"We are not the same!"
Cadence's voice echoed in my head louder than the waves. The ocean swept me away, far away, and its cold waves pushed me deeper into the darkness.
Go on now.
I blinked. The water was gone. I found myself standing, again, within the unreal labyrinth of doors and stairs. Cadence wasn't with me any more, and Luna was still nowhere to be seen. In front of me was the Canterlot-style door, the one I had failed to open. I knew what I would find on the other side. I stepped through before I could change my mind.
It was Mother's Day.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadence sat at a gorgeous table. On the far side were my parents. I recognised the room; it was the dining room where I ate every day, three times a day, before Celestia took me under her wing. It was where Shining would tease me about "never eating enough" and "staying small forever."
A decorative plate hung from the wall behind my parents. As a foal, it weren't its pretty colours that amazed me the most, but the very fact that it even was there. Mum insisted it was beautiful, but all I could think about was "Why would anypony use plates for decoration?" What astonished me now was Cadence's ability to recall it in such detail. Well that, or I, too, had forgotten what it really looked like.
For a while, I wondered why I wasn't there with them. Then I remembered: Shining did send me an invitation, but I didn't go. I was busy, down in Ponyville, researching... something. I can't even recall what it was. I do remember thinking that I couldn't possibly be interrupted; that I'd go next year, and bring twice as many gifts. But of course, there never was a next year for us.
An appetising cake was on a tray in the middle of the table. Cadence baked it herself. She thought it would be much more personal than buying flowers, like everypony does, even if Shining couldn't do it himself. Frosting on the top read "For Equestria's Best Mother."
I could see them talk, and I could hear their words. My mind, however, couldn't process them. I was unable to make out the exact sounds, but somehow their meaning still reached me. Cadence, it seemed, didn't remember every last thing after all.
There was talk of my absence, and my father cracked a joke at my expense. Mum wasn't amused at all. After an awkward pause, dad reached for a knife. Shining stopped him; he would get it. He cut each of them a slice from the cake, and they talked a little more. I felt the taste of cake in my mouth, and it was magnificent. Shining then stood up, and excused himself. He said he needed to use a little stallion's room.
When he left, mum asked Cadence about her new life with Shining. She asked if he was treating her well. Dad asked if she was treating him well. Mum wondered if there was room for one more in there.
There was a sudden pain in my heart, as if somepony had driven a knife through it. Cadence dropped her fork. A napkin floated to her mouth and she cleaned her lips, then excused herself as well. She wasn't feeling very well; must be something she ate yesterday, she said. She walked outside because she needed some fresh air. She'd only be a moment.
She thought she could forget about it. She's a princess of Equestria, adult and married, yet even now, it's the only thing they expect from her. The children, always the children. And she couldn't even do what any mare could. The one thing she's good for.
Useless.
She couldn't take it.
As she reached the door, she heard my parents bickering. It's your fault, no it's yours, you shouldn't have asked, you shouldn't have said. It's improper, it's not nice, it's too forward. No it's not, it's perfectly reasonable question.
The stabbing pain subsided, giving its place over to a blunt heaviness in my chest. That is love for you. Sometimes you do things your significant other won't like. Lovers fight. It happens. Happiness can't last forever.
Can't it? Isn't that what everypony wants?
I felt a sudden rush. My heart beat faster and faster each passing second, and a chill ran down my spine. The feeling reminded me of what I sensed when I held Cadence's hair-amulet. A storm gathered, now, in Cadence's mind, and the black clouds seemed ready to burst into a downpour. Then the sky was clear again.
Cadence walked back into the room. Mum and dad smiled at her. He asked if she was okay. Cadence smiled at him. Her horn lit up, and my father's eyes glowed. Mum asked what's going on. Cadence replied by turning towards her, her horn shining even brighter. Mother turned towards dad. He looked into mother's eyes, and in there, he saw something he hadn't seen in years. Mother was enchanted. They couldn't look away. A warmness filled my heart, the kind of which I've never felt before.
Shining returned and questioned Cadence. She shrugged. He suggested that maybe they should leave them be. They did. Cadence was ready to jump out of her skin in joy. She could barely contain herself, grinning ear to ear. Shining was as surprised as he was pleased.
Cadence had always been keen on helping others through difficult times, but for all the little spells she had cast, she never felt to have made a difference in the long term. That would all change now. The Princess of Love had found her purpose. Before, she had been too afraid to use her unique powers to their full potential.
Not any more.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadence sat in a gorgeous room. It was Cadence's bedroom, and it was early in the morning. The two just got up. It's been months since Mother's Day, and Cadence had gone out of her way to help many ponies since then. Although she barely remembered the first, there was a connection between these two days in her mind.
