The flight to Ponyville took approximately thirty minutes. Perhaps not coincidentally, that was almost exactly as long as it took for Twilight's good mood to evaporate completely. She'd read over Celestia's instructions regarding the Celebration the night before and found them incredibly vague, of course, but assumed the townsponies could flesh out the details themselves and leave her plenty of time to investigate. Now, looking out at the chaotic sprawl of Trotter-style thatched roofs slowly resolving itself on the horizon, the young scholar wasn't nearly as convinced.
She'd also been initially surprised when Celestia had requisitioned a Guard air chariot for her personal transport- she'd been expecting to have to hire a cart from her personal stipend, or be sent off to the public rail system. Initially she'd been grateful, but the Princess wielded passive-aggressive stagecraft like a fine rapier and minutes into her flight the vehicle had begun to feel far too large for Twilight's stature. No doubt Celestia knew that Twilight would realize this was intended to communicate displeasure with her work, and know that Twilight would know she knew, and on and on in an infinite regress that somehow always kept the alicorn one step ahead. The chariot was a fractal, physically assembled in pearl inlays and enchanted gold. It had thus been a quiet trip, with Spike's few attempts to clarify a section of the research notes he was annotating having received vague, noncommittal answers. He knew when to keep his distance, and went over his data in silence after that.
The buildings -'huts'? No, that sounded demeaning. 'Cottages.' They were cottages.- enlarged themselves with surprising speed, and with nary a bump Twilight and Spike found themselves on the ground once again.
"Good flying, soldier," Twilight said, and the pegasus corporal in front of her favored her with the best approximation of a curt nod as was possible when strapped into a drover's harness and twisted around a hundred and eighty degrees. That was one good thing about commissioning military transport, at least- Twilight didn't need to figure out how much to tip. The expected scaling factor seemed to fluctuate wildly between fifteen and thirty percent with no clear rhyme or reason, and the behavioral economics papers covering the subject she had found universally to sport serious methodological flaws.
Evidently Ponyville didn't receive a great deal of air traffic, as the soldier had been forced to land in a vacant patch of grass which happened to be mostly flat. As she stepped out of the chariot Twilight could already see equine shapes emerging from the nearest cottages, no doubt to gawk at the new visitor; foremost among them was a pudgy, bubblegum-pink Earth Pony mare with an unkempt mane and the sort of smile that in Twilight's experience immediately presaged either a sales pitch, a lesson on being Good Colts And Fillies, or some form of severe cataleptic seizure. While the rest of the onlookers kept at a reasonable distance she barreled right on ahead and introduced herself in a high, painfully earnest voice. "Hey, are you Twilight Sparkle? I'm Pinkie Pie! The Mayor asked me to show you around Ponyville and make sure you had everything you needed!"
"That's, umm, great, but I'm on kind of a tight schedule so if you could just dispense with the tour and get us directly to the Town Hall I'd really appreciate it."
"I figured you'd want to meet up with the Mayor first thing and check out Ponyville later, though, so I can just take you right there," the Earth Pony said near-simultaneously.
"… Huh." Twilight hadn't been expecting that. "Well, Spike, we'd… better get going, then!"
The young drake made his presence known by climbing out of the chariot, and Pinkie gave him a friendly wave but nothing more. Twilight thought that was surprisingly tactful of her; ponies in Canterlot who met her assistant for the first time tended to gawk and ask incredibly stupid questions. Spike had even offered to remain back at the Observatory during last night's preparations, but Twilight wouldn't hear of it. She was going to need his help before all of this was over.
"I'll see if I can round up somepony to take your luggage… err, well, your saddlebags at least?"
"That won't be necessary," Twilight cut her off. She preferred to keep her research notes and significant reserve of bits close at hoof, and aside from basic toiletries had packed precious little else anyway. Her Academy stipend wasn't large, but she spent even less of it day-to-day and had been confident that the coin she'd saved would be more than enough to purchase any equipment or labor she wound up needing on-site. Now, however, she was starting to have her doubts that proper excavating tools would even be available out here.
"Okie-dokie!" Pinkie Pie seemed completely unfazed, and turned to leave with the Canterlot party following wordlessly behind. The field soon narrowed to a rough dirt track as the homes surrounding it grew closer together and somewhat more expansive; a few even adding a second story. Many of them had been done up festively in garlands of flowers and multicolored banners, a trend which redoubled itself once the track opened up again into a sort of market square. A few ponies in distinctly artisanal tool-harnesses were busy affixing wings, a horn, and yellow-painted regalia to a whitewashed statue of an Earth Pony mare that seemed to be the central fixture of the place, and tents were already being erected offering any number of amusements. The Summer Sun Celebration was as much a religious holiday as a civic one- while it was held directly holy only by the cult of the Unconquered Sun largely confined to the Equestrian military and civil service, most of the other major temples paid some obeisance -and much of the assembled finery bore motifs of Gaia, the Four Winds, and the All-Seeing Eye.
Not long after her admission to the Academy Twilight herself had fallen in with a group of gnostics who held that the ancient magus Starswirl the Bearded had discovered a method of spiritual apotheosis and hidden it away in his writings, and as a result had little interest herself in the common religions of the Three Tribes. In fact, it had been ages since she'd attended any sort of meeting with the other exigietics, either- she just didn't have enough time away from her official studies. She supposed, though, that the artistic expression of the Ponyville natives could be considered charmingly quaint, at least.
As soon as they crossed into the square the trio were immediately set upon by a fresh new swarm of onlookers, foremost among them a sky-blue pegasus mare with a fashionably curled manecut. "Hey, are you from Canterlot?" she asked, interposing herself directly in Twilight's path, "My cousin in the Army wrote me that his unit's gearing up for an airship flight, and now it's in all the papers! Is Equestria really sending troops to clear the smugglers out of Kluge Town?"
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Twilight admonished, trying in vain to find an exit vector amid the suddenly close-packed crowd, "I'm just part of the General Staff." In Canterlot, simply mentioning her department was typically enough to deflect any untoward interest.
Apparently, however. Ponyville had a different understanding of Ministerial prestige. "And right after that big electrum shipment from Abyssinia hit the docks in Manehattan," muttered another pegasus, this one a dark gray stallion, "Quite the coincidence, innit?!"
