"I'm sorry."

It was the first sentence, the first two words, that Celestia had spoken to her former pupil in years.

The look on Sunset Shimmer's face faded from defiance to bafflement, then hardened back into wary suspicion. "And what is that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

Celestia stepped into the chambers. It was anything but a prison cell; the simple, yet comfortable room was sumptuous enough to have played host to various 'prisoners of honor' in the Crystal Empire's darker days. Other than the magical reinforcements girding it about, and the diamond bars over the window, it would have been indistinguishable from many of the guest suites elsewhere in the palace. It pained Celestia's heart no less to see her former pupil in such a glittering cage. "It means precisely what is said, Sunset Shimmer," she said. "That I am sorry."

Sunset Shimmer's expression merely grew more guarded. "Oh? Then for what?"

Celestia folded her legs gracefully beneath herself and settled to the plush carpeted floor. "Uff. Not as easy to do that as it used to be," she muttered, shifting her weight till she was comfortable.

Sunset Shimmer gave her former teacher a critical eye; she could barely help thinking that the Alicorn princess had gotten a bit... thicker around the middle. Shame to see her let herself go, the embittered unicorn thought snidely. Not surprising; she probably figures nothing matters much now that she's got what she wants...

"For... using you," Celestia said.

Sunset's thoughts stuttered to a halt. "So... you finally admit it," she said scornfully.

Celestia looked at her, pitying. "Yes." She took a deep breath.

"You don't think this little admission is supposed to make things all better again?" Sunset said with a toss of her mane.

"Hardly not," Celestia said. "I knew things had gone terribly wrong when you fled through the magic mirror. I didn't expect an easy fix." She extended a hoof to her ex-pupil. "Sunset... were things truly so irreconcilable?"

Sunset glowered over her shoulder. "Do you know where I've been all these years?" she said. "I've been living in a world full of creatures called 'humans.' Transformed into one of them. There's no unicorn magic over there. No weather control. No earth pony agriculture. Everything I ever learned here was completely useless, save for a couple of tiny spells related to the mirror. Three different diplomas from your School for Gifted Unicorns and I couldn't even hold down a job as a fry cook. I had to pretend I was nearly ten years younger and pose as one of their school children because I couldn't understand their culture and had to learn it from scratch." She shuddered in horror. "You cannot imagine the dystopic hell that is their educational system. It's like a low-grade prison for children, designed to turn their brains to mush. There were days I thought I'd slit my wrists if I saw another gym class or cafeteria mystery meal."

"Why subject yourself to that?"  Celestia said. Sunset Shimmer had always had a flair for theatrics, but...

Sunset smirked. "They have an author over there," she said. "Milton. There's a quote from one of his poems; "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Her smirk widened. "Didn't take much effort to be top of the pecking order. Being Queen Bee over a bunch of teenagers? Piece of cake.... for what it was worth." Her smirk disappeared. "Not like you were going to allow me to go anywhere in this world, I might as well try my luck in that one."

Celestia sighed. "How long did you know? How long did it take for you to figure out my plans?"

"Maybe a month before I left. Maybe two." Sunset said. "I had an inkling all along, really. But that was when the pieces all came together. It was pretty obvious when you kept forbidding me certain books and archives and certain lines of study that there was something you didn't want me to know. I just looked everywhere you told me not to." She snorted. "The pieces all fell into place after I started researching the Elements of Harmony."

"Sunset Shimmer, you were my greatest student. You were more powerful and more skilled than any unicorn I had seen in generations... even rivaling Twilight Sparkle. I would have been blind and foolish not to take you as my student when I first discovered you. But I was blind and foolish in entirely different ways. I had my agenda. And I took little regard in what the consequences were to those who were part of it."

"Really?" Sunset drawled. "I never noticed. Tell me, dearest teacher, how many other unicorns before me did you take under your wing and smother?"

"Did I really smother you?" Celestia said softly.

"Did you?" Sunset began pacing back and forth across the room, glaring at the sun princess all the while. "You lied, you obfuscated, you hid truths from me, you, you HERDED my studies one direction after another, always cutting me off when I started 'getting too far ahead'-- hah!" She fumed. "Smothered me? You admitted it the day I confronted you! You were holding out on me. You never intended for me to succeed, you never intended for me to be all that I could be-- you took me on as your student so you could teach me just enough to be useful. Just enough that I could be a tool to free your sister from her prison. And once she was back you were going to toss me out like yesterday's trash!"

“It didn’t take me long to figure out I’d been used....At least it meant you still had some use for me...." Words from another unicorn, not all that long ago, echoed in Celestia's ears. The words stung. And I deserve every minute of pain they have, Celestia reflected. "Yes," she confessed. "I held back. But I promise you, I would have never discarded you. I was trying to rein you in. I was afraid of what you might do, what you would have become."

