The shooting star streaked through the pre-dawn sky, its trail of brilliant light illuminating the lonely mountainside, and for a few moments the shadows of trees swept across the ground.

The filly huddled under one of Celestia's wings gasped, then stretched out one hoof toward the display. "It's so beautiful," she whispered.

Celestia smiled, her eyes straying upward to the shadow-mottled moon as the light faded. "It is."

As the last glow of the stellar filament faded, the purple unicorn nuzzled into Celestia's shoulder. "Thank you, Princess. For everything."

Celestia laughed gently. "It is I who should be thanking you, my faithful student. I've placed a lot of weight on your shoulders." She stared at the moon, and her voice softened. "I didn't dare believe in the prophecies, not until Harmony brought you to me. I couldn't bear the thought of failing my sister again."

Wind rustled in the trees, and for a moment Celestia wondered if she'd said too much. The silence had stretched out almost to the point of discomfort when the filly spoke again. "Do you really think I'm the one who will do it?"

Celestia uncurled her wing from her protege's back, touching a feather to one starburst Mark. "I know you will, my faithful student. 'The stars shall aid in her escape.' Moreover, it's already clear you're the best mage of your generation. You're also the most determined, ethical, and courageous pony I've ever taught, and I don't say that lightly." She curled her neck to the unicorn's. "Just believe in yourself, and keep being you."

The unicorn tensed for a moment at the touch, but quickly nestled closer in against Celestia's body, neck curling in fiercely. "I'll make you proud of me, Princess. I promise."

Celestia filled her lungs with sweet mountain air, closing her eyes and wrapping her wing back around her student. "Thank you, Morning Star."



"We literally have nothing left to teach her," said Rune Circle, tapping his pointer to a set of scrolls on the wall. "Three of her periods this semester are spent as a teacher's aide. The other three are spent with a rotating army of the world's best tutors, whose travel expenses alone are half of our budget. She's accumulated so many credits that Canterlot University is using her transcript totals as the foundation for a new branch of mathematics. Any sane director would have graduated her two years ago. Even I have reached my limit."

Farsight slammed her hoof on the table. "Would you get it through your thick skull that it's not about learning, it's about peer group socialization! She'll need friends for the other Elements, and without proper exposure to a broad cross-section of Equestria—"

"Not this again! What kind of ivory-tower hornhead does it take to think you can pick friendships like market vegetables? She needs intellectual peers, or she'll never find a reason to connect with them."

"She doesn't have intellectual peers," Letter Grade cut in, "and if you send her to us, all you do is replace her known classmates with a bunch of undergraduates who will be uncomfortable with a teenage prodigy."

"As opposed to teenagers uncomfortable with—"

Celestia cleared her throat. Silence descended around the conference table.

"I've already cost her enough of her childhood," Celestia said. "Mister Circle, does she seem happy there?"

"Well…yes, Your Highness."

"Then she stays. Make certain you continue to assign her teacher's aide duties, though—she's confided to me that she has grown to like the responsibility, and the students she tutors tell me they appreciate her help." She shifted her gaze. "Captain Overwatch, how goes the reclamation of the old castle?"

The armor-clad pegasus saluted. "Our earth-pony brigade completed the canal to the nearby chasm. The bog is almost fully drained, and we project the hydras should abandon their nests within six months. However—with respect, Highness—recovering the other Elements would be a trivial fraction of the effort if you were to use the Element of Magic to pinpoint the location of the five within the ruins."

Celestia shook her head. "We have the time and horsepower for the search. We don't have another Element of Magic if something were to happen when we took it into the Everfree. I will keep your suggestion under advisement, but short of an emergency, the Element stays under ward in my tower."

"Understood, Highness."

Celestia turned to the next pony around the table. "Miss Farsight, I believe you have a six-month followup on Morning Star's first exposure to dark magic?"

Farsight sat up a little straighter. "Yes, Princess. We've been monitoring closely since the fear-dreams we discussed at the two-month mark. Those receded quickly, and have not returned despite subsequent exposures. Her composure remains high across every psychological measure, and her altruism has actually increased. If that counts as corruption, then two-thirds of Equestria is Nightmare sleeper agents."

Celestia smiled. "I'd expect no less of her, but that's wonderful to hear. Even if the Nightmare returns at full power, she'll have the tools to defend herself…and with that broad a grasp of magic, after Luna returns to us, I don't doubt Morning Star has the qualities to ascend to join us. What do you think we should teach her next?"