"I think a coincidence is exactly what it sounds like," Twilight continued, "There's no way Celestia could plan and organize a major military action like that so quickly-"
"That's exactly what an agent of the Crown would say, in'it?!" the stallion demanded, earning him more than a few odd looks from the other townsponies.
"Uhh, sure, yeah, whatever you say…" Twilight backed away, and a shove from Spike managed to properly orient her to a less-populated portion of the market.
"I don't care what they say about the corruption in Canterlot," the blue pegasus was continuing just within earshot, "I don't think I've ever had the chance to vote against Mayor Mare…"
"You'll have to take that up with the Election Board, I'm just here for the Festival!" Twilight shouted back, then pulled up short having almost trod over a pair of fillies who both gazed up at her in awe.
"Wow, is that a tame dragon?" the one on the left- an orange-and-purple pegasus- asked.
"Can it talk?" continued the curly-maned white unicorn next to her.
"No, that would be ridiculous," Spike snapped, earning a snicker from Pinkie Pie and a glare from Twilight.
"Do you know what's Celestia's favorite type of flower?" asked a cream-and-red Earth Pony from behind a market stall.
"What about her favorite type of cake?" cut in a yellow stallion in a baker's apron.
"Yeah, sure, OK," Twilight said and kept walking, locked onto Pinkie Pie's highly visible mane.
"That doesn't answer my-"
"Perfect, sounds good, see you at the Celebration!" Twilight nodded approvingly and ducked through the mahogany doors of the large, cylindrical structure the placard outside identified as Ponyville Town Hall. Spike followed a moment later and shut it behind him, cutting off or at least muffling the ruckus building outside. Looking through one of the large windows on either side of the lobby, she saw that Pinkie Pie was at least managing to field their questions in a somewhat organized manner.
It was a very nice lobby, all told, paradoxically much more comfortable than the one outside of the Day Court, paneled in fine hardwood and furnished with a number of low green-velvet benches. As a result it didn't take long for Twilight to catch her breath and realize that she had no idea where in the building she was supposed to go. Voices and the scent of cheap coffee were issuing from what the directory identified as a conference room and the door there was propped open; that seemed as good a place to start as any.
Inside, a quintet of ponies sat in ratty leather desk chairs around a scuffed oaken table. One of them- a tan-coated, white-maned Earth Pony in a slightly nicer chair with a nameplate in front of her simply reading 'MAYOR'- looked up when Twilight entered and motioned her forward. "You must be the inspector from Canterlot," the Mayor said, age doing little to soften a voice that was obviously meant strictly for business. "We've been expecting you. These are Councilponies Granny Smith," She waved at the ancient-looking green Earth Pony two seats to her left, "Derpy Hooves," next in line was a gray pegasus with a jagged, straw-colored mane and something… off about the way her golden eyes tracked over the papers in front of her, "Cheerilee", on the other side of the Mayor a plum-colored Earth Pony gave a friendly wave, "and Amethyst Star." The pony on the far left was a fuchsia unicorn with a bright purple mane and a stack of three-ring binders in front of her that made Twilight briefly jealous. "Esteemed Councilponies, this is Twilight Sparkle, our liaison to the Crown."
She motioned to an empty chair on the other side of the table and Twilight gratefully sat down. Then she remembered the debacle in the market square and set out to do a bit of preemptive damage control: "That makes me sound a lot more important than I am, really. I just took a job as a clerk to help pay my way through magic school." That wasn't technically a lie, at least for certain definitions of 'clerk', 'pay', and 'magic school'. Twilight had, in fact, received her Doctorare Arcanis over two years earlier, and while her current status in the Canterlot hierarchy was somewhat ambiguous she certainly outranked most of the rest of the General Staff.
There was an open seat beside her- one of ten in total, in fact- and Spike climbed into it, realizing a bit too late that his head was barely visible above the surface. Twilight knew her assistant well enough to recognize that he was currently considering whether or not it would be simpler to just sit on the table, and she quietly shook her head no. She wanted to salvage what good impression she could here.
"I'm just not sure if Dash- uhh, Captain Dash can get the skies cleared and still have time to prepare for the Naming of the Four Winds…" the gray pegasus was saying. Her speech was odd- simple and labored, with some consonants overemphasized and some absent entirely- but the content of it was articulate and she seemed to have little trouble comprehending the complicated shipping manifest in front of her despite her clearly out-of-focus eyes. While by no means a trained physician Twilight knew enough from reading over her father's medical texts to make a tentative diagnosis of neuromotor ataxia, although whether from a congenital condition or from some injury in the pegasus's past she had no idea.
"I know it's a pegasus ceremony, but the mock-Accession is always set up early," Amethyst Star responded, "I could always send a few unicorn workers to help your crew set up the banners and such."
"Not much we can do 'bout the food prices, though," Granny Smith cut in, "least 'til exports from Apploosa finally pick back up…"
"We'll be able to make the difference up twice over in sales tax," the Mayor replied, "It's not an issue. I'm more concerned with the increase in Timberwolf sightings in the Everfree. After the local unit's been pulled in to guard Princess Celestia I worry we won't have sufficient troops to patrol the border after dark."
Anxious to head off another round of pointless reshuffling, Twilight spoke up. "I wouldn't bother, Celestia's never called on a security detail herself and always leaves the ones she's given behind as soon as she can." The young scholar had been unlucky- or, perhaps, lucky- enough to witness an assassination attempt on her patron first-hoof not long after coming to the Academy, specifically an incredibly precise cannon volley fired from a hilltop a mile away, and was fairly certain nothing physically could harm the Princess. "In fact, she likes to wander around and talk to her subjects more than anything; it's hard to say for sure but I think it bothers her when she's behind a barricade or anything like that."
"Oh, no," Cheerilee said, "that means we're going to have to reschedule the Cultural Exposition to accommodate her!"
