It looms, bone-white, from the mountain.  Its single dark window gazes down at her, and she is drawn into its emptiness once more.  Behind it stretches the infinite wall etched with portents of the future and remnants of the past.  She doesn't want to look at it.

Its spire unleashes a beam of eye-searing yellow light that lasers a small hole through the grey clouds.  She cannot look away.  Her hooves shake and sweat runs into her eyes as the light draws forth a new image: the moon.

Huge, weighty, it engulfs her.  The dark mare's face on its surface stares, cold and vacant, through her.

"I've done it already!"  Her voice is hoarse and tiny before the moon's enormity.  Her shouting is meaningless against its imposing awfulness, yet she persists.

"I've done everything you asked!  Please, stop!  Show me no more!"

The face of the mare draws before her, its eye unblinking and white.  Its stare is palpable, pushing her against the ground.  Fathomless sound waves, ceaselessly emanating from the surface, press her down.  They pound against her mind, and her mind screams.

The ground heaves and she falls.  Down, down into the moon, the black face staring without emotion.  Still she screams.  From the corners of her vision, four tiny lights appear.

Just when it seems she will meet her end on that impossibly large grey surface, she wakes.

A moment is all she needs to reorient herself to the trappings of her bedroom.  With a shaky hoof, she wipes away tears and just lays in bed and breathes.  Had her screams reached the waking world, as they sometimes do?  Her answer comes after a moment.

"Y-Your Highness?"

The voice is small, soft, and quivering.  Its temerity masks unspoken questions: [i]I heard you.  Is everything okay?[/i]  This hoofmaiden was hired barely a month ago; she has yet to understand that her Princess expects courage.  She does not like being feared.

"I'm fine.  Good morning, Chanterelle." Standing, she stretches, parts the curtains to show the pre-dawn sky, and parts her lips to show a smile.  "I hope I didn't frighten you."

"N-no, of course n-not, Your Highness." The hoofmaiden's eyes remain pointed at the ground.  Her legs tremble, branch-like.

She sighs.  "If breakfast is ready, I shall attend once I have raised the sun."

"O-of course, Your Highness.  It's ready.  Breakfast is, I mean.  Of course." Bowing, scraping, she backs from the room, relief written on her every fiber, even when she hits the doorjamb and scampers around it.

She moves to lower the moon and sighs again.  It will be but the blink of an eye to her before that mare grows comfortable in her new role.  Yet blinks can take an awfully long time to happen.

The moon is skittish this morning.  Perhaps it is her.  The Mare stares down at her from her dream.  If only her sister were still here, she could have stepped into the dreamscape and...

She feels again as on that first night when she took control of it after a moonless week.  It may not produce its own light, but the moon is not to be trifled with.  Anew returns the guilt, the unworthiness of bearing this burden.  Only the exhaustion of moving two heavenly bodies, still palpable as ever better than nine hundred years on, allows her to take penance for her overreach.

Breakfast is always a major affair in Canterlot Castle.

On this morning, she tries to lose herself in the clatter of serving carts, the rustle of nobles who have jockeyed for position to dine at her elbow, the scent of pancakes with syrup and butter.  The rising vapor from scrambled eggs and coffee does nothing to lift her spirits.  They are weighed down by a dark, woolen blanket of foreboding.  She must face the Tower today.

"...excellent field of young candidates this year, if I do say so myself, so I anticipate good things from the new class.  And the new stained glass window you requisitioned has been installed in the Star Swirl the Bearded Wing of the Canterlot Royal Library.  If you ask me, Your Highness, begging your pardon, it's a bit of a fright..."

Yes, a new window.  That is the only reason she would have the dream again, much as she wishes it were a matter of too many sweets before bed.  The palace staff assume that they appear by the efforts of zealous nighttime workponies helping their Princess's beautify the castle.  They keep careful track of where and when new windows arrive; they do not inquire as to who makes them.

Her Chancellor is leaning toward her, mustache ends near to dipping in the butter.  She is expected to say something.

"Yes, very well, thank you, Kibitz. If that is all to report this morning?"

He closes his eyes and leaves with a flourish and a bow.  She closes her eyes and tastes the pancakes.  They are more delectable than she deserves.  She has no stomach for food, yet she must eat for two.