"I'm afraid Rune Circle wasn't far wrong," Farsight said, casting a grudging glance across the table. "She's quickly reaching the point at which she surpasses the knowledge we can offer, and all we can do is help her turn knowledge into experience. Or point her at the old masters. We may have to give her Star Swirl's notes on time travel simply to keep her occupied."

Celestia's laughter rang like a bell-tower. "You, too? Just yesterday, she asked me what she still had left to learn. Why, I wouldn't be surpri—"

Her thought died mid-word as her head, and the head of every unicorn in the room, all swiveled in unison toward the center of the castle.

Then the others felt it, too—a prickling across the skin, a low rumble vibrating the floor underhoof—and the chaos began. The daylight around the edge of the curtains took on an eerie magenta pallor. Letter Grade, who had already bucked his chair away and was galloping toward the exit, yelped and ducked as Overwatch rocketed past his shoulder, slamming the door open with a body-blow. Rune Circle was charging a spell, and Farsight was throwing the curtains open, when Celestia disappeared with a flash of gold.

As she reoriented, a hundred meters straight up, the air itself began screaming with thaumic feedback. A second sun was shining in her eyes, so bright and so near that she had to shield her eyes with a leg. What's happening? she thought, then panic gripped her: Harmonic cascade. She'd only felt that magic a hoofful of times before, and only on the delivering end, but it was unmistakeable. No oh no the Element of—



After two stone watchtowers and an armory broke her fall, Princess Celestia got back up.

Two hundred and thirty-seven ponies didn't.

Exactly one of them was found at the epicenter, atop the rubble that had been the base of Celestia's tower. Despite that, what was left of Morning Star was almost recognizable. Almost.

Her shield had almost held. Almost.

---

Celestia was staring at the dark eastern horizon, flat in her bed, when there was a knock on her door. A second knock, louder and more urgent. She said nothing. There was the rattle of keys, the clunk of the lock, and a young, long-moustached stallion wearing a smart red coat walked in.

"Ah. Good morning, Princess," he said.

She didn't answer.

He cleared his throat. "Or…ah. Not-good morning. Rather more so the latter. However, and unfortunately, we must all get up anyhow."

Silence.

She heard the soft pad of hooves on carpet. The champagne-colored unicorn walked into her field of view and sat down on the carpet by her bed, his back to her, staring out the same window.

"I hope you can forgive my familiarity, Your Majesty," he said, "but I'm a little bit terrified right now. Is that a contradiction in terms? Perhaps it is; I'm an event planner, not a grammarian. What I mean is, I'm too scared to know the correct thing to say, and not scared enough to shut up. Should I start with introductions? We've met, but I expect you don't remember me. My name is Kibitz. I'm currently taking over for Major Domo, who was last seen near your tower before…ah." His torrent of words faltered for a moment, and Celestia saw the muscles of his neck tighten in a swallow. "Before it happened."

Celestia let out a long sigh. Kibitz froze. His posture gradually thawed as the room receded into silence.

"You might think an apprentice scheduler would be an odd choice for promotion to seneschal, but the fact is that I'm the highest-ranking surviving member of your personal staff," Kibitz said, still pointedly staring out the window. Celestia noticed he was trembling. "Ah. I don't know whose job it was to wake you up, but it seems to be mine now. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong. I don't even know if my title means anything any more. You've locked yourself in your bedroom since moonrise, and a castle full of panicking ponies are trying to organize themselves into chains of command without you. I hope I can walk out of here with something to tell them."

"Hope," Celestia said. "Starswirl said never to give up hope."

There was an entirely different sort of silence for a moment or two. "Pardon?" Kibitz finally said.

"He traveled to the future, once upon a time. For decades afterward, I begged him for details, and for decades he refused. Finally, on his deathbed, he called me to his side. He said that I would come to know grief I couldn't imagine, but that a shining star would appear to light my darkest moment." Celestia rolled onto her side, huddling in an alicorn-sized ball. "I waited nine hundred and seventy-five years for that star, Kibitz. Then, finally, finally, I found her. And now she's gone, and the Element of Magic with her…and I don't even know why, and I don't think I ever will."

Kibitz thought.

"Have you considered," he said, "that Starswirl was right?"

Celestia balled further up.