Twilight knew that she was relatively unique among ponies in that she actually found bureaucracy to be an incredibly fascinating area of study. It was a trait she shared with her brother and which she was fairly certain had been a significant contributor to her family's rapid ascent to Celestia's patronage. Where the rest of high society might drink or take in a play, evenings often found her and Shiny sprawled out on the floor of one apartment or another surrounded by flow charts and civil codes, tracing the path of particularly important decisions through different ministries and inking in suggested improvements to the process.
That, though, had been back in Canterlot, where the engines of policy were vast and beautifully complicated things upon whose continued smooth operation the lives of literally millions of ponies depended. It was beginning to dawn on the young scholar that she had made a terrible mistake in assuming that just because the issues facing Ponyville were several orders of magnitude smaller in scope and many more orders less complex, the ponies in charge would spend any less time bickering over them.
Bored almost to tears, Twilight regarded the ceiling as the others continued on without her. It wasn't a very interesting ceiling- just plaster and a few crystal lamps hung for illumination- and her eye soon wandered to the Summer Sun bunting that had been hung between the lampshades. "Spike?" she muttered, too quietly for the others to hear, "Notice anything out of the ordinary about the banners in here?"
He followed her gaze. "Wait, are those…?"
"Yeah. I thought I was seeing things, at first." The fabric was stitched using modern techniques in the traditional holiday golds, whites, and oranges, but there was no mistaking the smooth, gently-curving lines of the depicted ponies' armor and the single, eye-like gem placed front and center in the pattern as anything other than Lunar in origin.
"Hey. Other side." Her assistant nudged her in the shoulder, and Twilight quietly twisted around to spot a white unicorn mare with an elaborately-curled purple mane slip into the conference room and carefully readjust one of the fabrics in a blue telekinetic aura. Her saddlebags bulged with other neatly-folded sections of cloth upon which similar patterns were visible.
The general historical consensus was that the last of the true supporters of the Lunar Rebellion had died out by the early 500s, and had been a shadow of their former influence for decades before that. Occasionally 'Rebels' or 'Moon Cultists' had made appearances right up until modern times and would in all likelihood continue to do so, but universally these proved to be groups of disaffected young ponies who thought that wearing too much eyeshadow and writing poetry about Nightmare Moon's gaolment within the stygian voids of tormented dissolution made them seem impressive; needless to say they bore little to no resemblance to the zealots described by Inquisitor Gold Dust, the Black-Talons, and other contemporary sources.
That said, if anywhere in modern Equestria was likely to harbor an authentic survival of the Lunar ideology when it had dissolved everywhere else, a dismal little town not two miles from the Everfree Forest was probably the most likely candidate.
That also said, inserting identifiable but completely benign Lunar imagery into decorations for the Summer Sun Celebration seemed an odd means of subversion. Twilight decided the whole affair was worthy of further investigation regardless.
Unfortunately for her, that was also when the mysterious unicorn decided to finish what she was doing and leave for parts unknown, and also when Councilmare Cheerilee decided to slide several clipboards'-worth of hoofwritten paper across the table to Twilight's position. "We're having some trouble scheduling the night's speakers and I was wondering which speech would fit best before Celestia's arrival… and, of course, if you have any edits you'd like to make please feel free..."
Under cover of giving each of the clipboards a quick once-over, Twilight swung her head back towards her assistant. "Spike," she hissed, "see if you can follow that mare and figure out where she's going."
"Got it." He slipped down from his chair and disappeared under the table. Despite his rather loud coloring, the young dragon's small stature and flexible lizard-like frame coupled with over a decade escaping curious ponies had made him surprisingly good at avoiding notice. If the others were even aware that he was no longer at the table they gave no sign, and Twilight tried her damnedest to look busy as she reviewed the boringly adequate speeches which were to be delivered two days later and the Councilponies continued discussing their plans.
"Do you think Celestia would be impressed by an exhibition on the town economy, or do you think that would be too crass…"
"Or maybe an informal honor guard made up of veterans and the militiaponies…"
"… wait, look, they're both assigned to the parade and the demonstration stalls…"
"… can have Thunderlane fill in for Roseluck at…"
"… ain't y'all worried he'll try an'…"
"… All right, that's finally settled at least. Now we're free to move on to evacuation routes…"
Dimly, Twilight registered a four-fingered claw brush her right forehoof, and slid a little lower in her chair. "What'd you find?"
"She decorated most of the building and everyone acted like she belonged there," Spike whispered, "but now she's on the move, headed out around back."
Twilight fought down panic for a moment before realizing that sending her assistant away for twenty minutes and then having him return to whisper urgently to her was in fact a perfect way to set up her exit. "Uhh, excuse me," she said, silencing Derpy Hooves in the middle of an enthusiastic scribbling session with Granny Smith, "I'm really sorry, but something urgent's come up that I need to deal with. Don't wait up on my behalf." She slipped out of the room, brushed past Pinkie Pie heading the other way, and ducked into another office filled with filing cabinets, janitorial equipment, and- most importantly for her purposes- no other ponies.
A quick mental calculation of the radius of the Town Hall later, and she winked out of existence in a globe of violet energy only to reappear, dragon in tow and only mildly singed, in an area of flat-packed earth to the rear of the building which evidently served as a crude loading zone.
True to Spike's word, the white unicorn from the conference room was in the final steps of hitching herself to a simple wooden cart containing a few other Summer-Sun-themed accouterments and a prodigious amount of empty packaging. Now that she was up close Twilight could finally get a decent look at the mystery mare, and was a bit surprised by what she saw. Her target was heavily but tastefully made-up, her coat and mane glossy with some sort of conditioner- Twilight caught the faintest scent of vanilla and beeswax. Although on the thin side she looked healthy enough and carried herself with a sort of natural grace, and Twilight suddenly felt rather uncomfortable with her well-worn canvas saddlebags and practical manecut. She wasn't sure what she had expected a survivor of the Lunar Rebellions to look like, but it wasn't this- if it wasn't for her short stature and stubby three-spiral horn, the workmare could easily pass as part of the Canterlot gentry with an uncommonly sensible budget.
She supposed that in relation to her primary objective it didn't really matter. Digging deep into her saddlebag Twilight extracted the writ authorizing her to oversee the Summer Sun Celebration as a personal agent of Princess Celestia. The document didn't actually grant her much of any power over the residents of Ponyville or for that matter any other part of Equestria; but it was written in complicated legal jargon, it shared the same format as search warrants and bills of impoundment, and Twilight doubted any of the locals here had read anything more complicated than a beer label in a good long while.