"I WOULD HAVE BECOME AN ALICORN!" Sunset Shimmer shouted, her voice raw. "I would have been a princess! I would have been immortal!  I earned that, I sweated and slaved and worked for that-- even when I didn't know what the prize was I knew that there was a prize to have, and I gave everything I had to get it! All the horseapples you put me through..."

"Is that all our time was to you?" Celestia said. "A means to an end?"

"Wasn't it to you??"

Celestia let her jaw close. Touche'.

Sunset was off on a tear. "And who were you to decide I didn't deserve it?" she went on, tears starting in the corners of her eyes. "What a load of horseapples. I don't remember reading about anyone descending on a sunbeam to give you YOUR crown---"

"You're correct. I didn't have that right."

"Oh and now you-- huk?" Under any other circumstances, Celestia would have laughed at the expression on Sunset Shimmer's face.

"Tell me, Sunset Shimmer," Celestia said. "With all my planning, all my conspiring... what was my goal?"

Sunset sputtered a bit. "To... to free your sister from the Moon," she said matter-of-factly.

Celestia allowed herself a smile. "And then?"

Sunset's brow furrowed. "And then you and she would... reign over Equestria," she said.

Celestia let her smile spread another infuriating inch. "And then?"

"And then wha--" Sunset caught herself and shot Celestia her best deadpan look. "Very funny. Hysterical."

"Well?" Celestia goaded, her damnable smile not moving. "And thennnnn?"

Sunset growled. "I hated it when you did this when I was a filly."

"And?"

"And it hasn't improved with age."

"Well? And thennnnnnnn?" Celestia leaned in toward her, obviously waiting for an answer.

"There is no then! That's it! Nightmare Moon defeated, Princess Luna restored, save the day, huzzah huzzah, Sol Invictus, cupcakes for everyone, that's it, the end, nothing else!" Sunset shouted, stamping her hoof in exasperation. "What else is there??"

"Forever is a long long time to say "that's it, the end, nothing else," Sunset Shimmer, " Celestia noted. "This is why I tried to forestall ascension for you. You had a vision of yourself sitting upon a throne, a princess of Equestria-- but no picture in your mind of what came afterward."   

Sunset Shimmer actually looked chagrined. Could I actually be getting through to her? Celestia wondered. "Well," Sunset blustered, "I planned on figuring that out later. I would have had all of forever to decide what came next, after all." She looked away. "But you decided I wouldn't get that opportunity, didn't you?"

It was an obvious line, cast out and fishing. Celestia deliberately took it. "And I was wrong," Celestia repeated.

Sunset Shimmer stood very still. "Wh-what are you..." she swallowed, obviously disbelieving her ears. "You're not..."

"You do enjoy hearing me say that, don't you," Celestia said. "I. Was. Wrong."

"This is... this is some sort of trick?" Sunset said. She turned and faced Celestia.

"No, it is not." Celestia got to her feet. "It is part and parcel of the plans... the "what comes after"... that I hinted at, Sunset. I am blessed with a gift of immortality. Did you never wonder if, in my long life, I ever sought out some means to share it?...."

In a few brief sentences, Celestia outlined the Hunt, the Panacea, the entire Great Plan. Sunset Shimmer's jaw was nearly to the floor by the time she was done. "...Everypony?" she said. She sat down with a thump. "You've been trying to find a way to make everypony an alicorn??"

"Since before your great great great great grandsire was born," Celestia said, nodding. "Luna's imprisonment was a painful delay in that long plan...but even now we make up for lost time."

"If... if making all of us alicorns was your goal, then why...why when I  tried to pursue it...?" Sunset waved a hoof, indicating the years now lost behind them both.

Celestia hung her head a bit. "Because, in the midst of all the plotting for my sister's return, I took my eye off the goal," she admitted. "I let my anxieties over you, over how you were growing, over what might happen, interfere with my judgment. I was alone, and time pressed on me greatly-- and you were so... cold. So indifferent to the Magic of Friendship. I was afraid that you might...no. I all but knew that you would fall down the same path that took my sister and I would be unable to save you, or worse that I would be unable to save Equestria from both Luna and yourself. I convinced myself that you were not yet worthy of alicornhood..."

"And now you think I am?" Sunset said. Suspicious. Skeptical.

Celestia snorted and gave her a wry grin. "Not even close." She held up a hoof, forestalling Sunset's surely scathing reply. "But that's just the thing. I forgot that I wasn't worthy of it, either. Nor was my sister. Nopony is.

"Ascension is nothing less than the gift of life itself. And it never has been, and never will be, about deserving it. And maybe, if I wanted you to be more loving and trusting... I have to love and trust more, first."

Celestia's horn flared white. When the light dimmed, they had transported to a new place. They were standing in a circular crystal chamber, the walls and floor lit from within by silvery light. The roof overhead was open to the sky; the aurora of the Crystal Empire could be seen dancing across the night stars. The floor was etched with a complex pattern of runes and scrying lines that glowed purple and gold. At three equidistant points stood three ponies--- Princess Cadance, Princess Celestia, and a stallion Sunset Shimmer assumed was Prince Shining Armor. While Celestia and Cadance only wore their regalia, for some reason he was wearing a cape over his shoulders. Odd.