Over her shoulder, she heard the rustle of clothing as Kibitz turned around, and felt the pressure of a hoof on her mattress. "We all lost friends yesterday, Your Majesty. One was the stallion who had mentored me since I came out of diapers. It was duty which got me out of bed this morning, but neither you nor I nor Equestria can live on duty alone. We all need some hope right now…and the sunrise is a promise that, no matter what might befall us, life goes on."

After several seconds, Celestia uncurled somewhat. "Have you considered speechwriting, Mister Kibitz?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Your Majesty. Not until daybreak, at least."

"One hour," Celestia said. "Give me that. Give her that. Even if she betrayed us, she earned that much."

Kibitz cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, if word around the castle is anything to go by, I don't believe that would be a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Maj—ah, Captain Lightning was convinced that if word of the true nature of the explosion were to get out, it could create a threat without precedent."

Celestia thought of one particular statue in the garden. "He's not wrong, but I don't see what that has to do with the sunrise."

"Ah…well…to deflect suspicion, he announced that the explosion was an assassination attempt. The Diplomatic Corps went ballistic, but Lightning pulled rank, and there was nopony to tell him no."

Celestia shifted a hoof to the bridge of her nose.

"As such, Silver Tongue told me that if there's any disruption in the celestial schedule, the Gryphon Imperium will take it as a sign that the hated Sun-Queen is not so immortal as she pretends, and that a war could end her where her other enemies failed."

Celestia turned her head, meeting Kibitz's earnest stare for the first time, then let out a mirthless laugh. "It never ends, does it?"

"I hope not, Your Highness," Kibitz said. "I don't much fancy the alternative."



It was raining a week later when Celestia went back to the graveyard alone. She hadn't ordered a storm, but in hindsight she realized she'd waited for one.

The grave was a simple tablet of Canterlot marble. MORNING STAR, 948-965. Celestia had practically begged her former student's parents to let the crown provide something more fitting of her legacy, but they'd heard the whisper campaigns about where the body had been discovered, and were resolute in their desire to draw as little attention as possible to their daughter's assumed role in the tragedy. Celestia couldn't fault that, but it was a twist of the knife nonetheless.

She stared silently at the grave, the rain gradually plastering her mane to her neck. There was nothing worth saying, only questions that the stone couldn't answer. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up, feeling the raindrops streak down her cheeks.

A throat gently cleared behind her. She opened her eyes and glanced back. Kibitz had swapped out his typical suit for a raincoat, but still looked half-drenched.

"I hope I'm not intruding, Your Majesty," he said. "Seeing how you looked, I couldn't just leave."

Celestia nodded, then turned back to the grave, motioning him forward with a wingjoint. "Thank you."

She heard the soft squish of hooves in mud, and he appeared at the edge of her vision. "I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

"Me, too," Celestia said. "For all of them."

They stared in silence. Thunder rolled in the far distance.

"Who were you here to visit?" Celestia said.

"Major Domo." Kibitz took off his glasses and wiped off the rain with a soggy kerchief. "After everything he did for me, I never even got to say goodbye."

"I'm afraid my pain is a little more selfish," she said. "I keep wondering how I failed her."

"From everything I've heard, you didn't."

Celestia stared down at her muddy forehooves. "I appreciate that, but that's not how my heart feels. I should have seen the signs. I should have been kinder, or sterner, or more honest, or less. Maybe if I hadn't placed the burden of Luna's fate on her back so early on, she wouldn't have had a reason to access the Element of Magic. Maybe if I had allowed the Element of Magic to be taken to the Everfree, she wouldn't have had access to it until I realized her intentions. Maybe if I hadn't tried to train her in defense against dark magic, the idea to…do whatever she did…wouldn't have occurred to her." She let out a long sigh. "You're right, of course. Those thoughts are phantoms, cruel and unfair. However, realizing how false they are doesn't make them leave me alone."

Kibitz nodded. Another thunderbolt, much closer, rumbled through the sky.

"We should go inside before the weather turns, Your Majesty," he said. "Perhaps I can make you some tea. In the past week, I've very nearly learned how to operate a tea-kettle."

Celestia couldn't quite hold back a laugh. "Thank you, Kibitz."

They turned to leave just as the wind shifted. A soft sobbing reached Celestia's ears, and her eyes picked out a small form huddled over a nondescript grave in the distance. Her eyebrows raised.

"Please get that tea started," she said, veering away. "I'll meet you inside."