Twilight strode confidently forward brandishing the paper in her telekinesis and summoned up her best Buck Bower impression- she wouldn't say that she legitimately enjoyed the jingoistic serials that had become disturbingly popular as of late, at least not in the way their authors had intended, but she had to admit it was great fun to sit down with Spike and Shiny over a long weekend to pick apart their numerous tactical, historical, and magical inaccuracies. "Excuse me, miss, I'm Twilight Sparkle, agent of the General Operations Department, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"
The lot was empty aside from the three of them, and it occurred to Twilight that the mystery mare could take the opportunity to either flee or attempt to overpower her outright, so she quietly prepared a powerful stun spell. She had no formal combat training, it was true, but a magical prodigy didn't spend ten years living under the same roof as the current Commander of the Royal Guard without acquiring certain skills.
However, the other pony just turned, favored her with a small but nonetheless dazzling smile, and nodded. "From Canterlot? Certainly, darling! What is it you need?" What began as a slight Apploosan drawl transmuted mid-sentence into the posh accent the better class of finishing schools tended to produce and which very few of the Canterlot set bothered to retain once they came into their inheritances. Curious.
Perhaps she was just a dupe or a courier, and the Lunar materials were sourced from elsewhere. "Do you know the origin of those hangings you've been transporting?"
"Oh! Well, actually, not to brag, but I've sewn all of them myself. Is someone in Canterlot interested? I have others!"
"Well, not exactly," Spike cut in, "I was just wondering who gave you the idea to include those patterns." The banner pony gave him an odd look, but he continued, "In the Dragonlands I've never seen their like. Are these designs common in Equestria? I can't remember any in the other towns we've toured." Twilight had to admit she was impressed with Spike's verbal maneuvering, and wished she'd thought of the ruse herself. Given the accent and her general demeanor it wasn't hard to guess that the white unicorn had aspirations to move in the same circles as politicians and foreign diplomats; obviously if she'd managed to accomplish that dream she wouldn't be in Ponyville. Twilight had grown painfully familiar with the sort from Celestia's numerous political functions -back before she'd accumulated enough academic clout to stop attending, anyway- and figured that such a pony would jump at the chance to impress a dragon ambassador without recognizing the absurdity of dragons engaging in diplomacy or questioning why word of his arrival hadn't been made available beforehand. Twilight could have done without Spike's insinuation that she was some sort of attache or security officer assigned to support his fact-finding mission, however.
She supposed it didn't matter in the long run, though. "Well I'm flattered to have caught the eye of such a well-traveled dignitary," the mystery mare continued. Twilight thought she was laying it on a little thick. "These designs are based on motifs I've noticed at older historical sites around Ponyville. With so many important ponies- and dragons, it would seem -arriving for the Celebration I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate our heritage." Idly, Twilight wondered if the pony would bend down and kiss Spike's claw should he bother to extend it. "I've more work based on that motif back at my shop, should you happen to be interested."
"Yes, actually, we would like to take a look, miss…" Spike trailed off expectantly. Twilight supposed she was lucky his sibilant, utterly inequestrian speech would hopefully mask to the untrained ear his attempts to sound important and dignified.
"Rarity, darling. And... whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?"
"Just 'Spike' will do. You've already met Twilight Sparkle, my liaison with Canterlot."
As Rarity and the dragon set off back to what was presumably Ponyville's commercial district the newly-demoted arcanist fought to keep her expression neutral and motioned for Spike to fall back out of earshot with her as soon as he turned her way. "Is all of this really necessary?" she whispered.
"It got us a lead on the Lunars, didn't it? Besides, she seems friendly enough, I don't want her hauled back to Canterlot for interrogation just because she reminds you too much of Upper Crust."
"We're not here to make friends, we're here to get answers."
"They're not mutually exclusive, you know. And, honestly Twilight, I could use a break from research. See the rest of Equestria for a change, maybe." He waved a claw at the quaint storefronts on either side of them. Fortunately, Rarity's shop didn't seem to be located too close to the statue square and its mob of festival-goers. "I mean, just look at this place. It's like something off a postcard." He paused and flicked a claw against the rigid, bony plates that protruded from his conical skull and continued down his serpentine neck, "How are my spines, are they still straight?"
Twilight nodded, spotting another Lunar slit-pupilled eye incongruously superimposed over Celestia's cutie-mark on a string of hanging pennants. "Postcard? I don't know, I'm thinking more The Shadow over Bitsmouth myself."
"Oh, you mean the story where the protagonist calls in the Royal Navy to bombard the town even though the Sea-Ponies are barely seen and never themselves do anything demonstrably bad? Yes, I can see it."
"Spike?"
"Mmhmm?"
"Kindly be quiet."
Rarity's shop proved to be a good bit more modern than what Twilight was already starting to consider the 'standard' for Ponyville architecture- roughly cylindrical and featuring an actual glass storefront, she supposed it was a decent enough approximation of Canterlot Deco given the severely limited materials the tailor no doubt had available to work with out here. Spike once again took the lead as they stepped inside- a welcome respite from the afternoon sun- and the white unicorn led them past a showroom of admittedly very finely-dressed mannequins to a section of velvet curtains that blocked off the rear corner of the shop.
Once the curtains were pulled back in Rarity's blue telekinetic aura, Twilight had to admit she was impressed. The place was in equal parts a workshop and artist's studio, and the young scholar's eye roved over an incredible and neatly-organized array of dyes, lapidary's tools, fasteners, and a thousand other things she couldn't even recognize with barely-contained hunger. Magical theory and historical analysis were generally abstract quill-and-paper disciplines, and Twilight had always held a potent mixture of envy and admiration for ponies who actually spent their time making anything from fine tableware to stock alchemical reagents. The proprietor, for her part, seemed to sense this quickly enough and kept at a discreet distance as Twilight explored, and as a result the scholar decided it was only courteous to refrain from touching anything with either her hooves or telekinesis.