[hr]

The day is planned perfectly to give her no respite from the dread.  A meeting sure to go on for at least two hours is cancelled due to sickness in the Zebrican ambassador's family.  Court is lightly trafficked and the petitioners' problems easily solved.  Two nobles whose petty squabble has at last made its way before her throne have the nerve to fall in love at first sight, rendering five generations of blood feud moot in a red heartbeat.

She clamors for something, anything, to occupy her faculties.  Her thoughts are only of the dream, the Tower, and the guilt.  She cannot even muster the will to fret over her student, for she has already come to terms with her disappearance.  To dwell on the loneliness only leads to thoughts of her sister.

There is a lull in her court, a thing unheard of in this day and age.  The universe has conspired against her and won; she folds.

"Morning Court closes early today." She raps a gavel against the armrest of her throne, one of many meaningless gestures her little ponies appreciate.  Rising, she stretches.  "I shall take my lunch in Canterlot Tower." The words balk at her lips.

So begins her gallows walk.

Canterlot Tower is not the tallest, not the largest, of the palace's many towers, but it is the most famous.  None but the Princess may enter.  Its forbidden status makes it a popular tourist attraction, and those who wish may view the many wondrous stained glass windows from the ground, where they will get nothing more than vague impressions of kaleidoscopic planes.  Were it any clearer, they might realize.

Her hoofsteps are louder when the Tower is her destination.  Their echoes peal through her mind like the first shots of a war only she remembers.  The smiles she gifts to palace staff and royal guards bowing low in her presence are all she can muster.  Were it not for centuries of habit, she might let her composure slip, and that would be it.  Even if their great-great-grandparents had long forgotten their second princess, she owes it to them to remain stoic.

She did not commission the Tower, nor the palace.  Only when her little ponies -- she hardly felt them "hers" back then, but they were so eager to please -- told her they would build a new palace in her honor, she merely chose the spot and asked that it not remind her of the ruins in the Everfree.  The rest she left to them.  The Tower's architect remains unknown, yet still she cannot shake the feeling that it was birthed directly from her guilt.  This walk is not the one which grows longer over time, but with pang of each hoofstep, she fears the torture is self-imposed.

Is it more than she deserves?

The sounds of the palace founder as she approaches the columns marking the Tower's entrance.  Two unicorn guards stiffen at the sight of her, and she spares them one last smile.  Between them lurks a gleaming cart with soup, salad and bread.  Trust Cream Stock to respond to a request for early lunch with service even better than usual.  She does not deserve this, but ignoring such devotion does her little ponies ill.  She samples the soup, hot and savory, and lifts the buttered bread to bring with her.

"Please, enjoy yourselves."

Leaving the cart and guards behind, she enters the Tower and closes the door.

Even the emptiest halls of the palace ring with the clatters of far-off hoofsteps, the hush of distant conversation, the movement of remote materials.  Here, there is nothing but color and silence.  Flocks of birds fly mutely past.  An explosion in the city would sound as the merest puff of breath.  Her hooves hush against the rug.  Nothing can shield her from the Tower and its alabaster glare.

The stuffs the bread down her throat to fortify herself and regrets that she cannot savor it.  "You sent for me.  Here I am."

Her voice is but a pebble in an ocean of silence.  It presses against her.

The windows at the hallway entrance are familiar if out of place.  Judging by their positions, it would have been the sinking of Marelantis which moved to the library.  Having oriented herself, she counts the steps as she walks to the far end.  There are six more than before.

"What do you want this time?"

The walls remain impassive; she must search for her answers.  To her right is the scene from her dream: the moon in its full glory, the Mare judging her, and four tiny sparkles at the cardinal directions.  She hesitates before moving closer to examine those sparkles: stars, drawing near the moon.  Their meaning is lost upon her.

"Is it my sister?  Is something happening to her?"

All she can hear is her heartbeat and breathing, both accelerated, and the booming silence.

"Stop this!" She circles, stomping her hooves.  "Haven't I always done what you asked?  For once, can you not just tell me what it is you need!"