She was brushing her mane in the mirror. Through the great windows, the morning light flooded in, bringing with itself the brightness of another perfect day. In the mirror, she could see Shining on the bed, looking her way and smiling. She was happy.
Then there was a knock on the door. Not a soft one, not one concerned about what they might have been doing at such an early hour. It was powerful, fast, violent. The knocks thundered again, and the room seemed to shake.
"Captain Shining Armor!" came the muffled voice of a Royal Guard. "Captain Shining Armor!"
Cadence and Shining exchanged a look. She shrugged. Shining got out of bed and and opened the door slightly. Cadence kept careful watch through the mirror. She could see only the muzzle of the guard as he leaned in. He spoke swiftly, and Shining stopped him halfway through, asking something. He sounded worried. The guard lowered his head and Cadence couldn't see the muzzle any more. Shining looked at her, gaping, then back outside. He nodded, said a few words, then closed the door. He looked at Cadence again.
"I have to go," he said.
Cadence remembered his voice well. "What happened?" she asked.
"It's... my parents," he replied.
By the time Cadence put her brush down, Shining was already gone.
Shining Armor and Princess Cadence stood before a wall of Royal Guards. The wall was a barrier between them and the home of my parents. Their door was wide open, but they couldn't get close. The street was blockaded.
A Night Guard unicorn walked outside, his horn glowing. He turned his head side to side, and squinted his eyes as if he were looking for something, eyeing everypony with a suspicious look. His gaze passed Cadence, and Cadence felt it lingered a little longer on her than on anypony else. A Royal Guard came to the unicorn and said something. The unicorn's horn stopped glowing, and he shook his head. Cadence thought she saw the unicorn look at her again, but she might have been just making things up.
Just nearby, another Royal Guard was attempting to coerce information from a catatonic Twilight Sparkle. I remembered that day. Well, some of it. It was supposed to be a surprise visit, since I missed Mother's Day and I felt terrible about it. I even brought flowers. I rang the doorbell, but they wouldn't open. I was afraid they didn't want to see me. I remembered that they kept a spare key under the doormat. I've always told them that was dangerous. Inside, I found the three of them. And there was so much blood....
The wall of guards opened for Shining and he walked past. Then he fell to his knees. The opening gave Cadence a second to see three ponies lying on the road just outside the residence, covered by white sheets. My horn prickled, and my chest felt heavy again. A sudden rush through my body felt as if somepony had dumped a barrel of freezing water on me.
Cadence rushed forward, but the wall closed before her. The guards wouldn't let her closer, yet she tried to wrestle her way through them. They stood their ground, keeping her outside, no matter how much she struggled.
"No!" she screamed. "No! No! No!"
She repeated that until her throat was sore by the exertion and her vision was blurred by her tears. For she could tell what happened, and I saw it before myself as well. My mother, she was the one lying on the right. She was consumed by lust and soon my father wasn't enough. The pony in the middle, he was a young stallion who just thought himself lucky. My father, on the left, would have none of it.
I felt a stab in my groin. Then one in my chest, and a third through my neck.
Then I was furious. Furious that Velvet would do this to me. How could she? Can't she see how much I love her? And with a kid, no less!
A stab at my heart made me reach for my chest. I thought I felt blood trickling down my hoof, but when I looked, there was nothing there.
I slit my own throat.
Cadence couldn't speak any more. She just cried.
This isn't what we wanted.
But it is what we do.
I wanted, with every bit of my being, to hate Cadence. Yet even so, somehow, I couldn't. Perhaps my mind figured that she hated herself enough; what use would there be in adding to an already infinite pile?
"Twilight Sparkle?" Luna asked. She was beside me again. "Where were you?"
Don't say a thing.
"I... I don't know. I opened the door, and then I was here."
"Do not get lost in here," she said. "A mind can do strange things."
"What happens if I get lost?"
"I would rather not find out."
We looked at the scene playing out before us.
"So that's the truth then?" I asked. "Cadence killed my parents?"
"She did not!" Luna snapped. She took a moment to compose herself. "Don't you say that. Do not, ever, say that. What happened to your parents is regrettable. They were but innocent victims in this tragedy. But you have to understand, so is Cadence."
"How could she be innocent?"
Luna spread her wings, and her horn lit up. I was in Cadence's room again. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark.
Princess Cadence was sitting alone before her shattered mirror. A hundred tiny reflections refused to look back at her. There was a knock on the door.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!" Luna's voice thundered.
Cadence got up slowly, and began walking to the door. Before she reached it, it was thrown open, and Luna stormed inside. The door slammed shut.
"Look at me!" Luna commanded. Her voice sent shivers down my spine.
Cadence lifted her head slowly, and looked Luna in the eye. She didn't say a thing.