The Lunar inspiration was evident to a greater or lesser degree in roughly half of what Twilight found- at times it was as subtle as a preference for certain shades of purple or blue in an otherwise unremarkable selection of raw fabrics, although Rarity also seemed to have been building an entire suit of completely period-accurate Night Guard armor tucked away in one corner. Twilight had only ever seen illustrations of the equipment before, and decided to take a closer look. Even partially disassembled on a workbench there was a sort of fierce, predatory beauty to the design, all reflective purple alloy and sleek, sharp-tipped curves, although to her disappointment she saw that several of the loose plates not attached to the primary structure were dented or rusted nearly through; a few others were soaking in a tub of some sort of pungent-smelling solution evidently designed to clean them. Rarity wasn't building the armor, Twilight realized with shock, she was restoring it.
"Excuse me?" the scholar asked, then waited for Spike and the other pony to look back in her direction, "Would you mind telling me where you… acquired this?"
"Why certainly, darling! Most of this material was rescued, I guess you could say, from an old Lunar burial site on a farm outside of town. Sweet Apple Acres, it's called."
"Wait a minute, you opened up a Lunar Cairn?" The Cairns were easily the best-known and best-documented physical remainders of the Rebellions- indeed, they were the only Lunar-built structures to occasionally be found outside of what was now the protean Everfree Forest. The fallen Lunar troops were all interred in several dozen such sites -accounts couldn't agree whether Celestia had ordered them wiped out to the last mare, whether they'd committed some form of mass suicide, or if some had in fact slipped away to continue their insurrection elsewhere- and old laws intended to protect friends and family from retribution by the victorious Solars also forbid tampering with the tombs.
"Oh, firmament, no! It was open well before I came along. I… I know that the Lunar Republic did some horrible things in their day, but they poured so much beauty into everything they made." Idly, Rarity picked up a pair of what appeared to be pegasus flight goggles, half of the crumbling leather headband cut off and re-threaded with fresh material. The lenses were given an aggressive downward slant and tinted pale yellow-orange, possibly to enhance contrast in the low-light conditions the Lunars had no doubt favored. Twilight had never before seen their like. "I couldn't let all of that rust away underground; if the pony who made these was alive today I know she'd want her work shared with the rest of Equestria."
Twilight eyed the set of deployable hoof-blades soaking in a mineral bath, and hoped for Celestia's sake that Rarity didn't mean that literally. She didn't know quite what to think about the information the tailor had supplied. Nopony had bothered to even propose any kind of physical testing on the Cairns in the last thousand years because their construction was unusually well-attested in detailed, independent contemporary sources that all agreed to a high degree of precision on what they contained. However, none of those sources mentioned artifacts even remotely like what Rarity had evidently uncovered, and certainly none had ever described a Cairn being left open. She turned to Spike and gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
"Actually, if you could point us to the site I'd be very appreciative. I know the Lunar Rebellions were a traumatic time for Equestria, and I'd like to pay my respects on behalf of the Draconic nations."
Apparently the patent absurdity of Lord Torch paying respect to anypony whatsoever was lost on the tailor, as she simply nodded. "Just head due East and you can't miss it. Ask for Applejack, and tell her I sent you." Idly, she wandered back into the front of the shop. "It is a bit of a hike, so perhaps I could interest you…" She trailed off, possibly finally realizing that dragons would consider an implication of weakness to be an insult, "… interest your assistant in a pair of boots?"
"I'm sure I'll be fine."
"Traveling cloak? It's reinforced cotton, light and breathable. More durable saddlebags? I've just finished a leather attache model, if you can spare a moment I'll fit a clasp to match your cutie mark…?"
Twilight was already heading for the door. "C'mon, Spike," she whispered, "Quickly! Before she decides to dye my coat a new color!"
Whatever else Twilight might have said about Rarity, at least she gave accurate directions. All the young scholar had needed to do was head East for a little under a mile before the stone-and-thatch buildings of Ponyville fell away to reveal a neat grid of cultivated apple trees stretching off to the wooded horizon. She doubted she could have missed it if she'd tried- "Sweet Apple Acres" seemed to comprise, at a rough estimate, at least forty percent of the town's perimeter.
There was a collection of painted wooden buildings visible on a hilltop close to what Twilight supposed was the center of the property. Noting the distinctly insecure barrel-height fence, she stepped off the road and headed directly for it, Spike following a few steps behind.
"Do you think we should be on their property without permission?" the dragon whispered.
"It's not like we're stealing their crops, and obviously they aren't too worried about other ponies coming here. There's some pegasus bum sleeping in that tree over there."
"Maybe that's one of the farmers? Or a… a what are they called, a hired hoof?"
"Then why doesn't she have any equipment? Why isn't she doing anything productive? Surely they wouldn't pay ponies just to loaf around all day."
"I think I saw somepony in that outbuilding over there. D'you wanna take a look?"
The building in question turned out to be a sort of subsidiary barn -Twilight was certain there was some sort of specific agricultural name for that type of structure, but Tartarus if she knew what it was- which had been converted into a crude large-animal veterinary station. Inside, a small buttercup-yellow pegasus mare with a pale-pink mane was hard at work applying some variety of herbal compress to the bruised rear leg of a scruffy-looking dog. She was muttering quietly under her breath to the animal as she worked, but turned back to look at Twilight -startled, actually- as soon as the scholar cleared her throat.
"Excuse me? You wouldn't happen to be… Applejack, would you?"
Gaze fixed firmly on the ground at Twilight's hooves, the yellow pegasus shook her head.
"Do you know where I can find Applejack?" Twilight asked, a bit more quietly this time.
The pegasus backed up a few steps, wings clamped hard against her sides, and waved a forehoof towards a more residential-looking two-story building.
"Umm… I guess everything's in order. Keep up… the good work?"
The pegasus scampered off, dog in tow, at a slightly different angle from where she had pointed that would take her behind the farmhouse.