Sunset's attention was taken away from that a moment later when Celestia spoke. "Sunset Shimmer, are you ready?"

Sunset felt her heart start to hammer. "This is happening," she breathed, "this is really really happening--??"

Then she stopped. She stood in the middle of the room, panting, looking up at Celestia, tears filling her eyes. "This? Now? Even after all... all I said? After all I did?"

Celestia nodded. "If you are willing."

Sunset Shimmer lowered her head, shaking it. "I-- I can't," she said, her voice cracking. "I can't go back. I can't change what I've done, what I've become. I can't make up for what I've done--"

Celestia stepped forward, lowered her head to Sunset Shimmer's. "And nopony is asking you to," she said. "All we're asking is for you to... accept forgiveness when it is offered."

Sunset Shimmer looked up again, a knot in her throat. "I'd... I'd like that," she croaked.

"Then I hereby give it," Celestia said, smiling. She stepped back to her place in the circle and raised her wings.

"Auntie, are you sure the three of us...?" Cadance said.

"Are more than enough," Celestia said confidently. "If anything, having six alicorns doing it the last time was overkill."

The last time? Sunset managed to wonder giddily.

"From one to another, another to one.

A mark of one's destiny singled out alone, Unfulfilled;

From all of us together, To each of us together--"

The world turned to silver glass.

"...Sunset Shimmer?"

Sunset opened her eyes. She was lying on the crystal floor, the runic lines humming beneath her. Cadance was kneeling next to her, looking concerned.

"I'm... okay, I think..."  Sunset sat up, pulled her legs beneath her.

Flexed her wings.

The squee of delight rang off the crystal walls like windchimes.

Shining Armor sidled over to Celestia while his wife helped a euphoric Sunset to her hooves. "I'm surprised you decided to go through with this so, um, precipitously," he said.

"How so?" Celestia asked.

Shining grimaced discreetly. "You did tell us she had been something of a problem student, even before she ran off," he clarified. "And she was caught breaking into the palace... by her own testimony to get access to one of the Elements of Harmony. So breaking and entering the palace, attempted burglary..."

Celestia 'mm-hmm'ed, "Tell me, Shining Armor, are any of those deeds worthy of a death penalty?" At Shining Armor's shocked expression, she continued. "Shining, to deny her alicornhood, especially when she was so clearly a nascent, was to effectively sentence her to death. It would have placed me in the moral position of having the cure to a fatal illness in my grasp, and refusing to give it to any of the patients in the hospital whom I didn't think were "worthy" of living.

"And yes, she lusted after power-- but desiring power is not a sin nor a crime. Anyone who says they do not desire power is saying they have no desire to effect change. And I am scarcely going to condemn her now for sins which are barely even a fragment of a shadow of those committed by Luna or Discord."

"And if she abuses her power?"

"And if you abuse yours? Or Cadance hers? Or any of the Six?" Celestia smiled a little sadly. "Let us all answer for the sins we actually do commit. Sufficient to the day are the evils thereof."  Her smile turned a little wry. "Besides which, there are ten of us. I think we can take her in a fair fight," she teased. Shining rolled his eyes.

The two of them rejoined Cadance and Sunset Shimmer. "And how are you feeling now, Sunset Shimmer?" Celestia asked.

Sunset Shimmer looked up at her with confused, penitent eyes. "I... I don't know how to feel right now," she confessed, gingerly flexing her new wings, all sorts of emotions warring on her face.

"For now, try 'happy,' " Celestia suggested, startling her with a congratulatory nuzzle.

The new alicorn gave her a surprisingly vulnerable smile. "So what happens next?"

Celestia tsked. "Sunset, Sunset, Sunset. Still no plans for tomorrow?" she teased. "Oh don't look at me like that. There are a few things to plan at Canterlot... a few fences to mend with old acquaintances back at your old school, for one," this earned a wince from Sunset Shimmer. "And quite a few machinations behind the scene for the Great Plan with which you will be helping. And perhaps some time for you to grow acquainted with the others."

"Others?"

"Why yes. I don't know how close the tabs are you've been keeping on dear old Equestria but you have nine other alicorns besides myself to acquaint yourself with... though most of them are scattered hither and yon at the moment--"

Sunset's wings flared in surprise. "Nine??"

"Counting the three standing next to you right now," Celestia said. Sunset looked at Celestia and Cadance, doing an obvious mental count, then gave Shining Armor a puzzled look. "Come on, Captain, remove your cape..."

"Yeah, come on, honey, take it off, woo woo," Cadance teased. Grumbling and red faced, Shining Armor dropped his cloak from his shoulders and flapped his still rather preadolescent wings.

Sunset stared. "Snrrrk....."

Next Chapter: Chapter 19 Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 20 Minutes