"What have you to say for yourself?" Luna asked.
"Nothing," Cadence said. "I'm responsible. Do what you have to do."
For a moment, Luna didn't answer. She finally sighed. "Cadence, why?"
She looked away. "I don't know. I just don't know."
Luna put a hoof under Cadence's chin and turned her head to face her. Cadence's gaze trailed to the side, refusing to look Luna in the eye again.
"Cadence, why?" Luna asked again.
Cadence gulped. "I wanted to help. I thought they were unhappy. I just wanted to make them happy."
"Have you done this before? Do you often help other ponies?"
She nodded. "But this time was different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know. It was... it felt good. It made me feel good. I felt better than I ever had."
Luna pulled her hoof back. "I see."
"What's going to happen to me?"
"If Celestia finds out, there will be consequences."
Cadence lowered her head.
"There is a reason that it was me knocking on your door rather than her, Cadence."
She looked up again.
"I have not told her yet. And I do not want to."
"Why not?"
"You do not deserve it."
"But I do!" Cadence snapped. "I do! Princess of Love, as if! I'm useless. You know it, and Celestia knows it. Whole damn Equestria knows it. What am I even doing here, Luna? You and your sister control the sky. My biggest achievement is the murder of my in-laws. Oh, and I used to foalsit children. I deserve Celestia's fury. What I don't deserve is my crown. My title. My wealth. I am a disgrace! A disgusting, useless—"
Luna's hoof came down fast on Cadence's cheek, and the impact knocked her onto the floor. I felt the pain as well.
"Don't you say that!" Luna said. "Do not, ever, say that."
Cadence stood up, and she snarled. "And why not?"
"I have been down that road. There is nothing for you at the end but pain."
"So why are you here?! What do you want?"
"I'm here to give you the one thing I never had: a chance."
She's always had a knack for self-delusion.
Luna—the real Luna—turned to me. "Not a single day passes when Cadence doesn't suffer for the things that happened. But she did not commit the crime. She never would. There is something growing inside her. Something I've pledged to weed out. And that is why you're here. You've helped me. Perhaps you can help her."
"But I didn't help you," I replied. "The Elements of Harmony did."
"The elements banished me for a thousand years. I will not have Cadence be punished like that."
"That's not for you to decide. The way I see it, Luna, Cadence caused the death of my parents, and who knows how many more. And you're helping her by covering it all up." I stepped back. "How can you possibly justify that?"
"You may call me a murderer if you so desperately wish. But do you think, for a moment, that I have never called myself so? Do you really believe that I am not revolted by my own actions? I am guilty, Twilight Sparkle, of far more crimes than this. But Cadence is innocent. And I need you to prove that to her."
"So what do you want me to do? Shall I lecture her about the magic of friendship? Will that un-murder my parents?"
"Help me save her!"
There was an enthusiastic clapping in the room. The anger in Luna's gaze faded and was replaced at first by surprise, and then worry. We turned to see Cadence looking at us with a smile on her face.
"Bravo, Loony," she applauded. "A magnificent performance. It almost brought tears to my eyes."
"Cadence?" I asked. I saw the same invisible sinisterness in her eyes that I had seen in her nightmare.
"The one and only!" she announced. "The Princess of Love, in the flesh! In a dream, anyway." She looked away for a moment, then back at me. "Sorry about that thing earlier. I get so emotional. Luna's been telling me how I shouldn't let things get to me the way they do. Guess I just can't suppress my feelings the way she does."
Luna stepped up, pushing me behind herself. "Give her back to us."
"Oh, Loony, Loony," Cadence chortled. "You've always had a knack for self-delusion. Just accept it: I am Cadence."
"I won't warn you again."
"Oh, and what are you going to do?"
"I will stop you."
"Stop me, right." Cadence nodded, pursing her lips and rolling her eyes. "Stop me, like the time I killed Twilight's parents? Stop me, like the other one hundred times I enchanted some random pony on the street since then?"
Cadence looked at me for a moment with piercing eyes. I felt as if she was scanning my very soul. Her eyes drew my gaze in, and I couldn't look away.
"Stop me," Cadence said, "like the time I sentenced Aurora Iris to death?"
I was standing in a Canterlot street sometime in the afternoon.
Aurora Iris sat in a narrow, shadowed alley nearby. Her head was low and she cowered in shame, looking out into the street before her. Cadence was walking down that same street, and she noticed the quivering mare. Iris didn't see her; her eyes were fixed on a stallion further ahead. Cadence could tell Iris liked him, but she could never say it. So she reduced herself to pitiful stalking, and on the days when she was able to admit that to herself, she hated herself for it.