Her heart quickened as she approached and the filly's form further resolved. It was like staring at a ghost. The pelt was lighter, yes—as if somepony had mixed pink into Morning Star's orchid—and the hair was a sopping mass of blue-and-purple instead of Morning Star's cheerful frizz, but the sight of the teenaged unicorn filly nevertheless sent an odd tightness through Celestia's chest. The Cutie Mark even looked similar—a shooting star rather than a shining one, yes, but…

Celestia lowered herself to the muddy ground alongside the filly, heart pounding. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She sharply inhaled mid-sob, then scrambled back, spluttering and coughing. Celestia winced, but stayed still. The filly looked at her wide-eyed, swallowed, then shuffled back to her spot over the grave…no, the pair of graves.

Celestia's eyes flicked over the names she didn't recognize, then the dates, and around the empty cemetery. "Your parents?"

The filly nodded, lower jaw quivering, and said something unintelligible.

"Pardon?"

She swallowed and tried again. "Why did they have to die?"

Celestia was suddenly aware of how cold and itchy the mud felt against her belly. "There's no answer I can give you that will make things better," she said, putting all of her centuries of love and empathy and sorrow into her voice. "I'm sorry."

The filly nodded, then sank to the ground, closing her eyes and resting her cheek on the muddy earth.

Celestia's eyes strayed back to the Mark on the filly's flanks. She shouldn't. She felt so dirty. But for Luna's sake…

"Not even a princess can change the past," she said, risking the touch of a hoof to the filly's shoulder. "However, as a wise pony once told me, each sunrise is a promise that life goes on. That's not much, but after all the friends I buried, it's all I've got myself. That, and memories. If you'd like to get out of the rain—" and with timing she couldn't have matched if she'd tried to arrange it herself, lightning flashed overhead and thunder boomed around the cemetery—"perhaps we can sit down for some tea and talk about the good times we had with the ones we lost?"

The filly sniffled, turned pleading eyes upward, and wiped her nose on her leg. "I. Um. Okay."

Celestia stood, and offered her a hoof. "I didn't quite catch your name, my little pony?"

The filly stood. "St…Starlight Glimmer."



Celestia's heart sank into her gut and congealed into a thick, tarry mass. She hadn't been certain what to expect when she finally worked up the nerve to speak to her faithful student about Luna and the prophecies, but she certainly hadn't expected this. The young mare's eyes, for once, didn't remind her of Morning Star—their fierce frost reminded her of Luna, ten centuries ago, on the eve of war.

"Starlight," she said, gentle and conciliatory, worry creasing her tone. "Please. Speak to me."

Starlight stared daggers into Celestia's heart, then whirled and paced to the window of the reconstructed tower. "Oh," she said. "I see."

"You see what?" Celestia said, hoping that she was keeping her rising panic out of her tone. Being a master of self-control only got you so far when the emotion was so unfamiliar. "I don't understand, my faithful student, and I need your help. Luna's a good pony, but she's trapped—"

Starlight suddenly whirled, lashing out with a hoof at a floral vase on the window-ledge. It shot past Celestia, and she heard it shatter on the rear wall. "Better than my parents?" Starlight shouted.

Oh, Celestia thought, the pieces falling together. Oh dear.

Starlight jabbed a hoof forward, her eyes filling with tears, and stalked toward Celestia. "You don't think I heard about Morning Star?" she said, voice quiet and quivering like an unsprung trap. "Now the truth comes out. These Elements of Harmony you mention…she was trying to use them, wasn't she?"

Celestia froze, and words fled her tongue. "I…she…" She stifled her emotions with every ounce of her alicorn willpower, and looked Starlight in the eye. "I can't be certain. She got ahold of the Element of Magic without my permission, and something terrible happened—nopony knows what."

"But she wouldn't have been there if you hadn't been trying to rescue your sister," Starlight said, even quieter and sharper, "would she?"

Celestia closed her eyes.

Starlight's incoherent scream dissolved into an explosion of sound and vertigo and ocular artifacts as another vase smashed into Celestia's head. A third shattered on the wall above her, raining pottery and dirt. Celestia crumpled to the floor beside her bed, hearing books and metal plates and Philomena's perch ricochet off the wall nearby. The door slammed open and hooves stampeded in, followed by the thunderous smash of a hurtled bookshelf and a chorus of grunts and cries of pain.

Celestia lit her horn, encasing the far side of the room in a magical bubble, then sat up, brushing dirt off her face. A table bounced off the inside of her shield. "Guards, stand down."