No, comes the unbidden rebuttal, she hasn't always done what was asked.  Four hundred and thirty-three years ago, she thought she could break free from this prison, self-imposed though it might be.  Trottawa paid the price for her hubris in daring to tempt fate.  She was denied sleep for two weeks.  Never again would she defy the windows, but never did their meanings clarify.  The Marelantians lost to her slow action still visited her dreams now and then.

"Please..."

Eyes closed, she leans forward, and strikes her head against the wall.  How she missed this difference, she doesn't know, but there stands a door with gold inlays, imposed upon the Tower's far end.  Colorful shaped gems adorn the edges, raised like buttons but inert when she presses them.  The apex holds a mute white relief of an alicorn, in the simplified style of an Equestria ages past.  In the door's center, a sunburst motif rests at the intersection of six triangles of purple, lavender and pink.  At her gaze, the sunburst reveals a hole in its center.

She grits her teeth.  She swallows.  She steps forward and peers into the hole.  Nothing.

"I don't understand.  I [i]never[/i] understand."

A blue light inside the hole pulses once.  It seems large enough around to accommodate her horn.  Despite her clear plan of action, her stomach remains leaden, sunken to the level of her hooves.  With a deep breath, she lowers her head, placing the tip of her horn into the hole as though it were as everyday an occurrence as raising the sun, and steps forward.

Magic surges through her, but beyond the faint tingle along the hairs of her coat, it passes and leaves her unharmed.  The door emits that blue light once more and parts in the middle.

There must be a blue sun stored in the vault beyond, so all-consuming is the light.  She raises a leg to shield her eyes and the light slowly dims to a manageable level.  For the first time since the Tower rose above the streets of the city bearing its name, she allows herself the momentary hope that it does not hate her, that it wants to help her but is limited in its methods.  Perhaps it is a victim of fate as much as she, and they are united in their frustration at one another.

Within the vault sits a pedestal bearing a single bright star that reminds her of a mentor long past.  Atop it rests a box, blue as a late sunset, gilded and encrusted with gems.  She looks behind herself, a thief checking for witnesses, and takes the box in her magic.  Despite its keyhole, it opens readily.

To nothing.

The interior is pale mauve and holds no answers to the question of its purpose.  A door that only she could unlock in the most secure tower of Canterlot Castle, and all it holds is an empty box?

Anger brims along her mouth, but she chokes it back.  It has never served her in the past and will not serve her now.  She sets the box back on its perch, closes the lid, and steps out of the light.  The doors slide closed.

"What's the connection?" she asks through her teeth, though she knows no answer is forthcoming.  Her eyes close; she holds on to the notion that she is not the only one frustrated by this situation for it is the one thing that can succor her.

There is one spot she has not looked, for gazing too long at the Tower's additions never fails to discomfit her.  Opposite the window depicting the moon is a scene from Canterlot the city.  It is immediately familiar: one of the lecture halls of her School, the view split between exterior and interior.  Outside, a purple head has broken through the roof of the tower.  Within is a purple filly, her eyes milky white, her face crying in mute pain, surrounded by a magical field.

Her blood runs cold as she recalls the morning's itinerary.

"Is this happening today?" She need not look at the sun to know its position in the sky.  "Is it happening [i]now[/i]?"

Magic surges are rare, but in a unicorn talented enough just to merit an entrance exam to her School, they can be catastrophic.  Her mind whirls: the headmaster's reports!  This year's exam involves dragon eggs!  It is too clear what will happen, if it hasn't happened already.

She is already at the mouth of the hallway when a muffled boom shakes the tower.  All the little pieces of colored glass rattle in their housings, a symphony of ice crystal chimes.  It's the loudest sound she has ever heard in the Tower.  Outside, a distant rainbow shockwave creeps through the sky.  This is among the few experiences in her life she can count with a number so low as two.  She pauses to marvel at it, but can spare merely a second.

The guards cry out in alarm as she bursts from the door, scattering leftover salad across the floor.  She makes for the nearest window, depicting the shattering of a mirror, and crashes through it, spreading her wings.

Out from the Palace, down from the mountain, over the city, she flies, and the Tower that shares their names silently watches.  There will be time enough later to puzzle out the connection between moon, door and box.  Now, her only thought is swiftness and to save a little filly from suffering the fate of the Marelanteans.