65: The Emissary

James rubbed his hand over the chariot window, clearing away a small circle in the frost, and watched the lights of Canterlot drop away beneath him as he left Canterlot Castle for his diplomatic mission to the Changeling Empire. Once the lights were out of sight, he leaned back, resting his head on the wall. His breath was still visible when he exhaled, but the small portable stove in the chariot was rapidly warming things up. He felt sorry for the poor Pegasus Guards that had to pull the chariot. Although, he’d been told by Captain Swordstorm once that their fur and heavy feathers provided very good insulation. Ice was a bigger problem for them than cold was, he had said. If sufficient amounts of ice built up on their wings, it would disrupt the airflow over them enough that they would stall, and be unable to fly. However, their own body warmth acted as a natural deicer, and could melt even fairly heavy ice. Furthermore, unlike fixed-wing aircraft, the fact that pegasi could flap their wings also helped to break up ice. Ice wouldn’t be a problem today anyway. There was no snow and no clouds in the sky. Still, he thought even the hearty pegasi must be getting cold these days.

His thoughts turned to Luna now. He had really hoped he’d be in Canterlot to greet her when she returned. But there was no way he’d be back from the Hive in time now. Assuming, of course, that the rescue mission was successful. If he was able to watch the sun rise from the Hive, he’d know that it was.

At the same time, he was somewhat nervous about meeting her again. There were two subjects he had to discuss with her, and he wasn’t looking forward to either one. The first, was Theory Point. Yes, Twilight Sparkle believed he had no involvement in her treasonous actions. But then again, he was romantically involved with Twilight. Would Luna believe him? His relationship with Luna had come along way. At least, he thought it had based on the remorse she seemed to show in the dream world. But she hadn’t trusted him in the past. Would this incident only confirm her earlier mistrust of him? There was really no sense in worrying about it now. All he could do is tell her the truth and hope that she believed him. If she didn’t, he’d deal with it then.

Besides, whether Luna would believe him about that or not paled in comparison to the second thing he had to discuss with her. He knew he couldn’t keep his romantic relationship with Twilight concealed forever. He was going to have to tell her about it. And that scared him more than anything. The knowledge that she would order him to end that relationship was more frightening than if he were waiting on a judge to deliver a looming death sentence that he knew was coming. After all, there was no doubt of his guilt. His relationship with Twilight was a clear violation of Royal Council law, which forbade Councilors from engaging in romantic relationships on the grounds that it would distract them from their duty to Equestria. He knew the law, and he had broken it. There was no denying that.

The chariot began making a standard turn to the left, but he ignored it, assuming they were just flying the standard exit pattern from Canterlot airspace. He continued with his thoughts.

His plans had not changed. If … more like when, Luna ordered him to end his relationship with Twilight, he would only nod. Then, he and Twilight would do what they needed to do to end this crisis. And when it was over — assuming they or anything else in the universe survived — if Twilight asked him to run away with her, he would do it so they could be together. Even if it meant the two of them had to spend the rest of their lives in hiding. It wasn’t something he liked contemplating, and he hated all the options. However, he’d made his decision. If he was going to be forced to choose, then his loyalty to Twilight would be stronger than his loyalty to either of the Princesses.

Subconsciously, he realized that the left turn they were in was lasting too long. By now, they would have way overshot the exit pattern bearing. A slight pressure on the outside of his eardrums, followed by a pop as the pressure equalized also told him they were descending.

What are they doing? he thought to himself as he came out of his thoughts, looking out the window again. The lights of Canterlot Castle slowly swung passed the window and out of sight again towards the front of the chariot. Then the pegasi came out of their turn. It was obvious now that they had turned around and were taking him back to Canterlot Castle. Fear gripped him like the icy, bony hand of death itself as he assumed the worst: Something must have already gone wrong with the mission to rescue Luna, and all of the Councilors had been summoned back for an emergency briefing.

Calm down, James, he told himself. You haven’t even been in the air for ten minutes. Bat Team Alpha hasn’t even reached the facility where Luna is being held yet, much less started the mission. It’s probably a mechanical problem with the chariot. A broken harness or something. That seemed logical. After all, the harnesses did have a tendency to get a little brittle in this extreme cold. A broken harness, although considered an in-flight emergency, was not anything to get overly worked up about. The pegasi always flew with two harness cables on both sides of them so that if one broke, the chariot wouldn’t fall from the sky like an airliner that had suddenly lost all of its engines. Still, a broken harness cable was considered a failure of a safety system, and was grounds for an emergency landing under Royal Guard aviation regulations.

The combined knowledge that Bat Team Alpha couldn’t have even reached the facility yet, and that he probably wasn’t in any immediate danger of falling out of the sky, helped to calm him down some. Still, the five or six minutes it took them to fly the landing pattern passed agonizingly slow, like sitting in a hospital emergency room, waiting for news of a loved one who was brought in in an ambulance.

Finally, the chariot touched down and came to a stop. Through the window, James could see a junior Royal Guard cantering towards the door. A messenger, it appeared. So it wasn’t a mechanical problem, then. Not if a messenger was already waiting to meet him. Another surge of fear went through him as it became obvious that he had been called back for some reason. He opened the chariot door before the messenger got there.