Lieutenant Forward March blinked, looking back and forth between Celestia and the screaming, raging unicorn. "But—"

"Send a pegasus to summon the maids, then notify the shift commander that the tower post will be temporarily unstationed, and go take forty-five minutes paid leave, saying nothing of this to anypony. That's a royal order."

He stiffened, saluted, and backed away. "Yes, Majesty."

Celestia turned back to the unicorn in the bubble. "I'm going to release you now, Starlight. I certainly understand your anger, and I will not demean our relationship with an order, but I would take it as a kindness if you would calm down long enough for us to speak."

Starlight lifted her hooves and stomped them against the near wall of the shield. "Go…to…Tartarus," she hissed through clenched teeth, her cheeks streaked with tears. "How dare you, 'Teacher.' Redemption for the princesses, and early graves for the common ponies who believe in them."

Celestia released the spell, and Starlight landed unevenly, crouching into a battle posture.

"It's not like that," Celestia said.

"Tell that to my parents."

Frustration flared inside Celestia. "Starlight, I've buried hundreds of generations of ponies. No death is fair. But if you think one tragedy excuses the perpetuation of another…" She blinked several times, then laughed bitterly. "That's exactly your point, isn't it."

Starlight glared, eyes cold, legs trembling.

"Nothing can excuse what happened, Starlight. I'm sorry for that. But I can't be sorry for wanting to correct the wrong I did to Luna."

"Then you're a monster."

Celestia matched stares with Starlight for several moments, then sighed and gestured toward the door with a wing. "I don't think there's anything left to discuss. If you will leave peacefully, I will see to it that nopony stops you. Your years of tutelage should serve you well in pony society. If you ever change your mind, my door is open to you."

Starlight spat on the floor. "And why should I walk away from the one responsible for my parents' deaths, rather than tearing you down and building a fair world on the corpse of your empire?"

"Because revenge won't bring them back. Because you're afraid of me, or you would have already attacked. And, most importantly: because Starswirl the Bearded once looked into my eyes and told me never to give up hope." She looked calmly into Starlight's eyes. "Do you believe him? Because if you think hope is only for princesses—that his advice doesn't also apply to you—then you've just conceded I am special."

Starlight's mouth opened, lips curled back. She blinked several times. Her eyes widened. Then, without a word, she galloped out the door.

Celestia watched her go, muzzle neutral. Then, after the echoes of the hoofsteps on her stairs faded away, she took a step back against the wall, breathing raggedly.

She sank to the floor, and sobbed.

---

Celestia stared at the blank scroll in front of her, then glanced around the garden again. Still empty. It was a beautiful summer day, and sightseers were out in force, but whenever she needed some time alone, the alcove behind the moon-roses always coincidentally became deserted. Kibitz was wonderful that way.

She picked up her quill, took a deep breath, and began to write.

My beloved sister,

She set the quill down, between the scroll and the cup of tea she'd brought with her, and paced around the table. So much to say.

I've failed you. I'm sorry.

That was a start.

The prophecies told me how to break the Nightmare's hold on you. I did all I could to ensure that you would be freed as you returned to Equestria, but I have come to accept

The quill paused.

She hadn't thought it would hurt this much. Her decades of star-flanked students—who never measured up, even if their tragedy had never quite matched her first two—had given her plenty of experience with failure, and she had thought she had made her peace with the idea. But to write it was to make it final, in a way it had never before been. She set down the feather and, for several minutes, sobbed softly into the crook of her foreleg.

Then she picked the quill back up, dipped it in ink, and continued.

…come to accept that it will not happen that way. I will fight you, as I must, on behalf of the lives that eternal night would destroy. I might even win. Regardless, you will suffer even further, and my darkest moment will grow darker and darker still, and it will all be my fault, as it has been from the beginning.

Celestia chewed the end of the feather, contemplating the letter, and added:

Starswirl said never to give up hope, but it is a different sort of hope which sustains me today. I hope tha☁

The tip of her quill snapped against the table as light flashed from behind her and an echoing boom assaulted her ears. An expanding circular wave of rainbow light rolled through the sky overhead.

The sizzle and hum of arcing electricity followed it, and the edges of Celestia's mane began to writhe wildly in the charged air. She lifted her head, looking behind her at the white towers of the School for Gifted Unicorns, just in time to see a dragon's head explode out from the roof.

She stood speechless for a moment.

Then her muzzle curled into a bitter smile.

With a thought, she set the scroll afire. She waited only long enough to watch it burn into ash before she charged her horn and teleported away.