn't diminished with age. If he knew any information he would be a good source for it.  “You're out here often, then.  Did you see Princess Celestia come by in the last day or so?”

Roach cackled madly.  “The Princess?  Are you crazy?”  He squinted at Fehler.  “No, I ain't seen that old bird.  I woulda recognized her if I had since I met her once before, when I was younger.”  For a moment he didn't say anything and his eyes glazed over, but he quickly snapped back.  “Nope, no princess.  Did meet a nice filly earlier, though.  She was quite the unicorn.  Or was she a pegasus?  I can't remember.  Quite the looker, though.  Said she was heading up to the lake, something about it being her old family home.”

The trail the two had been following finally broke out of the brush onto a small dirt road.  There was some traffic, mostly going toward Detrot, and it all quickly passed Fehler and Roach.  Judging by the sun it was nearly noon, and Fehler was tired.  He had been tracking Celestia for nearly fifty four straight hours.  He would walk the old pony home, he decided, sleep for a few hours, then make his way toward the lake.  Fehler knew very little about Detrot and during the long walk ahead he would milk Roach for any information he could get.  He had the feeling it would be useful for later.

Luna frowned.  She reread the letter and her frown deepened and became tinged with worry.

“Fehler told you to give this to me.”  It was a statement rather than a question, and the words were quiet, unusual for the princess accustomed to using her royal Canterlot voice in the court.

“Y-yes,” confirmed Mica.  “He left two days ago and told me to bring this to you if he hadn't returned yet.”

“Well.”  She paused.  “Well.  This isn't good.”  She exhaled slowly and seemed to deflate as she did so.  She nodded to the royal guards who were standing in attendance, signaling them to leave.  “Now, explain to me what it was the two of you were working on.”

Mica told her the story of Fehler's coming to him, related the nature of the work, and then told her what they had ultimately discerned.

Luna swore.  “Did he tell you where he was going?  How to contact him?  Anything?”

“No, your majesty,” Mica replied.  “I was only told to come to you.”

Luna laughed quietly and coldly to herself.  The noise echoed off the stone walls like a chorus of agreement.  “Well, we are very much in trouble now.  What did you say your name was?”

“Mica, your majesty.”  He bowed to her.  “I am at your service.”

“You are not at my service.”  She tossed the letter down to him.  “Fehler said so specifically.”

Mica spread the piece of parchment open on the floor in front of him.  It read:

Luna,

The sun is winking in and out again, and I believe it may be more than I can handle this time.  You are in charge of the kingdom, for now.  If I don't come back, then, I'm sorry.

The pony delivering this letter assisted me on the research I was telling you about; he can tell what we found out.  Once he is done pay him and let him leave.  Don't drag him into this.

Goodbye.

-Fehler

“Your bits will be sent to your office.”  The princess of the night cocked her head at Fehler.  “I'm sorry you had to get involved in this.  Do you like pursuing information?”

“Well, yes, of course.  It's what I live for.”  Mica hadn't even needed to think about that.  “Why?”

Luna stood up from her perch by the throne and stepped down to Mica.  She leaned forward so that her head was right next to his and whispered, “I hope you don't come to regret what it is you live for.”

She turned to leave but Mica, on an impulse, stepped in front of her.  “What are you going to do now?  What will your course of action be?”

Luna regarded Mica like a Marene might regard an obstacle.  “I will wait.  I have to keep Equestria running until Celestia returns, and ultimately whatever I do won't matter.  Either Fehler will succeed or he won't.”

“No.”  He stomped his hooves.  “That's not enough.  There has to be something.”

“Tell me, do you even know where Fehler and Celestia are?  Or how to find them?  You don't, of course.  If you don't even know that how can you do anything?”  Luna sighed.  “All we can do is wait and see what happens.  Maybe we'll get lucky and glean some bit of information, a location, a sighting, anything.  We can only wait, and hope that when it comes it's not the end of the world.”

“You're joking about that last part, right?”  Mica had turned pale at the idea that he might have brought about armageddon.

“No,” she told him.  “I'm really not.”

Celestia was curled up against the moss-covered remains of an old stone wall barely two feet tall.  Even though the sky was clear the weak sunlight was doing nothing to warm her, and the constant highland winds were chilling her further.  Her teeth rattled and her entire body convulsed in an effort to stay warm.