“What’s going on?” he called out.

“Your mission to the Hive has been scrubbed, Councilor. An emissary from the Changeling Empire arrived less than five minutes after you took off. She asked for you by name. Says the two of you are friends. Name’s Commander Antenna. Looks like she saved you the trip.”

“Yeah, I know her,” James said with a nod, breathing a sigh of relief as all his fears evaporated. “Why wasn’t I informed before I left that there was a changeling emissary inbound?”

The guard’s expression took on a sheepish look and he responded somewhat slowly. “She kind of ... caught us by surprise, Councilor. They sneaked in disguised as a Royal Guard patrol. Although she revealed herself for who she was as soon as they were inside the courtyard.

Nice to see the security’s working so well around here even after Princess Celestia was kidnapped right out from under our noses, James thought, but did not voice his sarcasm to the guard. Instead, he just nodded.

“Where is she?”

“In the green sitting room.”

“Alright. Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I change out of these travel clothes. And see to her guards. I don’t imagine they’ll be going back to the Hive without a good rest period, so put them up in the barracks. And have a guest room made ready for Commander Antenna.” And tell her she wouldn’t have to wait for me if we’d had notice of her coming, he was tempted to add, but didn’t.

“Yes, Councilor,” the messenger responded before turning and cantering back into the castle.

James stepped out of the chariot now, closing the door and walking around to the front.

“Sorry you two had to get all dressed up with nowhere to go,” he said to the two Pegasus Guards that had been pulling the chariot.

“We won’t complain if you won’t, Councilor,” one of them responded.

“Trust me. I won’t,” James said before turning and jogging into the castle himself.

Once inside, he made his way to the Council living quarters. It was empty, he noted. No doubt all of the Councilors were busy with various tasks. Either that or they had started celebrating early at the prospect of Luna’s return. He quickly took off his Council robe, changed out of the warm underclothes, and then put the robe back on. Then he left, making his way through the hallways to the sitting room where Antenna was. The attendant outside opened the door for him, and he stepped in. Antenna put down the cup of tea she’d been drinking (apple-cinnamon, he thought from the smell), and stood up from the plush green cushion she’d been sitting on.

“Councilor, it’s good to see you again. I apologize for our delay in bringing news to you. We would have been here days ago, but because of bad weather, we had to travel most of the way by ground.”

James nodded. “It’s good to see you again too, Commander. And the delay is understandable. Although I do wonder if the deception and sneaking in under disguise was necessary.” He intentionally added a slight tone of rebuke to his voice for that last part.

“I apologize for that too, Councilor. We presumed you were already aware of the coup in the Empire, but we had no idea what information you had about it, or what you might currently believe about it. We weren’t sure if we’d be welcome here, or if your guard patrols would have attacked us on sight and asked questions later.”

“Very well,” James motioned for her to sit back down, and he did so as well. “I presume you are here to tell us what’s going on at the Hive, then?” James asked as he refilled her cup of tea and poured one for himself. He took a sip of it, confirming that it was apple-cinnamon as he had suspected. But not just any apple-cinnamon. This was straight from Sweet Apple Acres. It warmed his insides as it went down and also made him think of Ponyville.

“You presume correctly,” Antenna said with a nod. “To start with, yes it’s true. There has a been a coup, and Chrysalis has been deposed. I was the instigator and leader of said coup.”

“But why? Why now of all times?” James said, the exasperation no doubt clear in his voice.

“I was coming to that,” Antenna responded with an obvious hint of annoyance in her voice.

James nodded in acquiescence and let her continue.

“Chrysalis rescinded support for Equestria. In fact, she was planning to launch a major attack on Equestria. She claims Queen Dorylini came to her in a dream and told her to attack Equestria when it was at its weakest, and while they thought we were allies with them. She convened her military advisers and ordered them to immediately draw up plans for a major attack. Her plan was a blitzkrieg offensive against all of your major cities. She intended to quickly conquer and occupy them all before the Royal Guard units could be called back from the Beyond to defend them. She thought Equestria would have no choice but surrender to avoid the enormous civilian casualties that would occur while trying to rout changeling forces out of the cities again. The advisers told her the plan was folly under current conditions. That even if she could pull off the plan, and Equestria surrendered the way she hoped, her victory would mean nothing because all of her occupying forces would soon freeze or starve to death right along with the ponies of the cities they were occupying. But she would hear none of it. So convinced was she that Queen Dorylini had told her to do this. Anyway, I didn’t believe Queen Dorylini had really come to her. Neither did several other of her advisers. Queen Dorylini never had any designs on Equestria, and would never have sacrificed her entire Hive for a hollow victory that would mean nothing in the end.”

“It wasn’t Queen Dorylini,” James said shaking his head. “It was an aisling. A dream walker from the Beyond. They appear in whatever form your mind wants to give them. As what you fear the most, or what you revere the most, depending on what they are trying to convince you of. They’ve also visited Princess Celestia, Princess Luna. King Aetos of the Gryphons, and me.” James felt confident in saying that it definitely was an aisling that had visited Chrysalis, given his own experience with the aislings, and what Luna had told him about them.