Cadence didn't mean to do much; just a little tug in the right direction. She only meant to give her the courage to talk. Before Cadence knew it, she had already cast a spell, and Aurora Iris was changed. Cadence walked away swiftly before her own conscience was able to catch up with her. For all the guilt that was on her mind, the same warmness that she had felt on Mother's Day now filled her heart again. No, more than that; it was even warmer.
The warmth grew addicting, and her heart begged for more. Weeks and months passed, and Aurora Iris was only one in a long line of ponies that Cadence "helped." Cadence could sense them, all of them. She knew how they felt; she knew what they wanted; and she knew how they all ended. Some lasted long. Some couldn't take it. Some stories ended only with pain and a noose; Aurora's ended with the loss of purity and an axe. Cadence's heart was aflame, and she craved the searing pain.
"Stop me," Cadence said, "like the time I was delivering the gala tickets in Cloudsdale?"
I was in a large, white room. My hooves pushed softly into the clouds. Flags and crests covered one wall, denoting the different houses of the noble pegasi who stood under them in an orderly line. Royal Guards lined the other wall, looking the pegasi in the eye with unblinking stares.
Cadence walked between them, and was followed close by Luna on one side, and Shining Armor on the other. Cadence stopped at every noble, and she held her chin high as the golden tickets floated over to them. Two steps, stop, ticket; two steps, stop, ticket. It was was simple. She had been nervous before, but now she was calm.
She came to see a broken pegasus with missing feathers and opaque eyes. Monsoon Descent fixed his stare on her, and when he showed his rotten teeth in a smile, Cadence felt something that disturbed her. Her heart rate climbed, her legs went stiff, and then she was on the floor. The ponies exchanged worried looks and the guards rushed over to her. She couldn't see it, but she could tell: Monsoon Descent was still smiling.
What she sensed in that stallion could bear no words. What frightened her, however, were not his fantasies of cruelty and torture, but that she herself had thought the same before.
Cadence was taken away; the rite of ticket delivery would resume the next day. But Cadence fled from her room in the night; she wanted to see Monsoon Descent alone. She told herself it would be a personal apology. It became a ritual of slit fetlocks, and Monsoon Descent received not a ticket but a patch of Cadence's blood-soaked mane.
Who would have guessed that where her body had failed to give birth to innocence incarnate, it was able to create monsters? Who knew it would be so fascinating?
"Or will you stop me," Cadence asked, "like how you stopped me when I made a scene in front of half the Royal Guard just this evening? Because you know, mummy, I'm already in my room."
I stepped up. "Cadence, you are not well." An astute observation indeed.
Cadence burst out laughing. "See?" she asked, pointing at me. "This one, she knows what's up!" She cackled.
"Do not call her Cadence," Luna said. "She is not Cadence."
"That's exactly what I'm talking about, you know," Cadence said. "I'm Cadence. It doesn't matter, not one little bit, how many times you say otherwise. Do you want to know what I think, Loony?"
"No."
"I think you're... what's that word Shiny used?" Cadence looked at me again, raising an eyebrow, then back to Luna. "Projecting, that's it. I think you're projecting. You refuse to accept that I'm Cadence because then you'd have to accept that you're Nightmare Moon."
"Silence!" Luna's voice boomed, and she stomped.
A blast of lightning illuminated the room for a split second. There was a storm outside.
"But I'm just repeating what you already know, really," Cadence said. "And you know what? It's funny you should bring Twilight here tonight. She is very special to me." She grinned at me. "Thank you, by the way, for talking to Shiny for me. He gets ever so unbearable."
"You are nothing but a cancer," Luna said, "and I will cure Cadence."
Cadence laughed some more. "Or maybe, just maybe, Cadence can't be cured of me because I am Cadence. I'm Cadence, and I kill people. And you're helping me. Twilight hit the nail right on the head." She giggled. "Oh, without you, I wouldn't be doing this. It's okay to feel guilty. It's even okay to hide it. But at least don't lie to yourself about it, Nightmare Moon."
Luna's horn lit up, and I saw her cast a spell, yet nothing happened.
Cadence grinned. "Okay, I can see it's upsetting you. You don't like being called that, I get it. But I also know that there was a time when you didn't call her Nightmare Moon at all."
Luna took a shaky step back. I'd never seen her afraid before.
"Oh, yes," Cadence continued. "I know all about your foalhood playmate. You thought I was just sitting around idly, all these years, whilst you ransacked my mind to your heart's content? No, no! I've dug up some interesting gems over the years."
"Y-you're lying," Luna replied. She looked at me—she was terrified—then quickly back at Cadence.
Cadence grinned in turn. "Am I lying? Am I? Let's see, shall we?" She turned to me. "The little protégé is going to love this next part."