"Well, that was easy!" Twilight headed up the well-trodden dirt path while fishing around once again in her saddlebags for the Summer Sun memo. Bluffing had worked reasonably well on that tailor pony and she figured there wasn't any reason to keep fiddling around. Non-destructively poking around an already-open cairn technically wouldn't be illegal, but she didn't exactly have guardsponies backing her up and she'd read enough Daring Do novels -A. K. Yearling represented the historiographic and archaeological process with surprising verisimilitude, even going so far as to demonstrate an uncanny sixth sense for which competing theories would soon be vindicated or debunked by new evidence- to know that inbred locals were typically far more defensive of their historical sites than was in any way reasonable. Writ held firmly in her telekinesis, she motioned for Spike to slip to the side and out of sight and rapped her forehoof purposefully against the front door.
After a few seconds of indistinct shuffling, it opened to reveal a powerfully-built earth pony mare with a bright-orange coat and a brown leather hat- a Stilton? Hinton? Something along those lines- perched smartly atop her neatly-tied blonde mane. "C'n Ah help you?" she asked, in easily the thickest Apploosan accent Twilight had ever heard.
"Umm, yes, actually, you wouldn't happen to know where I could find a pony named Applejack, would you?"
"'bout two feet in front of you, in fact," her broad features shifted into a friendly smile, "You in town for the Festival?"
"Good. Right." Twilight paused to take a breath and brandished the document. She'd honestly been expecting three or four more cycles of searching around the property before actually meeting up with the pony she was supposed to talk to. "I'm Agent Twilight Sparkle, with the General Staff of the Royal Ministry for Arts and Antiquities. I've gotten a report that a site of archaeological value on your property's been damaged, and if you don't mind I'd like to inspect its condition and determine if any restoration work needs to be performed."
The earth pony's smile faded and her green eyes narrowed in suspicion. "C'n Ah see that paper there again, please?" Without asking she snagged the document out of Twilight's aura and began quickly scanning through it. "Funny how Canterlot figures they oughta' finally send somepony to take a look at the old Cairn a hundred an' fifty years after it got broken into… an' it's awful funny how they sent her with paperwork for talkin' to the Mayor 'bout the Summer Sun Celebration…"
Realizing that her cover was disintegrating before her eyes, Twilight opted to execute a tactical pivot-and-retreat. "Look, I'm terribly sorry for taking up your time, I'm just working for the General Staff to pay my way through school, I've been assigned some historical research, Rarity mentioned there was a cairn out here and I just wanted a look, I won't bother you again…"
She reached out once again with her telekinesis and managed to snag the now somewhat-crumpled document, pulling it towards her with surprisingly little resistance, even as Applejack grimaced and yelled "Hey, cut that out!"
In retrospect, she probably should have listened. Instead, the document was immediately followed and soon overtaken by Applejack's front hoof, which collided with Twilight's horn just above the base. The unicorn felt-more-than-heard a dull thunk resonate through her skull as her world briefly exploded into stinging, vibrating, nausea-inducing pain. Her ears registered a piteuous sort of strangled 'yeeigh' noise, and Twilight realized it was coming from her.
She had bumped her horn on a variety of surfaces before, of course, some of them quite unforgiving, and each time her response had been the entirely sensible one of spending the next few minutes on her haunches swearing a blue streak and waiting for the universe to stop spinning.
This was markedly worse.
After one particularly ignoble incident involving a stack of hardbound meteorurgy journals, a pegasus engineer with whom Twilight had been working at the time had asked her exactly what getting hit on the horn felt like to a unicorn. She'd answered honestly that the closest tribe-agnostic comparison would be undergoing invasive dental work with insufficient anesthesia- indeed, the structure of a horn and a tooth weren't too dissimilar, although the outer layers of the former were keratin instead of enamel and the whole structure could in time regrow if it was sliced or broken off.
Then again, now was probably not the best time to be thinking about horns being broken off.
Finally, the pain receded enough that Twilight could once again form coherent words. "What was that for?" she yelled.
"Ah saw your horn flarin' an'-"
"So you hit me in the head? What's wrong with you ponies?"
"Ah tapped you on the head. If Ah'd'a hit you that horn a' yours'd be halfway to Canterlot by now. Now you'd best clear off my property 'fore you do anything you'll regret later."
It was beginning to dawn on Twilight that she may have gotten herself into a potentially dangerous confrontation. It was a common piece of athletic folk-wisdom that Earth Ponies were stronger than unicorns or pegasi. In fact they were not, at least in terms of actual muscle mass.
What they were, however, was naturally attuned to the magical forces that kept solid matter solid and living things alive. A skilled earth pony geomancer could shatter mountains just by tapping them in the right place, and against that sort of power the more etherial magics of telekinesis and most direct-action unicorn spells might as well have been so much hot air. It was no coincidence that, in the endless territorial squabbles between the Unicorn Kingdoms and Greater Pegasopolis before the founding of Equestria, the most valued soldiers of the pegasus legions hadn't been pegasi at all but earth pony mercenaries.
Obviously a farmer wouldn't have that kind of magical and military training- probably just a few spells to hasten the growth of crops, ward off blights, and the like- but then again Twilight didn't either, and as she'd just been shown her odds in a direct physical confrontation could charitably be described as 'slim': tribal stereotypes aside, this particular earth pony looked STRONG enough to merit all capital letters. Spike might fare somewhat better with his claws, firebreath, and tough mineral scales, but he was also disturbingly similar in size and mass to a league bowling ball. So instead Twilight opted to de-escalate. "Look, I'm sure we can talk this out like civilized ponies-"
"Oh, you think Ah ain't civilized do you?" The earth pony made a distinctly contemptuous gesture with her hoof. "Go on… GET!"
Fearing for her safety, Twilight got.
Spike was still waiting for her, just out of sight around the corner. "Good to see you're still in one piece," he rasped, "I didn't think you'd need help so I went to have a look around. I saw you get hit but I couldn't get there in time to-"
"No, you made the right decision, we're not here to start hooffights." We'd almost certainly lose, Twilight added mentally, exhaling as the dull ache in the base of her skull finally abated. Strenuous telekinesis would probably be beyond her for the rest of the day, but the lack of any persistent pain indicated there wouldn't be need to seek medical attention. "Find anything interesting?"
"Yeah, actually, that yellow pegasus went in through the back door. I think she and Apple-whatever are talking about you."
"Great."