“It’s good to have my suspicions confirmed that it wasn’t Queen Dorylini,” Antenna responded, taking a sip from her cup of tea.

“Who’s in charge of the Empire now, then?” James asked.

“Right now, the Empire is under martial law. Chrysalis’s military advisers, including me, are ruling.”

“Is that stable? can you hold it together until we’ve overcome this crisis?” James asked, unable to keep the concern out of his voice.

Antenna looked down into her teacup, swirling it idly. “Probably not. Never before has a sitting Queen been deposed. And the changeling citizens know she was deposed. They have little tolerance for any rule other than the rule of the Queen. They’ll see this as a power grab by the military and demand that a Queen be chosen, or that Chrysalis be reinstated.”

“Alright. So all you have to do is choose a new Queen and place her in power then, right?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Antenna continued, her attention still on her cup of tea. “Normally, the High Priestesses would assume rule during transitions between queens. And only the High Priestesses can choose a Queen. But for them to do that, we have to convince them they made a mistake when they chose Chrysalis as Queen. And even if we do convince them, it’s unlikely they will admit they made a mistake. Doing so erodes public confidence in the institution of the Priestesshood. They’ve only made a mistake once in the entire history of the Changeling Empire. And the only reason they admitted that one is because they were forced to when the Queen they chose died at the age of a normal changeling instead of living for eight hundred to a thousand years as real queens do.”

A queasy feeling began to creep into James as it started to become apparent how bad this situation actually was.

“Can you turn the rule of the Empire over to the High Priestesses?” he asked, desperate to offer any suggestions now. “After all, you said that they would normally rule during the transition between queens. Would that satisfy the citizens for the time being?”

Antenna shook her head slightly. “For the High Priestesses to accept rule, they’d have to admit they made a mistake when they chose Chrysalis as Queen. And the citizens would just see it as a power grab by the High Priestesses assisted by the military. Historically, they’ve had little enough tolerance as it is for rule by the High Priestesses. If the High Priestesses take to long to choose a new Queen, the citizens start to think they are just holding onto power for themselves. Then they start to demand a new Queen.”

She swirled the tea in her cup again, pausing for a few seconds before continuing. “The citizens are already … uneasy. And some of the military may eventually side with the citizens in hopes of winning high favor with Chrysalis.”

James began to feel sick, almost like he was going to vomit, as the magnitude of the situation unfolded before him. He took a large sip of the tea to try to force the feeling back down.

“Antenna … we absolutely cannot afford a changeling civil war. Not right now. Equestria cannot win this war without changeling help. All of us … the entire world, is doomed if this coalition falls apart. You need to find a way to hold it together,” he said. Only after he had said it, did he realize he’d sounded like he was back at the Academy, chastising one of his students for not putting in enough effort on a project. Immediately, he regretted his tone.

“I’m trying, James,” she responded with a strong hint of annoyance in her voice. “I’m doing what I can. But we had to depose Chrysalis. If we hadn’t done so, at best all of your Royal Guard units would be double-timing it back from the northern border to try to liberate towns that have been overrun with changeling soldiers. At worst, you’d all be under the rule of Chrysalis right now. If nothing else, I bought time. I’m doing what I can.”

“I know you are,” he said calmly, then repeated more quietly, “I know you are.”

“I have someone in mind who I think is probably the true Queen. Her name is Commander Auraria. She’s currently with one of your armies.”

“I know the name,” James said with a nod. “Our military intelligence officers seem rather enamored with her.”

“There is no changeling in the entire army who would dare rise up against her. And she’s a hero among the citizens as well, so they would probably support her too. But the High Priestesses don’t take kindly to anyone interfering in their affairs.”

“We don’t have time for protocol. Surely even the High Priestesses must understand that,” James responded.

Antenna nodded slowly, finishing the last sip of her tea and putting her cup down on the small table between the sitting cushions. “I’ll do what I can. But I’ll have to be subtle.”

“That’s all you can do,” James said with a slight nod, then drained his own cup of tea and set it down on the table next to hers. “It’s too long of a trip to expect you and your guards to fly back without rest first. Your guards have been put up in the barracks, and I’ll have you shown to a guest room. You can order food and drink from the castle kitchen, although I’m afraid they only serve vegetarian cuisine,” he said as he stood up.

“Thank you. I’m very appreciative,” Antenna responded, standing up too and making her way to the door.

“And Antenna?”

“Yes?” She stopped, turning to look at him again.

“Be careful. Your actions have probably drawn the eye of the Beyond onto yourself, given that you thwarted its plans with Chrysalis. So don’t be surprised if you are visited by an aisling. They can be very convincing. And remember, they appear as whatever you fear the most, or whatever you admire the most, depending on what they are trying to convince you of. The Beyond knows we have no hope of winning if this coalition falls apart. And so it’s desperately trying to do everything it can to destroy it. You must not listen to anything it tells you.”

“I’ll be careful,” she said. Then, she turned, and and knocked on the door. The attendant outside opened, it and she left the room.