She had spent the last sixty hours wandering with frenetic, unguided energy.  When she could have run she sometimes flew, other times she ran when she should have flown.  Her normally brilliant white coat was covered with dirt and sweat, and everywhere there were small nicks, scratchs, and cuts from thorny undergrowth and jagged rocks.  Her mane, normally flowing and diaphanous, was limp and milky, devoid of even the hint of a shine.

Her ragged breath steamed out into the cold afternoon air.  Fall was certainly in full swing in the high lands, the tenuous life making way for the cold winter to come.  The Running of the Leaves would be soon, Celestia realized.  She tried to stand up, but her legs gave out and she hit the ground with a whump.  Something nagged at the back of her mind.  What had she been about to do?  Why had she been about to get up.  She could see it, the answer was there, but she couldn't seem to understand it.

She rolled onto her side.  What had it been?  She watched a spider creep through spaces between the old, weathered stones.  She should remember it.  Why couldn't she?  It was getting cold; fall was in full swing.  The Running of the Leaves would be soon, she realized.  She would go and watch this year, she decided.  She tried to stand up, but her legs gave out again, and she hit the ground with a dull thud.

Everything hurt.  Her joints hurt.  The spaces between her ribs hurt.  Her shoulders hurt.  Her skin throbbed.  The top of her head was burning and burning and burning, but she knew it wasn't the outside.  It was burning inside.

Everything hurt.

She coughed a few times.  What had she been doing?  There had been something.  Something important.  She began crawling forward slowly, but fast enough.  After all, she had time.  She left the muddy depression that marked her old room and home and started for the beach just twenty feet away.  There had been something.  What was it?  She ground over the rocks and low-bush tundra plants.  What was it?  There had been something.

Her head burned.  There was a fire inside it shorting everything out.  She could feel it, lingering, making her nauseous, making it hard to focus or concentrate or remember anything or formulate a plan – a plan!  What she needed was a plan.  A plan to do what?  A plan to escape.  A plan to escape what?

A plan to escape you, a voice whispered.

To escape who?  You.  Me?  Yes, you. You're the problem, don't you realize? Shut up!  She tried to scream but mostly succeeded in rasping.  “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”  Why should I?  “Because I want you to,” she whimpered.  If you really wanted me to be quiet I would be quiet, but here I am talking to you...  I don't think you really want me gone.

Celestia was lying on the beach now.  It was, if anything, more uncomfortable than the mud had been as there were only large rocks and gravel, rather than sand.  Icy water lapped at her flank, whipped up by the persistent wind heralding the coming storm.  In the distance bloated, black, heavy storm clouds were lumbering forth to wash away the world's grime.

Celestia's eyes closed and she listened to the wind whistle over the earth.  For a long fifteen minutes she didn't think anything, her mind was as silent and as cool as a crypt.  She might as well have been dead.  Suddenly something kicked into gear and her eyes opened wide.  She had to stop it.  She had to stop the fighting, the arguing, the shouting, the endless, endless noise.  She had to end it right now.  She jumped up to her feet, oblivious to her body's protests.  Her pulse was racing, thumping, her heart was fighting to break out of her chest, and she was so alive, and so awake, and so ready to fix it all and make things the way that they should be and erase the mistakes of the past, and she was ready to-

to-

to-

to-

Celestia screamed.  The burning was back and more intense than ever before, eating her from the inside like a worm.  She stormed off down the beachfront, kicking up a hail of gravel in her wake, running from absolutely nothing but herself.

As she ran the air around her horn began to waver like hot air off of the desert.  It was entirely different from the energetic glow of magic, and it was growing.  The burning was unbearable now, more than even Celestia could handle, and it too was growing.  Her lungs felt like they were going to collapse, her legs were fit to break, she was crying, and she was galloping and galloping and galloping and-

Celestia collapsed in a spray of rock and gravel.  She could no longer feel the worming, wiggling, burning feeling at the top of her head; she was unaware of the fresh new wounds that were oozing blood onto the cold rock;  she was oblivious to the imperceptible something that was growing out from her tired horn, groping and growing and feeling as if it was existing for the first time.  Really, Celestia was barely alive.  She was breathing, yes.  Her heart was beating, sure.  But she showed no sign of life.

The lake lapped at her flank.  The sun hung in the sky like a forgotten ornament, ready to be overshadowed by the looming clouds.  The wind teased over the tundra flowers.  Fat raindrops began to pitter patter over the earth.

The sun disappeared behind a curtain of black.