One of the windows above her was open, and Twilight caught the sound of hoofsteps on hardwood floorboards approaching it. She and Spike flattened themselves against the far wall as the farm pony's distinctive Apploosan drawl became audible. "… arrogant big-city egghead thinkin' she can just blow inta' this town an…"
"Oh! That must be the mare who asked me for directions. She looked tired, maybe she just didn't want to come all this way and come back empty-hoofed…" This was a new voice, quiet and slow but clear- presumably, the pegasus from the barn.
"… serves 'er right fer…"
"Applejack, sometimes desperate ponies just do things that…"
"… suppose Ah do owe Rarity a favor fer mendin' all them baskets…"
"… hope she hasn't gone too far…"
Twilight scampered away from the window and then continued on down the dirt track to the barns at a much slower pace. A moment later the front door of the farmhouse slammed open to admit both Applejack and the pegasus, wearing matching pairs of well-worn canvas saddlebags. "Hey! Twilight, was it?" the former called.
Twilight didn't have to fake her apprehension when she turned around.
"Look." Applejack removed her hat and tucked it against her chest, "Ah'm awful sorry for takin' a swing at'cha, that ain't no way to welcome a pony to town. Now, if'n you really wanna take a look at the old Cairn… well, a guide's wages 'round these parts runs 'bout ten bits an hour; Ah suppose Fluttershy an' Ah could take you."
Twilight had been worried that the farm pony might try to gouge her, but that was a surprisingly honest assessment of the average wage for odd jobs in rural Equestria- something she had picked up from an economics journal while attempting to figure out whether it was appropriate to haggle with Griffon rare-book importers. She dug through her saddlebags and telekinetically extracted a few five-bit coins, wincing slightly at the twinge of pain that accompanied them. "Here's twenty up front for your trouble. I might need a spare hoof digging and moving debris around once we get there." She'd considered mentioning that for some reason her horn wasn't feeling up to it today, but decided there was no point in potentially alienating the earth pony again. In retrospect, she probably should have just led with the bits to begin with.
The pegasus -Fluttershy- whispered something to her companion that sounded an awful lot like "See, now was that so hard?"
The earth pony accepted her payment, but then her green eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Wait, what's all this about digging?"
Fluttershy turned to look at her and blanched. "Oh! I hope you aren't going to do anything to hurt the bodies… I don't think their families would want to see that…"
"No no," the arcanist rapidly shook her head, "Look, my research is bound by nondisclosure agreements with my institution so there's things I really can't tell you about why I'm doing it," Twilight wasn't even sure if she could mention that the nondisclosure agreements in question were in the form of state-secrets regulations. The level of secrecy in which Celestia had wrapped Twilight's research was on reflection somewhat unusual. Sure, her work concerned a potential threat to all of Equestria, but other ponies at the Academy studied potential threats to all of Equestria and they at least got to inform the Commander of the Royal Guard of their progress, "but I can promise you that I won't take anything from the site, disturb the position of anything, or perform any sort of destructive scans, sampling, dowsing or divination."
"Ah figure that's fair enough." Applejack fished the bits out of Twilight's aura and slipped them into her saddlebag. "Y'all ready to get moving?"
Without waiting for an answer the earth pony set off deeper into the orchards that seemed to make up the overwhelming majority of her property, heading for a small blob of woodland that protruded from the larger, dark mass on the horizon. Twilight and Fluttershy fell into step behind her, but when Spike slipped around the corner and brought up the rear she stopped, turned around, and blinked several times in a futile attempt to clear her vision. "'Zat a dragon?" she asked.
"No, I'm a ten-year-old filly wearing a very elaborate disguise."
Twilight cringed in sympathetic embarrassment. Spike knew better than to truly antagonize any of the ponies upon whose goodwill their work now depended, nor was he likely to let slip the classified details of the same, but she'd seen enough repetitions of this conversation with the Canterlot gentry to understand just how painfully awkward it was for her assistant.
Applejack, however, merely shook her head and kept walking. "Well, if'n you're a fire breathin' dragon, I hope you understand it's nothin' personal when Ah tell you to watch your mouth 'round my property… which, you can see, is mostly made a' wood."
Twilight thought that would be the end of it, but to her surprise Fluttershy dropped back to Spike's position. "So, what's your name?" she asked in that soft, deliberate voice.
"Umm… everypony calls me Spike."
"How'd a nice dragon like you end up working with a pony like Twilight Sparkle?"
Twilight wanted to ask what exactly that was supposed to mean, but decided against doing so out loud.
"Well…" Spike shifted awkwardly and then continued all at once, "I… actually started out as another one of Twilight's experiments. The Aca- uhhh… the place Twilight's from somehow got ahold of a dragon egg a few decades ago, and she's the one who finally figured out a spell that would make it hatch. She's raised me like a little brother ever since," he stood up a little straighter and puffed out his narrow chest in pride, "Well, once the both of us were old enough. Before that, I was a personal ward of Princess Celestia!"
"You mean Celestia had executive oversight of the research initiative that raised you," Twilight corrected with speed borne from long practice. "That's not the same thing."
"Miss Sparkle, are you sure you're a mage?" Applejack cut in, eyes once again narrowing in suspicion, "'Cause nopony but a lawyer'd be so darn good at takin' ten words to explain somethin' that oughta' only take two!"
Twilight laughed at that, and only half-nervously.
"Oh my, was that… difficult?" Fluttershy asked her assistant.
"Is growing up ever not difficult?" Spike retorted, "It wasn't too bad, really. Twilight and I used to read a lot of Supermare and X-Mares comics together. At the time I thought it was just for fun but as I got older I realized she was teaching me about how to get along with ponies when I was… well, different."
Applejack turned to regard him once again. "You mean… you never even knew the names a' your ma an' pa?"
"To be honest, I don't think those dragons ever even cared if I'm alive or dead. Twilight did. She gets a little… obsessed with things sometimes-"
"Focused. I'm focused." Twilight amended
"- but she's not a bad pony."
"Ah hope you're right."
Without Twilight realizing it they had made it into the forest proper; now the thick, ancient trees thinned out to expose a grassy clearing perhaps twenty meters across. Overgrown as it was with moss and small, spiky tufts of grass, it took her a good few seconds to realize that the cairn was even there, but once she did the long, low, rectangular shape was umistakeable.
Feeling suddenly energized she trotted over, dragon in tow, and began a quick survey. Just as the texts in Canterlot described, the only aboveground portion of the structure was an arched roof of dressed stone bricks, mortared and partially covered over with loose earth- which, she supposed, technically made it a barrow and not a cairn. To Twilight's admittedly less-than-trained eye the craftsmareship seemed simple but competent enough by the standards of the late first century. At the narrow end of the structure, however, where she had been expecting a staircase to the subterranean main chamber, she instead encountered a disorderly pile of stones and rubble easily half again her height. "Spike?"
"Mmmhmm?"
"I thought she said this place was supposed to be open."
"Oh." Twilight jumped and executed a crude hind-leg pivot to find Fluttershy behind her. "The Mayor at the time had that put up to keep ponies from coming in and damaging the graves."
"Yeah," Applejack cut in, "My pa said his pa always did have no end of trouble keepin' the local schoolfillies outa' there. They'd dare each other to spend the night down in the pit, then they'd light fires and get upta' the black earth knows what all else…"
"Well I'm glad to see at least somepony's taking measures to protect the site," Twilight shook her head, "But if you'd told me ahead of time that this was there I'd've liked to bring some heavier equipment and maybe see if you could put me in touch with a few more laborers." She again considered mentioning that she could have dealt with the problem herself but for some reason wasn't feeling up to major feats of telekinesis at the moment, but in the interests of politeness decided to let the matter lie. If she was being entirely honest she'd admit that she was being a bit of a foal about what didn't even really qualify as an injury. Shining had once described to her a Royal Guard exercise where unicorn recruits were expected to telekinetically lift their pegasus and earth pony fellows over some kind of obstacle track while a drill sergeant moved back and forth behind the ranks and clubbed each in the horn at random intervals with a wooden truncheon. In comparison an intermittent headache did not, in fact, seem so bad.
"Aww, don't lose your prissy purple head over it," Applejack replied and ambled over to the sealed entrance, turning around and giving the stones -boulders, really- a few experimental shoves with her hind legs. Then, quite suddenly, she drew back and bucked two of the larger ones clean off the pile in rapid succession. Both of them sailed off into the treeline, and while it was difficult to see Twilight was fairly certain one had broken in half. Involuntarily the scholar shuddered. She was suddenly entirely convinced that the earth pony's threat to land her skull in Canterlot had not been hyperbole.
"Hmm," the farmer regarded the small gap she had created and shook her head, "Ah reckon that's 'bout all Ah can do for you right now… if'n Ah knock off any more the whole thing's liable ta' come down."
Twilight supposed she was right. What the scholar had initially assumed to be nothing more than a disorganized pile in fact functioned as a crude sort of booby-trap, with several of the smaller rocks positioned to appear loose but in fact holding up much larger ones- an impressive display of rustic engineering, to be sure. "Spike, if you wouldn't mind…?"
"On it." The small dragon slithered inside and after a few seconds of rather ominous clunking and rattling his sibilant voice rasped back from the depths. "I… think a pony could fit through here… it's only about a foot before it widens out and if you get stuck I'll push and AJ can pull."
"Well that's encouraging…" Twilight shucked off her saddlebags and left them within easy horn's-reach of the entrance, surprised by how damp the fabric had become- she'd worked up quite a sweat without realizing it. "Alright, here goes nothing."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Bit of a slow-burn on this one, but I promise things will be picking up very soon.
While it's far older than any of the cultural influences that helped shape the rest of pony society, their religious practices wound up taking a very Roman direction. I guess ponies in general would best be described as syncreatic or henotheistic in that they acknowledge the existence of multiple deities or supernatural figures, sometimes putting them in hierarchies or relationships of alliance and opposition, but typically only worship one or two each. Those cults have a strong civic component- they're heavily bound to tribal, regional, and vocational allegiances, and ponies with some kind of leadership role in those groups tend to also become local leaders of the cults (although I'd imagine there are laws in place to prevent religious participation or non-participation from influencing promotion decisions and the like).
I am not yet sure how the concept of Harmony fits into these many little religions, or for that matter if it is even considered religious as opposed to more of a philosophical or even physical concept, and I am also not yet sure if the entities worshiped are objectively real in the sense of their actions having a measurable and mechanistic effect on the world of Equis aside from just influencing pony intermediaries. I don't think we'll ever see conclusive answers to these questions, but who knows.
I'm not going to take a stand on whether Derpy's voice is the retconned or un-retconned version here, or for that matter another entirely, since that whole debate got more acrimonious and IRL-political than I care to involve myself in. Neither voice is exactly what I'd consider 'normal' and Twilight reacts accordingly; the explanation I've set out for her I think is the best match to what we see both in the show and in secondary sources like the comics.
Changes to canon extending beyond this one 'episode':
* Princess Luna / Nightmare Moon did not act completely alone but had significant portions of pony society supporting her against Celestia. More development on this will be seen in future chapters.
* Spike's voice is not remotely like a young colt's, or for that matter like a pony at all.
* He is also slightly larger than he is in the show and built with a longer neck, thinner body, and more angular head; these changes are difficult to describe in writing without making comparisons the characters would have no way to make in-universe. I suppose they don't really matter, but if you read about Spike being able to see or grab things he canonically could not this is the reason.
* I haven't fully settled on an age for him yet, but he is shaping up to be a bit older than he is in the show. Chronologically he'd be around 14 since Twilight hatched him when she was 9 and is currently 23, but his childhood was far from normal and dragons grow differently.
* Dedicated some time to filling out magic for the other two tribes (mostly earth ponies) to patch the power disadvantage compared to unicorns that is commonly portrayed in fanon.
* Established unicorn horns as being able to regrow. That causes some problems if I ever get around to doing an extended cut of "The Moive", but it's likely Tempest Shadow's injuries were atypical in some way- either because of some special property of Ursa claws that makes injuries by them resistant to healing, or just because her horn wasn't sliced off, it was ripped off, which caused so much damage to the root that it was impossible to regrow.